On March 2-3, the department will host a workshop, “Making Sense of Syria: Visualizing Social Patterns of Conflict in Video Reporting from the Free Syrian Army.” Focused on data collected by Syria Conflicts Monitor from YouTube videos made by armed units of the Free Syrian Army, this two-day workshop and public panel discussion will bring together data science, GIS, visualization, and area specialists from Google, The Carter Center, Change Assembly, and other organizations to explore how to make sense of social patterns in the Syrian conflict—and possible directions for scaling the collection and social analysis of video content in conflict.
Faculty member Daniel Goddemeyer and Richard Tyson, senior advisor at Caerus Associates, will lead the workshop. Current MFA Interaction Design students Tony Chu, Pamela Jue, Mini Kim, Shelly Ni, and Alex Todaro will participate.
The workshop will explore and rapidly prototype visual and technical means for making sense of several thousand self-reported videos. Working in collaborative teams, workshop participants will explore the question: what can data analysis reveal about the present and future of the Syrian conflict?
SVA Close Up interviewed the team. Read the interview in its entirety.
