NewsScope: A Global, Bias-Aware News Aggregator & Analysis Application

Overview

NewsScope is a cross-platform news application designed to combat misinformation by collecting and analyzing news stories from diverse English-language sources worldwide. It leverages an automated AI/NLP pipeline to detect political bias and sentiment, presenting users with a transparent, analyzed view of global events.

Live Backend API (Swagger): https://newsscope-backend.onrender.com/docs

Key Features

• Automated Ingestion: Aggregates news every hour from NewsAPI, RSS feeds (BBC, RTÉ, GB News), and GDELT.
• AI Analysis: Uses Hugging Face Inference APIs (DistilBERT, PoliticalBiasBERT) to score articles on Sentiment (Positive/Negative) and Political Bias (Left/Right).
• Flutter Mobile App: Interactive frontend with dynamic badges ("Left-Leaning", "Positive") and date-grouped news feeds.
• User Accounts: Secure authentication via Firebase (Email & Google OAuth).
• Archive System: Automatically moves articles older than 30 days to Supabase Storage to maintain performance.

Tech Stack

• Frontend: Flutter (Dart), Firebase Auth, Provider
• Backend: FastAPI (Python), APScheduler, Pydantic
• Database: Supabase (PostgreSQL + Storage Buckets)
• AI/NLP Engine: Hugging Face Inference API
• Infrastructure: Render (Hosting), Cloudflare, GitHub Actions (CI/CD)

Repository Structure

• backend/ - FastAPI server, ingestion scripts (jobs/ingestion.py), and analysis logic (jobs/analysis.py).
• frontend/ - Flutter mobile application source code.
• docs/ - Project documentation including Proposal, Feasibility Study, and Interim Report.
• .github/workflows/ - Automated testing pipelines for CI/CD.

Local Setup Instructions

Prerequisites

• Flutter SDK installed (flutter doctor to verify)
• Python 3.10+ installed
• Git installed

1. Backend Setup

Navigate to the backend folder and install dependencies:

cd backend python -m venv venv source venv/bin/activate # (On Windows: venv\Scripts\activate) pip install -r requirements.txt

Create a .env file in backend/ with the API keys provided in the submission report. Run the server locally:

Create a .env file in backend/ with the API keys provided in the submission report. Run the server locally:

uvicorn app.main:app --reload

2. Frontend Setup

Navigate to the frontend folder and run the app:

cd frontend/newsscope flutter pub get flutter run

Authors

• Christopher Noblett (C22454222) - Final Year Project 2025