curating and contextualizing twitter stories to assist with social newsgathering
DESCRIPTION
While journalism is evolving toward a rather open-minded participatory paradigm, social media presents overwhelming streams of data that make it difficult to identify the information of a journalist's interest. Given the increasing interest of journalists in broadening and democratizing news by incorporating social media sources, we have developed TweetGathering, a prototype tool that provides curated and contextualized access to news stories on Twitter. This tool was built with the aim of assisting journalists both with gathering and with researching news stories as users comment on them. Five journalism professionals who tested the tool found helpful characteristics that could assist them with gathering additional facts on breaking news, as well as facilitating discovery of potential information sources such as witnesses in the geographical locations of news.TRANSCRIPT
![Page 1: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social
Newsgathering
Arkaitz Zubiaga (City University of New York)
Heng Ji (City University of New York)
Kevin Knight (University of Southern California)
IUI 2013 - March 21, 2013
![Page 2: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/2.jpg)
Motivation
● Users share about news on Twitter, often complementing news media:– News break early.
– Users contribute with additional facts/info.
● Journalists are interested in gathering facts, and finding sources.
![Page 3: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/3.jpg)
![Page 4: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/4.jpg)
But...
Streams of tweets are overwhelming!
![Page 5: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/5.jpg)
Trending Stories on Twitter
![Page 6: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/6.jpg)
Newsgathering from Twitter (I)
![Page 7: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/7.jpg)
Newsgathering from Twitter (II)
![Page 8: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/8.jpg)
Two main shortcomings
(1) Overwhelming amounts of contents.✔ Need of curation.
(2) Lack of context.✔ Need of contextualization.
![Page 9: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/9.jpg)
Data
● 2,593 trending topics (Feb 1-28)– Up to 1,500 tweets per TT (3.6M tweets).
● Tweets in 46 languages.– 57.8% en, 14.9% es, 7.6% pt, etc.
● Split into:– Feb 1-21: Development set.
– Feb 22-28: Test set.
![Page 10: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/10.jpg)
Annotation
● Annotation of the 2,593 trending topics.– Newsworthy if the story was later covered by news
media (thepaperboy.com).
– Unnewsworthy otherwise.
● 358 deemed newsworthy.
![Page 11: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/11.jpg)
Links to news media
![Page 12: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/12.jpg)
Data processing
● Translation of tweets into English– 98.1% translated.
– 27 of 46 languages (19 of top 20).
● Ranking of trending topics.● Curation + contextualization of contents.
![Page 13: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/13.jpg)
Ranking of trending topics
![Page 14: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/14.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 15: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/15.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 16: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/16.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 17: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/17.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 18: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/18.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 19: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/19.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 20: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/20.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 21: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/21.jpg)
TweetGathering
![Page 22: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/22.jpg)
User Study
● Tested on-site by 5 journalism practitioners.– Native English speakers.
– Twitter users.
– They use Twitter for newsgathering.
● They used the tool while thinking aloud, and we interviewed them afterward.
![Page 23: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/23.jpg)
Feedback: news discovery
● “the ranking is very helpful, the stories in the bottom of the list are mostly memes and pointless conversations”.
● “it's easy to catch the scoop, and find out whether a story is worth exploring in more detail”.
![Page 24: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/24.jpg)
Feedback: curation
“Twitter conversations are full of spam instead of talking about the actual
news. Having a few tweets selected really helps me discover salient tweets
instead of doing it manually”
![Page 25: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/25.jpg)
Feedback: curation
“Earliest tweet” might be the source to follow or interview.
![Page 26: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/26.jpg)
Feedback: search
“I'd use the search engine to look for users in a specific location”
![Page 27: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/27.jpg)
Feedback: contextualization
“It all depends on whether the story contains links to news media. When there are, I can research the news written by others”
![Page 28: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/28.jpg)
Feedback: contextualization
“We often look into contributing users to find sources, or even witnesses that might be
reporting about the news. We rely on those as information sources, and sometimes contact
them to learn more”
![Page 29: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/29.jpg)
Feedback: contextualization
● Hashtags:
“It is sometimes worth exploring the hashtags that are co-occurring with the story. I was really wondering why #ows appears so frequently in a story about #wellsfargo, that’s something I needed to look into more detail”.
![Page 30: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/30.jpg)
Feedback: contextualization
● Events:
“They show what people are commenting on the story. It’s not only about the story itself. I found in a story about a political announcement that a popular event being mentioned in the tweets was resignation, this must be a strong community that wants this politician to step down”.
![Page 31: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/31.jpg)
Feedback: contextualization
● Named entities & external descriptions:
“They may reveal where the story is happening, and so makes it easier to locate it, as well as easily identify involved people and organizations, especially when it is culturally foreign to me”.
![Page 32: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/32.jpg)
Final remarks / Future work
● Customized stories and contents.
● Categorize news by topic.
● Identify location of users.
● Test the tool in real-time to quantify results.
![Page 33: Curating and Contextualizing Twitter Stories to Assist with Social Newsgathering](https://reader034.vdocuments.net/reader034/viewer/2022052619/556537d8d8b42a313f8b4db3/html5/thumbnails/33.jpg)
Thanks!