Media Convergence: A Case Study of a Cable News Station

Media convergence is happening around the world. This study looks at the current operation of a cable news station that produces 2 media products in 1 newsroom. It also explores the theoretical foundations of value creation in online news by examining how online news is selected, packaged, processed, and distributed. Observational results showed that media convergence still has a long way to go. More important, this study found several divides between the Web people and the news people, between the managers and the reporters, and between the news department and the advertising department. This article suggests that convergence would go more smoothly if stations would integrate Web producers into the newsroom; if reporters were given incentive to do extra work or if their daily work load were adjusted to give them time to file for the Web; and if the sales people better understood the value of the online product.     

STRUCTURAL CHANGE AND JOURNALISM PRACTICE

This paper examines structural changes to Chinese news organisations in the new millennium and their impact on journalism practice, with a particular focus on the Xinhua News Agency. The paper attempts to understand the complexity of these changes and their implications for journalism, media and communications studies.     

Mapping Changes in Local News

Local news media in the United Kingdom are undergoing a multitude of changes which have implications for our understanding of their value in local democracies. Despite the potential significance of these changes for those actors responsible for the provision of local news, very little research has investigated journalists’ and political communicators’ perceptions of the impact of these threats and opportunities. This article addresses this gap by presenting research which investigated the views of key stakeholders in the production of local news in a large city in the United Kingdom. The thematic analysis of 14 interviews evaluates how normative roles attributed to journalism, such as representing the public, acting as a watchdog, providing information, and running campaigns, are being fulfilled by different news providers in the current news ecology.     

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.     

媒介融合进程中新闻报道的突破与创新——基于2008年重大新闻报道案例研究的思考

本文以2008年三类重要新闻报道的案例研究为基础,总结了媒介融合进程中新闻报道在内容层面与管理层面上的突破与创新,并由此阐述新闻报道的发展方向和创新策略     

Global Mistrust in News: The Impact of Social Media on Trust

ABSTRACT

Digital platforms such as search engines and social media have become major gateways to news. Algorithms are used to deliver news that is consistent with consumers’ preferences and individuals share news through their online social networks. This networked environment has resulted in growing uncertainty about online information which has had an impact on news industries globally. While it is well established that perceptions of trust in news found on social media or via search engines are lower than traditional news media, there has been less discussion about the impact of social media use on perceptions of trust in the news media more broadly. This study fills that gap by examining the influence of social media as news sources and pathways to news on perceptions of the level of news trust at a country level. A secondary data analysis of a 26-country survey in 2016 and 2019 was conducted. The analysis revealed an increase in social media use for accessing news resulted in a decline in trust in news media generally across the globe. Higher levels of general mistrust in news were related to an increased use of sharing of news. This paper argues the use of social media for news is closely linked to the increase in news mistrust, which is likely to continue to rise as the number of people using social media to access news continues to grow.     

CORRECTING THE RECORD

Contemporary journalists are, on a daily basis, adopting new work practices to remain relevant in the changing media environment. This study examines these changing practices to determine if, and how, they have been accompanied by changes in journalists’ abilities to enact traditional ethical standards in the newsroom. It posits that by examining the performance of ethics by news actors, as opposed to ethical standards themselves, the importance and impact of changing news practices can be realized and addressed. To illustrate these changes, I explore the use of news corrections as a means for maintaining journalistic accountability. The findings suggest that key attributes of the contemporary news environment, including the rapid speed with which online information is transmitted, and the increasing participation of news consumers in the media environment, can help journalists in their quests for accountability. However, other changes associated with the online news environment, such as the ease with which online information can be erased from history, and the continuous evolution of newsroom technologies, highlight the need for journalists’ ongoing pursuit of new techniques to ensure that the standard of accountability is maintained.     

