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Low-Code Tools for Data Journalism

https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Data Editor

https://www.elconfidencial.com/

CEO and Data Scientists�https://datasketch.co

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Outline

Shapefiles and mapshaper
Scraping with googlesheets
Datasketch

Web demo and code
Data upload
Visualization

Web based visualization tools

Datawrapper
Flourish
Datasketch

R Practice

Practice: Shapefiles (map shaper)
Practice: Scraping (scrapping) and cleaning

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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mapshaper

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Mapshaper is very useful when we need to…

Create a new map

Reduce the weight of a map

Change the format of geographic data

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

Mapshaper is very useful when we need to:

Create a new map

Reduce the weight of a map

Change the format of geographic data

This is the most basic and you don't even need to know how to code.

Let's make a practical example of these functionalities. We have the following situation: I want to make a map, but the cartography is not already available in the tools I usually use.

This is more common than it seems. A case study. During the Covid pandemic, the Community of Madrid published infection data according to its basic health areas. This basic areas was not a municipality or a district or a neighbourhood, but the area covered by a health centre. Until then, we had never had to make a map with this information.

The Community of Madrid published the cartography on its open data portal. In order to make the maps, we simply use mapshaper to adapt the size and format to what the different platforms ask for. I'm going to do it.

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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How to use your own cartography in...

Datawrapper:

2MB
GeoJSON/ TopoJSON

Flourish:

5MB
GeoJSON

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Scraping data with Google Sheets

ImportHTML

List
Table

ImportXML

https://tinyurl.com/gijc23scraping

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

The ImportXML function is somewhat more complex. For it, you need to understand the HTML structure a little better and know how to write what is called Xpath. However, for some very basic scanning, it is not difficult.

Here let's start by trying to extract all the headlines from a media outlet. On the El Pais website, all the headlines have the "h2" tag, so if I type this (I type xpath), I will extract all the elements that have that tag. How do I know that they have that tag? Because I see it with the web inspector.

Now let's do an example with the GIJN 2023 author listing web.

To scan the names, I see that I have to say with my xpath that I want everything that has the sched-event-details-name class. Everything is the *. (I open the inspector on the web to see it).

And if I want the links of each name, then I have to indicate that I want everything that has the sched-avatar class and a link (with the inspector).

About the syntax, if you had never seen it, maybe you feel a bit lost right know. You can investigate more starting with the tutorials that we leave you here. But even if you don't understand some things now, it's normal. It is a matter of practicing from examples to refine the scrapings.

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Which tool should I use?

Design VS Need

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Datasketch Demo

Create and share datasets
Make charts
Make websites

https://www.datasketch.co

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Datasketch Demo - Create and account

http://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code-guide

https://www.datasketch.co

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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Which tool should I use?

	Datawrapper	Flourish	Datasketch
Maps	More cartographies available	More visual options��Higher map size limit	Very few available just yet
Other charts	Better default options	More visualization types	Balanced options
UX/UI	Upload data first	Select chart type first
Customization	Color palettes Logo (PAID)	Color palettes Logo (PAID)	Color palettes Logo (FREE)
Data sharing	Yes	No	Yes

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code

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R practice

Shapefiles, scraping, publishing

Setup guide: �http://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code-guide

Download file:

World Map 1945

http://web.archive.org/web/20080328104539/http://library.thinkquest.org:80/C006628/download.html

Make a map in 3 lines of code
Scrape tables from wikipedia

Slides: https://bit.ly/gijc2023-low-code