A presentation given at the Bruin Tech-a-Thon 2013 mini conference about the NewsScape project.

1. NewsScape, UCLA’s
International Television
News Archive
Kai Chan
BruinTech Tech-a-Thon, November 19, 2013

2. Introduction
• UCLA Library Broadcast NewsScape
• collection of television news
• 42 networks
• 2041 shows
• 211,000 hours
• 263,000 news program

3. Background/History
• analog recording
o since Watergate/1970s
o thousands of tapes
o hard to look for a particular news program or topic

4. Background/History
• digital recording
o since 2005
o digitally record TV news
 UCLA: campus TV feed
 midwest: CWRU
 other countries: Spain, Denmark, Norway, etc.
o download transcripts and web-streamed news
 CNN transcript
 Russia Today, Democracy Now
o download other news material
 campaign ads

5. Background/History
• collaboration with UCLA Library
o since 2012
o copyright protection
o new sources (e.g. Iranian Green Movement)
o current: access from UCLA, campus-wide
o future: access from all UC campuses (and beyond)
• collaboration with other
universities/institutions in U.S. and abroad

6. Applications in Research
• amount of coverage for events over time
• word/phrase choices
• speech and language patterns
• identification of gestures and images
• identification of objects and people
(anchors, public figures)
• story segmentation

7. Applications in Teaching
• Chicano Studies: representation of Latinos
on the Television News
o May 1, 2007 immigration march
o MacArthur Park, Los Angeles, CA
o 2 days (May 1 & 2, 2007)
o framing, stereotyping, metaphor, silencing
o reports with screenshots and links to news stories

8. Applications in Teaching
• Communication Studies: Presidential
Communication
o 2008 presidential primary
o 6 weeks (December 2007 to February 2008)
o coverage of sound bites
o amount of time given to candidate/party
o types of response (positive, neutral, negative)
o students created their own political ad.

9. Types Of Data
• caption
o closed captioning (US)
o teletext (Europe)
• transcript
• video
• image

10. Types Of Data
• metadata
o name-entity
o story segment
o on-screen text
o gesture
o static image

11. Search Engines
• search
o word, phrase, regex
o proximity: words, seconds, same segment
• filter
o date, network, show

12. Search Engines
• sort
o relevance, date
• group/count
o date: year, month, week, day, hour
o network, show
• display
o list, table, chart

13. Search Engines
• NewsScape main site
o http://newsscape.library.ucla.edu
o accessible from UCLA IP addresses (campus/VPN)
o for teaching and learning
• research interface
o login required, restricted
o for research

16. CNN
FOX-News
KABC KNBC
KCBS
MSNBC
Campaign
Ads

17. Al
Jazzeera CNN Comedy
Central
FOX-News
KCBS KNBC
MSNBC

18. 7/14/2013 11/16/2013

19. 7/14/2013 11/16/2013

20. 9/7/2008 12/21/2008

21. 9/7/2008 12/21/2008

22. 7/2011 12/2012

23. 7/2011 12/2012

24. Learning Experiences
• think about who will be using your projects
o make things easy-to-use for all whenever possible
• use the best technology whenever possible
o a lot of great open-source software
o think about extensibility
• talk to people about your projects
o you might be (positively) surprised

25. Conclusion
• start searching:
http://newsscape.library.ucla.edu
• my e-mail:kai@ssc.ucla.edu
• questions?