news websites research paper

People also looked at

Mini review article, the role of blogs and news sites in science communication during the covid-19 pandemic.

• 1 R&D Department, TIB – Leibniz Information Centre for Science and Technology, Hannover, Germany
• 2 Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University, Leiden, Netherlands
• 3 Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, Netherlands

We present a brief review of literature related to blogs and news sites; our focus is on publications related to COVID-19. We primarily focus on the role of blogs and news sites in disseminating research on COVID-19 to the wider public, that is knowledge transfer channels. The review is for researchers and practitioners in scholarly communication and social media studies of science who would like to find out more about the role of blogs and news sites during the COVID-19 pandemic. From our review, we see that blogs and news sites are widely used as scholarly communication channels and are closely related to each other. That is, the same research might be reported in blogs and news sites at the same time. They both play a particular role in higher education and research systems, due to the increasing blogging and science communication activity of researchers and higher education institutions (HEIs). We conclude that these two media types have been playing an important role for a long time in disseminating research, which even increased during the COVID-19 pandemic. This can be verified, for example, through knowledge graphs on COVID-19 publications that contain a significant amount of scientific publications mentioned in blogs and news sites.

Introduction

Blogs are important channels for dissemination of research ( Woolston and Brown, 2018 ; Ross-Hellauer et al., 2020 ) and are increasingly created by various organizations, such as learned societies, universities, departments, and individual researchers. Blogging about research is considered as part of outreach activities by researchers, universities, and research-performing organizations ( Cameron et al., 2016 ; Alperin et al., 2019 ). This could be influenced by the fact that higher education institutions are usually evaluated to a certain extent based on their online visibility ( Aguillo et al., 2008 ; Belli and Gonzalo-Penela, 2020 ). Furthermore, media mentions of scholars are considered as an additional indicator for some rankings in higher education, particularly in specific academic disciplines, such as economics and business studies ( BMBF, 2018 ). Discussions on the values and limits of these rankings are outside the scope of this review.

However, a vast amount of content is generated in blogs. As of January 2022, WordPress users generated 70 million new blog posts and 77 million new comments each month and “over 409 million people view more than 20 billion (WordPress) pages each month” ( WordPress, 2022 ). WordPress is only one possible way to publish blogs among many other blog publishing tools, and it is an illustration of the wide use of blogs. In addition to blogs, news sites play an important role in science communication particularly by the typical mentioning of research outputs by journalists ( NAS, 2017 ).

In this mini review, we frame blogs and news sites as scholarly knowledge transfer channels for the general public. This topic gains importance due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, as of January 2022 ( WHO, 2022 ). Due to the far-reaching impact of research on the pandemic and vice-versa, it is, therefore, crucial to provide an example of how a fraction of knowledge on this essential topic is transferred online to the wider public. Such an analysis can be of relevance for several stakeholders, for example, researchers from various academic disciplines, science communicators, policymakers, and the wider public. Thus, the purpose of this review is to provide an overview on COVID-19 research and two altmetric sources as science communication outlets, namely blogs and news sites. To put blogs and news sites as altmetric sources into context, we also reviewed literature that had been published before the COVID-19 pandemic. We selected literature from relevant journals, conferences, and workshops in scientometrics, and enriched this review with further reports and websites on the topic.

An overview on blogs and news sites as altmetric sources

Altmetric aggregators track the interaction of diverse audiences with research outputs across various data sources, such as online social networks (OSNs), news sites, and policy documents. Initially proposed in the so-called Altmetrics Manifesto in 2010 by Priem et al. (2010) , these online events are nowadays captured and collected by altmetric data aggregators. Altmetric.com is one of the largest altmetric data aggregators in terms of its use in scientific publications and studies. Other aggregators include Crossref Event Data (CED), PlumX , and the US Public Library of Science's (PLOS) article-level metrics (ALM) , while other open-source projects developed visualizations of altmetrics ( Hauschke et al., 2018 ).

Curated lists of blogs are tracked by several altmetric data aggregators, for example, Altmetric.com and PlumX. There is a distinction between blogs and microblogs, which refers to online social networks such as Twitter ( Bornmann and Haunschild, 2018 ). Surprisingly, due to the high amount of news that is shared on Twitter, the online social network was even considered as news media itself ( Kwak et al., 2010 ). Scholars have also investigated how news coverage of research outputs is related to citation rates, for example, in specific academic disciplines, such as biomedicine ( Dumas-Mallet et al., 2020 ).

Altmetrics as knowledge transfer channels

In general, medicine belongs to one of the main subject categories in Altmetric.com, CED, and PlumX with regards to news and blog sources ( Ortega, 2020 ). As this subject also includes research on COVID-19, it might be promising to study blogs and news sites as knowledge transfer channels. Altmetrics as knowledge transfer channels were discussed at an international conference in 2019, and we adopted this term for this review ( Ortega and Esquinas, 2019 ).

The similarity of topics from scientific publications (e.g. in the research area of Big Data) that are mentioned across various Altmetric.com sources, such as in blogs and news sites, is another area of interest for scholars ( Lyu and Costas, 2021 ). Additionally, a study has been carried out to calculate the time that it takes until a registered Digital Object Identifier (DOI) from the bibliographic database Crossref is reported for the first time in an Altmetric.com source. Blogs and news sites seem to be among the altmetric sources, where such a report happens relatively fast compared to other sources, that is “within the first few days after publication” ( Fang and Costas, 2020 ).

There might be multiple reasons for mentioning a research output in a blog post and a news article, and these reasons can even differ within the same blog or news site. For example, the research outputs mentioned in the news media based on their value is a research topic in journalism studies ( Badenschier and Wormer, 2012 ; Tunger et al., 2018 ; Prados-Bo and Casino, 2021 ). Another topic of interest is how users select news and how this selection can be influenced ( van der Sluis et al., 2012 ). The way in which the media reports about COVID-19 is a topic of interest in several studies, for example, to find out how preprint research is described by news outlets ( Fleerackers et al., 2021 ).

The relation of blogs and news sites as altmetric sources

Furthermore, the coverage of different altmetric data aggregators varies, and they track different lists of blogs and news sites. Due to such differences among altmetric data aggregators, their coverage has been compared in several research projects ( Zahedi and Costas, 2018 ). Generally speaking, blogs and news sites are closely related, for example, the content that is used in blogs often stems from news sites ( Nuernbergk, 2014 ). There are also several examples, where a certain topic was first discussed on a blog, and later picked up by news sites, or where bloggers fact checked the content of news sites ( Scott, 2008 ), an evaluation that is also called gatewatching ( Bruns, 2016 ). While this led to a transformation of how news are reported, some hurdles still exist ( Bruns, 2016 ). For example, bloggers need to set up their own blog or join an existing blog as an author ( Bruns, 2016 ). Another requirement is to constantly provide new blog posts for a longer period ( Bruns, 2016 ). What is more, the distinction between blogs and news sites is not always crystal clear, as blogs that report news are also sometimes called news blogs ( Bruns, 2016 ). Furthermore, blogs are not a genre as such, but rather consist of several sub-genres ( Lomborg, 2009 ). Another type of blog only disseminates articles of interest from other sources ( Bruns, 2016 ), and such types of blogs are typically also included as altmetric sources. Concerning blogs, evaluation of other sources and dissemination of information seems to be more common practices than reporting ( Bruns, 2016 ). News sites also exchange articles with each other. Going back in time, this exchange started as early as in the seventeenth century, when the first printed gazettes in Europe developed a way of exchanging information ( Colavizza et al., 2015 ).

Considering the relevance of blogs, a content analysis of these altmetric sources has been suggested by scholars ( Shema et al., 2015 ; Barata, 2018 ; Fraumann, 2020 ), an approach that is also used to study other altmetric sources, such as Twitter ( Araújo, 2020 ). This approach entails the identification of communities of attention ( Haustein et al., 2015 ), that is, a network of users that engage with a research output online, for example, by retweeting it. Several studies have been carried out to unveil the underlying data on blogs that also contribute to altmetric counts ( Shema et al., 2014 , 2015 ; Fraumann et al., 2015 ; Barata, 2018 ).

Additionally, another study compared the mentions of publications on blogs and news sites among three altmetric data aggregators, namely PlumX, Altmetric.com, and Crossref Event Data (CED) ( Ortega, 2020 ). CED also provides an Application Programming Interface (API) that may be used by others to build their own scientometric data services ( Hauschke et al., 2018 ). Publications on blogs and news sites seem to be mentioned less frequently compared to other altmetric sources, and Altmetric.com has the highest coverage compared to the other data aggregators ( Ortega, 2020 ). The variance between altmetric data aggregators in altmetric sources, such as blogs and news sites, fuels an ongoing debate in scientometrics ( Bar-Ilan et al., 2019 ). Unlike PlumX and CED, Altmetric.com seems to be the only one that captures older events, that is, links to blogs as early as 2005 ( Ortega, 2019 ). Data aggregators, such as Altmetric.com, decide on the sources to be included in their coverage ( Meschede and Siebenlist, 2018 ), and thus, control the information flow as gatekeepers, which can also be observed in other networks ( Belardinelli, 2019 ). Nevertheless, Altmetric.com also provides the possibility for users to suggest news sites, blogs, public Facebook pages, and YouTube channels as additional data sources via an online form 1 , as of 17 January 2022. According to Tunger et al. (2018) , there is a need to include more altmetric sources that relate to economy or policy areas.

Availability of data sources during the COVID-19 pandemic

Our literature review focused on studies that discuss blogs and news sites as altmetric sources. The global health crisis led to new research initiatives from several disciplines. For example, public datasets are being studied, such as publications on COVID-19 and the previous coronavirus publications from a scientometric perspective ( Porter et al., 2020 ; Colavizza et al., 2021 ); existing knowledge graphs are being extended ( Turki et al., 2021 ); or sentiment analysis on science news are being conducted ( Ferreira et al., 2020 ). Meta-research on COVID-19 is considered as an emerging research field, given its impact on research and researchers around the world ( Colavizza, 2021 ). In general, the response of academia to public health crises is a research topic in scientometrics ( Zhang et al., 2020 ), while the role of open access and international scientific collaboration during such emergencies has been discussed in several studies ( Belli et al., 2020 ; Homolak et al., 2020 ). Strikingly, 210,183 publications on COVID-19 have been reported in the bibliographic database Scopus , as of 1 August 2021 ( Ioannidis et al., 2021 ).

On top of that, the mentions of research publications in news sites and blogs, among other altmetric sources, have been extensively analyzed during the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, to make use of the smaller time window compared to citation counts ( Boetto et al., 2021 ). Boetto et al. (2021) conclude based on PlumX data that blogs and news sites are two of the altmetric sources that can be used to detect early scholarly communication on COVID-19, in addition to Twitter and Facebook. Furthermore, Colavizza et al. (2021) analyzed the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19) from a scientometric perspective on 1 July 2020, a dataset of 169,821 COVID-19 and coronavirus publications. The authors identified news (222,996 mentions) and blogs (29,119 mentions) as the sources that directly come after Twitter (5,868,992 mentions), when COVID-19 publications are mentioned on the Internet. The higher mentions of publications in news compared to blogs might also signal the importance of the topic for the wider public.

Compared to the other above-mentioned altmetric data aggregators, Altmetric.com seems to have the highest coverage in blogs and news sites, among others ( Ortega, 2018 ). Given the limited space of this review, we provide only an overview of this dataset. Still, we would like to stress that a comparison of various data aggregators is instructive, such as conducted, for example, by Ortega (2018 , 2019 , 2020) . Altmetric.com has included blogs as a category since October 2011 ( Altmetric.com, 2020a ), and it tracks over 15,000 academic and non-academic blogs via Rich Summary Site (RSS) feeds ( Altmetric.com, 2020a , c ). This number also changes depending on how many blogs are curated by Altmetric.com. The blogs are updated daily, and if a link to a ‘scholarly output' appears in a blog, the blog is harvested ( Altmetric.com, 2020c ).

