Data Journalism in the Age of Big Data: An Exploration into the Uptake of Data Journalism in Leading South African Newspapers

Abstract

The growing capacity to generate large quantities of data as a result of rapid technological change in the recent past has meant that increasingly, journalists everywhere are under pressure to find new ways of handling this information deluge, processing and packaging it in ways that allow ease of access for their readers. These data blizzards have been further intensified by the ever-expanding social media networks that keep churning out large volumes of information at unprecedented speed, making gathering, processing and packaging information in visualisable form all the more important. The rise of data journalism is in part a direct response to this, as it provides journalists the critical tools to manipulate data on complex issues such as national budgets, election manifestos and national census for innovative storytelling. This chapter explores the emergence of data journalism in South Africa and analyses its uptake by three leading mainstream newspapers—The Star, a national daily broadsheet; The Daily Sun, a national daily tabloid; and the Mail & Guardian, a widely respected weekly investigative paper. Using the so-called GuptaLeaks (a terabyte of email data on the links between the Gupta brothers and members of President Zuma’s government and family) as a reference point, the chapter analyses the extent to which the selected newspapers deployed data journalism to build the story of mass corruption that has come to be known as “State Capture.” It explores rationales for adoption or non-adoption of data journalism, as well as the different ways in which data journalism is affecting traditional newsroom practices through interviews interviews with a small sample of journalists and the selected papers.