How can data journalism be understood and studied in the context of broader processes of datafication in society? Join us for a public talk with Wiebke Loosen (Hans Bredow Institute), hosted by the Department for Digital Humanities, King's College London.

Datafied, Data-Driven, Data-Critical: Data Journalism Within Broader Processes of Datafication - Wiebke Loosen (Hans Bredow Institute)

Today's journalism is contextually situated in many different forms of data- and technology-driven practices. What is generally referred to as “data journalism” is, therefore, only one occurrence in journalism’s overall transformation towards an increasingly datafied, algorithmicized, metrics-driven, and automated practice. This includes how and by what means journalism observes and covers (the datafied) society, how it self-monitors its performance, how it controls its reach and audience participation, and how it (automatically) produces and distributes content. In my talk, I will place particular emphasis on data journalism while at the same time situating it within these much broader processes of journalism’s datafication. To this end, I will present selected results from (my own) empirical research, critically discuss the idea of data as “raw material” and synthesize it all into a typology of seven ‘Cs’ - seven challenges and underutilized capacities of data journalism that may also be useful for suggesting alternative practices in the field.

Bio: Prof. Dr. Wiebke Loosen is a senior journalism researcher at the Leibniz Institute for Media Research | Hans Bredow Institute in Hamburg (Germany) as well as a professor at the University of Hamburg. She studied communication science, psychology, and German studies at the University of Münster (Germany) where she also received her doctorate. Wiebke habilitated in communication studies at the University of Hamburg with her work on "The Transformation of Journalism and of Journalism Research". She has held visiting professorships at the University of Münster and the University of Munich. Her major areas of expertise include the transformation of journalism within a changing media environment, journalism theory, and methodology. Wiebke’s current research focuses on the changing journalism-audience relationship, the datafication of journalism, forms of ‘pioneer journalism’, and the emerging start-up culture surrounding journalism as well as how algorithms’ build ‘journalism-like’ constructions of public spheres and reality. She is also working as part of several interdisciplinary projects situated at the intersection of journalism research and computer science.