Panopticum News

In contrast to its past made of ink and paper, digital news is a volatile, lightweight, and ambiguous item. News has absorbed the characteristics and affordances of digital media. These affordances are remodeling the social and cultural role of news and journalism at large. For instance, news articles and snippets are published across platforms, copied, edited, and repurposed. Online news is shape-shifting. It is impossible to talk about the “news flow”, it is more appropriate to talk about “flows” – plural. It is also difficult to account for its volume and boundaries. The quantity of news items published daily is humongous, even concerning one specific outlet, country, or topic. Given these premises, the creation of a comprehensive impression of what is published by news outlets has become a complex endeavor. Taking inspiration from the philosophical concept of the Panopticon – this project explores questions related to these challenges.

Individual news consumption happens at a mesoscopic level. For instance, as readers, we are able to consume one individual article. We absorb the point of view of one author, within the editorial boundaries of one specific news outlet. However, the way digital news is published and archived would allow us to go beyond the boundaries of individual consumption. What happens on different scales? How do certain narratives unfold at a microscopic or macroscopic level? Digital archiving of news allows us to trace the history of a particular topic, author, or news outlet. Are news outlets insular to each other and the topics they discuss? At the same time, the hypertextual nature of web-pages allow us for a granular look into the microscopic dynamics of newspapers. How are certain concepts linked and discussed across several articles? What discourses are converging? Which ones are diverging?

How can visualization make micro, meso, and macro dimensions of news narratives visible?

This main question drives the project and focuses on the discovery of relations between different levels of news publishing. We use data visualization as a method of inquiry to make these levels visible and build meaningful interrelations. Like a panopticon, visualization might be able to observe the observers. In other words, we strive to bring forward the underlying mechanisms of journalism and make them visible. Panopticum News is part of project SPLEE (Streaming Platform für Longreads und Essays aus Europa). SPLEE aims to create a pilot model for a pan-European communication channel that enables access to quality media across national and linguistic borders.