Time for an update! I’m excited to introduce verworfen.at, a new media research project that tracks headline changes on the website of Austria’s public broadcaster. And I invite you to come to Regensburg at the end of May, when I’ll be speaking at SkepKon 2025 on how to detect deepfakes.
What Can Discarded Headlines Reveal?
To gain different perspectives on current affairs, I follow the headlines of major news outlets in multiple countries every day—this includes RTVE (Spain), BBC News (UK), ORF (Austria), and various US media platforms. It’s particularly intriguing to observe how headlines evolve over time.
Often, these adjustments are minor—fixing typos or updating an event’s status (e.g., from “Fire breaks out” to “Fire under control”). But in some cases, the edits completely shift the framing of a story—for example, “River affected by pollution” might turn into “Company contaminates river”.
Headline changes are thus a compelling object of media research, as—according to my hypothesis—they allow conclusions to be drawn about editorial decision-making processes, political influences, and societal attitudes.
Especially in public broadcasting, where various interest groups seek to assert their positions, the way news is presented and reformulated can provide valuable insights into internal mechanisms and external influencing factors.
To establish a data basis for this hypothesis, I have developed a Python script that documents and stores all changes to headlines on news.orf.at in real time. The collected data is publicly accessible at verworfen.at, enabling transparent tracking of headline modifications.
The project has been running for just a few days and has already recorded over 150 changes. Even though the dataset is still relatively small, it is already becoming clear that a significant portion of the changes can be attributed to updates, shortening of text, reordering of words, and the correction of typos. However, there have also been content-related modifications that might shift the weighting or interpretation of a topic. Feel free to explore the data yourself and draw your own conclusions!
SkepKon 2025: May 29–31 in Regensburg
With the theme “Facts. Myths. Controversies.“, SkepKon 2025—the largest conference on science and critical thinking in the German-speaking world—will take place from May 29 to 31, 2025, in Regensburg. The event is organized by GWUP, a leading organization promoting scientific skepticism.
Attendees can expect a diverse program of lectures, workshops, and panel discussions covering topics from medicine, politics, psychology, history, technology, and many other areas.
On Friday, May 30, I’ll be giving a talk on detecting deepfakes, sharing tools and strategies for navigating the AI era.
Interested? Secure your ticket and join us at SkepKon 2025 in the Marinaforum Regensburg!
