Perceptions of Partisanship in Local Television News

People turn to local media for information during crises such as the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). What factors impact media consumers’ decisions about which local television news broadcast to watch? This study argues that media consumers infer the partisanship of local television affiliates — judging local Fox and NBC news broadcasts to be right and left slanted, respectively, based on their perceived associations with Fox News and MSNBC. Using the results from a representative survey of Americans (N = 5,461), the study demonstrates that local Fox and NBC viewers are significantly more likely to watch Fox News or MSNBC. As a result, watching local Fox is associated with less coronavirus risk because media consumers choose local Fox believing that it will align with their existing conservative views. This study demonstrates the importance of the perceptions of local news partisanship in influencing the consumption of critically important local crisis news.

Values Influencing the Practice of Investigative Journalism in Malaysia: Media Practitioners’ Perspectives

Investigative journalism has been an American phenomenon, heavily embedded with their values. Scholars mentioned individualism and press freedom as two founding values of investigative journalism practice in the West. This study attempts to explore values influencing the practice of investigative journalism from a different viewpoint, by investigating Malaysia as a democratic country, but having a controlled media environment. Malaysia is also an interesting research subject because it is a developing country with strong Eastern values. Using local yardsticks, this study explores values influencing the practice of investigative journalism in Malaysia from local media practitioners’ perspectives. This research aims to explore more than just the differences between Western and Eastern culture, but also to understand how those different values influence the practice. In-depth interviews were used to explore the perspectives of 16 media practitioners from various backgrounds including editors and journalists who work in mainstream and alternative media in Malaysia. Vast data generated from the interviews pointing to a different viewpoint from current literature. The data, which was thematically analysed, revealed interesting findings which differentiate between Malaysian and Western practices of investigative journalism. The Eastern perspective was found to be dominant, especially in terms of collectivism culture, value of press freedom, and religious teachings influence. This study also highlighted the importance of considering the cultural factor in evaluating any journalism practice in the world. The study concludes that local values and culture must be included as research elements to understand a country’s journalism practice. Keywords: Investigative journalism, media culture, guiding values, press freedom, Malaysia.

Kinerja Filter Portabel Tepat Guna dalam Mereduksi Kekeruhan Air Banjir untuk Sanitasi atau MCK

During flood people had difficulties in obtaining clean water for sanitation (toilet). There was plenty of flood water but highly turbid. The water filter required electricity but its power outaged during flood. Filters usually used energy from electricity or gravity. This study evaluated the performance of a new handy-manually operated flood water portable filter. The standard of Permenkes No. 32/2017 was used as a reference. The flood water filter was pressurized by 0.025 kgf/cm2 and 0.051 kgf/cm2 and used local media: gravel, silica sand, anthracite, sponge. The results showed that pressure 0.025 kgf/cm2 was able to reduce turbidity from 220 NTU to 20.17 NTU with efficiency 90.83%. At 0.051 kgf/cm2 the filter was able to reduce turbidity from 220 NTU to 29.67 NTU with efficiency 86.52%. The pressure variation significantly affects the filtrate quality. The filter with pressure 0.025 kgf/cm2 could be applied for optimal filtration and produced 100-150 liters before clogging. This filter still needs to be studied related to physical strength, type and composition of media, portability and volume of water produced. This flood water filter will be an alternative solution for areas that often flood but no electricity or the power outage during flood.

The Subtle Dynamics of Power Struggles in Tunisia: Local media since the Arab Uprisings

This article contributes to the analysis of local media and democratic transformation in Tunisia since the Arab Uprisings. It aims to assess the extent to which pluralism, freedom of expression, and participation—central tenets of democratisation—are evident at the local level. Tunisian local media, unlike the national media, is relatively free of governmental control. Local media is also decentralised. It is this autonomy from the government which makes the analysis of local media fundamentally important for understanding politics in Tunisia. While national media is linked to the most powerful elements in the country, the diversity of voices within the media at the local level provides an opportunity to grasp the grievances, struggles, and agency of people in Tunisia, especially the most marginalised communities. This article will detail the changes in the media landscape, especially for local media, in Tunisia and connect our analysis of local media to better understand the Tunisia that has developed between dictatorship and democracy and the extent that the fledgling Tunisian democracy can withstand its most recent test.

Intolerance in the Media and Representations of the Catholic Church

Intolerance toward Christians in Europe including Slovenia is increasing and experts are not dealing with it sufficiently. The media plays a key role in disseminating information and shaping social representations. The fact that the media, due to the nature of their action, will always be in conflict with the Church, must not be a reason for intolerance. In Slovenia, the media are the central creators of negative opinions about the Church. They are very sophisticated in spreading Christianophobia. The journalists with the most published articles with negative connotations regarding the Church create negative social representations. Negative topics that are most often associated with the Church in the media are sexual abuse, money and politics. An analysis of the connotation and topic of the articles shows that the serious socio-political themes of the Church are neglected in the media. The local media mostly write positively about the Church, as they are aware of specific events, while the national media write about it negatively since they are often distant from specific events and usually evaluate them according to editorial policy criteria, and not according to professional arguments and varied opinions. The location of events covered negatively in articles happen both within and outside Slovenia. Most negative articles do not include photos; however, tabloids usually include them. By reducing the dissemination of negative and discriminatory messages about the Church and raising the ethics of reporting, intolerance towards Christians and other minorities will decrease.

