Una Maria Kelly, 23, Ireland
Una Maria is a recent graduate of law and German. Currently she works for a media monitoring service as well as writing for a local travel magazine in Berlin.

Data and Journalism in Ireland

In an era when vast quantities of data are stored and processed in databases, every person, government and organisation is leaving behind a digital trail. Data journalism is a crucial tool in responding to this change in our information environment. When it is done well, it should combat our inability to take in and process this vast flow of information which is coming to us at such high speed and volume. Sources have become digitized, so a journalist must know how to find, analyse and visualise a story from data.
In Ireland, this realisation of DDJ’s fundamental importance has taken root. One of the key media outlets using data journalism is TheStory.ie, which looks at data made available by the government which often goes unexamined. The use of Freedom of Information requests gain access to government data which is unpublished, for example the Prime Minister’s annual spending. One of their biggest successes revealed Ireland’s application for a financial bailout, which then made headlines across the country and further afield. Individual journalists who have turned their attention to specialising in DDJ are also contributing to this evolution in reporting – for example Kathryn Torney at Northern Ireland’s The Detail, who used data to investigate segregation in Northern Ireland’s schools. The larger, more traditional media institutions such as the Irish Times and Irish Examiner are following suit.
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The importance of being able to use techniques such as these lies in the ability for journalists to provide context and clarity and find the truth, which is of profound importance for society. Fluency with data helps journalists to sharpen their critical sense when faced with numbers, and have confidence in their ability to get the true story from raw data, rather than just relying on official interpretations of it.
However, there can be disadvantages in this developing area of journalism. The technique relies on governments making data available – but the Irish government very often does not, and the fees for Freedom of Information requests have become a barrier to smaller news outlets being able to use the process. It can tend to be third parties such as NGOs, lobbyists or interest groups crunching out the numbers, providing facts without context and thus skewing stories. This happened in Ireland in 2012/13 during a huge national debate on abortion, when pro-life interest groups used statistics to attribute Ireland’s outlawing of abortion as being the cause for the country’s healthcare system ranking among the best in the world for pregnant women. Another issue is that data could be seen to speak for itself, and presented as a story without taking the form of a coherent write-up. However, both these problems would be overcome by journalists who are able to using scraping and coding, and are committed to finding the truth behind the numbers.
An additional cause for concern is the ethics of accessing Big Data collections to generate news. Ireland is perched on the fault line of the data collection controversy. Dublin is host to the European headquarters of, among others, Google and Facebook. Therefore, any cases involving them fall under Irish jurisdiction, and the rest of Europe is forced to rely on Ireland’s data protection laws. The Data Protection Commissioner refused the request from an Austrian law student that he investigate Snowden’s claims that Facebook passed on its EU users’ information to the NSA. It is interesting to note that the NSA affair was not presented as so controversial and worrying as it was in Germany. Perhaps the difference in concern for data protection is due to cultural reasons, or that Ireland does not want to drive away huge US companies which have brought jobs. Nevertheless, the country must take on frontline responsibility for regulating the tech giants it has attracted.
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