Ziv Schneider is a creative technologist at The Brown Institute for Media Innovation based at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Schneider is breaking barriers in the sphere of Virtual Influencers. Virtual Influencers are computer-generated characters that exist on social media and appear as real humans – yet completely ignore the reality of aging. Like the
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Join us to celebrate the launch of ‘Maternal Figures’ on September 3
The Brown Institute is excited to announce the launch of Maternal Figures on September 3 at 10AM ET. We invite you to join project leads Ashley Okwuosa and Chuma Asuzu as they introduce Maternal Figures, a database of maternal health interventions implemented in Nigeria over the last 30 years. Register for the launch at maternalfigures.com/launch.
Announcing the Launch of the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer
The Brown Institute for Media Innovation is pleased to announce the launch of the Stanford Cable TV News Analyzer, an interactive tool that gives the public the ability to not just search transcripts, but also compute the screen time of public figures in nearly 24-7 broadcasts from CNN, Fox News and MSNBC. Each day, cable
Magic Grant project ‘Synthesizing Novel Video from GANs’ featured in Engadget
On August 14, 2020, the tech outlet Engadget featured recent research produced by the Magic Grant ‘Synthesizing Novel Video from GANs’ developed by grantee Haotian Zhang, alongside Cristobal Sciutto under faculty direction from Maneesh Agrawala and Kayvon Fatahalian.’ The article titled “These AI-generated tennis matches are both eerie and impressive,” describes the system developed under
Tracking Transportation in New York City During the Pandemic
Subway usage in New York City has decreased dramatically during the current COVID-19 pandemic, prompting architects, urban planners, and transportation specialists to wonder what life will look like after the city has reopened. Could New York ever become a more bicycle and pedestrian friendly city? To better understand if New Yorkers are actually replacing subway
The Launch of the ‘Documenting COVID-19’ Public Records Repository
The COVID-19 pandemic has upended American life and forced state and local governments to enact important policy decisions with incomplete or uncertain information. To help explain these decisions to the public, we’re launching an online repository of local, state and federal public records obtained through open-records requests called Documenting COVID-19 (documentingcovid19.io). We will provide these materials free-of-charge to
The Brown Institute is Proud to Announce Its 2020-2021 Magic Grants
The Brown Institute for Media Innovation, a collaboration between Stanford University’s School of Engineering and Columbia Journalism School, is pleased to announce its 2020-2021 Magic Grant recipients. Every year, the Brown Institute awards $1M in grants and fellowships to foster new tools and modes of expression. This is the eighth cohort of grantees — each
Contact Tracing: How decisions about COVID-19 were made by city and state governments
Updated 06/09/20: The team behind the 2019-20 Magic Grant Trump Town have made a pivot, and are focusing on state and local governments and their responses to COVID-19. Derek Kravitz and his team have received thousands of pages of emails in response to a large number of very targeted FOIA requests. In these emails we
Mapping Data Flows – Zoom Edition
Video conferencing app Zoom has surged in popularity due to the coronavirus pandemic, prompting the questions: what data can the company collect about our conversations, and what could they do with it? Those questions were answered by the researchers behind Mapping Data Flows — John Batelle, Senior Research Scholar and Adjunct Professor at Columbia’s School