Data journalism and the trends that drive it
This week, Aleksandra Milwicz and Edward Firman take you through current and future trends in the fast growing and ever evolving landscape of data journalism
Data journalism is a form of reporting that strays away from the classic breaking news story and focuses on facts and statistics. It is, in essence, analysis that bridges the gap from raw data to hard hitting stories that expose the reality of murky processes.
This form of reporting started to gain popularity in the late 2000s and early 2010s. It is now an integral part of news reporting in the UK, with interactive graphics, in-depth data analysis, and investigative reporting, where using datasets has become a common practice.
Popular types of data journalism
There are many ways in which data journalism is interpreted and outputted:
It helps to make the data digestible and easier to understand. It’s popular on social media, with organisations using statistics to create pie charts and graphics, for the quick scrollers.
And in articles to help to emphasise and present the data:
Famous examples
Famous landmark pieces like ‘The Panama Papers’, which exposed dodgy offshore financial dealings, and ‘The Counted’, which tracked police killings in the US, revolutionised journalism. Other examples include the ‘MP’s expenses scandal’ and ‘Watergate’.
Current trends
Looking back over data journalism trends last year, we see how major events such as elections, conflicts and extreme weather drove infographics and dashboards to interesting and stimulating places.
Elections
In 2024, major elections in places such as the US and Germany led to interactive ‘battleground’ maps. In the US, The Washington Post’s interactive dashboard showed how the majority of states moved to the right compared to the last election, even in strong Democratic areas. In Germany, the Tagesspiegel newspaper analysed speeches made by far right party Alternative for Germany using large language models to showcase how the party had been steadily ‘building up hate’ against foreigners.
Conflict
Major conflicts such as Israels attacks into Gaza and Lebanon, the ongoing war in Ukraine and lesser known conflicts in Sudan were also spotlighted by data journalism. an in-depth visual investigation by Bellingcat and Scripps News analysed the widespread destruction of military property, building complexes, homes, and mosques in the Gaza Strip during the first seven months of the conflict. The team used open source satellite imagery to track the movements of a single Israel Defense Force battalion across the region, geolocating online posts openly shared by soldiers on social media. In Ukraine, an analysis by Texty showed the various stages of the conflict, presenting them in a series of timelines and graphs highlighting Russian progress and losses. In Sudan, a devastating civil war, claimed to have taken 150,000 lives so far, was highlighted in a Financial Times analysis of bombing data that looked at the impact on Sudans health facilities.
Elon Musk
An interesting piece on Elon Musks tweets by the Wall Street Journal showed how between 2019 – 2024, Musks tweets became increasingly political, coinciding with his takeover of Twitter. Using the same artificial intelligence used to power ChatGPT, it analysed almost 42,000 of his interactions, averaging at roughly 61 tweets per day to his increasingly right wing followers.
Climate change
Every year climate change continues to alter the world we live in, with 2024 being no different. Extreme weather events hit Japan, Brazil, Spain and the US last year, killing over a thousand people, while wildfires raged in many places, including the Arctic. Analysis by Bloomberg showed how these have been increasing, through maps and graphs, highlighting how fires in the forests of Canada, Europe, and the Siberian tundra have impacted pollution and global warming. In an interactive special report, the Atlo Team showed with a mapped visualisation how the Danube rivers temperatures have been steadily rising, and the negative effects this has had on local wildlife and humanity.
Data broker files
Many cell phone apps use location services to track your geographical position, but in the wrong hands this can be dangerous. A visual special report from digital rights site Netzpolitik.org and Bavarian broadcaster BR, showed how even in countries like Germany with strict data privacy laws, these could be circumnavigated by unscrupulous data brokers. They managed to gain the dataset from a US broker which revealed the location data of millions of people, including the apparent movements of German military and intelligence personnel.
Olympics and Paralympics
The subject of many data projects for obvious reasons, last summers games were held in France for the third time, with the last one being held 100 years ago. The South China Post posted a gorgeous visual explainer, packed with illustrations, showcasing notable changes such as competition venues, number of athletes, sports, delegations and changes in equipment and sports attire. A piece in Le Monde analysed how inequality and discrimination against people with disabilities persists in France, also comparing transport accessibility data and comparing it to the last host cities, Tokyo and London.
Is the love song dying?
Lastly, a fun visualisation by the Pudding analysed top ten love songs from 1958 to 2023 and placed them into an interactive chart, each song represented by a bubble and placed into categories such as serenade, heartache, love song for the self and others. Through this, they managed to conclude that love songs aren’t dead but have merely ‘evolved’.
Future trends
Heading into the future, emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and automation are already starting to revolutionise the industry. Immersive data visualisations utilising Augmented and Virtual reality may start to gain more traction as projects like Apple’s Vision Pro and Google and Samsung’s recently announced Android XR headsets and glasses become more widely accessible.
AI
In a recent report on Reuters about journalism and media publications thoughts on the future, 73% of respondents said they wanted to incorporate AI news gathering functions into their investigations and data journalism. Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat has developed an AI toolkit focussed on news gathering and research, including translation, support for data investigations, and generating an automated timeline on any story.
As Antonio Delgado, co-founder of Datadista in Spain said:
‘AI models are enabling us to work with dispersed sources, creating stories that previously required weeks or even months of effort’.
Toolkits such as these can be used to streamline repetitive tasks, enhance data analysis capabilities, assist in data collection, cleaning, and analysis, increasing efficiency. Furthermore, automated storytelling platforms can enable journalists to produce personalised and data-driven content at scale, catering to diverse audiences.
Agents
One of the trends predicted to grow exponentially as time goes on is intelligent agents able to work on your behalf researching assignments, booking appointments, invoicing clients, and making purchases. They are programmed to understand, interpret and act on data and can also make decisions and perform actions based on predefined criteria or learned experiences, all things that can greatly aid in researching and interpreting data, leading to more projects like Pew Research Center’s Fact Tank short-form collection, that can deliver real-time infographics. Gartner, a technological research and consultancy firm, predicts that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, with at least 15% of day-to-day work decisions being made autonomously through AI agents.
The role of data journalism will continue to become increasingly vital as technology continues to evolve.
While journalists are no longer gatekeepers and use available information to investigate discourse and highlight insights, the transparency of data journalism allows for ethical reporting and remains crucial in ensuring accuracy, allowing the readers to make their own judgement.
With the integration of AI and immersive technologies, the future of data-driven storytelling is set to be more dynamic. Whether through in-depth investigations, real-time infographics, or interactive visualisations, data journalism remains at the forefront of modern reporting.