Instituto de Estudios Políticos y Derecho Público "Dr. Humberto J. La Roche"
de la Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas de la Universidad del Zulia
Maracaibo, Venezuela
Publicación cientíca en formato digital
ISSN-Versión Impresa 0798-1406 / ISSN-Versión on line 2542-3185
Depósito legal pp 197402ZU34
ppi 201502ZU4645
Vol.40 N° 75
2022
ISSN 0798- 1406 ~ De pó si to le gal pp 198502ZU132
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Vol. 40, Nº 75 (2022), 769-780
IEPDP-Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Políticas - LUZ
Recibido el 15/08/22 Aceptado el 22/11/22
Disadvantages of news aggregators in
capitalist countries: overview and critique
DOI: https://doi.org/10.46398/cuestpol.4075.45
Veronika Kysil *
Abstract
The objectives of the article were to analyze the strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the most popular
science news aggregators in capitalist countries, created as a
communication tool between scientists and journalists. For the
recent research the methods of analysis were used, especially
SWOT analysis and synthesis method. 10 main criteria of science
news aggregators were observed and highlighted by analyzing
recent science news aggregators from all over the world such as:
EurekaAlert, PhysOrg, ScienceDaily, Science Seeker and Open
Science. As a result, the study looked at the dual issue of funding,
where government funding of aggregators allows authorities to
control the process of publishing information while support is stable. At the
same time, crowdfunding funds or platforms allow an aggregator to exist
without political bias, but without strong condence in its future existence.
The results obtained allow us to conclude that, the points considered in the
relationship between capitalism and aggregators are of great importance to
create a high-quality scientic news aggregator at national and international
level.
Keywords: news aggregators; capitalist countries; SWOT analysis;
communication technologies; information policy.
* PhD student National Technical University of Ukraine "Igor Sikorsky Kyiv Polytechnic Institute",
Université Paris-Saclay. ORCID ID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3091-6004
770
Veronika Kysil
Disadvantages of news aggregators in capitalist countries: overview and critique
Desventajas de los agregadores de noticias en los
países capitalistas: panorama general y crítica
Resumen
Los objetivos del artículo fueron analizar las fortalezas, debilidades,
oportunidades y amenazas de los agregadores de noticias cientícas
más populares en los países capitalistas, creados como herramienta de
comunicación entre cientícos y periodistas. Para la reciente investigación
se utilizaron los métodos de análisis, especialmente el análisis FODA y el
método de síntesis. Se observaron y destacaron 10 criterios principales de
los agregadores de noticias cientícas mediante el análisis de agregadores
de noticias cientícas recientes de todo el mundo como: EurekaAlert,
PhysOrg, ScienceDaily, Science Seeker y Open Science. Como resultado, el
estudio se jó en la doble cuestión de la nanciación, cuando la nanciación
gubernamental de los agregadores permite a las autoridades controlar el
proceso de publicación de la información mientras el apoyo es estable.
Al mismo tiempo, los fondos o plataformas de crowdfunding permiten a
un agregador existir sin sesgo político, pero sin una fuerte conanza en
su existencia futura. Los resultados obtenidos permiten concluir que, los
puntos considerados en la relación capitalismo y agregadores son de gran
importancia para crear un agregador de noticias cientícas de alta calidad a
nivel nacional e internacional.
Palabras clave: agregadores de noticias; países capitalistas; análisis
FODA; tecnologías de comunicación; política
informativa.
Introduction
The web-site aggregator of scientic news is an opportunity of fast access
of users to the generalized, systematized and complex information to news
of national and world achievements of scientic community.
Due to the absence of one main tool of Ukrainian science news
channel, it exists an immediate need to create and promote information
channels for Ukrainian citizens. According to an internal memorandum
from the Stanford Research Institute and Edward Freeman in the 1980s,
stakeholders are: “Groups without whose support the organization would
cease to exist”(Freeman, 1983: 06). Given that science in Ukraine is largely
funded by the state, taxpayers are its main stakeholders. It follows that every
Ukrainian citizen is a stakeholder in the creation of a scientic product,
reporting on the use of taxpayers’ budget funds, as well as the promotion of
scientic products.
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CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
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Information awareness is the achievement of awareness, which is based
primarily on informing employees through simple forms of information
transfer within organizations (Sedej, 2015). If a country is a political form
of organization that has all the necessary criteria: association of people,
division of responsibilities, organizational structure, rules, steering group,
borders, organizational form and mission (Monastyrsky, 2019), we can
perceive the state as an organizational structure or company, as well as to
apply certain standard mechanisms inherent in business organizations.
According to the report for 2021 of the world organization We are Social
and Hootsuite (Hootsuite Inc., 2021), of the total world population of
7.83 billion people, 5.2 billion people, which means 66.6% of the world’s
population use mobile phones, and 4.66 billion people are Internet users.
