![]() ![]() Photo caption: Team members include, from left Andrew Higgins, doctoral student in philosophy Shubhanshu Mishra, doctoral student in GSLIS Sean Wilner, doctoral student in Informatics Diesner Kiumars Soltani, doctoral student in Informatics Jinseok Kim, doctoral student in GSLIS Liang Tao, master's student in agricultural engineering and Amirhossein Aleyasen, master's student in computer science.Īfter realizing she could apply a computational method to a seemingly abstract question, Diesner and her team had to decide what indicators they would use to measure impact. Their subject matter expertise is fundamental to our ability to improve our technology such that it becomes more useful and gets used to solve a specific real-world problem here and now,“ said Diesner. “We gain a tremendous amount of valuable insights from working directly with filmmakers and those in the media. This collaboration doesn’t only make the film’s impact more powerful, it also makes ConText work even better. ![]() Using ConText, Diesner and her team work in collaboration with various directors, producers, and funders to identify strategic opportunities that make the most of outreach and campaigning, ultimately increasing the impact of films that are about to be released. In addition to evaluating impact after a film has been released, they also bring this computational solution to filmmakers in earlier stages of work. With support from the JustFilms division of the Ford Foundation-a major funder of documentary films-Diesner put together a team of graduate students from a diverse set of backgrounds to design and build ConText, a publicly available tool that facilitates impact assessment. She knew that by combining methods from natural language processing, social network analysis, and data visualization, she could get a more comprehensive, rigorous, and efficient grasp on the impact of a documentary. She wanted to find out how people thought and felt about an issue before and after a movie was released, and to identify how much the film’s content and its coverage in both traditional and social media contribute towards any change in the public discourse. In fact, the success of a social justice documentary is often measured either by quantitative metrics such as the number of screenings, or in a more qualitative fashion by conducting interviews with small focus groups before and after a screening.ĭiesner took a different approach that brings these solutions closer together. However, it has been difficult to tell whether watching a movie on climate change, for example, actually moves people to alter their perception or habits. “Often that means an incremental contribution towards some bigger goal.” “A great number of documentary films are made with the idea that by bringing an issue to the public in an artistically appealing, compelling, and dramatic way, they can have an impact by effecting change,” she said. That is the question that Jana Diesner, assistant professor, set out to answer. In ninety minutes or less, we are moved by these stories. The best social justice films take us to places we’ve not been before, engaging our minds and our hearts as they explore some of the most significant issues of society: poverty, education, the environment, health, social equality. You may have to select a menu option or click a button.Documentary films are powerful storytelling vehicles.
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