Jornalismo de (im)precisão : o conhecimento matemático e a apuração de números

• Ano de defesa: 2016
• Autor(a) principal: Gehlen, Marco Antônio
• Orientador(a): Dornelles, Beatriz Corrêa Pires
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: por
• Instituição de defesa: Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Comunicação Social
• Departamento: Faculdade de Comunicação Social
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: JORNALISMO; COMUNICAÇÃO
• Área do conhecimento CNPq: CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::COMUNICACAO
• Link de acesso: http://tede2.pucrs.br/tede2/handle/tede/7001

This study investigates the journalistic treatment given to figures in professional practices of news report, from a discussion established through Precision Journalism, Investigative Journalism and Data Journalism Theories, as well as through the ultimate singling of the mathematical skills needed for contemporary journalism practice. The research was composed by eight methodological stages, in which we conducted interviews with prominent professionals in their working areas; applied questionnaires to students and journalists aiming to understand their relations with numbers; and used Content Analysis in a sample of news reports - standard and with data - that have been published in newspapers, focusing on identifying how figures were included in the news construction. As a result, we verified that 73% of journalism students and 60% of conventional journalists from various surveyed newsrooms claim that they do not like mathematics, although 82% of the professionals have pointed out that usually make news and / or reports using figures. From the investigative journalists we have talked to, 94% say they have felt the necessity to know more about mathematics when they were investigating some agendas, and 95% from the total of the surveyed journalists believe that, due to little affinity, journalists heavily rely on figures informed by their sources. The study mapped the figures published in 110 texts from a complete edition of a printed newspaper and concluded that 84% of them had numbers. From this, it has come to a typology with eleven categories of figures used in the construction of texts. A comparison of the numbers found in conventional reports and data reports revealed that the predominant differential is that the figures published in the data reports are obtained from databases and undergo mathematical operations performed by the newsroom team, that is, journalists are starting to make the numbers which will compose their news report. Regarding the necessary mathematical knowledge and skills to act in contemporary journalism, basic operations prove to be sufficient to perform operations for conventional reports, but data report teams have demonstrated greater mathematical and quantitative reasoning on a scenario of growing availability of databases and numbers which can be subject to further newspaper interest. We also extend, in this sense, the demand for statistical knowledge in handling and investigating such data. Therefore, in cases of reports that use numbers, journalistic “flair” and / or journalistic “intuition” do not constitute just an instinct, but we presume a new kind of quantitative knowledge capable of enabling the journalist to see what the data tell.