Data Journalism and the Panama Papers: New Horizons for Investigative Journalism in Africa

Abstract

This chapter argues that data journalism does not epitomize the end of critical and analytical reporting in the journalism profession. Instead, data journalism has sharpened issue-oriented reporting through its ability to distil big numbers and provide insight into a bricolage of things that may be of national or even global public interest. In the social world, it has not only unmasked the complex networks of corruption, but has also been able to provide the forensics of wrong doing through the gathering and filtering of data. The Panama Papers, a dossier of millions of documents detailing illicit financial activities by public officials, demonstrates one such case where digital data journalism has expanded the boundaries of investigative journalism. The Panama Papers also showed new possibilities for partnerships between reporters in the Global North and those in the Global South. In the age of information saturation and complex transnational corruption syndicates, data journalism has occasioned new opportunities that help investigative journalists to probe how the abuse of power manifests in the increasing globalized and de-territorialized networks. In the age of journalism that is driven by spectacle and drama, data journalism represents a return to grounded storytelling that is based on facts.