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How scientists scrambled to stop Donald Trump's EPA from wiping out climate data

Justine Calma

March 08, 2021 |

The Verge |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Washington, District of Columbia

The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, with the help of scientists, academics, and other volunteers, preserved EPA data and information that the Trump administration sought to erase. They held “guerrilla archiving” events to identify and save data, manually backing it up when necessary. They made data more accessible by creating congressional district “report cards” showing where environmental law violations occurred. To preserve institutional knowledge, they published interviews with 60 federal scientists who left the agency. In total, over 200 TB of data was archived in less than a year.

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A Booster Shot For Detecting COVID-19 Mutations

Thomas K. Grose

February 24, 2021 |

U.S. News & World Report |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United Kingdom

When the SARS-CoV-2 variant emerged in the United Kingdom, scientists in Britain were able to quickly identify it and warn other countries thanks to the use of genome sequencing. Now other countries, such as Denmark, are investing in genome sequencing to get ahead of the next potential outbreak.

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An Evanston Teen Saw How Hard It Was For The Elderly To Find Vaccines, So He Built A Website To Help

Edie Rubinowitz

February 21, 2021 |

WBEZ |

Radio |

3-5 Minutes

Response Location: United States, Evanston, Illinois

When a teenager in Evanston, Illinois realized that senior citizens were facing difficulties securing Covid vaccination appointments due to technology barriers, he created a website to help eliminate some of the technological barriers. The site aggregates available appointments in the area so seniors don't have to go searching for them, which has consequently helped reduce stress for users of the website.

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Boosting Voter Turnout: Seth Flaxman

Richard Davies Jim Meigs

February 13, 2021 |

How Do We Fix It? |

Podcast |

5-15 Minutes

Response Location: United States

Democracy Works has a suite of programs that make it easier to vote. TurboVote helps its 7 million subscribers easily register to vote by taking them to their state's online registration site or by sending them the paperwork with envelopes pre-addressed to their county election office. The service also sends emails and texts to remind users to vote, as well as with other deadlines and their polling location. Their Voting Information Project provides data for all districts in the U.S. that groups, such as Google and Facebook, use to provide their users with their polling place location information.

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Black people no longer disproportionately affected by COVID-19 in Flint, health officials say

Carmen Nesbitt

January 17, 2021 |

Flint Beat |

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1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Flint, Michigan

At the start of the coronavirus pandemic, public health officials in Flint, Michigan began tracking the demographics of those who were testing positive for the virus in order to better align the county's public health action and outreach. In doing so, officials realized that a lack of access to testing in predominately Black neighborhoods was a contributing factor and decided to launch mobile testing, barrier-free sites, and other interventions at the state level.

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How Californians are resorting to crowdsourcing to get their Covid-19 vaccine

Kelsey Piper

January 15, 2021 |

Vox |

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800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States, California

Residents of California are working together to crowdsource where COVID-19 vaccinations are being offered, and who they're being offered to. While the state has failed to implement a transparent dissemination strategy, 70 volunteers joined forces to create a spreadsheet that keeps track of what clinics are offering the shot and what parameters must be met to receive it. Users have reported that they were able to schedule an appointment because of this effort.

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How Open Source Experts Identified the US Capitol Rioters

Rowan Philp

January 15, 2021 |

Global Investigative Journalism Network |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States

Digital sleuths preserved a trove of evidence from the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by acting quickly to "scrape" and archive videos, images, and other data from social media. Investigative journalists from Bellingcat, the Toronto-based Citizen Lab, and Czech data archive Intelligence X were among those who responded before rioters, worried about criminal charges, began deleting posts. Crowdsourcing calls for assistance also produced a robust response from people anxious to aid law enforcement or debunk post-riot disinformation.

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The scramble to archive Capitol insurrection footage before it disappears

Tanya Basu

January 08, 2021 |

MIT Technology Review |

Text |

800-1500 Words

Response Location: United States

Several groups are preserving digital content related to the capital insurrection to ensure it is archived in case it gets deleted. A subreddit thread collected thousands of Tweets, Snapchats, and other videos to upload to the cloud, while the Woke Collective ensured the survival of livestreams by publishing them on its own YouTube and Twitch accounts. Efforts to crowdsource the identification of members of the mob include the Instagram account, @homegrownterrorists, and the journalism site, Bellingcat, which invited contributions to a publicly editable Google spreadsheet of links.

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A secret settlement hid an officer's misconduct. Outside Maine, it would have been different.

Erin Rhoda

December 09, 2020 |

Bangor Daily News |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, Colorado

A Colorado law enacted in 2016 requires law enforcement officers to disclose their past disciplinary records when seeking a new job at a different agency. By making such disclosures automatic, the law standardizes hiring practices statewide, protects past employers from liability for making the disclosures, and most importantly prevents rogue officers from hopping from one job to the next undetected. Maine has no such requirement., and so some of its agencies might unknowingly hire an officer with a record of misconduct.

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New Orleans actively releases videos of police shootings. Is it paying off with trust?

Christiaan Mader

November 23, 2020 |

The Current (Louisiana) |

Text |

1500-3000 Words

Response Location: United States, New Orleans, Louisiana

Once viewed as one of the nation's most brutal and corrupt police departments, New Orleans Police Department has earned steadily improving public support with a host of reforms. One reform that it took voluntarily, and in contrast with common practice in Louisiana, is to quickly release body-camera videos of police shootings and other uses of force. Though its effect is hard to untangle from other initiatives, video releases have become routine. In one case, a video prompted an official apology after proving rubber bullets were used against protesters. This helped lead to new restrictions on crowd control.

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