THE JOURNALISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF VOTERS IN THE SPANISH GENERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN 2008

This article examines the mediated construction of citizens during an electoral campaign, a political period in which citizens are normatively expected to play a fundamental role. From a social constructionist, discursive approach, this article qualitatively explores the representation of citizens in the press in the coverage of the main Spanish newspapers (El País, El Mundo, and Abc) during the campaign for the Spanish General Election of 2008. It is understood that the media's portrayal of citizens contributes to spreading and legitimising certain discourses about citizens, about citizens' political behaviour, and also about the reasons behind citizens' political attitudes and motivations. On occasions, these discourses are based on pre-electoral polls or previous research, although many rest only on inferences about the public. The newspapers put forward a reductionistic set of ambivalent discourses naturalising uninformed voting and legitimising the vote for major parties, while sympathising, at the same time, with disenchanted voters, justifying citizens' distrust in politicians.     

‘A Fine Healthy Place’

This paper presents a close reading of Australian local newspapers The Queenslander, The Week, and The Logan Witness. It argues that by representing triumph over local challenges these newspapers also constituted a late-nineteenth-century civilizing process. They played a vital role in generating community cohesion. Stability and civilization were represented to the target audience of families and entrepreneurs as ‘natural’ and appropriately embodied by colonizers. Embedding a sense of belonging established a ‘civilising (sic) goodness’ through disavowal of the displacement of indigenous peoples as familiar community practices were enacted. In this highly literate population newspapers, rather than books, provided local Australian content. A case study of the Lahey family, who arrived as South East Queensland became available for serious settlement in the early 1870s, personalizes the settlement ideology produced by local newspapers.     

First-level and second-level intermedia agenda-setting among major news websites

This study investigates the extent to which major news websites influence one another's issue agendas and attribute agendas on main posting areas. To contribute to the generalization of intermedia agenda-setting effects to online media in other countries, this study chooses the South Korean major news websites, which are Joins.com, Chosun.com, Donga.com (major online newspapers) and online Yonhap News Agency. A cross-lagged panel design and partial correlations reveal that Chosun.com and Donga.com influence issue agendas of the online wire service. There is no influence over issue agendas between major online newspapers. In terms of attribute agendas, Chosun.com and Donga.com influence Joins.com, and Chosun.com affects the online wire service.     

In it for the Long Run?

While previous research has focused on the uses of a variety of online services—such as Web pages and, more recently, Twitter—by media organizations and their audiences, a rather limited amount of empirical inquiry has been directed towards the often more and broadly used Facebook platform. The current paper contributes to the research field by providing a longitudinal study of journalist and audience engagement on the Facebook pages of Sweden's four major newspapers—Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen and Svenska Dagbladet. Employing state-of-the-art methods for data collection, the results indicate that while audiences appear to be increasing their engagement with news organizations on Facebook—albeit mostly through so-called “likes”—the media organizations themselves are decreasing their engagement with audiences.     

A Taxonomy of Newspapers based on Multi-Platform and Paid Content Strategies: Evidences from Spain

This article examines Spanish newspapers’ means of digital distribution and their adoption of paid content strategies. To that end, the article employs a quantitative, explorative approach with data collected from 88 Spanish newspapers in November 2012. Using a hierarchical cluster analysis four types of newspapers can be differentiated by their utilization of specific means of digital distribution of content. The four distinct clusters differ in their organizational background and their average net circulation. The results of the article highlight the increasing role of digital kiosks for digital distribution in Spain and indicate a high influence of publishing groups on paid content strategies.     

A space for countering colorblind discourse: constructions of police-perpetrated homicides of African-American males

This qualitative study assesses how police-perpetrated homicides of African-American males are constructed in the public sphere. Similar studies on the discourse surrounding the topic have focused on newspaper articles as the discourse unit. In this article, I argue that the opinion-editorial (op-ed) pages of newspapers are a space for challenging colorblind frames invoked the discourse about police use of force that dominates in the print media. To demonstrate this point, I conducted an ethnographic content analysis of 168 op-eds from five different U.S. newspapers: Contra Costa Times, New York Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Salt Lake Tribune, and Washington Post. The op-eds focused on the police-perpetrated homicides of Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice in 2014. The findings from this study indicate that the op-ed pages provide a unique opportunity for Black voices to be heard, as well as a space for dominant frames about police-perpetrated homicides to be challenged. Paradoxically, the results also impugn the sequestering of Black voices into the openly subjective spaces of print media.     

