No abstract

During its period of rapid growth, data journalism was poised to position journalism as society's watchdog once again. But despite eager predictions, its rate of adoption outside large news organisations remains low, limiting the consolidation of data journalism to a normative practice. Through Scenario Network Mapping, this article seeks to outline the possible futures of data journalism practice by determining its sustainability in the current climate of journalism austerity. Results suggest three possible scenarios: 1) As a skillset, data journalism will soon be regarded as essential for every professional journalist 2) As a genre, data journalism will remain a niche storytelling format but will ultimately find its way into smaller newsrooms due to decreasing limitations 3) Due to financial and personnel limitations, data journalism will be abandoned by the mainstream media, who will outsource data analysis to non-legacy actors. Within this context, it remains to be seen whether data journalism can continue innovating in order to remain competitive in the constantly evolving ecosystem of today's news production.

This study explores the integration of data journalism within three European legacy news organisations through the lens of organisational structure and professional culture. Interviews with data journalists and editors suggest that professional routines resonate with established data journalism epistemologies, values, and norms that appear to be constitutional for an inter-organisational data journalism subculture. At the same time, organisational structure either integrates the journalistic subculture by increasing levels of complexity, formalisation, and centralisation or rejects it by not accommodating it structurally or culturally. The three data teams work along epistemologies of computer-assisted reporting, investigative journalism, and data journalism but differentiate themselves through nuanced understandings of data journalism practice, driven by individual journalists. After a structureless episode, one team sets itself apart as it diverges from data-driven routines and orients itself towards technological and interdisciplinary interactive journalism. The findings show an interdependence of individual efforts, varying conceptualisations of data journalism practice, and interplay between organisational structure and professional culture.

This study introduces a synthesised framework for the analysis of data visualisations in the news. Through a close examination of seminal content analyses, their methodologies and findings, this article proposes a framework that consolidates dimensional components of data visualisations previously scattered across this body of research. To transition from incidental and essentialist examinations of visual data artefacts towards a systematic and theory-informed exploration, we consider the diagrammatic dimensions of data visualisations. The offered synthesized framework can serve as a starting point for both theory-infused descriptive purposes as well as more theory-guided explorations. The framework is put to the test by analysing 185 visualisations drawn from award-winning data stories. Findings generated through the application of the framework highlight the varied composition of components of data visualisations, though certain combinations of components are prevalent, leading to static categorical comparisons or interactive spatial localization. After all, data artefacts can be understood as problem-posing elements that are the outcome of diagrammatic thinking that journalists employ to communicate claims.

Within a series of six qualitative studies over seven years, this research in instructing journalism students investigates whether or not covering foreign news from home via Internet technology can substitute foreign correspondents on-site to reduce costs. Co-orientation and decontextualization can be described as characteristic for virtual foreign correspondence (VFC). In some cases, it can lead to high-quality products. However, virtual foreign correspondents (VFCs) cannot entirely substitute traditional foreign correspondents (TFCs) in terms of regional knowledge, background information, contextual insights, on-site investigations, and access to local sources and voices. Nevertheless, VFCs and TFCs could complement each other to optimize partition of work.