Journalism in the Data Age

This book is your guide to understanding what journalism is and could be in an age of digital technology and datafication.

Journalism today is entwined with the digital. Stories can come from crowdsourcing and content farms. They can incorporate data visualisations and virtual reality. Journalists can find themselves working as self-employed digital entrepreneurs or for tech giants like Google and Facebook.

This book explores the development of journalism in this era of digital tech, and big and open data. It explores the crucial new developments of online journalism, data journalism, computational journalism and entrepreneurial journalism, and what this means for our understanding of journalism as a profession, and as a part of society. Using a wealth of international case studies, Jingrong Tong explores contemporary issues such as:

• AI, Automated news, ’robot reporters’, and algorithmic accountability.
• Digital business models, from venture capital to tech start-ups to crowd-funding.
• Audiences and dissemination in and age of platform capitalism
• Questions of censorship, democracy and state control.
• Digital challenges to journalistic autonomy and legitimacy.

With clear explanations throughout, Journalism in the Data Age introduces you to a range of ideas, debates and key concepts. It is essential reading for all students of journalism.

Dr Jingrong Tong is Senior Lecturer in Digital News Cultures at the University of Sheffield.