News sites have been harvested by Altmetric.com since October 2011, and a new retrieval process has been in place since December 2015 ( Altmetric.com, 2021a ). News sites are also called mainstream media outlets by Altmetric.com ( Altmetric.com, 2020b ). Altmetric.com regularly harvests over 5,000 English and non-English news outlets ( Altmetric.com, 2020a , b ). Similar to the list of curated blogs, this number also changes regularly based on the curation efforts by Altmetric.com, for example, if users suggest new sources. This curated list is harvested in real-time by an unknown third-party provider directly via APIs or RSS feeds ( Altmetric.com, 2020c , 2021b ), although the full list cannot be downloaded directly from the public website. Hence, it is suggested to use the API to retrieve this list. The third-party data provider searches for direct hyperlinks to scholarly outputs in news articles. Furthermore, Altmetric.com uses text mining to search the news articles for mentions of scholarly outputs. To be tracked, the news article “must include at least the name of an author, the title of a journal, and a publication date” which is then matched with metadata in the Crossref API ( Altmetric.com, 2020d ). There is a difference between the harvesting frequency of these sources. News sites are harvested in real-time, while blogs are only harvested daily ( Altmetric.com, 2021b ).

In addition to the reviewed literature on blogs and news sites above, we conducted a query in the COVID-19 Altmetric.com in-house database from the Center for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS). The data from Altmetric.com used in this query is updated up to 21 January 2021. The database was created at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The related Altmetric.com in-house database is described in more detail in previous studies, for example, by Lyu and Costas (2021) . We counted the overall amount of blogs and news sites in the database. The query resulted in 541,649 news and 63,288 blog mentions, totalling 604,937 mentions in both altmetric sources. This leads us to conclude that there is a high amount of mentions of COVID-19 related publications in blogs and news sites.

Apart from the specific COVID-19 CWTS Altmetric database, we also queried the total number of publications that were tracked on blogs and news sites in the overall CWTS Altmetric database. The World Health Organization (WHO) characterized COVID-19 as a pandemic in a media briefing on 11 March 2020 ( WHO, 2020 ). We consider this media release as an event that might have increased science communication on several online sources, including on blogs and news sites. From 10 March 2019 until 10 March 2020, there were 104,547 unique publications tracked on blogs and 177,697 unique publications on news. From 11 March 2020 until 11 March 2021, these amounts increased by around 12% to 116,650 unique publications on blogs, and by around 19% to 211,828 unique publications on news sites, respectively. As such, we conclude that the number of publications that were tracked by Altmetric.com on blogs and news sites increased slightly during this period. However, it is impossible to test if this increase would have also happened within the same year without a pandemic.

Further available data sources

Obviously, in addition to Altmetric.com, there are several other news tracking services, although Altmetric.com provides some different features, such as linking to the research outputs themselves ( Altmetric.com, 2020e ). For example, apart from the well-known Google News , there is also the European Media Monitor , which tracks “thousands of news sources in over 70 languages”, is updated every 10 minutes, and can be followed via RSS feeds. The service was developed by the European Commission's Joint Research Center ( EC, 2022 ). Further studies retrieve news coverage of publications from the Factavia database that provides access to global news, among others ( Prados-Bo and Casino, 2021 ). Furthermore, how news are presented in Google Search or other search engines is a research field in itself ( Ørmen, 2016 ). Another source of interest in the altmetrics sphere with regards to news is EurekAlert! , a press release aggregator by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This particular news site is also studied as part of the Altmetric.com portfolio ( Bowman et al., 2019 ). The advantage of the Altmetric.com dataset is that it includes blogs and news sites in one file, which can be imported to and analyzed in relational databases, such as Structured Query Language (SQL). Still, we suggest analyzing various data providers to get a broader picture of blogs and news mentions.

Taking into account previous studies, we argue that blogs and news sites have always been playing an important role in disseminating research, and this role became more prominent during the COVID-19 pandemic. We consider a direct comparison between publications before the COVID-19 pandemic and during this global health crisis as infeasible since this event is a disruptive phenomenon ( Fassin, 2021 ). While it will only be possible to understand the whole picture of the role of blogs and news sites in disseminating research on COVID-19 after the end of the pandemic, the sheer amount of reported publications on COVID-19 calls for a brief overview of this topic which we provided here. We expect that researchers and practitioners from various disciplines as well as science communicators, policymakers, and the wider public can benefit from such an overview. While we mainly focused on blogs and news sites as altmetric sources due to the limited space of this mini review, several other sources can be considered for further reviews on the role of knowledge transfer channels during the COVID-19 pandemic. We would also suggest to study the amount of altmetrics sources that have been added during the pandemic by altmetric data aggregators.

What is more, how public health topics are captured by blogs and news media needs to be evaluated on an ongoing basis. In particular, when new global crises emerge, this topic is essential to study science communication from a different angle. How will the role of certain blogs and news sites change? What role will these two altmetric sources have in the future? We only covered a minor aspect of this research area and encourage other researchers to continue on this path.

Author contributions

All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.

This research was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) under grant number 01PU17019.

Acknowledgments

We thank Zohreh Zahedi (CWTS, Leiden University) for providing continuous feedback on the article. We also thank Rodrigo Costas (CWTS, Leiden University) for commenting on earlier drafts of this article, and for querying the Altmetric.com database. In addition, we thank the Research Topic Editors Jennifer Dusdal (University of Luxembourg) and Aliakbar Akbaritabar (Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research) for commenting on an earlier draft of the abstract. Finally, we thank the peer reviewers for their feedback, our colleagues at CWTS and TIB for commenting on a related research funding proposal, and Mariam Lepage (Altmetric.com) for answering questions concerning the Altmetric.com sources.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Publisher's note

All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.

1. ^ https://altmetric.typeform.com/to/CBfb1D?typeform-source

Aguillo, I. F., Ortega, J. L., and Fernández, M. (2008). Webometric ranking of world universities: introduction, methodology, and future developments. Higher Educ. Eur. 33, 233–244. doi: 10.1080/03797720802254031

CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Alperin, J. P., Muñoz Nieves, C., Schimanski, L., Fischman, G. E., Niles, M. T., and McKiernan, E. C. (2019). Meta-research: How significant are the public dimensions of faculty work in review, promotion and tenure documents? eLife 2019 8, e42254. doi: 10.7554/eLife.42254

PubMed Abstract | CrossRef Full Text | Google Scholar

Altmetric.com (2020a). Attention Sources Tracked by Altmetric . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000235983-attention-sources-tracked-by-altmetric (accessed January 17, 2022).

Google Scholar

Altmetric.com (2020b). News and Mainstream Media . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000235999-news-and-mainstream-media (accessed January 17, 2022).

Altmetric.com (2020c). Blogs . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000235927-blogs (accessed January 17, 2022).

Altmetric.com (2020d). Text Mining . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000240263-text-mining (accessed January 17, 2022).

Altmetric.com (2020e). Altmetric and Media Monitoring . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000234231-altmetric-and-media-monitoring (accessed January 17, 2022).

Altmetric.com (2021a). Attention Sources Coverage Dates . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000240455-attention-sources-coverage-dates (accessed January 17, 2022).

Altmetric.com (2021b). Attention Sources Update Frequency and Collection Methods . Available online at: https://help.altmetric.com/support/solutions/articles/6000240275-attention-sources-update-frequency-and-collection-methods (accessed January 17, 2022).

Araújo, R. F. (2020). Communities of attention networks: introducing qualitative and conversational perspectives for altmetrics. Scientometrics 124, 1793–1809. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03566-7

Badenschier, F., and Wormer, H. (2012). “Issue selection in science journalism: towards a special theory of news values for science news?,” in The Sciences' Media Connection—Public Communication and its Repercussions , eds S. Rödder, M. Franzen, and P. Weingart (New York, NY: Springer), 59–85. doi: 10.1007/978-94-007-2085-5_4

Barata, G. (2018). “The need to improve blogs qualitative data on altmetric,” in The 2018 Altmetrics Workshop: Science and The Public: Public Interactions with Science through the Lens of Social Media (London, UK). Available online at: http://altmetrics.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/altmetrics18_paper_10_Barata.pdf (accessed January 17, 2022).

Bar-Ilan, J., Halevi, G., and Milojević, S. (2019). Differences between altmetric data sources—a case study. J. Altmetric . doi: 10.29024/joa.4

Belardinelli, G. (2019). Gatekeepers in social networks: logics for communicative actions (Master's Thesis). University of Amsterdam. https://eprints.illc.uva.nl/id/eprint/1717/1/MoL-2019-20.text.pdf (accessed January 17, 2022).

Belli, S., and Gonzalo-Penela, C. (2020). Science, research, and innovation infospheres in Google results of the Ibero-American countries. Scientometrics 123, 635–653. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03399-4

Belli, S., Mugnaini, R., Baltà, J., and Abadal, E. (2020). Coronavirus mapping in scientific publications: When science advances rapidly and collectively, is access to this knowledge open to society? Scientometrics 124, 2661–2685. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03590-7

BMBF (2018). FRONTAL—Research Rankings, Output Measurement, Recruitment of Young Researchers, Choice of Topics and Incentives for Care . Available online at: https://www.wihoforschung.de/en/frontal-2068.php (accessed January 17, 2022).

Boetto, E., Fantini, M. P., Gangemi, A., Golinelli, D., Greco, M., Nuzzolese, A. G., et al. (2021). Using altmetrics for detecting impactful research in quasi-zero-day time-windows: the case of COVID-19. Scientometrics 126, 1189–1215. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03809-7

Bornmann, L., and Haunschild, R. (2018). Do altmetrics correlate with the quality of papers? A large-scale empirical study based on F1000Prime data. PLoS ONE 13, e0197133. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197133

Bowman, T. D., Niazi, R., and Ul Hassan, S. (2019). “Science news and altmetrics: looking at EurekAlert!,” in The 2019 Altmetrics Workshop. BYOR: Bring Your Own Research (Stirling, UK). Available online at: http://altmetrics.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Bowman_altmetrics19_paper_6.pdf (accessed January 17, 2022).

Bruns, A. (2016). ““Random Acts of Journalism” Redux: news and social media,” in News Across Media: Production, Distribution and Consumption, eds J. Linaa, J. Jensen, M. Mortensen, and J. Ørmen (London: Routledge), 32–47. Available onlien at: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315692456-8/random-acts-journalism-redux-news-social-media-axel-bruns (accessed January 17, 2022).

Cameron, C. B., Nair, V., Varma, M., Adams, M., Jhaveri, K. D., and Sparks, M. A. (2016). Does academic blogging enhance promotion and tenure? A survey of US and Canadian medicine and pediatric department chairs. JMIR Med. Educ. 2, e10. doi: 10.2196/mededu.4867

Colavizza, G. (2021). Meta-research on COVID-19: an overview of the early trends. arXiv [preprint] . https://arxiv.org/abs/2106.02961 (accessed January 17, 2022).

Colavizza, G., Costas, R., Traag, V. A., van Eck, N. J., van Leeuwen, T., and Waltman, L. (2021). A scientometric overview of CORD-19. PLoS ONE 16, e0244839. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0244839

Colavizza, G., Infelise, M., and Kaplan, F. (2015). “Mapping the early modern news flow: an enquiry by robust text reuse detection,” in Social Informatics. SocInfo 2014, eds L. Aiello, and D. McFarland (Cham: Springer). doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-15168-7_31

Dumas-Mallet, E., Garenne, A., Boraud, T., and Gonon, F. (2020). Does newspapers coverage influence the citations count of scientific publications? An analysis of biomedical studies. Scientometrics 123, 413–427. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03380-1

EC (2022). EMM—European Media Monitor . Available online at: https://ec.europa.eu/knowledge4policy/online-resource/emm-european-media-monitor_en (accessed January 17, 2022).

