Data literacy among journalists: A skills-assessment based approach

Abstract

Datafication brings with it the challenges for journalists to fulfill their historical role as mediators of social processes to their audiences. Journalism has been a rather humanistic field, where journalists tell stories, but do not deal with the analysis and interpretation of numbers. For the current study a methodological tool was developed to measure data literacy among journalists in Estonia. The study confirms that data literacy is acknowledged by journalists as a requirement of future journalism, but their actual skills are still low. Journalists feel more comfortable with data presented in familiar forms. There is a strong tendency that data literacy develops when the skills needed for data processing are in actual use.