Hey, everyone! I’m Lauren, a first year MBA at MIT. I also like to call myself an engineer, web-developer, feminist, avid podcast listener, political junky, among other things.
I am in awe of everyone who introduced themselves on the first day of this course, and am excited to learn from the incredibly diverse set of people in the room throughout the semester.
As a kid, I had a “newspaper” I would create and pass out to our neighbors, who were kind enough to humor me. I didn’t end up becoming a reporter, but I have always been fascinated by and engaged with the world of civic media, even more so, in light of the recent election and the rise of “alternative facts”.
The election is not the only recent event that has me thinking more about the role of news in our society. As a former UVA student, I was rocked by the since debunked Rolling Stone article about a gang rape on UVA’s campus and was fascinated by the Washington’s Post analysis of the Rolling Stone’s mistakes. I was especially struck by that author’s conclusion about the importance of supporting local news.
My goal of this course is to learn about more about this subject and become a better consumer, distributor and creator of content, especially where it supports the success of our democracy and society.
My name is Marie Patino, and I’m an undergrad at MIT, more specifically an exchange student from France where I study at Sciences Po. Originally I am a social sciences / political sciencesmajor which involves a bunch of reading and criticizing but rarely building anything, at least not at the undergrad level.
Which is also why I am here, as I would really like to take advantage of the class to learn how to build things. After a semester at MIT, I now know how to open a terminal. Well, maybe a little bit more.
Random interests: long feature journalism, radio ( not even podcasts, more like the radio in general), sociology, photography, writing, Swedish thrillers, Wes Anderson movies, Benedict vs Otters, Nicolas Cage memes and the ncage extension.
Also, I am interested in just learning and discovering everything outside my field – and inside it that I don’t know yet. I am very excited to be in class with you all, can’t wait to get to know you better, and work together.
You can follow me here: @mariepastora. Sometimes my feed is in French because our Presidential elections are being incredibly messy at the moment. Which means that I share a lot of articles about the candidates and complain about how corrupted some of them are.
Fake news. Clickbait. Terms that I failed to really appreciate or understand for most of my life. Then, around November of 2016, I began reading the slew of articles coming out highlighting the prevalence and impact of the many articles and websites that were producing highly spun accounts of events at best, or just blatantly false accounts of events that never happened, at worst. What made this situation even scarier was reading articles such as this, which brought to the forefront the fact that the primary discovery vehicles so many people used to find their news (Google and Facebook) could so easily be manipulated by fake news creators.
If those articles got my attention and made me aware, it was stumbling upon this video that really put the fear in me…. (check out the below)
HOW in a world where technology can facilitate the creation and propagation of lies can we trust anything? HOW will we obtain information and educate ourselves on what is going on in the world beyond what our own eyes can see?
With this motivation, I wanted to spend the time this week exploring tools that can help combat this surge of fake news. After spending some time researching the topic, what I found could be broadly put into 2 categories:
Methods to understand if a piece of written work should be trusted
Tools to aid in validating that images or videos are authentic and have not been tampered with
I will be focusing on the 2nd, but before I do, I thought it would be important to call out a few links that touch on the 1st.
This guide was put together by Melissa Zimdars and offers a great set of tips for analyzing news sources.
This list of fake news sites can serve as a great quick check.
Validating Images
To assess the validity of images, there seems to be 2 predominant techniques or methods suggested: (1) reverse image searching to try and identify the origin of an image and see where else it has been published, and (2) data validation to try and identify when and with what device a photo was made, image characteristics, or perhaps even the place where a photo was taken. Collectively, this is called EXIF-data. In addition to EXIF-data, some tools run error level analysis (ELA) to find parts of a picture that were added with editing
Let’s explore one popular reverse image search tool called TinEye
While TinEye offers a host of products, I will focus on their free online tool. It works in a very simple way:
Find the url for the image you want to explore
Paste that url into TinEye
Receive back a list of all other sites on the web where this image has been used
Clicking on any of the returned images will pop up this web widget which allows you to quickly toggle back and forth between the 2 images (the original one you queried about and the similar image from a different website). This toggling UI makes it easier to spot differences in the images.
This service could prove useful in a few ways. First, TinEye will return images that are similar to the one you are searching for, so if you are wondering whether or not your image has been slightly modified via photoshop, this site will find those other similar photos and allow you to do quick comparisons (check out this example about pikachu). Second, since TinEye shows the urls for the other sites where the image shows up, you can easily scan those urls and see if some appear to be coming from questionable sites.
While this tool is great, and does serve a clear purpose, I do believe it is currently quite limited in the practicality of its use. Here are a few issues that come top of mind for me:
If you think about the workflow of this tool, its effectiveness depends upon a scenario where you have a real image, and then a shady author who tampers with that real image to then re-use it in nefarious ways. But what if you have someone who took the original picture, and then modified the original before uploading it anywhere? Not only does it seem like this tool would not catch such cases, but may actually add legitimacy to them if that modified photo starts to circulate on other websites.
