The Berkman Center at Harvard University has created a tool that allows researchers to compare subjects across various blogs and online newspapers.  Called ‘Media Cloud’, this tool shows, among other things,  how a new topic trend spreads across different countries and compares how a topic is being covered in different publications.   From the web site:  “Media Cloud automatically builds an archive of news stories and blog posts from the web, applies language processing, and gives you ways to analyze and visualize the data.”

The three tools available allow you to view the coverage of the top 10 most mentioned terms in a particular blog or publication, show the top 10 most mentioned terms in a source on a particular topic, and a world map showing the degree of coverage in other countries on a particular topic.  The Berkman Center intends to expand the number of tools and it encourages solicitations from researchers.  Furthermore, open source is available for researchers who want to develop their own programs and tools.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am and is filed under Humanities, Tech Tools and Tips. All comments will be reviewed before they appear on this site. Comments will not be published if they are inappropriate or conflict with the library's or university's mission.