scholarly journals Are Experts (News)Worthy? Balance, Conflict, and Mass Media Coverage of Expert Consensus

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Merkley
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Expert Consensus ◽  
News Production ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Content ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Thematic Context

Overlooked in analyses of why the public often rejects expert consensus is the role of the news media. News coverage of expert consensus on general matters of policy is likely limited as a result of journalists’ emphasis in news production on novelty and drama at the expense of thematic context. News content is also biased towards balance and conflict, which may dilute the persuasiveness of expert consensus. This study presents an automated and manual analysis of over 280,000 news stories on ten issues where there are important elements of agreement among scientists or economists. The analyses show that news content typically emphasizes arguments aligned with positions of expert consensus, rather than providing balance, and only occasionally cites contrarian experts. More troubling is that expert messages related to important areas of agreement are infrequent in news content, and cues signaling the existence of consensus are rarer still.

Climate Change and Sustainability Issues in Indian Newspapers

2020 ◽  
pp. 189-206
Author(s):  
Nirmala Thirumalaiah ◽  
Arul Aram I.
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Human Life ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The Public ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Change Communication ◽  
Regional Newspapers ◽  
The Times

Climate change conferences had wide media coverage – be it on newspaper, radio, television or the internet. The terms such as ‘climate change', ‘global warming', and ‘El Nino' are gaining popularity among the public. This study examines the news coverage of climate change issues in the major daily newspapers—The Times of India, The Hindu in English, and the Dina Thanthi, Dinamalar, and Dinamani in regional language (Tamil)—for the calendar years 2014 and 2015. This chapter describes how climate change influences nature and human life, and it is the basis for social and economic development. The news coverage of climate change and sustainability issues helps the reader better understand the concepts and perspectives of environment. Climate change communication in regional newspapers and local news stories may increase the public's interest and knowledge level regarding climate change and sustainability issues.

Framing the Candidates in Presidential Primaries: Issues and Images in Press Releases and News Coverage

1998 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 312-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Mark Miller ◽  
Julie L. Andsager ◽  
Bonnie P. Riechert
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Press Releases ◽  
Presidential Candidates ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Presidential Primaries ◽  
Computerized Content Analysis ◽  
Elite Newspapers

Media coverage of presidential primaries is crucial to voters, and candidates often complain that news coverage fails to present their positions. This study used computerized content analysis to examine how the 1996 GOP presidential candidates framed themselves in press releases and how elite newspapers covered them. The analysis reveals that (1) candidate images were distinct in press releases and news stories; (2) candidate positions were represented differently in both; and (3) candidates were differentially successful in getting news media to reflect their positions. News media covered substantive concerns that were not included in candidate press releases.

scholarly journals Student Content Analysis of Business News Coverage

10.28945/2544 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine K. Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Critical Thinking ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Local Community ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Business Community ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Business News

Content analysis of media coverage provided a setting for group work, critical thinking, research, and data analysis. The analysis was motivated by a series of news stories that had damaged the reputation of the local community. The question was whether local news coverage was negative toward the business community. A business class addressed the problem and found that articles that business would view as favorable predominated. Based on their research, the class formulated a public relations strategy. Although this setting is a business class, content analysis of news media would work in other classes that emphasize critical thinking and problem solving.

scholarly journals Risk, Stigma, Trustworthiness, and Citizen Participation—A Multifaceted Analysis of Media Coverage of Dioxin Contamination in Midland, Michigan

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (21) ◽  
pp. 4165
Author(s):  
Jie Zhuang ◽  
Jeffrey G. Cox ◽  
Minwoong Chung ◽  
Joseph A. Hamm ◽  
Adam Zwickle ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Citizen Participation ◽  
News Media ◽  
Environmental Protection Agency ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Public ◽  
Local Newspapers ◽  
Dioxin Contamination

In the United States, more than 200 communities are designated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as areas of concern for dioxins. Informing the public about potential risks associated with dioxins and delivering information about how to avoid such risks are essential activities. News coverage of environmental and health problems affects how members of the public assess those problems in terms of both severity and how they are understood, as well as the extent of attention given to the problem by policy-makers. To contextualize public and institutional responses to dioxin contamination and remediation in a dioxin-affected community, we assessed 176 newspaper articles published over 30 years concerning dioxin contamination in Midland, Michigan, in terms of risk, trust in institutions, environmental stigma, and citizen participation. Articles about dioxin contamination and remediation in Midland appeared in both domestic and international newspapers. Domestically, both national and local newspapers covered this issue. The risks for human health and the environment caused by exposure to dioxins were widely covered, with much less media attention given to the trustworthiness of the organizations responsible for managing the risk, environmental stigma, and citizen participation. News coverage of these four themes also changed significantly overtime. Overall, our findings highlight the important role of local news media in communicating risk information, guiding safe behaviors, and facilitating community-level decision-making.

