DATA JOURNALISM IN HEALTH REPORTING IN BANGLADESH: PATTERN OF PRACTICES, IMPEDIMENTS AND PREPARATIONS FOR JOURNALISTS

Abstract

Data journalism, with its ability to provide macro and micro-scale perspectives on health care, redefined health reporting during the global COVID-19 pandemic. Under these circumstances, health has taken the place of high significance. Consequently, the curiosity to see how data journalism is exercised while covering health issues in Bangladesh led to the idea of this study. This investigation aimed to shed light on how data journalism was applied while reporting on health in Bangladeshi media. The study was conducted following a mixed-method approach; quantitative data through content analysis and qualitative data through key informant interviews. The news published in August and September of 2022 in online editions of The Business Standard, the Prothom Alo, the Daily Star and the Ittefaq; was taken for content analysis. Additionally, four key informant interviews with academicians, journalism trainers and media development experts were conducted. The study concluded that data journalism practices in Bangladesh are not up to the standard. The scenario is also severely poor in terms of the number of published data stories; only 24 reports among 736 health-related news were data-driven stories. The Business Standard published 19 health-related data stories, which is the highest among the four news outlets. On the other hand, the Prothom Alo and the Ittefaq did not publish any health-related data story. Even the data-driven stories published in these four news outlets focused only on urban areas. Additionally, the data-driven stories were mainly reported based on government sources. Besides, among 25 data visuals, 84% were pictographs. However, the interviewees identified not having an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) tool for the Bengali language as a significant impediment to the flourishment of data journalism in Bangladesh. They also marked that, journalists in our newsrooms often do not possess the technical skills to carry out the data-driven story. Nevertheless, they proposed that, to improve the scenario of data journalism in Bangladesh, news industry and the universities should work together. Media development organizations should advocate the concept of data journalism in the newsrooms. Furthermore, they have to introduce workshops and training programs on data journalism.