NewsViews is a system that automatically generates custom geovisualizations and data visualizations to accompany news articles. It extracts key locations, topics, and time periods from articles and selects relevant data to visualize from a database. The system then automatically creates multiple visualization options, choosing an appropriate format and annotating with additional context. The most relevant and interesting visualization is selected and presented to provide additional context for readers.

1. ACM CHI 2014
NewsViews: An Automated
Pipeline for Creating Custom
Geovisualizations for News

2. Online news is a preferred source of information
among many individuals.

3. Data visualizations can add context to news,
making trends in the article more tangible.

4. Maps are particularly helpful for news articles that
contain mentions of locations. They can orient a user
to unfamiliar locations,

5. and summarize data important to the story.

6. Annotated maps deliver more content with text
explanations of interesting data points.

7. For instance, what data best summarizes the
article topic?
However, the decisions involved with generating a
visualization to accompany an article are complex.

8. Should the visualization focus on data at different
locations, or across different time periods?
What is the best content for creating annotations?
Where should they be placed?

9. There are millions of articles, but professional
news visualization designers are scarce.

10. NewsViews automates a complex news
visualization pipeline, making it possible to scale
visualization creation to large sets of articles.
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11. For example, given an article about obesity in
the U.S., NewsViews presents a map of county-
level obesity rates.

12. Important locations in the article are labeled,
and annotations display content from other
relevant articles about the location and topic.

13. The NewsViews system in action:

14. NewsViews can also generate line graphs, when
an article focuses on comparisons across time.

15. NewsViews works by extracting key features
(places, topics, etc.) from an article, and
selecting relevant “data views” from a table
database.

16. A visualization generator creates multiple
visualizations of each view, including choosing a
visual format and annotating the visualization
with articles from a news corpus.

17. The most relevant and ‘visually interesting’
visualization is then chosen from the set and
presented to the news reader.

18. ACM CHI 2014
NewsViews: An Automated
Pipeline for Creating Custom
Geovisualizations for News