A majority of participants in a global BBC poll believe the internet has brought greater freedom, but more than half of those interviewed also think it is not a safe place to express their opinions. Many believe that greater freedom goes hand in hand with increased government surveillance, according to […] Read more »
The Personal News Cycle
The Media Insight Project’s first study examines the personal news cycle and uses an innovative approach to assess how people consume news across topics and platforms. The findings suggest that the conventional wisdom holding that media consumption divides largely along generational or ideological lines is overstated and that some long-held […] Read more »
Americans Most Likely to Say Global Warming Is Exaggerated
Even as most Americans report experiencing abnormal weather conditions lately, more than four in 10 say the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated in the news. These sentiments are lower than the record 48% who believed this four years ago, but higher than any year before Barack Obama became […] Read more »
Beware sloppiness when reporting on surveys
There is an old saying that figures don’t lie but liars figure. That’s a good thing to keep in mind when examining how some companies market the results of surveys. OK, perhaps lying is too strong a term, but I’ve seen too many press releases that promote the results of […] Read more »
Teaming With Data-Mining Security Firms to Get a Lead on News
When Ronan Farrow, the young human rights lawyer with a Hollywood lineage, debuts as an MSNBC host on Monday, he will have some prodigious computing power backing him up. MSNBC has struck a partnership with Vocativ, a digital news start-up, to provide the new program — “Ronan Farrow Daily” — […] Read more »
The democratization of data journalism
The proliferation of interesting and easy-to-access internet-based data combined with fast computers and free or cheap analysis and visualization tools are democratizing and popularizing the field of data journalism. But what are the rules, parameters, and guidelines for this work which, like its name, bridges the worlds of data and […] Read more »