Episode 14 of the Ctrl Enter podcast, an initiative by Professor Leonardo Monastério about Big Data and Data Science, features data journalist Judite Cypreste as a guest to give her perspective on this sometimes misunderstood relationship between data science and journalism.
Trajectory
Judite's first contact with the world of data was during an undergraduate research project in 2017, supervised by Professor Fábio Vasconcellos. At that time, however, her contact was largely theoretical. Her practical experience began in a trainee program focused on Data Journalism at the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper, where she participated in various classes and training sessions 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 bringing 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 would say, 'It's not doing it, you told it to.'"
Since then, Judite has honed her skills in using data, especially in using data for journalism, and realized that, in addition to being a journalist, she has also become a developer. However, she doesn't define herself at either extreme, but rather as a connection between the two. "If you ask me what I do, I'll always say 'I'm a data journalist,' I'll never just say journalist or just developer. That already says a lot about what I like and what I do. Because that's it, it's an in-between space," she comments.
Bridges between journalism and data science.
Here, Judite offers a critical analysis of the two fields, which are increasingly interconnected. There is a growing number of journalists interested in the use of data in newsrooms, just as there is an increasing number of programmers or data scientists working in communications.
Despite this, according to Judite, there is still a very large barrier to data journalism in newsrooms, which is largely influenced by a lack of understanding of what data science is. "I've had the experience of asking 'Do you know what data journalism is?' to professionals who have been in the market for a long time and hearing answers like 'Oh, I've done data journalism,' and then, when I look, the person's work was just putting a bunch of numbers in a report. And that's not it, we know that's not it," she recounts.
The journalist believes that, although it has existed for quite some time, academically speaking, data journalism is still new. While various tools for this practice exist today, Judite believes that academia has a "time to absorb," which ultimately generates a certain... delay"It's not uncommon to find journalists who don't know what data journalism is, who have no idea why they should learn to analyze data, or why they should learn programming," he says.
On the other hand, many developers don't understand what journalistic work is and everything that's involved. According to Judite, knowing how to do good journalistic research "is what differentiates the person who posts a video on Twitter that goes viral from another person who spends time verifying, checking if the video is real, if it's from that place, among other things, which is journalistic research," she explains. She also emphasizes that it's necessary to "understand what journalistic value is, what is important for society, what is not important, to understand..." timing".
Judite believes it's necessary to find a common factor among these difficulties: "both for journalism to understand what data journalism is, and for data scientists or developers who want to start doing data journalism to understand what news value is and what journalistic investigation is, is very important. We need to find a common ground to make it work," she emphasizes.
Fact checking
The emergence of fact-checking is considered, by the journalist, a barometer for understanding the society in which we live today: “It is nothing more than a response to the emergence, also, of a new means of spreading misinformation. Because misinformation has always existed. But now, we also need a new way to inform people that what many agents, what society is saying out there, is not correct,” Judite points out.
She points out that, 30 years ago, for example, it didn't exist. fact checkingHowever, the mobility and usability of information that we have today didn't exist then either. That's why Judite believes we're on the right track with fact-checking.
There are increasingly 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. Increasingly, fact-checking agencies are using tools and partnering with developers to do this very important work," he comments.
O fact checking It became even more important during the new coronavirus pandemic: "We are talking to that person who receives, via WhatsApp, information that the medicine x cure COVID, what is the medicine y "It helps prevent COVID, and when people receive it, they wonder if it's true or not. When they research it, they'll find fact-checking saying that the medicine doesn't work for that," she explains.
At the end of the podcast, Professor Leonardo Monastério asks: “If you were going to a desert island, which essential software would you take? And which would you leave behind?” To hear Judite Cypreste's answer, simply listen. Ctrl Enter episode 14 on major streaming platforms.
