The Nordic Data Journalism conference 2017 starts on Friday 27 January in Odense, Denmark. The main event focuses on focuses on the practical side of data journalism. There is also an academic track on Friday, presenting the latest research on the topic. Here are a few picks from the academic programme.

At 10.55, Carl-Gustav Lindén of the University of Helsinki and Södertörn University presents six case studies of news automation (also called robot journalism) in Sweden, Norway and Denmark. The paper looks at the state of development, the role of data journalists and business models for news automation.

At 13.00, by studying the winners of Global Editors Network’s Data Journalism Awards, Bahareh R. Heravi of the University College Dublin and Adegboyega Ojo of the National University of Ireland, present a framework to characterize successful data storytelling. They seeked to answer the question: What makes a winning data story? The findings refine the traditional typology of data stories from the journalistic perspective.

At 14.40, Eddy Borges-Rey and Florian Stalph of the University of Passau present their study on data journalism’s future: will data journalism remain economically sustainable? They also show key determinants that hinder practising data journalism in smaller newsrooms. Finally, three possible scenarios for the near future of data journalism are presented.

You can find more information on the conference website. Full programme and the academic programme are also available. The event’s Twitter account is @nodaconf and you can use the hashtag #NODA17.

Editor’s note: Turo Uskali and Ville Manninen of Journalism Research News are also attending the conference and presenting a paper on the academic track.

Picture: IMG_8160 by Krists Luhaers, license CC BY 2.0