Category: News

This opinion piece in the New York Times this morning seems relevant to our class this semester and specifically to this week. It’s written by Ian Lipkin, Director of the Center for Infection and Immunity at Columbia University, whose work involves investigating the origins of outbreaks. He and his team have had many successes, but…

It seems like the news these days couldn’t get much worse, but last week I saw a headline about a leak at a nuclear power plant in Minnesota that had a leak which wasn’t reported for several days. So far I have not seen much media coverage of the event. Which could either be terrifying,…

More Perfect Union (IG, TikTok, YouTube) is a media project that I’ve just recently learned about that has been producing some well-researched, informative, and incisive reporting about the train derailment in East Palestine. This video from February 13 titled “The Ohio Railroad DISASTER Explained” was some of the first coverage that I saw of the…

It’s been so interesting to watch the slowly building news coverage of the East Palestine derailment with you all over the last month. Glad to see that the event is finally getting the coverage it deserves. As we talked about in class, since this has happened (and since our class started this semester) it seems…

Interesting piece in the New York Times about the language we use to talk about extreme weather events and the challenges that poses to people communicating about them. Scientists are in consensus on the increasing frequency of extreme weather events [but] there was another growing worry: how people talk about the weather. The widespread use…

Here’s a link to two recent NPR pieces that both touch on topics we’ve been thinking about over the last couple weeks: how every disaster is political, and how politics can often complicate aid and recovery. • Leila Fadel, “Initial earthquake aid is finally getting to Northwest Syria but more is needed”, February 22, 2023. Excerpt:…

Here’s a link to a thoughtful piece from WNYC’s “On the Media” all about how the media is covering the train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio: There are four audio segments. Summarized here: “Off the Rails”, February 17, 2023

Just as I was finishing the reading for this week, this news alert popped up on my phone, announcing an article describing a malnutrition crisis that the narrative ties to a ban on female workers put in place by the Taliban. This is really related more to last week’s topic than this week. It has…

While we were in class today, the official Twitter account for the National Weather Service Los Angeles (@NWSLosAngeles) posted a “blizzard warning” cautioning folks about “extremely dangerous mountain conditions” in the mountains of Southern California. Apparently the first blizzard warning ever for this area. Naturally the local news was having a field day. All joking…

“Social media data, especially from Twitter, has long been an invaluable tool in the wake of natural disasters. But this time, according to four data scientists and researchers involved in the rescue effort, the work has been hampered by recent changes to Twitter’s API, the programming interface that enables third parties to access and analyze…