What Does the Audience Want from Data Journalism? An Exploratory Study About Disclosure Transparency

Despite growing attention to studies of journalism-audience relationships in the digital age, niche areas such as data journalism remain underexplored. In this qualitative, exploratory study, I investigate how a group of Brazilians perceives the disclosure transparency of data journalism articles. To do this, I used a semi-structured guide and interviewed 15 adults who read data stories around twice a week. Based on previous research and this study's findings, it is possible to infer a mismatch between the imagined and actual audiences who consume data journalism. This leads to the following key takeaways: a) the participants of this study prioritize editorial and financial disclosure over methodological openness; b) the audience members value clarity about the origin of information, but they do not necessarily examine the source further; and c) they expect journalists not only to explore numbers in news articles, but also to investigate the reliability of official data, indicating that their expectations are very much aligned with what is projected of journalism as a whole. Furthermore, this study advances a research agenda on the role of intersectional identities across multiple countries outside the so-called “Global North”.