Tech Trends for Journalists - 8th Annual Online News Association Presentation

Online News Association10 Tech Trends For Journalists

September 2015 –– Los Angeles

Amy Webb: 3 Things

1

2

3

Digital Media FuturistResearch and forecast near-future tech and digital media trends. Also, I write books.

Social@webbmedia –– NOT @amywebb

NO Vendor/ Startup RelationshipsI have no financial relationships with any company I’m talking about today. No benefits, kickbacks, etc. etc. etc.

8Thank You!

2007

(original Android logo design)

Perspective–– A lot can happen in 8 years ––

12 months

How?

Predictions–––––––––

Process

Observation > Reporting > Data > Modeling > Theorizing > Testing > Forecasting

Guiding Questions...1. Who is directly working in this space? USPTO, academic journals, startups, university research

2. Who is funding or otherwise encouraging experimentation in this space? XPrize, Accelerators, VC funding

3. Who is directly impacted by this? Customers, other businesses, niche groups of society, companies, governments

4. Who might work against this because they stand to gain something? Hackers, competitors, politicians, technology companies, criminals

5. Who might see this as a starting point for something bigger and better? Researchers, academics, people within my organization, people in other organizations

AssumptionsKnowledge

WITHIN INDUSTRY

Today’s Talkis my forecast for

the future

What to do about it in the present

Tool: Assumptions vs Knowledge

Early Stages of Awareness + Thinking: I'm in my early stages of awareness and thinking.  It may or may not develop in a way that matters, but be aware and start thinking individually and organizationally.

Fairly Certain: I'm fairly certain of this.  There are still questions about how things will develop and how it will matter, but you should be watching it closely and planning to act.

Highly Confident: I'm highly confident of this.  It is happening and it will matter.

Tool: Assumptions vs Knowledge

Early Stages of Awareness + Thinking: I'm in my early stages of awareness and thinking.  It may or may not develop in a way that matters, but be aware and start thinking individually and organizationally.

Fairly Certain: I'm fairly certain of this.  There are still questions about how things will develop and how it will matter, but you should be watching it closely and planning to act.

Highly Confident: I'm highly confident of this.  It is happening and it will matter.

Cognitive Computing: Year Two

What do people really read? What’s the best way to reach out to them?

1

Linguistic Analytics

Character + PersonalityInferences

Email, Text, Social Posts

Linguistic, semantic analysis

+Behavior

Implications

What we know about news consumers:• Their schedules• Their locations• Their speeds• What they read• What they listen to• How often they engage with your site• How often they engage with your digital products• What they click on• What their interest areas are• Whether or not they clicks on ads• How they’re retargeted• Who their friends are• How tech-savvy they are

FIORINA FOILS CARSON

Juana wants technical political language. Lots of details. Deep-cuts version.

Amy wants only the most important facts details without commentary or color.

Jim wants a concise 300 words. Unless Philly, then he might want deep-cuts version.

≠ Apple News

Language you seevs

What + When you see it

Cognitive Computing

Trend Into Action

Strategy = Experiment with what’s at the fringe. Experiment with APIs for cognitive computing and aggressive versioning.

Peer 2 Peer Publishing

What if there were no intermediaries, and youjust sent your content straight to consumers?

2

WebRTC

Make video and voice calls without a plugin. Replaces the intermediary.

https://apprtc.appspot.com/

What about me?

Who wants to go see the new Steve Jobs movie?

What about me?

Who wants to go see the new Steve Jobs movie? AND ME?!

No plugins/ intermediaries =

Opportunities for web, mobile and IoT

Push content between browsers

Torrent files include information how to download a larger file using the BitTorrent protocol.

BitTorrent is a sidestep around centralized servers, instead moving data across the Internet is a more distributed way.

Project Maelstrom

</intermediaries>

Content gets published that doesn’t actually live on a server.

You see content by connecting to others that are also viewing the site.

End of DDoS attacks and throttling...

Implications for Journalism• Hard to remove incorrect info.• No editing in real-time. • Hard to deal with harassment.

