The News Barometer periodically analyzes the most prominent 'top stories' on online news media in Portugal. Thus, it is intended to identify, systematically and with a consistent methodology over time, the thematization of the public debate through the media. It is assumed that the news media contribute to shape the cultural and social ‘fabric’ through the selection and dissemination of certain media events, in the most diverse social fields. The choice of online media is related to the growing relevance of online news, which corresponds to changes in journalistic practices and, ultimately, how the news reaches the public, in general.  The project is carried out in partnership with Priberam that provides its news monitoring platform and technical support to the proprietary algorithm behind Priberam news clipping web service. The platform dynamically captures all news publications available in more than 1,000 entities (sources of information). The algorithm delivers the 50 most significant 'stories' grouped into clusters. After this process, semantic validation is carried out by human coders, using traditional content analysis techniques.