Being able to generate synthetic media content “at the push of a button” is as fascinating as it is dangerous. On the one hand, there is the significant boost in productivity and creativity. On the other hand, there is the dystopian vision of a technology that fosters disinformation and violates a plethora of rights.
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There are those who say that when you are occupied with creating and disseminating fact-based reports dealing with current events, that will always be called journalism – no matter what kind of tools you enlist. However, other people argue that there is a significant difference between writing a standard newspaper article and putting out a multilayered, interactive digital story that features text, pictures, videos, audio, and data repositories. While we hope that there continues to be a common denominator, we tend to agree that there are now indeed very different kinds of journalism, some of them driven by technologies that were in their infancy or not available just a decade ago. In the following post, we will take a closer look at three new (sub)categories of digital reporting that are particularly appealing to us and have played a significant role in recent projects: Augmented Reality (AR) Journalism, Drone Journalism, and Journalism of Things (JoT).
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The European Data Journalism Network (EDJNet), set up in 2017, is all about “producing and promoting data-driven coverage of European topics”. As of May 2021, it has 29 members (including DW) in 14 different countries, and the EC has just granted a new round of funding. Time for a chat with Chiara Sighele and Lorenzo Ferrari, staff members of the Osservatorio Balcani e Caucaso Transeuropa (OBCT), but first and foremost: the main coordinators of EDJNet.
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How can social media be more than just an afterthought for data-driven journalism (DDJ)? As a partner of the European Data Journalism Network (EDJN), our colleagues at DW Data have been exploring ways to attract readers and make DDJ stories more interesting on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. Here is a guest post with new insights by Kira Schacht.
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It has been a while since we last compiled a list of interesting media technologies for you – check out this post that aged rather well – but of course tech scouting is still important to us. And now that a number of new projects have been successfully kicked-off in spite of the pandemic, we actually found the time to sit down, review some internal notes – and introduce some more tools and concepts that we think could have an impact on our industry.
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If you are into DDJ, you have probably come across the NYT’s You Draw It series, where users have to draw the second half of a graph and thus interact with a data story. We have always liked this idea. And we thought that by adding augmented reality (AR) and Instagram face filters, we could develop it further. Our aim: Creating a new worthwhile form of interactive journalism – and great shareable content. Here is a quick recap of our Insta experiments, including the lessons we have learned.
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