Peril in the personals: the dangers and pleasures of classified advertising in early twentieth‐century Britain

The question of how newsbook storytelling contributed to the cultivation and development of thinking about particular political practices during the English Civil Wars in the 1640s needs systematic attention. A sustained examination of newsbook narratives reveals assumptions about political order, activity and legitimacy that were being continuously reiterated in public discourse. Examining how the author of the Royalist Mercurius Aulicus chronicled, selected and ordered recent events into a series of narrative episodes across a number of issues, this article offers a preliminary approach towards understanding how newsbooks contributed to everyday political thinking. Using Charles Taylor's notion of ‘social imaginaries’, it outlines the ideas and assumptions that constituted Aulicus' discussion of the Solemn League and Covenant's introduction in September and October 1643. As an important form of political engagement, the stories newsbooks told were used to shape ideas about political propriety on a weekly basis.     

Declaring the Value of Truth

As fake news has become a growing concern since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, attention to journalism history offers a useful means for rediscovering strategies for both fighting fake news and shoring up journalism’s commitment to the truth. This article argues that truth’s value emerges from the conditions under which journalism is produced, both commercial and cultural. Looking at arguments about fake news published in news reports, columns, letters to editors, and advertisements in major metropolitan papers between 1891 and 1919, we recover the particular ways journalists came to define the problem of fake news, arguing that its emergence as a discursive object offered opportunities for conceiving of and articulating practicable responses across the industry. For contemporary practitioners, scholars, and commentators alike, this means that clearly defining and responding to the problem of fake news in ways that are both critical and contextual offer a means for recovering agency in the face of this crisis.     

Accessibility to news: Sources of information for Japanese politicians

This article identifies sources of information for Japanese members of parliament (Diet). It focuses on four main sources that Dietmen often use—the news media, colleagues, bureaucrats, and newsmen—based on interviews conducted with politicians. Politicians differ in their use of certain channels, along lines of parliamentarian experience, the nature of contact they have with sources, and whether they belong to the ruling party or the opposition. The significant finding is that Diet members attributed much importance to the information they obtain from news reporters.     

Trust or Bust?: Questioning the Relationship Between Media Trust and News Attention

This article establishes the theoretical significance of media trust and explores the relationships between individuals' levels of media trust and news attention. Three distinct types of media trust are introduced: 1) trust of news information, 2) trust of those who deliver the news, and 3) trust of media corporations. The findings indicate that these different types of media trust relate to news attention in distinct ways, specifically when examined across medium. The theoretical significance of the findings are discussed and contextualized in light of an evolving media environment.     

Precarious Balance

This article explores how journalists negotiate notions of autonomy in their daily exchanges with politicians. Based on qualitative data analysis of semi-structured interviews conducted in Chile, this article argues that, when analysed from the perspective of journalists, notions of autonomy appear to be negotiated in three distinct dimensions. First, a professional narrative built upon news values firmly grounded in commercial considerations; second, an organizational narrative that rests upon editorial lines that occasionally become explicit editorial biases, and third, a sense of belonging to an encapsulated community inhabited by journalists, politicians and communication officers. Data analysis suggests that core claims of autonomy in political reporting stem from values of newsworthiness greatly influenced by a commercial logic of audience maximization. This professional autonomy, though, has to be upheld at the organizational and the relational level, and appears tensioned by the appearance of new media and political actors who push journalists towards a public-oriented role. The implications of these findings for journalistic practice are discussed.     

Does Commercialized Political Coverage Undermine Political Trust?: Evidence Across European Countries

Media commercialization has long been suspected of exerting a negative influence upon political culture. The news media's interest in intrigues, personal details, and scandals rather than political issues in order to capture audience attention is regarded by many as a prime source of political cynicism. This article scrutinizes this claim by examining whether a commercialized media environment correlates with lower levels of citizen political trust across countries. Integrating cross-national survey data with country-level measures of commercialized political coverage, the findings indicate that, across 33 European countries, a negative link exists between media commercialization and political trust. Replication of the analysis with a separate cross-national survey across 28 countries demonstrated the robustness of the findings. These support the claim that media commercialization undermines political trust.     

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.     

