Parents' Guide to

newsmap

By Polly Conway, Common Sense Media Reviewer

age 15+

Global news goes visual with nonlinear maps.

Website http://www.newsmap.jp
newsmap Poster Image

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this website.

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What’s It About?

NEWSMAP is a website that \"visually reflects the constantly changing landscape of the Google News news aggregator.\" The site pulls all its content from Google News, organizing it by color, country, and subject, offering a nonlinear way to observe news trends. Sign up with an email address and a password and then look at the standard Newsmap; it includes many countries and color-coded boxes that contain headlines from categories such as \"world,\" \"national,\" \"business,\" \"technology,\" \"sports,\" \"entertainment,\" and \"health.\" Each color has three tones relating to a story's publication date. A dark shade indicates a news story is from more than an hour ago. A medium shade means it's from more than 10 minutes ago, and a lighter shade means it's from the last 10 minutes. You can check and uncheck boxes to see different configurations of content; for example, you can choose to view only Argentinean entertainment news or sports headlines from the Netherlands.

Is It Any Good?

Our review:
Parents say: Not yet rated
Kids say: Not yet rated

The site was created in 2004 and hasn't been updated in a few years. It still runs well and doesn't look dated, but the designer is no longer with the site and probably isn't returning to update or adjust it anytime soon. Still, it's a neat idea that helps users visualize the news in an unusual way. Similar to the many popular mind-mapping sites, Newsmap presents information in a highly visual, nonlinear format. Although it can help users discover patterns and observe what kinds of news each country reports the most, further applications aren't obvious.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

  • Families can talk about how they get their news. Which sources does your family trust? Why?

  • Talk to your kids about censorship. Explain that, in some countries, not all the news is reported fairly or at all. Why would governments want to keep information hidden?

Website Details

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