Inequality, Mediatization, and Critical Takes on Making the News

2020 ◽  
pp. 48-69
Author(s):  
Paschal Preston
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Research Literature ◽  
Economic Equality ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
The Media ◽  
High Level ◽  
Changing Role

Chapter 3 continues the initial review of existing research literature related to the changing role and forms of the media and economic affairs, and the issues of economic inequality in particular. It aims to identify some high-level ideas and concepts drawn from the fields of socioeconomics and political economy, as well as certain sub-sets of the communication and journalism studies fields, which shed light on the meaning of economic inequality and the key influences on the selection or making of news culture and journalistic practices. The chapter considers the shifting forms and meanings of economic equality in the modern social sciences, indicating the diversity of prior studies, engagement with, or neglect of inequality matters. It then moves on to address the notion of mediatization and select aspects of the evolving role and scope of the media in relation to economic and other societal processes, including those related to economic inequality. Next, some of the major approaches and prevailing perspectives on ‘making the news’ are identified. This outlines a typology of the prior research literature, noting a number of distinct schools in explaining the key influences on newsmaking and shaping journalism discourses. The authors focus on certain macro- and meso-level factors which influence news media and journalistic discourse (rather than individual-level characteristics or failings of journalists). The chapter ends with an outline of the authors’ transdisciplinary approach towards ‘making the news’, combining conceptual elements from both the critical cultural studies and political economy approaches. A final section considers conclusions and implications.

Economic Inequality and News Media

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
News Media ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Mainstream Economics ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Key Issues ◽  
Blind Spots

Despite the rediscovery of the inequality topic by economists and other social scientists in recent times, relatively little is known about how economic inequality is mediated to the wider public. That is precisely where this book steps in: it examines how mainstream news media discuss, respond to, and engage with such important trends. The book addresses significant ‘blind spots’ in the two disciplinary areas most related to this book—political economy and media/journalism studies. Firstly, key issues related to economic inequalities tend to be neglected in media and journalism studies field. Secondly, mainstream economics have paid relatively little attention to the evolving scope and role of mediated communication.

Understanding Trump Supporters’ News Use: Beyond the Fox News Bubble

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 319-346
Author(s):  
Sadie Dempsey ◽  
Jiyoun Suk ◽  
Katherine J. Cramer ◽  
Lewis A. Friedland ◽  
Michael W. Wagner ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Fox News ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
Heterogeneous Consumption ◽  
The Media ◽  
Media Habits ◽  
Conservative Media ◽  
Methods Analytical ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract Since the 2016 election, the relationship between Trump supporters and Fox News has gained considerable attention. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 people and a representative survey conducted in the state of Wisconsin, we dive deeper into the media habits of Trump supporters using a mixed methods analytical approach. While we do not refute the importance of Fox News in the conservative media ecology, we find that characterizing Trump supporters as isolated in Fox News bubbles obscures the fact that many are news omnivores, or people who consume a wide variety of news. In fact, we find that Trump supporters may have more politically heterogeneous consumption habits than Trump non-supporters. We find that 17% of our survey respondents who support Trump in Wisconsin are regularly exposed to ideologically heterogeneous news media. We also find that like other voters, Trump supporters are disenchanted with the divisive nature of contemporary media and politics. Finally, we analyze the media use of young Trump supporters and find an especially high level of news omnivorousness among them.

scholarly journals Digital media and democracy: tactics in hard times

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenwick Robert McKelvey
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Media ◽  
Tactical Media ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Public Demand

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” explains an unnamed Bush administration official. This quote sets the tone for a new edited collection reflecting on the role of the media in constructing reality. The lack of a “truth” does not quell the public demand for one, as Boler aptly points out in her introduction: “The desire and longing for truth expressed by the public demands for media accountability is in tension with the coexisting recognition of the slipperiness of meaning” (p. 7). Media, then, in all their forms, become a central battleground for forging meaning and shaping reality. “Media are the most powerful institutions on earth,” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now claims, “more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile” (p. 199). This series of interviews and articles explores how incumbent powers and media activists compete to produce and reproduce their versions of reality through the media. The contributors use the format to discuss the tenuous relationship between media and democracy and the changing role of the news media, as well as to present examples of tactical media. The resulting collection provides an excellent introduction to the current, troubling media landscape and its tactical opportunities.

