On the Meedan Radar – July 2012

This post is going to be a monthly round up of projects we’ve been talking about at the Meedan watercooler, research that is guiding our work, and links that have us hitting “share”

- BBC publishes major report on Arab Spring coverage (http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/bbctrust/assets/files/pdf/our_work/arabspring_impartiality/arab_spring.pdf ) What is generally apparent is that the BBC are doing good things with UGC verification, but lack policy and structure to handle this issue of “caveat” in a consistent and methodical way. At the same time, though much of the process has been written in blog posts, there is a lack of audience awareness about the work and methodology for verification deployed by the UGC Hub. We’ve blogged on the issue here: http://meedan.org/2012/06/bbc-arab-spring-report-verification/

- Fact Checking (https://factchecking.civiclinks.it) is a neat-looking tool that allows users to ask questions of facts stated in the media, to establish whether true or false. Users can respond with links proving/disproving the sentence and attach a rating to the sentence’s credibility. Built by the <ahref Foundation

The <ahref Foundation focuses on the quality of information emerging from today’s social networks and digital media. Its research activities aim at innovation geared toward good journalism and citizen participation, while also developing open platforms & projects to increase online collaboration.

- Sourcefabric running a series of open-source journalism tech events and activities branded as #newsbeta: http://www.sourcefabric.org/en/community/blog/1265

- Google updates site translation plugin to allow site owners to modify and improve. Anas Q writes for the Meedan Blog: http://meedan.org/2012/05/google-updates-site-translation-plugin-allowing-owners-and-readers-to-improve-machine-translations/

- Duolingo goes into public beta: http://duolingo.com human translation of the web via a language learning portal from Luis Von Ahn – and early friend of Meedan and one of the most revered figures in HCI (human computer interaction). Also the inventor of Captcha and reCaptcha. Nicely designed and great fun to use, people should give it a try! Blog post to come soon.

- Use All Five launches Language Immersion for Chrome (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FrEzKtjKVio&gt) which uses GoogleTranslate API to partially translate web pages, pushing readers to read bilingually in order to improve language skills.

- Dakwak come out of beta and launch their localization/translation workflow services: http://dakwak.com/

- Knight launched a second round of the News Challenge, this time focussing on data (Meedan did not apply for the award). Here are some applications that caught our eye:

NewsPipeline: “NewsPipeline ingests content from multiple sources, outputs content to multiple platforms, and creates a dashboard for publishers for one-stop curation.”

http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/25654020256/newspipeline

.dBunk(r): “.dBunk(r) utilizes linkable data, Bayesian inference and binary logic to create highly contextualized and open ended knowledge maps. This process allows the user to hold the Internet accountable by transforming separate pieces of information into connected threads of knowledge.”

http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/25588094090/dbunk-r

Statistics Black Box (or perhaps “the Mechanical Meyer”): “a web-based app to analyze uploaded datasets and return results in plain language.”

http://newschallenge.tumblr.com/post/25599355546/statistics-black-box-or-perhaps-the-mechanical

Bedtime Reading

Ashoka – In Search of a “500-Year Plan” for Achieving News Literacy
Ushahidi Blog – Watertracker: Structured Data, Integrated Response
Social Edge – Nonprofit Analysis: Beyond Metrics
EFF – Can Apple Refuse to Sell a Laptop to an Iranian Citizen? Maybe.
Nieman Journalism Labs – Signalnoi.se mines social media for real-time analytics for news