Data Journalism

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.