FOUR RUMOURS AND AN EXPLANATION

Our analysis of 2207 domestic news reports in a structured sample of UK “quality” (the Guardian, The Times, the Independent and the Telegraph) and mid-market (Daily Mail) newspapers, revealed journalists’ extensive use of copy provided by public relations sources and news agencies, especially the UK-based Press Association. A political economic explanation for this reliance on news stories produced “outside the newsroom”, draws inspiration from Gandy's notion of information subsidies and presents findings from a substantive content analysis of selected UK national newspapers, interviews with journalists working on national titles and news agencies, as well as detailed archival analysis of UK newspaper companies’ annual accounts across 20 years to deliver information about newspapers’ profitability, their expansive editorial pagination as well as the number of journalists they employ. The argument here is that this reliance on public relations and news agency copy has been prompted by the need for a relatively stable community of journalists to meet an expansive requirement for news in order to maintain newspapers’ profitability in the context of declining circulations and revenues.     

Barrier or Bridge: Photojournalism of the San Diego/TijuanaBorder Region

Using both quantitative and interpretive approaches, this article provides an in-depth analysis of the changing representations of the border region in the newspapers of San Diego and Tijuana over the last decade. The major daily newspapers, the San Diego Union-Tribune, and El Mexicano, have been sampled over a 10-year period. For the Union-Tribune, photo-journalistic coverage evolves in relationship to changing political realities, though the images may tend toward a more polarized reading than the text. Initially the photographs in the Union-Tribune depict the border as boundary. By 1998 increased emphasis on regional trade is reflected in the photojournalistic coverage. Until 2000, coverage in El Mexicano is much more static, always representing the border as bridge from the perspective of Mexican official culture. Comparative analysis of the representational strategies used in both cities suggests alternatives that cross borders rather than reinforce them.     

How partisan newspapers represented a pandemic: the case of the Middle East respiratory syndrome in South Korea

This study analyzed the coverage by two partisan South Korean newspapers of the Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) pandemic, examining differences in their use of news frames and cited sources. A content analysis revealed that Hankyoreh, the left-wing newspaper, placed more emphasis on attributing responsibility to the government and society. In contrast, Chosun Ilbo, the right-wing newspaper, placed more emphasis on attributing responsibility to the individual. Severity/uncertainty, economic consequences, and statistical data frame were utilized more in Hankyoreh than the expected frequency. On the other hand, human interest and reassurance frame were utilized more in Chosun Ilbo than the expected frequency. Regarding the sources used in news stories, Hankyoreh used significantly more sources from local governments than did Chosun Ilbo. On the other hand, Chosun Ilbo used significantly more sources from medical agencies and experts than did Hankyoreh. This study advances previous research on the framing of a pandemic in the media by exploring how the partisan leanings of newspapers influence the framing.     

Planning for Multilingual Chat Reference Service in a Suburban Public Library System

SUMMARY

Recent immigrants are settling not only in urban centers, but are dispersing throughout the suburban landscape. For many of these new immigrants, the local public library can provide a vital connection to the American Dream, if only librarians can effectively reach them. This article discusses the planning for multilingual chat reference service (currently English, Spanish, and Chinese) and some of the issues and challenges that librarians face in a suburban public library system.     

