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Andy Dickinson

Andy Dickinson

Andy is a Senior lecturer in Journalism at Manchester Metropolitan University where he is the program lead for the MA Multimedia Journalism.

📍 Manchester

How open is Data Journalism?

Where does data journalism get its data? 1.In a brown envelope or mysterious memory stick 2.From freedom of information requests 3.From free (open) government data sources 4.Some will collect their own via the crowd It’s the brown envelope stories that invariably get the headlines (and

Open data and rent-seeking economies

Yesterday, I was introduced to a concept I hadn’t heard of before – rent seeking behaviour. Its an economics term that essentially means that instead of investing time developing things that you can sell, you spend all your money making it really hard for the other guy to sell their

#HLDJ Conference 6th and 7th November 2015

This isn’t meant to be a conference about Hyperlocal data journalism (but it could be!) It’s a conference about the way that Hyperlocal AND/OR data AND/OR journalism might work together. I think that there are three distinct but related areas where there are new opportunities. I’

Pulling policing data into Google sheets

Last week I had a regional newspaper group in for a few days exploring lots of different things. One area that popped up was data and we did a quick breakout looking at some data from an FOI on 101 calls. It was a whirlwind overview – you can see the

Icons of the dead: visualising the deaths of migrant workers in Qatar.

Update: The data from the WaPo story was challenged by the Qatar Government resulting in an amendment stating that the data was deaths for all migrants not just those working on world cup venues. Something, in a uncharacteristic bit of comment baiting,Roy Greenslade felt the need to point out

Hyperlocal. open data. journalism conference: If you'll come, I'll build it.

Update: I’ve decided on dates. 6th and 7th of November 2015 in Preston. If you’re interested you can tell me what you’d like to see through a quick survey [http://digidickinson.net/2015/06/22/hldj-conference-6th-and-7th-november-2015/] . As part of my current research activity into hyperlocal and open

The connected middle class: Ofcom and civic internet use

OFCOM have released their Adults’ media use and attitudes report for 2015 [http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/market-data-research/other/research-publications/adults/media-lit-10years/] . It’s a report that is always worth a read through. This is the ten year anniversary edition with a good deal of the content around the release

Open data: What can we expect from the conservatives?

We have a conservative government in the UK for the next five years. I’ve been looking at open data a lot for some research that I’m doing so I wanted to cast a proper eye over their manifesto [https://www.conservatives.com/manifesto] to see what was on

Open data overload:yorkopendata and #localdata15

For the last week it’s feels like my life has been all about opendata. My immersion into the world of open data that started last Friday with my trip up to Leeds for the DataDive [http://digidickinson.net/2015/04/20/refelcting-on-the-leeds-datadive/], continued with two events driven by open

Reflecting on the Leeds #Datadive

Last Friday night, I found myself in a sun filled loft workshop in Leeds. All the people in the room seemed to be in one corner, but that’s where the (free) bar was. Tables are set out in rows. Solid wood and rubber topped refugees from the re-fit of