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Daily Archives: October 6, 2024

Campaign Finance Made Easy: Announcing DataTalk

Cheryl Phillips, Founder and Co-Director, Big Local News: “DataTalk is an experimental system that makes it easier to follow the money flowing through national campaigns for the Nov. 5 U.S. election. It allows for natural-language queries of large public datasets from the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and OpenSecrets.org to help journalists and other researchers tap into the latest mandatory filings. It can quickly answer key questions such as: Who are the biggest donors? Which special interests are involved in the campaigns? Which candidate is spending the most? DataTalk is powered by artificial intelligence, utilizing a Large Language Model (LLM) to transform user questions into Structured Query Language (SQL) commands. These commands are executed on Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, covering money raised and spent in the 2024 presidential and congressional campaigns. The agent retrieves summary data on candidate and committee fundraising and expenditures, itemized individual contributions over $200, as well as records of committee contributions, transfers and expenditures. The agent provides a step-by-step explanation of its computational approach, highlights any limitations in its response and suggests follow-up questions for deeper analysis. Users can modify, execute, save and publish a query in the SQL execution engine. However, we encourage users to perform their own analysis to fact-check the outputs and verify important claims using other trusted sources. Guided by expert knowledge from journalists focusing on campaign finance, DataTalk was developed by a team from Stanford University’s Open Virtual Assistant Lab, Stanford’s Big Local News, and Columbia Journalism School under a grant from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation. Derek Willis, a data journalism lecturer at The University of Maryland, has been a key advisor to the team. He is a longtime specialist in using campaign finance records for journalism that matters. “The hardest part of doing this kind of reporting is that it requires that journalists adapt to the systems that produce the data rather than allowing them to begin with the fundamental tool of every reporter: a good question,” Willis said. “DataTalk offers reporters a new way to ask questions of campaign finance data, one that makes it easier for them to turn their lines of reporting into helpful insights.”

You might discover a conspiracy theory on social media — but you’re more likely to believe it if you hear it from a friend

NiemanLab – Want to check out some new conspiracy theories? Social media is a great place to find them. But will it make you believe them? That’s the question asked by a new working paper looking at conspiracy theories surrounding the Donald Trump assassination attempt on July 13. (Gotta love it when academia moves quickly!)… Continue Reading

LLRX Articles and Columns, September 2024

When Should Presenters Apologize? – Referencing decades of experience as a presenter and an attendee at presentations, Jerry Lawson cautions us not to begin a presentation with an apology, which can be compelled by a tech glitch or some other reason not within our control. AI in Finance and Banking, September 30, 2024 – Sabrina I.… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 5, 2024

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 5, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and… Continue Reading

Not incentivized yet efficient: Working from home in the public sector

Alessandra Fenizia and Tom Kirchmaier. 25 September 2024. Paper Number CEPDP2036 Download PDF – Not incentivized yet efficient: Working from home in the public sector This paper studies whether working from home (WFH) affects workers’ performance in public sector jobs. Studying public sector initiatives allows us to establish baseline estimates on the impact of WFH… Continue Reading

Why are Red State Citizens Poorer, Less Educated & Sicker than Blue State Citizens?

Hartmann Report – “Republicans worship cheap labor — and having a steady and reliable supply of cheap labor requires widespread poverty… We must not confuse statistical probability with some transcendental and utterly compelling force. — Unspiek, Baron Bodissey One of the enduring mysteries of America is why the citizens of Red states are generally poorer,… Continue Reading

Trump would add twice as much to national debt as Harris

US Budget Watch 2024 is a project of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget – The next President will face significant fiscal challenges upon taking office, including record debt levels, large structural deficits, surging interest payments, and the looming insolvency of critical trust fund programs. Our large and growing national debt threatens to slow economic growth,… Continue Reading

‘Not one girl could be shown to her parents’: The horrors of Oct 7 – as told by the survivors

The UK Telegraph [unpaywalled] – ‘I saw the Holocaust… so many dead bodies’: To mark the anniversary of the attacks, I traveled to Israel to hear stories of Israelis forced to face an unimaginably dark ordeal….So many questions still unanswered from October 7. I put those queries to scores of Israelis – survivors, soldiers, politicians,… Continue Reading