Validity and Media-Derived Protest Event Data: Examining Relative Coverage Tendencies in Mexican News Media *

2008 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelley Strawn

This essay engages the debate over the validity of media-derived protest data through an assessment of event coverage for three Mexico news sources. With a focus on "relative"—as opposed to "absolute"—coverage tendencies, it is argued that certain coverage tendencies in news sources can be identified and, in turn, incorporated as controls into more substantive analyses of protest phenomena. Specifically, this analysis finds that that, for the Mexico media, claims that coverage is representative of all protest events is dubious with respect to the overall population of specific events and to the geographic distribution of events. At the same time, it is shown that tendencies driven by regional biases, chronology, event size, event targets, and event issues can be exposed and identified through a simple comparison of the principal media source to one or more others.

Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110070
Author(s):  
Kathryn Shine

Numerous quantitative studies from around the world have found that women are under-represented as sources in news content. This study aims to add to the existing quantitative research by describing female experts’ attitudes about being interviewed as news sources, and their experiences of interacting with journalists. It reports the findings of semi-structured interviews with 30 Australian female academic experts from a broad range of disciplines. Almost all of the women experts in the group were willing to be interviewed by a journalist, and reported that their experiences with the news media had generally been positive. However, they referred to various factors that may act as deterrents. These included a lack of confidence, a reluctance to appear on camera, time constraints and a lack of understanding about how the news media operates. This research provides valuable insights for journalists and editors, and outlines recommendations about how to encourage female participation in the news.


2022 ◽  
pp. 107769902110665
Author(s):  
Jimmy Ochieng

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.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 330-339
Author(s):  
Abdul-Karim Ziani ◽  
Mokhtar Elareshi ◽  
Khalid Al-Jaber

Abstract Many critical questions concerning the relationship between the news media and political knowledge involve the extent to which the media facilitate learning about news, war and politics. Political awareness - via the news media - affects virtually every aspect of citizens’ political attitudes and behaviours. This paper examines how Libyan elites adopt the news media to access news and information regarding the current Libyan war and politics and how they use political communication and new media to build/spread political awareness. With the expansion of private and state-owned television in Libya, concern has grown that these new TV services will survive in providing information about citizens’ interests, including the new, developing political scene. A total of 134 highly educated Libyan professionals completed an online survey, reporting their perceptions of issues covered by national TV services. This account centres on how those elites consume the media and what level of trust they have in the media and in information and what the role of the media in their country should be. The results show that most respondents, especially those who live outside the country, prefer using different Libyan news platforms. However, 50 per cent of these do not trust these channels as a source of information regarding the civil war, associated conflicts and politics in general. They have grown weary of coverage that represents the interests of those who run or own the services and consequently place little trust in the media. Spreading ‘lies as facts’ has affected the credibility of these services. Politically, these respondents wish the media to discuss solutions and act as a force for good, not for division. They also differed in the number and variety of national news sources that they reportedly used. This paper also highlights the role of social media, mobile telephony and the Internet, as well as the rapidly proliferating private and national media. These findings are also discussed in relation to the growing impact of online sources in Libyan society, social and political change and the emergence of new media platforms as new sources of information.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claus Rinner ◽  
Andrew Komaromy ◽  
April Lindgren

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) enable the integration, mapping, and analysis of data across numerous domains. It has been estimated that 80 per cent of all data collected by governments and businesses contain geographic references, and the news media are no exception. We will explain how we conceptualize news items as spatial data points and illustrate how GIS can be used to manage and analyze them using a sample of geographic references from local news items published in the Toronto Star newspaper. The analysis makes use of cartographic mapping for visual analysis of local news distribution and geospatial tools for quantitative–statistical analysis of emerging patterns. The objective of this paper is to illustrate how computer-based mapping tools can be used to analyze the geographic distribution of news in order to identify concentrations and gaps in local news coverage within a given area and thus better understand issues and trends in local news reporting. Keywords : geographic distribution, GIS, local news, spatial point pattern analysis


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Yafei Zhang ◽  
Chuqing Dong

