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UBC LIBR 557 Dr. Mary Sue Stephenson. News and Current Events: Web Sites, Search Engines and Tools Presented by Kim Feltham, Derek Grasby Norma Godavari, Lee Anne Smith November 15, 2002. Today’s Presentation. Characteristics of news and current events Three main Web news sources
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UBC LIBR 557 Dr. Mary Sue Stephenson News and Current Events: Web Sites, Search Engines and Tools Presented by Kim Feltham, Derek Grasby Norma Godavari, Lee Anne Smith November 15, 2002
Today’s Presentation • Characteristics of news and current events • Three main Web news sources • Directories and Portals • Media sites • Search Engines • News Tools • Specialized News sites
Other characteristics Content • News in any subject • Current events in any subject • Politics, sports, health, business, entertainment Issues in Content • Reliability - original reporting or third party • Advertising - how much where, what kind • Quality writing versus sensationalism
Other characteristics cont’d Sources • TV and radio • Newspapers and magazines • Newswires • News Web Pages Format • Headlines, top stories • Short columns, features articles, reviews • Multimedia - videos, audio, photos, images.
Other characteristics cont’d Scope • Local – Global Vancouver • Regional- CBC • International-World News Coverage • Breadth • Depth • Alternative/non-mainstream information
Attacks Denial of service • Malicious multiple requests - October 2002 • Causes outages and slowdowns Virus • Usually malicious • Can shutdown site, transmit to other sites, infect programs Overloads • Non-malicious • Simultaneous log on – 9/11 • System crashes, display changes
Censorship Blocks • E.g. - China’s block of Google and AltaVista Editorial bias • Influence of sponsors and advertisers Intellectual Freedom • Harassment of reporters or sites Public scrutiny • Reporting practices
Searching Ranking • Search engines Results • Example of indexing (Killerinfo) News Alerts • Push services with pre-determined profile Archives • Big daily newspapers - 5 to 90 days usually free • Deeper content - pay per view
How to findNEWS on the Web News Directories and Portals Media Outlet Sites News Search Engines
Directories • Selected Resources-avoid overload • Examples: • Sites by different compilers • News Specialists: Open Directory Project • Librarian: NewsCentre • Journalist: JournalismNet
To JNet To portals…..
Portals • Quick reference for breaking news Examples: Yahoo News, WorldNews, Canada.com • Multiple news sources • Shows news source and time posted • Subdivided into subjects and regions • Some have advanced searching • Minimum 2 weeks free archive • Advertising is prominent • Related story links
Web News Comes of Age • Death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 major global scale news event -triggered web news expansion • Since - interactivity greatly increased • Soon after terrorist planes hit on 9/11- Web became lifeline for people trying to contact others and find latest news
Lycos search engineday of 9/11 Top ten search terms • CNN • News • World Trade Center • CNN News • cnn.com • MSNBC • ABC News • BBC • breaking news • world news
9/11 cont’d • CNN logged about 4.6 million unique visitors per day the week after attack • Emails flooded in -many posted • News sites offered audio/video coverage, but all major news sites drastically overloaded. • CNN, though servers ramped up for US elections, posted cut-down front page, temporarily removed video clips, ads and other stories-let users access news faster
9/11 cont’d • Users could not access news engines, portals • AltaVista first engine with relevant search results, within 2 hours-because it used news crawler Moreover • Others altered interfaces-putting links such as CNN on pages within 4 hours • Search results not up to speed until more than 6 hours after-databases not refreshed sooner
9/11 cont’d • Just after first attack, worldwide fall by about 10% in network traffic as people stopped trying to get immediate information online-turned to television and radio • Email, instant messaging, and web pages allowed communication when phone lines were jammed
9/11 cont’d • Since 9/11, surge in demand for Web world news has parallelled internet expansion and globalization • Shift from mainly western to worldwide news sites • Arab websites and alternative news websites have seen a surge in use
9/11 cont’d • Revival of reporting of foreign news and serious news • News sites are creating special archives • Articles about the affect of September 11 on news media
News Media Sites • News coverage from one network • Minute by minute updates • In depth coverage, related stories, special reports, archives • Multimedia • Advertising • Examples: CNN, BBC, CBC To Search Engines…
News Searching When NOT to use a search engine: • If timeliness is an issue • breaking news • If geography is an issue • local news
Idiosyncrasies of Search Engines • Searches • Default command AND or OR? • Boolean logic? • advanced searches are more specific • Case sensitive? • allows more specific results • Phrase searching? • allow more precision
Idiosyncrasies of Search Engines • Coverage • Dates covered? • how far back are the archives? • Update Frequency • how up-to-date are they? • Sources • news wires? • web sites? • news sources?
Idiosyncrasies of SearchEngines • Results • How are the results sorted? • relevancy? • date? • option to change order? • unknown? • News monitoring? • Will they send you news?
