Media Analysis Reimagined
In today's rapidly evolving media landscape, understanding how different platforms shape public discourse has become crucial for informed citizenship. Traditional legacy media outlets - newspapers, television networks, and established digital publications - operate under editorial standards developed over decades. Meanwhile, social media platforms like X provide real-time, unfiltered reactions from millions of users, creating a dynamic environment where news spreads instantly but with varying degrees of accuracy and emotional intensity. This AI-powered app monitors top global headlines and finds corresponding X posts, comparing how the same stories are covered, discussed, and received across these fundamentally different media environments. By examining sentiment patterns, emotional responses, and narrative framing, we can discover hidden patterns that influence how society processes information, forms opinions, and makes decisions. This comparative approach doesn't seek to determine which platform is "better," but rather to illuminate how each contributes to the complex tapestry of modern news consumption, helping readers develop media literacy skills essential for navigating our interconnected information age. Specifically, news stories are analyzed for overall sentiment (on a 0-1 scale where 0=very negative, 1=very positive) as well as the dominant emotion expressed, from both legacy sources and X posts. The data is then filtered for news items that are covered substantially differently and conveniently displayed in a table below (see the Latest Data section) for users to peruse, along with a commentary on the differences. The data automatically updates each day at 10pm CST (to capture a full day's worth of news stories), and is automatically posted here as well as on our X account, @Legacy_VS_X. Note that while only stories with a substantial difference in coverage are displayed here (in the latest data section), the full data for each article is in the database in case you'd like to refer to it later. See the source for further details.
Latest Data
Comparison of world news coverage between legacy media outlets and social media discourse on X. Data is automatically updated daily at 10pm to capture evolving narratives based on a full day's worth of news headlines.
| Timestamp | Article Title | Legacy Sentiment | X Sentiment | Legacy Emotion | X Emotion | Analysis |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 28, 2025 @ 12:00PM | Doomsday Glacier Approaching Catastrophic Collapse | 0.15 | 0.55 | Fear | Fear | The article's sentiment is more negative at 0.15 compared to the average sentiment of X posts at 0.55, indicating that X posts are generally more neutral in tone. Both the article and X posts share the dominant emotion of Fear, reflecting similar underlying concerns about the glacier's collapse. However, X posts appear less alarmist overall, as they often share information factually without the intense negativity seen in the article. |
| December 28, 2025 @ 3:57PM | Israel's tech sector says more staff seek relocation abroad | 0.35 | 0.75 | Fear | Excitement | The X posts exhibit a higher average sentiment of 0.75 compared to the article's 0.35, indicating a more positive tone overall. While the article's dominant emotion is fear, reflecting concerns, the X posts frequently convey excitement and optimism about growth and investments. This suggests the X posts focus more on positive developments and opportunities in Israel's tech sector, contrasting with the article's cautious and negative undertone. |
| December 28, 2025 @ 12:44AM | WATCH: New Yearβs resolutions for your pets | 0.9 | 0.83 | Joy | Encouragement | The X posts have an average sentiment of 0.83, which is slightly lower than the article's 0.9, indicating a marginally less enthusiastic tone overall. While the article's dominant emotion is joy, the most common emotion in the X posts is encouragement, reflecting a more practical and advisory focus rather than pure excitement. Despite these differences, both the article and X posts maintain a generally positive outlook on pet-related resolutions. |
| December 28, 2025 @ 4:05PM | WATCH: Trump and Zelenskyy to meet in Florida | 0.55 | 0.55 | Trust | Hope | The average sentiment of X posts aligns closely with the article's neutral tone at 0.55, showing no significant difference. While the article's dominant emotion is Trust, X posts display a mix of emotions including Hope and Distrust, indicating a broader emotional range. X posts generally convey a more varied and cautious undertone compared to the article's steady, trusting perspective. |
| December 28, 2025 @ 10:28PM | The Internet Is a Net Negative | 0.2 | 0.2 | Anger | Frustration | The X posts have an average sentiment of 0.2, which is identical to the article's very negative sentiment, showing no difference in overall negativity. While the article's dominant emotion is anger, the most common emotion in the X posts is frustration, suggesting a slightly more subdued expression of discontent. This indicates that the X posts maintain a similar tone of criticism but shift towards a more resigned frustration rather than the article's overt anger. |
| December 28, 2025 @ 11:30AM | 10 Sunday Reads | 0.7 | 0.4 | Joy | Sadness | The X posts have an average sentiment of 0.4, which is lower than the article's 0.7, indicating a more negative overall tone. While the article's dominant emotion is joy, the most common emotion in the X posts is sadness, suggesting a shift toward more reflective and critical undertones. This contrast shows that the X discussions are generally more somber and introspective compared to the article's positive and uplifting vibe. |
Archive
To access data for a previous date, please refer to our account on X, which automatically posts the current day's data at 10pm CST daily.
Source Code
This project is completely open source and free. It requires only PHP, MySQL, and API keys for xAI and NewsAPI. It is webserver agnostic, so you can use Apache, nginx, or whatever else will run PHP. The code that automatically posts the data to X also requires an API key from X and the free software packages wkhtmltopdf/wkhtmltoimage and ImageMagick (if you're running Ubuntu, sudo apt install wkhtmltopdf imagemagick is quick and easy).
Here is a quick rundown on the files:
- config.php - set your API keys here
- database.php - database functions to connect to your MySQL server, uses the MySQLi PHP extension
- get_news.php - gets today's global news headlines from legacy source via NewsAPI
- index.php - this file, which acts as the primary frontend
- main.php - responsible for invoking the functions defined in get_news.php, xai_article.php, and xai_x_posts.php. This is the file you want to execute in your crontab
- table.php - handles the latest data table, index.php calls this file as an include
- xai_article.php - passes a legacy news article to the xAI API to perform sentiment and emotion analysis
- xai_x_posts.php - searches X (via xAI API) for posts describing a particular news story. Finds the average sentiment and dominant emotion among these posts
- x_post.php - responsible for automatically posting the data to X. This should also be executed via cron slightly after main.php. Personally, I run them at 10:00 pm and 10:05 pm. Note that this requires an X API key in config.php as well as the TwitterOAuth package (easy install via composer)