[open-government] norwegian editors on government data and journalism

Tue Apr 12 12:00:04 UTC 2011

In cooperation with the Association of Norwegian Editors I had the
opportunity to ask the editors of Norwegian media (newspapers, broadcasting,
magazines, websites) questions about open government data, data journalism
etc. The survey was conducted in February and 138 editors responded.

Some results:
- Editors are convinced that data journalism (interactive visualizations,
the mashup of different data sources etc) has the potential of reaching a
wide audience. 83 percent agreed (completely or somewhat) to this.
- Editors are also convinced that data journalism is capable of producing
insights about society that traditional journalism can not. 91 percent
agreed (completely or somewhat) to this statement.
- However, when it comes to concrete plans for the next year, editors are
hesitant. 11 percent say they will give priority to data journalism
projects, 31 percent will try out limited projects, but 55 percent will not
give priority to this.
- Access to data: 79 percent of editors say their organization has filed a
request for data under the freedom of information act during the last year.
This sounds like a very high percentage. However, please take the answers on
the access to data questions with a pinch of salt. From some of the free
text answers, it seems that some editors have interpreted the question as
being about freedom of information requests in general, not specifically
about data.
- Access to data - challenges: Editors were asked about challenges in
communication with public sector agencies about access to data sets. More
than half picked "freedom of information act is interpreted too narrowly",
and "agencies take very long to respond".

All data from the survey is published here: (although only in Norwegian)
https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AsEFV_gbhE48dG5ETEs0WnpVVG83UXlvMTNkZEZRQlE&hl=no#gid=0

Two blog entries with comments from editors and experts (also Norwegian):
http://voxpublica.no/tag/redaksjonsunders%C3%B8kelsen-2011/

All the best
Olav Øvrebø
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