Search

Previous research has attributed media convergence to, among other things, where the news was originally published. That research, however, has struggled to identify causal relationships between a news item's publication in a particular outlet and journalists' perceptions of a story's newsworthiness. This relationship is difficult to identify because of the correlation between publication in a particular outlet and many other factors that also impact newsworthiness. This paper uses an experiment embedded within a survey of over 1,500 U.S. political journalists to test the impact of a news story's previous publication history on journalists' views of the newsworthiness of that news item. Compared with previously unpublished stories, the publication of a news story in a national paper has no significant positive effect on the perceived newsworthiness of a story. The origin of a story in a local outlet, however, causes journalists to perceive that story to be less newsworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the collection of articles published in MIA to mark 50 years of The Australian offers a critical assessment of the literature on The Australian. It covers the miracle of the paper's conception, its struggle to survive amid widespread doubts that it could, and the conditions that enabled it to flourish at various times. It discusses the paper's original vision as well as its early reception, some of the market research and the changing profile of its readers. It examines arguments and evidence about The Australian's coverage of elections, notes the contention over its positions on other issues and lists a large number of studies that have explored various aspects of its journalism. It also situates The Australian in relation to other parts of News Limited and scrutinises claims about the paper's influence on other publishers and other media. Finally, it offers an outline of the articles in this theme section - four from industry and three from the academy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid concerns of 'market failure' in the U.S. commercial news industry, this paper explores more than a decade's worth of scholarly arguments that government intervention and investment is the best solution to what many deem a crisis in American journalism. Through the lenses of First Amendment theory and political economy, the analysis examines a range of ideas and proposals that, in many ways, began with Robert W. McChesney and John Nichols' The Death and Life of American Journalism in 2010 and continue up through Victor Pickard's Democracy Without Journalism: Confronting the Misinformation Society in 2020. The paper concludes that, while a 'positive' interpretation of the First Amendment would seem to demand such intervention, the window of opportunity has closed due to a range of political and economic forces that have either developed or become further entrenched over the past decade. To that end, it calls on journalists and journalism scholars to work to shift the discourse of journalism, to characterise it as an essential, nonpartisan public good – one no different than education. It argues that such a shift, along with enough evidence of further market failure, could someday help inspire the necessary political and economic will to help rescue the floundering news industry on a wider scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The telegraph literally and figuratively electrified news by transforming reporting into a process that delivered impulses of information whose timeliness often riveted and sometimes excited newspaper audiences. The now-familiar daily news cycle—scheduled reports of recent news punctuated by even more timely breaking news—originated with telegraphic journalism. Daily papers began presenting themselves as the public's portal to an electrified national and international newsgathering network. Looking beyond the role of telegraph firms and wire services, this study explores how the culture of journalistic timeliness was cultivated in organizational, occupational, and public settings. Organizationally, telegraph-enabled timeliness altered every stage of the news-production process, from reporter-source interactions to the delivery of stories to readers. The press reified timeliness internally through organizational rewards and occupational discourses, and externally by projecting its institutional values through marketing and the metatexts that accompanied stories. For the audience, daily papers conveyed the temporal rhythms of a networked industrial society. Audiences valued some timely news as data inputs that enhanced opportunities to participate in distant affairs or influence outcomes, though for economic intelligence private channels almost always outstripped newspapers' public delivery of the same information. But even electrified news valued mostly for its storytelling made events common to many people simultaneously in a manner that encouraged the construction of meaning by scattered audiences. In those situations, timeliness often meant that news circulated fast enough for reactions around the nation to become part of the story itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 12 September 2001, as Hans-Peter Feldmann documented in his 2002 installation 9/12 Front Page, the front pages of newspapers from 151 countries showed similar photographs of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center. Despite this cross-cultural agreement on the most salient image at the time, in the decade since, distinct visual narratives of 9/11 have emerged in newspaper anniversary journalism.This paper examines how The New York Times (US) and Le Monde (France) have used photographs, advertisements, and editorial cartoons in 9/11 anniversary journalism. Using theories of collective memory and photography, along with demographic data of 9/11 victims, I examine how photographic representations of the victims have changed, offering a less complex