Computational Journalism: Shaping the Future of News in a Big Data World

Introduction

According to IBM, 90% of the data that exists in the world today is only two years old. It is also estimated that there is now 2.5 quintillion bytes of data in the world, up from only 800,000 petabytes in the year 2000. This number is expected to rise to 35 zettabytes by 2020. Much of the new data is being generated by social media. Twitter alone generates 7 terabytes (TB) daily, and Facebook generates 10 TB. It is also estimated that other businesses generate terabytes of data every hour of every day. Ultimately, these volumes are incalculable, since estimates of the amount of big data tend to be out of date as soon they are published (Zikopoulos, et. al., 2012).

Big data is defined as “the overwhelming volume of information produced by and about human activity, made possible by the growing ubiquity of mobile devices, tracking tools, always-on sensors, and cheap computing storage” (Lewis, Zamith, & Hermida, 2013, p. 34). So how do we keep up in a “big data” world and discuss its impact at such a rapid growth rate? Perhaps the answer lies in the question, and we have to keep swimming upstream and hope we survive. Nonetheless, big data is instrumental in predicting our future, ready or not. The problem is we are not ready for it. “In short, the term big data applies to information that can’t be processed or analyzed using traditional processes or tools” (Zikopoulos et al., 2012, p. 3). This is the challenge for most corporations, the news industry, and educational institutions. Even the powerful search engine Google is grappling with the challenges of living in a big data world and generating effective measurement tools for predictions. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist admits as much: “we don’t have any better ways to predict the future. What we’re working on is predicting the present” (Mui, 2014, p. A5).

If corporations and powerful search engine platforms such as Google are trying to keep up, then the news industry and educational institutions have their work cut for them as it relates to teaching and training the next wave of journalists who will create and disseminate news, using big data as a tool. Yet, big data is already part of the news cycle. Social media, which relies on and disseminates big data, is increasingly becoming the central part of human interaction. Social media sites have replaced news wire services and other traditional means of researching and packaging news. As a result, news theories and communication process models of the past are almost non-existent in the world of “big data.” Social media and citizen journalism are now major players in the shaping of news today. This is a major challenge with which the news industry and educational institutions are grappling, despite experiencing budget cuts, outdated equipment, and a lack of resources that are needed to function in this new environment.

There are also questions associated with the rise and reliance on big data. Does bigger make it better? How does it impact the field of journalism in relation to truth, ethics, overall news product, and the audience? What about the need for privacy, given the fact that so much data are collected on individuals and communities? How about protection from hackers, who seem to be able to crack any safety net that stores big data including personal finances, medical information, user habits, and other consumer information? This is the new world in which we live. There are some who point out that companies and institutions are relying too much on hard data, and thus may be blinded to other critical ways to gauge trends. “Some argue that what’s really needed is an overhaul of how we measure – and judge – the world to include intangibles such as happiness, education and health” (Mui, 2014, p. A5). While this is a noteworthy suggestion, the issue is much more complex.