Because the team was using multiple datasets

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The News Measures Research Project web captures provide a unique snapshot of local news in the United States. The work is focused on analyzing the nature of local news coverage at a local level, while also examining the broader nature of local community news. At the local level, the 100 community sample provides a way to look at the nature of local news coverage. Next, a team of coders analyzed content on the archived web pages to assess what is being covered by a given news outlet.

Often, the websites that serve a local community are simply aggregating content from other outlets, rather than providing unique content. The research team was most interested in understanding the degree to which local news outlets are actually reporting on topics that are pertinent to a given community (e.g. local politics). At the global level, the team looked at interaction between community news websites (e.g. sharing of content) as well as automated measures of the amount of coverage.

The primary data for the researchers was the archived local europe cell phone number list community news data, but in addition, the team worked with census data to aggregate other measures such as circulation data for newspapers. These data allowed the team to examine the amount and type of local news changes depending on the characteristics of the community. , the Web data is just one part of the puzzle. The WAT data format proved particularly useful for the team in this regard. Using the WAT file format allowed the team to avoid digging deeply into the data – rather, the WAT data allowed the team to examine high level structure without needing to examine the content of each and every WARC record. Down the road, the WARC data allows for a deeper dive, but the lighter metadata format of the WAT files has enabled early analysis.