Skip to main content

Bournemouth University

BU Research Blog

Latest research and knowledge exchange news at Bournemouth University

  • Home
  • RDS Team
    • Faculty-Facing Staff
    • Funding Development Team
    • Project Delivery and Research Governance Teams
    • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
    • Research Excellence Team
  • Clinical Governance @ BU
  • Research Ethics @ BU
  • Post-REF 2021
    • BU REF 2021 Code of Practice
    • Declaration of Staff Circumstances
    • BU’s Unit of Assessment Teams
    • REF FAQs
    • Archive – REF 2014
      • BU REF 2014 Code of Practice
      • REF 2014 Frequently Asked Questions
        • REF 2014 Overview
        • Staff eligibility
        • Mock REF 2014 (REF preparation) exercises at BU
        • REF 2014 Assessment of outputs
        • REF 2014 Staff selection
        • REF 2014 Equality and diversity
  • Impact
    • Partnerships & collaborations
    • Working with businesses
      • Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF)
    • Communicating your research
    • Influencing policy makers
    • Public engagement
      • Quick guide to public engagement
    • Student engagement
      • Stages of engagement
      • Case study: Sean Beer
      • Case study: James Gavin
      • Case study: Anna Feigenbaum
  • Research Toolkit
  • Research Lifecycle
  • Policy
  • PGR
    • The Doctoral College Team

June 2, 2015

Joint GeoNet/Datalabs seminar on digital storytelling

Awarded & submitted bids, Fusion, Fusion Investment Fund, Knowledge Exchange, Public engagement pgillingham

On the 14th May we were joined by Malachy Browne from the social media news service Reported.ly. Their role is to encourage social media users to report on humanitarian crises and disasters to get a fuller picture of events and involve people on the ground in journalism. This means that stories from ordinary citizens are represented, rather than the educated elite who tend to be over-represented in traditional journalism. Malachy and his team make good use of geocoded photos from the web taken by citizens on the ground at these crises. I was particularly impressed to learn about googles reverse image search, which allows the team to verify whether a photograph they want to use as a source is likely to be genuine or whether it has been used elsewhere on the web as evidence in other situations – sort of like a turnitin for images.

They also do some really interesting work matching up topographical references in videos (tops of buildings, stand out features) with geocoded photos on google earth to check that the videos are genuine. One very practical use of geographic information was for citizens on the ground to use a compass app on their phone to determine the direction that rockets were coming from during an attack. This was then used externally to work out where the rockets came from and work out a route to get people to safety. He also mentioned a field called forensic architecture, where the viewsheds of soldiers (the parts of a landscape each soldier can see from a set position) were mapped to determine which soldier shot a protester during a rally. Finally, and on to political corruption, he has tied instagram photos posted by politicians during their holidays to flight ownership by political donors, showing an inappropriate use of expenses. In this way he can develop new stories, given context to events as they are happening and provide real time support to those on the ground.

This was a really interesting talk which highlighted the extent to which social media and the internet can contribute geographic information at the short time scales needed to deal with such crises. You can follow @reportedly and @MalachyBrowne on twitter for more information.

Our next GeoNet event is from 12-2 in CG21 this Thursday the 4th June.

A GEONET & BU DATALABS EVENT

Lunchtime Chat and Skill-share: Mapping for Social Change with Dr. Stephen McFarland

June 4th 2015 – 12:00-14:00 

Talbot Campus, CG21

Dr. Stephen McFarland joins us from the University of Tampa to share insights and techniques for using QGIS and CartoDB in mapping projects. Drawing from his extensive work mapping labour and housing struggles, Dr. McFarland will explain how maps can tell stories for social change, make  issues more visible, and be used to engage policy-makers and the public.

​Lunch will be provided to those participating in the full session, places are strictly limited so please email pgillingham@bournemouth.ac.uk if you wish to attend.

Related Posts

  • GeoNet Launch with climate change eventJanuary 30, 2015
  • GeoNet Seminar on Citizen ScienceMay 19, 2015
  • GeoNet cultural heritage landscapes and deathscapesAugust 10, 2015
  • Datalabs 3: Digital Storytelling with DataMay 5, 2015

BU staff can login below:

Other services

Research Digest

Subscriptions to the BU Research Digest email are currently unavailable.

