Digital Journalism 2 Workbook- Mahira Begum

10 May Digital Journalism 2 Workbook- Mahira Begum

Posted at 16:04h in Digital Journalism 2, Level 4 by Mahira Begum

Week One

Introduction to Broadcast Journalism

Learnt what assessments we will have which were: CW1: Infographic 80% and CW2: professional conduct 20%

What is data?

Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis, records or measurements of something, data is also gathered and analysed in a rigorous, rule-governed way, using consistent units for each dataset, they are facts and normally refers to or represents something other than itself

Data Journalism, why do journalists use data?

IDJ, GDJ, Real-time Data Journalism

Week Two

  • Ways of visualising data
  • Static infographic (print+web)
  • Standalone charts/charts as stories
  • Interactive charts
  • Scrolling stories/’scrollitelling’
  • Interactive data visualisation
  • Interactive tools and Dashboards
  • Animation
  • Looked at visualising data
  • MP’s expenses scandal- which MP’s spend the most amount of money
  • Film scenes that were actually truthful and accurate to real life (Hollywood movies)
  • People who fought during the war, Soviet Union fighters, The Fallen of WW2
  • Gapminder- how many people are rich? How many people are poor? Ages, Income and life expectancy
  • Unsolved murder investigations
  • State of the Union speeches charts

Week Three

Don’t publish raw data.

Tell a story!

  • Florence Nightingale, 1857- Rose diagram of causes of death in the army
  • Improved hygiene
  • The context we see in the data is very important
  • “There are three kinds of falsehood: lies, damned lies, and statistics”- Mark Twain

Data terminology

  • Data point: one piece of data
  • Dataset: a whole array of data
  • Variable: one dimension of the dataset
  • Raw data: unprocessed, detailed, has not been manipulated or analysed
  • Aggregated data: grouped or combined from several measurements
  • AVERAGE-MEAN-MEDIAN-MODE
  • AVERAGE-(ARITHMETIC) MEAN
  • Add all and divide by number of entries
  • MEDIAN
  • The middle number or, if even number, the sum of the two-middle divided by 2
  • MODE
  • Most frequent or common value

Week Four

  • Business data and developing data stories
  • FTSE stands for Financial Times Stock Exchange
  • Be colour aware
  • Finding data stories- heatmap
  • Found 3 stories on the news that can be developed by using data sets

Week Five

Finding data sets

We went over the homework we was set in week 4 on finding a current news story and then developing it into data and finding a news angle from the news story.

Went through looking at data sets from official sources such as ONS, electoral commission etc.

Looked at international sources

Data visualisation, visual essays, visual stories-web, mobile

In the afternoon we had learn’t how to use Microsoft Excel 2016 and learn’t how to produce graphs such as a box and whisker plot, line graphs, pivot tables etc. We also worked on looking at data on crime in London which was real.

Week Six

This week we had fight hoax training by a guy who works for the company who came into university to teach us how to use the website. I learn’t that Fighthoax is a website that analyses news stories and big news data that have been published on the internet to detect whether they include false information in a matter of a few seconds.

I had started to research infographic ideas and I really liked the idea of doing an infographic story on knife crime in London as knife crime is known to be on a rise.

 

Week Seven

The class had introduced their ideas of their infographics to Michael and he had given us all pointers on the good things and ways we can make our work better by giving up suggestions. We then went into our Fighthoax groups that we had created from last week. In my group we were looking at Google News stories so we all had a task of looking for different news stories about Brexit on Google News so that we could do a manual analysis on Fighthoax.

 

Week Eight

We had started off the lesson by talking about the events that recently happened in the past week in New Zealand. Michael spoke about the editor’s code of practice and what we should be careful of when we are posting news, specifically in news stories that are sensitive.

We then went to discuss how far we have got on our infographic work and Michael gave us feedback. After this we got into our Fight-hoax groups and each individually analysed a news story.

In the afternoon with LJ we had been introduced to a software called InDesign and we had learn’t how to use it. We learn’t how to layout the page by splitting the page, adding text, changing the font size and lettering and adding pictures etc.

Week Nine

We started off the class looking at a online news article about Theresa May and then we had analysed it on Fight hoax in depth and spoke about each factor as a class. After this in my group we had looked for Brexit stories on Google News and had each individually analysed them on Fighthoax. We then went on to each individually discuss our datasets for our infographic and tell Michael how far we have got.

In the afternoon with LJ we had started to produce our infographics using the websites she had posted on Moodle, I had used Vengage to start creating my infographic.

Week Ten

We worked on Fighthoax and went through the final analysis of each groups stories that they analysed throughout the whole semester. We then went onto having a discussion about our infographics with Michael and everyone individually went through how far they had got. Then we had a lecture about script writing.

In the afternoon with LJ we had 1-2-1 meetings about our infographic and had shown LJ the work produced so far, I had shown my infographic I had created on Vengage and LJ had provided feedback

Week Eleven

We didn’t have any classes and instead we had a 1-2-1 meeting with Michael where we had to show our work we did on the infographic and infographic story during the Easter break. Michael had given me feedback and told me what looks good and what needs improving.

That evening I had worked on my infographic and the story and had improved what Michael said to do.

Week Twelve

No lesson, I had worked on updating and finishing off my workbook and making sure everything is ready for submission.

My Infographic and Infographic story

  • I started looking for sources on knife crime and had started to email for FOI and get raw data for my story and infographic. I then decided that I wanted to change my idea as my knife crime story was getting too broad and I wanted to do something that nobody in the class was doing. I then came up with the idea of looking at the rise in number of people choosing apprenticeships over university and I had looked at numbers.
  • I had told Michael that my idea for my infographic had changed to looking at apprenticeship and university numbers in the UK. He said this was fine, so later on that day after uni I had started to find raw data for apprenticeships and university and started researching.
  • I started sending out emails for raw data and they had replied back fairly quickly which was good.
  • After I had got my data, I had started to analyse each data set as there was raw data for university and one raw data set for apprenticeships. I did this through filtering my data on Excel to make it easier for me to analyse, it had also speeded up the process.
  • In my datasets I found that after analysing them the number of people attending university in the UK has not changed drastically and has stayed in the 500,000 mark but the number of people starting apprenticeships goes up each year.
  • I also have a friend that I know called Sadie who had left university due to mental health to start a TFL apprenticeship and I got her to say how she felt about starting an apprenticeship she said “mental health is a massive issue particularly for young people like me, I’m a dropout of uni because of stress with finance, I’m now doing an apprenticeship which I don’t have to pay for”.
  • I then started to write my story and then I made my infographic using a website called Vengage which was recommended by LJ.

My raw data that I had used:

Other sources I had used:

Mahira Begum
begum@gmail.com