Journalism in the Era of Big Data: Cases, Concepts and Critiques - Introduction

This open-access article introduces the Special Issue of Digital Journalism (Volume 3, Issue 3, 2015), focusing on Journalism In An Era Of Big Data, devoted to “examine the changing nature of journalism amid data abundance, computational exploration, and algorithmic emphasis”. This special issue thus explores a range of phenomena at the junction between journalism and the social, computer, and information sciences.

These data-centric phenomena are poised to greatly influence, if not transform over time, some of the most fundamental aspects of news and its production and distribution. As large-scale datasets and their collection, analysis, and interpretation are becoming increasingly salient for making sense of and deriving value from digital information, their impact on the media industry and on journalism deserves examination, particularly regarding the potential transformation it implies on news production, democracy, and public life.

By inviting scholarly scrutiny on these phenomena, this issue also calls for tempering much celebration about the promise of reinventing news through the potential of “big data.”