Primary Contact Name
Describe your project
This project aims to construct a new journalistic workflow and an associated framework aimed at providing consumers with a contextualized view of news events. Our goal is to explore and develop methodologies of presenting news in a dynamic fashion that go beyond the timeframe and structure limitations of the editions (in newspapers), newscasts (radio and television), and postings (internet) . With the use of a more structured data and reporting framework for news gathering and with the use of computational systems and databases, this framework can help journalists and media organizations to offer a more adaptive, flexible, and contextualized product for all users. Specifically, this project includes three sections: The first one is to create new ways to structure reporting endeavors with the aid of computational tools. The second one is to get the data gathered into computational understandable structures (such as relational databases). The third one, and the more visible to the audience, is the creation of an adaptive story display that renders the news topic based on the timeframe, depth, geographical location, and many other related criteria. This project suggests that the actual storytelling structure of the news-story needs to evolve into a more adaptive and personalized experience for users. This approach is not aimed as a personalization system that filters stories, but a rendering system that can create news products with the depth needed by the user.
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Who would want to use it and why?
This paradigm change needs the involvement of all the aspects of the news information process: from reporters, to journalists, to designers, to editors, and to the audience. Traditionally, journalists have given the society a selection of relevant and important stories of what happens around us. But traditional media work is now surrounded by an enormous amount of other news outlets that have added more weight to the already overwhelming information load. The media diet of the people has grown, but the understanding hasn’t improved too much. There is still a continuing lack of connection between the stories, contextualization, and adaptation to the knowledge of each individual. Because of all these limitations, the people today are getting less information then they need, or at a depth not suitable for them.
Why are you the best person or organization to develop this project?
This project will be led by Sergio Goldenberg, a Ph.D. Student in the Digital Media Program at Georgia Tech. He is a student in the Language, Culture & Communications Program and is also a member of the GVU Center, an interdisciplinary center aimed at developing and enhancing computing technologies to support users in their daily tasks. Sergio is a unique individual with an uncommon profile, seldom found in the professional or academic world. He has formal academic training in journalism and communication in undergraduate level, and technology, computer science and media studies in graduate level. In 2001, he joined the Catholic University of Chile’s Journalism School, one of the most important institutions in Chile and the only non-US program accredited by the Accrediting Council on Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. Only 25 % of the US Schools have achieved it. He has taught several courses related to new media development in the Internet era. He also leaded the Research and Development of Canal13.cl, one of the main TV networks in Chile, where he was responsible for the creation of over 50 websites and other digital products. After his efforts in Chile, he jumped to the technology side, and earned a MSc in Digital Media at Georgia Tech. Currently, he is pursuing Ph.D. in Digital Media where his goal is to create a bridge that can make technology and journalism work together. The only way to pursue this is to have training on “both sides”, and make a synthesis that does not exist today. At Georgia Tech, he is working leading experts in the area of Digital Media, namely Professor Janet Murray, Professor Jay Bolter, and Professor Ken Knoepsel. He is also a core member of Professor Essa's efforts on the study of Computation and Journalism and their related impacts on each other. Sergio's belief is that to make the journalism industry go forward, one deeply understand the challenges and advantages provided by the current and future IT infrastructure, and to create the skills set and tools to make this happen.
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What potentially bigger thing might happen if everything went perfectly and the stars all aligned?
The Digital Medium, the Web, and related technologies offer us today an enormous potential for journalism. After more than a decade of news organizations publishing their online versions on the web, is not too much that have changed. Although, we see more photographs, audio, and video, together with the text stories, we don’t see yet a radical novel way to present the news to the audience. The people feel overwhelmed with the enormous amount of information that they have to select, dissect, and understand every day. From the visionary views of Vannevar Bush in the forties to the current views of a Semantic Web (or Data Web) from Tim-Berners Lee we have been able to understand, at least in theory, the big potential of the Internet. However, neither the users, creators, nor technology have been aligned to make that potential be converted in reality. There have been numerous efforts to get this Semantic Web a reality, but is in the domain of media and journalism where the efforts have been insufficient. Probably this has been because media companies have not had the vision or knowledge to understand the technology available for them, or because the technologists have a difficult time understanding the humanists. If the claims and plans presented in this project succeeded, together with numerous other efforts, we will be seeing a new ways to offer information to the society which would be much tailored for each individual needs (without disengaging them from the society), acknowledging transparently their time and access constrains. As a result of that, the society will have more tools to make their decisions and know what is important and interesting for them. Moreover, if the paradigm and structure changes are assumed by journalists and media companies, their work can be done much efficiently giving them more time to focus on making sense of what happens in the society.
