Method
01Scoring
Every day, the top 10 front-page articles of each outlet are scored from 1 (alarming) to 5 (optimistic) based on their headline and summary. An outlet's daily score is the average of its articles, weighted by their position on the front page at the time of extraction.
02The scale
- 1Very negative
- 2Rather negative
- 3Neutral
- 4Rather positive
- 5Very positive
03Types of outlets
Outlets are classified by ownership structure, a criterion that can be checked in their articles of association rather than a judgement on their editorial line.
- PU : Public service
- Public service — Publicly funded, with editorial independence guaranteed by law or by an independent body.
- ET : State media
- State media — Directly controlled by the government, the ruling family or a party.
- PR : Private
- Private — Owned by a company, a group or investors who can profit from it.
- I : Independent
- Independent — No shareholder can profit from it: foundation, association, cooperative, endowment fund, or majority-owned by its journalists or readers.
04Sources
Articles come from the outlets' public RSS feeds or, failing that, their homepage. Collection follows the access rules each site sets for robots (robots.txt) and identifies itself as such.
05Limits
The top 10 follows front-page order, not audience. The model scores framing and word choice, not the seriousness of events: a sober report on a serious event remains neutral. Score explanations are written in French.