Breaking news: How push notifications alter the fourth estate

First Monday ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madelyn Rose Sanfilippo ◽  
Yafit Lev-Aretz
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
General Information ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
Fourth Estate ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Case Comparison ◽  
Attitudinal Changes

In the face of media mistrust and increasing scrutiny over fake news, the fourth estate traditional power-check functions, as well as its esteem, are in jeopardy. Changes in news reporting and dissemination, including social media and new technologies have greatly reshaped the information environments of an informed electorate within American democracy. While much scholarly progress has been made in studying the socio-political impact of social media, similar critical attention has not been given to some of the technological changes in news dissemination. Research has begun to analyze attitudinal changes, as well as documented general information-saturation culture and online civility. It is not clear if these are related within the context of breaking news, raising distinct research questions, including: How have objectivity and sentiment changed in media representations over time? How have push notifications, as an increasingly popular and exemplar technological change in news dissemination, influenced these representations? This paper addresses these questions by exploring a case comparison between representations of two historically parallel breaking news stories, U.S. President Nixon firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox in 1973 and President Trump firing FBI Director James Comey in 2017, through computational textual analysis. While headlines and push notifications vary significantly by news providers, push notifications are similar across platforms in distinguishing characteristics such as emotionally loaded and subjective language. Both of these are defining elements of fake and deceptive news and may potentially account for some media distrust recently.

scholarly journals A Semantic Preprocessing Framework for Breaking News Detection to Support Future Drone Journalism Services

2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Michail Niarchos ◽  
Marina Eirini Stamatiadou ◽  
Charalampos Dimoulas ◽  
Andreas Veglis ◽  
Andreas Symeonidis
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Data Retrieval ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Video Footage ◽  
Media Organizations ◽  
Definition Of

Nowadays, news coverage implies the existence of video footage and sound, from which arises the need for fast reflexes by media organizations. Social media and mobile journalists assist in fulfilling this requirement, but quick on-site presence is not always feasible. In the past few years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), and specifically drones, have evolved to accessible recreational and business tools. Drones could help journalists and news organizations capture and share breaking news stories. Media corporations and individual professionals are waiting for the appropriate flight regulation and data handling framework to enable their usage to become widespread. Drone journalism services upgrade the usage of drones in day-to-day news reporting operations, offering multiple benefits. This paper proposes a system for operating an individual drone or a set of drones, aiming to mediate real-time breaking news coverage. Apart from the definition of the system requirements and the architecture design of the whole system, the current work focuses on data retrieval and the semantics preprocessing framework that will be the basis of the final implementation. The ultimate goal of this project is to implement a whole system that will utilize data retrieved from news media organizations, social media, and mobile journalists to provide alerts, geolocation inference, and flight planning.

scholarly journals Who shares news on mobile messaging applications, why and in what ways? A cross-national analysis

2020 ◽  
pp. 205015792095844
Author(s):  
Antonis Kalogeropoulos
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Breaking News ◽  
Main Motivation ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Current Affairs ◽  
The Us ◽  
The Uk ◽  
National Analysis ◽  
News Sharing ◽  
Cross National

Recently, in many countries, the use of mobile messaging applications for news has risen while the use of Facebook for news has declined. The purpose of this study is to identify who shares news on messaging applications, why and in what ways. Findings from a survey and focus groups in the US, the UK, Germany, and Brazil show that (a) the main motivation for news users to share news in these spaces is context collapse; their aversion to news sharing on an open network like Facebook, (b) the anytime/anywhere mobile affordance facilitates their need for private news sharing, (c) news stories chosen for sharing usually revolve around niche interests or breaking news events and not politics and current affairs, (d) news sharers are likely to be young, and to trust in news found on social media in the Western countries of our sample, while they tend to be older and partisan in Brazil where 38% of the population shares news on mobile messaging apps during an average week.

The association between Twitter content and suicide

2020 ◽  
pp. 000486742096980
Author(s):  
Mark Sinyor ◽  
Marissa Williams ◽  
Rabia Zaheer ◽  
Raisa Loureiro ◽  
Jane Pirkis ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Media Content ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Legal Problems ◽  
Local Newspaper ◽  
Control Window ◽  
Newspaper Reporter ◽  
Social Causes

