Exploring the Awareness and Implementation of Data Journalism in Malaysian Online Newsrooms

Abstract

This article is a study about the importance and significance of data journalism in the digital media. As the era of digital advancement takes over almost all industries, it could be seen that data is proliferating in the ways many jobs work. However, study shows that industries that heavily rely upon data, such as the online newsrooms, pay insufficient attention to data journalism. This research is aimed at studying and evaluating the surfeit awareness and practice of data journalism in online newsrooms in Malaysia. This paper employed convenience sampling, selecting five editors-in-chief from different online newsrooms in Malaysia for in-depth interviews. This method was carefully selected based on the accessibility of these individuals, given their high-ranking positions in their respective news organisations. Data was analysed using thematic analysis, identifying patterns from the interview transcripts to understand how data journalism is understood and implemented. The findings of this this study show that some of these newsrooms see any story involving data as data journalism, while some perceive data journalism as more towards investigative journalism involving overhauling projects. This shows that even though these newsrooms recognize the existence of data journalism, their depth of understanding the principalities of data journalism varies. If anything, this this study would potentially be a practical guide to implement data journalism in the Malaysian online newsrooms.

Keywords: Data; journalism; digital; media; newsrooms; online

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