scholarly journals Selected by expertise? Scientific experts in German news coverage on Covid-19 compared to other pandemics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Leidecker-Sandmann ◽  
Patrizia Attar ◽  
Markus Lehmkuhl
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The Political ◽  
Scientific Experts ◽  
Scientific Expertise ◽  
Available Information ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
Selection Of

At the time of the corona pandemic, the population has a great need for information. (Mass) Media try to provide the concerned citizens with answers to their pressing questions with the help of scientific actors and their expert knowledge. Scientific experts serve as an important source of information for journalists and for society. Therefore, it is of particular relevance to examine, which scientific actors are discussing scientific issues related to the Covid-19 pandemic publicly via media coverage. Of particular interest is a look at the scientific expertise of the so-called experts, because the quality of the available information stands and falls with it. Our study describes the journalistic selection of scientific experts in German news coverage on Covid-19 compared to other pandemics. We analyze, which experts get a chance to speak in media coverage, how diverse the spectrum of selected experts is and how their scientific expertise is to be assessed. Our findings show that the Covid-19 coverage is dominated by actors from the political executive and less than in previous pandemics by scientific experts. Further, the Corona debate is characterised by a greater diversity of expert voices than the previous pandemic debates and therefore less concentrated on a few individual scientists only. Further, the journalistic selection of scientific experts is biased in favour of those who have a high scientific expertise. On average, media coverage on the Covid-19 pandemic makes references to more reputable and acknowledged scientific experts compared to earlier pandemics.

Drowning Not Waving: The ‘Children Overboard’ Event and Australia's Fear of the other

2003 ◽  
Vol 109 (1) ◽  
pp. 93-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Slattery
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
National Identities ◽  
Global Village ◽  
Print News ◽  
The People ◽  
Identity Based ◽  
And Migration ◽  
Selection Of

The last few years have been an awakening time for the people, communities and governments of the global village. Escalating problems in the Middle East, global economic uncertainty and an increase in asylum seekers, refugees and migration worldwide have reignited tensions involving boundaries and borders, both geographical and cognitive. One event which highlighted these tensions in Australia, and which was given much media coverage, was the ‘children overboard’ event in October 2001. Utilising a selection of print news coverage of the event, this paper explores how the ‘children overboard’ event demarcated national identities and spaces through the construction and representation of ‘good’ Australian citizens and ‘bad’ asylum seeker ‘others’. Specifically referring to ‘children overboard’ as an ‘event’, I seek to highlight the constructed and representational nature of ‘children overboard’ as a media story and political tool, one which promoted a continuing threat of ‘others’ to the nation in order to gain support for government policy and legitimize national security, and in so doing creating a model of Australian citizenship and identity based upon fear.

scholarly journals Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input – output analysis

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Lehmkuhl ◽  
Nikolai Promies
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Output Analysis ◽  
Input Output Analysis ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Selection Of

Based on the decision-theoretical conditions underlying the selection of events for news coverage in science journalism, this article uses a novel input-output analysis to investigate which of the more than eight million scientific study results published between August 2014 and July 2018 have been selected by global journalism to a relevant degree. We are interested in two different structures in the media coverage of scientific results. Firstly, the structure of sources that journalists use, i.e. scientific journals, and secondly, the congruence of the journalistic selection of single results. Previous research suggests that the selection of sources and results follows a certain heavy-tailed distribution, a power law. Mathematically, this distribution can be described with a function of the form C*x-α. We argue that the exponent of such power law distributions can potentially be an indicator to describe selectivity in journalism on a high aggregation level. In our input-output analysis, we look for such patterns in the coverage of all scientific results published in the database Scopus over four years. To get an estimate of the coverage of these results, we use data from the altmetrics provider Altmetric, more precisely their Mainstream-Media-Score (MSM-Score). Based on exploratory analyses, we define papers with a score of 50 or above as Social Impact Papers (SIPs). Over our study period, we identified 5,833 SIPs published in 1,236 journals. We consider a power law fit with an exponent of about -2 to be plausible for the distribution of the source selection but cannot confirm the power law hypothesis for the distribution of the selection of single results. In this case, an exponentially truncated power law seems to be the better fit.

scholarly journals Smart Parking: A Literature Review from the Technological Perspective

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (21) ◽  
pp. 4569 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jhonattan J. Barriga ◽  
Juan Sulca ◽  
José Luis León ◽  
Alejandro Ulloa ◽  
Diego Portero ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Dioxide Emissions ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
Smart Cities ◽  
High Growth ◽  
Smart Parking ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Source Of Information ◽  
The Internet Of Things ◽  
Selection Of

