Web 2.0 tools for data journalists

Web 2.0 toolboxfor data journalism

David HerzogMissouri School of Journalism and NICAR

Getting and sharing

Cleaning

Analyzing

Visualizing and mapping

Tools for every step

Don’t have to buy/license your own software

No software to install (for the most part)

Web service hosts data

Data accessible

Can share with the world

Benefits

Give up control of data◦ Read the terms of service◦ Legal constraints

Downtime for web applications

Services go out of business/lose traction◦ Swivel◦ Needlebase (June 1, 2012)

Poor documentation and user interfaces

Drawbacks

http://www.google.com/transparencyreport/userdatarequests/

http://www.reporterslab.org/needlebase-dead/

Get and share data

FOIA Machine

http://www.foiamachine.org/

iFOIA

https://www.ifoia.org/#/

MuckRock

http://www.muckrock.com/

OpenMissouri

http://openmissouri.org/

What do they know?

http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/

Alavateli

http://www.alaveteli.org/

Socrata

http://opendata.socrata.com/

GitHub

https://github.com/Chicago

Junar

http://www.junar.com/

APIs – New York Times Congress

http://developer.nytimes.com/docs/congress_api

DocumentCloud

http://www.documentcloud.org/

ScraperWiki

http://scraperwiki.com/

Cometdocs

http://www.cometdocs.com/

Zamzar

http://www.zamzar.com/

Clean your data

http://www.zamzar.com/

Google Refine

http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/

Mr. Data Converter

http://shancarter.github.io/mr-data-converter/

Mr. People

http://people.ericson.net/

Analyze your data

http://people.ericson.net/

Google Spreadsheets

http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/05/summarize-your-data-with-pivot-tables.html

Overview

http://overview.ap.org/

Visualize your data

http://overview.ap.org/

Many Eyes

http://www-958.ibm.com/software/data/cognos/manyeyes/

Tableau Public

http://www.tableausoftware.com/public

Infoactive

https://infoactive.co/

Chartbuilder

http://quartz.github.io/Chartbuilder/

Infogram

http://infogr.am/

Muckety

http://news.muckety.com/

Google Media Tools

http://www.google.com/get/mediatools/

Google public data explorer

http://www.google.com/publicdata/home

Google Fusion Tables

Map your data

Batch Geo

http://www.batchgeo.com/

Texas A&M geocoding

http://geoservices.tamu.edu/Services/Geocode/

Google MyPlaces

Google Docs map gadgets

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AlekPTqyybH6dDgtX1FvQm1tclFIdHBmV3NqOHBxZlE&hl=en

Geocommons Maker

http://geocommons.com/

ArcGIS Online

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/index.html

Advanced mapping tools

http://www.esri.com/software/arcgis/arcgisonline/index.html

MapBox

http://mapbox.com/

CartoDB

http://cartodb.com/

Technology

Web 2.0 tools for data journalists