From Telling Stories with Data to Telling Stories with Data Infrastructures: Repurposing Digital Methods and the Data Sprint for Data Journalism

From Telling Stories with
Data to Telling Stories with
Data Infrastructures
7 January 2016, University of Amsterdam
Liliana Bounegru | lilianabounegru.org | @bb_liliana
Repurposing Digital Methods and
the Data Sprint for Data Journalism

Data Journalism Handbook: http://datajournalismhandbook.org/

Data Journalism MOOC: http://datajournalismcourse.net/

Data Driven Journalism: http://datadrivenjournalism.net/

Data Journalism Awards: www.globaleditorsnetwork.org/programmes/data-journalism-awards/

1. How could the data journalism
mainstream be reimagined?

Bounegru, L. “What Data Journalists Need to Do Differently.” Harvard Business Review.!
https://hbr.org/2014/05/what-data-journalists-need-to-do-differently/

–Bounegru, L. “What Data Journalists Need to Do Differently.” Harvard
Business Review, 2014
“…when journalists are building their stories exclusively
around existing data collected by a small number of major
institutions and companies, this may exacerbate the
tendency to amplify issues already considered a priority,
and to downplay those that have been relegated or which
aren’t on the radar screens of major institutions.”

–Frontex ofﬁcial cited in Le Monde Diplomatique, 31 March 2014
“Le travail de Frontex, c’est la lutte contre l’immigration
illégale, pas le sauvetage en mer, et ces gens-là sont morts,
ce ne sont plus des migrants.”

How could things be
different?

–Bounegru, L. “What Data Journalists Need to Do Differently.” Harvard
Business Review, 2014
“Data journalists should strive to go beyond established
sources to ﬁnd or create their own data in order to bring
about fresh reﬂections and insights or to bring new issues to
the public’s attention.”

http://www.themigrantsﬁles.com/

–Nicolas Kayser-Bril cited in Gray, J., Lämmerhirt, D. and Bounegru, L.
“Changing what counts: How can citizen and civil society data be used as
an advocacy tool to change ofﬁcial data collection?” (2016)
“The goal of the project changed as the investigation
progressed: we originally thought that we would structure
existing information in order to geolocate it … and then
realised that …the story was not about the data we had
but about the data we didn’t have.”

From telling stories with data
to telling stories with data
infrastructures

Gray, J., Gerlitz, C. and Bounegru, L. (forthcoming). “Towards a Literacy for Data Infrastructures”

– Gray, J., Gerlitz, C. and Bounegru, L. (forthcoming). “Towards a Literacy
for Data Infrastructures”
“Might conceptions of data literacy which focus on
increasing the effective use, uptake and transformation of
data not risk overlooking questions about how data is made
– and how it might be made differently?”

From data as a resource or raw material to be mined and to
extract value from …

…To accounting for the wider data infrastructures which
create the socio-technical conditions for the creation,
extraction and analysis of data.

Where can we draw inspiration
from to reimagine data journalism
as telling stories with or about data
infrastructures?

2. Telling stories with data
infrastructures: Examples from
digital methods research

Situated at the intersection
between media and social
research after the digital turn

Digital Methods Initiative!
www.digitalmethods.net

Digital methods take up the challenge of rethinking the
methodological repertoires of social and cultural research by
creatively engaging with digital infrastructures and their
devices

– Richard Rogers, “Political Research in the Digital Age”, International
Public Policy Review, 2014
“[Digital methods] refers to repurposing online devices
and platforms (such as Google searches, Facebook and
Wikipedia) for social and political research that would often
have been otherwise improbable.”

– Richard Rogers, “Political Research in the Digital Age”, International
Public Policy Review, 2014
“[Digital methods] encourage a sociological outlook or
imagination about research opportunities that exist in online
culture by following the medium rather than asking it to do
one’s disciplinary bidding.”

–Noortje Marres, “Re-distributing methods - digital social research as
participatory research,” 2011
“This approach accords to digital devices, search engines
chief among them, the capacity to generate potentially new
methods of social research.”

Digital methods are …
!
(1) an approach to studying social and political
issues online (“issue mapping”, “controversy
mapping”, “digital STS”)
!
(2) an approach to the study of digital platforms to
makes visible the method and information politics of
digital devices
!
(3) a contribution to the methodological repertoire of
social and Internet studies and way to reﬂect on the
politics of methods of these disciplines

1. Mapping Right-Wing
Formations in Europe with the
web and hyperlink analysis!

The Guardian (2013) “The rise of far right parties across Europe is a chilling echo of the 1930s”. 
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/nov/15/far-right-threat-europe-integration

Hufﬁngton Post (2014) “Sudden Rise of Far Right Groups in EU Parliament Rings Alarm Bells Across
Europe”. Available at: http://www.hufﬁngtonpost.com/elinadav-heymann/sudden-rise-of-far-right-
_b_5512961.html

New York Times (2014) “Populist Party Gaining Muscle to Push Britain to the Right”. 
Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/08/world/europe/populist-party-gaining-muscle-to-push-
britain-to-the-right.html

What kinds of issues are most active
amongst far right groups?

How are far right extremist groups connected
to populist right and other right wing groups
online?

What are the recruitment methods 
of far right groups?

Are current counter-measures proving
effective?

