scholarly journals Earthquake Information Extraction and Comparison from Different Sources Based on Web Text

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (6) ◽  
pp. 252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xuehua Han ◽  
Juanle Wang

Web text, using natural language to describe a disaster event, contains a considerable amount of disaster information. Automatic extraction from web text of this disaster information (e.g., time, location, casualties, and disaster losses) is an important supplement to conventional disaster monitoring data. This study extracted and compared the characteristics of earthquake disaster information from web news media reports (news reports) and online disaster reduction agency reports (professional reports). Using earthquakes in China from 2015 to 2017 as a case study, a series of rules were created for extracting earthquake event information, including temporal extraction rules, a location trigger dictionary, and an attribute trigger dictionary. The differences in characteristics of news reports and professional reports were investigated in terms of their quantity and spatiotemporal distribution through statistical analysis, geocoding, and kernel density estimation. The information extracted from each set of reports was also compared with authoritative data. The results indicated that news reports are more extensive and have richer information. In contrast, professional reports are less repetitive as well as more accurate and standardized, mainly focusing on earthquakes with Ms ≥ 4 and/or earthquakes that may cause damage. These characteristics of disaster information from different web texts sources can be used to improve the efficiency and analysis of disaster information extraction. In addition, the rule-based approach proposed herein was found to be an accurate and viable way to extract earthquake information from web texts. The approach provided the technical basics and background information to support further research seeking human-centric disaster information, which cannot be acquired using traditional instrument monitoring methods, from web text.

2007 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephannie C Roy ◽  
Guy Faulkner ◽  
Sara-Jane Finlay

Abstract: This natural-history approach to investigating media reports concerning health can reveal the complex process whereby health research becomes news. Using television and newspaper reports of a press event taken from a larger project, this article examines the inception and mediation of obesity research in the Canadian news media. By exploring questionnaire data, a media release, telephone interviews with journalists, and news reports, we can better understand the meaning making that occurs at all levels in the communications process. We conclude that there is an interdependent and possibly problematic relationship between health sources and journalists that shapes the inception and mediation of obesity research and the translation of health research to the public. Résumé : Cette approche, qui a recours à l’histoire naturelle pour investiguer les reportages sur la santé, peut révéler le processus complexe selon lequel la recherche dans le domaine de la santé devient une nouvelle. En utilisant des reportages de télévision et de journaux sur un événement de presse provenant d’un plus grand projet, cet article examine l’origine et la médiation de la recherche sur l’obésité dans les médias canadiens. Au moyen de données de questionnaire, d’un communiqué de presse, d’entrevues téléphoniques avec des journalistes et de rapports de nouvelles, nous pouvons mieux comprendre la création de sens qui a lieu à tous les niveaux du processus de communication. Nous concluons qu’il y a un rapport d’interdépendance peut-être problématique entre les experts en santé et les journalistes qui influence l’orientation et la médiation de la recherche sur l’obésité et la présentation au public de la recherche dans le domaine de la santé.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Liu ◽  
Zequan Zheng ◽  
Jiabin Zheng ◽  
Qiuyi Chen ◽  
Guan Liu ◽  
...  

BACKGROUND In December 2019, a few coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Soon after, increasing numbers of cases were detected in other parts of China, eventually leading to a disease outbreak in China. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus, such as its pathogenesis, spread, prevention, and containment. OBJECTIVE The aim of this study was to collect media reports on COVID-19 and investigate the patterns of media-directed health communications as well as the role of the media in this ongoing COVID-19 crisis in China. METHODS We adopted the WiseSearch database to extract related news articles about the coronavirus from major press media between January 1, 2020, and February 20, 2020. We then sorted and analyzed the data using Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number with evidence of the coherence number. We operated latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with a suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We then divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into a 2D plane via multidimensional scaling. RESULTS After removing duplications and irrelevant reports, our search identified 7791 relevant news reports. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as the number of topics and generated the topics’ themes and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine main primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three most popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, and global or local social and economic influences, accounting for 32.57% (n=2538), 16.08% (n=1258), and 11.79% (n=919) of the collected reports, respectively. CONCLUSIONS Topic modeling of news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. Comparing the number of articles for each day and the outbreak development, we noted that mass media news reports in China lagged behind the development of COVID-19. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society rather than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide issue, and society has become concerned about donations and support as well as mental health among others. We recommend that future work addresses the mass media’s actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.


