Posts tagged fjp

Why It’s Time to Rethink Web Video Entirely Producer Adam Westbrook recently built an essay called The Web Video Problem about how cinematic video content is wrong for the web, and that we can and ought to recreate the visual storytelling experience on the web entirely. Toward that end, he’s working on web publishing house (Hot Pursuit). He writes: In visual storytelling on the web we are still talking about images in deliberate sequence. We are juxtaposing these images, either over time (in a linear audio/visual way) or in space (like a web comic might). If we accept this definition of visual storytelling (in the purest sense) then it doesn’t matter if it’s video, a web comic or even an animated GIF - or a combination of all these and more. Combine this with the growing capabilities of the web browser, and the connectedness of the internet, and potentially we have the ability to tell dynamic, visual stories in a way that hasn’t been done before. This excites me very much. The essay is nicely built and designed with bold, scrolling visuals (using the curtain jquery plug-in, which yes, is very popular these days and can be downloaded here for your own building pleasure) so that you can choose to read the whole thing or just get the highlights. It’s worth checking out.  Bonus: He provides some great resources on visual storytelling: A good briefing on the principles of visual storytelling are featured in the second issue of Inside the Story Magazine, available here. If you don’t want to pay for the whole thing, this free articlecovers a lot of the same ground. Scott McCloud’s comic book on comic books is an essential read for visual storytellers. Craig Mod’s essay on Subcompact Publishing informed some of the ideas about thinking web-natively, as did this article by John Pavlus and this piece by Bryan Goldberg. Finally, Steven Benedict’sanalysis of Spielberg’s cinematic storytelling skills demonstrate what visual narrative can acheive, and let Steven Soderbergh tell you why this new thing shouldn’t become like the movie business. Image: Screenshot from The Web Video Problem

Why It’s Time to Rethink Web Video Entirely

Producer Adam Westbrook recently built an essay called The Web Video Problem about how cinematic video content is wrong for the web, and that we can and ought to recreate the visual storytelling experience on the web entirely. Toward that end, he’s working on web publishing house (Hot Pursuit).

He writes:

In visual storytelling on the web we are still talking about images in deliberate sequence. We are juxtaposing these images, either over time (in a linear audio/visual way) or in space (like a web comic might).

If we accept this definition of visual storytelling (in the purest sense) then it doesn’t matter if it’s video, a web comic or even an animated GIF - or a combination of all these and more.

Combine this with the growing capabilities of the web browser, and the connectedness of the internet, and potentially we have the ability to tell dynamic, visual stories in a way that hasn’t been done before.

This excites me very much.

The essay is nicely built and designed with bold, scrolling visuals (using the curtain jquery plug-in, which yes, is very popular these days and can be downloaded here for your own building pleasure) so that you can choose to read the whole thing or just get the highlights. It’s worth checking out. 

Bonus: He provides some great resources on visual storytelling:

A good briefing on the principles of visual storytelling are featured in the second issue of Inside the Story Magazine, available here. If you don’t want to pay for the whole thing, this free articlecovers a lot of the same ground. Scott McCloud’s comic book on comic books is an essential read for visual storytellers. Craig Mod’s essay on Subcompact Publishing informed some of the ideas about thinking web-natively, as did this article by John Pavlus and this piece by Bryan Goldberg. Finally, Steven Benedict’sanalysis of Spielberg’s cinematic storytelling skills demonstrate what visual narrative can acheive, and let Steven Soderbergh tell you why this new thing shouldn’t become like the movie business.

Image: Screenshot from The Web Video Problem

Banksy on Advertising Via Upworthy. Select to embiggen.

Banksy on Advertising

Via Upworthy. Select to embiggen.

The Editorial Observations of a URL Shortener 

The Editorial Observations of a URL Shortener 

The Webby Awards are proud to honor Steve Wilhite with a Lifetime Achievement Webby Award in recognition of inventing the GIF file format. The GIF has had an immeasurable impact on the way users interface with the Web and how designers and developers present visual data and imagery. From its humble beginnings in the early days of the Netscape logo, the GIF has continually proven a dynamic format for Net artists and advertisers alike. Despite developments in moving image and animation technology on the Web, the GIF remains a staple among image formats used to spread news and information. The proliferation of the GIF within today’s meme-powered, Tumblr-driven pop culture, proves it a lasting format still among the most celebrated on the Web (despite the hotly contested controversy over its correct pronunciation). With 2012 being the 25th anniversary of the GIF we think the 17th Annual Webby Awards is a most fitting event to honor and celebrate Steve Wilhite and this historical achievement.

