News Source Evaluation and Visualization System

The advent of Web 2.0 and modern internet technologies was associated with a revolution in online contents especially those that are news-oriented. The proliferation of an array of online mediums for news dissemination and aggregation led to the availability of a constant flow of news contents to endusers. Moreover, the advent of Social Media (SM) platforms meant that the Web was transformed to the biggest live news platform on the planet. In an Era when online users are exposed to an overwhelming stream of news contents, there is an increasing need for tools to empower them to quickly glean and digest the information that they are looking for. Users also need effective tools for news intelligence and prediction to keep abreast of their interests. This paper proposes an interactive online system that will enable users to have an analytical view on the news feeds that are related to their interests. The Visual News Screener (VNS) will aim to surpass the traditional news aggregation systems by its ability to evaluate the effectiveness in which a given news source covers a certain news topic or issue. VNS will have the flexibility of analyzing a plethora of news sources and visually summarize the aggregated data within a customized dashboard (the News Screener). The news contents that VNS will analyze will include RSS feeds, SM feeds, crawled online news sources and articles. The visualization process will depend on the actual context that the user is interested in. Furthermore, the history, current status and potential development patterns of the monitored news issue(s) will also be analyzed and visualized.