Story by Pamela Duncan, Carmen Aguilar García, Michael Goodier, Olivia Lee and Alex Clark.
Graphics by Lucy Swan and Tural Ahmedzade.
In this piece, journalists at the Guardian have scrutinized data to depict the lives of alleged rioters who took part in the 2024 UK protest wave, which broke out after the stabbing of three young girls at a children’s dance class in Southport. By using court filings and tracking the cases of almost 500 rioters, the journalists have cross referenced their personal details with other publicly available data, thus challenging some common assumptions about these dissatisfied citizens. Below are some examples of data journalistic strategies from the article:
- Video clips from several of the riots have been compiled into GIFs
- Residencies of the alleged rioters have been mapped in relation to the locations of the riot events
- Graph shows correlation between alleged rioting and residing in socioeconomically deprived neighborhoods/circumstances
- Graph shows correlation between alleged rioting and voting for right-wing populist party Reform UK
- Graph shows age range of alleged rioters and establishes that the average rioter was an angry adult – not an errant youngster
- Includes data on the public’s perception of the ratio of immigration vs. true numbers
In my opinion, this is a great example of data journalism that reflects “common” people’s lives, whilst simultaneously analyzing the political landscape in the UK and debunking myths about the civil resistance movement that took to the streets this past summer.