Big data journalists: influence and interest

Cision worked with LexisNexis to create the top 11 most influential big data journalists in the UK. 

Big data is an industry buzzword that most people are aware of but few seem to fully understand. With around two billion people currently connected to the internet and the majority of the remaining five billion likely to be connected in the next five years, big data is set to grow in every industry.

Big data refers to data sets that are large, complicated and difficult to manage. The subject also encompasses the technical tools and practicality of handling such vast amounts of data. As people store more personal information online, either in company sign-ups, social media profiles or competition entries, big data becomes more of a reality for all types of business.

Cision teamed up with LexisNexis to create a list of the UK’s most influential ‘Big Data’ journalists. With around 175,000 licensed news articles from over 20,000 licensed newspapers, trade journals and social media added to the Nexis database every day we had our own big data set to work with. Over 1300 articles in the past month alone were tagged in the metadata as related to the subject ‘Big Data’.

CisionPoint’s Influence Rating (calculated by a range of criteria including reach, followers, frequency and engagement) was used to determine the most influential technology journalists. Of those, 11 have written about big data at least once in the two years up to March 2013. Together these journalists wrote a total of 9738 articles, of which 76 were about big data.

When choosing media contacts to send press releases to, PRs should be consider not only influence but also engagement: how engaging does the journalist find the subject?  For example, Matt Warman is incredibly influential as consumer technology editor at The Daily Telegraph (with a Cision Influencer Ranking of 99) but he has only written about big data once in 1574 articles – a proportion of just 0.1%.

The top 11 journalists by proportion of big data articles:

1. Sooraj Shah, reporter at Computing – 11.3%

2. Daniel Robinson, technology editor at v3.co.uk – 4.8%

3. Madeline Bennett, editor, v3.co.uk – 3.4%

4. Jemima Kiss, head of technology at the Guardian – 2.2%

5. James Ball, data editor at the Guardian – 1.4%

6. Charles Arthur, technology editor at the Guardian – 0.7%

7. Chris Williams, technology, media & telecoms editor at the Telegraph – 0.6%

8. Chris Nuttall, technology correspondent at the Financial Times – 0.3%

9. Josh Halliday, media and technology reporter at the Guardian – 0.1%

10. Rory Cellan-Jones, technology correspondent at BBC Online – 0.1%

11. Matt Warman, consumer technology editor at The Daily Telegraph – 0.1%

While Sooraj Shah has only written 97 articles for computing, 11 of them have been about big data making him a key Big Data contact. Charles Arthur’s big data proportion is low because he has written a total of 1619 articles, somewhat eclipsing his 11 big data articles. Daniel Robinson would be considered a key big data contact having written 28 articles on the subject out of his total of 582.

Worthy of note is the volume of Guardian journalists in the list. With a dedicated Datablog on their website, the Guardian has embraced the concepts of big data into their own “Data Journalism”.  Over the past 2 years, the Guardian has been the national paper with the second most articles related  big data (41 articles across their print and web editions only beaten into pole position by the Financial Times with 49 articles) which says a lot about the topic and its audience. Newspapers and magazines work with content that has been successful before (why change what works?) and including big data articles again and again suggest it is a popular subject among the Guardian’s readership.

When choosing contacts to pitch to or build relationships with, their influence is important but knowing their history of covering your niche may prove more valuable to your campaigns’ success.

All of the journalists and the publications they write for are available on CisionPoint‘s Media Database. Find out more about influence.