Episode 14 of the Ctrl Enter podcast, an initiative by professor Leonardo Monastério on Big Data and Data Science, features data journalist Judite Cypreste as a guest to give her point of view on this sometimes misunderstood relationship between data science and journalism.
Trajectory
Judite's first contact with the universe of data was during a scientific initiation, still at college, in 2017, guided by professor Fábio Vasconcellos. During this period, however, contact was quite theoretical. The practice began in a trainee program focused on Data Journalism at the newspaper Folha de S. Paulo, when he participated in several classes and training on writing, journalism and programming.
It was during this trainee period that she took classes, for four months, with Fernando Masanori, whom the journalist highlights: “if you want to learn Python and you want to learn Python very well, with a wonderful person, it's with Fernando Masanori. He has this experience of taking programming to journalists, so he understands.”
The journalist comments that studying data science was like discovering a completely new universe: "when I was learning, I was surprised. 'My God, this is doing this'. And Fernando said 'he's not doing it, you told him to to do".
Since then, Judite has improved in the use of data, mainly in the use of data to do journalism, and realized that, in addition to being a journalist, she has also become a developer. However, it is not defined in either extreme, but rather in a connection between the two. “If you ask me what I do, I'll always say 'I'm a data journalist', I'll never say just a journalist or just a developer. This already says a lot about what I like and what I do. Because that’s it, it’s an in-between place”, he comments.
Bridges between journalism and data science
Here, Judite makes a critical analysis of the two fields, which are increasingly related to each other. There are an increasing number of journalists becoming interested in using data in newsrooms, just as there are an increasing number of programmers or data scientists doing communications work.
Despite this, according to Judite, there is still a very large barrier to data journalism in journalistic newsrooms, which is greatly influenced by the lack of knowledge of what data science is. “I've had this experience of asking 'do you know what data journalism is?' for professionals who have been in the market for a long time and hear responses like 'ah, I've done data journalism' and, when I look, the person's subject was to put a bunch of numbers into a report. And that’s not it, we know it’s not that”, he reports.
The journalist believes that, although it has existed for a long time, academically speaking data journalism is still new. Even though today there are several tools for this practice, Judite believes that the gym has an “absorption time”, which ends up generating a certain delay , a delay in the advancement of the practice. “It’s not very uncommon to find journalists who don’t know what data journalism is, they have no idea why they should learn to analyze data, why they should learn programming,” he says.
On the other hand, many developers do not understand what journalism is and everything that is involved. According to Judite, knowing how to carry out a good journalistic investigation “is what makes the difference between someone who posts a video on Twitter that goes viral and another person who spends time checking, checking if the video is real, if it's from that exact place, among other things. other things, which is journalistic investigation”, he explains. She also emphasizes that it is necessary to “understand what journalistic value is, what is important for society, what is not important, understand timing ” .
Judite believes that it is necessary to find a common factor between these difficulties: “both journalism understands what data journalism is and data scientists or developers who want to start doing data journalism understand what news value is and what journalistic investigation is very important. We need to find a common ground to work”, he highlights.
Fact checking
The emergence of fact-checking is considered, by the journalist, a thermometer to understand the society we live in today: “It is nothing more than a response to the emergence, also, of a new means of disinforming. Because misinformation has always existed. But now, we also need a new way of informing people that what many agents, what society is saying is not correct”, points out Judite.
She highlights that, 30 years ago, for example, there was no fact checking , but also, there was no mobility and usability of information as we have today. Therefore, Judite believes that we are going in a good direction with fact checking.
There are more and more agencies committed to this role, of verifying what is true or not: “it is inevitable that we use science to demonstrate that those things are not true. More and more checking agencies are using tools and teaming up with developers to do this very important work”, he comments.
Fact checking has become even more important during the new coronavirus pandemic: “We are talking to that person who receives, via Whatsapp, information that the medicine x cures COVID, that the medicine y prevents COVID, and that, When you receive it, you wonder if it's true or not. When she goes to research, she will find the check saying that the medicine is not suitable for this”, he explains.
At the end of the podcast, professor Leonardo Monastério asks: “if you went to a desert island, what essential software would you take with you? And which one would you leave there?” To check out Judite Cypreste's answer, just listen to episode 14 of Ctrl Enter on the main streaming platforms.
