Experts in the News: The Differential Use of Sources in Election Television News

2010 ◽  
Vol 35 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Ann Cross
Keyword(s):  
Television News ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
News Sources ◽  
News Discourse ◽  
Political Entrepreneurs ◽  
Grand Public ◽  
Television Coverage ◽  
Source Use ◽  
Election News

ABSTRACT This article examines the use of news sources in mainstream television coverage of a Canadian election and considers these findings within the context of broader studies on the significance and role of sources in election news. Using content analysis, it considers the type, nature, and functions of sources in election reporting and pays particular attention to the competing theories of the use of sources in news discourse. Through a review of the type, length, and frequency of sources, a more media-centric theory of source use emerges. It is suggested that rather than “primary definers” or “political entrepreneurs,” sources often function as mere “symbolic representations” of an already framed story in election discourse.RÉSUMÉ Cet article examine l’utilisation de sources à la télévision grand public lors d’une élection canadienne, puis considère les résultats de cet examen dans le contexte plus large d’une étude de la signification et du rôle des sources dans les reportages électoraux. L’article recourt à l’analyse de contenu pour recenser le type, la nature et les fonctions des sources dans les nouvelles et porte une attention particulière à certaines théories contrastantes sur le recours aux sources dans les discours de l’actualité. En passant en revue le type, la durée et la fréquence des sources, l’article formule une théorie centrée sur les médias. Il suggère que, plutôt que « définisseurs primaires » ou « entrepreneurs politiques », les sources sont souvent de simples « représentations symboliques » d’une histoire déjà encadrée dans les discours électoraux.

Old-Growth Forests on Network News: News Sources and the Framing of An Environmental Controversy

1996 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carol M. Liebler ◽  
Jacob Bendix
Keyword(s):  
Television News ◽  
Network News ◽  
The Other ◽  
Old Growth ◽  
News Stories ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Old Growth Forest ◽  
Environmental Controversy ◽  
Source Use ◽  
Two Sides

The old-growth forest debate involves two sides (“procut” and “prosave”) presenting competing views of the issue. Television news stories may reflect one or the other of these frames through (1) choice of sources, (2) choice of visuals, and (3) reporter's summary remarks. We examined four years of coverage on ABC, CBS, and NBC, and found that while the distribution of visuals was inconclusive, source use and reporter wrap-ups predominantly reflected the procut frame. This may be because the procut frame emphasized an unambiguous conflict that was more amenable to brief explanations.

scholarly journals Teacher Orchestration of Language and Gesture in Explaining Science Concepts in Images

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thu Ngo ◽  
Len Unsworth ◽  
Michele Herrington
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
High School Students ◽  
Senior High School ◽  
School Students ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Cell Components ◽  
Diagram Comprehension ◽  
Senior High School Students

AbstractStudents’ difficulties interpreting diagrams remain a concern in science education. Research about improving diagram comprehension has included few studies of teachers’ orchestration of language and gesture in explaining diagrams—and very few in senior high schools. Research with younger students and studies of research scientists’ practice indicate the significance of the interaction of teachers’ gesture and language in explaining visualisations. The strategic deployment of such teacher-focussed authoritative explanations has been observed in facilitating progression to more complex and symbolic representations in classroom work. However, the paucity of such research in senior high school leaves open the question of how these teachers use gesture and language in managing the challenges of explaining the intricate sub-microscopic and abstract visualisations senior high school students need to negotiate. In this paper, we outline existing studies of teachers’ use of gesture and language to explain complex images in senior high school and investigate how it is managed by two biology teachers with images of different types and complexity representing the activity of certain cell components in the early phase of cell duplication. Implications are drawn for foci of further research including the role of a metalanguage describing different types of visualisations and their affordances.

scholarly journals The role of cultural practices in the emergence of modern human intelligence

2008 ◽  
Vol 363 (1499) ◽  
pp. 2011-2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edwin Hutchins
Keyword(s):  
Embodied Cognition ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Human Activities ◽  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Symbolic Representations ◽  
High Level ◽  
Human Brains

Innate cognitive capacities are orchestrated by cultural practices to produce high-level cognitive processes. In human activities, examples of this phenomenon range from everyday inferences about space and time to the most sophisticated reasoning in scientific laboratories. A case is examined in which chimpanzees enter into cultural practices with humans (in experiments) in ways that appear to enable them to engage in symbol-mediated thought. Combining the cultural practices perspective with the theories of embodied cognition and enactment suggests that the chimpanzees' behaviour is actually mediated by non-symbolic representations. The possibility that non-human primates can engage in cultural practices that give them the appearance of symbol-mediated thought opens new avenues for thinking about the coevolution of human culture and human brains.

