JMSC Research Seminar: Computational Journalism: Mapping the Research Agenda

This seminar will review and explore current state of research on computational journalism, a critical emerging field for both the academy and the media industry. A multidisciplinary panel of speakers will share their research projects and explore the following questions:

1) Promises and challenges of research in computational journalism

2) Current methodological approaches

3) Synergy between the industry and the academy

4) Applications for research on China media

Agenda:

About the Speakers and Moderators:

Yuen-Ying Chan

Ying Chan, an award-winning journalist and Hong Kong native, established The University of Hong Kong’s Journalism and Media Studies Centre (JMSC) in September 1999. She set up the first professional postgraduate journalism programme in Hong Kong, launched Hong Kong’s first fellowships for working journalists, and forged extensive ties between HKU and the news industry. She is currently Director of JMSC and Professor. Chan’s honours include a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University, a George Polk Award for journalistic excellence and an International Press Freedom Award by the Committee to Protect Journalists. She taught at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism and was on the board of the Asian American Journalists Association. Chan has a bachelor’s degree (social sciences) from HKU and a Masters from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Jonathan Stray

Jonathan Stray is the Interactive Technology Editor at Associated Press, creating interactive news stories for the Associated Press. He has contributed to the New York Times, Foreign Policy, Wired.com, CNET, and others about subjects such as art, epidemiology, and the social impact of technology. He obtained a Master of Journalism degree from JMSC, HKU. His personal website is http://jonathanstray.com/.

Nicholas Diakopoulos

Nicholas Diakopoulos is a Computing Innovation Fellow at the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University and an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Drew University. He received his PhD in Computer Science from the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His current research projects touch on human computer interaction, information visualization, and social media with themes spanning journalism, collaborative authorship, and games.

More about Nick can be found here http://www.nickdiakopoulos.com/.

Irene Jay Liu

Irene Jay Liu is a staff reporter at the South China Morning Post based in Hong Kong, where she reports on regional security and law enforcement and oversees the paper’s computer-assisted and document-based reporting projects. She is an honorary lecturer at JMSC, teaching the computer assisted reporting.

Previously, she was a political writer for the Capitol Bureau of the Albany Times Union in Albany, New York, where she wrote for print, served as lead blogger for the paper’s most-read blog, Capitol Confidential, and was an on-air correspondent for the statewide PBS television programme New York Now. She is a contributor to National Public Radio, where her investigative radio documentary on Chinese human smuggling, Snakehead, aired as a two-day series on NPR’s Morning Edition. Liu has been an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, a fellow with the Toni Stabile Center for Investigative Journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and a correspondent for the Center for Investigative Reporting (CIR). Before becoming a journalist, she worked for years in the non-profit and philanthropic sector. While an undergrad at Yale, she cofounded and led Advanced Strategies for Healthcare Access, for which she was nominated for the Ford Foundation’s Leadership in a Changing World award and profiled in The New York Times. Irene has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science from Yale University and a Master of Science in Journalism from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

SCMP’s WhoRunsHK: http://topics.scmp.com/news/whorunshk/

King-wa Fu

Dr. Fu is Research Assistant Professor at the JMSC. His research focuses on analyzing online public opinion, young people’s new media use, media’s influence on mental health/suicide, health communication, research method, and statistics in journalism. He has a PhD from the JMSC, a MA in Social Sciences and a MPhil in engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He obtained an undergraduate degree in engineering from HKU. He was a journalist at the Hong Kong Economic Journal.

His CV can be found here: http://sites.google.com/site/fukingwa/.