story of events. I document the images that have been recirculated and discuss why the emergence of visual icons matters to our collective memory of 9/11. And I explore how the papers’ proximity to the events influenced their visual anniversary journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the implementation process of digital audience metrics as a key strategy in Swedish legacy news production during the last three decades. The historical adoption of metrics in the newsroom is not new but has grown fast (from analogue audience measurements in the 1950s and monthly statistics of unique visitors in the 1990s to a wide range of real-time data). This trend is important because Swedish news organisations have invested heavily in data analytics, which involves integrating metrics-driven journalism into a particularly strong and homogenous tradition of professional autonomy. Based on interviews with key senior managers and supported by the analysis of trade publications, as well as published interviews, the findings reveal three chronologically overlapping periods: the naïve stage of 'getting online', the destructive period of 'social media prominence', and the end of the 'paywall hesitation'. This trend has led to a new equilibrium in which audience metrics are perceived as better aligned with the professional values of news selection. More importantly, the industry-wide embrace of metrics as guidance for more relevant and rational news production revolves around two main factors: First, although metrics are tied to organisational targets, they remain under editorial control. Second, the degree of granularity and diversification of metrics allow for wider support of their use for strategic purposes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to the visual turn in journalism and the emergence of mobile journalism, many newspaper journalists have had to change the way they work and learn to use new tools. To face these changes, traditional news organizations apply different strategies to increase staff competencies in using new production tools and creating innovative content in new formats. In this paper, we investigate how a specific training arrangement was experienced by a group of 40 print editors and journalists in a German regional publishing house. The journalists were introduced to audio-visual storytelling and reporting with smartphones in a 2-week training course. The training arrangements were studied using participant observation and in-depth interviews, followed by a thematic analysis of the data. The study indicates that for print journalists and editors, the transition from the print to the mojo mindset depends on three dimensions: (i) mastering mojo skills, (ii) adopting visual thinking and (iii) integrating ethical and legal awareness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to expand peace journalism scholarship by proposing a new peace journalism model for analyzing media representations of immigration. By employing framing and content analysis, the paper takes a closer look at the ways in which four Greek newspapers portrayed immigration in crisis-stricken Greece between 2011 and 2014. Results indicate that a conflict frame prevailed in the majority of all newspaper articles analyzed. In this context, immigration was portrayed (1) as an issue that generated conflict among different political and social groups, (2) through stereotypical portrayals of immigrants as a threat to public health and security, (3) as a mass of people in extreme conditions of exception, and (4) as a problem to almost every aspect of the Greek society: for tourism, trade, the economy or even Greece's relationship with the EU. A peace frame, conversely, was identified in around one fourth of all news stories. At the same time, findings lead us to conclusions that transcend the peace and conflict journalism dualism revealing five distinct subframes that provide a more nuanced understanding of the peace journalism concept; (1) a 'direct conflict subframe' enhancing division and dispute over immigration, (2) a 'journalism of conventions subframe' following well-established journalistic conventions with important consequences on the quality of information, (3) a 'journalism of values subframe' being closer to the traditional values of journalism, (4) a 'diversity journalism subframe', including all elements referring to a pro-immigrant approach, and (5) a 'positive peace subframe', closer to Galtung's notion of positive peace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As Australia's only national general newspaper, with an elite 'political class' audience, The Australian has been at the forefront of newspaper proprietors' attempts to influence media policy. This article analyses The Australian's reporting of two key media policy proposals affecting newspapers: the establishment of the Australian Press Council in 1975-76 and the Independent Inquiry into Media and Media Regulation (the Finkelstein inquiry) in 2012-13. While the events were 36 years apart, the paper's stance and rhetoric were remarkably similar. However, its approach to journalism and to providing information to its audience changed in several important respects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Election coverage is often assumed to be different to everyday political coverage. We argue that this depends on political institutions. In majoritarian countries, where elections choose governments, election coverage should decisively move towards political competition and away from policy. In consensual countries, where coalitions are based on policy negotiations, there should be a less pronounced shift towards political competition and away from policy. To test this argument, we use an automatic coding system to study 0.9 billion words in Die Welt for 12 years and in the Financial Times for 30 years. The results support our institutional hypothesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes slum