Tag Archives: online sources

Mashable: Are social networks becoming personal news wires?

To celebrate its five-year anniversary, Mashable is producing a series of posts on developments in social media. The latest looks at the impact of social networking on news consumption and the idea that social networks have become personal news wires.

Following a discussion of online “friends” evolving into our news editors, writer Vadim Lavrusik rounds-up some interesting ideas about ways to measure source credibility in the future for greater transparency online.

Though news is increasingly social and user-generated, the persistent fear is one of credibility and a flaw in measuring a curator’s knowledge on or interest in a topic. This problem could be improved by enabling users to develop more targeted news feeds on personalized topics of interest, but also by identifying specific sources and curators of information as more or less credible than others.

One idea he discusses, put forward by Andy Carvin a senior strategist at NPR,  would be to measure “who is knowledgeable” about a topic being shared.

This could also include sifting sources based on whether they are eye-witness to an event or are experts on the topic, both of which add value in their own way, he said. Such a model could then help establish a credibility index among users as sources, helping consumers better decide what information is credible.

See the full post here…

MemeTracker: Visualising ‘time lag’ on online news reporting

Fascinating project (found via @amonck):

“MemeTracker builds maps of the daily news cycle by analyzing around 900,000 news stories and blog posts per day from 1 million online sources, ranging from mass media to personal blogs.

“We track the quotes and phrases that appear most frequently over time across this entire online news spectrum. This makes it possible to see how different stories compete for news and blog coverage each day, and how certain stories persist while others fade quickly.”

Visit MemeTracker at this link…

Bivings’ top 10 US newspapers: missing the news point?

The Bivings Group‘s recently released Bivings Report of the top 10 US newspaper sites in 2008 consisted of:

  1. New York Times
  2. Washington Post
  3. Wall Street Journal
  4. Florida Times-Union
  5. Philadelphia Inquirer
  6. USA Today
  7. St Paul Pioneer Press
  8. Atlanta Journal-Constitution
  9. Arizona Republic
  10. Columbus Dispatch

The study, which picks the list based on usability, design and web features of the US’ 100 largest newspapers, is purposefully limited to covering US-based, newspaper sites.

But as one commenter on the Bivings blog says, ‘No Mention of any of MY best news sites’ – he then goes on to list his own top 10, including Huffington Post and EveryBlock (which another commenter then takes as the Bivings’ list).

Is comparing like-for-like really that useful – newspapers aren’t just competing with each other – or other mainstream news organisations – anymore. What the Bivings Group rates the sites on may be completely different from the readers’ criteria – particularly if these comments are anything to go by.

It reminds me of this Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) study from 2007, which found a different news agenda on UGC sites than mainstream platforms (e.g the agenda decided by journalists).

Users’ online agendas are different (and that’s not to say news organisations should completely adhere to UGC inspired schedules – that’s a debate for another day) and influenced by a plethora of different online sources. As such their expectations of newspaper sites will be shaped by the other tools and information websites they use. Ranking newspaper websites against each other won’t deliver the kind of comparisons that these sites can take away and use.