Fang, Z., and Costas, R. (2020). Studying the accumulation velocity of altmetric data tracked by Altmetric.com. Scientometrics 123, 1077–1101. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03405-9

Fassin, Y. (2021). Research on Covid-19: a disruptive phenomenon for bibliometrics. Scientometrics 126, 5305–5319. doi: 10.1007/s11192-021-03989-w

Ferreira, M. R., Ranjbar-Sahraei, B., and Costas, R. (2020). “COVID-19 research in the news: Visualizing the sentiment and topics in science news about the pandemic,” in Leiden Madtrics . Available online at: https://leidenmadtrics.nl/articles/covid-19-research-in-the-news-visualizing-the-sentiment-and-topics-in-science-news-about-the-pandemic (accessed January 17, 2022).

Fleerackers, A., Riedlinger, M., Moorhead, L., Ahmed, R., and Alperin, J. P. (2021). Communicating scientific uncertainty in an age of COVID-19: an investigation into the use of preprints by digital media outlets. Health Commun . doi: 10.1080/10410236.2020.1864892

Fraumann, G. (2020). “What Lies behind Altmetrics Scores? Guidelines on How to Use Qualitative Approaches in Altmetrics,” in A Report from LIBER's Innovative Metrics Working Group . (LIBER)

Fraumann, G., Zahedi, Z., and Costas, R. (2015). “What do we know about altmetric.com sources? A study of the top 200 blogs and news sites mentioning scholarly output,” in The 2015 Altmetrics Workshop (Amsterdam, the Neherland).

Hauschke, C., Cartellieri, S., and Heller, L. (2018). Reference implementation for open scientometric indicators (ROSI). Res. Ideas Outcom. 4, e31656. doi: 10.3897/rio.4.e31656

Haustein, S., Bowman, T. D., and Costas, R. (2015). “Communities of attention around scientific publications: Who is tweeting about scientific papers?,” in Social Media and Society 2015 International Conference (Toronto, Canada). Avialable online at: https://www.slideshare.net/StefanieHaustein/communities-of-attention-around-journal-papers-who-is-tweeting-about-scientific-publications (accessed January 17, 2022).

Homolak, J., Kodvanj, I., and Virag, D. (2020). Preliminary analysis of COVID-19 academic information patterns: a call for open science in the times of closed borders. Scientometrics 124, 2687–2701. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03587-2

Ioannidis, J. P. A., Salholz-Hillel, M., Boyack, K. W., and Baas, J. (2021). The rapid, massive growth of COVID-19 authors in the scientific literature. Res. Soc. Open Sci . 8, 210389. doi: 10.1098/rsos.210389

Kwak, H., Lee, C., Park, H., and Moon, S. (2010). “What is Twitter, a social network or a news media?,” in Proceedings of the 19th International Conference on World Wide Web (WWW '10) . Available online at: http://www.ambuehler.ethz.ch/CDstore/www2010/www/p591.pdf (accessed January 17, 2022). doi: 10.1145/1772690.1772751

Lomborg, S. (2009). Navigating the blogosphere: towards a genre–based typology of weblogs. First Monday 14. doi: 10.5210/fm.v14i5.2329

Lyu, X., and Costas, R. (2021). How do academic topics shift across altmetric sources? A case study of the research area of big data. Scientometrics 123, 909–943. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03415-7

Meschede, C., and Siebenlist, T. (2018). Cross-metric compatability and inconsistencies of altmetrics. Scientometrics 115, 283–297. doi: 10.1007/s11192-018-2674-1

NAS (2017). Communicating Science Effectively: A Research Agenda . Washington, DC: The National Academies Press.

Nuernbergk, C. (2014). Follow-up communication in the blogosphere. Digit. Journal. 2, 434–445. doi: 10.1080/21670811.2014.895520

Ørmen, J. (2016). Googling the news. Digit. Journal. 4, 107–124. doi: 10.1080/21670811.2015.1093272

Ortega, J. L. (2018). Reliability and accuracy of altmetric providers: a comparison among Altmetric.com, PlumX and Crossref Event Data. Scientometrics 116, 2123–2138. doi: 10.1007/s11192-018-2838-z

Ortega, J. L. (2019). Availability and audit of links in altmetric data providers: link checking of blogs and news in Altmetric.com, Crossref Event data and PlumX. J. Altmetric . 2, 1–8. doi: 10.29024/joa.14

Ortega, J. L. (2020). Blogs and news sources coverage in altmetrics data providers: a comparative analysis by country, language, and subject. Scientometrics 122, 555–572. doi: 10.1007/s11192-019-03299-2

Ortega, J. L., and Esquinas, M. F. (2019). Evaluating Knowledge Transfer and Impact: Metrics, Procedures and Governance for Science and Innovation (Córdoba, Spain) . Available online at: https://kti-conference2019.org/index_en.asp (accessed January 17, 2022).

Porter, A. L., Zhang, Y., Huang, Y., and Wu, M. (2020). Tracking and mining the COVID-19 research literature. Front. Res. Metric. Anal. 5, 594060. doi: 10.3389/frma.2020.594060

Prados-Bo, A., and Casino, G. (2021). Microbiome research in general and business newspapers: How many microbiome articles are published and which study designs make the news the most? PLoS ONE 16, e0249835. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0249835

Priem, J., Taraborelli, D., Groth, P., and Neylon, C. (2010). Altmetrics: A Manifesto . Available online at: http://www.altmetrics.org/manifesto (accessed January 17, 2022).

Ross-Hellauer, T., Tennant, J. P., Banelyte, V., Gorogh, E., Luzi, D., Kraker, P., et al. (2020). Ten simple rules for innovative dissemination of research. PLoS Comput. Biol. 16, e1007704. doi: 10.1371/journal.pcbi.1007704

Scott, D. T. (2008). “Tempests of the blogosphere: Presidential campaign stories that failed to ignite mainstream media,” in Digital Media and Democracy: Tactics in Hard Times. eds M. Boler, 271–300. Available online at: http://web.mit.edu/comm-forum/legacy/mit4/papers/scott.pdf (accessed January 17, 2022).

Shema, H., Bar-Ilan, J., and Thelwall, M. (2014). Do blog citations correlate with a higher number of future citations? Research blogs as a potential source for alternative metrics. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 65, 1018–1027. doi: 10.1002/asi.23037

Shema, H., Bar-Ilan, J., and Thelwall, M. (2015). How is research blogged? A content analysis approach. J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol. 66, 1136–1149. doi: 10.1002/asi.23239

Tunger, D., Clermont, M., and Meier, A. (2018). “Altmetrics: state of the art and a look into the future,” in Scientometrics. eds M. Jibu, and Y. Osabe. doi: 10.5772/intechopen.76874

Turki, H., Hadj Taieb, M. A., Shafee, T., Lubiana, T., Jemielniak, D., Aouicha, M. B., et al. (2021). Representing COVID-19 information in collaborative knowledge graphs: the case of Wikidata. Semant. Web . 13, 233–264. doi: 10.3233/SW-210444

van der Sluis, F., Glassey, R. J., and van den Broek, E. L. (2012). “Making the news interesting: understanding the relationship between familiarity and interest,” in Proceedings of the 4th Information Interaction in Context Symposium , 314–317 (Nijmegen, The Netherlands). doi: 10.1145/2362724.2362783

WHO (2020). WHODirector-General's Opening Remarks at the Media Briefing on COVID-19-− 11 March 2020 . Available online at: https://www.who.int/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19-−11-march-2020 (accessed January 17, 2022).

WHO (2022). Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Pandemic . Available online at: https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019 (accessed January 17, 2022).

Woolston, E., and Brown, C. (2018). Why science blogging still matters. Nature 554, 135–137. doi: 10.1038/d41586-018-01414-6

WordPress (2022). A live look at Activity Across WordPress.com . Available online at: https://wordpress.com/activity/ (accessed January 17, 2022).

Zahedi, Z., and Costas, R. (2018). General discussion of data quality challenges in social media metrics: extensive comparison of four major altmetric data aggregators. PLOS ONE 13, e0197326. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0197326

Zhang, L., Zhao, W., Sun, B., Huang, Y., and Glänzel, W. (2020). How scientific research reacts to international public health emergencies: a global analysis of response patterns. Scientometrics 124, 747–773. doi: 10.1007/s11192-020-03531-4

Keywords: altmetrics, knowledge transfer, science communication, science and society, blogs, news sites, COVID-19, scholarly information

Citation: Fraumann G and Colavizza G (2022) The role of blogs and news sites in science communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. Front. Res. Metr. Anal. 7:824538. doi: 10.3389/frma.2022.824538

Received: 29 November 2021; Accepted: 02 September 2022; Published: 23 September 2022.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2022 Fraumann and Colavizza. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Grischa Fraumann, gfr@hum.ku.dk

This article is part of the Research Topic

Science of Science: Connecting Multidisciplinary Studies of Research, Higher Education, and Society

Articles on Online news

Displaying 1 - 20 of 46 articles.

The ‘dead internet theory’ makes eerie claims about an AI-run web. The truth is more sinister

Jake Renzella , UNSW Sydney and Vlada Rozova , The University of Melbourne

Embracing digital spaces: How older immigrants are navigating the infodemic

Natalia Balyasnikova , York University, Canada and Claire Ahn , Queen's University, Ontario

People experiencing news fatigue are less likely to be voters

Paul Whiteley , University of Essex

Buzzfeed News: sad demise of a clever, innovative site that led the way in digital journalism

Sean Dodson , Leeds Beckett University

The Online News Act could give Google and Meta too much influence over Canadian news organizations

Sara Bannerman , McMaster University

Information literacy courses can help students tackle confirmation bias and misinformation

James Wittebols , University of Windsor

Why Ottawa’s efforts to get Google and Facebook to pay for news content misses the mark

Ricard Gil , Queen's University, Ontario

Canadians’ trust in the news media hits a new low

Colette Brin , Université Laval and Sébastien Charlton , Université Laval

Facebook vs. Australia — Canadian media could be the next target for ban

Jean-Hugues Roy , Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)

Comics can teach readers how to identify fake news

Erin Steuter , Mount Allison University

Facebook and Google used to be the future of news. But now media companies need more strings to their bow

James Meese , RMIT University and Edward Hurcombe , Queensland University of Technology

Coronavirus: why we should keep our eyes and ears open as well as our hands clean

Michael Wade , International Institute for Management Development (IMD)

You’re probably more susceptible to misinformation than you think

Darren Lilleker , Bournemouth University

How to spot fake news this election

Amy Binns , University of Central Lancashire

UK election 2019: conspiracy or cock-up ? The digital dirty tricks marring this campaign

Matt Walsh , Cardiff University

Brexit: democracy needs journalists to be transparent about their political sources

Meera Selva , University of Oxford and Richard Fletcher , University of Oxford

Media Files: ACCC seeks to clip wings of tech giants like Facebook and Google but international effort is required

Andrea Carson , La Trobe University ; Andrew Dodd , The University of Melbourne , and Matthew Ricketson , Deakin University

Shutting down the internet doesn’t work – but governments keep doing it

George Ogola , University of Central Lancashire

Big Fail: The internet hasn’t helped democracy

Robert Diab , Thompson Rivers University

As emerging economies bring their citizens online, global trust in internet media is changing

Bhaskar Chakravorti , Tufts University

Related Topics

• Digital media
• Misinformation
• Online media
• Social media

Top contributors

Dean of Global Business, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Professor of Informatics and Computer Science, Indiana University

Research Fellow, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, University of Oxford

Professor of Communication, Deakin University

Associate Professor of Narratology, University of Sydney

Co-director, Centre for Digital Business, University of Salford

Visiting Professor of Practice (Journalism), City, University of London

Research Fellow, Technology, Communication and Policy Lab, RMIT University

Director of Undergraduate Studies, School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies, Cardiff University

Reader/ Associate professor in Media Psychology, University of Salford

Senior Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Journalism, City, University of London

Associate Professor in Digital Media, Western Sydney University

Head of the School of Journalism, Media and Culture, Cardiff University

Senior Lecturer, Journalism and Digital Communication, University of Central Lancashire

Emeritus Professor of Journalism, Cardiff University

• X (Twitter)
• Unfollow topic Follow topic

IEEE Account

• Change Username/Password
• Update Address

Purchase Details

• Payment Options
• Order History
• View Purchased Documents

Profile Information

• Communications Preferences
• Profession and Education
• Technical Interests
• US & Canada: +1 800 678 4333
• Worldwide: +1 732 981 0060
• Contact & Support
• About IEEE Xplore
• Accessibility
• Terms of Use
• Nondiscrimination Policy
• Privacy & Opting Out of Cookies

A not-for-profit organization, IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization dedicated to advancing technology for the benefit of humanity. © Copyright 2024 IEEE - All rights reserved. Use of this web site signifies your agreement to the terms and conditions.