journalism in the British provincial press and reveals that it continued to be a major theme until well into the twentieth century. Instead of the rather moralizing reporting of the earlier nineteenth century, this journalism used the device of civic shame to pressurize local government into taking action on slums as a matter of public health. It examines the discourses that resulted from civic shame in two newspapers—the Manchester Guardian and the Birmingham Daily Gazette —and challenges the idea that interest in reporting local political matters decreased during this period. Civic shame is shown to work in two ways—offering detailed vignettes of aspects of slum life based on personal observation and showing (some) slum-dwellers as worthy of better living conditions, and blaming the local authority directly for failing to address the problem. In this way, later slum writing sought to appeal directly to the reader not just to impart facts but to stimulate empathy and to develop a desire for action. Such in-depth studies of a particular social issue sought to address the local authorities directly, to apportion blame and to use slum writing as a tool for social action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflicts that occur across ethnic and/or religious identity lines generally have underlying root causes such as economic marginalization and political competition. Yet when these causes are ignored by politicians and the media, and conversely differences in ethnicity and religion are simply propagated as the main conflict causes, this may have serious consequences for people's perceptions concerning the possibility and feasibility of peaceful conflict resolution and coexistence. In this paper, we investigate to what extent Nigerian newspapers practice peace journalism by emphasizing underlying causes of conflict in their reporting rather than stressing ethnic and religious divisions. We make use of a sequential mixed methods approach, which combines a quantitative content analysis of news reports with semi-structured interviews with Nigerian newspaper editors and journalists. Our results indicate that Nigerian newspapers do not explicitly use divisive language when discussing conflicts, but they rarely stress underlying structural causes either. While there is a willingness among Nigerian journalists to avoid potentially escalatory language, a dearth of resources and capacities impedes independent and in-depth analysis concerning the underlying drivers of conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This monograph examines daily newspaper coverage of organized labor during the burst of union activity that began in the early 1930s. Three factors influenced labor reporting during this period: the dramatic rise of unions as a political, economic, and cultural force in the New Deal; trends in journalism, including the dominance of objectivity as an operating norm and the shift toward interpretive reporting; and journalists, their sources in labor leadership, and the emergence of the American Newspaper Guild. Union leaders were highly critical of the general circulation press and its coverage of labor issues. I argue that labor news was biased against unions, but that bias was not the result of a deliberate attempt to discredit unions. Despite prounion inclinations of some journalists, news values, news gathering routines, and newsroom practices shaped labor reporting in a way that emphasized organized labor's role in repeatedly challenging and disrupting the status quo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the adoption of cross-border collaboration practices by introducing the concept of 'intermediaries of change': individual journalists who drive the adoption and gradual normalisation of pioneering cross-border practices. We ask how they implement cross-border practices, integrate them into existing working routines, and how this influences their working conditions using a case study on Europe's Far Right, a network of seven newspapers that investigated far-right parties ahead of the European Parliament election 2019. We found that the network expanded journalists' research capacity and entails a 'domino effect' since journalists gain experience and establish cross-national ties, which enable them to better establish follow-up collaborations. While this might help to normalize cross-border practices, organisational structures and contexts of transnational journalism shape the degree of participation by different network members. Moreover, we found that cross-border collaborations might foster precarious working conditions and competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the transition of traditional newspapers and magazines to the online space is gathering pace, and the literature on multimedia journalism is proliferating, little attention has been paid to date to the implications of convergence for the press in regulatory terms. One such regulatory dilemma arises from the proliferation of video content on newspaper websites. It is this question and others at the conjuncture of press freedom and the dynamics unleashed by convergence that the papers in this special section seek to shed light upon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the market has produced a differentiation inside the Chinese press between an ‘official’ press with traditional propaganda functions on behalf of the Communist Party and a ‘commercial’ press whose objective is to maximise revenue. Scholarly opinion has differed over whether marketization undermines Party control and whether new forms of journalism have arisen that lead to conflicts. These discussions have rested on little evidence as to the practises of Chinese journalism. This article presents empirical data on the extent of the differentiation, reporting on a content analysis of the national news in People’s Daily and Southern Metropolitan Daily. These titles are popularly believed to represent the polar opposites of