Reflective Piece
As we got introduced to data journalism, I got to familiarise myself
with the type of articles that are based on data from reports. For our first
assignment of the year, we had to find a report from any organisation and
thereafter write a report-based article after we had done our crowd sourcing
and polls. I chose my report from the World Health Organisation. It is a report
based on statistics on the rates of child homicides in South Africa. The
research was done in 2009 to determine the child homicide rate in the country. The
WHO defines child homicide as the death of a child at the hands of a person
other than the victim, with responsibility for the death having been determined
through police investigation and a judicial enquiry based on the Inquest Act of
1959.
After analysing the data on the
report, I had to figure out which social network platform would be suitable to
execute this package and get effective response and feedback from the general
public. I therefore used Facebook to crowd source because I had used it before
and for the first time since I did New Media, I did not have to inbox people in
order for them to comment and engage on the topic I posted. I guess my topic
had hit home, because even if a person is not personally affected, but child homicide
also has an effect indirectly to immediate family members or friends.
In terms of the topic choice, well, it did not come as
easy. I had initially thought on writing my report-based article on non
communicable diseases. My lecturer had approved on this topic but I later
realised that I would not do it much justice because it is a broad topic and I
somehow had to be limited in terms of which angle would work best.I had a problem with my poll. Basically because people do not normally
pay attention to links on Facebook, so when it came to my poll I had to ask
people to vote. It was no issue finding links to related stories on the topic;
I discovered how big an issue child homicide is as I read through articles and
the websites created specifically for it.
All in all, this was an interesting assignment, mainly because I was
not just required to write an article. I had to analyse information, sift all
the relevant statistics and thereafter figure out an angle which would work
best and be of human interest. This was a learning curve because I know have
knowledge in data journalism, who knows? I might just pursue it in the near
future.
