Top Seven Media Source Categories

You're right, and I appreciate your patience. Let me now strictly follow your instruction:✅ Use only the four documents:

• My original deep research
• Claude’s classification
• Gemini’s classification
• Grok’s classification ✅ Purpose: Create a final, revised list of the top seven most important media source categories,
  → by carefully merging overlapping or adjacent categories
  → based strictly on consensus among the four sources
  → grounded in publisher nature and academic framing
  → no value judgment or partisan lens

✅ Final List: Top 7 Media Source Categories (Consensus-Based)

1. News Media (Reporting-Primary)

Definition: Domains whose primary function is the original, editorially-controlled reporting of current events based on verifiable facts.
Distinguishing Features:

• Professional journalism standards (verification, sourcing)
• Editorial oversight
• May include both digital-native and legacy outlets
  Examples: nytimes.com, bbc.com, reuters.com, vox.com
  Justification: All four documents agree that the distinction between "legacy" and "digital-native" is organizational, not functional. Reporting-focused media should be grouped by purpose, not origin (Gemini, Claude, Grok).

2. Opinion & Advocacy Media

Definition: Domains whose primary content is persuasive, ideological, or subjective, including editorial commentary, advocacy journalism, or blogs.
Distinguishing Features:

• Expresses viewpoints rather than neutral reporting
• Includes advocacy NGOs, opinion blogs, and ideological news
  Examples: dailywire.com, huffpost.com, greenpeace.org, substack.com
  Justification: All sources distinguish between fact-based reporting and persuasive content. Gemini and Claude note shared persuasive intent across opinion columns, advocacy NGOs, and editorial blogs. Merged here due to common purpose.

3. Academic & Scholarly Sources

Definition: Domains that host or publish scholarly research—whether preprint, peer-reviewed, or institutional.
Distinguishing Features:

• Created by or for researchers
• Includes both pre-publication and final peer-reviewed articles
  Examples: arxiv.org, nature.com, jstor.org, plos.org
  Justification: Claude separates academia; Gemini splits preprint vs. VoR but recognizes functional overlap. For simplicity and consensus, Grok and my own analysis support merging them under scholarly function.

4. Government & Intergovernmental Sources

Definition: Domains operated by national, local, or international government or treaty-based institutions.
Distinguishing Features:

• Official authority, statutory mandates
• Structured data and public communication
  Examples: nasa.gov, usa.gov, who.int, un.org
  Justification: All four sources identify this category as distinct. Gemini and Claude consolidate national and IGO sources due to shared public institutional role. Retained as its own category.

5. Corporate & Commercial Sites

Definition: For-profit company websites whose content serves marketing, branding, investor relations, or commercial transactions.
Distinguishing Features:

• Content shaped by business interests
• Includes both informational and transactional subtypes
  Examples: tesla.com, amazon.com, microsoft.com
  Justification: Claude and Gemini distinguish corporate informational (e.g., PR) from ecommerce, while Grok merges them. For this 7-category version, we consolidate both under a unified commercial purpose.

6. Social Media & UGC Platforms

Definition: Platforms that primarily host user-generated content and facilitate sharing or discussion.
Distinguishing Features:

• Content produced by users, not the platform
• Algorithmic distribution, real-time feedback
  Examples: x.com, reddit.com, youtube.com, facebook.com
  Justification: All four sources agree that these platforms differ in kind from editorial media due to decentralized authorship. Gemini and Claude frame them as a structurally distinct content model.

7. Reference & Aggregator Resources

Definition: Domains that compile, index, summarize, or redirect to primary/secondary sources.
Distinguishing Features:

• Tertiary sources (encyclopedias, dictionaries, search engines)
• Designed for lookup, not for original content creation
  Examples: britannica.com, wikipedia.org, google.com, worldcat.org
  Justification: All sources agree this is distinct from journalism or opinion. Gemini and Claude both include aggregators and encyclopedias in a shared category based on function (tertiary knowledge organization).

🧾 Summary Table: Final 7 Media Source Categories

🔀 On Hybrid or Unclear Domains

When a domain spans multiple functions:

• Classify by dominant content type (primary intent or brand-defining function).
• Use “Reference” only if the domain’s core is factual summarization (e.g., not news or commentary).
• Use “Opinion & Advocacy” if persuasive content outweighs neutral reporting.
• Use “Other/Unclear” only for domains too obscure to classify, not as an 8th content type.

Would you like this formatted as a reference sheet or integrated into a spreadsheet?