Short answer: yes. Check the War in Afghanistan project on the Commons. Thanks!

Thanks, Dwight. Don’t hesitate to jump in and contribute! (Note, I deleted your second comment, since it was just a repeat of the first one. Sorry that the system hiccuped your submission.)

>>How can we set up an automated data collection and simple content analysis system for monitoring media for bias?

This I’m not so sure about. An automated content analysis system to monitor for bias? That would require some heuristic analysis capabilities that would floor me. Wordle is, from my quick overview, basically a system for creating tag clouds. You could run a particular story (or set of stories) through Wordle, generate tag clouds, and analyze them for word frequency.

>>As much fun as Wordle is, for evaluating news articles you would require much more specific types of information.

Exactly. This is a terrific idea that needs to be pursued. I hope your contacts with Dr. Feinberg are productive. If you’re able to produce something that approaches the performance of the task you’ve delineated, please let us know.

Congratulations on getting the webpage and blog up and running. It takes time and effort.

How can we set up an automated data collection and simple content analysis system for monitoring media for bias? I was thinking along the lines of something like Wordle (www.wordle.net) that would give simple and quick displays, but would show asymmetries in coverage (people quoted, or references cited) on a particular event or plan. Wordle gives different sizes and colors and perspectives for different words, and those can be controlled along with font types, to produce some fascinating displays of a word article. As much fun as Wordle is, for evaluating news articles you would require much more specific types of information.

Given that there is so much research in computer based content analysis, and the “semantic” web, it is surprising that there are no “beta” versions of software available and given the number of layoffs in newspapers this year, it may be that the news coverage of the military is just one example of low quality jounalism.

Biased coverage is not knew, small town newspapers, even large town newspapers when the economy is struggling, are not able to afford a room full of editors or high priced scholars to score articles on a number of dimensions.

I”m going to copy the man (Jonathan Feinberg, IBM Research) who wrote Wordle and see what he has to suggest.

Dwight Hines
St. Augustine, Florida