Television news is government news in Taiwan patterns of television news sources selection and presentation

1994 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ven‐Hwei Lo ◽  
Jei‐Cheng Cheng ◽  
Chin‐Chuan Lee
Keyword(s):  
Television News ◽  
News Sources

scholarly journals Buses from nowhere: television and anti-busing activism in 1970s urban America

Urban History ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 643-643
Author(s):  
MATT DELMONT
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Television News ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Vice President ◽  
Board Of Education ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
School Buses ◽  
Urban America ◽  
School Superintendent ◽  
Television Coverage

ABSTRACT‘Busing’, in which students were transported by school buses to achieve court-ordered or voluntary school desegregation, became one of the nation's most controversial civil rights issues in the decades after Brown vs. Board of Education (1954). Focusing on Florida Governor Claude Kirk and Pontiac housewife activist Irene McCabe, this essay examines how busing opponents turned the conventions of television news – its emphasis on newsworthy events and crisis; its selective use of historical context; and its nominal political neutrality – to their advantage, staging television friendly protests that positioned mothers and children as victims of activist judges and federal bureaucrats, and framed their support for segregated neighbourhoods and schools in the colour-blind rhetoric of homeowners’ rights. For politicians who aspired to the national stage, like Florida Governor Claude Kirk, busing offered a recognizable issue on which to take a stand. When Kirk protested court-ordered busing by suspending a local school board in Manatee County (Bradenton, Florida) and appointing himself school superintendent, he was not only appealing to Florida voters but also to television viewers in cities like Nashville, St Louis and Seattle, many of whom wrote to convey their support. When Vice-President Spiro Agnew complained that television network news ‘can elevate men from obscurity to national prominence within a week’, he was referring to Black Power author and activist Stokely Carmichael, but television news also propelled grassroots anti-busing activists like Irene McCabe to national prominence. McCabe, who staged a widely covered six-week march from Pontiac to Washington DC to protest busing, made frequent television appearances because networks deemed her newsworthy, not necessarily because newscasters agreed with her politics. Repeated television coverage turned relatively minor busing battles in Bradenton and Pontiac into national news and established Kirk and McCabe as icons of busing opposition in the early 1970s.

scholarly journals News Media Exposure and Political Communication among Libyan Elites at the Time of War

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 330-339
Author(s):  
Abdul-Karim Ziani ◽  
Mokhtar Elareshi ◽  
Khalid Al-Jaber
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Political Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Political Awareness ◽  
Highly Educated ◽  
News Sources ◽  
The Media

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.

The portrayal of elderly men and women in Hungarian television news programmes

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
Gábor Kovács ◽  
Petra Aczél ◽  
Tamás Bokor
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Elderly People ◽  
Television News ◽  
Age Groups ◽  
Older Men ◽  
Comparison Theory ◽  
Men And Women ◽  
Qualitative Variables ◽  
Older Men And Women

Abstract Mass media research on the portrayal of older people has primarily focused on television series and advertisements. News programmes on television have received little attention. We argue that viewers perceive characters on the news as more direct and more accurate representations of social reality than fictional characters, and therefore portrayals on the news are more likely to be integrated in viewers’ stereotypes about elderly people or used as standards of comparison. In order to explore potential differences in the representation of senior men and women, we conducted a quantitative content analysis on a sample of 754 elderly people who appeared on the evening news programmes of four major Hungarian television channels with high viewership. Each character was coded in terms of 115 qualitative variables. Our results indicate that older men are portrayed significantly more often than women as affluent, elegant, knowledgeable, powerful and actively working. By contrast, women are more commonly shown as kind, family-oriented, in ordinary roles (e.g. as the ‘woman in the street’) and engaged in less-productive activities such as shopping. Based on previous research on the role of mass media in the socialisation process as well as social comparison theory, we discuss how these imbalances in the representation of older men and women may affect viewers of different age groups, genders and social status.