Media and Moral Panic: Challenging LGBT in Minangkabau People 2016-2017

Following the report of the existence of LGBT Group in Minangkabau society 2017, the local media, personal blog of public figures, official media social of local government, and several leaders of adat, religious leader, some civil societies responses assess to the new challenges for the decreasing of cultural and religious norm of Minangkabau people. The narrative has four stages: suggesting that the rejection of LGBT is against the cultural values of Minangkabau ethnic identity, reducing the social and adat (customary law) of Minangkabau people, considering LGBT is a threat and a social disease that affects the young generation of Minangkabau, and assuming LGBT is a form of decline for Islamic values that are considered embedding in the local tradition of society. This research argues that LGBT is a moral panic for the Minangkabau people produced by the power. This kind of moral panic emphasizes the disposition of the understanding of adat, religion and traditions around the public discourse. It means that this moral panic framework is a reproductive attempt to strengthen exclusive and conservatism trend in contemporary Minangkabau society and patriarchal influence which claim their attempts to maintain matrilineal values. To build on this argument, this paper will firstly present the context of heteronormativity in Indonesia and then discussing the context of Minangkabau people in West Sumatra.

The Eye of the Beholder: Applying Visual Analysis in an Historical Study of Lynxes’ Representations in the Bavarian Forest Region

Representation is never neutral, especially when it comes to agents devoid of their own voice. As such, wildlife has often been employed as a sort of leverage point, an emotional trigger aimed to deliver a certain message (see e.g., Cronin, 2011). The establishment of the Bavarian Forest National Park (BFNP) coincided with the return of large carnivores to the region, in particular, lynxes. Lynxes are endemic to the area; however, as in many other parts of Europe, the last free-roaming individuals were eradicated in the middle of the nineteenth century. In the past few decades, slowly, lynxes were both reintroduced or came back on their own volition, and that has created a considerable response from the population. There has been extensive coverage of the return of these animals both in local and regional media. Lynxes are also kept in the enclosures of the BFNP to afford visitors an unmediated look at the native charismatic megafauna. In this chapter, I analyse how lynxes have been represented in the local media, the newspaper Grafenauer Anzeiger, and discuss merits and drawbacks of visual analysis research method in understanding the change in attitudes towards these animals’ presence in the BFNP area. For that, I look at the archival and contemporary publications of the newspaper. It has been said that the precondition for people’s understanding of reality lays in fantasy, in imagining things to be true (Bergman, 2013). A visual analysis method can help uncover stories that do not necessarily come to the fore in text, and that, in turn, makes it possible to have a fuller grasp of one’s research object. Andrew Isenberg once said that “[our] representations of wildlife are inescapably expressions of human values” (Isenberg, 2002), and while texts are important in their own regard, visual analysis gives an opportunity to look behind a textual narrative to discern whether what we see of the wildlife corresponds to what we understand.

MEDIA FRAMING AND OFFICIAL PROPAGANDA IN ARMENIA DURING THE 45-DAY ARTSAKH WAR

This study analyzes the role of the media during the 45-day war in Artsakh in 2020. It aims to understand how the local media responded and reacted to official propaganda, particularly to the statements of the Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan. The research question of the capstone project is “What was the media framing of the official statements of the Armenian Prime Minister throughout the war?” To answer this question, the study first provides a short timeline of the war and the PM’s statements. Secondly, it conducts a descriptive content analysis of the three local media outlets, which are selected through purposive sampling. The analysis shows that the government-imposed censorship as well as the political economy of the media significantly affected the way the PM’s statements were being framed. The study tries to understand to what extent there was a “rally round the flag” effect and what caused certain behavior from different media outlets. Keywords: Artsakh war, media framing, propaganda, Nikol Pashinyan, rally round the flag

Exploring COVID-19 patients’ experiences of psychological distress during the disease course: a qualitative study

Background The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an emerging disease with many unknown clinical and therapeutic dimensions. Patients with COVID-19 experience a variety of psychological problems during the disease. Understanding patients’ mental condition and their distress during the disease is the first step to help these patients. So, the aim of this study was to explain COVID-19 patients’ experiences of psychological distress during the disease course. Methods The present qualitative research was conducted in Iran from April 2020 to April 2021 using the conventional content analysis method. The participants included patients with COVID-19, selected by the purposeful sampling method. Data was collected through 34 telephone and in-person interviews and analyzed based on the method proposed by Lundman and Graneheim. Results Qualitative data analysis led to the emergence of sources of psychological distress as the main theme as well as seven categories and seven sub-categories. The categories were the disease’s nature (the subcategories of disease’s unknown dimensions, and disease severity), the anxiety caused by preventive behaviors (the subcategories of quarantine, worry about transmitting the infection to others and obsessive thoughts related to disinfection measures), the inefficient management by the health system (the subcategories of poor health care condition and lack of spiritual care), death anxiety, stigma, anxiety after recovery, and sleep pattern disturbance. Conclusion Patients with COVID-19 experience great psychological distress during the acute phase of the disease or even long after recovery. It is suggested that psychological and spiritual counseling, as a key element of treatment and support for these patients, is provided to patients in the acute phase of the disease, as well as after recovery. National and local media should boost awareness about the disease as a dangerous yet preventable and curable infectious disease. People should follow health instructions and leave their seeing the disease as a taboo. Trial registration number Not applicable.