Weiss (2013) talks about news organizations plotting geo-located news stories on map so that people can see where late-breaking news is taking place. How might having a map plotted with geo-tagged news stories of crimes contribute to media agenda setting?
What might having a plotted map of news stories reveal about the kinds of stories news organizations are covering?
I think doing this may have a positive and negative impact. One positive may be that it would help identify where crime is happening and hopefully bring out action from the people that can control it (Law enforcement or government officials). However, there is also a downside to this because it is generally the case that the media is not covering every single crime event in a particular area. Because not every event is being highlighted, for whatever reason, it will skew the results of the map. However, going back to a positive, let's say the map shows that car accidents are always happening at one particular intersection, then maybe the city or state needs to take a look at that area to see if any changes need to be made in terms of traffic lights, lane sizes, etc.
I agree with you Marc. There are definite advantages and disadvantages to geolocating news stories. The example I thought of was with Hawaiʻi news mediaʻs recent coverage of the homelessness issue here on Oʻahu. A plotted map might show a high concentration of geotags in the Kakakaʻako area representing all recent news stories on the homeless issue in, say. What if a positive story came out about a local business in Kakaʻako that same week? That storyʻs geotag would be lost in the ocean of tags for news stories about homelessness. But like you said, there are positives to such a feature as well.
It would be interesting to think about this kind of feature for local Hawaiʻi news media as compared to a state that is not spread out over 8 islands.
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