How will you be able to measure whether or not your project has really made a difference?
This project proposes that journalists, editors, technologists, computer scientists, managers, and so forth, need to be involved on a radical paradigm change. One of the purposes of this project is to create a framework that will allow the involved individuals connect and create synergy. This change is not easy; it needs to break stereotypes and rigid definitions between and inside disciplines. This proposal is not only about creating structures and end user software. It is an effort to understand storytelling from the perspective of distant disciplines such as journalism and computer science. We believe that until now, practitioners (and academics) of these two worlds hardly speak, but one group has been using the tools created by the other group. In order to make successful new tools that understand the processes behind news delivery, these two groups needs to start talking. The approach of this project is somehow an experiment to create a truly multidisciplinary dialogue where its outcome will be the three aspects of the proposal: the structure of journalism reporting; the conversion of data gathered into computational understandable structures; and the creation of an adaptive story display. In terms of measuring, we believe that the start of the dialogue and the creation of the first prototypes will send a message to the academia and the industry that will show them the value of this dialogue in the actual technological context. Moreover, if we make the industry to adopt the proposed changes, we will be more than satisfied.
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Requested amount from Knight News Challenge
What unmet need does your proposal answer?
We believe that the traditional journalism industry have been unable to understand the current potential of digital media. The mix of computer technology and the Internet offers features that no other media could offer before. In this context, this project tries to offer a framework where the processing, structure, and dynamic display capabilities of digital medium are used to give the user a novel way to experience news consumption that meet their current expectations on the medium. Media companies efforts on the Web have not been able to deliver products tailored for individual needs. Active and passive personalization filtering, RSS feeds, news aggregators, have been examples of efforts to give the user a personal approach to news delivery. From the Daily Me (Negroponte, 1995) to collaborative efforts such as Digg.com, the ideal of a personal news delivery turned more a utopia than a reality. However, we believe that the focus should not be the crude personalization or segmentation found on previous efforts. This project aims to deliver a personal news consumption system, but one that starts from the same content of massive media that is expanded or constrained depending on the user context, usage, device, time, or interests. In one hand, a generic approach is needed as an effort to have a common denominator of what is important to society. On the other hand, we have individuals that might share this overall desire of common important issues, but their specific interest and knowledge is not the same. Some people probably have followed some news topic through the week, but someone else probably is the first time that reads about that topic. This creates different expectations on each individual. Moreover, mainstream media usually needs to present the stories in a generic language, avoiding going too specific on a topic. Time frame and depth are two examples of dimensions that will be used to offer a flexible rendering that fulfils the expectations and needs of each individual.
Total cost of project, including all sources of funding
What specific, unique opportunity do you see that will make this project more successful than others trying to fill that general
Continuously, we have seen efforts that have tried to solve only one aspect of this issue of using the current digital media platform as a successful information medium. However, most of these efforts have oriented their work in specific niches without understanding that these problems need the involvement of all the participants of the process of delivering information. Some projects have aimed to solve only front end presentation or design problems without understanding the underlying processes, technologies, and people involved. Others have focused in reengineering published content to convert it into machine-understandable structures, which could be the only option for old content, but does not solve the way future content might be presented. Newer efforts focus on the data structure of the web, but fail to deliver novel forms of presentation to the user (more in q 12). The aim of this project is to have a broad view of the issues. We are convinced that only approaching the whole process it is possible to aim to successful answers. Moreover, that is the logic behind the organizational context where this project will be developed. As it has been stated before, the GVU center at Georgia Tech is a multidisciplinary endeavor where computer science, humanism, and communications blend. With the support of this center, its faculty members, researchers, and its industry connections, we believe it will be possible to approach this effort in a successful way. Specifically, we believe that working with the whole creation process it is possible to offer a significant value added product. For example, the source of the content presented on the front end, how flexible it can be, all depends on how much raw content is available. If the data gathering strategies of the journalist were not aligned with the whole process, the product will turn very limited. Computers science and journalism need to connect more than ever in order to start offering significant new information products, and this is a starting point.
