Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism

by Sharon Machlis

Overview

Do you want to use R to tell stories? This book was written for you—whether you already know some R or have never coded before.

Most R texts focus only on programming or statistical theory. Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism gives you ideas, tools, and techniques for incorporating data and visualizations into your narratives.

You’ll see step by step how to:

• Analyze airport flight delays, restaurant inspections, and election results

• Map bank locations, median incomes, and new voting districts
• Compare campaign contributions to final election results
• Extract data from PDFs
• Whip messy data into shape for analysis
• Scrape data from a website
• Create graphics ranging from simple, static charts to interactive visualizations for the Web

If you work or plan to work in a newsroom, government office, non-profit policy organization, or PR office, Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism will help you use R in your world.

This book has a companion website with code, links to additional resources, and searchable tables by function and task.

Sharon Machlis is the author of Computerworld’s Beginner’s Guide to R, host of InfoWorld’s Do More With R video screencast series, admin for the R for Journalists Google Group, and is well known among Twitter users who follow the #rstats hashtag. She is Director of Editorial Data and Analytics at IDG Communications (parent company of Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World and Macworld, among others) and a frequent speaker at data journalism and R conferences.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780429681752
Publisher:	CRC Press
Publication date:	12/21/2018
Series:	Chapman & Hall/CRC The R Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	260
File size:	19 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Sharon Machlis is the author of Computerworld’sBeginner’s Guide to R, host of InfoWorld’sDo More With R video screencast series, admin for the R for Journalists Google Group, and is well known among Twitter users who follow the #rstats hashtag. She is Director of Editorial Data and Analytics at IDG Communications (parent company of Computerworld, InfoWorld, PC World and Macworld, among others) and a frequent speaker at data journalism and R conferences.

Table of Contents

Introduction. Get Started With R in a Few Easy Steps. See How Much You Can Do in a Few Lines of Code. Import data into R. Project: Snowfall data; Skill: Basic data exploration. Project: Raw Snowfall data; Skill: Reshape data. Project: Airport Delays by Airline; Skill: Analyze data by groups. Map Median: Household Income; Skills: Simple mapping, saving graphics. Population Density and Election Results: Is There a Relationship?; Skills: Joining tables, correlations, basic linear regression. Easily Reproducible Reports With R Markdown; Skills: Generate a Word doc or HTML file from an R script.

Editorial Reviews

"Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism looks to me like a fabulous resource for those folks who always wanted to learn some more R but were afraid to ask. Definitely recommended." ~Carl Howe, Director of Education, RStudio

"The book can provide a good starting point into working with R. It covers a lot of perspectives that are expected in newsrooms all over the world, especially working with geospatial data. It also provides a lot of good examples and interesting additional resources. The packages used are also mainly part of the standard corpus of R-packages." ~Benedict Witzenberger, Süddeutsche Zeitung

"I am the data editor of a mid-sized newsroom. I have long wished for an Intro to R book that was geared toward journalists, not data scientists. I’ve found that fellow journalists are much more likely to pick up on the intricacies of a computing language like R when they encounter it through a relatable example, like visualizing Election Night votes or analyzing a city council budget. Additionally, there are some R functions that simply aren’t useful for the quantitative needs of most journalists. This is what I appreciated the most about the book – its practical nature (the title doesn’t lie!) Machlis focuses on the concepts that data journalists most frequently encounter and spends little to no time on those they don’t…I also appreciated Chapter 17, "An R Project from Start to Finish." This chapter is exactly why I’ve wanted a journalism-specific Intro to R project that I can recommend to my colleagues" ~Ryann Jones, Deputy Editor, Data at ProPublica

"I like the book. It’s conversationally written, it walks you through common problems in data journalism and for the most part uses the most common libraries to analyze and visualize data…The book’s instructional approach is the real value – it seems aimed at an audience that needs a narrative in order to understand code and analysis. Conveniently, that pretty well describes journalism students and working professionals…I would recommend publication. It advances the field of data journalism and presents a solid text for instructors or practitioners who are interested in R for analysis." ~Matthew Waite

"I NEED THIS BOOK. I may adopt it as a textbook." ~Alberto Cairo, University of Miami

"I’m reading this book now and it is terrific. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning R. I will be using this book in my Data Analysis for Journalists class in the spring." ~Rob Wells, University of Arkansas

"Sharon Machlis' 'Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism' is based on the author's workshops for journalists. This book dives straight into doing the kinds of things a busy reporter or news analyst needs to do to meet a 5:00 pm deadline: data cleaning, presentation-quality graphics, and maps take precedence over control flow or the niceties of variable scope. I particularly enjoyed the way each chapter starts with a realistic project and works through what's needed to build it. People who've never programmed before will be a little intimidated by how many packages they need to download if they try to work through the material on their own, but the instructions are clear, and the author's enthusiasm for her material shines through in every example." ~Greg Wilson, RStudio

"Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism looks to me like a fabulous resource for those folks who always wanted to learn some more R but were afraid to ask. Definitely recommended." ~Carl Howe, Director of Education, RStudio

"The book can provide a good starting point into working with R. It covers a lot of perspectives that are expected in newsrooms all over the world, especially working with geospatial data. It also provides a lot of good examples and interesting additional resources. The packages used are also mainly part of the standard corpus of R-packages." ~Benedict Witzenberger, Süddeutsche Zeitung

"I am the data editor of a mid-sized newsroom. I have long wished for an Intro to R book that was geared toward journalists, not data scientists. I’ve found that fellow journalists are much more likely to pick up on the intricacies of a computing language like R when they encounter it through a relatable example, like visualizing Election Night votes or analyzing a city council budget. Additionally, there are some R functions that simply aren’t useful for the quantitative needs of most journalists. This is what I appreciated the most about the book – its practical nature (the title doesn’t lie!) Machlis focuses on the concepts that data journalists most frequently encounter and spends little to no time on those they don’t…I also appreciated Chapter 17, "An R Project from Start to Finish." This chapter is exactly why I’ve wanted a journalism-specific Intro to R project that I can recommend to my colleagues" ~Ryann Jones, Deputy Editor, Data at ProPublica

"I like the book. It’s conversationally written, it walks you through common problems in data journalism and for the most part uses the most common libraries to analyze and visualize data…The book’s instructional approach is the real value – it seems aimed at an audience that needs a narrative in order to understand code and analysis. Conveniently, that pretty well describes journalism students and working professionals…I would recommend publication. It advances the field of data journalism and presents a solid text for instructors or practitioners who are interested in R for analysis." ~Matthew Waite

"I NEED THIS BOOK. I may adopt it as a textbook." ~Alberto Cairo, University of Miami

"I’m reading this book now and it is terrific. Highly recommended for anyone interested in learning R. I will be using this book in my Data Analysis for Journalists class in the spring." ~Rob Wells, University of Arkansas

"Sharon Machlis' 'Practical R for Mass Communication and Journalism' is based on the author's workshops for journalists. This book dives straight into doing the kinds of things a busy reporter or news analyst needs to do to meet a 5:00 pm deadline: data cleaning, presentation-quality graphics, and maps take precedence over control flow or the niceties of variable scope. I particularly enjoyed the way each chapter starts with a realistic project and works through what's needed to build it. People who've never programmed before will be a little intimidated by how many packages they need to download if they try to work through the material on their own, but the instructions are clear, and the author's enthusiasm for her material shines through in every example." ~Greg Wilson, RStudio

From the Publisher