The news gap in the «triple digital agenda»: The different interests of media, audience and networks

Digital transformations entail continually reviewing the various Communication models and processes. The influence of the media themselves as agenda setters for an ever more active audience and social networks that select and make certain content they receive viral are also affected by such a convergent context. This current research analyses a model called here the ‘triple agenda’ within the media themselves, in which the journalistic criterion of relevance and their audience’s preferences in the web and the networks travel along different paths. The proposal includes the users and the viral effect as influencing agents in the shape and selection of news, generating a news gap of interests between the media and their audiences. In order to test this model, we study an exploratory case in ElPaís.es, applying a content analysis to the information (n=420) distributed among the online front page, what is most read by the audience in its webpage, and the most viral in its Twitter account. The main objective is to check whether or not these three spheres of relevance operate independently, showing different informative interests f rom the thematic selection that the medium establishes f rom its agenda, its audience and its social networks. The results confirm that there is a gap in the informative interests of the three spheres analysed, especially between the agenda marked by the medium and the interests that are reflected in their web audience, which is more attracted to soft news and the clickbait technique; while there is a greater coincidence of interests between the newspaper’s front page and the users’ selection in their social networks.

Infotainment as a hybrid of information and entertainment: a conceptual analysis

PurposeTo elaborate the nature of infotainment as a mediating concept between information and entertainment by analysing how the concept of infotainment is approached in diverse domains such as communication research.Design/methodology/approachConceptual analysis was conducted by focussing on 41 key studies on the topic. First, it was examined how researchers have approached the relationships between informational and entertaining elements of infotainment. Thereafter, attention was directed to the ways in which people make use of infotainment. The conceptual analysis is based on the comparison of the similarities and differences between the characterizations of the above issues.FindingsEarly studies characterized infotainment in terms of soft news which is distinct from hard news offering factual information. Later investigations offer a more nuanced picture by approaching infotainment as phenomenon with diverse dimensions depicting the topics, focus and presentation style. Studies on the use of infotainment offer contradictory evidence of the extent to which infotaining programmes can increase people's interest in social, political and health issues, for example.Research limitations/implicationsAs the study concentrates on the analysis of an individual concept, that is, infotainment, the findings cannot be generalized to concern the ways in which informational and entertaining phenomena are related as a whole.Originality/valueBy elaborating the conceptual nature of infotainment, the study contributes to information behaviour research by refining the picture of the relationships between information and entertainment.

Patterns and Motivations Predicting Mobile Hard News and Soft News Consumption

The purpose of this study is to examine Emirati university students' usage of smartphones as a news resource. In addition to the motivations, patterns, and relationships between hard news and soft news consumption and the different gratifications sought, this study adopted perspectives from the both the uses and gratifications and media displacement theories and utilized a quantitative research design. Data was collected from 488 undergraduate students between February 2019 and March 2019. Results revealed that students were interested in both hard and soft news, but there was 7% more soft news consumption by students. Additionally, results revealed that smartphones have become students' main source of news as they allow them to find information easily. When assessing the relationships and dynamics between mobile news and the gratifications sought, results revealed that the convenience gratification was the only predictor of both mobile soft news and hard news out of all the gratifications offered.

Facing the music: Stereotyping of and by women in US music journalism

This study updates and expands the application of stereotyping and professional socialization to music journalism in a way that is generalizable to the United States music journalism industry, and seeks to understand the role women journalists play in counteracting or perpetuating stereotyping of women musicians. A content analysis of 936 articles finds significant stereotyping of women musicians in major US music publications during 2016. The stories, randomly sampled from eight top US publications, were predominantly about men artists and by men authors, and were more likely to discuss women musicians’ appearance and relationships, and used more sexualized and emotional language. Improvement was found in that articles were no more likely to discuss women musicians’ age and youth than men’s. Women journalists were just as likely to stereotype women musicians as men journalists were, and more so in one category. We expand stereotyping by incorporating insights from professional socialization and applying it to the ‘soft news’ yet male-dominated field of music journalism, adding to our knowledge of hard news fields such as politics, business and sports. It also updates the few studies of music journalism from decades ago, showing little progress in the blatant stereotyping of women musicians

Uso del clickbait en los medios nativos digitales españoles. Un análisis de El Confidencial, El Español, Eldiario.es y Ok Diario

El clickbait es una estrategia utilizada en los medios digitales, que busca llamar la atención a través de los titulares, apelando a las emociones y a la curiosidad de los lectores para que cliquen en la noticia. Para indagar en este fenómeno, se procede a estudiar a través de una metodología cualitativa y cuantitativa los titulares de las portadas de los cuatro principales diarios nativos digitales en España durante una semana (n=2505): El Confidencial, El Español, eldiario.es y Ok Diario. Entre los resultados de la investigación destaca una presencia alta de titulares que contienen clickbait (48% en el cómputo global, ascendiendo al 69,5% en las soft news), siendo las modificaciones de morfosintaxis de las oraciones el recurso más utilizado. Se discuten estos hallazgos en el marco de las dinámicas de la comunicación digital, cuestionando si el clickbait, como fenómeno extendido en los diarios nativos digitales, puede llevar a un mayor número de visualizaciones en sus páginas, pero en detrimento de la calidad de las informaciones publicadas.

