Tag Archives: NLP

This is what I learned after teaching chatbots to journalists: 3 takeaways for newsrooms

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In a guest post for OJB Maria Crosas points out three main takeaways that newsrooms should consider when aiming for a complete chatbot experience. 

Over the past year I’ve been frequently invited to share ideas around how bots can help newsrooms to deliver news, and advice on how to build an engaging chatbot experiences. And throughout these classes, I’ve also had challenging questions on how these technologies are pushing the boundaries of ethics, artificial intelligence and storytelling.

I’ve boiled down these experiences into 3 takeaways for newsrooms that want to begin the chatbot journey. Here they are…

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Text-as-data journalism? Highlights from a decade of SOTU speech coverage

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January 2012: The National Post’s graphics team analyzes keywords used in State of the Union addresses by presidents Bush and Obama / Image: © Richard Johnson/The National Post

January 2012: The National Post’s graphics team analyzes keywords used in State of the Union addresses by presidents Bush and Obama / Image: © Richard Johnson/The National Post

In a guest post for OJB, Barbara Maseda looks at how the media has used text-as-data to cover State of the Union addresses over the last decade.

State of the Union (SOTU) addresses are amply covered by the media —from traditional news reports and full transcripts, to summaries and highlights. But like other events involving speeches, SOTU addresses are also analyzable using natural language processing (NLP) techniques to identify and extract newsworthy patterns.

Every year, a new speech is added to this small collection of texts, which some newsrooms process to add a fresh angle to the avalanche of coverage.

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Data journalism’s AI opportunity: the 3 different types of machine learning & how they have already been used

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I understand that you want me to explain how Ava works (from Ex Machina)

This week I’m rounding off the first semester of classes on the new MA in Data Journalism with a session on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning. Machine learning is a subset of AI — and an area which holds enormous potential for journalism, both as a tool and as a subject for journalistic scrutiny.

So I thought I would share part of the class here, showing some examples of how the 3 types of machine learning — supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement — have already been used for journalistic purposes, and using those to explain what those are along the way. Continue reading →