scholarly journals News values on social media: Exploring what drives peaks in user activity about organizations on Twitter

Journalism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 633-651 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theo Araujo ◽  
Toni GLA van der Meer

Since news circulation increasingly takes place online, the public has gained the capacity to influence the salience of topics on the agenda, especially when it comes to social media. Considering increased scrutiny about organizations, this study aims to understand what causes heightened activity to organization-related topics among Twitter users. We explore the extent to which news value theory, news coverage, and influential actors can explain peaks in Twitter activity about organizations. Based on a dataset of 1.8 million tweets about 18 organizations, the findings show that the news values social impact, geographical closeness, facticity, as well as certain influential actors, can explain the intensity of online activities. Moreover, the results advocate for a more nuanced understanding of the relation between news media and social media users, as indications of reversed agenda-setting patterns were observed.

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcus Maurer ◽  
Jörg Haßler ◽  
Simon Kruschinski ◽  
Pablo Jost

Abstract This study compares the balance of newspaper and television news coverage about migration in two countries that were differently affected by the so-called “refugee crisis” in 2015 in terms of the geopolitical involvement and numbers of migrants being admitted. Based on a broad consensus among political elites, Germany left its borders open and received about one million migrants mainly from Syria during 2015. In contrast, the conservative British government was heavily attacked by oppositional parties for closing Britain’s borders and, thus, restricting immigration. These different initial situations led to remarkable differences between the news coverage in both countries. In line with news value theory, German media outlets reported much more on migration than did their British counterparts. In line with indexing theory, German news coverage consonantly reflected the consensual view of German political elites, while British news media reported along their general editorial lines.


Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (10) ◽  
pp. 1397-1414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juliane A Lischka ◽  
Julian Stressig ◽  
Fabienne Bünzli

News value theory aims to predict a story’s chance of being selected for publication based on news factors and ascribed news values. News values can also predict the coverage of corporate press releases. For news decisions, a newspaper’s revenue model may force editors to consider whether the source of a press release is an advertising client, despite the ‘separation of church and state’. In addition, for business journalism, corporate press releases have become an increasingly important news source. This study combines news values and advertiser weight to predict news coverage of press releases of banks in the news of partly and fully advertising-funded newspapers in Switzerland. Results show that advertiser importance can explain press release coverage concerning article length and tone in few cases, but has no universal news value. Public relations material is also not used as editorial subsidy for news. Larger companies are more successful in terms of press release uptake. However, their articles consist of a greater share of non-public relations material. Thus, our findings confirm editorial independence instead of copy-paste or obsequious journalism.


Corpora ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monika Bednarek

The sharing of news through social media platforms is now a significant part of mainstream online media use and is an increasingly important consideration in journalism practice and production. This paper analyses the linguistic characteristics of online news sharing on Facebook, with a focus on evaluation and news values in a corpus of the 100 ‘most shared’ news items from ‘heritage’ English-language news media organisations. Analyses combine corpus linguistic techniques (semantic tagging, frequency analysis, concordancing) with manual, computer-aided annotation. The main focus is on discursive news values analysis (DNVA), which examines how news values are established through semiotic resources, enabling new empirical insights into shared news and adding a specific linguistic focus to the emerging literature on news sharing. Results suggest that all ‘traditional’ news values appear to be construed in the shared news corpus and that there is variety in terms of the items that are widely shared. At the same time, the news values of Eliteness, Superlativeness, Unexpectedness, Negativity and Timeliness seem especially important in the corpus. The findings also indicate that ‘unexpected’ and ‘affective’ news items may be shared more, and that Negativity is a more important news value than Positivity.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 (5) ◽  
pp. 689-707
Author(s):  
Tanya Notley ◽  
Michael Dezuanni

Social media use has redefined the production, experience and consumption of news media. These changes have made verifying and trusting news content more complicated and this has led to a number of recent flashpoints for claims and counter-claims of ‘fake news’ at critical moments during elections, natural disasters and acts of terrorism. Concerns regarding the actual and potential social impact of fake news led us to carry out the first nationally representative survey of young Australians’ news practices and experiences. Our analysis finds that while social media is one of young people’s preferred sources of news, they are not confident about spotting fake news online and many rarely or never check the source of news stories. Our findings raise important questions regarding the need for news media literacy education – both in schools and in the home. Therefore, we consider the historical development of news media literacy education and critique the relevance of dominant frameworks and pedagogies currently in use. We find that news media has become neglected in media literacy education in Australia over the past three decades, and we propose that current media literacy frameworks and pedagogies in use need to be rethought for the digital age.


