News Bias

A chrome extension that informs you of your news sources' quality and bias and offers better sources.

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Inspiration

I was inspired by the great fact-checking work that is available on the internet and hoped that people could have easy access to it. I hoped to use this to give people a better idea of the bias and accuracy of the news sites the get their information from.

What it does

  • Shows bias and accuracy of current site
  • More than 2000 news sites
  • Shows select other sites' biases
  • Shows average bias of all your visited sites
  • Updates icon based on site
  • Links to media bias checker
  • Detailed description of website
  • Shows alternate sites and their bias and accuracy

How I built it

  1. Started with a database
  2. Display data values from database
  3. Display chart using Chart.js
  4. Add description instead of numbers
  5. Add site description
  6. Add average bias and quality
  7. Polish errors

Challenges I ran into

  • Getting popup.html to even display
  • Making chrome storage sync work
  • Getting averages without exceeding data capacity by storing past values
  • Making points on the chart have links
  • Weird characters in description appeared in UTF-8

Accomplishments that I'm proud of

Making a tool that can really help the world come together. Finishing and focussing on a project and seeing it to fruition.

What I learned

  • How to use chrome extension apis such as tabs and storage
  • How to use action listeners in javascript
  • How to use Chart.js to display data

What's next for News Bias

I hope to continue development and publish to the chrome store so that other users can benefit. I'm thinking about adding specific recommended articles on the same topic but less biased.

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