In Brazil, inequalities are visually represented in its favelas. These neighborhoods are usually comprised of low-income informal settlements neglected by governments and often forgotten by mainstream media. The pervasive nature of information and communications technology (ICT) has brought new ways to produce news content in the media industry, giving voice to these communities. Thus, small, alternative, community, or non-mainstream media became a vital terrain of opposition activism. Drawing on user participation, collaboration, and data journalism theories, this article analyzes three alternative media organizations (Agência Mural, data_labe, and Favela em Pauta), which proposed producing data-driven content by, for, and about favelas through a mixed-method research design. Results show that four contributing factors tend to help these organizations to produce data stories despite these challenges: citizen participation, activism, collaboration, and humanizing data. The article concludes by demonstrating how elements developed in these initiatives and presents an agenda for future research.

In search of profitability, digital media have for years been exploring innovative strategies to produce and finance their content. Specifically, digital-native media, those news organisations that operate solely in digital networks, have generally evolved from an ad-based free content model to multi-revenue stream business models in which formulas like branded content have gained relevance. Drawing upon three cases¿BuzzFeed, Viceand Vox¿, this article analyses the evolution of the business strategies of global digital-native organisations towards multi-revenue streams paying attention to the role of the new forms the commercial content is adopting in this competitive scenario. This article uses a multiple case study approach that examines both relevant news stories (n=1,000) and in-depth interviews with managers and editors (n=7) to understand how the emphasis of these three leading digital-native media brands on branded content formats as a revenue source have impacted their business models. These brands have evolved towards a combination of news and branded editorial content, which is constantly adapted to user behaviour while looking for innovative ways to engage with the audience. Results show that although branded content and other alternative means of revenue have become essential for these digital-native media organisations, they do not provide an ultimate and long-term model.

Despite growing interest in the emergence of technologies in journalistic practices, especially from the production perspective, there is still very little research on organizational structures and professional culture in relation to the deployment of these technologies. Drawing on six interviews and observation in staff meetings, this study aims to explore the nuances behind the professional roles of data journalists and how these relate to structural aspects of news organizations. The study focuses on the case of ProPublica, a news organization internationally renowned for its global excellence in data stories. This work considers boundary-making in the context of journalism and focuses on new professional roles in the news industry to produce a hybrid ethnography study based on qualitative data collected immediately before the Covid-19 pandemic hit the United States. The findings reveal the importance of hybrid profiles at ProPublica. While some journalists have had to expand their knowledge to learn more about new areas, such as coding and design, some non-journalistic professionals have had to develop writing skills, and this blurring of traditional boundaries forms an important aspect of ProPublica's professional culture. The structure of the organization, divided into two teams engaged in cross-sector activities, helps to promote data skills and collaboration with other journalists, which also serves to mitigate any individual lack of experience on certain topics. The article concludes by suggesting that the growing importance of these new professional roles has broader implications for the development of data skills in the newsroom, and also discusses the limitations that can arise from the increasing overlap between journalistic and non-journalistic roles.

The environmental crisis and more recently climate emergency have driven news media outlets to create editorial brands that specifically cover these topics. To make itself heard in a market for environmental news that is increasingly dominated by global media outlets, La Nacion (Argentina) has leveraged its reporting on the topic by developing a novel editorial brand focused on environmental data journalism: "Proyecto Naturaleza." Through the lens of data journalism and collaborative journalism, this article relies on methods such as participant observation and in-depth interviews to understand the practices, norms, and routines adopted by La Nacion to produce data journalism focused on environmental topics. The results indicate three specific pillars for such journalism: climate change, biodiversity, and audience participation. The team sets an agenda based on these topics in light of annual events or large celebrations, resulting in a calendar of proposed activities (the production of data stories or crowdsourcing actions). The data team holds meetings with different individuals and organizations from different sectors to identify distinct perspectives on environmental issues to discuss undertakings and collaborate as needed with these actors. La Nacion also emphasizes involving audiences on a deeper level, transforming their traditional role as passive recipient into active participant.

Innovation in journalism became an important element to determine the current and future direction of the profession. Through incremental and cumulative transformations over time, because of many obstacles faced inside the newsrooms, journalism has suffered from significant and fundamental changes, including the deployment of data journalism. In Latin America, the practice has seen an increasing expansion in the last years. Nevertheless, there are important technological gaps that limit its development. The present study draws upon literature on data journalism, media management, and sociology, aiming to contribute theoretically to data journalism research. Our findings show that beyond the technological approach, practitioners are relying on data evangelists, collaboration, and audience-centered innovation to produce data storytelling in their newsrooms. On the other hand, these alliances form homophily and endogamy features that limit the dissemination of the practice, which must consider the potential implications for the social distance of the audiences. It argues that Latin American professionals are distancing themselves from technological determinism to embrace a more audience-centric innovation in newsrooms. Finally, it also states that it is important to take into account those limitations, as they pose obstacles for data journalism innovation research knowledge. The article concludes with an agenda for future research.

Many scholars have recognized the benefits that user-generated content (UGC) can bring to news publications. In this context, the coverage of the pandemic has undoubtedly forced news outlets around the world to embrace such content to present relevant information during this time. To understand how Latin American outlets are exploring UGC in news reporting, we proposed an exploratory study that includes a devised observation of 80 news websites and their social network channels between April and August 2020. During this period, we conducted a systematic observation to analyze how these outlets open spaces for the public and experiment with integrating user content into their news processes. Our findings suggest that the majority of the observed portals have punctually adopted UGC with minimal engagement. However, the pandemic disrupted interesting experiments regarding the integration of UGC into news creation that generate innovative forms of storytelling.

