Having outlined the range of ways in which artificial intelligence has been applied to journalistic investigations in a previous post, some clear challenges emerge. In this second part of a forthcoming book chapter, I look at those challenges and other themes: from accuracy and bias to resources and explainability.
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Investigative journalists have been among the earliest adopters of artificial intelligence in the newsroom, and pioneered some of its most compelling — and award-winning — applications. In this first part of a draft book chapter, I look at the different branches of AI and how they’ve been used in a range of investigations.
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Previously I wrote about four of the 7 angles that are used to tell stories about data. In this second part I look at the three further angles: those stories focusing on relationships; ‘meta data’ angles that focus on data’s absence, poor quality, or collection — and exploratory features that mix multiple angles or provide an opportunity to get to the grips with the data itself.
There are two broad categories of exploratory story:
Looking across the comments in the first discussion of the EJC’s data journalism MOOC it struck me that some pieces of work in the field come up again and again. I thought I’d pull those together quickly here and ask: is this the beginnings of a ‘canon’ in data journalism? And what should such a canon include? Stick with me past the first obvious examples…
These examples of early data visualisation are so well-known now that one book proposal I recently saw specified that it would not talk about them. I’m talking of course about… Continue reading
This is the fourth in a series of extracts from a draft book chapter on ethics in data journalism. The first looked at how ethics of accuracy play out in data journalism projects, the second at culture clashes, privacy, user data and collaboration, and the third at mass data gathering. This is a work in progress, so if you have examples of ethical dilemmas, best practice, or guidance, I’d be happy to include it with an acknowledgement.
Most news organisations’ professional guidelines include sections on protecting sources. In some countries this is also enshrined in law. Many journalists, however, are not aware of how they can betray sources’ identity by publishing original files online.
Metadata stored in those files – information about the date and location of access, the computers and accounts used, and other data, can be used to identify a leaker. Even photocopied or printed materials can bear invisible digital watermarks which describe what machines were used to produce them, and when (Reimer, 2005; PicMarkr, 2008). Continue reading
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