While most news outlets on Tuesday will focus on which candidates and ballot measures are getting the most votes, a group of journalists and students will be mining social media to detect problems with the process of voting itself. Are voting machines malfunctioning? Provisional ballots being handed out? Voters being inappropriately asked for ID or being harassed? In short: are citizens able to exercise their right to vote?
More than 150 people are expected to crowd into the student newsroom at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism in New York’s Times Square. Professional journalists and students will join data experts from Google and other companies for pizza, coffee, and snacks, and to sift through a deluge of data on that day’s voting. It will be the hub of a group called Electionland, led by the nonprofit news site ProPublica, Google News Lab, CUNY, and others. They hope Electionland will leverage social media and other data sources to surface and flag suspicious voting situations.
Systematically monitoring voting is hard because it is supervised by local officials, making it tough for groups to highlight concerns quickly, says Derek Willis, a data journalist and developer at ProPublica and part of the Electionland team. “A national election is really 50 state elections,” says Willis.
Electionland is a bid to take the wide reach and accessibility of platforms such as Facebook and Twitter and use that to monitor and improve the voting process.
Willis and others involved readily admit that information coming from social media and Google search trends are at best an imperfect measure and at worst subject to manipulation. “It will be just as much about debunking false claims as identifying the problems,” says Carrie Brown, director of the social journalism program at CUNY.
Charles Stewart, a political science professor at MIT and an expert on voting, says he is “very, very worried” about the potential that Electionland’s focus on social media could be susceptible to manipulation and that news organizations, drawn in by the immediacy of the information coming through on social media, might rush out information before it is properly vetted for accuracy. Disseminating information on issues such as the length of voting lines, even if accurate, could have the negative effect of discouraging voter turnout, he says.
Just as problematic, much of social media is not representative of the broader public. “It is skewed urban, toward tech-savvy white men. It is skewed in a lot of ways,” says Stewart.
To minimize those issues, Electionland’s creators have tried to pull data from a variety of sources and create a system to critically vet the information that surfaces.
Though much of the data will come into Electionland from automated systems, its review will require a significant amount of human judgment. Six hundred student volunteers will use tools like Facebook Signal and Dataminr to pick up on hot issues on social media platforms. In addition, the public will be able to send concerns directly to Electionland via text message. The group will pull in leads on election irregularities phoned in to a hotline run by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
Students will try to verify the authenticity and significance of various signals with tools like reverse image searches (to determine if a photo has been in circulation before) and geolocation (to determine whether a text is coming from near a polling place in question).
Professional journalists will then review issues that pass the students’ evaluation, and if the pros agree, the leads will be sent to local reporters around the country who have signed up to check out questions about polling places in their area. “There is no magic box here,” Willis says. “As with most civic-oriented projects there is no algorithm that does the job without human input.”
