International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) – is an organization that brings together the world’s leading news agencies, publishers and industry vendors. Its mission is to simplify the distribution of information, develop and promote efficient technical standards to improve the management and exchange of information between content providers, intermediaries and consumers [1]. One of IPTC standards is Media Topiсs – the subject taxonomy focused on categorizing text. It provides for classification, content routing, content storage, search, digital asset management and controlled values and organized on a hierarchical basis [2].
There are 17 top level terms in Media Topics. And the most extensive and branched topic is «Economy, business and finance» that deals with all matters concerning the planning, production and exchange of wealth [3].
Top level term has 250 subordinated objects: 4 – at the second level, 27 – at the third level, 202 – at the fourth level, and 17 – at the fifth level.
There are 4 topics at the second level: «Business information», «Economic sector», «Economy», «Market and exchange».
The first topic «Business information» contains information about individual business entities, including companies, corporations, charities and has 4 subordinated objects business finance (a business entity’s finances), corporate social responsibility (a company’s business practices reflecting responsible social, ethical and environmental policies), human resources (people working for a business and how they are managed) and strategy and marketing (planning the direction of a company and selling its products and services to achieve the strategy).
In turn, the item business finance includes accounting and audit (changes regarding applicable accounting rules and the audit of accounting), analysts comment (stock analyst comments, analysis and recommendations), bankruptcy (news about actual bankruptcy filings), credit rating (formal statements by certain rating agencies on the investment risk of a company or enterprise), dividend announcement (announcements regarding the disbursement of dividends), earnings (any release of earnings results), earnings forecast (analyst prediction of company earnings), financially distressed company (indications that a company is financially distressed but not having filed for bankruptcy yet), shareholder (the owner of one or more shares of a company), financial statement (formal statements about the company financials typically delivered annually or quarterly) with proxy filing (filings with regulatory agencies of proxy statements for upcoming shareholder votes). Item corporate financing (the financing, capital structuring, and investment decisions of a corporation) combines buyback (stock buyback programmes), restructuring and recapitalization (the sale of company units, splits of existing companies into units under a holding company, etc.), stock activity (announcements of major stock events: splits, block trades, new highs or lows, etc) and stock flotation (the issuing of stock shares to the public for the first time, also called an Initial Public Offering (IPO).
The item human resources includes layoffs and downsizing (Planned or actual reductions in the labor force), management (company executive officers including appointments and changes), stock option (an agreement to either buy or sell a stock when it meets a certain price, applies to employees and officers of this company only).
The subject strategy and marketing is very extensive and indicates such items: annual and special corporate meeting (news surrounding company reports and annual or special corporate meetings), annual report (availability or contents of annual company reports), board of directors (appointments to or changes in the board of directors for a company), business governance (the way a business works and any rules of that should be abide), commercial contract (contracts regarding commercial activities), company spin-off (the creation of new companies being spun off from existing companies), economic globalization (doing business around the world), joint venture (two or more companies agreeing on a venture), leveraged buyout (acquiring control over a company by buying its shares with borrowed money), licensing agreement (the document defining the terms for licensing intellectual property), management buyout (acquiring control over a company by the management buying its shares), merger or acquisition (two or more companies forming a new company mergers, takeovers or acquisitions), new product or service (the introduction of products or services that are either new to the market), outsourcing (business practice in which services or job functions are farmed out to a third party), patent, copyright and trademark (intellectual properties as patents, copyright and trademarks), product recall (a decision by a company to take back or repair a defective product), public contract (written contracts between companies and public authorities for the execution of works, the supply of products or the provision of services) and research and development (research and expenditure on new product or service development).
