Transregional News Media Coverage in Multilingual Countries: The Impact of Market Size, Source, and Media Type in Switzerland

ABSTRACT The news media play a key role in framing the media coverage of oil spills. It is imperative that scientists, industry and policymakers are fully tuned into the ways in which current news organisations operate. Over recent years, a growing environmental promotion industry has emerged, alongside an increasing emphasis on environmental advocacy within the commercial sector. A number of information crises (notably, the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989) have forced sections of industry to take a more proactive approach to environmental communications as potent media imagery has directly contradicted assurances that environmental protection is not compromised by their activities. Particular issues or events that capture attention tend to be highly visually appealing and resonate with deeply held beliefs and values that operate at a symbolic level. This paper examines the preliminary findings of an international online survey of environmental reporting distributed to key environmental journalist news groups and generalist journalist news groups during June and July 2002. In particular, it focuses upon the following: journalists’ views about what makes a newsworthy story; their degree of scientific training; the constraints under which they work; their main sources of information; their relationships with news sources; and the impact of editorial policy. Interviews with environment correspondents reveal that relatively few possess scientific training and they tend to rely heavily upon official sources of information. The news agendas of broadcasters closely mirror that of print journalists and there is remarkable consensus concerning ‘news values’ – the taken for granted notions about what constitutes a ‘good’ news story. Having presented the main findings of the survey, the paper concludes by arguing that what is needed is greater communication between scientists, industry and journalists leading to an increased mutual recognition of the specific constraints under which they operate.

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Negativity in the news and electoral behavior between first- and second-order elections

Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica ◽

10.1017/ipo.2021.8 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

Moreno Mancosu ◽

Antonella Seddone ◽

Giuliano Bobba

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Research Question ◽

News Coverage ◽

Academic Research ◽

Second Order ◽

General Elections ◽

Item Data ◽

European Parliament Elections ◽

The Impact

Abstract The effects of news coverage on political attitudes in election campaigns have been widely studied in academic research. In particular, a fertile branch of the literature investigated the impact of news media negativity on turnout. To date, however, findings are mixed, precluding to state a clear relationship. This paper aims to shed a light on this topic by testing whether negative coverage may affect voters' turnout and to what extent. It approaches this research question by accounting for two different dimensions, controlling whether the interplay of media negativity (press and TV coverage) with the type of election (first- vs. second-order elections) has an impact on citizens' propensity to turnout. We test our hypotheses by taking Italy as a case study because it offers a combination of systemic and media characteristics that allows addressing properly the topic. We rely on four datasets covering the 2018 Italian general elections and the 2019 European Parliament Elections in Italy, respectively, with opinion data (2018 ITANES survey and 2019 ITANES-University of Milan survey) and two datasets measuring media negativity by means of a human content analysis carried out on media coverage during the 7 weeks before the election days (2018 and 2019 ITEM data). Our findings show that individual exposure to negative coverage leads to an increase in turnout mainly to the detriment of indecision. This pattern holds both in first- and second-order elections.

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Competing and conflicting messages via online news media: Potential impacts of claims that the Great Barrier Reef is dying

10.31230/osf.io/7r8q3 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Lynne Eagle

Keyword(s):

Great Barrier Reef ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Policy Development ◽

Science Communication ◽

News Coverage ◽

Online News ◽

Barrier Reef ◽

Theoretical Concepts ◽

The Impact

Coverage of issues by news media is known to impact on both public perceptions and policy development aimed at addressing the featured issues. We examine the potential impact of news media coverage regarding the health and potential future of the World heritage-listed Great Barrier Reef, which is under multiple pressures, both natural and anthropogenic. We draw on the extant literature regarding the impact of news media coverage of other complex issues, linking to relevant, albeit limited theoretical concepts that have been applied to previous media studies. We find that media coverage is predominately sensationalized and negative, with the potential to reinforce perceptions that mitigation attempts will be ineffective and thus likely to inhibit future policy development. We discuss the need for a review of existing science communication models and strategies to reduce the knowledge-practice gap between scientists and policy makers, together with proactive strategies to counter negative news coverage.

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Negative perceptions of race relations: A brief report examining the impact of news media coverage of police shootings, and actual fatal police shootings

The Social Science Journal ◽

10.1080/03623319.2021.1994276 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-7

Author(s):

Christopher J. Ferguson

Keyword(s):

Race Relations ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Police Shootings ◽

Negative Perceptions ◽

The Impact

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Frame Variation in the News Coverage of the Refugee Crisis: The Romanian Perspective

East European Politics and Societies and Cultures ◽

10.1177/0888325419890665 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 088832541989066

Author(s):

