Transparent Social Footprints
From The Theme
PUBLISH ON DEMAND
WHAT IF
What if we could help media companies increase revenue by tracking the “social footprints” of their audiences?
WHAT WE SET OUT TO DO
We wanted to examine the requirements needed to develop prototypes for metrics and tools to support media organizations in the shift from print to digital content. Teams in an upper level two- quarter computer science course, CS201: Software Project Experience with Corporate Partners, and a journalism course, Comm 241: Digital Media Entrepreneurship, worked on a use case with mid- sized, regional newspaper, The Sacramento Bee.
WHAT WE FOUND
Two teams of Computer Science and Journalism students tackle the question of how media companies can better track the ‘social footprints’ of their audience – specifically, how consumers behave and engage with content on their websites. The TagTeam Metrics team built a prototype meta-tagging system that uses natural language processing to scan thousands of articles and identify the most relevant keywords within each, allowing the display of articles that match the interests of individual readers. The Yes& team identified needs and requirements for a paragraph-specific reader commenting system to foster audience discussion and increase time spent on site.
LEARN MORE
mediaX Research Project Update, Fall 2013
mediaX Research Theme Update, Spring 2013
Read The Stanford Report Announcement
PEOPLE BEHIND THE PROJECT
Jeffrey Heer is an Associate Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, where he directs the Interactive Data Lab and conducts research on data visualization, human-computer interaction and social computing. His group’s research papers have received awards at the premier venues in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Visualization.
Ann Grimes serves as Lorry I. Lokey Professor of the Practice and teaches classes in technology reporting, digital media and entrepreneurship. She also serves as the Associate Director and an affiliated faculty member of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation in the School of Engineering. In addition, she is an affiliated faculty member of the Center for Innovation in Global Health at Stanford Medical School, and the Program in Science Technology and Society in the School of Humanities & Sciences.
R.B. Brenner is the director of the School of Journalism and the G.B. Dealey Regents Professor in Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously, he was the deputy director of Stanford University’s Journalism Program and taught courses in public issues reporting, digital journalism and narrative writing. He had a leadership role in merging the digital and print newsrooms of The Washington Post.
Jay Borenstein currently teaches computer science 210 at Stanford University and also run Facebook Open Academy as part of a larger Facebook effort to modernize education. CS210 leverages Jay’s and Stanford’s extensive network to bring in industry leaders and visionaries as guest lecturers. Students are highly skilled at navigating the entire software design and development process, from conceptual brainstorming to comprehensive documentation and development.