Today’s ad blocking controversy

P2P Publishing

Trend Into Action

Experiment with WebRTC and Maelstrom. What are the implications for P2P publishing? How can you participate?

Recognition

In the coming year, algorithms will recognizeus and assist journalists with reporting.

3

<Our Photos>

“We’re making the coming robot apocalypse fun and friendly.”

–– Hilary Mason, Fast Forward Labs

Image credit: Hilary Mason

Photos = Deep learning algo trained on the ImageNet dataset.

Labels = Lexical database WordNet.

<Our Keystrokes>

Blake Patterson: SGI RT6856T keyboardhttps://www.flickr.com/photos/blakespot/

Deep Learning for Keystroke Style

Keystrokes measure a deeply human characteristic

–– Researchers: J Visumathia and P Jesu Jayarin@ Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Jeppiaar Engineering College

<Our Faces>

Image credit: M. Saquib Sarfraz, Rainer StiefelhagenInstitute of Anthropomatics & Robotics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology

Deep Learning for Thermal Fingerprints

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks...

<Public Databases>

Karen B.British ColumbiaAddress.....Phone number.....Traveled.....Domestic partnership with Doug...

Journalists: datamining via photos!

Real-Time Fact Checking

Great first attempt:

Reporters add in fact-checkingahead of time, synchs with speech playback.

2016:

Speech-recognition algos +Natural language processing +Calls to database(s) +Probability algo =X% true/ false in real-time

Recognition

Trend Into Action

Recognition Strategy = How can you harness the recognition trend for reporting? (And reporting in real-time?)

Social Reporting

In the coming year, you will rely on the social networksthemselves to assist with your reporting.

4

SIGNAL

Crowdtangle

Crowdtangle

Crowdtangle

Crowdtangle

Isn’t just to see which social media postsare going viral.....

Brute-force predictive analysis.

Crowdtangle:

Early whispers about GOP Congressmen boycotting because of Pope’s climate stance

FB Newswire

In the other corner...

Twitter Curator

Twitter’s Project Lightening

Similar in spirit to Snapchat Discover

Stories load as visuals

(no, this isn’t Project Lightening)

Key Change in 2016Integrated into existing social networks rather than stand-alone apps/ services.

Social Reporting

Trend Into Action

Social Reporting Strategy = Share these tools with everyone in the news organization. Not just your social team. They’re good listening posts.

Metaverse

VR headsets will officially launch in 2016.But journalists should focus on AR & 3D.

5

Lag isn’t the problem.

Problem = Headsets.

Games? Yes.Live Concerts? Yes.

News? Nope.

Immersive Storytelling, Documentary = Yes.

Perspective: It takes a really long time to commercializenew technologies like VR.

Magic Leap’s SDKrecently launched.

Some headsets.....

.....some as displays

Will Sullivan at MWC earlier this year

Image credit: Will Sullivan

This technology will soonbe in our phones, cars,

other screens.....

Imagine Snow Fall on a Leia 3D screen.....

Leia 3D’s SDK officiallylaunched just now at ONA!

Why This Matters:

• VR, AR and 3D each have value, but in different circumstances.

• 3D screens have practical use for journalism.

• The “metaverse” is a way to think conceptually about all of these. Storytelling! Maps! Data visualization!

Metaverse

Trend Into Action

Metaverse = Don’t just focus on VR. Experiment with 3D, AR too. Get the Leia 3D SDK and start playing. Experiment with Magic Leap’s SDK. Think about our immersive future with and without headsets.

Robots

Soon, actual robots will assist journalists with reporting.(Among other things.)

6

Robots are here to assist staff in lots of fields.And us in our everyday lives.

Last ONA’s Trends:Bot-assisted reporting

This ONA:Actual robots!

Image credit: Brian Woolf

“Robot-Assisted” Future

Better efficiencyBetter use of our timeOpportunities to collect useful data(*no weirdness if you’re in PJs)

Robot-Assisted Reporting

Reporter’s Multimedia Assistant

[BREAKING NEWS] Nothing is happening on my street. But you get the idea.

