Computational Journalism
Welcome to
computational journalism
Welcome! This is an envisioned course curriculum for Computational Journalism. The course is divided into three units — stories by algorithms, stories through algorithms, and stories about algorithms — highlighting the different ways journalism and computation intersect. The focus will be on practical toolbuilding and reporting, including learning how to construct applicable tools to facilitate story discovery and generation and deconstruct the algorithms that govern daily life.
“Computational journalism is stories by, through, and about algorithms”
What does it mean to think of computational journalism in this way? Let’s break it down:
Stories
by
algorithms
Using algorithms to write stories
Examples
Automatically generated sports/finance stories
Reusable story templates for local news stories
News curation through a news aggregator app
Stories
through
algorithms
Using algorithms to discover and tell stories
Examples
Tools and frameworks for sifting through datasets, document collections, and databases
Platforms to facilitate local news creation
Machine learning to reduce investigative workload
Stories
about
algorithms
Writing stories to cover algorithms
Examples
Examining machine bias in credit scores, automated sentencing decisions, etc.
Analyzing social media’s influence in spreading misinformation
Breaking down bias in search engine results