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

•  We're Hiring!
•  Help Center

News Websites

• Most Cited Papers
• Most Downloaded Papers
• Newest Papers
• Save to Library
• Internet News Follow Following
• Framing Theory Follow Following
• Framing and agenda setting research Follow Following
• Frame Analysis Follow Following
• Priming Follow Following
• Framing Follow Following
• Blogs Follow Following
• Development communication Follow Following
• Mass Communication Follow Following
• New Media Follow Following

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• Academia.edu Publishing
•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

Explore millions of high-quality primary sources and images from around the world, including artworks, maps, photographs, and more.

Explore migration issues through a variety of media types

• Part of The Streets are Talking: Public Forms of Creative Expression from Around the World
• Part of The Journal of Economic Perspectives, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Winter 2020)
• Part of Cato Institute (Aug. 3, 2021)
• Part of University of California Press
• Part of Open: Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture
• Part of Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Winter 2012)
• Part of R Street Institute (Nov. 1, 2020)
• Part of Leuven University Press
• Part of UN Secretary-General Papers: Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016)
• Part of Perspectives on Terrorism, Vol. 12, No. 4 (August 2018)
• Part of Leveraging Lives: Serbia and Illegal Tunisian Migration to Europe, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Mar. 1, 2023)
• Part of UCL Press

Harness the power of visual materials—explore more than 3 million images now on JSTOR.

Enhance your scholarly research with underground newspapers, magazines, and journals.

Explore collections in the arts, sciences, and literature from the world’s leading museums, archives, and scholars.

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

• View all journals
• Explore content
• About the journal
• Publish with us
• Sign up for alerts

Research articles

A virtual rodent predicts the structure of neural activity across behaviors.

• Diego Aldarondo
• Bence P. Ölveczky

A general strategy for the synthesis of taxane diterpenes

• Fabian Schneider
• Tanja Gaich

Molecular and physiologic changes in the SpaceX Inspiration4 civilian crew

• C. W. Jones
• E. G. Overbey
• C. E. Mason

The Space Omics and Medical Atlas (SOMA) and international astronaut biobank

• Eliah G. Overbey
• JangKeun Kim
• Christopher E. Mason

Most nearby young star clusters formed in three massive complexes

Analysis of data from Gaia Data Release 3 and other large spectroscopic surveys shows that nearly 60% of high-quality young clusters within 1 kpc of the Sun originated from just three distinct star-forming complexes.

• Cameren Swiggum
• Sabine Reffert

Mechanisms of actin filament severing and elongation by formins

• Nicholas J. Palmer
• Kyle R. Barrie
• Roberto Dominguez

Unlocking carbene reactivity by metallaphotoredox α-elimination

• Benjamin T. Boyle
• Nathan W. Dow
• David W. C. MacMillan

Widespread horse-based mobility arose around 2,200 BCE in Eurasia

• Pablo Librado
• Gaetan Tressières
• Ludovic Orlando

Structure and topography of the synaptic V-ATPase–synaptophysin complex

• Chuchu Wang
• Wenhong Jiang
• Axel T. Brunger

A virally encoded high-resolution screen of cytomegalovirus dependencies

A genetic screen that expresses single guide RNA libraries targeting host genes in the human cytomegalovirus genome enables identification of host factors and provides insights into their roles during the viral replication cycle.

• Yaara Finkel
• Aharon Nachshon
• Noam Stern-Ginossar

A disease-associated gene desert directs macrophage inflammation through ETS2

ETS2 —which is associated with inflammatory bowel disease, ankylosing spondylitis, primary sclerosing cholangitis and Takayasu’s arteritis—is a central regulator of human inflammatory macrophages.

• C. T. Stankey

Profiling phagosome proteins identifies PD-L1 as a fungal-binding receptor

Proximity labelling of phagosomal contents is used to identify proteins that localize to phagosomes in host–microorganism interactions.

• Avradip Chatterjee
• David M. Underhill

MYCT1 controls environmental sensing in human haematopoietic stem cells

MYCT1 is identified as a crucial regulator of cellular properties essential for the stemness of human haematopoietic stem cells, a finding that may help improve successful in vitro expansion of these cells for therapeutics.

• Júlia Aguadé-Gorgorió
• Yasaman Jami-Alahmadi
• Hanna K. A. Mikkola

Observation of 2D-magnesium-intercalated gallium nitride superlattices

The spontaneous formation of magnesium-intercalated gallium nitride superlattices by the interstitial intercalation of two-dimensional magnesium results in considerable compressive strain perpendicular to the layers, leading to enhanced hole transport.

• Hiroshi Amano

Fault-network geometry influences earthquake frictional behaviour

Analysis of some of the main fault zones in California shows that the presence of complex earthquake fault-network geometries results in geometric locking that promotes stick-slip behaviour, whereas simpler geometries lead to smooth fault creep.

• Jaeseok Lee
• Victor C. Tsai
• Daniel T. Trugman

Injectable ultrasonic sensor for wireless monitoring of intracranial signals

A bioresorbable, wireless hydrogel (metagel) sensor, encompassing both biodegradable and stimulus-responsive hydrogels for ultrasonic monitoring of intracranial signals, was implanted into intracranial space with a puncture needle and deformed in response to physiological environmental changes.

• Hanchuan Tang
• Yueying Yang
• Jianfeng Zang

A late-Ediacaran crown-group sponge animal

Cross-hatch impressions from Ediacaran rocks in China are interpreted as having been left by a crown-group sponge fossil, Helicolocellus cantori gen. et sp. nov., characterized by an organic latticework skeleton.

• Xiaopeng Wang
• Alexander G. Liu
• Shuhai Xiao

Myelin plasticity in the ventral tegmental area is required for opioid reward

Oligodendrogenesis is shown to be involved in reward learning, with dopaminergic neuronal activity-regulated myelin plasticity being an important reward circuit modification.

• Belgin Yalçın
• Matthew B. Pomrenze
• Michelle Monje

Early stages of covalent organic framework formation imaged in operando

The operando imaging of the early formation stages of covalent organic frameworks with the optical technique interferometric scattering microscopy leads to mechanistic insights, enabling the rational development of a synthesis protocol at room temperature instead of elevated temperatures.

• Christoph G. Gruber
• Emiliano Cortés

Nuclear position and local acetyl-CoA production regulate chromatin state

Analyses of histone acetylation in Drosophila wing imaginal discs reveal distinct patterns of acetylation and cellular metabolism that affect gene expression and cell specification.

• Philipp Willnow
• Aurelio A. Teleman

Quick links

• Explore articles by subject
• Guide to authors
• Editorial policies

• Search this journal
• Search all journals
• View access options
• View profile
• Create profile

Newspaper Research Journal

Founded in 1979, Newspaper Research Journal (NRJ) answers questions about all aspects of US and foreign newspapers: their content, their staffs, their management (including advertising, circulation, and production) and economics, their technology, their design and layout, their relationships with their communities and democracy, their relationships with journalism educators, journalism ethics, and more. View full journal description

This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) .

P. L. Ellis, P. S. Voakes, and L. Bergen, News for US: Citizen-Centered Journalism

Examining opinion journalism in the united arab emirates national press: a comparative analysis.

• Khalaf Tahat
• Ahmed Mansoori
• Mohammed Habes

Seeking the public health angle in Missouri newspaper coverage of the opioid crisis

• Justin F. Willett
• Shelly Rodgers
• Jon Stemmle

Editors Note

Gender on the agenda: media framing of women and women of color in the 2020 u.s. presidential election.

• Stephanie Gibbons

When love wins: Framing analysis of the Indian media’s coverage of Section 377, decriminalization of same-sex relationships

Getting news from social media influencers and from digital legacy news outlets and print legacy news outlets in seven countries: the “more-and-more” phenomenon and the new opinion leadership.

• Justin D. Martin
• Krishna Sharma

Islamophobia in non-Western media: A content analysis of selected online newspapers

• Isyaku Hassan
• Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi

“A heart-wrenching thing”: Analyzing newspaper narratives of pregnancy during the COVID-19 pandemic

• Stefanie Davis Kempton
• Carlina DiRusso

Seeing red: Reading uncivil news comments guided by personality characteristics

• Arthur D. Santana

Framing risk and responsibility: Newspaper coverage of COVID-19 racial disparities

• Kelsea Schulenberg
• Madison Wilson
• SaiDatta Mikkilineni

Where are all the women? A cross-cultural analysis of women in online news

• Basma Mostafa Taha
• Shahira S. Fahmy
• Jessica F. Sparks
• T. Franklin Waddell

• Thomas J. Hrach

• Olanrewaju O. P. Ajakaiye
• I. B. Oloyede
• Omowale Adelabu
• Felix Olajide Talabi
• Bernice O. Sanusi
• Rachael O. Ojeka-John
• Kehinde Abdul-Afees Ayantunji
• Ruth J. Heo
• Serena Miller
• Bruno Takahashi
• Jonus Corttrell

--> -->

Yan Li, Fengying Fu, Jian-Min Sun, Baiyin Yang
	David Holman

-->

	David Holman

• Using Expert Sources to Correct Health Misinformation in Social Media Download MP3

Victoria Y. Martin

Nick Dragojlovic

You might be interested in

This is the marketing spot title.

• this is the first item in the list - not hyperlinked
• this is the second item in the list - hyperlinked
• External link Hyperlink

regular text to be added here

Publish with us

Authors will enjoy:

• Rigorous peer review of your research
• Prompt publishing
• Multidisciplinary audience
• High visibility for global exposure

Author, editor & reviewer resources

Sage supports authors, editors, and reviewers throughout all steps of the publishing process – explore these resources:

• Author Gateway
• Editor Gateway
• Reviewer Gateway
• View additional resources

Sage discipline hubs

Calls for papers.

Check out our latest calls for papers:

• Special Issue on Neurodiversity

Example Header

• ASA Style GUide
• Promote your work
• Editors Reports
• Online Posting Policy for Authors os ASA Journal Articles
• Acceptance Rate: 5.3 %
• Average review time for manuscript: 8.8 weeks
• Average time from acceptance to online publication: 35 days

Keep up to date

Email alerts.

