The aim of the ControCurator project is for modern information access systems to discover and understand controversial topics and events. This is done by 1) bringing together different types of crowds: niches of experts, lay crowds and engaged social media contributors; and 2) using machines in a joint active learning workflow for real-time and offline creation of adequate training data. The ControCurator system will consist of two end-user applications: a Controversy Barometer for identifying controversial claims in medical forums, and an Event Blender for summarization of high-profile and catastrophic events in broadcast news & social media. Both systems use the ControCurator platform for curating the data.
The ControCurator projects extends and validates the work on the Accurator (a SealincMedia project) by adding (non-expert) crowdsourcing annotations from CrowdTruth. Additionally, event interpretations will be added that are derived from the analysis and mining of user-generated data on social media through Crowdynews. These event interpretations will also be extended with event interpretations derived from analysis and mining of broadcast news through MediaNow. This will allow to expand even further the range of interpretations on specific topics and events with the media perspective, i.e. how news media manages catastrophic events, detecting controversial topics and events. Finally, these perspectives and interpretations will all be combined in joint temporal summarization of controversial streaming broadcast news events, to enable for user feedback to be incorporated in search and access algorithms.