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How will people learn about what you are doing?
This project is part of ongoing efforts at Georgia Tech on the areas of Computational Journalism leaded by Prof. Irfan Essa and Digital Media studies leaded by Prof. Janet Murray. Therefore, the process and outcomes of this project will be part of the knowledge available to the academic community. Moreover, the project itself will have public visibility through a web space that will also serve as a place of discussion and collaboration. After some research is complete, the outcomes will be made public through publications and conference presentations. Finally, the relationship with the industry is vital, both media and technology sectors. Therefore, direct communication and collaboration with these organizations is also planned.
Do you have any other funding or investment? We’re interested in knowing who else is interested in your project.
This project is part of Sergio Goldenberg’s academic research as a Digital Media Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech, therefore is part of ongoing efforts at Georgia Tech on the areas of Computational Journalism and Digital Media. Specifically, the multidisciplinary GVU Center is deeply interested on this topic and it’s planning a future symposium on Computational Journalism in the near future. Sergio Goldenberg is currently funded by Georgia Tech for the duration of this Ph.D. in order to complete a dissertation based on the research presented in this proposal. Beyond the personal context, Georgia Tech’s Computational Journalism endeavors are currently seeking for further funding for this and other related research projects. Historically, the faculty and the institute have received funding from industry companies, such as Turner Broadcasting and Microsoft, and also from other sources such as the state and federal government.
Are you working with anyone else to complete this project? If so, please give names and what they would do?
This project is part of Sergio Goldenberg’s academic research as a Digital Media Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech. Although this is a personal project, it will be closely guided and advised by this distinguished faculty members: Professor Irfan Essa: Earned his PhD from the MIT Media Laboratory in 1995 and is a leading expert in analysis and authoring of multimedia content. He has published over 100 scholarly publications and he is leading the Computational Journalism endeavors at Georgia Tech. Professor Janet H. Murray: Earned a PhD from Harvard University. An internationally recognized interactive designer, and director of Georgia Tech's Masters and PhD Program in Digital Media. She is the author of Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace, which is widely used as a roadmap to emerging broadband art, information, and entertainment environments. Professor Kenneth Knoespel: Earned his PhD from University of Chicago in 1982. He currently is the Chair of the School of Language Communication and Culture at Georgia Tech and is a leader in the area of the study of institutions facing and embracing technological change.
Who else is working in this area? How does your work fit into the larger context of work in this area?
The general goals of this project have been explored from different perspectives in the last decade. However, most of the computer science and information sciences approaches has focused not on a journalism product, but using the Web as a general information platform. Adaptive hypermedia has its roots in the creation of the web. From the beginning, researchers understood that html pages needed to be more than just a static display. Most focused on how to create personalized versions of the content based on personal and context variables. Unfortunately, most of the work done focused too much on the limited technologies available at that time. Information abstraction, modality transformation, interface agents, information visualization, and so forth, are research focuses used during the last decade. Today’s research on these topics has assumed a more structuralist perspective using XML/XLS/RDS frameworks. Some call the current endeavors Open Hypermedia. Some other works have focused on the front end of the products. One of such is the research done by Roger Fidler who has worked on the development of new products using e-ink devices where users can have an enhanced control of the content consumed. Another related approach, in this case to the importance of structure and data, has been the work in the last two decades on Computer Aided Reporting. Mainly investigative journalists have focused on the use of computing tools to improve newsgathering. Although it might seem trivial, the paradigm change of understanding information as data structures is crucial. Today’s approach can be exemplified with the work of Adrian Holovaty. Some media companies have done tremendous efforts to create “interactive graphics or multimedia” as a way to help the users understand complex stories. Moreover, several Journalism related organizations have been focusing on the importance of new platforms and technologies: The Online News Association, the American Press Institute, The Poynter Institute, and the Society of News Design.
What do you guarantee will happen if you complete the activities in this proposal?
- A written proposal of new ways to structure and aid journalism reporting and news gathering. - A written proposal of data structure designed specifically for news processes - A prototype of an adaptive story display that renders news stories based on timeframe, depth, geographical location, and other related criteria. - The establishment of a community of communicators and technology developers around the topics of Computational Journalism. - The research outcomes will be made public through academic publications, presentations, or similar outlets.