Hanna Orsolya Vincze ◽

Radu Meza ◽

Delia Cristina Balaban

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

News Coverage ◽

Computer Assisted ◽

Refugee Crisis ◽

The European Union ◽

News Frames ◽

Media Type ◽

European Crisis ◽

Occurrence Patterns

The 2015 refugee crisis has held the attention of Romanian news media as well, as one of the most challenging issues for the European Union in the last decade, even though Romania is not situated on the main routes on which refugees arrive. Our research focuses on the variation of issue-specific news frames in time, according to media type, and by the countries covered, also addressing the locally salient issue of religion. Articles from the websites of the top-ranked six Romanian news outlets were analyzed, including three quality papers and three tabloids (N=6,183), from 1 April 2015 to 30 September 2017. Using a computer-assisted, clusters-based frame analysis, we identify six primary, mutually exclusive and six secondary, nonexclusive frames: European crisis, context/victimization, relocation/distribution, international conflict, and social problem, national costs, religious issues, US immigration policy, humanitarian/international. The variations in their salience follow the general European tendency toward securitization. At the same time, the emphasis on the issue as a European crisis indicates a tendency characteristic of Central and Eastern European media coverage. Co-occurrence patterns of frames and specific countries also indicate that the salience of some globally recurrent frames varies by countries covered.

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Clearcut Persuasion? Audience Cognition of Mediated Environmental Advertising through the Lens of the Elaboration Likelihood Model

The Journal of Public Interest Communications ◽

10.32473/jpic.v2.i1.p64 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 2 (1) ◽

pp. 64

Author(s):

Derek Moscato

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Elaboration Likelihood Model ◽

Elaboration Likelihood ◽

Social Psychological ◽

Experimental Conditions ◽

Clear Cut ◽

Likelihood Model ◽

Social Advertising ◽

The Impact

Through the theoretical lens of Petty and Cacioppo’s Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and using the case of Oregon Wild and its campaign against clear-cut logging on public lands, this study explores the impact of media coverage of contentious activist advertising on audiences. A survey with experimental conditions measures attitudes of audiences exposed to this interplay of advocacy communication. The study assesses partiality toward the sponsor organization, a willingness by the target audience to act on its behalf, and an understanding of the central environmental issue. Differences between gender in reception of the campaign and coverage also are examined. By examining the interplay of social advertising, news media, and audiences, this study highlights a dynamic, social psychological stream of public interest communications.

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Diversity of COVID-19 News Media Coverage across 17 Countries: The Influence of Cultural Values, Government Stringency and Pandemic Severity

International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health ◽

10.3390/ijerph182211768 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 18 (22) ◽

pp. 11768

Author(s):

Reuben Ng ◽

Yi Wen Tan

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Cultural Values ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Baseline Period ◽

Global Database ◽

Media Diversity ◽

Corpus Size ◽

Pandemic Severity ◽

The Impact

The current media studies of COVID-19 devote asymmetrical attention to social media; in contrast, newspapers have received comparatively less attention. Newspapers are an integral source of current information that are syndicated and amplified by social media to a wide global audience. This is one of the first known studies to operationalize news media diversity and examine its association with cultural values during the pandemic. We tracked the global diversity of COVID-19 coverage in a news media database of 12 billion words, collated from 28 million articles over 7000 news websites, across 8 months. Media diversity was measured weekly by the number of unique descriptors of 10 target terms of the pandemic (e.g., COVID-19, coronavirus) and normalized by the corpus size for the respective countries per week. Government Stringency was taken from the Oxford COVID-19 Government Response Tracker and cultural scores were taken from Hofstede’s Cultural Values global database. Results showed that Media Diversity Rate increased 6.7 times over 8 months, from the baseline period (October–December 2019) to during the pandemic (January–May 2020). Mixed effects modelling revealed that higher COVID-19 prevalence rates and governmental stringency predicted this increase. Interestingly, collectivist cultures are linked to more diverse media coverage during COVID-19. It is possible that news outlets in collectivist societies are motivated to present a diverse array of topics given the impact of COVID-19 on every segment of society. Of broader significance, we provided a framework to design targeted public health communications that are culturally nuanced.

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Quantifying the online news media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic

10.1101/2020.12.24.20248813 ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

K. Krawczyk ◽

T. Chelkowski ◽

S. Mishra ◽

D. Xifara ◽

B. Gibert ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Health Communication ◽

Sentiment Analysis ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Online News ◽

