Fear in the media : a comparative analysis of U. S. and British news media coverage of a terrorist threat

This study provides a comparative analysis of news media coverage across four types of mass public shootings: rampage, disgruntled employee, school, and lone-wolf terrorist. This research analyzes the agenda-setting function of the media and identifies differences in coverage and the salience of coverage, proportionality of coverage, changes in coverage over time, and factors influencing levels of coverage. Findings indicate school shootings and lone-wolf terrorist shootings receive disproportionate amounts of news media coverage. This suggests media coverage may be contributing to setting the public and policy agenda concerning the phenomenon. These findings have important implications for public perceptions of risk, conceptualizations of potential perpetrators, and the implementation of security measures.

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Hero or terrorist? A comparative analysis of Arabic and Western media depictions of the execution of Saddam

Discourse & Communication ◽

10.1177/1750481311427085 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 5 (4) ◽

pp. 301-335 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Ghayda Al Ali

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Descriptive Analysis ◽

Linguistic Analysis ◽

Point Of View ◽

News Article ◽

Lexical Selection ◽

The Media ◽

Western Media

While the role of the media in the war against terror has received ample attention from scholars, there is little in the literature that deals specifically with the Iraqi point of view with respect to the nature of terror or with the comparative analysis of Western and Arabic media treatment of terror. That Western and Arabic ideologies arise from divergent political, national, cultural, and religious traditions is well understood in the West. Indeed, this understanding is generally implicit and unconscious, often leading to perception of Arabic culture and ideology as a monolithic whole. Lost in this division between ‘Us’ and ‘Other’ are the multitude of inner-Arabic ideological divisions. Among these is an important inner-Arabic ideological division that reflects the larger Arab–Western ideological split, a split between those in support of Saddam’s reign and the post-invasion Iraqi insurgency and those in opposition. Cultural ideologies, all-encompassing yet often unstated, are difficult to summarize and analyze through the examination of indigenous news media. The media must balance truthful accuracy and objectivity with self-preservation. They must be exceedingly sensitive to the moods and outlooks of their target audiences in order to survive politically as well as economically. This work is a comparative, descriptive analysis of Saddam’s execution as covered by Arab and Western media, making use of Van Dijk’s Socio-ideological Discourse Theory as embodied in the Theories of Semantic Macroproposition and the concept of the Ideological Square as well as the Discourse-Historical Approach of Wodak. This combination of theoretical elements constitutes a basis for comparative Arabic–English discourse analysis with a focus on socio-linguistic analysis of text and rhetoric, rather than the more common functional Systemic Linguistic analysis or grammar theory considerations. These analytical elements also enable the de-construction of news media coverage in terms of macro-microstructures, micro-semantics, and the rhetoric news discourse. Technical analysis of news article word count, lexical selection, grammar, literary style, and rhetoric provides a portal through which hidden opinion, ideology, and dogma are made visible.

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From Ni putes ni soumises to #metoo in the French press: Between the hegemony of Whiteness and the Otherness of Muslims

French Cultural Studies ◽

10.1177/09571558211021704 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 095715582110217

Author(s):

Marion Dalibert

Keyword(s):

Middle Class ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

White Women ◽

Post Colonial ◽

Mainstream Media ◽

The Media ◽

Cultural Power ◽

Majority Groups ◽

Feminist Movements

By questioning the media coverage of the seven feminist movements that have received most publicity in the French mainstream media since the 2000s, this article shows that the media narrative regarding feminism perpetuates the national metanarrative produced in generalist newspapers. This metanarrative reinforces the power of majority groups by portraying them as inherently egalitarian, while those with the least economic, social, political and cultural power, such as Muslim men, are portrayed as the most sexist. It also highlights that racialised collectives are still socially invisible or limited to a visibility that is framed by representations rooted in a (post) colonial imaginary. Non-white women are in fact presented as fundamentally submissive, while (upper)-middle-class white women are the only ones associated with emancipation, which is significant of white and bourgeois hegemony at work in the French news media.

