this newsbot site
Bot! :-]
DrugSenseBot automatically tracks
the very latest
breaking drug news from around the world,
many times an hour, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
You just can't get more recent breaking drug news, anywhere.
This newsbot searches online sources, automatically categorizing the text.
It transforms sites into specialized, strategic RSS news feeds
on
cannabis,
medical marijuana,
harm reduction,
opioids,
hallucinogens,
and much more.
News articles are automatically summarized.
Bot turns online news sites into
RSS XML news feeds
whether or not the source itself has news feeds!
What else does this newsbot do?
This site is a tool which assists
mapinc newshawks
(news analysts) in gathering the latest
drug-related news.
The system acts as an
agent
to find and fetch the
latest drug-related news articles from news sites.
see chart: Bot's place
in the MAPInc data collection scheme.
Bot's technology is able to extract unstructured information
from pages around the web and translate it into categorized
knowledge that activists can use to improve their effectiveness.
How does this robot work?
Using content analysis, Bot filters news articles for
drug-related news items, fetches, analyses and transforms the
news article text.
This newsbot's transformation of news text is
a central feature of this process because it makes possible
the ongoing critical commentary and analysis of drug-related news.
Textual transformation includes re-formatting, concept detection,
classification, and mark-up.
Unlike RSS aggregators, this news bot scans the actual news artcles themselves,
not just a pre-packaged article summary as most RSS aggregators do. Unlike simple
keyword schemes (as google news uses for searching and mail-back), this newsbot uses
a subject-specific (drug policy) dictionary to go beyond simple keyword techniques.
As the name "bot" implies, this whole process is automated.
No manual intervention is used at any stage of the process.
Concept-Based Content Analysis
Concept-based analysis translates phrases and words to their
underlying concepts; for example, "cannabis",
"marijuana" and "THC" would all index to the
same concept.
The
concept dictionary
defines the "concepts" used for the content analysis, classification and markup process.
This is a thesaurus-like organization of related search terms that is used
by the system to classify articles, to summarize articles,
and to selectively follow links when examining a site.
Bot's concept-based system
-
reduces the time and effort it takes hawks (news analysts) to find relevant
news items
-
reduces the volume of irrelevant documents retrieved (high precision)
-
is readily adaptable to new domains (topic areas)
The news articles here are not automatically
hawked,
that is left for the human readers of this site.
The transformed news article remains here for
a few days and is then deleted.
also see:
see also,
Why is a depiction of Hitler used
as a graphic to represent propaganda?
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| ![:-] Bot! - home](/bot/images/dsbotface1.gif ":-] Bot! - home")