The development and high growth of the Internet of Things (IoT) have improved quality of life and strengthened different areas in society. Many cities worldwide are looking forward to becoming smart. One of the most popular use cases in smart cities is the implementation of smart parking solutions, as they allow people to optimize time, reduce fuel consumption, and carbon dioxide emissions. Smart parking solutions have a defined architecture with particular components (sensors, communication protocols, and software solutions). Although there are only three components that compose a smart parking solution, it is important to mention that each component has many types that can be used in the deployment of these solutions. This paper identifies the most used types of every component and highlights usage trends in the established analysis period. It provides a complementary perspective and represents a very useful source of information. The scientific community could use this information to decide regarding the selection of types of components to implement a smart parking solution. For this purpose, herein we review several works related to smart parking solutions deployment. To achieve this goal, a semi-cyclic adaptation of the action research methodology combined with a systematic review is used to select papers related to the subject of study. The most relevant papers were reviewed to identify subcategories for each component; these classifications are presented in tables to mark the relevance of each paper accordingly. Trends of usage in terms of sensors, protocols and software solutions are analyzed and discussed in every section. In addition to the trends of usage, this paper determines a guide of complementary features from the type of components that should be considered when implementing a smart parking solution.

scholarly journals Quality (Health Coverage)

10.34778/2a ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doreen Reifegerste ◽  
Annemarie Wiedicke
Keyword(s):  
Health Information ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Medical Decision ◽  
Online Health Information ◽  
Group Discussions ◽  
Health News ◽  
Health Related ◽  
The Media

To judge the quality of the media coverage of health information, research mostly focuses on ten criteria: adequately discussion of costs, quantification of benefits, adequately explanation and quantification of potential harms, comparison of the new idea with existing alternatives, independence of sources and discussion of potential conflicts of interests, avoidance of disease mongering, review of methodology or the quality of the evidence, discussion of the true novelty and availability of the idea, approach or product as well as giving information that go beyond a news release (Schwitzer, 2008, 2014; Smith et al., 2005). Other quality dimensions applied in content analyses of health news coverage are diversity, completeness, relevance, understandability and objectiveness (Reineck, 2014; Reineck & Hölig, 2013). These criteria are increasingly relevant as people use online health information more frequently and in addition to the information from their physician for medical decision making (Wang, Xiu, & Shahzad, 2019). Thus, analyzing the quality of health content in the media coverage becomes even more relevant. As Schwitzer (2017) points out, there is a variety of quality problems due to hurried, incomplete, poorly researched news. To measure quality, the content of health news coverage can be compared to content of the original research paper (e.g., Ashorkhani et al., 2012) or the quality of media content is continuously judged by journalist, medical experts or independent organizations such as HealthNewsReview with respect to different criteria (e.g., Schwitzer, 2008; Selvaraj et al., 2014). Field of application/theoretical foundation: Online health information, medical decision making, journalism studies References/combination with other methods: Focus group discussions with journalists, editors-in-chief and news gatekeepers (Ashorkhani et al., 2012), focus group discussions with consumers of health information (Marshall & Williams, 2006) Example studies: Anhäuser & Wormer (2012); Schwitzer (2008); Wormer (2014); Reineck & Hölig (2013); Reineck (2014)   Information on Reineck & Hölig, 2013 Authors: Dennis Reineck, Sascha Hölig Research question: Which factors contribute to the quality of health journalism? Object of analysis: Sample of all health-related articles in four German newspapers: Süddeutsche Zeitung (n = 167), Die Welt (n = 426), Frankfurter Rundschau (n = 219) and die tageszeitung (n = 84) Time frame of analysis: March, 1, 2010 to February, 28, 2011 Info about variables Variables: Variables defining five dimensions of quality for health-related newspaper articles, deduction of a quality index: coding of 0 to 100 points for each indicator of the different variables, deduction of a quality index for each article based on these points Level of analysis: news article Quality dimension Variable Indicator(s) Diversity (rH= 0.78) Quantitative diversity Length of the article Source diversity Number of sources Opinion diversity Discussion of contrary opinions Completeness (rH= 0.86) Journalistic completeness and scientific completeness, risks For diseases: information about prevention, symptoms and remedies Scientific completeness For research studies: information about method, sample and results Risks For treatment options: addressing of risks and side effects Relevance (rH= 0.85) Source credibility Sources with the highest reputation Usefulness Take-home-messages, references to additional information Newsworthiness News factors (e.g., topicality) Understandability (rH= 0.86) Simplicity Simplicity vs. complexity of language Structure Well-structured vs. inadequately structured presentation Conciseness Concise vs. circuitous presentation Storytelling Storytelling vs. matter-of-fact presentation Objectiveness (rH= 0.95) Emotionalization Emotional language Dramatization Dramatization of information     References Anhäuser, M., & Wormer, H. (2012). A question of quality: Criteria for the evaluation of science and medical reporting and testing their applicability. PCST 2012 Book of Papers: Quality, Honesty and Beauty in Science and Technology Communication. http://www.medien-doktor.de/medizin/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/downloads/2014/04/Paper-Florenz.pdf Ashorkhani, M., Gholami, J., Maleki, K., Nedjat, S., Mortazavi, J., & Majdzadeh, R. (2012). Quality of health news disseminated in the print media in developing countries: A case study in Iran. BMC Public Health, 12, 627. https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2458-12-627 Marshall, L. A., & Williams, D. (2006). Health information: does quality count for the consumer? Journal of Librarianship and Information Science, 38(3), 141–156. https://doi.org/10.1177/0961000606066575 Reineck, D. (2014). Placebo oder Aufklärung mit Wirkpotenzial? Eine Diagnose der Qualität der Gesundheitsberichterstattung in überregionalen Tageszeitungen. In V. Lilienthal (Ed.), Qualität im Gesundheitsjournalismus: Perspektiven aus Wissenschaft und Praxis (Vol. 325, pp. 39–60). Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-02427-7_3 Reineck, D., & Hölig, S. (2013). Patient Gesundheitsjournalismus: Eine inhaltsanalytische Untersuchung der Qualität in überregionalen Tageszeitungen. In C. Rossmann & M. R. Hastall (Eds.), Medien + Gesundheit: Band 6. Medien und Gesundheitskommunikation: Befunde, Entwicklungen, Herausforderungen (1st ed., pp. 19–31). Nomos. Schwitzer, G. (2008). How do US journalists cover treatments, tests, products, and procedures? An evaluation of 500 stories. PLoS Medicine, 5(5), e95. Schwitzer, G. (2014). A guide to reading health care news stories. JAMA Internal Medicine, 174(7), 1183–1186. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamainternmed.2014.1359 Schwitzer, G. (2017). Pollution of health news. BMJ (Clinical Research Ed.), 356, j1262. https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.j1262 Selvaraj, S., Borkar, D. S., & Prasad, V. (2014). Media coverage of medical journals: Do the best articles make the news? PloS One, 9(1), e85355. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0085355 Smith, D. E., Wilson, A. J., & Henry, D. A. (2005). Monitoring the quality of medical news reporting: Early experience with media doctor. The Medical Journal of Australia, 183(4), 190–193.

