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AWARENESS AND READINESS TO LEARN DATA JOURNALISM AMONG STUDENTS AT UNIVERSITI SAINS
ISLAM MALAYSIA (USIM)
Siti Suriani Othman
Senior Lecturer, Communication Program, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia Email: [email protected]/[email protected]
Purpose of the study: This study examines the level of awareness about data journalism among communication and language students at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM), an Islamic public university in Malaysia.
Methodology: The study examines 34 students from communication and language background to learn about their awareness about data journalism. Via online survey, this study descriptively investigates the level of awareness among the respondents, readiness to learn data journalism and impression on data journalism.
Main Findings: The findings indicate that the level of awareness among the students is still low, but they are ready to learn with the impression that data journalism is not easy to master but a necessary skill for them in the future.
Novelty of the study: According to author’s knowledge, there is no study which has focused on awareness of USIM students related to data journalism. Therefore, this preliminary study provides early data about the level of awareness about data journalism of this specific group of students.
Keywords: Awareness, Data Journalism, Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia, Online Survey, Communication and language students.
1.0 INTRODUCTION
Data journalism is a new branch of journalism study in Malaysia. In practice, it has however been practiced in several newsrooms, by leveraging data and utilize them to produce more accurate stories. Many other countries have started to utilize the power of data journalism to provide accurate stories and to prevent fake news such as the US (Heravi, 2018) and the UK and some Scandinavian countries (Stalph & Borges-Rey, 2018, Aitamurto et al., 2011) while some countries faced their own challenges in practicing data journalism such as in Saudi Arabia (Fahmy & Attia, 2020), closed political system (Porlezzaa & Splendore, 2019) and insufficient inheritance of quantitative reporting tradition in China (Zhang & Feng, 2018), while some are still limited offering at universities such as in Azerbaijan (Isgandarova, 2022). Technological literacy and engagement of readers are among the challenges faced by data journalists in Pakistan (Sadia Jamil, 2019). In Brazil, citizen participation, activism, collaboration, and humanizing data are identified as factors to improve the practice of data journalism in the country (Santos & Mesquita, 2021). In the context of Southeast Asian countries, some countries practiced data journalism more seriously than Malaysia and this includes countries like Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia.
Hence, due to the lack of practice of data journalism in Malaysia, there is lack of studies that have been conducted to know more about data journalism and its practices within the country. At the same time, there is also lack of study to know whether our future journalists (specifically communication students at local universities) are ready to learn data journalism if it is included in their syllabus. There awareness about what data journalism is, is another question that have not been sufficiently examined.
Studies on data journalism conducted abroad may be more advanced in terms of the scope of research. For instance, they study about the history of data journalism in their countries (Tabary et al, 2015), exact practices of data journalism among data journalists in their countries, the development and evolution of practices (Wright &
Doyle, 2018), and some ethical issues such as openness of data and readiness of a nation to support the practice of data journalism.
This study investigates the awareness about data journalism among communication and language students at USIM. The study is executed to examine the level of awareness about this young branch of journalism among a particular group of students who can be assumed to have more understanding about data journalism than other groups of students. It is particularly known that data journalism is a branch that is still in infancy in Malaysia although
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some organizations journalists have started to practice it in their reporting. Due to its importance, it is pertinent for us to know the awareness level of our journalism students—whether they have heard about data journalism, how much they understand the concept, their impression to the concept and their readiness to learn the new skill.
2.0 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Data Journalism
The definition of data journalism remains blurred. In empirical studies, there are some criteria that have been established including data, communicative function, the textual-visual relationship, structure and design of a story, interactivity, and the meta-story (Weber et al. 2018). Berret & Phillips in Heravi (2018) describe data journalism as a "field [that] encompasses a suite of practices for collecting, analyzing, visualizing, and publishing data for journalistic purposes." The history of data journalism goes back to 1821 when an article in the Manchester Guardian in the UK listed data on Manchester school and provides a table of the students and the tuition fees of the institution (Tabary et al, 2015; Knight, 2015). Although this does not yet meet the definition of data journalism today, data presentation was available and that was new in journalism that that time.
Around the world, data journalism is an emerging field while some countries have practiced it to enhance reports to serve more accurate data to the audience. In the Western context, it is seen as a tool to strengthen democracy (Parasie, Sylvain & Dagiral, 2013). Data journalism has gained prominence in the United States and the United Kingdom while WikiLeaks (Stalph & Borges-Rey, 2018) is one of the examples of how data journalism is used to enhance reporting and assist investigative reporting. Data journalism is also seen as to be able to increase participation among audiences more than traditional journalism (Palomo et al. 2019).
