This course offers an introduction to internet shutdowns, including an overview of the shutdown problem and examples of different ways governments shut down the internet and other communications channels. It will examine how internet shutdowns exacerbate human rights abuses and interfere with democratic processes. The course looks into who is fighting back and multi-stakeholder advocacy strategies used by the global #KeepItOn coalition to end internet shutdowns.

Introduction to Internet Shutdowns

Advocating and Campaigning Against Internet Shutdowns

#KeepItOn Campaign Manager, Access Now

Felicia Anthonio

@FelAnthonio

Introduction to the course

The facts on internet shutdowns

How internet shutdowns harm human rights?

Quiz - The basics of internet shutdowns

History of internet shutdowns - From Egypt to Myanmar

Defining internet shutdowns (#KeepItOn definition)

Technical means to shutdown the internet

Quiz - Am I experiencing an internet shutdown

What are internet shutdowns?

Why internet shutdowns are a barrier to elections

Civil unrest, protests and shutdowns

What activists need to know

Case study - Susan Mwape, Common Cause Zambia Case study

Quiz - activity

Cuba Case Study - Norges Rodríguez, Yucabyte

Internet shutdowns and democracy

Tips for planning for shutdowns during elections and civil unrest

About the #KeepItOn Coalition

Internet shutdown monitoring tools

Liaising with national and International institutions over shutdowns

Why the private sector matters

Advocacy and internet shutdowns

Wrap up video

Course survey

Conclusion

Access Now

Data are everywhere - if you know where to look. This course will show you who is publishing data, and how to find it. Using publicly available data to tell stories is becoming more and more important for journalists today. Learning how to source and verify data is essential to finding important stories. But before you begin telling a story, how do you go about finding open data in the first place?

Open data research for journalists

Jonathan Stoneman

Introduction to course

Who publishes open data?

What can data do for me? Interview with Megan Lucero

How open is open data?

Open data quiz

What is open data?

Main sources of data

Quiz: Sources for data

Official sources of data

Government and other sources

Searching for data: Using advanced search techniques

What if it's a PDF?

Exercise: Find the table

Scraping data

Interview with data journalist Leila Haddou

Quiz: Handling datasets and scraping

Trusted sources

Privacy and the law

Quiz: Handling data and privacy

Data privacy and the law

Making progress with data

Iran Spotlight

What happens when the database you need to help your advocacy or social development project is a jumbled mess? No download button, no CSV file, no structured dataset. You see the information you want locked in PDF reports, in social networks (like Twitter and Instagram), or even in webpages, but you can't really do anything with it. No more! We will show you how to quickly and easily extract information from these non-structured sources into useful datasets. You will get data you thought were never accessible before, giving your projects a new level of refinement and relevance.

A Gentle Introduction to Scraping Data

Marco Túlio Pires

@mtrpires  

What is scraping?

My first scraper: Me!

Quiz

Scraping, an introduction

Introduction

Using ABBY FineReader Online  to extract data from PDFs

Using Tabula to extract tabular data from PDFs

My second scraper: unlocking PDF files!

Unlocking data from PDF files

Scraping Twitter data using IFTTT

My third scraper: Twitter & Instagram

Scraping data from Twitter & Instagram

A brief introduction to HTML

Using the webinspector

Uncovering the secrets of web pages

Using Google Sheets formulas to scrape data

Scraping data from webpages using Google Sheets

Scraping wikipedia

Scraping webpages, Part 1

Scraping data from webpages using Web Scraper

Web scraping

Scraping webpages, Part 2

School of Data

Charts and graphs are some of the easiest and best ways to visualise your data. They can help you turn complex datasets into easier to understand visuals that you can share in reports, on websites and on social media. 

This course will teach you how to choose the best chart and graph to fit your dataset and  includes lots of tips and techniques.

Visualise your data with the best charts and graphs

Amr Eleraqi

@aeleraqi

The main types of data

Making data understandable

Getting to know your data

Introduction to graphs and charts

Bar charts

Histograms

Line charts

Pie charts

Bubble charts

Map charts

Treemaps

Charts and graphs summary

Quiz - Charts and Axes

Types of Graphs and Charts

Graphs anatomy

Guidelines for formatting graphs and charts

Mistakes to avoid

Quiz - Labelling graphs and charts

Creating the Right Charts

How to create a graph using a google spreadsheet

Exercise

Draw your data

Infotimes

This course will introduce you to the practical skills needed to analyse data using spreadsheets, allowing you to start looking for stories in data if you’re a journalist or analysing your data for advocacy or social development if you’re an activist.

Data Gathering for Beginners

Cleaning and Analysing Data

Milena Marin

@milena_iul

Hannah Williams 

@LittleMsNimbus

hannahwilliams.co.za

Introduction to Cleaning and Analysing Data

Examining data: range, count and distribution

Averages: Mean, median and mode

Normalising data: Comparing things

Taming the Fierce Beast: The Math You Need to Start

Spreadsheets: An overview

Creating a spreadsheet and uploading data

Navigating and using the Spreadsheet

Sorting Data

Filtering Data

Working with spreadsheets: formatting, sorting and filtering

Introduction to formulae

Using a formula to add, subtract and multiply values

Using the built-in functions

Visualising data - Creating basic charts

Screencast: Creating basic charts

Working with spreadsheets: formulae and basic charts

Introduction to advanced formulae and pivot tables

More complex formulae

Retrieving data: the vlookup function

Summarising data: Pivot Tables

Quiz: Formulae and pivot tables

Working with spreadsheets: advanced formulae and pivot tables

Introduction to data cleaning

What can go wrong?

Summary and best practices

Quiz: Cleaning Data

Are you interested in data journalism or using data to help your advocacy or social development project? Can data help you understand and analyse your challenges better but you don’t know where to start? This course is a gentle introduction to data basics where you can find data and what to do with it.

What is data?

What is data? Quiz!

The Average Trap

Where things can go wrong

Quiz: Avoiding Common Misconceptions

Common misconceptions and how to avoid them

Finding data

Where to find secondary data & data sources

Source verification

Content verification

Quiz: Verifying data sources

Verifying data sources

How to design a good survey

Why validation matters

Being responsible with the data we collect

Quiz: Primary data

Primary data: Collecting your own data - surveys

Wrap up

Successful advocacy strategists set goals. Donors demand them. But not all goals are equal in getting you where you want to be. Improve your effectiveness by learning the different types of goals and how to make them SMART with this course by the digital media and advocacy experts at Social Media Exchange.

Courses

Open data research for journalists

Open data research for journalists

A Gentle Introduction to Scraping Data

A Gentle Introduction to Scraping Data

Visualise your data with the best charts and graphs

Visualise your data with the best charts and graphs

Cleaning and Analysing Data

Cleaning and Analysing Data

Data Gathering for Beginners

Data Gathering for Beginners

Developing SMART Goals for Successful Strategies

Developing SMART Goals for Successful Strategies