News-Seekers vs. Gate-Keepers

2015 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 50-63
Author(s):  
Sharon E. Jarvis ◽  
Maegan Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Online News ◽  
Position Information ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Traditional Research

Traditional research on gatekeeping examines how journalists, editors, and publishers construct and position information to become news. Opportunities for interactivity in online news outlets, however, are creating space for audience members to also play this role. This article analyzes the tone and scope of the stories appearing on the print front-pages in the online most-read lists in twelve news outlets. Findings reveal how news-seekers prefer serious soft news articles, stories that position readers prominently, and fact-laden updates. These trends are interpreted in light of an elitist approach to gatekeeping versus a more egalitarian mindset and the authors conclude that the articles promoted by news-seekers are far less frivolous than feared.

Gate-Keeping and News-Seeking in Print and Online Outlets

2014 ◽  
pp. 224-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon E. Jarvis ◽  
Maegan Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Online News ◽  
Home Page ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Position Information ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Gate Keeping

Traditionally, gatekeeping theory has been used to examine how journalists, editors, and publishers write, edit, and position information to become news. The opportunity for interactivity in online news outlets, however, creates space for audience members to play this role as well. Even though many in the journalism profession are worried about a shift in control from the front page to the home page, researchers have yet to analyze, systematically, the textual characteristics of the stories that online news-seekers select and deem most popular. This chapter compares the tone and scope of the stories appearing on the print front pages and those appearing in the online most read lists in twelve elite and regional news outlets. The findings show that news-seekers prefer serious soft news articles, stories that position readers prominently, and fact-laden updates. The chapter interprets these trends in light of an elitist approach to gatekeeping versus a more egalitarian mindset, and concludes that the articles promoted by news-seekers are far less frivolous than feared.

Gate-Keeping and News-Seeking in Print and Online Outlets

2015 ◽  
pp. 1422-1441
Author(s):  
Sharon E. Jarvis ◽  
Maegan Stephens
Keyword(s):  
Online News ◽  
Home Page ◽  
Front Page ◽  
Position Information ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Gate Keeping

Traditionally, gatekeeping theory has been used to examine how journalists, editors, and publishers write, edit, and position information to become news. The opportunity for interactivity in online news outlets, however, creates space for audience members to play this role as well. Even though many in the journalism profession are worried about a shift in control from the front page to the home page, researchers have yet to analyze, systematically, the textual characteristics of the stories that online news-seekers select and deem most popular. This chapter compares the tone and scope of the stories appearing on the print front pages and those appearing in the online most read lists in twelve elite and regional news outlets. The findings show that news-seekers prefer serious soft news articles, stories that position readers prominently, and fact-laden updates. The chapter interprets these trends in light of an elitist approach to gatekeeping versus a more egalitarian mindset, and concludes that the articles promoted by news-seekers are far less frivolous than feared.

Sacrificing Credibility for Sleaze

2016 ◽  
pp. 1267-1282 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenn Burleson Mackay ◽  
Erica Bailey
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Credibility Scale ◽  
Act Utilitarianism ◽  
Traditional Stories

This chapter uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalists' use of sensationalized or tabloid-style writing techniques affect the credibility of online news. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey's Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Soft news stories written with a tabloidized style were rated more credible than hard news stories that also had a tabloidized style. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. The authors conclude by utilizing act utilitarianism to argue that tabloidized writing is an unethical journalistic technique.

scholarly journals When News Goes Online. A Cross-Media Analysis of Editorial Logics and Consumers’ Feedbacks in the Printed, Online and Facebook Versions of the Italian Newspaper la Repubblica

2015 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Francesca Arcostanzo ◽  
Alice Pulvirenti
Keyword(s):  
New Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Media Analysis ◽  
Positive Trend ◽  
News Production ◽  
Media Companies ◽  
Cross Media ◽  
Soft News ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
And Diffusion

<p>As a consequence of the advent and diffusion of new media, one of the most accredited hypotheses in the realm of mediatization theory has been that the essential prerequisites of mediatization would have slowly started to disappear. On the contrary, we hypothesize that the unprecedented knowledge about users’ preferences given to media companies would be reflected in the logics of news production, which would shift from being guided by internal logics and standards of newsworthiness to be driven by an audience-oriented commercial logic. Therefore, we expect storytelling techniques to prevail in online news production, with <em>soft news </em>becoming progressively prevalent moving from traditional to new media. We address our hypothesis performing a cross-media analysis of the Italian newspaper <em>la Repubblica</em>, investigating both the different editorial logics underlying the selection and framing of contents as well as the relationship between the general news frame and the level of readers’ engagement. In our findings, <em>soft news </em>prevails regardless of the platform, also following a positive trend as we move towards Facebook. Moreover, <em>soft news </em>seems to be able to foster a higher level of users’ engagement as expressed in terms of likes and shares, while <em>hard news </em>prevails in commenting activities.</p>

Sacrificing Credibility for Sleaze

2014 ◽  
pp. 97-112
Author(s):  
Jenn Burleson Mackay ◽  
Erica Bailey
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Credibility Scale ◽  
Act Utilitarianism ◽  
Traditional Stories

This chapter uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalists' use of sensationalized or tabloid-style writing techniques affect the credibility of online news. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey's Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Soft news stories written with a tabloidized style were rated more credible than hard news stories that also had a tabloidized style. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. The authors conclude by utilizing act utilitarianism to argue that tabloidized writing is an unethical journalistic technique.

