A look at how Malaysian journalists embraced data journalism during the Covid-19 pandemic to provide deeper insights beyond daily statistics, focusing on human stories and trends.
PETALING JAYA: When Covid-19 hit Malaysia , the numbers came fast - infections, deaths, hospital beds, ventilators. Every day, authorities such as the Health Ministry and the World Health Organization released a fresh set of statistics.wanted to dig deeper and find the stories hiding inside them to help readers make sense of it all.
In early 2019, about a year before the pandemic started, chief content officer Datin Paduka Esther Ng asked senior news editor Razak Ahmad to explore a new storytelling tool for the digital age. Known as data journalism, the approach involves analysing data on a specific topic to unearth interesting trends that could be turned into stories. Online, data stories often feature multimedia and interactive graphics that allow readers to explore the data themselves.
Razak attended training courses and learnt from every resource he could find, including YouTube videos.
“I realised that journalists don’t need to be experts in math, statistics, or coding to learn the basics,” he said. “What’s important is a willingness to step out of your comfort zone and learn something new. ”, the unit was tasked with producing data-driven and multimedia stories for“Covid-19 threw us into the deep end. Working closely, we managed to create nearly 100 data-driven stories on the pandemic alone," said Razak.
The most important stories of Covid-19 were the human ones - the nearly 40,000 lives lost, the livelihoods upended, as well as the bravery and sacrifices of frontliners. One example was when the pandemic worsened. During the third wave in 2021, the Health Ministry disclosed that widespread community infections had become the norm, meaning the virus had spread so fast that many cases were no longer traceable to known clusters.
The team analysed the daily case figures and turned the numbers into a graphic that showed the worryingAnother example was using data to measure the extent of the drop in foot traffic at public places during the movement control order .at Kuala Lumpur’s Suria KLCC plummeted by 74% on the first day of the MCO, with Central Market down by 70%. For example, many Malaysians lost their jobs and faced financial hardship.
This was a trend The Star picked up from an analysis of Bank Negara statistics.a 17% rise in Malaysians' bank savings deposits in April 2020 due to the MCO, the sharpest rise in 12 years. When the pandemic eased, the team went on to apply their “data lens” to everything from the Budget to pop culture.about the tabling of the country’s annual spending plan. The longest was Tun Tan Siew Sin's in 1966, which ran nearly three hours.
StarPlus even tracked the colour of the Finance Ministers' Baju Melayu during the tabling of the Budget each year, concluding that blue dominates on Budget Day. The team found that each year, as Christmas approaches, listeners across Malaysia and many other Asean countries turn toSince 2020, data-driven and visual stories produced by StarPlus have won one gold and five silver awards at the annual Malaysian Press Institute-PETRONAS Malaysian Journalism Awards.
Most of the award-winning stories were the result of collaboration between the data team and journalists from other sections in The Star.
“Journalists from each section are experts in their respective beats, so working together allows us to share our skills, brainstorm and exchange ideas more freely.for breaking news alerts and key updates!
Data Journalism Covid-19 Malaysia Pandemic Storytelling
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