Data and computation drive our world, often without any kind of critical assessment or accountability. Journalism is adapting responsibly—finding and creating new kinds of stories that respond directly to our new societal condition. Join us for a two-day conference exploring the interface between journalism and computing.
October 24-25, 2014
9:00 am - 6:30 pm
The Brown Institute for Media Innovation
Pulitzer Hall, Columbia University
New York, NY
We live in a society that is increasingly dependent on data and computation, a dependence that often evolves invisibly, without substantial critical assessment or accountability. Far from virtual, inert quantities, data and computation exert real forces in the physical world, shaping and defining systems of power that will play larger and larger roles in people's lives.
Journalists, "the explainers of last resort," need to adapt responsibly—finding and creating new kinds of "stories" that respond directly to this new societal condition, whether that “story” be an actual written piece, a data visualization, an API or database, or even something hot off the 3D printer.
Computation+Journalism is a forum for discussing the ways journalism is and should be adapting in the face of the quantitative turn in society. We invite the participation of a broad range of thinkers, doers, and storytellers to this interdisciplinary meeting, a hybridization of journalism and the computing and data sciences. We want to hear from journalists with an interest in, or experience in, developing new technologies or applications, and from data and computer scientists working in news, or storytelling broadly, and collaborating or hoping to collaborate with journalistic organizations.
The Computation+Journalism Symposium is part celebration of the best examples mixing story and technology; it is partially a venue to spawn new collaborations and partially a learning experience, an experiment to see what a group of talented practitioners might imagine as new forms of journalism.
This is the third meeting of an ongoing series 'Computation + Journalism'. Details about the first and second symposium can be found at the links below:
computation-and-journalism.com/symposium2013
computation-and-journalism.com/symposium2008
| September 5, 2014 | Paper Submissions Due |
| September 22, 2014 | Acceptances Announced (Extended) |
| October 15, 2014 | Registration Deadline |
| October 24-25, 2014 | C+J Conference |
At this time, registration for the event is full and no longer accepting requests for admission.
We specifically invite papers emphasizing any of four kinds of contributions:
Each different contribution will be judged on its own merits, but all should be reflective and seek to share knowledge that leads the field forward. For instance, story submissions might explain the story as well as how it was enabled or constrained by technology, platform submissions might detail what is unique about the platform and how its design affords journalistic work, and research submissions might articulate a research question and contribution to state-of-the-art knowledge. All submissions will be reviewed by experts in the field. Accepted papers will be invited to present in a poster/demo or plenary session.
Papers will be published as part of an online proceedings linked off this site but should be considered "non-archival" for the sake of journal submissions elsewhere. At the same time, we highly encourage unique and novel contributions with limited overlap to other related publications the author may have or intend to publish. Accepted papers will also be invited to publish a short abstracted version of the paper in a special issue of the American Journalism Review (AJR).
Paper submission and timelines:
Papers must be electronically submitted by Friday, September 5, 2014 at 5pm Pacific Daylight Time. C+J accepts only electronic submissions in PDF format. We are not asking for anonymous submissions. Accepted papers will be announced on September 15, 2014.
Format:
All submissions must be in PDF format, follow a standard set by the Association for Computing Machinery (http://www.acm.org/sigs/publications/proceedings-templates), and should not exceed 5 pages (including references).
Paper Submission Deadline has Passed.
We are seeking contributions on the following topics. While this is an extensive list, do not be limited by it. We are trying to cast the widest possible net in mapping out the interplay between computation and journalism.
