Semantic Web for Media Convergence: A Newspaper Case

Abstract

Newspapers in the digitalisation and Internet era are evolving from mono-channel and static communication mediums to highly dynamic and multi-channel ones, where the different channels converge into a unified news editorial office. Advanced computerised support is needed in order to cope with the requirements arising from convergent multimedia news management, production and delivery. Such advanced services require machines to be aware of a greater part of the underlying semantics. Ontologies are a clear candidate to put this semantics into play, and Semantic Web technologies the best choice for Web-wide information integration. However, newspapers have made great investments in their current news management systems so a smooth transition is required in order to reduce implementation costs. Our proposal is to build an ontological framework based on existing journalism and multimedia standards and to translate existing metadata to the Semantic Web. Once in a semantic space, data integration and news management and retrieval are facilitated enormously. For instance, Semantic Web tools are being developed in the context of a media house that are capable of dealing with the different kinds of media managed in the media house in an integrated and transparent way.