Visual data underpins press freedom goal

• Analytics & Modeling - Real Time Analytics
• Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Visualization

• Business Operation

• Real-Time Location System (RTLS)

• Data Science Services

The Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom (AJF), a Sydney-based public not-for-profit company, was looking to expand its advocacy into the Asia–Pacific (APAC) region in mid-2020. The organization realized that it needed to fully understand the press freedom landscape in the APAC region. Existing data was presented in different ways and AJF identified a gap in the market for a visual overview of the data. The organization wanted to develop a project that provided a visual overview of the data in the region it was trying to better understand. AJF's advocacy focuses on building trust and relationships, and the organization wanted to develop a tool that emulates that. The purpose of AJF’s work in the region is to support others to act independently to protect their own press freedom and transparency. This has positive civic and possibly even economic implications for those countries.

The Alliance for Journalists’ Freedom (AJF) is a Sydney-based public not-for-profit company that was incorporated in 2018. The organization’s purpose is twofold: AJF works with Australian governments to ensure legislation supports press freedom and campaigns in Asia–Pacific wherever journalists have been imprisoned, threatened, censored or killed. In mid-2020, the organization was looking to expand its advocacy into the Asia–Pacific (APAC) region. The research developed since underscores how governments – whether they seek to or not – are whittling away at their own societies’ freedoms by stifling the media’s freedom. AJF's advocacy focuses on building trust and relationships, and the organization wanted to develop a tool that emulates that. The purpose of AJF’s work in the region is to support others to act independently to protect their own press freedom and transparency. This has positive civic and possibly even economic implications for those countries.

AJF decided to develop the Press Freedom Tracker (PFT) using the Qlik Sense data analytics platform. The PFT is an interactive map that updates developments with implications for press freedom in real time. It categorizes types of incidents that stifle press freedom: physical attacks, police actions, governments introducing laws and regulatory changes, court cases, imprisonments and other incidents that qualify as violations of press freedom. The Qlik Sense solution was chosen because it delivered a great level of depth and clarity that would allow it to be easily digested by AJF's audience. The solution was made possible because of Qlik’s corporate social responsibility program, which provides support to non-profits through free or discounted licenses to help organizations drive their missions forward. The Qlik platform provides a level of data that AJF has not seen elsewhere, especially the capacity to dig deep into that data and see what exactly happened to an individual or an organization on a specific date.

• The Qlik Sense solution captures details of the targets against whom incidents are being perpetrated, be they journalists, media organizations or even whistleblowers and sources to media sources.
• The timeline function allowed AJF to focus on tracking and visualizing how the impacts on press freedom changed with two crises, the arrival of Covid-19 and the crisis in Myanmar.
• The PFT activity sits alongside AJF’s other APAC project which is called the Asia–Pacific Dialogue. Its purpose is to hold roundtables to encourage collaboration between governments, security agencies, media and others to make it easier to solve press freedom issues as they arise, in a way that is sensitive to different nations’ sovereignty.

• 18 countries covered in 12 months, up from four previously. This number is continuing to grow.