Time as space vs. time as quantity in Spanish: a co-speech gesture study

There is a distinction between languages that use the duration is length metaphor, like English (e.g., long time), and languages like Spanish that conceptualise time using the duration is quantity metaphor (e.g., much time). The present study examines the use of both metaphors, exploring their multimodal behaviour in Spanish speakers. We analyse co-speech gesture patterns in the TV news setting, using data from the NewsScape Library, that co-occur with expressions that trigger the duration is quantity construal (e.g., durante todo ‘during the whole’) and the duration is length construal in the from X to Y construction (e.g., desde el principio hasta el final ‘from beginning to end’). Results show that both metaphors tend to co-occur with a semantic gesture, with a preference for the lateral axis, as reported in previous studies. However, our data also indicate that the direction of the gesture changes depending on the construal. The duration is quantity metaphor tends to be performed with gestures with an outwards direction, in contrast with the duration is length construal, which employ a left-to-right directionality. These differences in gesture realisation point to the existence of different construals for the concept of temporal duration.

Agendy partii politycznych i telewizyjnych serwisów informacyjnych w mediach społecznościowych w kampanii wyborczej do parlamentu w 2019 r.

Social Media Agendas of Political Parties Versus Social Media Agendas of TV News Services in the Parliamentary Election Campaign in 2019 The presented article concerns the convergence of symbolic political agendas of selected political entities (coalitions) (PiS-ZP, PO-KO) and agendas of selected broadcasters (Wiadomości TVP, Fakty TVN), in social media, in the parliamentary campaign in 2019. Theses concerning the overlapping of the media and political agendas of PiS-ZP and TVP and PO-KO and TVN in the thematic aspect were formulated, as well as the thesis about the affective orientation of media agendas towards specific political entities: TVN towards PiS-ZP and TVN towards PO-KO. The theoretical framework of the research was the agenda-setting theory, the concept of mediatization of politics and the evolution of the roles of political and media actors. The work also presents empirical research on the agendas of the above-mentioned entities on Twitter. The hypotheses were verified on the basis of quantitative and qualitative analysis.

Political Information Use and Its Relationship to Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories Among the German Public

This study investigates how exposure to different news sources, propensity to vote (PTV) for a party and demographics are related to belief in conspiracy theories drawing on three repeated cross-sectional surveys in Germany 2017–2019. Results show that frequent exposure to alternative news sites and video-sharing platforms increased conspiratorial beliefs. Frequency of exposure to the quality press, public service TV news, and news aggregators diminished beliefs in conspiracy theories. Exposure to TV news, legacy media online, tabloids, social media, and user comments was unrelated to such beliefs. PTV for far left and right parties increased conspiratorial beliefs, moderate party preference reduced them.

Proximal versus distant suffering in TV news discourses on COVID-19 pandemic

News is central to human communication and has an important signifying power as a particular subsystem within language. This study sets out to comprehensively examine how four major TV global news providers – CNN, BBC, DW and RT – have covered the COVID-19 pandemic from outbreak to mid-crisis. We apply a multi-level content analysis approach that rests on theories of proximization and representation of distant suffering, following a computer-assisted analysis that aids in identifying concepts occurrence and the semantic relationship among the highly frequent clusters. We explore the news representation during 2020 of COVID-19 as proximal versus distant discourses of suffering, safety and compassion conceptualized in light of theories on distant suffering. A total number of 12 dataset reports consisting of 2,017,875 words were analyzed. The results suggest that the COVID-19 pandemic news formulates a particular type of discourse on suffering that individualizes the sufferer, sets out the course of action and turns the fast-approaching pandemic into a global cause for action.

Silence and Media Encounters in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall

Silence is enfolded with voice—the two phenomena are complementary. The presence of silence inevitably points to the presence of sound, and by extension, to the presence of meaning. Still, encountered silence can be meaningful in itself. The article explores interactions between different media (TV news, painting and black box recordings) and the corresponding silences in Noah Hawley’s Before the Fall: the silence of the main protagonist and his avoidance of news reporters; the silence of catastrophic art voiced by the use of ekphrasis; and the silence recorded by the black boxes. The rhetoric of each medium in question and its interaction with the corresponding silence are investigated to show that silence “speaks volumes” in the novel.

The reception of subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Spanish TV news programs

The current paper presents a study on the subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) in Spanish TV news programs (live and semi-live subtitling). The aim of this reception study is to analyze users’ comprehension and assessment of live and semi-live SDH. A contemporary corpus comprising items from real news broadcasts was used for the research, and a sample of 52 deaf and hard-of-hearing participants was recruited for the experiment, which was carried out through a variety of virtual and live sessions. The results show that users consider the quality of SDH acceptable and audiovisual comprehension insufficient.

The Onset of Habituation Effects

While extraordinary events like pandemics may prompt an increase in information-seeking behaviour, such trends are unlikely to be sustainable. Over time, issue fatigue/overdose is expected to set in. This study employed generalised additive mixed models (GAMMs) to determine whether attention to TV news corresponded with real-world developments. We sought to predict news use in Germany during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic based on disease occurrence next to two well-established predictors of news use (total TV use and day of the week). The association of key events with news use was also assessed. Initially, news use increased with disease occurrence. However, as the pandemic progressed, the linkage between the two variables weakened considerably, suggesting the onset of a habituation effect. Some support emerged for the idea that key events increased news use. Overall, our results are more in line with the explanation provided by agenda-setting theory and various information-seeking models than with the notion of coping through information avoidance. Thus, how the pandemic progresses appears to be a good predictor of news use at the aggregate level, although its predictive power decreases over time.