Researching & Brainstorming
Researching
& Brainstorming
in an online world
FOR THE JOURNALIST
Alex Ballingall, Mariam Ahmad, Trevor Melanson, Elvis Anber, Brian Moskowitz
social media
Here to kick things off is a podcast. We take a look at Twitter in the newsroom. We also make bad jokes. Lots of them. Listen at your leisure.
And here's a video. We talk to Kate Dubinski of the London Free Press about how she uses social media.
open data
Welcome to Government 2.0
The Open Data Movement and Government Transparency in the Digital Era
It’s happening in the United Kingdom. It’s happening in the United States. It’s springing up all over Canada – from Montréal to Nanaimo. It’s even taken root at the World Bank.
No, it’s not the plague. It’s the open data movement, an initiative that aims to knock down barriers between the citizenry and their governments by making public information easily accessible over the Internet.
“The problem with a lot of government data today is that when it does get released, it’s released in paper form,” says Vancouver-based open data activist David Eaves.
He says that if this same information is “machine-readable,” – in other words, it’s keyword searchable, easy to access and available online for public use – then people can participate directly with governments in finding new ways to use it. Most often, says Eaves, people create applications for computers and smartphones. The people making them range from democratic activists to entrepreneurs, Eaves explains.
“People want to hold government to account around being able to access information to see what’s going on,” he says. “They also want to use the information to create new services and new ways to spot and identify things. On top of that I think there’s a group of people who want to make their communities better.”
The result is that, across Canada and other countries, machine-readable data is being used to create applications that efficiently deliver information to the public, and also aim to help improve communities in ways that range from garbage pickup to environmental initiatives.
“This is about giving citizens access to the same information the government has so that they can really think of great solutions to these types of problems,” he says.
Data-Driven Journalism
According to Eaves, the movement also presents an opportunity for journalists. He calls it “data-driven journalism” – where the role of the journalist is to aggregate raw data on say, the government’s stimulus spending during the recession, and to present it in an easily digestible format. That way, website visitors can delve into the information on their own, find their own stories and arrive at their own conclusions.
“If you want to expand your readership beyond the traditional base,” says Eaves, “you’re going to have to find new ways to engage them…Data provides a way of doing it. It can provide for an interactive experience.”
He also says that open data serves opens up government to the research and scrutiny of journalists. It’s something they should use and pay attention to.
“It’s not all about holding government to account, but finding out the interesting things governments are doing, or the things we didn’t even realize were going on that can help us make better public policy,” he says.
For Eaves, journalists in the United Kingdom are doing a good job of this. He says The Guardian in particular has been at the forefront of the movement among newspapers. The paper has an entire open data section on its website. It’s called Datablog, and it features articles about the movement and periodically features open data applications.
For example, they’ve used open data to create an interactive program where readers can manipulate budget information to experiment with how the various ways government can make budgetary cuts to reduce the deficit.
“They understood that there’s interest and value in data, and we have to figure out we’re going to use this as journalists,” Eaves says.
But, according to Eaves, the media in Canada has a long way to go before they’re up to speed with the open data movement.
“The only people who really seem to get this are the technology type people and the bloggers,” Eaves says. “It really stuns me how the press (in Canada) has not understood the opportunity of open data.”
The Guardian's interactive Flash budget diagram that uses open data Check it out here
Open Data in London
Here in London, people like Shawn Adamsson are leading the way for open data. So far, he and the group Open Data London have lobbied the municipal government to release data sets on parks and recreation.
As a leader in the local movement, Adamsson participated in organizing a “hack-a-thon” that brought together computer programmers and open data enthusiasts to build an application using the city’s data sets. They came up with a computer program that sends you an email to inform you on when you need to bring out your garbage.
“It’s at londontrash.ca,” he says. “Basically you just put in your street address and it will tell you what day your pick up is.”
Adamsson hopes to continue working with the government as they become more comfortable with the concept of open data. Next, he wants to convince City Hall to release data sets on their budgetary information.
“We’re in discussions with the city on an ongoing basis about what additional sets to get,” says Adamsson. The way he sees it, the open data movement can bring new ideas to the city government in a way that is cost effective and creative.
“The city has limited IT resources. They can’t just go out on a whim and make an application if they’re not sure whether anyone will like it or not, whereas hackers and the public can do that,” he says.
International Hack-a-thon
Currently, Adamsson and Open Data London are gearing up to participate in the first-ever international open data hack-a-thon, an initiative that Eaves is promoting from Vancouver.
“I wrote on my blog and I just said: “you know we should do an international open data hack-a-thon to raise awareness in communities which don’t benefit from open data,’” Eaves explains. “The response has been overwhelming…It’s kind of an exciting time.”
