ABSTRACT
Working with data has become an increasingly important part of journalistic work, and not just since the COVID-19 pandemic. Digitalization is providing journalism with an exponential increase in larger and more accessible datasets, thus causing data journalism to outgrow its niche and develop into an important area of innovation in journalism. This chapter looks at the backgrounds, aims, and challenges of important cases from Austria, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom, which have been analyzed in the context of the JoIn-DemoS project. The results show that the understanding of journalism as a public service has taken on an important role in the development of data journalism. In addition, factors that have supported (e.g., cooperation, commitment, COVID-19) or hindered (e.g., monetization, missing resources, missing reputation) the rise of data journalism are also elaborated on.
