Yarina Mykhyalyshyn, 23, Ukraine
Yarina is finishing her master degree and has created the infographics for Yanukovych Leaks and one of her interactive maps was used by the Economist.
Data and Journalism in Ukraine
The environment of digital media with its continuous changes, advancement and innovations is extremely dynamic and diverse field. As new technologies emerge and new goals appear, modern journalist should meet the requirement of an appropriate technical skills and knowledge. On the one hand, in the conditions of severe business competiveness modern media are in on-going search for new ways of telling stories, engaging readers, drawing attention, collecting the information and interacting with audience.
On the other hand, modern technologies with their rich variety of advanced tools and data-driven applications provide outstanding possibilities for news coverage, journalistic investigations and analytics. At the crossroad of this mutually beneficial symbiosis new practices emerge such as infographics, data visualizations, and computational media applications etс.
Today those practices seem to be so deeply integrated in the work of leading newsrooms, that a few will hardly argue that data journalism is just a short-lasting trend or a fashionable whim. As it was summarized in the recent report The Art and Science of Data-Driven Journalism by Tow Center for Digital Journalism “Data will become even more of a strategic resource for media”1. No doubts, it will. Even in such countries as Ukraine, which is not currently at the vanguard of data-driven journalism, the first steps have already been taken. In 2012 the first School of Infographics in Ukraine was launched. Back than I was lucky to participate in it and learned the basics of data journalism and information design which today considerably dominate my everyday job. My first instructor was Anatoliy Bondarenko (a co-editor at Texty.org.ua) who by all means can be considered a leading data journalist in Ukraine nowadays and with whom I’m happy to work on the data projects published by Texty.org.ua.
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However, recently I’ve decided to switch to interactive visualizations which provide more abilities for data analysis and interaction. Some of my last projects include the interactive visualization of tax structure in Ukraine (http://goo.gl/1xzycV ), interactive timeline of the massive deconstruction of the Lenin’s monuments in Ukraine (http://goo.gl/5fNDcI ), interactive timeline of the core Euromaidan events (http://goo.gl/WcJm7pl), interactive map of hot spots in the Eastern part of Ukraine which was useful not only for Ukrainian users, but was a primary source for the map produced by The Economist for their story about the current situation in Ukraine (original map http://goo.gl/xIXHBO ; an article of The Economist http://goo.gl/s9wA1J).
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I’m deeply convinced that data-driven journalism will be an inalienable part of news production in forthcoming years. It will adapt media to new needs of reader as well restore trust in it. It’s black and white that the recent political crisis in Ukraine was caused by outraging corruption and severe lack of transparency and openness of the government. And it’s true that data-driven journalistic investigation and control could be the major tools of avoiding such situation in future.