We hope to have them back online soon. In the meantime, you can sign up or unsubscribe by emailing research@bournemouth.ac.uk.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

Recent posts

BU research Funding opportunities EU
  • HealthBus to present at Community Voices webinar Wednesday April 12th 12-1pmMarch 23, 2023
  • Online public lecture from BU academics this evening: Pioneering women at the BBCMarch 23, 2023
  • Giving PGRs a voice…participate in a PhD study exploring research cultureMarch 22, 2023
  • Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023March 22, 2023
  • Association between Traumatic Injuries and Heart Rate Variability- Systematic Review Published in PloS One by an MSPH PhD StudentMarch 21, 2023
  • BU Research Funding Panels 23 – Call for Chair & Deputy Chairs, Reopening CallMarch 21, 2023
  • GoodBye JeS, Hello TFSMarch 23, 2023
  • Updated Intention to Bid form – March 2023March 22, 2023
  • UKRI Future Leaders Fellowships Round 8 – Internal Process LaunchedFebruary 23, 2023
  • Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU AcademicsFebruary 16, 2023
  • BA/Leverhulme Small Grants 7th June 2023February 13, 2023
  • COST Information and Networking EventFebruary 13, 2023
  • European research project to promote local food purchasing and reduce food wasteMarch 9, 2023
  • HE Policy update for the w/e 27th February 2023February 27, 2023
  • Save the Date – 26 April 2023 – UKRO Annual Meeting with BU AcademicsFebruary 16, 2023
  • COST Information and Networking EventFebruary 13, 2023
  • Horizon Europe Update – January 2023January 16, 2023
  • Horizon Europe ResourcesJanuary 5, 2023

Search by Category

Search by popular post topics

AHRC Brexit BRIAN BU research clinical research CMMPH collaboration collaborative research conference congratulations Dr. Pramod Regmi Edwin-blog-post ESRC EU Europe event Events funding funding opportunities Fusion Fusion Investment Fund Health horizon 2020 HSC impact innovation knowledge exchange media midwifery Nepal nhs NIHR open access Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen publication public engagement publishing ref research Research Councils research professional RKE development framework social sciences training widening participation

RSS Research Information Network

  • Physical Sciences Case studies: information use and discovery
  • Information handling in collaborative research: an exploration of five case studies
  • Information literacy monitoring and evaluation
  • Data centres: their use, value and impact
  • Heading for the open road: costs and benefits of transitions in scholarly communications

RSS UKRI

Browse all our categories
  • Awarded & submitted bids
  • BRIAN
  • BU Challenges
  • BU research
  • BU2025
  • Business Engagement
  • Centre for Excellence in Learning
  • Clinical Governance
  • Coffee Morning
  • conferences
  • COVID-19
  • data management
  • Delicious links
  • Doctoral College
  • ECR Network
  • EPSRC
  • ESRC
  • EU
  • Events
  • Featured
  • Featured academics
  • Festival of Learning
  • Friday profile
  • Funding opportunities
  • Fusion
  • Fusion Investment Fund
  • Fusion themes
  • Global engagement
  • Grants Academy
  • Guidance
  • hate crime
  • HE-BCI
  • HEIF
  • HSS Our 9 Research Entities
  • humanities
  • Impact
  • Industry collaboration
  • Info Days
  • innovation
  • international
  • Knowledge Exchange
  • Knowledge Exchange and Impact Team
  • Knowledge Transfer
  • Knowledge Transfer Partnership
  • News from the PVC
  • nhs
  • NHS
  • open accecss
  • open access
  • parliament
  • Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology
  • PG research
  • policy
  • Post-award
  • Postgraduate Research
  • pre-award
  • Public engagement
  • Publishing
  • R & KE Operations
  • REF Subjects
  • Research assessment
  • Research Centres
  • Research communication
  • Research Concordat
  • Research Ethics
  • Research Integritiy
  • research integrity
  • research methods
  • Research news
  • research opportunities
  • research staff
  • Research Supervision
  • Research themes
  • Research Training
  • RKE development framework
  • staff profile pages
  • Strategic Investment Areas
  • Student Engagement
  • student research
  • the conversation
  • Training
  • UKRI
  • Uncategorized
  • Vitae
  • Women's Academic Network
  • writing
  • Twitter

© Bournemouth University 2023. All rights reserved.

  • Charitable status
  • Website privacy & cookies
  • Copyright and terms of use