official, orthodox journalism and commercial, liberal journalism. The evidence presented here demonstrates that while there are indeed significant differences in the journalism of the two titles, there remains a substantial overlap in their choice of subjects, their use of sources and the degree to which news is presented ‘objectively’. Southern Metropolitan Daily does display some ‘popular’ features and does contain more ‘watchdog’ journalism, but it shares with its official cousin an emphasis upon the party as the source for news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Spanish civil war was a conflict that acted as a touchstone for the divisions within Irish society. As a newly-independent state that was 93 per cent Catholic, reporting a conflict that involved, on the one hand, an armed rebellion against a democratically elected government, and on the other, the killing of clergy and the burning of churches, proved divisive. The decisions by Ireland’s three national newspaper titles to send correspondents to Spain only further polarized opinion as their reportage reinforced divergent opinions on the origins and meaning of the conflict. The examination, through digital archives, of the activities of these correspondents sheds new light on the experiences of war correspondents in this conflict and on the ‘newspaper war’ that sought to influence public and political opinion on it. Similarly, the reactions to these reports give an insight into how divisive the conflict was within a state seeking to bed down its own democratic institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study examines the social institutional influence on how a nonprofit community newspaper conducts newswork. Utilizing both in-depth interviews and participant observation, the data illustrate how the government, the audience, donors and advertising impact news construction processes. The results are analyzed through both management and media sociology theories. Finally, the authors elucidate how nonprofit news organizations can optimally operate as an open-system (or organism), allowing for all peripheral social institutions to impact newswork without losing any autonomy over the journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The microbiome has captured the attention of researchers and newspapers. We studied how the subject is covered in The New York Times, The Times, and El País via DowJones Factiva (2007–2019), analyzing aspects that included article type, word count, authorship, topic, and citation of researchers, organizations, and journals. We found that 87.6% of newspaper articles (409/467) were news articles and most were longer than 300 words (396; 84.8%), with The New York Times devoting the highest proportion to newspaper articles over 1000 words (99; 45.4%). While basic science findings received the most attention from newspapers from 2007 to 2015, topics related to medicine and nutrition attracted increasing attention from 2016 to 2019. Newspapers showed a domestic preference for their respective researchers, organizations, and journals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this study is to examine how male sex workers are represented in Thai newspapers. The analysis is contingent upon Reisigl and Wodak's concept of discursive strategy in conjunction with Machin and Mayr's compilation of transitivity analysis. Methodologically, this study employs corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The 45,769-word corpus consists of news articles retrieved from the websites of 11 Thai newspapers. They were published in English between the period of 2000 and 2019. Findings reveal that the media pursue the nomination, predication, argumentation, perspectivization together with intensification and mitigation strategies to portray male sex workers in a non-threatening fashion. Possible contributing factors behind such portrayal are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transparency is often discussed as a way to increase the public's perception of journalism. While its adoption by newsrooms is relatively well studied, only a few studies have investigated its effects on news users' credibility judgments. We build on research about transparency effects and report the results of two online experiments (total N = 2262), one with a local and one with a national newspaper frame. Our results suggest that transparency does not affect the perceived message and source credibility newspaper articles and that moderating factors such as cognitive involvement and media skepticism are more important predictors of credibility assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the past two decades, India’s media sector has witnessed profound and transformative change reflected in the expansion of both outlets and audiences. According to recent estimates, the country has over a 100 news channels that reach 161 million TV households, about 94,067 newspapers, as well as over 200 million Internet users. These developments have engendered a growing discourse that emphasizes the growth and dynamism of Indian media. However, this predictably celebratory narrative does not focus on the more troubling structural trends that increasingly characterize the country’s media landscape. These include commercialism, rising levels of concentration and cross-media ownership, as well as the expansion of control by politicians and industrialists over the media. Employing a political economy perspective, this article explores the emergence and workings of these structural trends in depth. It challenges the popular perception that India represents a dynamic and pluralistic media landscape, and argues that contemporary trends in the Indian media landscape have significant and deeply negative implications for the production of news and the overall quality of journalism in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study, utilizing 19 in-depth interviews, offers a systematic qualitative investigation of the perceived impact of a newspaper's closure on community members' everyday lives and their sense of community. Results demonstrate a negative impact on community members' sense of community, with participants missing celebrated gatherings and noting increased isolation and diminished pride in their community. Findings also show the impact on residents' daily lives, with one participant declaring 'life is harder' without the newspaper. Overall, these findings present a picture of life in Caroline County, Virginia, following the Caroline Progress' closure after 99 years of service to the county. