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Free data literacy for journalists course
THE UNIVERSITY of Sheffield is offering a free online course in data literacy for journalists. Created by Dr Jingrong Tong, senior lecturer in digital news cultures at the University of Sheffield, and Claire Miller, data editor at Reach plc, it promises to guide you through using datasets in journalism in six weeks at about three hours a week, at your own pace.
Dr Jingrong Tong talks us through data
According to research funded by Google, 42 per cent of journalists have "used data" and 51 per cent of newsrooms have "at least one data journalist". But how well do they - we - do it?
And the internet giant's lobbying department must have been pleased with that finding: Google is here to help journalism, not anything else! And indeed in her introduction Dr Jingrong Tong usefully stresses the importance to journalists of being sceptical of data and of the effects of the ways in which it has been gathered, selected and curated.
The Freelance sampled the course and it offered some techniques we hadn't known about. The great majority of the worked examples use the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet program.
It's hard for us to tell, though, how useful the explanations are for someone who, say, very rarely asks themself "what is the type of this data item?" or even "is this cell in the spreadsheet a number, text or a date or what?" - or even: what is the relationship of these two questions? If you are that person, the Freelance would be very grateful if you could try the course and let us - and the course organisers - know.
Sign up at the link below...
Data literacy for journalists futurelearn.com