Journalism Ex Machina—Google News Germany and its news selection processes
Journalism Ex Machina—Google News Germany and its news selection processes
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新闻机械姬 - Google 新闻德国及其新闻选择流程
DOI：
10.1080/14616700500057486
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发表时间：
2005
影响因子：
3
通讯作者：
Moritz Kralemann
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
R. Schroeder;Moritz Kralemann
Google News是一个自动化的新闻收集工具，自2002年10月以来，它已经连续观察了全球约4500个新闻来源（Google News，2004）。与其他在线新闻媒体一样，谷歌提供了一系列最重要和最新的故事和发展，包括“世界”，“美国”，“商业”或“娱乐”等典型部分。关键的区别是，新闻选择过程完全由计算机算法进行，使该服务能够检查大约4500个在线新闻来源的网站，并创建一个带有照片和链接到相应媒体网站的挑逗性文章。Google新闻使用的一项关键技术是PageRank，它允许根据网站的重要性和频率对网站进行排序和评估。学者和记者质疑，像谷歌新闻或雅虎！新闻危及专业新闻;有些答案甚至预言了新闻业的终结。但是，由于在线搜索引擎只是搜索，分类，分层和链接到现有的新闻内容网站，记者的工作仍然是不可或缺的。“谁需要编辑？”Google做的。如果没有记者和编辑，谷歌就没有什么可以依靠的，也没有什么可以提供给那些寻求谷歌即时信息的人。没有其他网站，谷歌就不存在“（克雷默，2002）。然而，我们必须考虑搜索引擎提供的新闻服务对新闻多样性的影响。谷歌的算法是保密的，选择过程只能通过比较调查来观察。最近的研究证明，80%的互联网用户在使用Google或Yahoo！等搜索引擎时只关注搜索结果的第一页。（Machill等人，2003年，第255页）。如果这种行为也可以应用于谷歌新闻和其他类似的服务，选择过程将在保持互联网上的信息多样性方面发挥重要作用。如果倾向于受众范围广的强大新闻网站，那么较小和独立的来源实际上将被排除在信息循环之外。作为第一步，这个简短的调查试图发现哪些媒体来源是谷歌新闻最突出的使用。迄今为止，只有少量数据可用，自动化新闻服务对新闻业内新闻设置过程的影响仍然不清楚。根据comscoreMediatric的数据，330万美国人使用谷歌新闻（Cyberjournalist.net，2004 a），而6300万访问者转向谷歌的搜索引擎。Nielsen\\NetRatings在2004年4月声称Google News有750万访问者（Cyberjournalist.net，2004 b）。这些相互矛盾的数字支持一个详细的研究需要。
Google News is an automated news-gathering tool that has continuously observed approximately 4500 news sources world wide (Google News, 2004) since October 2002. Like other online news media, Google offers a selection of the most important and recent stories and developments, including typical sections like ‘‘World’’, ‘‘US’’, ‘‘Business’’ or ‘‘Entertainment’’. The key difference is that the news selection processes are conducted exclusively by computer algorithms that enable the service to check the websites of approximately 4500 online news sources and create a teaser article with photo and a link to the respective media site. A key technology utilized by Google News is the PageRank that allows sorting and evaluating websites by their importance and frequency. Scholars and journalists have questioned whether services like Google News or Yahoo! News jeopardize professional journalism; some of the answers have even predicted the end of journalism. But since the online search engines only search, categorize, hierarchize and link to existing journalistic content sites, the work of journalists remains indispensable. ‘‘Who needs editors? Well, Google does. Without reporters and editors Google has nothing to feed on, nothing to offer the seekers turning to Google for instant pathways to information. Google doesn’t exist without other Web sites’’ (Kramer, 2002). Nevertheless, we have to consider the implications which news services provided by search engines have for journalistic diversity. Google’s algorithms are kept a secret and the selection process can only be observed by comparative surveys. Recent studies prove that 80 per cent of Internet users pay attention to only the first page of search results when using search engines like Google or Yahoo! (Machill et al., 2003, p. 255). If this behavior could also be applied to Google News and other comparable services the selection process will play an important role in maintaining information diversity on the Internet. If powerful news sites with high audience reach were preferred, smaller and independent sources would practically be excluded from the information cycle. As a first step this short survey tries to discover which media sources are most prominently used by Google News. To date, only marginal data are available and the influence of automated news services on the agenda-setting process within the news business remains unclear. According to comscoreMediametrix, 3.3 million Americans used Google News (Cyberjournalist.net, 2004a), while 63 million visitors turned to Google’s search engine. Nielsen\\NetRatings claimed 7.5 million visitors for Google News in April 2004 (Cyberjournalist.net, 2004b). These conflicting numbers support a detailed research need.