Aesthetic Trends and Semantic Web Adoption of Media Outlets Identified through Automated Archival Data Extraction

Abstract

The last decade has been a time of great progress in the World Wide Web and this progress has manifested in multiple ways, including both the diffusion and expansion of Semantic Web technologies and the advancement of the aesthetics and usability of Web user interfaces. Online media outlets have often been popular Web destinations and so they are expected to be at the forefront of innovation, both in terms of the integration of new technologies and in terms of the evolution of their interfaces. In this study, various Web data extraction techniques were employed to collect current and archival data from news websites that are popular in Greece, in order to monitor and record their progress through time. This collected information, which took the form of a website’s source code and an impression of their homepage in different time instances of the last decade, has been used to identify trends concerning Semantic Web integration, DOM structure complexity, number of graphics, color usage, and more. The identified trends were analyzed and discussed with the purpose of gaining a better understanding of the ever-changing presence of the media industry on the Web. The study concluded that the introduction of Semantic Web technologies in online media outlets was rapid and extensive and that website structural and visual complexity presented a steady and significant positive trend, accompanied by increased adherence to color harmony.

Theory and Applications of Web 3.0 in the Media Sector

“…The ninth paper emphasizes aesthetic trends and Semantic Web adoption of media outlets, as identified through automated archival data extraction and analysis processes [36]. Lamprogeorgos, Pergantis, Panagopoulos, and Giannakoulopoulos (2022) employed various web data extraction techniques to collect current and archival information from popular news websites in Greece to monitor and record their progress through time.…”

“…Thereafter, digital literacy initiatives and audience engagement strategies can enhance the impact of SW services in the media world and the broader society. The current Special Issue enlightens the above perspectives through theoretical, algorithmic/technological, and case-study contributions, discussing challenges and state-of-the-art solutions on news detection, classification, (semantic) analysis and evaluation [12,18,27,29,30], automated modeling/prediction, generation, and recommendation of news content [19,[31][32][33], evolution, aesthetics, and integration evaluation of Web 3.0 elements in news websites [34][35][36].…”