Political Journalism Represented by Headline News: Canadian Public and Commercial Media Compared

2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 455-478 ◽  
Author(s):  
Blake Andrew

Abstract.Headlines play a key role in influencing how and about what citizens are informed. In news media, their task is threefold: to represent stories, signal informational hierarchy and draw publicity for (or sell) what follows. This article examines the representative dimension of headline news content for the 2006 Canadian federal election campaign, testing whether public media headlines more faithfully reflected story-level coverage than commercial media. Comparing both public and commercial media coverage of this watershed election presents a unique opportunity to assess whether the overarching macro-incentive of commercial media—profit-making—may have influenced micro-level relationships between headlines and stories. Results of 55-day multiplatform analysis (N = 11,002) involving CBC election media and 12 commercial newsrooms reveal few differences with respect the representativeness of headlines from public and commercial media, save for the presence of journalists' opinion in headline content.Résumé.Les titres influencent comment les citoyens sont informés, et à propos de quoi ils en pensent. Les titres ont trois objectifs dans les nouvelles : ils résument les nouvelles, signalent quelles nouvelles sont les plus importantes, et vendre l'histoire complète qui suit. L'article examine le niveau de représentativité des titres dans les nouvelles sur la campagne de l'élection fédérale canadienne de 2006. Plus précisément, il teste si les titres venant des médias publics sont plus représentatifs que les nouvelles dans le média commercial. En comparant la couverture médiatique dans cette élection structurante, nous explorons si la motivation des médias commerciaux, notamment le profit, peut influencer le lien entre les titres et les articles. Les résultats de l'analyse multiplateforme de la campagne qui durait 55 jours (N = 11 002) incluent la couverture sur la CBC et 12 médias commerciaux. Ils indiquent qu'il n'y a pas beaucoup de différence dans la représentativité des titres entre les sources publiques et commerciales, sauf la présence de l'opinion dans le contenu des titres.

2019 ◽  
pp. 089443931988163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julian Unkel ◽  
Mario Haim

Democratic election campaigns require informed citizens. Yet, while the Internet allows for broader information through greater media choices, algorithmic filters, such as search engines, threaten to unobtrusively shape individual information repertoires. The purpose of this article is to analyze what search results people encounter when they employ various information orientations, and how these results reflect people’s attributions of issue ownership. A multimethod approach was applied during the 2017 German Federal Election campaign. First, human search behavior depicting various information orientations was simulated using agent-based testing to derive real search results from Google Search, which were then manually coded to identify information sources and ascribe issue ownerships. Second, a survey asked participants about which issues they attribute to which party. We find that search results originated mainly from established news outlets and reflected existing power relations between political parties. However, issue-ownership attributions of the survey participants were reflected poorly in the search results. In total, the results indicate that the fear of algorithmic constraints in the context of online search might be overrated. Instead, our findings (1) suggest that political actors still fail to claim their core issues among political search results, (2) highlight that news media (and thus existing media biases) feature heavily among search results, and (3) call for more media literacy among search engine users.


Journalism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (11) ◽  
pp. 1611-1629 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kehla Lippi ◽  
Fiona H McKay ◽  
Hayley J McKenzie

Immigration policy, arrival modes, human rights, and international obligations have all been part of the debate that has ensued over the Australian Government’s policy response towards refugees and asylum seekers. This debate was a central campaign focus in the lead up to the 2013 Australian federal election and was accompanied by extensive media coverage. This media coverage is a significant contributor to the representation of refugees and asylum seekers to the Australian public. This study explores how refugees and asylum seekers were represented in Australian print news media in the period immediately before and after the 2013 federal election. Using news framing and critical discourse analysis, this study examined 162 articles, published between 7 August and 8 October 2013, in Australian newspapers. The analysis revealed two opposing themes in the representation of asylum seekers: refugees and asylum seekers were represented as either a threat requiring a military intervention or as victims requiring management. The findings of this study demonstrate the ways in which the print media contribute to a polarised representation of refugees and asylum seekers and the potential deleterious effect of this dichotomous construction to an informed public opinion.


