Transnational News Flows

Author(s):  
Daya Kishan Thussu

The international flow of news has traditionally been dominated by that from North to South, with the West being at the core. Within the West itself, news flow is dominated by Anglo-American media, a situation which has its roots in the way that journalism developed historically. The historical context of global news begins with the introduction of the telegraph and undersea cables in the nineteenth century, which created a global market for news. Major players emerged—including news agencies—and shaped the transnational news flows. What emerges is that, in all ages, key innovations in transnational news flows have been closely linked to commerce, geopolitics, and war, from the telegraph to online news outlets. The increasing availability and use of news media, from major non-Western countries, are now affecting transnational news flows. Global journalism has been transformed in the digital age by internet-based communication and the rise of digital media opportunities—allowing for multi-directional news flows for growing global news audiences.

Author(s):  
Noha Mellor

This chapter focuses on media coverage of bin Laden and how it depicted his relationship with his wives, particularly the sixth one, Amal Assadah, who was rumored to have shielded bin Laden when the American commandos shot him. It argues that the main difference between the coverage in Arab media versus Anglo-American news media is that the former focused on the issues surrounding bin Laden and his family, foregrounding the wives' support of bin Laden as part of their duty as virtuous Muslim women. Anglo-American media, however, chose to focus on the image of bin Laden as a sexual being, thereby contributing to the myth of bin Laden as a neurotic evil. Both regions focused on these wives as mainly emotionally or religiously motivated to follow bin Laden rather than on their political and ideological motivations. The chapter begins with a brief discussion about the role of myth in the news-making process, focusing on the myths surrounding bin Laden's sexuality. It then presents examples of pan-Arab and Anglo-American coverage.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sina Blassnig

The recent rise of populist politicians in Western democracies is often associated with their allegedly successful use of digital media. However, for a long time, there has been little research specifically on populist online communication. To address this substantial research gap, the thesis pursues two major research aims: First, it investigates drivers of populist communication in politicians’ online self-presentation and online news media representation. Second, the thesis examines the effects of populist online communication on citizens’ behavior in the form of user reactions to politicians’ social media posts and reader comments on online news articles. Based on five internationally comparative studies and the overarching synopsis, the cumulative thesis demonstrates that populist online communication is driven by the reciprocal interactions among politicians, journalists, and citizens and is influenced by various factors on the macro, meso, and micro level. Furthermore, it shows that populist online communication resonates with citizens and is multiplied by them – specifically by citizens with prior strong populist attitudes. By analyzing the interactions of three key actor groups – politicians, journalists, and citizens – and by following a multimethod approach the dissertation connects research on both the supply and demand side of populism.


2020 ◽  
pp. 146144482094645
Author(s):  
Toni G.L.A. van der Meer ◽  
Michael Hameleers

Online news consumers have the tendency to select political news that confirms their prior attitudes, which may further fuel polarized divides in society. Despite scholarly attention to drivers of selective exposure, we know too little about how healthier cross-cutting news exposure patterns can be stimulated in digital media environments. Study 1 ( N = 553) exposed people to news media literacy (NML) interventions using injunctive and descriptive normative language. The findings reveal the conditional effect of such online interventions: Participants with pro-immigration attitudes engaged in more cross-cutting exposure while the intervention was only to a certain extent effective for Democrats, ineffective for Republicans, and even boomeranged for partisans with anti-immigration attitudes. In response to these findings, Study 2 ( N = 579) aimed to design interventions that work across issue publics and party affiliation. We show that NML messages tailored on immigration beliefs can be effective across the board. These findings inform the design of more successful NML interventions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-185
Author(s):  
Vanessa De Macedo Higgins Joyce ◽  
Zahra Khani

Abstract This study contrasts the effects of news media to those of neighborhood in building consensus regarding trust in government. Consensus building is a consequence of agenda setting at a societal level. It conducts a secondary data analysis from an online survey with a panel of 983 older Texans from November/December 2015. We found significant correlation between trust and following the news, accessing TV news, using digital media, online news and newspapers. We found that news media in general and online news increased consensus both within education and location; radio and television increased consensus for education and digital media for income. Our spatial auto-correlation test found a minimal tendency of similar values of trust to be clustered. We cannot infer that neighborhood contributes in the formation of trust. We found evidence, in a case study of older Texans, that the news media may bring us closer together than next-door neighbors


2020 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 426-446 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Stier ◽  
Nora Kirkizh ◽  
Caterina Froio ◽  
Ralph Schroeder

Research has shown that citizens with populist attitudes evaluate the news media more negatively, and there is also suggestive evidence that they rely less on established news sources like the legacy press. However, due to data limitations, there is still no solid evidence whether populist citizens have skewed news diets in the contemporary high-choice digital media environment. In this paper, we rely on the selective exposure framework and investigate the relationship between populist attitudes and the consumption of various types of online news. To test our theoretical assumptions, we link 150 million Web site visits by 7,729 Internet users in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States to their responses in an online survey. This design allows us to measure media exposure more precisely than previous studies while linking these data to demographic attributes and political attitudes of participants. The results show that populist attitudes leave pronounced marks in people’s news diets, but the evidence is heterogeneous and highly contingent on the supply side of a country’s media system. Most importantly, citizens with populist attitudes visit less Web sites from the legacy press, while consuming more hyperpartisan news. Despite these tendencies, the Web tracking data show that populist citizens still primarily get their news from established sources. We discuss the implications of these results for the current state of public spheres in democracies.


