This is the opposite of Foust and Hathaway:

“Not only can such interactivity increase the community’s interest in topics of importance, it also can increase the particular news organization’s standing in the community by providing a sense that it listens to its audience”(2005,13)

This was also confirmed with a post by Robin PC on the Help Me Investigate site. I realised that in pursuit of mashing-up available data, I had lost focus on why I was making the map. I responded to Robin’s post saying his comments would help my feature.

I took stock of my actions and put a summing up post on the HashBrum site. The purpose of this was to allow the public to see how I had reacted to various comments and what my plans were. I had to redesign the first post so that people visiting the site could navigate their own way.

“Because the Web can be either linear or non-linear, web journalists will have to understand both concepts and be skilled enough to present information in both forms.” (Stovall, Allyn and Bacon 2004, 42)

I cut the original post down to encourage contribution to the map still and provided a logo-link to SMIDSY.

“For the Web journalist it needs to be lateral. The journalist needs to ask ‘How can the story expand?’”(Stovall, Allyn and Bacon 2004, 63)

I decided to start gathering my own data and humanised my story by getting on my own bike, inspired by a feature in Guardian Society. I realised that an old bike that I inherited was perfectly adapted to snow conditions for reasons explained in the Audioboo. I was also playing with new technology having ordered an Android phone after Christmas. I attempted to take pictures from the journey and send them whilst cycling mobile via Pixelpipe and Tweetorium.

The idea was to not only give the story a human angle but also peak peoples’ interest. I teased Snow Bike on Twitter with links that lead to The Boo or pictures. In its raw form, this multimedia project lived on my blog. My bitly rating were pushed up as other people on Twitter including @benjibrum and @kevingilmartin retweeted it. I also commented on the Guardian website which produced traffic for my site as well.

I installed an application onto my phone called Sportsrunner which tracked my journeys. Although it was a sporting device that highlighted speed trials and personal bests, it did allow for comment notes section. I was therefore able to write a little about each track and mention any hazards I saw. I then transposed these hazards onto the map. I put up a post on HashBrum and also encouraged people on the Birmingham Cycling site to contribute if they could get the technology.

I bought a Kodak Zi8 and decided that I would test Robin PC’s claim that the best way to avoid an accident is make sure you are seen by motorists. He suggested cycling further away from the kerb, so I decided to put this to the test using a Flip Mount on my handlebars. I was on Snow Bike that day, which gave me something extra to talk about. I then edited the footage down and published it on YouTube. I also commented on a Podnosh post on Flip cameras which again drove some traffic to this site where I displayed the story alongside a map tracking my progress using VideMap. The story was fragmenting across platforms and I liked it.

“News, in other words, is no longer made up simply of a complete, self contained news item, but breaks into a series of primary reports (for example of updates as they unfold, or of various news items written from different perspectives) background information, discussion, commentary, and related and further information.” (Bruns 2005 218)

I tied various multimedia parts together on another HashBrum post, moving from mapping the stats to tracking my progress. I grabbed another perspective on safety and the kerb rule when I got my bike chain fixed. I then compiled my Robin PC footage together.

Find out how I finished my story but can’t stop pedalling in part three.

Part 1 – Pedalling The Raw Data

This feature began with a simple observation, I’d started hearing and reading more news stories where cyclists had been involved in accidents. This interested me because I had been cycling into work. Working at Metro Newspapers at Fort Dunlop, I considered pitching a story to Birmingham Post about commuter cycling so I filed a Freedom Of Information (FOI) request on road deaths involving cyclists in the West Midlands.

When I started this course I began to think about different ways in which story could be told. My FOI request came through and I decided to map the deaths. I felt mapping could graphically represent the accidents which would help cyclists think about how they ride in that area. However, my FOI request had a significant flaw, the accidents were not located.

I put the FOI on the HashBrum site alongside the map and set about trying to find the accident locations via news stories and police reports. I also launched an investigation on Help Me Investigate.

“The first step in community organizing is to listen… you show that you are willing to not only listen to other voices in your online community, but to amplify them. That takes you into the second step in community organizing, building relationships.”(Niles)

I responded to each comment and I hope I succeeded in what Axel Bruns would call “dialogic, coversational, unfinished news” (2005, 53.) People showed me other experiments that were taking place, other data that was available and successful national mash-up maps.

I was encouraged by the different experiments taking place but they all stopped short of what I wanted for HashBrum. Dave Harte showed me a mash-up created by Times Online made from data which had been passed to me the day before. In December, I was shown a UK Crash Map on the BBC site. They were expansive but I wanted something more local and with more detail.

I was told about a similar investigation that was taking place in New York but no results had been mapped. Hannah Waldram was inspired by my experiment and launched a similar Help Me Investigate for Cardiff which I duly joined.

“Digital age journalism is now also interactive. Until recently it was a one-way process… this is no longer the case. Discussion and debate over all kinds of issues is enhanced by the digital age.” (Herbert 2000, 2)

I also received attention from the cycling community in Birmingham, including CTC and Birmingham Cyclist Blog and they both started following me on Twitter. One person who runs the Birmingham bike forum also contacted me in the New Year when a cyclist was involved in a serious collision in Solihull; I worked this fact into my story.

However, I was frustrated that I, or anyone else for that matter, couldn’t find the older news stories to corroborate the FOI stats I had. I spotted another US site called Bikewise they seemed to have access to full police reports.

I went hunting for other data. I discovered a site called SMIDSY (Sorry Mate I Didn’t See You) a campaign launched by the Cycle Touring Club (CTC) which encouraged cyclists to report near misses and even get legal advice. I asked the administrator if I could access their data, they refused but were encouraging about the investigation. They offered some tips such as ‘the cycling community prefers using the terms crash or collision rather than accident.’

I decided the only data I could use was the UK government statistics. I decided I could marry the Birmingham pinpoints up with some of the missing FOI accidents. Following our mapping lesson I looked into ways put these stats on a map and then limit it to the Birmingham area.

I launched another task using Help Me Investigate and spent many hours converting the stats to Longitude and Latitude and trying different sites that could accept a large amount of data. I tried Mapalist, Many Eyes, Google Earth Pro but I couldn’t convert them. I contacted @Psychemedia a mash-up specialist but couldn’t get it to work. When I disappeared into the world of Python I had to give up.

Find out how I got back on my bike in part two.