Parental mediation during the U.S. 2016 presidential election campaign: How parents criticized,restricted, and co-viewed news coverage

Presidential election campaigns provide opportunities for parents to socialize their children to become politically engaged citizens. However, news coverage of the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign contained inappropriate content, leading parents to possibly restrict or denigrate rather than encourage child campaign news consumption. This study built on literatures in political socialization and parental mediation to explore mediation of campaign news coverage. Data from a representative sample of American parents during the Autumn of 2016 revealed that co-viewing, active mediation, and restrictive mediation were relatively common. The predictors of mediation included political variables, parenting orientations, and child factors, with the latter two often interacting with one another. The results have implications for how we conceptualize both political socialization and parental mediation.     

Networking or Not Working?

This paper examines journalists' changing sourcing practices in the context of an emerging media ecology initiated by processes of globalization, digitization, commercialism and concentration. Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube provide the means to access a more diverse range of sources, including civil society organizations and ordinary citizens. We developed a quantitative content analysis to examine to what extent Belgian news coverage showed signs of diverse sourcing practices during the 2011 uprisings in three Arab countries. We analysed a total sample of 1121 news items about the street protests in Syria, Egypt and Tunisia, in four Belgian newspapers (two popular and two quality dailies) and two Belgian broadcasters (the public broadcaster VRT and the commercial channel VTM). The analysis shows that ordinary citizens and non-mainstream groups are important news sources and that social media platforms are consulted relatively often compared to everyday foreign news coverage. In terms of inter-media differences, the findings show that broadcasters' dependency on video footage and eyewitness accounts is reflected in their use of ordinary citizen sources and amateur footage. Moreover, the analysis confirms that quality newspapers display more diverse and more innovative sourcing practices than popular newspapers.     

Where populist citizens get the news: An investigation of news audience polarization along populist attitudes in 11 countries

This article presents a secondary analysis of two multi-national cross-sectional surveys conducted in 2015 (11 countries, N?=?10,570) and 2017 (4 countries, N?=?2165) to examine the relationship between populist attitudes and media use. The results indicate that populist citizens are more likely to consume news than non-populist citizens. Specifically, populist citizens exhibit a preference for commercial television (TV) news, as well as a tendency to read tabloid newspapers. While they use fewer quality newspapers, public TV news are not systematically avoided. Regarding the online news environment, populist citizens prefer Facebook over Twitter as a source of political information. This selective pattern will be discussed in light of the debates on news audience polarization and political polarization.     

Engagement with news on Twitter: insights from Australia and Korea

ABSTRACT

This study examines the patterns of news engagement among news consumers with different political affiliation and cultural background. We use computational methods and data from Twitter in a cross-country comparison of engagement with six online news sources in Australia and South Korea. For our analysis, we used a subset of Twitter users who retweeted at least one political story during the period of collection, and for whom we were able to predict political affiliation using correspondence analysis and data on Twitter follower ties to politicians. We find that right-wing Australian retweeters are more intense in their news engagement, compared with their left-wing counterparts, whereas in South Korea it was the opposite. Australian right-wing political retweeters have more diverse information sources, while there was no difference in information diversity between the right and left in South Korea. We discuss how the political situation in South Korea at the time of data collection may have affected our analysis. We emphasise the methodological contributions of our research and its connection to on-going research into the behavioural foundations of ‘filter bubbles’.     

Antecedents of Incidental News Exposure: The Role of Media Preference,Use and Trust

ABSTRACT

The online environment has radically changed the way in which users consume, discover and manipulate news. The growing relevance of social media platforms and digital intermediaries for news sharing and consumption increase the likelihood of citizens to be exposed to online news even when they are not seeking it. This digital transformation fundamentally challenges the way online news use and exposure have been conceptualized and measured, affecting also to citizens’ knowledge about public affairs and politics. This article examines the factors that predict the probability to be an “incidentally exposed news user” online. Specifically, based on a representative US sample from the Pew Research Centre, this study analyses the role of media preference, use and trust. Findings indicate that beyond users’ demographics and loyalty, readers’ news preferences, uses and trust, specially of social media platforms, affect their probability to be incidentally exposed to news online. These results have important empirical and theoretical implications for understanding the connection between readers’ news consumption patterns and online exposure, intentional or incidental.     

Tracing the Sources

This article explores health journalists’ sourcing patterns in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium across a range of different media including newspapers, magazines, radio, television and online health news websites. A cross-sectional quantitative content analysis of health news items collected in February 2015 (N?=?981) was established to examine the number and origin (e.g. industry, citizens, experts) of sources (N?=?1998) mentioned in health news stories with particular attention paid to differences across various media types. Despite recent claims of media convergence, cross-media comparisons are scarce and, for a specialized beat such as health, nonexistent. The key findings of this study indicate that ordinary citizens and academic experts constitute the two largest source categories. The small share of industry-related sources confirms journalists’ skeptical attitude towards content provided by the industry. But on closer inspection, large differences can be observed across various media types. On the one hand, ordinary citizens occur with relatively high frequency on television but hardly make an appearance in online news items. Academic sources, on the other hand, are dominant online but nearly absent in television news items. In sum, this analysis demonstrates that health journalists’ source uses differ across various media platforms.     

