eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

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Data journalism is a rather new format of reporting news stories online, which utilizes open data as the basis of stories and illustrates findings visually. The data journalism creation process and the way the information is being presented are very different to that of traditional print journalism. The objectives of this research are to identify current data journalism creation processes, forecast the future process outlook and to discuss journalists' role in the process.

There has been very little academic research conducted in the field of data journalism previously. Therefore, the literature review within this thesis has a wide scope and is explorative in nature while the findings serve as the basis for creating a future model for data journalism creation processes. The viability of the created future model has been tested by interviewing three Finnish data journalism professionals.

Suggested streamlined process model for the future of data journalism proposes that in the future the two most work-intensive data journalism creation phases, data manipulation and story visualization, will be outsourced to organizations specialized in these phases. This model is generally accepted as a viable future scenario by the professionals interviewed. However, there is some concern about communication between journalists and the institution to which the data journalism creation process is being outsourced to. This notion of the importance of communication prompted the creation of two more models that take communication more into consideration: (1) data journalism consultancy model and (2) outsourced chain model for data journalism. Together these two models suggest four approaches for producing data journalism in the future, these are: (a) an in-house data journalism team,(b) partner up with an organization specialized in creating data journalism and outsource the whole data journalism creation process except story creation to it, (c) outsource each phase to a separate phase provider and (d) a hybrid model of the first and last mentioned approach. The role that journalists will have in the data journalism creation process of the future will alter according to which model media organization decides to adopt.