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examines the role of gender and class inequalities in the experience of reading print newspapers. We draw on data from two complementary sources: a survey of news, technology and entertainment consumption (n = 700) administered in the greater Buenos Aires area, and 158 semi-structured interviews conducted in the City of Buenos Aires and other towns in Argentina. Our findings indicate that although news consumption in general appears to be evenly distributed, with no significant gaps according to age, gender, education and socioeconomic status, print newspaper consumption seems to be the preserve of older, more affluent, mostly male audiences in ways that reinforce patriarchal family patterns – it is usually husbands and fathers who decide for the entire household which newspaper is purchased and when that takes place. In addition, newspaper reading is carried on by those at the top of the income-earning pyramid, and reinforces class status mainly due to the persistent associations between newspaper readership, civic duty, and professional prestige. We conclude by reflecting on the implications of these trends for print newspapers and their role in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Disaster and Media Research Group conducted for the first time, extensive, in-depth interviews with newsroom executives of 14 Japanese mainstream national media outlets (8 newspapers and wire services, and 6 broadcasting networks) on their reflections of Japanese media coverage of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami. The Japanese media takes pride in their ability to swiftly communicate news alerts and evacuation announcements. However, they recognized little issue in merely conveying official information from the government and power industry in coverage of the nuclear disaster, rather than demonstrating journalistic effort by seeking alternative sources, particularly for assessing the seriousness of radiation exposure. The main findings from the interviews were that Japanese media (1) are well prepared for broadcasting of immediate reports on seismic scales and tsunami alerts, but less so for assessing the risks of nuclear disaster; (2) share the view that the media's role is to cooperate with the government to communicate during emergencies, even if this means sacrificing their watchdog role; (3) are steadfast in their belief in traditional platforms while lacking a strategy to adopt the web and smartphone; (4) have little or no interest in collaborative news gathering or journalism sharing; and (5) are negative to the idea of training reporters to specialize in nuclear science, nuclear plant safety measures, or radiation exposure (with the exception of two media interviewed). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an empirical assessment of determinants of international news, this study tests the theory that human rights abuses elicit media attention commensurate to the violence. To evaluate this proposition, the study draws on two authoritative human rights indices: the Political Terror Scale and the Cingranelli–Richards human rights score. These indices are correlated country by country with a 180-nation database tracking foreign news coverage by the New York Times, Time magazine, and NBC Nightly News. Making a contribution to this field of research, this cross-media study assesses the magnitude of human rights suffering relative to the influence of economic, geographical, and demographic factors that drive media agenda setting. By informing the public of human suffering, media potentially provide a crucial link to political response and public policy. How well do the US media studied perform this role? Not very well. Results indicate that human rights abuse is a weak predictor of media attention; military and economic factors predominate international news coverage. With human rights ranked 7th of 16 news determinants, the study suggests that greater media attention can – and should – be given to victims in dire distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the large array of research dedicated to examining the concepts of news values and newsworthiness, journalism studies barely attempt to deal with the idea of editorial-worthiness at the theoretical level. This article proposes a conceptual foundation to reflect on the elements influencing how news organizations build their editorial positions. Studying the idea of editorial-worthiness is essential to catalog the characteristics guiding newspapers' editorial decisions and production processes, as well as to understand the differences between professional rules and cultures shaping opinionated practices in contemporary journalism. By employing an approach based on a review of the literature, the article proposes a conceptualization of criteria of editorial-worthiness consisting of (1) editorial factors and (2) editorial values, further divided into 25 items. The proposal allows journalism research to acknowledge how the gatekeeping function plays out on editorial pages by categorizing the elements influencing editorial production routines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the light of profound transformation processes shaping news media markets during the last decade, in particular local and regional news markets are confronted with consolidation and