The OPTED team is happy to present Meteor (https://meteor.opted.eu/), the inventory for media texts, as timely resource for text analysts.

Meteor is an inventory that helps text analysts to obtain detailed information on European news sources. It covers various distribution channels such as print or social media channels, media organisations, and links data access options that are useful to gather the related text data.

The now published research note (Open Access here) in the European Journal of Communication describes the overall context of the inventory. The authors Paul Balluff, Fabienne Lind, Hajo Boomgaarden and Annie Waldherr describe the motivation for the inventory, the selection procedure that was developed to screen relevant news sources, and the importance of certain filter categories.

Meteor (Media Texts Open Repository) was launched in 2021. Since then, the OPTED team of WP3 have continuously updated and expanded it to now include 1,500 news sources from 17 countries, as well as over 300 organisations, and 17 full text data archives. Anyone is invited to register to as a contributor to help further the expansion of the inventory. Quality is assured through a review process that screens entries before they are added to the registry.

The inventory can also be integrated into the classroom. The authors provide teaching materials for a course on “Hybrid Media Systems in Comparative Perspective” on the inventory website.

Work on the inventory will continue, as well as the overall OPTED infrastructure. New features as well as additional entries are planned for the months to come.