Open Data For Human Rights Event Has Taken Place in İstanbul

İstanbul /Cibali
4 March 2017 / Saturday

The Open Data Day on the 4th of March celebrated in 300 different events (workshops, conferences, etc.)  around the world as well as in Turkey by Open Knowledge International’s affiliate group Dağ Medya  in Turkey with the support of the Global Open Knowledge Foundation.

Işıl Yarımoğlu, Pınar Dağ and Sadettin Demirel organized the Open Data Day Turkey from Dağ Medya.

 

 

 

 

 

The theme of the event was “Open Data For Human Rights” and the day  attendants accordingly gathering and structuring  the deceased workers’ data in Turkey. Also it was highlighted the significance of open data for human rights and for journalism that covers the human right issues. 

 

#insanhaklarıiçinaçıkveri #OpenDataDay2017 işçi ölümleri ham verileri işleniyor #odd17 #açıkverigünü #Turkey pic.twitter.com/eMYhJclzsV

— Veri Gazeteciliği (@DagmedyaVeri) 4 Mart 2017

 

The purpose of the event was to make deceased workers’ data structured and transform the raw data into tables and machine-readable format. So that to raise awareness of the human rights issue by opening the data accessible for journalists, researchers and  civil institutions.

The raw deceased workers’ data for January and February 2017 were gathered by the news via Google Alerts. The raw data was processed into spreadsheet format with the help of 10 attendees. The data structured by the attendees will shortly be released in Dağ Medya Deceased Workers Open Database as openly licensed and accessible.

The participants shared their opinions regarding Open Data For Human Rights at the end of the event.

Sevgi Korkut
Social Media Expert, Journalist

The training we had on Open Data Day 2017 was very beneficial for me. First of all we learned how to process data in detail. We learned which online tools are used for scraping or working with data. We gathered the data of January-February deceased workers by using Google Alerts and recorded them on a given template. I realized that how you record data was like the foundation of a building. Because how you record and processed the raw data directly affects the quality of data.

 

Ahmet Ağdoğan
Junior Student at Faculty of Communication, Galatasaray University

We did a productive work session at Kadir Has University for Open Data Day. We learned about open data, then started working on it. We recorded the deceased workers in Turkey. Then made it accessible for further use. We learned how much effort it takes to gather and prepare data by experiencing it. Thanks to everyone in the workshop and my lecturer, Pınar Dağ.

 

Yasemin Akbulut
Kadir Has University Graduate Student, Department of Industrial Engineering

We gathered data and made it ready to analyze as well as accessible. We learned about the tools that helps categorizing or finding the errors while working with small amounts of data. We added products to Open Food Facts which made us realize new things about the products we’re using. I’d like to thank to Pınar Dağ who organized the event and invited us and also to the people who contributed.

 

Onur Teksan
Senior Student at New Media, Kadir Has University

This workshop reinforced my knowledge about open data, since I took the Data Journalism class. Accessing to unadulterated information always makes me excited and arouses my curiosity. That’s why it was pleasing for me to attend this kind of event on World Open Data Day. Especially, chosen topic which is work safety and deaths at work raised awareness.

 

 

Faruk Aydıner
Senior Student at New Media, Bahçeşehir University

 

I learned so much about both traditional and data journalism in my experiences at Dağ Medya and Open Data Day. I was able to learn the job by doing it which is not an opportunity that is given in universities. I was never censored in any shape of form while I was an intern at Dağ Medya. We worked on so many different topics from animal rights to human rights which expanded my horizon. On Open Data Day we learned about how to structure data as well as discussing how to use data to produce news stories. The most important thing was to both learn about tools and being able to put them to use. While it’s believed that traditional journalism will never die, we’ve been providing awareness about the promising future for it which is data journalism.