4.Case studies from Turkey and from other countries
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We can see that in many countries data journalism can do effectively around the world although there are no institutions such as foi, e-government.
Since 2013 in Saudi Arabia 7, Pakistan 18, Ghana 8, Egypt 34, China 40, Afghanistan 5 data journalism projects have been applied to Data Journalism Awards. And among them are the projects remaining in the finals, and the award-winning project. In 8 years data journalism workshops, data literacy e-trainings, data journalism projects, data journalism efforts to develop data literature, open data trainings and more with the participant feedback, observations and experiences will be read in detail.
Turkey's First Data Journalism site Dağ Medya(2011), The First Turkish Data Journalism platform (www.verigazeteciligi.com)(2012) - the first Open Data and Data Journalism Association (2015) in Ankara and now Data Literacy Association (2018) in İstanbul. It explains the impact/benefits and shortcomings of creating the first regional data journalism, open data and data literacy MOOC with the feedback of the participants. Data Journalism Projects from Turkey 1)
After the tragic mining accident that occurred in Soma, Turkey, it proved extremely difficult to document the working conditions of employees. There were discrepancies with the number of unionised workers, and an inability to provide sufficiently transparent data to account for the deaths of workers over previous decades. What was available was disorganised and lacking in detail to be able to pinpoint project data more effectively. This open database that we have produced works in a systematic way, providing visibility of the information gathered and giving much deserved recognition to the numbers of victims and the poor working conditions that they endured. It offers information in a way that may be filtered, added to and developed in the future, following in an orderly structure so that the public may view this open source data in a informative way. The project includes embeddable maps, graphs, and data in different formats that were prepared in a manner to allow open public access. Deaths of workers in over 20 sectors were located in the data covering the years 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. After the project was completed, we reported the death of workers with regular media monitoring and loaded them into the database at the end of each respective month. The most important details included the name of the company for whom they worked, and the names of the workers that were killed.
This information was uploaded to the data table, and provided the opportunity to see the working frequency of losses that may have occurred in the same institution on a monthly basis. We began to gather media interest in the project, and the data began to be utilised by both journalists and media institutions, including the maps and charts. It began to be a reference guide to politicians, which helped to combat the major problem we have here in Turkey, of how to better achieve the provision of correct data recording, storage and availability. But then a more unexpected challenge happened. When we announced the project, one of the NGOs whose data we were using was unhappy that we were using their data. They claimed that the project did not say anything other than to use their open data. By using their data in this way, they thought that we had neglected their labor. We had asked for permission, and their data is also open to anyone, but they still opposed the project. They even stopped sending out their data bulletin as regularly as they used to! Imagine. Our project was able to get their data out more easily, in a visually understandable and downloadable format, they didn’t like us using it. Interestingly, they thought we pornographicised workers' deaths with the below visualisation and numbered filtering!
Of course, the human stories were always important, but unstructured, raw data was also important to present and structure for the public interest. Unfortunately, it was not possible to convince them of this logic. Looking back, I think the most important point here was that they did not know the importance of the open data ecosystem. On the surface it might not seem like a big challenge, but without a local understanding of the value of open data, we will always face such difficulties.
2)Data on missing children
In April 2014, the disappearance of a child in Istanbul captured the public’s attention. On a daily basis, hundreds of children go missing all around Turkey, however, this particular case received substantially more media attention, for reasons which were unclear. Therefore, we wanted to search and investigate data on these other missing children. But, again, we were faced with a challenge: there were three different sets of data from three separate sources during that time. According to the Turkey Statistical Institute (TSI), there were 27,000 children missing. The Ministry of the Interior said 15,000. While the Lost Relatives Families Association (YAKAD) was reporting 30,000. What did we do about this?
We produced news articles highlighting the discrepancies between these three sources. Since there was already high interest in the missing Istanbul child case, this brought awareness to the fact that there were problems with the data for this very sensitive and important issue.
What has happened since?
1)Wikileaks Iraq war logs: every death mapped /Iraq WikiLeaks released thousands of Afghanistan war logs in 2010. The Wikileaks Iraq war logs provide with a unique picture of every death in Iraq. These are those events mapped using Google Fusion tables.The release contains 391,832 reports documenting the Iraq conflict from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for May 2004 and March 2009).
4)Which Flight Will Get You There Fastest? FiveThirtyEight analyzed 6 million flights to figure out which airports, airlines and routes are most likely to get you there on time and which ones will leave you waiting.
We ended up uploading the monthly worker deaths by comparing (remember those FOI requests) with the list that we collected through our own monitoring (see the spreadsheet above), and verifying these monthly. Ultimately, the project was a success, recognised as a finalist in the . Unstructured data “kills life” but open data saves lives!
Image: News story, in Turkish .
Back in 2014, we made two FOI requests to the Ministry of the Interior, however, we didn’t receive any answers. We sent the questions again, but never received a response. So, we started to collect our own data using alert systems (like , robot@alert.changedetection.com) to compare search engine results with official sources. We also collected data by scanning the media, scraping data (, ) and following lost ads. However, this was both tiring and intensive work, so we stopped in late 2016. This brings me to my advice: it is always important to create an alternative open data source. That said, you cannot collect data for every project you do. For this reason, it is important that journalists share their data, and set an open standard for all use.
Image: Poster on missing children, in Turkish .
The release has been coordinated through many of the most prominent media outlets across the globe including , , , , , , and Swedish TV channel . The Guardian has chosen to plot a unique picture of mapped using Google Fusion tables. Unlike with the Afghanistan war logs data, they have chosen not to release the entire dataset as they cannot be confident at this stage that all sensitive data has been removed. They have also created an revealing the logs associated with a particular day during the Iraq conflict.
3)Migrants File A database on the more than 29,000 migrants who died on their way to Europe since 2000. Turkey is also in the routes. Data is updated on a regular basis. The project also provides sanctions.
Screenshoot: 3)Inside the Firewall: Tracking the News That China Blocks Every day since Nov. 17, 2014, ProPublica has been testing whether the homepages of international news organizations are accessible to browsers inside China. Of the 18 in the test, 15 are currently blocked.
Screenshoot:
ProPublica, with permission, used data from , a free service that anybody can use to test if a website is accessible within China. Its pseudonymous founders are activists who created the site to highlight online censorship in China.
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More project can be seen here :