concentration processes. As a result, newspaper organizations are required to adapt their organizational strategies and editorial routines to face these challenges. Among journalistic routines, the use of sources is a prime example for an analysis of changing patterns in news production. This article investigates regional newspaper's use of self- and media-citations in a longitudinal design (1995, 2006, 2015). Based on a content analysis of German regional newspapers (N = 4713 articles), we illustrate changing patterns in the use of sources over a period of 20 years. Results point to an increase in other media outlets as sources indicative of an eligible and cheap content sourcing strategy. Self-citation is mainly used in articles that cover regional and local events mirroring the core business of local news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transition of newspapers from traditional revenue models to digital advertising-based models has been fraught with financial peril, with many formerly strong news organizations laying off journalists or closing entirely. The launch of The Athletic, a subscription-only digital site for sport coverage and opinion, has been watched with great interest within the sports journalism world, as it represents a new method of financing journalistic endeavors. The majority of hires at The Athletic over its first few years have been marketable writers from traditional newspaper backgrounds. This study utilizes a qualitative methodology to examine introductory stories written by new hires to The Athletic (N = 88). Through open coding, the study evaluated these stories for common themes relating to the authors' newfound employment and transition to a supposedly new model of journalism. The study found three overarching themes, centered on the writers' explanations of their own biographical backgrounds, attempts to convince the audience of the superiority of the new editorial model being employed by The Athletic, and communicating to the audience what they should expect and deserve. Framing theory is utilized as a guiding theoretical perspective as themes from the stories, and their underlying implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public trust in the criminal justice system in England and Wales has been low since the 1990s, and accusations that the system is arcane, lacking transparency, soft on criminals and removed from the society it serves are common. The government, together with many lawyers, journalists and experts, believes that lifting the ban on televising trials may enhance the transparency of the judicial system, and eventually lead to higher levels of public trust. Drawing on the most systematic content analysis of the coverage of this debate between 1984 and 2016, we analyse how this issue was debated in British national newspapers. In addition to examining how newspapers presented this policy debate, we also explore how the coverage discussed the impact that filming trials could have upon journalistic practice. Our analysis shows how metajournalistic discourse resorts to high-profile and celebrity cases when examining journalistic practice. Newspapers constructed this issue as a quandary between increasing the transparency of the judicial system, and the risk that justice would become sensationalised, ignoring key elements in the debate, and the role that journalists themselves may play in that process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a quantitative model of the circulation of foreign news based on a gravity-like model of spatial interaction disaggregated by time, media, and countries of interest. The analysis of international RSS news stories published by 31 daily newspapers in 2015 demonstrates, first, that many of the laws of circulation of international news predicted half a century ago by Galtung and Ruge and by Östgaard are still valid. The salience of countries in media remains strongly determined by size effects (area, population), with prominent coverage of rich countries (GDP/capita) with elite status (permanent members of United Nations Security Council, the Holy See). The effect of geographical distance and a common language remains a major factor of media coverage in newsrooms. Contradicting the flat world hypothesis, global journalism remains an exception, and provincialism is the rule. The disaggregation of the model by media demonstrates that newspapers are not following exactly the same rules and are more or less sensitive to distance, a common language or elite status. The disaggregation of the model by week suggests that the rules governing foreign news can be temporarily modified by exceptional events that eliminate the usual effects of salience and relatedness, producing short periods of "global consensus" that can benefit small, poor, and remote countries. The residuals of the model help to identify countries that are characterized by a permanent excess of media coverage (like the US or the Australia in our sample) or media that received a coverage more important than usual during several months (Yemen, Ukraine) or years (Syria, Greece) because a situation of long-term political or economic crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examined the reportage of information on climate change in the Guardian and the Daily News, two leading broadsheet newspapers in Tanzania. Data were collected and analysed using the informetrics method. Content analysis was used to delineate themes. Quantitative data generated was analysed using Microsoft Office Excel Software 2007 to generate graphs and charts. In all, 338 articles from 728 newspaper issues from January to December 2015 were collected and analysed. Key findings indicate that climate change impacts and adaptation, climate change conferences and policy, politics and development were themes mostly covered in the two newspapers under review. Findings also indicate an increased coverage of international and local climate change news. The study