Beyond Journalism
A case study on the South African start-up Code for South Africa
Sophie Frankenmolen
UvaID: 10628118
April 2015
dhr.prof.dr. M.J.P. Deuze
Journalistiek en Media
Research en redactie voor Audiovisuele Media
Universiteit van Amsterdam
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Table of contents
1.
Introduction…………………………………………………..
p.4
1.1 Beyond Journalism
1.2 Code For South Africa
1.3 Relevance
1.4 Main question
1.5 Pointers for reading
2.
Description of the start-up…………………………………..
p.7
2.1 Brief history of the start-up
2.1.1 Mission
2.2 Business model
2.3 Services and products
2.4 Relation to other initiatives
2.5 People involved
2.6 South African media landscape
2.6.1 Politics and journalism
2.6.2 Newspapers, broadcasters and the internet
2.6.3 Editorial landscape
2.6.4 Legacy of apartheid
3.
Theoretical framework………………………………………..
p. 15
3.1 Start-ups
3.2 Civic journalism (objectivity versus neutrality)
3.3 Open source philosophy
3.3.1 Hacks/Hackers
3.4 Identity
3.5 Changing discourse: from journalism towards information
4.
Methodological framework…………………………………..
p. 23
4.1 Choice for Code4SA as a case study
4.2 Research objectives
4.3 Thick description
4.4 Literature
4.5 Grounded theory
4.6 Semi structured interviews
4.7 Document analysis of private documents
4.8 Research questions
5.
Analysis………………………………………………………...
p. 27
5.1 The organization
5.1.1 The motivational foundations of Code4SA
5.1.2 The power of data
5.1.3 The projects
5.1.4 Success
5.1.5 Business and everyday work
5.1.6 Typically South Africa
5.2 The people
5.2.1 What is important, what do you look for in a job?
5.2.2 The common element or binding factor
5.2.3 So, what are you then?
5.3 Journalism
6. Conclusions……………………………………………………
7. Literature……………………………………………………….
p.44
p.47
Prefix I
Prefix II
Prefix III
p.49
p.54
p.55
Code4SA projects…………………………………….
Topic list semi-structured interviews…………………
Transcriptions of interviews.………………………….
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1. Introduction
1.1 Beyond journalism
This thesis is part of a larger research project called Beyond Journalism. This project is
an exploration of the so-called start-up culture that is emerging within the broader field
of journalism. The internet is increasingly being used as a platform for new journalism
start-up enterprises. Impetus for the coming into existence of these start-ups are
deteriorating business models, due to changes in technologies, dissatisfaction with
existing media and the layoff of journalists (Naldi & Picard 2012:69). But despite these
rigorous changes, this era may well be typified as a period of innovation and change.
For since the mechanisation of printing and the industrialisation of newspaper
production, journalism has been changing in response to technological change
(McQuail 2013:13). The possibilities of the internet have several implications on
journalism, like the loss of control, the increasing diversity of content and the decreasing
concentration of power of the institutionalized press and a chance for active social
participation (14).
Innovation is a response to change. A response to a digital era and to a generation that
no longer finds its information the same way their parents did. A response to increasing
insecurity, regarding labour conditions, channels of publication and the public’s
mounting disinterest and distrust in journalism (Naldi & Picard 2012:70).
“Even as inherited professional practices and business models are
under immense pressure, pioneers are prospecting for the future of
journalism, both within and outside existing legacy media
organisations, creating new opportunities for journalists to practice
their profession along the way” (Bruno & Kleis Nielsen 2012:3)
Start-ups present us a base and a window to what journalism may look like in the
future. Shaping a future requires thinking outside the box: considering new business
models and ways of using technology. But this new situation also challenges the most
permanent and fundamental themes in journalism (Franklin 2014:487). For example, the
internet has challenged the we write-you read dogma, for the public is no longer a
passive reader or spectator (Hermida & Thurman 2008:5). Also, the digital age
questions the professional autonomy of the journalist. New online developments have
affected the traditional monopoly on news of the journalist and institutional media
businesses (Deuze 2008:113).
There are definitions of journalism, digital or otherwise, that make presumptions about
the practitioners qualifications and place of employment (Kawamoto 2003:3). In this age
of digital media, where allegedly anyone can be a publisher, the designation of journalist
is being called into question. Questions on who is a journalist or what is journalism are
not merely academic ponderings. People choose to work in non-traditional settings and
perform programming, design, activism, moderating and storytelling altogether, giving
their ideals shape in practice.
This research aims to look at start-up enterprises that function online and outside the
institutional media and try new things, that some might now define as journalism.
Beyond journalism means to explore a new field of journalism and stimulate thinking
about the field and question assumptions about practice and theory. Because after all,
the words ‘digital journalism’ suggest an old practice in a new format (Kawamoto 2003:
4). Therefore, the Beyond journalism research seeks to explore how journalism
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manifests itself in new start-up enterprises. The overall question the Beyond Journalism
research aims to answer is: What are the factors involved in creating and running a
journalistic start-up?
1.2 Code for South Africa
To answer the question above, this thesis presents a case study of the South African
start-up Code for South Africa (Code4SA), founded in 2013 by Adi Eyal. Code4SA was
founded on the belief that data should be openly available to anyone for the promotion
of informed decision making. It’s a small organisation, with less than ten
(data)journalists, ‘techies’ and designers working together to create technical tools.
Their founding documents state that they “want to use liberated data to improve lives
and empower people to make informed choices. We hope to build and active citizenry
by increasing interactions between the public and the government, using applications
that really matter to people”.
Code4SA is a non-profit organization that is physically situated in Cape Town. The staff
makes technical tools for people in four areas of interest: media, government, civil
society and community. Next to that, Code4SA organises workshops for journalists, to
teach them how to embed the tools into newsrooms and get as many people as
possible involved with the possibilities of data. For that same purpose they also
organize events with people from local governments, hackers, journalists and techies.
Recapitulating, Code4SA is an online journalism start-up with a social agenda that uses
innovative technology and collaborations to promote informed decision making
1.3 Relevance
Code4SA not only touches upon a fairly new field of journalism, it is also an organization
that is highly converged, with employees from different backgrounds but sharing a
similar ideology.
“The age of democracy has also been an age of journalism and the
two have always supported each other. The main reason lies in what
journalism does – providing essential information on issues of the day
to citizens that enables them to make informed choices and
judgements concerning policies and politicians” (McQuail 2013, 206).
South Africa is a young democracy with a scarred racial background and large
differences between rich and poor. It does not have a long tradition with institutional
journalism serving as a watchdog. Personal interest and a background as
anthropologist stimulated me to seek for a start-up not only dealing with technological
changes and possibilities, but also one that faces democratic challenges, especially
when it comes to informed decision making.
This thesis is a collaboration with Evelien Veldboom, with whom I share a background
as cultural anthropologist. We were both interested in researching a journalism start-up
in South Africa and got interested in Code4SA in November 2014.
1.4 Main question
In the beginning of this research, we worked together, gaining general impressions and
information about Code4SA. We found that Code4SA as a case study provided two
different research possibilities. On the one hand we were interested in the
datajournalistic practice of Code4SA and on the other hand in the professional identity
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and intrinsic motivations of Code4SA’s team. We both focused on separate subject
matters but have continually, throughout the period of writing and research, exchanged
insights on the workings of Code4SA.
The main question of this specific research is:
How does the social agenda (ideology) of Code4SA gain meaning in daily
routines of the start-up (practice)?
Sub questions, operationalized in the theoretical chapter involve:
1. What are the intrinsic motivations for creating and running this start-up?
What is the ideology that set off the founding of Code4SA?
What are Code4SA’s main goals?
What is the surplus value of data (journalism)?
What are characteristics of Code4SA’s projects
What defines as a right partner?
What kind of difficulties does Code4SA encounter as a business?
What defines success for Code4SA?
2. What kind of people created and run this start-up?
What are the backgrounds of the employees?
What do the employees consider to be their occupational identity?
Why are the motivations of Code4SA’s employees to work there?
What binds the employees of Code4SA?
3. How are classical journalism values combined with an activist agenda?
How do the goals of Code4SA relate to classical occupational values and
norms of journalism?
Is Code4SA a journalism start-up?
How do the employees of Code4SA define journalism?
These questions are meant to explore how a social agenda influences daily practice, to
find what binds the employees and what the members of Code4SA consider to be their
occupational identity. Semi structured interviews with Code4SA employees and an
analysis of private documents offer insight into the ways they experience working at
Code4SA, how they give meaning to their ideals in their daily practices and to where
Code4SA stands within the developing and expanding field of journalism.
1.5 Pointers for reading
This thesis starts off with a description of the case-study which provides and overview
of its history, business model, products and services and those involved. Next follows a
theoretical chapter, providing a framework for analysis. In this chapter, the reader will
read about ideology, identity, citizen journalism, open source philosophy, datajournalism
and start-up culture. A methodological chapter follows on the theoretical framework.
The research continues with an analysis and conclusion. More generally, this thesis
seeks to explore what constitutes start-up culture through looking at this specific case
study. It is to be expected that start-ups are doing something radically different than
traditional media. This particular research aims to provide some initial insights on how
they do this and what his means for the definition of what constitutes journalism.
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2. Description of the start-up
Before getting to the theoretical framework, methods and analyses of this thesis, this
chapter provides a description of the start-up. First, the history of the start-up, its
business model, its services and products and the people involved are outlined.
Additionally, the last paragraph gives context regarding the South African media
landscape, covering politics and journalism, an overview of South African media and the
editorial landscape and information on the legacy of the apartheid regime.
“The emphasis is not just on describing what ‘is’, but on explaining
how the nature of this phenomenon is closely linked to other aspects
of its social context” (Denscombe 2010:328).
The information provided in this chapter stems from context interviews with Adi Eyal,
founder of Code For South Africa and private documents on strategy, mission, vision
and founding principles of the organization. Rather than providing this information in the
analysis chapter, this chapter is meant to provide context on the case study for the
reader.
2.1 Brief history of the start-up
Code4SA came into existence in November 2013. The idea was a submission for the
African News Innovation Challenge (ANIC), a competition that aims to stimulate
innovation within the broader field of journalism. Adi Eyal, data specialist and Gabriella
Razzano, human rights lawyer, thought up a way and a workflow to embed the use of
data in newsrooms in order to change news organizations. Both believe in data as a
way of promoting informed decision-making. They set out to help news organizations
with the technical part of doing datajournalism. Their idea proved to be a good one and
the African News Innovation Challenge rewarded them with a starting capital.
Getting Code for South Africa off the ground, Eyal and Razzano got advice and help
from Justin Arenstein, who is involved in many innovative journalism projects. Arenstein
had formerly helped setting up Code4Kenya and helped Eyal and Razzano to connect
with funders and partners and forming a strategy. Finding funds proved to be hard. The
ANIC only had little money itself and finding a place on the market of data nurtured a lot
of worries. Initially, Code4Sa offered their services for free, but other organizations failed
to see their potential worth because of this. When a little more funding was found and
Code4SA made a name for itself, projects started to set off. The organization found that
the services they provided resonated with the wants and needs of civil society
organizations. Also, Eyal was a prominent person in the South African open data
community and his connections were helpful to the promotion of Code4SA.
Code4SA shares a name with Code4Africa and Code4Kenya, Code4Ghana and others.
However, except for the name, the organizations are not formally linked. Code4SA is
much more evolved than the ‘Code4’s’ in other countries. However, they are share the
‘creative commons thought’, which means that the technical background of tools
should be open to share and re-used by others.
From the beginning of 2014, Greg Kempe, a softwaredeveloper, got involved with
Code4SA, taking on the technical part of the start-up. This gave space for Eyal to focus
more on the business side of the organization. Razzano decided to spend her time
focussing on the strategic part. In the following months, several new employees joined
and left Code4SA.
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2.2 Business model
Code4SA is a non-profit organization and asset ownership is currently not a central
motivation. The organization relies heavily on borrowing physical and technical
infrastructure. The staff uses their own machines, and their servers are shared.
The projects are partly (about fifty percent) financed by funds (talks have taken place
with African LII, Black Sash, Freedom House, Indigo Trust, Open Society Foundations
and Code4Africa, Hivos and Google South Africa). The other fifty percent is paid for by
partner organizations in exchange for services. These partner organizations currently
consist of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group, Media Monitoring Africa and Ndifuna
Ukwazi. In the past year Code4SA also has had talks with several other civil society and
media organizations such as the Mail & Guardian, City Press, African Media Institute
and the African News Innovation Fund.
2.3 Services and products
The products and services that Code4Sa provides can be divided into four groups
being: datatools/ visualisations, technical assignments, data trainings/(un)conferences
and other projects. A comprehensive overview of all the projects can be found in
appendix A. This paragraph describes a few examples.
Code4SA aims to work together with four areas in their projects: government, civil
society, community and media. One of the most successful project so far is Wazimap,
which was launched in collaboration with Media Monitoring Africa. Wazimap is a map of
South Africa that provides geological and geographical information. Users (both
journalists and citizens) can derive information like graphics and specific maps from
Wazimap and use it as content for their own websites. Another example is Live Election
Map, which was created in cooperation with the Mail & Guardian. This data visualisation
was used during the elections of 2014 and showed live the election results throughout
the country. From the moment of establishment up until December 2014, Code4SA
made fifteen of these kind of data projects.
Next to these visualisations, Code4SA also helps other organizations which the
technical aspects of their enterprise. For example, Code4SA developed a
communication channel for the inhabitants of squatter camp Red Hill and the
Municipality of Cape Town in Open Democracy Advice Centre, which was
commissioned by the Open Democracy Advice Centre. Also, AricanLII, an organization
that tries to make the South African law insightful, asked Code4SA for help
incorporating technology into their services. To ensure making it a common good that
news organizations apply data in their daily work, Code4SA provides data training for
journalists. Code4SA also organises so-called (un)conferences, at which ideas about
open data and data journalism are exchanged.
The past year, Code4SA also organized a number of projects that are not to be
categorised in the above groups. For example, the advocate sends a two-week
newsletter with updates and links to interesting projects that have to do with open data.
Users can subscribe to this service. This year (2015), Code4SA aims to reach more
organizations in order to strengthen the open data community. The team hopes to
encourage this, through meetings, both online and offline. Additionally, the team wants
to promote their tools OpenByLaws, Parliamentary Monitoring Group, Medicine Price
Comparison Tool and Wazimap to their target groups, since these apps and tools are
only successful once used.
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2.4 Relation to other initiatives
The open data and datajournalism community of South Africa consists of a small, but
active group of individuals and organizations. At international level, there are several
organizations that operate under the name of ‘Code4’, such as CodeAfrica,
Code4Kenya, Code4Nigeria and Code4Ghana. Code for Africa is a federated umbrella
that frames itself as a people-driven movement that aims to empower active citizenry
and strengthen civic watchdogs to help governments shape and improve its services to
citizens. Code for Africa’s partners include the African Media Initiative, the International
Center for Journalists, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Praekelt Foundation,
Hacks Hackers Africa and many more1. The partners represent a sense to what is
important for Code for Africa. The different ‘Code4’s’ are not formally linked but share
common goals.
Through international conferences, Code4SA connects with other similar international
organizations to exchange knowledge. According to Code4SA’s founder, Adi Eyal,
Code4SA is rather unique in their own country, but on a worldwide scale there are
many similar organizations.
Within the boundaries of South Africa, the start-up aims to fill a gap in the market. “We
fill a gap in developing and using technology to further social change which would
otherwise not be effectively filled” (private documents Code4SA). Also, Code4SA offers
its skills, tools, software and knowledge to news organizations and civil society
organizations. According to Siyabonga Afrika, Code4SA is not seen as a competitor in
a ‘data journalism market’ but rather as a partner.
2.5 People involved
During research, Code4SA consisted out of seven employees with a core of three
permanent employees, four part-timers (freelance), two consultants, two ex-interns and
two ex-employees who still somehow feel affiliated. The information of this section was
gathered during a context interview with founder Adi Eyal.
1
•
Adi Eyal is the founder of Code4SA. He is thirty-six years old and born in South
Africa with Israeli roots. He studied computer science and worked as a software
developer and project manager at ICT4D (Information and Communications
Technology for Development) for fifteen years. Before Code4SA, Eyal also
worked at two other start-ups where he developed tools. He is involved in the
open source and hackers community and works at Code4SA fulltime. At
Code4SA he manages the projects and tries to put the organization on the
map.
•
Greg Kempe is the software developer of Code4SA. He is thirty-four years old
and was born in South Africa. He graduated in computer studies and works
fulltime at Code4SA since September 2014 and before that he already did some
projects for the organization on a more freelance base. Before Code4SA, he
worked at a Canadian start-up and for Amazon. He then worked as a
consultant and webdeveloper. Kempe leads the technical part of the
organization and has a great interest in civilian technology and open data.
www.code4africa.org, consulted March 2015
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•
Jason Nordwood-Young calls himself a data journalism protagonist. He is thirtyseven years old and was born in South Africa. He works at Code4SA four days
a week and tries to make a stand for data journalism in South Africa. He
focuses mainly on training media companies on how to use data. NordwoodYoung studied journalism at university for about a year and then quit. He then
worked as a journalist. He used to be the technical manager of the Mail and the
Guardian Online, worked at Stuff Magazine and was a freelancer. NordwoodYoung had known Adi Eyal for a while when Eyal started Code4SA and
Nordwood-Young joined.
•
Raymond Joseph is a data journalist who is sixty-one years old and was born in
South Africa. He is a trained journalists and works for Code4SA for about ten
days a month. He’s been a journalist, correspondent and editor for over forty
years. Primarily, he provides data-journalism trainings for journalists and
students and also works on several projects with Code4SA’s developers. He
also blogs and occasionally manages Code4SA’s social media outlets. Joseph
himself says he does a bit of everything.
•
Gabriella Razzano is the strategist of Code4SA. She is thirty years old and was
born in South Africa. Along with Eyal she founded the organization. She also
works at the Open Democracy Advice Centre, and does not work at Code4SA
on a daily base. Additionally, Razzano provided legal advice to organizations in
the non-profit sector.
•
Siyabonga Afrika is a data journalist and programmer. He is twenty-nine years
old and was born in South Africa. He studied journalism and User Experience
Design and Information Architecture and has worked at several newsrooms.
Also, he worked as a digital media specialist at Media24, the Preakelt
Foundation and Do Not Look Down. Afrika participated in the School of Data
course from August 2014 to Januari 20152. He worked on various projects and
helped media organizations with implementing the usage of data in their
newsrooms. Since Januari 2015 he works at the South African Broadcasting
Coorperation (SABC). Ever since 2013 he has been the chairman of
Hacks//Hackers Johannesburg.
•
Hannah Williams is a graphic designer and is thirty-six years old. She studied
Information Design and has worked as a designer for fourteen years. Just like
Siyabonga Afrika, she participated in the School of Data. That is where she first
discovered about open data and data journalism. She currently works on
projects for Code4SA as a freelancer.
Some other people have occasionally worked on projects for Code4SA as well. The
team has an office in Cape Town, but employees often work partly at home. The team
communicates through communication tool ‘Slack’, on which they chat and have
conversations. Throughout this thesis, the employees of the start-up will be called by
made-up nicknames, so it will be easier for the reader to remember which person is
being referred to. However, these nick-names have no other intention or meaning that
2
The School of Data was founded by the Europe Knowledge Foundation and asked
Code4SA to accompany and help the South-African participants.
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this. Adi Eyal will be called the Founder; Greg Kempe will be called the Software
Developer; Jason Nordwood-Young will be the Data Advocate; Raymond Joseph will
be called the Senior Journalist; Siyabonga Afrika will be called the Programmer
Journalist and Hannah Williams will be known as the Graphic Designer.
2.6 South African media landscape
As Reese (2001) states in his model on professional identity, one does not work
detached from his or her national or cultural context. The creative industry, of which
journalists are part, does “not exist independently of a complex institutional framework
which authorizes, enables, empowers and legitimizes them. This framework must be
incorporated into any analysis that pretends to provide a thorough understanding of
cultural goods and practices” (Johnson in Bourdieu 1993, 10). Therefore I reckon it
necessary to briefly elaborate on contemporary South African political, legal and social
issues insofar these affect the operations of journalism in general and news startups in
particular in the country.
Bourdieu understands the creative industry, or journalism is this case, as a
manifestation of the cultural field as a whole. Consequently, journalism must be viewed
as socially constructed, since its actors function in a complex and constantly changing
and negotiated set of circumstances in which multiple social and institutional factors are
involved
South Africa is a young parliamentary republic and one of the most socially and
economically developed countries of the African continent. Despite its developed
status, the country still faces one of the most skewed distributions of income in the
world (development program United nations, 2014). Freedom House, an American
organization pursuing global freedom in the broadest sense of the word, releases an
annual ‘freedom of the press indication’, in which every country in the world is given a
rating (0 = best, 100 = worst). In 2014, the Netherlands scored a 10 and was classified
as free. South Africa is considered to be partly free, with a score of 33. This, among
other reasons, because there are an increasing number of laws with potential effects on
freedom of the press and freedom of speech. These include laws like the Protection of
Personal Information Act and the Protection of State Information Bill 3(dubbed ‘The
Secrecy Bill’ by scholars such as Fourie 2013, Hadland 2007). The policy environment
perhaps reflects the political atmosphere that is currently not conducive to progressive
attitudes to information access (Code4SA strategy documents 2014). Towards 2015,
political actors are paying lip service to open data and access to information, but are
hesitant to take actual steps given the instability of current political alliances. This
despite freedom of press being enshrined in the constitution.
3
The Protection of State Information Bill (POSIB) allows for the government to impose restrictions on
journalists to report on security forces, prisons and mental institutions. In 2013 the controversial Protection
of State Information Bill (POSIB) was approved by parliament. The bill enables the government to classify
certain information as of ‘national interest’. The publication of such classified information is considered a
criminal offence. There have been many protests against this bill by opposition parties and activists whom
expressed concern that the POSIB would be in conflict with the Promotion of Access to Information Act
(PAIA) of 2000, which could be considered as the South African counterpart of the Dutch ‘Wet
Openbaarheid van Bestuur’ (WOB: often successfully used by Dutch journalists to request access to
otherwise classified information). Due to this criticism – for example regarding the risk of a twenty-five year
imprisonment for journalists who leak information that is protected under POSIB – the bill has not been
signed by President Zuma.
11
2.6.1 Politics and journalism
The largest and most powerful political party in South Africa is the African National
Congress (ANC). When the first free elections were held in 1994, the ANC, led by antiapartheid freedom fighter Nelson Mandela, came out as winner.
Traditionally, the ANC has a hundred year old history with the press, in which the ANC
repeatedly fought for freedom. In a 1992 Ready to Govern document, they ANC states:
"At the core of democracy lies the recognition of the right of all citizens
to take part in society's decision-making process. This requires that
individuals are armed with the necessary information and have access
to the contesting options they require to make informed choices. An
ignorant society cannot be democratic." (ANC 1992)
The South African constitution is even considered to be one of the most liberal in the
world (Daniels 2013). However, many scholars notice a dissonance between the
constitution and state practice (Daniels 2013, Johnston 2007, Harber 2014) Hadland
(2007) is critical of the ANC, which he calls the powerful elite:
“Why would they introduce legislation like the Protection of State
Information Bill (known as the ‘secrecy bill’) that profoundly limits the
media’s capacity to expose state corruption? […] The ANC
understands it is far more than just a political party. It is a movement
representing no less than human progress on the southern tip of
Africa. As such, all the tools and levers of society –from economy to
the press- form part of the national democratic revolution and could
be used to achieve its objectives.” (ANC 2014)
The objectives that Hadland refers to are the ones in the ANC quote above. He
addresses that after apartheid the media were seen as a sector not only in need of
urgent change, but also as a vehicle for transformation (Harber 2014:206). Over the
past few years the ANC criticized the media for not living up to its three purposes as
stated after the apartheid era. Simultaneously, journalists and critics accuse the
government of suppressing freedom of the press. Also, state broadcaster South African
Broadcasting Cooperation (SABC)– that dominates the radio and television landscape has been accused of providing biased information in favor of the ANC (Daniels 2013: 7).
During the last couple of years the relationship between ANC and media professionals
has grown increasingly volatile.
Code4SA is not linked to news organizations and works independently. By embedding
Code4SA’s tools in established newsrooms, Code4SA hopes to create honest and
transparent news- and information (context interview Founder Adi Eyal). News
organizations may get a fresh perspective on journalism through the trainings and
content provided by Code4SA, making it easier to stray from traditional systems.
Johnston, a South African political scientist, emphasizes the importance of the role of
media in society (2007:29). The media provide an intermediary role between politics and
the public by transferring information in a clear way. Code4SA has set up several
projects that aim to bring citizens closer to politics. For example, the organization has
developed several data visualizations and applications during the elections of 2014.
Also, Code4SA developed a platform on which young people can chat with politicians.
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2.6.2 Newspapers, broadcasters and the internet
In 2013, Glenda Daniels (Wits Journalism, journalism department of the University of
Witwatersrand, Johannesburg) did research on South African newsrooms. According to
her research, there are a total of 539 papers in South-Africa. Fifteen of them are
distributed weekly, 32 only on the weekends, 28 daily, 58 exclusively local and 219 free
of charge. Most of the papers are written in English, but some are in isiZulu or Afrikaans
(Daniels 2013, 2). Harber states that there is a great absence of ethnic, accessible
media and that the English language of most of the media is a problem. “The fact that
English is increasingly dominant as the language of national debate, business, and
politics excludes many, and notably a disproportionate number of its poorer, less
educated citizens” (2014:219). In other words, language may marginalize those who
don’t speak English, Afrikaans or isiZulu. State broadcaster SABC4 (South African
Broadcasting Cooperation) is the largest radio and television broadcaster. In addition,
three commercial broadcasters fill a large part of the paid and unpaid programming on
television: e.tv, TopTV and DStv (last two on surcharge). Radio is the most popular
medium in South Africa, especially at local level (Daniels 2013:7).
When it comes to the internet, growth and usage have grown significantly. Internet use
has more than doubled in four years, Daniels states. It has become more popular than
the newspaper but would still be ‘defeated’ by radio and television. Seventeen percent
of adults read a newspaper on a daily base, twenty-two percent use the internet dail,
fourty-seven percent listen two the radio for at least one hour a day and seventy-one
percent watches television for a minimum of one hour a day (Daniels 10). Internet is
used mainly through mobile services.
According to Harber (2014), technology entails the potential to facilitate much greater
interaction and to break gatekeeping roles of traditional media. But results depend on
access. And bandwidth remains expensive and slow. But the majority of the population
is not able to make use of the Internet, because of the high cost and the largely English
content. One must be careful not to deepen the digital divide much further. Despite
shifting demographics of ownership in management and in newsrooms, many,
especially poor black marginalized still have little access to media (220).
However, the internet is still quickly gaining popularity, which contributes to media
distribution. The number of facebook users went from 6.8 million to 9.4 million in 2014
alone (World Wide Worx 2014). Fourie labels South Africa as both a developing and
developed nation, in which there are big differences in access to media. The gap
between a digitized elite and the majority living in poverty has a major influence on
media use and is called the digital divide (2013:153). Code4SA made an interactive
data-visualization project called Wazimap, that shows Internet access in South African
households5. The organization Freedom House calculated at the end of 2013 that the
percentage of South Africans with Internet access had risen exponentially.
