Examining the Linking Patterns and Link Building Strategies of Mainstream and Partisan Online News Media in Central Europe

Author(s):  
Andrea Hrckova ◽  
Robert Moro ◽  
Ivan Srba ◽  
Maria Bielikova
2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Hrckova ◽  
Robert Moro ◽  
Ivan Srba ◽  
Maria Bielikova

PurposePartisan news media, which often publish extremely biased, one-sided or even false news, are gaining popularity world-wide and represent a major societal issue. Due to a growing number of such media, a need for automatic detection approaches is of high demand. Automatic detection relies on various indicators (e.g. content characteristics) to identify new partisan media candidates and to predict their level of partisanship. The aim of the research is to investigate to a deeper extent whether it would be appropriate to rely on the hyperlinks as possible indicators for better automatic partisan news media detection.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilized hyperlink network analysis to study the hyperlinks of partisan and mainstream media. The dataset involved the hyperlinks of 18 mainstream media and 15 partisan media in Slovakia and Czech Republic. More than 171 million domain pairs of inbound and outbound hyperlinks of selected online news media were collected with Ahrefs tool, analyzed and visualized with Gephi software. Additionally, 300 articles covering COVID-19 from both types of media were selected for content analysis of hyperlinks to verify the reliability of quantitative analysis and to provide more detailed analysis.FindingsThe authors conclude that hyperlinks are reliable indicators of media affinity and linking patterns could contribute to partisan news detection. The authors found out that especially the incoming links with dofollow attribute to news websites are reliable indicators for assessing the type of media, as partisan media rarely receive links with dofollow attribute from mainstream media. The outgoing links are not such reliable indicators as both mainstream and partisan media link to mainstream sources similarly.Originality/valueIn contrast to the extensive amount of research aiming at fake news detection within a piece of text or multimedia content (e.g. news articles, social media posts), the authors shift to characterization of the whole news media. In addition, the authors did a geographical shift from more researched US-based media to so far under-researched European context, particularly Central Europe. The results and conclusions can serve as a guide how to derive new features for an automatic detection of possibly partisan news media by means of artificial intelligence (AI).Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at the following link: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2020-0441.


Media Asia ◽  
2003 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 197-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alice Y. L. Lee

Daedalus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 140 (4) ◽  
pp. 108-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Kelly Garrett ◽  
Paul Resnick

Must the Internet promote political fragmentation? Although this is a possible outcome of personalized online news, we argue that other futures are possible and that thoughtful design could promote more socially desirable behavior. Research has shown that individuals crave opinion reinforcement more than they avoid exposure to diverse viewpoints and that, in many situations, hearing the other side is desirable. We suggest that, equipped with this knowledge, software designers ought to create tools that encourage and facilitate consumption of diverse news streams, making users, and society, better off. We propose several techniques to help achieve this goal. One approach focuses on making useful or intriguing opinion-challenges more accessible. The other centers on nudging people toward diversity by creating environments that accentuate its benefits. Advancing research in this area is critical in the face of increasingly partisan news media, and we believe these strategies can help.


Author(s):  
Kathleen Searles ◽  
Joshua P. Darr ◽  
Mingxiao Sui ◽  
Nathan Kalmoe ◽  
Raymond Pingree ◽  
...  

Abstract Previous study demonstrates that partisans perceive in-party news outlets as fair, and out-party news outlets as unfair. However, much of this study relies on one-shot designs. We create an ecologically valid design that randomly assigns participants to news feeds within a week-long online news portal where the balance of in-party and out-party news outlets has been manipulated. We find that sustained exposure to a feed that features out-party news media attenuates Democrats' beliefs that Fox News is unfair, but the same is not true for Republican's perceptions of MSNBC's fairness. Unexpectedly, repeated exposure to in-party news did increase Republicans' beliefs that Fox News is unfair. This study updates our understanding of partisan news effects in a fragmented online news environment.


2011 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Van Cauwenberge ◽  
Hans Beentjes ◽  
Leen d’Haenens

A typology of young news users in the Low Countries A typology of young news users in the Low Countries This article investigates different types of young news users (15-34 years) in the Low Countries. Therefore a survey among 1200 Flemish and Dutch youngsters and adolescents was conducted, analyzing the combined use of media platforms for news consumption and time spent with these news carriers. The cluster analysis identified five types of news users: the sound and vision group, characterized by the use of mainly audiovisual news platforms, combined with online news sites; the e-news users, who give most prominence to online news sites but also rely on traditional news platforms, the all rounders, depending on a range of off- and online news channels; the traditionalists, who spent most time with offline news media; and the dabblers, a group with an overall low level of news consumption. Our results indicate that Flemish and Dutch youngsters combine online and traditional news platforms for their news gathering, giving most prominence to traditional news media, especially television news.


Significance The new rules follow a stand-off between Twitter and the central government last month over some posts and accounts. The government has used this stand-off as an opportunity not only to tighten rules governing social media, including Twitter, WhatsApp, Facebook and LinkedIn, but also those for other digital service providers including news publishers and entertainment streaming companies. Impacts Government moves against dominant social media platforms will boost the appeal of smaller platforms with light or no content moderation. Hate speech and harmful disinformation are especially hard to control and curb on smaller platforms. The new rules will have a chilling effect on online public discourse, increasing self-censorship (at the very least). Government action against online news media would undercut fundamental democratic freedoms and the right to dissent. Since US-based companies dominate key segments of the Indian digital market, India’s restrictive rules could mar India-US ties.


Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110568
Author(s):  
Arif Hussain Nadaf

The Indian government on 5 August, 2019, unilaterally removed Article 370 of its constitution that provided autonomous status to the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir. In order to pre-empt any backlash, the authorities put the entire region under strict lockdown and imposed a complete communication blackout including suspension of internet, mobile, and landline phone services. The Indian media vociferously covered the issue of higher “national interest” with no counter-narrative from local news media in the region. Using Van Djik’s socio-cognitive model, the study conducted comparative critical discourse analysis of the headlines from two major Indian online news publications; the English daily The Times of India and the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran to identify the discursive strategies adopted by these newspapers after the revocation of the Article 370. The study aimed to understand how Indian newspapers were shaping the discourse when the Indian government imposed communication restrictions and lockdown in the region. Through CDA, the study located the discursive strategies in the headlines and the ideological standpoints they reflected while covering the Article 370 controversy. The CDA found that the headline discourse in both the news publications was characterized by aggressive nationalistic assertion reinforcing domestic legitimacy for the government’s decision. The analysis further showed substantial evidence for the cultural distances between the English and Hindi language news discourse. Unlike English headlines, the Hindi headlines contained explicit linguistic subjectivities and were overtly hyperbolic in recognizing and blending itself with the nationalist assertion and socio-political expression around the abrogation of Article 370.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-148
Author(s):  
Eva Eddy

Abstract The paper focuses on one’s perception of factuality in selected online news media. A group of university students of English were approached and presented with ten statements about Sweden and asked to evaluate their truthfulness. Half of the group (informed respondents) were then advised on the ways media use to infer a narrative onto the reader, potentially influencing the way they view events, while the other half (uninformed respondents) were not made aware of this fact. The respondents were then presented with a news report describing a specific event that took place in Sweden; however, half of each group were asked to read its tabloid description while the other halves were shown the event as reported by a broadsheet (both online). They were then asked to reevaluate the statements they were presented with before and decide whether their opinions changed based on the article they had just read. The results suggest that one is inclined to believe what they read, regardless whether the source seems reliable and whether they are aware of the fact media might manipulate their audiences.


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