Jeremy Merrill: ProPublica’s project crowdsourcing political ads on Facebook

After the 2016 presidential election, Facebook received criticism and questions over a lack of transparency into micro-targeted political advertising on its platform. ProPublica has been particularly persistent in its coverage of electioneering on the social media giant. In  the fall 2017, the non-profit news organization launched a project to crowdsource the collection of political ads on Facebook. … Continued

Tips to consider for porting real estate info to voice devices

Voice is just another interface A voice-activated device is like a browser you interact with by speaking instead of pointing and clicking. An Alexa skill or Google Assistant Action is just a thin layer that 1) defines the patterns of speech for which the device is listening; and 2) maps the components of that speech … Continued

RJI Futures Lab senior editor to teach Python data science course at CAR conference in Chicago

This week, I’ll reunite with my California Civic Data Coalition colleagues to co-teach a six-hour, hands-on session at the annual Computer-Assisted Reporting Conference in Chicago. Our class, “First Python Notebook,” is for journalists who want to learn data science. We’ll show our students how to use computer-assisted techniques to report on money in state politics, but the skills could … Continued