Data Journalism

Description of the video:

IU campus shots roll, beginning with the Sample Gates and Franklin Hall.

Voiceover, Elaine Monaghan, professor of practice, The Media School: The world has become vastly more complex with the growth of social media. 

Monaghan speaks to the camera.

Monaghan: And in order to be able to navigate that world, we have to be literate in data. And that doesn't just mean adding numbers up. It means being able to look at gigantic data sets and figure out how to use them to tell stories. 

Students point to computer screens working in a lab at class. A student fixes a tie before anchoring a news show. A student points a camera. Coding appears on a black screen.

Monaghan: The data journalism concentration is one of the options available to students who enroll in our M.S. program. And it focuses more on data. 

Monaghan speaks to the camera.

Monaghan: And so it really gives you an opportunity to go beyond the basic and traditional journalism reporting skills and to expand your ability to use data for storytelling, analysis, visualization, and to help your audience understand this world. 

Various data sets appear on screen.

Gerry Lanosga, associate professor, The Media School, speaks to the camera.

Lanosga: From the journalism side, we, we really teach data literacy from the ground up. Once we get past the, the basic levels, then they'll go on to some data science training where they learn basic programming skills, for instance, which are important for particularly those journalists who want to develop visualizations, who want to develop news apps and so forth. 

HTML appears on a screen. Students work at computers.

Lanosga: And they'll learn those things as part of the work over at the Luddy School. 

Monaghan speaks to the camera: You go and ask somebody a question. 

Shots of Washington, D.C., and policy meetings appear.

Monaghan: It's much harder for that person to ignore the equation if you turn up with data in your question and in your pocket and you're able to challenge governments, policymakers, powerful people, if you have the data knowledge. 

Campus shots roll beginning with a focus on the Sample Gates facing Kirkwood.

Lanosga: The journalist who is conversant with data in a newsroom sort of rises to the top.

Black screen. Text: Indiana University. Mediaschool.indiana.edu

Online certificate

If you can't commit to a full master's program, consider our online-only graduate certificate in data journalism. The curriculum is personalized for each student — with oversight from a faculty committee, students select 12 credit hours of Media School and Luddy courses from within the M.S. program to build upon their existing skills and meet their professional goals.

Learn more in the graduate bulletin

The Michael I. Arnolt Center for Investigative Journalism

The Arnolt Center teaches and produces top-tier investigative journalism covering the state of Indiana and beyond. Its work — produced by Master of Science and undergraduate students — is available at no cost to local, regional and national news outlets. As a student in the data journalism concentration, you’ll produce a capstone project to be published by the center and distributed nationally.

Visit the Arnolt Center's website

Observatory on Social Media

OSoMe investigates the role of media and technology in society, focusing on the spread of information and misinformation online. It provides resources and training to help students, journalists and citizens identify attempts to intentionally manipulate information and sway public opinion. Faculty who designed and teach in the data journalism program were part of the team that won a major donation from the Knight Foundation and expanded OSoMe into an interdisciplinary center. OSoMe’s external advisory board of industry professionals will assist you with your internship search.

Visit OSoMe's website

Careers

You’ll complete at least one internship during this program, and Media School faculty are standing by to help launch you on your career. Your work in this concentration will prepare you with in-demand skills that will set you apart. Whether you go on to work as an investigative reporter, data analyst or interactive designer, you’ll have the skills to analyze data to tell stories comprehensively and ethically.

Explore careers in journalism

Find a story that interests you and that can be only be told by coding. You’ll be surprised how quickly you can learn enough to do an insightful project.

Eric Blom, MS'19, senior newsroom developer at National Geographic