“Knowledge is like money – to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.” Quote attributed to American author Louis L'Amour.
Faced with environments where those in the public eye are often tempted to blur the lines between fact and fiction, and where claims attacking the validity of media reports are commonplace, PSM are increasingly looking to use hard data as a foundation for their reporting and to better reach its audiences.
The EBU Big Data Initiative’s workshop on "Data in the Newsroom" – hosted by the Institut für Rundfunktechnik (IRT) in Munich on 26-27 February – surveys the cutting edge of technologies and tools that may help overcome the complexity of data analysis, and to add value to services for audiences.
"Data provides incredible and mostly untapped opportunities to produce new types of content, engage audiences even more and leverage their loyalty in an environment of fierce competition”, says Pierre-Nicolas Schwab, Chair of the EBU Big Data Initiative.
AI and ML at your fingertips?
One of the recurring topics of this BDI workshop is Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML). Many hopes are placed in new tools that can put the sharper analytical skills and processing power of dedicated AI and ML algorithms at the fingertips of journalists and analysts.
This BDI workshop will explore the capabilities of such tools and “commodity AI”, its limitations, skillsets required to put such tools in the employ of media organizations, as well as ethical questions raised in doing so.
A resource for Members
EBU Members can join BDI workshops free of charge to network and engage directly with the experts gathered by the initiative. Videos and PDFs of the presentations will also be made available on BDI Data in the Newsroom event website.