Call for Research Applications — Fall 2015
In January 2015, the Tow Center for Digital Journalism was awarded $3 million in new funding from the Knight Foundation to expand research into the following 4 areas: Computation, Algorithms and Automated Journalism; Data, Metrics and Impact; Audiences and Engagement; and Experimental Journalism, Models and Practice. These 4 areas are expanded upon in greater detail below.
Call for Project Proposals
We are pleased to announce a call for research project proposals. We invite students, researchers, faculty and practitioners in the fields of computer science and journalism to propose potential research projects that fall within our 4 areas of inquiry. We outline the proposal process for research projects in further detail below, and encourage you to adhere closely to the outline noted.
Call for Project Proposals — Scope, Format, and Process
Project Proposal Scope
Research projects range from small to large in scope; a small project might comprise a few months of local field research and writing to produce a white paper on a specific topic at the forefront of the study and practice of digital journalism; a large project might comprise the design and implementation of a technology or process to then be tested and evaluated in an applied journalism context.
Project Proposal Format
Project proposals should be limited to three pages only. All project proposals should be sent to the Tow Center’s Research Director, Claire Wardle, at: cw2912@columbia.edu as an MS Word Document, and must include:
- A clear description of the research question(s).
- A brief description of the proposed research activities including the research design and methodology
- A distinct explanation of the significance and timeliness of the research, and the anticipated impact and applicability of the resulting findings.
- Project deliverables, including blog posts, papers, events and programming, applications
- Project personnel, including short biographies and links to CVs or resumes for all proposed team members, indicating why they are capable of delivering the work.
- Project timeline, clearly indicating proposed timeline for work, project phases, and expected time commitments from team members.
- Project budget, including labor, materials and/or travel.
If you have ideas for a research project but would like to meet with a member of our research team prior to the submission of a proposal, contact the Tow Center’s Research Director, Claire Wardle, at cw2912@columbia.edu.
Project Proposal Review Process
Our timeline for the next year is projected below.
October 5, 2015: Research Project Proposal period opens
November 16, 2015: Research Project Proposals are due
December 18, 2015: We will have contacted Project Proposal applicants
Applications received after each closing deadline must be re-submitted by the applicant during the next Research Project Proposal window to receive consideration.
Our Research Themes, expanded:
- Computation, Algorithms and Automated Journalism
Computer science now plays a key role in journalism. Whether it is the investigation of algorithms, large-scale data projects, automated reporting tools or detailed metrics evaluations data, a whole new area of professional expertise now sits alongside more traditional journalistic skills. This stream will explore the leading edge of this new practice, work with institutions that are actively and progressively embracing computation, and find innovative ways to bring computer scientists into the practice and development of journalism.
- Data, Impact and Metrics
The Tow Center is already known for its work in data journalism, both in research and the classroom, and looks to extend this work over the next three years. Journalists often get into the profession inspired to “make a difference”, but newsrooms are naïve in the science of figuring out which stories have impact, why that’s so and how to reproduce those effects. Developing work around the use of metrics in newsrooms has been a cornerstone of the Tow Center since its inception four years ago. Work is needed in developing new metrics and measurement as our access to data increases and ways of finding and consuming journalism develops. - Audiences and Engagement
Participatory journalism, social journalism, crowdsourcing, open journalism: there are many ways of describing the new pact between the journalist and the audience they seek to engage and inform through new platforms and tools. With experiments taking place in newsroom comment systems and social platforms, publishers are grappling with how to evaluate the direct relationship with audiences. As some news organisations withdraw from commenting or outsource their interactions to other social platforms, we see this area as needing far more research to examine questions such as, What are best practices? Do news organisations which employ more engagement tools improve key metrics? When data scraping is more efficient than crowdsourcing, what is the future of participatory techniques and social media teams? - Experimental Journalism, Models and Practice
This track will develop our field experiments with practicing journalists and newsrooms to test new techniques and technologies. In models and practice there are a number of areas where we are already establishing research or will start new investigations. These may include the transformation of broadcast newsrooms, the influence of philanthropy and non-profit funding on news start-ups, a continuation of our work on surveillance technologies used by and against journalism
Research Audiences
The Tow Center’s different research projects engage particular communities in different ways — both in terms of who produces the work and who consumes it. Researchers and project proposers should let the target audiences inform their plans for research content, activities and dissemination.The practicing digital journalism community forms the Tow Center’s biggest constituency; these are largely working reporters and newsroom managers. For these people the Tow Center should identify, articulate and analyze the new digital journalism ideas that will affect their work over the coming years. If your project is likely to be of interest to this group, you may want to include specific training or seminars, panels at mainstream journalism conferences, alongside publication through the Tow Center’s website and social media channels. To reach these audiences, you may want to pitch articles based on your work to journalism news channels including PBS Mediashift, Nieman Lab, Poynter and the influential industry bloggers.
For news executives the Tow Center aims to provide awareness of significant new ideas, access to our fellows for their expertise, workshop space to focus on ‘the next thing’, and avenues of engagement for their teams can be involved. If your research is likely to be of particular interest to news executives, you may want to include in your deliverables specific meetings or events.
Current journalism students and educators are another constituency for the Tow Center. They are often reached through similar activities and channels to practicing journalists, however, fellows may also choose to publicize and distribute their work directly to educators. We welcome collaboration with faculty, researchers and students at other academic institutions.
For the academic research community, the Tow Center also aims to provide opportunities to publish quality, relevant work on fast timelines. The Tow Center will reach this community through their specialist conferences, including ISOJ and NICAR, and online channels including their email lists and twitter groups.
Research Type: Tone, Language & Output Rhythm
The qualities of the tone, language and output rhythm of the Tow Center’s research flow logically from the Tow Center’s identity, the Center’s mission, and the Center’s audiences: The Tow Center is a great research institution, housed within an excellent journalism school and designed to respond to and serve the rapidly changing journalism industry. The Tow Center’s mission is to help individual journalists, students, faculty, news organizations and policymakers to develop and expand their thinking around and practice in digital journalism.
Tow Center research projects need to serve busy people who consume a lot of information: The tone and language must therefore efficiently convey that the content is insightful, stimulating, backed by quality research that would otherwise be unavailable, and is relevant to the audiences’ professional lives. Different projects will reach slightly different constituencies, so the tone and language can likewise vary, but they should not stray far from the description above.
The output rhythm should similarly serve the constituencies: Although the Center will study topics that remain relevant over the medium to long term, the precise trajectories of journalistic movements may be unpredictable and our audiences need to respond quickly. For that reason, each program of work should have agility; by producing regular audience-facing deliverables every few months and adjusting course as needs be.