concludes that the access of journalists to relevant and reliable Internet resources influenced the climate change information appearing in the two newspapers. Thus, the study recommends for climate scientists and policy-makers to train journalists on proper analysis and reporting of climate related information. Moreover, the study suggests establishing a communication policy framework designed to enhance journalists' and media owners' access to and effective dissemination of climate change information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the front page plays an important temporal and explicative role for audiences, especially when it comes to journalistic work during a disruptive media event such as the Charlie Hebdo attacks. As a special agent of mediatization, the front page offers the possibility of 'freezing' the very often long-lasting live coverage of the (ongoing) happenings. It does not stand in opposition to faster communication of news but the front page is a very special journalistic form that opens interesting ways to contemplate news temporalities on another level. Based on a thematic content analysis of 1017 international front pages, this article develops their typology in order to analyze how the event was covered globally and locally, all by pointing out the different journalistic forms that are utilized. The study shows that the type of front page that is emerging allows us to grasp the coexistence of shared visual and textual regimes without leading to a false idea of a totalizing uniformity of information and thus of future social memories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim:: Taking into account that a key determinant in public approval of vaccinations is how the media constructs and frames messages about vaccination programmes, our aim is to review communication studies exploring media coverage of vaccines within traditional media venues.Methods:: Using a registered protocol (PROSPERO: 42017072849), a systematic review was conducted that searched in three international electronic databases (PubMed, Scopus, and the International Bibliography of Social Science) for articles published between 2007 and 2017 following content-analysis methods. The characteristics and outcomes were systematically identified and described. The search yielded 24 eligible studies that were further analysed in the review.Results:: Media coverage of vaccines has been largely studied during the last decade. Findings revealed that 62% ( n = 15) of studies analysed the human papillomavirus vaccine, 87% ( n = 21) examined newspapers, and 62% ( n = 15) examined North American media. In relation to media content analyses, 75% found negative messages on vaccines and 83% identified a lack of accurate information.Conclusions:: This systematic review suggests an agenda for further research. There is a significant need to analyse other types of traditional media beyond newspapers. Future studies should focus on other geographical areas such as low-income countries and on analysing visual materials and digital media. We found that negative messages and inaccurate information are common in media coverage on vaccines; therefore, further research focusing on these topics is needed. Officials in public health organizations should develop a close collaboration with the media to improve public communication on vaccines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The media is a key institution in producing, legitimizing and disseminating cultural classifications. From this perspective, newspapers and their sections devoted to culture are particularly interesting. This article examines how the structures of quality European newspapers have changed over time and in different socio-historical contexts, especially regarding the amount of space allocated to and the placement of articles related to culture. We draw on data from Helsingin Sanomat (Finland), Le Monde (France), ABC/El País (Spain), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden) and The Guardian (United Kingdom) – covering the time frame from 1960 to 2010. We use three types of data: individual articles about culture (N = 11,775), data on all the issues (N = 585) and full editions of the newspapers (N = 30). We show that the amount of space dedicated to culture has increased but that the placement of articles on culture has shifted slightly. We detect only weak signs of the assumed crisis of cultural journalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study on news coverage of highly visible company types in a Dutch daily quality newspaper (NRC Handelsblad; N = 14,363), during the economic crisis (2007–2013), shows that attention to banks (and to a lesser extent also to the automobile and components industry) had a structural negative influence on media agenda diversity. The majority of the other salient company types had a significant positive impact on diversity. These results suggest that banks attracted attention at the expense of more varied, diverse coverage during the crisis. Our findings extend knowledge of agenda-building dynamics in relation to organizational news by considering characteristics of the broader media agenda. We discuss our findings in light of causes and consequences of media coverage of salient businesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates how Burmese refugees were framed by Fort Wayne’s The Journal Gazette located in one of Indiana’s cities where refugee resettlement has taken place over the last two decades. We analyzed 335 stories and 286 accompanying images to identify salient textual and visual frames. Results show that the human interest and attribution of responsibility were most salient textual frames, while the visual frame of exotic was dominant. Feature stories were more likely to have a human interest frame and, if an image is included, to reflect the visual frame of Burmese as being exotic. As a global refugee crisis continues to unfold, this study presents