North Central Research Station

Why can't I see the charts?

You may not have the software you need.

Viewing and using these interactive charts requires first installing the following free software:

Microsoft Internet Explorer

Adobe SVG Viewer

How do I use the charts?

Using Monthly Charts

Each monthly chart summarizes the news media discussion for each of the seven policy issues plus conflict for a particular month. You can change the month by using the selector beneath the chart.

Alternating vertical bands of white and green shading distinguish individual days throughout a month. Broad shaded bands indicate days with more news stories; narrow shaded bands indicate days with fewer news stories. Move the mouse over an open area within a shaded band to view the date.

A vertical red cursor line–which represents an individual news story–tracks the movement of the mouse and shows a hint box with the date of news stories.

A scroll bar at the bottom of the chart allows you to scroll from the beginning of a month to the end of the month. Caution: Because of limited screen width, use the scroll bar to ensure that you view all the stories for each day.

While the vertical red cursor line indicates an individual news story, each of the policy issues discussed in a story is represented as a vertical blue bar. The height of each blue bar represents the number of paragraphs in a news story discussing a particular policy issue. Some stories discuss multiple policy issues. Due to space limitations, the height of the bars is limited to 16 paragraphs.

When the cursor is placed over a blue bar, the bar turns red and a hint box gives the number of paragraphs in the story discussing the issue.

The conflict index indicates the presence of expressions of conflict in a news story about any of the seven policy issues. Conflict is shown in black to distinguish it from the seven issues. The height of the black conflict bars represents the number of paragraphs in a news story expressing conflict.

News stories containing expressions of conflict are ranked within each day; stories containing the most conflict expressions are on the left and gradually taper off to stories without expressions of conflict on the right.

Click on a blue story bar to see an extract of the first 100 words of the news story. Click on the link at the bottom of the extract to get the full news story (assuming it is still on the original Web site).

Clusters of blue story bars on a particular day or several consecutive days indicate relatively heavy news discussion of an issue. For example, May 6 and 7, 2005, contain clusters of “Roadless” news stories. May 6 was the day the new Forest Service Roadless Rule was rolled out.

A plateau of blue story bars on a particular day usually indicates a news article that was repeated in different news sources, typically from a news wire such as the Associated Press.

Using Annual Trend Charts

Each annual trend chart summarizes the news media discussion for one of the seven policy issues for the most recent 12 months. You can move from one annual chart to another by clicking on the list of policy issues on the left or right side of the Web page. Clicking on a particular month on an annual trend chart will take you to the corresponding monthly chart.

Click on “Save SVG Image as JPEG” (located below the chart) to save annual trend or monthly charts as JPEG files. The JPEG images may be used in presentations or reports.

Important Note about Using these Charts

Before February 2005, both the monthly and annual data were U.S. news stories from print, wire service, television, and radio sources. Beginning at the end of January 2005, a conversion was made to U.S. online news sources identified by CyberAlert.com. As a result, there are consistently more news stories starting in February for all issues.

CyberAlert.com monitors over 25,000 news publications. CyberAlert includes news sources that require users to register in order to view online news stories. Sources that require a paid subscription are not included in CyberAlert.com searches.