prj_anic.html

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layout: project
title: African News Innovation Challenge

project_name: Data Education and Advocacy
project_image1: img/project_fellowships01.jpg
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project_description: |
    <p>At Code4SA, our philosophy is that the only way to create a sustainable open data and citizen engagement movement within South Africa is to create a paradigm shift within thought-leader organisations. Through these organisations we believe that society can be sensitised to the importance of transparency in government and other organisations.</p>
    <p>We <a href="http://africannewschallenge.org/2012-winners/">announced</a> as one of the winners of the <a href="http://africannewschallenge.org/">2012 African News Innovation Challange</a> to support a pilot project that will attempt to contribute to the development of a South Africa data-driven ecosystem of information producers and consumers.</p>
    
    <p>Our initial experiment is to try to evangelise the use of data within influential media organisations. Following the <a href="http://www.code4kenya.org/">Code4Kenya</a> model, data analysts / fellows are being embedded into host organisations for a period a six months. </p>
    <p>During that period, Fellows are considered to be part of the news team, sitting side-by-side with journalists and attending daily news briefs. They are responsible for identifying opportunities to improve the way news stories are found and disseminated. Typically, they work on a data story with a journalist, produce visualisations, build apis or develop interesting ways of consuming news.</p> 
    <p>Fellows are supported by a CitizenLab manned by techies and a graphic designer. This lab provides the heavy-lifting to implement some of the projects identified by the fellows.</p>
project_whatwechanged: |
    <p>The objective of this project is to allow news organisations to experiment with data-driven journalism without a big initial investment. After this 6 month period, we hope to have created institutional change within host organisations.</p>
    <p>In addition to developing tools, a core function of the embedded fellows will be to promote the creation of teams inside media houses. We believe that long-term sustainability cannot be achieved unless behaviour change takes place. Team relationships will reinforce this change and serve to create internal champions.</p>
    <p>Moreover, we believe that careful selection of organisations can create a "me too" ripple in the industry that will lead to a greater appreciation for how data can be used by journalists to reach their audiences.</p>
    
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