Sign up to receive email alerts:

• With the latest table of contents
• When new articles are published online

Add email alerts

You are adding the following journal to your email alerts

	New content
Newspaper Research Journal

Also from Sage

• CQ Library Elevating debate opens in new tab
• Sage Data Uncovering insight opens in new tab
• Sage Business Cases Shaping futures opens in new tab
• Sage Campus Unleashing potential opens in new tab
• Sage Knowledge Multimedia learning resources opens in new tab
• Sage Research Methods Supercharging research opens in new tab
• Sage Video Streaming knowledge opens in new tab
• Technology from Sage Library digital services opens in new tab

Pardon Our Interruption

As you were browsing something about your browser made us think you were a bot. There are a few reasons this might happen:

• You've disabled JavaScript in your web browser.
• You're a power user moving through this website with super-human speed.
• You've disabled cookies in your web browser.
• A third-party browser plugin, such as Ghostery or NoScript, is preventing JavaScript from running. Additional information is available in this support article .

To regain access, please make sure that cookies and JavaScript are enabled before reloading the page.

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Research News

• Subscribe to Health Newsletter

Later this year, the FDA plans to decide whether MDMA can be used to treat PTSD Eva Almqvist/Getty Images hide caption

Misconduct claims may derail MDMA psychedelic treatment for PTSD

June 3, 2024 • People with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) may soon have a new treatment option: MDMA, the chemical found in ecstasy. In August, the Food and Drug Administration plans to decide whether MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD will be approved for market based on years of research. But serious allegations of research misconduct may derail the approval timeline.

Former President Donald Trump holds a press conference following the verdict in his hush-money trial at Trump Tower on May 31 in New York City. Spencer Platt/Getty Images hide caption

Trump repeats claims — without evidence — that his trial was rigged

May 31, 2024 • Former President Donald Trump reiterated many of claims — without evidence — that his criminal trial was rigged, a day after a New York jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Researchers have detected microplastics in human testicles. Volodymyr Zakharov/Getty Images hide caption

Shots - Health News

Plastic junk researchers find tiny particles in men's testicles.

May 22, 2024 • The new study has scientists concerned that microplastics may be contributing to reproductive health issues.

Harlan Gough holds a recently collected tiger beetle on a tether. Lawrence Reeves hide caption

To escape hungry bats, these flying beetles create an ultrasound 'illusion'

May 22, 2024 • A study of tiger beetles has found a possible explanation for why they produce ultrasound noises right before an echolocating bat swoops in for the kill.

A sea otter in Monterey Bay with a rock anvil on its belly and a scallop in its forepaws. Jessica Fujii hide caption

When sea otters lose their favorite foods, they can use tools to go after new ones

May 20, 2024 • Some otters rely on tools to bust open hard-shelled prey items like snails, and a new study suggests this tool use is helping them to survive as their favorite, easier-to-eat foods disappear.

Lauren Hill, a graduate student at Cal State LA, holds a bird at the bird banding site at Bear Divide in the San Gabriel Mountains. Grace Widyatmadja/NPR hide caption

On this unassuming trail near LA, bird watchers see something spectacular

May 13, 2024 • At Bear Divide, just outside Los Angeles, you can see a rare spectacle of nature. This is one of the only places in the western United States where you can see bird migration during daylight hours.

The inside of a cell is a complicated orchestration of interactions between molecules. Keith Chambers/Science Photo Library hide caption

AI gets scientists one step closer to mapping the organized chaos in our cells

May 13, 2024 • As artificial intelligence seeps into some realms of society, it rushes into others. One area it's making a big difference is protein science — as in the "building blocks of life," proteins! Producer Berly McCoy talks to host Emily Kwong about the newest advance in protein science: AlphaFold3, an AI program from Google DeepMind. Plus, they talk about the wider field of AI protein science and why researchers hope it will solve a range of problems, from disease to the climate.

NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a strong solar flare on May 8, 2024. The Wednesday solar flares kicked off the geomagnetic storm happening this weekend. NASA/SDO hide caption

NOAA Issues First Severe Geomagnetic Storm Watch Since 2005

May 10, 2024 • Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration observed a cluster of sunspots on the surface of the sun this week. With them came solar flares that kicked off a severe geomagnetic storm. That storm is expected to last throughout the weekend as at least five coronal mass ejections — chunks of the sun — are flung out into space, towards Earth! NOAA uses a five point scale to rate these storms, and this weekend's storm is a G4. It's expected to produce auroras as far south as Alabama. To contextualize this storm, we are looking back at the largest solar storm on record: the Carrington Event.

Esther Nesbitt lost two of her children to drug overdoses, and her grandchildren are among more than 320,000 who lost parents in the overdose epidemic. Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

In a decade of drug overdoses, more than 320,000 American children lost a parent

May 8, 2024 • New research documents how many children lost a parent to an opioid or other overdose in the period from 2011 to 2021. Bereaved children face elevated risks to their physical and emotional health.

This illustration depicts a washed-up Ichthyotitan severnensis carcass on the beach. Sergey Krasovskiy hide caption

Largest-ever marine reptile found with help from an 11-year-old girl

May 6, 2024 • A father and daughter discovered fossil remnants of a giant ichthyosaur that scientists say may have been the largest-known marine reptile to ever swim the seas.

A survey shows that doctors have trouble taking full vacations from their high-stress jobs. Even when they do, they often still do work on their time off. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

Perspective

When pto stands for 'pretend time off': doctors struggle to take real breaks.

May 4, 2024 • What's a typical vacation activity for doctors? Work. A new study finds that most physicians do work on a typical day off. In this essay, a family doctor considers why that is and why it matters.

Weliton Menário Costa (center) holds a laptop while surrounded by dancers for his music video, "Kangaroo Time." From left: Faux Née Phish (Caitlin Winter), Holly Hazlewood, and Marina de Andrade. Nic Vevers/ANU hide caption

'Dance Your Ph.D.' winner on science, art, and embracing his identity

May 4, 2024 • Weliton Menário Costa's award-winning music video showcases his research on kangaroo personality and behavior — and offers a celebration of human diversity, too.

Researchers in a rainforest in Indonesia spotted an injury on the face of a male orangutan they named Rakus. They were stunned to watch him treat his wound with a medicinal plant. Armas/Suaq Project hide caption

Orangutan in the wild applied medicinal plant to heal its own injury, biologists say

May 3, 2024 • It is "the first known case of active wound treatment in a wild animal with a medical plant," biologist Isabelle Laumer told NPR. She says the orangutan, called Rakus, is now thriving.

The federal government says it has taken steps toward developing a vaccine to protect against bird flu should it become a threat to humans. skodonnell/Getty Images hide caption

Launching an effective bird flu vaccine quickly could be tough, scientists warn

May 3, 2024 • Federal health officials say the U.S. has the building blocks to make a vaccine to protect humans from bird flu, if needed. But experts warn we're nowhere near prepared for another pandemic.

A Nazca booby in the Galápagos Islands incubates eggs with its webbed feet. Wolfgang Kaehler/LightRocket via Getty Images hide caption

The Science of Siblings

For birds, siblinghood can be a matter of life or death.

May 1, 2024 • Some birds kill their siblings soon after hatching. Other birds spend their whole lives with their siblings and will even risk their lives to help each other.

Planet Money

How do you counter misinformation critical thinking is step one.

April 30, 2024 • An economic perspective on misinformation

This image shows a brain "assembloid" consisting of two connected brain "organoids." Scientists studying these structures have restored impaired brain cells in Timothy syndrome patients. Pasca lab, Stanford University hide caption

Scientists restore brain cells impaired by a rare genetic disorder

April 30, 2024 • A therapy that restores brain cells impaired by a rare genetic disorder may offer a strategy for treating conditions like autism, epilepsy, and schizophrenia.

Katie Krimitsos is among the majority of American women who have trouble getting healthy sleep, according to a new Gallup survey. Krimitsos launched a podcast called Sleep Meditation for Women to offer some help. Natalie Champa Jennings/Natalie Jennings, courtesy of Katie Krimitsos hide caption

Helping women get better sleep by calming the relentless 'to-do lists' in their heads

April 26, 2024 • A recent survey found that Americans' sleep patterns have been getting worse. Adult women under 50 are among the most sleep-deprived demographics.

Bird flu is spreading through U.S. dairy cattle. Scientists say the risk to people is minimal, but open questions remain, including how widespread the outbreak is and how the virus is spreading. DOUGLAS MAGNO/AFP via Getty Images hide caption

As bird flu spreads in cows, here are 4 big questions scientists are trying to answer

April 26, 2024 • Health officials say there's very little risk to humans from the bird flu outbreak among dairy cattle, but there's still much they don't know. Here are four questions scientists are trying to answer.

A coyote at the Fort Worth Zoo is photographed in the hours leading up to the April 8 total solar eclipse. The Hartstone-Rose Research Lab, NC State hide caption

Animals get stressed during eclipses. But not for the reason you think

April 25, 2024 • After studying various species earlier this month, some scientists now say they understand the origin of animal behavior during solar eclipses.

Dr. Jeffrey Stern, assistant professor in the Department of Surgery at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of the NYU Langone Transplant Institute, prepare the gene-edited pig kidney with thymus for transplantation. Joe Carrotta for NYU Langone Health hide caption

A woman with failing kidneys receives genetically modified pig organs

April 24, 2024 • Surgeons transplanted a kidney and thymus gland from a gene-edited pig into a 54-year-old woman in an attempt to extend her life. It's the latest experimental use of animal organs in humans.

Drug companies often do one-on-one outreach to doctors. A new study finds these meetings with drug reps lead to more prescriptions for cancer patients, but not longer survival. Chris Hondros/Getty Images hide caption

Oncologists' meetings with drug reps don't help cancer patients live longer

April 22, 2024 • Drug company reps commonly visit doctors to talk about new medications. A team of economists wanted to know if that helps patients live longer. They found that for cancer patients, the answer is no.

share this!

June 5, 2024

This article has been reviewed according to Science X's editorial process and policies . Editors have highlighted the following attributes while ensuring the content's credibility:

fact-checked

peer-reviewed publication

trusted source

Study finds simple headlines attract more online news readers

by Michigan State University

The competition for online attention in today's news environment is fierce. High-quality news from credible sources must compete for attention with misinformation and a rapidly increasing amount of partisan content.

How can a news organization stand out as a reputable and trustworthy outlet while driving readers to its site?

The answer is simple: literally.

According to research from Michigan State University, news readers engage more with simple writing, suggesting journalists should write simply—clearly and without ambiguity—to attract attention online. The study was published in the journal Science Advances.

"Newsrooms want engagement, and citizens, in general, want to be informed. Simple writing provides both. It can help news outlets compete in the competitive online attention economy and makes news more approachable to online readers," said David Markowitz, associate professor of communication in the MSU College of Communication Arts and Sciences.

Markowitz and his colleagues on the study, Hillary Shulman, associate professor of communication at Ohio State University, and Todd Rogers, professor of public policy at Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government, evaluated over 30,000 field experiments assessing how headlines from the Washington Post and Upworthy impacted how often people clicked on stories. To do this, they developed a simplicity index, which evaluated headlines based on the following criteria:

• Common words, including simple nouns and verbs.
• Readability, reflecting the number of words per sentence and syllables per word.
• Analytic writing, which describes how much a text reflects a story. Texts that score high in analytic writing tend to be more formal and complex.
• Character count, or the raw number of characters per headline.

Data from these experiments found that people engage with and click on linguistically simple headlines more than linguistically complex headlines.

"Simplicity is often preferred linguistically because it feels better than complexity to most people," said Markowitz. "It can impact what people read, what people click on, and how they think about companies and institutions competing for our attention."

"The best way to increase demand for good, credible journalism is to realize that simpler is better," Shulman said.

