In this post I'll go over some of my thoughts on the relationship between my first and second summer Laidlaw projects; how my experience during summer 1 shaped what I wanted to do with summer 2; and how the skills I learned during summer 1 have carried over.

The research I did during my first summer with Laidlaw was very independent. My project explored the AI guidelines and norms that were emerging in American and British newsrooms through a series of interviews with leading journalists and a comparative analysis of different AI policies. I spent most of my time combing through research papers and compiling information from the internet; when I wasn't doing that, I was mass-emailing (emphasis on 'mass') journalists, preparing questions, and organizing interviews where I could find them. The interviews gave the work a slight social edge (I was talking to people, after all), but in the grand scheme of things they occupied a small amount of time relative to my work as a whole--21 x 30-45 minutes, or about ~13 hours across 6 weeks (and I ended up doing 4 or 5 of them after the 6 weeks were up, due to scheduling constraints, so really more like 10 hours). I learned a lot about setting my own expectations and working on a timeline that best fit the kind of deliverables I wanted to come out of the program with. I also became better at communicating with strangers in formal research contexts--interviews--which was something I'd never done before. But I knew coming out of those six weeks that I wanted to move on to projects that inhabited a more socially dynamic research context, with more opportunities for collaboration, discussion, constructive criticism, and public engagement. I was glad that I'd learned how to navigate the difficulties of research successfully while working in isolation: but I felt like I would have a lot more creative potential if I was surrounded by other people with similar interests and research programs.

This summer, my work with the AI, Media, and Democracy Lab has been anything but independent. It has been an interesting shift: going from a long-form wholly independent research project to a living, breathing work environment where multiple projects are always being developed in tandem; it has also been an interesting experience moving from pure research to a mix of public engagement, applied research, and general organizational support. One through line across my work here has been my focus on the emerging European data governance space and how it relates to AI policy, local media, and copyright law: a subject with crucial implications for media actors across the European Union and for data privacy concerns as well. But I have also had the opportunity to support projects that range across several related fields: quality assessments for public-interest virtual reality systems, the role of AI in regional elections, and more. It has been eye-opening to see what "academic" research can be when it is merged with a thriving civil society space, local stakeholders, and activist communities. I'm glad that I was able to move beyond the almost solipsistic paradigm of independent research work while engaging with a thriving local media and data governance community.