Blessed be the educated journalist: Reflections on a religious literacy gap in the field of journalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 81-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enqi Weng ◽  
Alexandra Wake
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Religious Literacy ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Cultural Perspectives ◽  
Literacy Gap ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
The Media

Religion has ‘returned’ to news discourses, since 9/11, with a focus on Muslims and Islam and more recently on Catholicism (in the wake of paedophile priest scandals) and anti-Semitism (with the rise of the far-right movements). These news discourses, however, tend to adopt limited perspectives, and do not reflect the diversity of practices and viewpoints within these religious traditions. As Australia becomes increasingly ‘superdiverse’, there is a greater need for the inclusivity of cultural perspectives of these religions. Current research findings show that religious literacy among media practitioners in Australia is not only limited to specific notions about a small number of religions, it is exacerbated by an Anglo-Celtic dominance in the media workforce. This article suggests that for news media to provide a more culturally and religiously inclusive public service to promote societal understanding, current and emerging journalists require a more reflexive understanding of religions, through journalism studies and humanities more broadly, and how they have historically shaped the world, and continue to do so.

Why Are American Presidential Election Campaign Polls So Variable When Votes Are So Predictable?

1993 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 409-451 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Gelman ◽  
Gary King
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Party Identification ◽  
Opinion Poll ◽  
Campaign Strategy ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Media ◽  
Opinion Polls ◽  
Presidential Election Campaign

As most political scientists know, the outcome of the American presidential election can be predicted within a few percentage points (in the popular vote), based on information available months before the election. Thus, the general campaign for president seems irrelevant to the outcome (except in very close elections), despite all the media coverage of campaign strategy. However, it is also well known that the pre-election opinion polls can vary wildly over the campaign, and this variation is generally attributed to events in the campaign. How can campaign events affect people's opinions on whom they plan to vote for, and yet not affect the outcome of the election? For that matter, why do voters consistently increase their support for a candidate during his nominating convention, even though the conventions are almost entirely predictable events whose effects can be rationally forecast?In this exploratory study, we consider several intuitively appealing, but ultimately wrong, resolutions to this puzzle and discuss our current understanding of what causes opinion polls to fluctuate while reaching a predictable outcome. Our evidence is based on graphical presentation and analysis of over 67,000 individual-level responses from forty-nine commercial polls during the 1988 campaign and many other aggregate poll results from the 1952–92 campaigns.We show that responses to pollsters during the campaign are not generally informed or even, in a sense we describe, ‘rational’. In contrast, voters decide, based on their enlightened preferences, as formed by the information they have learned during the campaign, as well as basic political cues such as ideology and party identification, which candidate to support eventually. We cannot prove this conclusion, but we do show that it is consistent with the aggregate forecasts and individual-level opinion poll responses. Based on the enlightened preferences hypothesis, we conclude that the news media have an important effect on the outcome of presidential elections – not through misleading advertisements, sound bites, or spin doctors, but rather by conveying candidates' positions on important issues.

scholarly journals The Role of the Media in the Propagation of the Terrorist Agenda

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Goodman ◽  
Shane Warren ◽  
Robyn Jolly ◽  
Maggie Norton
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Kenneth Burke ◽  
The Public ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
The Media ◽  
High Level

The thesis of this paper is that jihadists are using terror as a propaganda weapon to create a high level of fear among the public around the world, a level above the actual threat. We believe the media and national leaders enhance the effectiveness of the jihadists' propaganda in the ways they present terror attacks. Previous research indicates that horrific events, whether created by humans or the result of nature, leave a lasting psychological impact on the victims. We show a psychological link by victims of the Mumbai attack seven years ago and the Paris attacks in November of 2015. We argue that the psychological impact may be caused when the cultural signifiers of terror result in a meaning abyss because most people do not have signifieds that readily link to brutal terrorists' signifiers. What Derrida described as the abyss occurs when acts of brutality create panic and chaos because most people do not know assign signifieds-- i.e., meanings-- to the brutality. Kenneth Burke critiqued Mein Kampf by explaining how Adolph Hitler had used god terms and evil terms to create ideological agreement with Hitler's concept that the Aryan race was being undermined by a Jewish conspiracy. We examine how the news media coverage of nine terrorist attacks invoked god terms and evil terms in their description of the terror created by the jihadists. Further, we looked for chaos terms, which are terms that describe such inhumane acts of terror that people do not have existing signifieds to translate those acts into meaning. Not only did we find that chaos terms in the news coverage, as well as the god terms and evil terms, but we also found chaos terms used by world leaders. We draw the conclusion that both the media and world leaders contribute to the propaganda impact of jihadists attacks by using chaos terms.

