Invited talk at the BBC Data Day, 12 November 2014.

1. Improving the coverage of
complex issues with data
journalism and digital
methods
12th November 2014, BBC Data Day, London
Liliana Bounegru | lilianabounegru.org | @bb_liliana

2. Gray, J., Bounegru, L. & Chambers, L. (2012) The Data Journalism Handbook.!
Available at: http://datajournalismhandbook.org/

3. Doing Journalism with Data (MOOC), European Journalism
Centre: http://datajournalismcourse.net/

4. Rogers, R. (2013) Digital Methods.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

5. Digital Methods Initiative (2014) DMI Tools.!
Available at: http://tools.digitalmethods.net

7. STS/
Internet
researchers
leading
digital
newsrooms
new ways of
covering
complex issues
=+

8. “An epistemological experiment”

9. STS/
Internet!
researchers
leading
digital
newsrooms
new ways of
covering
complex issues
=+

10. Two examples:!
1. climate change negotiations!
2. rise of the far right in Europe

11. Example #1:!
mapping dominant topics and
countries in UN climate
negotiations

12. EMAPS (2014) “Climaps: A Global Issue Atlas of Climate Change Adaptation”!
Available at: http://climaps.org/

13. “Adaptation turn”

14. – Leo Hickman, “Can carbon offsetting ever be truly green?”,
The Guardian, 3rd September 2008.
“In what seems like a flash, the climate-change
debate has lurched from talk of mitigation to
one of adaptation.”

15. The Atlantic (2014) “The UN's New Focus: Surviving, Not Stopping, Climate Change”.
Available at: http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/04/the-uns-new-focus-surviving-not-
stopping-climate-change/359929/

16. Can the shift from mitigation to adaptation be
observed in the UNFCCC negotiations?

17. Venturini, T., Baya-laffite, N., Cointet, J., Gray, I., Zabban, V., & De Pryck, K. (2014) “Three Maps and Three
Misunderstandings : A Digital Mapping of Climate Diplomacy.” Big Data and Society, 2014, 1(1).
Available at: http://medialab.sciences-po.fr/publications/misunderstandings/

18. Findings!
Both adaptation and mitigation are highly
visible in negotiations.
Adaptation financing has been central to
climate negotiations from the outset.
There is a noticeable shift towards adaptation
during the period we examined.

19. Which countries intervene most in UN climate
negotiations and how do these interventions
evolve over time?

20. Graphing the number of interventions in the
negotiations of the 21 most active countries
based on daily summaries from the Earth
Negotiations Bulletin (ENB)

21. Venturini, T., Baya-laffite, N., Cointet, J., Gray, I., Zabban, V., & De Pryck, K. (2014) “Three Maps and Three
Misunderstandings : A Digital Mapping of Climate Diplomacy.” Big Data and Society, 2014, 1(1).
Available at: http://medialab.sciences-po.fr/publications/misunderstandings/

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

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

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

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

26. 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/

27. 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/

28. Example #2:!
mapping counter-jihadist
groups on social media

29. 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

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

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

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

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

34. Findings
Facebook is an important medium for extremist
groups.
!
Three main clusters based on geographical
proximity.
!
European Counter-Jihadist groups are networked
and transnational.

35. Who are the new leaders?

37. Findings!
!
Offline leaders are active on Facebook.
!
There are also new emerging online leaders.
!
New technique for identifying online leaders.

38. Digital tools and methods

39. Digital Methods Initiative (2014) DMI Tools.!
Available at: http://tools.digitalmethods.net

40. Sciences Po Media Lab (2014) “Tools we develop and tools we use”!
Available at: http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/

41. “Netvizz is a tool that extracts data from
different sections of the Facebook platform
(personal profile, groups, pages) for research
purposes.”

42. Rieder, B. (2013). Studying Facebook via data extraction: the Netvizz application. In WebSci '13
Proceedings of the 5th Annual ACM Web Science Conference (pp. 346-355). New York: ACM.

43. Netvizz: https://tools.digitalmethods.net/netvizz/facebook/netvizz/

44. “The Twitter Capture and Analysis Toolset
(DMI-TCAT) captures tweets and allows for
multiple analyses (hashtags, mentions, users,
search, ...).”

45. Borra, E. & Rieder, B. (2014) “Programmed method: developing a toolset for capturing and analyzing
tweets”. Aslib Journal of Information Management. Vol. 66 No. 3: 262-278.

46. TCAT: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat

47. TCAT: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolDmiTcat

48. “The Issue Crawler is web network location
and visualisation software. It consists of
crawlers, analysis engines and visualisation
modules.”

49. “A software tool that locates and visualizes
networks on the web”

50. Issue Crawler: https://wiki.digitalmethods.net/Dmi/ToolIssueCrawler

51. “Gephi is an interactive visualization and
exploration platform for all kinds of networks
and complex systems, dynamic and
hierarchical graphs.”

52. Gephi: http://gephi.org

53. How might digital tools and methods for
issue mapping be used in journalism to
improve coverage of complex issues?

54. • Co-occurrence analysis to identify themes
!
• Network analysis to identify actors and sources
!
• Hyperlink analysis to explore “politics of
association”
!
• Resonance analysis to identify source
partisanship

55. Next steps:
!
• Preliminary report for Tow Center for Digital Journalism at
Columbia University (based on interviews with journalists)
!
• Embedded experiments in newsrooms
!
• Pilot around Paris 2015 climate negotiations (mapping
debates with transcripts, IPCC reports and social
media)!
!
• Toolkit and handbook for journalists

56. Opportunities and challenges
- some preliminary findings
and reflections

58. Some different potential uses of digital methods in journalism:
!
• Story discovery (news desk/projects)
• Internal reference resource (news desk/projects)
• Preparation for live coverage (news desk/projects)
• Quick/easy tools for journalists (news desk/projects)
• Presentational device (interactive/graphics)
• Interactive news “toys” for exploration (interactive)

59. Some challenges to using digital methods in journalism:
!
• Time, resource and budget constraints
• Resistance to change in (especially bigger) newsrooms,
hard to introduce new tools/methods
• Social scientists often want to capture complexity,
journalists often want to simplify
• Tension between traditional journalistic values (recency,
human interest, etc) and research values
• Rendering complexity readable and accessible to broader
publics - not just issue experts/researchers
• Keeping interactive projects about current events up to
date
• Not just tool provision, but also training
• Transparency of tools and interpretation of results
• Some of tools are complex to install and no web version
available
• Speed of using tools as events unfold
• Efficiency of these methods compared to others
• Hard to find stories in data

60. Some opportunities for using of digital methods in journalism:
!
• Interest in using tools from interactive teams
• More newsrooms have been experimenting with related
approaches, still at very early stage
• Potential for researchers working with journalists (rather
than issue experts) to help with selection, filtering, framing
and narration
• Introducing robust methodology around use of social
media data in newsrooms
• Identifying human sources for interviews.
• New forms of analysis and verification of sources.
• Hyperlink analysis and web data currently very rarely used
in journalism
• Low uptake of text-mining and scientometrics tools and
methods
• Input/feedback from journalists could feed into existing
software development
• New web versions of existing tools (e.g. Gephi)
• Using social media and web as data, not just content (to
look at relationships and interactions)

61. Thank You!
Liliana Bounegru | lilianabounegru.org | @bb_liliana
Sciences Po médialab
http://www.medialab.sciences-po.fr/
!
Sciences Po médialab - Tools
http://tools.medialab.sciences-po.fr/
Digital Methods Initiative
https://digitalmethods.net
Digital Methods Initiative - Tools
https://tools.digitalmethods.net