2020 ◽  
Vol Volume 4 (Issue 2) ◽  
pp. 478-496
Author(s):  
Farrukh Shahzad ◽  
Prof. Dr. Syed Abdul Siraj

Inter-media agenda setting is a commonly used phenomenon to investigate the transfer of contents between news media. The recent digitization era challenges the traditional presuppositions. This study investigates the inter-media agenda setting influence between social media and traditional media. To address this question, the present study investigates first level agenda setting between Twitter and ARY news during Farishta murder case 2019. Content analysis method was used to assess agendas present within Twitter and ARY news. By employing cross-lagged correlation, the study investigates the inter-media agenda setting influence between Twitter agendas and of ARY news agendas. Aggregate findings of cross-lagged correlation reveal a clear agenda setting influence of Twitter on ARY news coverage agenda about Farishta murder case. The results of the study suggest that Twitter has the capability to influence broadcast agendas of television in Pakistan


Author(s):  
Pingyan Li ◽  
Mengxiao Chen ◽  
Jianxin Yang

The paper makes a discursive analysis of the news value construction in the headlines of new media news. The data chosen is 59 news headlines on coverage of Zimbabwe Crisis released in the apps of BBC from November 6th to November 18th 2017. The data indicates a chronological variance of the news values in the headlines. Specifically, eliteness and negativity are values constantly occurring in the headlines throughout the crisis report. The value of positivity appears only at the final stage of the news coverage. The value of timeliness emerges at the final four days of the news coverage. The value of suspense appears at the middle stage of the event. The value of proximity is employed when the detention just occurred. In terms of the linguistic realization of those news values, the study finds that the frequent use of some words contributed to the realization of news values. This study is important in that it reveals how language resources are used by newsmakers to construct news value in the headlines and how news values are realized in the context of communication.


2017 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 275-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raymond A. Harder ◽  
Julie Sevenans ◽  
Peter Van Aelst

Intermedia agenda setting is a widely used theory to explain how content transfers between news media. The recent digitalization wave, however, challenges some of its basic presuppositions. We discuss three assumptions that cannot be applied to online and social media unconditionally: one, that media agendas should be measured on an issue level; two, that fixed time lags suffice to understand overlap in media content; and three, that media can be considered homogeneous entities. To address these challenges, we propose a “news story” approach as an alternative way of mapping how news spreads through the media. We compare this with a “traditional” analysis of time-series data. In addition, we differentiate between three groups of actors that use Twitter. For these purposes, we study online and offline media alike, applying both measurement methods to the 2014 Belgium election campaign. Overall, we find that online media outlets strongly affect other media that publish less often. Yet, our news story analysis emphasizes the need to look beyond publication schemes. “Slow” newspapers, for example, often precede other media’s coverage. Underlining the necessity to distinguish between Twitter users, we find that media actors on Twitter have vastly more agenda-setting influence than other actors do.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Jennifer Brasch

<p>Despite the potential for conflict between news media’s idealised socio-political role and its practical commercial role, a qualitative content analysis of the coverage of the 2012 Libor scandal in four newspapers, The Times (London), The Financial Times, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal, revealed that these aspects of news media are in fact complementary. Although it is often argued that the commercial function of news media is prioritised over its social and political roles, the commercial aspects of the coverage of the Libor scandal did not overwhelm or significantly compromise the political watchdog role of the media. In fact, the unexpectedly large divide in coverage between the UK newspapers and the US newspapers signifies that the divide between domestic and foreign news is significantly more important than the divide between news media’s idealised socio-political role and its commercial aspects. The unexpected similarities between specialist and mainstream publications significantly contributed to this divide between domestic and foreign news. This suggests that scandals represent a unique case in which dramatic mass interest imperatives combine with critical public interest imperatives.  The results of the analysis suggest that an equal fulfilment of both watchdog and newsworthiness imperatives – demonstrated by the UK press – can offer a comprehensive investigation of, and increase public concern for, issues within an international scandal. A strong emphasis on news values and construction of a personalised narrative by these newspapers enabled the scandal to attract and maintain audience attention. Their coverage also featured a strong emphasis on the morality of the scandal and used official political sources in order to inform the public of something they needed to know.  In contrast, a lack of fulfilment of both watchdog and newsworthiness imperatives – demonstrated by the US press – can result in a weakening of public attention and debate about foreign issues that directly affect domestic political and economic policy. The US coverage failed to emphasise news values or construct a personalised narrative, which stripped the scandal of resonance. It failed to aggressively question the individuals involved and demand official investigations, failed to emphasise the substantive social impact, and used a limited range of sources. This resulted in the US press failing to construct a scandal frame.</p>


