Data Dredger
Name of the organisation: Internews Network
Country: Kenya
Category: Data journalism website or section small media
Description of the project: Data Dredger was established as a platform to help Kenyan journalists develop their data storytelling skills. While this particular space went up in February 2013, Internews data journalism work has been ongoing for a little over a year. The platform was built to provide hands-on opportunities that would allow journalists to learn to produce data stories by doing. In developing their stories, journalists work under the mentorship of Internews in Kenya data journalism trainers. Data journalism with Kenyan journalists under Data Dredger has been tremendously fruitful. The platform has given journalists the opportunity to not only engage with data on Kenya Open Data Initiative (KODI) but to also explore other avenues of identifying data sources that become gems for great stories for their audiences. The platform has allowed journalists in Kenya to produce numerous in-depth and interrogative stories that would not have been possible before.
What data did you use and how did you obtain it?: The Data Dredger began by acquiring data from Kenya Open Government Data Initiative (KODI), launched by the Kenyan Government in 2011. The fact that the government had released the data, becoming the first government in sub-Saharan Africa to do so, inspired journalists to identify other data sets. The exercise of mining more data ranged from downloading Kenya Demographic Health Surveys data to poring through old paper files in government ministries in pursuit of mountains of data that the government was yet to release.
Technical challenges, tools used: Agile development methodologies, PHP Kohana framework, MySQL, HighCharts, JQuery, Twitter bootstrap framework, Komodo, Adobe CS5.
