Communication Process of Public Issues by Independent News Agency Based on Data-Driven Journalism

Abstract

Data-driven Journalism is well-known concept for news reporting skill set from the West. Thai media adopt it to select digital information for news reporting using data as a key informant. The research aims to study public issues and the process of data-driven journalism of the five Thai independent news agencies applying Content Analysis, Participatory Observation, In-dept Interview methodology during January 2018 to May 2019. The research found that these Agencies apply data-driven journalism merely in the aspect of enhancing their investigative and in-depth news reporting for agenda setting, and do not employ it in the same level for all the reporting. In short, Data-driven journalism is still at the initial stage. The news agencies could not make best use of the full concept of data-driven journalism aiming for policy or public agenda setting as equivalent level to the west that usually applied because of the limitation such as human resource, the budget, non-open data government. Therefore, in order to develop the data-driven journalism for the Thai future context, public should advocate for open data from both government and private sectors in order to have enough accessibility to practice skill sets on capacity-building and be able to exhaust the data-driven journalism for the better public sphere. Another suggestion is that there should be collaboration among many independent news agencies to improve the citizen’s rights to know in the digital age.