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The Royal Wedding: An experiment in data journalism

WANNABE HACKS: by Matthew Caines

Graph by Matthew Caines using ManyEyes

UPDATE: After having a stab at data journalism today, my first ever piece has since been featured on the MANY EYES homepage. Not too bad for first-timer…

Seeing as today is all about taking the plunge and tying the knot, I’ve been thinking about joining to someone in holy matrimony myself… to data journalism! I say taking the plunge because it’s not necessarily a match made in heaven – data journalism is something I’ve often shied away from, always assuming the tech geeks + web guys are the only ones who can do it and do it well.

My cold feet were that anyone who saw my Microsoft Word multi-coloured pie-chart would surely scoff at my horrendous attempt at interactive data. But I need this marriage to work because data journalism is fast becoming a valuable skill for any aspiring journalist. [Read more…]

 

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The Social Media Buzz Behind the Royal Wedding [INFOGRAPHIC]

MASHABLE: by Ben Parr

 

Infographic from Mashable website

With hours to go until the Royal Wedding, online buzz surrounding the big event has surpassed the chatter that surrounded the Egypt uprising and the Japan earthquake.

New stats gathered and analyzed by Webtrends reveal that the world simply can’t stop talking about the Royal Wedding (not that you needed us to tell you). According to the web analytics company, people have sent 911,000 tweets in the last 30 days, or just a little more than 30,000 tweets per day, which accounts for 71% of the buzz Webtrends tracked. For comparison, there were approximately 217,000 Facebook status updates and 145,000 blog posts about William and Kate’s big day. [Read more…]