Emerging Content Requirements for News Products : Emerging Content Requirements for News Products Howard Williams
February 28, 2004
IA Summit
Presentation Topics : Presentation Topics Current trends in online news
Design issues for presentation of news content
Reading & learning the news
Personalization & summarization
Explanation & framing the news
Emerging content requirements
Enabling technologies
Content management
Slide3 : Reading
the News Online News Text Processing
w/ News Corpus IR / AI ? Internet Capabilities Information Architecture Reading & Learning
Current Trends in Online News : Current Trends in Online News Media convergence w/ multiple delivery channels
News portals, content aggregation & syndication services
Web-based capabilities w/ multimedia
News monitoring & alert services
Personalization based on reader profiles
Interactive features and reader services
Enriched text & metadata for indexing & retrieval
XML-based specifications for content representation
Sophisticated categorization of news content
Advanced search & retrieval capabilities
Extensive use of news briefs (summaries)
Domain specific applications (e.g., financial news)
Information Architecture for News Content : Information Architecture for News Content Poynter Eyetrack (early 90’s) - print
Stanford-Poynter Eyetrack (late 90’s) - online
Redesigning Print for the Web (Mario Garcia)
Reading online news
Web information design
Story structure
Typography
Color
Reading the News : Reading the News Scanning & skimming is common
Eyes gravitate toward visuals (print)
Eyes gravitate toward text (online)
Summaries often hold readers’ attention
Headline level knowledge is typical
Most of what’s written isn’t read!
Observations : Observations User-centric design
Exploiting potential of unread text
Extracting economic value from content
Variables of usability that impact reading & learning
Reading & Learning : Reading & Learning Text can be enhanced for readability & recall
Summaries are good surrogates
What readers learn is influenced by prior knowledge, goals & strategies
Readers benefit from clear, explicit connections between events in a story
Readers look for “why” & “how” information: causes & effects; motives, goals & beliefs of people
In their absence, readers make inferences based on their own knowledge (“mental models”)
News Reading as Inference : News Reading as Inference Main Parties Boycott Ivory Coast Vote Coup Leader's Candidacy Condemned by U.S., OAU
ABIDJAN, Ivory Coast, Oct. 22 –– Residents of this once-stable West African
country voted today in a disputed presidential election that pitted military leader
Gen. Robert Guei against mostly unknown civilians. The ballot was boycotted by
the two main parties and condemned by the international community as not
being free and fair. Voter turnout appeared to be extremely light throughout this
city of 2 million and across most of Ivory Coast, and there were no reports of
violence. Results are expected Monday. The stability of Ivory Coast,
sub-Saharan Africa's third-largest economy, is of growing concern to West Africa,
already racked by a festering civil war in nearby Sierra Leone, new fighting in
Liberia and growing tension in Guinea.
10 Paragraphs Later … : 10 Paragraphs Later … Ivory Coast was stable and relatively prosperous under Houphouet-Boigny,
its first president and national icon, who ruled from independence from
France in 1960 until his death in 1993. Under Guei, the military mutinied twice,
demanding pay raises that have left the country unable to service its foreign debt.
He has also tried to capitalize on anti-foreigner sentiments fueled by the slumping
economy. Immigrants from surrounding countries, who were welcomed by
Houphouet-Boigny, now make up about 40 percent of Ivory Coast's estimated
16 million inhabitants.
Enhancing Presentation Value of News Content : Enhancing Presentation Value of News Content Illustrated News (photos + headlines)
Highlighting main ideas
Information chunking
Easy to locate explanatory information
Headers that signal function
Summarization of essential points
Explicit story connections Writing stories vs. Re-presentation of stories vs. Generation of
news products derived from large text databases & multiple sources.
Slide17 : Presentation Content Text Domain
Knowledge
Slide20 : Bush to pose changes to immigration law for Mexicans
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush is proposing to let foreign workers who have U.S. jobs waiting for them enter America — a move designed to help repair relations with Mexico and capture Latino voters in this year's election.
Virtually silent on the immigration issue for two years, Bush was
working Tuesday on remarks he will make about immigration on Wednesday afternoon at the White House to about 150 people active in immigration issues.
White House press secretary Scott McClellan would not say whether the
president would announce a detailed proposal, or general outlines of a
proposal to match willing foreign workers, mostly from Mexico, with
receptive U.S. employers. There are an estimated 10 million undocumented workers in the United States, as many as half of them from Mexico.
"It's the issue of what he's talked about before — about matching willing
workers with willing employers where there are jobs that Americans are
not interested in filling," McClellan said. "That's an economic need that exists. It's important that we have a fair immigration policy and an immigration policy that addresses those economic needs."
Domain Knowledge – Reader Questions : Domain Knowledge – Reader Questions Who is George Bush?
What are his motivations to change immigration law?
What is the problem?
Why do foreign workers want U.S. jobs?
Why do U.S. employers hire foreign workers?
Why is this change being proposed now?
Who will benefit from the changes?
What is the background to the issue?
How does this impact U.S. workers?
What are the underlying economic issues?
Slide22 : Presentation Content Personalization
Summarization
Explanation
Framing
Personalization : Personalization Response to increasing volumes of info (filter out) and consumer preferences (filter in)
Profiles predicated on good user modeling
Breadth of variables (subject, source, location, display, editorial views, format, readability, learning style, detail of explanation, level of summarization, etc.)
