news 2012

A study led by academics at the University of Bristol's Intelligent Systems Laboratory and the School of Journalism at Cardiff University has used Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to analyse 2.5 million articles from 498 different English-language online news outlets over ten months. The researchers found that: As expected, readability measures show that online tabloid newspapers are more readable than broadsheets and use more sentimental language.

From Wikipedia to relief efforts after natural disasters, crowdsourcing has become a powerful tool in today's connected world. Now an international team of researchers including a computer scientist at the University of California, San Diego, report they have found a way to make crowdsourcing more reliable.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-Texting while driving is a serious threat to public safety, but a new University of Michigan study suggests that we might not be aware of our actions. U-M researchers found that texting while driving is predicted by a person's level of "habit"-more so than how much someone texts. When people check their cell phones without thinking about it, the habit represents a type of automatic behavior, or automaticity, the researchers say.

University of Melbourne researchers will use the federal election to test the capacity of social media to increase civic engagement in the political process and enhance political journalism. The Citizens' Agenda project will be driven by the University's Centre for Advanced Journalism , in partnership with Fairfax Media and the social media group OurSay.

Americans' lives are still grounded in the communities where they live and require a set of basic information to navigate daily life, despite the proliferation of technology that seems to shrink the world by the hour.

Cutting-edge research focusing on the changing nature of journalism in the digital age is to be brought together in a new peer-reviewed journal launched by a Cardiff professor. Digital Journalism , founded and edited by Professor Bob Franklin of the School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies will provide a critical forum for discussion, analysis and responses to the shifts in journalism brought about by digital technology.

The first report to systematically assess how online-only news websites across Western Europe are faring has found that new start-ups are struggling to find business models that can cover their operating costs. It suggests that the funding environment is more challenging for new start-ups than for traditional media outlets that also have online content, because the latters' operations can be subsidised by revenues from offline businesses.