Who exactly is this tool for? Is it for journalists who would like to include a certain image in an article before publishing? That seems to be the most likely case, though I would argue then that any journalist LOOKING to use such a tool is not the type of journalist we should be worried about spreading fake news. This tool is a great asset for the honest journalist, but, in a way, that does not protect us from the real problem, which brings me to….
What practical impact does this kind of a tool have on readers? Casual readers likely will not go out of their way when browsing through articles to go confirm the validity of an image. Fake news creators are not significantly deterred by the presence of this service, and that is the fundamental limitation of this tool.
TinEye is a great idea – it is a foundational capability. However, in today’s day and age, it does not quite do enough. After doing my research this week, I am left wondering, how can such tools be leveraged as the building blocks to construct a more active form of policing of online content.
PS: A brief aside on video validation. Videos are tough! Being a diligent journalist when it comes to verifying the authenticity of a video takes a lot of time and effort. Though I didn’t want to focus on this subject here, if you are interested in seeing a really thorough walkthrough that demonstrates just how much time and effort it takes, click here.
Hi there! I’m Drew, an undergraduate student at MIT studying computer science & electrical engineering, along with physics.
Motivation: I see journalism and participatory media as a great equalizer — holding powerful people and institutions accountable, while giving a voice to the voiceless. The democratization of media online these past two decades has brought more voices into the mix (a positive force), but at the cost of some veracity, responsibility, and credibility (a negative force). However, I believe there is no fundamental reason that the positive necessitates the negative — and rather that we are simply still waiting for a creative, new approach to media that will provide the benefits of journalistic democratization without sacrificing journalistic integrity.
Technology: programming since before I can remember; interned at Sony Ericsson and Khan Academy as a software developer in high school; co-founded and served as CTO of a start-up with 6 people; consulting at the World Bank on big data
Journalism: writing and editing for MIT’s school newspaper, The Tech; reported on the Boston Marathon bombing trial from the courtroom for half a year; interviewed people such as IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde
Random life experiences: biked across the U.S.; worked in a quantum computing lab; built iOS apps in ’09; got rid of my smartphone for a dumbphone
Hello, you! I’m Katrine, pronounced “Katrina” and spelled with an “e”. Please, if you’re hesitant, just ask or pick one and go with it — you’re interesting and I want to get to know you.
Part 2 of our in-class tweet icebreaker:
tweet 1: Katrine. Comp. Sci. M.Eng. student working with Ethan. Central Square resident. Born and raised Norwegian, increasingly American at heart.
tweet 2: Why this class? Media matters. Raving reviews. Learning from all of you with totally different backgrounds from mine.
tweet 3: Things that I like: Code for good, slam poetry, rock climbing, behavioral econ., queer/feminist discussions, the music duo “Dresses”
If you’re interested in more of the ‘professional’ stuff, this website has something like that.
Hi! My name is Arthur Sheyn, and I’m a 2nd year MBA student at MIT Sloan. To be quite honest, I was naively ignorant about the importance of the media for most of my life. Annnnndddd then this election happened. I distinctly remember that the moment I first read about whether or not Facebook should be held responsible for policing fake news was the moment I realized how important of a role the media plays in everyday society. (This John Oliver segment was also very eye opening.)
What started as the above nugget (or maybe epiphany) has now evolved into a full-blown curiosity and fascination for how news and media have evolved and must further evolve to serve an important purpose in society. This is why I am taking this class – to educate myself, and hopefully, explore some meaningful solutions for the future.
A bit about me:
I was born in Ukraine, and my family immigrated (as political refugees, a fact of my history that I have learned to appreciate so much more as of late) to the US in 1991
I grew up in San Francisco, which meant that for most of my life, I thought the diversity of my childhood was representative of the US (are you beginning to sense a theme of naiveté?)
Fun fact – I used to be a competitive ballroom dancer (check me out on youtube!). After I stopped competing to go to college, I took up coaching my university’s ballroom dancing team. That experience showed me just how meaningful and powerful communication can be.
I love action, adventure, nature, pretty much anything outside and remotely physical. One of my highlights of 2016 was going bungee jumping in New Zealand (twice!)
For my short professional career, I spent 3 years in management consulting and 2 years working for the digital innovation arm of a global retail company. I’ll spare you the details, since LinkedIn provides a pretty good summary!
Aaron Rose is a senior at MIT majoring in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. Aaron grew up in suburban Chicago and Boca Raton, Florida. More than anything else, Aaron hates writing bios about himself, so he asked some people who knows him well for their thoughts.
“One of those good looking guys who is just a bit too short.” – Aaron’s younger, taller brother
“With coordination that resembles an infant trying to catch a ping pong ball, and the quickness of a sloth with its legs tied together, I am glad he is no longer pursuing a professional basketball career.”
– Aaron’s high school basketball captain
“Rooming with Aaron was almost indescribable. But if I had to describe it, it would be as the single worst experience of my life.”
