ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the emerging trend towards a critical interrogation of our increasingly datafied societies by journalism, in the context of growing interest in the social and political implications of datafication. In embracing computer programming culture and the logic of computation, data journalism scholarship has often positioned technology at the centre of its practices. Critics have therefore called for a shift in the trajectory of data journalism scholarship towards a more sociological approach. At the intersection of data journalism studies and accountability research, significant scholarship has appeared on algorithmic accountability – a branch of computational journalism with a traditional watchdog function that makes algorithms the object of investigation. Data justice is a powerful conceptual lens that has emerged to engage with the challenges of datafication ‘in a way that privileges an explicit concern for social justice’.
