Looking at Context in the Context of News Patterns

We here at News Patterns often think about context as we develop our patterning algorithms and interfaces. According to the Merriam Webster definition...

Context: the interrelated conditions in which something exists or occurs; environment or setting.

We extend the definition of context to include relevant relationships that enable one to see things differently as a result of those visible or conscious relationships. This graphic illustrates the point about the power of context:

  

As one might suspect, both gray squares are actually the same color and lightness. Nevertheless, the gray square surrounded by black squares (left) appears to be darker than the gray square surrounded by white squares (right).  This visual perception shift is a result of the way our brains perceive patterns in light and dark fields.  We interpret the gray squares differently because of the the different contexts where they appear.

This same shifts in perception occurs when we are exposed to news signals based on these examples of news context from traditional news sources:

• The credibility of the news article source (history of relevant coverage and factual accuracy)
• The historical sentiment of the source (as in friend, foe or credible objective)
• The relevancy of the news as it pertains to current needed information
• The frequency of new story repetitions among different news sources

With our news patterning algorithms and animations, we extend the boundaries of context with these attributes:

• Thousands of potential relevant sources
• Extended periods of time (days, weeks, months and years)
• Topics that should be tracked as part of important interests
• News that correlates with archetypical patterns of competition
•  New topics that are deserving of active tracking
• Visual animations of context and trends
• Tracking layers set to anticipate actual market, political or societal events
• Trusted group memberships that share news and relevancies of news articles

Since all this extra context would produce an overload of text if it were all in written form, News Patterns uses image and animation layers to add context to relevent news for our network members.  Context in image form is interpreted by humans at amazing speeds.  The end result is greater insight (as in more useful context) in a shorter period of time.

I will add more on this topic in a future post.  See also my most recent  post: Animation Innovations for News Patterns Radar Interfaces )