Data Journalism in the Philippines: New Trends, New Practices for Old Media Organizations

Data journalism and audience engagement: Introduction to the special issue

“…However, tensions emerged due to the paternalistic element in the design of data journalism producers, aiming to provide interactivity to audiences, who could thus generate meanings of the data stories themselves (Anderson and Borges-Rey, 2019). The literature also largely acknowledges the ability of data journalism to enhance audience engagement (such as Ilagan and Soriano, 2019; Fahmy and Attia, 2021; de-Lima-Santos and Mesquita, 2021; Borges-Rey, 2020; Wu, 2023) with marginal voices arguing this may not always be the case (such as Appelgren and Jönsson, 2021; Tong, 2022b). These studies portray data journalists’ audiences as empowered, but still subject to traditional journalists’ perception of their role as information gatekeepers and audiences as at the receiving end of communication.…”

“…One important reason to explain its rise stems from the belief that this form of journalism helps news media to engage with audiences. This is due to its frequent use of interactive to tell stories and methods such as crowd-sourcing to involve audiences in data collection, as well as its occasional publication of datasets to increase transparency (see Ilagan and Soriano, 2019; de-Lima-Santos and Mesquita, 2021; Borges-Rey, 2020; Felle, 2016). Most existing studies on data journalism examine the practices and epistemology of data journalists, the development of data journalism and its integration into newsrooms in different countries (see, for example, Appelgren and Nygren, 2014; Cushion et al, 2017; Fink and Anderson, 2015; Knight, 2015; Maeyer et al, 2015; Tabary et al, 2016; Tong, 2022c).…”

Evaluating “exemplary data journalism” from Asia: An exploration into South China Morning Post’s data stories on China and the world

“…Data journalism in the non-West remains under-researched, especially in Asia, even when countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, China and Iran are already doing some form of data journalism (Mutsvairo, 2019b). A few existing studies reveal findings like the lack of resources and unavailability of data as the common obstacles faced by data journalists in Asia (Ilagan and Soriano, 2019; Jamil, 2019), and that data stories usually take the form of short data-filled stories rather than full-length data-centric articles (Ilagan and Soriano, 2019; Jamil, 2019). In discussing data journalism in the global South, Mutsvairo (2019b) also reveals the lack of programming and statistical analysis skills among journalists.…”