Analyzing front pages.
PageOneX is an open source tool to code, analyze and visualize the evolution of stories on newspaper front pages. In the future it will allow to compare newspaper with social media coverage. Newspaper front pages are a key source of data about our media ecology. Newsrooms spend massive time and effort deciding what stories make it to the front page. PageOneX makes coding and visualizing newspaper front page content much easier, democratizing access to newspaper attention data.
How is your project different from what already exists? Communication researchers have analyzed newspaper front pages for decades, using slow, laborious methods. PageOneX simplifies, digitizes, and distributes the process across the net.
What has been built? A semi-automated version of the tool has been tested, and we have produced several interesting examples: http://numeroteca.org/cat/frontpage-newspaper/.
- The first version of the tool built in Processing, https://github.com/numeroteca/pageonex-processing, scrapes front pages from the web (kiosko.net) and builds the matrix of images (in .svg) that must be manually coded in inkscape.
- Now you can now test the first online version of the code at https://github.com/numeroteca/PageOneX-ruby by using the testing account at http://pageonex.herokuapp.com
Credits This is a project by Pablo Rey Mazón, https://github.com/numeroteca. Ahmd Refat, https://github.com/ahmdrefat, has been coding thanks to GSOC during summer 2012; Sasha Costanza-Chock is giving advice and supporting from the Center for Civic Media at MIT Media Lab. Alfonso Sánchez and Jeff Warren have also provided technical help.
Check for updates about the project at http://montera34.org/pageonex/ and in Twitter @pageonex Check http://pageonex.com for all related links.