Public relations practices at medical journals

Many publishers of medical journals actively court coverage by the news media. However, the extent and effect of these practices are poorly understood. After reviewing prior literature regarding the impact of news coverage on the citation rate of journal articles, this paper seeks to measure the extent to which medical journals with clinical significance use public relations practices to encourage news coverage of their articles, and the success that those practices had in increasing coverage by newspapers. Editors of 120 medical journals published worldwide with clinical relevance were surveyed; the response rate was 54%. Eighty per cent of respondents reported that their journal offered journalists at least one of press releases, access to full‐text articles, or press conferences. Editors whose journals used the practices in conjunction with an embargo reported higher‐quality news coverage than editors of journals that did not, but editors and journalists held differing views about the justifications for the specific practice known as an embargo.     

Selling the Story

International development agencies and charities often have a major focus on highlighting and attempting to alleviate health problems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). In these objectives, they rely strongly on news media reporting of these problems and their solutions. This paper examines the experiences of communication staff from eight large non-governmental organisations (NGOs) of trying to secure coverage of LMIC health stories in the Australian news media. It reports on how these NGOs perceive current Australian news coverage of LMIC health, how they negotiate its “media logic” and their attempts to work within and beyond it for better coverage of LMIC health news. Their impressions of LMIC health reporting are broadly consistent with existing literature on the coverage of humanitarian and foreign news. In endeavouring to maximise exposure for their work, the agencies also sought to benefit journalists and news outlets by providing content that matched with existing notions of mainstream news. However, these NGOs are also in the process of working out how to move beyond these outlets and create news content on their own terms. Possible new avenues for the creation of such content are explored.     

Public Space: How Shared News Landscapes Close Gaps in Political Engagement

The recent proliferation of online videos captured at the scene of news events begs the question: Do news videos have a meaningful impact on citizens’ political opinions and behaviors that is different than that of news articles? This was examined in an experiment using carefully matched videos and articles about the European refugee crisis. Findings show that articles generated stronger intentions to help refugees than videos, and this was mediated by the depth with which the news story was processed. Despite their increasing prominence and intuitively impactful qualities, news videos do not deliver more powerful effects than news articles.     

Citizen-Centered Journalism and Contested Boundaries

This article explores the existence of a “citizen-centered journalism” that sees citizens as crucial participants in the construction of news and as co-creators of their own worlds. Through qualitative case studies of three news organizations, the article examines the motivation for using a citizen-centered approach, the news routines that are required to do so, the categories of content produced, and the perceived impact of this approach. The results suggest these news organizations are working in partnership with communities and striving to give a voice to historically marginalized communities. The journalists, however, see citizen participation as complementary to professional journalistic routines that favor verifiable information, rather than assigning inherent value to it for its own sake.     

Measuring the effect of political alignment,platforms, and fake news consumption on voter concern for election processes

Fake news, propagated on social media platforms, is regularly used as a tool to influence political beliefs. In this paper, we investigate the impact of fake news on perceptions of election processes by drawing on the theory of motivated reasoning. We use survey data on partisan alignment, news consumption habits, and voting methods collected before and after the 2020 United States general election. Our pre-election results indicated that political alignment and the type of news a voter consumes influences their trust perceptions of election processes. These findings were replicated in the post-election results. We also found that Facebook users were more likely to consume fake and hyper-partisan news, whereas people who directly navigate to news websites consume primarily mainstream news sources. Implications for research and policy are discussed along with opportunities for future research on the impacts of fake news.     

关于媒体融合的几点思索

“媒体融合”概念越来越频繁地进入人们视线,美国已有新闻传播院系设立“媒体融合”专业或方向,更在研究者在美国佛罗里达进行了一次大规模的尝试,将30多个媒体放在了同一个大平台坦帕(TAMPA)上运作;对这次自觉的试验,我们需要进行理性的思考,即“媒体融合”假设是否成立;是否已形成理论、或在理论上能表述清楚;通过试验能否提供一些数据、定律供研究者检验操作;它将为新闻采写和传播模式带来怎样的变革等等。     

The Effect of Media Coverage on Employer Reputation

A growing body of research examines the formation of employer reputation. One potential driver is media coverage. Using content analysis data for media coverage and survey data, this study examines different dimensions of media coverage, namely, social and functional news and their impacts on employer reputation. Results show that in particular negative functional and social news affect employer reputation, although the impact of negative social news is more indirect and delayed.     