The second topic ««Economic sector» contains information grouping of economic activities by products or services, such as: agriculture (the industry of producing natural materials for consumption), chemicals (natural or manmade materials used to produce other materials), computing and information technology (anything to do with computing and/or transmission of information from one point to another), construction and property (all items pertaining to the construction and sale of property), consumer goods (items produced for and sold to individuals), crafts industry (products or services provided with simple skills and tools, as opposed to by mass industrial production), energy and resource (the use of natural resources for business purposes to generate energy), financial and business service (services that transmit, safeguard, keep track of money or provide backup to commercial enterprises), logistics (supply chain, inventory management and transportation of products), manufacturing and engineering (manufacturers of electrical, electronic and mechanical equipment but does not cover civil engineering), media (the various means of disseminating news and information to the public), metal and mineral (production and refining of ores into metals), process industry (the business of turning raw materials into useable products), retail (the last stage in the sales chain), tourism and leisure industry (commercial organizations and operations dealing with vacations and visits to places of interest and the pursuit of recreational activities), transport (the means of getting people or goods from one place to the other without walking), utilities (the providing of basic services including supplying water and waste removal to the public).
The third topic «Economy» provides content of a general nature about trade and the economy and includes topic macroeconomics (broad scale economics at the world or national level) and sharing economy (peer-to-peer-based sharing of access to goods and services). In turn, topic macroeconomics covers such items: bonds (corporate or governmental paper representing the loan of money at a fixed rate and for a fixed time to that company or government), budgets and budgeting (a method of balancing revenues against expenses), business enterprise (organizations set up usually for profit-making purposes by creating and selling a product or service), central bank (a country’s major bank that sets interest rates, and provides transfer of funds between commercial banks), consumers (buyers of goods and services), credit and debt (credit: the amount of money available to you, often by loan; debt: the amount you owe), currency (the system of money used by a country, including the value of one currency as measured against another), deflation (a fall in prices), economic growth (an increase of the GDP), economic indicator (certain indexes, such as company inventories, the movement of prices that show whether the economy is improving or declining), economic organization (business, industrial and trade associations, societies and other private-sector groups), emerging market (those markets that are struggling to enter the world economies and those requiring financial help from international lenders), employment statistics (statistics about employment), exports (what is produced or manufactured in your country and sent and sold elsewhere), government aid (supply of financial and other help by one government, usually to another), government debt (the amount a government owes on bonds, services and for goods and services for which it has no ready cash), imports (what is bought abroad and brought into a country for resale), inflation (a rise in prices), interest rate (the amount of money one must pay to borrow money), international economic institution (entities such as UNIDO, World Bank, World Trade Organization, the Import-Expert Bank etc. that deals at a world level), international trade (trade of goods and services between nations), investments (speculative purchases of corporate instruments, of commodities, currencies, or parts thereof), monetary policy (government bank directed policy on the amount of money in circulation and the rate at which it can be loaned), mortgage (the loan of money for the purpose of purchasing a property, whether land or building), mutual funds (pools of shares or bonds for sale often grouped by investment intention, such as growth, income or security), prices (the monetary value of goods, services or stocks and bonds), recession (a decrease in the GDP over a period of 2 quarters in a row) and tariff (fees placed on goods imported or exported, often punitive).
And the last topic «Market and exchange» indicates information about organized entities for buying and selling stocks, currencies, commodities and other goods, including commodity market (the bartering or trading of goods such as cotton, oil, coal, metals, etc.), debt market (market for trading debt instruments such as bonds, CDs, banker’s acceptances, T-bills, notes, IOUs etc.), foreign exchange market (the trading of shekels, dinars, euros, dollars etc. around the world through regulated markets), loan market (the market where money is available to borrow, at certain rates of interest), securities (markets for trading types of company paper such as stocks and bonds), stocks (corporate paper that gives an individual an ownership right to a part of a company’s earnings).
References
- IPTC Official Website. Available at: http://www.iptc.org.
- Balalaieva O. Media topics in descriptors of International Press Telecommunications Council // Вісник Львівського університету. Серія Журналістика. 2017. № 42. С. 151-158
- Балалаєва О. Ю. Аналіз новинних кодів за стандартами Міжнародної ради з питань преси та телекомунікацій // Науковий вісник Національного університету біоресурсів і природокористування України. Серія: Філологічні науки. 2017. Вип. 272. С. 103-110.