How were the data in the archive collected?
The television content for this project was captured through a sophisticated market-based media server technology. Media servers, located physically in each of the markets, electronically capture television news programming between 5:00pm and 11:30pm every evening and divide it into 30 minute segments of digitally recorded video. These segments from each day’s worth of captured programming are sent over the Internet to the University of Wisconsin NewsLab servers overnight. Once the recorded programming is transferred from each of the media markets via web to the NewsLab servers, the InfoSite online software systems developed by CommIT take over. There are two distinct but interrelated InfoSite systems: the Clipping System and the Coding System. Using the Clipping System, the 30 minute segments are divided into news and non-news programming, and all election-related content is tagged. Election-related news stories are sent to the Coding System where coders enter information about each s