Since 2012, more and more media companies launch new apps. There are several
technological innovations for apps of South African media companies that have won
international awards, including by Naspers managed app Price Check (Daniels
2013:12). Through the app or website, consumers can enter a product, than Price
4
Moreover, SABC runs both public and commercial television channels and radio stations. The
broadcasting company is owned by the state, but manages its public and commercial services separately.
The commercial branches partly finance the public services (SABC 2015).
5
Based on 2011 data.
13
Check shows a price comparison of different options. They recently expanded its
application to other countries in Africa (Naspers, 2014). Code4SA also has in the last
year several applications developed with data projects.
2.6.3 Editorial landscape
The turmoil, brought about by rapidly changing technology has also caused cutbacks
and layoffs, like anywhere else in the world. Consequently, mergers have lead to greater
homogeneity and less diversity among regional newspapers and broadcasters, leading
to a decreased capacity to critically report on daily news. (Harber 2014:209, Daniels
2013:3).
Daniels argues the media should make a shift to an industry that can monitor
democracy, so that the traces of apartheid in the media disappear (3). The media
provide an intermediary role between politics and the public. According to Johnston the
media faces a major challenge in the absence of a strong parliamentary opposition, to
act as a watchdog and enforcer of accountability (2007:30), Code4SA uses the
possibilities of the Internet and open-source technology to encourage and support
democracy and access to information.
During the era of apartheid and the years thereafter, the vast majority of journalists were
white. Daniels’ research in nine prominent newsrooms showed that in 2013, sixty-one
percent of the journalists are black or colored (5). That distribution of skin color in
newsrooms is generally not leading to black journalists in the definition of their work
(Fourie 2013: 151). According to him, the South African press attaches more value to
the role as a watchdog of democracy, than to reduce ethnic differences.
2.6.4 Legacy of apartheid
Two decades after the abolition of the apartheid regime, the theme remains prevalent in
South African social, cultural, political and economic practices. According to South
African communications scholar Pieter Fourie, apartheid and racism are often thought
to be responsible for poverty, a lack of development, poor education, poor governance
and conflict. He claims that many dichotomies, such as rich-poor, illiterate-literate,
developed–underdeveloped, and urban-rural, are often found in South African society
(213). South African society is characterized by a variety of cultures, languages and
ethnic groups. “The media are a mirror of society: what appears in the newspapers, on
TV and on the internet says something about our way of thinking.” (Koetsenruijter en
Van Hout, 164, translated). This means that issues that society deals with are to be
represented in the media and journalism, in order to contribute to a healthy and
democratic public sphere (in content, media ownership, regulations and staffing).
Maintaining a space for public debate, connecting citizens with governments and giving
opportunities to voices of civil society to speak out are important to (McQuail 2013, 48).
Fourie calls, when transferring information, to reflect on the properties of African
communication. One can, for example, take the importance of the symbolic value of
words into account. The same goes for the use of singing, dancing, drama, story telling
and the effective use of proverbs (Fourie 2013:153). Evelien Veldboom’s thesis
discusses how Code4SA communicates its messages.
14
3. Theoretical framework
This chapter provides the theoretical framework of this thesis. This framework is meant
to provide the theoretical support needed to answer the main and sub-questions of this
research. In order to understand and analyze the way the social agenda (ideology) of
Code4SA gains meaning in daily routines of (practice), this chapter discusses
theoretically elaborates on five topics that have implications for both its practical and
ideological workings. First, the premise that combining ‘neutral’ journalism with activism
could be contradictory. Second, theory is provided on how knowledge and expertise
socializes members of a profession group and provides them with a collective identity.
Third, this chapter elaborates on how Code4SA’s open source philosophy mixes with
journalism’s professional logic of control. Fourth, a paragraph on how a change in
discourse may help include new start-ups in the wider space of journalism and lastly, an
insight in the South African Media landscape. Literature on these five topics presents a
framework from which this research aims to answer its questions.
3.1 Start-ups
The main reasons for commencing an online journalism start-up are threefold: the
demise of newspapers and broadcast journalism, the discontent with existing
journalism and the job abatement at existing media enterprises. Journalism start-ups
are therefore framed as a counterforce, with an ability to renew journalism (Naldi and
Picard 2012). The term ‘online journalism start-up’ has three implications in this thesis.
First, they’re born digital, second, they do not affiliate with existing media enterprises
(Bruno Kleis & Nielsen 2012:4) and they identify with fundamental journalistic
occupational values like truthfulness, informing, interpreting, criticizing and entertaining
(Deuze 2004). For the purposes of this thesis, a journalism start-up is considered to be
a small or medium sized enterprise (SME), with between ten and two hundred
employees (Powell 2007:376).
Code4SA fits this description and is an interesting case study for other reasons as well.
The organization is engaged with data journalism, has a social agenda that promotes
informed decision making and wants to build an active citizenry and does so by
engaging with journalists, hackers, technical people and designers (in the four above
mentioned areas of government, media, civil society and community).
According to Deuze (2008) there is a distinction between start-ups with a strong public
service agenda or a strong connection with a specific interest or target group and startups who see a clear competitive advantage in convergence culture in a strongly
declining market. This is what McQuail (2013:162) calls the difference between a ‘civic’
motive, where the aim is a better service to the citizen and a ‘strategic’ motive, where
market considerations predominate. For both types, the formula for success depends
on the following elements: good partners, a distinctive and unique quality product,
miscellaneous income flows, being aimed at a niche audience that is not served by
existing media and an effective financial logic (Bruno and Kleis 2012:2, Naldi and Picard
2012:71). What these authors mean by ‘success’ is not only focused on financial
independence and profit, since many start-ups function as non-profit organizations.
Success may also be measured in terms of public service and survival (Bruno and Kleis
2012:8).
Code4SA is a non-profit organization that aims to provide a service to South African
citizens through working with partners from four areas. By using open source
15
technology and data, they want to give people the opportunity to gain the information
needed to make informed decisions.
Innovation requires new ways of thinking (Bruno & Kleis Nielsen). Studying start-up
culture is studying convergence culture. Characteristic for convergence culture is the
ever so more interactive engagement between people and their media, within media
companies and between different types of professionals (Deuze 2008:104). And all of
these opportunities brought by a digital age also bring about theoretical and practical
challenges. Five of these contemplations are illustrated below.
First, Code4Sa combines journalism with activism. Since journalism is idealistically
about neutrality and objectivity and activism is about fighting for a cause, this could be
contradictory. Secondly, each profession demarcates certain boundaries of elitist
knowledge and expertise that justify their authority and socializes its members,
providing them with a collective identity (Lewis 2013:841). Theory on this matter is
needed to understand and analyze how Code4SA gives meaning to its identity in their
ideology and daily practices. Third, this chapter will elaborate on how Code4SA’s
datajournalism and open-source philosophy may or may not be combined with the
professional logic of control of journalism. Fourth, the chapter will present how a recent
change in discourse may help to include organizations that stem from convergence into
the wider scope of journalism. Lastly, the chapter provides useful insight on the South
African media landscape, which outlines the political context in which Code4SA arose.
3.2
Civic Journalism
Civic journalism is the idea of integrating journalism into the democratic process. The
media do not only inform the public, but also work towards engaging citizens and foster
public discussion. The civic journalism-movement is an attempt to abandon the notion
that journalists and their audiences are spectators in political and social processes.
Civic journalism seeks to treat community members as participants and pursue a goal
of improving life. Usually, it is non-profit driven (McQuail 2013:49).
The concept of civic journalism dates back to the 1920s, when Walter Lippmann and
John Dewey famously discussed the role of journalism in society (Glasser 1999).
Lippmann viewed the role of the journalist as recording what politicians say and
informing the public. Dewey, however, defined the journalist’s role as being engaged
with the public and critically examining information provided by the government.
Jay Rosen further explored Dewey’s argument, but called it public journalism. This kind
of journalism, marked by the engagement and needs of the community, has also been
called communitary journalism, engaged journalism and civic journalism. “All of them
have in common the centralizing of the profession’s practical objectives on encouraging
effort to advance citizenship, improving public debate, reviewing public life and
contributing to the improvement of democracy” (Dornelles 2008:108). Therefore, its
philosophy or set of values, which goes beyond unloading facts and has an obligation
to public life, makes for a good way to analyze Code4SA.
Rosen gives five ways of understanding public/civic journalism, namely, as an
argument, a way of thinking about what journalists should be doing. As an experiment,
a way of breaking out of established routines. As a debate, with both people inside and
outside the media about the role of the press. As a movement involving practicing
journalists, former journalists, academics, researchers and other like-minded people
and using lend ideas that might stimulate a think-tank. And lastly, as an adventure, “an
16
open ended and experimental quest for another kind of press” (Rosen in Glasser
1999:22).
However, civic journalism collides with the original idea of journalism as a neutral carrier
of information about current events (McQuail 2013:11). There has always been a
difference in profit-oriented newspaper press and the ones with a more ideological
objective, but in recent times, digital opportunities have widened the possibilities of the
last one. The last one is usually considered to be less objective than the first one
(Rijssemus 2014:61).
Rosen dissects this myth of journalistic, objective, detachment. To him, every story and
every decision is based on an assumption on how the world is supposed to work. A
story on injustice, for example, is only a story if there exists a perspective that injustice
is bad (Linksy 2001).
Rijssemus takes it one step further and implies that engaged journalists are needed for
society. Engaged journalists bring about contemplations, facts and insights that their
‘neutral’ colleagues may withhold the public. He argues that media that explicitly
choose a side are usually discarded not providing ‘quality’ journalism. Advocacy
journalism, or engaged journalism is therefore not popular, he states. But if you take this
advocacy journalism ‘outside journalism’ and you give it a different name, it is
considered a virtue. To Rijssemus, a journalist does not leave his view on society aside
when he sits down at his desk and writes a piece (Rijssemus 2014:61).
According to Rijssemus, it is essential to remember that we live in a society with
different collective identities. To him, it is important that all those collective identities
have a channel to the public sphere, since there are different perspectives on reality
(2014, 61). This democratic purpose can be served through the digital media, where
the entry is not only easily accessible, but also more democratic. The internet is a way
for minorities and the less represented to make their voice heard (2014:17).
Rosen and Rijssemus dismantle the myth of neutrality and argue that the media are not
detached from what they report, despite the ideal of neutrality and objectivity (Rosen in
Glasser 1999:27). To them, what is needed to save journalism is reporters and editors
making explicit their decisions and rethink and reflect on their practices. Code4SA
makes decisions based on their own perspective of what is important to society.
However, providing people with tools to make sense of the world around them, on their
own pace, and think and react to that information also fulfills an old journalism mission:
“to call attention to the shared interests, values, and concerns that bind a community as
a real place and help to create that sense of place” (Schaffer 2000:268).
Engaged- and civic journalism are gaining popularity and their worth is being
reevaluated, as Rijssemus’ 2014 book shows. Engaged and civic journalism add
something to the ‘neutral’ news. Even though the professional ideology of journalism
prescribes neutrality and objectivity, Rijssemus and other scholars argue that civic
journalism can also lead to very rich and informed pieces of journalism. Of course,
Code4SA is not the first organization that combines elements of journalism and
activism. Indymedia6, a collective of independent media organizations has proved its
6
According to www.indymedia.org: "Indymedia is a collective of independent media organizations and
hundreds of journalists offering grassroots, non-corporate coverage. Indymedia is a democratic media
outlet for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of truth." Indymedia was founded as an
alternative to government and corporate media and seeks to facilitate people being able to publish their
media as directly as possible.
17
surplus value, as it has many users. Just like Code4SA, Indymedia asks for input of the
public, making the public a co-producer. Access or influence to publishing areas/tools
is connected to the ideals of open source movement, where information is freely
distributed and exchanged between communities (Deuze & Platon 2003:348).
Code4SA is also sympathizes with the ideals of open-source publishing, in which
software is freely shared. However, controlling content, like journalism does and open
publishing seems to be a paradox, which will be addressed in the next paragraph.
Studying daily practices, we can see ideology at work. Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001)
state that giving meaning to ideology in reality is what gives legitimacy and credibility to
what a journalist does. Therefore, journalism should be viewed as an occupational
ideology rather than as just a profession, literary genre or industry (Deuze 2004).
Viewing journalism in terms of how journalists give meaning to their work, gives
relevance to researching new types of journalism, because it says something about
how journalism’s ideology is evolving.
3.3
Open source philosophy and a professional logic of control
“Open access to information will be the default position, in formats that are simple to
use and machine-readable, and Code for South Africa will be central to finding
innovative ways to repackage that information so that citizens can participate in their
governance constructively” (Code4SA vision, 2014)
Code4SA works with data and an open source philosophy. Its founding principles state
that they subscribe to the principles of openness and want to play a pioneering thought
leadership role in the development of the open data community in South Africa.
Journalists and technologists are increasingly organizing and collaborating across news
organizations and grassroots networks (Lewis and Usher 2013:603). This intersection of
journalism and technology opens up many possibilities to improve journalism (Bradshaw
2012).
“By a technology-focused approach to journalism innovation, we
mean understanding how the ideas, practices and ethos long held by
communities of technologists could be applied to rethinking the tools,
culture and normative framework of journalism itself” (Lewis & Usher
2013:603).
What Lewis and Usher mean by this, is that it might be helpful to study and engage the
way technologists handle, use and approach information, when overthinking and
shaping the field of journalism in the future. Paul Bradshaw, one of the authors of the
datajournalism handbook, sees datajournalism as full of possibilities, applicable to any
sector within journalism: for example to retrieve and order information from authorities,
or by using software to find connections between thousands of documents. But data,
which can ultimately be traced to a set of one’s and zero’s, can also be used as a tool
to tell a complex story, by making an application of infographic (Bradshaw 2012). Mirko
Lorenz, also author of the Handbook, adds that data journalism has the ability to collect
information that cannot be seen by the naked eye. By this he means that sometimes, ‘a
pile’ of information makes no sense and does not seem relevant, until you find the right
correlations and patterns within that ‘pile’. The role of the journalist herein is not just to
report, but also to explain. Using data transforms the abstract to something
understandable, to which people can relate.
18
Open source is based on the notion that ideas should be shared without copyright
(Platon & Deuze 2003:341) – it is transparent and participatory coding, with an
emphasis on a social philosophy of sharing. Open source offers the capacity to rethink
journalistic practices because of its alternative emphasis: participation from multiple
sources (different disciplines, professionals and amateurs), collaborative community
building and increased transparency (Lewis and Usher 2013:610). Combining
technological know-how of software architecture with the open-source culture of
participation emboldens journalism to think of information as both a process (how to
retrieve information) as a product (story).
3.3.1 Hacks/hackers
Hacker is a contested term, which hereby refers to a broad range of computationally
skilled people. Hacker ethic is marked by experimentation and play as well as pro-social
interest in information liberation and democratic ideals, just like civic journalism (Lewis &
Usher 2013: 603). The collaboration between journalists and technologists, with an
ethos of open source, has become an international phenomenon on the edges of the
journalism field called Hacks/Hackers (604). Lewis and Usher did a two year case study
on Hacks/Hackers and found that journalists and hackers usually have similar goals: to
find out how software can help tell a story. Code4SA has warm bonds with the
Hacks/Hackers community in both Johannesburg and Capetown, with some of its
employees being organizers of Hacks/Hackers meetings.
The hacker culture and journalism culture are two entirely different worlds. However,
their ideals overlap. An anthropological concept may clarify this: the trading zone. The
trading zone is a place where two different homogeneous groups come together and
form a new identity. This newly formed combination between groups, individuals and
ideas is much more diverse and heterogeneous. Literature on the trading zone
suggests that the coming together of two different 'cultures', with common goals (such
as accessible information for the purpose of informing the public and the power to
control) could lead to a productive synergy. (Lewis and Usher 2014: 385)
This kind of journalism is based on ideas regarding open sourcing of software code, as
used by computer programmers, and how it can and is being used by other groups
and professionals (Moon, in Deuze en Platon 2003:341). In spite of the involvement of
citizens as active participants, most news organizations retain a certain degree of
conventional control over what is eventually published. Within this blurring of
boundaries, and involving non-journalists, Lewis (2012) observes a tension between a
professional desire to control inherent to classic journalism as opposite to the
opportunities of open participation which is inherent to this digital era. Controlling
content in an open publishing newswire seems to be a paradox.
“Empirical literature finds that journalists have struggled to reconcile
this key tension, caught in the professional impulse toward one-way
publishing control even as media become a multiway network. Yet,
emerging research also suggests the possibility a hybrid logic of
adaptability and openness –an ethic of participation- emerging to
resolve this tension going forward.” (Lewis 2012: 836)
Deuze argues that ongoing mergers of media companies and professionals, as well as
the convergence of production and consumption are signs of a global convergence
culture (2008:104). Characteristic of this convergence culture is the ever more so
interactive engagement between people and their media, within media companies and
19
between media professionals and amateurs. Convergence culture is not just a
technological process. “Media convergence must also be seen as having a cultural logic
of its own, blurring lines between different channels, forms and format, between the
acts of production and consumption, between making media and using media and
between active and passive spectatorship” (Deuze 2008:103). Journalists find it difficult
to navigate the challenges this brings to established notions of professional identity and
gatekeeping. Journalists tend to react nostalgically on innovation, since the
opportunities of the digital era undermine their professional autonomy (Deuze 2008:113)
This matter is elaborated on in the next paragraph.
3.4
Identity
Developments in digital and mobile media facilitate a climate for innovation. Also, it
creates new opportunities in terms of production, distribution and consumption of
journalistic content. One can wonder about the implications of these developments on
several levels such as business models, financial strategies, journalism education,
journalism ideology and professional identity (Franklin 2014:481).
Each profession demarcates certain boundaries of elitist knowledge and expertise that
justify their professional authority and autonomy. Journalists have traditionally exercised
the control of a body of knowledge and practice of certain fields. The trend towards deprofessionalization, which has emerged in journalism, has disrupted this practice and
knowledge monopoly.
The emergence of start-ups, the possibilities of digital participation affect the selfdetermination of the journalist. Journalists no longer exert exclusive control over content
collection, filtration and distribution: the producer-consumer dichotomy and you readwe write dogma have drastically changed. In the past, journalism was defined by a
certain degree of control and scarcity. But it has now lost control over some classical
domains. Kovach and Rosenstiel (2001) state that giving meaning to these values in
reality is what gives legitimacy and credibility to what a journalist does. That is why
researching daily work is important when studying identity.
Lewis argues that a well-defined profession also ensures socialization by its "members".
It provides them with a collective identity and culture. Professionalism, in this sense, is
an important aspect of the self-conception of the journalist. When it gets damaged, it
has direct implications for his identity - resulting in an identity crisis (2013:841).
According to Powell (2007), a start-up is not a ‘static’, non-evolving business: its
identity and goals are continually constructed and changed. The brand and vision are
temporary outcomes of negotiations between the creativity of the employees and the
ideas of the founders. Powell claims that the vision and identity of a creative SME are
thoroughly influenced by negotiation and debate.
Townley e.a. (2009) did research on creative industries and found that creatives often
identify more with their projects/clients than their own organization. The same is the
case for journalists (Russo 1998:72). There seems to be a tension between the fixed or
permanent identity that is needed for an effective representation of the start-up towards
the outside world and the dynamic organizational creativity that shapes and reshapes
the journalism start-up day to day. Code4SA functions without a marketing department
that may function as a buffer. They do however, have a very clear mission, but
employees from very differing backgrounds.
20
A distinct and stable professional identity can also function as a way for journalists to
set themselves apart, communicate their uniqueness and their added value. Sirkkunen
and Cook (2012) refer to this phenomenon as monetizing ideology by using the idea of
a counterculture to attract subscribers.
This process of identification can be seen as a form of what Gieryn (1983) calls
boundary work. These are a professional domain’s attempts to establish and enhance
limits of institutional authority. These kind of professional boundaries are mainly brought
into motion by tension. Boundary work is done in every profession, but especially in
creative industries like journalism, because of its malleable nature. The concept of
boundary work is crucial to understand how such distinctions professional / amateur,
producer / consumer, journalist / Non-journalists are forged, maintained and continually
renegotiated in changing circumstances. These circumstances are constituent of what
Deuze (2008) and others label as convergence culture.
The professional identity of the journalist is influenced by individual characteristics like
background, work routines, organizational, extra media and ideological (Reese 2001).
All these levels are important when considering the occupational identity and Reese
organizes them from micro (the individual) to macro (the national context). He states
that a person or a journalist has its own professional attitude and views, which are
being influenced by larger structures. The journalist’s background is respectively
influenced by work routines, the organization and the national context in which he or
she operates. Reese’s model (2001) assumes that a workplace influences the journalist.
This is important to consider when exploring the occupational identity of Code4SA’s
employees and the identity of the organization.
3.5
Changing discourse: from journalism towards information
Framing journalism very strictly makes it hard for new organizations that affiliate with
journalistic values, but might not be purely journalistic, to consider themselves as actors
in journalism. Probably therefore, until recently, new experiments like participant/
audience involvement where done in a ‘traditional arena’, where journalists still gained
some form of control. For example by monitoring online reactions on content, like one
traditionally did when deciding on publishing a letter to the editor. However, online
channels arose that were not controlled by established media. Lewis:
“There is emerging evidence that journalism’s ideological commitment
to control, rooted in institutional instinct toward protecting legitimacy
and boundaries, may be giving way to a hybrid logic of adaptability
and openness: a willingness to see audiences on a more peer level, to
appreciate their contributions and to find normative purpose in
transparency and participation, a la open source technology culture.”
(851)
The Knight Foundation, a wealthy American fund that supports journalistic innovation,
promotes the idea of journalism as an open, participatory whole and encourages this
reformulation of borders (852). The question that arises is where (digital niches on
editorial boards), how (which discourse and practice) and why (under which normative
considerations), is the original logic of control of journalism reformulated? In the
Netherlands, a similar encouragement can be witnesses in the form of the
21
‘Persinnovatieregeling’. Organizations and individuals with an innovative idea for
journalism can get subsidies from this fund7.
The Knight Foundation is a funder of the African News Challenge, which initially invested
money in Code4SA. American journalism scientist Seth Lewis studied how the Knight
Foundation, founded in 1950, changed its discourse from 'journalism', with its existing
ideological implications and expectations, to a more boundless and open 'information'.
With this, the fund seeks to fade the professional limits inherent to the term ‘journalism’
(which traditionally excludes amateurs like civic journalists) and weaken its own
historical emphasis on professionalism as requirement for quality. The fund used to
have a persistent belief in the expertise and knowledge of professionals. They argued
for a causal relationship between professionalism and journalistic excellence. The
underlying thought was that professionalization leads to consistent standards and
greater compliance with existing codes of ethics, which would lead to quality
journalism.
The foundation has shifted its emphasis, both rhetorically and materialistically to the
‘wisdom and expertise of the public’ and citizen participation. As of 2009, all winners of
The Knight News Challenge, of which Code4SA is one, have been innovative,
experimental ideas. Also, it’s remarkable that the contest is now open to everyone:
individuals, organizations, (non) profit and -crucially- journalists and non-journalists.
According to Lewis, the fund seeks to send journalism (or ‘information’ as a business) in
a new, unclassified direction.
The intersection between technology and journalism, in which hackers, programmers
and ‘techies’ merge, receive much emphasis (Lewis and Usher 605). Data
visualizations, software applications, the development of APIs, new algorithms are now
considered relevant for journalism (or information) in a digital age (615). In South Africa,
the intersection between technology and journalism is in its infancy. Data journalism is
only done by a handful of pioneers. Many of them are affiliated with either
hacks/hackers or the Open Knowledge Foundation South Africa. The Open Knowledge
Foundation is a worldwide organization with departments in different countries that
wants to improve openness and the spread of information by combining technologists
with people who can ‘transfer’ information, such as journalists. Greg Kempe and Adi
Eyal, are both active participants of the Open Knowledge Foundation SA and Raymond
Joseph is the chairman of hack/hackers Cape Town.
This thesis is a case study on the South African organization Code4SA. This theoretical
framework has shed light on several changes journalism is going through and what kind
of challenges new start-ups, like Code4SA may pose to journalism ideology. Challenges
that have to do with combining activist ideology with journalism ideology, challenges on
whether to call start-ups that derived from convergence culture journalistic or not. This
chapter also provides theoretical concepts that help analyze the occupational identity of
Code4SA’s staff members, how ideology is given meaning in practice and what kind of
difficulties Code4SA may face doing so. How these aspects have been researched and
analyzed, is explained in the next chapter.
7
Source: http://www.persinnovatie.nl/16913/nl/op-de-goede-weg-maar-ruimte-voor-verbetering
22
4. Methodological Framework
This research is a case study on the South African start-up Code4SA. I chose a case
study because it allows a detailed contextual analysis and is useful when answering
‘how’ and ‘why’ questions (Yin 21). Robert Yin defines a case study as an empirical
study of a contemporary phenomenon in its real-world context, in which the boundaries
between the phenomenon and the context are not always clear (23). It is important,
however, to realize that outcomes of a case study research cannot be generalized. It is
the study of one single start-up. However, lessons may be learned and it provides us
with a window on what journalism may look like in the future. This chapter elaborates in
the choice for Code4SA and explains which methods are used.
4.1 Choice for Code4SA as a case study
Within the Beyond Journalism research, no research on a sub-Saharan African country
was being done yet. Together with Evelien Veldboom, I started looking for a innovative
start-up on the edges of what is considered journalism. Organizations that do not arise
from established, troubled media organizations might give an interesting outlook on
how journalism is redefining itself. We made contact with two potentially suitable startups. One in Zimbabwe (Mobile Community Zimbabwe) and a start-up in Kenya
(Mzalendo). However, after emailing we found these start-ups not innovative, big and
suitable enough. Mark Deuze advised us to look for a start-up in South Africa and
showed us a couple of potential enterprises, including Code4SA. Deuze even knew one
of the staff members personally. This was very handy in the initial contact and helped us
get into contact with the founder. After email contact, Evelien and I found Code4SA
very suitable, since data journalism is fairly new, sub-Sahara Africa had both of our
interest and we were very curious about the intersection of journalism and technology.
Also, we were both very interested in the somewhat activist ideology of the start-up. It
seemed like the type of enterprise that really wants to make a difference.
4.2 Research objectives
The methods used in this case study are qualitative. This choice is based on a number
of factors. Choosing for qualitative research is a right choice if the character of the
research is exploratory. The research questions in this thesis deal with quite an amount
of ‘why’-questions. The research is has continually changed during investigation and is
not aimed at controlled and established guidelines, as such is the case in quantitative
research. Quantitative research, as opposite to qualitative research, tests and connects
numerical variables. Rather than testing, qualitative research aims to interpret word or
image and thereby strive for unique outcomes. It is therefore important to consider that
the results of this case study cannot be generalized beyond the specific case.
Qualitative research is designed to describe complex phenomena and seek for
motivations and motives of people. The nature is both exploratory and explanatory.
According to Koetsenruijter and Van Hout, it’s useful to choose for qualitative methods
when little is known about a phenomenon (2014:19). It is the perceived reality of the
investigated that is central to the research. Koetsenruijter and Van Hout state that a
qualitative researcher searches for peculiar patterns. Knowledge of what is regarded as
striking derives from literature.
Significance is determined inductively. That is to say that theories and concepts are
derived from the data and not vice versa. Ideas continuously develop while analysing.