| Time | Programs |
| 9:00 AM | Welcome |
| 9:15 - 10:30 AM | Keynote by Jon Kleinberg Tracing the Flow of On-Line Information through Networks and Text |
| 10:30 - 11:30 AM | Papers: Algorithm & Data-Driven Storytelling Artificial Intelligence for Public Affairs Reporting; Meredith Broussard Data-Driven Rankings: The Design and Development of the IEEE Top Programming Languages News App; Nicholas Diakopoulos, Stephen Cass and Joshua Romero Regulatory Breakdowns in Oversight of U.S. Stockbrokers; Jean Eaglesham and Rob Barry |
| 11:30 - 12:30 PM | Panel: Journalistic Platforms Gideon Mann, Bloomberg Kareem Amin, NewsCorp Brian Abelson, enigma.io and the Tow Center Moderator: Mark Hansen, Columbia University |
| 12:30 - 1:30 PM | Lunch - Boxed Lunches will be provided |
| 1:30 - 2:30 PM | Papers: Fact or Fiction Finding, Monitoring, and Checking Claims Computationally Based on Structured Data; Brett Walenz, You (Will) Wu, Seokhyun (Alex) Song, Emre Sonmez, Eric Wu, Kevin Wu, Pankaj K. Agarwal, Jun Yang (Duke University), Naeemul Hassan, Afroza Sultana, Gensheng Zhang, Chengkai Li (University of Texas at Arlington), Cong Yu (Google Research) TRAILS: A System for Monitoring the Propagation of Rumors On Twitter; Samantha Finn, Panagiotis Metaxas, Eni Mustafaraj, Megan O'Keefe, Lindsey Tang, Susan Tang and Laura Zeng RumorLens: A System for Analyzing the Impact of Rumors and Corrections in Social Media; Paul Resnick, Samuel Carton, Souneil Park, Yuncheng Shen and Nicole Zeffer Moderator: Nick Diakopoulos, University of Maryland |
| 2:30 - 3:00 PM | Coffee break |
| 3:00 - 4:00 PM | Panel: Establishing and Growing Data Journalism Eva Constantaras, Internews in Kenya Fergus Pitt, Columbia University Jonathan Hewett, City University London Moderator: Mark Hansen, Columbia University |
| 4:00 - 4:30 PM | Break and Poster/Demo Setup |
| 4:30 - 7:00 PM | Reception and Poster/Demo Session CitiBike Rebalancing Study VisJockey: Enriching Data Stories through Orchestrated Visualization Linked to Related Text Covering the EU Elections with Linked Data Controversy and Sentiment in Online News GED VIZ: A Web Tool for Exploring and Sharing Global Economic Relations Automatic Discovery of Partisan campaigns, Agenda Setting and Political Spin in Press releases Automatic Investigation on Mass Media: Epoch Detection in Journalism The “Courage For” Facebook Pages: Advocacy Citizen Journalism in the Wild Open Data Hackers in Brazil: Motivations and Practices MakePipe: Standardized Data Processing Pipelines Does Comprehensiveness Matter? Reflections on Analysing and Visualising UK Press Portrayals of Migrant Groups Presidential Issue Framing and the Role of the Media: The Case of the VA Backlog, 2009-2014 Discovering Newsworthy Tweets with a Geographical Topic Model Retweets indicate Interest, Trust, Agreement: User Opinion and Meta-Analysis of Twitter Research AttitudeBuzz: Using Social Media Data to Localize Complex Attitudes Fact Checking and Analyzing the Web with FactMinder Automatic detection of themes used as narrative frames in news articles Please Take My Survey: Compliance with smartphone-based EMA/ESM studies |
| Time | Programs |
| 9:00 - 10:00 AM | Papers: Automation in the Newsroom and Beyond Datastringer: easy dataset monitoring for journalists; Matt Shearer, Basile Simon and Clement Geiger Journalist versus news consumer: the perceived credibility of machine written news; Hille Van der Kaa and Emiel Krahmer. Understanding News Geography and Major Determinants of Global News Coverage of Disasters; Haewoon Kwak and Jisun An. Moderator: Larry Birnbaum, Northwestern University |
| 10:00 - 11:00 AM | Panel: Algorithms & The Future of Accountability Reporting Christian Sandvig, University of Michigan Christo Wilson, Northeastern University Kelly McBride, Poynter Institute Moderator: Julia Angwin, ProPublica |
| 11:00 - 11:30 AM | Midmorning Break |
| 11:30 AM - 12:30 PM | Papers: Visual Content Gathering and Creation The Feasibility of Using Small Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for Mapping News Events; Ben Kreimer and Matt Waite Towards Story Visualization from Social Multimedia; Unaiza Ahsan and Irfan Essa Data-Driven Cartoons: A Procedural Experiment in Provocation and Civic Participation; Kati London Moderator: Bernd Girod, Stanford University |
| 12:30 - 1:30 PM | Lunch - Boxed Lunches will be provided |
| 1:30 - 2:30 PM | Panel: Data-mining in Journalism Matt Connelly, Columbia University Jacob Eisenstein, Georgia Institute of Technology Dan Keating, Washington Post Hanna Wallach, Microsoft Research New York City Moderator: Mor Naaman, Cornell Tech and Seen.co |
| 2:30 - 3:30 PM | Dialogue: Crowdsourcing and Collaboration in Journalism Michael Bernstein, Stanford University Mar Cabra, The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists |
| 3:30 - 4:00 PM | Wrapup and Conference Summary |
| 4:00 PM - close | Networking Happy Hour |
Jon Kleinberg is the Tisch University Professor in the Computer Science Department at Cornell University. His research focuses on issues at the interface of networks and information, with an emphasis on the social and information networks that underpin the Web and other on-line media. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is the recipient of MacArthur, Packard, and Sloan Foundation Fellowships.
Event Location
Brown Institute for Media Innovation
Pulitzer Hall, Columbia University
2945 Broadway, New York, NY 10027
Hotel Recommendations
1) Aloft Harlem, 2296 Frederick Douglass Boulevard
2) NYLO New York City, 2178 Broadway
3) Hudson Hotel, 356 W 58th Street
For the best price, request the Columbia Negotiated Rate.
