Knight International Journalism Fellow Gustavo Faleiros is tapping ordinary, environmentally concerned citizens in the Amazon region to help contribute data and information to InfoAmazonia, his digital mapping project that tracks deforestation. Faleiros says "citizen science" movements like this one can be a powerful force for connecting communities, for telling stories about the environment and health, and for helping explain the problems and issues to policymakers.
Since embarking a year ago on a media-sustainability project as a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Liberia, I have worked with managers at three newspapers and three radio stations to help them succeed not only as news organizations but also as businesses.
The Liberia media industry is extremely volatile, with radio stations, in particular, shutting down from time to time for lack of income.
“Mi Bogotá Verde,” or My Green Bogota, a new, crowdsourced digital map that will track solid waste disposal – the first of many urban environmental concerns – is just weeks away from going online in Bogota.
The map was developed during the first hackathon of the Bogota chapter of Hacks/Hackers, created just four months ago.
For two days, the trainers became trainees, and it was fun. We stepped into the world of data visualization using the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS). These population-based surveys provide reliable information on HIV, malaria, gender, family planning, maternal and child health, and nutrition in more than 90 countries.
Abortions are technically illegal in Mozambique. Even though the laws are no longer enforced, medical standards have yet to catch up, especially in rural areas where patients find less sterile, riskier procedures. Now with a new effort to revamp and discard the old national laws, all that is about to change.
A digital mapping tool to track corruption in Colombia on a national scale launched July 24, a result of our partnership with the Consejo de Redacción, a country-wide organization of investigative journalists.
On Monday, July 16, I launched Brazil’s first Hacks/Hackers chapter in Sao Paulo. The initiative has the support of ABRAJI (the Brazilian Investigative Journalism
Association), the local offices of the Open Knowledge Foundation and W3C (the World Wide Web Consortium).
Stretching across a broad expanse of wilderness along South Africa’s Eastern Cape, the Transkei is the region set aside for the Xhosa people by the old apartheid regime, ostensibly as an experiment in black self-governance. It is also the birthplace of some of South Africa’s greatest freedom fighters, among them Nelson Mandela, Walter Sisulu and Thabo Mbeki.
With its focus on global environmental issues, NationalGeographic.com is highlighting a digital map launched by Knight International Journalism Fellow Gustavo Faleiros, including the use of layered filters that can help data journalists track the effects of forest fires, deforestation and extractive industries like mining.
One of the most important goals of the Knight International Journalism Fellowships Program is to produce impact that benefits society. I think we have done that in Panama. In the two years since we launched Mi Panama Transparente, the digital map has provided a platform that helps journalists and citizens track crime and corruption across the country.
