Dataharvest/EIJC 2016

Inspired by NICAR, lightning talks are five-minute talks about any subject, given by people with a good idea or a clever solution. All Dataharvest participants were invited to pitch a talk. The eight participants with the most popular topic each get five minutes to present:

1) Elena Erdmann (TU Dortmund) — How machine learning can shape the future of investigative journalism

"Computers can drive cars, dream of pictures and beat the world champion at the game of Go. All this is possible because they have learned to learn. By imitating human learning, they excel at a diverse range of tasks. Even though computers do not (yet) understand text like humans do, they can reveal interesting knowledge from data. Half a year into my PhD in artificial intelligence and machine learning, I want to share my insights into how my discipline can help journalistic investigation."

2) David Cabo (Civio) — Onodo, an open-source visual mapping tool

"Introducing Onodo, an open, replicable and collaborative tool to facilitate the analysis of networks and relationships in any field of knowledge. The objective is to develop strong ties with communities of professionals in the need for an influence network analysis tool. We aim to improve the way journalists can show their data and better communicate and engage with target audiences."

3) Boaventura Monjane (Pambazuka News) — Pambazuka News: Pan-African voices for freedom and justice

"Pambazuka News is a community of African journalists, activists, academics, writers, bloggers, students and scholars among others who have all been brought together by their determination to fight against various forms of social injustices, through journalism research and analysis. What can we learn from it?"

4) Maaike Goslinga (De Correspondent) — Securing Europe: Who Profits, Who Loses?

"More and more companies design security products promised to keep us safe from terrorism, crime and other real or imagined threats. We're currently working with a team of European investigative and data journalists to uncover the scope of the activities of security companies in European countries. In this lightning talk we will introduce our project and ask you for help."

5) Arne Semsrott (Open Knowledge Foundation Germany) — FOI Flooding. Forcing public authorities to open up

"Making public authorities respond to FOI requests is hard. However, by crowdsourcing FOI requests online, it might become possible to force them to open up. On our FOI platform FragDenStaat.de we created one-click FOI requests, making it possible to request reports by the German parliament out of a list of 5000 titles. 2000 people participated in our campaign, effectively FOI flooding the parliament. Three weeks into the campaign, the parliament announced that it will proactively publish all of its reports."

6) Serena Tinari (Re-Check) — Three Ninja Moves to Investigate and Map Public Health Affairs

"Broccoli is good for you. Eating broccoli might even prevent cancer. I love veggies and I eat broccoli in order to do something good for my health. But if you look at the biomedical literature, you'll see that we suppose broccoli to be beneficial, because they are rich in valuable nutrients. Benefit on a human being? We got no clue. Disappointed? Me too! That's how it is with evidence-based medicine: you might be sorry. Learn three Ninja moves to connect the dots around medicine and public health."

7) Felix Franz (hostwriter) — Pluralising the #PanamaPapers effect: cross-border collaboration for journalists

"The Panama Papers show that the need for cross border, collaborative journalism is more essential than ever. Major stories are cross-border or global and the need for independent journalism to reflect this is vital. However, budget cuts across all media outlets make international reporting often a privilege available to only a few. Hostwriter changes this dynamic by having created a community of currently 1800+ journalists from 95 different countries eager to collaborate."

8) Kira Schacht (Journocode) — The case for collaborative data literacy

"Becoming data literate is fun. But it takes time and nerves, especially if you do it alone. That's why other people are your best resource - and why you are theirs. It takes half an hour to teach someone else what a frustrating night of trial and error taught you. If you give them the chance, they might even return the favour. Incorporating collaborative data literacy into your daily life is easier than you think. Here's how we did it. Here's how you can do it, too."