Delegates from across the EU are in Galway this week to discuss the future of journalism in Europe at a two-day event in NUI Galway’s Insight Centre for Data Analytics.
The event, taking place in the centre today (Thursday ) and tomorrow, forms part of a EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme called Your Data Stories, which explores the use of open and social data.
The event, officially opened today by Mayor of Galway Frank Fahy, is being hosted by the Insight Centre’s eGovernment unit, a major Science Foundation Ireland-funded initiative involving researchers at Dublin City University, NUI Galway, University College Cork, and University College Dublin.
The Your Data Stories project aims to develop next generation data journalism tools using public open data to provide media and consultancy organisations with stories as they happen.
“The next generation of journalists will come into work on a Monday morning to find a set of potential stories waiting in their inbox, complete with statistical and background information derived from multiple sources,” said organiser Niall Ó Brolcháin of the Insight Centre. “The data that will be used to create such stories could comprise health information, transport data, financial data, environmental data, agricultural data, and other data sources combined with statistical data. Any anomalies in the data will automatically trigger a red flag, for example incidents of air pollution, major traffic snarl ups, or the outbreak of an epidemic.”
Delegates will include representatives from the Irish Government’s government reform department, the Netherlands-based European Journalism Centre, the German broadcaster Deutsche Welle, the Belgium software company Tenforce, the Athens Technology Centre, the Greek Free Open Source Software Society (GFOSS ), and the Demokritos National Centre for Scientific Research.
