Mapping News

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• visualizing the news serial_consign on 11/09/2007 at 3:18 PM

  Posts: 1

  Great discussion. The cartographic/mapping aspects of hyperlocalism are only beginning to be really explored. I think a lot of folks are still trying to wrap their head around hyperlocal journalism (which tends to be pitched in tandem with citizen journalism) and there is loads of room for discussion on how it can be represented and distributed online. I've been reseaching this topic as well, thanks for some new links to dig into. :) Rate this comment: (Reply)

• Algorithms for geographic filtering & tagging TedColtman on 11/09/2007 at 5:08 PM

  Posts: 1

  I'm pleased to read that YourStreet is working on improving the algorithms to recognize place-nicknames, but that is only one of the obstacles that geographic parsing must overcome in dealing with typical current news streams. Another is disambiguation of place-names when a lot of  geographic information is implicit in the audience's minds, rather than explicit in the text of the news story. My first quick visit to YourStreet highlighted this for me as I checked out stories related to the neighborhood in which I live -- Washington DC's Capitol Hill. Most of the stories there were about Congressional proceedings. To be fair, the US Congress does  transact most of its business a few blocks from my house, but the metaphorical "Capitol Hill" to which many journalists refer in their texts bears only a tenuous relationship to the "literal" "Capitol Hill" that surrounds the US Capitol on three sides. A similar problem arises when a story refers simply to a district (e.g., "Downtown", in many places) with boundaries so imprecise that many knowledgeable local people would disagree on whether any particular site was within the district or not. Resolving these kinds of problems will be very important for hyper-local journalism, so it will be exciting to watch as people compete to do so. Rate this comment: (Reply)

  • 	Re: Algorithms for geographic filtering & tagging horatio92 on 11/14/2007 at 1:37 PM
    Posts: 1	The first thing that I checked was wrong.  It was from a place in Baltimore 20 miles away with a similar name.  I clicked on the "wrong address" feedback link. Rate this comment: (Reply)