Determining the Key Dimensions for Evaluating Service Quality and Satisfaction in Academic Libraries

ABSTRACT

Offering quality services and evaluating the rate of success in providing users with target services is the pervasive importance of academic libraries. The central purpose of this study is to determine key dimensions of service quality and satisfaction through developing a new item-scale for evaluating service quality and satisfaction in academic libraries. For primary data collection the study used a 28-item instrument based on five dimensional modified version of SERVQUAL. Respondents were asked to indicate their degree of opinions in the three-columns format: desired service expectation, minimum service expectation, and perception of service performance on a 7-point Likert-type scale. The researcher initially conducted a pilot survey to clarify the overall structure of the questionnaire items to be accepted and used. The reliability of the analysis of data with distinct service attributes were taken from ten public and private university libraries in Bangladesh. Subjecting data obtained to exploratory factor analysis shows that academic library service quality and satisfaction is related to four basic dimensions: caring, competence, resources, and library as a place. Twenty-six service items were identified after extraction through exploratory factor analysis, where nine items were shown before “caring,” five items for “competence,” seven items for “resources,” and five items for “library as a place.” The result in fact provides a generic and robust instrument and recognizes a new item-scale, namely “real service expectation” for the librarians and information science practitioners in the assessment of service quality and satisfaction in academic libraries and in the related fields.     

Neighborhood Press and Immigration

This research studied the way immigration is depicted by the neighborhood press of Barcelona. Mainstream media tend to give visibility to immigrants when problems arise. Through this visibility based on problems, and the processes of framing, a virtual social identity is constructed and given to the immigration population. However, the neighborhood press of Barcelona, inscribed within the Catalan regional press’ own idea of journalism, offers a different approach to this issue due to its history, neighborhood and commitment to the region. Through a frame analysis, three main frames gave a depiction of the immigrants different from the one the mainstream media use. The results show that this differentiated depiction still stereotypes immigrants while not granting them enough visibility even when there is no blaming or attack. In this sense, while accounting for the differences, the neighborhood press of Barcelona misses a chance of depicting immigration in a more accurate way.     

The economic context of book publishing

A healthy publishing industry flourishes in a healthy economy. This article (written June 1990) provides a brief forecast for the U.S. economy and overall consumer spending. The authors combine economic and demographic forecasts to predict trends in book sales. Jim Haughey is Vice President, Research and Economics, at Cahners Publishing Company, which publishesPublishers Weekly, Library Journal, and seventy other business and consumer magazines and newspapers. Deborah Selsky is the economist for the printing and publishing group at Cahners Economics. She regularly writes on economics forLibrary Journal and is the editor ofPublishing Markets, a newsletter.     

A Mirage of Change: Visibility of Politicians on TVE during the 2015 and 2016 General Elections

ABSTRACT

The use of strategies to enhance the media visibility of politicians intensifies above all at election time and their focus is chiefly television due to the fact that it still has the greatest power to sway voters. Thus, based on a content analysis of the evening news on Televisión Española (TVE) and 18 semi-structured in-depth interviews with professionals working at the Spanish public broadcaster, the airtime that politicians were given was established to assess whether it had fulfilled its obligation as regards independence and pluralism at two crucial moments for Spanish politics: the period prior to the election calls, the pre-campaign periods and the official campaigns before the general elections held on 20 December 2015 and 26 June 2016. Both were unique in their own way: on the one hand, the debut of new political parties with the potential to win a large number of seats in Parliament; and, on the other, despite the fact that in just six months the party in power had lost its absolute majority and there were still no visible signs of change at TVE, it is still worth examining the variations in news treatment prior to both elections.     

A Follower-Centric Approach to Leadership in the Newsroom

This article analyses leadership in the newsroom of the Spanish newspaper El País as well as its impact on the craft of journalism more generally. Through 23 in-depth interviews, we try to elucidate how the newsroom constructs its leaders (in the newsroom, what does it mean to be a leader?), paying particular attention to the main skills considered to be necessary. According to our newsroom findings, not all heads of section or editors-in-chief are leaders, a fact that questions formal authority relations and proclaims expertise and know-how as discriminatory skills. This study emphasizes that the collective recognition of a leader is not an ultimate disposition, but can vary over time: consequently leaders who do not achieve the professional requirements of the newsroom can be denied the status, despite their expertise and experience. Our findings indicate that leaders at El País are those journalists (no matter what their positions) with strong capacities and skills (fundamentally experience, expertise and creativity) to manage form (relationships) and substance (contents) in the daily work of the newsroom. In short, journalists seen as leaders combine reiterated and strong qualities and merit, graphically reflected in the texts they have published for years in the newspaper.     

