2022 Lightning Talks lineup announced

Thanks to everyone who pitched and voted on the Lightning Talks for NICAR22. Here are the talks we’ll be hearing online and in-person in Atlanta Friday, March 4 at 5 p.m.

1. Teach better: Here's how | Jessica Huseman

In 5 minutes, I’ll teach you to teach better. Craft an objective, align your lessons to that objective, and measure the objective to ensure your students have attained the skill you want to teach.

2. Beyond fact-checking Whack-a-Mole: Using narrative and contextual analysis to decode mis/disinformation | Giovana Fleck

Identifying misinformation and disinformation online can feel like a hopeless game of Whack-a-Mole: false and harmful information is proliferating online at a rate that makes it impossible for even the most efficient fact-checking system to keep up. While fact-checking and other quantitative approaches to stopping the spread of mis- and disinformation are important, they often fail to identify broader narratives and local context and subtext that permit a fuller understanding of the broader dynamics at work in media ecosystems.

3. How do different newsrooms' style-guides compare: A data dive | Areena Arora

I created a searchable database of different newsrooms' (BBC, BuzzFeed, Reuters, The Guardian and NPR) styleguides to see how they compare. Some words, such as, 'Black' aren't capitalized by some newsrooms, while others do — giving a peek into their editorial leanings.

4. How many mosquitoes does it take to kill you? | Dexter McMillan

Since hiking in Ontario two years ago, getting absolutely swarmed by mosquitoes, I've been obsessed with a question: how many mosquitoes would it take to gang up and threaten your life? Using Python Pandas and Datawrapper to visualize, I will create a dataset that attempts to answer this question. The audience, many of whom will known how to use Pandas to analyze already-built datasets, will learn how to use these tools to tell a story by building a dataset themselves.

5. You'll Never Guess How These Platform Algorithms Work | Jonathan Stray

Recommender systems are the algorithms that power social media and news aggregators. I've spent the last two years studying them and helping others build them in the public interest. Here's what I've learned about what's inside the black boxes.

6. How to end tabmageddon| Cezary Podkul

Face it: You have waaay too many web browser tabs open and it's driving you crazy. It's also not good for you. Here's a few good strategies for how to regain control over your online research and end tabmageddon once and for all.

7. When An Internet Source Won't Tell You Who They Are | Ari Schneider

Too often do journalists quote anonymous internet users without knowing who they are, but that falls short of rigorous journalism ethics. How do you know what their motives are, or if they're not the same person operating under multiple accounts? My presentation will help investigative reporters build the trust of potential sources from the dark web, Reddit, Discord, etc, to get information on the record and on background from individuals who are accustomed to being cloaked by message board anonymity.

8. Wayback Machine - Tips and Techniques | Mark Graham

10 Tips and Techniques about how to use the Wayback Machine in your next investigation. Will review some new and lesser known features and capabilities. News you can use!

9. File management, organization and documentation for dummies (And why doing it badly can be disastrous) | Yoohyun Jung

How many times have you saved files in random directories and you cannot remember the file path to save your life? Bad management and organization of files can prove disastrous, especially when you're working on big projects. Helpful tips I gained from my own disasters.

10. An awesome tool for finding sources | Brad Hamilton

The best option out there for identifying and making contact with potential sources -- whether you're looking for someone specific or trying to cultivate an FBI agent, for example, or an employee of the Trump Organization -- is the Contacts Reference database in LexisNexis. This amazing tool, compiled by web scrapers that troll for professional profiles among company and government agency websites, as well as job-search outfits like LinkedIn, unearths sources from among hundreds of millions of profiles, showing you names, titles, employers, areas of expertise and how to reach them by work email and office phone numbers. An astonishingly small number of journalists have heard of this tool, let alone know how to use it properly. This session will show you how.