Affective news: a case-study of the work of emotions in news coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti

The study of affective discourse in the news is critical for understanding how world events become meaningful to audiences, and important in light of the fact that the profession of journalism maintains problematic ideas of the role of emotions in news texts. Within the ideals of journalism are notions that emotional narratives and affective discourses are secondary, or even degrading, to serious news stories. Other journalistic ideals view emotions as a kind of necessary evil to the selling of news. Lastly, in scholarship around the democratic potential of human interest or soft news stories (typically narrated using emotive language), there is an idea that soft news stories are only meaningful in so far as they act as a gateway to serious news issues. These theories of serious news degrade the role that the affects play in news texts. This paper suggests that emotions and the deployment of affective discourse in news texts can be understood as meaningful beyond their work in selling news stories or acting as a gateway to serious issues. This paper is interested in the ascension of "serious" news, and the way in which emotion in the news became regarded as trivial and unimportant. More specifically, I examine the division between serious, factual, objective news and dramatic, emotional human-interest stories, and their associated classificatory terms "hard" and "soft" news. This paper attempts to problematize the characterization of serious news as non-emotional, and non-serious news as emotional, by demonstrating how the press's commitment to the public sphere is an affective commitment predicated on the idea of "care." As this paper argues, the press's commitment to the public sphere, though, is vague and ambiguous. The effect of ambiguity around concepts of the public sphere and regarding ideas of care is that the press envisions care in differing ways. The differential alignment of the press with humanitarian goals, thus, works to privilege certain sites and methods of care over others. In this way, news coverage reflects a politics of care that operates through the alignment of public sympathies with pre-existing authorities of aid, relief and assistance. In order to demonstrate the affective work of the press, this paper examines news coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Affective news: a case-study of the work of emotions in news coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti

The study of affective discourse in the news is critical for understanding how world events become meaningful to audiences, and important in light of the fact that the profession of journalism maintains problematic ideas of the role of emotions in news texts. Within the ideals of journalism are notions that emotional narratives and affective discourses are secondary, or even degrading, to serious news stories. Other journalistic ideals view emotions as a kind of necessary evil to the selling of news. Lastly, in scholarship around the democratic potential of human interest or soft news stories (typically narrated using emotive language), there is an idea that soft news stories are only meaningful in so far as they act as a gateway to serious news issues. These theories of serious news degrade the role that the affects play in news texts. This paper suggests that emotions and the deployment of affective discourse in news texts can be understood as meaningful beyond their work in selling news stories or acting as a gateway to serious issues. This paper is interested in the ascension of "serious" news, and the way in which emotion in the news became regarded as trivial and unimportant. More specifically, I examine the division between serious, factual, objective news and dramatic, emotional human-interest stories, and their associated classificatory terms "hard" and "soft" news. This paper attempts to problematize the characterization of serious news as non-emotional, and non-serious news as emotional, by demonstrating how the press's commitment to the public sphere is an affective commitment predicated on the idea of "care." As this paper argues, the press's commitment to the public sphere, though, is vague and ambiguous. The effect of ambiguity around concepts of the public sphere and regarding ideas of care is that the press envisions care in differing ways. The differential alignment of the press with humanitarian goals, thus, works to privilege certain sites and methods of care over others. In this way, news coverage reflects a politics of care that operates through the alignment of public sympathies with pre-existing authorities of aid, relief and assistance. In order to demonstrate the affective work of the press, this paper examines news coverage of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.

Why Do You Trust News? The Event-Related Potential Evidence of Media Channel and News Type

Media is the principal source of public information, and people's trust in news has been a critical mechanism in social cohesion. In recent years, the vast growth of new media (e.g., internet news portals) has brought huge change to the way information is conveyed, cannibalizing much of the space of traditional media (e.g., traditional newspapers). This has led to renewed attention on media credibility. The study aims to explore the impact of media channel on trust in news and examine the role of news type. Twenty-six participants were asked to make trust–distrust decisions after reading a variety of news headlines from different media channels while undergoing electroencephalography (EEG) monitoring. The electrophysiological results showed that, for hard news (e.g., important news related to public life), the new media condition elicited smaller N100 and larger P200 amplitudes than the traditional media condition. However, for soft news (e.g., entertainment, and non-related to vital interest), there was no significant difference. The study suggests that the fitness of media channel and news type may influence the evaluation of news, impacting participants' affective arousal and attention allocation in the early stage and influencing trust in news. These results provide neurocognitive evidence of individuals' trust toward hard and soft news consumed via different media channels, yielding new insights into trust in media and contributing to media trust theory.

Is Snapchat Discover really a news platform? News snacking from social media and users’ knowledge of current affairs

The role of the media in informing the public has long been a central topic in journalism studies. Given that social media platforms have become today’s major source of news, it is important to understand the impact of social media use on citizens’ knowledge of current affairs. While people get news from multiple platforms throughout the day, most research treats social media as a single entity or examines only one or two major platforms ignoring newer social media platforms. Drawing on news snacking framework, this study investigates how using some of today’s most popular social media platforms predicts users’ current affairs knowledge, with particular attention to Snapchat and its news section Discover. A survey conducted in the United States (N=417) demonstrated that each of the platforms is distinct: Twitter is a strongly positive predictor of knowledge, Facebook a marginally significant negative predictor, Reddit a significantly negative predictor and Instagram not a significant predictor. Overall Snapchat use has no significant association with users’ knowledge of current affairs, whereas Discover use has a negative relationship. Further analysis revealed that mere exposure to Snapchat is positively related to soft-news knowledge and attention to Discover is negatively related to hard-news knowledge.