Spinister just launched. It’s an inventive new idea – rate the news and spin based on your political leanings. Then see how those with differing politics rate the same story.
Spinister is a political news site that allows you to gauge the spin and relevance of any given story. If you have ever found yourself reading the newspaper, listening to news radio, or watching the news on television and had this overwhelming feeling that not only are signifigant details being left out of a report, but that you are perhaps even being directly lied to or deceived — then this is the place to express yourself. If you feel there is a slant or bias to the media, we offer you the tools to subjectively rate it.
We amass political news stories from around the Internet, trying to cover every major subject in U.S. politics. Then we allow you to both rate a story’s spin (“SpinRater”) and it’s relevance. We then take these ratings and group it with others who share your political affiliation and compile it into statistics that show the trends and varying perspectives among the major parties. Some will find a story more relevant than others, some may even see a completely different spin altogether.
But the point is, this base-level reaction to a story is for all to see (at a group-level). So instead of just scratching your head wondering what the heck the people affiliated with another party could be thinking — at Spinister you can see it, and get a better idea of what their motivations might be. Better yet, perhaps you’ll even find some level of understanding with a party that might have otherwise just seem alien to you. That’s the ultimate goal of Spinister. We don’t want to see these “divide and conquer” tactics tear America apart, instead we want to see America bridge those gaps we focus so much attention upon. Or as we put it, conquer the divide.
In addition to being a unique and useful site, Spinister is also and well-designed, well-written – a nice piece of data-driven coding indeed.