scholarly journals Content of Hindi and English Television News Channels: The Journalists’ Perspective

Author(s):  
Amit Kumar ◽  
Poonam Gaur

<p>The news is not just an ordinary media product, especially in a democracy. It plays a very crucial role in engaging common people in democratic processes. Television news media plays a vital role in shaping the public opinion which is very important in any democracy. As a result, the content of television news channels has been the topic of serious discussion and research among journalists and academics. This study employed a qualitative approach to reveal the perspectives of working journalists on the different aspects of the content of Hindi and English television news channels.</p><p><strong> </strong></p>

2018 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 639-656 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Cushion

The news media are often accused of reporting politics in a too narrow and consensual way, excluding certain perspectives and issues that might better reflect the public’s agenda. This study lends weight to this argument by not only demonstrating the party political focus of UK election coverage but also in the misleading way public opinion was, at times, represented. Analysing 6647 items and/or stories in the largest ever content analysis study of 4613 sources across five first- and second-order election campaigns in the United Kingdom, it comprehensively tracks how citizens and journalists appear in television news, as well as developing a finely grained, qualitative assessment of how public opinion was represented during the 2017 election campaign. Overall, the study found that political parties received the most amount of airtime, but in some election campaigns members of the public appeared in coverage more often than politicians. However, they were mostly granted limited airtime to articulate their views in vox pops. During the 2017 election campaign, the study found the editorial construction of public opinion in vox pops and live journalistic two-ways was shaped by a relatively narrow set of assumptions made by political journalists about the public’s ideological views rather than consulting more objective measures of public opinion. So, for example, voters were portrayed as favouring more right- than left-wing policies despite evidence to the contrary. The use of citizens as sources is theorised as serving the pre-conceived narratives of journalists rather than reflecting a representative picture of public opinion. The study reinforces and advances academic debates about journalists and citizen-source interactions. More accurately engaging with people’s concerns, it is concluded, will help move broadcasters beyond the narrow set of assumptions that typically serve their narratives of political coverage.


Author(s):  
Julie Firmstone

Editorial journalism and newspapers’ editorial opinions represent an area of research that can make an important contribution to our understanding of the relationship between the press and politics. Editorials are a distinctive format and are the only place in a newspaper where the opinions of a paper as an organization are explicitly represented. Newspapers and the journalists who write editorials play a powerful role in constructing political debate in the public sphere. They use their editorial voice to attempt to influence politics either indirectly, through reaching public opinion, or directly, by targeting politicians. Editorial journalism is at its most persuasive during elections, when newspapers traditionally declare support for candidates and political parties. Despite the potential of editorial opinions to influence democratic debate, and controversy over the way newspapers and their proprietors use editorials to intervene in politics, editorial journalism is under-researched. Our understanding of the significance of this distinctive form of journalism can be better understood by exploring four key themes. First, asking “What is editorial journalism?” establishes the context of editorial journalism as a unique practice with opinion-leading intentions. Several characteristics of editorial journalism distinguish it from other formats and genres. Editorials (also known as leading articles) require a distinctive style and form of expression, occupy a special place in the physical geography of a newspaper, represent the collective institutional voice of a newspaper rather than that of an individual, have no bylines in the majority of countries, and are written with differing aims and motivations to news reports. The historical development of journalism explains the status of editorials as a distinctive form of journalism. Professional ideals and practices evolved to demand objectivity in news reporting and the separation of fact from opinion. Historically, editorial and advocacy journalism share an ethos for journalism that endeavors to effect social or political change, yet editorial journalism is distinctive from other advocacy journalism practices in significant ways. Editorials are also an integral part of the campaign journalism practiced by some newspapers. Second, research and approaches in the field of political communication have attributed a particularly powerful role to editorial journalism. Rooted in the effects tradition, researchers have attributed an important role to editorials in informing and shaping debate in the public sphere in four ways: (1) as an influence on readers, voters, and/or public opinion; (2) as an influence on the internal news agendas and coverage of newspapers; (3) as an influence on the agendas and coverage in other news media; and (4) as an influence on political or policy agendas. Theorizing newspapers as active and independent political actors in the political process further underpins the need to research editorial journalism. Third, editorial journalism has been overlooked by sociological studies of journalism practices. Research provides a limited understanding of the routines and practices of editorial journalists and the organization of editorial opinion at newspapers. Although rare, studies focusing on editorial journalism show that editorial opinion does not simply reflect the influence of proprietors, as has often been assumed. Rather, editorial opinions are shaped by a complex range of factors. Finally, existing research trajectories and current developments point to new challenges and opportunities for editorial journalism. These challenges relate to how professional norms respond to age-old questions about objectivity, bias, and partisanship in the digital age.


2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 276-303 ◽  
Author(s):  
Orsolya Putz

The peace Treaty of Trianon, which was signed by the representatives of Hungary and the Allies in 1920, caused substantial economic, political and social changes in the life of the Hungarian nation. The paper explores how far these changes have been conceptualized by conceptual metaphors in Hungarian public discourse from 1920 to the present day. Specifically, it looks at whether there is a conventionalized metaphoric conceptual system concerning the treaty, which began (or was current) in 1920 and has been developing for almost a hundred years. The paper applies a qualitative approach to a small corpus of written texts. The corpus contains twenty texts, which are taken from four different categories of public discourse (political, academic, informative and media) and four time periods (1920–1945, 1945–1990, 1990–2010, and 2010–2015). The paper concludes that, within the public discourse on the consequences of the Trianon peace treaty, the same metaphors have fundamentally survived over nine decades. This conceptual history of metaphors suggests heavy conventionalization, which can play a crucial role in the survival of a certain mental image of the nation and in maintaining negative emotions about the treaty. It also suggests that the Trianon frame is still an essential part of Hungarian national identity.