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SEO and Digital News Media: Visibility of Cultural Information in Spain’s Leading Newspapers

Tripodos ◽

10.51698/tripodos.2019.44p41-61 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 41-61

Author(s):

Carlos Lopezosa ◽

Lluís Codina ◽

Mario Pérez-Montoro

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

News Media ◽

Search Engines ◽

Web Traffic ◽

Social Signals ◽

Digital News ◽

The Media ◽

Visibility Index ◽

The Web ◽

Digital Newspapers

This paper undertakes a comparative analysis of the visibility, and of other SEO indicators, of the culture sections of Spain’s leading digital newspapers —specifically, elmundo.es, elpais. com, lavanguardia.com, abc.es, elconfidencial.com and 20minutos.es— based on data collected by the media analytics company, comScore, and the web traffic metric, Alexa Rank. The analysis employs a set of positioning indicators: namely, a visibility index, keywords, social signals, keyword profiles, URLs, SERP-Snippets, reference domains and best anchor texts, as made available by SISTRIX, an SEO analytics audit toolbox. Thus, we were able to determine which of the digital newspapers’ culture sections has the best visibility. Likewise, we were able to identify which of these media are best positioned on Google, presumably as a result of more effective positioning strategies. We conclude with a discussion of our results and, on the basis of these findings, recommend ways in which the visibility of journalistic information can be optimised in search engines. SEO i cibermitjans: visibilitat de la informació cultural dels principals diaris d’Espanya Aquest article realitza una anàlisi comparativa de visibilitat i altres indicadors SEO de la secció de cultura dels principals cibermitjans espanyols: elmundo.es, elpais.com, lavanguardia.com, abc. es, elconfidencial.com i 20minutos. es. Les anàlisis s’han dut a terme amb la utilització d’un conjunt d’indicadors de posicionament (visibilitat, paraules clau, senyals socials, paraules clau, url, snippets, dominis de referència i millors textos àncora) utilitzant l’eina de auditoria i anàlisi de posicionament en cercadors, SISTRIX. Ens preguntem quin d’aquests mitjans té millor una secció de notícies culturals amb millor visibilitat. L’estudi dut a terme amb els indicadors seleccionats permet, d’aquesta manera, presentar una anàlisi comparativa del periodisme cultural i identificar quins d’aquests mitjans presenten millors posicions a Google, presumiblement, com a resultat d’estratègies de posicionament. Finalitzem amb una discussió dels resultats juntament amb unes recomanacions finals per optimitzar la visibilitat de la informació periodística en els cercadors.

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Diverging from News Media: An Exploratory Study on the Changing Dynamics between Media and Public Attention on Cancer in China from 2011-2020

10.20944/preprints202107.0230.v1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Yangkun Huang ◽

Xiaoping Xu ◽

Sini Su

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Cancer Information ◽

Second Phase ◽

Media Industry ◽

Public Attention ◽

Media Attention ◽

Starting Point ◽

The Media ◽

Cancer Types

Over the past decade, China has witnessed fast-paced technological advancements in the media industry, as well as major shifts in the health agenda portrayed in the media. Therefore, a key starting point when discussing health communication lies in whether media attention and public attention towards health issues are structurally aligned, and to what extent the news media guide public attention. Based on data mined from 73,060 sets of the Baidu Search Index and Media Index on 20 terms covering different types of cancer from 2011 to 2020, the Granger test demonstrates that, in the last decade, public attention and media attention towards cancer in China has gone through two distinct phases. During the first phase, 2011-2015, Chinese news media still held the key in transferring the salience of issues on most cancer types to the public. In the second phase, from 2016-2020, public attention towards cancer has gradually diverged from media coverage, mirroring the imbalance and mismatch between the demand of active public and the supply of cancer information from news media. This study provides an overview of the dynamic transition on cancer issues in China over a ten-year span, along with descriptive results on public and media attention towards specific cancer types.

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Young adults know that their issues are not represented in the news: Israeli young adults and mainstream news media

Journal of Information Communication and Ethics in Society ◽

10.1108/jices-02-2021-0026 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽

Author(s):

Benny Nuriely ◽

Moti Gigi ◽

Yuval Gozansky

Keyword(s):

Social Media ◽

Young Adults ◽

Content Analysis ◽

Social Relations ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Online News ◽

Content Type ◽

Mainstream Media ◽

The Media

Purpose This paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults (YAs). It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations. Design/methodology/approach This was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years. Findings Most YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings. Originality/value Contrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media.

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Metaphors of corruption in the news media coverage of seven European countries

European Journal of Communication ◽

10.1177/0267323117750695 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 33 (1) ◽

pp. 57-72 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Roxana Bratu ◽

Iveta Kažoka

Keyword(s):

United Kingdom ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

European Countries ◽

Complex Phenomenon ◽

The United Kingdom ◽

The Media ◽

Media Practices

This article explores the symbolic dimension of corruption by looking at the metaphors employed to represent this phenomenon in the media across seven different European countries (France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Romania, Slovakia and the United Kingdom) over 10 years (2004–2014). It focuses on the media practices in evoking corruption-related metaphors and shows that corruption is a complex phenomenon with unclear boundaries, represented with the use of metaphorical devices that not only illuminate but also hide some of its attributes. The article identifies and analyses the metaphors of corruption by looking at their sources and target domains, as well as unpacking the contexts in which media evoke corruption-related metaphors.

