World Heritage In Danger: Big Data And Remote Sensing Can Help Protect Sites In Conflict Zones
A new paper by researchers Noam Levin, Saleem Ali, David Crandall and Salit Kark uses GDELT to examine the threat…
The Big Data Revolution Will Be Sampled: How 'Big Data' Has Come To Mean 'Small Sampled Data'
One of the great ironies of the “big data” revolution is the way in which so much of the insight…
Facebook's Orwellian Privacy Stance Reminds Us Once Again That Our Data Is Its Data
The fact that Facebook feels that all of our data is its data and that we no longer disagree with…
Could Facebook's Secret User Tracking Be Just A Preview Of What's To Come?
Could last week’s revelation just be the tip of the iceberg in terms of how social media companies harness their…
Using BigQuery As A Lens To Explore Large Datasets
One of the most incredible aspects of the modern cloud is the way in which it accelerates massive adhoc data…
Social Media Analytics Is A Disaster: Why Can't We Fix It?
It is a truly sobering thought that the totality of our understanding of social media and the insights we draw…
Could Facebook Track The Locations Of Journalists And Politicians It Deems A 'Threat'?
Facebook's use of location tracking of users it considers a "threat" raises the question of whether it may use the…
How Immigration Coverage Shifted From People to Barriers
One of the more intriguing findings in how the media covered President Trump’s State of the Union address earlier this…
Terabytes Of News Versus One Trillion Tweets: Is Social Media Really As Big As We Think?
One of the great ironies of the “big data” revolution is the way in which social platforms have convinced us…
How Big Is Social Media And Does It Really Count As 'Big Data'?
Social media has become synonymous with “big data” thanks to its widespread availability and global influence, but if we look…
Why We Need More Visibility Into The Social Media Analytics Algorithms We Use
We know surprisingly little about the algorithms powering most social media analytics platforms. How can we make meaningful decisions based…
How Media Treated the State of the Union Address
After being delayed by the political brinkmanship of the government shutdown, President Trump’s State of the Union address finally happened…
Greater Good Gathering 2.0: Technology, Community And The Greater Good
From December 2017 through Spring 2018 I was asked for my thoughts on how to build upon October 2017's successful…
Why Do We Tolerate Social Media's Dark Side And What If We Made Them Pay For It?
Social media has devolved into a medium that tears society apart, fostering trolling, bullying and all manner of toxic, hateful…
Making Our Smart Homes More Resilient Against Internet Outages
As our homes become increasingly “smart” we should be equally focused on making the Internet connectivity that is their lifeblood…
Why Is Our AI Revolution Built On Free Data Rather Than Good Data?
For all of the investment being made in the people, computing hardware and algorithms powering AI, we refuse to make…
Facebook's Biggest Success Is That It Taught Us Not To Care About Our Privacy Anymore
One of the most existential questions of the modern world is why we as a society have accepted the steady…
Why Do We Measure Everything By Tweet?
It is a truly extraordinary commentary on the influence of social media that in a world literally drowning in data,…
Facebook's Continued Growth Reminds Us: It's Now Too Big To #DeleteFacebook
Facebook has become so integrated into our lives, so intertwined with how we keep in touch, follow the news, get…
Could AI-Powered Traffic Cameras Finally Stop Distracted Driving?
While driverless cars may eventually free us to spend our commutes entirely on our phones, in the meantime, could AI-powered…
Sunday Times: Confucius Institutes Sway News Coverage On China, Says UCD Analysis
The Sunday Times covered an analysis by researchers at the University College Dublin that used GDELT to explore how Confucius…
Could Apple Ban Unethical Facial Recognition And Become The Patron Saint Of Privacy?
Apple’s sharp rebuke of Facebook’s data practices this week has shown us the power of the device companies like Apple…
What Does It Mean To "Consent" To The Use Of Our Data In The Facebook Era?
Facebook's response to nearly every one of its privacy stories over the past year has been to argue that its…
Apple's Facebook Rebuke: Could Apple Save Privacy Where Government Won't?
Looking to the future, could Apple perhaps become our defacto privacy guardian, protecting its users from unethical data harvesting as…