The researchers also found that complex headlines had less stickiness than simple headlines: readers were less likely to recognize or remember them later, as demonstrated in online experiments.

"Small efforts aimed at increasing the simplicity or fluency of language can increase the attention of casual readers—and also make them more informed and educated about the news of the day," said Markowitz.

And getting the simplicity right can make a significant difference. For example, during the time of the study, the Washington Post had about 70 million unique visitors to its website—that is, readers who did not visit the site twice. If only 0.10% more readers click on a story because it has a simpler headline (2.1% versus 2%) and end up reading three articles on the Washington Post website, that would still equal a difference of more than 200,000 readers.

"This not only makes the news accessible to more people, but it can also help newsrooms with their bottom line. More visitors means ad buyers are more attracted to a publication, which helps a news organization's bottom line," said Markowitz.

Writing for readers

While general news consumers tended to gravitate toward simple headlines, journalists—the ones actually writing the headlines—did not have a preference for simpler headlines and remembered both complex and simple headlines after reading them.

The possibility that journalists are more motivated to carefully read and process the news, relative to general news consumers, may suggest a disconnect between what journalists think audiences want to read and what they actually read.

To combat this, Markowitz recommends that journalism training, whether it be in a newsroom, educational institution or at a workshop or conference, emphasize writing for the average reader .

"It's important that those who are producing news are intentional and thoughtful with their writing," Markowitz said. "In order to get news into the hands of those who need it most, you need a 'keep it simple mentality' and to write for the average reader."

Journalists and writers often refer to themselves as storytellers, and one way to approach simplifying a headline is to think of it like a story.

"People are more likely to remember stories and experiences. Approaching the news in a more narrative, chronological manner and writing with more common and familiar words makes it more memorable and engaging," Markowitz said.

Markowitz and his colleagues agree that crafting headlines in a simple manner is a small change that makes a big difference.

"Words have power," he said. "Using ones that are clear and concise in news reporting can lead to a more informed public."

Journal information: Science Advances

Provided by Michigan State University

Explore further

Feedback to editors

Millions of insects migrate through 30-meter Pyrenees pass

5 hours ago

Study finds human-caused nitrous oxide emissions grew 40% from 1980–2020, greatly accelerating climate change

6 hours ago

Wind from black holes may influence development of surrounding galaxies

7 hours ago

Machine learning speeds up climate model simulations at finer resolutions, making them usable on local levels

8 hours ago

Coastal research shows flood risk for several Alaska communities

Combined X-ray surveys and supercomputer simulations track 12 billion years of cosmic black-hole growth

Scientists spot more Milky Way-like galaxies in early universe, advancing our understanding of how galaxies were formed

Human bodies mostly recover from space, tourist mission shows

Unlocking the future of sustainable mining through carbon sequestration

Scientists engineer yellow-seeded camelina with high oil output

9 hours ago

Relevant PhysicsForums posts

Who is your favorite jazz musician and what is your favorite song, gobekli tepe under private sector management.

11 hours ago

Today's Fusion Music: T Square, Cassiopeia, Rei & Kanade Sato

16 hours ago

Cover songs versus the original track, which ones are better?

Jun 9, 2024

Bach, Bach, and more Bach please

What is your favorite drawing.

More from Art, Music, History, and Linguistics

Related Stories

New research shows how attention lapses are exploited by fake news sites

Feb 28, 2024

How Facebook clickbait draws users into engaging with posts

Jun 29, 2022

Studies suggest finding automatic ways to spot fake news may be more complicated than anticipated

Jun 22, 2021

Headlines with a negative twist boost the consumption of online news, demonstrates study

Mar 21, 2023

New study: Eyes linger less on 'fake news' headlines

Aug 24, 2020

The challenge of keeping an audience engaged: How language shapes attention

Mar 22, 2023

Recommended for you

Wire-cut forensic examinations currently too unreliable for court, new study says

Jun 10, 2024

Study reveals complex dynamics of philanthropic funding for US science

Success follows failure less often than expected, study finds

Interventions against misinformation also increase skepticism toward reliable sources, finds study

Basic income can double global GDP while reducing carbon emissions, analysis suggests

Jun 7, 2024

Firms' desire for ad revenue tied to inadvertently financing online misinformation outlets

Let us know if there is a problem with our content.

Use this form if you have come across a typo, inaccuracy or would like to send an edit request for the content on this page. For general inquiries, please use our contact form . For general feedback, use the public comments section below (please adhere to guidelines ).

Please select the most appropriate category to facilitate processing of your request

Thank you for taking time to provide your feedback to the editors.

Your feedback is important to us. However, we do not guarantee individual replies due to the high volume of messages.

E-mail the story

Your email address is used only to let the recipient know who sent the email. Neither your address nor the recipient's address will be used for any other purpose. The information you enter will appear in your e-mail message and is not retained by Phys.org in any form.

Newsletter sign up

Get weekly and/or daily updates delivered to your inbox. You can unsubscribe at any time and we'll never share your details to third parties.

More information Privacy policy

Donate and enjoy an ad-free experience

We keep our content available to everyone. Consider supporting Science X's mission by getting a premium account.

E-mail newsletter

Library of Congress

National digital newspaper program.

• Ask a Librarian
• Digital Collections
• Library Catalogs
• About the Program
• Guidelines & Resources
• Award Recipients
• Program News
• NDNP Extras
• Contact the NDNP

Chronicling America

Search newspaper pages digitized through the NDNP or find information about American newspapers published between 1690-present.

• Go to Chronicling America
• Topics in Chronicling America
• Chronicling America Maps and Visualizations
• Follow Chronicling America on Twitter (external link) .
• Chronicling America Website Migration Updates

Get Program & Application Information from NEH

For important information and application resources, go to the NEH National Digital Newspaper Program site (external link) .

National Digital Newspaper Program A partnership between the Library & the National Endowment for the Humanities

About the NDNP

The National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP), a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Library of Congress (LC), is a long-term effort to develop an Internet-based, searchable database of U.S. newspapers with descriptive information and select digitization of historic pages. Supported by NEH, this rich digital resource will be developed and permanently maintained at the Library of Congress. An NEH award program will fund the contribution of content from, eventually, all U.S. states and territories.

Learn more about the Library's role in the NDNP

See what states are participating in the program

Guidelines & Resources 

Information on technical specifications for NDNP, best practices, publications, technical premises and more.

Read the most recent technical guidelines for applicants (PDF, 375 KB)

Visit Guidelines & Resources for links to Content Selection Criteria, Writing Guidelines, and other useful resources.

meta|morphosis

meta|morphosis , developed and hosted by the University of Kentucky Libraries (external link) , provides self-paced video tutorials, quizzes and other resources about digitization of microfilm to NDNP specifications to help prepare non-NDNP states for inclusion in, and digitization beyond, NDNP.

Go to meta|morphosis (external link)

Newspaper Navigator

Newspaper Navigator is an experimental web application from LC Labs that utilizes machine learning techniques to let you search and browse over 1.56 million photographs extracted from the NDNP's Chronicling America online newspaper collection.

Search historic newspaper photos with Newspaper Navigator

Learn more about the Newspaper Navigator Project

Program News 

Check here for the latest news on NDNP and its website, Chronicling America .

• 11/02/2023: Library of Congress Announces Chronicling America Website Migration
• 08/17/2023: NEH Announces 2023 Awards to 12 States for Continued Digitization of U.S. Newspapers as part of NDNP
• 03/14/2023: Newspapers from 1770 Now Available in Chronicling America
• 09/20/2022: Chronicling America Celebrates a Major Milesone by Reaching 20 Million Pages
• 09/13/2022: NEH Announces 2022 NDNP Awards adding New Hampshire, the 50th U.S. State to the Program!

National Digital Newspaper Program, 2005-2023

Extra! Extra! NDNP Extras!

The following sites provide examples of reusing historic newspapers and directory records in unique ways. Some utilize data mining techniques, harvesting, or individual items.

• Go to NDNP Extras
• National History Day – Special Prize for Uses of Chronicling America (external link)

Last Updated: 11/02/2023

Connect with the Library

All ways to connect

Subscribe & Comment

• RSS & E-Mail

Download & Play

• iTunesU (external link)

About | Press | Jobs | Donate Inspector General | Legal | Accessibility | External Link Disclaimer | USA.gov

Open Newswire

Available in more than 90 languages!

Open Newswire is a consolidated feed of freely-republishable news articles written by professional journalists from around the world! Articles are written in over 90 languages and are available to be used under Creative Commons licenses or similar guidelines .

To access the newswire, please click here

Open Newswire includes articles in the following languages:

• Azerbaijani
• Bahasa Indonesia
• Chinese (Simplified)
• Chinese (Traditional)
• Crimean Tatar
• Haitian Creole
• Kinyarwanda
• Kurdish (Kurmanji)
• Kurdish (Sorani)
• Lithuanian*
• Uzbek (Cyrillic)
• Uzbek (Latin)

* Coming soon

Sign up for updates about Open Newswire

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact: [email protected]

NOTICE: This service is an aggregator of RSS feeds from different news websites and is in no way affiliated with the publishers themselves. In some cases, articles may be released under conditions different to those specified on this website. Always check the conditions of republication at the source site itself and, if in doubt, contact the publisher directly. To view republication guidelines for a particular article, hover your cursor over the license tag and click through for more information. Always provide correct attribution per respective publishers’ guidelines and ensure any accompanying media may also be republished. Open Newswire is not responsible for any infringements of the terms set out by respective publishers.

Suggestions or feedback?

MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

• Machine learning
• Social justice
• Black holes
• Classes and programs

Departments

• Aeronautics and Astronautics
• Brain and Cognitive Sciences
• Architecture
• Political Science
• Mechanical Engineering

Centers, Labs, & Programs

• Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL)
• Picower Institute for Learning and Memory
• Lincoln Laboratory
• School of Architecture + Planning
• School of Engineering
• School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
• Sloan School of Management
• School of Science
• MIT Schwarzman College of Computing

New computer vision method helps speed up screening of electronic materials

Press contact :, media download.

*Terms of Use:

Images for download on the MIT News office website are made available to non-commercial entities, press and the general public under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives license . You may not alter the images provided, other than to crop them to size. A credit line must be used when reproducing images; if one is not provided below, credit the images to "MIT."

Previous image Next image

Boosting the performance of solar cells, transistors, LEDs, and batteries will require better electronic materials, made from novel compositions that have yet to be discovered.

To speed up the search for advanced functional materials, scientists are using AI tools to identify promising materials from hundreds of millions of chemical formulations. In tandem, engineers are building machines that can print hundreds of material samples at a time based on chemical compositions tagged by AI search algorithms.

But to date, there’s been no similarly speedy way to confirm that these printed materials actually perform as expected. This last step of material characterization has been a major bottleneck in the pipeline of advanced materials screening.

Now, a new computer vision technique developed by MIT engineers significantly speeds up the characterization of newly synthesized electronic materials. The technique automatically analyzes images of printed semiconducting samples and quickly estimates two key electronic properties for each sample: band gap (a measure of electron activation energy) and stability (a measure of longevity).

The new technique accurately characterizes electronic materials 85 times faster compared to the standard benchmark approach.

The researchers intend to use the technique to speed up the search for promising solar cell materials. They also plan to incorporate the technique into a fully automated materials screening system.

“Ultimately, we envision fitting this technique into an autonomous lab of the future,” says MIT graduate student Eunice Aissi. “The whole system would allow us to give a computer a materials problem, have it predict potential compounds, and then run 24-7 making and characterizing those predicted materials until it arrives at the desired solution.”

“The application space for these techniques ranges from improving solar energy to transparent electronics and transistors,” adds MIT graduate student Alexander (Aleks) Siemenn. “It really spans the full gamut of where semiconductor materials can benefit society.”

