1. A method for detecting developments among temporally ordered items, the method comprising: a) establishing an item topic hierarchy of desired granularity; b) applying said topic hierarchy to said items by applying at least a partially automated classifier to assign said items to at least one topic in the topic hierarchy, c) establishing at least two sets of items based upon selected temporal parameters; d) determining the distribution of said items in said topic hierarchy for each of said sets of items; and e) comparing respective distributions among at least two of said sets of items.