Two-layer reading positions in comments on online news discourse about China

2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 473-496
Author(s):  
Juan He

Reading experience is viewed as ‘interactive and negotiable’ for different reading positions are created in readers’ responses to the same news report. To understand the differences between ‘ preferred reading’ and actual readings, this article, drawing on the context models and the Appraisal framework, analyzes 785 readers’ comments attached to 23 hard news stories sourced from the China Daily mobile application (APP) and the People’s Daily Online website. The study combines corpus semantic tagging analysis for readers’ choices of evaluative lexis with a manual analysis of Appraisal resources for reading position construction based on a whole text perspective. The results show that readers are likely to use Appraisal resources strategically to defend their own opinions against other commenters or affiliate with large numbers of potential readers without commenting. Furthermore, comments were found to be directed either at the text or at other commenters, and through this a number of different reading positions were revealed. The readers’ context models are the cognitive link between discourse properties and social strategies in the process of news understanding.

Author(s):  
Kevin Wise ◽  
Hyo Jung Kim ◽  
Jeesum Kim

A mixed-design experiment was conducted to explore differences between searching and surfing on cognitive and emotional responses to online news. Ninety-two participants read three unpleasant news stories from a website. Half of the participants acquired their stories by searching, meaning they had a previous information need in mind. The other half of the participants acquired their stories by surfing, with no previous information need in mind. Heart rate, skin conductance, and corrugator activation were collected as measures of resource allocation, motivational activation, and unpleasantness, respectively, while participants read each story. Self-report valence and recognition accuracy were also measured. Stories acquired by searching elicited greater heart rate acceleration, skin conductance level, and corrugator activation during reading. These stories were rated as more unpleasant, and their details were recognized more accurately than similar stories that were acquired by surfing. Implications of these results for understanding how people process online media are discussed.


Author(s):  
Resdianto Permata Raharjo ◽  
Maranita Anjarsari

This study aims to describe 1) the form of cohesion contained in the news Watching Sakinah Movies, UIN Yogyakarta Give Praise Students and 2) describing the forms of coherence contained in the news Watching Sakinah Film, Students of UIN Yogyakarta Give Praise. The subjects used in this study were news of watching Sakinah film, UIN Yogyakarta students giving praise, and the objects used were sentences containing grammatical cohesion, a form of lexical cohesion. The approach used in this study is a qualitative descriptive approach. The data in this study are sentences in the news of Watching Sakinah Movies, This student is a method of literature study. While the method of data analysis in this study is descriptive method analysis method, the method used to analyze and describe cohesion markers and analyze markers of coherence. Test The results of the study show that in the news of watching Sakinah films, UIN Yogyakarta Beri Pujian students have varied markers of cohesion and coherence in the Tebuireng Online news discourse. Cohesion markers were found to reference (3), substitution (1), ellipsis (2), conjunction (3), collocation (1), and markers of coherence found cause-effect relationships (2), relationship coherence suggestions — goals (1), coherence temporal relations (1), and coherence of causal relationships (1).


Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110568
Author(s):  
Arif Hussain Nadaf

The Indian government on 5 August, 2019, unilaterally removed Article 370 of its constitution that provided autonomous status to the disputed region of Jammu and Kashmir. In order to pre-empt any backlash, the authorities put the entire region under strict lockdown and imposed a complete communication blackout including suspension of internet, mobile, and landline phone services. The Indian media vociferously covered the issue of higher “national interest” with no counter-narrative from local news media in the region. Using Van Djik’s socio-cognitive model, the study conducted comparative critical discourse analysis of the headlines from two major Indian online news publications; the English daily The Times of India and the Hindi daily Dainik Jagran to identify the discursive strategies adopted by these newspapers after the revocation of the Article 370. The study aimed to understand how Indian newspapers were shaping the discourse when the Indian government imposed communication restrictions and lockdown in the region. Through CDA, the study located the discursive strategies in the headlines and the ideological standpoints they reflected while covering the Article 370 controversy. The CDA found that the headline discourse in both the news publications was characterized by aggressive nationalistic assertion reinforcing domestic legitimacy for the government’s decision. The analysis further showed substantial evidence for the cultural distances between the English and Hindi language news discourse. Unlike English headlines, the Hindi headlines contained explicit linguistic subjectivities and were overtly hyperbolic in recognizing and blending itself with the nationalist assertion and socio-political expression around the abrogation of Article 370.


2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 127
Author(s):  
Guðbjörg Hildur Kolbeins

By employing the theoretical framework of framing, the present paper attempts to examine the Icelandic media’s coverage of the 2013 parliamentary election by paying particular attention to coverage of public opinion polls and the policies of the political parties, i.e. the “horse-race” frame and the issue frame, and to examine media’s reliance on experts for interpretation of election news. Seven online news media, two newspapers, two radio stations and two television channels were monitored for 25 days prior to Election Day, i.e. from April 2 to April 26, 2013, - resulting in 1377 election news stories. The findings show, for example, that 29.8% of all the election news stories had public opinion polls as their primary angle while 12% of the stories were primarily issue-oriented. In addition, the media rely on experts for interpretation of the polls; five of the 10 most interviewed or quoted sources on public opinion surveys were political science experts who were affiliated with universities. Finally, news coverage of polls was generally amplified as media outlets had a tendency to report on public opinion polls that were commissioned by other media.