Aissi and Siemenn detail the new technique in a study appearing today in Nature Communications . Their MIT co-authors include graduate student Fang Sheng, postdoc Basita Das, and professor of mechanical engineering Tonio Buonassisi, along with former visiting professor Hamide Kavak of Cukurova University and visiting postdoc Armi Tiihonen of Aalto University.

Power in optics

Once a new electronic material is synthesized, the characterization of its properties is typically handled by a “domain expert” who examines one sample at a time using a benchtop tool called a UV-Vis, which scans through different colors of light to determine where the semiconductor begins to absorb more strongly. This manual process is precise but also time-consuming: A domain expert typically characterizes about 20 material samples per hour — a snail’s pace compared to some printing tools that can lay down 10,000 different material combinations per hour.

“The manual characterization process is very slow,” Buonassisi says. “They give you a high amount of confidence in the measurement, but they’re not matched to the speed at which you can put matter down on a substrate nowadays.”

To speed up the characterization process and clear one of the largest bottlenecks in materials screening, Buonassisi and his colleagues looked to computer vision — a field that applies computer algorithms to quickly and automatically analyze optical features in an image.

“There’s power in optical characterization methods,” Buonassisi notes. “You can obtain information very quickly. There is richness in images, over many pixels and wavelengths, that a human just can’t process but a computer machine-learning program can.”

The team realized that certain electronic properties — namely, band gap and stability — could be estimated based on visual information alone, if that information were captured with enough detail and interpreted correctly.

With that goal in mind, the researchers developed two new computer vision algorithms to automatically interpret images of electronic materials: one to estimate band gap and the other to determine stability.

The first algorithm is designed to process visual data from highly detailed, hyperspectral images.

“Instead of a standard camera image with three channels — red, green, and blue (RBG) — the hyperspectral image has 300 channels,” Siemenn explains. “The algorithm takes that data, transforms it, and computes a band gap. We run that process extremely fast.”

The second algorithm analyzes standard RGB images and assesses a material’s stability based on visual changes in the material’s color over time.

“We found that color change can be a good proxy for degradation rate in the material system we are studying,” Aissi says.

Material compositions

The team applied the two new algorithms to characterize the band gap and stability for about 70 printed semiconducting samples. They used a robotic printer to deposit samples on a single slide, like cookies on a baking sheet. Each deposit was made with a slightly different combination of semiconducting materials. In this case, the team printed different ratios of perovskites — a type of material that is expected to be a promising solar cell candidate though is also known to quickly degrade.

“People are trying to change the composition — add a little bit of this, a little bit of that — to try to make [perovskites] more stable and high-performance,” Buonassisi says.

Once they printed 70 different compositions of perovskite samples on a single slide, the team scanned the slide with a hyperspectral camera. Then they applied an algorithm that visually “segments” the image, automatically isolating the samples from the background. They ran the new band gap algorithm on the isolated samples and automatically computed the band gap for every sample. The entire band gap extraction process process took about six minutes.

“It would normally take a domain expert several days to manually characterize the same number of samples,” Siemenn says.

To test for stability, the team placed the same slide in a chamber in which they varied the environmental conditions, such as humidity, temperature, and light exposure. They used a standard RGB camera to take an image of the samples every 30 seconds over two hours. They then applied the second algorithm to the images of each sample over time to estimate the degree to which each droplet changed color, or degraded under various environmental conditions. In the end, the algorithm produced a “stability index,” or a measure of each sample’s durability. 

As a check, the team compared their results with manual measurements of the same droplets, taken by a domain expert. Compared to the expert’s benchmark estimates, the team’s band gap and stability results were 98.5 percent and 96.9 percent as accurate, respectively, and 85 times faster.

“We were constantly shocked by how these algorithms were able to not just increase the speed of characterization, but also to get accurate results,” Siemenn says.  “We do envision this slotting into the current automated materials pipeline we’re developing in the lab, so we can run it in a fully automated fashion, using machine learning to guide where we want to discover these new materials, printing them, and then actually characterizing them, all with very fast processing.”

This work was supported, in part, by First Solar. 

Share this news article on:

Related links.

• Tonio Buonassisi
• Department of Mechanical Engineering

Related Topics

• 3-D printing
• Artificial intelligence
• Sustainability
• Computer vision
• Materials science and engineering
• Mechanical engineering
• Renewable energy

Related Articles

Moving perovskite advancements from the lab to the manufacturing floor

Explained: Why perovskites could take solar cells to new heights

Engineers enlist AI to help scale up advanced solar cell manufacturing

Homing in on longer-lasting perovskite solar cells

Previous item Next item

More MIT News

Researchers use large language models to help robots navigate

Read full story →

Making climate models relevant for local decision-makers

New algorithm discovers language just by watching videos

MIT Faculty Founder Initiative announces three winners of entrepreneurship awards

How a quantum scientist, a nurse, and an economist are joining the fight against global poverty

Catalyst Symposium helps lower “activation barriers” for rising biology researchers

• More news on MIT News homepage →

Massachusetts Institute of Technology 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA, USA

• Map (opens in new window)
• Events (opens in new window)
• People (opens in new window)
• Careers (opens in new window)
• Accessibility
• Social Media Hub
• MIT on Facebook
• MIT on YouTube
• MIT on Instagram

Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World

Read our research on:

Full Topic List

Regions & Countries

Publications

• Our Methods
• Short Reads
• Tools & Resources

Read Our Research On:

News Platforms & Sources

Americans’ changing relationship with local news.

More Americans now prefer to get local news online, while fewer turn to TV or print. And most say local news outlets are important to their community.

How Hispanic Americans Get Their News

U.S.-born Latinos mostly get their news in English and prefer it in English, while immigrant Latinos have much more varied habits.

Introducing the Pew-Knight Initiative

The Pew-Knight Initiative will deliver a comprehensive, real-time look at the information landscape from the standpoints of both consumers and producers of news.

Many Americans find value in getting news on social media, but concerns about inaccuracy have risen

Four-in-ten Americans who get news from social media say inaccuracy is the thing they dislike most about it – an increase of 9 percentage points since 2018.

Most Top-Ranked Podcasts Bring On Guests

Thousands of guests appeared on the top-ranked podcasts in 2022, but a relatively small number accounted for a majority of appearances. 76% of top-ranked podcasts brought on at least one guest in 2022, and 27% almost always or regularly featured guests.

An Audio Tour Through America’s Top-Ranked Podcasts

To offer a taste of the variety of topics the top-ranked podcasts represent, and to give a sense of what podcast listeners experience, we compiled clips from the shows we studied.

Q&A: How we used large language models to identify guests on popular podcasts

We asked researchers how they used the newest generation of large language models to analyze roughly 24,000 podcast episodes.

5 facts about how Americans use Facebook, two decades after its launch

Around seven-in-ten U.S. adults (68%) say they ever use Facebook, a share that has remained relatively flat since 2016.

Audiences are declining for traditional news media in the U.S. – with some exceptions

A declining share of U.S. adults are following the news closely, and audiences are shrinking for several older types of news media.

News Platform Fact Sheet

The transition of the news industry away from print, television and radio into digital spaces has caused huge disruptions in the traditional news industry, especially the print news industry. Today, an overwhelming majority of Americans get news at least sometimes from digital devices.

REFINE YOUR SELECTION

Research teams.

1615 L St. NW, Suite 800 Washington, DC 20036 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 |  Media Inquiries

Research Topics

• Email Newsletters

ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER  Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of  The Pew Charitable Trusts .

© 2024 Pew Research Center

The state of AI in early 2024: Gen AI adoption spikes and starts to generate value

If 2023 was the year the world discovered generative AI (gen AI) , 2024 is the year organizations truly began using—and deriving business value from—this new technology. In the latest McKinsey Global Survey  on AI, 65 percent of respondents report that their organizations are regularly using gen AI, nearly double the percentage from our previous survey just ten months ago. Respondents’ expectations for gen AI’s impact remain as high as they were last year , with three-quarters predicting that gen AI will lead to significant or disruptive change in their industries in the years ahead.

About the authors

This article is a collaborative effort by Alex Singla , Alexander Sukharevsky , Lareina Yee , and Michael Chui , with Bryce Hall , representing views from QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and McKinsey Digital.

Organizations are already seeing material benefits from gen AI use, reporting both cost decreases and revenue jumps in the business units deploying the technology. The survey also provides insights into the kinds of risks presented by gen AI—most notably, inaccuracy—as well as the emerging practices of top performers to mitigate those challenges and capture value.

AI adoption surges

Interest in generative AI has also brightened the spotlight on a broader set of AI capabilities. For the past six years, AI adoption by respondents’ organizations has hovered at about 50 percent. This year, the survey finds that adoption has jumped to 72 percent (Exhibit 1). And the interest is truly global in scope. Our 2023 survey found that AI adoption did not reach 66 percent in any region; however, this year more than two-thirds of respondents in nearly every region say their organizations are using AI. 1 Organizations based in Central and South America are the exception, with 58 percent of respondents working for organizations based in Central and South America reporting AI adoption. Looking by industry, the biggest increase in adoption can be found in professional services. 2 Includes respondents working for organizations focused on human resources, legal services, management consulting, market research, R&D, tax preparation, and training.

Also, responses suggest that companies are now using AI in more parts of the business. Half of respondents say their organizations have adopted AI in two or more business functions, up from less than a third of respondents in 2023 (Exhibit 2).

Gen AI adoption is most common in the functions where it can create the most value

Most respondents now report that their organizations—and they as individuals—are using gen AI. Sixty-five percent of respondents say their organizations are regularly using gen AI in at least one business function, up from one-third last year. The average organization using gen AI is doing so in two functions, most often in marketing and sales and in product and service development—two functions in which previous research  determined that gen AI adoption could generate the most value 3 “ The economic potential of generative AI: The next productivity frontier ,” McKinsey, June 14, 2023. —as well as in IT (Exhibit 3). The biggest increase from 2023 is found in marketing and sales, where reported adoption has more than doubled. Yet across functions, only two use cases, both within marketing and sales, are reported by 15 percent or more of respondents.

Gen AI also is weaving its way into respondents’ personal lives. Compared with 2023, respondents are much more likely to be using gen AI at work and even more likely to be using gen AI both at work and in their personal lives (Exhibit 4). The survey finds upticks in gen AI use across all regions, with the largest increases in Asia–Pacific and Greater China. Respondents at the highest seniority levels, meanwhile, show larger jumps in the use of gen Al tools for work and outside of work compared with their midlevel-management peers. Looking at specific industries, respondents working in energy and materials and in professional services report the largest increase in gen AI use.

Investments in gen AI and analytical AI are beginning to create value

The latest survey also shows how different industries are budgeting for gen AI. Responses suggest that, in many industries, organizations are about equally as likely to be investing more than 5 percent of their digital budgets in gen AI as they are in nongenerative, analytical-AI solutions (Exhibit 5). Yet in most industries, larger shares of respondents report that their organizations spend more than 20 percent on analytical AI than on gen AI. Looking ahead, most respondents—67 percent—expect their organizations to invest more in AI over the next three years.

Where are those investments paying off? For the first time, our latest survey explored the value created by gen AI use by business function. The function in which the largest share of respondents report seeing cost decreases is human resources. Respondents most commonly report meaningful revenue increases (of more than 5 percent) in supply chain and inventory management (Exhibit 6). For analytical AI, respondents most often report seeing cost benefits in service operations—in line with what we found last year —as well as meaningful revenue increases from AI use in marketing and sales.

Inaccuracy: The most recognized and experienced risk of gen AI use

As businesses begin to see the benefits of gen AI, they’re also recognizing the diverse risks associated with the technology. These can range from data management risks such as data privacy, bias, or intellectual property (IP) infringement to model management risks, which tend to focus on inaccurate output or lack of explainability. A third big risk category is security and incorrect use.

