Impacts of open data: journalism

The following post is an excerpt from my thesis entitled Linked open data for public sector information.
The availability of data and data processing tools gives birth to a new paradigm in journalism that is commonly referred to as data-driven journalism. It refers to the practice of basing journalistic articles on hard data, which allows to back up claims with well-founded evidence.
Unlike in journalism that is driven by data, unverified claims abound in traditional journalistic practice. To address this deficiency, data-driven journalism may employ open data sources to cross-verify the claims. Data triangulation combining disparate sources may establish validity of the verified claims.
If data-driven journalists strive to draw closer to objectivity, they need to share their sources to achieve transparency. Sharing the underlying data is an imperative of data-driven journalism, so that others can see what lead to insights conveyd in articles. In the light of such transparency, claims made by journalists may be verified by third parties and trust may be established.
The best known examples of data-driven journalism include the Guardian’s Datablog or Pro Publica.