Communication Strategy ◽

Analysis Tool ◽

Topic Detection ◽

English Speaking ◽

The Impact

AbstractBackgroundNon-pharmaceutical interventions such as lockdowns, mask wearing and social distancing have been the primary measures to effectively combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Such measures are highly effective when there is strong population wide adherence which needs to be facilitated by information on the current risks posed by the pandemic alongside a clear exposition of the rules and guidelines in place. Here we address the issue of communication on the pandemic by offering data and analysis of online news media coverage of COVID-19.MethodsWe collected 26 million news articles from the front pages of 172 major online news sources in 11 countries (available at http://sciride.org). Using topic detection we identified COVID-19-related content to quantify the proportion of total coverage pandemic received in 2020. Sentiment analysis tool Vader was employed to stratify the emotional polarity of COVID-19 reporting. Further topic detection and sentiment analysis was performed on COVID-19 articles to reveal the leading themes in pandemic reporting and their respective emotional polarizations.FindingsWe find that COVID-19 coverage accounted for approximately 25% of all front-page online news articles between January and October 2020. Sentiment analysis of English-speaking sources reveals that the overall COVID-19 coverage cannot be simply classified as negative due to the disease subject matter, suggesting a wide heterogeneous reporting of the pandemic. Within this heterogenous coverage, 16% of COVID-19 news articles (or 4% of all English-speaking articles) can be classified as highly negatively polarized, citing issues such as death, fear or crisis.InterpretationThe goal of pandemic public health communication is to increase understanding of distancing rules and maximize the impact of any governmental policy. Our results suggest an information overload in COVID-19 reporting that could risk obscuring effective policy communication. We hope that our data and analysis will inform health communication strategy to minimize the risks of COVID-19 while vaccination regimes are being introduced.

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Digital News Media Coverage on Sexual and Gender-Based Violence in Kenya: Scoping the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic

10.31235/osf.io/vbku6 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Clara Broekaert ◽

Ceri-Lune Renneboog ◽

Ferdinand Okwaro ◽

Marleen Temmerman

Keyword(s):

Scoping Review ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Mitigation Measures ◽

Gender Based Violence ◽

Scoping Reviews ◽

Digital News ◽

Gender Based ◽

And Gender ◽

The Impact

Background: Sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) in Kenya is frequently covered in digital news media. As a powerful influencer of public opinion, news media coverage can have a significant societal impact. This scoping review identifies the extent, nature, and themes of all available digital news media coverage on SGBV in Kenya from June 2019 to July 2020. It analyzes changes in coverage since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Method: The methodological framework for scoping reviews developed by Arksey and O’Malley (2005) guided the scoping review. The selected articles were analyzed using NVivo.Results: Analysis of the 340 included articles indicates clear trends in news media coverage on SGBV in Kenya. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, trends include high numbers of news reports, feature articles, and opinion pieces on SGBV, female genital mutilation (FGM) as the most covered form of SGBV, and opinion pieces in line with the Kenya Vision 2030 agenda. Since the implementation of the COVID-19 mitigation measures in Kenya, trends include an increase in news media coverage on SGBV, extensive reporting on the causes of the rise in SGBV cases in Kenya, and increased media attention for domestic and sexual violence.Conclusions: Analysis of the news media coverage demonstrates the health advocacy/agenda-setting role of the media. The increased reporting on SGBV since the implementation of the COVID-19 mitigation measures could facilitate broad-based awareness.

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Quantifying Online News Media Coverage of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Text Mining Study and Resource

Journal of Medical Internet Research ◽

10.2196/28253 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 23 (6) ◽

pp. e28253

Author(s):

Konrad Krawczyk ◽

Tadeusz Chelkowski ◽

Daniel J Laydon ◽

Swapnil Mishra ◽

Denise Xifara ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Public Health ◽

Health Communication ◽

Sentiment Analysis ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

English Language ◽

Communication Strategies ◽

Online News ◽

Topic Detection ◽

The Impact

Background Before the advent of an effective vaccine, nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as mask-wearing, social distancing, and lockdowns, have been the primary measures to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Such measures are highly effective when there is high population-wide adherence, which requires information on current risks posed by the pandemic alongside a clear exposition of the rules and guidelines in place. Objective Here we analyzed online news media coverage of COVID-19. We quantified the total volume of COVID-19 articles, their sentiment polarization, and leading subtopics to act as a reference to inform future communication strategies. Methods We collected 26 million news articles from the front pages of 172 major online news sources in 11 countries (available online at SciRide). Using topic detection, we identified COVID-19–related content to quantify the proportion of total coverage the pandemic received in 2020. The sentiment analysis tool Vader was employed to stratify the emotional polarity of COVID-19 reporting. Further topic detection and sentiment analysis was performed on COVID-19 coverage to reveal the leading themes in pandemic reporting and their respective emotional polarizations. Results We found that COVID-19 coverage accounted for approximately 25.3% of all front-page online news articles between January and October 2020. Sentiment analysis of English-language sources revealed that overall COVID-19 coverage was not exclusively negatively polarized, suggesting wide heterogeneous reporting of the pandemic. Within this heterogenous coverage, 16% of COVID-19 news articles (or 4% of all English-language articles) can be classified as highly negatively polarized, citing issues such as death, fear, or crisis. Conclusions The goal of COVID-19 public health communication is to increase understanding of distancing rules and to maximize the impact of governmental policy. The extent to which the quantity and quality of information from different communication channels (eg, social media, government pages, and news) influence public understanding of public health measures remains to be established. Here we conclude that a quarter of all reporting in 2020 covered COVID-19, which is indicative of information overload. In this capacity, our data and analysis form a quantitative basis for informing health communication strategies along traditional news media channels to minimize the risks of COVID-19 while vaccination is rolled out.

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