EL ROL DEL PERIODISTA DE DATOS EN EL PROCESO DE LOS SISTEMAS DE GESTIÓN Y DECISIÓN PÚBLICA Y EN LA RECUPERACIÓN DE LA CONFIANZA ENTRE EL CIUDADANO Y LAS INSTITUCIONES PÚBLICAS

Abstract

Data journalism is distinguished from other types of journalism for the use of data as the main source for the elaboration of a story. This type of journalism is mainly nourished by the combination of the arrival of Big data or massive data and the development of the semantic web in the society of knowledge. At the same time, the deterioration of the journalist’s image in recent decades has been precipitated by the search for economic performance at the expense of journalistic quality, in addition to the adaptation to new digital scenarios. Also, the progressive losses of credibility and trust from the public towards the journalist have stimulated the need to take into account another way of doing journalism._x000D_ _x000D_ Therefore, the need to investigate the role of the data journalist is justified. The data journalist has to recover its professional role as a guarantor of the control on management and public decision-making systems._x000D_ _x000D_ This is the objective of this PhD thesis, describing the antecedents of data journalism and making a portrait of the professional that uses data from the historical and academic perspective. The importance of the problem lies in understanding the evolution of a professional who finds himself in a new context in which the information and communication tools are fundamental, but with the use of techniques based on social sciences._x000D_ _x000D_ The first contact with the reality of the practices is observed with the realization of the state of the question on data journalism through the use of in-depth interviews with data journalists, as well as the bibliographic tracking. The identification of trends in data journalism practices is carried out in previously selected countries (United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Belgium and Switzerland), which have been selected thanks to the classification of Hallin and Mancini (2008) and the latest changes in the transparency laws._x000D_ _x000D_ The transparency law that depends on the administrations and grants access to public data used largely by journalists, does not seem to facilitate the work of journalists when it comes to obtaining responses to their requests. In addition, difficulties are detected by journalists to retrieve data from administrations: it can often be presented as a threat to ignorance and fear of an eventual manipulation of data._x000D_ _x000D_ The obligations of working with data are also translated by the use of specific tools or by the need for the integration of specialized professional profiles. The analysis of the award-winning projects in Data Journalism Awards between 2012 and 2015 - a contest that rewards the best data journalism projects in the world - contributed to observe that the recovery of data, the amount of data, the type of data, the difficulty of organizing data patterns or the creation of visualizations are some of the criteria by which expert intervention is required. We observe how this situation, in some projects, may favor a more efficient collaboration between journalists and experts._x000D_ _x000D_ Finally, it is worth highlighting the possibility that data journalism projects exercises an influence on public trust when assessing or considering public decision-making processes. The capacity of the data journalist to highlight failures and/or propose solutions or alternatives does not empower the citizen to regain trust in public institutions. However, it allows journalists to re-appropriate their role as guardian of democracy.

Date of Award	2 Mar 2018
Original language	Spanish
Supervisor	Santiago Giraldo Luque (Director)