2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 422-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johanna Sumiala ◽  
Tiina Räisä

This article investigates the ritual work in terrorist news events, using the Berlin truck attack as a case in point. The article connects with the larger cluster of anthropologically inspired communication research on media events as public rituals in news media and applies digital media ethnography as its method. Fieldwork is conducted in 15 online news sites. The article identifies three key phases through which the ritual work was carried out: the rupture in the news event (ritualised as the strike), the liminal phase (ritualised as the manhunt) and the reconstitution of order following the attack (ritualised as the mourning). The article concludes with an interpretation of the broader social implications of the ritual work and related naturalisation of ‘friends’ and ‘foes’ and suggests that this type of ritual work contributes to a collective mythologisation of terrorism in news media and society at large.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Galiya Ibrayeva ◽  
Saltanat Anarbaeva ◽  
Violetta Filchenko ◽  
Lola Olimova

This investigation is the first attempt in Central Asia to measure online news consumption. It focuses on identifying trends of online news consumption and sources of news content in the region. The publication contains the results of online survey with participation of 4,130 online news consumers, in-depth interviews with 20 experts in new media who know regional and local peculiarities of news outlets, and analysis of news accounts in social media. The research will be useful to journalism faculties, news media, researchers, and international organisations, as well as to all who are interested in development of digital media in the region. The publication is available in English, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Russian, Tajik and Uzbek languages.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Adis Maksic ◽  
◽  
Selma Delalic ◽  
Adem Olovčić

Abstract: This paper situates the 2008 Global Financial Crisis into the wider historical context to argue that the roots of the crisis can be traced back to the dominant economic ideology in the West during the 1970s. It shows that the corresponding financial policies, implemented by the powerful western economies during the four decades that preceded the crisis, created an institutional framework that fostered financial irresponsibility and made the crisis all but inevitable. The paper also explores the ideas that led to the stabilization of the global market as well as the role of China in charting the way ahead. Ultimately, the discussion highlights the inherent tendency of neoliberal economic ideology to create market instabilities whose consequences for the global economy can be devastating.


2020 ◽  
pp. 016344372097231
Author(s):  
Abdelfettah Benchenna ◽  
Dominique Marchetti

This article presents an overview of the emergence of online news sites, which has radically altered news provision and media consumption patterns in Morocco. This sector has rapidly become a strategic site. Firstly, its precedence over print media and national television networks does not only stem from the high traffic figures of news websites. Along with certain social platforms, these websites are the only vehicules for 24/7 news in a country which currently has just one such news channel and where, in spite of the ‘liberalisation’ of media, national networks provide very institutionalised news programs based on the activities of the state official institutions and of the monarchy. Secondly, certain domestic Arabic-language news websites have become the main platform for the voicing of political dissent. Based on 31 interviews, the article briefly describes the historical development of the online press, since the ‘February 20th Movement’ of 2011. This case study provides a good example of the new challenges surrounding the control of information: an issue long shaped by the limitation of news provision to duly authorised political and journalistic organisations and by limited ‘demand’ resulting from widespread illiteracy. This article describes how the Moroccan establishment react to the explosive growth of online news media by creating new mechanisms to control it.


Author(s):  
Vineta Kleinberga

Perceptions play a pivotal role in assessment of efficiency of government communication. Informed by the strategic narrative conceptual framework this study looks at perception of government communication in Internet comments during three essential dates in conquering the COVID-19 pandemic in Latvia: introduction of emergency situations on March 12 and November 6, 2020, and introduction of a curfew on December 29, 2020. The study uncovers how often and how the main spokesperson in government communication – the Prime Minister of Latvia Krišjānis Kariņš – is framed in comments of three online news media in Latvia (Apollo, Delfi, Tvnet) in Latvian and Russian. Using a digital tool for online comments analysis - the Index of Internet Aggressiveness (IIA), a data set is created of 244 comments, containing a key word “Kariņš” in various cases in Latvian and Russian. Qualitative content analysis is applied to extract and to compare the frequency of appearance and the framing of Kariņš over the course of the pandemic in Latvia. The findings reveal that Kariņš appears in comments significantly more after news in Latvian than in Russian, and has been commented five times more in Delfi than in Tvnet and Apollo together. The comments in Latvian are more aggressive than in Russian, and their emotional tone increases towards the end of 2020. In majority of comments the framing is negative involving attributes of irresponsibility, superficiality, indecisiveness and danger; yet positively framed rigidity and decisiveness of Kariņš can be observed too.IIA is an online comment analysis tool, incorporating a machine learning program, which analyses users’ comments on news on online news sites according to pre-selected keywords to grasp the commenters’ verbal aggressiveness. In March 2021 the IIA data set consists of ~25.08 million comments; ~ 616.62 million word usage in written commenting and ~ 1357.40 thousand news. 


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