2021-05-10: Chronicling the life-cycle of top new stories with StoryGraphBot

Fig. 1: Fig. 1 (Click on image to expand): Story Attention Dynamics chart illustrating the life-cycle of two top news stories from May 18, 2018 -- May 19, 2018. Each line (red or blue) represents a top news story. The x-axis represents time while the y-axis represents the average degree of Connected Components (representation of story). Within our window of observation, the Santa Fe High School Shooting story received peak attention on Friday May 18, 2018 at 4:40PM, this attention waned with the lowest point coinciding with the rise of a new story, the Royal Wedding of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle . News stories are born expected or unexpected, big or small, compete for attention with sibling stories or enjoy the spotlight alone, live short or long lives, and exit through death or hibernation. Since August 2017, every 10-minutes, StoryGraph has been quantifying the attention given to news stories. In the past three years, we have seen threats of war , hurricanes Harvey / Irma /