Television News and the Making of the Boston Busing Crisis

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 218-234
Author(s):  
Matthew Delmont
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Television News ◽  
School Desegregation ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Department Of Health ◽  
Local Television News ◽  
Production Techniques ◽  
History Of ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Television Coverage

People outside of Boston came to know and care about the city’s “busing crisis” because television news featured the story regularly and this essay examines how television news framed this story for national audiences. This essay illuminates the production techniques of a medium that framed the “busing crisis” in Boston for millions of national viewers. First, I examine how the television coverage of Boston busing in the mid-1970s focused on reports, analysis, and predictions regarding antibusing protests and violence. This day-to-day focus on current and emergent scenes of crisis ignored the history of desegregation efforts since the 1960s, including those that received television coverage in earlier years, like the community-funded Operation Exodus program to bus black children to schools in other neighborhoods and the U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare’s suspension of federal school aid to Boston for violating the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Second, I consider how television news framed the use of force in the Boston busing story. Much of the footage from Boston focused on confrontations between antibusing protestors and authorities from the Boston Police and other law enforcement. Third, I look at how television news offered viewers background reports on two of the places at the center of the busing story, South Boston and Charlestown. Finally, I analyze how local television news programs in other cities presented busing in Boston as a failed policy and regularly replayed the archived footage from Boston to underscore efforts to educate viewers on the importance of upholding the law and avoiding violence. Boston was neither the first nor the last city to witness violent resistance to school desegregation, but extensive television news coverage fixed Boston as the emblematic busing crisis and shaped popular conceptions of the history of busing for school desegregation.

New Technologies, Old Practices: The Conservative Revolution in Communication Between Reporters and News Sources in the Israeli Press

2005 ◽  
Vol 82 (3) ◽  
pp. 552-570 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zvi Reich
Keyword(s):  
Relative Stability ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Communication Technologies ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Daily Press ◽  
Conservative Revolution ◽  
Physical Presence ◽  
Before And After

The study explores to what extent new communication technologies have played a revolutionizing role in the ways in which news reporters acquire information. Reporters reconstructed how they used different technologies in order to obtain each of their sampled items, both before and after the introduction of new communication technologies into the Israeli daily press. Changes appear to be minor. Reporters continued to contact sources directly, negotiate their versions orally, and use technologies to replace physical presence at news scenes and face-to-face interviews. This relative stability might reflect the fact that, in the interplay between forces for continuity (represented by the ongoing patterns of newswork) and forces for change (suggested by the new technologies), the role of the former has been dominant.

News media and perceptions of police: a state-of-the-art-review

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-225 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa M. Graziano
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Television News ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Consumption ◽  
Content Type ◽  
High Profile ◽  
Causal Pathways ◽  
Meta Review ◽  
Perceptions Of Police

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of the literature examining the role of news media consumption and awareness in shaping public attitudes about police.Design/methodology/approachA comprehensive, systematic search of multiple academic databases (e.g. EBSCO Host) was undertaken, supplemented by the use of Google Scholar to search among journals indicated as having cited the articles found in the databases.FindingsA total of 42 studies were identified that met the selection criteria for this meta-review and examined exposure to high-profile incidents involving police, awareness of negative news coverage of police, and/or consumption of specific news mediums (e.g. newspapers). Overall, research supports a relationship between negative perceptions of police and both exposure to high-profile incidents and awareness of negative coverage. Some support for the influence of consuming television news on attitudes exists, but more research is needed on the role of different news sources in shaping perceptions. Future research should also include determining causal pathways and how news about police is selected.Originality/valueThis is the first meta-review of the research examining how news media and attitudes about police are related. This study will provide a useful resource for those researchers wishing to continue to examine different aspects of news media consumption as a predictor of perceptions.

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