Melissa Zhu - Profile and Journalist Details
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Melissa Zhu
Verified
Editor, Bellingcat
London
Beats
Robotics, Prefab, mr, Blockchain , AR , AEC Technology , AI , BIM , Engineering , Architecture, Blockchain , AR , AEC Technology , AI , BIM , Engineering , Architecture, VR, lean construction
Crime & Sports
Content
By Pooja Chaudhuri, Melissa Zhu| Bellingcat Verified In the lead up to the 2024 US presidential election on Nov. 5, Democratic candidate Kamala Harris’ campaign mentioned the phrase “Donald Trump” more than they did “Kamala Harris” in advertisements that ran on Facebook and Instagram. Meanwhile, ads sponsored by the official campaign for her Republican rival Trump relied heavily on the slogan “Make America Great Again,” popularised during his 2016 presidential campaign, in their messaging on the same platforms.
By Melissa Zhu| South China Morning Post Verified At China’s largest AI event, the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, in July, 20 speakers were scheduled to speak. Only one of them, Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) CEO Lisa Su, was a woman. This is disappointing but not surprising. Women in technology have long been sidelined, despite their significant contributions to the field. Earlier this month, The New York Times drew flak for an article listing a Who’s Who of AI that mentioned 12 men and zero women.
By Melissa Zhu| Medium@ There's a glaring disparity between the number of women and men that appear in the news. To tackle this issue, I prototyped an application called EquiQuote using GPT-4 - OpenAI's latest language model - to identify the gender of sources in news stories and a custom Google search to suggest alternative sources when there is an imbalance. This showed promising results, although it's not without its issues. Globally, men are quoted about three times more in the news than women.
Company Info
Bellingcat
Bellingcat is an independent nonprofit investigative collective that specializes in open source intelligence (OSINT) research. Founded in 2014 by Eliot Higgins, it has developed innovative digital forensic methods to investigate global conflicts, human rights abuses, and transnational crimes. The organization operates as a decentralized network with over 30 staff and contributors across more than 20 countries. Bellingcat focuses on investigative research related to war crimes, assassinations, and disinformation campaigns. It offers training programs to journalists, activists, and legal professionals, having trained over 4,000 individuals in OSINT techniques. The Global Authentication Project (GAP) is a volunteer network that crowdsources the verification of digital evidence. Additionally, Bellingcat collaborates with judicial bodies, including the International Criminal Court, to integrate OSINT into legal proceedings. Its findings are widely cited by international media and have contributed to significant investigations, such as the MH17 incident and the Skripal poisoning case.
Founded: 2014