On Supporting Digital Journalism: Case Studies in Co-Designing Journalistic Tools

TL;DR

This paper discusses a collaborative research effort to develop and refine digital journalism tools through co-design with journalists, aiming to address key challenges faced in digital media work.

Contribution

It presents case studies of co-designing journalistic tools with journalists, highlighting the process and lessons learned from a multi-year research program.

Findings

Effective co-design processes improve tool relevance and usability.

Collaborative development enhances journalists' adoption of new tools.

Insights inform future digital journalism tool development.

Abstract

Since 2013 researchers at University College Dublin in the Insight Centre for Data Analytics have been involved in a significant research programme in digital journalism, specifically targeting tools and social media guidelines to support the work of journalists. Most of this programme was undertaken in collaboration with The Irish Times. This collaboration involved identifying key problems currently faced by digital journalists, developing tools as solutions to these problems, and then iteratively co-designing these tools with feedback from journalists. This paper reports on our experiences and learnings from this research programme, with a view to informing similar efforts in the future.