The Webby Awards honors Steve Wilhite for his creation of the GIF file format while at Compuserve in 1987.

Fun Fact 01: So is it pronounced with a soft or a hard G? These guys say soft, we always go hard. Let’s agree to disagree.

Fun Fact 02: While Wilhite created the GIF file format, he’s never created an animated GIF. He does say, though, that the 1997 “dancing baby” is his favorite.

Gender Balance in News Open Gender Tracking Project is a software program that collects digital content from news sources and analyzes gender balance within news organizations. The project was created by Irene Ros and Adam Hyland of Bocoup and Nathan Matias of the MIT Center for Civic Media.  The program collects data on who is writing the articles and who the articles are written about. It also measures audience response data directly associated with specific articles (like how many times a post is shared in social media). The goal of the program is to make news sources aware of content diversity (or lack thereof) so organizations can work toward maintaining a balanced set of voices. For the most part, women are currently being underrepresented in digital media.  Via Guardian: In the UK, newspaper front pages rarely include women, and women write a minority of articles. Women are prominent at the Daily Mail, where they write most of the celebrity news, fewer news articles, and almost no sport. Even when publications do include women, they’re often at the mercy of their audiences. 20% of Telegraph opinion articles are written by women, but women’s opinion articles attract only 14% of the Telegraph’s shares and likes on social media. And according to studies done by the Women’s Media Center, in both legacy and newer news sites, women are too often relegated to writing about “pink topics” like fashion, relationships, and food, rather than urgent and/or international issues. On a positive note, Global Voices, an international citizen media news site, is one of the only news organizations currently known to have equal gender participation. According to The Guardian, 764 women wrote 51% of all articles from 2005-2012.  Related: Gender balance is the new rage. I just wish somebody had spread the word to the Wikiverse: Wikipedia Bumps Women From ‘American Novelists’ Category. — Krissy Image: Screenshot of graph from Open Gender Tracker

Gender Balance in News

Open Gender Tracking Project is a software program that collects digital content from news sources and analyzes gender balance within news organizations. The project was created by Irene Ros and Adam Hyland of Bocoup and Nathan Matias of the MIT Center for Civic Media. 

The program collects data on who is writing the articles and who the articles are written about. It also measures audience response data directly associated with specific articles (like how many times a post is shared in social media). The goal of the program is to make news sources aware of content diversity (or lack thereof) so organizations can work toward maintaining a balanced set of voices.

For the most part, women are currently being underrepresented in digital media. 

Via Guardian:

In the UK, newspaper front pages rarely include women, and women write a minority of articles. Women are prominent at the Daily Mail, where they write most of the celebrity news, fewer news articles, and almost no sport. Even when publications do include women, they’re often at the mercy of their audiences. 20% of Telegraph opinion articles are written by women, but women’s opinion articles attract only 14% of the Telegraph’s shares and likes on social media.

And according to studies done by the Women’s Media Center, in both legacy and newer news sites, women are too often relegated to writing about “pink topics” like fashion, relationships, and food, rather than urgent and/or international issues.

On a positive note, Global Voices, an international citizen media news site, is one of the only news organizations currently known to have equal gender participation. According to The Guardian, 764 women wrote 51% of all articles from 2005-2012. 

Related: Gender balance is the new rage. I just wish somebody had spread the word to the Wikiverse: Wikipedia Bumps Women From ‘American Novelists’ Category. — Krissy

Image: Screenshot of graph from Open Gender Tracker

To Strongbox or Not to Strongbox

Last week we noted that the New Yorker launched Strongbox, an online system meant to preserve the anonymity of leakers submitting sensitive material to the magazine.

Strongbox is based on the work of Aaron Swartz and Kevin Poulsen and, as Amy Davidson noted when announcing its implementation, “Even we won’t be able to figure out where files sent to us come from. If anyone asks us, we won’t be able to tell them.”

Which is a good thing given recent news about the Justice Department’s surveilling of journalists and news organizations.

But can it be be a newsroom boon?

Writing at CSO Online, John P. Mello argues that while Strongbox “provides strong protection of the identity of a source, it removes an important element in the process: authentication.”

Here’s what he means:

A system where anonymous leakers are dropping documents into a folder has advantages when government investigators start probing a story’s sources, but it also creates tremendous disadvantages. “The government can’t come after you to find out who gave you the document because you have no way of knowing,” [Northeastern University assistant journalism professor Dan] Kennedy said.

“That gives more protection to the source, but it makes it harder to vet the document because you don’t know who gave it to you,” he said…

…”All sources, anonymous or not, have to be evaluated. That’s impossible to do without context. “Knowing your source’s motivations helps contextualize the information,” said Mark Jurkowitz, associate director for the Pew Research Project for Excellence in Journalism.

