Illuminating 2018: Supporting Political Journalism in the Social Media Age

In 2016, the Illuminating project was supported by a Tow Fellowship, and was able to build an interactive website targeted to journalists, academics, and the public that provided real-time analysis of the U.S. presidential candidates’ Twitter and Facebook accounts. The Illuminating website (http://illuminating.ischool.syr.edu) generated news coverage and spawned academic conference presentations and journal articles. The Illuminating project would like to expand its work to encompass the 2018 midterm elections. Midterms pose great challenges for newsrooms. Cuts in political reporters (especially state and local reporters), a complex, multi-campaign context, and the ever-expanding communication environment challenge the abilities of newsrooms to provide comprehensive coverage of political campaigns and detect shifting public opinion. The Illuminating project's goal is to expand its website and analysis to the gubernatorial, House, and Senate races, to add topic analysis to its existing categories, and to further improve its analysis of the public’s discussion around the campaigns. Continuing its effort to support journalists, Illuminating aims to automate article briefs based on real-time analysis of social media messages so as to allow journalists easy understanding of key insights so they can report on them. The project is also working on a partnership with the Associated Press to observe newsroom practices and share leads for potential stories.

Project lead: Jenny Stromer-Galley

January 01, 2018