Metadata enhanced content management in media companies

Abstract

Media companies are facing new opportunities and challenges. Communications, computing, and content industries are converging into a single, horizontally connected content value chain, where changes are frequent and activities are highly interdependent. However, before convergence and digital content are taken seriously, media companies must understand what is expected from them, how their operations will be affected, and why they should be involved.

The production, distribution, and use of content rely heavily on computers and automation. This requires the content essence to be enhanced with explicit descriptions of semantics, or more specifically, semantic metadata. However, semantic metadata is useful only if its nature is understood clearly, and when its structure and usage are well defined. For this purpose, ontologies are needed to capture the essential characteristics of the content domain into a limited set of meaningful concepts.

The creation and management of ontologies and semantic metadata require skills and activities that do not necessarily exist in traditional print-based publishing or broadcasting. Companies developing ontologies must understand the essential characteristics of available content, user needs, and planned or existing use of content. Furthermore, they must be able to express this information explicitly in an ontology and then reflect changes in the environment back to that ontology.

Content production and distribution should be flexible and able to support the reuse of content. This thesis introduces two abstract models, a component model and a process model. Both models assist in the understanding and analysis of electronic publishing of content for multiple media products and on multiple media platforms.

When semantic metadata, ontologies, and improved publishing processes are available, new advanced content-based products, such as personalized information feeds, are possible. The SmartPush project, for which the author was the project manager and worked as a researcher, has shown that semantic metadata is useful in creating advanced content-based products, and that media companies are willing to alter their existing publishing processes. Media companies participating in the SmartPush project have acknowledged the impact of our work on their plans and operations. Their acknowledgement emphasizes the practical importance of semantic metadata, ontologies, improved electronic publishing process, and personalization research.