scholarly journals How Elections Change the Way Citizens View the Political System: Campaigns, Media Effects and Electoral Outcomes in Comparative Perspective

2003 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 443-467 ◽  
Author(s):  
SUSAN A. BANDUCCI ◽  
JEFFREY A. KARP
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
Political System ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
System Support ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Campaign Activity ◽  
The Individual

Attitudes towards the political system have often been assumed to be stable attributes that are not easily influenced by short-term forces. We examine the extent to which attention to media coverage, campaign activity and electoral outcomes can mobilize support for the political system in the context of an election campaign. Using pre-election and post-election survey panels from the United States, Britain and New Zealand, we find only small shifts in aggregate measures of system support. However, we find that there are significant shifts in system support at the individual level that can be explained by status as election winners, attention to the media, particularly serious news coverage and economic perceptions. The results have implications for the debate over measures of system support such as trust, cynicism and efficacy.

Issue ownership as a determinant of political parties’ media coverage

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kirsten Van Camp
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Political Parties ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Television News ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Good News ◽  
Issue Ownership ◽  
News Sources ◽  
Source Of Information

Abstract For many citizens, news media are the most important source of information about relevant political topics and actors. As a consequence, it is crucial to investigate who gains media coverage and why. Leaning on two classic news sourcing criteria, suitability and availability, we claim that issue owners can be seen as good news sources. By combining a content analysis of television news with data collected through a journalist survey, we investigate whether issue ownership is a determinant of political parties’ news coverage. Results confirm that issue ownership is a predictor of parties’ news coverage, even when controlling for ministerial competences.

scholarly journals Presidential Pseudo-Events and the Media Coverage They Receive

2008 ◽  
Vol 29 ◽  
pp. 85-108
Author(s):  
Jeff Peake ◽  
Amanda Jo Parks
Keyword(s):  
Media Coverage ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Local Context ◽  
The Political ◽  
White House ◽  
Policy Context ◽  
Potential Market ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media

