Researchers and Guardian win top journalism award

An academic collaboration with the Guardian newspaper has been awarded a data journalism award for its work on how Twitter was used during last summer's riots. Professor Rob Procter from The University of Manchester led the JISC funded study of 2.6 million Twitter messages. It was published in Guardian newspaper last December as part of its Reading the Riots investigation. Professor Procter and his team, which include Alex Voss from St Andrew's University and Farida Vis from The University of Leicester, will pick up their data journalism award at the Global Editor's Networks' World News summit in Paris today. The DJA is the first international competition to recognise outstanding work in the growing field of data journalism. The Global Editor's Network initiative is supported by Google and is organised in collaboration with the European Journalism Centre. There are three DJA categories awarded at both national/international levels and local/regional levels, giving out a total of six prizes.