2016 ◽  
pp. 1267-1282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenn Burleson Mackay ◽  
Erica Bailey

This chapter uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalists' use of sensationalized or tabloid-style writing techniques affect the credibility of online news. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey's Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Soft news stories written with a tabloidized style were rated more credible than hard news stories that also had a tabloidized style. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. The authors conclude by utilizing act utilitarianism to argue that tabloidized writing is an unethical journalistic technique.


Author(s):  
Bingjuan Xiong

The development of new media transforms human communication experiences in ways that are socially, culturally, and politically meaningful. This study investigates the Chinese government's use of new media in response to an international communication crisis, the Ai Weiwei case, in 2011. Through a discourse analysis of China's official online news website, China Daily, as well as Twitter posts, most salient media frames in China's online media discourse are identified. The results suggest that online contestation of media framing in China's official media discourse contributes to the formation of new cultural expectations and norms in Chinese society and challenges the government's ability to tell its own stories without dispute. The author argues that new media foster online discussion and stimulate public debate of China's accountability and transparency in interacting with domestic and global audiences during crisis communication.


Author(s):  
Nicolá Goc

Throughout the history of journalism the notion of a mother killing her infant child—committing an act of infanticide—has always been high on the news values scale. In the 19th century, sensational news reports of illicit sexual liaisons, of childbirth and grisly murder, appeared regularly in the press, naming and shaming transgressive unmarried women and framing them as a danger to society. These lurid stories were published in broadsheets and the popular press as well as in respectable newspapers, including the most influential English newspaper of the century, The Times of London. In 19th-century England, The Times played a powerful role in influencing public opinion on the issue of infanticide using lurid reports of infanticide trials and coronial inquests as evidence in stirring editorials as part of their political campaign to reform the 1834 New Poor Law and repeal its pernicious Bastardy Clause, which had led to a large increase in rates of infanticide. News texts, because of their ability to capture one view of a society at a given moment in time, are a valuable historical resource and can also provide insight into journalism practices and the creation of public opinion. Infanticide court and coronial news reports provided details of the desperate murderous actions of young women and also furnished potent evidence of legal and government policy failures. The use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) in studying infanticide reports in The Times provides insight into the ways in which infanticide news stories worked as ideological texts and how journalists created understandings about illegitimacy, the “fallen woman,” infanticide, social injustice, and discriminatory gendered laws through news discourse.


2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 2126-2164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Cagé ◽  
Nicolas Hervé ◽  
Marie-Luce Viaud

Abstract News production requires investment, and competitors’ ability to appropriate a story may reduce a media’s incentives to provide original content. Yet, there is little legal protection of intellectual property rights in online news production, which raises the issue of the extent of copying online and the incentives to provide original content. In this article, we build a unique dataset combining all the online content produced by French news media during the year 2013 with new micro audience data. We develop a topic detection algorithm that identifies each news event, trace the timeline of each story, and study news propagation. We provide new evidence on online news production. First, we document high reactivity of online media: one quarter of the news stories are reproduced online in under 4 min. We show that this is accompanied by substantial copying, both at the extensive and at the intensive margins, which may constitute a severe threat to the commercial viability of the news media. Next, we estimate the returns to originality in online news production. Using article-level variations and media-level daily audience combined with article-level social media statistics, we find that original content producers tend to receive more viewers, thereby mitigating the newsgathering incentive problem raised by copying.


2015 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 14-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kristina Birnbrauer ◽  
Dennis Owen Frohlich ◽  
Debbie Treise

West Nile Virus (WNV) has been reported as one of the worst epidemics in US history. This study sought to understand how WNV news stories were framed and how risk information was portrayed from its 1999 arrival in the US through the year 2012. The authors conducted a quantitative content analysis of online news articles obtained through Google News ( N = 428). The results of this analysis were compared to the CDC’s ArboNET surveillance system. The following story frames were identified in this study: action, conflict, consequence, new evidence, reassurance and uncertainty, with the action frame appearing most frequently. Risk was communicated quantitatively without context in the majority of articles, and only in 2006, the year with the third-highest reported deaths, was risk reported with statistical accuracy. The results from the analysis indicated that at-risk communities were potentially under-informed as accurate risks were not communicated. This study offers evidence about how disease outbreaks are covered in relation to actual disease surveillance data.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Skye C Cooley ◽  
Ethan C Stokes

This study aims to better understand how various Russian news outlets present stories pertaining to Russia’s recent economic downturn and future economic outlook. This study analysed over 1500 Russian broadcast TV and online news stories. Among its major findings are the following: (1) calls for Russia to diversify its economy by accelerating trade agreements and cooperation with Eurasian Economic Union and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations, (2) presenting China as critical to Russia’s economic future, (3) presenting Russia’s economy as strong due to natural resources and (4) framing the United States negatively by calling for strategies to counter Western economic sanctions. Strategic and policy implications are discussed at length.


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