It is difficult to pinpoint the origin of Big Data. It was not until 1989 that the term was born thanks to an article by journalist Erik Larson. He referred to how data could be used for purposes other than its original objective.
If technology has historically been used to cover needs and tasks, today that function is much more sophisticated thanks to the Internet and its applications. And although many of these applications are free, the payment exists and it is our privacy.
Every time you shop online, search for a route or like a photo , it’s like you’re leaving virtual fingerprints. Your online behaviour creates a map of data (metadata) that is stored on servers and available to telecommunications companies. If a lot of data is stored for each of us every day, the result is a gigantic volume of information available. That’s Big Data.
The production and use of data is present in many other areas of knowledge. One of them is, for example, public management and the implementation of state policies. Thanks to transparency and access to information laws, we have figures on the management of public resources at hand. This is an important aspect of today’s democracies: that their citizens can make informed decisions.
Big Data and journalism, an inevitable relationship
Over the past ten years, journalism has undergone a latvia phone number data major reconfiguration . Connectivity has increased around the world, and low-cost digital devices (mainly smartphones) have allowed a large number of people to access information available on the web.
Audiences have moved to social media. Digital newspapers have proliferated, and print newspapers have had to rethink their formats and ways of reporting. The profession itself is also readapting . Traditional narratives have mutated, as audiences demand multimedia content, quality research and easy reading.
As alarming as it may sound, the digital revolution is revitalizing journalism. And this is where Big Data comes in. Media outlets around the world are taking advantage of it (and contributing to its growth) to deliver personalized and fast content to their readers, but above all, to tell new stories.
Traditionally, a journalist had to look for figures to support his ej leads or her research proposal. Today, large volumes of data are the starting point for discovering a topic. Journalistic production, its methods of prioritizing and collecting information, have changed: news is emerging from numbers, and not the other way around.
But it is not about publishing raw data, because we must be able to “see through the numbers”. The role of journalism is to start an investigation by analysing huge numbers and extract a meaningful story. Reporting news from large amounts of data not only adds new skills to journalism, but also increases its value in society.
In this way, Big Data technology has changed journalism, both in gregory fernandez ceo its working formats and in its way of thinking about itself. Many media outlets have taken advantage of this metamorphosis, innovating in techniques to process and deliver information. One example is The Guardian , which has an entire section on its website dedicated to reports and articles based on data analysis.
This is why new technologies should not be feared: it all depends on how they are used.