Tag Archives: Ian SIlvera

Can you help map local data blogs?

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This week Matt Burgess launched the Northampton Data Blog, “exploring the data behind the headlines in Northamptonshire”. The site is at least the fourth local data blog to be launched this year after the Coventry Data Blog in May, and Behind The Numbers sections on Wales Online and the Birmingham Mail.

But are we missing any? Please let me know in the comments.

UPDATE: Philip Nye points out his data posts are largely about Hackney.

Disclosure: Matt Burgess was previously the editor of Help Me Investigate Education and Coventry Data Blog creator Ian Silvera has contributed to Help Me Investigate. I am regularly involved in the Birmingham Data Blog.

A lesson from Superstorm Sandy: How to find sources using social media

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By Ian Silvera

In a world where an extraordinary amount of people own smartphones, it’s easier than ever to connect instantaneously with those affected by significant news events wherever you happen to be based. But what tools can help reporters find those affected?

Simple searches on Twitter or Facebook may present too many ‘junk leads’ to wade through. Tools like TweetDeck are better, but what if you were able to find social media users more quickly through geolocation? Surely that would be a much more efficient method?

There are numerous websites out there that offer this functionality.

Continue reading →

How to investigate Wikipedia edits

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Ian Silvera (@ianjsilvera) gives a step-by-step guide on how to find out who’s behind changes on a Wikipedia page. Cross-posted from the Help Me Investigate blog.

First, click on the ‘view history’ tab at the top right of the Wikipedia entry you are interested in. You should then be directed to a page that lists all the edits that have occurred on that entry. It looks like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paul_Bradshaw_(journalist)&action=history

Second, to identify if someone has been deleting unhelpful criticisms of an organisation or person on their Wikipedia entry, you could read through each edit, but with large Wikipedia entries this exercise would be too time-consuming. Instead, look for large redactions. Continue reading →