– Aaron’s former roommate
“One thing Aaron has consistently done all semester is not follow the instructions on his assignments.”
– Aaron’s design professor
“Aaron is really in way over his head. He should have stuck to electrical engineering and had an easy senior spring.”
– Aaron’s brain sitting in the first class
Aaron has virtually no prior experience in journalism, but has long been a voracious consumer of the news. He’s incredibly excited to be in MAS.700. He just started his Twitter account again, you can find him @aaronrose87.
For everyone interested in taking MAS.700, welcome! There’s been a lot of interest in the class this year – one wonders why, as there’s nothing going on in the outside world that makes news particularly interesting or important. I am going to assume that people have simply heard that I’m a style icon and are attending to see my radical and provocative fashion choices.
If you’re interested in the spring 2017 edition of MAS.700, here are a few things to know:
– You must come to the first class. It’s from 1-4pm on February 8, in E15-341. (This first class will probably go only 2 hours, but most will be closer to 3 hours with a break.) I will try to accommodate everyone, but there are constraints having to do with the size of the room and the number of assignments I can read each week.
– There is no passive auditing of any of my classes. You’re welcome to participate as an auditor, but I expect you to do the work that any student taking the course for credit would do.
– It doesn’t matter what university you’re from. I’m thrilled to have MIT students – Media Lab, CMS or otherwise – in this class, but I’m equally thrilled to have participants from anywhere in the greater University of Boston. If you’re affiliated with a university somewhere within driving radius of Cambridge, you’re welcome here.
– If I have to limit the size of the class, I will make decisions based on balancing skill sets. This class works best when I have roughly equal numbers of engineers, designers and journalists, plus a few wild cards.
– The syllabus is in flux. I am making some changes today, and will likely keep adding readings as the semester goes on as this is a really fascinating moment in time and some great writing is taking place.
– Most students find that this course requires more work than they expect. There’s three hours of classes a week, and reading will likely take you another 2-3 hours. There’s an assignment virtually every week, and those tend to take a minimum of 4 hours to complete. If that’s going to be a problem for you, please give your seat to someone else who wants it.
Looking forward to meeting lots of folks on Wednesday the 8th.
Below is a mockup of a concept I’ve had for a while called NewsMap*, which is a way of curating and annotating the news by storing news stories in a personal categorized dashboard.
NewsMap would allow people to process the news in a more coherent manner, as opposed to jumping from headline to headline, day to day. For example, if someone is interested in MOOCs, they can store an interesting article about MOOCs in the Ed Tech folder on their NewsMap dashboard. Two weeks later, when there’s another front page article about MOOCs, they can drag and drop it to that same folder, and compare the two stories and start to build a narrative of who the players are, what the trends are, etc air max sale.
NewsMap would galvanize people to action through first and foremost supporting their intellectual curiosity and helping them make connections between related news stories (as well as information on the web that isn’t necessarily categorized as “news,” such as organizations, campaigns, emails, and blog posts). Their dashboard would become a visual representation of the connections they make between research, policy, and practice original new balance.
In the long term, this concept is something I plan to integrate into my school mapping project.
Always looking for feedback and assistance 🙂
Thanks,
Julia
*I am aware that the name NewsMap is already taken.
In November 2014, after the three stalwarts of the Boston art scene–the Fogg Museum, Busch-Reisinger Museum, and Arthur M. Sackler Museum–became one institution under the Harvard Art Museum, a smaller, experimental gallery launched within its walls under the masterful direction of Harvard’s metaLAB, “an idea foundry, knowledge-design lab, and production studio dedicated to innovation and experimentation in the networked arts and humanities.” The space was designed to push the boundaries of an otherwise traditional museum space through, “digital experiments and new media projects that respond to collections held at the Harvard Art Museums.”
The entirety of the room is covered with screens, projectors, network jacks and various other necessities that would make any experimental artist salivate. But what might make this gallery most exciting is the juxtaposition of next-generation tech, and the traditional artworks of the museum.
Nothing feels more well-suited to this surprising marriage than the upcoming video exhibiton “YOUR STORY HAS TOUCHED MY HEART,” opening May 23. The exhibition highlights the truly extraordinary American Professional Photographers Collection, over 20,000 photographs depicting American life in the late 19th and early 20th century.
The photographs depict the hopes and dreams—and fears—of Americans as they imagined themselves at their best. Your Story Has Touched My Heart combines these photographs with new video footage, sound, and fragments of text that put the work in dialogue with memory, individuality, ephemerality, and the meaning of visual abundance as these images find their way in the digital realm.
– metaLAB
A special screening will be held on May 25, followed by a discussion of the video and corresponding works by the metaLAB’s Matthew Battles and Sarah Newman, in concert with one of the APPC’s curators, Professor Kate Palmer Albers.
The 20,000+ collection is impressive both in its size and the consistent quality of the photos and negatives. To gain more exposure before the event, follow our Boston Bot on Twitter, and receive periodic links to images in the collection!
In the long term, this concept is something I plan to integrate into my school mapping project.
