"Where'd That Come From?": The Impact of Aggregation on Source Citations in Internet-Based Cancer News.

This paper is a preliminary descriptive analysis of content differences between news search engines (or news aggregators) like Google News and non-aggregator news websites like CNN.com. Specifically, Google claims to offer a wider variety of perspectives than other news sites as a result of the news aggregation process. We tested this notion by examining the frequency articles retrieved by news aggregators (Google News and Yahoo! News) and non-aggregators websites cited sources like medical journals, universities, hospitals, NCI, and ACS. We find evidence of significant differences between the two Internet-based news websites on a number of categories, but non-aggregators appear to cite significantly more sources on multiple levels. Implications of these findings and others are discussed, and future exploration posited. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]