Achievement

IGERT faculty Augustin Chaintreau did a project called Dispatch with Google on collaborative curation. Dispatch (dispatchapp.wpengine.com) is a unique publishing tool that allows journalists working in conflict areas to publish their work and communicate with sources instantly and securely. Using an identity-based encryption scheme, it helps separate one’s published work from his real identity, while still giving the readers confidence that the material one posted really came from him. It is now available on Apple App Store and Android Market, after an alpha version was tested by 10 journalism students reporting during the U.S. election night in New York. The project’s presence at the 2012 Online News Association conference sparked substantial interest in Dispatch from both attendees and organizers, and the tutorial on dispatch was presented at The National Institute for Computer-Assisted Reporting.