Objective: A growing body of research has established that specific elements of suicide-related news reporting can be associated with increased or decreased subsequent suicide rates. This has not been systematically investigated for social media. The aim of this study was to identify associations between specific social media content and suicide deaths. Methods: Suicide-related tweets ( n = 787) geolocated to Toronto, Canada and originating from the highest level influencers over a 1-year period (July 2015 to June 2016) were coded for general, putatively harmful and putatively protective content. Multivariable logistic regression was used to examine whether tweet characteristics were associated with increases or decreases in suicide deaths in Toronto in the 7 days after posting, compared with a 7-day control window. Results: Elements independently associated with increased subsequent suicide counts were tweets about the suicide of a local newspaper reporter (OR = 5.27, 95% CI = [1.27, 21.99]), ‘other’ social causes of suicide (e.g. cultural, relational, legal problems; OR = 2.39, 95% CI = [1.17, 4.86]), advocacy efforts (OR = 2.34, 95% CI = [1.48, 3.70]) and suicide death (OR = 1.52, 95% CI = [1.07, 2.15]). Elements most strongly independently associated with decreased subsequent suicides were tweets about murder suicides (OR = 0.02, 95% CI = [0.002, 0.17]) and suicide in first responders (OR = 0.17, 95% CI = [0.05, 0.52]). Conclusions: These findings largely comport with the theory of suicide contagion and associations observed with traditional news media. They specifically suggest that tweets describing suicide deaths and/or sensationalized news stories may be harmful while those that present suicide as undesirable, tragic and/or preventable may be helpful. These results suggest that social media is both an important exposure and potential avenue for intervention.

Technological Affordances Can Promote Misinformation

2019 ◽  
pp. 182-198
Author(s):  
Maria D. Molina ◽  
S. Shyam Sundar
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
News Stories ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Technological Affordances ◽  
Main Model

The nature of news reporting and data gathering has changed with the advent of social media, equipping journalists with new methods of uncovering news stories and providing the necessary background and context for their readers. Even though a presence online is indispensable for journalists, there are risks from these practices. Affordances of media technologies can influence a journalist´s decision to cover an event, select sources, or engage in conversations, but they also result in cues and residues that can reduce a journalist’s credibility. In this chapter, we use the four classes of technological affordances outlined by the MAIN model (Sundar 2008)—modality, agency, interactivity, and navigability—to examine the various actions and cues in social media that both aid and ensnare journalists. We discuss how interface cues trigger cognitive heuristics (or mental shortcuts) that lure journalists, sometimes to their detriment. We provide recent examples of journalistic misadventure and potential solutions.

Whose voices are heard? The byline gender gap on Argentine news sites

Journalism ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-326
Author(s):  
Eugenia Mitchelstein ◽  
Pablo J Boczkowski ◽  
Victoria Andelsman ◽  
Paloma Etenberg ◽  
Marina Weinstein ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Content Analysis ◽  
Gender Gap ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Media Representations ◽  
News Article ◽  
Home Pages ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Significant Difference

This article examines patterns of gender discrimination in the authorship of news stories in general, and opinion pieces in particular. Drawing on feminist media scholarship, content analysis of 3013 articles from eight Argentine news sites and their respective social media accounts during 2017 shows that 32.63 percent of the stories with bylines were authored by women; stories about sports, politics, and crime were less likely to have a female byline; there were no significant differences across news sites; and this gap was smaller on the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the news outlets examined than on their home pages. In the case of opinion pieces, the percentage with female bylines dropped to 15 percent, which amounts to a significant difference with other genres even after controlling for other variables, such as topic or news site. On the basis of these findings, we reflect on how factors such as news topics, the format of the news article, and the type of digital source interact with gender as a structuring mechanism of media representations.

Online destigmatization of schizophrenia: A Romanian experience

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (S1) ◽  
pp. s276-s276 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Ladea ◽  
M. Bran ◽  
S. Marcel Claudiu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Mental Illness ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Relevant Information ◽  
General Information ◽  
Mental Illness Stigma ◽  
Media Campaign ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Effective Manner ◽  
The Social

IntroductionMental illness stigma existed long before psychiatry, although sometimes the institution of psychiatry has not helped enough in reducing either stereotyping or discriminatory practices. Stigma of mental illness involves problems with knowledge, attitudes, and behavior and has important negative consequences for patients and their families. As new technologies become more reliable and accessible, mental health specialists are developing new and innovative methods through which they may provide services. Internet has an important role in the delivery of information because of its ability to reach a large number of people in a cost-effective manner.ObjectivesIn order to reduce stigma an online platform with relevant information about schizophrenia was developed. Simultaneously a social media campaign to increase awareness was launched.MethodsA multidisciplinary team of psychiatrists, web-developers, IT specialists and designers developed the platform www.schizophrenia.ro. The platform is intended to be simple and with a great visual impact and it gathers general information about schizophrenia. The social media campaign used emotional messages like “Diagnosis is not the end of the road” or “I’m a person not a diagnosis” combined with high impact images.ResultsFrom 1st January to end of September 2015 the platform had about 22,500 users and about 70,500 page views. The social media campaign had a reach of approximately 9700 people in just 2 months.ConclusionsThe World Wide Web is increasingly recognized as a powerful tool for prevention and intervention programs and could also play an important role in destigmatization campaigns.Disclosure of interestThe authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals COVID-19 news reporting and engaging in the age of social media: Comparing Xinhua News Agency and The Paper

2021 ◽  
pp. 205943642110173
Author(s):  
Zenan Chen ◽  
Xiaoge Xu
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Special Form ◽  
User Engagement ◽  
Health Crisis ◽  
New Normal ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
News Agency ◽  
Xinhua News Agency

