The Sigmas 2024 shortlist had 52 entries from 22 countries. Our awards committee reviewed the list and selected the top 10 entries. The 10 winning entries were announced during a livestream on the Sigmas YouTube channel on March 22, 2024. You can rewatch and comment using this link.
Together, they represent the best of data journalism in 2023. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to this great piece of data journalism, and to everyone who sent in their projects. Over the past year, we have received valuable contributions that have helped us monitor the evolution of this field.
How is China destroying Islam?
Published by Financial Times
Country/Region: United Kingdom
Comments from the award committee:
It is no secret that the Chinese government has detained hundreds of thousands of Turkic Muslims in Xinjiang. The Financial Times was able to find an innovative way to showcase the broader suppression of Islamic culture in China. The How China Is Tearing Down Islam team built a database of 4,450 buildings and manually reviewed each building for accuracy. Many reporters based in China pursued this story at great personal risk. The study is the first to document the scale and reach of the Chinese government’s policy to remove Arabic-style buildings from its streets. This entry uses a great mix of photos, videos, data visualization, and consistent page design to tell a powerful story.
Humans have prejudices.Generative AI is even worse.
Published by Bloomberg
Country/Region: United States
Comments from the award committee:
As generative AI models rapidly advance in their ability to generate text and images, we find that biases built into the training data can be amplified in the output from the models. To create the idea that humans have prejudices. Generative AI is even worse: Bloomberg journalists used a text-to-image model to create more than 5,000 images of workers in various jobs and people involved in crime. The resulting images were compared to government data on actual race and gender. of those groups of people. Our analysis shows how the models perpetuated stereotypes, elevated them to something more extreme than the real world, and used well-crafted and creative visuals to clearly demonstrate this to their readers. Ta.
Inside the suspect machine
Published by Lighthouse Reports, WIRED, Vers Beton, OpenRotterdam
Country/Region: Netherlands
Comments from the award committee:
In Inside the Suspicion Machine, Lighthouse Report, WIRED, Vaas Beton and Open Rotterdam gain rare access to the algorithms used to select subjects for welfare fraud investigations. did. After almost a year and a half of negotiations, reporters obtained the basic computer code used to issue warnings to Rotterdam residents. This could result in residents being cut off from services and even subject to raids. By researching and testing risk-scoring algorithms, they learned that they are only slightly better than random chance and target people based on their native language, gender, and even clothing. . From there, reporters followed his two archetypes, represented by over 300 characteristics, to show viewers the logic of an arbitrary and sometimes biased system.
Body Count: Extrajudicial Executions in Bangladesh
Publisher: Netra News
Country/Region: Bangladesh
Comments from the award committee:
Body Count is an exceptional data journalism effort where the numbers tell a grim story, but it’s actually the combination of data processing and fieldwork that makes this project so incredibly impactful. We must thank the anonymous journalists who risked their time working in Bangladesh, a country where intelligence and law enforcement investigations are extremely dangerous, to bring this story to light. This work is a sign of the future, where cross-border data journalism can protect reporters in dangerous environments while exposing vitally important issues.
The wind is blowing anyway
Grist publication
Country/Region: United States
Comments from the award committee:
In a beautifully laid out and powerful investigation, Grist reporters Naveena Sadasivan and Clayton Aldern explore Koch-owned chemical plants along the Texas Gulf Coast and how plant managers identify He talked about whether he had shut down his kiln or turned off the fans. Wind was blowing near the air monitoring equipment, artificially creating the illusion that the factory was not spreading toxic gases above legal limits. Produced in partnership with the Houston Chronicle and Beaumont Enterprises, this project clearly explains how the company took advantage of loopholes in the Clean Air Act and harmed local communities with toxic emissions from its facilities. has been done. Our reporters did a great job of blending data analysis with narrative and visual details to tell a compelling and important story.
[Illustration] China’s war drum against the First Island Chain: Responses under military tensions in the Taiwan Strait and restructuring of Japan-U.S. strategy
Publisher: The Reporter
Country/Region: Taiwan
Comments from the award committee:
The project collected dry military data and turned it into a compelling visual narrative to highlight the risk of war breaking out at one of the world’s key flashpoints. This made the risk of conflict more apparent to an audience that may not have been focused on the issue.
Satellite data uncovers Nigeria’s forgotten mass graves
Published by HumAngle Media and New Lines Magazine
Country/Region: Nigeria
Comments from the award committee:
This article is a great example of the increasing sophistication of using open source methods for research articles. What used to be something only executives at major news organizations did has become a more democratized capacity. This study presents a methodology that can be used by other newsrooms.
Homelessness in LA: How LA’s housing assistance scoring system deprioritizes Black and Latinx people experiencing homelessness.
Publisher: Markup
Country/Region: United States
Comments from the award committee:
“LA Homeless: How LA’s Scoring System for Supportive Housing Drops Priority Scores for Black and Latinx People Experiencing Homelessness,” a study by Los Angeles people previously supported primarily by anecdotal evidence. A story that uses data to expose species disparities and systemic issues. This broad methodology serves as a guide that other journalists can follow when conducting similar investigations in their own communities. Markup has done a great job serving the public interest.
Ghost Tags: Inside New York City’s black market for temporary license plates
Published by Streetsblog NYC, New Jersey Monitor, and Motherboard
Country/Region: United States
Comments from the award committee:
There are many reasons why Ghost Tag makes our list of the best works of journalism in 2023. The first and most important reason is that it is a superior material and far exceeds the average standard of everyday work. This social relevance is notorious. This loophole in the law resulted in a death (or was it murder?) that was made public only through a consistent effort – in a reliable way. The state apparatus was neither prepared nor capable of containing this scandal, which was exposed by professional journalism. The scandal led to shady deals where people were allowed to commit crimes and get rich, but in the end they were punished with small fines. The writing is objective, incisive, and direct. One characteristic of him stands out. It is a classic/traditional method of research with emphasis on interviews and sources. And this great work comes from a medium that competes with the big printing companies in terms of quality.
Shahid’s year
Published by Airwars, Der Spiegel, and the Financial Times
Country/Region: United Kingdom, Germany
Comments from the award committee:
The increasing digitization, mechanization, and automation of warfare is a worrying trend that is likely to accelerate further in the coming years. This article about the affordable but highly effective Iranian drone (actually a pseudo-missile) that Russia used in Ukraine explains what investigative reporting and data journalism does to warn readers about such trends. This is a great example of what can be done. This work combines detailed data analysis of attack patterns, first-person accounts of their results, and rich context regarding both the history and operational methods of this weapon. The story uses photographic and audio evidence to weave the narrative, along with a series of simple but effective data visualizations, scroll-telling sequences, and well-executed vector 3D renderings of drones. In summary, it’s a rich multimedia experience.
What’s next?
Each winning entry will receive a share of the $5,000 prize, a certificate suitable for framing, and the team member credited to the entry will be invited to participate in a panel discussion on data journalism projects at the International Journalism Festival 2024 in Perugia, Italy. You will be invited. Stay tuned for more information on these sessions soon.
This post was originally published by Sigma Awards and is reprinted here with permission. Edited for style and clarity. The complete team list is available in the original.
Marianne Bouchard is the founder and director of HEI-DA is a media nonprofit building data journalism, open data, and web innovation projects around the world. She is also the executive director of the Sigma Awards, a competition that celebrates the best data journalism around the world.