Proﬁles for 13 European countries.

Method!
1. Compile lists of links per country with expert input
2. Hyperlink analysis with the Issue Crawler
3. Study issues and actors in resulting networks

Greece: blood and soil and organic markets

Rogers, R. et al (2013) “Right-Wing Formations in Europe and Their Counter-Measures: An Online
Mapping”. Digital Methods Initiative. https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/RightWingPopulismStudy

Hungary: horse and yurt recruitment festivals

Findings 
Right-wing politics in the North is animated by Islamophobia while
the old right is still active in the South.
!
New issues (e.g. environment, anti-globalisation and rights),
principles and recruitment techniques animate right wing politics in
Europe today.
 
Counter-measures are often outdated (mismatch between activities
of the right and measures to counter them).
!

2. Mapping counter-Jihadist (anti-Islamist)
groups with Facebook analysis

The Guardian (2012) “Far-right anti-Muslim network on rise globally as Breivik trial opens”.
Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2012/apr/14/breivik-trial-norway-mass-murderer

Hope Not Hate (2012) “Counter-Jihad Report”. 
Available at: http://www.hopenothate.org.uk/counter-jihad/

Are different Counter-Jihadist groups in
Europe connected? If so how?

Methods!
!
1. Set up Facebook research account
!
2. Submit request to join Facebook groups of interest
making research intentions known in the request
!
3. Use the Netvizz application to extract (anonymised)
user activity data across groups

Digital Methods Initiative. “Counter-Jihadist Networks: Mapping
the Connections Between Facebook Groups in Europe.”

Findings 
 
Facebook is an important medium for extremist
groups.
!
Three main clusters based on geographical proximity.
!
European Counter-Jihadist groups are networked and
transnational.
!
Most engaged with content is meme-like.

3. Mapping climate change adaptation with
transcripts and indicators

http://climaps.org/

Climaps (2014). Available at: http://climaps.org

Findings!
Both adaptation and mitigation are highly visible in
negotiations.
Mitigation has been a top priority from the beginning.  
 
Adaptation received less attention in the beginning with
the exception of adaptation ﬁnancing
Adaptation becomes more important in the second
phase of the negotiations.

Notable stability in presence and
intervention of countries.
Most active are China (representing G77),
United States and Europe.
Notable exceptions include Bolivia and
Philippines who are becoming more
prominent in recent negotiations.
Countries tend to be more active when they
host the negotiations.

“…the negotiations on climate change have moved from
mitigation to also include adaptation, an issue which
could in principle be seen as a national responsibility. 
 
Here it becomes particularly acute to justify which
countries should receive aid and why. A much
debated method for doing so is the assessment of
vulnerability to climate change.”
!
- climaps.org

http://index.gain.org/ranking

http://download.daraint.org/CVM2-Low.pdf

Who is vulnerable according to whom?
Climaps (2014). Available at: http://climaps.org

Vulnerability indices tend to disagree in their
assessment of different countries.
Very few countries (7) are among the most vulnerable
according to all three indices.
Quite a few countries (25) are simultaneously assessed
to be most vulnerable and least vulnerable according
to different indices.
The assessment of climate change vulnerability by
means of indicators continues to be a contentious
issue divide in both policy and academic communities.

Wired Italia (2014) “Cambiamenti del clima: 20 anni di conferenze”. March 2014. No. 60.

Wired Italia (2014) “Beautiful Information, in mostra le migliori infograﬁche di Wired”. 
Available at: http://www.wired.it/attualita/media/2014/03/04/beautiful-information-infograﬁche-wired/

3. Telling stories with data
infrastructures: Examples from
journalism

How might journalism that is aligned with
the digital methods outlook look like?
• It would engage not with data as raw materials but with data
infrastructures.
• It would engage with digital platforms as objects of investigation not just
sources of data to tell stories about issues, platform effects or both.
• It would account for the socio-technical conditions for the creation,
extraction and analysis of data as a key part of the investigation rather
than a methodological footnote.
• It would take seriously the investigation’s potential to interrogate and
intervene in the composition of data infrastructures.
• It may go in the direction of algorithmic accountability reporting
(investigation into the “power structures” and biases inscribed in
computational algorithms - Diakopoulos 2014).

Reverse engineering
Netﬂix’s ﬁlm genres
database

How Netﬂix Reverse Engineered Hollywood. The Atlantic (2014)

Mapping the dynamics of
misinformation on Twitter

Reading the Riots: How Riot Rumours Spread on Twitter. The Guardian (2011)

Reverse engineering targeting
models in email campaigns of
political elections

Message Machine: Reverse Engineering the 2012 Campaign. ProPublica (2012)

Mapping the French
political blogosphere

Le Monde, "2007-2011 : la cartographie de la blogosphère politique" (2012)

Making visible the
memory politics of social
media platforms

China’s Memory Hole: The Images Erased From Sina Weibo. ProPublica (2013)

4. The Winter School and the Data
Sprint Format

What is the Digital Methods Winter
School? What is a data sprint?
!
See: https://vimeo.com/148249099

Thank you!
Liliana Bounegru | lilianabounegru.org | @bb_liliana

From Telling Stories with Data to Telling Stories with Data Infrastructures: Repurposing Digital Methods and the Data Sprint for Data Journalism

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