“To follow and to be followed” has become the new normal in news communication in the age of social media. News audience follow news via social media while they are being followed by news anytime anywhere. This new normal has created a pressing need to investigate whether social media have brought any changes to both party-controlled and market-oriented news media in China in reporting crises. Comparing Xinhua News Agency (party-controlled) and The Paper (market-oriented), this study investigated how they reported COVID-19 and how their news consumers engaged with their COVID-19 news stories on Jinri Toutiao, a popular and yet special form of social media. This study found that Xinhua News Agency continued to stay overwhelmingly positive, while The Paper was more neutral in reporting the health crisis. Xinhua News Agency was surprisingly more episodic than The Paper in framing the pandemic. The Paper, however, had a higher level of user engagement than Xinhua News Agency. To cater to the changing news-seeking behaviors and patterns, both party-controlled and market-oriented news media have changed their operations, but not their fundamental orientations.

scholarly journals Children’s cognitive responses to constructive television news

Journalism ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (4) ◽  
pp. 568-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mariska Kleemans ◽  
Roos Dohmen ◽  
Luise F Schlindwein ◽  
Sanne L Tamboer ◽  
Rebecca NH de Leeuw ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Television News ◽  
General Information ◽  
Cognitive Responses ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Constructive Condition ◽  
Negative News ◽  
News Event ◽  
Insight Into

Given the importance of news in preparing children for their role as active citizens in society, insight into how negative news can be delivered to children most optimally is warranted. In this regard, this study examined the usefulness of constructive news reporting (i.e. solution-based news stories including positive emotions). An experiment ( N = 281 children, 9–13 years old) was conducted to investigate how constructive, compared to nonconstructive, news reporting affected recall of television news, and whether negative emotions elicited by this news mediated this relation. Analyses of covariance revealed that children in the constructive condition displayed a lower recall of the general information about the event. In contrast, their recall of constructive stories was better compared to the recall of comparable, but nonconstructive, stories by children in the nonconstructive condition. Fear and sadness elicited by the news did not mediate the relation between news reporting style and recall. Instead, constructive reporting directly induced smaller increases in fear and sadness than nonconstructive reporting. To conclude, the negative aspects of the news event were less prominently available in memory of children exposed to constructive news.

scholarly journals Wielding Social Media in the Cyber-Arena: Globalism, Nationalism, and Civic Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Charles S. White
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Civic Education ◽  
Citizenship Education ◽  
Technology Use ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Global Citizenship ◽  
World Order ◽  
Positive Role ◽  
Global Citizenship Education ◽  
News Reporting

Information technology is a tool, and its effects on global citizenship education (GCED) depend on who uses the technology, how it is employed, and for what purpose. In theory, technology use could provide significant benefits toward achievement of GCED goals. Globalization has demanded an educational response — to prepare the young for productive engagement with the emerging global community. Technology could play a positive role in effective GCED. But globalization has come at a cost; it has produced winners and losers. Among the losers are those economically displaced as manufacturing jobs move elsewhere; they are resentful of foreigner and fearful of an uncertain future. For them, global citizenship is anathema. They are susceptible to manipulation by malign forces eager to exploit any perceived rifts in the post-war world order. For them, technology is a weapon, as easily aimed at the aspirations of GCED as another apparent enemy.             Identifying how technology can be employed positively in GCED is important, but not enough. Young people must also understand the conflict between globalization and alt-right nationalist populism, much of it carried out in the cyber-arena of the Internet and social media. New technologies have armed adversaries with tools to manipulate opinion and foment disorder. how technology is employed to undermine global citizenship education, as well as the democracies of the West. This they can witness in the gladiatorial combat between globalization and nationalist populism —between democracy and authoritarianism — in the cyber-arena. This article explores how technology is a double-edged sword – a tool for good and a tool for mischief. It draws from current research and news reporting on methods and effects of online manipulation. The article concludes by describing international efforts to defend against social media assaults on democracy and by identifying the new knowledge and skills citizens must acquire for positive civic engagement in the global cyber-arena.  

Modern Events Resumed Online

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin G. Barnhurst
Keyword(s):  
Word Of Mouth ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Online News ◽  
Current Event ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Flow Of Information ◽  
Missed Opportunity

This chapter analyzes the impact of online news on news reporting. In the first decade of the 2000s, the “what” in accident, crime, employment, and political stories first began reporting more events in stories, reversing decades of declines. But by 2010, the references to current events within stories had declined to the levels of the 1990s, with political stories concentrating even more than other topics on a single current event. The changes in the “what” echo earlier patterns of modern news, when practitioners responded to then-new technologies by reverting to established ways. Online, the news outlets again moved together, a pattern that suggests a missed opportunity. News practice might have escaped from conventional constraints, pushing to a linked perspective on what happens. The general public was using interconnectivity to cope with the flow of information in the new century, a third of them sharing news stories on social media, half relying on word of mouth, and more than three-quarters using email links. Instead of finding ways to stay in tune with public habits, news practitioners pushed back, closing ranks around modern truth.

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