Data journalism uptake in South Africa’s mainstream quotidian business news reporting practices

Journalism ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 146488492095138
Author(s):  
Allen Munoriyarwa
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
Corporate Accountability ◽  
News Production ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Business News ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Data Journalism

Drawing from the sociology of news production theory, this study examines the uptake of data-driven practices in business news reporting. It examines the extent to which journalists have adopted data journalism in business news and how this has altered their news reporting practices. It is based on a textual analysis of business news stories from two selected prominent business newspapers – Business Day and The Financial Mail and qualitative interviews with business news reporters. The study finds that there is a (gradually) increasing uptake of data-driven business news reporting practices, tempered by journalists’ concerns regarding their own individual professional capabilities. Furthermore, the practice has increasingly created a new narrative of corporate accountability in the press and inculcated collaboration in newsrooms. It argues that data-driven business news practices have upended the ‘rhythimised’ and ‘routinised’ news production processes by, among other aspects, empowering non-elite news sources, fostering newsroom collaborations and agentive the newsrooms. However, there is need for a recalibration of journalism education if data-driven reporting practices are to be more sustainable.

scholarly journals Women, ethnic minorities and newsworthiness: Journalists’ perceptions

Journalism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 227-243
Author(s):  
Hanne Vandenberghe ◽  
Leen d’Haenens ◽  
Baldwin Van Gorp
Keyword(s):  
Ethnic Minorities ◽  
Ethnic Diversity ◽  
Search Process ◽  
News Production ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
The Third ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Source Selection ◽  
Depth Interviews

This study seeks to determine the extent to which the Flemish press gives voice to gender and ethnic diversity. A total of 16 in-depth interviews with print journalists outlined five key arguments about diversity in the newsroom. Two of these view the portrayal of diversity as conceptually irrelevant or inconsistent with a notion of universal equality. The third argument defines diverse representation as an active search process that is part and parcel of a journalist’s mission. Two additional arguments blame the lack of diversity in news reporting on practical obstacles – professional practices that make it difficult to aim for a diverse source selection, or the less prominent role of women and ethnic minorities in society which leads to a less diverse set of news sources. This study seeks to find explanations in the news production process as to why gender and ethnic diversity in the news continues to be consistently scarce.

scholarly journals Internet news about Ukraine and the “audience agenda”: topics, sources and the audience aggressiveness

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 17-37
Author(s):  
Anda Rožukalne
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Significant Rise ◽  
Media Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Audience Reaction ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Russian Version ◽  
Internet News ◽  
Russian Media ◽  
Research Show

Euromaidan in Kiev, the annexation of Crimea and the war in Eastern Ukraine had become the most important international events that impacted media content in 2013 and 2014. This paper provides research that intends to analyse the interrelation between news content of the three largest news sites in Latvia (Delfi.lv, Apollo.lv, Tvnet.lv) and the Latvian and Russian-speaking audience reaction to the news about the events in Ukraine in 2014. By using a unique tool for audience behaviour analysis “The Index of Internet Aggressiveness” in this research, the level of audience aggressive­ness that appears within audience comments has been analysed with the aim to find out how and if the professional approach of the news producers influ­ences the aggressiveness of the news site’s audience.The three different groups of data from the Index of Internet Aggressive­ness are used to measure audience behaviour: the quantity of aggressive key­words used in the comments by audience members that create a significant rise in the Index of Internet Aggressiveness next to the news on Ukraine; content analysis of the most aggressively commented news articles about the events in Ukraine; the semi-structured qualitative interviews with editors of news sites that explain professional routines.The most significant conclusions of the research show the domination of the official Russian media outlets among the news sources about Ukraine. By republishing ready-made and easily accessible news stories, independent news sites of Latvia have become distributors and multiplicators of messages favourable to the Russian version of the events in Ukraine.

scholarly journals Who can you trust? Medical news, the public and what reporters think about public relations sources

2012 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 102 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Furlan
Keyword(s):  
Public Relations ◽  
Relational Dynamics ◽  
News Production ◽  
Public Relations Practitioners ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Medical News ◽  
Scant Attention ◽  
Health Care Options

Research on the effects of medical news stories on the public has demonstrated that consumers make decisions about personal health care options and choices sometimes exclusively based on stories published by the media. Given the news media’s ability to set the agenda for what the lay public, government policymakers and even health professionals consider topical and important, medical news reporting has an added sense of responsibility to be timely, reliable and accurate. Public relations practitioners involved in medical promotion can be the behind-the-scenes providers of information and access to important sources in medical news production. This relationship has been an emerging area of research focus in the US but has received scant attention in Australia. Just as in other areas of reporting, the relational dynamics between reporter and PR source are often conflicting and contradictory. This article will explore the views of 25 Australian medical reporters in a mixed method study on their relationship with public relations practitioners through the construct of trust. The findings indicate that most medical reporters, although acknowledging the increasing influence of public relations on medical news production, generally do not trust public relations sources, especially those in the corporate sector. However, if ongoing PR sources are considered reliable and trustworthy, then the relationship can become one of trust and interdependence.