American presidents routinely use pseudo-events in their attempts to generate positive news coverage and build a favorable image in the press. Despite their prevalence, we know little about how pseudo-events are covered by the American press. We content analyze front-page coverage of seven White House events during 2006 and early 2007 in 96 U.S. newspapers. We compare the amount and tone of coverage given each event, as well as the framing provided by headlines and lead paragraphs. Moreover, comparisons across newspapers suggest that newspapers slant to their coverage of presidential pseudo-events, which correlates with endorsement behavior and the political leanings of its potential market. Our results suggest that the coverage of presidential pseudo-events is shaped by the national political and policy context as well as the local context of the newspaper, thus limiting the ability of the White House to positively influence media coverage. However, effective staging and symbolism can result in positive coverage, even when the president faces difficult political circumstances.

scholarly journals The effect of political products on the decision to choose political party through the role of the candidates of legislative members as mediating variable

2015 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 367
Author(s):  
Suwignyo Widagdo
Keyword(s):  
Statistical Analysis ◽  
Political Party ◽  
Hypothesis Test ◽  
Personal Characteristic ◽  
The Political ◽  
Path Coefficient ◽  
Test Result ◽  
Selection Of

This study attempts to analyze; 1) the effect of political product on the decision to choose the candidate of legislative member; 2) the effect of political product on the decision to choose political party; 3) the effect of the decision to choose the candidates of legislative members on the decision to choose political party; and 4) the role of mediating variable of the decision to choose the candidate of legislative member on the affect the decision to choose political party. The data were analyzed using inferential statistical analysis of Generalized Structured Component Analysis (GeSCA). It shows that 1) the political product has an effect on the decision to choose the candidate of legislative member; 2) the mediating variable of the decision to choose the candidate of legislative member plays a very important role for the constituents in taking the decision to choose political party. However, of the existing three indicators, only personal characteristic can explain the strength of the effect of political product on the selection of political party. Yet, the second hypothesis test result shows that the path coefficient is significant and provides evidence that the second hypothesis is accepted. The decision to choose political party is increa-singly stronger as a result of the decision to choose the candidate of legislative member which is in accordance with the expectations of voters. Acquisition of the party vote will increase after the constituents know the candidates proposed. The higher the popularity and quality of the candidate is, the greater the electoral gains of a party.

Bayesian Update With Fuzzy Information

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Beer ◽  
Matthias Stein
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Approach ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Basic Requirement ◽  
Fuzzy Information ◽  
Inconsistent Information ◽  
Uncertainty Model ◽  
Bayesian Update ◽  
Available Information ◽  
The Bayesian Approach

A realistic quantification of all input information is a basic requirement in order to obtain useful results from engineering analyses. The concept of quantification and the associated uncertainty model have to be selected in agreement with the amount and quality of the available information. For inconsistent information, a distinction between probabilistic and non-probabilistic characteristics is beneficial. In this distinction, uncertainty refers to probabilistic characteristics and non-probabilistic characteristics are summarized as imprecision. When uncertainty and imprecision occur simultaneously, the uncertainty model fuzzy randomness appears useful. In this paper, the fuzzy probabilistic model is utilized in a Bayesian approach to take account of imprecision in data and in prior expert knowledge. The propagation of imprecision and uncertainty is investigated for selected cases. The Bayesian approach extended to inconsistent information is demonstrated by means of an example.

scholarly journals Frequency distribution of journalistic attention for scientific studies and scientific sources: An input–output analysis

PLoS ONE ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 15 (11) ◽  
pp. e0241376
Author(s):  
Markus Lehmkuhl ◽  
Nikolai Promies
Keyword(s):  
Power Law ◽  
Media Coverage ◽  
Social Impact ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Input Output ◽  
Output Analysis ◽  
Input Output Analysis ◽  
Study Results ◽  
Scientific Results ◽  
Selection Of

Based on the decision-theoretical conditions underlying the selection of events for news coverage in science journalism, this article uses a novel input-output analysis to investigate which of the more than eight million scientific study results published between August 2014 and July 2018 have been selected by global journalism to a relevant degree. We are interested in two different structures in the media coverage of scientific results. Firstly, the structure of sources that journalists use, i.e. scientific journals, and secondly, the congruence of the journalistic selection of single results. Previous research suggests that the selection of sources and results follows a certain heavy-tailed distribution, a power law. Mathematically, this distribution can be described with a function of the form C*x-α. We argue that the exponent of such power law distributions can potentially be an indicator to describe selectivity in journalism on a high aggregation level. In our input-output analysis, we look for such patterns in the coverage of all scientific results published in the database Scopus over four years. To get an estimate of the coverage of these results, we use data from the altmetrics provider Altmetric, more precisely their Mainstream-Media-Score (MSM-Score). Based on exploratory analyses, we define papers with a score of 50 or above as Social Impact Papers (SIPs). Over our study period, we identified 5,833 SIPs published in 1,236 journals. For both the distribution of the source selection and the distribution of the selection of single results, an exponentially truncated power law is a better fit than the power law, mostly because we find a steeper decline in the tail of the distributions.

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