The Battle over Marriage

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leigh Moscowitz
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Gay Rights ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Gay Marriage ◽  
Public Image ◽  
Gay And Lesbian ◽  
Ballot Initiatives ◽  
News Stories

Over the past decade, the controversial issue of gay marriage has emerged as a primary battle in the culture wars and a definitive social issue of our time. The subject moved to the forefront of mainstream public debate in 2004, when San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom began authorizing same-sex marriage licenses, and it has remained in the forefront through three presidential campaigns and numerous state ballot initiatives. This book examines how prominent news outlets presented this issue from 2003 to 2012, a time when intense news coverage focused unprecedented attention on gay and lesbian life. During this time, gay rights leaders sought to harness the power of news media to advocate for marriage equality and to reform their community's public image. Building on in-depth interviews with gay rights activists and a comprehensive, longitudinal study of news stories, this book investigates these leaders' aims and how their frames, tactics, and messages evolved over time. In the end, media coverage of the gay marriage debate both aided and undermined the cause. Media exposure gave activists a platform to discuss gay and lesbian families. But it also triggered an upsurge in opposing responses and pressured activists to depict gay life in a way calculated to appeal to heterosexual audiences. Ultimately, this book reveals both the promises and the limitations of commercial media as a route to social change.

Covid-19, Media Reporting, and the Role of Bioethicists

2021 ◽  
Vol 66 (Special Issue) ◽  
pp. 137-138
Author(s):  
Federico Nicoli ◽  
◽  
Paul J. Cummins ◽  
Joseph A. Raho ◽  
◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
The Other ◽  
Scientific Uncertainty ◽  
Media Reporting ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Media ◽  
The U.S

"In the aftermath of the 2014 Ebola outbreak, media coverage was scrutinized for sensationalism, weakness in explaining scientific uncertainty, dehumanization of patients, and lack of contextualization. The current COVID-19 crisis presents an opportunity to assess whether the media learned its lesson. Results are mixed. Early reporting on the origin of COVID-19 in “wet markets” indicates that the media continues to do poorly with contextualization. On the other hand, stories on mortality and the infectiousness of COVID-19 indicate there has been improvement. The situation remains fluid as COVID-19 threatens to transform into a pandemic at the time of submission. Data from new countries may alter the reported rates of lethality and infectiousness, and media reporting on these changes may or may not be responsible. The explosion of social media, as a medium to promote reporting, could provide bioethicists a tool to direct the public to reliable stories and criticize inaccurate ones. Using a bioethics perspective, this poster will critically evaluate the quality of U.S. and Italian news media’s reporting on the evolving scientific understanding of COVID-19 and its contextualization. The presentation will employ QR technology to provide links to media coverage of COVID-19 from the U.S. and Italian news media. After critically appraising the quality of COVID-19 reporting, this poster will consider if bioethicists: 1) should provide comment to the media on pandemics; 2) should correct reporting for the public and 3) have a duty to publicly criticize sensationalism in the media. "

scholarly journals Invisible Women? Comparing Candidates’ News Coverage in Europe

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
pp. 223-253 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maarja Lühiste ◽  
Susan Banducci
Keyword(s):  
Gender Bias ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Underrepresentation Of Women

Past studies, largely based on the United States, have argued that differential coverage of men and women candidates could explain the lack of women in elected political office. We investigate, first, whether a gender bias exists in coverage of candidates and, second, the possible mechanisms underlying any differences in the amount and tone of candidates’ news media coverage. Using data from the 2009 European Election Study Media Analysis, drawn from media coverage in 25 EU member states during the European Parliament election campaigns, we find that, similar to previous research, there is evidence of a gender gap in the amount of media coverage. Even for highly prominent and competitive candidates, the gender bias in media coverage remains. However, this bias in media coverage largely reflects the parties’ preselection of viable candidates and that where there are remedies in place to address the underrepresentation of women (i.e., quotas), women candidates actually have lower visibility in campaign coverage. We also find that, though women candidates are more often the subject of valence evaluations in news stories, male candidates are more negatively evaluated in news stories.

