Culture: News: Perspective
Venn Diagram Meta-News   (+10, -1)  [vote for, against]

A news website that focuses on presenting comparative summaries of news events as published in different countries or by different interest groups within a country. Textual comparisons would be provided as well as a high-level visualization in the form of a Venn diagram.

I would find this useful for at least two reasons: (1) I interact a lot with people from China, and I find it very useful to understand their perspectives by knowing how events are reported in the Chinese media. And (2), this might often reveal facts about or interpretations of events that are conspicuously (and tellingly) absent from the media in one's own tract of land.

Currently, individuals can put this broader perspective together themselves, by tracking and translating foreign media sources. The idea here, however, is to have a media outlet that provides the service of tracking, translating, and side-by-side comparison.
-- swimswim, May 27 2010

Chomsky often discussed the central theme of your idea http://www.chomsky.info/articles.htm
So this is not what you are looking for but it will make an interesting read with much the same angle. [zeno, May 27 2010]

Flickr: A complicated Venn Diagram http://www.flickr.c...-72157618027570984/
Wow, that's a pretty cool way to show a lot of different fields - it is apparently a method developed by Anthony William Fairbank Edwards. [zen_tom, Jun 01 2010]

Flat Earth News http://www.amazon.c...rtion/dp/0701181451
A concise explanation of why all media peddle the same news stories with the same angles. [wagster, Jun 01 2010]

google? oh wait.
-- po, May 27 2010


//I interact a lot with people from China//

Send some our way, then. We are so low on chinamen we are having to use mexicans in our chinese buffets
-- MikeD, May 27 2010


In America this is baked by the BBC. The language is similar enough so we get the gist of what they are saying.
-- MisterQED, May 28 2010


I have to go the route with [Mr.QuantumElectroDynamics], here. This idea is flour needing kneeding... nothing else, for now. [-]
-- daseva, May 28 2010


[MisterQED] and [daseva], BBC, unless I am mistaken, provides world news; as in news events that happen all around the world. The point of the present idea, however, is to summarize the differences in the *way* news is reported in different areas. E.g. U.S. newspapers highlight that the Cheonan was sunk by a N.Korean torpedo, while Chinese newspapers emphasized the possibility that the found torpedo was a rusty old one from the Korean war. A Venn diagram would quickly highlight such differences to the reader.
-- swimswim, May 28 2010


I always thought he was [MisterQuodEratDemonstrandum]
-- BunsenHoneydew, May 31 2010


All news is Venn. Bullet overlaps with man. Airplane intersects ground. Safety net fails to intersect trapezist.
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 31 2010


No news is Zen. Tree falls in forest, makes sound.
-- rcarty, May 31 2010


We need a "draw cartoon" option here on the HB, as well as the "annotate" option. I see a motorbike with two large and overlapping wheels, and the caption "Venn and the art of motorcycle maintenance."
-- MaxwellBuchanan, May 31 2010


How far outside of the loop would Fox News be?
-- RayfordSteele, May 31 2010


I've been thinking recently about how Venn diagrams could contribute to replacing or augmenting hierarchial file systems and how you might be able to do a Venn diagram navigation GUI. Nothing very low level but I'm optimistic that such a thing could be created and that it would be useful.

However such an approach triggers my "has been baked" senses, other people must have worked on such a GUI.
-- Aristotle, Jun 01 2010


I don't know if it has [A] I have seen implementations of Graphical Query Languages - but they were all about clicking on entity diagrams and typing in filter criteria. A graphical Venn UI would be interesting, but I suspect unworkable as people tend to consider their files as discrete, atomic entities, while a Venn diagramm is a much more field-like affair - perhaps, having carved out the population you are interested in, you could double-click to see what that population contains. Another challenge, once you start getting past 5 different criteria, they might start looking ugly as well [edit: I take that back, I've just added a link to a Venn diagram with a large number of areas that looks like it might have been generated formulaically - and which looks rather good]

Oh, and [MB] Venn and the Art... is a fabulous idea for a cartoon.
-- zen_tom, Jun 01 2010


Me and my barber cooked up a very similar idea the other day (we stopped at the textual stuff, though diagrams would be good) - I just hadn't got around to Googling for it's current existence.

//In America this is baked by the BBC.// Oh dear. If you have to go to the BBC as a balance to CNN you are in trouble. It's pretty much the same I'm afraid. I watch Al-Jazeera (English language version) to get another perspective. It is no less biased, but at least different. There is no unbiased global news - it's not even possible. A global news dashboard like this would be the only option.

Read Nick Davies excellent "Flat Earth News" for a clear analysis of the problem (link).
-- wagster, Jun 01 2010


The problem with Venn diagrams for {files structures, news stories} is that they would work best if the tagging it relied on were universal, reliable and ubiquitous. Structured, usual and consistent tagging would probably need the muscle of a wikipedia-type venture along with the attendent contraversy and bickering.

To confidently look at the set of all massacres and/or birthday pictures you would have to be sure that everything is correctly tagged, for example.

Could it automatically be made pretty? Looking at current progress at attempts to auto layout other designs such a business process re-engineering diagrams (I could be showing my age here) could show the state of the art.
-- Aristotle, Jun 01 2010


I see logic behid the previous jokes as being Venn in nature.

(V(enn ne)Z)
-- rcarty, Jun 01 2010



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