Nick Diakopoulos

Version 0.0.0.1 of Videolyzer is now online! Videolyzer is a tool designed for journalists and bloggers to be able to collaboratively assess the information quality of a video, including its transcript. Information quality involves things like credibility, validity, and comprehensivness among other things.  Videolyzer was designed to support the analysis, collection, and sharing of criticisms [...]

Bloomberg recently ran a story which covered the bogus CNN iReport last week suggesting Steve Jobs had a heart attack. I didn’t see the actual report but this is a great example of people manipulating the supposed authenticity of citizen produced media. In a utopian world where citizens don’t advocate and have no selfish motives, [...]

I recently finished the book, “We’re All Journalists Now” by Scott Gant. I was largely underimpressed by the book in terms of the references to things going on in the wider world of citizen media which were mostly already familiar to me. Where the book does excel is in explaining some of the legal issues [...]

Over the past weekend I was in Washington, DC doing some sight-seeing on the mall (where all of the monuments are). I snapped this photo of a cop yelling at some guy on the street handing out pamphlets. The cop was pretty much a real jerk about it; according to him it’s illegal to hand [...]

In his book, Public Opinion, written in 1922, Walter Lippmann takes as his thesis that the ordinary citizen is incapable of making the decisions necessary in democracy due to his limited ability to perceive and understand the world outside of his immediate environment. He suggests that we need intelligence workers, experts whose interests transcend local [...]