The community model of content management: A case study of the music industry

Abstract

In 450 years of existence, the written press has never faced a change with the intensity and consequences as those of the Internet. The decision of going online represents a whole set of opportunities and threats that publishers must carefully weigh. Once they have made the step, newspapers find themselves in a completely different competitive environment. They deal with different competitors, business models, customers and patterns of consumption. The present study explores such patterns of consumption by using data from 15 Spanish newspapers, covering time periods from 2 to 20 months. Characteristics of the printed newspapers and general patterns of the Internet are also analyzed in order to isolate the factors that enable an Internet newspaper to achieve a high level of readership. The findings indicate that reading patterns on the Internet strongly differ from those in the physical world, particularly when we consider weekday versus weekend circulation. The use of the newspaper is different too: reading of Internet newspapers is usually more functional and goal oriented, as indicated by the small number of pages read per visit. These and other results can provide publishers with valuable insights to understand this new frontier in the history of journalism.     

Reaching Out: Newspaper Credibility Among Young Adult Readers

The researchers examined student perceptions of campus and community newspaper credibility at the University of Florida using a Web survey (n = 1,906) of those enrolled in a general education class. A moderate correlation (r = .28) existed between college newspaper credibility and community newspaper credibility. Using hierarchical linear regression, the researchers found interest in news content to be a statistically significant predictor of credibility for both local newspapers and college newspapers. In addition, students whose parents encouraged them to read a newspaper found both newspapers more credible than did their peers, and exposure to a newspaper was found to be a strong predictor of credibility for that newspaper. Finally, the results of this case study also suggest White respondents find local newspapers more credible than other races. Implications for researchers and practitioners were discussed.     

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.     

Social Media References in Newspapers

Social media are increasingly being used as sources in mainstream news coverage. Yet, while the research so far has focused mainly on the use of social media in particular situations, such as breaking news coverage, during crisis news events or in times of elections, little attention is paid to journalists' routine, day-to-day monitoring of social media platforms. The aim of this study is to examine the use and selection of social media as sources in routine newspaper coverage. First, it presents a quantitative overview of all the articles published between January 2006 and December 2013 in the print editions of two Flemish (north Belgian) quality newspapers, De Standaard and De Morgen, that explicitly refer to Facebook, Twitter or YouTube. Next, a content analysis is conducted of a sample of newspaper articles published in 2013 that explicitly mention Facebook, Twitter or YouTube as sources of information. The goal of this content analysis is to examine the different appearances and functions of social media references in the news. The study thus provides a first insight into Belgian newspaper journalists' regular sourcing routines in relation to social media.     

Innovation Management and U.S. Weekly Newspaper Web Sites: An Examination of Newspaper Managers and Emerging Technology

Using Everett Rogers's (2003) Rogers, E. M. 2003. Diffusion of innovations, 5th, New York: Free Press.  [Google Scholar] theory of innovation in organizations, this nationwide study examines U.S. weekly newspapers and their adoption and management of innovation—specifically, the online newspaper. From a theoretical standpoint, the creation of the online product was somewhat unsystematic. The data reveal that most weekly newspapers were not following any type of innovation management strategy when developing their online editions. This study echoes the findings of Saksena and Hollifield (2002) Saksena, S. and Hollifield, C. A. 2002. U.S. newspapers and the development of online editions. The International Journal on Media Management, 4: 75–84. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar] in the assessment that newspapers are adopting and managing emerging technology in a “relatively haphazard fashion.” Most newspaper managers report they did not develop a business plan for the new product or set specific, measurable goals to aid in assessing the success of the online newspaper. In addition, almost ¾ of the newspapers did not gather target-market or audience research before launching the online newspaper. The study found that newspaper managers were sensitive to their staffs' questions, needs, and concerns about publishing an online newspaper; and most involved their staffs in the decision-making process. A majority reported that they did not meet any resistance from their staffs about the adoption of new technology to produce the online newspapers.