Browser Plugin Helps People Balance Their Political News Reading Habits
From the post:
As the U.S. presidential election approaches, many voters become voracious consumers of online political news. A tool by a University of Washington researcher tracks whether all those articles really provide a balanced view of the debate — and, if not, suggests some sites that offer opinions from the other side of the political spectrum.
Balancer (http://balancestudy.org/balancer/), a free plug-in for Google’s Chrome browser, was developed this summer by Sean Munson, a new UW assistant professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering. The tool analyzes a person’s online reading habits for a month and calculates the political bias in that behavior. It then suggests sites that represent a different point of view and continues to monitor reading behavior and offer feedback.
“I was a bit surprised when I was testing out the tool to learn just how slanted my own reading behavior was,” Munson said. “Even self-discovery is a valuable outcome, just being aware of your own behavior. If you do agree that you should be reading the other side, or at least aware of the dialogue in each camp, you can use it as a goal: Can I be more balanced this week than I was last week?”
The tool classifies more than 10,000 news websites and sections of news websites on a spectrum ranging from far left to far right, using results of previous studies and existing media-bias indices. For a few popular sites the tool also tries to classify individual columnists whose views may be different from those of the overall publication’s slant.
If you think being “informed,” as opposed to owning a stable of elected officials, makes a difference, this is the plugin for you.
The same principle could monitor your technical reading, to keep your reading a mixture of classic and new material.
A service that maps across terminology differences to send you the latest research could be quite useful.
So you would not have to put forth all that effort to remain current.