News Automata

· 12.06.2014 · etc

Since mid-September I've been teaching at The New School as part of their new Journalism+Design program. Heather Chaplin, who organizes the program, brought me in to teach a new class I put together called News Automata, which explores the technical underpinnings, ethical concerns, and potential benefits/pitfalls of technology in journalism.

The way I ended up teaching the class deviated a bit from my original plan. For reference, here's the initial syllabus:

News Automata Fall 2014 syllabus

Week 1: Introduction to the Course

Introduction to journalism and how technology is affecting it both as an industry and as a practice. What is the point of journalism? We'll talk about a few of the major definitions of journalism's responsibility.

We'll also talk about the format of the course and what'll be expected.

Some things we'll go over:

  • Bias in journalism? Is "fair and balanced" actually fair?
  • Does journalism work?
  • Varying definitions of journalism: the spotlight, the watchdog, the entertainer, the simulacrum, the influencer, the activator, the business

Week 2-3: Leveraging networks: from consumers => producers

How are individuals becoming empowered to participate in the production of news, whether through whistleblowing or "citizen journalism"? How does news "break" in the age of Twitter? How are journalists collaborating with on-the-ground sources to have direct access to those affected, in real time? How are online communities becoming involved in the investigative process? We'll discuss some of the challenges in this area, such as verifying accuracy and security, and look at how things can go wrong.

Some things we'll go over:

Week 4: Bots and drones: the automated assemblage

Automation is creeping into more and more parts of our lives. Jobs which existed a few decades ago are now obsolete. Jobs which exist now will likely be obsolete in an even shorter amount of time. Will journalists be one of them?

Some things we'll go over:

Week 5: Information overload and context

The information age is a blessing and a curse. What good is all that information if you don't have the time, energy, or attention to make use of it? What approaches are being used to make the news easier to digest and give us the fullest understanding of what's happening in the world? Technology and design are both about getting more with less. How can we get the maximum impact from the smallest amount of information?

Some things we'll go over:

Week 6: Engineering virality and control over networks

Facebook wants you to be happy, BuzzFeed knows you like lists and quizzes, and Upworthy understands how to tease you into clicking a link. They have all been immensely successful. Is that all these companies are about? Or is there something larger at play? What happens when all news is designed just to get us to click into it? Or has that already happened?

Some things we'll go over:

Week 7: The Filter Bubble and the new gatekeepers

The most prominent approach to managing information overload is self, algorithmic, or thought-leader curation. But the nature of these three filtering mechanisms leads many to worry – are we just seeing more of the same? How does that affect how we think about the world? Is that fundamentally antithetical to journalism's aspirations as a practice?

Some things we'll go over:

Week 8: Taking action

Journalism is more than about knowing what's happening. It's also about acting on that knowledge. How can we design systems to tighten that action-intent gap? How can we make it easier for people to organize and act on the issues they feel strongly about?

Some things we'll go over:

Here's what the classes ended up being about:

  • What does journalism hope to accomplish?
  • Social networks and news production: crowdsourcing/citizen journalism, problems of verification, perspectives, popular curation vs the gatekeeper model
  • Automation, news bots, intro to machine learning, intro to natural language processing
  • Communities and discussions online, anonymity, and bits of behavioral economics, game theory, decision theory, group dynamics, sociological/psychological research for understanding online behavior
  • How elections are reported (the week after midterm elections), how algorithmic filters work, filter bubbles/"personalized propaganda"
  • Hands-on: building our own news feeds and algorithmic filters with Python
  • The maturing medium of video games (narrative, mechanics, aesthetic, and technical perspectives) and how it relates to journalism

There are still two more classes in which I plan on covering:

  • The physical basis of the internet (an overview on its infrastructure and the politics of that infrastructure)
  • Taking action and digital impact IRL: slacktivism, hacktivism (Anonymous, Wikileaks), doxxing, DDoS/LOIC, etc

This was my first time teaching a class so it's been a great learning experience for me, and my students were great. I'm hoping to teach it again next fall. The class was public which ended up being a boon (I was worried about it at first) - lots of people from all sorts of backgrounds stopped in for a class or two and had interesting contributions to our discussions.