scholarly journals Optimal Dynamic Allocation of Attention

2019 ◽  
Vol 109 (8) ◽  
pp. 2993-3029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yeon-Koo Che ◽  
Konrad Mierendorff
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Learning Strategy ◽  
Limited Attention ◽  
Dynamic Allocation ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source ◽  
Current Belief ◽  
Optimal Dynamic ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Chamber Effect

We consider a decision maker (DM) who, before taking an action, seeks information by allocating her limited attention dynamically over different news sources that are biased toward alternative actions. Endogenous choice of information generates rich dynamics: the chosen news source either reinforces or weakens the prior, shaping subsequent attention choices, belief updating, and the final action. The DM adopts a learning strategy biased toward the current belief when the belief is extreme and against that belief when it is moderate. Applied to consumption of news media, observed behavior exhibits an “ echo-chamber” effect for partisan voters and a novel “ anti-echo-chamber” effect for moderates. (JEL D72, D83, D91, L82)

News Sources and Framing of Responsibility on Devolution in Kenya, 2013–2017

2022 ◽  
pp. 107769902110665
Author(s):  
Jimmy Ochieng
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Newspaper Coverage ◽  
Attribution Of Responsibility ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source ◽  
Official Sources

The present research examines two aspects of newspaper coverage of devolution during a 4-year period between March 27, 2013, and May 28, 2017: first, through the lens of attribution of responsibility, who the news media most blamed for problems facing devolution; second, whether reliance on official sources in reporting of devolution mirrors the indexing hypothesis. Findings show that the most-blamed actor and dominant news source on devolution is the county executive. Journalists continue to rely on the elite as their main news source and as a result they shape the discourse on devolution.

scholarly journals Social Studies Teacher Perceptions of News Source Credibility

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
Christopher H. Clark ◽  
Mardi Schmeichel ◽  
H. James Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Social Studies ◽  
Teacher Perceptions ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Social Studies Teachers ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Secondary Social Studies ◽  
News Source ◽  
News Credibility

Politically tumultuous times have created a problematic space for teachers who include the news in their classrooms. Few studies have explored perceptions of news credibility among secondary social studies teachers, the educators most likely to regularly incorporate news media into their classrooms. We investigated teachers’ operational definitions of credibility and the relationships between political ideology and assessments of news source credibility. Most teachers in this study used either static or dynamic definitions to describe news media sources’ credibility. Further, teachers’ conceptualizations of credibility and perceived ideological differences with news sources were associated with how credible teachers found each source. These results indicate potential inconsistencies in how news credibility is defined and possible political bias in which sources social studies teachers use as exemplars of credibility.

scholarly journals Paying Attention to the Pandemic: Knowledge of COVID-19 Facts by News Source and Demographics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Molly M. King
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
News Media ◽  
Black People ◽  
Logistic Models ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Accurate Knowledge ◽  
News Source ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Access To Knowledge

The structured inequalities built into our sociotechnical institutions shape access to knowledge. During the COVID-19 pandemic, knowledge acquisition was shaped by news sources, class, and race. Through analysis of nationally representative data using logistic models, this study reveals how the use of different news sources differentially shapes access to accurate knowledge about COVID-19 topics for different demographics. Those who rely on informal and local news sources have the largest knowledge gaps about these topics, while those who seek information from national or international news outlets and politicians have the most accurate knowledge. Race and class influence knowledge of government operations, public health, and science of COVID-19. In particular, Black people, people with less education, and those with lower incomes are significantly less likely to have accurate knowledge about COVID-19, all else equal. These findings have implications for knowledge dissemination that impacts public health, as well as for how news media target different audiences in an increasingly fractured landscape.

Framing cooperation among regional economic powers: The South in global spheres of influence

2016 ◽  
Vol 78 (8) ◽  
pp. 755-776 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sujatha Sosale ◽  
Tania Cantrell Rosas-Moreno
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
News Media ◽  
The South ◽  
Regional Economic ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Spheres Of Influence ◽  
News Source ◽  
Media Research ◽  
The Relationship

This study examined the coverage of the trilateral commission of India, Brazil, and South Africa (IBSA) in the national press of these three countries over a 6-year period. Even though this group has pre-dated the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa (BRICS) group and shares an affinity from political and economic standpoints, it has received little attention in media research. The goal of the study was to understand how news media framed the relationship among the IBSA member nations, and their individual and collective policy stances to their citizens. Each news source emphasized different areas of the cooperation; all three news sources expressed faith in IBSA to varying degrees, but also kept a close eye on the more recently formed BRICS. In sum, this study offers an exploratory view of cooperation among emerging regional economic powers located across and lobbying for the South in contemporary global spheres of influence.

scholarly journals Testing popular news discourse on the “echo chamber” effect: Does political polarisation occur among those relying on social media as their primary politics news source?