23
The result of qualitative analysis is documenting attributes, motivations and remarkable
things that serve to answer the main question. There is also another reason why
qualitative research is interesting for this case study:
“Besides content analysis teaching you about the results of a journalist’s
work, there is a second important reason for doing content analysis. And
that reason is much broader and perhaps even more important […] The
media are a mirror of society: what appears in the newspapers, on TV
and on the internet says something about our way of thinking.”
(Koetsenruijter en Van Hout, 164, translated)
In this research, semi-structured interviews and document analysis were used to
formulate an answer to the research questions. The documents and interviews were
structured on the principles of grounded theory, as explained in paragraph 4.5.
4.3 Thick description
The context chapter (chapter two) offers a description of Code4SA, its strategy, its
objectives, a list of projects and partners and its employees and their backgrounds.
Together with the information offered on the South African media landscape, this
provides a context in which Code4SA exists and function on a daily base. Denscombe
(2010:328) says thick description allows for readers to draw their own conclusions. The
idea behind studying case studies within the framework of the ‘Beyond Journalism’
research project is to get a deeper insight of journalism start-ups emerging around the
world.
4.4 Literature
For orientation of the field of study and for the formation of a theoretical framework, a
literature research has been done in chapter two. This chapter is designed to provide
context and information about the South African media landscape, start-up culture,
civic journalism, open source philosophy, datajournalism, identity and changing
discourse. For examining South African media culture, literature from South African
scholars was used.
4.5 Grounded theory
Grounded theory is a qualitative research method that enables a researcher to develop
a theory which offers an explanation about something. The grounded theory method is
a set of techniques for identifying categories and concepts that emerge from text and
linking the concepts into theories (Russell Bernard 2006:492). It is a general research
method that initially uses and inductive approach to generate substantive codes from
text (data). Data may be information from interviews, publications, internal documents,
videos, websites and other sources. The ideas the researcher develops lead to next,
more focused questions to ask. It is called grounded theory because it is grounded in
data. The mechanics of grounded theory are deceptively simple: produce transcripts of
interviews and read through a small piece of text. Identify analytical categories, which
are potential themes. As categories emerge, compare them and see how they are
linked together. Lastly, use those relations to Grounded theory follows a couple of steps
which sum up to: Identifying substantive area of interest, collecting data, open coding,
selective coding, finding theoretical codes based on substantive codes and finding new
theories (Russell Bernard 2006:493).
24
So the collected data, both from the documents and transcribed interviews with
Code4SA’s staff members was firstly analysed through open and axial (selective)
coding, using coloured pencils. I did some pre-coding in advance, when things struck
me during reading or interviews. After coding two times, I grouped different codes as
one. For example, codes that had to do with projects, partners, power of data or
ideology were grouped as ‘The organization’. I did this in all collected data, which
provided me with structure and insight.
4.6 Semi structured interviews
Semi structured interviews were held with all-but-one staff members. One staff member
did not have any time to talk on Skype. All interviews were done through Skype and
lasted for about an hour. The interviews were all completely transcribed and can be
found in the appendix.
The transcribed interviews have been coded. Small pieces of text have been labeled
with a code. After going through all the transcriptions a couple of times, I grouped
codes together as a category. Categories were later categorized in a theme called
either ‘organization’ ‘people’ or ‘journalism’
I learned that doing research from a distance is not easy. At times, communication was
difficult and during interviews you lack any form of non-verbal communication.
Sometimes I asked one of the respondents a question, trying to play the devil’s
advocate. But in reality, this did not always turn out well. On the other hand, every
interview I learned something, either practical or about the structure of my interview.
After every interview, I changed the course of my questions a little bit to fit my research
even better.
The interpretative repertoire is a theoretical and analytical concept used within
discourse analysis. I considered this concept while analyzing the interviews. It lives by
the assumption that language is not a neutral carrier of information, but implicates
certain ideas on what is good or bad (McKenzie 2005:2). The fact that one would call
something ‘injust’ says something about how one perceives the world around him.
Interpretative repertoire looks at the way one considers a topic. The French philosopher
Foucault (1988, 18) also states that language is not a neutral reflection of reality, but a
way in which people actively give shape to their own reality. Therefore, language helps
us depict what is just, injust, what is moral and immoral etc. I found it useful and
revelant to consider this concept when analyzing, since I got the impression that
Code4SA does not aim to be a neutral carrier of information. Rather, they seem to have
strong opinions, values about what is wrong or right might shine through in their choice
of words.
4.7 Document analysis of private documents
Founder Adi Eyal has sent us several internal, private documents on the foundations,
strategy and finances of Code4SA. Also, he sent us a list with projects they worked on
so far. During research, I decided to examine all those projects and divide them up in
type of project, partner and theme. The internal documents were, as grounded theory
suggests, all coded, labeled and structured.
25
4.8 Research questions
Following a model used by Deuze and Platon (2003), this thesis distinguishes
information provided by Code4SA’s employees and internal documentation on two
levels. First, in an ideological level, where normative values and concepts like truth,
objectivity and identity are comprised and formulated for Code4SA. Secondly, on a
more practical level, looking at the way values intersect with daily work. Here, this
research aims to explore personal involvement and motivations of Code4SA’s
employees (micro-level).
The analysis chapter follows Reese’s micro-meso-macro model (2001) that states that
the professional identity of the journalist is influenced by larger structures, such as the
organization, national context and ideology. Therefor, the analysis chapter is divided
into three sections called ‘The organization’ (meso), ‘The people’ (micro) and
‘journalism’ (macro). The section aim to answer the following questions:
The organization:
What are the intrinsic motivations for creating and running this start-up?
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
What is the ideology that set off the founding of Code4SA?
What are Code4SA’s main goals?
What is the surplus value of data (journalism)?
What are characteristics of Code4SA’s projects
What defines as a right partner?
What kind of difficulties does Code4SA encounter as a business?
What defines success for Code4SA?
The people:
What kind of people created and run this start-up?
•
•
•
•
What are the backgrounds of the employees?
What do the employees consider to be their occupational identity?
Why are the motivations of Code4SA’s employees to work there?
What binds the employees of Code4SA?
Journalism:
How are classical journalism values combined with an activist agenda?
•
•
•
How do the goals of Code4SA relate to classical occupational values and
norms of journalism?
Is Code4SA a journalism start-up?
How do the employees of Code4SA define journalism?
26
5. Analysis
This chapter is split up in three different parts. Parting information like this is done
because in order to organize the data, some kind of structure is needed. However,
parting up information like this might also be problematic. Since this thesis researches
motivations and ideology, things might overlap. One cannot explain Code4SA’s
ideology and founding principles without taking a look at the people who work there.
They did not just respond to a job opening, but they share very important and similar
values with the organization as such. This means that elaborating on the motivational
foundations of Code4SA and discussing what qualifies as a right project or partner, has
very much to do with what Code4SA employees find important in their job and their
lives. Thus, splitting up these themes is not ‘natural’ per se, but is done for analytical
purposes.
Throughout this chapter, the employees of the start-up will be called by made-up
nicknames, making it easier for the reader to remember which person is being referred
to. However, these nick-names have no other intention or meaning that this. Adi Eyal
will be called the Founder; Greg Kempe will be called the Software Developer; Jason
Nordwood-Young will be the Data Advocate; Raymond Joseph will be called the Senior
Journalist; Siyabonga Afrika will be called the Programmer Journalist and Hannah
Williams will be known as the Graphic Designer.
5.1 The organization
5.1.1 The motivational foundations of Code4SA
Code4SA is founded on a strong belief that access to information promotes informed
decision making. The organization is established upon the desire to serve the common
good through the advancement of transparency. It aims to help people with making
decisions which politician to vote for, and also with services such as how much money
to pay your domestic worker, how to get medicines or see if your local municipality, that
said it would spend money on toilets in shantytowns, actually did so.
In every single interview that was conducted, driving social change was referred to as
both an organizational and personal motive. According to software developer Greg,
social change is where people’s lives improve, put very broadly. This might involve
better access to sanitation, cleaner streets, feeling more secure, better medical care or
knowing more about your government, city or home. The organization deliberatively
keeps the meaning of ‘social change’ broad, since there are many ways to change
people’s lives for the better. This is a key element of the philosophy Code4SA lives by.
Code4SA’s mantra, as stated in all interviews, documents and website, is to help
people make more informed decisions and to drive social change. According to founder
Adi, data is one of the tools, one of the ingredients to do that. Code4SA works with four
different ‘areas’, He explains: civil society, media, government and community:
“Our main focus is helping those people – journalists, activists and
everyone else- do their job better. […] We don’t do the work
ourselves, we don’t change the world ourselves, it’s the organizations
that do that. […] Ultimately, what it means is strengthen the society. I
think that is what we’re trying to do make a reality. Giving people the
tools to do that. […] We’re not taking over the world, we’re working
with those organizations who could.”
27
The organization’s strategy documents claim that over the next four years, Code4SA
aims to be the premier organization for providing technical support to projects that
advance transparency in South Africa. Their strategy documents state they do so
because the open data community, “government and civil society need support to grow
and gain experience in effectively utilizing open data and technology”. The ideal aim is
to empower citizens, who actively claim their rights and use their open access to
information to make informed decisions and participate in the country’s governance.
This means driving the supply of open data from public and private bodies in formats
that are machine readable whilst demonstrating directly its value and utility. Code4SA
does this because internet communications and information systems can be
innovatively used to promote direct dialogue and enhance accountability, but this is not
being effectively and actively exploited by either government, civil society or the
citizenry. Code4SA aims to make the government aware of open data and its
democratic value and considers itself central to finding innovative ways to repackage
information.
It has in common with public/civic journalism, as explained by Rosen (1999) the
practical objectives of encouraging efforts to advance citizenship, improving public
debate, reviewing public life and contributing to the improvement of democracy
(Dornelles 2008:108). This set of values, going beyond unloading facts and including an
obligation toward public life, has a lot in common with Code4SA’s motives. The
programmer journalist puts it: “You know, Code4SA sits in an position where its not the
only one fighting for those rights,…but it’s the only one creating tools”. This provides
additional value to the civic model: Code4SA enables other to fight for certain causes.
5.1.2 The power of data
“Data will show you where the story is”
“So on the left-hand side you’ve got data and on the right-hand side
you’ve got someone trying to make an informed decision based on
that data. That data might not (yet) exist, it might not be available, in
might not be well formatted, it might be dirty. And we’re just going to
sit in the middle of there and do what is necessary to find the data,
clean it or analyze it for people on the other side who make decisions.”
- The software developer
Data is information that consists out of numbers or computer codes. Often, they’re
incomprehensible excel-sheets. Data potentially contains information that journalists
can use as a start for a story or to verify a story they are working on. Also, data may be
used to create technical, online tools such as a map, in which people can find
information.
The software developer explains: “We can help a partner understand data and use it for
a purpose, making it accessible. It all ties into the logic of making informed decisions”.
Senior journalist Ray calls it the data path line – finding, discovering, scraping,
organizing, visualizing and his own specialty – storytelling. According to the senior
journalist, some say data are facts, and data is the truth. But to him, data only tells a
story if someone helps it tell a story”. Graphic designer Hannah says exactly the same
thing during her interview. “Data is just data”, she states, “It is not a story.”
Bradshaw, author of the Datajournalism Handbook, sees data as full of possibilities,
applicable to any sector within journalism. From retrieving information to developing
software to finding connections between thousands of documents, to designing ways
28
to tell a story using infographics. According to Lorenz (2012), the role of the journalist is
to explain and interpret information. Combining skills to transform abstract data into
something understandable to which people can relate. However, handling data also
poses difficulties. Accessing data can be problematic, just like knowing whether you
have actually collected all possible data. Also, data in itself is not useful unless someone
interprets its meaning. Therefore, working with data, requires a team with a broad set of
skills. The technical skills are not easy to learn and finding and processing data can be
very time consuming.
Data journalism is not just about creating visualizations, graphs or charts. A good data
journalism story does not even necessarily have to have any of that and can be totally
text based. Software developer Greg elaborates: “For me, what defines a data
journalism story is: was data the original source? After that it could go into much more
traditional news”. The staff sees data mostly as a seed, as a means to their goal: finding
a story, and discovering together with a journalist where it leads. In 2014, the founder
was looking at a few data sets about schools and discovered a school where sixty
children had died in one year. Nobody had been there, but senior journalist Raymond
went to check it out and found there had been a disease. Senior journalist: “The data
stood out so much, but no one had been there. The tools do the heavy lifting, but you
still got to do the journalism.”
According to Bradshaw, author of the data journalism handbook, the intersection
between journalism and technology opens up possibilities to improve journalism
(Bradshaw 2012). Practices, ideas and ethos, long held by communities of
technologists could be applied to rethink tools, culture and normative frameworks of
journalism.
The organization did not just ‘pick’ data as a way to accomplish their goals. Rather, the
goal was formulated after seeing the potential of technical skills and data. Founder Adi
has been a prominent figure in the open data and hackers community in South Africa. A
valuation of the potentials of coding skills made him set up Code4SA. Combining
existing interest in civic technology with existing skills laid the groundworks for what is
now Code4SA. There was no other organization that combined these technical,
journalistic and civic elements yet, so there was a gap in the market. Programmer
journalist Siya elaborates:
“Some start-ups are very much profit-driven. At the same time you
have the people who realize that this technology and this tools can
provide service to the people that is not necessarily driven by the idea
of making a lot of money. Trying to fulfill our civic role, maybe the
fourth estate as you wanna call it that.”
According to Deuze (2008), start-ups usually either see a competitive advantage or they
have a strong public service agenda. McQuail (2013:162) calls this the difference
between a ‘civic’ motive, where the aim is a better service for the citizen and a
‘strategic’ motive, where market considerations predominate. Code4SA is clearly a
start-up with a civic motive. According to several staff members, this is probably why
journalism mixes so well with the civic technology space, because it just naturally melts
with wanting to be a public protector, being able now to create apps, website and APIs
as easy as we can. It is essentially what has allowed for the growth of Code4SA, some
staff members say.
29
5.1.3 The projects
Analyzing the projects (up until January 2015), three things stand out: the type of
project, the type of partner and the main subject of the project.
Code4SA Projects organized by type.
Project
1
Bill Tracker
Type
Data Journalism
2
4
5
6
7
8
Southern African Regional Programme on Access
to Medicines - SADC Medicines
Southern African Regional Programme on Access
to Medicines - Tendai
Noseweek Visualisation
Know Your Hood
Medicines Price Comparison Tool
Political Candidate Visualisation
Election Map
9
10
11
12
13
14
Dexter
Wazimap
Open By-Laws
Ward geolocation
Domestic worker tool
Protest map
15
16
17
Main subject/theme
Laws, politics
Data Journalism
Sponsor/Partner
Parliamentary Monitoring
Group
Re-Action/DFID
Data Journalism
Re-Action/DFID
Health, medicines
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Laws, politics
Politics, voting, society
Health, medicines
Politics, gender
Politics, voting, society
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Noseweek
Mail and Guardian
Code4SA
City Press
Mail and
Guardian/Code4SA
Media Monitoring Africa
Media Monitoring Africa
AMI/Code4SA
Preakelt Foundation
Code4Sa
AMI/Code4SA
Support to Cape Times
African News Innovation Challengde
Open Data Now Unconference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Cape Times
ANIC
Code4SA
18
19
20
21
Community Meetups
3-day training data usage
Training WikiAfrica employees
People’s Assembly Intern
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
22
eNCA Intern
Training/Conference
Code4SA
Livity Africa
WikiAfrica
Parliamentary Monitoring
Group
eNCA/AMI
23
School of Data
Training/Conference
OKF/Indigo Trust
24
Data Analysis for Civil Society
Training/Conference
Code4SA
25
Conferences
Training/Conference
Code4SA
26
Data training Workshops
Training/Conference
Code4SA
Practical help for journalists
Practical help for journalists
Binding governm, priv.sect, media,
academics.
Hackaton
Social mov. Training
Social mov. Training
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
27
Ford Housing Project
Technical
28
29
30
31
Road to Justice
API Development
Election Registration Tool
Parliamentary Monitoring Group Content
Management System
Memorandum of understanding with Re-Action
Consulting
Mobile Data Collection
African LII
Technical
Technical
Technical
Technical
Technical
Open Democracy Advice
Centre
Rape Crisis
Code4SA
Preakelt Foundation
Parliamentary Monitoring
Group
Re-Action
Technical
Technical
HealthE
African LII/Indigo
Health, violence, law
Server for API’s
Politics, voting, society
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
Health, medicines
Politiics, voting, society
News Scraping
Speak Up Mzansi!
Investigation into medicine procurement in WestAfrica
Early Childhood Development
Naked Data Newsletter
Other
Other
Other
University of San Diego
Freedom House
ANCIR
Politics, voting, society
Youth, diaologue, politics
Health, medicines
Other
Other
Code4SA
Code4SA
Health, medicines
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
3
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Health, medicines
Media, minorities, representation
Politics, local, journalists, civ.soc.
Politics, stats
Politics, voting, society
Minorities, injustice
Information, civil services
Minorities, injustice
Code4SA has several types of projects. While working with the four areas of civil
society, government, community and civil society, they develop technical programs,
develop data(journalism) projects and organize trainings (mainly for journalists) and
organize conferences to get those four areas together.
30
When it comes to the purely technical projects, for example, Code4SA has built several
APIs. An API can metaphorically be explained as being like a water pipe: the pipe (API)
enables the water to run through, and others can built a tap (app) on that pipe to use
the water (data) that runs through it. The projects are organized by type and it is
noticeable that data journalism construes about one third of the total, and so do
trainings and technical operations. Four projects are typified as ‘other’. These are the
weekly newsletter and some projects on paper.
The training are meant to get journalists to understand data journalism. Senior journalist
Ray trains many young journalists and tries to get them interested with the goal of
infiltrating newsrooms.
Code4SA relies on civil society to give expression to grassroots needs. The founder:
“The rationale behind working with civil society is that we don’t have access to the
grassroots, nor we want to. What we do want is working with the organizations who are
working with the grassroots”. As can be seen when looking at the list of projects,
Code4SA has worked with many grassroots organizations. All staff members state that
it is not difficult to get people enthusiastic about the value Code4SA can bring with the
technical solutions. However, the problem lies in truly incorporating this in both news
and grassroots organizations. The founder elaborates:
“There are some newsrooms that really get it. There may be editors
or higher-level managers who get it. But actually changing the ways
organizations work, how to create budgets and training or staff…there
is a difference in thinking it is a good idea and really taking action”.
Themes, topics and targets
The subjects of Code4SA’s projects say something about what is prioritized and seen
as important. Recurring themes are laws, politics, health, minorities, gender, civil society
and the promotion of data journalism. The founder explains: “We pick those projects
that actually further our own goals, which is again, informed decision-making”.
The staff see their skills as a way to contribute to a better society. Jason, the data
advocate: “The work offers a lot of opportunities to make society better. The nice thing
about South Africa is that you can actually shift the needle”. Handling data and teaching
other people how to use data is seen as a potential big lever on society.
Even though some literature claims that data is objective (Lorenz 2012), this list clearly
shows that what Code4SA chooses to pick, clean and scrape is intentional. Graphic
designer: “Yeah, what do you highlight? You can take any angle on the story. Just
because it almost looks scientific, that data, that is absolutely not neutral”. The choices
of partners and themes is based on thoughts of what is important and what type of
information should be out in the open. This means, that different from journalism
ideology, which aims to provide a whole and complete range of information, Code4SA
will shine light only on certain topics and other topics will be excluded and will not be
considered a right theme, since it does not follow the line of interest Code4SA has.
The setting up of a technical or datajournalism project works in two different ways:
either a partner or fund comes up to Code4SA asking for help or Code4SA finds an
interesting dataset or potential technical tool and (preferably) finds a partner to work
with that. Occasionally, the organization has a theme it wants to work on which they
consider to be of such civic importance, that no partner is needed and Code4SA pays
with their own money. Take for instance the Domestic Worker Tool. Housekeepers are
a marginalized group in South Africa. They often get a very low, dehumanizing wage.
31
This tool helps employers determine a reasonable wage. Code4SA examined the
different costs of fare, transport, education, health of people with low incomes. The
purpose of the tool is to create a discussion between the different employers over
wages that they give to their householders. The software developer states: “Many
South Africans have a domestic worker and yet there is such little agreement on how
much you should pay a domestic worker. It’s good to encourage discussion around it,
even though it’s uncomfortable”. Informing people and social change, according to
Code4SA, is not just about informing them with government data, but a lot “with the
man on the street.”
Partners “They have to m atch our values”
Analyzing Code4SA’s partners, one can see that every partner shares similar ideology
and goals with Code4SA. For instance, African LII’s (African Legal Information Institute)
main goal as stated on their website8 is “to promote free access to law and open justice
in Africa”. Main goal of the Parliamentary Monitoring Group is “to provide accurate,
objective and current information on all parliamentary committee proceedings”9. Also
the Indigo Trust has a shared goal with Code4SA. It is a UK based foundation that
“funds technology-driven projects to bring about social change, largely in African
countries”10. The Preakelt’s Foundation’s goal is stated as “to use open source
technologies to deliver essential information and inclusive services”11. Also, some other
partners are media or journalism organizations like the Cape Times, the Mail and
Guardian or Media Monitoring Africa.
Partners, funders and the choice of projects are a often discussed subject in interviews.
Code4SA needs partners and funders to help reach their goals. Founder Adi: “A good
partner is one that fully buys into that vision and trusts us to be custodians”. During the
interviews the employees were asked who or what qualifies as a right partner. The main
condition is a shared body of thoughts on what is important:
Graphic designer Hannah: “A big factor is if someone is willing to commit time, money
and resources to make this happen. You may think ‘oh cool, visualizations’, but at the
end of the day you really have to put in.”
Software developer Greg: “We want to work primarily with organizations that also
believe in making a change. […] Of a full profit company comes with a whole lot of
money but promotes no social change, we would probably focus on something else.”
Programmer journalist Siya: “They have to match our own values”
Data advocate Jason: “We’re not a corporate driven by money. We base our decision
on: is it in line with what we do. We measure partners against the question whether it
will help people make better decisions.”
Townsley (2009) stated that in convergence culture, creatives often identify more with
their product and clients than with the static organization itself. However, it seems like
the staff indeed very much identifies with its projects and partners, but that these are, in
this case, a result of what Code4SA stands for.
Practical considerations are also kept in mind when considering partners. Does the
organization already have support on the ground or a community? The software
8
www.africanlii.org, consulted April 2015
www.pmg.org.za, consulted April 2015
10
www.indigotrust.org.uk, consulted April 2015
11
www.preakeltfoundation.org, consulted April 2015
9
32
developer emphasizes that is difficult to build a community from scratch. The data
advocate and the programmer journalist both state that a partner should not tell them
what to do. The senior journalist clarifies: “you don’t go to a techie and say ‘I want a
tool that builds this. The way to talk to techies is: ‘I’ve got a problem, help me solve it’,
and then they’re up for the challenge”.
Code4SA does not have a hard time finding partners, since many civil society- and
media organizations are very pleased to work with them.
5.1.4 Success
“It can be sexy as hell but if nobody’s using it, then what’s the point”
Literature suggests (Bruno and Kleis 2012:2, Naldi and Picard 2012:71) that for
enterprises with either a civic or strategic motive, the formula of success depends on
good partners, a distinctive and unique quality product, miscellaneous income flows,
being aimed at a niche audience that is not served by existing media. Especially in nonprofit (civic) enterprises, success may be measured based on public service and
survival (Bruno and Kleis 2012:8).
What Code4SA considers a successful project tells something about their social
agenda and motives. There are several parameters for success for Code4SA. Whether
projects actually are a success is not within this research’ reach to measure. However,
the things the employees consider to be important say something about their intentions
and goals. Answers, as retrieved from the interviews to what makes a project (either a
tool, conference, data journalism project or training) a success, can be divided into
three types of arguments.
Impact (reaching niche audience, public service and survival)
•
•
•
•
•
•
Does it start a dialogue?
Are people discussing it?
Has it actually managed to change lives and how many and to what extend?
Does it deal with issues in society
Are people using it
How to reach the lower end
Data journalism (distinctive and unique quality product)
•
•
•
Is data journalism becoming a topic in newsrooms?
Are journalists using it?
To get journalism managers (media companies) to invest in data journalism?
Practical (does it function well?)
•
•
•
•
•
It has got to be replicable (for coding)
How long has it taken versus how many users its gotten?
Does the tool work properly?
How many registered visits on the website?
Can it be marketed: not for profit but to get more funding?
These answers embody some of the ideological standpoints Code4SA has. Code4SA
is convinced that the projects they start could really make a difference. Whether they do
so depends for a large extend on if people actually use the tools. Most employees
33
consider this to be a topic of thought and worry at times. How to get people (media,
government, community and civil society) to use it, is a constant topic of contemplation.
The programmer journalist says he sometimes goes to bed wondering about that. Also,
a topic on concern is getting journalists, newsrooms and media companies to see the
potential of data. Code4SA relies heavily on civil society and media to give expression
to the needs of society and spread information throughout existing civil communities.
The practical parameters of success have more to do with technology and business. If
the project took a lot of time and money, they like that effort rewarded with many users.
Also, in line with the open data ideology, a project may best be replicable. Foudner Adi
on success:
“Well of course for the technical thing to work well and the partner to
be happy. But for me to be really happy is for people to use it in their
daily life. With regards to the domestic workers project, I don’t have
any proof, but I have the feeling that many domestic workers are going
home at the end of the month with more money in their bank
accounts. That to me is a success”.
To him, from an output point of view, Code4SA has done very well. The founder
elaborates:
“In the fifteen months we’ve been around we have made tremendous
strives. We are in the open data space, we are known as pioneers, we
have worked with pretty much all the major newsrooms in the country.
[…] We are known as the organization that gets things done. We are
quite prolific in the amount of work we have done in a short amount of
time”.
From an impact point of view, however, they would like to achieve more.
5.1.5 Business and everyday work
There are a few things this research has found about Code4SA as an enterprise.
Strategy documents have shown that Code4Sa strives to have a flat management
structure, as opposed to top-down management. As a young non-profit organization,
asset ownership is not a central motivation. Current assets are limited and Code4SA
relies heavily on borrowing physical and technical infrastructure. The staff uses their
own computers and servers are shared. The organization’s internal documents identify
five weaknesses or worries, which the staff confirms during interviews. These are the
small capacity, the vulnerability to staff loss, the lack of substantial funding, the question
of how to get in touch with citizens and the not yet establishment of a public profile.
What typifies Code4SA is the urge to produce tangible results. Graphic designer
Hannah states that even though she has very limited experience in the NGO world, her
experience is that NGOs often focus much of their time on making presentations in
order to get funding. The graphic designer likes the fact that Code4SA actually wants to
achieve things. That seems to be a realm at Code4SA. Software developer Greg
mentions tangible results as one of the most satisfying things about his job: “When one
of your partners comes in saying: you’ve made a huge difference, and we have
significantly reduced costs.”
Powell (2007) stated that the identity and goals of a new start-up are often renegotiated
and changed as a result of negotiations between staff and founders. Code4SA is
indeed not static, but changes all the time. The founder states “Over the period we
34
realized that no one really cares about data. People care about being able to answer
questions about issues that are important to them. So we are constantly experimenting
with how do you go by doing that?”
Funding
Funding is a crucial issue and topic for Code4SA. Internal financial documents state
that currently, only two members of the organization are identifying funding resources.
Core funding is lacking and will need more focus in 2015. The programmer journalist
explains that many non-profit organizations are partially funded and are basically
competing for the same slice of pie.
