BU Digital Journalism March 3, 2015

More about Data Journalism and Global Information Systems (GIS) 

Gray, J., Bounegru, L., & Chambers, L. (Eds.). (n.d.). Data Journalism Handbook. Open Knowledge Foundation. Retrieved from http://datajournalismhandbook.org/1.0/en/index.html

The world is awash with data! More about Global Information Systems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_information_system
Many people routinely use Global Positioning Systems (GPS) for everyday navigation.  

Geoguesser Game https://geoguessr.com/ is fun.

 Application of Google Street view in a story on equipment movements in the Ukraine/Russia conflict.

Stunt Geolocation – Verifying the Unverifiable via @bellingcat https://t.co/jphK9hPCyR pic.twitter.com/m5fpFZhWCp
— Eliot Higgins (@EliotHiggins) March 3, 2015

Map data layers for fun and profit

Racial Distribution in the US based on 2010 census

http://www.coopercenter.org/demographics/Racial-Dot-Map

Another set of distribution maps with evident bias.

The deeper into Stupidparty land you get - the deeper into dog shit you wade -on every metric! http://t.co/fQRZrMNugz pic.twitter.com/vPHpPiJYAK
— Patrick M (@andendall) March 3, 2015

Another Mapping application

 

 Finding Data Sets

Search for *.csv  Where *= your topic of interest and you will find data sets with comma separated values, or CSV files, a common format for data.

Census data, public information, sports analysis etc.

To Code or Not to Code.

Should you learn how to write computer programs/code? It is not really required, for the most part but it doesn't hurt to have some understanding of the rudiments of things like Javascript, HTML, Python. Many online courses and programs of self study are available , see here for a bit of a starting point. http://62-170.wikispaces.com/Activities

You can start pretty simply, like with this Trinket system that lets you change Python code and watch the effect it has on the displayed material.

More coding ideas http://www.skulpt.org/static/proctest.html

Look and listen to this pretty thing http://heylookatmygames.com/thesun/

Applications also exist that allow you to assemble programs without writing code. Yahoo Pipes and IFTTT let you string together modules or widgets to make things happen.