Examples of data journalism

Let’s get acquainted with some works of data journalism to get a feel for what journalists are currently doing and where they are pushing the boundaries:

Visualizations

538 - Gerrymandering — a look at how gerrymandering could alter district boundaries to favor either party. Involves creating a computational model of the country and its demographics at local level.

NYTimes - Income Mobility — a unique way to visualize how what your race and gender are at birth can influence your future success.

Pudding.Cool - 3D world population — a topographic lens of the world population.

Clever data collection

For cops, no limit - South Florida SunSentinel — reporters used publicly available toll booth data to calculate how fast cars were moving based on how long it took them to reach different toll booths spaced apart. They figured out that police vehicles routinely speed, with 1/5 of cop cars hitting speeds over 90 mph. They won the Pulitzer in Public Service as a result. (link to their database).

The Guardian - Bussing Homeless People — an investigative piece that compiled its own database of cities giving homeless people bus tickets to go elsewhere

Going undercover

Hanna and Ismail - BR Data and SPIEGEL ONLINE — an investigation into German housing discrimination. Fake profiles were created for fictitious characters Hanna and Ismail, who both applied to over 20,000 apartment inquiries. They differed only in name but Ismail received far fewer positive responses.

ProPublica - Facebook Lets Advertisers Exclude Users by Race — reporters purchased ads on Facebook targeted towards house hunters, and set the ads to exclude anyone with an “ethnic affinity” of African-American, Asian-American, or Hispanic. Facebook approved the ads despite them being illegal, a violation of the federal Fair Housing Act.

Algorithmic accountability

ProPublica - Machine Bias — an investigation into software used in judicial sentencing to predict how likely an arrested person would commit a crime in the future. Reporters checked risk scores for over 7,000 arrested in Florida and showed that the metric was wildly unsuccessful in predicting future crime and racially biased against African Americans.

Light topics

NYTimes - Hello, Arya! ‘Game of Thrones’ Baby Names Are for Girls — a look at how Game of Thrones-inspired baby names are on the rise, with some specific examples.