2021 - Interviewing Your Data: Tools and Methods for Data Journalists
Course Director(s):
- Miklos Koren, Department of Economics and Business, CEU, Vienna, Austria/Budapest, Hungary
- Eva Bognar, Center for Media, Data and Society, Democracy Institute, CEU, Budapest, Hungary
Course Faculty:
- Eric Barrett, Data Desk, Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, Tbilisi, Georgia
- Attila Bátorfy, ATLO Graphic Team, Hungary, Budapest
- Alberto Cairo, School of Communication, University of Miami, USA
- András Pethő, Direkt36 Investigative Reporting Center, Budapest, Hungary
Course date: 14 June - 21 June, 2021
Free media is essential to hold the less-than transparent governments of Central and Eastern Europe to account. Key political and business actors are increasingly obfuscating their actions and limiting data access to escape public scrutiny. Effective investigative journalism requires a set of skills for obtaining and working with large datasets, and interpreting the patterns emerging from such data.
This course will bring together junior journalists and researchers from the CEE regions with global experts of data journalism with the aim of teaching the necessary tools and methods, as well as to build professional networks.
This one-week course will cover four topics:
- Finding and obtaining data: open data, large-scale data platforms, freedom-of-information requests, web scraping
- Working with data in various formats, cleaning messy and purposefully obfuscated data with OpenRefine
- Building stories from data, ethics of working with large datasets
- Principles of effective and truthful visualization
Classes will be hands-on, where learners use their own computer to access the tools and technologies taught and discuss problems in small groups. A key component of several modules is “live demo,” where instructors and learners work on their problems together. This practice enables effective learning with frequent interaction and feedback from instructors and peers.
Application deadline: 22 March, 2021
Tuition fee: 250 EUR
Please note that considering prolonged uncertainties about travel and the possibility of onsite teaching, CEU offers online summer courses in 2021.