Extending Open Data Platforms with Storytelling Features

Abstract

1 Research into Data-Driven Storytelling using Open Data has led to considerable discussion into many possible futures for storytelling and journalism in a Data-Driven world, in particular, into the Open Data directives framed by various governments across the globe as a means of facilitating governments, transparency enabled citizens and journalists to get more insights into government actions and enable deeper and easier monitoring of governments' work. While progress in the development of Open Data platforms (usually funded by national and local governments) has been significant, it is only now that we are beginning to see the emergence of more practical and more applied use of Open Data platforms. Previous works have highlighted the potential for storytelling using Open Data as a source of information for journalistic stories. Nevertheless, there is a paucity of studies into Open Data platform affordances to support Data-Driven Storytelling. In this paper, we elaborate on existing Open Data platforms in terms of support for storytelling and analyse feedback from stakeholder focus groups, to discover what methods and tools can introduce or facilitate the storytelling capabilities of Open Data platforms.

Transparencia y Cuarto Poder en España. Un estudio sobre el valor del acceso a la información para el periodismo y en la lucha contra la desinformación

“…La aprobación de normativas de acceso a la información y el desarrollo de los datos abiertos han contribuido a un desarrollo de ciertas disciplinas periodísticas. Así, Brolcháin et al (2017) aseguran que han surgido nuevas narrativas gracias a la proliferación de los datos abiertos en la última década. Sin duda, el Periodismo de Datos ha sido uno de los grandes beneficiados en este sentido, pues se nutre precisamente de grandes conjuntos de datos (Rogers, 2012).…”

“…Mientras la transparencia se ha convertido en uno de los ejes de los discursos políticos en España (Curto-Rodríguez, 2020), el periodismo ha resultado ser uno de los sectores más interesados en las políticas de apertura informativa. Así, han surgido nuevas narrativas periodísticas gracias a la proliferación de los datos abiertos en los últimos años (Brolcháin et al, 2017).…”

Mediating Open Data Consumption - Identifying Story Patterns for Linked Open Statistical Data

“…Lately, ideas for extending open data platform with data story features have been considered. According to [4], open data platforms with support for data storytelling are required to among other things support the discovery of relevant data, provide assistance in wrangling data and support the generation of insights from stories. To enable the generation of insights from data published on open data platforms, tools for data analysis and visualisations are required.…”

“…Recent studies such as [26] also show that both small and large newsrooms are employing data story telling using publicly available data including open data in their data journalism practices. However, apart from [4], we are unaware of investigations linking data stories with data published on open data platform. We address this gap in this paper by examining how data stories can be used to mediate the use of linked open statistical data available on open data platforms.…”