Data for Democracy: Using Data and Technology for Social Impact

Data for Democracy is a volunteer collective of data scientists throughout the country that emerged since the election of Donald Trump. It has local chapters taking a look at civic data in their local communities.

Its mission is “to be an inclusive community for data scientists and technologists to volunteer and collaborate on projects that make a positive impact on society. ”

The Boulder chapter has been looking at data released earlier this summer by Stanford University, on racial profiling during police stops. It is currently collaborating with Boulder Rights Watch on analyzing data from the Boulder jail on the number of homeless people being booked in.

The Denver chapter is working on mapping demographic shifts / urbanization patterns in Denver and Assessing oil and gas impact in Colorado.

In today’s show we’re joined by Sam Zhang of the Boulder chapter of Data for Democracy and Jonathan Morgan, the co-founder and CEO of New Knowledge, the co-host of Partially Derivative, the co-founder and a volunteer for Data for Democracy who researches media, radicalization, and extremism.

Contact information for Data for Democracy / Boulder:
meetup.com/Data-for-Democracy-Boulder/
https://github.com/data4Democracy/colorado
https://github.com/data4Democracy/read-this-first

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