Syllabus Fall 2016

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The course is a hands-on introduction to the areas of computer science that have a direct relevance to journalism, and the broader project of producing an informed and engaged public. We will touch on many different technical and social topics: information recommendation systems but also filter bubbles, principles of statistical analysis but also the human processes which generate data, network analysis and its role in investigative journalism, visualization techniques and the cognitive effects involved in viewing a visualization. Assignments will require programming in Python, but the emphasis will be on clearly articulating the connection between the algorithmic and the editorial.

Our scope is wide enough to include both relatively traditional journalistic work, such as computer-assisted investigative reporting, and the broader information systems that we all use every day to inform ourselves, such as search engines and social media. The course will provide students with a thorough understanding of how particular fields of computational research relate to journalism practice, and provoke ideas for their own research and projects.

Research-level computer science material will be discussed in class, but the emphasis will be on understanding the capabilities and limitations of this technology. Students with a CS background will have opportunity for algorithmic exploration and innovation, however the primary goal of the course is thoughtful, application-oriented research and design.

Format of the class, grading and assignments.
This is a fourteen week course for Masters’ students which has both a six point and a three point version. The six point version is designed for CS & journalism dual degree students, while the three point version is designed for those cross listing from other schools. The class is conducted in a seminar format. Assigned readings and computational techniques will form the basis of class discussion. The course will be graded as follows:

  • Assignments: 80%. There will be a homework assignment after most classes.
  • Class participation: 20%

Assignments will be completed in groups (except dual degree students, who will work individually) and involve experimentation with fundamental computational techniques. Some assignments will require intermediate level coding in Python, but the emphasis will be on thoughtful and critical analysis. As this is a journalism course, you will be expected to write clearly.

Dual degree students will also have a final project. This will be either a research paper, a computationally-driven story, or a software project. The class is conducted on pass/fail basis for journalism students, in line with the journalism school’s grading system. Students from other departments will receive a letter grade.

Week 1: Introduction and Clustering – 9/16
Slides
First we ask: where do computer science and journalism intersect? CS techniques can help journalism in four different areas: data-driven reporting, story presentation, information filtering, and effect tracking. Then we jump right into high dimensional data analysis and visualization, which we’ll need to study filtering, with an example of clustering, visualizing, and interpreting feature vectors of voting patterns.

Required

Recommended

  • Precision Journalism, Ch.1, Journalism and the Scientific Tradition, Philip Meyer

Viewed in class

Unit 1: Filtering

Week 2: Text Analysis – 9/23
Slides
Can we use machines to help us understand text? In this class we will cover basic text analysis techniques, from word counting to topic modeling. The algorithms we will discuss this week are used in just about everything: search engines, document set visualization, figuring out when two different articles are about the same story, finding trending topics. The vector space document model is fundamental to algorithmic handling of news content, and we will need it to understand how just about every filtering and personalization system works.

Required

Recommended

Examples

  • Watchwords: Reading China Through its Party Vocabulary, Qian Gang

Assignment:  LDA analysis of State of the Union speeches.

Week 3: Filtering algorithms
Slides
This week we begin our study of filtering with some basic ideas about its role in journalism. We will study the details of several algorithmic filtering approaches including Twitter, Reddit’s comment ranking, the Newsblaster system  (similar to Google News) and the New York Times recommendation engine.

Required

Recommended

Discussed in class

Week 4: Filters as Editors 
Slides
We’ve seen what filtering algorithms do, but what should they do? This week we’ll study the social effects of filtering system design, how Google Search and other systems are optimized in practice, and start to ask about possible ill effects like polarization and fake news.
Required

Recommended

Viewed in class

Assignment – Design a filtering algorithm for an information source of your choosing

Unit 2: Interpreting Data

Week 5: Quantification, Counting, and Statistics
Slides
Every journalist needs a basic grasp of statistics. Not t-tests and all of that, but more grounded. Where does data come from at all? How do we know we’re measuring the right thing, and measuring it properly? Then a solid understanding of the concepts that come up most in journalism: relative risk, conditional probability, the regressions and control variables, the use of statistical models generally. Finally, the state of the art in data-driven tests for discrimination.

Recommended

Week 6: Drawing conclusions from data 
Slides
This week is all about using data to report on ambiguous, complex, charged issues. It’s incredibly easy to fool yourself, but fortunately, there is a long history of fields grappling with the problem of determining truth in the face of uncertainty, from statistics to intelligence analysis. This week includes: statistical testing and statistical significance, Bayesianism in theory and practice, determining causality, p-hacking and reproducibility, analysis of competing hypothesis.

Required

Recommended

Viewed in class

Assignment: Analyze NYPD stop and frisk data for racial discrimination. Details here.

Week 7: Algorithmic Accountability 
Slides
Our society is woven together by algorithms. From high frequency trading to predictive policing, they regulate an increasing portion of our lives. But these algorithms are mostly secret, black boxes form our point of view. We’re at they’re mercy, unless we learn how to interrogate and critique algorithms. We’ll focus in depth on analysis of discrimination of various types, and how this might (or might not) be possible in computational journalism.

Required

Recommended

Unit 3: Methods

Week 8: Visualization 
Slides
An introduction into how visualization helps people interpret information. Design principles from user experience considerations, graphic design, and the study of the human visual system. The Overview document visualization system used in investigative journalism.

Required

Recommended

Week 9: Knowledge representation 
Slides
How can journalism benefit from encoding knowledge in some formal system? Is journalism in the media business or the data business? And could we use knowledge bases and inferential engines to do journalism better? This gets us deep into the issue of how knowledge is represented in a computer. We’ll look at traditional databases vs. linked data and graph databases, entity and relation detection from unstructured text, and traditional both probabilistic and propositional formalisms. Plus: NLP in investigative journalism, automated fact checking, and more.

Required

Recommended

Viewed in class

Assignment: Text enrichment experiments using StanfordNER entity extraction.

Week 10: Network analysis 
Slides
Network analysis (aka social network analysis, link analysis) is a promising and popular technique for uncovering relationships between diverse individuals and organizations. It is widely used in intelligence and law enforcement, but not so much in journalism. We’ll look at basic techniques and algorithms and try to understand the promise — and the many practical problems.

Required

Recommended

Examples:

Assignment: Compare different centrality metrics in Gephi.
Week 11: Privacy, Security, and Censorship 
Slides
Who is watching our online activities? How do you protect a source in the 21st Century? Who gets to access to all of this mass intelligence, and what does the ability to survey everything all the time mean both practically and ethically for journalism? In this lecture we will talk about who is watching and how, and how to create a security plan using threat modeling.

Required

Recommended

Assignment: Use threat modeling to come up with a security plan for a given scenario.

Week 12: Tracking flow and impact 

How does information flow in the online ecosystem? What happens to a story after it’s published? How do items spread through social networks? We’re just beginning to be able to track ideas as they move through the network, by combining techniques from social network analysis and bioinformatics.

Required

Recommended

 Final projects due 12/31  (dual degree Journalism/CS students only)

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