I don’t think I’ve written a post about a news-oriented site before. This is likely because I try to veer away from news because a bit of an addiction I have with news, in particular, print-based news. I get sucked in, and then before you know it the whole day has gone by and I’ve just made it to the “local” section of the paper. So I try to practice a certain level of media avoidance in order to remain a productive, employable person. Silobreaker could be a dangerous new site in my arsenal because it both contains interesting news and displays the news in an interesting visual way as Anne-Marie has noted.

Silobreaker is a news aggregator that aims to provide relational and contextual background for its readers. It uses several visual mapping tools to do this (all of which you can manipulate to see what other connections you can make with the news). There is a Trends Map that shows a comparison of how a set of topics have fluctuated in their newsiness over time; Hotspots which shows the geographical location of news events and how newsy that event is; and Network that shows the connections between the big players (e.g. in four steps we get from Robert Gates to Condy Rice to Sean McCormack to Hillary Clinton - and the articles that connect them).

Silobreaker is not only a cool way to read the news, but also a good idea-generator for thinking about ways you (or I) may want to include visual relationships in presentations, library websites, or classroom discussions.