2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (8) ◽  
pp. 1437-1461 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Baugut ◽  
Katharina Neumann

This study is the first to explore the twin influences of online propaganda and news media on Islamists. We conducted 44 in-depth interviews with cognitively and behaviorally radicalized Islamist prisoners in Austria as well as former Islamists in Germany and Austria. We found that online propaganda and news media had interdependent influences on Islamists’ rejections of non-Muslims and Western politics, as well as on their willingness to use violence and commit suicide. Cognitively radicalized individuals were influenced by propaganda that blamed non-Muslims for opposing Islam; this was reinforced by online mainstream news reports of right-wing populism and extremism that propagandists selectively distributed via social media. Among behaviorally radicalized individuals, exposure to propaganda and news reports depicting Muslim war victims contributed to the radicalized individuals’ willingness to use violence. Moreover, propaganda and media reports that extensively personalized perpetrators of violence strengthened radicalized individuals’ motivations to imitate the use of violence.


2020 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard Wong ◽  
Lyon Tan ◽  
Rachel Wong ◽  
Su Lin Yeo

PurposeThe overnight introduction of tens of thousands of dockless bike-share bicycles in Singapore with its indiscriminate parking drew the attention of the media, which generated extensive news reports on the activities carried out by bike-sharing operators. Given the meteoric rise and fall of the industry, this study examines the influence of agenda-setting of news reporting on the public’s perception of the industry and the impact on the firms’ corporate reputation.Design/methodology/approachUtilizing the Reputation Quotient Index, the study content analyzed 147 textual data of online reports which were crawled over two years between 2017 and 2018 from six mainstream news organizations.FindingsOur findings showed that the news reports carried more negative frames in the headlines and body content. It also found that only five out of six dimensions of the Index were emphasized with varying degrees of importance, indicating that the corporate reputation as determined by the media reports did not collectively represent the operators’ past actions and results with valued outcomes.Practical implicationsPractical implications discussed included the need to integrate corporate strategies into public relations programs and the importance of engaging the media to demonstrate congruence between business objectives and positive social impact on society.Originality/valueAlthough the study limited its data collection only to online media reports, it is one of the few research to provide empirical evidence concerning the media’s influence on the public’s perceptions and reputation of the nascent bike-sharing industry.


2019 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 44-51
Author(s):  
Meenadchi Mohanachandran

The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyze the racial undertones found in the news media reports on the West Africa Ebola outbreak of 2013 to 2016, focusing mainly on the portrayal of North American cases on television. As with many political activist issues, the first step to making a change for the better is recognizing exactly where the errors are made. Through the analysis of news reports posted by CityNews and The National, the paper identifies four critical themes: Othering, Them versus Us, and the impact of Visualization. Othering is the process of alienating the Black community from the rest of the population as the leading responsible factor for Ebola. This creates a dilemma of Them (the Black community) versus Us (the general population) that exasperates the already existing racial tensions. All of which is done not only by what is expressed by the reporters, but what is shown on the screen as part of the news story. This is evidence of systemic institutional racism in the media industry. By understanding the key reoccurring themes of racism found in the event of an epidemic, society can be better prepared to confront the situation when it arises again.  


2019 ◽  
Vol 09 (4) ◽  
pp. 67-79
Author(s):  
A.A. Khoroshilov ◽  
Y.D. Kozlovskaya ◽  
R.R. Mussabayev ◽  
A.M. Krassovitsky ◽  
A.A. Khoroshilov

The article describes the solution of the task of creating linguistic tools and the methodology of automatic determination of the tonality of news reports related to the quality of life of an ordinary citizen of the Republic of Kazakhstan. The approach for solving the problem was defined, software and methods of automated creation of object dictionaries and evaluation predicate dictionaries, as well as evaluation measure modifier dictionaries were developed. The experiment confirmed the correctness of the proposed methodology for assessing events covered in news reports and the operability of the software complex. This technique, with appropriate selection of event assessment objects, can be used in creating tonal portraits of specific authors on the set of their publications, as well as tonal portraits of various news aggregates on the set of events they cover in a particular time interval.