Therefore, Code4SA needs to market itself in the greater development community. To
do that, they have to deliver more projects. This is a vicious circle. The programmer
journalist guesses that once they get out there more, funding will be easier to get. The
founder tells that 2014 has been mainly about keeping heads above water and making
sure they can pay salary. 2015 is going to be more on how to focus on core goals. The
software developer states that the way Code4SA get’s its projects and funding, also
brings about an interesting constraint. Working in a world where budgets are tight “we
have to be quite creative and clever on how we build things. Because, you know, I’d
love to have an indefinite big budget and build whatever we want. But ultimately that
wouldn’t build the right thing.” Two other add that not having cornerstone partners has
two sides to it: “nobody can tell us what to do. But it is also bad because you always
worry and you can’t plan ahead.”
The constraints of a tight budget makes the employees of Code4SA set priorities and
really consider, which each potential project or partner whether it is the most important
thing right now, and whether it is in line with their ideology and goals. Code4SA is
forced to make clever choices within that constraint, rather than just building just
because they can.
Challenges, perks and satisfactions of a small enterprise
Code4SA is small, which makes consultation easy and quick. But the fact that the
organization is so small, also brings about other things. The software developer states
that the size of Code4SA forces employees to do everything.
“Which is on the one hand a lot of fun and very interesting, but also
means a lot of jumping around and wearing different hats. So at times,
you can’t go as deeply into a role as you’d love to go.”
The software developer emphasizes that this is both a challenging and fun aspect of
working at Code4SA. Especially when time is limited. Swinging around between
funding, high level business and low level technical work. The fact that people with
different skills sets work at Code4SA seems to be an advantage in several ways. The
graphic designer states that the more diverse your skills set is as an organization, the
better the results are. Looking at a problem from different angles makes you come up
with more comprehensive solutions. According to Deuze (2008), studying start-ups
means studying convergence culture. Characteristic for convergence culture is the ever
so more interactive engagement between people and their media, within media and
between different types of professionals (2008:104). “I’d like it to be even more diverse.
In my experience, working on projects where you have the biggest diversity of skill sets,
are the most successful. Creative problem solving”, the graphic desinger adds. Also the
senior journalist states that working in a team with different skills set brings about a
synergy. To him, data journalism is about teamwork.
35
“A data scientist or techie can hack a code and has the ability to
interrogate data. To find the potential story, but he doesn’t know if it’s
a good story or not. It’s teamwork; it’s the coder and the journalist.
Remember, all those tools they do the heavy lifting, the hard work. But
you still got to do the journalism.”
It seems, judging from the newsletters, online interviews, and overall correspondence,
that Code4SA is very informal and people are not keen of hierarchy. Everyone has got
his or her own skills, which they are probably good at, so when it comes to technical
aspects, everyone got his own role. The Newsletter Code4SA sends out every week is
very cheeky. Also, founder Adi’s blogs seem very informal. They all call themselves
somewhat geeky. The founder is the ideological leader of the pack. Since he is a wellknown and respected person in the open data world, I think the staff acknowledges
and accepts his leading role. Of course, this case study research lacks any real-life
observations, so I cannot elaborate on this any further.
What is satisfying for the staff is when partners come up to Code4SA and state that
they have been able to have an actual conversation with their users. The senior
journalist states that for him, giving training is very satisfying and rewarding. People are
weary at first, but in his experience, as soon as he shows them the tools and how to
work with them “they’re absolutely blown away”. He explains: “It’s like buying a car. I
can see it and it’s really nice. But I wanna drive it”. That is how a training becomes
successful, by showing journalists how to actually work with the tools”. He adds:
“We’ve got a long way to go in South Africa. Sometimes you push a
rock up a hill and you push and push and push and when you stop
pushing, the rock falls down and you can start all over again. It
sometimes feels like that. Code4SA is doing work that mainstream
media should do themselves. That’s a goal: more people.”
5.1.6 Typically South Africa
South Africa is a country with many social issues and high levels of inequality. Code4SA
exists within this social, cultural and economic context. To graphic designer Hannah,
the ultimate successful goal would be to make information easily accessible to the
general public. And have citizens participate and be more active in their local
communities and broader government. “Because we have this democracy which is
supposed to be very participative but they don’t know how it works and how to open
up and release data. There are a lot of gaps that need to be breached. I guess that’s
the ultimate goal.”
The graphic designer is referring to the high digital gap that South Africa has and the
high levels of inequality. She states that is will be interesting to see what happens in the
next few years, since the people that are most important to reach are now getting
smart phones. “Smartphones and internet access penetrate the market more and it is
happening very rapidly. People are skipping the whole thing of just having a phone or a
computer and are going straight onto smart devices” (graphic designer). This is in line
with what Daniels found in her research newsrooms and internet (2013).
Programmer journalist Siya also states that the technology space is growing, which
makes the daily question the employees of Code4SA have on how best to reach those
who are hardest to reach, a little more redundant day by day. He states that if
Code4SA has an amazing tool, which nobody uses because nobody knows about it, its
36
useless. According to Harber, technology entails the potential to facilitate much greater
interaction (2014). He says: “If you spend time here, you come to realize what our
challenges are. People do not have the information they need in order to make the right
decisions”. It is not as easy to get information in the right place. “When you look at it,
the government is not very keen on the idea of engaging its citizenry in a fair manner”.
He is referring to the Protection of State Information Bill (Fourie 2013).“We are
guaranteed in our constitution to have access to all government data. Section 32 of our
constitution”, the data advocate states.
The city of Cape Town has recently opened up their dataportal. The members of
Code4SA consider this a huge development. It is the first so-called open data portal in
the whole of Africa. It is still riddled with a lot of issues and questions, but it is a good
start. Johannesburg, on the other hand, is not very keen on sharing information,
programmer journalist Siya states. He lives in Johannesburg and says that this exactly
why people need an organization such as Code4SA.
“The city of JoBurg, which has the highest population, a ten million
estimated people. […] Yet the city doesn’t want to open up their data
sets. It doesn’t want to be transparent in a lot of things, like its
budgeting and cases like corruption. You need people like Adi,
Raymond and organizations like Code4SA to stand up and fight for
these rights. Code4SA is not the only one fighting for these rights, but
it is the only one creating tools”.
And when governments or municipalities do release data, it is often in very bad quality,
that’s another issue with data. The senior journalist elaborates: “Datasets are not easy
to get. I don’t know how hard it is to get data out of the Dutch government, but very
often if you can get data here, it is not in really good condition, or in PDF.”
The School of Data12 gets is fellows only from Eastern European, African, South
American and Asian countries. Graphic designer Hannah and programmer journalist
Siya were both fellows at the School of Data, and worked at Code4SA while they were
completing their fellowship. Programmer journalist:
“That’s where an issue of data is really a thing. Where people don’t
really have access to tools or a government that cares about them in
that way […] So yeah, that’s the challenge with developing countries
[…] It’s one of the, I wouldn’t say inheritances, but challenges of a
young democracy, entering a new power dome in a digital age.”
The data advocate adds that the nice thing about South Africa is, is that you can
actually shift the needle, you can make a difference by putting pressure on the right
points. “Think of it as using data as a big lever, and we just need to know the exact
point to put that lever.”
One of the things software developer Greg works on at the moment is a tool on
legislation. According to him, access to legal information is a topic on which only little
work has been done. A “typical African thing” that motivates fighting for open legislation
is that much information is traditionally verbally passed down as supposed to written
down. According to him, there are many laws that are not written down, so not only
12
A global project Code4SA works closely together with. The School of Data trains young, talented
technical people to use technology and data in newsrooms. The project is funded by Open Society
Foundation, Shuttleworth and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.
37
lawmakers have no access to them but also people on the ground. People do not know
their rights and even if they would like to know, they cannot access it. These African
circumstances typically enable some projects.
Those typical circumstances are probably the reason why so many employees enjoyed
Wazimap13. The software developer enjoyed making and using Wazimap because he
says it gave him a very personal first hand feeling of actually the variance in our country.
South Africa has huge income differentials, a large range of cultures and large ranges of
access to information. “By exploring data and putting it together in really helped me see
how differently people can live in South Africa an can yet be neighbours. I really enjoyed
helping others realize that. […] We shed a little bit of light there about the community
they live in”.
5.2 The people
5.2.1 What is important, what do you look for in a job?
The people working at Code4SA are all-but-one technical. Overall they have broad set
of skills. Some are technical developers, others are graphic designers and some have
journalism backgrounds. Many have previously worked at profit-driven corporate
companies. They seem to be very passionate and caring about the work they produce
and about the goals they strive for. The founder:
“We can’t afford the best salaries. In order to work here you really
need to buy into the idea. You should want to contribute to society
[…] For everyone that works here, we make sure that that’s the case. I
much more prefer someone who comes in with passion, I want a 120
percent of your enthusiasm.”
That enthusiasm is important. Many staff members also actively engage in other data or
social initiatives like hacks/hackers. The senior journalist illustrates this by mentioning
that founder Adi spends his life putting in requests for data. The programmer journalist
states that he often goes to bed theorizing on how to reach people. The passion for
civic technology and a determination to improve society is important to the staff. In
March 2015, they hired a new staff member, who has got a technical background but
also a strong social conscience. “That’s one of the key things we’re looking for, the
interest in making a difference”, data advocate Jason explains. According to him, many
technical people have this social conscience; they just have to be aware of the potential
of their skills. Lewis and Usher (2013) found that many hackers or technologists have a
social interest and democratic ideals. They found that technologists and journalists
often have similar goals: to find out how data can tell a story. According to the software
developer, their social conscience just needs to be tickled a little bit. The founder adds
that many technical people do not even know that this civic technology space exists.
“They don’t know it is interesting and actually pays salary”.
Many of them have worked in the full-profit world, but feel like they wanted to help out
more and make a difference. Use your skills beyond making money. For the data
advocate, Code4SA matches his own personal values. The programmer journalist
13
Wazimap is a map and a data analysis tool that visualizes Code4SA elections and data counts on hyper
local level as a research tool for journalists and civil society (civil society). Both media and civil society can
now find demographic information in geographical areas at various local levels.
38
states he used to work at a digital agency where he made good money and where his
skills were valuable. But he states he still felts drawn to civic technology. All staff started
working for Code4SA because they wanted to do something useful with their technical
skills. During profit driven work some, like the software developer, came to realize “Hey!
We can do the same thing in a way that affects people’s lives positively!”. Others were
also missing that aspect in other, less civic jobs. The data advocate: “I think that’s the
reason why I do it, you can actually make a difference”.
Lewis (2014) found that the ethic technological culture and journalism culture are two
different worlds of which the ideals overlap. The anthropological concept of the trading
zone, as described in the theoretical framework, seems to be at work at Code4SA. The
trading zone is a place where different groups or identities come together and form a
new, much more diverse identity. The coming together of different heterogeneous
groups or identities that share similar goals, could lead to a productive synergy.
The fact that people with different skills sets work at Code4SA seems to be an
advantage in several ways. The graphic designer states that the more diverse your skills
set is as an organization, the better the results are. Looking at a problem from different
angles makes you come up with more comprehensive solutions. “I’d like it to be even
more diverse. In my experience, working on projects where you have the biggest
diversity of skill sets, are the most successful. Creative problem solving”
Also, the senior journalist states that working in a team with different skills set brings
about a synergy. To him, data journalism is about teamwork. He adds: “You don’t need
to be a mechanic to drive a motorcar. You don’t have to know how to fix it, you just got
to know somebody who does.”
5.2.2 Activism
The word ‘activism’ has different connotations to different people. This research found
that every single staff member sees activism as a positive, constructive and needed
thing. I have defined activism as the act of actively striving to achieve an ideological
goal, Code4SA would definitely have and activist element to it. Staff members all speak
of feelings of enjoyment and empowerment doing the work they do. They have got a
deep trust in their own skills and projects and the potential to make a difference.
Software developer Greg mentions: “we motivate for open data, so in a way we’re
activists for open data. I guess you cold say there is definitely an activist component”.
As for activism, some identify more as an activist than others. Some have ideas on what
an activist is supposed to do. One staff member mentioned not having sacrificed
enough to be an activist. Another staff member laughingly adds : “I’d say that I’m more
of a sophisticated activist. I won’t be on the streets, I will not be jumping around. I will
be in an office. But what I am doing is for the benefit of you”. Or: “We should be even
more activisty. I’m doing some activist stuff on the side, that runs in my veins.” The
founder elaborates that it depends on how you define activism. “We don’t march in the
streets but we do have an area of interest which promotes social change. We’re
definitely activists in an abstract way.”
According to senior journalist Ray, wanting to make a difference is an activist standpoint
at itself. Others feel like the social agenda Code4SA strives for is the key activist
element and that the goal itself is an activist goal.
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5.2.3 The binding factor
Common phrases that are often mentioned and repeated in both the interviews, the
website and the internal documents are: facilitating social change; help out; desire to
make a difference; affect people’s lives positively; improve how people interact with
their municipalities and governments; fair; reasonable; care. A belief in these elements
and using technology to achieve these things are common things among Code4SA’s
staff. Senior journalist: “Well, we’re much into data. And we use data for good”. Another
staff member adds that it is Code4SA’s natural urge to tell stories with data and thereby
giving people the means to make decisions.
“If you were to say two things that characterize us, it’s that people care and the other
thing is, people who are curious”, the software developer adds. There is a shared
technical background, an interest in civic technology and open data. A strong social
conscience. He adds:
“We know we can find work in the full profit world. But the desire to
make a difference definitely binds us and that’s why we’re working
and doing what we’re doing now.”
Also, they all find this aspect, helping people make informed decisions, more important
than making a lot of money somewhere else. Many of them have experience in the
corporate world, but choose to work for a non-profit either way. That drive is what
binds the staff. Founder Adi states that in regards to work, it is important to be able to
develop as a person. “Many people think the way to optimize is salary, but in terms of
personal development […] you want to maximize the impact you have in the world.
Being part of something bigger.”
5.2.4 So, what are you then?
Researching Code4SA has taught me that putting a label on someone does not make a
lot of sense when it they are involved in a rather new field of interest. Labels like
‘activist’ or ‘journalist’ seem to have inherent prejudice, limitations and connotation.
Someone who has not studied journalism might not feel like a journalist, compared to a
colleague that did. For example, one staff member did not think of himself as a
journalist since he had not published anything for a while or spends most of his time
staring at a computer screen. The same goes for activists. However, many do see
many characteristics of journalists and activists in themselves. But mainly, they see
themselves as technical people with a social agenda. And sometimes that requires
taking on different roles.
It’s been helpful to consider the trading zone concept. Literature on trading zones
suggests that the coming together of two different ‘cultures’, with common goals, could
lead to a productive synergy (Lewis and Usher 2014:385), which definitely seems to be
the case at Code4SA.
This research has been exploring what might be a collective occupational identity for
the staff members of Code4SA. A concept that I have found to be fitting for the
employees of Code4SA, is ‘enablers’. They enable others in different ways. A) they
enable media, government, civil society and communities B) they enable people to
make informed decisions C) they pick topics and themes that enable dialogue and D)
They enable the use of data for good. They use their unique skills and synergy to get to
their goals. They enable a means for their goal.
40
Lewis observed a tension between the professional desire for control, characteristic for
journalists, and the philosophy of open data. Even though Code4SA has a little of both
ingredients in their ‘identity cocktail’, this tension does not seem to exist. It is merely a
guess, but maybe the staff does not experience this tension because they do not
identify as journalists. Giving up control is therefor not considered a loss or violation of
their occupational identity.
Also, the staff does not seem to struggle with whether to stay objective or neutral. They
proudly tell that they choose to engage in things that are in line with their goal. In
journalism, having a ‘goal’, as opposite as being a neutral journalist, is often frowned
upon, Rijssemus stated. However, Rijssemus claims that if you take advocacy
journalism ‘outside journalism’, it is considered even a virtue (Rijssemus 2014:61). This
seems to be the case at Code4SA. Working at Code4SA, the staff never identified as
neutral and striving-for-objectivity-journalists.
But Code4SA does, however, trigger defensive journalist reactions. According to
Deuze, journalists often react nostalgically and even defensive to innovation, something
the senior journalist found as well. This might be because Code4SA brings a new tool
into the journalism-toolbox, which undermines established notions of professional
identity and gatekeeping: technical people are ‘entering’ the journalism domain. This is
the reason why Code4SA especially focuses on training young journalists, since older
journalists seem to feel threatened and uninterested.
Powell (2007) stated that the identity and goals of a new start-up are often renegotiated
and changed as a result of negotiations between staff and founders. Since Code4SA is
so small, changes in the team have a very large impact on the organization. This might
be a little problematic for Code4SA, since Lewis (2013) argued that a well-defined
profession ensures socialization by its ‘members’, providing them with a collective
identity and culture. Changes in the direction of the organization have large impact on
the feeling of belonging at Code4SA. As is the case with the data advocate, who felt
like the thing that attracted him to Code4SA in the first place, a very activist-like focus,
has become a little less. That is why he is down from five days to one. Code4SA is
constantly negotiating its boundaries, even though its mission stay unchanged (Gieryn
1983).
5.3 Journalism
Code4SA shares many values with traditional journalism. Ideologically, they deem
functions ascribed to journalism such as being a watchdog, an information source,
public representative and mediation for political actors (Witschge & Peters 2015) as very
important to what they do. Also, they identify with role attitudes like truthfulness,
informing, criticizing and entertaining (Deuze 2004). However, the staff does not see
themselves or Code4SA as journalistic, even though they accomplish their goals
through storytelling and truth-seeking. Rather, they see their work as creating tools for
journalists and journalism-goals. Code4SA can work with journalists to create a
complete journalism package. What the founder wants is go give journalists actual tools
“[...] instead of now going through a data base of information, old paper, this thick, we
instead are creating an API, that you can use in a single search”.
To Code4SA, civic technology and working with data leads the way for journalists, and
they can very well work together as a team. Programmer journalist Siya:
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“I think that’s why journalism mixes so well with the civic technology
space, because it just naturally melts with wanting to be a public
protector, being able now to create apps, websites and APIs as easy
as we can. It’s essentially what has allowed for the growth of
Code4SA and Hacks Hackers.”
Foremost, the staff sees Code4SA as an enabler of data journalism. However, there do
seem to be quite some overlap between journalism and what Code4SA does.
•
•
•
•
There is an aspect of investigative work, going through information trying to find
out what it means. Digging through
Just like a journalist, Code4SA chooses what to highlight, the information is not
completely neutral
Journalism aims to inform people and keep people accountable. That is what
Code4SA aims to do as well.
Journalists and Code4SA share similar ideas on right to information in a
democracy and the importance of it.
“Data is an aspect of journalism, it’s not the only kind of journalism there is. You know,
there’s good journalism and there’s bad journalism. […] Some say data are facts, data
is true, but data only tells a story if someone helps it tells a story”. The data advocate
likes to point out that is datajournalism and not datajournalism, whereby he means that
data without the journalism is useless.
The staff states that they play an important role in journalism, since the data they bare
may show where a story is. Data on its own is not considered journalism by Code4SA,
because for data to mean something on a context, someone has to make sense of it.
That’s where a journalist comes in. Asking whether data makes a journalist redundant,
the programmer journalist says: “Good stories are still necessary, for interaction
between government and society, we’re just adding a new layer. An adjacent layer”.
The key role as a journalist is to tell a story. Software developer Greg adds:
“For me, a journalist tells a whole story. What we’re trying to do is
saying ‘hey there is an interesting story here’. We see various points
along a line…it is up to the journalist to draw the dots and find out
exactly where that line goes.”
It seems like the staff of Code4SA has quite a traditional view on what it entails to be a
journalist. So the staff sees the role of a journalist as actually doing proper investigation
and talking to people. According to data advocate Jason, Code4SA does not follow
any of the journalism ethics that would be required, like the principle of the adversarial
process. They believe the journalists’ role is to take information and to steer it in a way
people can easily understand it. Hence data is an extension of that. It is helping people
make sense of information, and that is why data and journalism go so well together, the
data advocate states. However, providing people with tools to make sense of the world
around them, on their own pace and think and react to information does fulfill an old
journalism mission: “to call attention to the shared interests, values and concerns that
bind a community as a real place and help to create that sense of place” (Schaffer
2000:268).
Framing journalism very strictly makes it problematic for new, online organizations that
affiliate with journalistic principles, to consider themselves or to be considered
‘journalistic’. The Knight Foundation, that funded Code4SA initially, has encouraged a
reformulation of the occupational borders. Changing its discourse from ‘journalism’,
42
with its existing ideological implications and expectations, to a more boundless and
open ‘information’.
Start-ups provide us with a base and a window to what journalism may look like in the
future. Shaping a future requires thinking outside the box: considering new business
models and ways of using technology and the perks of other professions and skills. But
like Franklin put (2014:487), a new situation challenges the most permanent and
fundamental themes in journalism, such as objectivity, neutrality and control.
An organization like Code4SA, that functions outside the expectations, implications and
limitations of the word ‘journalism’, may however be a window to the future. Like senior
journalist Ray puts it: data journalism is not the future of journalism, it is part of the
future of journalism. However, business like Code4SA may be a foresight into what
journalism may look like in the future: converged and somewhat loose from inherent
meanings traditionally linked to ‘journalism’. And that is what the Beyond Journalism
research is about: exploring how journalism may manifest itself in new start-up
enterprises.
Code4SA seems to share many similarities with public/civic journalism. Rosen (1999)
understands this type of journalism as an argument, experiment, movement and
adventure. All these words have been used in the interviews with the staff.
“Even as inherited professional practices and business models are
under immense pressure, pioneers are prospecting for the future of
journalism, both within and outside existing legacy media
organisations, creating new opportunities for journalists to practice
their profession along the way” (Bruno & Kleis Nielsen 2012:3).
This quote, which is found in the introduction of this thesis, gains more meaning when
seeing Code4SA as part of a larger development and in the light of a changing
discourse. All over the world, online start-ups are prospecting for the future of
journalism, either outside of within existing media organizations.
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6. Conclusions
This case study on the South African start-up Code4SA has been part of the Beyond
Journalism research project. An extensive literature study has been done, forming the
theoretical framework that has allowed this analysis of Code4SA. After gaining the
theoretical knowledge to help answer the (sub) questions of this research, semistructured interviews were held and document analysis was done. This research has
been of exploring nature.
The specific questions this research aimed to answer is:
How does the social agenda (ideology) of Code4SA gain meaning in daily
routines of the start-up (practice)?
The sub questions were: ‘what are the intrinsic motivations for running this start-up?’,
‘What kind of people run this start-up?’ and ‘how are classical journalism values
combined with an activist agenda?’.
What are intrinsic motivations for running this start up?
Code4SA was founded with a civic motive (McQuail 2013:162) and the belief that
access to information ultimately leads to informed decision-making. Taking a close look
at what drives Code4SA’s staff, what the main subjects and interests of the projects
are, what Code4SA want to achieve as a company and what kind of partners they work
with, has empowered me to explore and learn something about how Code4SA’s
ideology gains meaning in practice. Code4SA’s goals and motives drip through in many
daily decisions they make. Whether it comes to working with partners, choosing topics,
or finding new employees.
Code4SA has now existed for fifteen months (april 2015) and its goals have not been
altered in the meantime. However, the means to achieve these goals have changed at
times. A word I have found very useful when talking about Code4SA is ‘enablers’. They
enable civil society, government, communities and media to spread and use information
for a civil cause.
Some of the success factors that had an impact on Code4SA have not been explicitly
mentioned in literature. For example, their strong position within the data community,
the fact that founder Adi Eyal was fairly well known within that community and
Code4SA’s vast idealism encourages the staff to work for the organization everyday,
even at times when Code4SA struggles with mundane, everyday difficulties. The startup has known and still encounters hardships every so often, such as trying to find
effective financial logics. However, success is not determined in financial terms, rather
in how many people are reached. This seems to be a characteristic of civic start-ups
(Naldi and Picard 2012:72).
How are classical journalism values combined with an activist agenda?
As Code4SA seemed to combine both journalism and activism at first sight, I found it
interesting to see how these could or could not be combined. Since journalism is
idealistically about neutrality and objectivity and activism is about fighting for a cause.
As it turns out, Code4SA shares many values with traditional journalism. They deem
functions like being a watchdog, an information source and a public representative
(Witschge & Peters 2015) as very important. However, Code4SA’s staff does not
44
consider what Code4SA does as journalistic. Rather, they see their job as adding
another tool in the journalism toolbox. Together with journalists, they see themselves as
creating a complete ‘information package’. Because of the fact that Code4SA’s staff
shares many values with journalists, working together on the similar goals seems to go
well.
“The age of democracy has also been an age of journalism and the
two have always supported each other. The main reason lies in what
journalism does – providing essential information on issues of the day
to citizens that enables them to make informed choices and
judgements concerning policies and politicians” (McQuail 2013: 206).
There seems to be no such tension as described by Rijssemus (2014) when it comes to
neutrality and journalism. I think this is because Code4SA’s staff does not identify as a
journalist. They are open about their goals and do not aim in any way to be neutral.
The work Code4SA strongly resembles with the new discourse the Knight Foundation
has pictured for journalism: from ‘journalism’, with its existing ideological implications
and expectations, to a more boundless and open ‘information’ has taken place. I think
that this change in what is included might give room for journalists to interact more with
people with other (technical) skills, without this hurting their occupational identity.
Code4SA shares a goal with the Knight Foundation, which is combining journalism and
technology to provide information that can help to make informed decisions (Lewis and
Usher 2013:606).
I think Code4SA does is not fully journalistic, since they do need journalists to help tell
the stories they discover with data. I think Code4SA can be seen as an enabler of
journalism, sharing many common goals with traditional journalism.
The People
Each profession demarcates certain boundaries of elitist knowledge and expertise that
justify their authority and socializes its members, providing them with a collective
identity (Lewis 2012:841).
Code4SA is definitely a product of convergence culture (Deuze 2004) and seems to
have developed a whole new identity for itself. The staff does not seem to fully identify
as ‘just’ software developer, journalist, activist or designer. They appear to have
incorporated a little bit of all those identities in their own, newly formed occupational
identity. Since Code4SA is so new and small, there is no permanent occupational
identity yet. Problems, tensions or fear regarding identity (“am I neutral enough? Do I
publish enough to be a journalist?”) do not seem to exist or for a problem. This seems
to create an enormous amount of freedom and also a lot of enjoyment.
What can be said about Code4SA’s staff is that they all identify strongly with the goals
and motives of the organization. They are all very passionate about their work and
consider their job as an argument, experiment, movement and adventure at the same
time, just like what Rosen (1999) found typical of civic journalism.
When this research would be conducted again, it would probably turn out different than
this one. Start-ups change continually (Bruno & Kleis Nielsen 2012:8). The dynamical
aspect is what makes start-ups such an interesting field of study. The ideals of
Code4SA probably won’t change, but the ways in which these goals are to be achieved
will change. Whether Code4SA is journalistic, is doubtful, however, what can definitely
45
be said is that they provide a unique service to journalism in South Africa, where access
to information remains a challenge.
A converged enterprise like Code4SA might be what journalism will look like in the
future, functioning outside expectations, assocations and limitations inherent to the
word ‘journalism’. And that is what the Beyond Journalism research project is about:
exploring how journalism may (or may not) manifest itself in new start-up enterprises.
Code4SA’s has a strong wish to technically support civil society, media, government
and communities with opening up their data and improve lives doing so. Hopefully,
what is now in its infancy will in the future be a norm.