The rise of social media has ignited an unprecedented circulation of false information in our society. It is even more evident in times of crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Fact-checking efforts have significantly expanded and have been touted as among the most promising solutions to fake news. Several studies have reported the development of fact-checking organizations in Western societies, albeit little attention has been given to the Global South. Here, to fill this gap, we introduce a novel Markov-inspired computational method for identifying topics in tweets. In contrast to other topic modeling approaches, our method clusters topics and their current evolution in a predefined time window. To conduct our experiments, we collected data from Twitter accounts of two Brazilian fact-checking outlets and presented the topics debunked by these initiatives in fortnights throughout the pandemic. By comparing these organizations, we could identify similarities and differences in what was shared by them. Our method resulted in an important technique to cluster topics in a wide range of scenarios, including an infodemic ¿ a period overabundance of the same information. In particular, our results revealed a complex intertwining between politics and the health crisis during this period. We conclude by proposing a novel method which, in our opinion, is suitable for topic modeling and also an agenda for future research.

Journalism is at a radical point of change that requires organizations to come up with new ideas and formats for news reporting. Additionally, the notable surge of data, sensors and technological advances in the mobile segment has brought immeasurable benefits to many fields of journalistic practice (data journalism in particular). Given the relative novelty and complexity of im-plementing artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism, few areas have man-aged to deploy tailored AI solutions in the media industry. In this study, through a mixed-method approach that combines both participant obser-vations and interviews, we explain the hurdles and obstacles to deploying computer vision news projects, a subset of AI, in a leading Latin American news organization, the Argentine newspaper La Nación. Our results high-light four broad difficulties in implementing computer vision projects that involve satellite imagery: a lack of high-resolution imagery, the unavail-ability of technological infrastructure, the absence of qualified personnel to develop such codes, and a lengthy and costly implementation process that requires significant investment. This article concludes with a discus-sion of the centrality of AI solutions in the hands of big tech corporations.

The proliferation of data journalism has enabled newsrooms to deploy technologies for both mundane and more sophisticated workplace tasks. To bypass long-term investment in developing data skills, out-of-the-box software solutions are commonly used. Newsrooms today are partially dependent on third-party platforms to build interactive and visual stories - but the business models of platforms are predisposed to changes, frequently inducing losses of stories. This article combines in-depth interviews and an ancillary survey to study the status quo and identify future challenges in embracing out-of-the-box and in-house tools, and their impact on Australian data journalism. Results indicate a dichotomy between commercial and public service media organisations. Commercial outlets are heavily reliant on out-of-the-box solutions to develop stories, due to a lack of skillsets and a shortage of skilled labour. By contrast, public service media are developing their own in-house solutions, which reflects their desire for the continuous digital preservation of data stories despite the challenges identified.

The newspaper industry is facing a global crisis. In this article, through bibliographical and documental research, we systematize the multiple facets of this crisis, with a synthesis of the reasons explored by other researchers, in order to connect them and establish an organized panorama of the disruption of journalism in a scenario unbalanced by the influence of digital platforms. We organized the various factors of this disruption based on three pillars: business model, journalistic practices and news values. We understand that listing, explaining and connecting the types of disruption in the profession allows us to think about how post-industrial journalism is being structured and point out ways for research about this new reality.

This book explores innovative approaches to digital and data journalism in Latin America, brought by both legacy media and newcomers to the industry, with the purpose of examining this changing media landscape. As part of the Global South, Latin America has shown significant influence in the promotion of data and digital technologies applied to journalism in recent years. In this region, news entrepreneurs are becoming an essential source of innovation in news production, circulation, and distribution. The book considers news media, particularly in Latin America, as an open set of practices intertwined in the evolution of technology. It discusses the transformation of the Latin American news media ecosystem and considers how it has shaped the industry despite local differences. The study fills a significant gap in academic scholarship by addressing the multiple external factors, mainly political and economic, which have contributed to the relative lack of studies on the patterns of journalism in this region.

Globalization is a multifaceted and complex phenomenon that does not reach equally to all global actors. In fact, the lack of technological capabilities to promote innovation has been an essential conditioning factor that has limited an equal diffusion worldwide of technology, research, and development, thus restricting the concrete growth opportunities of the least favored countries. While in the Global South many countries still struggle to jump on the wave of Information Society, Northern countries have been navigating the waters of innovation and technology disruption for decades. In this chapter, we discuss the multiple external factors, mainly political and economic, which have contributed to the relative lack of academic studies on the patterns of journalism in Latin America. Through its evolution, the Latin American region has become a laboratory of interesting ideas and initiatives that shed lights on how to confront the problems suffered locally and by the media ecosystem worldwide.

Media organizations have been struggling to survive in the digital age. In order to get a chance to pull through while facing the threat of a post-truth era, data and investigative journalism seem to be more important than ever. The old model of highly competitive single newsroom environment evolve to a `new model¿ of sharing information, sometimes on a global scale, dealing with new players. Thus, third-party organizations come in handy to help to overcome the lack of resources and skills within the newsrooms. This study conducted six (n=6) in-depth interviews with professionals working within thirdparty organizations, such as startups, studios or agencies in the five continents (Africa, Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania). The results show that the number of news outlets requesting their services have been reducing, with many organizations bringing these skills inside the newsrooms. The political context and media crisis also affect outsourcing by publishers. However, these organizations still believe they will be useful in the future with new technological capacities being requested, such as automation.