#011 — Laura Ellis: Emerging technology at the BBC

Laura Ellis is a journalist and technologist with special interests in machine learning, disinformation and data. She has worked on news teams in radio, TV, and online as a reporter, producer and Editor. She has led two of BBC the BBC’s Regional News and Current Affairs teams, establishing the corporation's first end-to-end digital newsroom. In her current role she focuses on ensuring the BBC is best placed to take advantage of emerging technology and also takes a particular interest in the technology ethics, personalised and automated journalism. EPISODE LINKS: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laura-ellis-0533b94/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://www.mindnarrative.co.uk/ Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1BlZEf3k4ifhvi0XkL8Au1 Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/mind-narrative/id1562903429 Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWRpYS5yc3MuY29tL21pbmRuYXJyYXRpdmUvZmVlZC54bWw RSS: https://anchor.fm/s/56b4a504/podcast/rss Full episodes playlist: https://bit.ly/2OFUN3V SOCIAL: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/mind-narrative/?viewAsMember=true Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mindnarrative TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Introduction 0:58 Who is Laura? 0:32 Emerging tech – The last 10 years 4:36 Some of Laura's cool emerging tech projects at the BBC 8:32 Emerging tech – Balancing risks and opportunities 11:51 Approach to curation and personalisation 14:38 The end-user experience 16:48 Disinformation, misinformation, media provenance and project ''origin'' 19:02 Renee DiResta and other prominent investigative journalists 22:09 Algorithms 23:55 The size of platforms today and their impact, media provenance 25:23 Should platforms be treated as publishers? 28:29 The state and future of media provenance (C2PA) 31:08 The future of journalism – robot, automated journalism 35:10 The power of personalised content – risks and opportunities 37:46 The invisible force of global media and its influence on end-users 39:09 Linear and digital journalism 42:08 The difference between linear and digital journalism 44:37 BBC Media, Tech & Society: Conference + Fair 48:55 CogX Ethics Stage, Laura Ellis and Renee DiResta – personalised recommenders 50:26 What's next for you? 53:10 What are the conversations we have a duty to continue/start discussing? 55:34 News that your regularly read? 56:42 Your reading or other dynamics that influence your current role at the BBC 59:01 What are the skills and/or character traits that helped you so far in your life?