Visualizing Suffering: Tracking Photojournalism and the Syrian Refugee Crisis

Project Summary

Robbie Ha (Computer Science, Statistics), Peilin Lai  (Computer Science, Mathematics), and Alejandro Ortega (Mathematics) spent ten weeks analyzing the content and dissemination of images of the Syrian refugee crisis, as part of a general data-driven investigation of Western photojournalism and how it has contributed to our understanding of this crisis.

Themes and Categories
Health, Public Policy
Data+, Digital Humanities, Social Sciences
Year
2017
Contact
Ashlee Valente
Center for Applied Genomics and Precision Medicine
ashlee.valente@duke.edu

Project Results: The team gathered images and metadata from an AP database and used reverse Google image search to track which news agencies used each photo.

They found that the number of published images source from a particular country is in no way proportional to the number of refugees housed by that country. In addition, they observed that images published from Western European countries often depicted political protests and refugees in large groups, while images published from Middle Eastern countries often portrayed individuals and refugee camps. This finding, along with many other interesting observations, is summarized on a team-designed website.

Click here for the Executive Summary

Faculty Lead: Astrid Giugni

Project Manager: Jessica Hines

Room 351: Sharing Project Space and Coding

Learn More: 
Math Programs

Related People

Related Projects

Basketball analytics pipeline---from raw video to dynamic visualization

In this project, we are interested in creating a cohesive data pipeline for generating, modeling and visualizing basketball data. In particular, we are interested in understanding how to extract data from freely available video, how to model such data to capture player efficiency, strength and leadership, and how to visualize such data outcomes. We will have four separate teams as part of this project working on interrelated but separate goals:

Team 1: Video data extraction

This team will explore different video data extraction techniques with the goal of identifying player locations, ball location and events at any given time during a basketball game. The software developed as part of this project will be able to generate a usable dataset of time-stamped basketball plays that can be used to model the game of basketball.

Teams 2 & 3: Modeling basketball data: offense and defense

The two teams will explore different models for the game of basketball. The first team will concentrate on modeling offensive plays and try to answer questions such as: How does the ball advance? What leads to successful plays? The second team will concentrate on defensive plays: What is an optimal strategy for minimizing opponent scoring opportunities? How should we evaluate defensive plays?

Team 4: Visualizing basketball data

This team will work on dynamic and static visualization of elements of a basketball game. The goal of the visualization is to capture information about how players and the ball move around the court. They will develop tools to represent average trajectories be in these settings that can also capture uncertainty about this information.

Faculty Leads: Alexander Volfovsky, James Moody, Katherine Heller

Project Managers: Fan Bu, Greg Spell, 2 more TBD

Smart Meters and Real-time Electricity Consumption Monitoring Algorithms to Reduce Electricity Theft in Developing Countries

A team of students led by researchers in the Energy Access Project will develop means to evaluate non-technical electricity losses (theft) in developing countries through machine learning techniques applied to smart meter electricity consumption data. Students will use data from smart meters installed at transformers and households through a randomized control trial. Students will develop algorithms that can be used to detect anomalies in the electricity consumption data and create a dataset of such indicators.  This project will provide researchers with new ways of incorporating electricity consumption data and applications for electricity utilities in developing country settings.

Network Visualization of IoT devices

A team of students, in conjunction with Duke’s Office of Information Technology, will use of Duke’s network traffic data to perform IoT device behavioral fingerprinting that can be employed to identify device types. The data will be used to analyze trends and risks, develop security best practices, and build machine learning models that can be used to detect similar device types. Students will work directly with the network data and have access to the analytics tools used in OIT and will have a great opportunity for exploration of the data in consultation with OIT network, security and data analytics professionals.

Project Lead: Jen Vizas