August 26, 2005

CARR "among the most powerful tools not yet discovered by the Blogosphere"

Mark Tapscott says a new data analysis by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University which discovered the federal government significantly increased its prosecution of illegal aliens last year shows the value of computer-aided research and reporting skills of the kind that the Media Bloggers Association and the Heritage Foundation are providing to bloggers via a series of CARR Boot Camp training sessions.

"The TRAC study that found the 345% increase in federal prosecutions in South Texas of illegal aliens could be done by anybody with basic spreadsheet skills, which is what we teach at the CARR boot camps," Tapscott said. "There is an incredible amount of publicly available data out there and the more bloggers there are who know how to do statistical analyses the stronger will be the Blogosphere's ability to get beyond the spin to the real news."

On his blog, Tapscott comments that...

The TRAC study is based on data that is publicly available from the Department of Homeland Security (usually via a Freedom of Information Act request) and the analysis required to determine basic trends such as the increase in prosecutions is easily done with elementary spreadsheet skills and Microsoft Excel.

The TRAC project is an example of Computer-Assisted Research and Reporting, which is among the most powerful tools not yet discovered by the Blogosphere.

More details about the TRAC study, and the CARR Boot Camp, here. Tapscott and I are both members of the board of the Media Bloggers Association, a co-sponsor of the CARR Boot Camps.