10.2196/19118 ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. e19118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qian Liu ◽  
Zequan Zheng ◽  
Jiabin Zheng ◽  
Qiuyi Chen ◽  
Guan Liu ◽  
...  

Background In December 2019, a few coronavirus disease (COVID-19) cases were first reported in Wuhan, Hubei, China. Soon after, increasing numbers of cases were detected in other parts of China, eventually leading to a disease outbreak in China. As this dreadful disease spreads rapidly, the mass media has been active in community education on COVID-19 by delivering health information about this novel coronavirus, such as its pathogenesis, spread, prevention, and containment. Objective The aim of this study was to collect media reports on COVID-19 and investigate the patterns of media-directed health communications as well as the role of the media in this ongoing COVID-19 crisis in China. Methods We adopted the WiseSearch database to extract related news articles about the coronavirus from major press media between January 1, 2020, and February 20, 2020. We then sorted and analyzed the data using Python software and Python package Jieba. We sought a suitable topic number with evidence of the coherence number. We operated latent Dirichlet allocation topic modeling with a suitable topic number and generated corresponding keywords and topic names. We then divided these topics into different themes by plotting them into a 2D plane via multidimensional scaling. Results After removing duplications and irrelevant reports, our search identified 7791 relevant news reports. We listed the number of articles published per day. According to the coherence value, we chose 20 as the number of topics and generated the topics’ themes and keywords. These topics were categorized into nine main primary themes based on the topic visualization figure. The top three most popular themes were prevention and control procedures, medical treatment and research, and global or local social and economic influences, accounting for 32.57% (n=2538), 16.08% (n=1258), and 11.79% (n=919) of the collected reports, respectively. Conclusions Topic modeling of news articles can produce useful information about the significance of mass media for early health communication. Comparing the number of articles for each day and the outbreak development, we noted that mass media news reports in China lagged behind the development of COVID-19. The major themes accounted for around half the content and tended to focus on the larger society rather than on individuals. The COVID-19 crisis has become a worldwide issue, and society has become concerned about donations and support as well as mental health among others. We recommend that future work addresses the mass media’s actual impact on readers during the COVID-19 crisis through sentiment analysis of news data.


Author(s):  
Michael B. Munnik

Muslims are a subsidiary concern for religion reporting in Scotland’s news media. If journalists must cover religion, issues pertaining to Christian sectarianism still occupy a central focus, although, as more Scots identify with no religion, news reports take on a memorialising tone, marking religion’s decline. Sometimes these storylines merge, as was the case with the biggest religion story in the news during my research about Muslims and the news media in Scotland: the revelation of the sexual abuse of several priests by Cardinal Keith O’Brien (Deveney, 2013). The dominant Scottish story overall was the preparation for the referendum on independence. Muslims played a humble part in coverage of the second story and no part at all in the first.


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Sparks ◽  
Heather Hodges ◽  
Sarah Oliver ◽  
Eric R. A. N. Smith

In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims to believe? This is a question we address by drawing on the psychology of persuasion. We propose the hypothesis that people are more likely to believe local scientists than national or international scientists. We test this hypothesis with an experiment embedded in a national Internet survey. Our experiment yielded null findings, showing that people do not discount or ignore research findings on climate change if they come from Europe instead of Washington-based scientists or a leading university in a respondent’s home state. This reinforces evidence that climate change beliefs are relatively stable, based on party affiliation, and not malleable based on the source of the scientific report.


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yating Yu ◽  
Mark Nartey

Although the Chinese media’s construction of unmarried citizens as ‘leftover’ has incited much controversy, little research attention has been given to the ways ‘leftover men’ are represented in discourse. To fill this gap, this study performs a critical discourse analysis of 65 English language news reports in Chinese media to investigate the predominant gendered discourses underlying representations of leftover men and the discursive strategies used to construct their identities. The findings show that the media perpetuate a myth of ‘protest masculinity’ by suggesting that poor, single men may become a threat to social harmony due to the shortage of marriageable women in China. Leftover men are represented as poor men, troublemakers and victims via discursive processes that include referential, predicational and aggregation strategies as well as metaphor. This study sheds light on the issues and concerns of a marginalised group whose predicament has not been given much attention in the literature.


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