Exploring Australian journalism discursive practices in reporting rape: The pitiful predator and the silent victim

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-258 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michelle Dunne Breen ◽  
Patricia Easteal ◽  
Kate Holland ◽  
Georgina Sutherland ◽  
Cathy Vaughan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Violence Against Women ◽  
Online News ◽  
Discursive Practices ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Reporting Practices ◽  
News Stories ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Victim Impact Statement ◽  
The Impact

This article draws on the qualitative research component of a mixed-methods project exploring the Australian news media’s representation of violence against women. This critical discourse analysis is on print and online news reporting of the case of ‘Kings Cross Nightclub Rapist Luke Lazarus’, who in March 2015 was tried and convicted of raping a female club-goer in a laneway behind his father’s nightclub in Sydney, Australia. We explore the journalism discursive practices employed in the production of the news reports about the Lazarus trial. Our analysis shows how some lexical features, quoting strategies and structuring elements serve to minimise the victim’s experience while emphasising the adverse effects of the trial on the accused. Furthermore, we demonstrate how such practices allow for the graphic representation of the attack in a salacious manner while minimising the impact of the crime on the victim by selectively referencing her victim impact statement. We found some differences between print and online news stories about this case, some of which may be attributable to the greater space available to the telling of news stories online. We conclude that in news reporting of the Lazarus case, routine journalism discursive practices, such as the inverted pyramid news-writing structure and decisions about who and what to quote, serve simultaneously to diminish the victim’s experience while objectifying her. These results build on international findings about media reporting practices in relation to violence against women and add substantially to what we know about these practices in Australia.

A Descriptive Study on Data Journalism and its Application in Indian Media Industry

2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (01) ◽  
Author(s):  
Abhishika Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
Descriptive Study ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
News Story ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Investigative Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
The Face ◽  
Data Journalism ◽  
The Masses

The face of journalism has changed from the industry that relied on technology and information of happenings that took place overnight and is produced the next morning. Today media is all about gathering, filtering and visualizing information beyond what eyes can see. Gone are the days when ‘Nose for news’ was considered as one of the essential qualities for a journalist to report a news story. Interpretative and investigative reporting was considered as the job of senior and experienced reporters. Competition, advent of computer aided systems, interactivity and participation of audiences have changed the tradition form of news from 5 W’s and 1H to more data driven journalism. Giving a different shape to the journalistic writings which more based on data available from sources, journalist today are depending on data available from various sources like government bodies, corporate houses, reports from well know houses to develop and design stories. These stories are getting popular and accepted by the masses as they are not the normal ‘he said or she said’ stories rather they are more factual, impactful and transparent stories developed from more trusted sources. The objective of the paper is to study what data journalism is and its application in today’s mass media to develop news stories. The paper will also examine the challenges faced by mainstream journalist coming out with data driven writings and its popularity amongst the readers.

scholarly journals A Data-Driven Framework for Coding the Intent and Extent of Political Tweeting, Disinformation, and Extremism

Information ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 148
Author(s):  
Mahdi Hashemi
Keyword(s):  
Social Networks ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Data Driven ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Affiliation ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The U.S

Disinformation campaigns on online social networks (OSNs) in recent years have underscored democracy’s vulnerability to such operations and the importance of identifying such operations and dissecting their methods, intents, and source. This paper is another milestone in a line of research on political disinformation, propaganda, and extremism on OSNs. A total of 40,000 original Tweets (not re-Tweets or Replies) related to the U.S. 2020 presidential election are collected. The intent, focus, and political affiliation of these political Tweets are determined through multiple discussions and revisions. There are three political affiliations: rightist, leftist, and neutral. A total of 171 different classes of intent or focus are defined for Tweets. A total of 25% of Tweets were left out while defining these classes of intent. The purpose is to assure that the defined classes would be able to cover the intent and focus of unseen Tweets (Tweets that were not used to determine and define these classes) and no new classes would be required. This paper provides these classes, their definition and size, and example Tweets from them. If any information is included in a Tweet, its factuality is verified through valid news sources and articles. If any opinion is included in a Tweet, it is determined that whether or not it is extreme, through multiple discussions and revisions. This paper provides analytics with regard to the political affiliation and intent of Tweets. The results show that disinformation and extreme opinions are more common among rightists Tweets than leftist Tweets. Additionally, Coronavirus pandemic is the topic of almost half of the Tweets, where 25.43% of Tweets express their unhappiness with how Republicans have handled this pandemic.

