Presentation at ESJ Lille about teaching AI and machine learning to data journalists and journalism students

1. Teaching #DDJ + #AI
@PaulBradshaw
Birmingham City University, BBC Data Unit

2. https://github.com/paulbradshaw/
Data journalism at Birmingham City
● DJ techniques + issues, from
spreadsheets to HTML, JS, R, AI
● Narrative: newswriting, longform,
social, video and audio, visual, VR
● Investigations: docs, scraping (Pyth),
FOI, accounts, stats, OSINT, networks
● Critical issues, methodologies
● Law, ethics - and institutions
● Newsrooms - negotiating cultures!

3. Teaching DDJ+AI?
1. Holding data’s power to account
2. Reporting accurately with AI
3. Problems — and problem-solving
https://github.com/paulbradshaw/

4. 1. Holding [data] to account

5. “We are moving from the
knowledge/power nexus portrayed by
Foucault to a data/action nexus that
does not need to move through
theory: All it needs is data together
with preferred outcomes”
Geoffrey Bowker, 2014
https://ijoc.org/index.php/ijoc/article/download/2190/1156

6. https://www.propublica.org/series/machine-bias

7. https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-03-08/how-data-can-turn-immigrants-into-criminals

8. “[Algorithms] are not isolated
deterministic actors but an
inextricable component within a
network of communicative
practices that includes economic,
institutional and increasingly legal
and ethical issues”
Matt Carlson

9. https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrime-map

10. http://museumofhomelessness.org/2019/03/12/dying-homeless-project/

11. https://twitter.com/guardian/status/1009433445032976389?s=09

12. Lowrey 2015; Reporters Lab 2016

13. 2. Reporting [stories] accurately

14. “When we teach computers to
write, the computers don’t replace
us any more than pianos replace
pianists—in a certain way, they
become our pens, and we become
more than writers. We become
writers of writers.”
Ross Goodwin

15. https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2019/05/23/ai-in-journalism-guidelines-on-reporting-uncertainty/

16. Showing uncertainty
Gauge; box and whisker plots; ranges; visualising uncertainty;

17. https://www.wired.com/story/polisis-ai-reads-privacy-policies-so-you-dont-have-to/

18. http://jonathanstray.com/extracting-campaign-finance-data-from-gnarly-pdfs-using-deep-learning

19. 3. Speaking the language of
[power]

20. Kao, 2017

21. Julia Wolfe, WSJ, quoted in Cairo (2017) Nerd Journalism

22. Read more here

23. “We find journalists are “writing for
machines” by converting
unstructured information into
structured data to enable automated
recombination and future re-use of
content. This impacts editorial
control by delegating responsibility
to either the algorithm or the
audience, in the name of choice.”
Jones and Jones 2019

24. https://onlinejournalismblog.com/2017/08/07/10-principles-for-data-journalism-in-its-second-decade/

25. Merci.
@PaulBradshaw, Birmingham City University
Online Journalism Blog, BBC England data unit