News Source Diversity Tracker Overlay

WHAT IT DOES

News Source Diversity Tracker Overlay scans the page for article links, extracts the domain and source of each link, and displays a floating overlay showing the distribution of sources as a bar chart or pie chart. Each source is grouped with its count and percentage of total articles, giving you a clear picture of your news diet's diversity. A "Diversity Score" from 0 to 100, calculated using the Shannon diversity index, quantifies how evenly sources are distributed—higher scores indicate more balanced coverage. The overlay highlights when a single source dominates the feed, with a configurable warning threshold. Clicking any source in the overlay filters and highlights articles from that source directly on the page, making it easy to see which stories come from which outlet.

WHERE IT RUNS

This script operates as a userscript within the BotGentz extension on any webpage that contains article links, including news aggregators, social media feeds, RSS readers, and individual news sites. It functions on any modern browser that supports the BotGentz extension, including Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, and Opera. The script runs entirely client-side, analyzing the page's DOM without sending any information to external servers. It works across all domains and adapts to different site structures automatically.

HOW TO USE

After installation, the script automatically scans the page for article links and displays the diversity overlay in the bottom-right corner. The overlay shows a chart of source distribution, a diversity score, and a list of sources with percentage bars. If a single source exceeds your configured threshold, a warning appears. Click any source name in the list to highlight all articles from that source on the page—great for seeing which stories come from a particular outlet. Use the panel to switch between bar and pie charts, adjust the dominance threshold, toggle compact mode, or change the overlay position. Click "Rescan Page" to re-analyze if new content loads.

THE MECHANISM THAT MAKES IT WORK

Unlike simple source counters, this script uses the Shannon diversity index, an information-theoretic measure that accounts for both the number of sources and their relative abundance. The algorithm extracts the domain from each article link, normalizes it, and aggregates counts per source. The diversity score is calculated as the normalized Shannon entropy: H = -∑(p_i * ln(p_i)), where p_i is the proportion of articles from source i, divided by ln(number of sources) to produce a 0-100 scale. This provides a mathematically rigorous measure of evenness that distinguishes between a feed with 10 equally represented sources (score near 100) and a feed dominated by one source with others as tokens (score near 0). The dominance warning triggers when the maximum source percentage exceeds the user-configured threshold. The highlighting feature uses DOM traversal to find and outline containers associated with each source, with smooth visual feedback.

THE PANEL

The script panel is built using BotGentz's BGPanel framework and provides comprehensive control over the tracker's behavior. The panel opens as a floating overlay that can be dragged anywhere on your screen, with a clean dark theme matching the tool's aesthetic. It includes dropdown menus for dominance threshold selection (40-80%), chart type (bar or pie), and overlay position (top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right). Toggle switches enable or disable the tracker, compact mode, percentage display, and highlight-on-click behavior. Action buttons allow you to rescan the page or reset all settings to defaults. The panel collapses to a small icon when not in use and expands when clicked, remaining accessible but unobtrusive. Press the Escape key at any time to close the panel.

PLEASE NOTE

This script requires the free BotGentz extension to be installed and activated in your browser. The extension is available from the official BotGentz website. The script identifies sources by extracting domains from article links; it may not detect sources that use link shorteners or unusual URL structures. The diversity score is a measure of evenness, not quality—a high score indicates balanced source distribution, not necessarily better journalism. All data is processed locally and not shared with any third-party services. If a site's HTML structure changes significantly, the script may need updates to maintain compatibility. The highlight-on-click feature adds outline styles to articles; these can be cleared by clicking another source or refreshing the page.