From Open Journalism to Closed Data: Data Journalism in Italy

Abstract

The study investigates how journalists construct the rise of data journalism discursively within the specific political and economic conditions of Italy, and whether data journalists describe it as able to promote transparency at the level of both journalism and society as a whole. Italy is an interesting case for four different reasons: (1) to date, few analyses have been carried out on Mediterranean countries; (2) the Italian media system and its traditional journalism culture appear to be reluctant to innovate; (3) Italian data journalists are generally freelancers linked to small news agencies rather than established newsrooms; (4) the research reported in this paper was accomplished while the Italian government was approving a Freedom of Information Act. From the end of 2015 to the beginning of 2017, we carried out 15 interviews with data journalists working full-time for both established news organizations and specialized agencies. The findings show that data journalism in Italy is a highly professional sub-field, although journalistic education is not well developed. Data journalism is still largely determined by the availability and accessibility of public datasets. However, data journalists have developed certain strategies with which to generate and collect their own data, for instance collaborations and networks.

Keywords:

• Data journalism
• datafication
• FOIA
• journalism education
• open data
• public administration
• transparency

Notes

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Among many indexes that assess the level of a country’s digitization and evaluate its level of both access and e-government/open data facilities, see the Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) issued by the European Commission, which summarizes relevant indicators on Europe’s digital performance (Italy is 25th in the overall ranking); and the Open Data Barometer to estimate the level of openness of data provided by the public administration (Italian performances are better that the average of the rest of the countries, but Italy is far from the UK or US, which, not surprisingly, present the best data journalism products).

2 The fact that data journalists are closely interconnected, particularly on Twitter, was recently demonstrated by Splendore (2016b).

3 The direct quotes were translated into English by the authors. Each journalist is coded with a specific number. The low number of interviewees, the fact that most agencies are small sized, and the fact that we guaranteed anonymity prevent us from providing further details about the journalists.

4 The projects are: “Vaccini, la mappa di chi continua a rifiutarli. La situazione migliora, ma non molto,” “L’Unione dei diritti,” and “Quanti non pagano l’assicurazione dell’auto?” These stories are about the use of vaccines by Italians, the civic rights in the European Union and the payment of car insurance. They are available here: https://www.wired.it/scienza/medicina/2017/11/07/vaccini-mappa-italia-rifiuta, http://lab.gruppoespresso.it/espresso/2017/europa-unione-diritti-60-anni-trattati-roma and http://www.infodata.ilsole24ore.com/2017/05/07/quanti-non-pagano-lassicurazione-dellauto-scopri-la-mappa-dei-comuni-la-media-italiana-12 (last accessed 25 January 2019).

5 See the Open Government Declaration at https://www.opengovpartnership.org/open-government-declaration (last accessed 25 February 2019)