Computing the News

Computing the News PDF

Author: Sylvain Parasie

Publisher: Columbia University Press

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 169

ISBN-13: 0231553277

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Faced with a full-blown crisis, a growing number of journalists are engaging in seemingly unjournalistic practices such as creating and maintaining databases, handling algorithms, or designing online applications. “Data journalists” claim that these approaches help the profession demonstrate greater objectivity and fulfill its democratic mission. In their view, computational methods enable journalists to better inform their readers, more closely monitor those in power, and offer deeper analysis. In Computing the News, Sylvain Parasie examines how data journalists and news organizations have navigated the tensions between traditional journalistic values and new technologies. He traces the history of journalistic hopes for computing technology and contextualizes the surge of data journalism in the twenty-first century. By importing computational techniques and ways of knowing new to journalism, news organizations have come to depend on a broader array of human and nonhuman actors. Parasie draws on extensive fieldwork in the United States and France, including interviews with journalists and data scientists as well as a behind-the-scenes look at several acclaimed projects in both countries. Ultimately, he argues, fulfilling the promise of data journalism requires the renewal of journalistic standards and ethics. Offering an in-depth analysis of how computing has become part of the daily practices of journalists, this book proposes ways for journalism to evolve in order to serve democratic societies.

Algorithms, Automation, and News

Algorithms, Automation, and News PDF

Author: Neil Thurman

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-05-18

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 1000384373

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

This book examines the growing importance of algorithms and automation—including emerging forms of artificial intelligence—in the gathering, composition, and distribution of news. In it the authors connect a long line of research on journalism and computation with scholarly and professional terrain yet to be explored. Taken as a whole, these chapters share some of the noble ambitions of the pioneering publications on ‘reporting algorithms’, such as a desire to see computing help journalists in their watchdog role by holding power to account. However, they also go further, firstly by addressing the fuller range of technologies that computational journalism now consists of: from chatbots and recommender systems to artificial intelligence and atomised journalism. Secondly, they advance the literature by demonstrating the increased variety of uses for these technologies, including engaging underserved audiences, selling subscriptions, and recombining and re-using content. Thirdly, they problematise computational journalism by, for example, pointing out some of the challenges inherent in applying artificial intelligence to investigative journalism and in trying to preserve public service values. Fourthly, they offer suggestions for future research and practice, including by presenting a framework for developing democratic news recommenders and another that may help us think about computational journalism in a more integrated, structured manner. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Digital Journalism.

Affective Computing

Affective Computing PDF

Author: Rosalind W. Picard

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2000-07-24

Total Pages: 308

ISBN-13: 9780262661157

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

According to Rosalind Picard, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions. The latest scientific findings indicate that emotions play an essential role in decision making, perception, learning, and more—that is, they influence the very mechanisms of rational thinking. Not only too much, but too little emotion can impair decision making. According to Rosalind Picard, if we want computers to be genuinely intelligent and to interact naturally with us, we must give computers the ability to recognize, understand, even to have and express emotions. Part 1 of this book provides the intellectual framework for affective computing. It includes background on human emotions, requirements for emotionally intelligent computers, applications of affective computing, and moral and social questions raised by the technology. Part 2 discusses the design and construction of affective computers. Although this material is more technical than that in Part 1, the author has kept it less technical than typical scientific publications in order to make it accessible to newcomers. Topics in Part 2 include signal-based representations of emotions, human affect recognition as a pattern recognition and learning problem, recent and ongoing efforts to build models of emotion for synthesizing emotions in computers, and the new application area of affective wearable computers.

Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism

Heteromation, and Other Stories of Computing and Capitalism PDF

Author: Hamid R. Ekbia

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2017-05-04

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 0262036258

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

An exploration of a new division of labor between machines and humans, in which people provide value to the economy with little or no compensation. The computerization of the economy—and everyday life—has transformed the division of labor between humans and machines, shifting many people into work that is hidden, poorly compensated, or accepted as part of being a “user” of digital technology. Through our clicks and swipes, logins and profiles, emails and posts, we are, more or less willingly, participating in digital activities that yield economic value to others but little or no return to us. Hamid Ekbia and Bonnie Nardi call this kind of participation—the extraction of economic value from low-cost or free labor in computer-mediated networks—“heteromation.” In this book, they explore the social and technological processes through which economic value is extracted from digitally mediated work, the nature of the value created, and what prompts people to participate in the process. Arguing that heteromation is a new logic of capital accumulation, Ekbia and Nardi consider different kinds of heteromated labor: communicative labor, seen in user-generated content on social media; cognitive labor, including microwork and self-service; creative labor, from gaming environments to literary productions; emotional labor, often hidden within paid jobs; and organizing labor, made up of collaborative groups such as citizen scientists. Ekbia and Nardi then offer a utopian vision: heteromation refigured to bring end users more fully into the prosperity of capitalism.