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Diversity in the News? A Study of Interest Groups in the Media in the UK, Spain and Denmark

British Journal of Political Science ◽

10.1017/s0007123415000599 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 47 (2) ◽

pp. 313-328 ◽

Cited By ~ 23

Author(s):

Anne Skorkjær Binderkrantz ◽

Laura Chaqués Bonafont ◽

Darren R. Halpin

Keyword(s):

Interest Groups ◽

Interest Group ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Extensive Coverage ◽

Citizen Groups ◽

Country Analysis ◽

The Media ◽

Cross Country ◽

The Uk

This article provides the first systematic cross-country analysis of interest group appearances in the news media. The analysis included three countries – the UK, Spain and Denmark – each representing one of Hallin and Mancini’s1three overall models of media and politics: the liberal system, the polarized pluralist system and the democratic corporatist system. It finds important similarities across countries with high levels of concentration in media coverage of groups, more extensive coverage of economic groups than citizen groups, and differential patterns of group appearances across policy areas and between right- and left-leaning papers. It also identifies country variation, with the highest degree of concentration among group appearances in Spanish newspapers and the most attention to economic groups in Danish newspapers.

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Gender and Race in Congressional National News Media Appearances in 2008

Politics & Gender ◽

10.1017/s1743923x16000623 ◽

2017 ◽

Vol 13 (04) ◽

pp. 569-596 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jennifer C. Lucas

Keyword(s):

Black Women ◽

News Media ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Race And Gender ◽

Presidential Candidates ◽

Racial Identities ◽

National Media ◽

The Media ◽

And Gender ◽

Nonwhite Male

Media coverage of women and black members of Congress and presidential candidates often relies on gender and racial stereotypes, providing distorted coverage of these members and their agendas. This study analyzes national news media appearances of House members discussing the 2008 presidential election to examine whether the increased salience of race and gender due to the presence of nonwhite male presidential and vice presidential candidates resulted in greater media visibility for female and black representatives. Female and black House members, particularly those Democrats who endorsed a candidate, appeared in the media more often in 2008, driven by the media's interest in connecting their gender and racial identities to evaluations of Clinton, Palin, and Obama. With the national media's attention drawn to conflict, members with perceived conflicts among their intersectional identities drew greater media attention, especially Republican and black women. Overall, the media rendered black and female members as mainly surrogate representatives for black and women voters. The results suggest that black and female sources may secure national media exposure through the strategic use of their perceived raced-gendered expertise but at the risk of reinforcing stereotypes, and female or minority presidential candidates may influence the visibility of these members to voters.

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A Comparative Analysis of Visual Agenda-Setting in Reporting Islam

International Journal of Asian Social Science ◽

10.18488/journal.1.2018.89.622.630 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (9) ◽

pp. 622-630

Author(s):

Isyaku Hassan ◽

Mohd Nazri Latiff Azmi

Keyword(s):

Comparative Analysis ◽

Agenda Setting ◽

Media Coverage ◽

Public Discourse ◽

Corporate Ownership ◽

Visual Elements ◽

Collective Effort ◽

People’S Perception ◽

The Media ◽

Visual Bias

The media set the agenda of public discourse and define people’s perception of the issues. Research shows that analysis of visual elements in the media coverage of Islam is under-represented. This study explores and compares visual agenda-setting of Islam in selected Nigerian and Malaysian newspapers. Punch and Vanguard were chosen from Nigeria while The Star and New Straits Times were chosen from Malaysia based on their online readership. The study focused on content analysis of 425 photos and 23 videos used in the selected newspapers. Sample was collected from November 2015 until September 2016. Only photos and videos used in articles directly related to Islam were collected from the respective websites of the newspapers. It was found that Nigerian newspapers used more violent photos in reporting Islam than Malaysian newspapers. Of all the photos used in the selected newspapers, 43 reflected violence blamed on Islam while 382 were non-violent. None of the videos reflected violence. Though the use of violent photos is minimal in the newspapers, their implication might be highly influential. Visual bias could be avoided through collective effort of journalists, editors, and corporate ownership of the media.

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