These companies are aimed at ensuring communication between client
companies and their target groups through the use of social networks, as
well as other means of social communication on the Internet. In addition,
the data show that the number of global Internet users increased by 7.3% in
2020, which shows a fairly rapid growth of human network improvements.
Figure No. 01. Percentage of Internet and mobile users in the world. Source:
Datareportal (2021).
Given the above processes, we can conclude that the use of Internet
technologies and social networks is a convenient and relevant tool that
has a tendency to expand the target audience. Business corporations are
already active users of the network in order to raise public awareness or
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Veronika Kysil
Disadvantages of news aggregators in capitalist countries: overview and critique
target groups. Thus, the constant growth of the use of the Internet has
many positive consequences for the educational and scientic community,
but at the same time, it complicates the process of analyzing the importance
of information (McCrickard, 1999).
Namely, the task of the aggregator platform is to become the main
channel of communication with the public, which will inspire condence
in the latter. The issue of misinformation is being actively studied after the
Covid-19 pandemic (Trishchuk et al., 2020) and the beginning of the war
in Ukraine (Tylchyk, 2022), so the popular media call for constant checking
of sources of information and look for the original source with its further
analysis. It follows that the resource with scientic news should primarily be
based on research conducted by scientists and their scientic publications
as factors of truthfulness and veriability of data.
The objective of a recent study is to highlighted main criteria of science
news aggregator through the analysis of recent worldwide science news
aggregators.
Methods which were used include general method of analysis and
synthesis, descriptive method, forecasting methods to create SWOT-
analysis and method of generating creative ideas.
1. Results and Discussion: Analysis of competitors and
determination of the uniqueness of the platform-aggregator of
scientic news
Analyzing the main competitors of sites aggregators of scientic news,
which publish press releases to promote science, we have:
1. The most global American news aggregator network EurekaAlert
from the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
which is also the publisher of the journal Science and has the largest
community of science promoters in the world. In order to understand
the eectiveness of the resource, it is necessary to conduct one of
the most popular (Hill and Westbrook, 1997) methods of analysis
of strengths and weaknesses, prospects and risks, called SWOT-
analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats). We will
conduct a SWOT-analysis of this resource:
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Vol. 40 Nº 75 (2022): 769-780
Figure 2. SWOT analysis of EurekaAlert news aggregator! Source: Own
elaboration.
EurekaAlert! is the most important player among the aggregators of
scientic news. In addition, they are published in a variety of languages
and have the support of America’s leading scientic institutions. In the
analyzed media there are rather insignicant risks, which are expressed
only in political involvement. The above criterion can be both an advantage
and a disadvantage. With EurekaAlert, journalists from around the world
receive press releases and translate into their own countries. In addition,
each journalist conrms his identity by registering with corporate mail,
which prevents the undesirable spread of embargoes on news that have a
specic time of publication of the news in any media.
2. PhysOrg is the second, but no less popular resource for aggregating
scientic news, which has a rather primitive design, but the team of
publishers, editors and the depth of diversity of specialties make it
the most popular among the public on social networks in terms of
subscribers.
774
Veronika Kysil
Disadvantages of news aggregators in capitalist countries: overview and critique
Figure 3. SWOT-analysis of the news aggregator Phys.Org. Source: Own
elaboration.
According to the analysis, we see that one of the specic threats to the
resource is the risk of popularity of special programs that block the display
of advertising on sites. It is through advertising that Phys.Org gets the
nancial opportunity to survive. That is, political and any other bias can be
a risk for the comfortable continuation of the resource.
3. ScienceDaily is one of the oldest aggregators of scientic news. The
convenience of its use is that it has a collection of top news of each
specialty. However, if the two previous resources were able to register
and receive specic content by subscription, selected according to
the interests of the recipient, then ScienceDaily does not have such
an opportunity. A major shortcoming of the resource is the lack of
clear information on nancial security, which makes it impossible to
fully implement the analysis.
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Vol. 40 Nº 75 (2022): 769-780
Figure 4. SWOT analysis of ScienceDaily news aggregator. Source: Own
elaboration.
It is worth noting that despite the availability of relevant social networks
in the resource, their activity stopped in early 2021. That is, the pages are
not updated and the resource for promotion does not fulll its function of
attracting new audiences. Analyzing the visual design of the web portal,
similar to the previous resource, there is a need to update or adapt for use
by smartphones.
4. ScienceSeeker is a unique aggregate of popular science blogs from
students, PhDs, scientists and all those interested in promoting
scientic achievements. A signicant advantage of the resource is
the ability to receive a large amount of news from various sources
and professionals, but the disadvantage is full responsibility for
the appropriateness and veracity of information to bloggers. Thus,
if the resources previously analyzed had a large sta of editors and
journalists, the resource may exist autonomously, but has a higher
risk of misinformation or unveried facts.
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Disadvantages of news aggregators in capitalist countries: overview and critique
Figure 5. SWOT analysis of the news aggregator ScienceSeeker. Source: Own
elaboration.