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Wakati vyombo vingi vya habari siku ya Jumanne vitatazama ni wagombea gani na hatua za kura zinazopokea kura nyingi, kikundi cha waandishi wa habari na wanafunzi watatafuta vyombo vya habari vya kijamii ili kugundua matatizo na mchakato wa kupiga kura yenyewe. Je, mashine za kupiga kura hazifanyi kazi vizuri? Vipande vya kura vya muda vinavyotolewa? Je, ni wajumbe wa chama cha siasa wanaotakiwa kutoa vitambulisho vyao au wanaotakiwa kuingiliwa? Kwa ufupi: je, raia wanaweza kutumia haki yao ya kupiga kura? Watu zaidi ya 150 wanatarajiwa kukutana katika chumba cha wanafunzi cha habari katika Chuo cha Uandishi wa Habari cha CUNY katika Times Square, New York. Waandishi wa habari na wanafunzi watajiunga na wataalamu wa data kutoka Google na makampuni mengine kwa pizza, kahawa, na vitafunio, na kuchanganua mafuriko ya data juu ya kupiga kura kwa siku hiyo. "Kama ilivyoelezwa hapo juu, ""Electionland"" ni shirika lisilo la faida linaloongozwa na ProPublica, Google News Lab, CUNY, na wengineo." Wanasema kuwa ElectionLand itatumia mitandao ya kijamii na vyanzo vingine vya data kugundua na kuashiria hali za kupigia kura zenye kutilika shaka. "Kufanya uchunguzi wa utaratibu wa uchaguzi ni vigumu kwa sababu unaongozwa na maafisa wa mitaa, na hivyo kufanya iwe vigumu kwa makundi kuelezea wasiwasi haraka,"" anasema Derek Willis, mwandishi wa habari na msanidi programu wa ProPublica na sehemu ya timu ya ElectionLand." "Chaguzi za kitaifa ni uchaguzi wa majimbo 50," anasema Willis. Electionland ni zabuni ya kuchukua upatikanaji mkubwa na upatikanaji wa majukwaa kama vile Facebook na Twitter na kuitumia kufuatilia na kuboresha mchakato wa kupiga kura. Willis na wengine waliohusika wanakubali kuwa habari zinazotoka kwenye mitandao ya kijamii na mwenendo wa utafutaji wa Google ni kipimo kisicho kamili na katika hali mbaya zaidi chini ya udanganyifu. "Itatumika kama vile kufuta madai ya uwongo kama kutambua matatizo", anasema Carrie Brown, mkurugenzi wa programu ya uandishi wa habari za kijamii katika CUNY. Charles Stewart, profesa wa sayansi ya siasa katika MIT na mtaalam wa kupiga kura, anasema ana wasiwasi sana juu ya uwezekano wa kuzingatia ElectionLand kwenye media ya kijamii inaweza kuwa na uwezekano wa udanganyifu na kwamba mashirika ya habari, yaliyochukuliwa na uwazi wa habari inayokuja kupitia media ya kijamii, inaweza kukimbilia habari kabla ya kuchunguzwa kwa usahihi. "Kusambaza habari kuhusu masuala kama vile urefu wa foleni za kupiga kura, hata ikiwa ni sahihi, kunaweza kuwa na athari mbaya ya kukatisha tamaa ya wapiga kura,"" anasema." Kama vile tatizo, mengi ya vyombo vya habari vya kijamii si mwakilishi wa umma kwa ujumla. <unk>Ni skewed mijini, kuelekea tech-savvy wanaume weupe. Ni skewed katika njia nyingi, "anasema Stewart. Ili kupunguza masuala hayo, waundaji wa Electionland wamejaribu kuvuta data kutoka vyanzo mbalimbali na kuunda mfumo wa kuchunguza kwa uangalifu habari zinazotokea. Ingawa data nyingi zitakuja katika Electionland kutoka kwa mifumo ya kiotomatiki, ukaguzi wake utahitaji kiasi kikubwa cha uamuzi wa binadamu. Wanafunzi 600 watatumia vifaa kama vile Facebook Signal na Dataminer kugundua masuala ya sasa kwenye mitandao ya kijamii. Kwa kuongezea, umma utaweza kutuma wasiwasi moja kwa moja kwa Electionland kupitia ujumbe wa maandishi. Kikundi hicho kitatoa habari kuhusu makosa ya uchaguzi yaliyoelekezwa kwenye simu ya simu inayoendeshwa na Kamati ya Wanasheria ya Haki za Kiraia. Wanafunzi watajaribu kuthibitisha uhalisi na umuhimu wa ishara mbalimbali kwa kutumia zana kama vile utafutaji wa picha za nyuma (kuamua kama picha imekuwa ikizunguka kabla) na geolocation (kuamua kama maandishi yanatoka karibu na mahali pa kupiga kura). Waandishi wa habari watachunguza maswali ambayo yanapitia tathmini ya wanafunzi, na ikiwa wataalamu wanakubali, habari hizo zitapelekwa kwa waandishi wa habari wa ndani nchini kote ambao wamejiandikisha kuangalia maswali kuhusu maeneo ya kupiga kura katika eneo lao. "Hakuna sanduku la kichawi hapa", Willis asema. "Kama ilivyo na miradi mingi ya kiraia, hakuna algorithm ambayo inafanya kazi bila pembejeo ya binadamu. ""Teknolojia 10 za Kupita 2024 Kila mwaka, tunatafuta teknolojia za kuahidi zilizo tayari kuwa na athari halisi ulimwenguni." Hapa ni maendeleo ambayo tunafikiri ni muhimu zaidi sasa hivi. Wataalamu wa afya wamegundua dalili za ugonjwa wa Covid-19 katika damu Zinaweza kuongoza kwenye matibabu mapya. Uharibifu wa sehemu fulani ya mfumo wa kinga inaweza kuwa chanzo cha baadhi ya kesi za muda mrefu za COVID-19, utafiti mpya unaonyesha. AI kwa kila kitu: Teknolojia 10 za Kuboresha 2024 Vifaa vya Generative AI kama ChatGPT vilipata kupitishwa kwa wingi kwa muda wa rekodi, na kuweka upya mwendo wa tasnia nzima. "Kama ""Mwanzoni mwa mwaka wa 2020,"" ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020,"" ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020"" au ""Mwaka wa 2020."""