Want to get this in your inbox every fortnight? Sign up for The Crunch here. Hello and welcome to another edition of The Crunch. In this week’s newsletter we are going hard on maps. We have a map based on a Billy Joel song, a Lego US election map and much more. For the non-map nerds (how many can there be?) there are also visuals on microplastics in the oceans, how mpox spreads and mutates, electric cars, and a beautifully illustrated scrolly ..read more

The factoid about biodiversity and Indigenous peoples spread around the world, but scientists say bad data can undermine the very causes it claims to support The statistic seemed to crop up everywhere. Versions were cited at UN negotiations, on protest banners, in 186 peer-reviewed scientific papers – even by the film-maker James Cameron, while promoting his Avatar films. Exact wording varied, but the claim was this: that 80% of the world’s remaining biodiversity is protected by Indigenous peoples. When scientists investigated its origins, however, they found nothing. In September, the scienti ..read more

The Data Local team uses AI technology to generate stories on weather, fuel prices and traffic reports for hyperlocal mastheads Follow our Australia news live blog for the latest updates Get our morning and afternoon news emails, free app or daily news podcast News Corp Australia is producing 3,000 articles a week using generative artificial intelligence, executive chair Michael Miller has revealed. Miller told the World News Media Congress in Taipei that a team of four staff use the technology to generate thousands of local stories each week on weather, fuel prices and traffic conditions, a ..read more

The question was: ‘How many people have died since the 1991 royal commission?’ Nobody knew – so a Guardian Australia team spent eight months trawling through inquests and media reports, striving to highlight human stories behind shocking statistics Ten years of Guardian Australia’s most impactful journalism Support Guardian Australia journalism by making a contribution of any size In cities across Australia in 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests erupted around the world, the number 432 was everywhere – displayed on banners at rallies and at marches. “That number didn’t exist before we publi ..read more

A huge cache of reports from the heart of Australia’s immigration detention regime led to a Guardian scoop – and lasting change to how the country treats asylum seekers Ten years of Guardian Australia’s most impactful journalism Support Guardian Australia journalism by making a contribution of any size It was March 2016 and Paul Farrell, then a reporter at Guardian Australia, had agreed to meet an anonymous source. He had been reporting on immigration for several years but still, when he was slipped a USB stick across the table and told, “I think it might be of interest to you,” he had no id ..read more

The journalist and academic says that the bias encoded in artificial intelligence systems can’t be fixed with better data alone – the change has to be societal Meredith Broussard is a data journalist and academic whose research focuses on bias in artificial intelligence (AI). She has been in the vanguard of raising awareness and sounding the alarm about unchecked AI. Her previous book, Artificial Unintelligence (2018), coined the term “technochauvinism” to describe the blind belief in the superiority of tech solutions to solve our problems. She appeared in the Netflix documentary Coded Bias (2 ..read more

Our acting data projects editor speaks to her predecessor, Simon Rogers, about how their work became integral to the newsroom “It’s a new way of doing journalism which, like punk, anyone can do”. So said the Guardian’s data editor, Simon Rogers, in a TedX talk entitled “Data journalists are the new punk rockers” in 2012. As far as career-changing sentiments go, it’s admittedly a strange one. But, looking back now in my role as the Guardian’s acting data projects editor, the idea that, with the right tools, anyone could be a data journalist was a real eye opener ..read more

The Guardian’s data editors in the UK, US and Australia explain how their work has influenced our journalism The Datablog was launched in March 2009, starting in a corner of the Guardian website dedicated to the publication and analysis of data. In the last decade it has published thousands of stories and datasets on every topic imaginable, from Reading the Riots to how the UK fared in every Eurovision song contest, and its influence lives on throughout our data journalism. How did it all begin? This is what its founder, Simon Rogers, remembers: It really started with a simple idea: what if we ..read more

An infographic endorsed by the Davos set presents the story of coerced global proletarianisation as a neoliberal triumph Last week, as world leaders and business elites arrived in Davos for the World Economic Forum, Bill Gates tweeted an infographic to his 46 million followers showing that the world has been getting better and better. “This is one of my favourite infographics,” he wrote. “A lot of people underestimate just how much life has improved over the past two centuries.” Of the six graphs – developed by Max Roser of Our World in Data – the first has attracted the most attention by far ..read more

The deaths do not just occur at sea – but in detention blocks, asylum units and even town centres. Here’s how the List is put together Download a PDF of the List here The boat capsized in rough seas in March close to Italian territorial waters. A search and rescue operation fished bodies from the sea, dead and alive. Many of the ship’s passengers remained unaccounted for. No one knew quite how many. It’s a grimly familiar tale that sounds like one of the tragedies that occurred on Europe’s southern rim over the past couple of years. But in fact, the events described occurred in 1997. Some de ..read more