News is no longer made through self-contained works of reporting, but instead often emerges as an ongoing dialog between facts, readers, and multiple media sources. For every news story published, thousands of people will react via comments or social media, and it will often be re-reported by other media outlets (from small blogs to major newspapers). These reactions in turn impact the perceptions of future readers: How do people feel about a story? Do they generally accept its facts, or dismiss them? How is the story shaping public opinion? To understand the true impact of a story, journalists must understand the substance of the discussion it inspires. The goal of this project is to create tools that allow journalists to measure these reactions at scale. The Measuring Public Perception team consists of Ethan Fast and Binbin Chen from Stanford Computer Science.
Measuring Public Perception of Stories in the News2017-2018