46
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Bruno, N. & R. Kleis Nielsen (2012) Survival is Success - Journalistic Online Start-Ups in
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Denscombe, M. (2010) The good research Guide for Small-scale research projects:2. Case
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Dornelles, B. (2008) ‘The end of objectivity and neutrality in civic and environmental
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Fourie, P.J. (2013) ‘Beyond skills training. Six macro themes in South African journalism
education’ Journalism Practice 7-2:212-230.
Franklin, B. (2014) ‘The future of journalism. In an age of digital media and economic
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Gieryn, T.F. (1983) ‘Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science:
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48:781-795.
Glasser, Theodore (1999). The Idea of Public Journalism. Guilford Press. Print.
Hadland, A. (2007) ‘State-media relations in post-apartheid South Africa: An application of
comparative media systems theory’ Communicare 26-1: 1-17.
Harber, A. (2014) ‘Accountability and the Media’ Annal of the American Academy of Political
and Social Science 652-1: 206-221.
Hermida, A. & N. Thurman (2008) ‘A clash of cultures: the integration of user-generated
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Journalism Practice 2-3:344-352.
Johnston, A. (2007) ‘The African National Congress, the Print Media and the Development
of Mediated Politics in South Africa’ Critical Arts 19-2:12-35.
Kawamoto, K. (2003) Digital Journalism. Emerging Media and the Changing Horizons of
Journalism. Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Oxford. Print.
Kovach & Rosenstiel (2001) The elements of Journalism: What new people should know
and the public should expect. Three Rivers Press. Print.
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Koetsenruijter, W. & T. van Hout (2014) Methoden voor Journalism Studies Den Haag,
Boom Lemna Uitgevers. Print.
Lewis. S.C., K. Kaufhold & D.L. Lasorsa (2010) ‘Thinking about citizen journalism. The
philosophical ad practical challenges of user-generated content for community newspapers’
Journalism Practice 4-2:163-179.
Lewis, S.C. (2012) ‘The tension between professional control and open participation’
Information, Communication & Society 15-6:836-866.
Lewis, S.C. (2012) ’From Journalism to Information: the Transformation of the Knight
Foundation and News Innovation.’ Mass Communication and Society 15-1:309-334.
Lewis, S.C. & N. Usher (2013) ‘Open source journalism: toward new frameworks for
imagining news innovation’ Media, Culture & Society 35-5:602-619.
Lewis, S.C. & N. Usher (2014) ‘Code, Collaboration, and the Future of Journalism – A case
study of the Hacks/Hackers global network Digital Journalism 2-3:383-393.
McQuail, D. (2013) Journalism and Society London, Sage Publications. Print.
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sharing news?’ Journalism 4-3:336-355.
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Journalistiek Amsterdam University Press. Print.
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69 journalistic pure players and their business models.
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the motley crew’ Human Relations 62-7:939-962.
Yin, R.K. (2003) Case study research: Design and Methods. London, Sage. Print.
48
PREFIX I – Code4SA projects
Code4SA Projects organized by type.
Project
1
Bill Tracker
Type
Data Journalism
2
4
5
6
7
8
Southern African Regional Programme on
Access to Medicines - SADC Medicines
Southern African Regional Programme on
Access to Medicines - Tendai
Noseweek Visualization
Know Your Hood
Medicines Price Comparison Tool
Political Candidate Visualization
Election Map
9
Dexter
10
Main Subject
Laws, politics
Data Journalism
Sponsor/Patron
Parliamentary
Monitoring Group
Re-Action/DFID
Data Journalism
Re-Action/DFID
Health, medicines
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Laws, politics
Politics, voting, society
Health, medicines
Politics, gender
Politics, voting, society
Data Journalism
Noseweek
Mail and Guardian
Code4SA
City Press
Mail and
Guardian/Code4SA
Media Monitoring Africa
Wazimap
Data Journalism
Media Monitoring Africa
11
12
13
14
Open By-Laws
Ward geolocation
Domestic worker tool
Protest map
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
Data Journalism
AMI/Code4SA
Preakelt Foundation
Code4Sa
AMI/Code4SA
15
16
17
Support to Cape Times
African News Innovation Challengde
Open Data Now Unconference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Cape Times
ANIC
Code4SA
18
19
20
21
Community Meetups
3-day training data usage
Training WikiAfrica employees
People’s Assembly Intern
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
Training/Conference
22
eNCA Intern
Training/Conference
Code4SA
Livity Africa
WikiAfrica
Parliamentary
Monitoring Group
eNCA/AMI
23
School of Data
Training/Conference
OKF/Indigo Trust
24
Data Analysis for Civil Society
Training/Conference
Code4SA
25
Conferences
Training/Conference
Code4SA
26
Data training Workshops
Training/Conference
Code4SA
27
Ford Housing Project
Technical
28
29
30
31
Road to Justice
API Development
Election Registration Tool
Parliamentary Monitoring Group Content
Management System
Memorandum of understanding with ReAction Consulting
Mobile Data Collection
African LII
Technical
Technical
Technical
Technical
Technical
Open Democracy
Advice Centre
Rape Crisis
Code4SA
Preakelt Foundation
Parliamentary
Monitoring Group
Re-Action
Technical
Technical
HealthE
African LII/Indigo
Health, violence, law
Server for API’s
Politics, voting, society
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
Health, medicines
Politiics, voting, society
News Scraping
Speak Up Mzansi!
Investigation into medicine procurement in
West-Africa
Early Childhood Development
Naked Data Newsletter
Other
Other
Other
University of San Diego
Freedom House
ANCIR
Politics, voting, society
Youth, diaologue, politics
Health, medicines
Other
Other
Code4SA
Code4SA
Health, medicines
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
3
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
Health, medicines
Media, minorities,
representation
Politics, local, journalists,
civ.soc.
Politics, stats
Politics, voting, society
Minorities, injustice
Information, civil services
Practical help for journalists
Practical help for journalists
Binding governm, priv.sect,
media, academics.
Hackaton
Social mov. Training
Social mov. Training
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
promoting, schooling,
incorporating datajourn.
Minorities, injustice
49
1) Information gathered in one tool about laws. Visualization of the process and a onestop shop for all information related to the law. It is intended for researchers, journalists,
civil society and other curious industries to help them questions about legislation
2) Development of a tool to compare prices when purchasing of medicines. Information
collected on medicines in 15 SADC (Southern Africa Development Community)
countries. Subsequently, a database has been developed that assists countries in
preparing prescriptions and locating suppliers of medicines. The tool is meant to help
save money on medicines and improve quality. The whole project is part of the
SAPRAM program (Southers African Regional Program on Access to Medicines Ines).
3) Developing applications with mobile data collection that ensure that 150 community
health monitors collect information on a monthly basis about the zero stock of
medicines in health clinics. This information can be used by these organizations as
evidence of poor service to the government.
4) Graphic visualization of the political influence of Jacob Zuma in government
departments by showing cadre deployment
5) Tool in which neighbors can see what their neighborhoods voted for in the lasts
elections. This was an experiment on the provision of such information about the 2009
elections.
6) A mobile-friendly website that helps medicine consumers to find cheap general
medicine. Both patients, doctors and health insurances use the tool.
7) Visualization of distribution of sex and age within political parties.
8) A tool that visualizes the results of the elections. Developed for the Mail and Guardian
during the elections of 2014. Online readers could see results coming in on their
website. As it turned out, readers stayed on the website for more than ten minutes. The
success of visualizations is seen by Code4SA as a sign of great interest of the public
when it comes to public, online interactive content (especially at live events).
10) A ‘flagship’ data tool that visualizes election data on hyper local level as a research
tool for journalists and civil society. Both media and civil society can now find
demographic information in geographical areas at various local levels.
11) Tool that will map municipal statutes of Cape Town and Johannesburg, with the
intention to make them easy to find. The municipalities themselves make use of it.
12). The Preakelt Foundation was helped with this tool in their electoral registration
campaign on the basis of this 'ward geolocation' tool.
13) Housekeepers are a marginalized group in South Africa. They often get paid
dehumanizing wages. This tool helps employers determine a reasonable wage.
Code4SA examined the different costs of fare, transport, education, health of people
with low incomes. The purpose of the tool is to create a discussion between the
different employers over wages that they give to their householders.
14) Initially designed for ENCA. Protest Map visualizes previously unavailable information
about services and protests in South Africa. Developed as a media research tool, now
included in Wazimap.
50
15) Practical support of a Cape Times journalist, including setting up, cleaning and
visualizing datasets.
16) Experiment with journalists / interns in newsrooms that are trained to work with data
journalism.
17) Code4SA organized an ‘Unconference’ with representatives of civil society,
government, private sector, media and academia. The focus of the Unconference was
the discovery of open data in South Africa.
18) Code4SA organized twelve meetings and hackatons to build a community of
advocates of Open Data.
19) Code4SA gave three days training to use data Livity Africa, a content agency that
helps young people in bringing about social change in different ways.
20) Data Journalism training for WikiAfrica employees.
21) Code4SA trained an intern of People’s Assemly for six weeks to teach him to data
journalism and make infographics. Code4SA did this to promote data journalism in
South Africa. During the six weeks, Code4SA supported him with guidance and
technical assistance. The work he finally yielded was qualitatively not very strong, but
Code4SA recognizes the importance of an experienced data specialist and an editorial
in an organization, it helps them to better understand their own data and communicate.
22) Similar as above (researching and creating data visualizations), but at eNCA, a
television broadcaster. After four weeks of intensive interactive training they sent to
Johannesburg to work there on the eNCA office. After two months she came back
because she had trouble with the pressure on editors and grounding in Johannesburg.
She gave some articles, but Code4SA concludes that integrating junior trainees in the
editorial is not so successful.
23) Through a competition (indicate motivation) organizations could compete to get a
mentor Code4SA in applying data media or civil society. Mentoring begins with a twoday workshop focused on data collection, cleansing and presentation. Then they can
on the basis of a specific project on a weekly basis guidance, advice and training given
by the mentors.
24) He Code4SA offered its services to Ndifuna Ukwazi (nonprofit organization), the
International Budget Partnership and Black Sash (human rights organization), in order to
help with the cleanup, processing and analyzing of data. Work with Ndifuna Ukwazi is
now included in the School of Data project. On the other collaborations have yet to be
started.
25) Code4SA steps outside the office to get in contact with other organizations. The
organization has been present and has presented at the following conferences: Populus
conference in Chile Open Knowledge Festival in Berlin, Code for America Summit in
San Francisco, Hacks / Hackers Media Party in Buenos Aires, Code Camp for the
World in Bellagio, Law via the Internet in Cape Town, South African Local Government
Association (Salga) meeting in Cape Town, presentation of the SADC Medicines
Database to permanent secretaries and at ministries or health in Lesotho, Zambia,
Zimbabwe and Botswana. Guardian Activate Conference in Johannesburg Workshop at
Power Reporting Investigative Journalism Conference in Johannesburg, Hack / Hackers
hosted meetings in Johannesburg and Cape Town, Presentation of SADC medication
51
database of officers from 13 SADC (Southern African Development Community), Open
Data Now Conference South Africa hosted, Social Media Week is hosted in
Johannesburg.
26) Organized a workshop in Cape Town and Johannesburg. During the workshop,
media and civil society organizations have been trained in the use and presentation of
data.
27) Develop pilot system that creates a channel of communication between residents of
the slum (squatter camp) Red Hill and the City of Cape Town. A project to facilitate
housing for these residents has been running for about ten years, many of them have
no hope of ever getting a house. Through the communication channel, the municipality
informs the residents and the residents themselves can information that is important to
them.
28) A pilot project to see how victims of violence can be helped by NGOs, the National
Prosecuting Authority, the police, Tutuzela Health Centres by providing information
about their case, their rights and a calendar of activities such as subpoenas.
29) A server APIs to support further application development (applications for elections,
police, protests, drugs, mapping, geocoding).
30) API developed the to help the Preakelt Foundation locate their users to make their
voices district intended for the registration of national elections.
31) Strengthening and flexibility create the content management system of the
Parliamentary Monitoring Group, which provides information on the parliament. Initially
Code4SA found himself not suitable for it, but the commission adopted later anyway,
because it offers opportunities for growth and stetl PMG able to offer other
organizations access to their content.
32) Technically supporting SADC Secretariat.
33) Both HealthE and Afro Barometer have Code4SA asked to give them advice on
their mobile data collection programs. In HealthE helped with setting up monitoring. In
Afro Barometer is assisted in digitizing the paper system.
34) AfricanLii (working on accessibility of South African law) is helped to restructure their
services and incorporate technology into their future plans.
35) Operating on continuing the work that Code4SA did for Media Monitoring Africa
(see project below) were in this project 100 online news publications placed collected
before and after the elections and decompose. The information is used for a research
project to analyze the election and reporting biases and promises made to determine
during the election period.
36) Online platform to encourage dialogue between politicians and South African youth.
Freedom House is trying to encourage democracy among young people. On the
platform they can discuss about issues that are important to them. Politicians guest will
talk in different interviews. Initially Code4SA not entirely agree with the logic of the idea
of Freedom House, it seemed Code4SA important that alongside the system should be
working on the development of communities and providing multiple channels: web,
mobile, MXlt , text. Freedom House was to agree and the project is still in development.
52
37) This project is still in its infancy. In collaboration with the African Network of Centers
for Investigative Reporting (ANCIR) Code4SA working on a project to investigate
potential irregularities in the supply of medicines in Sierra Leone, Senegal, Nigeria,
Ghana and Cameroon. In cooperation with local journalists, sensitive documents from
ministries of Healthcare are collected.
38) This project is still in its infancy. Code4SA has begun to consider how they can
assist grassroots ECD centers in Kwa-Zulu Natal by promoting early childhood
development.
39) Until March 39 newsletters sent Code4SA named "Naked Data 'about data
journalism at local and international level. Through the website of Code4SA people can
subscribe to the newsletter, and he is sent to their email address.
53
PREFIX II – Semi structured interview
The interviews are not to be conducted in especially this order. Depends on the
respondent and whether communication through Skype goes well. Questions were
reformulated new questions were formulated after every interview.
On Code4SA:
•
•
•
•
•
Motivations for founding Code4SA
What is social change?
Partners and tools (who is responsible, what qualifies, who qualifies, how does
that work?) ! how do you judge?
What are the characteristics of projects or plans?
When is a project satisfactory?
Personal:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Can you tell me something about yourself?
What kind of work do you do?
Why here and not somewhere else? (what attracts you?)
How are you different or the same from your colleagues (trying to get the
conversation about motives, shared qualities or interests?)
What do you consider yourself to be? (maybe techie/journalist/activist?)
What are rewarding and frustrating things about your job?
Considerations on ‘tasks’?
What kind of person do you have to be to work at Code4SA?
What does the combination of different people bring about?
What are you proud of?
On journalism, data (room for philosophical thoughts)
•
•
•
•
What does journalism mean? (how is Code4SA different or the same?)
Data – does it make a journalist redundant? (are data facts, thus truth?)
Is Code4SA journalistic?
What is the difference between you and a journalist? (Similarities)
54
PREFIX III – transcriptions
INTERVIEW HANNAH WILLIAMS – graphic designer
First off, how did you get affiliated with Code4SA?
Well, I'm a graphic designer, graphic designing background. I've been working
professionally in the communications industry for about thirteen years now. And at
some point I decided that I wanted to do more worked that had some sort of social
impact, which wasn't just commercial design. And so, we started a school agency, goal
was trying to do social projects, but funded by our commercial work, some public
artworks, some involved some data and we had no idea what we were doing haha.
And last year I was offered a position, part-time position as a design mentor at a news
developments magazine. And the idea of that is giving young people work experience.
At a design magazine. So what happened is that they arranged for me to get set on this
data journalism workshop which I attended and that was sort of my first exposure to
the real world of data haha. And thought wow there's all these tools I don't know about
and that could make life so much easier. Following that, giving these workshops they
said: you look very exited about it, and we have a fellowship opportunity coming up
(school of data fellowship). So I applied, I didn't think I would get it. And I got a place,
and sort of since I have been working at code4SA and school of data. It's fairly new to
me, I have been doing it for less than a year.
Can you tell a little more about the School of Data?
It sort of works like in SA, the fellows work independently. We work with embedded
fellows. The theory is, in stead of training a lot of people, it has to work like snowball
effect. I train five, they train some more.
So what is it about Code4SA that attracts you personally?
It's just the work that they're doing. And I like the attitude that they want to produce
tangible results. I have found in my limited experience working in the NGO world, and
this is my very honest opinion, I find some NGOs, everything revolves about getting
funding. Obviously they need it. So people make nice presentations, to get more
funding, I find that real outcomes, compared to the corporate commercial world, I find
NGOs generally, this is very broad, they often congratulate results of mediocracy, I find
that the little performance, they seem to take things a little slower and not take things
as serious...it's a very poor generalization haha. And I like the fact that at Code4SA we
really wanna do things, get things done and achieve something.
What are the, well, people affiliated with Code4SA, what sort of people, probably a very
general question. What kind of people works there, what binds you all?
I think I am the odd one out haha. With my creative background. They're all like
supergeeks.
You're more of an artist.
Yeah I mean, I am a little bit geeky, bit they're next level geeky. They're all like
programmers. And even though I know al little bit, because I make websites, I come
from a very different background. Initially, I found that, because we've got very different
thinking styles, it was tricky to sort of sit in.
What do you mean by different thinking styles?
In projects, in their minds, they have different things they prioritize and I think more of
application, and they wanna make the technical work.
55
Is that a good combination?
Yeah it is a very good combination, and it is a nice experience and I have found with
other projects that the more diverse your skills set is, the better the results are. Looking
at a problem from different angles. I would never look at something the way they do it
and they would have never looked at it the way I do. And so it's nice, I think it makes
you come up with more comprehensive solutions.
And something I was wondering, which is, the first time I read about Code4SA. I'm an
anthropologist and I am doing a master in journalism and what I find interesting in
journalism right now is that there used to be this monopoly on knowledge. Journalists
had the connections and they could publish. But now with the Internet and everybody
having videophones and blogs, the way information is used is changing. Code4SA want
to support informed decision making, but in a way, that is something that the first
journalists did as well. Spreading information to promote informed decision making.
Can you relate to that?
I think it is a very interesting way of looking at things. You have a very good point. The
whole point of anyone being able to write an article is very democratizing...if that is a
word. Anyone, even I could write a blogpost. I don't have to have real facts though. But
I think real reliable sources of information are challenged. Open data world is probably
very journalistic, like journalism was a hundred years ago.
Yeah maybe when the first video journalists came people would say: this is not
journalism, journalism is what you write in the paper.
I think that is a very interesting point.
What do you think it means to be a journalist? And is there a difference to what you
guys do at Code4SA?
In terms of journalism and Code4SA, I do think to a large extent, usually journalism is
exclusively aimed towards the public. Whereas, some of the things Code4SA do is for
the general public, many is for civil society or journalists. So it is sometimes a little more
targeted and focused when I would think that is one of the big differences. But there
are many overlaps. Code4SA, that is something we might work on is to get the projects
more out there, publicize it more. Because that is not really their background and it is
not really what they do. And so we could reach more people with projects, I think we've
got some very useful tools. So a bit more marketing and a bit more exposing.
Yeah Ray said that that is one of his main goals for 2015. What do you think defines
success for Code4SA? Getting out there?
No it is a much broader objective, I think there would be different milestones and
objective, but that would be one of them. I think generally as a SA organization the
ultimate successful goal would be to make information easily accessible to the general
public. And have citizens participate and be more active in their local communities and
in broader...government. Because we have this democracy, which is supposed to be
very participative, but they don't use it because they don't know how it works and they
just don't know how to open up and release information either. You know, just the
average guy working in an office. There are a lot of gaps that need to be breached. I
guess that's an ultimate goal, that's a big goal.
That seems like a very good future goal. Is there a big digital gap in SA? The group that
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doesn't have that digital opportunities, is that the group you want to reach eventually?
I think it is a tricky circumstance, because working with technology like this, talking
about the general public..., which has high levels of inequality. I think probably the
majority of the population is in the lower level income groups. Lots of people in rural
areas. Interesting things are gonna happen in the next few years, with smart phones,
and pressure on the African market for that is massive. SA is also very lucky; it is one of
the African countries with very advanced phone networks. That is really cool. Yeah so,
smart phones and internet access penetrate the market more and it is happening very
very rapidly. People are skipping the whole thing of just having a phone or a computer
and are going straight onto smart devices.
Mobile first.
Yeah it changes the ways, people don't work that much on computers, so you got to
keep that in mind building interfaces and that sort of stuff. I think in the next two years,
the level of access that people have to technology will increase. I am not sure what the
stats are.
Earlier on you were saying that there are a lot of different kind of people working at
Code4SA. You as a designer, a journalist, the techies. In what way does that bring
value? Is it unique?
I'd like even more diverse. In my experience, working on projects where you have the
biggest diversity of skill sets are the most successful. Creative problem solving.
Sometimes people from different backgrounds come up with very different ways of
looking at things. I think it is a really good thing, could really be more diverse. Not just
journalism, but related to...
Also makes me wonder...data is a way to tell a story, if data is truth, or objective. Does
that make a journalist redundant?
No I don't think so, I think to a large extent, a spreadsheet or a bunch of statistics. The
key role a journalist has, they don't have to be technical. Their role is to tell the story,
what does this mean? And find interesting things in it. Maybe there's very big
differences, I don’t know, the number of televisions people own in a certain area. It's
interesting, here they don't really have TV’s and there they have a lot. You can find
interesting correlations. Data is just data. It's not a story.
Data is just out there, but someone has to go up there and use it. What you pick to
clean and scrape and prepare is intentional.
Yeah what do you highlight? You can take any angle on the story. A journalist chooses
to highlight what he tells to. So that's exactly the same in a way. I think part of the thing
that is important. Nothing is neutral. Just because it looks almost scientific, that data,
that's absolutely not neutral.
There is probably so many subjects or topics to choose from. What is a theme or topic
that is interesting for you?
I think everything is very interesting. I do like looking at things that challenge
assumptions. People assume things...and the only way to address problems is to sort
of break down assumptions and think about what is really happening. For example,
there were a lot of protests in Cape Town because people were staying in informal
settlements and they don't have sanitations. The city says: yes we provided toilets,
we've done it, and we’ve spent the money. So what happened a group of community
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organizations said: all right where are all those toilets, are they even working. So they
started collecting data. We counted every single one. And this sort of opened up a
dialogue.
It sounds like you also have a social agenda, focused on civil society.
Yes, like personally, in a country like SA. I grew up, I sort of benefited from the
apartheid era. And there's a lot of inequality and a lot of issues and I just would really
like to do everything I can to address it because it is not cool that people are having a
really hard time and I'm here just..
Is it safe to say that people who work at Code4SA feel a little bit like activists as well?
Yeah I think you can definitely day that, big social agenda going on.
So, you could probably make more money somewhere else. Siya said the other day: I
could make a whole lot more at some commercial place, but this is what I feel that I
have to do.
From what I've seen I haven't seen Code4SA developing something overly commercial.
Mainly just when a NGO comes up to them. No vanity projects.
In what way plays activism a role in what Code4SA does? How do you pick a right
partner? How do you decide this is something or someone I want to work with.
Something I found is a great factor...first I didn't understand why they choose certain
organizations I felt we had to open up a little bit. And I think a big factor is an
organization that is actually willing to commit time, money and resources to make this
happen. A lot of people: oh data is exiting, visualizations, so cool. But at the end of the
day to produce something you really have to put in, time, money, man-hours,
somebody has to do the work. What happens in order to get an end results we have to
make sure an organization is actually committed to doing this and isn't just exited and
really has a budget to do it. So I think that is a very big factor. For the rest they're very
willing to work with any organization that shows: look we really want to do this, we need
help. With regards to topics of social agenda's, I'm not really sure. Generally they try to
help anybody. They've worked with education things, budget stuff, you know crime
statistics. I think as long...I don't think there is a specific set of topics.
Did working as a fellow change the way you feel about yourself. Or identify. Have you
become more of a data person or data journalist?
I have to say, very much. Previously I have been a graphic designer, making websites,
logo's. Now people come to me: oh you're the data person! That is really cool, that has
definitely changed how I probably see myself and my skill set and also how other
people are approaching me. That's quite surprising.
[Some talk about the English language and how Afrikaans and Dutch are similar and
how data journalism is used in the Netherlands.]
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INTERVIEW GREG KEMPE – the software developer
Hi Greg how are you? Thank you so much for making time!
Sure, let's see how I can help you.
[some talk about the connection and the camera]
Shall I just start off telling you what I'm looking for, what I want to know about
you? Yeah So I've got three different kind of questions. One part is focused on the
people that work at Code4SA, so you in this case haha. And some questions about the
organization and its motivations and some, little bit, more philosophical questions about
journalism versus activism versus technical stuff. But I'll start off asking some questions
about you. You are the technical person at code4SA right, the software developer,
right?
Yes. I'm the technical lead of Code4SA which means that i have the general technical
direction and I also do development work.
A couple of weeks back you talked to Evelien and she talked out that interview. I read
that, so i know a little bit about you. But I would still love to ask if you can tell me a little
about yourself and how you came about to work at Code4SA.
Yeah, its probably gonna duplicate what I told Evelien. I worked in the corporate world
for six years and I got tired of that and decided to do something different. And I was
crafting around looking for interested things to do and I ended up being involved in
what is being known now as the civic tech movement. Using technology and open data
and that sort of thing to try and drive social change and improve how people interact
with their government and their municipalities and that sort of thing. So I started a
project there and I got to know Code4SA and Adi and we consulted together for about
eight of nine months and then after that time we decided to actually join forces and I
came to work for Code4SA
So I hear you talk about civic tech and social change. So what is it about those things
and about open data that got your interest?
From a personal standpoint, I've got these skills which, when you're deeply involved
with a technical organization you don't realize just how valuable they are. And when you
go beyond that organization you realize how valuable they can be. And I wanted to use
my technical skills to try and change South Africa a little bit. To try and make people's
lives better. Maybe just a small bit better, but try to change things. There's a lot of push
at the moment in the sort of commercial world where people with strong technical skills
realize they can go in and change industries. You can change the taxi industry when
you're uber. You can change the advertising industry or digital marketing. And I figured
Hey! we can do they dame thing in a way that affects people's live positively. From a
sort of civic standpoint.
Is that civic standpoint, civic change point a factor that binds the people of code4SA?
You all seem to have very different backgrounds, but is that something that binds you?
[Enthusiastically] Yeah definitely, definitely! We have that common element across all of
us. We all want to make a difference, we all feel actually we could do something to help
out. We have all worked in a full profit world; we don't have a huge problem with that.
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And we know we can find work in a full profit world, but the desire to make a difference
definitely binds us and that's why we're working and doing what we're doing now
That's really cool. Over the last couple of weeks, reading into your projects and
Code4SA I really came to admire what you guys do and even though it is very hard to
judge from here what kind of effects it has in SA, it looks really cool. I was wondering, in
your very small organization. What are the most frustrating things about your job, and
on the other side, the most rewarding?
Haha, that's good question. The most frustrating thing is...we are small which means
you have to do everything. Which one the one hand is a lot of fun and interesting, but
also means a lot of jumping around and wearing a lot of different hats. So at times, you
can't go as deeply into one role as you'd love to go.
Do you have an example?
