The utilization of open data sources in developing journalistic practices of news platforms: a field study on a sample of news websites

Author

Department of Visual Communication, Faculty of Mass Communication, Ahram Canadian University

Abstract

The study aimed to identify journalists’ visions and perceptions regarding the best practices for implementing open data sources within newsrooms, to know the extent of its impact on the developing of the quality of the news stories, achieving user engagement, knowing the extent of journalists’ interest in using them, and the most Arab and foreign open data sources widely used by  journalists, and the advantages, and the challenges they face while using open data sources, and the support provided by newsrooms to help journalists produce stories based on open data sources. The field study was applied to a deliberate sample of (152) journalists working on websites with different political orientations, and ownership patterns, in addition to journalists who work independently who use open data sources in their news coverage, in addition to conducting in-depth interviews with eight journalists working in the field of investigative journalism. The field study was conducted during the time period from April to June 2023, and the study concluded that 90% of the respondents rely on “open data sources” in their news coverage, and this result indicates that open data sources have become an indispensable source for obtaining information, and there are a diverse number of “Arabic open data sources” that journalists rely on in their daily work, such as: “Reports issued by United Nations organizations,” the “Websites of official ministries, “The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, “Research Centers,” then “Arab open data portals”, As for “foreign open data sources” that journalists rely on, the “Google Public Data” website came first, with a relative weight of 70.3%. The results also indicated that there are many professional criteria to depend on open data sources, as following: “the open data sources must be appropriate to the topic on which journalists are working”, “the journalists use open data sources after they have verified the accuracy and credibility of them”, and “journalists prefer to provide their topics with statistics and figures”, then “journalists said that the open sources should provide their services in Arabic and English languages so that it will be easily understandable”, and “the open data sources should be among the sources they are commonly used by journalists”.

Keywords

References

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