Data literacy among journalists: A skills-assessment based approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.19195/1899-5101.12.3(24).2Keywords:
data literacy, journalism, datafication, statistics, research dataAbstract
Datafication brings with it the challenges for journalists to fulfill their historical role as mediators of social processes to their audiences. Journalism has been a rather humanistic field, where journalists tell stories, but do not deal with the analysis and interpretation of numbers. For the current study a methodological tool was developed to measure data literacy among journalists in Estonia. The study confirms that data literacy is acknowledged by journalists as a requirement of future journalism, but their actual skills are still low. Journalists feel more comfortable with data presented in familiar forms. There is a strong tendency that data literacy develops when the skills needed for data processing are in actual use.
References
Appelgren, E., & Nygren, G. (2014). Data journalism in Sweden. Introducing new methods and genres of journalism into “old” organisations. Digital Journalism, 2(3), 394–405.
BBC Trust. (2016). BBC trust impartiality review: Making sense of statistics. UK. http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/starts_impartiality/audience_reasearch.pdf.
Coddington, M. (2015). Clarifying journalism’s quantitative turn: A typology for evaluating. Data Journalism, Computational Journalism, and Computer-Assisted Reporting. Digital Journalism, 3(3), 331–348.
Cushion, S., Lewis, J., Sambrook, R., & Callaghan, R. (2016). Impartiality review of BBC reporting of statistics: A content analysis. Cardiff: Cardiff University.
Entman, R. (1993). Framing: Toward clarification of a fractured paradigm. Journal of Communication, 43(4), 51–58.
Figl, B. (2017). Bigger is not always better: What we can learn about data journalism in small newsrooms. Reuters Institute Fellowship Paper. Oxford: University of Oxford.
Fridberg, T., Rosdahl, A., Halapuu, V., Valk, A., Malin, A., Hämäläinen, R., …, & Mellander, E. (2015). Adult skills in the Nordic Region: Key information-processing skills among adults in the Nordic re-gion. Copenhagen: Nordic Council of Ministers, TemaNord.
Godler, Y., & Reich, Z. (2017). Journalistic evidence: Cross-verification as a constituent of mediated knowledge. Journalism, 18(5), 558–574.
Hammond, P. (2017). From computer-assisted to data-driven: Journalism and Big Data. Journalism, 18(4), 408–424.
Himma-Kadakas, M. (2018) . Skill performance of Estonian online journalists: Assessment model for newsrooms and research. Dissertationes de mediis et communicationibus universitatis Tartuensis. Tartu: University of Tartu Press.
Hovden, J. F., Nygren, G., & Zilliacus-Tikkanen, H. (Eds.). (2016). Becoming a journalist: Journalism education in the Nordic countries. Gothenborg: Nordicom.
Huff, D. (1954). How to lie with statistics. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1984). Choice, values, and frames. American Psychologist, 39, 341–350. Karlsen, J., & Stavelin, E. (2014). Computational journalism in Norwegian newsrooms. Journalism Practice, 8(1), 34–48.
Kitchin, R. (2014). Big Data, new epistemologies and paradigm shifts. Big Data & Society, April–June, 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1177/2053951714528481.
OECD. (2016). Skills matter: Further results from the survey of adult skills. OECD Skills Studies. Paris: OECD Publishing.
Porter, T. M. (1995). Trust in numbers: The pursuit of objectivity in science and public life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rogers, S. (2017). Foreword. In J. Mair, R. L. Keeble & M. Lucero (Eds.), Data journalism: Past, present and future. Bury St Edmunds: Abramis Publishing.
Schäfer, M. T., & van Es, K. (Eds.). (2017). The datafied society: Studying culture through data. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Simons, M., Tiffen, R., Hendrie, R., Carson, A., Sullivan H., Muller, D., & McNair, B. (2017). Under-standing the civic impact of journalism. Journalism Studies, 18(11), 1400–1414.
Stalph, F. (2017). Classifying data journalism: A content analysis of daily data-driven stories. Journal-ism Practice. https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1386583.
Ulferts, H., Korunka, C., & Kubicek, B. (2013). Acceleration in working life: An empirical test of a sociological framework. Time & Society, 22(2), 161–185.
van Someren, M. W., Barnard, Y. F., & Sandberg, J. A. C. (1994). The think aloud method: A practical guide to modelling cognitive processes. London: Academic Press.
Waldman, S. (2011). The information needs of communities: The changing media landscape in a broadband age. Washington, DC: Federal Communications Commission.
Weaver, D. H., & McCombs, M. E. (1980). Journalism and social science: A new relationship? Public Opinion Quarterly, 44, 477–494.
Wihbey, J. (2017). Journalists’ use of knowledge in an online world. Journalism Practice, 11(10), 1267–1282.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2020 Central European Journal of Communication
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
