Apostles of certainty: data journalism and the politics of doubt

Can journalists use data in order to produce better journalism? In this text, C.W. Anderson traces the genealogy of data journalism and its material and technological underpinnings, arguing that the use of data in news reporting is inevitably intertwined with national politics, the evolution of computable databases, and the history of professional scientific fields. This work shows how the changes in specifically journalistic understandings of evidence can help us think through the current 'digital data moment' in ways that go beyond simply journalism

Introduction -- The idea of data, documents, and evidence in early 20th century journalism -- Journalism interprets, sociology scientizes : boundary work between empirical occupations in the 1920s and beyond -- Context, social science, and the birth of precision journalism -- Precision becomes data -- Databases, stories, databases : narrative, semantics, and computational journalism -- Three overview cases : varieties of information in the digital age -- Solidarity and uncertainty -- Appendix: On objects, objectivity, and method