Reporting and breaking the Panama Papers and Paradise Papers investigations required a centralized platform that made it possible for the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists’ to collaborate while exploring tens of millions of files. As successful as these probes proved, the platform failed to make a searchable database that connected data stored in individual reporters’ computers. Supported by a 2017-18 Magic Grant
CategoryProject Updates
Reporting from Rwanda
Francesco Fiondella, principle investigator of the Data Interrupted Magic Grant, has spent the past week in Rwanda, collecting artifacts, conducting interviews, and reporting on data loss in the country due to the 1994 conflict. Fracesco has spent the week digging through archives, unearthing unlogged weather data that might help strengthen existing climate models. He has interviewed
Dark Inquiry Launches Bail Bloc Project
The Brown Institute announces the launch of the latest project from the Dark Inquiry Magic Grant team. Bail Bloc starts with the premise that cash bail streamlines mass incarceration by preventing low-income, usually people of color, from exercising their right to a fair trial. The team writes that “prosecutors and judges work in concert to coerce low-income people
Measure for Measure at The Public Theater
Elevator Repair Service, the Obie-winning company behind Gatz — “the most remarkable achievement in theater of this decade” (The New York Times) — returns to The Public to celebrate their 25th season with a dynamic new production of Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE. With athletic theatricality and Marx-Brothers-inspired slapstick, the ERS ensemble brings exciting new life to this story of impossible moral choices in
Watch ‘Experiencing Racism in VR’ at TEDxRVA
Psychologist Courtney D. Cogburn focuses her work on how racism contributes to racial inequalities in health. With support from a Magic Grant through the Brown Institute, Courtney and a team of researchers at Columbia and Stanford University have been using virtual reality to help people experience the complexities of racism to not only encourage them
1000 Cut’s member on VR and Social Change
Stanford University faculty and 1000 Cut Magic Grant member Prof. Jeremy Bailenson was recently among those cited and quoted in an August 1 USA Today Article entitled “New breed of VR pushes for social change.” The article examines how this emerging platform is being used as an instrument for letting participants examine their conceptions of
FB Live event on telling race-related stories
Professors Courtney Cogburn and Desmond Patton are going LIVE on CSSW’s Facebook page to talk about the projects they are doing with the help of two Magic Grants from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Professor Cogburn’s project took place this past year. she will report on what it was like to create a visceral
El Tabulario Launches
On May 26 and 27, members of the Brown Institute traveled to Panama City, Panama, for the launch of El Tabulario, a new platform promoting data transparency in the country. Journalists from the area, as well as representatives of the government’s transparency initiative, attended the launch. The two-day event was a mini design sprint, taking
Brown Institute Heads to Panama
In 2015, the Brown Institute funded the Nueva Nación team in Panama to create the country’s first truly accessible public data platform, El Tabulario, and now they’re finally ready to launch. On May 26th and 27th, we’ll be hosting journalists, computer scientists, and students in Panama City to pore over the team’s compiled data and explore new