C+J 2021 —A virtual gathering. From the outset, 2020 looked like it would be a year of data and computation in journalism. Think of the events that were planned — from the 2020 Presidential Election to the decennial census, to the Summer Olympics, to the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day. Each of these stories had
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Superpredator: The Media Myth That Demonized a Generation of Black Youth
Our 2020-21 Magic Grant Wolf Pack has published its first piece — a deep dive into the invention of the term “superpredator”. The team “found nearly 300 uses of ‘superpredator’ in 40 leading newspapers and magazines from 1995 to 2000. Fewer than 40% of these articles criticized the term.” As Carroll Bogert and LynNell Hankock
‘Sylvia’ Premiering at IDFA DocLab
Have you ever known an aging robot? Meet Sylvia, the first aging virtual influencer. Premiering on November 20, 2020 at the International Documentary FilmFestival Amsterdam (IDFA), attendee’s can look back on Sylvia’s life, and witness its end. Virtual Influencers are computer-generated characters that exist on social media and appear as real humans. These characters are complex
Introducing ‘AR for Everyone!’: A Journalism 360 Project
The Brown Institute is excited to announce that our team members Ziv Schneider and Juan Francisco Saldarriaga have been selected as some of the winners of the 2020 Journalism 360 Challenge. The initiative by the Online News Association and the Knight Foundation focuses on using immersive storytelling to discover new ways to engage audiences and advance
‘Changing Course’: Lectures on Data Representations and Equitable Approaches to Computing
Each year, the Brown Institute sponsors talks that explore the intersection between media and technology. This year we have three virtual presentations lined up, each challenging us to think about data and computation in new ways. Johanna Drucker starts the series by looking at alternatives to representing time — looking beyond graphic standards such as
Magic Grant projects ‘Public Analysis of TV News’ and ‘Sports Illustrated’ featured on Bloomberg QuickTake
On October 21, 2020, Ashlee Vance, Senior Writer at Bloomberg Businessweek interviewed Stanford Professor Kayvon Fatahalian and highlighted advancements in artificial intelligence through Magic Grant projects Public Analysis of TV News and Sports Illustrated. In the piece, Vance and Fatahalian highlight the tremendous opportunities that AI has provided for media makers. Both also offer thoughtfulness
Introducing Reporting Grants from Maternal Figures
Led by Ashley Okwuosa and Chuma Asuzu, Maternal Figures is a solutions journalism project aiming to encourage journalists to investigate solutions to an endemic problem. The project focuses on Nigeria’s maternal health, which has one of the world’s worst outcomes. For context, Nigeria’s estimated 40,000 maternal deaths account for a staggering 14% of the world’s annual
Institute Director Agrawala talks Deep Fakes with the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI
To spot a deep fake, researchers looked for inconsistencies between “visemes,” or mouth formations, and “phonemes,” the phonetic sounds. Using AI to Detect Seemingly Perfect Deep-Fake Videos was published on the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence Blog on 10/13/2020, which featured Brown Institute Director Maneesh Agrawala. In the article, Agrawala spoke to the struggles
Meet ‘Sylvia’: A Project Challenging Ageism in Digital Space
Ziv Schneider is a creative technologist at The Brown Institute for Media Innovation based at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Schneider is breaking barriers in the sphere of Virtual Influencers. Virtual Influencers are computer-generated characters that exist on social media and appear as real humans – yet completely ignore the reality of aging. Like the