The best journalism department in the country could soon be in our own backyard “It’s a kickass time to be a journalist right now.” And Jeff Howe, an assistant professor of journalism at Northeastern, wants to prove it, with the help of a $250,000 grant from the Knight Foundation and a new media innovation graduate program at the University. The track, announced Tuesday, will go toward tailoring the Master’s […]
How to start a conspiracy theory on Facebook In a 2013 report summarizing global challenges, the World Economic Forum singled out “massive digital misinformation” as “one of the main risks for the modern society.” Social networks may be structurally optimized for sharing; their structures, however, don’t tend to distinguish between good information and bad. Which means that sites like Facebook aren’t just a […]
New Scientist Wanted: voice donors for people who can’t speak I am locked in a quiet, carpeted room, listening to a robotic voice on my iPhone. When the voice pauses, I repeat after it: “Jo’s gentlemanly demeanour amused and set him at his ease.” This rather odd sentence, along with a few hundred others, form part of a test for a new phone app that […]
The Nation Plea Time for Snowden Let’s start with the obvious. Edward Snowden doesn’t want to spend the rest of his life in Moscow or even Ecuador, Brazil or the other havens he has unsuccessfully pursued. He wants to come back to America—and we need him here. The Obama administration cringes at his every public appearance, and the intelligence community has […]
Northeastern gets Knight Foundation grant to launch media innovation program Northeastern University’s School of Journalism has received a $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation to help launch a graduate program focused on media innovation. Beginning in the fall, the school plans to enroll experienced media professionals who will devote much of their studies to nonjournalism subjects, such as computer science […]
Slate Study explains why your stupid Facebook friends are so gullible It’s a common experience. You log on to Facebook for your lunchtime fix of friends’ baby photos and links to fascinating online content from trusted sites like Slate, when you come across an intriguing headline such as “Stephen Hawking’s Blunder on Black Holes Shows Danger of Listening to Scientists, Says Bachmann” or “Sochi Hotel Guests […]
Researcher tracks illicit sex after quitting commodities Meredith Dank has a job that she admits can be a “party buzz kill” — she spends her days delving into the often gritty and grim lives of child sex workers, prostitutes and pimps. “As much as you think you have built up this wall of emotion, there are some horrific stories out there that […]
Room for Debate: A drug that should be easier to get For the last decade, overdoses of opiates and similar drugs have advanced at an accelerating pace, killing hundreds of thousands of Americans. Improving access to the drug naloxone, which counteracts the effects of overdoses, is one of the only interventions proven to save lives. Programs that have distributed naloxone to drug users, their family members […]
My business accepts Bitcoins The five-year-old digital currency is increasingly being adopted by brick-and mortar businesses, including dentists, pet boutiques — even a small honey business in Utah. In 2012, about 1,000 businesses used BitPay, the largest processor of Bitcoin payments. Today, more than 26,000 businesses worldwide use BitPay, said Tony Gallippi, its cofounder and CEO. The majority of […]
CNET News Beware this big iOS flaw– and it’s not alone An Android presentation just after Mandt’s asserted that the one-two punch of Android fragmentation has placed Android users at risk of missing out on important security updates. That’s not going to be fixed anytime soon, they said. The issue, argued Jon Oberheide of Duo Security and Northeastern University security researcher Collin Mulliner, lies in how […]
Teens getting squeezed out of labor market, study finds Teenagers are getting squeezed out of the labor force in record numbers as unemployment among the youngest workers remains at astronomical levels nearly five years after the last recession ended, according to a study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. The study, released Friday, found that numbers of working teenagers has plunged by […]