Keywords
computer analysis
regional mass media
How to Cite
Abstract
Introduction. As a rule, news sources are identified in journalistic texts manually. However as far as journalists use typical wordings for news sources references, it’s possible to create regular expressions and to design a computer program for automatic identification of the data. Relevance of the study. The program is important for news sources usage study in the digital reality, in particularly of ‘access hierarchy’ and ‘information hegemony’ defining. It may be additionally significant for some practical tasks achieving: news monitoring, professional standards compliance analysis. Research objective is to observe news sources exploiting in the regional mass media with computer analysis, define leading people sources and evaluate balance of the news. Methodology. Two local news sites were chosen for the analysis: Dymskaya and Odesa Life. At first a sample of texts was formed and regular expressions for the program were tested. References to the quotes, ‘communicative’ verbs and other expressions were coded. Content analysis was used, news sources were difened as elements of the analysis. Results. The program and manual processing results comparison shown an insignificant percent of mistakes (7,8% and 11% respectively). The reasons of the program’s mistakes were: incorrect identification of the news sources in analytics, blogs and columns, included in news feeds; larger vocabulary of the communicative verbs vocabulary; double references. In some cases the program shown pronouns and nouns (not just surnames). The latter problem may be solved with the list of spot words implementing. With the help of the program the leading news sources of Dumskaya site were defined: own correspondent, the president of Ukraine, the prime minister and other officials. All-Ukrainian news sources prevailed, while local authorities, activists, experts were not so popular. In the case of Odesa Life there was more balanced approach: local authorities and activists were represented. Conclusions. Thus, it’s quite possible to design the automatic approach to news sources study. The computer program was proposed and tested for this aim. In the majority of cases the program’s mistakes may be explained with the professional standards violation by the journalists (lack of accuracy in the references, analytics and columns placement in the news feeds etc). The limitations of the program: the need of resetting for every new site, because of some stylistic peculiarities and editorial policy. The analysis has shown the level of balance in the regional mass media: the texts form independent media outlet were more balanced.
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