Nieman Foundation at Harvard
What, exactly, would Tinder for video discovery look like? How do you wrangle all the live video around a story across social networks? And is it possible to use Mystery Science Theater 3000 as a prototype for a video engagement app?
These are a few of the ideas and questions journalists and technologists came up with at this past weekend’s Hacking Journalism event in New York. More than 100 people, from companies like The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, Vox Media, Genius, Wired, Chartbeat, and The New York Times, descended on Condé Nast’s offices to focus on creating new tools and other products for video.
It was the second event in the Hacking Journalism series, hosted by Hacks/Hackers, Embedly, Condé Nast, and MIT’s Future of News program.
For two days, teams focused on themes that many in the journalism business have been trying to solve: How can text and video be used together more effectively (and creatively)? What ways can we streamline the process of discovering and curating videos for journalists? How can we make producing and distributing video safer in parts of the world where reporting, or simply speaking out, is dangerous?
Jeanne Brooks of Hacks/Hackers has a Storify roundup of the projects, and MIT’s Matt Carroll and crew chronicled the weekend over on Medium.
Here are a few of the projects to come out of the hackathon. Overall, 12 were brought to life over the weekend; you can find more information on the event’s Hackdash page, with plenty of links to GitHub for further tinkering.
Compare reportage of news events, see who's not reporting and watch a story unfold over time with catch up #videohack pic.twitter.com/STERrpClKo
— Alessandra Villaamil (@ali_villaamil) January 18, 2015
Catch Up lets people watch a collection of news videos in chronological order from multiple sources. Users can filter footage by network or create personalized videostreams.
Cume is billed as “the Internet’s control room,” that allows journalists to pull together livestream video on breaking news events. Producers could potentially use Cume to create a unique interface for users that combines video, social media discussion, and chat functions.
Mst4k is like snapchat or soundcloud commenting for video! Annotate video with video #videohack pic.twitter.com/csFwt7wXz7
— Alessandra Villaamil (@ali_villaamil) January 18, 2015
Described as “SoundCloud’s time-based comments but for video and on steroids,” MST4K (reference) could let users share reactions, ideas, or annotations of a video.
Greyhound is a Tinder-inspired take on video discovery that encourages people to indicate their video preferences by swiping right for what you like, and left for something different. (Here’s a demo.)
http://t.co/inPFHtJhMR: Sentiment analysis around words used to publicize videos ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ #videohack pic.twitter.com/cyNUqMflq0
— Aleszu Bajak (@aleszubajak) January 18, 2015
An interesting way for publishers to make decisions on what videos they want to showcase, tmp.RTr.ly.io uses sentiment analysis on phrases surrounding videos shared social media — thus taking the temperature on whether a video is hot, cold, or just right.
Resume is similar to Apple’s Handoff, but with a specific focus on video. The app uses Bluetooth to sync video, allowing you to continuing watching something as you move from desktop to phone to tablet.
What my team made at #videohack: Full Sight, a tool for displaying full-screen video behind text and progre… https://t.co/rnExqqxBcF
— Douglas Arellanes (@dougiegyro) January 19, 2015
Instead of simply linking out or embedding a video in a story, journalists using Full Sight can play a clip under the story itself. Anchored to certain points in text, the story disappears as the video plays, then returns to view.