Childhood ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emiljano Kaziaj ◽  
Sofie Van Bauwel

Children are not considered to be an appropriate audience for news coverage based on their presumed lack of emotional maturity, critical thinking and proper knowledge. This article challenges these views by presenting the opinions of children aged 10–15 who report having watched broadcast news nearly every day. Additionally, the views of adults aged 25–62 are investigated. Children contest to the ways they are being portrayed by the news media and demonstrate their need to be considered as active participants in the public sphere, which is presented by the news media as an exclusive domain for adults.


Author(s):  
Gabriella Sandstig

The news media can both mirror age stereotypes held by the public, as well as contribute to constructing or amplifying them. The first risk group identified in the pandemic was older adults. They are generally not so visible in the media, but during the pandemic, they were in focus. This study analyses to what extent the public agrees with age stereotypes during the COVID-19 pandemic and what characterizes the groups that hold them. Survey data from 04/14/20-06/28/20 on a national sample (6000) of the population of Sweden is used. The results, contrary to the expectation that stereotypes of older adults should dominate the public opinion, rather the stereotype of younger people not distancing themselves enough is the most common. However, the corresponding stereotype of older adults not doing the same is the second most common. In a non-crises situation, the most common stereotype of older adults is that they have poor cognitive abilities. However, this stereotype is rare during the pandemic. The characteristic of the group that agree with the stereotypes are that they are young rather than old. There are also differences by gender, education and residential area, but they vary depending on the specific age stereotype in question.


2021 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Irwansyah ◽  
Ahmad Alvin Ferdian ◽  
Zulfiana Enni Rizqa ◽  
Muzahid Akbar Hayat

The Job Creation Act which was ratified on 5 October 2020 was met with the agitation of rejection in the form of demonstrations in almost all parts of Indonesia. There are many misunderstandings in the interpretation of this law, one of which is the assumption that the law will harm workers and society. This study aims to identify the causes of negative public opinion on the Job Creation Act, what forms of socialization are carried out by the government, and how the public gets information about the law. This research uses a qualitative approach. The data was taken through a questionnaire distributed to 22 respondents who were randomly selected from the Job Creation Act demonstrators in November 2020 in front of the DPRD Building of South Kalimantan Province. The results showed that respondent’s negative opinion on the Job Creation Act was caused by a lack of knowledge about the contents of the law and the lack of government socialization to the public. The strategy that can be taken by the government to create positive public opinion is to involve community groups, students, public figures, religious leaders, community leaders, and influencers as communicants or messengers in the socialization of the Job Creation Act.


2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (2) ◽  
pp. 361-383 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruud Wouters ◽  
Stefaan Walgrave

How do public opinion signals affect political representatives’ opinion formation? To date, we have only limited knowledge about this essential representative process. In this article, we theorize and examine the signaling strength of one type of societal signal: protest. We do so by means of an innovative experiment conducted among Belgian national and regional politicians. Elected officials were exposed to manipulated television news items covering a protest demonstration. Following Tilly’s previously untested WUNC claim, four features of the event were manipulated: the demonstrators’ worthiness, unity, numerical strength, and commitment. We argue that these protest features present elected officials with useful cues about what (a segment of) the public wants. We find that these cues affect elected officials’ beliefs. The salience they attach to the protest issue, the position they take, and their intended actions all change as a consequence of exposure. The size of a protest event (numbers) and whether the protesters agree among themselves (unity) are the most persuasive protest factors. The effects of the protest signals come on top of strong receiver effects. We find no evidence that elected officials’ predispositions moderate the effects of the protest features.


2021 ◽  
Vol 27 (1and2) ◽  
pp. 105-118
Author(s):  
Annisa Nadia Putri Harsa ◽  
Lily El Ferawati Rofil

The 2019 Asrama Papua conflict in Surabaya initiated many discourses on racial discrimination and police brutality towards Papuan students in Indonesia. The question arises as to how the public perceive news framing and its effects on public opinion. This question will be answered by examining reports in the newspapers Kompas (published in Jakarta) and Jubi (Jayapura, Papua) which display quite different thematic and rhetorical structures. As secondary research, this article aims to assess the public opinion on the framing of the incident based on Berger and Luckmann’s Social Construction of Reality. Through qualitative focus group discussion, this study examines people’s perceptions of news media framing and its effect on the shaping of public opinion towards an ethnic minority group. The results show that media framing reinforces a certain idea of public opinion towards minority groups through various factors such as Perspective of Reporting and Depth of Reporting, both of which differ in Kompas and Jubi as a result of differences in their audiences. Differences were also found in such factors as the thematic structure between lens of sympathy and lens of antagonism. Ultimately, this research suggests that the public possess an awareness of news framing, thus giving them the capability to construct their own critical viewpoints towards media and the incident.


2020 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 47
Author(s):  
Ruth M. López

This article addresses television news coverage of the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act of 2010, which would have created a path to legal residency for thousands of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Considering the role that news media play in socially constructing groups of people, through an analysis of English- and Spanish-language evening television news coverage of the DREAM Act of 2010, the author examined discursive practices used to represent undocumented youth in both dehumanizing and humanizing ways. The author discusses the implications of these types of discourses for education policy understanding by the public and education stakeholders.


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