Author: Kalev Leetaru
Using Television News Ngrams To Explore Linguistic Correlation
The compilation of a decade of television news closed captioning into an ngram dataset makes it possible to begin exploring…
New Television News Inventory Files
We're excited to announce the new Television News inventory files, which record the complete list of public shows archived by…
Announcing The Television News Ngram Datasets (TV-NGRAM)
Update (6/7/2020): This dataset has been superseded by the TV Ngram 2.0 Dataset. Users should move their workflows to this…
Instagram's Response To The Bianca Devins Murder Reminds Us It Profits From Horror
Every murder image, terrorism recruiting video, genocide glorification, animal cruelty, human trafficking sale and other unimaginably horrific post puts real…
Would Fining Social Media Companies Force Them To Tackle Horrific Content?
One of the greatest challenges confronting the modern Web is how to address the rise of the horrific content that…
Do We Need New Laws Forcing The External Auditing Of Social Media Algorithms?
Requiring regular public algorithmic accuracy metrics and regular external audits would go a long way towards helping the public and…
New Television News Completion File
As the Television Explorer is increasingly used to understand the reaction to breaking news and evolving narratives, the unpredictable nature…
The Social Media Filter Bubble's Corrosive Impact On Democracy And The Press
Social media was supposed to expand our horizons, giving voice to the voiceless and letting us see, experience, debate and…
The Internet Of Things Is Creating 1984's National Camera Surveillance Network
As the physical world becomes enveloped by the digital, the same surveillance state that watches us online will come to…
Why Is The Digital World More Toxic Than The Physical One?
Reflecting on what makes the digital world more toxic than the physical, the loss of identity and sustained interaction lead…
Is The Web Era Destroying the Innovative Spirit Of The Moonshot Era?
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of humanity’s great expedition to the moon, it is worth asking whether we have…
Media Coverage of Anti-Semitism, Racism Rise in Trump Era
President Trump generated an uproar this week with his widely condemned comments regarding four Democratic lawmakers of color, coupled with…
Is The Smartphone Behind The Web's Shift From Enlightenment To Entertainment?
Could the rise of the smartphone and the mobile Web be the cause of the Web's devolution, as our increasingly…
Why Do We Blame Algorithms For All Of Society's Ills?
It is not algorithms that have led to our societal troubles of today, it is the way in which society…
FaceApp Reminds Us The Rights We Sign Away When We Use The Web
Nowhere was the public’s failure to understand digital privacy on more prominent display this week than Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer’s…
Concern Over 'Russian' FaceApp Ignores That American Companies Sell Our Data Abroad
It seems this week’s privacy backlash against viral app FaceApp has much less to do with privacy than it does…
Forget 'Russian' FaceApp – Facebook And Social Science One Are The Real Russian Data Danger
Instead of focusing all of our attention on random apps whose developers just happen to be Russian, perhaps we should…
Academia's Facial Recognition Datasets Illustrate The Globalization Of Today's Data
While all of the digital privacy attention this week has focused on FaceApp, this concern belies the simple fact that…
NYTimes: Which Democrats Are Leading the 2020 Presidential Race?
The New York Times' look at the 2020 Democratic field uses the TV Explorer to examine media coverage of the…
Gizmodo: How a Horrific Murder Exposes the Great Failure of Facebook's AI Moderation
Gizmodo's Brian Merchant quotes Kalev in his lengthy look at Facebook's failure to properly moderate the Bianca Devins images. Read…
Will The Kinescope Rise Again In The Era Of Deep Fakes?
In an era of digital signatures and GPS-stamped media, could cardboard kinescopes fuel the rise of deep fakes? Read The…
Automation Reshaped The Workplace In The 1960's But Will The Deep Learning Revolution Be Different?
We’ve weathered each previous automation revolution by creating new kinds of more highly skilled jobs. When machines can do it…
What Happens In A Digital World When Our Words And Images No Longer Age?
As we look back someday on the impact of the digital world, perhaps we will fondly remember a time when…
The FaceApp Furor Was Never About Privacy – It Was About Russia
The fact that we seem more interested in the app’s Russian heritage than we do in its privacy considerations reminds…