Robot-Assisted ReportingCamerabot• Takes video for editing later• Live-streams video during event/ breaking news• Beams video back to newsroom for various uses

Virtual Reporters• Election: @ RNC/ DNC virtual and live reporters work in tandem to interview delegates, speakers• Second virtual reporter can sit in on interviews in remote locations• Robots can go into places unsafe for human reporters

Image credit: Latoya Peterson

Robot assistants like Savioke’s Relay and the Beam will be ubiquitous in the near-future. They will quickly become indispensable.

Robots

Trend Into Action

Robot Strategy = 2016 is the year to start experimenting with telepresence and with virtual journalism. Get in the sandbox and try it out!

Internet of X Things

Note: I skipped this trend in the presentation because of limited time. So this trend includes a slide of explanation.

7

With so many objects, networks and people coming online, you will start to hear companies calling themselves the “Internet of X.” Israeli startup Consumer Physics––a sort of Internet of Ingestibles––wants to put molecular spectroscopy into smartphones so that you can extract information out of your food and pills. This would enable you to scan a piece of chicken in order to search the fat and calories on your plate. Their research is also able to image prescription and over-the-counter drugs in order to spot counterfeits. Meantime, a new project called MatchMaker Exchange is an “Internet of DNA,” matching the DNA from sick people around the world. It’s not unrealistic to say that in the near future, everything you see (and even the things you can’t) will become searchable via a distributed network.

Why this matters for journalists: This will unlock layers of information previously unavailable to us––but it will also create a significant demand for verification, especially within journalism.

Trend #7: Internet of X Things

Zero Day Exploits

Note: I skipped this trend in the presentation because of limited time. So this trend includes a slide of explanation.

8

Italian spyware maker Hacking Team (HT) had been selling commercial hacking software to law enforcement agencies in countries all over the world––until it got hacked. Data leaked from HT, along with a massive dump of 400 gigabytes of internal emails, revealed a number of zero-day exploits. In the hacking community, zero days are prized tools because they are undisclosed vulnerabilities that can be exploited. Once the flaw is revealed, programmers have zero days to do anything about it. The HT breach helped to shine a light on a growing zero day marketplace, with some exploits being sold for as much as $500,000.

Why this matters for journalists: A lack of planning and oversight led to significant cyber attacks in the past year. I’m forecasting even more sophisticated attacks in 2016, with some likely targeted at news organizations.

Trend #8: Zero Day Exploits

Media Consolidation

Note: I skipped this trend in the presentation because of limited time. So this trend includes a slide of explanation.

9

Re/code became part of Vox, which became part of NBC, which a while back became part of Comcast. Verizon acquired AOL. The Financial Times was acquired by Nikkei (for a staggering $1.3 billion). Will BuzzFeed be next? Will NewsCorp acquire Vice? Will Bloomberg buy the Atlantic? Will Facebook and Twitter merge? Or will Facebook eat Twitter and then the whole media landscape? The next 24 months will be about rapid product creation and monetization in a rush for investment and exits.

Why this matters for journalists: By the year 2021, it’s possible that AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, Charter and Amazon will have replaced CBS, Viacom, the Washington Post, Hearst and Conde Nast as the biggest news and entertainment media brands in the U.S. This isn’t to say that a media organization run by AT&T would not act in the public’s interest, but we ought to begin scenario planning now for a future marked by consolidation.

Trend #9: Media Consolidation

Internet Mob Justice

Journalists need an updated code of ethics for 2016.

10

News organizations are unwitting (+sometimes complicit) participantsin Internet mob justice.

This is Venezuela.Not Baltimore.

April 23rd:Journalists begin

using #BaltimoreRiots

April 25thActual rioting

occurs

April 26thProtests, but

no rioting

April 26th:Journalists aggressively

use #BaltimoreRiots; speculate on next locations

Internet Mob Justice

Trend Into Action

Ethics = Journalists need to have discussions about the new ethical questions posed by emerging Internet mob justice. And to set new guidelines.

Thanks!

webbmediagroup.com hello@webbmediagroup.com @webbmediagroup267-342-4300