One of the important disadvantages of the site is that some functionality
does not work. This criterion can lead to distrust of the new public, despite
the considerable coverage of connoisseurs on social networks. The site
needs updating, which means that it needs additional nancial losses. The
general idea of the aggregator of scientic blogs is interesting, because due
to the large number of authors and their interested community, there is an
opportunity for rapid “natural” promotion of the portal without additional
funds.
However, the constant dependence on the amount of free time of
scientists to support popular science publications causes a rather chaotic
update of news on the resource and a great dependence on the human
factor.
The four news aggregators analyzed above are American and mostly
English-speaking. Thus, only a person who is uent in English has the
opportunity to freely receive materials and translate them into their native
language. It follows that a journalist, namely a science journalist, needs
to speak English at a high level. However, having an English-language
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resource, we are usually familiar with English-language research. This is
how the phenomenon of “British scientists” appeared (Sokolovska, 2017),
about which any research the whole world learns very quickly.
Given that there are no aggregators of scientic news in Ukraine, there
is a need to analyze their existence in the post-Soviet space.
5. Open Science is a resource that contains information in the form of
press releases on the achievements and publications of n scientists.
None of the other neighboring countries has a similar portal.
Figure 6. SWOT analysis of the Open Science news aggregator. Source: Own
elaboration.
The undeniable advantage of the portal is its non-involvement in the
political community and independence of scientic results. However, in
order to apply for grants from the Russian Foundation for Basic Research,
the competition application receives additional points through a clear plan
to promote scientic results (RFBR, 2021). That is, in these circumstances,
some dependence on state funding for research still exists, so one of the
possibilities of the resource is full state funding of this initiative and
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Veronika Kysil
Disadvantages of news aggregators in capitalist countries: overview and critique
support for the development of the portal, its visual and informational
improvement. The main threats to the development of the portal are the
general dependence on the human factor, as well as the general political
situation of the country, which cannot allow the resource to go beyond the
Eurasian Economic Union due to Russia’s image as a state in the political
arena.
The analyzed aggregators of news allow us to draw conclusions and
form the main criteria of the aggregator of scientic novelties for its further
creation:
1. The presence of an editorial sta to quickly verify the veracity of
information.
2. The presence of a link to the source of the message in the form of a
scientic publication.
3. Perspective on multilingual content. In the context of promoting
the scientic achievements of Ukrainian scientists, the translation
of press releases into English is mandatory for the dissemination of
news abroad.
4. Despite the contradictory possibilities of nancial support by
the state, there are not enough funds in Ukraine that would be
interested in promoting science. As a result, we have rather unstable
volunteer projects that are not supported by the state and do not
have constant nancial support. But in the case of the latter, the
longevity of nancial security ends in 3-5 years. That is why it makes
sense for the selected projects in state support or in the existence
of partnership assistance through which it is possible to obtain
additional funding.
5. Qualitative promotion of the resource in social networks, because
social networks are the rst contact of the audience with the resource
and the opportunity to build trust between participants.
6. Adaptation to mobile devices and quick and easy access to
information through the use of tablets, smartphones, etc.
7. The presence of a news embargo.
8. Ability to submit your own news for publication.
9. Ability to register with accredited journalists to receive embargoes
on press releases and industry subscriptions to scientic news.
10. Convenient modern design.
Having formed 10 main criteria of the aggregator of scientic news,
according to which it is possible to create a high-quality latest Ukrainian
product, we move on to creating its prototype.
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CUESTIONES POLÍTICAS
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Conclusion
In the paper, it was analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of the
scientic news aggregators of the world. Some of them have government
support, others have the support from foundations and an independent
vector of news publishing. Nevertheless, the independence of the scientic
press is one of the main criteria for the success of an aggregator and
adherence to journalistic ethics.
The study was observer at the dual issue of funding, when governmental
funding of aggregators allows the authorities to control the process of
publishing information. While funds or crowdfunding platforms allow an
aggregator to exist without political bias. In the contrary, this can lead to
global questions of the existence of a scientic news aggregator as such due
to a lack of funding.
After analyzing the above questions, it was decided that since the
stakeholders of the aggregator are taxpayers, it is the state that should
support the popularization of scientic results, as presented on the example
of the largest scientic aggregator EurekaAlert.
The second most important factor in the creation of national news
aggregators has become multilingualism, thanks to which the news of one
country can be distributed around the world. Using the example of the Open
Science resource, we saw a great lack of a resource for site visitors who are
not native speakers of the national language of the resource.
Moreover, the work considered the issues of modern web-design, its
convenience, a link to the original source of scientic news, the presence
of an editorial board, embargo news, the possibility of registration for
journalists and adaptation of content for mobile devices. The points
considered are of great importance for creating a high-quality aggregator of
scientic news at the national and international levels.
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www.luz.edu.ve
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Esta revista fue editada en formato digital y publicada
en diciembre de 2022, por el Fondo Editorial Serbiluz,
Universidad del Zulia. Maracaibo-Venezuela
Vol.40 Nº 75