Teaching Data Journalism: Insights for Indian Journalism Education

Abstract

With emergent subspecialties like data journalism bringing new skillsets and job roles, professionals and journalism educators find it difficult to imbibe the fast-changing industry demands. Such challenges in some countries and media industries put journalism educators in an advantageous position, offering them an agency to actively shape the contours of industry practice than getting shaped by it. From this perspective, the present study tries to understand data journalism practices in India and suggests certain insights to integrate data journalism training in programmes offered by Indian journalism education. By probing insights from the literature on data journalism education and by examining existing data journalism practices in India, the study calls for intervention with a pedagogic strategy to impart better data-sourcing practices, coding skills and critical data literacy among the students as an antidote to the prevalent DIY culture and overdependence on data aggregates. The pedagogic strategy should convey the importance of audience centrality and ethics in data journalism practice. It argues that such an approach can, in effect, improve industry practices as well as the quality of journalism education in India.

Training data journalists. An analysis of postgraduate programs in Spanish universities and the degrees of professionals

“…Training data journalists. An analysis of postgraduate programs in Spanish universities and the degrees of professionals media outlets is that, as Kashyap and Bhaskaran (2020) describe, "this apparent imbalance between the media industry requirements and academic curriculum has resulted in the mushrooming of media-backed institutions" (2020, p. 4). "Therefore, direct observation of media institutions that train journalists is considered appropriate.…”

“…There is a need to change the curricula and adapt them to the new niches in the media. As Kashyap and Bhaskaran (2020) argue, the changes brought about by new practices such as data journalism are an opportunity for the journalism academy to take a proactive role in shaping journalistic practices within the media industry.…”

Data journalism and audience engagement: Introduction to the special issue

“…The second research trend, which is also related to the first one, concerns the adoption, integration and evolution of data journalism within the newsroom in various societies and during specific time periods, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Auväärt, 2022;Bisiani et al, 2023;Desai et al, 2021;Maeyer et al, 2015;Pentzold et al, 2021;Stalph, 2020;Tong, 2020;Wright and Doyle, 2018). Scholars have also looked into how data journalism has been integrated into journalism education (Green, 2018;Heravi, 2019;Kashyap and Bhaskaran, 2020) and explored the prospect for data journalism (Mair et al, 2017;Stalph and Borges-Rey, 2018) In the third research trend, scholars are dedicated to discussing the norms, values, epistemology, ethics and expertise of data journalists (Borges-Rey, 2020;Bradshaw, 2014a;Splendore, 2016;Morini, 2023;Lewis and Waters, 2018;Hermida and Young, 2019;Tong and Zuo, 2019;Tong, 2022d;Ramsälv2023;Tandoc Jr. and Oh., 2017). The uncertain nature and ethics of data have been thought to have implications for the ethical practices of data journalism (Tong and Zuo, 2019;Tong, 2022d;.…”

“…The second research trend, which is also related to the first one, concerns the adoption, integration and evolution of data journalism within the newsroom in various societies and during specific time periods, such as the COVID-19 pandemic (Auväärt, 2022; Bisiani et al, 2023; Desai et al, 2021; Maeyer et al, 2015; Pentzold et al, 2021; Stalph, 2020; Tong, 2020; Wright and Doyle, 2018). Scholars have also looked into how data journalism has been integrated into journalism education (Green, 2018; Heravi, 2019; Kashyap and Bhaskaran, 2020) and explored the prospect for data journalism (Mair et al, 2017; Stalph and Borges-Rey, 2018)…”

Understanding and Enhancing Journalism Students’ Perception of Data Journalism

“…Various studies have highlighted the importance of incorporating data journalism into journalism programs and courses (Heravi and Lorenz 2020;Weiss and Retis 2018;Bhaskaran et al 2022). Furthermore, the growing demand for data journalism in newsrooms has prompted journalism schools to adapt their curricula to address the evolving needs of the industry (Jiang and Rafeeq 2019;Kashyap and Bhaskaran 2020). Data journalism is considered an essential skill as it aids in the narration of complex stories with comprehensible visualizations contextualizing societal issues; therefore, new courses are added to existing educational programs (Jiang and Rafeeq 2019).…”