Using Google DNI funding to help make sensory data a practical tool for journalists
By Alison Gow, Editor in Chief (digital) at Reach PLC Regionals
The latest round of Google DNI funding for Europe always makes for interesting reading.
From the ideas submitted you start to see the themes and burgeoning strategies those working in and around media (from students to startups, developers to mainstream media companies) believe will steer the industry in the near future. And you can see where a large tech company believes there is likely to be intersection and synergies — for example, machine learning is writ large again in this latest round of funding.
Google’s stated commitment to support media innovation in Europe with a €150 million fund has so far seen around 1.5m euros being given to UK applicants.
The new funding release largely focused on monetisation and building more diverse revenue streams. You can read more on Google’s blog about it here.
Among the successful applicants, winning €48,000, was a partnership close to my heart — Sensemaker, a joint project between the academic innovation team at UCLan and regional editorial at Reach plc, including myself and Digital Innovation Editor Paul Gallagher.
Sensemaker, in the words of our submission to Google, ‘brings together journalism industry expertise, multidisciplinary academic partners spanning innovation, internet of things, engineering and autonomous systems with communities and public bodies. This group will identify key issues, and then develop specialist, bespoke sensor kits that respond to, reveal, or add value to, local issues via a co-creation methodology’.
My old journalism mentor always told me to pitch my reporting language so Mrs Evans, of Lower Pennar knew what I was telling her without getting a dictionary out.
So,Mrs Evans, what that means is that we’ll build machines that can interpret information from the world around us — such the air we breath and the sunshine (currently) beating down on us, or the roads we drive on — so we can add more useful data, context, content, impartiality, and transparency to our stories. That means people reading them get a more detailed understanding of the news that impacts on their lives, and should help them care more about that news — even if it isn’t about Love Island.
You can see a basic idea of sensor-data-for-news here with this German air pollution map German live air pollution map https://www.stuttgarter-zeitung.de/feinstaub
It won’t just be a media/academia bubble — we will work with the public, and local communities and organisations, to help them make sense of their world. We’re piloting this in Manchester.
We’re going to base the Sensemaker work in Greater Manchester, and we’ve got a number of organisations locally signed up to work with us including Greater Manchester Combined Authority and the local Hacks and Hackers group, as well as the Manchester Evening News.
But what does it really mean? If you’re a journalist, data will already be a part of your world. I am writing this on what’s forecast to be the hottest day of the year, and every website and newspaper is carrying some form of heat/UV/sun warning — all of that is based not only on data but sensory data.
Sensemaker wants to carry the idea into our everyday reporting roles so journalists have access to that kind of rich data rather than waiting for it to be provided by other organisations, or via tortuous FOIs.
So, if I’m reporting on traffic problems outside a school, which is a pretty typical local news story, I have multiple data and sensory data points:
Numbers data:
The amount of traffic
The double/triple/yellow line/driveway parking
Number of crossing guards
Number of buses
Amount of time the chaos lasts
Etc, etc
Sensory data:
The scenes I see
The noise I hear
The smell of hydrocarbons
The discussions I have with parents or locals
Photos, video or livestream
Now take it a step further. A Sensemaker probe bringing in multiple data streams could potentially be tracking:
Noise pollution
Air quality/particle pollution from engines
CO2 levels
Biometric data (footfall, movement, heart rate)
Patterns of traffic chaos over 5-days
The result is a richly detailed dataset that shows, without partiality, a deep picture of the issue and that should empower all involved — school, parents, residents, the journalist, the local authority to effectively work for a change.
This isn’t the first time we’ve managed to gain Google DNI funding for a project — the last, NewsThings, looked at the Internet of Things, and how audiences wanted us to enable ‘things’ for news supply, filtering and consumption. (That project is coming to a close now and there will be more to share on our findings next month.)
For John Mills, lecturer and researcher at the Media Innovation Studio, one of the academic partners on the Sensemaker project and a former digital editor, there are multiple motivations for being involved in such a DNI project.
“From a research perspective, we’re keen to explore how new technologies can be shaped and influenced by communities to have real impact on people’s lives. We’re keen to put the creation of data into the hands of communities. We’ll ‘co-create’ our sensor kits with journalists alongside grounds and individuals throughout Manchester with the aim of creating data tools, and content, that are as relevant and meaningful as possible. The innovation process can also be just as fascinating as the outputs.”
The Media Innovation Studio, based in UCLan’s School of Journalism, Media and Performance, is a multidisciplinary research centre which works on a wide variety of projects. These include drone journalism, proximity broadcasting, the Internet of Things and news media alongside broader ‘civic media’ projects.
“Working in partnership with publishers such as Reach, and the Manchester Evening News, is a good example of what we aim to do as a research centre more generally. Through collaborating with industry and creating new products, services and, ultimately, knowledge, our research has the potential to make a much more powerful impact in the real world.”