The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines

The Energetics of Computing in Life and Machines PDF

Author: Chris Kempes

Publisher: Seminar

Published: 2018-09

Total Pages: 500

ISBN-13: 9781947864184

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Why do computers use so much energy? What are the fundamental physical laws governing the relationship between the precise computation run by a system, whether artificial or natural, and how much energy that computation requires? This volume integrates concepts from diverse fields, cultivating a modern, nonequilibrium thermodynamics of computation.

Computer-assisted Reporting

Computer-assisted Reporting PDF

Author: Bruce Garrison

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-07-20

Total Pages: 504

ISBN-13: 1000105911

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Reporters in the newsroom are becoming more involved in computer-assisted reporting and online news research than ever before. This edition introduces readers to computer-assisted reporting and to describe how leading journalists are using personal computers for news gathering in modern print, broadcast, and online newsrooms. It provides a thorough discussion of technology and its applications to news reporting. Computer Assisted Reporting focuses on the computerization of newsgathering, highlighting the fact that the computer assists journalists by making writing easier, and also makes gathering and organizing information more efficient. As it begins, the book demonstrates methods for journalists to get more from their computers, such as data retrieval, data analysis, information storage, and dissemination of that information in both processed and unprocessed forms. It concludes with a refined proposal, originally proposed in the first edition, for five stages for development of computer literacy in the newsroom.

Computers in Broadcast and Cable Newsrooms

Computers in Broadcast and Cable Newsrooms PDF

Author: Phillip O. Keirstead

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-09-22

Total Pages: 182

ISBN-13: 113567566X

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Computers in Broadcast and Cable Newsrooms: Using Technology in Television News Production takes readers through the use of computers and software in the broadcast/cable newsroom environment. Author Phillip O. Keirstead began writing about television news technology decades ago in an effort to help television news managers cope with technological change. In this text, he demonstrates the myriad ways in which today's journalism is tied to technology, and he shows how television news journalists rely on varied and complex technologies to produce timely, interesting, and informative broadcasts. Using a hands-on, practical approach to cover the role computers play in various parts of the newsroom, the volume will be of great practical value to undergraduate and graduate students in advanced broadcast/news television courses.

Acting with Technology

Acting with Technology PDF

Author: Victor Kaptelinin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2009-08-07

Total Pages: 347

ISBN-13: 0262513315

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

A systematic presentation of activity theory, its application to interaction design, and an argument for the development of activity theory as a basis for understanding how people interact with technology. Activity theory holds that the human mind is the product of our interaction with people and artifacts in the context of everyday activity. Acting with Technology makes the case for activity theory as a basis for understanding our relationship with technology. Victor Kaptelinin and Bonnie Nardi describe activity theory's principles, history, relationship to other theoretical approaches, and application to the analysis and design of technologies. The book provides the first systematic entry-level introduction to the major principles of activity theory. It describes the accumulating body of work in interaction design informed by activity theory, drawing on work from an international community of scholars and designers. Kaptelinin and Nardi examine the notion of the object of activity, describe its use in an empirical study, and discuss key debates in the development of activity theory. Finally, they outline current and future issues in activity theory, providing a comparative analysis of the theory and its leading theoretical competitors within interaction design: distributed cognition, actor-network theory, and phenomenologically inspired approaches.

Cloud Computing

Cloud Computing PDF

Author: Nayan B. Ruparelia

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2016-05-13

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 0262529092

DOWNLOAD EBOOK →

Why cloud computing represents a paradigm shift for business, and how business users can best take advantage of cloud services. Most of the information available on cloud computing is either highly technical, with details that are irrelevant to non-technologists, or pure marketing hype, in which the cloud is simply a selling point. This book, however, explains the cloud from the user's viewpoint—the business user's in particular. Nayan Ruparelia explains what the cloud is, when to use it (and when not to), how to select a cloud service, how to integrate it with other technologies, and what the best practices are for using cloud computing. Cutting through the hype, Ruparelia cites the simple and basic definition of cloud computing from the National Institute of Science and Technology: a model enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources. Thus with cloud computing, businesses can harness information technology resources usually available only to large enterprises. And this, Ruparelia demonstrates, represents a paradigm shift for business. It will ease funding for startups, alter business plans, and allow big businesses greater agility. Ruparelia discusses the key issues for any organization considering cloud computing: service level agreements, business service delivery and consumption, finance, legal jurisdiction, security, and social responsibility. He introduces novel concepts made possible by cloud computing: cloud cells, or specialist clouds for specific uses; the personal cloud; the cloud of things; and cloud service exchanges. He examines use case patterns in terms of infrastructure and platform, software information, and business process; and he explains how to transition to a cloud service. Current and future users will find this book an indispensable guide to the cloud.