The Role of Political Identity and Media Selection on Perceptions of Hostile Media Bias During the 2012 Presidential Campaign

Viewing a hostile media bias against one’s group (e.g., political party) is a perceptual effect of media use. When it comes to the portrayal of political parties in the United States, prior research suggests that both Democrats and Republicans see mainstream media coverage as favoring the other side, regardless of the orientation of the political news coverage. Although prior research has not identified all factors that make this perceptual bias more likely, or at explaining how or why this perceptual effect occurs, we do know that it is related to one’s group identity. In this study, we examined salient predictors of hostile media bias during the 2012 presidential campaign. Individual (i.e., political cynicism) and group identity related (i.e., group status, intergroup bias, political ideology) differences of media users predicted such perceptions. But, the medium selected for political information about the campaign also mattered. The use of two media in particular—TV and social networking sites—appear to have blunted hostile media bias perceptions, whereas the use of two other media—radio and video sharing sites—appear to have accentuated perceptions that the media were biased against one’s party     

Did the European Migrant Crisis Change News Coverage of Immigration? A Longitudinal Analysis of Immigration Television News and the Actors Speaking in It

Although immigration always has been an issue of political debate, the 2015 European migrant crisis led to an enormous increase in attention from policymakers and news media. Many studies already focused on the representation of the crisis in the news, but no systematic longitudinal research existed comparing coverage in crisis and non-crisis times. This study analyzes all television news items on immigration in Flanders (Belgium) from the two main broadcasters from the period 2003–2017. By doing so, we are able to study whether there are changes in immigration coverage before and during the crisis years. We focus specifically on the actors that get the opportunity to voice their point of view on immigration and on the issues related to immigration. Our results show that before the crisis, immigration news coverage on the commercial and public service broadcaster was relatively similar. However, during the crisis their approach changes. The commercial broadcaster criminalizes immigration more and focuses on political actors. The public broadcaster opts for a broader issue approach and gives the word more to citizens and immigrants during the crisis. We elaborate in the conclusion on how crises can change the nature of reporting.     

Reimagining Newsroom Collaboration: How Two European News Nonprofits Are Inviting Citizens In

ABSTRACT

News nonprofits in the U.S. have been proliferating over 15 years as a way of addressing troubles in the business model for news. For these newsrooms, collaboration, with each other and with mainstream news, has emerged as a key way to build readership and attain relevance in a crowded media space. Still, past research has told us that the strong connection to mainstream news has constrained these organizations’ critique of journalism. In Europe, nonprofit news remains nascent and represents a response to declining trust in and engagement with journalism, and rising populism across the continent. Against this very different context, this study examines two players at the forefront of the European news nonprofit movement. It demonstrates the path dependency inherent in the origins of these organizations: In Europe, they are a response to a different societal change, and thus developed rather differently than did their peers in the United States, with a focus on redefining the idea of collaboration and the role of their audiences by seeing citizens as collaborators, both in the creation and in the dissemination of news. By seeing citizens as collaborators, not just readers, they work to empower and build news audiences as well as participants.     

Taking our Pictures

This qualitative research project explores the specific ways in which 12 traditional television, print and internet news organizations in the United States integrated user-generated visual content into news coverage over the course of an ordinary week, June 8–14, 2014. Framed from a cultural materialist perspective, we found that user-generated visual content constituted a minimal part of the print, broadcast and online news coverage. Based on our research, we suggest that traditional media outlets marginalized the use of citizen photojournalism in an effort to control news production, maintain their influence and power, and to reinforce the reliance on ideological notions of accurate, responsible and relevant journalism.     

REPORTING ON FAIRNESS IN CIVIC LIFE

Drawing on procedural justice research from social psychology, this study explores the role that journalistic practice plays in telling community members about whether local politicians are behaving fairly. Qualitative interviews with 24 community journalists working in cities in Upstate New York are used to answer the following research questions: (1) how does content regarding authority fairness find its way into news stories, and (2) what facets of justice—whether distributive, voice, or relational—do journalists emphasize. The interviewed journalists said that they often used their evaluation of local politicians’ fairness in deciding whether to pursue a story. In doing so, these journalists highlighted questions of whether politicians were listening to community members and the degree to which they appeared to take the best interest of citizens to heart. There was little agreement among journalists about the degree to which citizens could adequately make fairness judgments based on local news coverage, although the television reporters believed that television's visual component provided key information about the fairness of local politicians.     