OPINION FORMATION IN MEDIATED CONFLICTS AND CRISES: A THEORY OF COGNITIVE-AFFECTIVE MEDIA EFFECTS

This paper analyzes opinion formation in the cases of threemediated conflicts using a complex model that evaluates therespondents' value systems, the coverage of the mass media used,the recipients' familiarity with specific events occurring inthe conflicts, and their positions on the issues. The modelpredicts that the recipients' long-term value systems influencetheir positions on the issue in two ways. Firstly, value systemshave a direct impact on the short-term positions on an issue.Secondly, value systems have an indirect impact on the positionsof issues by influencing the recipients' selection of news mediaand thus the type and amount of news information they are exposedto. The type and amount of news influences how knowledgeablethey are of the events related to the conflicts. The familiaritywith these events influences their positions on the issues.Value systems, media usage, familiarity and positions on theissues were measured in a survey. A parallel content analysisexamined the coverage of the conflicts in the German mass media(press, radio, television) during the six-month time frame priorto the survey. Both data sets were merged in order to give anestimate of the information each recipient was exposed to. Theresults of multiple regression analyses support the theoreticalmodel. Furthermore, this paper discusses the relevance of themodel for the analysis of opinion formation as well as the limitationsof the model.     

民国时期国民党地方性通讯社历史发展探究

通讯社在新闻传播活动中发挥着重要而独特的作用。民国时期,国内曾涌现大量通讯社,特别是地方性通讯社数目相当庞大。国民党内不同政治势力和派系为谋取自身利益,纷纷染指通讯社业务,他们或直接兴办,或暗中资助,很多省份的中心城市都先后出现了国民党、政府和军队等系统创办的地方性通讯社。这些通讯社一般都带有明显的政治倾向,为一定的利益集团所控制。国民党系统地方性通讯社的兴衰,从一个侧面反映出民国时期中国社会政治生活的乱象及对新闻业的影响。     

MANAGED MEDIOCRITY?

Based on a production study of the distinct and unique children's news programme, BBC Newsround, this paper explores the place of the professional understanding of the target audience as a “missing link” within the news-making process. Approaching programme production with this concern uncovers the particular understandings of the target audience that inform journalists’ news culture and professional views. Further revealed is how such ideas, when traced within the news production process, explain the particularised practices that condition and shape “appropriate” news representations for the audience. The paper concludes with an assessment of the impact of these professional ideas on the dialogical possibilities of the children's news programme.     

Commercialization of Technology News

While technology news has become a major news genre, the coverage of high-tech products has raised concerns regarding the commercialization of journalism. Drawing on salience transfer and exemplification theory, this study explores how The New York Times and USA Today covered Apple products along quantity and quality dimensions. A content analysis documented a landslide in the amount of coverage on Apple products in both newspapers. Both iPhones and iPads were disproportionately over-covered in relation to their market share. Over one-third of the headlines about the iPhone covered the product favorably. The New York Times published more stories about these gadgets than USA Today did, while USA Today was twice as likely to portray iPhones in a positive light. These findings have raised questions about the commercialization of technology news and its impact on journalism.     

从面向“受众”到面对“用户”——试论传媒业态变化对新闻编辑的影响

新媒体的崛起与媒体融合的推进改变了传媒业态,也促使新闻编辑面对新的工作环境和工作任务。新闻实践表明,从单媒体内容生产向多种媒体内容生产转移使新闻编辑面对更加细分的用户,大众媒体与社会化媒体的相互嵌入要求编辑重视传播活动中的用户体验。在新形势下,编辑的专业素质和技术能力需要进一步提高。