DOI: https://doi.org/10.15368/theses.2014.68
Available at: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/theses/1222
Date of Award
6-2014
Degree Name
MS in Computer Science
Department/Program
Computer Science
Advisor
Alexander Dekhtyar
Abstract
News space is a relatively nebulous term that describes the general discourse concerning events that affect the populace. Past research has focused on qualitatively analyzing news space in an attempt to answer big questions about how the populace relates to the news and how they respond to it. We want to ask when do stories begin? What stories stand out among the noise? In order to answer the big questions about news space, we need to track the course of individual stories in the news. By analyzing the specific articles that comprise stories, we can synthesize the information gained from several stories to see a more complete picture of the discourse. The individual articles, the groups of articles that become stories, and the overall themes that connect stories together all complete the narrative about what is happening in society.
TSPOONS provides a framework for analyzing news stories and answering two main questions: what were the important stories during some time frame and what were the important stories involving some topic. Drawing technical news stories from Techmeme.com, TSPOONS generates profiles of each news story, quantitatively measuring the importance, or salience, of news stories as well as quantifying the impact of these stories over time.