Data Journalism in the Arab Region: Role Conflict Exposed

Abstract

Can the promise of data-driven reporting as an empirical form of journalistic inquiry take root in the Arab region, where public data are often inaccessible, equipment and skills are in short supply, and civic-affairs journalism is hamstrung by wary governments? Sixteen data journalists working in Arab nations were identified through multiple inquiries and a snowball sample that achieved saturation. Informants described data journalism as the careful analysis of numerical evidence to provide credible and sometimes visual information to audiences on subjects otherwise off limits and which aligns journalists with perceived global professional standards. Four types of barriers emerged: two structural (insufficient data access and social/political expectations) and two individualistic (ignorance and resistance). Combined, those barriers affirm journalistic role conception research and the value of metajournalistic discourse theory to reveal that the fundamental obstacle in the region is not a paucity of data but the ontological limitation of the dominant loyal-facilitator role.