I'm doing development but i also need to work hard on what [..] and growing a
community, working out the business direction. And sort of doing high-level business,
but also low level technical work. And time is limited. So it's getting around doing all
those things and doing a great job on them, which is challenging. And I was gonna add,
what, not so much frustrating, but more an interesting constraint,....working in a world
where our budgets are tight, the projects we do..our partners..they have tight budgets.
That means we have to be quite creative and quite clever on how we build things,
which, at times is frustrating, because you know I'd love to have a indefinite big budget
and build whatever we want. But ultimately that wouldn't build the right thing. So it's
really good to be able to..that you have to work in the constraint of a narrow budget. It
forces you to think: okay what really is the most important thing here. And build for that.
And make clever choices so that you can work within that constraints rather than just
building, adding just because you can.
It makes you set priorities.
Exactly. It actually makes for some good trade-offs. It forces you to trade-offs.
I also wanna know what you find most rewarding haha, but now that you mentioned
priorities. You can really see themes in your projects like law, medicines, health, politics,
minorities, gender, that sort of very societal subjects. And I was wondering like, what
really has your priority?
I don't know [thinking]...well the area that interests me the most is hmm access to legal
information, legislation, and...just because just because i think there's few work being
done there. There is more work being done in the open data world, there's more on
budgets, work being done trying to give people a voice. But there's is very very little
work being done in the open on legislation.
What do you mean by legal information and legislation?
The laws of the city where you live, general access to those. There are so many laws in
Africa that are literally not written down. So not only do the lawmakers not have access
to them, but also the people on the ground, living, do not have access to those. People
don't even know their rights.
I can imagine that the people don't know where to find the rules...
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…and to apply them the law, absolutely. Often things like case (?) law...legal
information, is passed down verbally as supposed to written down. Which means
people have to, you can’t actually go to a reference book of law in some countries. And
say well what is the law. Because it is all verbally handled.
Is there something you're working on right now that has to do with this legislation?
Yeah so we're working on something with African LII that is the African Legal
Information Institute. Putting up a platform, that they would like to use to capture,
consolidate and publish legislation in an open format. Which is very related to the
OpenByLaws project, which I'm sure you've read about.
Is that meant for journalists or also for..what would you call them...normal civilians?
Hahaha. Normal people. So the target group for the platform itself is legal experts, so
law librarians, or African LII domain experts in terms of legislation. Once they use the
platform to capture all the legislation, they build websites on top of that which makes it
very easy to get at that legislation and to read it and share it and then your target
market is much broader. Potential uses of that are practicing law professionals, lawyers,
governments, the man on the streets. If you're talking about local legislation, it's
definitely the man on the street. there is a big range there.
Would you consider it your...in this particular situation...or in general. Would you
consider it your job to release data? Or also interpret it?
We see our role as being...using information to sort of promote informed decision
making, to drive social change and sometimes that takes on different roles. So
sometimes that might be, actually opening up existing data, making existing data more
accessible, or finding stories in data. So working with a partner, who've got a bunch of
data and they want to make some decisions on that, we can help make them
understand that. And in other cases it's actually saying: well this data hasn’t been
collected yet, because there is no [..] to collect it. You know, it all ties into the logic of
making informed decisions.
So that makes you...sort of, correct me if I'm wrong, sort of enablers in different ways?
Enabling either existing data or hidden data to be accessible.
Yeah that's a good way of putting it. We're trying....I guess on the left hand side if
you've got data.. and on the right hand side...you've got someone trying to make a
decision based on that data. The data might not exist, it might not be available, it might
not be well formatted, it might be dirty. And we're going to sit in the middle of there and
do what is necessary to find the data, or clean it or analyze it and make it available on
people on the other side and make decisions.
And so..and those, decisions and that sort of, social change..this might be a little bit of
an open door, but what is social change to you?
Social change is where people's lives improve. Put very broadly. And that might involve
better access to sanitation, it might involve having cleaner streets, it might involve
feeling more secure, it might involve having better medical care. It might even involve
knowing more what is going on in their governments, city or their home and I think there
is a whole range of things and we deliberately keep that broad because I think there are
many ways to change people's lives.
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If I’m right, is that the ideology that Code4SA lives by?
Yeah, I think, the key one, the same element that brings us together. The belief that if
we use data and we make informed decisions and we can help ourselves and other to
lead better lives.
Would you consider yourself to be somewhat of an activist then?
Haha, oh...I think that there are many people out there that either have gone before me
or working now that are far better activists than I am haha. But I guess in a very small
way.
So what makes someone a better activist than you in this case?
I think there are people who have made many sacrifices to be activists and to drive
change and certainly those that have made more sacrifices that than I made. I don't
wanna say I'm an activist and piss off others haha.
Well you are doing, you're living and working by an ideology that strives to make
people's lives better. That sounds a little bit like an activist standpoint right? Maybe if i
ask in broader way...would you consider Code4SA to be somewhat of an activist
organization?
I guess there are some aspects that are activist-like. We motivate for open data, we
work with...with local cities to strive open data policies and to open up data so yes. In a
way we are activists for open data (sounds surprised by his own findings) and open
government. I guess you could say that there definitely is an activist component.
Haha, and also, I was wondering if you're looking to partner up with a partner or
funders...what if a company comes that has a whole lot of money but
doesn't necessarily share your ideas on open data or what is ...let's say..good or bad...
Haha, we primarily want to work with organizations that believe in also making a
change. So if we have a full profit company coming to us with a load of money, but
not necessarily promote social change it might well be a perfectly legitimate full profit
project but we would rather focus on groups that are trying to make a change.
What would qualify as a right partner?
That's a complicated thing, but that is one of the aspects. I mean, we look to see...we
prefer to work with partners who already have support on the ground, a community
they're working with. And we can help them work [...]. Predominantly because (15:30)
it's very difficult to built a new community fresh from scratch. Who are already have that
community doing good work but wanna make it more efficient.
Going back to what I asked you a little bit earlier. I was also wondering what you find
most rewarding about your job.
It's gonna sound a bit cheesy. But when one our partners comes in saying: you've
really made a huge difference. And even though allow them to something they would
otherwise not be able to do, that's very satisfying. You know, when we significantly
reduce costs, which is very tangible. Or when we allow them to do something which
they otherwise wouldn't have been able to do at all. So they've been really able to work
with their community. For instance, we work with a group to make statistics about
the delivery of healthcare more understandable. So people who work with the
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healthcare community or the people on the ground or people needing healthcare...they
actually have a reasonable dialogue about that [...]. That is very satisfying, companies
being able to have decent conversation rather than just making guesses.
Elaborating on that, what makes a plan or project or conference..what makes you say
to each other: this was a success or this was a failure?
That really depends on the project, that's really contextual. So a project can be
successful in many ways and can..don't wanna say fail, but there can be multiple
aspects about a project at the end of the day. And I think a key one would be: has it
actually managed to change lives and how many lives and to what extend? Has it
helped people, you know, if we put together a small project and it helps saving people a
significant about of money or time or stress in their lives, that it's successful.
So what are your own personal favorite project?
Like I said, the legislation is great for me right now. So ByLaws and the Indigo platform
are both very interesting to me. I Also...actually most of the stuff I've made I find
interesting haha. I really enjoyed the wazimap project. I really enjoyed wazimap because
it gave me very personal first hand feeling of actually the variance in our country. Huge
income differentials, large range of cultures, large ranges of access to services and that
sort of thing. And by exploring the data and putting it together it really helped me to see
how differently people can live in SA and can yet be neighbors and live so close to each
other. I really enjoyed helping other people also realize that. It's really satisfying that you
give people a tool and they can start exploring their neighborhood. And where they live,
their city and they start going: whow that's interesting! and they find something they
didn't know. And we just shed a little bit of light there about the community they live in.
Does that make you...working on a project like Wazimap, does that make you
somewhat of a journalist as well? Setting up either a story or enlargement of knowledge
or information about a place?
To some extend I suppose it is a similar role to that of a journalist. Sometimes you're
doing investigative work to find a story and to tell that story. We do have journalist
partners that work with us who do that work, much better than I do. but Yes, when
you're going through a data set trying to find a story and trying to understand what that
means..well yeah I think you're doing something somewhat similar to what a journalist
does. But any person analyzing data, digging through, will be going to a similar process
as what a journalist goes through.
(20:02)
Yeah maybe this is also the same sort of, that you're very, curious about how things
come about and..how do you put that..
Yeah absolutely, curiosity. if you were to say two things that characterize us, one is, you
know, people who care and the other things is...people who are curious.
That's a very, actually an interesting statement you're making there. I was thinking
what's considered to be journalism, maybe it's a little old fashioned...thinking of
someone who goes into the field, talks with people, makes a story. Originally what all
journalists want is to inform people and keep people accountable, governments
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accountable. I think that is one of the main things of...a journalist or journalism. But
that's actually exactly what Code4SA is doing as well...informing people and keeping
people accountable, right? Just a thought..
There is definitely an aspect of that. I guess that's why we overlap so much with
journalism and do so much data journalism work. I don't think that's the only aspect of
it. Improving people's lives can be through keeping people accountable, but there are
other ways as well. Not just keeping governments accountable, but keeping others
accountable as well. We just did a big piece on domestic workers in SA which is really
great and has generated a lot of discussion and controversy about it. But that has
nothing to do with governments, but a lot with the man on the street. You know, your
next door neighbor, saying, how much do you pay your domestic worker, how much is
fair, how much is reasonable?
Yeah that's such daily subjects that people worry about.
Exactly. It's very personal. Many South Africans have a domestic worker and yet there
is such little agreement on what the law says like how much you should pay a domestic
worker officially. That's the reality of it. It’s good to encourage discussion around it,
even though it's uncomfortable.
Do you think that data journalism should be part of a daily journalism routine in SA or in
general?
My colleagues like to emphasize the fact that it is datajournalism, not datajournalism
haha.
Haha, yeah that's Jason right?
Yeah haha. To some extension, that [...]. I think yes, there could be more focus on
informing stories with a hard fact underground. Rather than just reporting about what
happened. Like, this person says this. You could say: how do they back that up, what's
the information behind that. Just like finding other stories, it's personal stories that
people try to tell, but there is also data behind it. Like the domestic workers. And also
challenging what is being said in public. With data and with evidence.
So I was also wondering, I heard Jason say he's back at working one day a week at
code4SA. Are you and Adi right now the core of Code4SA?
Yeah, we're the core at the moment. We've just got a new hire, which is exiting! And
we're gonna have someone else joining us, which is great. Yeah we're the core group.
We have group that work nearby as partners, but we are sort of formally the only
fulltime employees.
Do you work fulltime at code4SA?
Yeah fulltime.
So what are the plans for 2015? I heard Jason say this might be one of the junction
points...either growing or changing strategy. That this is a very exiting time.
Haha yeah this is gonna be a very interesting year. We're a small company and like any
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small company, or young company I should say...things are gonna be changing and
you're gonna be changing purpose and direction. You're pretty irregular in your first
year. There's lots of exiting things going on...data journalism school, looking at a couple
of interesting partnerships, potential great funding partners, lots of opportunity this year.
So yeah its gonna be interesting.
That sounds very positive, you sound exited!
Yeah it's gonna be good haha!
Do you have any ideas on how things are going to develop the next couple of
months? Or what I mean, what is your focus gonna be? More on training? Developing
tools..
Generally we're gonna focus on training, focus on adjusting tools that we have and
pushing them out there and getting people more interesting in them and understanding
what needs to change to get them more interesting. We're also looking to carry on
some more partners, and complete the projects that we're on, pushing new projects,
getting funding. So the next couple of months are going to be crazy to say the least.
that new person you hired, what kind of background does she or he have?
Uhm he is also got a technical background, but is also interested in open data and civic
technology. So we're very exiting to getting him on board. Because like I said, that’s
one of the key things we're looking for, the interest in making a difference.
On the technical part, we're you also involved in the hacks/hackers movement?
Before no, I didn't know about it. When i was in the corporate world i didn't know these
things were going on. But now I've learned about the hacks hackers group.
Is there overlap in what Code4SA does and the ideology of hack/hackers?
Definitely, hacks hackers to me is about journalists meeting up with people who can do
some data crunching. To complement those skills. That is definitely where we lie, there
is an overlap.
What I was curious about, which is very hard to judge from the other side of the world.
When code4SA was founded, was there a gap? An information gap that needed to be
filled? Where there organizations that did similar things? Unique in that?
As far as I know, in the SA context there was nobody else doing this. So we definitely
filled a gap. There are similar organizations around the world, in the UK. But it SA
definitely didn’t exist. As far as I know there was no good technical partner for civic
organizations. There was really no data journalism movement to speak of in SA.
Do many newsrooms know what you guys do and how you can be of help or
assistance or complementation?
At this point, all of the newsrooms know about us, which is great. I don't think the pin
has dropped for all of them quite what we can do for them and quite important
that data journalism is. Some realize more than others that journalism is undergoing
quite a change at the moment. So lots of people are scrambling. They don't realize
what the potential is.
When I look around in my own environment I see lots of...journalists getting in to
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technical stuff because it such...like a synergy combining those different kind of skills.
Yeah I definitely think there's opportunity there and in the same way there's opportunity
to take these skills and transform advertising or marketing or taxi's or you know, really
anything. Journalism is no different.
For now, I asked just about all my questions. Is there anything you would like to add or
something I should have asked?
Haha, what is your interest in this, why are you doing this?
Well, hum, my interest is that you know I’m doing a master in journalism but i got a
background in anthropology and with new technology and internet spreading all over
the world, you see lots of little startups and journalism business popping up. Here in the
Netherlands is mainly focused on different ways of telling stories and different ways of
making money. But we've got very social issues than probably in SA. And i was
wondering if there are any organizations that use those digital opportunities to
make change which also has something to do with journalism. Tat has got my personal
interest. I think that if I would be a little bit more technical that's probably what i would
want to do as well, trying to make a change in people's lives using those skills. So when
i was looking for a startup for my thesis to research we came about Code4SA and that
struck my attention and I thought that what you guys were doing is really cool. I joined
up with Evelien who is also a journalist and anthropologist. We decided that she was
gonna focus on data journalism and personally I am more interested in what drives
people and what drives and organization because if you're new, starting on a new
market, doing new stuff, you really got to be very motivated (Greg: haha). You got to be
passionate so I'm really interested in what drives you guys and what drives Code4SA.
That's interesting, when your stuff is out there, or when you've got a condensed version
of it I'd love to see it. What I think drives people in our...to versus to what drives people
in more typical Silicon Valley startups. I think it is quite different. But I don't really have
anything to back that up.
You said you worked at Amazon before, you could probably make a whole lot more
money there with your skills than you're making right now.
I could hahaha.
That's a decision you made and that says something about you I guess.
You're right absolutely. Part of what I noticed. Try and tickle that social conscience
which I think many of that technical people have..to make them aware that there's
an opportunity to really do something with their skills that can really help their country
and other people's lives..beyond just making money. But you can also make
money...we're not doing this for free and we need to put money on the table.
Of course. But I think it really says something about a person, when you're focus is
either on making a lot of money or realizing social change. But of course...you need to
get food on the table. What also interests me..traditionally, journalists sort of strive to be
objective, it's never really the case, but you strive to tell an objective story and inform
people, but if you combine journalism with activism...activism is more like, you've got a
goal you wanna achieve. That combination interests me. How to combine striving for a
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goal with striving for objectivity.
That's interesting, that's a good point.
[Conversation about other things]
Some people day: data is objective, data makes a journalist redundant.
I don't think that is true. First of all, I don't think data is objective. We have to interpret it
to make sense of it and just by that act we're making it subjective. Also data is not
perfect, it doesn't reflect exactly what is going on in the world because ways of
gathering data are flawed. You know, aggregating and analyzing data isn't perfect.
Agreed, data is not objective at all. Well, not at all, there is an objective about it but
definitely a subjective component as well.
You also choose which datasets to scrape and clean. “This is the type of data we're
interested in”.
Exactly. I mean absolutely. When we put something together like Wazimap we're
making a choice about what to include on that page. We're making a choice on how to
present those numbers and whenever you're doing that you're making a choice and
putting some form of subjectivism into it. So, in the same way no journalism piece could
be perfectly objective I think that no data journalism piece or tool could be objective
either.
Yeah, and also what you just said, If you make wazimap, how is that different from
journalism? If you say I'm not a journalist, really. So how is making something like
Wazimap different from what a journalist does? Just thinking out loud right now.
That is a good question. For me...a journalist tells a whole story. What we're trying to
do is setting a [...[iets van een haakje]], trying to say hey this is an interesting story here.
We see various points along a line, it is up to you to draw the dots and to find out
exactly where that line goes. To me, that's what the journalist does. We're just laying
down the seeds and saying there's a potentially interesting thing going on.
I guess that makes you enablers.
Yeah I think that's a good word. It's definitely an enabler. Rather than an end product in
its own right.
And maybe you've got a different role...enabling journalists and enabling stories. But
maybe you do strive for the same goals as many journalists do, informing people,
getting people accountable, making people's lives more informed.
Yeah I mean absolutely. The goals are similar, but the means are slightly different.
That's a really good way of putting it! Haha.
[einde praatje.]
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INTERVIEW JASON NORWOOD-YOUNG – the data journalism protagonist
Shall I just start off with telling you a little bit about what I want to know or like to ask
you? You talked with Evelien a couple of weeks back and we're both researching
Code4SA, and we're both researching a very different thing. She more on the data
journalism technical side, and I myself am more on the ideological side, what motivates
you guys. I have couple of questions in three different themes. One theme is the people
that work at code4Sa, so you in this case, the organization itself and the last one is how
Code4Sa can be placed somewhere between activism, journalism, hackers, that kind of
thing. Shall I just hit you with some questions?
Yeah!
So first, I read a little bit about you and saw your video from the other day. I was
wondering if you can tell me a little bit about yourself and what it is you do at code4SA
Well my background is actually as a journalist, technology journalist, over ten years, but
I’ve always coded at the same time. But 7 years ago I moved more to coding, joined a
publication called the mail & Guardian. And I was the technology manager of M&G
online. But I’ve also worked at other publishers, the daily Maverick. And then I entered a
start up where I made custom made management system for publishers, what M&G is
using today. And yeah, it ran into trouble, that was at the end of 2013. I joined
Code4SA, they were doing what I wanted to do anyway, data journalism. I was keen to
get into more data journalism stuff. That was more multiple disciplined journalism,
mixed multimedia, data, video, all those kind of things.
Do you, visualizations, do you all count them under the data journalism umbrella?
They are very different things, maps, graphs versus info graphics, they are all different
skills but get caught up together. And then there's [..] data journalism, which is scraping
the data which can be very problematic, peeling of the data, analyzing of the data. All of
those skills are very different. I guess you should try to pick up all of those skills.
Is the work that you do at Code4SA, is it more a storytelling side or more the technical
side as well?
Probably the more technical, should be more storytelling, but it ended up being more
technical. Also, doing a lot of training.
You give the trainings together with Raymond?
No, mostly together with the school of data. I manage some programs, just recently we
did a big two day course in JoBurg, 20 people were supposed to come, 10 journalists.
We really focused on tools they can use, showed them something called Open Refine,
used to analyze and clean data. It’s a Google product but Google has abandoned it.
Anyway, that is a product we use a lot internally. We train some people in Cape Town
and they got a lot out of it so we decided to focus on that in trainings [Kid coughing].
What is it that attracts you about Code4SA? Why is it that you work at Code4SA?
I'm actually down to one day a week at Code4SA. As of this month. The thing that
attracted me to code4sa, is the more technical side to it, I’m quite techie. I could do
that kind of stuff, and they're doing what I’m trying to do and that is promoting data
journalism in SA. So you know that is pretty much what i was interested in and we
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could match up.
Is there sort of a binding factor that binds people that work at Code4SA?
Uhm, we are all quite technical but also quite different. So, i don't know...not like..
The reason I ask has to do..when I took a look at the projects you've been doing it's a
lot on themes like law, medicines, health, politics, gender..very societal subjects. I
was wondering if that is something that is important to you as a person.
I think it's the reason. Why I do it...you can actually make a difference and make a
change as supposed to working at a start up or something where you're making ads.
Or an agency or something terrible like that...this is...improving society in many ways.
Code4SA..their work offers a lot of opportunities to make society better so if you use it
for that. The nice thing about SA...is that you can actually shift the needle; you can
make a difference by putting pressure at the right points. Think of it as using data as a
big lever and we just need to know the exact right point to put the lever.
Could you say that the people who work at Code4SA, I get the feeling, what you just
called improving society, that that idea, even though you all do very different things and
are very different, that that is something that seems to drive you.
Yeah I think that's pretty fair.
Do you consider yourself to be a journalist? Or maybe somewhat of an activist?
At the moment I do not consider myself to be a journalist because I haven't produced
much lately. But maybe an activist...[thinking]..yeah an activist is better, I’ve been doing
a lot of training, but I don't really enjoy training, it's not my favorite thing. I prefer doing
to training. So, yeah, maybe an activist developer or something!
So maybe at this time a little bit more of a techie than a journalist. Is that where you
want to be?
I think I'd like to shift a little bit back towards journalism. It can get a little boring on the
techie side. I don't think I can use all my skills; I used to be a pretty good journalist. And
I haven't done any for a while.
Would you say, first you where at code4SA fulltime...even though you've turned it down
to a little less. I was wondering what is the most rewarding and most frustrating thing
working at an organization like Code4SA?
The rewarding thing, initially one the most rewarding things is that we were free to what
we want. Now there's been put a little more structure in place. I think that is why I
reduced my days because I'm not really structured haha. But I've been trying to do a
little bit more project work with their partners, which brings in money. Which is
important. But I think it is not in line with doing better and doing really cool stuff. Which
it initially was.
Does that have to do with funding?
Yeah, there have been some things around funding. We don't really have cornerstone
funders, in a way that’s good. Nobody can tell us what to do. But it is also bad because
you always worry and you can't really plan ahead.
I can imagine that there might be. That you really have to consider with what kind of
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funders or partners you get into business with since you want to keep your
independence. I think everyone at Code4SA is extremely independent. We do not do
well if a partner tells us what to do. So, you know, you [..] but it wouldn't go well if a
funder would dictate anything.
How come?
Because we're so independent, we [..] we tell them to fuck off basically.
What have your favorite projects been so far?
I really liked the backslash project we did. Because it was so different to what we
normally do, physical paper based stuff. I also really enjoyed the election map we made
for the M&G, big technical challenge that was fun. I really like some of the stuff Adi has
done recently with visualizations, the valentine's thing Adi did, with ages and people
getting married. Adi for a while tried to do one a week haha.
You do the newsletter right?
That's really good, that keeps in touch with everything that is going on, i have to read a
hell of a lot. That keeps me on a roll.
how many people receive the newsletter?
Quite generally...not that many I think 250 I think.
Do you get reactions?
Yeah yeah yeah we do. Sometimes more than other times. Haven't quite worked out
what the spark is haha.
What kind of reactions do you get to the newsletters?
Some people suggest stuff. We haven't really got any negative reactions. Sometimes
people just say: I enjoyed your newsletter.
I have some questions on the organization as well. Some might be little bit open door
questions, but I'm still going to ask them. First I'd like to know, what was the ideology or
motivation in which Code4SA was founded?
Well, Adi's motivation was the surprise that data wasn't openly available initially. And
Adi kind of taught be quite a lot and I also strongly believe that government data should
be openly available. So, that is quite a touch point for me too. That was the one..open
data from governments. Then we thought what do we do with that data? Just getting
data produced is worthless. So we started exploring how best to use the data. And
more recently is more about supporting other non-profits other NGOs, giving trainings.
So seem to have a lot of data and have no idea what to do with it. And yeah, helping
them work with data [part of Jason's words are not clear since his little daughter is
yelling a bit].
A little while ago I heard people say that data makes journalists redundant. What is your
outlook on that?
Quite the opposite. I believe the journalist’s role is to take data and loads amounts of
information and to steer it into a way people can easily understand it. Hence data..is an
extension of that. That's why data and journalism go so well together...it's helping
people make sense of information.
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So when is a project, a data project, when is it a success? And when is it a failure?
One way we measure it, how long it’s taken to do versus how many users it’s gotten.
That's not they only measure...if it starts a dialogue. Have you seen the living wage
calculator that was creating a lot of conversation? There’s people discussing it. I think
that is a good measure of success. And then like, there is other measurable stuff. The
city of Cape Town is now releasing data. That's measurable. And I think that data
journalism is more of a topic in newsrooms, journalists now know what it is. We've
trained a lot of journalists to at least know the basics.
Do you think that Code4SA has played a role in making data more of a daily routine in
newsrooms?
Yeah definitely. We're pushing it quite hard.
Is Code4SA well known in de journalism world?
It's actually surprisingly well known!
Would you be able to say that for the last year, data journalism has become a bigger
thing?
Yeah it is. The interest we're getting, since the beginning of last year. People we're like:
we have no time. At the end of last year people came around. There has been a shift,
people, a lot of more people wanna talk to us about it. Yeah it has really changed.
On the success and failure question..is it more important that journalists use the tools or
rather normal people?
I think, for me journalists. I believe that they'll reach more people. We reach people
through news organizations.
What do you consider to be the most successful projects?
The school of data stuff has been good, that's my project haha. Training and working
with organizations, that's made impact and there are projects that came out of it.
Specifically the organizations [...] they have been mapping. Mapping the rich and poor
areas and how the city spends its money there, that's gonna be major. One of the guys
of the social justice coalition was also involved and wrote a piece in the Daily Maverick
and got a strong response from the government. That was good to see.
I can imagine that is very rewarding.
Yeah, definitely. We've been working with the municipality of the city get them to open
up their data portal. There is other stuff; there was a project, with the parliamentary
monitoring group, which is also important and serious research.
Have you every turned down a potential partner?
Yeah, we do occasionally? So, we believe that data get help people make better
decision in their lives. So we measure our projects against that. Will it help people make
better decisions? That is an important measurement.
The reason I ask, I get the idea that Code4SA based on a very strong ideological belief
that data should be open and for the better. I can imagine that if there is an organization
that says: I'll give you loads of money...but it is an asshole organization that that would
lead to some, well,..
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If they're an asshole organization we wouldn't work with them, haha. That's very easy.
I guess that others might say: well it's money.
We're not a corporate driven by money. We base our decisions on: is it in line with what
we do. Even PMG we had some issues with, they release a lot of data but not
everything.
Would you say Code4SA is the right name for the organization?
No definitely not. What would be a better name? Something like OpenDataSA, we did
something with a tagline, which was open data now, that was good.
[Little talk about SA and Cape Town]
I also have some little philosophical questions about journalism, since you've worked as
a journalist. As a journalist you sort of try to strive for objectivity. Not taking sides...but if
you work at an organization which has an activist goal as well, is that conflicting?
I don't think so because we seem to piss everyone off. In terms of political bias or
religious bias in SA or racial bias...on those three things, Code4SA is extremely
unbiased. They're really...we really don't care..it's data. And of course we do have an
agenda of getting data opened up..but that's it. I don't think there's anything else, I
don't think you could claim we're biased. We actually don't discuss religion and politics
in the office...especially Israel. It can be a bit of a...
Adi is from Israel right?
Nobody mentions Israel haha, sensitive subject. But apart from that…
A question I have been asking myself, how can you combine that striving for objectivity
with activist goals like in IndyMedia.