2017 ◽  
Vol 40 (6) ◽  
pp. 893-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Trottier

This article considers the 2015 federal election in Canada as the emergence of seemingly citizen-led practices whereby candidates’ past missteps are unearthed and distributed through social and news media channels. On first pass, these resemble citizen-led engagements through digital media for potentially unmappable political goals, given the dispersed and either non-partisan or multi-partisan nature of these engagements. By bringing together journalistic accounts and social media coverage alongside current scholarship on citizenship and visibility, this case study traces the possibility of political accountability and the political weaponisation of mediated visibility through the targeted extraction of candidate details from dispersed profiles, communities and databases.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia Moy ◽  
David Tewksbury ◽  
Eike Mark Rinke

Today's news media exert a host of influences over individuals' attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors. This entry provides an overview of three widely studied theories and mechanisms of influence: agenda‐setting, which occurs when increased media coverage of an issue leads to increased perceptions of salience of that issue; priming, the process by which the salience of an idea becomes the basis for judgment and evaluation; and framing, a set of processes by which news content is created and shapes individuals' perceptions and behaviors. [Publication of this chapter on SocArXiv courtesy of John Wiley and Sons, Inc.]


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Merkley

Overlooked in analyses of why the public often rejects expert consensus is the role of the news media. News coverage of expert consensus on general matters of policy is likely limited as a result of journalists’ emphasis in news production on novelty and drama at the expense of thematic context. News content is also biased towards balance and conflict, which may dilute the persuasiveness of expert consensus. This study presents an automated and manual analysis of over 280,000 news stories on ten issues where there are important elements of agreement among scientists or economists. The analyses show that news content typically emphasizes arguments aligned with positions of expert consensus, rather than providing balance, and only occasionally cites contrarian experts. More troubling is that expert messages related to important areas of agreement are infrequent in news content, and cues signaling the existence of consensus are rarer still.


2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 17
Author(s):  
Elly Delfia

Diction headline mass media is important because it describes the overall news content. The mass media has a moral responsibility to provide learning for the reader about the correct use of language. That's called character diction. Diction character or character choice of words used in the title of the news media can influence the character speaking readers for diction has meaning and soul. Diction used in the mass media headlines West Sumatra, including euphimisme, sarcasm, regional language (language Minangkabau), foreign language (English), idioms, abbreviations and acronyms, Indonesian non standard, and nicknames


2021 ◽  
Vol 64 (4 (248)) ◽  
pp. 55-72
Author(s):  
Bartłomiej Łódzki

Activity of Polish Foreign Correspondents on Twitter Social media have been transforming the realm of journalism, audiences, as well as news consumption. Twitter, which is one of the top three social networking sites in the world (Broersma, Graham 2013; Neuberger et al. 2019; Nordheim et al. 2018; Swert, Wouters 2011) has become one of the main social networking tools used by the news media industry, too. There is little research on how foreign correspondents use Twitter as a reporting tool. This research aims to investigate how foreign correspondents of the largest Polish radio and TV stations use Twitter. The analysis focuses on the correspondents in the Washington and Brussels sites. The research period covered 2016–2019, when the new management of the public media decided to replace most of the correspondents. The author looks for similarities and differences between journalists from public and commercial media. He tries to find out whether their activities on Twitter are used to transmit messages, promote their work, build the image of the editorial office, or communicate with recipients. The analysis of over 20,000 tweets confirms the influence of political changes on the work and activity of journalists in the public sphere. Most public media correspondents reported in line with the ruling party’s agenda focused on domestic affairs and used Twitter for self-promotion. Commercial media representatives mainly covered international topics, using a wider range of sources in their tweets. Significant differences were related to the way of interacting with the audience. The majority of shares on Twitter and the most intense discussions concerned the content of public media correspondents. The highest rates were achieved by tweets that focused on the actions of the leading politicians of the right-wing parties, national issues, and criticism of the actions of European bodies. The disputes and discussions on Twitter between the correspondents and the public as well as among the correspondents themselves show the crisis in public space, lack of trust, and difficulty to change this state in a short time. STRESZCZENIE Artykuł analizuje, w jaki sposób wykorzystują Twittera korespondenci zagraniczni największych polskich stacji radiowych i telewizyjnych na przykładzie placówek w Waszyngtonie i Brukseli. Okres badawczy obejmuje lata 2016–2019, kiedy nowe kierownictwo mediów publicznych w Polsce podjęło decyzję o wymianie większości korespondentów. Celem analizy jest identyfikacja podobieństw i różnic między relacjami dziennikarzy mediów publicznych i komercyjnych, jak również ustalenie, czy aktywność podejmowana na Twitterze służy do przekazywania wiadomości, promowania własnej pracy, budowania wizerunku redakcji czy też komunikowania się z odbiorcami. Wyniki analizy, która objęła ponad 20 tys. tweetów, potwierdzają wpływ zmian politycznych na pracę i aktywność dziennikarzy w sferze publicznej. Większość polskich korespondentów mediów publicznych relacjonowała wydarzenia zgodnie z linią programową partii rządzącej, koncentrowała się na sprawach krajowych i wykorzystywała Twittera do autopromocji. Dziennikarze mediów komercyjnych relacjonowali natomiast głównie tematykę międzynarodową, korzystając z szerszego spektrum źródeł w tweetach. Istotne różnice widoczne były także w sposobie interakcji z publicznością. Najwięcej udostępnień na Twitterze i najintensywniejsze dyskusje dotyczyły treści korespondentów mediów publicznych. Najwięcej uwagi uzyskały tweety na temat działań głównych polityków partii prawicowych, kwestii krajowych i krytyki działań organów europejskich. Wyniki badań dowodzą istnienia głębokiego kryzysu debaty publicznej, braku wzajemnego zaufania i możliwości zmiany tego stanu rzeczy w bliskiej perspektywie.


