BU Research Blog

Civic Media Hack Day: Human Rights and Policing

Feb 9th  2016
10:00-16:00
W403 (Computer Lab, Weymouth House)

Open to all UG students, PG students, staff and the wider BU community. To register email: a.feigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk

photo by Jo Price_Migrants Tear Gassed in Calais_2015

On Tuesday February 9th Bournemouth University’s Civic Media Hub – Datalabs team will have a ‘Hack Day’ at Bournemouth University, pulling together news and human rights data to feed into an investigation for the Council of Europe’s  Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights.

The Council and UN Special Rapporteur is looking for figures on death and serious injury from tear gas in member countries for their March 2016 policy meeting. Our Hack Day at BU stands to have a direct impact on European human rights policy-making, shaping the regulation of policing in member states.  There will also be opportunities to write and pitch journalistic stories arising from the investigation, as well as for mapping data.

During the hack day, we will use investigative web searching, as well as basic data scraping techniques to aggregate and verify records of tear gas deaths and serious injuries in Council of Europe member states. This will involve, in particular, working with data and reliable sources from human rights reports, news organisations and medical institutions. If you are new to these methods, mentorship will be provided on the day – all welcome.

There will be a briefing on the task from 10:00-10:30. After that, you are welcome to come for all of the day or part of the day. It is also fine to pop in and out.

There will be lunch and refreshments provided throughout the day.

Please RSVP if you would like to attend by emailing a.feigenbaum@bournemouth.ac.uk