Media Party, the most important media innovation conference in Latin America, closed its 11th edition with its Hackathon: “Artificial Intelligence, News, and Democracies.”
For over a decade, this free event has brought together professionals from various disciplines over three days with a clear goal: to revolutionize journalism through technology. Within this framework, the Media Party Hackathon is a classic: during a 6-hour session, multidisciplinary teams dive into creating prototypes for innovative projects. In this edition, the focus was on the application and use of artificial intelligence, with participants competing for prizes totaling $5,000 USD, generously awarded by the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).
On Saturday, October 7th, the Konex Cultural Center was the epicenter of this intense day. The action kicked off at 11:00 AM with preliminary presentation sessions for the 18 projects uploaded to Hackdash, the platform housing all event information. Here, participants joined teams, filling in the necessary skills and profiles to start working. After 6:00 PM, spokespersons for each project pitched their prototypes to a panel of expert judges. This crucial moment allowed them to receive valuable feedback and answer key questions about their proposals.
The Hackathon’s expert jury was composed of:
- Freddy Boulton from Hugging Face (the platform hosting the largest open-source machine learning community)
- Maggie Farley from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ)
- Sil Hamilton from Hacks/Hackers
- Ana Soffietto from the Media Development Investment Fund (MDIF)
- Carla Nudel from The New Republic
- Gino Cingolani Trucco from Media Party
The judges evaluated the projects based on a series of key criteria, including alignment with the central theme, ability to address significant problems at the intersection of AI and journalism, consideration of ethical issues, usability, team composition and structure, and the quality of the developed prototype.
The winning projects were:
- Demystif.AI: An easy-to-use web extension that promotes digital literacy by providing credibility and transparency indicators for AI-related news, based on journalistic quality criteria.
- Datos Electorales (Electoral Data): Built upon the Open Data and Maps Project, La Izquierda Diario presented an advanced data analysis tool that allows users to query metrics and patterns from one or multiple elections, complete with a chatbot that interprets data requests.
- MinorGard: An AI tool designed to recognize the faces of minors during live broadcasts and automatically blur them for anonymization.
The Media Party 2023 Hackathon stands as a testament to the passion and dedication of media professionals, designers, programmers, activists, and entrepreneurs seeking to transform journalism through technology. Media Party continues to be a beacon of innovation in Latin America.
If you are interested in more details or getting in touch with the judges or participants, write to produccion@mediaparty.org.