Author(s):  
Matt Guardino

This book examines how major news media have influenced the politics of economic inequality by shaping U.S. public opinion toward key policies since the early 1980s. The book describes the substance and ideological texture of news coverage during economic and social welfare policy debates across the neoliberal era. It also compares this news content to patterns of official and nongovernmental discourse. The book argues that the media’s structural position as a corporately organized and commercially driven institution helps to explain politically significant discrepancies between news coverage and broader policy discussions. The book also shows how framing patterns in the news produced through these political-economic processes may influence concrete policy attitudes. Its experimental analysis demonstrates that news coverage can shape public opinion to favor neoliberal policies, including among key segments of the American public that otherwise would not express support. The book contends that structural and institutional shifts which mark the rise of neoliberalism as a governing framework for media policy and practices have reinforced patterns of superficial and narrow news content during policy debates. Ultimately, the book argues that media coverage has fostered political climates conducive to neoliberal domestic policies at important historical moments. It suggests that changing media technologies have done little to arrest these trends in corporate news media, and that significant shifts in public policy coverage would require changes in media policy.


2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 863-897 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Fournier ◽  
Fred Cutler ◽  
Stuart Soroka ◽  
Dietlind Stolle ◽  
Éric Bélanger

Abstract.The results of the 2011 Canadian federal election were surprising. What accounts for the dramatic and largely unexpected shift in electoral fortunes? Most importantly, what accounts for the sudden leap in popularity of the New Democratic Party, particularly in Quebec? The aftermath of election day produced no lack of potential explanations. Pundits, politicians, and political scientists have suggested many. This paper examines the empirical validity of various explanations swirling about the 2011 election, especially regarding the “orange surge.” The analysis relies upon the 2011 Canadian Election Study and the content of news media coverage. It concludes that the most important factors behind the orange wave were the image gap between Jack Layton and the other party leaders, as well as the proximity between the NDP's values and issue positions and those of many Quebeckers.Résumé.Le résultat de l'élection fédérale canadienne de 2011 a été surprenant. Comment expliquer les renversements dramatiques et largement inattendus dans les appuis aux partis politiques? Surtout, comment expliquer le bond soudain de popularité du Nouveau parti démocratique, particulièrement au Québec? Plusieurs explications potentielles ont été suggérées par les commentateurs, les politiciens et les politologues au lendemain de l'élection. Cet article examine la validité empirique de nombreuses explications entourant l'élection de 2011, notamment celles portant sur la « vague orange ». L'analyse repose sur l'Étude électorale canadienne de 2011 ainsi que sur le contenu de la couverture médiatique. Elle indique que les facteurs les plus importants à l'origine de la vague orange ont été l'écart entre l'image de Jack Layton et celle des autres chefs de partis, de même que la proximité entre le NPD et plusieurs Québécois quant aux valeurs et aux enjeux.


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