Constructing undesirables: A critical discourse analysis of othering of Fulani nomads in the Ghanaian news media

2021 ◽  
pp. 175048132098209
Author(s):  
Mark Nartey ◽  
Hans J Ladegaard
Keyword(s):  
Discourse Analysis ◽  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
Analysis Framework ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Media Attention ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Content Organization

The activities of Fulani nomads in Ghana have gained considerable media attention and engendered continuing public debate. In this paper, we analyze the prejudiced portrayals of the nomads in the Ghanaian news media, and how these contribute to an exclusionist and a discriminatory discourse that puts the nomads at the margins of Ghanaian society. The study employs a critical discourse analysis framework and draws on a dataset of 160 articles, including news stories, editorials and op-ed pieces. The analysis reveals that the nomads are discursively constructed as undesirables through an othering process that centers on three discourses: a discourse of dangerousness/criminalization, a discourse of alienization, and a discourse of stigmatization. This anti-nomad/Fulani rhetoric is evident in the choice of sensational headlines, alarmist news content, organization of arguments, and use of quotations. The paper concludes with a call for more balanced and critical news reporting on the nomads, especially since issues surrounding them border on national cohesion and security.

News production theory and practice

Pragmatics ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tom Van Hout ◽  
Geert Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
Process Analysis ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Computer Assisted ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
News Production ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Business News ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
The Individual ◽  
And Control

This paper considers notions of agency, interaction and power in business news journalism. In the first part, we present a bird’s eye view of news access theory as it is reflected in selected sociological and anthropological literature on the ethnography of news production. Next, we show how these theoretical notions can be applied to the study of press releases and particularly to the linguistic pragmatic analysis of the specific social and textual practices that surround their transformation into news reports. Drawing on selected fieldwork data collected at the business desk of a major Flemish quality newspaper, we present an innovative methodology combining newsroom ethnography and computer-assisted writing process analysis which documents how a reporter discovers a story, introduces it into the newsroom, writes and reflects on it. In doing so, we put the individual journalist’s writing practices center stage, zoom in on the specific ways in which he interacts with sources and conceptualize power in terms of his dependence on press releases. Following Beeman & Peterson (2001), we argue in favor of a view of journalism as ‘interpretive practice’ and of news production as a process of entextualization involving multiple actors who struggle over authority, ownership and control.

scholarly journals Journalism and Numeracy in Context: Four Case Studies

Numeracy ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Numerical Data ◽  
Quantitative Literacy ◽  
News Production ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Life And Death ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Reports ◽  
Reporting Process ◽  
The Relationship

Although research into the relationship between quantitative literacy (QL) and news reporting is sparse, the consensus among researchers is that journalists tend not to place QL very highly among their professional values and that journalism suffers as a consequence. This paper is an attempt to provide concrete examples of the ways in which news reports systemically misinterpret, misrepresent, or misuse numerical data as part of the reporting process. Drawing on scenarios ranging from elections and healthcare to the mundane world of food preparation, it shows how a lack of rigour in the fields of reporting and news production can lead to a diminution in the quality of journalism presented to the public. It is argued that while the effect of this can sometimes be trivial, on occasion it is literally a matter of life and death.

scholarly journals From Data Journalism to Artificial Intelligence: Challenges Faced by La Nación in Implementing Computer Vision in News Reporting

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-40
Author(s):  
Mathias-Felipe de-Lima-Santos ◽  
Ramón Salaverría
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Computer Vision ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Implementation Process ◽  
Media Industry ◽  
Technological Infrastructure ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Technological Advances ◽  
High Resolution Imagery ◽  
Data Journalism

Journalism is at a radical point of change that requires organizations to come up with new ideas and formats for news reporting. Additionally, the notable surge of data, sensors and technological advances in the mobile segment has brought immeasurable benefits to many fields of journalistic practice (data journalism in particular). Given the relative novelty and complexity of implementing artificial intelligence (AI) in journalism, few areas have managed to deploy tailored AI solutions in the media industry. In this study, through a mixed-method approach that combines both participant observations and interviews, we explain the hurdles and obstacles to deploying computer vision news projects, a subset of AI, in a leading Latin American news organization, the Argentine newspaper La Nación. Our results highlight four broad difficulties in implementing computer vision projects that involve satellite imagery: a lack of high-resolution imagery, the unavailability of technological infrastructure, the absence of qualified personnel to develop such codes, and a lengthy and costly implementation process that requires significant investment. This article concludes with a discussion of the centrality of AI solutions in the hands of big tech corporations.

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