Data Journalism: How Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic Students Turn Dry Numbers into Impressive and Inspiring Stories

Thanks to the pilot module on data journalism, students of the Journalism major at NU «Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic» gained unique skills in working with open data, learned how to create informative visualizations, and research current topics.

This course is part of a national initiative implemented by BRDO in cooperation with the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine with financial support from USAID, UK Dev, and the Transformational Cooperation Program of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic. Zaporizhzhia Polytechnic is one of five universities in the country where the course was introduced. Interactive webinars, meetings with experienced journalists, and consultations are its practical basis.

The acquired knowledge was tested by a data journalism project competition, where the most talented 2nd–4th year students presented their works. The jury, which included teachers and open data experts, evaluated 11 diverse complex projects.

Winners of the competition:

1st place: Elizaveta Fedotova — «Why are square meters getting more expensive? Analysis of Ukrainian Real Estate«

II place:

Viktoria Tertysh, Anastasiia Sardak — »Raw material 2.0 or a «second life» for waste in Zaporizhzhia«

Svitlana Mylovanova — »Sorting and recycling of waste in Germany«

III place:

Vladislav Tovchygrechka, Iryna Obukhova — »The environmental cost of Zaporizhzhia industry: the main air pollutants«

Anastasiia Semenyuk, Anastasiia Zavodyuk — »We will not sit down for firewood or why draft law No. 9665 is great«

Mariia Bashkatova — »How the average salary changed during the years of independence: gender gap, trends by region, inflation and consumer spending”

A special award was given to Yurii Pshenychny and Artem Kondyra for their work «Protecting What We Have: Rare Plants Under Threat of Extinction».

The best materials will be published in the regional media outlet «SODA».

The high quality of the student works was noted by the following jury members:

• Nataliya Ostrovska and Halyna Volynets – Associate Professors of the Department of Journalism
• Denys Gubashov – Open Data Expert at the Eastern Europe Foundation
• Olexandr Oksimets – Data Analyst at texty.org.ua
• Viktoria Brodova – IT and Telecom Sector Expert at BRDO
• Kateryna Rozhdestvenska – Co-Founder and Editor-in-Chief of SODA

Thank you to the organizers, teachers, experts and students for their contribution to the development of data journalism! New discoveries, new projects and new peaks are ahead!