"Auditing your output for diversity of representation" Speaker: Nancy Roberts CEO Umbrella Analytics

 

Broadcast using Zoom Webinars

​

Following on from the devastating impacts of COVID on women and ethnic minorities, and the outpourings of rage over the death of George Floyd this year, issues of representation are more important than ever. The recent “Rethinking ‘Diversity’ in Publishing” report provided a searing analysis of the challenges faced by writers of colour in getting published, and the lack of diversity in authorship and output remains an issue across all publishing sectors.

The first step in addressing this is to audit the diversity of your content creators. Using AI-based name inference technology it is possible to infer ethnic and gender identity using author names. This can form the basis of understanding the diversity of your content creation pool, which can then be benchmarked against open data sources to drive out insights.

By taking a cold hard look at the realities of the data enables content creators to identify key issues and work backwards to remove the barriers which prevent output being more diverse and representative.

Takeaways:
- What to do if you “don’t have any data” (and why that’s never true!)
- How to create meaningful comparison datasets
- A few ideas on tackling root causes