Einar Thorsen

Professor of Journalism and Communication at Bournemouth University

Publications | Conferences | Teaching | Projects

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Journalistic potential of public tax returns

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Eirik Stavelin on the journalistic potential of public tax returns showing income, tax paid and fortune.

These tax return lists are made public in Norway, though as Eirik points out, only to news organisations at a fee of around £450. Newspapers currently publish stories related to these figures (e.g. politician's salaries, prominent local public figures etc), but also allow their audiences to search the records for specific names online.

The article (in Norwegian) discusses how journalists can enhance their use of the data via for instance mashups and other online tools.

Now if only UK tax returns were made public…

Source

Citizens map the Gulf oil slick with balloons and kites – MIT Center for Future Civic Media

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    "We're helping citizens to use balloons, kites, and other simple and inexpensive tools to produce their own aerial imagery of the spill… documentation that will be essential for environmental and legal use in coming years.

    We're not trying to duplicate the satellite imagery or the flyover data (though we’re helping to coordinate some of the flyovers and trying to make sure the data is publicly accessible). We believe in complete open access to spill imagery and are releasing all imagery into the public domain."

    External link

    Del.ici.us tags: maps mapping citizenmedia civicmedia oil spill environment publicdomain activism visualization