Data journalism is argued to enable some practices which cannot be materialized by traditional journalism. For example, through data journalism, some stories which cannot be found through traditional reporting, may be found through data journalism. Besides that, claims may be verified more authoritatively because they are backed up with evidence. Data journalism also allows bigger stories that involved huge amount of data to be understood and covered. Interestingly, data journalism also allows journalists to find insightful stories that might be hidden in data.
In terms of presentation, audience engagement increases due to innovative ways of storytelling approaches (Kuang Keng Kuek Ser, n.d.).
Besides that, data journalism is also argued to be the solution in the crisis in journalism including the shrinking industry, closure of newspaper organizations in many parts of the world, decline in circulations and many other issues. While we agree that almost all ordinary persons are now able to write and publish freely via various online platforms, data journalism is one of the tools to ensure the dignity of professional journalism is maintained (Belaid et al. 2019).
Hence, due to its contribution to the field and practice, it is not strange to find that data journalism will become part of the establishment (Rogers, 2011). Finland for example is a country that has provided open access to data and this supports activists (Aitamurto et al., 2011) to participate in creating content less fearlessly. Generally, data journalism is seen to be an essential skill for every professional journalists in the future. It is also seen as a storytelling method that will be a practice even in smaller newsrooms in the future (Stalph & Borges-Rey, 2018).
In Malaysia, data journalism is still a young branch in journalism. In the Southeast Asia, countries like Indonesia, Philippines and Singapore are among most advanced countries in practicing data journalism. Malaysia, although is still new in this exciting venture, seems attempting to embrace it and several large newspaper organization has started the practice such as Bernama and The Star. Alternative organizations such as MalaysiaKini and several smaller private organizations have also started discovering big data and data journalism in reporting.
2.2 Awareness Among Students About Data Journalism
To make student aware about data journalism, one of the ways is by teaching traditional journalism with specific skills set (Tabary et al., 2016). It is still in its infancy such as in Poland and Italy (Splendore et al., 2015) some countries like the UK, Germany and Netherlands offer more academic and vocational classes on data journalism.
In Australia, one of the approaches used to encourage students to learn data journalism is by confessing and discussing issues students’ have related to learning data journalism. Some other universities introduced a data interrogation activity to their first-year students, so they realize that understanding data is a core still they have to master. Some other universities took a different approach by hiring data analyst to teach at the universities because data journalism is considered a high-level skill that needs experts to teach (Belaid et al. 2019).
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Among students at higher learning institutions, one of the most apparent challenges is the need to master Mathematics in order to learn and master data journalism (Kashyap & Bhaskaran (2020); Lewis (2020); Yang & Du (2016)). Other factors include unwillingness to learn subjects related to computer science (Plaue & Cook, 2015;
Yang & Du, 2016) and difficulty in learning skills related to big data (Splendore et al., 2015), scared to work with statistics (Burns & Matthew, 2018), and the fear of mathematics and computer-science related subjects (Plaue &
Cook, 2015; Yang & Du, 2016). These factors all contribute to dislikes and unwillingness to learn data journalism which lead to low level of understanding of what data journalism is.
In Australia, some of the challenges in teaching data journalism is the low and lack of quantitative literacy among students. Teachers also found it hard for upskilling and limited room to add new materials in current journalism courses. In the country, there are currently nine universities teaching data journalism as a course while some others teach data journalism as a form of exposure to students via lectures and activities. All respondents in this study believe that more effort should be done to incorporate data journalism into the curricula (Davies & Cullen, 2016).
At Hong Kong Baptist University, a survey with 121 journalism students shows that they are eager to understand what data journalism is and its practice, but do not have comprehensive knowledge of data collection, data analysis and interpretation. Secondly, the survey also found that computational tools are absent from current journalism curricula, which leads to misperceptions among the students about data usage in news reporting. Thirdly, students have a high willingness to learn data journalist, but half of them confessed that they dislike works related to data (Belaid et al. 2019).
The same study also found that gender and major also played a role to dictate students’ perception about data journalism. Male students for instance, mastered more data-related knowledge than female students. Students majoring in Chinese journalism showed the least interest in data, compared to students from financial journalism major. This brings to the irony of the overall findings in the study. Although the students in the study recognized the importance of data journalism for their career, they showed minimal interests or possess minimal data skills that can be used in the future (Belaid et al. 2019).
3.0 METHODOLOGY
This study adopts descriptive online survey as the research method. This method is chosen because it is the most convenient method to reach the students while most of them are still having online classes at USIM when the data collection of this study was done. This method also enables access to large and geographically distributed populations. It is also a cost-effective method and time saving for researchers.
