Ibero-American data journalism: development, contestation, and social change. Presentation

Abstract

As the emphasis of data journalism research shifts to the Global South one region that remains relatively under researched is Ibero-America. Arguably, a space that has pioneered data journalism practices and with enormous potential for social change and development through open data, Ibero-America has excelled in many areas related to the field: La Nación in Argentina has to date one of the most innovative data journalism units globally. Also, La Nación, together with the Spanish newspaper El País, were, together with the Guardian, the New York Times and the Spiegel, the first news organisation that extracted and published information from WikiLeaks’ War Logs. Finally, Spain is one of the most open societies in Europe, and a global example for open data. Yet, an absence of Ibero-American data journalism studies from mainstream scholarship, creates an opportunity to further explore the developments and evolution of data journalism in this geographic region. In this vein, this special edition of Icono14 aims at repositioning Iberian American data journalism within the broadest discussions on the field, recontextualising its contribution into debates on the role of this journalistic practice in the Global South.