Political News Journalists in Social Media

Social media allow everyone to show off their personalities and to publicly express opinions and engage in discussions on politicised matters, and as political news journalists engage in social media practices, one might ask if all political news journalists will finally end up as self-promoting political pundits. This study examines the way political news journalists use social media and how these practices might challenge journalistic norms related to professional distance and neutrality. The study uses cluster analysis and detects five user types among political news journalists: the sceptics, the networkers, the two-faced, the opiners, and the sparks. The study finds, among other things, a sharp divide between the way political reporters and political commentators use social media. Very few reporters are comfortable sharing political opinions or blurring the boundaries between the personal and the professional, indicating that traditional journalistic norms still stand in political news journalism.     

Mediated Negotiations: A Case Study of a Transcultural Exchange between Lebanon and Israel

This article examines the strategies and practices by which the Israeli news media negotiated and (re)appropriated a Lebanese documentary that was produced in cooperation with a French company and was purchased and broadcast by an Israeli commercial channel. Using this transnational textual event, the article explores the dynamics, opportunities and pitfalls associated with transcultural exchanges that take place in a conflictual, translocal context, and the ways in which such exchanges are shaped by an interplay of material-institutional and discursive-symbolic dimensions. The article also provides a multi-layered framework for analyzing the broadcasting and journalistic practices surrounding such textual events, and establishes the relationship between appropriation and witnessing strategies. I show how the Israeli media—driven by commercial interests and applying complex forms of witnessing and appropriation—worked to sustain national myths and suppress the potentially disruptive aspects of the documentary, while at the same time exposing the weaknesses of these myths, as well as the limits of the State's power. Emerging from this case study is a complex picture of the multifaceted roles played by national news media in a transnational economy, and of the ways in which commercial media interests serve as both hegemonic and disruptive forces within the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict.     

Second Generation Net News: Interactivity and Information Accessibility in the Online Environment

This study assesses the ways in which local television news operations and major metropolitan newspapers in the top 40 U.S. media markets are making information accessible and structuring interactive experiences online as the industry transitions into a third generation of Internet news. As Net news approaches its first decade of existence, online news sites are assumed to be evolving from a noninteractive, passive model of information delivery into an environment of increased immediacy, content richness, and user control. To investigate this question, a content analysis was performed in 2 waves, once during fall 1998 and again during fall 2000. For comparative purposes, differences across years are examined. In addition, the efforts of local television news sites are contrasted with the online activities of dominant newspaper sites, which have assumed a commanding lead in building a local online audience. The analysis argues for valuing Net news sites less from a profit-loss standpoint and more for the nonmonetary contributions they make in relation to the broader news mission, namely, enhanced coverage, brand loyalty, and news credibility.     

Second Screening Donald Trump: Conditional Indirect Effects on Political Participation

As second screening becomes more widespread, this study addresses its mediating role on the impact of TV news in political participation online and offline, and how this impact varies across groups. We expand the existing line of research by assessing the moderating role of support for Donald Trump on the established mediated model. Through a cross-lagged autoregressive panel survey design applied to the communication mediation model, our results support the link between second screening and political participation—but the mediating role of second screening is contingent upon attitudes towards Trump. For those who do not view Trump favorably, second screening during news leads to a decrease in political participation, both online and offline. As such, this article adds to the communication mediation model by suggesting that discussion and elaboration may not always be positive antecedents to political participation. When individuals disagree with the message dominating TV news and social media, deliberation via second screening leads to political disengagement.     

REPURPOSING OF CONTENT IN MULTI-PLATFORM NEWS PRODUCTION

One of the characteristics of convergence journalism is the prominence of repurposing of content. This article analyses news production processes at the Norwegian public service broadcaster, NRK, through the concepts of genre and adaptation. Convergent, or cross-media, news journalism involves media content travelling across media boundaries. As different media platforms use different sets of sign systems (audio, video, writing, images and graphics), this requires some form of translation or adaptation. This article analyses some examples of audiovisual content that travels across media platforms; mainly from television and radio to the Web, but also between radio and television. News content made for a specific programme on a specific platform, with a characteristic rhetoric, is adapted in part or as a whole to be republished on a different platform with a different rhetoric. In conclusion, the article outlines a typology of different forms of repurposing in cross-media news journalism, expanding on those found in Dailey et al.'s (2003) “convergence continuum”.     

