Four Ways to Get Involved with the Global Data Journalism Community

By: Stephen Abbott Pugh | 08/19/2015

All over the world, journalists are taking an interest in data journalism, attending training sessions and infusing new data skills into their work. ICFJ Knight Fellow Stephen Abbott Pugh offers tips on how to join the global data journalism community:

So you’ve taken your first data journalism class and now see the possibilities for using data to enhance your storytelling. What’s next? Here are four ways you can keep the momentum going and build on what you’ve learned.

Join a local Hacks/Hackers chapter representing a wider community of data journalism and technology/innovation in media. Find these using Meetup.com or Facebook.
On Twitter, follow the global conversation about data-driven journalism and data visualizations by tracking the #DDJ or #dataviz hashtags. The links posted there could inspire you to look for data sources to tell similar stories about the country you work in.
Make sure to familiarize yourself with the datasets currently available on open data websites. To discover open data sets for your country, consult online resources like the Open Knowledge global open data index or dataportals.org.
Sign up to useful mailing lists to receive updates in your inbox on the latest happenings in data journalism. Examples include the DDJ mailing list (for beginners), Code for South Africa’s Naked Data newsletter (for fun) or the NICAR-L mailing list (for experts). You can also search on Google Groups for local mailing lists.

Code for Africa’s recent d|Masterclass in Nairobi was just the latest of many sessions run by our team to help journalists learn advanced data techniques and discuss how to incorporate data-driven storytelling into their newsrooms. Get in touch with us via Twitter or Facebook if you want to find out more about these data bootcamps.

Main image CC-licensed on Flickr via janneke staaks.

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