Depth of variables (coarse-grain to fine-grain)
Fine-grain profiles are difficult to implement; community coarse-grain preferred to personalized fine-grain
Summarization : Summarization Response to info overload & consumer needs
Commonly used, wide reader appeal
Includes headlines (single, multi-deck), leads
Result of good writing & copy editing
High volume, automatic generation at multiple levels, from multiple sources, for multiple purposes
Basic model extracts and ranks sentences according to feature-based criteria
Creating purposeful summaries is a non-trivial task; NLP required to smooth results
Explanation : Explanation Answers “why” and “how”
Often lacking, inadequate or buried in text
Good explanations answer reader questions, and some are predictable
Background (history, timeline)
Causes & functional mechanisms (“how things work”)
Beliefs, motives & goals of actors
Good explanations reduce the reader’s inferential burden (explicit, not implicit; easy to read)
Relevant content needs to be “surfaced”
Slide30 : Foreign trade deficit falls slightly
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:35 a.m. ET Dec. 16, 2003
The deficit in the nation's broadest measure of
foreign trade fell slightly to $135.04 billion this summer
after setting an all-time high in the spring, the Commerce
Department said Tuesday. The drop in the current account
trade deficit in the July-September quarter reflected a 3.1
percent improvement from a record quarterly deficit of
$139.39 billion set in the April-June period. Even with the
small improvement in the third quarter, the country is well
on its way to setting an all-time record deficit for the year
of more than $500 billion in the current account. The current
account is the broadest measure of trade because it covers
not only trade in goods and services but also investment
earnings and foreign aid. The country's soaring trade deficit
has proven to be a major political headache for President Bush
with his Democratic presidential opponents charging that the
record deficits reflect the administration's failed economic policies.
The improvement in the current account balance in the July-September
period reflected a better showing in all of the major categories.
Slide31 : Foreign trade deficit falls slightly
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:35 a.m. ET Dec. 16, 2003
The deficit in the nation's broadest measure of
foreign trade fell slightly to $135.04 billion this summer
after setting an all-time high in the spring, the Commerce
Department said Tuesday. The drop in the current account
trade deficit in the July-September quarter reflected a 3.1
percent improvement from a record quarterly deficit of
$139.39 billion set in the April-June period. Even with the
small improvement in the third quarter, the country is well
on its way to setting an all-time record deficit for the year
of more than $500 billion in the current account. The current
account is the broadest measure of trade because it covers
not only trade in goods and services but also investment
earnings and foreign aid. The country's soaring trade deficit
has proven to be a major political headache for President Bush
with his Democratic presidential opponents charging that the
record deficits reflect the administration's failed economic policies.
The improvement in the current account balance in the July-September period reflected a better showing in all of the major categories.
Slide32 : Foreign trade deficit falls slightly
The Associated Press
Updated: 11:35 a.m. ET Dec. 16, 2003
The deficit in the nation's broadest measure of
foreign trade fell slightly to $135.04 billion this summer
after setting an all-time high in the spring, the Commerce
Department said Tuesday. The drop in the current account
trade deficit in the July-September quarter reflected a 3.1
percent improvement from a record quarterly deficit of
$139.39 billion set in the April-June period. Even with the
small improvement in the third quarter, the country is well
on its way to setting an all-time record deficit for the year
of more than $500 billion in the current account. The current
account is the broadest measure of trade because it covers
not only trade in goods and services but also investment
earnings and foreign aid. The country's soaring trade deficit
has proven to be a major political headache for President Bush
with his Democratic presidential opponents charging that the
record deficits reflect the administration's failed economic policies.
The improvement in the current account balance in the July-September
period reflected a better showing in all of the major categories.
A trade deficit occurs when imports
are greater than exports. The balance of payments for a country
is separated into two main accounts:
the current account and the capital
account. The current account records
sales and purchases of goods, services
and interest payments. The entire
merchandise trade balance is contained
in the current account.
Framing the News : Framing the News Frames (themes, news plots) simplify complex events
“Conflict”
“Horse Race”
“Personality”
Institutional forces at work
Underlying messages and sources of bias (e.g., “crime”)
Frame Mental
Model Filtering without design!
Game Theory Model as Frame : Game Theory Model as Frame Goal is to preserve event complexity
Game models applied to “real world” events
Structures of the model provide basis of frame
Players
Rules
Strategic options
Payoffs
Preferences
Goals & motivations
Relevant content needs to be “surfaced”
Variable for consumer preference (as is “liberal” or “conservative”) Again, we could write
the story this way, or
re-present it, but we’re
mostly interested in how
we could generate products
from large text databases &
multiple sources.
Emerging Content Requirements : Emerging Content Requirements Content is multi-purpose
Identify or derive features & structures; apply & use for various purposes (e.g. categorization)
Features & structures might include:
Main ideas
Cause-and-effect statements
Arguments
Historical, biographical, geographical content
Timelines
Analogies or similar events
Novel information on events or topics …and more.
Enabling Technologies : Enabling Technologies ASIST; SIGIR; MUC, TIPSTER, TREC
KR, NLP & IR approaches
Information extraction
Text mining
Text categorization
Topic/event/novelty detection
Profiling & filtering
Question answering
Summarization
XML : XML NITF (News Industry Text Format)
Enriched text elements
NewsML
Content syndication (RSS, ICE)
PRISM Standards help to reduce costs through a
content value-chain and may help to develop
new products.
Content Management : Content Management News
Sources Books,
Etc. KB Content processing Value-added
processing Not a workflow!
Slide39 : Content
Requirements Supporting
Capabilities Business Model
Slide40 : Howard Williams
Colorado Springs, CO
719-651-8852
howard_williams@mindspring.com Thank You!