The Impact of News Use and News Content Characteristics on Political Knowledge and Participation

Research has examined the relationship between traditional news media use and normatively important political outcomes such as knowledge and participation. However, most research fails to account for variations in the nature of news over time and across communities that could alter the fundamental relationship between exposure and these outcomes. Here two studies are presented—one with variation in news characteristics over time based on the American National Election Studies time series data and another with variation across local communities and newspapers within a single state during a single election year—to assess the hypothesis that the relationship between news use and political outcomes are moderated by natural variations in the nature of the news content and news outlets.     

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.     

中国新闻周刊的生存状况与发展路径

中国大陆地区的新闻类周刊1990年代以来取得长足发展,也面临新的挑战与危机。“生逢其时”的社会环境与“生不逢时”的媒体竞争环境,使其努力寻找更为适合自己的生存路径,包括对“刊”形态与“周”时态的重新认识,对“忙人”与“有影响力”的人的重新界定,对“品质”与“风格”的不同选择,以及从“品牌化生存”到“两栖化生存”的拓展,以期借助于其他类型传播媒体的同步传播或“二次传播,”形成品牌,扩大影响,牢牢站稳属于自己的一片媒体空间。     

Opposing verdicts in the Webb/Dotson rape case: Legal vs. news constructions

This essay compares legal and mainstream news discourses surrounding the Webb/Dotson rape recanting case, focusing on reasons why the two discourses derived opposing conclusions about Dotson's guilt. It argues that the tendency of mainstream news media to highlight emotional and personal elements helped construct a picture of Dotson as innocent and affable, while the tendency of legal discourse to emphasize mutually exclusive categories contributed strongly to a picture of Dotson as guilty regardless of Webb's recanted story.     

Partisan Enclaves or Shared Media Experiences? A Network Approach to Understanding Citizens’ Political News Environments

The abundance of political media outlets raises concerns that citizens isolate themselves to likeminded news, leaving the public with infrequent shared media experiences and little exposure to disagreeable information. Network analysis of 2008 National Annenberg Election Survey data (N = 57,967) indicates these worries are exaggerated, as general interest news outlets like local newspapers and non-partisan television news are central to the public’s media environment. Although there is some variation between the media diets of Republicans and Democrats (FOX News and conservative talk radio are central to Republicans’ information network), neither group appears to engage in active avoidance of disagreeable information. Individuals across the political spectrum are not creating partisan “echo chambers” but instead have political media repertoires that are remarkably similar.     

THE BEST OF BOTH WORLDS

Reuters established a picture service after its competitors. So why did it enter the picture market when it did? What advantage did late entry give it? How did this new technologically driven business model based on pictures offer the key bridge to the contemporary multimedia company Reuters is today? In this article, the story of the Reuters picture service is told for the first time since it was officially established in 1985. Using Reuters archive, it begins with the purchase of UPI's US pictures service and ends with the contemporary business. It explores the ways Reuters managed to finance the production of pictures; build a new network for the picture service; invest in (and develop) new technologies of distribution, consumption and operation while being constantly on guard through research; study its markets, its competitors and clients; make room for new product lines in the form of news pictures within an already fully operational organisation, and deal with difficulties that resulted from such structural changes. Establishing its picture service during the 1980s not only helped Reuters make a strong entry into the international image market at a time when international news had just entered a new digital era, it also helped Reuters build a strong business and technological model during a period of media industry upheaval. And it used its picture operations to establish an elaborative infrastructure, enabling this forward-looking multimedia business to become a powerful international news agency ready for the future.     

Punditry as a reward system: audience construction and the logics of the punditry sphere

The article explores the relationship between the punditry sphere and democracy by analyzing how pundits and media organizations think about their audience. It also examines the role of punditry in the political environment in which the media organizations operate. Using Portugal as an example, the study draws on data gathered from interviews with pundits, journalists and news editors. Findings suggest that pundits and media organizations construct a punditry sphere that revolves around the circles of power. The article argues that this conception of the punditry sphere reflects the reward system under which pundits and media organizations work. Punditry seems to be a field primarily oriented to pundits themselves and to managing their stakes in the public arena while operating as a sphere where media organizations rework their relations with and within established powers, where politicians hold a special place. This construction reflects the co-dependence between media organizations and circles of power in Portugal and offers organizational-structural understanding of the logics of the punditry sphere and the role pundits play in public communication.     

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.