Respondents to the latest survey are more likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider inaccuracy and IP infringement to be relevant to their use of gen AI, and about half continue to view cybersecurity as a risk (Exhibit 7).

Conversely, respondents are less likely than they were last year to say their organizations consider workforce and labor displacement to be relevant risks and are not increasing efforts to mitigate them.

In fact, inaccuracy— which can affect use cases across the gen AI value chain , ranging from customer journeys and summarization to coding and creative content—is the only risk that respondents are significantly more likely than last year to say their organizations are actively working to mitigate.

Some organizations have already experienced negative consequences from the use of gen AI, with 44 percent of respondents saying their organizations have experienced at least one consequence (Exhibit 8). Respondents most often report inaccuracy as a risk that has affected their organizations, followed by cybersecurity and explainability.

Our previous research has found that there are several elements of governance that can help in scaling gen AI use responsibly, yet few respondents report having these risk-related practices in place. 4 “ Implementing generative AI with speed and safety ,” McKinsey Quarterly , March 13, 2024. For example, just 18 percent say their organizations have an enterprise-wide council or board with the authority to make decisions involving responsible AI governance, and only one-third say gen AI risk awareness and risk mitigation controls are required skill sets for technical talent.

Bringing gen AI capabilities to bear

The latest survey also sought to understand how, and how quickly, organizations are deploying these new gen AI tools. We have found three archetypes for implementing gen AI solutions : takers use off-the-shelf, publicly available solutions; shapers customize those tools with proprietary data and systems; and makers develop their own foundation models from scratch. 5 “ Technology’s generational moment with generative AI: A CIO and CTO guide ,” McKinsey, July 11, 2023. Across most industries, the survey results suggest that organizations are finding off-the-shelf offerings applicable to their business needs—though many are pursuing opportunities to customize models or even develop their own (Exhibit 9). About half of reported gen AI uses within respondents’ business functions are utilizing off-the-shelf, publicly available models or tools, with little or no customization. Respondents in energy and materials, technology, and media and telecommunications are more likely to report significant customization or tuning of publicly available models or developing their own proprietary models to address specific business needs.

Respondents most often report that their organizations required one to four months from the start of a project to put gen AI into production, though the time it takes varies by business function (Exhibit 10). It also depends upon the approach for acquiring those capabilities. Not surprisingly, reported uses of highly customized or proprietary models are 1.5 times more likely than off-the-shelf, publicly available models to take five months or more to implement.

Gen AI high performers are excelling despite facing challenges

Gen AI is a new technology, and organizations are still early in the journey of pursuing its opportunities and scaling it across functions. So it’s little surprise that only a small subset of respondents (46 out of 876) report that a meaningful share of their organizations’ EBIT can be attributed to their deployment of gen AI. Still, these gen AI leaders are worth examining closely. These, after all, are the early movers, who already attribute more than 10 percent of their organizations’ EBIT to their use of gen AI. Forty-two percent of these high performers say more than 20 percent of their EBIT is attributable to their use of nongenerative, analytical AI, and they span industries and regions—though most are at organizations with less than $1 billion in annual revenue. The AI-related practices at these organizations can offer guidance to those looking to create value from gen AI adoption at their own organizations.

To start, gen AI high performers are using gen AI in more business functions—an average of three functions, while others average two. They, like other organizations, are most likely to use gen AI in marketing and sales and product or service development, but they’re much more likely than others to use gen AI solutions in risk, legal, and compliance; in strategy and corporate finance; and in supply chain and inventory management. They’re more than three times as likely as others to be using gen AI in activities ranging from processing of accounting documents and risk assessment to R&D testing and pricing and promotions. While, overall, about half of reported gen AI applications within business functions are utilizing publicly available models or tools, gen AI high performers are less likely to use those off-the-shelf options than to either implement significantly customized versions of those tools or to develop their own proprietary foundation models.

What else are these high performers doing differently? For one thing, they are paying more attention to gen-AI-related risks. Perhaps because they are further along on their journeys, they are more likely than others to say their organizations have experienced every negative consequence from gen AI we asked about, from cybersecurity and personal privacy to explainability and IP infringement. Given that, they are more likely than others to report that their organizations consider those risks, as well as regulatory compliance, environmental impacts, and political stability, to be relevant to their gen AI use, and they say they take steps to mitigate more risks than others do.

Gen AI high performers are also much more likely to say their organizations follow a set of risk-related best practices (Exhibit 11). For example, they are nearly twice as likely as others to involve the legal function and embed risk reviews early on in the development of gen AI solutions—that is, to “ shift left .” They’re also much more likely than others to employ a wide range of other best practices, from strategy-related practices to those related to scaling.

In addition to experiencing the risks of gen AI adoption, high performers have encountered other challenges that can serve as warnings to others (Exhibit 12). Seventy percent say they have experienced difficulties with data, including defining processes for data governance, developing the ability to quickly integrate data into AI models, and an insufficient amount of training data, highlighting the essential role that data play in capturing value. High performers are also more likely than others to report experiencing challenges with their operating models, such as implementing agile ways of working and effective sprint performance management.

About the research

The online survey was in the field from February 22 to March 5, 2024, and garnered responses from 1,363 participants representing the full range of regions, industries, company sizes, functional specialties, and tenures. Of those respondents, 981 said their organizations had adopted AI in at least one business function, and 878 said their organizations were regularly using gen AI in at least one function. To adjust for differences in response rates, the data are weighted by the contribution of each respondent’s nation to global GDP.

Alex Singla and Alexander Sukharevsky  are global coleaders of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and senior partners in McKinsey’s Chicago and London offices, respectively; Lareina Yee  is a senior partner in the Bay Area office, where Michael Chui , a McKinsey Global Institute partner, is a partner; and Bryce Hall  is an associate partner in the Washington, DC, office.

They wish to thank Kaitlin Noe, Larry Kanter, Mallika Jhamb, and Shinjini Srivastava for their contributions to this work.

This article was edited by Heather Hanselman, a senior editor in McKinsey’s Atlanta office.

Explore a career with us

Related articles.

Moving past gen AI’s honeymoon phase: Seven hard truths for CIOs to get from pilot to scale

A generative AI reset: Rewiring to turn potential into value in 2024

Implementing generative AI with speed and safety

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

• Backchannel
• Newsletters
• WIRED Insider
• WIRED Consulting

Will Knight

OpenAI Offers a Peek Inside the Guts of ChatGPT

ChatGPT developer OpenAI’s approach to building artificial intelligence came under fire this week from former employees who accuse the company of taking unnecessary risks with technology that could become harmful.

Today, OpenAI released a new research paper apparently aimed at showing it is serious about tackling AI risk by making its models more explainable. In the paper , researchers from the company lay out a way to peer inside the AI model that powers ChatGPT. They devise a method of identifying how the model stores certain concepts—including those that might cause an AI system to misbehave.

Although the research makes OpenAI’s work on keeping AI in check more visible, it also highlights recent turmoil at the company. The new research was performed by the recently disbanded “superalignment” team at OpenAI that was dedicated to studying the technology’s long-term risks.

The former group’s coleads, Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike—both of whom have left OpenAI —are named as coauthors. Sutskever, a cofounder of OpenAI and formerly chief scientist, was among the board members who voted to fire CEO Sam Altman last November, triggering a chaotic few days that culminated in Altman’s return as leader.

ChatGPT is powered by a family of so-called large language models called GPT, based on an approach to machine learning known as artificial neural networks. These mathematical networks have shown great power to learn useful tasks by analyzing example data, but their workings cannot be easily scrutinized as conventional computer programs can. The complex interplay between the layers of “neurons” within an artificial neural network makes reverse engineering why a system like ChatGPT came up with a particular response hugely challenging.

“Unlike with most human creations, we don’t really understand the inner workings of neural networks,” the researchers behind the work wrote in an accompanying blog post . Some prominent AI researchers believe that the most powerful AI models, including ChatGPT, could perhaps be used to design chemical or biological weapons and coordinate cyberattacks. A longer-term concern is that AI models may choose to hide information or act in harmful ways in order to achieve their goals.

OpenAI’s new paper outlines a technique that lessens the mystery a little, by identifying patterns that represent specific concepts inside a machine learning system with help from an additional machine learning model. The key innovation is in refining the network used to peer inside the system of interest by identifying concepts, to make it more efficient.

OpenAI proved out the approach by identifying patterns that represent concepts inside GPT-4, one of its largest AI models. The company released code related to the interpretability work, as well as a visualization tool that can be used to see how words in different sentences activate concepts, including profanity and erotic content, in GPT-4 and another model. Knowing how a model represents certain concepts could be a step toward being able to dial down those associated with unwanted behavior, to keep an AI system on the rails. It could also make it possible to tune an AI system to favor certain topics or ideas.

By Matt Burgess

By David Robson

By Joseph Cox

By Boone Ashworth

Even though LLMs defy easy interrogation, a growing body of research suggests they can be poked and prodded in ways that reveal useful information. Anthropic, an OpenAI competitor backed by Amazon and Google, published similar work on AI interpretability last month. To demonstrate how the behavior of AI systems might be tuned, the company's researchers created a chatbot obsessed with San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge . And simply asking an LLM to explain its reasoning can sometimes yield insights .

“It’s exciting progress,” says David Bau , a professor at Northeastern University who works on AI explainability, of the new OpenAI research. “As a field, we need to be learning how to understand and scrutinize these large models much better.”

Bau says the OpenAI team’s main innovation is in showing a more efficient way to configure a small neural network that can be used to understand the components of a larger one. But he also notes that the technique needs to be refined to make it more reliable. “There’s still a lot of work ahead in using these methods to create fully understandable explanations,” Bau says.

Bau is part of a US government-funded effort called the National Deep Inference Fabric , which will make cloud computing resources available to academic researchers so that they too can probe especially powerful AI models. “We need to figure out how we can enable scientists to do this work even if they are not working at these large companies,” he says.

OpenAI’s researchers acknowledge in their paper that further work needs to be done to improve their method, but also say they hope it will lead to practical ways to control AI models. “We hope that one day, interpretability can provide us with new ways to reason about model safety and robustness, and significantly increase our trust in powerful AI models by giving strong assurances about their behavior,” they write.

You Might Also Like …

Navigate election season with our WIRED Politics Lab newsletter and podcast

Don’t think breakdancing is an Olympic sport ? The world champ agrees (kinda)

How researchers cracked an 11-year-old password to a $3M crypto wallet

The uncanny rise of the world’s first AI beauty pageant

Give your back a break: Here are the best office chairs we’ve tested

Lauren Goode

Kate Knibbs

Reece Rogers

Purdue Online Writing Lab Purdue OWL® College of Liberal Arts

Welcome to the Purdue Online Writing Lab

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

This page is brought to you by the OWL at Purdue University. When printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice.

Copyright ©1995-2018 by The Writing Lab & The OWL at Purdue and Purdue University. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, reproduced, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed without permission. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our terms and conditions of fair use.

The Online Writing Lab (the Purdue OWL) at Purdue University houses writing resources and instructional material, and we provide these as a free service at Purdue. Students, members of the community, and users worldwide will find information to assist with many writing projects. Teachers and trainers may use this material for in-class and out-of-class instruction.

The On-Campus and Online versions of Purdue OWL assist clients in their development as writers—no matter what their skill level—with on-campus consultations, online participation, and community engagement. The Purdue OWL serves the Purdue West Lafayette and Indianapolis campuses and coordinates with local literacy initiatives. The Purdue OWL offers global support through online reference materials and services.

Social Media

Facebook twitter.