How OKOSPHERE works

Sources

We read public RSS feeds of about 150 news outlets worldwide and official services (GDACS, USGS, NASA, ESA). Each item links to its original publisher. We show headlines and short excerpts only.

Places and topics

Location and topic are detected automatically from the headline and summary using place-name tables in 15 languages. Mistakes happen; we test and correct them continuously.

Events

Reports about the same story from different outlets are grouped into one event. An event is “Confirmed” when at least three independent sources or an official service report it, “Developing” with two, “Early reports” with one, and “No new reports” after 24 hours of silence.

What counts as independent

We count original sources, not outlets. A story an outlet republishes from a news agency (AP, Reuters, AFP and others) counts as that agency once, however many outlets carry it. Word-for-word identical text under different outlets counts once, and so do sister newsrooms of one owner (for example, the language services of Radio Free Europe). An agency itself is an independent source: Reuters plus BBC is two. We detect republishing from bylines and from matching text; a story rewritten in an outlet’s own words without credit can still slip through.

AI

AI is used to translate headlines, to write short retellings in the reader view and to write the summary on event pages. An event summary is written from one report per independent source — never from several copies of the same agency story — and only from what those reports say. Every summary is checked automatically: it is rejected or rewritten if it copies long passages, contains numbers that are not in the sources or drops a source’s caveat (“reportedly”, “unconfirmed”). AI does not invent events; every event is backed by the linked publishers.

Corrections and contact

Found an error? Use the feedback form on the globe. We fix place, topic and grouping errors and keep this methodology up to date.