5 minute read
Living the story: BBC Monitoring’s Data Hub
from BBC MONITOR 33
BBC Monitoring’s Data Hub was launched in June 2024, bringing together a small team with a broad range of multidisciplinary skills and experience spanning data journalism, programming, writing and editing, TV production, consultancy and academic research in computer science and AI. The Data Hub’s Sarah Coop, Hicham Yezza and Marc Ellison tell us more.
What brought you to BBC Monitoring?
With a history dating back to the eve of the Second World War, BBC Monitoring has seen remarkable change in its first eight decades, and we wanted to be a part of its latest transformational chapter towards being a data-led organisation.
We share not only a passion for data and analytical insights, but also for news, current affairs and geopolitics. As a central editorial hub we work with specialist teams around the world on a daily basis, which keeps us on our toes.
We are all excited about this new career challenge and being part of a team straddling editorial, technical, training and strategic remits has allowed us to leverage a wide range of techniques and tools, such as data wrangling, Python and R coding, thematic topic modelling, Machine Learning for Natural Language Processing (NLP), and visualisation and mapping tools.
What does a typical day look like?
Our day is a mix of technical work, training and support sessions and editorial meetings where we look for ways in which data-led insights and approaches can enhance Monitoring’s core output. We work with BBCM teams across our international offices, so a typical day can involve working on data projects tracking climate coverage in Afghanistan, mpox case rates in Africa, Jihadist activity in the Sahel and thematic narratives in China or Latin America around the US elections.
We are involved at every stage of the editorial and data processes: from initial project design and scoping to data collection, processing and analysis, write-up and visualisation.
One of the core – and most rewarding – remits of our work is to drive data awareness and upskilling across BBC Monitoring.
As such, not only do we deploy tools and techniques but we also train and support colleagues and teams to incorporate them into their daily workflow. The reaction so far has been incredible and it has been fantastic to see colleagues who previously dreaded the sight of an Excel spreadsheet now effortlessly navigating pivot tables and data validation.
We work with a wide range of data sources, from primary data collection to textual analysis of TV, online and social media output, to quantitative analysis of media activity, popularity and reach. In line with Monitoring’s tradition and editorial priorities, our projects typically involve multilingual and crossregional expertise, so strong working relationships with our teams of regional experts have been essential.
In short, while our days are extremely varied, they share a common, core vision: to drive the data-led transformation of BBC Monitoring’s output, processes and culture.
What is the most interesting story you have worked on?
Some of the most exciting and valuable aspects of BBCM’s output are stories involving cross-team collaboration, examining regional thematic angles and narratives. As a central editorial hub, we are perfectly positioned to coordinate these and provide a robust data analytical underpinning.
It has been fascinating to work with teams on their weekly round-ups of global coverage of the US elections in key regions including Russia, China, Latin America and the Middle East. This has involved designing and building dashboards tracking the volume as well as the thematic focus of the coverage, while helping teams identify, surface, validate and visualise analytical insights about the coverage.
The explainers we produced on TikTok and Meta banning Russian state media outlets showcased BBC Monitoring’s ability to provide distinctive insight into Russia’s global media activities. Our team provided charts of social media followers and the posting activity of banned accounts, showcasing the lost reach and influence of these accounts in different regions.
Our team has also had the opportunity to commission new products. Working closely with the Nairobi team, we have co-produced a bi-monthly mpox roundup which includes charts on key epidemiological and demographic metrics, including, case, death and mortality rates.
What are the challenges in coordinating our data-driven coverage?
Our team is brimming with ideas for transforming data-driven coverage across BBC Monitoring. One main challenge is finding the time to do it all! Alongside our editorial focus, one of the most important aspects of our job has been designing and building the infrastructure for collecting, processing, analysing, organising and visualising our data, including a range of pipelines and dashboards. The aim is to help our journalists react quickly to key news stories, as well as to inform or What are the challenges in coordinating our data-driven coverage?validate their analytical insights.
What have you learnt while working at BBC Monitoring?
Our BBCM Data Hub journey so far has illustrated some of the key drivers of successful digital transformation: A clear vision, systemic thinking and cross-team, multi-disciplinary collaboration. Above all, however, it has highlighted that while data-led tools can help us collect and process vast amounts of data, they can never replace the depth, richness and nuance of the insights of our colleagues.
It has been a fascinating education learning from BBCM subject matter experts. No day is ever the same, and for this we are very grateful.