implications for how media coverage of future refugees in the United States will evolve based on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2016, the New Scientist announced the birth and good health of the world’s first baby conceived using spindle nuclear transfer (SNT). The story was immediately circulated worldwide. In this article, we analyze 39 articles published within the first 48 hours of the announcement, in the Mexican, British, and U.S. press. These articles constitute the initial press reactions to the announcement, and as such, they offer a narrative ground on which SNT could thereafter be discussed. We argue that as a media event, the articles performed the task of rendering SNT, a “cultural novelty,” as culturally and technologically feasible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study questions the role of media in the formation of society's memory regarding the asylum seeker struggle in Israel. Through analyzing 180 news articles published during the daily coverage of the refugees' protest in Israel between December 2013 and January 2014, this study offers an opportunity to explore the mediated environment that also shapes the refugees' situation in Israel and the role of the printed press in a memory contestation. The study demonstrates that while traditional media are a site in which different versions of the past, even including the refugees' own version, are being contested and evaluated, they are not enough to guarantee that refugees will gain recognition as such, because traditional media maintain the power to shape and construct the debate in ways that do not always support the refugees' claims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes quantitatively and qualitatively 1,583 comments by national newspapers' online readers in Bulgaria. It investigates readers' reactions to articles discussing the media war between the biggest press groups--one owned by a Member of Parliament known as "the Murdoch of the East." The study explores how these stories influence the relationship between newspapers and their readers, and whether they enhance the democratic potential of online discussion. The results show a higher level of reader engagement than in established democracies or nondemocracies. The online space provides an arena for democratic conversations and it is also used as an engine for conspiracy theories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Have the nature of printed news stories changed in competition with new media? Our content analysis of Norway’s largest morning newspaper Aftenposten in four time cuts between 1950 and 2008 revealed that the length of news stories had increased until 2008 when the newspaper had changed to the tabloid format with a mixture of both brief and lengthy articles. News stories tended to have broader time frames in more recent years. The frequency of simpler forms of news stories like reports of meetings and social events had diminished considerably. In the last 20 years, journalists have also become more visible in the text. We will look at these findings against a historical background. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

References to the concept journalism-as-a-conversation abound in audience-centered literatures. Largely missing, though, are clear operational definitions. This exploratory study sought to help close that gap by finding a way to measure conversational journalism in terms of key socio-psychological and technological dimensions, then to test it on perceived credibility and expertise in newspaper sites. Findings suggest conversational journalism is powerful but nuanced. Conversation features most predictive of credibility and expertise were audience members’ perceived similarity to a journalist and that journalist’s online interactivity with the audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its beginning, American journalism has been anchored in both the printing trades and the world of intellectuals who recognized the value of newspapers in shaping public opinion. These dual origins influenced the debate over journalism education from the mid-nineteenth century. News professionals and university educators pondered whether journalists needed to be college-educated, whether they needed a liberal arts degree, or whether they needed professional education that combined liberal arts and practical training. These debates were complex and political, representing issues of localism versus nationalism, the role of professional schools within the American university, and the rise of social science. The tension between educating reporters and editors to improve the quality of journalism or contribute to a democracy versus training them to function efficiently in a newspaper office—or any media environment—continues today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

By means of a cross-longitudinal quantitative content analysis of the Chilean national press, this article analyses the changes in reporting styles and the framing of politics in news coverage between 2006 and 2011, exploring whether the features of political reporting found in studies of Western countries are evident in the case of Chile. According to the data, while politicians trigger the majority of political news stories, political coverage originates significantly more from events than from statements or issues. Likewise, although framing politics as a game is a dominant and significant characteristic of the Chilean press, there is a systematic increase in the public policy frame. The results also indicate low levels of interventionism in covering political news, showing the practice of journalism where politicians have a strong influence on news content. The research allows for discussion on how politicians are adapting to the needs of the media and presents a deeper understanding of the characteristics that define political journalism in new democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]