Variety supply information on websites is far from being as abundant as one might imagine. And, worse still, this offer is massively "redundant" and "stereotypical" news websites disseminate same news at the same time, with extreme concentration of production on a small number of topics that dominate the scene completely. This is the conclusion I came to study " Internet, diversity and redundancy of information " presented at Athens, May 6 to 9 (available on the site Nikos Smyrnaions in pdf format).
An account of the research is posted on the blog of Narvic, Novovision . "The big interest of this study, "says the blogger" is to be one of the first to conduct scientific analysis on the statistical nature of the content of news coverage on the popular Web-speaking (but certainly contains elements of generalization). It has the merit of analyzing a wide range of sites and not to focus only on the sites of the press generated by traditional media and the "pure players" of journalists, but to broaden the field of web portals, aggregators, the webzine and blog.
In search of the long tail of information. "Going in search of what the" long tail theory "could possibly apply to information on current Internet, researchers have been forced to soften its conclusion. The study is based on news published in November 2008 and focuses particularly on days 6 and 10 November by making semi-automated statistical analysis of several thousand items generated from dozens of sources. Researchers have established a procedure to automatically aggregate into "topics" articles on the same event with the observation of recurrences language in texts. They then observed the distribution of the report the number of articles / variety of topics, providing a sort of index of pluralism of news online. They have done a step further by analyzing the treatment of the same subject in different articles that confront him, to provide a sort of index of originality. "
The realm of" news agency in bursts. "The result is without appeal: the information network is massively" redundant "and" stereotypical " . Stated differently, the information sites dealing with the same arguments, same time and in the same way, and the variety of these topics is extremely low. "Narvic him as" the kingdom of the news agency to burst. "" The distribution of results broadly responds to the principle of "law of Paretto": 80% of the articles focus on 20% of the subjects, 80% of the other topics are treated from 20% of the articles other, often by a single item (ie only one source). The recurring use of language in the actual formulation of several articles on the same subject shows that this is actually the same cast of press agencies, almost entirely copied.
Exceptions to this practice sites: Agoravox, web journalism citizen; Bakchich, political webzine, The Post, another site of participatory journalism and blogs.
"On balance, the extreme concentration of manufacturing information on a small number of subjects ultra dominant is not compensated by an extreme variety of topics covered in the long tail. In fact, the tail is too short and not enough dense than the model expected. The redundancy information dominates.
"The researchers put forward several explanations of methodology and background. The sample of sources considered perhaps underestimates the production of webzines and blogs, which publish less and not daily. At bottom, the ephemeral nature of current non-expiring soon would find the effects of the fund, which are for music or literature. "
journalism flights on the Internet. " More profoundly, the researchers advance another explanation: the economic conditions of production of information on these sites.
"Recent research on the conditions of production in online newsrooms shows a strong tendency to high productivity. The online journalism tends to favor the rewriting and re-publishing existing content at the expense of service (reportage) original. One element of our study confirms that this trend is that the sources of our sample are more redundant portals without any team of journalists, free newspapers with small newsrooms and radio and television stations that have a limited production of textual content. We can deduce that the special conditions of production in these information sites online have a greater impact on the diversity of its content.
"Stated differently, it is quite logical but it is hardly reassuring: the diversity of information given is proportional to the number of journalists employed. Other than that, and the researchers acknowledge that further studies to determine this, what remains is determining the relationship between the diversity of provision and the reality of the use of Internet information. "
" The data that you have not in the field, quite encouraging: the audience of the portal sites "without journalists," the pure "news agency Burst" largely dominates that of the media sites that offer information and journalists have more original and diverse. Must conclude that the quality, online, does not pay? Or, rather, that the request for information major Internet users are concentrated on the type of information proposed by these "news agency in bursts? Why just them this information? Why are wary of other forms of information produced by journalists? It would be really bad news for journalism ...".
I translated this post from the blog Novovision (and I apologize if there is any imperfection here and there) because, although the analysis is for the French-speaking web, it seems the feature of redundancy of information belongs also to the Italian media sites. What do you think?
An account of the research is posted on the blog of Narvic, Novovision . "The big interest of this study, "says the blogger" is to be one of the first to conduct scientific analysis on the statistical nature of the content of news coverage on the popular Web-speaking (but certainly contains elements of generalization). It has the merit of analyzing a wide range of sites and not to focus only on the sites of the press generated by traditional media and the "pure players" of journalists, but to broaden the field of web portals, aggregators, the webzine and blog.
In search of the long tail of information. "Going in search of what the" long tail theory "could possibly apply to information on current Internet, researchers have been forced to soften its conclusion. The study is based on news published in November 2008 and focuses particularly on days 6 and 10 November by making semi-automated statistical analysis of several thousand items generated from dozens of sources. Researchers have established a procedure to automatically aggregate into "topics" articles on the same event with the observation of recurrences language in texts. They then observed the distribution of the report the number of articles / variety of topics, providing a sort of index of pluralism of news online. They have done a step further by analyzing the treatment of the same subject in different articles that confront him, to provide a sort of index of originality. "
The realm of" news agency in bursts. "The result is without appeal: the information network is massively" redundant "and" stereotypical " . Stated differently, the information sites dealing with the same arguments, same time and in the same way, and the variety of these topics is extremely low. "Narvic him as" the kingdom of the news agency to burst. "" The distribution of results broadly responds to the principle of "law of Paretto": 80% of the articles focus on 20% of the subjects, 80% of the other topics are treated from 20% of the articles other, often by a single item (ie only one source). The recurring use of language in the actual formulation of several articles on the same subject shows that this is actually the same cast of press agencies, almost entirely copied.
Exceptions to this practice sites: Agoravox, web journalism citizen; Bakchich, political webzine, The Post, another site of participatory journalism and blogs.
"On balance, the extreme concentration of manufacturing information on a small number of subjects ultra dominant is not compensated by an extreme variety of topics covered in the long tail. In fact, the tail is too short and not enough dense than the model expected. The redundancy information dominates.
"The researchers put forward several explanations of methodology and background. The sample of sources considered perhaps underestimates the production of webzines and blogs, which publish less and not daily. At bottom, the ephemeral nature of current non-expiring soon would find the effects of the fund, which are for music or literature. "
journalism flights on the Internet. " More profoundly, the researchers advance another explanation: the economic conditions of production of information on these sites.
"Recent research on the conditions of production in online newsrooms shows a strong tendency to high productivity. The online journalism tends to favor the rewriting and re-publishing existing content at the expense of service (reportage) original. One element of our study confirms that this trend is that the sources of our sample are more redundant portals without any team of journalists, free newspapers with small newsrooms and radio and television stations that have a limited production of textual content. We can deduce that the special conditions of production in these information sites online have a greater impact on the diversity of its content.
"Stated differently, it is quite logical but it is hardly reassuring: the diversity of information given is proportional to the number of journalists employed. Other than that, and the researchers acknowledge that further studies to determine this, what remains is determining the relationship between the diversity of provision and the reality of the use of Internet information. "
" The data that you have not in the field, quite encouraging: the audience of the portal sites "without journalists," the pure "news agency Burst" largely dominates that of the media sites that offer information and journalists have more original and diverse. Must conclude that the quality, online, does not pay? Or, rather, that the request for information major Internet users are concentrated on the type of information proposed by these "news agency in bursts? Why just them this information? Why are wary of other forms of information produced by journalists? It would be really bad news for journalism ...".
I translated this post from the blog Novovision (and I apologize if there is any imperfection here and there) because, although the analysis is for the French-speaking web, it seems the feature of redundancy of information belongs also to the Italian media sites. What do you think?
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