Lecture delivered to Sri Lanka College of Journalism. I introduced data journalism with examples from Google and Groundviews. The examples from Google, which use World Bank data, are especially interesting and in these examples, I explore the co-relation between GDP and life expectancy in Sri Lanka, plus the effects of GDP growth and mobile phone growth, looking at how war affected this. There are also two examples from Groundviews (www.groundviews.org) are to date the first and only examples of data journalism in Sri Lanka.

1. Current affairs reporting
News Writing and Reporting
Sanjana Hattotuwa
TEDGlobal Fellow 2010
Editor, Groundviews (www.groundviews.org)

2. what is social media?
• Social media uses Internet and web-based technologies to transform
broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues
(many to many). It supports the democratization of knowledge and
information, transforming people from content consumers into content
producers. (Wikipedia)

3. what is new media?
• New media is a term meant to encompass the emergence of digital,
computerized, or networked information and communication technologies.
• New media is not television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or
paper-based publications. (Wikipedia)
• But increasingly, old media is leveraging the web, Internet and mobiles in
generating and disseminating news and information.

5. new media and foundations
• Blogs
• Social networks (Twitter, Facebook)
• Google Maps
• Mobiles: SMS, mobile photography and video
• VoIP: Skype, Google Chat
• And making this all possible is ADSL + 3G wireless broadband

6. what’s new
• Ubiquity of two way communications
• Addressable peoples, even those who IDPs or refugees
• Both news generation and dissemination leverages new media
• Disintermediated models vs. traditional media model
• Citizens as producers
• Low resolution content broadcast on high definition media

7. old media model
Event / Issue
Journalist
Consumer
Mainstream
media

8. new media models
Event / Issue
Journalist
Consumer Citizen media
Mainstream
media
Consumer

9. the revolution
Journalist Consumer
Journalist
Consumer /
Witness
News as a conversation
News as a package

10. What is out there?

11. bearing witness: Groundviews
www.groundviews.org

12. readership and reach: web media
From 19 – 27 May 2010, Groundviews ran a special edition on the end of war in Sri Lanka.
Over this week alone, the site received over forty thousand readers and exclusively
featured over eighty-thousand words of original content, one video premiere, over
a dozen photos, generating over one hundred and fifty thousand words of
commentary. Tens of thousands more have read and commented on this content since.

13. online video: Vikalpa YouTube Channel
www.youtube.com/vikalpasl

14. alternative politics in Sinhala: Vikalpa
www.vikalpa.org

15. news from provinces: perambara
www.perambara.org

16. kottu: blog aggregation
www.kottu.org

17. sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregation
www.sinhalabloggers.com

18. sinhala bloggers union: Sinhala blog aggregation
www.sinhalabloggers.com

19. twitter: topical, pithy perspectives
www.twitter.com

20. Facebook for journalism

21. social networking: facebook

22. social networking: facebook reach with $0

23. social networking: facebook reach with $0
Avg. FB account: 130 friends
Updates featured on 225,000+ FB accounts. Instantly.
Groundviews FB page has 1,732 fans

24. Managing content: Pulling in

25. essential email: gmail / google account

26. google search: updates from social media

27. google news: thousands of sources

28. google alerts: thousands of sources
http://www.google.com/alerts

29. google reader: a web based RSS reader

30. Selecting the best: Curating news

31. curated content

32. curated content = selecting the best produce

33. curating news
• Buying fruits of vegetables
• Check price
• Weigh it in one’s hands
• Look at it from all angles
• Look at it in context
• Look at a few, not just one
• Discard if old
• Be suspicious if it looks too good
• Ascertain location where it was
produced
• Curating news
• Check authorship
• Check for veracity, quality
• Is it accurate, fair, topical?
• What is the bias? Is it progressive?
• Select a few from many sources
• Discard if out-dated information is
presented
• Be cautious of unverified information
and breaking news
• Is the producer local or foreign?

34. curated twitter content on sri lanka: news
http://twitter.com/groundviews/sl-news

35. curated twitter content on sri lanka: blogs
http://twitter.com/groundviews/sl-bloggers

36. Managing content: Pushing out

37. wordpress.com: blogging

38. wordpress.com: blogging
http://si.wordpress.com

39. wordpress.com: blogging
http://ta.wordpress.com

40. wordpress.com: blogging via phone
http://en.support.wordpress.com/post-by-voice

41. ustream.tv: broadcasting via a PC

42. ustream: mobile phone broadcasting
http://www.ustream.tv/mobile

43. flickr: posting images via mobiles
http://www.flickr.com/tools/mobile

44. Visualising news: Data driven
journalism

45. google: public data
http://www.google.com/publicdata/directory

46. google: world bank public data
GDP growth and life expectancy, Sri Lanka

47. google: world bank public data
Mobile phones and war correlation, Sri Lanka

48. groundviews: undergraduate unrest in Sri Lanka
http://www.groundviews.org/2010/11/04/a-turn-for-the-worse-undergraduate-protests-and-
unrest-in-sri-lanka/

49. groundviews: undergraduate unrest in Sri Lanka
http://www.groundviews.org/2010/11/04/a-turn-for-the-worse-undergraduate-protests-and-
unrest-in-sri-lanka/

50. groundviews: flooding in colombo
http://www.groundviews.org/2010/05/15/colombo-goes-under-water-and-not-for-the-first-
time

51. Recap

52. enduring challenges
• Impartial, accurate coverage still vital, increasingly hard to ascertain
• Torrent of information, trickle of knowledge
• Veracity and verifiability
• Eye-witness accounts are partial, subjective
• New media / technology illiteracy even amongst journalists
• Apathy and animosity against citizen journalism
• Licensing and attribution of online content

53. key points
• New technologies potentially give voice to all citizens
• Be sceptical of new information, but use new media to push and pull content
• Develop media literacy to embrace new technologies

54. Thank you