Opinion Texts in Journalism: Analysis and Retrieval of Factual Data in Information Systems

Abstract

Opinion texts not only occupy a large space throughout press pages, but also in the digital media archives. As other journalistic genres, previously studied from the information systems perspective, opinion texts are traditionally analyzed in such systems using conventional techniques of extraction of metadata, operations that do not allow factual data (issues discussed, evaluations, causes or purposes of the analysis, conclusions and proposals...) as an answer to pronominal questions asked by users (who, why, how or what... assesses, analyses or proposes?). As part of a broad program of research addressing all the journalistic genres and taking into account its typologies and discursive strategies, an adhoc procedure for the organization and retrieval of factual data from opinion texts is proposed keeping the genuine nature and potentials of this particular genre.