“A solution that prevents the news organization from knowing the identity of a confidential source has value, but it’s not an ideal solution because it is important to know the identity of the source to weigh the information,” he told CSO.

“Information supplied by a confidential source needs to be evaluated, weighed and understood in the same way that information of somebody speaking on the record does,” he added.

FJP: A tool is a tool. While Mello illustrates important drawbacks, if the alternative is no documents to work with then you work with the tools available. It’s just important to know going in what their limitations are.

Images: Independent Twitter posts via Nicholas Thomson and Kevin Anderson.

The Geography of Hate Speech on Twitter Dr. Monica Stephens, professor at Humboldt State University in California, worked with undergraduate researchers to create The Geography of Hate Map. The map geographically tags and plots homophobic and racist statements tweeted all over America from June 2012 - April 2013. In Stephens’ introduction to the map, she explains that HSU collected the data with DOLLY (Data On Local Life and You), a University of Kentucky project that maps social media geography for research.  The Geography of Hate Map suggests that out of 150,000 mapped tweets, most haters reign from the Midwest to the East Coast. Is this accurate? Sort of. Via Time: Stephens herself notes, “Even when normalized, many of the slurs included in our analysis display little meaningful spatial distribution,” and as she later tweeted, “in the east coast the counties are smaller so if a word is used in adjacent counties it appears as a hotspot,” which accounts for some of the East Coast / West Coast disparity. What about hate words that are used in a joking way? As Chris Rock points out in his stand-up: ”It’s not always the word [that’s offensive], it’s the context in which the word is said.” To account for such varying intent, the researchers read each “hate-tweet” individually to determine a tweet’s sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral — and only negative tweets are shown on the map. Though the study accurately depicts the hate of those Tweeters that managed to make it into the study, the map isn’t a perfect depiction of Twitter hate in the US. As Matt Peckham notes: people who haven’t enabled geotagging aren’t included in the study, meaning there could be more hateful tweets out there that haven’t been plotted. Also, more hate words exist than those Stephens chose to incorporate; when those other hate words aren’t counted, results are skewed.  FJP: When social media becomes social meanie-a… - Krissy  Image: Screenshot of The Geography of Hate Map

The Geography of Hate Speech on Twitter

Dr. Monica Stephens, professor at Humboldt State University in California, worked with undergraduate researchers to create The Geography of Hate Map. The map geographically tags and plots homophobic and racist statements tweeted all over America from June 2012 - April 2013.

In Stephens’ introduction to the map, she explains that HSU collected the data with DOLLY (Data On Local Life and You), a University of Kentucky project that maps social media geography for research. 

The Geography of Hate Map suggests that out of 150,000 mapped tweets, most haters reign from the Midwest to the East Coast. Is this accurate? Sort of.

Via Time:

Stephens herself notes, “Even when normalized, many of the slurs included in our analysis display little meaningful spatial distribution,” and as she later tweeted, “in the east coast the counties are smaller so if a word is used in adjacent counties it appears as a hotspot,” which accounts for some of the East Coast / West Coast disparity.

What about hate words that are used in a joking way? As Chris Rock points out in his stand-up: ”It’s not always the word [that’s offensive], it’s the context in which the word is said.” To account for such varying intent, the researchers read each “hate-tweet” individually to determine a tweet’s sentiment as positive, negative, or neutral — and only negative tweets are shown on the map.

Though the study accurately depicts the hate of those Tweeters that managed to make it into the study, the map isn’t a perfect depiction of Twitter hate in the US. As Matt Peckham notes: people who haven’t enabled geotagging aren’t included in the study, meaning there could be more hateful tweets out there that haven’t been plotted. Also, more hate words exist than those Stephens chose to incorporate; when those other hate words aren’t counted, results are skewed. 

FJP: When social media becomes social meanie-a… - Krissy

 Image: Screenshot of The Geography of Hate Map

A Coder’s Fury Image: Page source, Slidedeck. Select to embiggen.

A Coder’s Fury

Image: Page source, Slidedeck. Select to embiggen.

Just Write What the Government Tells You The News: The Justice Department tracked Fox News’ correspondent James Rosen in an attempt to tie leaks on North Korea to a government advisor. Via Glenn Greenwald: If even the most protected journalists - those who work for the largest media outlets - are being targeted [for leaks by the Justice Department], and are saying over and over that the Obama DOJ is preventing basic news gathering from taking place without fear, imagine the effect this all has on independent journalists who are much more vulnerable. Image: Twitter post from Karen Tumulty

Just Write What the Government Tells You

The News: The Justice Department tracked Fox News’ correspondent James Rosen in an attempt to tie leaks on North Korea to a government advisor.

