Collaborative Coding Cultures: How Journalists Use GitHub as a Trading Zone

Abstract

As the use of “big data” in journalism has become an increasing practice in recent years, its exercise is no longer limited to newsrooms in Europe and North America. The prevalence of coding cultures and collaboration in newsrooms worldwide has risen, in part to tackle challenges related to information overflow. This collaboration has been facilitated partly by the popularization of low-cost code hosting platforms such as GitHub. GitHub is a well-known public code management system with a significant potential for transparency and collaboration between communities. This study aims to map how newsrooms employ GitHub as a trading zone for collaborative journalism. We analyze the GitHub activities of leading media outlets from 27 countries. Based on content analysis of the newsroom’s repositories and users’ profiles, we found that media organizations in the United Kingdom and the United States continue to be the primary code producers in GitHub. However, our results show that newsrooms in developing countries benefit from these codes by stargazing these projects. The results of this article have important implications for understanding how newsrooms across the globe use GitHub for collaboration and the role journalistic code plays in bringing together various collaborative initiatives and actors in journalism.