Sampling method used is purposive sampling, which they must be communication or language students who take journalism courses. They may voluntarily participate in this study once they fulfill the main criterion. A total of 34 students involved in this study.
4.0 RESULTS/FINDINGS
4.1 Awareness about Data Journalism among USIM Students
It is interesting to note that the total students aimed to involve in this study is 200. They are communication and language students from two faculties—Faculty of Leadership and Management and Faculty of Major Languages.
However, only 34 students participate and one of the most striking reasons is they do not know much about data journalism. Even by looking at the title of the online survey, only 17 percent of the students were willing to answer voluntarily.
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Figure 1: Whether respondents have heard about data journalism
From 34 students who participated in this study, only about 30 percent said they have heard about data journalism (which is 11 students). From this, three of them heard about data journalism from class while three others from the internet.
Figure 2: Pie chart showing whether respondents understand what is data journalism
Generally, it can be concluded that majority of the students do not understand what is data journalism. 39 percent answered neutral, which may be read as “do not understand”. Only 15 percent answered they understand data journalism, and out of 8 responses, all of them suggest the students understand data journalism. They include some keywords and phrases that demonstrate understanding such as “analising large data sets”, “numerical data used in production of information”, “help journalists to tell complex story through infographics”.
This is a good sign because the respondents are generally communication and language students who have not entered any data journalism classes. The keywords used to describe their understanding are accurate and that include “data”, “complex story” and “infographics”. However, we still do not have any idea whether the students have any idea how exactly data work in news reporting.
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Figure 3: Respondents’ views whether data journalism is perceived as an important skill in the future
When asked whether they think that data journalism is an important skills for future journalists, 45 percent agreed while 30 percent strongly agreed which bring to the majority of 75 percent agreement from the 34 respondents. This is in line with Wright & Doyle’s (2018) study in Australia who found that data journalism is potentially becoming more important and will penetrate even smaller newsrooms in the future. Related to that, there are some skills that journalists need to master including to be good in Mathematics (Kashyap & Bhaskaran, 2020;
Lewis, 2020; Yang & Du, 2016). However, for USIM students, we still need to examine how much they know about data and news reporting, and how whether they are ready to learn the complexity of data and related skills related to data. This is because, it is agreed by many data journalism teachers that one of the most challenging thing in teaching data journalism is to ensure students are interested with what they learn, able to grasp data-related skills and able to apply in news reporting (Belaid et al. 2019).
Figure 4: Respondents readiness to learn data journalism if it is offered as a compulsory subject by the university
Respondents were also asked if they are ready to learn data journalism if it is offered as a compulsory course by the university and 90 percent agreed. They reported that “it is very important to learn data journalism nowadays”, “will be an important skill in journalism in the future”, “to produce original content from data journalism”, and “enhance skills for journalism graduates” to support their readiness to learn.
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Figure 5: Respondents’ willingness to pay fees to learn data journalism
In fact, if they need to pay to learn data journalism, about 40 percent agree to pay for the course if necessary.
5.0 CONCLUSION
It is rather obvious that data journalism is an important branch in journalism and provides various opportunities than traditional journalism. In fact, it is so important that we can say that it might be one of the writing method that could be the saviour of professional journalism. However, the teaching of data journalism has been challenging in many countries. The practice is also limited to some countries with more advanced tools and with more experts and welcoming social and political cultures. Hence, it is not strange to find that many journalism students do not get sufficient exposure to what data journalism is and how to be leveraged into accurate and credible news reports.
From the findings of this study, the conclusion that can be made is the level of awareness about what data journalism is still low among USIM students, albeit being communication or language students. However, they know the importance of data journalism and are willing to learn especially if it is made compulsory by the university, and some agreed to pay if needed. This is inline with the impression that data journalism is an important skill to be mastered by future journalists.
The findings suggest several important implications to several parties especially to universities offering journalism courses. More exposure about data journalism must be done if not yet able to offer a full course of data journalism in Malaysia. This also includes the readiness of teachers to learn data journalism.
6.0 LIMITATION AND STUDY FORWARD
This study is a preliminary study, hence it has various limitations. One, future studies may conduct similar studies with more respondents and can also covered other communication students from other universities in Malaysia.
Other methods may also be used including qualitative methods such as interview so deeper understanding about the students’ awareness and readiness to learn data journalism may be examined further.
Deeper future studies may examine among journalism students in Malaysia to study their readiness to learn data-related skills and they must be exposed to learn those skills to know the level of interests and capacity to master those skills.
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