scholarly journals The AI doctor will see you now: assessing the framing of AI in news coverage

AI & Society ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mercedes Bunz ◽  
Marco Braghieri
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Hippocratic Oath ◽  
Healthcare Sector ◽  
Medical Expert ◽  
Data Set ◽  
The Public ◽  
New Development

AbstractOne of the sectors for which Artificial Intelligence applications have been considered as exceptionally promising is the healthcare sector. As a public-facing sector, the introduction of AI applications has been subject to extended news coverage. This article conducts a quantitative and qualitative data analysis of English news media articles covering AI systems that allow the automation of tasks that so far needed to be done by a medical expert such as a doctor or a nurse thereby redistributing their agency. We investigated in this article one particular framing of AI systems and their agency: the framing that positions AI systems as (1a) replacing and (1b) outperforming the human medical expert, and in which (2) AI systems are personified and/or addressed as a person. The analysis of our data set consisting of 365 articles written between the years 1980 and 2019 will show that there is a tendency to present AI systems as outperforming human expertise. These findings are important given the central role of news coverage in explaining AI and given the fact that the popular frame of ‘outperforming’ might place AI systems above critique and concern including the Hippocratic oath. Our data also showed that the addressing of an AI system as a person is a trend that has been advanced only recently and is a new development in the public discourse about AI.

scholarly journals The Role of the Media in the Propagation of the Terrorist Agenda

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Goodman ◽  
Shane Warren ◽  
Robyn Jolly ◽  
Maggie Norton
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Psychological Impact ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Kenneth Burke ◽  
The Public ◽  
Terror Attacks ◽  
National Leaders ◽  
The Media ◽  
High Level

The thesis of this paper is that jihadists are using terror as a propaganda weapon to create a high level of fear among the public around the world, a level above the actual threat. We believe the media and national leaders enhance the effectiveness of the jihadists' propaganda in the ways they present terror attacks. Previous research indicates that horrific events, whether created by humans or the result of nature, leave a lasting psychological impact on the victims. We show a psychological link by victims of the Mumbai attack seven years ago and the Paris attacks in November of 2015. We argue that the psychological impact may be caused when the cultural signifiers of terror result in a meaning abyss because most people do not have signifieds that readily link to brutal terrorists' signifiers. What Derrida described as the abyss occurs when acts of brutality create panic and chaos because most people do not know assign signifieds-- i.e., meanings-- to the brutality. Kenneth Burke critiqued Mein Kampf by explaining how Adolph Hitler had used god terms and evil terms to create ideological agreement with Hitler's concept that the Aryan race was being undermined by a Jewish conspiracy. We examine how the news media coverage of nine terrorist attacks invoked god terms and evil terms in their description of the terror created by the jihadists. Further, we looked for chaos terms, which are terms that describe such inhumane acts of terror that people do not have existing signifieds to translate those acts into meaning. Not only did we find that chaos terms in the news coverage, as well as the god terms and evil terms, but we also found chaos terms used by world leaders. We draw the conclusion that both the media and world leaders contribute to the propaganda impact of jihadists attacks by using chaos terms.

Intermedia Agenda Setting in Business News Coverage

2014 ◽  
pp. 335-357 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew W. Ragas
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Business News ◽  
Intermedia Agenda Setting ◽  
Proxy Contests ◽  
Practical Implications

While business news coverage has risen around the world in recent decades, scholarly research into this area has been limited. Scholarship on media coverage of public affairs topics has generally found that coverage patterns converge across news media outlets. This study probes for evidence of intermedia agenda setting among seven elite business news outlets in their coverage of transformational events: corporate proxy contests. The results find that the amount of news stories each outlet devoted to coverage of 25 large proxy contests in the U.S. stock market over a five-year period was highly similar. Intermedia convergence across this news content was also found to a lesser extent regarding issue and stakeholder salience but not, for the most part, with peripheral media favorability. This moderate overall overlap in coverage across media outlets suggests that the notion of a complementary media agenda remains largely intact. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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