Writer movements between news outlets reflect political polarization in media

2021 ◽  
pp. 146144482110271
Author(s):  
Nick Hagar ◽  
Johannes Wachs ◽  
Emőke-Ágnes Horvát

Digital news outlets rely on a variety of outside contributors, from freelance journalists, to political commentators, to executives and politicians. These external dependencies create a network among news outlets, traced along the contributors they share. Using connections between outlets, we demonstrate how contributors’ publishing trajectories tend to align with outlet political leanings. We also show how polarized clustering of outlets translates to differences in the topics of news covered and the style and tone of articles published. In addition, we demonstrate how contributors who cross partisan divides tend to focus on less explicitly political topics. This work addresses an important gap in the media polarization literature, by highlighting how structural factors on the production side of news media create an ecosystem shaped by political leanings, independent of the priorities of any one person or organization.

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 115-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anette Novak

User participation in the journalistic context has theoretically been possible since the emergence of the Internet. The few interface formats which have been developed to link newsrooms and citizens have, however, not followed the same explosive development as other parts of the media landscape. One reason often referred to by the scientific community is the defensive newsroom culture. This essay presents an alternative interpretation and argues that bridging the gap between interaction design research, media and communications research, and practitioners within digital news media, could shed new light on the stalled process of newsroom co-creation with users.


Tripodos ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 41-61
Author(s):  
Carlos Lopezosa ◽  
Lluís Codina ◽  
Mario Pérez-Montoro

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the visibility, and of other SEO indicators, of the culture sections of Spain’s leading digital newspapers —specifically, elmundo.es, elpais. com, lavanguardia.com, abc.es, el­confidencial.com and 20minutos.es— based on data collected by the media analytics company, comScore, and the web traffic metric, Alexa Rank. The analysis employs a set of positioning in­dicators: namely, a visibility index, keywords, social signals, keyword profiles, URLs, SERP-Snippets, reference domains and best anchor texts, as made availa­ble by SISTRIX, an SEO analytics audit toolbox. Thus, we were able to deter­mine which of the digital newspapers’ culture sections has the best visibility. Likewise, we were able to identify which of these media are best positioned on Google, presumably as a result of more effective positioning strategies. We con­clude with a discussion of our results and, on the basis of these findings, re­commend ways in which the visibility of journalistic information can be optimi­sed in search engines.   SEO i cibermitjans: visibilitat de la informació cultural dels principals diaris d’Espanya Aquest article realitza una anàlisi com­parativa de visibilitat i altres indicadors SEO de la secció de cultura dels principals cibermitjans espanyols: elmundo.es, elpais.com, lavanguardia.com, abc. es, elconfidencial.com i 20minutos. es. Les anàlisis s’han dut a terme amb la utilització d’un conjunt d’indicadors de posicionament (visibilitat, paraules clau, senyals socials, paraules clau, url, snippets, dominis de referència i mi­llors textos àncora) utilitzant l’eina de auditoria i anàlisi de posicionament en cercadors, SISTRIX. Ens preguntem quin d’aquests mitjans té millor una secció de notícies culturals amb millor visibilitat. L’estudi dut a terme amb els indicadors seleccionats permet, d’aquesta manera, presentar una anàlisi comparativa del periodisme cultural i identificar quins d’aquests mitjans presenten millors posicions a Google, presumiblement, com a resultat d’estratègies de posicio­nament. Finalitzem amb una discussió dels resultats juntament amb unes re­comanacions finals per optimitzar la vi­sibilitat de la informació periodística en els cercadors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-132
Author(s):  
Arif Hussain Nadaf

International conflict reporting and national media discourse of warring nations continue to dominate existing scholarship on media–conflict relationships. The literature on the subject lacks significant consideration towards understanding the relevance of local and sub-national media narratives in conflict situations. The existing literature on the media–conflict relationship in the conflict territory of Kashmir shows that the issue has been largely studied from the perspective of national news media in India and Pakistan. This study while engaging with the local news media in the Kashmir region, draws empirical evidence from the local newspapers in the context of the 2014 State Assembly election campaigns which took place amid unprecedented political polarization in the region. The findings from the content analysis revealed that the contested political issues between the political parties found higher resonance in the campaign news while the deliberation regarding the conflict in the region and its resolution had the least prevalence in the news discourse. This not only confirms the significant relevance of local news media and internal political dynamics in redefining the media–conflict relationship in the Kashmir conflict but also suggests the further need to engage with local and regional news narratives in conflict situations.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 168-190
Author(s):  
Kylah J. Hedding ◽  
Kevin Ripka

Abstract This study explicates the concept of news media agendamelding. While only one-quarter of U.S. adults are on Twitter, it remains a popular platform among news media and political elites who often still set the public agenda for political discourse. Twitter provides insights into the issues that are at the top of the media and policy agendas, as well as how social media might influence the way journalists approach political issues. At the same time, there is concern about the influence of social media on political polarization. This study uses a specific set of influential Twitter users to examine one main question: Were there differences between right, left, and center political media reactions during the 2016 presidential debates? This study provides further evidence that there is, in fact, a conservative political Twitter media agenda that exists separately from liberal or nonpartisan media outlets.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
ardian maulana ◽  
Hokky Situngkir

Abstract Political polarization has long been a central topic for political science. This study investigate the phenomenon of political polarization in Indonesian news media landscape during the 2019 Presidential Election. We represent the media landscape as a network of news media based on their shared audience, and implement community detection algorithms to extract media clusters. We also construct a time series of media network and explore the dynamics of polarization during the observation period. The study confirms the existence of political polarization in the global and temporal networks of Indonesian news media, and shows that Twitter users' news consumption behavior is highly polarized. We also reveal periods with higher and lower polarization throughout the observation period, namely the degree of polarization in the media landscape is already high from the start of the observation, relaxes quickly after the election, and then reaches its maximum prior to the announcement of the official results.


Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1327-1345 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis M Romero-Rodríguez ◽  
Ignacio Aguaded

The quality of information from communication media is a topic that has been dealt with by various theorists through the analysis of the final products of information. This research work offers an analysis model of the quality of information of printed news media by the use of three indexes of categories and structured dimensions that will allow for the assessment and evaluation of the quality of information from the media, and the identification of the incidence of political-economic conditions of the journalistic environment’s macro-environment. For this, an experimental test of two Venezuelan media outlets was performed. Their use allowed us to conclude that political polarization and discourse of social confrontation, as well as economic factors such as inflation and pay scales had a proportionally direct effect on the quality of information products.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Minna Horowitz ◽  
Markus Ojala ◽  
Janne Matikainen ◽  
Johanna Jääsaari

Finland provides an interesting case study on trust in the media in the digital era. The country is known to exhibit the greatest levels of trust in the political establishment and the government, as well as the media. In the Finnish “digital welfare state,” the news is an inseparable part of the mechanism, producing a high level of social trust within the welfare state system, and Finland features the highest level of media freedom and literacy in Europe. This multimethod study examines different understandings of trust by studying in what ways Finnish audiences experience trust in news, especially when consuming news on digital platforms, and what factors explain trust in different news sources. Our basic premise is that trust can be understood in three ways: as dispositions of individual actors, as the social organization and the relationship between different social nodes and the system, and as a constantly negotiated property of social relations. We apply this three-dimensional framework in two sets of audience survey research data (2019, 2020) and reflect the findings with a focus group and expert interviews as well as with two similar surveys a decade prior. Our results depict relatively high levels of trust in the media in Finland and surprisingly little change in audiences’ perceptions of trustworthiness compared to the earlier surveys. The most defining characteristic of Finnish audiences is critical trust. Audiences are aware of the impacts of digitization, especially the dangers of social media bubbles and disinformation. They also recognize market-driven imperatives of journalism yet appreciate legacy news media in its different digital forms. Our study indicates that a balance between skepticism and reliance on news outlets can exist in audiences’ perceptions of the trustworthiness of digital news.


Author(s):  
Pere Freixa ◽  
Mario Pérez-Montoro ◽  
Lluís Codina

Interaction and visualization together yield an interesting, fruitful, and promising combination for producing content in digital news media. In an era in which the press no longer exclusively provides the news, interaction and visualization combined in innovative products for the public are powerful value propositions for the media. Together, they are capable of winning readers’ loyalty and engagement, both of which are crucial for the media’s sustainability. In this work, we present a review of the literature and formulate the theoretical bases for this binomial pairing and its main components, which, we argue, should be available to citizens, the interests of whom journalism must defend if it aspires to be viable.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel Negredo ◽  
María-Pilar Martínez-Costa ◽  
James Breiner ◽  
Ramón Salaverría

Digital-native news organizations have grown steadily in Spain since the mid-1990s and they have become established as a major force in the media market. Paradoxically, their biggest expansion coincided with the Great Recession (2008–2014). In fact, their numbers increased most during 2012–2013, when traditional media were cutting staff in response to the economic crisis, and unemployment rates in the media sector as a whole hit their peak. However, these digital-native news startups have yet to prove their sustainability and stability. This study uses our own database of 3,862 native and non-native digital news outlets in Spain and the Reuters Institute Digital News Report to analyze a number of characteristics of these media, such as the percentage that have gone inactive, the relative popularity of legacy brands vs. digital natives, multi-platform synergies, content subject matter, geographical location, ownership, and funding sources. Based on these quantitative parameters, this study reviews the structural strengths and weaknesses of digital-native media in the Spanish news market. Taking into account these findings, we conclude that the surge in digital-native news media observed in Spain during the Great Recession followed the pattern of creative destruction described by several economists.


Antiquity ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 89 (344) ◽  
pp. 472-477
Author(s):  
Lucy Shipley

In the autumn of 2013, a discovery was made in the Doganaccia necropolis close to the ancient Etruscan city of Tarquinia. A sepulchre was uncovered, mercifully and unusually unlooted. Inside were the remains of two individuals and a range of grave goods, allowing the tomb to be typologically dated to the late seventh or early sixth century BC. One of the individuals had been cremated, while the other was laid out in a supine position. Both were placed on funeral benches similar to those known from Etruscan tombs across the region (Steingräber 2009). This excavation was as unusual as it was spectacular—the equally vigorous efforts of nineteenth-century enthusiasts (Leighton 2004: 12) and twentieth-century tomb robbers (van Velzen 1999: 180) have left little of the Etruscan burial record undisturbed. Unsurprisingly, there was a great deal of media excitement over the burial, as its excavator, distinguished Etruscan scholar Alessandro Mandolesi, spoke with the press of his impressions of the remains and their relationship to the artefacts found in the tomb. Little of his exact words remain in the public sphere, but the impression he provided to the press was clear in the flurry of media reports that followed his statement. The ensuing media interest and archaeological developments present a number of serious issues for the practice of archaeology in an age in which digital media can magnify the impact of any major discovery. In addition, the interpretation put forward exposed the continued androcentrism inherent in many sub-disciplines of archaeology, which, 30 years on from Conkey and Spector's (1984) transformative publication, remain locked in deeply problematic interpretative patterns. This interpretation of the Tarquinia burial is emblematic of a far wider phenomenon, both within and beyond Italy, which has serious implications for future archaeological practice. This article unpicks both the media storm and interpretative paradigms that characterised this case study, and queries archaeological responsibility and visibility in an age of 24-hour news.


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