I wouldn’t say...we don't directly do much journalism; yeah we really assist other
journalist in their work. [..Skype]. It's not really an issue for us in that respect. One
danger that we have, which would be every journalist's issue is that you do try to find
an interesting story and sometimes you almost chase the more interesting story. The
danger of Code4SA as a data journalism company...which we are not..is that we don't
do the rigorous journalism that would be required of a data journalist. So for instance,
the piece Adi did with the marriages, that would be just the start for a data journalist.
Data journalists would then go out and find those people, check that and see, is that a
mistake? Who are these people, get a comment from home affairs, try to find the
people themselves, what the real story is. We just got a bit of cool data. The data is the
seed. It's the off start. It is dangerous to see Code4SA as a journalism company,
because we don't do that.
You say it quite harsh: we are not a data journalism organization.
We support data journalists and journalists. But the stuff we put out, I wouldn't call
journalism. Why not? We don't follow...it's like blogging really. We haven't given anyone
a place to reply...we haven't basically we haven't followed any of the journalism ethics
that would be required.
But when new genres come in journalism, people would say like: this is not journalism.
Maybe a hundred years ago, the first journalists said they wanted to do the same stuff
that you're doing..giving a voice to people, showing them their own surroundings,
politicians, that kind of stuff. There is a lot of overlap though.
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We can work with journalists to create a complete journalist package, like the stuff
Ray(mond) could do. Would fall more into journalism. Until you've done the
legwork...when you just sit there and stare at the screen for a few hours and do some
excel, it doesn't qualify as a journalistic piece. That's blog. That can lead to something
though. When we work with journalists we can turn it into something bigger. [...] When
the data is used to create a story, the start of a story, the genesis of a story. But the
story is really about the people.
What would your definition of data journalism be?
You can do full on data journalism, where there is like...my definition is any journalism
where the source, the primary source is data.
So maybe Code4SA is creating those primary sources?
Yeah definitely
It's funny, you all have a slightly different outlook on what data journalism is and where
Code4SA stands. I was wondering where you place Code4SA in the activism journalism - techie sphere.
Activism, journalism, techie triangle...I think, Code4SA is quite techie and I don't think,
they're not as activist as they were when they started. And with Ray's input they're
going towards journalism a little more. Techie on one...journalism number two, activism
on number three.
How come that's become a little less?
I think the organization is maturing a little bit. I don't think it's a good think. We should
be more activisty. The reality is that there's a lot of project work, which also has to do
with money and stuff. So yeah..
And what do you consider yourself to be right now?
I'm probably a bit more activist at the moment, I'm also a techie, but I want to move
back to some more journalism
[Talk about Jason's new job. Music streaming start-up.]
More doing some activisty stuff on the side, that still runs in my veins. Hacktivism.
[talk about how Adi and Jason met].
What do you think the future will bring?
I think we're at a critical junction at the moment. We could either kick off and be really
big or not. And if they don't, they'll struggle for a while and eventually lose relevance. Or
grow really big. So yeah, I think they need to pick up the gear, hire a few people, push
up on that. Broader thinking, much like the initial projects. And I suppose, Code4SA is
still very young, finding its identity. And everyone that joins, shifts the identity. There are
only a few persons at an office, a new person makes a very big difference. So if they
have some good hires, they'll do well. And if they don't they're going to struggle to kind
of pick it up. Really critical time, big investors and big funds looking at Code4SA. It will
be interesting, tough period.
I have one final question, something that noticed. You use the word they and not we.
I suppose that's because I'm down to one day a week. I'm finishing some projects and
when that is finished I'll probably do the newsletter for a while. At the moment the core
group is Adi and Greg. When I joined I would definitely call us 'us'. But it's the way it's
evolved over time, because I'm sort of moving out.
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INTERVIEW RAYMOND JOSEPH – The senior journalist
Can you tell me little bit about yourself and what it is that you specifically do at
code4SA.
I’m a journalist, I come from print, hum, and originally I am a freelance journalist, a
trained journalist. Consulting in newsrooms, content that sort of thing. Through hack
hackers I met the Code4SA guys. I’m really not fulltime staff, 10 days a month. I put
input into the tools the guys build from a kind of journalism point of view, because its
important when you built something its important that you think about the end user.
And unfortunately, techies don't really understand our world (haha).
Excuse me, very often, subtle changes, alternations, or kind things that people want to
do. Really it's often, moving around buttons, making suggestions about making
something more prominent of intuitive sort of thing.
I'm not a techie. You don't need to me a mechanic to drive a motorcar. Well, if you
drive a motorcar, you don't have to know how to fix that motorcar. You just gotta know
somebody who does. So that when you have a problem, you know where to go.
Often, on data stories, working with the coders of the techies, data journalism is all
about team work. NYT, guardian, best practice. People are working in teams, not as
individuals.
What is it that people from different background bring about? What's the value or
synergy to it?
Well, so, Data journalism is all about teamwork. So, someone that has the ability to find,
scrape a tune the data, put it in form that you can work with. Remember one thing, this
is where many journalists, big data. Netherlands, England, you can't look at the
guardian or the NYT for example.. and say this is the state of data journalism, that best
practice! But if you have a look generally, I bet in the Netherlands, you'll see that the
older journalists are not interested in data journalism
Yeah, there's a generation gap I Guess.
Well, I am sixty years old. So it's a state of mind.
What is it that attracts you in Code4SA, goals, social driven, well motivations.
They do some interesting stuff that no one else is doing. They don't only work with
journalists, remember, they work with CSO's, civil society organizations, working with
activists. The tools that they build, they are great for journalists, but they're not only for
journalists, anyone can use these tools. Anyone who has an interest. So those with
ordinary people in mind. If you wanna know what's going on in parliament for example,
the parliamentary groups in society, people's assembly website, ordinary people can
use that, to find who their representatives are, contact details, debate sin parliament, all
that sort of thing. We're careful not to say that working with data, data journalism, is
only for journalists, or working with data is only for journalists. That’s the biggest
mistake we'll make.
Its very simple to be a data journalist. You need to know how to use excel.
You need some sort of API?
Well, no, most basic form is documenting in a spreadsheet. Data scientist (techie),
gifted. He can hack code, he's a good coder. Ability to interrogate data. To find the
story. He doesn’t know if it's a story or not. Cos he's [...]
Teamwork, it's the coder and the journalist. Remember, all these tools, they do the
heavy lifting short circuit lot of heavy work. [...] the thing about the tools, they do the
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heavy lifting, the hard work. But you still gotta do the journalism. I think one thing that
put's journalist off is that they think: that tool is taking over my job. But that's not true,
they still gotta do their work. A lot of journalists are very weary of learning new skills,
because newsroom is so crowded. They all worried, the newsrooms are depleted. They
are worried that if they gain more skills, they'll be given more work to do. Exactly. That’s
part of the problem, the other thing is, if you want to scare a journalist, you should give
him a story that involves numbers. They think it's gonna do them out of job.
What I was very curious about, you were talking about the CSOs. is that connection
that code4SA has with civil society what makes it interesting for you to work there.
What I’m trying to ask is what really attracts and motivates you to work there?
I find it just a very interesting field with very interesting people and I'm learning new stuff.
its journalistic curiosity and learning new skills and...working with cool
people...developing , we're not developing magic bullets
I can imagine, that the people who work at Code4SA have - there is something that
binds them, obviously, an interest in certain topics. How do you pick a partner, or
design a tool that suits you as an organization?
[..] the thing about techies...you don't of to a techie and say: I want a tool that builds
this - the way to talk to techies is: I got a problem, problem, help me solve it. And then
they're up for the challenge; they don't like to be told to do something. So they then, a
lot of this stuff might be around an issue, sometimes it comes out of finding an
interesting data set. They try not to reinvent the wheel, to build tools that can be
replicated and used for other things. So you don't just start from scratch all the time.
SO, and, with, with the open data community and the open source community, people
share their codes, so if you look at wazimap for example. Wazimap was build in
America originally, to look at their senses (?) and here it’s being reworked, for our
purposes. You don't rewrite it from top to bottom, all you're doing is you're customizing
it for you purposes. And you find that these tools are open source tools. Techies don't
like working with other people's tools, which is a bit of a challenge (haha), but hum you
can't start from scratch. So other thing that Code4SA has focused on is developing
APIs, so other can build tools on top of their APIs. What you don't wanna do is, don't
scrape all the data and no one has access to it.
Let's take an API - things with API - anyone can built a tool on top of it and extract data
out of it. And run it on top of the API. I, I think you mustn’t think sitting and thinking
people write of a lot of original code. Of course there is a lot of original code writing,
though. Most of it is adapting to what we need here
So it’s a very bottom up organization in which someone presents a problem or a very
interesting data set? And then, hum, Adi and Code4SA sort of works with that?
Very often, the tools were a project that’s being funded. Tools being built on top of that.
Sometimes you just find a data set and just play with it – I’m not sure what the question
is. You're making it sound formal and very organized. And I you need to understand
that its a very small organization, mean and lean, it doesn't have much capacity and
yeah, just it's not a building full of engineers, it's like four or five people.
Yeah, I know, it's ...the reason I ask is because I think its so interesting to get to know sort of- what qualifies...I wasn’t brought up in SA, I can read about a lot of stuff..uhm,
sort of a spectator from the outside and very interested in what qualifies as a right
topic...what is it what Code4SA thinks: this is so interesting for us or society.
So...very often it will be driven by a project with a client - all ...yeah there are no
parameters. The most important thing is..it's gotta be replicable. So, be able to
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replicate and use it and...so..coding for good. So does it deal with issues in society,
does it help people better understand and issue. That's a point of departure. That's an
issue that Adi has gotta talk with you about, he is very passionate...Adi..is really one of
the leaders in the open data movements and civic coding movements. And he's a
serious activist on that. The other issues - datasets are not easy to get. I don't know
how hard it is to get data out of the Dutch government, but hum - [all those liberal
about data??] - very often even if you can get access to data it is not really in a good
condition, or in PDF, it's not in a place where its easy to get hold of. SA for
example...statistics SA, the department who does all the collecting of data and
analyzing it, like the household income survey, economic data, hum I mean one of the
biggest excuses they use is confidentiality. And even when you say to them: anonimise
the data, we don't really want data about an individual, but you can anonimise the data
by taking out names and ID number for example. I mean, Adi's spends his life - putting
in requests for data. And PAIA is quite a, we don't use it a lot, but we have partners
who would use it, and...Access to information...putting in requests and according to [...]
it should be easy, but it's not.
With PAIA - is it that you write a request - how does that work?
access for information law - don't you have one.
Yeah we do (WOB) you can send them a question and they're a obliged to answer in a
couple of weeks. do they? yeah, they do actually. And if they don't and they haven't
answered your question in twelve weeks, they have to pay you a fine.
Well than you're ahead of most countries, because they really don't...it's called the
promotion of access to information law. Yeah I’ve read a bout it. Results I have seen
underline...but you know..getting access to data is a problem that's gonna be dealt
with, constantly. is that also why COde4SA organizes the things like the unconference
and get together with people from -how do you call that- ...Well that’s working with
generate (generous, genuine?? 19:50) spirits. For many, that's Adi's thing. That just
forming coalitions, people like you that you can work with.
With these and developing tools and APIs and workshops, what defines a successful
project for Code4SA?
Well if it's a tool, it’s a success if it works properly and does [...] actively. More
important, I think you measure success with whether people use it or not. How do you
measure if people use it? How do you know? How do you know, well, its all registered
on Code4SA site, you can see the visits. You can actually measure traffic. Is that going
well or well enough? Hmmm...yes and no....yes and no..I mean, listen it's a hard one.
To get journalists to buy, it's in its infant stage, and you.. and more importantly, you get
managements (?) invest in data journalism. And data in the newsroom...they are every
reluctant to spend money on something of which they can't see how its gonna bring
them an income.
There is of course newsrooms, but also end-users who are just people, right? How do
you get people, regular people, who are not journalists to use the tools? Do they?
You market the hell out of if! (Hahaha). Yes you do, social media, naked data
newsletters, it's all marketing. Does that work out well? Well...your questions are [a bit
invasive?]...It’s not as simple as yes or no. Sometimes...yes and other times no...so...
The reason I ask is because I wonder if that's a topic you talk about with your hum
Code4SA colleagues, something you elaborate on or worry about.
Constantly, constantly...on how do we get people to use tools more, I mean, ultimately
donors put in money and they measure, they don't want to building something that
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doesn’t get used...it can be sexy as hell, but if no one is using it, then what's the point.
Part of that, what I and Jason do, we do outreach, into newsrooms, journalists, training.
We give really nice two hour training that we do, which is we get a room full of
journalists to bring their laptops and they sit here. And we code and show them all the
different tools, not only our tools, other tools too, in two hours we give them a little work
out with all the different tools, so they understand what they can do. You can't teach
people in two hours how to use something, what you CAN do is show to basics and
get them interested enough to explore. It's like using Microsoft word for the first time.
Don't go for lessons, someone teaches you the basics and then you work it out.
Yeah, you gotta get interested and play with it yourself. So we do a lot of that.
So what are the reactions if you get a room full of journalists?
You see, that's too big a question. Inevitably, most of them are absolutely blown away
because you know...because f you don’t get it and you get it and someone shows you
a tool and you sense, its just very..data only. It's just data only. and its [...?] (24:56)
which helps to set data very very simply in their data...which is something they're doing
much longer processes...and people are blown away. Parliamentary...newspaper
group. Some of them keen, some of them were only there because they were told to
come. But by the end of...first 3 minutes you cold hear a pin drop. People suddenly
realize..the lights went on. What we find that if you sit people down and explain to them
and show them the tools...they get it. But just talking to them, they don't get it. It's like
buying a car, you can show me a car and I see it's really nice. But I wanna drive it. And i
guess that’s a big difference, a lot of the training that happens..data follows the data
path line right? Which is very simple. finding, discovery, scraping, cheating?, invading
data (26:18)? visualizing data, and then the end which is my specialty...story telling with
data. And that's the data path line that you follow.
Excuse me if my questions are sometimes a bit too wide, I’m trying to get as much
information as I can get. But it's really just so cool to hear someone doing the work,
working together with the techies. Cause, Evelien and me...we're just very, I gotta say,
its so its just really, its just putting two worlds together, which is probably the future of
journalism...I guess.
It's not the future of journalism, it's part of the future of journalism. hum, I think it's part,
sometimes we think happens we get too obsessed with data, think that data is
journalism. Data journalism is an aspect of journalism. It’s not the only kind of journalism
there is. You know, there's good journalism and there's bad journalism. There's print,
there's radio...with a good data set, data can only a good story if you got good
information. And there is this,
Some say data are facts, and data is the truth. But data only tells a story if someone
helps it tell a story I guess.
Data will show you where the story is. That is what data is. Where it is. But you still
gotta do the journalism on the data. Data on it's own is no journalism, because
someone’s not gonna make the data make sense to ordinary people. And so you
know, say you do something from the senses, you sense, so in this village, there's
thousands of people who don't have access to a normal toilet. You might say, gee so
many. The real story is when a journalists goes there and talks to those people. See
how they're looking. And finds out what living without a toilet is like, putting a human
face Very often journalism, data journalism is putting a human face to the data. The
data will show you trends, Outlier --> outlier is a point of the data that stands out from
everything else. That it makes you take notice. So there, on the far right or far left of the
spectrum is a community or person, or something that will stand out on its own. That’s
called an outlier. That it stands out of the data that is often where the story lies.
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So a while ago, Adi was looking at a data set around schools in SA. And he discovered
a school where something like 60 children died in one year. We checked out what been
written about it and we found out there was a disease. But no one had been there
because its in the middle of nowhere. But the data stood out so much. Its not always a
story, but you gotta go check out a story. The tools do the heavy data. You still gotta
go do the journalism.
So what is it, Adi told be that Code4SA is working on a new strategy for 2015- what is
it that you want to improve or, you were just talking about how to reach people. [...]
what are the sort of goals for these coming months on reaching out to people - of that
defines success, how are you gonna do that?
You're focusing too much on tools. Not just tools. I guess, getting more ordinary
journalists. We're gonna start a little data journalism school, very very small scale. With
a kind of curriculum on how to teach people, ...I’m very keen on how to train
youngsters and infiltrate at newsrooms and CEOs and do a bottom up. Because if you
can't get through to the seniors, than you try infiltrate that way. So listen, the aim this
year is to get more trained, more journalists on different levels doing different data
journalism and we hope that the newsrooms will make use of their skills. But you know,
one of the big (33:35) problems that it often has, you’ve got journalists who can do this,
but their work, - you can't interact with stuff, embed, you can't embed it on their
websites. Wherever you point, on a map and it points out information, and it doesn’t
work.
My daughter is a data journalists and she's just done an internship at a big TV station,
website can't interact with visualizations, that's bizarre. The plan for the new year is to
keep on pushing and to get more journalists trained and get more training, just keep
pushing the [...] of data journalism. On the tools, that's a question that Jason must
answer. But from my point of view it’s to get journalists to understand working with
data, giving them the basic skills to be able to do so. Nothing elaborate.
In the beginning of our talk, we were talking about what attracts you personally to
code4sa. I was wondering if there is a sort of a shared - what kind of person do you
have to be, with what kind of interest, either as a journalist or as techie to work at
code4SA? what is it that binds you, that makes you wanna work for the same causes.
Well, I guess we more into data journalism haha. We're much into data. And we use
data for good. The ability to use data for good.
Is there an activist in all of you?
Yeah, everyone is an activist. Is that something that binds you, that for good thing? I
guess that's one, wanting to make a difference, being a pioneer, doing something
different, something new, working with cool people. And from my point of view, every
few years I reinvent myself. So that's why at my age I probably know more than most
kids coming out of university. I’ve got the journalism experience and judgment,
ultimately good journalism is about judgment, and judgment is not something they
teach you in university, it's something that you learn of the job. And I guess that
because of that, I bring that to it. New, something different.
I have to say, its really cool that you say you keep on reinventing yourself any other so
many years. So many working at newspaper, people who are in their fifties or sixties,
and doing what they've doing for the last twenty years, ignoring that things have
changed. And that, well, that it would be such and experience to invent yourself again,
learn something. That's very inspiring.
So what, there's people saying data journalism is a passing fase. Well...well i guess
journalism is transient, I don't think if its a passing fase, but what will bring change will
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become part of mainstream. It will become part of journalism. I don't believe that in a
few years, any serious journalism school will not be teaching the basics of data
journalism. And if they aren't, choose another school. Its not a passing fase, it’s gonna
end up being mainstream.
It hard to see from the other side of the world. Is Code4SA as an organization, together
with hacks hackers and open source community; is it a unique organization in SA?
Well, so, of course there are other tech labs, some profit, for good, work on projects for
free, or add a discount to them. There will be almost...well I’m reluctant to call it a
charity, aspect to their work, but there's nothing like code4SA. Have you looked at
code4Africa?
Yeah, definitely.
There's code for Nigeria, Kenya etc. All independent, but all linked.
Is code4SA one of the most, furthest ...developed ones?
Code4SA is i guess, advanced, Code4africa do a lot of coding stuff on projects.
[talking about data portal, looking on the computer] 41:41
Africaopendata.org [41:40 - 44:10]
Interesting portal, releasing data sets. What you'll see is that you'll see the state.
[44:00-48:16] Nederland & South Africa (not really part of the interview)
48:20
We've got a long way to go in SA. Sometimes you push a rock up a hill and you push
and push and push and push and when you stop pushing, and the rock will fall down
and you start all over again. It sometimes feels like that, it's a hard some. People at
code4SA doing a lot of work that mainstream media should be doing themselves. My
hope is that they will start doing that. That's a goal: more people.
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INTERVIEW SIYABONGA AFRIKA – the data journalist
Hi Siya, how are you? Good to finally talk to you.
I'm good I'm good, its been a crazy year so far. How come? I just started a new job, so
you know I was just, you asked me about this interview, I was finishing my code4SA
fellowship. Once I started this new job, I was thrown into the deep end, and its been
crazy ever since. I work for the state broadcaster (SABC) as a digital media specialist.
What are you doing there?
I work with the digital news department. I act almost as a consultant. We have special
project which need a digital tools, so I get put on you know, I get asked to help out with
that, all sorts...I do a bit of research and development. So, hum its a very, its pretty far
ranging what I have to do at SABC news. I started round about january 8, and yeah,
jeez, time has just flown by. Haha, I recognize that. Time flying by. It's different from
when you're in college, when you still studying, when you're writing a thesis. I can take
as much time as a want. But when you get into the real month, man a month is literally
a day.
[talking about Amsterdam, the Netherlands, Siya's birthday]
My thesis is very much (3:50) is on motivations and on what drives people. Evelien is on
the data stuff. Let me just start off how you got involved with code4SA and what it is
that you specifically did or do?
Where shall I start haha. You know, getting involved with code4SA was more like
getting involved with you know a bigger civic technology community in SA. It started
when I got back from the states, where I did my masters. So I was initially working at a
digital agency and then afterwards I went to work for Media24, one of the largest news
organizations in SA. I worked at their English digital media consultant for the English
papers. Back when I was there they used to divide where the programmers are, and
where journalists are. I was more used to what the US is doing, throwing everyone in
special teams. So I wanted to essentially conduct a hackathon, you know there was no
one I could get any of the developers, they were all the way in CT 2500km away, that
would cost money. I got involved with hack/hackers it was actually at Mozilla, I
contacted them, if they could come and help us with the hackathon. My Mozilla contact
she said that it was better to speak the hacks/hackers community, so yeah, I met up
with a guy Tailor (6:04) who was running the chapter at the time. I became a very active
community member, organizing hackathons and meet ups. Last year, I was, wouldn't
say, voted in.. Executive chair, I was more like given the job because a guys wife was
pregnant, he said I was the only person who was working as hard as him.
So you were the head of the executive committee for hacks hackers JoBurg.
Yeah and hack/hackers CapeTown was run by Adi and Raymond Joseph. Adi was the
guy who set up the open knowledge foundation in SA. Now an international group, he
was setting it up in Cape Town and working with Greg and Me, for hack hackers, my
name came through and when they were calling for open data fellows, I was on top of
the list. It was more getting involved with the community than just getting involved with
code4SA and I still, you know, with them when they ask and I have time,...I run a
project with them. You know, in contact with the organizations which I was working
with up here for my fellowship with, so the con (?) and media march (?) so it's just it’s
an ongoing relationship. I'm also still running hacks/hackers Joburg, still involved in the
community very deeply. That basically doesn't change cause I have a fulltime job,
makes it tougher. Late nights again, I liked it when I was just a fellow, I worked during
the day or work late, when I worked late into the night, id still have the next day. If I’m at
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my day job, and get home a write code, I am literally about to die.
What is it that drives that community? A lot of people talk about that hacks/hacker
community that there is something that binds all those people?
You know, it's..most part its curiosity, at the time I was getting involved with
hacks/hackers, data journalism was starting to creep into conversation and no one in
south Africa knew what it was and what it was about. I was one of the few people
investigating and learning and affecting other media, going to big data meet ups and
user-experience design meet ups. I saw that it was a mix up of different things, it was
still story telling but you know, going back to the question that drives us. It's that
curiosity, people are just keen to learn, what is data journalism? Like they weren't doing
it in their offices, so they needed a space and a community that was willing to teach
them and willing to learn with them. So that what's hacks hackers has been for the last
couple of years. We still try to you know, lead the way in data journalism and
discussion, I also try to get people to think about civic technology because I think that's
the natural urge (9:40) of data journalism - telling stories with data and beyond that,
actually giving people the tools to make decisions using data, that's a big part of civic
technology.
So what you're saying that the combination between civic technology and sort of the
curiosity and urge of storytelling - is that hacks/hacks community and code4SA - sort of
all the tools and API and technology you develop, they all have this social movement
or activist thing to it. Why is that something that fuels, is that something that fuels the
organization.
Oh yeah, I mean, I think with the way technology has shaped up and people can build,
you start to find that people are starting to focus in different areas, you know, like.
Startups, some of them are very much enterprise driven, some of them are you know,
very profit driven. At the same time you have the people who realize that this
technology and this tools can provide a service to the people that is not necessarily
driven by the idea of making a lot of money. Trying to fulfill our civic role, maybe the
fourth estate if you wanna call it that. I think that's why journalism mixes so well with the
civic technology space (11:31), because its just naturally melts with wanting to be a
public protector, being able now to create apps, websites and APIs as easy as we can
it's essentially was has allowed for the growth of Code4SA and hack hackers and a
whole lot of other communities to develop around Joburg and Capetown.
Is that something that drives you as well? Something that fuels you, that civic...probably
with your skills you could do something in a place that has a lot more money, but you
choose to do a fellowship in a place that is so bottom up, or community based?
I worked at a digital agency when I got back, I made nice money (haha) way better than
what I made at code4SA. And so my skills were of course, valuable to them. But I was
still drawn to...you know...to journalism and civic technology and civic space because
you know, that is what fueled me in college anyway (haha). (13:03) And you know, I was
a student journalist, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed telling stories that got people resolved,
that helped people in a way they needed help. And one of my favorite anecdotes was
when I was a junior reporter at Soweto, when I finished my degree in journalism. I was
send out to the township in Soweto. So there was an elderly couple and they were
complaining about a burst water pipe that was flooding the streets and water coming
into their house. I thought that what I did was simple. I made a call to Joburg water,
wrote a story, used their point of view. And they called me back two days later when
the story was published, saying thank you, actually you actually made it come through.
We've been calling them for weeks and because of the story they actually did
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something. What i did there, in terms of just writing a story, is the same thing I see with
civic technology tools and apps. You know, it's kinda taken away the middleman. You
don't necessarily now need a journalist. Tools which allow you to actively engage and
say: hey there is problem with my streets, why aren't you fixing it. You say you have
budgets for this, why aren't you paying for our [re???] to disposed off? What are the
legal ramifications of me owning a house? People can now directly engage with
government, because tools allow it.
Are you saying - makes it a journalists redundant?
I wouldn't say necessary redundant, journalists still have a place. Good stories are still
necessary, for interaction between government and society, we're just adding a new
layer. Lets sot say a new layer but an adjacent layer (15:10). So, we're not
necessarily...we're not saying you don't need daily newspapers anymore. Where are
you gonna get your information from. I’m saying civic technology exists in order to
create more acts of citizenry, you know like people don't necessarily have to write
letters to the editor in order to get a civic official to listen to them. You can actually do it
yourself...but if you want someone who's gonna actually investigate your civic,
municipal leader, because they suspect them of fraud or something...that's a journalist.
Only journalists know how to do that properly, so you know, there still exists a place for
journalists I don't say, never applicated for, them, to consider themselves not important.
[..?]
The thing that really interests me is that a couple of years back it was so clear what
journalism was, and who's a journalists. We had a monopoly on information, on
spreading and gaining information. But now, everyone with internet or a videophone,
could potentially be a journalists. I was thinking, hum, Adi said 'we're not necessarily
journalists, we're just providing tools for citizens and journalists'. But fifty or sixty years
back, people who invented the printing press or the television, they probably thought:
'we're no journalists'. It is a new way, you know, of telling stories. So, I'm sort of - does
that sound familiar?
