Media Cloud
"[1] Media cloud "tracks hundreds of newspapers and thousands of Web sites and blogs, and archives the information in a searchable form.
The database ... enable[s] researchers to search for key people, places and events — from Michael Jackson to the Iranian elections — and find out precisely when, where and how frequently they are covered.
It "collects news stories" in sets from:[6] Among the companies that have collaborated with Media Cloud (or still do) are Morningside Analytics [2], Betaworks [3], Bit.ly, Associated Press [4] and Global Voices [5].
"[7] The relaunch of Media Cloud allows users who are interested in using its tools to analyze "what bloggers and journalists are paying attention to, ignoring, celebrating or condemning.
[1] Media Cloud was used from September 2010 through January 2012 to obtain data for a study at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society that analyzed a set of 9,757 online stories related to the COICA-SOPA-PIPA debate.
The Berkman Center for Internet & Society website offers an interactive visualization map [7] from this study, which was created to "depict media sources ("nodes", which appear as circles on the map with different colors denoting different media types) ... [and] track media sources and their linkages within discrete time slices and allows users to zoom into the controversy to see which entities are present in the debate during a given period ..."[8] This map allows for the visualization of how the COICA-SOPA-PIPA controversy evolved over time by using link analysis.
[12] The analysis of Media Cloud about the Gamergate controversy, an episode of personal attacks on female game developers,[13] showed two cluster of news sources and discussions that were divided by the criteria of the most common opinions.
[14][15] Media cloud's key functionality comes from using web crawling to periodically fetch articles from various sources and then break them down into words that are counted.
These are algorithms characterized by operating on a continuous and unending stream of data, rather than waiting for a complete batch of information to be assembled.
A social study that states that the public debate was responsible for the Stop Online Piracy Act failing, and how it played its role, was proposed by five researchers of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University.
The main conclusion of the study is that the diversification of the political views rather than polarization of the debate enabled the creation of consensus which pressured the policymakers to vote against the bill.
[20] The Pew Research Center classified the killing of Trayvon Martin, a teenager who was shot in the chest by a Florida policeman,[21] the most covered news with a social component in the five years that anteceded the event.
The report attributed the uneven media attention not only to Eurocentrism, but to the difficulty in taking a side in the conflict between the Boko Haram and the Nigerian Army.
PEJ works their magic using talented teams of coders, who sample different corners of the media ecosystem to find out what's being discussed.
"[7] Future uses for Media Cloud can involve smart phone or tablet applications to introduce the platform to users away from a computer.
