#STORIES AND INSIGHTS
41 years. $3 billion. Inside the Clinton donor network (Washington Post)
A Washington Post investigation reveals how Bill and Hillary Clinton have methodically cultivated donors over 40 years, from Little Rock to Washington and then across the globe. Their fundraising methods have created a new blueprint for politicians and their donors.
Why open data doesn’t mean open government (The Guardian)
China and Russia are beginning to selectively share state information with the public, but democracy requires more than just data. “Publishing open data is of course not sufficient for open governments or open societies. It is just one ingredient in the mix”, says Jonathan Gray (director of policy and research at Open Knowledge).
Corruption in Africa: 75 million people pay bribes (Transparency International)
Nearly 75 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa are estimated to have paid a bribe in the past year – some to escape punishment by the police or courts, but many forced to pay to get access to the basic services that they desperately need. Latest report: People and Corruption: Africa Survey 2015.
In a Global Market for Hacking Talent, Argentines Stand Out (NY Times)
Want to learn how to break into the computerized heart of a medical device or an electronic voting machine? Maybe a smartphone or even a car? Thanks to the legacy of military rule and a culture of breaking rules of all sorts, Argentina has become one of the best places on earth to find people who could show you how.
What academic research caught the public imagination in 2015? (The Altmetric Top 100)
Just One Thing: A Year in Review, Part I (Source, OpenNews)
The best of info activism in Latin America (SocialTIC)
And the future… Predictions for Journalism 2015: Numbers, numbers everywhere (NiemanLab)
#RESOURCES
The Quartz guide to bad data: An exhaustive reference to problems seen in real-world data along with suggestions on how to resolve them. This guide presents thorough descriptions and possible solutions to many of the kinds of problems that you will encounter when working with data.
Report: The Transparency International football governance league table: To identify potential corruption risks in world football, Transparency International looked at the information that is publicly available on websites about how the 209 FAs and the regional football confederations are run.
New portal expedites access to open government data across Europe: The European Data Portal, currently contains over 240,000 datasets from 34 European countries, as well as several features to assist users as they navigate the European open data market.
Open Data Inception Project’s Online Directory: Links to 1,600 Open Data Portals Worldwide, such sites as OpenGeocode, DataPortals, Quora, and StackExchange.
2015 Global Terrorism Index: A comprehensive summary of the key global trends and patterns in terrorism over the last 15 years with a special emphasis on 2014.
#TOOLS
probablepeople Python library for parsing unstructured romanized name or company strings into components, using advanced NLP methods. This is based off us address, a python library for parsing addresses. Repo / Web interface.
Moebio Framework JavaScript toolkit for performing data analysis and creating visualizations. It provides a canvas based graphics framework and data structures and operators for manipulating data. Repo / Examples.
#MAP
Exploring the VW scandal with graph analysis (Data to Value + Linkurious)
#NEXT EVENTS
- IRE CAR Bootcamp - Jan 11 (Columbia, Missouri)
- CAR Boot Camp #RDFviz, Responsible Data Forum: Visualization - January 15, 2016 (NYC)
- Hacks/Hackers Meet Ups: San Francisco (Jan. 22-23), London (Feb. 5-7) & New York City (Feb. 26-27).
- NICAR 2016 - March 2016 (Denver, USA).
#APPLY
- Doing digital social research? Grant application support workshops - 14th January; 18th; February; 17th March and 21st April 2016 (University of Sheffield, UK)
- McGraw Hill Financial Data Journalism (Dec 31)
- Multimedia Skills Building for Georgian Journalists (Jan 8)
- Last day to propose a talk or poster to PyCon US (Jan 3)
- Last day to propose a session to FOSS4G North America (Jan 22)
- Bringing Home the World: International Reporting Fellowship Program for Minority Journalists (Jan 25)
- Last day to propose a talk to Tapestry Conference (Jan 31)