scholarly journals An Analysis of a Repetitive News Display Phenomenon in the Digital News Ecosystem

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (12) ◽  
pp. 4736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyu Kwak ◽  
Seong Hong ◽  
Sang Lee
Keyword(s):  
South Korea ◽  
News Media ◽  
Online News ◽  
Daily Newspapers ◽  
News Reports ◽  
South Korean ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Digital News ◽  
New Type ◽  
Tabloid Journalism

In South Korea, approximately 88.5% of online users have obtained news and information from news aggregators such as Naver and Daum. Since most users read news on the internet, a new type of tabloid journalism, referred to as “news abuse,” has emerged in South Korea. “News abuse” is jargon used in South Korea to mean the repetitive display of news by online news publishers. “News abuse” is similar to “clickbait” in its use of clickbait headline links to attract online users’ attention and encourage them to click on links. This study explores the characteristics of news abusing phenomena in South Korea. With content analysis of 2101 articles (609 stories for soft news and 1402 stories for hard news), we attempt to investigate when news abuse saliently occurs and to whom news abusing is attributed. Our results show that news abuse is prevalent among South Korean newspapers during the first three hours after initial news reports are made and when people have time to rest after lunch between noon and 3 p.m. Moreover, the highest percentage of news abuse of soft news was found among tabloid daily newspapers, while that of hard news was found among daily newspapers. In addition, intermedia news abuse was more frequently utilized than intramedia news abuse. The percentage of intermedia abuse, in particular, was higher in general daily newspapers and business newspapers than in other news media platforms. By contrast, the percentage of intramedia news abuse was significantly higher in 24-h news channels. News abuse may be a side effect of news aggregation in the division of labor of news production and news distribution. More steps are required to decrease news abuse, which will lead to maintenance of a healthy digital news ecosystem and development of the news aggregation business.

scholarly journals Markaðsvæðing frétta: Greining á innihaldi frétta í tveimur dagblöðum og tveimur vefmiðlum fyrir og eftir hrun

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 303
Author(s):  
Valgerður Jóhannsdóttir
Keyword(s):  
Online News ◽  
Online Newspapers ◽  
Economic News ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Daily Press ◽  
The World ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
International Social

The media around the world are presently undergoing dramatic changes. They have their roots in political, economic and not least technolgical changes and have lead to ownership concentration, commercialisation and increased competition. Research indicates that this development has greatly affected professional journalism and led to an increasing emphasis on stories about crime, sport and entertainment and less news about politics, international, social and economic affairs. Some researchers posit that this applies particulary to online news. These changes have certainly had their impact in Iceland like other western countries, but little is known about its effect on news content. This study compares the content of the main off and online newspapers in Iceland, in the year 2005 and 2013, or before and after the financial crisis in 2008. The findings indicate that the Icelandic national daily press publishes less political and economic news now than before the the crisis in 2008, and more of so called soft news. This holds particularily true for the online news.

Succulent Sins, Personalized Politics, and Mainstream Media’s Tabloidization Temptation

2012 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 41-53
Author(s):  
Jenn Burleson Mackay ◽  
Erica Bailey
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Source Credibility ◽  
Online News ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Credibility Scale ◽  
Act Utilitarianism ◽  
Traditional Stories

This study uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalism’s use of tabloid writing techniques affects online credibility. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey’s Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Tabloidized soft news stories were more credible than tabloidized hard news stories. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. An application of act utilitarianism suggests that tabloidization is an unethical method for increasing news readership.

Perusing pages and skimming screens: Exploring differing patterns of selective exposure to hard news and professional sources in online and print news

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (10) ◽  
pp. 3580-3596 ◽  
Author(s):  
George DH Pearson ◽  
Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick
Keyword(s):  
Selective Exposure ◽  
Online News ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Print News ◽  
Soft News ◽  
Source Type ◽  
Delivery Format ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Within Subjects ◽  
High Credibility

Changing structures to online news have instigated concerns that the electorate may predominantly consume soft news for entertainment purposes while neglecting public affairs information. The Internet in particular brought an increase in outlets, including unconventional low-credibility sources. A 2 × 2 × 2 within-subjects experiment ( n = 197) investigated whether delivery format (print vs online) and source type (high vs low credibility) shape the extent to which recipients select different types of news (public affairs news vs soft news). Participants browsed 32 news items, half of them hard news and the other half soft news, either associated with high- or low-credibility sources, and did so online or via print magazine. Results show that greater preference for online news fostered selective exposure to hard news. Greater habitual news use via social media reduced selective exposure to news from high-credibility sources.

Working Hard to Achieve Self-Defining Group Goals: A Social Identity Analysis

2000 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 191-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly S. Fielding ◽  
Michael A. Hogg
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Group Identification ◽  
Group Norms ◽  
Identity Threat ◽  
Traditional Research ◽  
Identity Model ◽  
Group Goals ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Substantial Effort

Summary: A social identity model of effort exertion in groups is presented. In contrast to most traditional research on productivity and performance motivation, the model is assumed to apply to groups of all sizes and nature, and to all membership contingent norms that specify group behaviors and goals. It is proposed that group identification renders behavior group-normative and encourages people to behave in line with group norms. The effect should be strengthened among people who most need consensual identity validation from fellow members, and in intergroup contexts where there is inescapable identity threat from an outgroup. Together these processes should encourage people to exert substantial effort on behalf of their group.

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