LOOK WHO'S TALKING

Even though we live in a global world cross-cultural comparisons of journalism practice remain rare. This study analyzed the use of sources in newspaper coverage in Sweden and the United States. Rather than focusing on one single event, the comparison utilizes data from a number of different events: the 2003 Iraq War, the 2002 national election in Sweden and the 2004 presidential election in the United States, and the 2005/2006 international controversy stemming from the publication of the Mohammad Cartoons. Some interesting patterns across the three events emerged for the use of government officials, academic experts and citizens as sources. The findings are discussed in the context of news reporting and journalism within a distinct national political and media system.     

THE EDITORIAL PRODUCTION PROCESS AND EDITORIAL VALUES AS INFLUENCES ON THE OPINIONS OF THE BRITISH PRESS TOWARDS EUROPE

British newspapers have been criticised for their coverage of the European Union and accused of contributing to the strength of anti-European opinion in the United Kingdom. Despite these claims, research by media sociologists and political communications scholars has commonly focused on news reporting, overlooking editorial opinions on European issues. This article addresses this gap by presenting a sociological analysis of editorial journalism in relation to European integration at 10 British national newspapers. The findings show that newspapers vary widely in the resources and roles they have assigned for editorialising on Europe, and provide an original insight into the common routines employed for producing editorial opinion. A model, entitled the editorial production process, is developed to illustrate the key stages of this routine. The specialist practices of editorial journalism are discussed through the identification of a set of editorial values used to select issues for comment.     

Hardwired for News: Affective Intelligence and Political Attention

Research on citizens’ inattentiveness to political news has built a theoretical base for understanding political judgment in the American electorate. The research, however, has a strong cognitive orientation with surprisingly little attention to the dynamic interaction between emotional and attentional factors. To broaden our understanding of these potential emotional influences, we assessed levels of enthusiasm, anger/aversion, and anxiety in response to brief summaries of 50 news stories of diverse character and provenance selected to be representative of quotidian news. The analysis reveals dramatic variation across news stories and across subjects responding to the same story on all 3 emotional dimensions. We also examine an unexpected inverse correlation between education and level of emotional response to news.     

News Organizations 2.0

This study aims at understanding international news differences by studying the headlines of over 360,000 news stories posted on the Twitter pages of 12 Arabic and English news organizations. The most referenced countries as well as figures and political actors are examined in these headlines, and the results show that a number of news values elements provide insight into the nature of the news selection. While Arabic channels are mostly focused on the events taking place in the Middle East (proximity), some English-language channels show clear preference for the countries from which they are located, especially CNN and Sky News, as well as Arabic and English state-owned media outlets like France 24 and RT (agenda and ideology). The findings suggest that news content largely follows a number of news values criteria that can explain the news selection process.     

INCREASED NEWS ACCESS FOR INTERNATIONAL NGOs?

The combined interplay of commercialisation, digitalisation and globalisation offers opportunities for international non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to gain more news access. We set up a quantitative content analysis to study how and to what extent press releases from the international NGO Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) were adopted in foreign coverage by four Flemish newspapers (1995–2010). First, the analysis shows that fewer articles were based on MSF press releases in 2010 than in 1995. Furthermore, we found that Flemish journalists generally supplemented the MSF press releases with additional information. The decreased agenda-building capacity of MSF can be explained by the nature of events (violent conflicts in 1995 versus natural disasters in 2010) and by the increased competition between NGOs in 2010. The fact that MSF press releases and articles increasingly discuss global issues nonetheless indicates that globalisation offers opportunities for international NGOs to enhance their agenda-building capacities. Second, our research found less evidence to support often heard complaints about “churnalism” in newsrooms and showed that public relations can also be a positive factor in the news production process; specifically, we found that MSF press releases are often used to counterbalance the “official” message coming from political representatives or contending parties.     

EDITORIAL

Research on the sociology of news has tended to de-emphasize the impact that the social characteristics of journalists may have on news content. This study suggests that more attention should be paid to the link between these individual-level characteristics of news workers and the content that they produce. The study is a secondary analysis of short narratives from 327 reporters who worked with a high degree of newsroom autonomy. They were asked to give a recent example of their “best work”. The topics of the stories that they cited varied systematically according to some of the reporters’ social characteristics. This finding suggests that certain individual-level factors may have a stronger link to the production of news than is generally believed.     

Perceived party polarization,news attentiveness,and political participation: a mediated moderation model

Perception of party polarization has a positive impact on political participation. While past research suggests that such impact depends upon people’s information use, empirical evidence is lacking. We used a mediated moderation model to test the multiplicative effect between polarization perception and media use on political participation. The data for analysis came from a survey of 625 representative Hong Kong residents in 2015. Findings show that the impact of perceived party polarization on political participation is contingent upon one’s news attentiveness, and that internal political efficacy serves as a mediator that partially explains the interaction effect. Narrowed gaps in political knowledge, efficacy, and participation were observed between light and heavy news users as perceived party polarization rises. The implications of the findings with respect to political participation, role of news media use, and the formation of efficacy beliefs in the context of party polarization are discussed.