[hahaha] I totally share you. It’s what every evolution of the journalism field - from the
introduction of radio, TV, internet really kinda shook the boat. It gave many people
agency, where journalists could be saying: we do have that position of power, we're the
only ones that publish (17:35), not everyone can be a publisher. But never countered
that, this thing, I’m sure mark must have told you: journalists, you know, may not be the
only publishers no more, they are now the [soilfeeders - sort leaders?] (17:50) - you see
the reason why Adi says we're not journalists because he knows he cannot do a
proper investigative piece on government the way someone who's got like five or ten
years of experience in doing this. [more power] And he's giving them actual tools [...]
instead of now going through a data base of information, old paper, this thick, we
instead are creating an API, that you can use in a single search. That's what we're
doing, we're not taking away that position, that role that we have. Tell Mark I remember
that (haha)
The thing that interests me about Code4SA is that what's considered to be journalism,
changes over time, and maybe in a couple of years time, what you guys are doing at
code4SA which might be a bit marginal right now, it might be considered to be a new
way of generating, spreading and using information. What i was thinking about is that
data is...pretty straight, external data. But the way you use it or the things you choose,
is very intentional. Code4SA, you in this case. You pick a partner, subject, and a tool,
what I was wondering about. What is that based on? What makes someone...what
qualifies as a right partner or a right tool for Code4SA.
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Can you elaborate?
Yeah, if you sit together, and someone from civil society has a question or a problem how do you decide id that's something you wanna work on, if that suits you?
The fellowship was a pretty exhaustive process, we had to consider a lot of factors like
geographic location, access to them, in terms of time that we had, also what their
mission statement was, and if its in line with our own values. On a broader scale its just
that, if organizations and people match our own values as well. If we help them, say,
open up a data set, that they're not gonna take that data set and say well we're gonna
close it off and sell it. They're all for open data, all for open systems. And they are pretty
much keen on learning, you know, failing with us at times, and we're keen to work with
them.
So you're saying they share our values, that makes thema potential partner, to talk to.
How doe that hum, just for my information, how does that work, consulting with
someone, who's keen to talk about to create a tool or getting the help from Code4SA.
Pooh, you know, that's bit of a tough learning school for me, cause I say yes to
everything. And for the most part, you know, you have to deal with reality, you have to
say: look this may take a week, this may take months, depending on how much time a
person has. You cannot promise the world that sets you up for failure. Rather, under
promise and over deliver (21:46). So if I get approached, I need to, to do a project. I
say, [??]I need to consider my own personal time and personal goals. You know, there
are also projects that I wanna work on and that need time for themselves. Like if its a
worthwhile project and I’m gonna decide maybe couple of days, month, of whatever
the case, just to work on it and I know its gonna be very beneficial and do good, than
sure I wouldn't mind. But if I know that it is a vanity project of somebody, you know it
doesn't really, if they're looking for someone just to code, because people still just think
of coders as [...clones? drones?] who will write anything. Hum, no I won't do those kind
of projects.
Ray said, you shouldn't tell techies what to do.
Haha, no never tell techies what to do! It's all about collaboration. If it turns into a 90/10
collaboration, that is not really...than you're just skimming off my talents.
What is your occupational identity? Do you identify as a journalist, or as a techie or
somewhere in between?
I'm gonna say I’m somewhere in between. Because I still have my days when I’ll be, I
wanna do something, I know that it can be coded, but I don't know where to start.
(23:56). So, I’m still on this learning curve we're I’m understanding when a person can
code. Actually my background, to be honest, is from the technology, user experience
and design. I'm a u-ex designer first; I’m a coder second. Oh no, I am an u-ex designer
first, a journalist second and then a coder. In that order. You know, I can code
something but it might take me longer than someone who does it on a day to day
basis.
You were talking before about sometimes people gotta share our values and interest for
open data, and the failures. What defines success and what defines failure?
Adi would be better to answer that. For me, when I’m working and it takes longer that
what in needs to be done. And the organization was young, failure there was that we
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didn't get our project done on time, to get our reports to our funders. Really about how
much time is spend, what is achieved, was it a tool that can be marketed, and not so
much marketed as in for profit, I’m talking about marketed so that we can get more
funding so we can do more of these kind of thing. Is it marketable in that sense? Of
course, project done on time, that’s marketable, and sharable and actually has impact.
Is impact also an important measurement? You can make a whole lot of tools, but if no
one is using them it's not...
That's the big one, you know, I don't really run the numbers, I don't have access to our
Google analytics. Our biggest visitors are probably the digitally inclined, so people who
are probably already well-off, who are middle class. I have no problem with that (26:16),
I really think with SA being the country it is. We need to really look at the lower end, the
90% who are, who are..who do need these tools. I mean, if I go back to that story I was
telling you about, with the burst water pipe, how would I get people like that to use
those tools. That's my biggest concern; it's something I go to bed with, always
theorizing about. And so I think we are moving towards a more mobile first type of
development space, but at the same time its still like...gets a lot more engaged type of
people. I'm trying to figure out how do we engage these people who aren’t' engaged
already. That will be our biggest challenge going into the future.
Is that a topic if discussion as well, when you talk to each other, how to reach these
people, the ones you really want to reach.
Yeah, I mean, we have our slack groups, Skype, its always something that comes up
now and again, it think when it comes to forays when we have meetups with other
journalists, they will raise the questions of how do we get his out to our readers. It's
fantastic, great tool, but how people can't access it, its not gonna mean much. Our
technology space is growing, feature phones with more features, so you know..that
question is become a little bit more redundant day by day. but I think we still need to
figure out, other difference user experience strategies in order to -sorry I've been up
since 5 AM, it's starting to catch up- (haha)
Another thing a was wondering about, looking at the future, hat has to happen at
Code4SA to - I get the impression that things are going pretty well, so what has to
happen to remain or become successful. In both a business point of view and an
ideologically point of views.
From a business point of view - that's a tough one, I have been at this stage at the civic
space for the last two and a half years. From 2012 to now - so I've come to understand
the funding practices you know that...go on in order to drive a lot of these organizations
and trust me, code4SA is not the only one. (29:16). So, we're all basically competing for
the same slice of pie, either the Knight foundation of the Bill and Melinda Gates
foundation, legal trusts, to allowing us to have. For us, from a business point of view, to
actually get more we need to deliver more and more projects. So output is a big one, a
need for output. Unfortunately, there's not many fulltime staff. Except for Adi and Jason,
Greg is sort of quasi-formally working for them. We have another Code4SA fellow, who
is also a Code4Africa fellow, Friedrich, really cool German guy. (30:06) He is like all over
the shows. He's like working on our stuff and other people's stuff. We'll always make it
work. Jason and Greg get stuff up, and in a matter of days, someone like me will get
two, three weeks and they put it up in two days. If we could get a little more people like
that it would be great. Marketing ourselves to the greater developer community. But
yeah, once we get our output further out, I think there'll be more funding and more
funding means more opportunities to build projects and also run programs like the
school of data fellowship. What else? Oh you are saying ideologically...hum..i don't
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think there's much in terms of..much..wrong about the ideology that does into
Code4SA. Hum...you know, I’m not here talking earning points for them (haha). I’m just
looking at exactly how they think at exactly how they think at what is needed in this
country. If you come to SA and actually spend time here, you come to realize what our
challenges are. People don't have the information they need in order to make the right
decisions. Government has made very tested very public experts in order to rightful
(break down??) people's right to information
There is this law right?
The secrecy law, protection of state information bill. When you start looking at that, you
start realize that our government is really not keen on the idea of engaging its citizenry
in a fair manner. And so where organizations like Code4Sa come in, is that you know,
they are the ones, pressing/saying, that is not the case: by law we are allowed to this
information. And beyond the law, we will give people the means in order to decipher
this information and consume it and use it in a way that will benefit them. To me, that's
essentially where we're in the right. Ideologically, a change needs to occur actually in
the state departments. We just had CT opening up their first, what they call the first
data portal in Africa, it's riddled with a lot of issues, from and open data stand point you
just you're looking at it and you're like: you're not being open data, you're only releasing
certain data sets that paint a lovely picture of the city as opposite to being really truly
transparent.
Even in SA..the city of Joburg, which has the highest population, 10 million estimated
people, 1/5 of the country. [Talking about Joburg and size of the Netherlands]. But if
you imagine how much data is being generated by all these people, how much data is
needed to guide these people...for a much better live. Yet the city doesn’t wanna open
up their data sets. It doesn't want to be transparent in a lot of things, like it’s budgeting,
and you know, cases like corruption. You need people like Adi, Raymond and
organizations like Code4SA to stand up and fight for these rights. I'm not saying they're
the only ones, there are other organizations, like the SA human rights commission and
all these other legal bodies and you know...news media. But yeah you know, code4SA
sits in an position where its like not the only one fighting for those rights...but it's the
only one creating tools. (34:40).
It could be really really big, as more people gain access to phones and internet.
Oh yeah, I had a chat with my boss right now at SABC and he just had a media
innovation conference, and they were talking about going mobile first, and I was like...I
have been saying lets go mobile first since (hahaha) how many years ago?? But we are
starting to think mobile first, beyond just creating desktop apps, we're living ..people
exist in a greater spectrum than that. In order for us to really truly engage with them, we
have to be open for the WWW, and not just the world wide web, but the web on a
phone. And that's where the full ww exists. People being connected everywhere they
are.
I have been thinking about data, open data, data journalism in the Netherlands, there
are a few, some. We've got hacks hackers Amsterdam as well. But I think, in our
society there are problem as well, but maybe not comparable to the ones SA has. You
know, so, there is sort of the civic thing. What I want to say, that something like
Code4SA probably exists in SA because there is really a need for these kind of people
to help solve those kind of problems. A lot of the open data in the Netherlands has to
do with, you know, of course also civic problems. But you know, the things that have
an effect on people's daily life, like healthcare or education, or a roof above your head.
Those are things that are probably quite well taken care of.
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If you look at how the school of Data selects, a lot of them are sub-Saharan or eastern
European or South American...that's where an issue of open data is really a things,
where people don't really have access to tools or the government that cares about
them in that way. Or..not even care but..not so much that it doesn't care but it doesn’t
know how to start the process of opening its data and being a much more transparent
state. You guys are much more progressed in that. This is me just assuming, I’ve seen
some articles. But yeah, the challenges that we face, some of them are more mitigated,
some are exasperated. [...]
Maybe it also has to do that the countries you talked about, they're all either young
democracies or...
Yeah SA, 20 years old, baby compared to some other states.
That's also me assuming, in the Netherlands we have a very large history and tradition
of people checking the government and people getting others responsible for the things
they do. I can imagine in a young democracy, that those issues are..those problems
probably play a bigger role because the country hasn't known freedom for that long.
(40:08)
Freedom, our freedom and democracy has been recently, is that what you're going for
haha? Getting, our first democratic elections were in 1994, how do you compare to a
country that has been democratic elections since the 18hundreds. Even the civil rights,
was in de sixties. The sixties were still heating up in SA. A lot of African and South
American countries are still feeling the after affects getting democracy, of becoming free
nations, therein lies the challenges. What is actually happening now is determine the
future of the country. I mean, if SA becomes a police state now again, who knows...it
will probably remain like that. The next uprising, who knows when that will be. So yeah
that is a challenge with developing countries. We have heads of state that are entering
a new fase you know, maybe some of them were freedom fighters, activists. Now
they've become actual presidents and prime ministers and ministers. And with that
comes a different mindset, its supposed to bring a different mindset, its a challenge.
Our president, he's pretty famous, hahaha.
Someone like Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, he was a freedom fighter. In the
eighties he was seen as the savior of Zimbabwe, now the rest of the world a lot of his
people can’t stand him. It's one of the..I wouldn't say inheritance, but challenges of a
young a democracy, entering into a new power dome..
In a digital age...Imagine if you had...if we had...in a more analog age. Citizenry now...it
wouldn't be like the government would think to close off its information. And I think
that's where the benefit of western countries. They have had so much practice over the
years.
Trial by error haha. Do you consider yourself to be a little bit of an activist as well?
Hahahaha. You're diving for the better right? I guess, if people ask me that, I college I
used to march with the student organizations before I turned into a student journalist.
Because I realize that whilst...the organizations at your...unions! Whilst they may go
on/under the ground I feel as though, journalism affords you the opportunity to actually
engage with leader across the table, which is more civil. I'd say that I’m more of a
sophisticated activist (hahaha). I won't be on the streets; I will not be flag Harding (?) I
will not be jumping around, it will be in an office, (44:08) but what I am doing is for the
benefit for you.
[Einde interview]
Awesome stuff man. (44:20)
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INTERVIEW ADI EYAL – The founder
[Start-up talk]
Thank you so much for making time, especially since you said you were so busy.
This year has been so busy. All the basic admin stuff seems to be running.
Running in a good way?
Yeah, busy is good, but at some point busy is bad. So it's at some half point in
between.
How's that?
Well when you're too busy and can't really get to everything, you start to piss people
off. Haha.
Yeah I've heard the staff say things like that as well. Playing different roles.
Yeah, we're also restructuring the team. So it's...at the moment we have somewhat of
a capacity shortage.
I heard Jason is down to one day?
He is down to one day. He is focusing more on data journalism and also doing his own
thing. So we have just hired someone to start in early may. We have also hired a project
manager who is working part-time, but she'll be coming in fulltime.
So, it's different than a few months back.
yeah it's still Greg, Ray is here as well. Yeah so pretty much. It's basically Petrus and
Jason who are no longer fulltime involved.
Since you're short on time, shall I just tell you a little bot about what I’d like to ask you?
I've got three different types of questions. Some to do with the people who work at
Code4SA, so you in this case. Some on the organization and some that have a little bit
to do with journalism and data journalism. Starting off, since you're the founder of
Code4SA, people have told me you are the ideological leader of the pack [haha], I'd like
to hear from you what it is that drives you?
Well, the mantra of Code4SA is promoting informed decision making and if you were to
expand it a little bit I think data and technology to help people make more informed
decisions and to drive social change. So that is kinda not sexy, but it is pretty much the
underline message that we tell ourselves and people. And open data is not the focus; it
is one of the tools, one of the ingredients to be able to do that. That is also why we're
working with civil society and media and we're starting working with government and
community. Most things, while they might sound quite disparate, it all leads to the same
vision, which is essentially promoting informed decision making while using data. So,
regarding what drives me and the organization, it is really the ability to use our skills,
which are usually used in the corporate world to make money. Using those skills to help
people better their lives, you know in whatever way we're able to...we're not taking over
the world; we're working with other those organizations who could.
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Have you worked in the corporate world as well?
Yeah yeah, well it depends on what you mean by corporate; I worked at some start-ups
and ran my own consultancy the most of my career.
But after that, there was something that made you decide to start Code4SA?
Yeah. The combination. I think the trigger was, the project around sharing medicine
prices across various countries and realize they're overpaying for medicines. And this is
in the public health sector, so countries in southern Africa are amongst the poorest in
the world and they had limited budgets for pharmaceuticals. And if they're overpaying
that means there gonna be shortages. And all we did is, we took data and made it
available to the right people in the right format so they can make better decisions. be
able to negotiate better prices with suppliers. And if they're saving money on
medicines, they can buy more medicines. So, that for me was the trigger to realize that
do actually make impact and sometimes big impact in the world, you only have to make
minor changes. And is this case, correcting information asymmetries. So that is the
more academic, more complicated way of saying: we make data available and people
make better decisions. That for me was quite a moment of realization. I had the skills to
make it happen and I wanted to now rather than waiting for opportunities to actually
change this in a career and focus on this kind of stuff and do this on a daily basis.
Are you happy about how things are going?
Yeah incredibly happen. In the fifteen months we've been around we have made
tremendous strives. We are in the open data space, we are known as the pioneers. In
data journalism. We are well known also as data journalism pioneers. We have worked
with pretty much all of the major newsrooms in the country. We have recently launched
a project on domestic workers and salaries. And that was incredibly well received. We
had tens of thousands of users, story was published in twenty newspapers, five radio
interviews, hundreds comments, it was big. And the philosophy is the same, it is
helping people make informed decisions. But we're also changing the nature of the way
news is presented in SA. We have had a couple of experiments and this last one was
incredibly successful. Also from the donor world, donors love us. We are known as the
organization that gets things done. We are quite prolific in the amount of work we have
done is a short amount of time. From a government perspective we are, I am on the
open data steering committee of the city of CP as a public representative. So i sit with
all the internal people, policy maker and advice policy makers. Code4SA is also well
known there, we're known as the thinkers. So if you ask if we're doing well, I think we
are doing very well! Considering that we're a very small team and we haven't been
around for long. Yeah, great stuff!
I was going to ask you, what makes Code4SA or a project a success? What is it that
defines success.
Well of course for the technical thing to work well and for the partner to be happy
etcetera. But for me to really be happy is for people to use it and use it in their daily life
and if it helps them think and make better decisions. So with regards to the domestic
workers project, I don't have any proof of it but I have the feeling that many domestic
workers are going home at the end of the month with more money in their bank
accounts. That to me is a success, I wish I could measure it, but I can't. I have lots of
pointers, evidence that suggests that this is happening. Regards to the work we did on
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bibles, people use it all the time we get many emails with pretty technical emails, that
shows that people are using it. Really using it. Not just going to the website. Just look
at the traffic and they keep coming back. That tells be that they're really using it. Not all
tools have as much traffic as I like but we're definitely going in the right direction. In
terms of impact and success, we see ourselves as different from technical consultancy
companies. Rather, we want to have impact. And it sounds boring, I’m just gonna keep
on repeating it, which is essentially informed decision making. People can use
something to make better decisions. That's what we aim for. Experiment in different
ways, we try to be quite innovative. I think for so far, I’d love for us to take it further, love
to make bigger impact. But, you know, I have a much more conservative view on
success. Output point of view, we have done very well. From an impact point of view
we'd like to achieve more. But we're on our way.
would you consider yourself to be an activist.
It depends on how you define activism. We don't march in the street. But we do have
an area of interest, which does promote social change. In our own way. It might me
somewhat removed from grassroots, but I think we're definitely activist in an abstract
way.
Is that a binding factor, common element among the people that work at Code4SA?
Yeah, I mean essentially we're working in the non-profit space. We can't afford the best
salaries. In order to work here you need to buy into the idea. You should want to
contribute to society, and it is making you a better person. Not in a bleeding heart,
saving the world kind of way. But rather, I buy into what we're doing. I say that I earned
it. For everyone that works here, we make sure that that's the case. So obviously we
take, we are learning how to go about it. I much more prefer someone who comes in
with passion than someone who might be technically more...I want a 120% of your
passion and enthusiasm. Don't come to work and think it's just a job from eight to five.
That is not what this is about.
You need to believe in the ideology behind it.
That's the only way we're gonna keep people at work. They have to find they can more
value. Many people think the way to optimize is salary, how much money do they get.
And that's a very one-dimensional view, and not very, in terms of personal
development, I don't think you're developing way in a multidimensional way. all you're
doing is getting more money so you can consume more. I don't have a problem with
money I think people should earn money, but what's important is that people are a bit
more enlightened. To realize actually I can develop myself as an individual in different
ways. One of these things is actually becoming part of society, contributing to society
What you're optimizing is not only your salary, of course everybody wants to earn more
money, but also to maximize the amount of impact you have in the world. So if you go
to, meet your friends at a bar, you can very proudly tell them what you're doing. I think
that is very important. Not just about output, but also internally, I think that is very
important for you life. They are part of something bigger, that's what making them
better people.
What would you say is rewarding or frustrating things about what you're doing right
now. I can imagine what the most rewarding thing is.
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I wouldn't say frustrating. But to me honest, I am happy. Very happy. In all areas. I
mean it's difficult and hard work, stressful, but all in a good way. I don't like the fact that
I am superbusy, but also, the business is not necessarily a bad thing. All the things we
do are quite positive. We're struggling with human resources. It is difficult to find the
people that I just described, It's not simple. That's tough. Also, just running a business,
administrative stuff, revenue, department of labor...all the compliance stuff which I am
currently dealing with...but I guess that's just the nature of running a business.
I read in the strategy documents that Code4SA is quite vulnerable for staff loss since
you're so small. Also there was a lot in it about funding and sponsors, partners. I was
wondering, what qualifies as a right partner?
It depends on what type of partner. We see ourselves as working in four different areas.
Community, civil society, media and government. So when you talk about partners, it is
mostly civil society. The rationale behind working with civil society, we don't have
access to the grassroots. We're sitting under the bridge doing our work. You know, we
don't have access to the grassroots, nor we want to. What we DO want to do is
working with the organizations that are working with the grassroots. More importantly,
it's not just that they have to have constituency, important for the projects that we take
is for us to be part of the project. We want to have a best of interests there; we want
the project to be successful. Not just from a business point of view. We pick those
projects that actually further our own goals. Which again, is informed decision making.
A good partner is a partner who sees that and is willing to let us be part of that. If that's
the case we'll contribute to the funding, where possible we would give a lot more than
any other plain supplier would provide. That's a good partner: that fully buys into that
visions and trusts us to be custodians of an important part of their project.
How does that buy into, you told Evelien that you hope in a couple of years Code4SA
doesn't exist anymore, that people have taken up data journalism themselves. You
mentioned those four areas. I can imagine not wanting to exist anymore, when it comes
to the newsrooms. How's that for the three other areas.
I suppose I have been a little extreme. We'll always work with civil society. We have
many social problems in SA. The many organizations that deal with that need better
access to technology. And how to use it in a more effective. I suppose I was little
extreme. Focusing more on media. Of course, regarding media, it would be great to
continue to be involved. But our objective is to make journalism more effective. And
once they become more effective, we can step out of that space.
They can use it like a tool in their toolbox.
Exactly. When it comes to government it is a more difficult thing. We're talking about
policy change. This is a biggest thing in SA. We want to contribute, one government
unit at a time. The mission is initially open data. Because open data is quite easy to
understand. More importantly is, the civil engagement for citizenry. For government to
see citizens as partners and not recipients of services. That is a much broader
mandate. Of course, we wanna get into that space. So hopefully in some period of
time, this is something to realize.... it is rather complex. It is a big goal. And we may
never achieve it, certainly not by ourselves. Yeah, we want to raise the consciousness.
And hopefully in five years time it wouldn't be a novel idea. but rather something that
organizations and, just part of the course. With regards to community it is very much
the same thing. We wanna start to help spark that community. We just look at the
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technical field. Many technical people don't even know that this space exists. They
don't know that it is interesting and actually pays salary. They don't see that and we
would' like to change that perception. Make it a viable option. Previously nobody
thought about it and we wanna make it a viable career option. So of course, we could
continue to exist, I think that the role here is quite important but my ideal would be a
momentum and virtuous circle here. So we keep it going without us needing to keep
the fire....that is pretty much what i meant in terms of not meaning to exist. I'd like to
exist, but I'd like to be in a position that if we were to step out, everything would
continue as it is.
Do you think that, data and data journalism have already become more part of a daily
journalism routine? If you would step back, like you said, would it fall apart?
It would definitely fall apart. We’re very far away from making a significant impact in the
media. It is difficult because I mean...we talk about changing an industry. Obviously.
we're not the only push. Yeah, I think there is a lot of work that still needs to be done to
get this going. Yeah I think we're very far away.
Do they understand what you do and what the potential impact might be?
Yeah, News24 who published the domestic worker, they know what the value is. Some
other of the other newsrooms, [...] there was tweet that said this is one of the best
news pieces that have come out. It comes down to what do you consider as news.
How you define news. Essentially what we produce is more a tools or a calculator and a
way for people to create their own use. And to personalize their use. That is very much,
in different words, the target and direction we're looking at. So yeah, there are some
newsrooms that get it. But...there are maybe editors or higher-level managers get it. but
actually changing the ways organizations work, how to create budgets and training of
staff...there is a difference of thinking it is a good idea and really taking action.
There was one word that came in mind just now when you listed those four areas. I've
been looking for a word to define what you guys do. Would it be right to say that you're
in many ways enablers?
I think that is a great word. Because we don't do the work ourselves, we don't change
the world ourselves, there are organizations that do that.
I was also wondering, traditionally journalists are looking to inform people and people
accountable. That's something that you guys are doing too. What is the biggest
difference between what you do and what a journalist does?
So, our focus is not about accountability and transparency. It is a byproduct of what we
do. Main focus is enabling and helping those people -journalist, activists and everyone
else- do their job, do their job better. We're not competing with journalists, we're trying
to strengthen their skills set.
Different means to a similar goal?
Ultimately what it means is strengthening the society. Different ways, civil society
holding governments to account, or the media doing that. Civil society, being more
involved rather than, taking ownership of the environment they live in. I think that what
we're trying to do is making that a reality, making it possible. Giving people the tools to
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do that.
What are you going to focus on the next couple months?
Those four areas.
Are you working in particular projects that are going to need a lot of focus or that you're
looking forward to working on.
Civil society area is going to be very similar to what we're currently doing. What I have
done is I have applied for funding that would allow us to explore the areas which
currently don't have funding and none is currently paying for that. And really love to do
that work but we can't afford to right now.
What areas are you talking about?
For instance early childhood development. How do you help parents make more aware
on how important it is? Pre school facility. How do you help them make that choice, ask
the right questions? Finding out if your child is being fed proper nutritious meals or
activities during the day. Then again we don’t wanna tell parents this is what you have
to do, we want to help them ask those questions. That's one example of a project that
I'd like to work on but currently there is no funding for it. I'd like to be able to push it
myself. In media, we're starting the data journalism school. That is, we're gonna have a
winter school around June. We're also gonna have a proper 6 month boot camp plus,
very practical newsroom set up. Journalism point of view. That's gonna be exiting.
Large capacity of journalism industry. Government, we're currently about to [..]
CityWrangler into the city of CP to help them operationalize the open data portal.
Currently the have launched an open data portal but they're not doing much with it. So
the danger here is that if they don't show value...that the project will be stopped. We
want to help the city...and I’m exploring the same thing with some municipalities. It's
hard, i don't have the experience, but I have the networks. That's something I want to
focus on a lot. The last area, community, I would like to change CodeBridge, the place
we're working - to focus more on civic technologies and bring in various groups. Data
journalism school is gonna run from out of here. Also encourage developers to come
through, activists, we want to provide an environment where people can actually create
civic tech start-ups. We are currently talking to sponsors of space for a school that is
going to be training young kids from underprivileged environments to be part of the
program. These kids are going to be sponsored by companies that take them on for
internships after they've been trained. We wanna create a very diverse environment with
people from different backgrounds. Very different from an incubator or co-op what
people typically think of, but rather a place where exiting stuff happens, with people
who are different than you, and didn't know existed. That is very exiting and again very
difficult, you can't engineer a community. Just create the environment and hope the
magic happens. Applying for funding, hope it works out.
exiting!
Yeah we have a lot of stuff happening in different areas. 2015 is been quite busy. 2014
was mostly about keeping our head above water and making sure we can pay salary.
2015 is more about how do we start focusing on our core goals. Hopefully we'll be able
to do it and find the appropriate funding. And also what goes into it, like the right
human resources. Yeah that's our directions.
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Sounds exiting! I wondered, over the last 15 months, even with all your experience and
network. Did you personally learn new things?
Definitely I think you learn all the time. The initial rational behind Code4SA was firstly
supporting civil society organizations [...]. And also open data. Over the period we
realized that no one really cares about data. People care about is being able to answer
questions about issues that are important to them. So, also, experimenting with how do
you go by doing that? Telling people, this is not the right way...no. What is helping them
making their own decisions, that is a lot more powerful. So all these things, you know,
experimenting with the way to go by things. How you should work...even for me
running a nonprofit organization is strange. It is strange to apply for funding for instance.
It is very weird to ask people for money, just because you have an idea. That is not the
way I've worked. Previously I have worked hard and gotten money for it. Coming up
with an idea and asking people to fund it, is weird.
Good to hear it is making you happy though.
[end of talk]
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