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Main Authors: Lokmanoglu, Ayse D, Walter, Dror
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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Online Access:https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14868
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author Lokmanoglu, Ayse D
Walter, Dror
author_facet Lokmanoglu, Ayse D
Walter, Dror
contents Understanding visual narratives is crucial for examining the evolving dynamics of media representation. This study introduces VisTopics, a computational framework designed to analyze large-scale visual datasets through an end-to-end pipeline encompassing frame extraction, deduplication, and semantic clustering. Applying VisTopics to a dataset of 452 NBC News videos resulted in reducing 11,070 frames to 6,928 deduplicated frames, which were then semantically analyzed to uncover 35 topics ranging from political events to environmental crises. By integrating Latent Dirichlet Allocation with caption-based semantic analysis, VisTopics demonstrates its potential to unravel patterns in visual framing across diverse contexts. This approach enables longitudinal studies and cross-platform comparisons, shedding light on the intersection of media, technology, and public discourse. The study validates the method's reliability through human coding accuracy metrics and emphasizes its scalability for communication research. By bridging the gap between visual representation and semantic meaning, VisTopics provides a transformative tool for advancing the methodological toolkit in computational media studies. Future research may leverage VisTopics for comparative analyses across media outlets or geographic regions, offering insights into the shifting landscapes of media narratives and their societal implications.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2505_14868
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle VisTopics: A Visual Semantic Unsupervised Approach to Topic Modeling of Video and Image Data
Lokmanoglu, Ayse D
Walter, Dror
Information Retrieval
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimedia
Understanding visual narratives is crucial for examining the evolving dynamics of media representation. This study introduces VisTopics, a computational framework designed to analyze large-scale visual datasets through an end-to-end pipeline encompassing frame extraction, deduplication, and semantic clustering. Applying VisTopics to a dataset of 452 NBC News videos resulted in reducing 11,070 frames to 6,928 deduplicated frames, which were then semantically analyzed to uncover 35 topics ranging from political events to environmental crises. By integrating Latent Dirichlet Allocation with caption-based semantic analysis, VisTopics demonstrates its potential to unravel patterns in visual framing across diverse contexts. This approach enables longitudinal studies and cross-platform comparisons, shedding light on the intersection of media, technology, and public discourse. The study validates the method's reliability through human coding accuracy metrics and emphasizes its scalability for communication research. By bridging the gap between visual representation and semantic meaning, VisTopics provides a transformative tool for advancing the methodological toolkit in computational media studies. Future research may leverage VisTopics for comparative analyses across media outlets or geographic regions, offering insights into the shifting landscapes of media narratives and their societal implications.
title VisTopics: A Visual Semantic Unsupervised Approach to Topic Modeling of Video and Image Data
topic Information Retrieval
Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition
Multimedia
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2505.14868