UBC journalism professor Alfred Hermida has been awarded $10,000 from IBM to support his research into the application of visualization in journalism.
The 2010 IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) Faculty Award is designed to support Prof. Hermida’s research in the area of business intelligence for journalism. IBM said the award was in recognition of the quality of his research and its importance to the industry.
Prof. Hermida is researching the application of visual analytics to develop of new digital story-telling techniques that take advantage of the ability to manipulate and represent complex datasets in visual and compelling ways.
Visual analytics is an emerging area of research that applies the science of analytical reasoning supported by highly interactive visual interfaces.
It is increasingly being adopted in journalism to communicate information clearly and effectively through the use of computer-generated images, gaining insight and knowledge from data, and its inherent patterns and relationships.
The UBC journalism school is developing a Visualization Lab for Civic and Investigative Journalism to research and develop innovative approaches to data manipulation, integration and querying for the purpose of understanding complex public policy issues using investigative journalism and visual analytics.
The aim of the visualization project is to improve access to essential data on public policy issues benefits all Canadians. Reducing barriers to information access is valuable because the democratization of data plays a meaningful role in fostering civic engagement. It is a response to the growing need for credible information on key quality of life issues brought directly to Canadians in a visual form that is both easily accessed and understood.
The IBM Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS), established in 1990 at the IBM Toronto Software Laboratory, brings together IBM researchers and technical leaders with academic and government research organizations from around the world.
The IBM CAS awards recognize individuals who best epitomize the mission of CAS to facilitate the exchange of academic research knowledge and real world industry.