Via Glenn Greenwald:

If even the most protected journalists - those who work for the largest media outlets - are being targeted [for leaks by the Justice Department], and are saying over and over that the Obama DOJ is preventing basic news gathering from taking place without fear, imagine the effect this all has on independent journalists who are much more vulnerable.

Image: Twitter post from Karen Tumulty

How to Legalize Pot

Kleiman is leading the team hired to advise Washington State as it designs something the modern world has never seen: a fully legal commercial market in cannabis. Washington is one of the first two states (Colorado is the other) to legalize the production, sale and consumption of marijuana as a recreational drug for consumers 21 and over. The marijuana debate has entered a new stage. Today the most interesting and important question is no longer whethermarijuana will be legalized — eventually, bit by bit, it will be — but how.

Challenges include: the DOJ, since anyone who trades in cannabis is still a felon according to federal law; big profiteers, since the cannabis industry could easily become controlled like Big Tobacco; and how to measure drugged driving, since the government hasn’t funded too much research on the chemistry of weed in the human body.

You can read Kleinman’s proposal to Washington State here.

Groundhog's Day: DOJ Tracks Fox Reporter's Phone Records

Last week’s news was that the Justice Department seized two months of Associated Press phone records.

This week’s begins with a report that the DOJ surveilled Fox News’ chief Washington correspondent James Rosen, tracking his visits to the State Department in an apparent attempt to link a 2009 leak of classified information about North Korea to government adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim

Via the Washington Post:

When the Justice Department began investigating possible leaks of classified information about North Korea in 2009, investigators did more than obtain telephone records of a working journalist suspected of receiving the secret material.

They used security badge access records to track the reporter’s comings and goings from the State Department, according to a newly obtained court affidavit. They traced the timing of his calls with a State Department security adviser suspected of sharing the classified report. They obtained a search warrant for the reporter’s personal e-mails.

The case of Stephen Jin-Woo Kim, the government adviser, and James Rosen, the chief Washington correspondent for Fox News, bears striking similarities to a sweeping leaks investigation disclosed last week in which federal investigators obtained records over two months of more than 20 telephone lines assigned to the Associated Press…

…Court documents in the Kim case reveal how deeply investigators explored the private communications of a working journalist — and raise the question of how often journalists have been investigated as closely as Rosen was in 2010. The case also raises new concerns among critics of government secrecy about the possible stifling effect of these investigations on a critical element of press freedom: the exchange of information between reporters and their sources.

Washington Post, A rare peek into a Justice Department leak probe.

We Promise Not to Screw Quick, someone teach the Yahoo social team how to use the Tumblr Twitter box. STAT. Image: Automated tweet from Yahoo’s Tumblr to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Twitter account.

We Promise Not to Screw

Quick, someone teach the Yahoo social team how to use the Tumblr Twitter box. STAT.

Image: Automated tweet from Yahoo’s Tumblr to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s Twitter account.

Scaling Mt. Everest Twenty-five-year-old Raha Moharrak is the first Saudi Arabian woman, and youngest Arab ever, to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. She accomplished the feat with the first Qatari and Palestinian men to ever reach the peak, and an Iranian man. The group calls itself Arabs with Altitude and the expedition was made in an attempt to raise $1 million for education projects in Nepal. Image: Raha Moharrak on being “first”. Mt. Everest aerial view via Wikimedia Commons. Select to embiggen.

Scaling Mt. Everest

Twenty-five-year-old Raha Moharrak is the first Saudi Arabian woman, and youngest Arab ever, to reach the summit of Mt. Everest. She accomplished the feat with the first Qatari and Palestinian men to ever reach the peak, and an Iranian man.

The group calls itself Arabs with Altitude and the expedition was made in an attempt to raise $1 million for education projects in Nepal.

Image: Raha Moharrak on being “first”. Mt. Everest aerial view via Wikimedia Commons. Select to embiggen.

Rupert Murdoch, offering advice to Facebook, via Twitter. Murdoch’s News Corp (in)famously bought Myspace in 2005 for $580 million and sold it in 2011 to Specific Media for $35 million. During a 2011 annual meeting, he admitted that News Corp managed to “mismanage it in every possible way.”

Rupert Murdoch, offering advice to Facebook, via Twitter.

Murdoch’s News Corp (in)famously bought Myspace in 2005 for $580 million and sold it in 2011 to Specific Media for $35 million. During a 2011 annual meeting, he admitted that News Corp managed to “mismanage it in every possible way.”