As of Nov. 25, people from 63 cities in 25 different countries are set to participate. Eaves says the World Bank is also “very, very excited.”
Still, not everyone is enthusiastic about the movement. Adamsson and Eaves say the main obstacles faced by open data activists are concerns over privacy and a lack of enthusiasm from some sectors of the government’s bureaucracy.
Although Adamsson is optimistic that people will catch on, he says they’re going to have to keep the pressure on the government to release more data sets until they can create something that will capture more support.
“We’re going to have to sell it until we come up with a slam dunk,” he says.
The international hack-a-thon is scheduled for Dec. 4.
crowdsourcing
First, we present you with this Flash video. What is crowdsourcing? What can it do? What should we expect from it? We answer your burning questions.
Crowdsourcing the accuracy of quotes
The following is largely based on an interview with Truthsquad founder Fabrice Florin.
The news media is chalk-full public figures spewing inaccurate information. Unfortunately, the information they relay is often accepted as fact, no questions asked. Of course, media watchdogs and news organizations often verify their statements and speeches for accuracy. But today, there’s a new player in town. Truthsquad uses crowdsourcing to verify the accuracy of quotes by public figures.
“The way Truthsquad works is we pick a controversial statement from a politician or media pundit and we ask people whether their statement is true or false,” says Fabrice Florin, founder of NewsTrust and who began Truthsquad. The quote is crowdsourced and participants are asked to provide news articles or other information to help verify or disqualify the claim.
Some examples of quotes that have been examined by Truthsquad are:
"Crime is totally out of control" in Phoenix - By Bill O'Reilly, Fox News
Fox News "never criticized George Bush for anything." - By Rachel Maddow, MSNBC
Each statement, says Florin, is posted “on our site and we ask people whether it was true or false – you can click a true or false button. And we encourage you to take a guess even if you don’t know the answer, give it a try. And once you’ve answered it, you get to see all the other answers from all the other folks that have participated in Truthsquad, but you also get to see a series of links that either support or oppose that statement with factual evidence.”
Participants are called on to click on and review the links. True or false answers can change upon review the information. A few days later, editors at Truthsquad write a truth/false verdict based on the feedback received from the community.
The Importance of Community Involvement
For Florin, it’s a no-brainer why the community should get involved in the process of fact checking, given the ever-evolving news media landscape.
“There used to be a lot of journalists in the previous era. In this point in time, there are economic reasons why it’s not longer possible for people to employ professional journalists. Therefore, it becomes incumbent for each of us as citizens to acquire some research skills and to become a little bit more discriminating as news consumers.”
The future will contain fewer journalists and the onus is now on the people to verify facts themselves, according to Florin.
“We encourage collaboration between citizens and journalists. Whenever those collaborations happen, both sides get a lot out of them. The Journalists have unique information gathering skills and sometimes they are a lifetime of experience, and they can impart some of those skills to the citizens if they’re willing to do so.”
Concerns
A community of fact checkers – or “truthsquaders” as they're known – could emerge in a way that challenges the intent of crowdsourcing. Florin suggests that a small, committed slew of fact checkers would come to dominate the research process. But this is only to be temporary, says Florin, as these newly minted “experts” would tackle a particular beat. This raises concerns once you have a committed community of fact checkers because the project no longer becomes a crowdsourcing one – or it at least becomes limited in its scope because a tiny coterie of folks dominate.
Unless this project takes off in a phenomenal way, only some will receive research training by journalists. Truthsquad could end up with a small community of researchers investigating these quotes. The value of crowdsourcing becomes diminished and the act of crowdsourcing is questioned.
Furthermore, how many journalists are willing to impart their knowledge to citizens? And how many citizens can reasonably collaborate with journalists? And how committed will the citizens be? There’s no promise that the time and effort expended by journalists will pay off.
Regardless, Florin believes there’s a possibility for a community of thousands to develop in Truthsquad, performing an invaluable service. Currently, the number of active participants on the site is in the hundreds. Each week a quote is posted for verification – Florin hopes to soon begin posting a quote daily should the community enlarge. Whether or not the project truly takes off is one question, but in today’s ever-changing news media landscape, arming citizens with the necessary research tools to discern truth from fiction is always a worthwhile venture.
looking forward
Brian takes a very personal look at the future of journalism research. What's Profnet? The semantic web? What the f*** is that? Brian finds out.
For Western Journalism, we're Alex Ballingall, Mariam Ahmad, Trevor Melanson, Elvis Anber and Brian Moskowitz