Purpose This study aims to explore multifaceted corporate social responsibility (CSR) covered in popular English newspapers in the UK, USA, mainland China and Hong Kong from 2000 to 2016 via a computer-assisted analytical approach. This study moves the understanding of CSR away from corporate self-reporting to the mass media and raises interesting questions about the role of the news media in presenting CSR as a multifaceted, socially constructed concept. Design/methodology/approach Data were retrieved from CSR-related news articles from 2000 to 2016 that were archived in the LexisNexis database. Guided by the theoretical framework of agenda setting, a computer-assisted content analysis (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) was used to analyze 4,487 CSR-related articles from both business and non-business news sources. Analysis of variance was used to compare salient CSR topics in each country/region. Findings This study identifies newspapers as an alternate to corporations’ attempts to distribute CSR information and construct CSR meaning. The findings revealed that the news communicates a variety of CSR issues that are aligned or beyond what CSR was defined in corporate CSR reporting, as suggested in previous studies. In addition, CSR news coverages differ between the business and nonbusiness news sources. Furthermore, the media tone of CSR coverage significantly differed across the regions and between the business and nonbusiness newspapers. Social implications Emerging topics in CSR news coverage, such as business education, could help companies identify untapped CSR realms in the market. Originality/value This study contributes to CSR communication research by adding a non-corporate perspective regarding what CSR means and should be focused on. The news media presents CSR using a heterogeneous approach as they not only provide surface reports on corporations’ CSR activities but also offer in-depth discussions.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 107
Author(s):  
Devon Thacker Thomas ◽  
Jenny Vermilya

The representation and framing of events by news sources plays a critical role in the way society comes to understand a given phenomenon. For example, the use of force by police officers against civilians is covered regularly by news media outlets. Far less widely examined, however, is the excessive use of force against companion animals or pets. Thus, to understand the ways in which police use of force against animals is framed in the media, we conducted qualitative content analyses of 189 print news articles published in diverse regions of the U.S. over the course of a six-year period (2011–2016). Drawing on symbolic interactionism, analysis reveals that the media’s representation of incidents of police shootings of dogs speaks not only to the social value dogs have in society, but also to the acceptability of friendships between humans and dogs. Specifically, we argue that some dog–human relationships are more socially acceptable than others and, therefore, shootings against some dogs are perceived as less acceptable than others. Ultimately, we find that news media representation and the ways in which incidents are framed reify existent social hierarchies. This research contributes to growing bodies of literature on police violence, the shift in perspectives on animals in society, and the power of the media to affect public perception of incidents.


2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 262-272
Author(s):  
Christopher H. Clark ◽  
Mardi Schmeichel ◽  
H. James Garrett

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.


2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-68
Author(s):  
F. Jeane Gerard ◽  
Norair Khachatryan ◽  
Bethany Browning

Despite the alarming nature of homicides in which the offender meets the victim online, or cyber-initiated homicides, little empirical attention has been devoted to this phenomenon. The present study was designed to explore the behavioral patterns found prior to and during a cyber-initiated homicide event. Data on 61 homicide cases from various countries were collected through news media and legal sources. Smallest space analysis revealed that cyber homicides were characterized by four distinct themes: excessive violence, fatal escalation, crime-related incidents, and predatory behavior. Implications of the findings and avenues for future research are discussed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter M Dahlgren ◽  
Adam Shehata ◽  
Jesper Strömbäck

The growth of partisan news sources has raised concerns that people will increasingly select attitude-consistent information, which might lead to increasing political polarization. Thus far, there is limited research on the long-term mutual influences between selective exposure and political attitudes. To remedy this, this study investigates the reciprocal influences between selective exposure and political attitudes over several years, using a three-wave panel survey conducted in Sweden during 2014–2016. More specifically, we analyse how ideological selective exposure to both traditional and online news media influences citizens’ ideological leaning. Findings suggest that (1) people seek-out ideologically consistent print news and online news and (2) such attitude-consistent news exposure reinforces citizens’ ideological leaning over time. In practice, however, such reinforcement effects are hampered by (3) relatively low overall ideological selective exposure and a (4) significant degree of cross-cutting news exposure online. These findings are discussed in light of selective exposure theory and the reinforcing spirals model.


2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-240 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott J. Cook ◽  
Betsabe Blas ◽  
Raymond J. Carroll ◽  
Samiran Sinha

Media-based event data—i.e., data comprised from reporting by media outlets—are widely used in political science research. However, events of interest (e.g., strikes, protests, conflict) are often underreported by these primary and secondary sources, producing incomplete data that risks inconsistency and bias in subsequent analysis. While general strategies exist to help ameliorate this bias, these methods do not make full use of the information often available to researchers. Specifically, much of the event data used in the social sciences is drawn from multiple, overlapping news sources (e.g., Agence France-Presse, Reuters). Therefore, we propose a novel maximum likelihood estimator that corrects for misclassification in data arising from multiple sources. In the most general formulation of our estimator, researchers can specify separate sets of predictors for the true-event model and each of the misclassification models characterizing whether a source fails to report on an event. As such, researchers are able to accurately test theories on both the causes of and reporting on an event of interest. Simulations evidence that our technique regularly outperforms current strategies that either neglect misclassification, the unique features of the data-generating process, or both. We also illustrate the utility of this method with a model of repression using the Social Conflict in Africa Database.


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