2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. e20-e29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kalyan Gudaru ◽  
Leonardo Tortolero Blanco ◽  
Daniele Castellani ◽  
Hegel Trujillo Santamaria ◽  
Marcela Pelayo-Nieto ◽  
...  

Background and Objectives There is an increasing use of social media amongst the urological community. However, it is difficult to identify urological data on various social media platforms in an efficient manner. We proposed a hashtag, #UroSoMe, to be used when posting urology-related content in the social media platforms. The objectives of this article are to describe how #UroSoMe was developed, and to report the data of the first month of #UroSoMe.   Material and Methods The hashtag, #UroSoMe, was introduced to the urological community. The #UroSoMe working group was formed, and the members actively invited and encouraged people to use the hashtag #UroSoMe when posting urology-related contents. After the #UroSoMe (@so_uro) platform on twitter had grown to more than 300 users, the first live event of online case discussion, i.e. #LiveCaseDiscussions, was conducted. A prospective observational study of the hashtag #UroSoMe Twitter activity during the first month of its usage from 14 December 2018 to 13 January 2019 was evaluated. Outcome measures included number of users, number of tweets, user location, top tweeters, top hashtags used and interactions. Analysis was performed using NodeXL (Social Media Research Foundation; California, USA; https://www.smrfoundation.org/nodexl/), Symplur (https:// www.symplur.com) and Twitonomy (https://www.twitonomy.com).   Results The first month of #UroSoMe activity documented 1373 tweets/retweets by 1008 tweeters with 17698 mentions and 1003 replies. The #LiveCaseDiscussions was able to achieve a potential reach of 2,033,352 Twitter users. The top tweets mainly included cases presented by #UroSoMe working group members during #LiveCaseDiscussions. The twitonomy map showed participation from 214 geographical locations. The major groups of participants using the hashtag #UroSoMe were ‘Researcher/Academic’ and ‘Doctor’. The twitter account of #UroSoMe (@so_uro) has now grown to more than 1000 followers.   Conclusions Social media is an excellent platform for interaction amongst the urological community. The results demonstrated that #UroSoMe was able to achieve wide spread engagement from all over the world.


Author(s):  
Wallace Chipidza ◽  
Elmira Akbaripourdibazar ◽  
Tendai Gwanzura ◽  
Nicole M. Gatto

AbstractKnowledge gaps may initially exist among scientists, medical and public health professionals during pandemics, which are fertile grounds for misinformation in news media. We characterized and compared COVID-19 coverage in newspapers, television, and social media, and discussed implications for public health communication strategies that are relevant to an initial pandemic response. We conducted a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), an unsupervised topic modelling technique, analysis of 3,271 newspaper articles, 40 cable news shows transcripts, 96,000 Twitter posts, and 1,000 Reddit posts during March 4 - 12, 2020, a period chronologically early in the timeframe of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coverage of COVID-19 clustered on topics such as epidemic, politics, and the economy, and these varied across media sources. Topics dominating news were not predominantly health-related, suggesting a limited presence of public health in news coverage in traditional and social media. Examples of misinformation were identified particularly in social media. Public health entities should utilize communication specialists to create engaging informational content to be shared on social media sites. Public health officials should be attuned to their target audience to anticipate and prevent spread of common myths likely to exist within a population. This will help control misinformation in early stages of pandemics.


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