First Monday ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
An Nguyen ◽  
Hong Tien Vu
Keyword(s):  
Online Social Networks ◽  
Secondary Analysis ◽  
Traditional Media ◽  
Political News ◽  
Political Beliefs ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
News Source ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Beliefs And Attitudes ◽  
Chamber Effect

Since 2016, online social networks (OSNs), especially their “big data” algorithms, have been intensively blamed in popular news discourse for acting as echo chambers. These chambers entrap like-minded voters in closed ideological circles that cause serious damage to democratic processes. This study examines this “echo chamber” argument through the rather divisive case of EU politics among EU citizens. Based on an exploratory secondary analysis of the Eurobarometer 86.2 survey dataset, we investigate whether the reliance on OSNs as a primary EU political news source can lead people to more polarisation in EU-related political beliefs and attitudes than a reliance on traditional media. We found little evidence for this polarisation, lending credence to a rejection of social media’s “echo chamber” effect.

More top-down than peer-to-peer: talking to Australians about their ideal news source

2019 ◽  
Vol 175 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-123
Author(s):  
Sacha Molitorisz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Public Interest ◽  
News Media ◽  
The United States ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Digital Platforms ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source

In Australia as in the United States, levels of trust in news media remain alarmingly low. In four qualitative workshops held in 2018 in Sydney and Tamworth, 34 participants discussed the ways they access news, their relationship with news media, and how trust might be rebuilt. We also tested the hypothesis that Australians want news sources that are more peer-to-peer and ‘like a friend’. Emphatically, participants said they don’t want news sources to be like a friend. Instead, they want accuracy, objectivity and service of the public interest. One interpretation is that our participants clearly distinguish between news sources (the ABC, News Corp, etc.) and digital platforms (Facebook, Google, etc.). Furthermore, it would appear they expect news sources and digital platforms to play different roles and follow different standards: the former should adhere to traditional journalistic values; whereas no clear picture emerged of the role and standards that participants think should apply to the latter.

scholarly journals Examining the relationship between trust and online usage of news media

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Kathryn Yaeger
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
News Media ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Source ◽  
News Organizations ◽  
Financial Impacts ◽  
The Relationship

This study tests the relationship between overall trust and online usage of 35 popular United States news sources. Trust of news media, currently at its lowest percentage in Gallup's 45-year polling history, has both brand and financial impacts; as news organizations employ strategies to rebuild trust, knowing the relationship between trust and usage can help them measure the effectiveness of their efforts. A series of regression models using three months of pooled cross-sectional data of trust measures from the Pew Research Center and usage measures from ComScore found a positive, statistically significant relationship between trust and direct traffic, but it found no association between trust and frequent usage. When testing how additional variables moderated the relationship between trust and frequent traffic, the study found no evidence that having a multiplatform presence or political ideology impacted the relationship. It found evidence in one month that being a mainstream news source could impact this relationship, but results are overall inconclusive.

scholarly journals Echo chamber detection and analysis

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Giacomo Villa ◽  
Gabriella Pasi ◽  
Marco Viviani
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Community Detection ◽  
Virtual Communities ◽  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Social Needs ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Detection Strategy ◽  
Echo Chambers ◽  
Echo Chamber ◽  
Content Aware

AbstractSocial media allow to fulfill perceived social needs such as connecting with friends or other individuals with similar interests into virtual communities; they have also become essential as news sources, microblogging platforms, in particular, in a variety of contexts including that of health. However, due to the homophily property and selective exposure to information, social media have the tendency to create distinct groups of individuals whose ideas are highly polarized around certain topics. In these groups, a.k.a. echo chambers, people only "hear their own voice,” and divergent visions are no longer taken into account. This article focuses on the study of the echo chamber phenomenon in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, by considering both the relationships connecting individuals and semantic aspects related to the content they share over Twitter. To this aim, we propose an approach based on the application of a community detection strategy to distinct topology- and content-aware representations of the COVID-19 conversation graph. Then, we assess and analyze the controversy and homogeneity among the different polarized groups obtained. The evaluations of the approach are carried out on a dataset of tweets related to COVID-19 collected between January and March 2020.

scholarly journals Story character, news source or vox pop? Representations and roles of citizen perspectives in crime news narratives

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492199406
Author(s):  
Kobie van Krieken
Keyword(s):  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Inside Information ◽  
Societal Values ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Crime Narratives ◽  
News Source ◽  
Crime News ◽  
Story Character ◽  
News Events ◽  
Over Time

This study analyzes citizen representations in a corpus of 300 Dutch newspaper narratives published between 1860 and 2009. Results show that citizen perspectives are more frequently represented than authority perspectives, although the perspectives of authorities have become somewhat more frequent over time. In-depth analyses of the citizen perspectives show that citizens may fulfil multiple roles in the crime narratives, leading up to a functional typology of citizens as (1) story characters experiencing the news events, (2) news sources providing inside information about the events, and (3) vox pops expressing opinions and evaluations of the events. The variety of citizen perspectives included in crime news narratives and the multitude of roles they fulfill may help audience members to become informed as well as engaged and to explore their personal emotions, which may ultimately reinforce moral, cultural and societal values.

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