News Media and Economic Inequality

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-212
Author(s):  
Andrea Grisold ◽  
Paschal Preston
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Economic Issues ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Cultural Research ◽  
Cross Country

Chapter 10 provides an overview and a summary reflection on the key findings from the authors’ distinctive, cross-country study of news media coverage of economic inequality, viewed through the lens of journalistic responses to Piketty’s high-profile book on this theme. It examines key findings arising from cross-country empirical research, linking them to broader discourses on economic, material, and discursive aspects of power, public policies, and political economy, as well as cultural research on news media. This chapter also briefly considers the contours of requisite reforms if the present dominance of elite discourses are to be ameliorated when it comes to inequality and other economic issues of wider public interest.

scholarly journals The depiction of marketing and marketers in the news media

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (5/6) ◽  
pp. 752-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Cluley
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Marketing Research ◽  
Marketing Practice ◽  
Content Type ◽  
News Reports ◽  
The Media ◽  
One Year ◽  
High Level ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose In an effort to explain the high level of scepticism and distrust towards marketing and marketers, this paper aims to explore how marketing practice and practitioners are depicted in the mass media. Design/methodology/approach The paper analyses 6,877 news reports that discuss “marketing” across two one-year time periods from three UK newspapers. A systematic content analysis is presented through N-grams and K-grams, close readings of individual cases and manual coding. Findings The paper finds that the news media cultivates an image of marketing and marketing practitioners as a cost to businesses and something that businesses do to consumers. The study finds that marketers are also presented through a narrow viewpoint. Marketers are depicted as male and tend to be viewed as a source of authority only when speaking on behalf of their organizations in response problems and crises. Research limitations/implications The cultivation effect of mass media is widely accepted among communications scholar, yet its use within marketing research is limited. The paper represents an empirical application of this approach. Practical implications Organizations including the Chartered Institute of Marketing and American Marketing Association have attempted to counteract marketing’s image problem by redefining what marketing means. The results of this study suggest that such attempts are unlikely to work, as the practice of marketing, in particular PR, cultivates a negative image in the media. Social implications The paper explores the relationship between marketing practice and the marketing profession and society. Originality/value The paper demonstrates the utility of cultivation theory and systematic content analyses of media texts. It develops a methodology to examine how professional practice is depicted in mass media.

scholarly journals Digital media and democracy: tactics in hard times

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fenwick Robert McKelvey
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Bush Administration ◽  
The Public ◽  
Hard Times ◽  
The Media ◽  
Tactical Media ◽  
Changing Role ◽  
Public Demand

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality,” explains an unnamed Bush administration official. This quote sets the tone for a new edited collection reflecting on the role of the media in constructing reality. The lack of a “truth” does not quell the public demand for one, as Boler aptly points out in her introduction: “The desire and longing for truth expressed by the public demands for media accountability is in tension with the coexisting recognition of the slipperiness of meaning” (p. 7). Media, then, in all their forms, become a central battleground for forging meaning and shaping reality. “Media are the most powerful institutions on earth,” Amy Goodman of Democracy Now claims, “more powerful than any bomb, more powerful than any missile” (p. 199). This series of interviews and articles explores how incumbent powers and media activists compete to produce and reproduce their versions of reality through the media. The contributors use the format to discuss the tenuous relationship between media and democracy and the changing role of the news media, as well as to present examples of tactical media. The resulting collection provides an excellent introduction to the current, troubling media landscape and its tactical opportunities.

Agenda Setting and Journalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastián Valenzuela
Keyword(s):  
Digital Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
The United States ◽  
Radio Stations ◽  
Journalism Studies ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Media Agenda ◽  
The Media ◽  
Digital Algorithms

People use the news media to learn about the world beyond their family, neighborhood, and workplace. As news consumers, we depend on what television, social media, websites, radio stations, and newspapers decide to inform us about. This is because all news media, whether through journalists or digital algorithms, select, process, and filter information to their users. Over time, the aspects that are prominent in the news media usually become prominent in public opinion. The ability of journalists to influence which issues, aspects of these issues, and persons related to these issues, are perceived as the most salient has come to be called the agenda-setting effect of journalism. First described by Maxwell McCombs and Donald Shaw in a seminal study conducted during the 1968 elections in the United States, agenda-setting theory has expanded to include several other aspects beyond the transfer of salience of issues from the media agenda to the public agenda. These aspects include: the influence of journalism on the attributes of issues and people that make news; the networks between the different elements in the media and public agendas; the determinants of the news media agenda; the psychological mechanisms that regulate agenda-setting effects; and the consequences of agenda setting on both citizens’ and policymakers’ attitudes and behaviors. As one of the most comprehensive and international theories of journalism studies available, agenda setting continues to evolve in the expanding digital media landscape.

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