16. Data Journalism in Chile: Towards a Critical Appropriation

Like other waves that come from the Global North, Data Journalism begins to be seen by journalists in Chile (though not only here) as a trend that needs everyone’s attention. Therefore, they believe it is convenient to be prepared for its arrival. Despite this, the use of big data is still far from becoming a common practice in Chilean journalism. Two possible ways to explain this include the weak presence that the journalism watchdog model has in Chile (Mellado et al., Palabra Clave, 20(1), 14–46, 2017) due to the closeness that Chilean political journalism has historically had with the elites, an aspect characteristic of the recent dictatorial past, and because of the important instabilities that the media system continues to face. However, governmental, political and economic systems are already used to advanced levels of data for the interpretation and analysis of public comments that appear in social networks. Then, the use of big data has generated a big gap in the capacity to use data processing between the political and economic powerbases, and Chilean journalism. In consequence, we are in the presence of a journalism that is underutilizing big data for investigative practices and this chapter seeks to use journalism theory to explain why this is the case. Data Journalism represents a double challenge for journalism practice and theory in Chile. For practice, because we must evaluate the capacity of Chilean media structures to formalize technological, editorial and professional spaces characteristic of Data Journalism. Theoretically, journalism studies have been understood in Chile (as in the rest of the Global South) as a model whose great social responsibility is to publicize (in the Habermasian sense) the affairs of the State.