Anna Havránková 438033

Google News: The Aggregating Innovator

In the current era of globalisation and readily available information, the trend of most
social media and news sites is to be multimodal and congregate wide variety of content under
one domain. With social media we can see this tendency for instance with YouTube recently
adding the stories and blog posts functionalities. News sites have similar tendency – The
Guardian now has sections dedicated solely to videos and podcasts.
One product that is working to satiate the need for centralized news content are so called
news aggregator services, such as Pulse, News 360 or Fark – however, in this paper I want to
explore Google News, as it has the added advantage of personalising the content based on the
users data collected through their google account, even before the users decide which content
to follow and personalise the service themselves. This specific format of news subscription
acts as the next step in online news presentation – a move towards more concise, personalized
yet unbiased, multimodal and accessible way to consume content. Aggregators are of course
not content creating subjects, they act merely as mediators, however, the way they achieve
this mediation is rather revolutionary.
News aggregators create a curated news feed, consisting of news articles, but also blog
posts and other multimodal media (similarly to RSS feeds). It allows the person to subscribe
to their preferred content and personalize their feed, but in the case of google news, the
algorithms work with other types of information as well, creating so called topics – areas of
interest based on the readers location, personal information, viewing history and activity
within the aggregator itself.
All these factors considered, Google News should be the ultimate biased source,
spoon-feeding the reader news tailored to their political beliefs. However, the opposite is
somehow true. way topics function on GN mostly eliminates preliminary bias. Of course, the
readers are able to follow specific sources and fill their feeds according to their preference,
however, when the site selects topics based on the data mentioned above, they translate as
simple tags devoid of political ideology. For instance, pro-life or anti-vax are not considered
topics. They are both valid search but cannot be followed and GN will not automatically
include them into readers news feeds based on their data. However, abortion and vaccinations
are both valid topics and will return an overview of news coverage from different sources
with different political leanings. The order and priority of those does not seem to be
influenced by what sources the reader follows.

1
 Anna Havránková 438033

Fig. 1: First 3 results of the abortion topic displayed after following Fox News as a news source

However, the main reason I consider GN to be particularly unbiased is one specific function
of the service - the full coverage function. While some stories displayed in the news feed are
solitary articles or videos, many display this particular option, which takes the reader to an
overview of the covered event including several sections including but not limited to live
coverage, top coverage, local coverage, related videos, opinion pieces, tweets, FAQ relating
the topic and finally all available coverage. Thanks to this function the article that is displayed
first only acts as a way to catch the readers eye, then they have the option to immediately
compare the sources. Of course, this could and will serve as confirmation bias, each reader
will ultimately find the viewpoint they agree too. It is however a valid alternative to following
a single newsfeed, that is bound to be opinionated.

2
 Anna Havránková 438033

Fig. 2: The top coverage section of an article featuring sources with the most traffic

Leaving aside the topic of biases, GN and other aggregators are also a fascinating case
of multimodality and scope of topics. Granted, as for the scope, news sites are not far behind.
However, given Google News’ data collection and the options to customize the feed and
select from enormous number of sources, the GN feed can simultaneously display breaking
news from top news sites and cater to the readers’ personal interests, however niche they may
be for mainstream media.

Fig. 3: Scope of a personalized news feed

3
 Anna Havránková 438033

It can also deliver regional news far more effectively, combining the aforementioned
topics with the readers’ physical location obtained either from their mobile device’s GPS or
their IP address.
As for multimodality, news sites are in themselves multimodal with embedded tweets,
pictures and videos, live-coverage feeds etc. However, GN and its full coverage function has
the advantage to effectively let the readers choose their preferred modality. As mentioned
above, apart from different sections on news coverage, the full coverage option often includes
a video section, redirecting to TV news segments, trailers etc. Furthermore, the reader is also
presented with multiple thumbnails, tweets, headlines and other pieces of information, giving
them fuller picture before reading any of the articles – or possible even without ever reading
any of the articles.
The last interesting feature to note is the chronology of updates. While all the news on
the feed are recent enough to be relevant, they are not necessarily arranged in chronological
order. The same then goes for the updates within the full coverage feature.

Fig. 4: Feed of the Brexit topic arranged by combination of chronology and relevance

4
 Anna Havránková 438033

One possible explanation is, that in the era where the information flow could be considered
relatively instantaneous compared to the last decade, there is a movement from immediacy to
relevance, or perhaps even “virality”. On both social media and news sites content is no
longer necessarily arranged by timestamps, but rather by a combination of these factors,
which may result in the top story being the most clicked/shared one in the last few hours
rather than the truly “Breaking News”. While this approach is by no means unique to Google
News, the prevalence of the deictic marker as one of the few information in the news story’s
preview seems to highlight the lack of chronology.
To conclude, Google News and similar services mark another era of online news,
where content is personalised, less publisher-dependant, increasingly multimodal and lacking
strict chronological arrangement. Such evolution is possible due to both technological
advancements and new online conventions, such as creating tags that can group news together
cross-platforms.