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I’ve been an investigative reporter for a long time, and data like this are essential for reporting on campaign activity in the digital age. Only looking at con
by GWSchulz 7y ago
I’ve been an investigative reporter for a long time, and data like this are essential for reporting on campaign activity in the digital age. Only looking at contributions and expenditures in disclosure reports isn’t enough anymore.
This isn’t the most intuitive viz on the planet. But dear smart tech people and data scientists with a strong public interest streak: Please keep doing this and get it online. At least for me, when I see it, I’ll put it in front of other journos on social. We compete but help each other out by sharing tips like this through professional orgs and journalism boards like Y Combinator (which I’ve followed closely for years).
Many of us are particularly keen on helping young journalists become natural investigators, and the next generation has a huge amount of data smarts already. Let’s put it to work for justice and fairness and all that mushy human freedom and better leadership stuff.
- 52-6F-62 7y agoThanks for saying this. I'll add, just as general observation from within the industry, that because of the shrinking profits and massive budget cuts insisted upon by a lot of corporate parent companies many outlets are short-staffed. The enormous (and I've personally witnessed enough to suit the use of that term) reduction in editorial and arts staff at major outlets has stretched the surviving teams pretty thin. It gets harder and harder to source and confirm this kind of data, and then present it, within the timelines available.
- JamesSchriver 7y agoWhen you look at these types of things, does it bother you that, e.g., when you look at the "by country" view, that there is all kind of noise in the categories? For example, looking at the USA, under the "Region" class, hundreds of regions are listed that have nothing to do with the USA, let alone are relevant. Just seeing that kind of thing makes me immediately question the accuracy and precision of the data if the creators didn't even conduct that rather basic due diligence. Which is also related to my inherent general concern regarding the data because it seems that everyone simply just accepts that data is not only accurate and precise, but that it has also not been manipulated and tampered with, even though currently there is very little way to verify the integrity of the data, let alone have it certified as accurate or even honest. What is considered a political ad? Is there any skullduggery going on where Facebook and others classify things they don't like incorrectly in order to manipulate things? etc It's not like that is an unfounded concern and really should be a basic measure of journalistic integrity whether the data was evaluated or provenance was certified. There are some obvious and intentional distortions manipulative and abusive distortions that come to mind, ironically the most prominent one from the A D L that classified all manner of unrelated incidents as "right wing white supremacist extremism" in testimony to Congress an in general in public; including classifying two black people as white supremacists, classifying a domestic dispute as white supremacist, a murder of a cheating spouse as white supremacist, etc. all in order to pump up and manipulate data and impressions for political purposes. The A D L propaganda was discovered rather easily because their data set was rather limited and could be reviewed in mere seconds, but how do you have any confidence whatsoever in the data of this type of site, regardless of any kind of specific intention, let alone even unintentional manipulation and corruption of data?