Projects
The Justice Media Computational co-Lab is the first curricular collaboration between the BU Faculty of Computing and Data Sciences and the College of Communication. We are training a new generation of computational investigative journalists equipped to leverage the power of computing and data science to advance justice and transparency. Students accepted into the co-Lab from Journalism and Data and Computing sciences join interdisciplinary teams to work with local, regional, national and international media partners to report and publish data-driven investigations and build tools for newsrooms to increase transparency, combat racism and otherwise further justice in reporting, editing and publishing. The co-Lab does not build silos but rather focuses on teaming and is truly interdisciplinary in nature. Journalism students have an opportunity to work with peers who have more advanced computational skills, and Data and Computing sciences students have the chance to gain experience with Journalism students reporting, interviewing, writing, fact checking and publishing. Ultimately, the co-Lab gives students in both areas of study a chance to explore careers in newsrooms as data journalists, developers, data visualization experts and more.
Data-driven Newsroom Investigations
Working with local, regional, national and international news partners, students in our Fall and Spring course as well as our paid summer internship gain professional experience working on interdisciplinary teams to produce a data-driven investigation utilizing advanced computational methods. Unlike many busy reporters, students in the course have time and faculty advising — the class is co-taught with faculty from CDS and COM — needed to think big and try out new and advanced computational methods to find and report out news stories examining, exploring and exposing injustices as well as potential solutions. Our computational methodology is public and iterative — we want our work to provide a roadmap for reporters around the country to be able to do the same thing or something similar with another agency or subject. In the Fall and Spring course as well as the paid summer internship program, we hire upper level undergraduate students and graduate students from CDS and COM to serve as project managers.
The Latest from the Newsroom:
- The Emancipator: Climate change is exacerbating racial inequities. Boston is trying to change that. Historically redlined Black and Brown communities can’t escape the heat
- TheGrio: This is what it looks like when cops lie
- WBUR: For EVs to take off, Boston needs more equitable placement of chargers
- GBH News: Amid calls to increase policing at Mass. and Cass, overtime spending surges under Mayor Wu
- GBH News: Youth voters have been turning out in historic numbers. Will they do so again in Massachusetts?
- CBS Boston: UMass Gender Pay Gap: Top paid men making nearly 30 percent more than female colleagues
- NBC Boston: Not Everyone Has a Bank Account: The Cost of Being Unbanked
Building Justice Tools to Combat Racism
Interdisciplinary teams of students in the co-Lab also work on building tools to help ensure justice in the reporting process and improve accountability and transparency. The co-Lab is currently collaborating with GBH and the NAACP on an internal newsroom tool to alert reporters and editors to potential racism in news stories. The Justice Media co-Lab also forms interdisciplinary teams during the course and summer internship program to focus on increasing and making it easier for newsrooms to request, store and make public data freely available.
