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By now all have heard about the blockchain technology. However, many still only think of blockchain as some magic technology behind the cryptocurrencies, such as the viral Bitcoin. At the same time the majority still don’t know about other uses of blockchain and how it can add value to our daily lives. The industry that the blockchain technology is really starting to change is the media industry.  

A large percentage of the people around the globe stop trusting the news sources. For example, in the US only less than a third of the population still trust the media (Ahmed, 2022). It is mostly due to the ever-rising volume of fake news being generated. Deepfakes, which are essentially photo and video manipulations where the real person’s face and mimics are replaced by those of another person with the use of machine learning and AI, possess yet another very concerning threat for the trustworthiness of the media. This is where blockchain can help the society in general and journalism specifically. Blockchain can seem to be a complicated technology and it actually isn’t a simple one, but essentially, one can think of blockchain as something that allows our data to be saved securely. It allows the journalists to create sort of a registry for the text, images, and other features of the media releases, making the metadata information available to the readers (Knightfoundation, 2018). Therefore, blockchain technology also enables the readers to verify the identity of the journalist, as well as the originality of the media source, as any tampering with the bits of data in the blockchain is almost impossible and would be recorded by the underlying technology and visible to the reader as well (Ivancsics, 2019). As a result, the publishers that would use blockchain technology to provide the readers with the information about the origin of their posts can offer more transparency and can become more trustworthy. Nevertheless, if the journalists and media sources are one-sided, biased or filled with propaganda and fake news, there is very little the blockchain technology can do, as it simply allows to the readers to check originality and the initial source of the news source, but whether to trust the actual content is then up to the content consumers. Moreover, it is the job of the community to establish the registry of content, how new information about the media sources and journalists will be added to it and what incentives will be incorporated to incentivize continuous trust maintenance.

Have you found this post valuable and do you know other uses of blockchain technology in journalism? Please let us know in the comments below!  

References:

Ahmed, A. (2022, July 8). A new study shows people are losing trust in the news media. Digital Information World. Retrieved October 10, 2022, from https://www.digitalinformationworld.com/2022/07/a-new-study-shows-people-are-losing.html 

Ivancsics, B. (2019, January 25). Blockchain in Journalism. Columbia Journalism Review. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://www.cjr.org/tow_center_reports/blockchain-in-journalism.php 

Knightfoundation. (2018, September 11). Indicators of news media trust. Knight Foundation. Retrieved October 11, 2022, from https://knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust/ 

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Tennis is often referred to as a “gentlemen’s sport”, the game with long-standing traditions that remained unchanged for years. In the times when tennis must compete for the viewers not only with other sports but also various other entertainment channels, such as video and gaming platforms, tennis might even be too conservative. However, one aspect of tennis has changed dramatically over the past years – line calling.

Sam Groth holds the record for the fastest tennis serve ever recorded, as his serve reached the mind-blowing speed of 263.4 km/h (Abdalazem, 2022). Although, the average tennis serve of both male and female players is somewhat slower, the speed and the margins with which professionals play the game is sensational. It, however, makes the job of the tennis umpires and line referees much more difficult, as one wrong line call can cost the players millions of prize money. This is where the AI supported by sensors and IoT comes to rescue. The so-called “hawk-live” system is already widely implemented at the largest tennis tournaments, such as Australian and US Open (Michaels, 2021). The system is using multiple sensors and cameras to track the movement and the bounces of the ball. The tracking data is then uploaded to the predefined model that imitates the tennis court and the trained AI system can decide whether the ball landed in or out of the court lines (Abusalah, 2021). The system can also generate an animated video replay of the ball trajectory and the final mark the ball leaves on the court, for the players, the umpire, and the viewers to get a visual confirmation of the decision (Abusalah, 2021).

It used to be that for each tennis game, typically there would have to be one main chair umpire, overseeing the whole game, and six line umpires, responsible for calling the outs on the assigned lines. However, thanks to the technologies, now tournaments are allowed to reduce the number of referees required to facilitate the game to only one – the chair umpire.

But if technologies continue to disrupt the game, does it mean that in the future the main umpires can also be replaced by an electronic AI-driven judge? This is still very unlikely, as the job of the umpire is not only about keeping track of the score and calling outs, but is also about controlling the crowd, helping the players and many other tasks that we still cannot replace with technology.

References:

Abdalazem, R. (2022, July 8). What is the fastest tennis serve ever recorded? Diario AS. Retrieved October 1, 2022, from https://en.as.com/other_sports/what-is-the-fastest-tennis-serve-ever-recorded-n/#:~:text=Who%20recorded%20the%20fastest%20tennis,%2D6%2C%203%2D6. 

Abusalah, M. (2021, February 16). IOT replaces on-court line umpires in Australia open tennis. Medium. Retrieved October 2, 2022, from https://medium.com/analytics-vidhya/iot-replaces-on-court-line-umpires-in-australia-open-tennis-bf6c84f82c12 

Michaels, J. (2021, February 13). ‘there are just no mistakes happening’: Hawk-eye live gains more support at Australian Open. ESPN. Retrieved October 1, 2022, from https://www.espn.com/tennis/story/_/id/30877297/hawk-eye-live-gains-more-support-australian-open