The Evolution of Data Journalism: A Case Study of Australia

ABSTRACT

This article investigates how and why data journalism has evolved in Australia. Using semi-structured interviews with Australian data journalists, we examine how they view their role in news organisations; the structure of Australian data journalism within and beyond Australian newsrooms; and how their practice has changed and the factors that drive this. This study finds that there has been a decline in larger projects and in exploratory dashboards, as well as in the number of active data journalists in Australia. However, there remains a small core of data journalists alongside some moves to normalise data into everyday reporting. This suggests that rather than purely a story of decline, the ways in which data journalism is institutionalised has started to evolve to cope with these changes.

KEYWORDS:

• Australian journalism
• computer-assisted reporting
• data journalism
• change in journalism
• journalism practice

ORCID

Scott Wright http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4087-9916

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Carlton Connect Initiative – Best Practice in Data Journalism.