Das Cloud online magazine launches Macroscop, 1st data journalism project in Romania

Digital & Media, Media

Das Cloud online magazine and Romanian graphic and interactive design studio X3 are launching the 1st project of data journalism in Romania. The experimental project brought together a team of journalists, designers and programmers that analysed, after a process that involved over 450 hours of work, the evolution of the most popular medical searches made by Romanians on Google during the last 3 years.

After analyzing couple hundreds of key words from the medical sector, 14 were the ones that attracted the highest interest from Romanian internet users, among which medical tests, tick, colon help, swine flue, helicobacter pylori, C hepatitis, lupus, meningitis, tick bite, smallpox, scoliosis or zona zoster.

macroscop

The main purpose of Macroscop was to make a medical portrait for the Romanians, based on Google searches and to try to explain how these searches are influenced by external factors like mass media. Over the evolution of the interest for the 14 most looked for terms, a person using Macroscop can overlay the evolution of press articles’ number published in the same period. The data was collected using MediaIQ monitoring service.

In a digital world, the journalist has access to immense quantities of information that he can use to make data-storytelling. With the Macroscop interactive graphic, the journalistic act is not ending when the article is published: it is an instrument anyone can continue to use to discover things that us, at Das Cloud, missed

Bogdan Pencea,

Project Manager Das Cloud.

An educated patient is a better patient and a better partner for the one that offers him medical services. In areas where the medical system is precarious, to offer access to information to the people in order to make them more responsible on their health is an important factor to consolidate communities’ health and limit contagious diseases’ spreading

Chris Bailey,

e-Health Specialist – World Health Organization

Macroscop interactive graphic was made by X3, Romanian interactive agency based in Timisoara. X3 made over the time over 400 projects for clients from abroad and a number of design awards in international competitions.

Das Cloud is the online tech magazine for programmers, designers and tech entrepreneurs from Romania. Its mission is to bring to the public the newest apparitions in hi-tech world and show their practical impact. Through its articles and special creative projects, Das Cloud tries to imagine how using new technologies could change for better people’s lives.