Special Note
This is a 2nd year elective course.
Course overview
This is a second-year graduate level course for students interested in understanding the role of numerical data in journalism research and reporting.
This course is an introduction to data journalism. You do not need any prior skills or experience in statistics, graphic design, computer programming or specific software. It presumes no prior background in statistical methods or graphic design. To be a good data journalist you need to have a curious mind, attention to detail and critical thinking. Together, we will learn how to use various free data tools you can use in newsrooms around the world.
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
- produce a story driven by data.
- Find, pitch and tell data-driven stories.
- Understand the ethical implications of data journalism.
- Recognize what makes a good data visualization.
- Find data through open data portals, public data sets and FOIs.
- Interrogate, clean and fact-check data sets.
- Create simple graphs, maps and charts to help drive storytelling.
- Understand data visualizations and be able to recognize errors and deception.