Why is data journalism important?

July 2021 Some of the Sanema and Yecoana indigenous tribes living deep in the Amazon appeared at the Superior Prosecutor's Office of the Venezuelan state of Amazonas. They allege that illegal miners from Brazil, known as 'garimpeiros', have been leaching mercury into their surrounding water bodies, causing widespread illness among indigenous people.

As always, this time too, their words were not given much importance. Even though they have been complaining for the past decade, from the local government to the national government, no one has cared much about their complaints.

However, even if the local administration was not interested, the journalists showed interest. There have long been plans to investigate how criminals operate inside the Venezuelan Amazon. Finally, investigative journalism organizations entered the field, including Spanish newspapers El Pais and Armando.info, which were also involved in projects such as the Panama Papers and the Paradise Papers. They are also joined by the Pulitzer Center's Tropical Forest Research Network.

In the first phase of the search, data journalists developed an algorithm to find open mines and hidden airstrips in different parts of the Amazon using satellite images. The data from there is then compared with satellite images from Planet.com, Google Earth and DigitalGlobe. The maps were then put into a software called MapBox to be presented to the audience, through which the audience could find out for themselves where the criminal activity was taking place in Venezuela.

Investigation revealed that these secret airstrips deep in the jungle are regularly visited by various illegal planes from neighboring countries including Brazil, which are used to smuggle gold illegally mined inside the Amazon. These strips are also used for drug trafficking. Soon after this report was published, the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) of Venezuela launched a campaign against illegal miners in the Amazon. Their campaign resulted in the complete shutdown of many mining operations, unprecedented in Venezuela's history.

Datajournalism.com ranked this six-part report as one of their top 9 data journalism projects of 2022. From protecting the rights of indigenous people to protecting the environment, exposing the criminal activities of criminals, this report has played an important role in various ways.

Whether it is the format or the content of journalism, data journalism has added different dimensions to it in various ways. Let's take a look at why data journalism is important.

Importance of format Visualization of complex data

A key difference between data journalism and traditional journalism is that data journalism allows visualization of complex data, which is not possible in traditional journalism. Data journalists can easily present complex datasets to audiences using a variety of visualization software and methods. By transforming abstract data into aesthetic and readable visualizations, the audience can infer key messages from the visualization itself and draw conclusions from the news story.

For example: The Pudding, an interactive data visualization company, created a data visualization of how women are represented in newspaper headlines using data from a database created by the Global Media Monitoring Project. It is not possible for the audience to decipher any data from the huge tables in the database. However, if the results obtained from analyzing the database are shown through visualization, then it is possible to easily understand the actual state of the data. And that's what The Pudding did. As can be seen, most of the women-centric news headlines are related to violence. Also such news is more sensational. Which media have sensationalized women more, which words have been used more at which times, are also presented through aesthetic interactive visualizations. New forms of storytelling

A new format of storytelling appears in data journalism. Data journalists use a variety of data visualizations, including charts-graphs-maps-3D models, within their news stories. Also use audio, video or animation many times. Adding data in such a format while writing allows data journalists to shape the storytelling of their reports in a variety of creative ways. While this helps them to organize the report in different ways, the readers can get a fuller understanding by accessing the information in different ways.

For example: After the terrible earthquake in southern Turkey and northwestern Syria in February 2023, a group of Reuters journalists wrote in their report in addition to pictures, videos to highlight the actual condition of the earthquake, the amount of damage, how earthquakes occur, and what can be done to prevent earthquakes. , uses drone footage, maps, 3D models, illustrations, charts. As a result, a detailed picture of the earthquake emerges in front of the reader.

Interactivity

One of the biggest advantages of data journalism is its interactive feature, where the audience can interact with the data itself. In the case of interactive data visualization, the data is exposed in the form of visualization in front of the audience, the audience finds interesting information from the data according to their wishes and interests. Its purpose is to allow the audience to explore. Interactive data visualizations can be created not only for serious news events, but also for various interesting topics.

For example: 'The Pudding' creates an interactive report called 'Who's in Your Wallet?' The report includes several interactive visualizations of the people on the banknote, their occupations, their genders, which aspect they are first in, their year of birth and their lifetime. Readers can click or hover the mouse pointer to find out more detailed information about that profession or person.

Importance of content Transparency and accountability

In June 2023, after a boat capsized off the coast of Greece that left 78 dead and 500 missing, the Greek Coast Guard was widely criticized for not intervening earlier. After this disaster, Greek non-profit media Salomon took the initiative to shed light on the European Union's allocated funds for Greece's border management between 2021 and 2027. Salomon released a detailed infographic showing that the Greek government has allocated only 0.6 million euros of the EU's total allocation of 880 million euros to 'search and rescue'. The remaining huge amount of allocation has mainly been spent on purchasing essential equipment for border protection like drones, vehicles, thermal cameras, helicopters, automated surveillance systems. In this way, transparency and accountability can be ensured by analyzing data from various areas of finance including public service-development. Through this, it is possible to find out the manipulation, inefficiency or irregularities of various institutions starting from the government.

Another example would be Japan's financial support for the Matarbari coal-fired power plant in Bangladesh. According to a report by Reuters, Japan referred to this financial support to the United Nations as 'climate finance', meaning that they claimed a coal-fired power plant as beneficial for the environment. According to their claim, since the coal-fired power plant will use Japanese technology, power generation will reduce carbon emissions, contributing to a more sustainable environment. Although this carbon emission is more than the emission of a whole year in the city of San Francisco. Meanwhile, Iqbal Kabir, a researcher working under the Ministry of Health and Family Development of Bangladesh, asked for a grant to research the effect of salt water on the fertility rate of women in coastal areas. The Japanese government did not take it. Japanese government officials also declined to comment on why they are pouring money into certain projects. Meanwhile, after international criticism in this regard, Japan has also withdrawn from fossil-fuel-based projects.

Look for patterns and trends

Since the 1970s, incidents such as kidnapping for ransom have become quite regular in Argentina, with guerrilla groups in particular using this tactic to further their interests. Later, this technique of kidnapping for financial gain was adopted by many criminal organizations. But a recent analysis of a data-driven investigative report by InsightCrime shows that the rate of kidnappings has continued to decline this century, falling to just 27 in the past year, with most of them occurring in or around the capital, Buenos Aires.

Comparing kidnapping rates to several economic indicators, kidnapping rates have fallen as Argentina's inflation has risen. At the same time, the crime rate has also decreased due to the arrest of the leaders and activists of various organized criminal groups and bringing their criminal groups fully under the law. In this way, data journalism can be used to find patterns and trends in everything from crime to economics, politics, and commerce. There may be patterns within complex topics that can be picked up through data analysis but not through traditional journalism.

Fact checking and verification In 2020, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered the country's poverty rate to be cut in half. With that goal in mind, Russian officials began to 'work', resulting in Russia's poverty rate falling to the lowest level in history. But has Russia's poverty rate really decreased?

Russian media outlet The Insider, which specializes in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analysis, deduced from their data-driven analysis that Russian officials have resorted to statistical tricks rather than taking action to reduce poverty. According to Inside's analysis, the number of poor people in Russia decreased by 1.7 million by 2022, while the number of poor people increased by 2.3 million according to the old estimates. Real poverty rates are missed by deriving poverty rates using different types of statistics in different regions of Russia. And this is how the Russian government has manipulated the real picture of their development.