Sophisticated search algorithm
The search algorithm combines advanced natural language processing, information retrieval and recommender system algorithms to mimic the expert creative strategies of experienced journalists. – The core algorithm was developed from extensive previous research at City University London on creative search algorithms for other domains such as design and healthcare. The algorithm was specialised using knowledge from domain experts in journalism, says Maiden.
Neil Maiden elaborates that the JUICE team has experimented with automatic language translation services such as Google Translate, and have found it to be sufficiently accurate to enable cross-language translation. For example, to discover relevant Norwegian language news items in response to English-language stories and inputs.
Interviews revealed 6 strategies
In order to build JUICE the team needed to collect requirements from experienced journalists. – The JUICE team ran semi-structured interviews with 6 experienced journalists, and 2 leading digital experts in journalism to elicit strategies that these journalists use to explore and write creative angles on news stories. They found 6 principles to design JUICE:
(I) Individuals: creatively explore different human angles in a news story based on the different people and roles associated from its background.
(II) Casual: creatively explore the background events that underpin a story to discover a new angle to the story from its background.
(III) Quirky: creatively explore unusual or comical information about a story as a means of using wit to report serious news.
(IV) Quantifiable elements: creatively explore numerical and quantified information about a news story in order to back it up with evidence in new and useful ways.
(V) Ramifications: creatively explore information about the consequences of events and actions related to a news story, to generate new and useful stories about future consequences.
(VI) Data visualizations: creatively explore different data sets and visualizations to generate new and useful ways about how to display information in a news story to encourage human insight.