Reading between the numbers: Tracing the politics of data through the practice of data journalism

• In Event: Politics of data and quantification as modes of governing (Part 1)

Abstract

Proliferation of digital data has led to datafication of knowledge across all domains of work. Journalism is one of the many fields to make way for the ‘new’ potential of data-driven knowledge via what is usually termed as data journalism. Instead of source-based news reporting, data journalists write data stories based on analysis of datasets, presented as colorful charts, maps, info-graphics and interactive visualizations. Data journalism combines statistical analysis, reporting and data visualization to find and tell news stories (Chris W. Anderson, 2017) and hence presents a new and emerging site for data politics. In this paper, we examine this politics of data through the practices of data journalism based on a 14-week long ethnographic immersion in the data journalism team of a leading national English newspaper in India as well as secondary research that draws on data stories, news articles and online commentary by data journalists and reporters. We highlight how access to data is controlled and negotiated through political actions, how data journalists leverage data for political action and accountability, and how consequently data and data journalists come under the ambit of political censorship. While critically analysing how data journalists, as practitioners, navigate the politics of access, participation, representation and interpretation of data, we foreground two important points about data politics: firstly, digital data as a socio-material artifact rearranges the narratives of power within and outside the newsroom; secondly, how the larger social forces mold the narrative potential of data.

Authors

• Srravya C, IIIT Bangalore

• Bidisha Chaudhuri, International Institute of Information Technology Bangalore