“Toxic atmosphere effect”: Uncivil online comments cue negative audience perceptions of news outlet credibility

Uncivil user comments have been found to have a negative effect on how people perceive an issue featured in the news, a news story, or a journalist who reports a news story. To advance this line of research, we draw on expectancy violations theory and the concept of heuristic cues to theorize the toxic atmosphere effect. We theorize that incivility in online comment threads could pose an even larger challenge to news organizations by cuing news audience members to perceive an entire news outlet—not just an individual story—as lacking in credibility. Based on two experiments in the United States (Study 1, n = 520; Study 2, n = 1056), we show that exposure to incivility can lead people to perceive a news outlet as less credible even though the incivility did not directly attack the news outlet. Such effects hold true even when people are exposed to comment threads in which the first several comments are civil. Democratic and business implications are discussed.

A Case Study: Mada Masr—A Progressive Voice in Egypt and Beyond

This article questions the role of the media in times of political transformation. In doing so, it draws on theories on the interconnectedness of the different fields of society to explain the sets of roles that media outlets and journalists adopt during phases of transition. Before 2011, the Egyptian media mostly acted as collaborators of the ruling regime and rarely as an agent of change. Journalists took over the latter role more often following the advent of privately-owned media outlets, thus helping to pave the way for the events of the so-called Arab Spring. This case study focuses on the development of the online news portal <em>Mada Masr</em> and therefore traces the development of two newsrooms. Starting as the English edition of a privately-owned Arabic newspaper in 2009 and changing its status to an independent news outlet in 2013, <em>Mada Masr</em> is one of the few voices which still openly criticise the Egyptian government. Founded in a time of political turmoil and struggling against an increasingly authoritarian environment, the outlet implements innovative ways of producing content, securing funding, and reaching out to its readers. A group of young Egyptian and international journalists make use of new spaces for expression that have opened through the global changes in communication infrastructure while struggling with frequent attacks by representatives of the ruling regime. As such, <em>Mada Masr</em> is a role model for small and regime-critical media outlets.

Signaling News Outlet Credibility in a Google Search

This study extends the literature on how transparency influences news credibility perceptions by examining trust signals at the news outlet level, rather than at the story level, as earlier research has done. Experiments in the United States ( n = 1,037) and Germany ( n = 1,000) found that exposure to trust signals in a Google search about a known news brand, rather than an unknown brand, and the German cultural context increased news credibility perceptions. Participants were more likely to click on trust signals that gave background about the news brand or offered ways to engage with a news outlet.

Impingement on the internet: evaluating the quality and readability of online subacromial impingement information

Patients increasingly access the internet to learn about their orthopaedic conditions. Despite this, online information may be unregulated, of questionable quality and difficulty to read.ObjectivesTherefore, this study aimed to evaluate the readability and quality of the online information concerning subacromial impingement syndrome.MethodsA search using Australia’s three most popular online search engines was undertaken using the search terms ‘subacromial impingement syndrome’ and ‘shoulder impingement’. The first 15 websites for each term were evaluated. Duplicates, advertisements and sponsored links were removed.The quality and readability of each website were calculated using the DISCERN and Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease (FKRE) tools, respectively. The differences in quality and readability between each website type (healthcare/academic, commercial, news outlet, charitable/not-for-profit, layperson, government) was assessed using analysis of variance. The correlation between quality and readability was assessed using the Pearson correlation coefficient.ResultsThe majority of 35 unique websites analysed were of ‘poor’/’fair’ quality (determined via the DISCERN instrument) and ‘difficult’ readability (per the FKRE tool), with no correlation established between the scores. There was no statistically significant difference in quality across website types, however layperson, news outlet and government websites were found to be significantly more readable than alternate website categories (p<0.05).ConclusionsWe determined that much of the online information concerning subacromial impingement syndrome may be difficult to read and/or of poor quality. By recognising the shortcomings of information accessed by patients online, it is hoped clinicians may be prompted to better educate their patients.

MEGAPHONE: SOCIAL-MEDIA-NATIVE OUTLETS BETWEEN EDITORIAL INDEPENDENCE AND ALGORITHMIC CONSTRAINTS

Though the role of digital media in protest movements has received plenty of attention since the onset of Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Uprisings a decade ago, the way that protest movements have enabled the institutional development of independent digital news media has received less attention. How do protest movements enable the rise of independent digital news media? How do these emerging outlets interact with components of pre-existing media? And what techno political constraints do these outlets face? To answer these questions, we zoom in on Lebanon where an uprising broke out in 2019 and gave rise to a network of independent and interdependent digital media outlets. We focus on the rise of Megaphone, an independent social-media-native news outlet that left its mark on the country’s political and media scene. Based on a politico-economic analysis of the emerging digital media scene in Lebanon, a historical analysis of the distinctive meaning of media independence in that context, and a case study of Megaphone, we examine the notion of independent digital media in the context of protest movements and analyze the distinctive travails of social-media-native outlets. We also show how, in Lebanon, independence movements, protest movements, and uprisings have historically contributed to introducing new media forms and outlets and shaping Lebanon’s media. Our paper contributes to a techno-political and algorithmic notion of media independence and begins to theorize social-media-native independent news outlets as a peculiar form of emerging, and increasingly prevalent, media institution.

Look Who’s Writing: How Gender Affects News Credibility and Perceptions of News Relevance

Women reporters are underrepresented in newsrooms and assigned to gender-stereotypic roles, but to what effect? To better understand the role of gender in news making, this article utilizes three survey experiments to investigate the effects of journalists’ gender on reader perceptions toward reporter credibility, outlet credibility, and the relevance of news to them. We find little evidence that readers doubt the credibility of a reporter or a news outlet based on the gender of a reporter, the gender of the source, or the gendered nature of the issue. Our findings have implications for media credibility and newsroom diversity.

Going negative by metaphors: The Donbass conflict in the Russian and the Ukrainian press

Previous research has established the importance of metaphors as conceptual devices (Semino, 2008; Zinken & Musolff, 2009). This article builds upon existing research and extends the insight into how media use metaphors in their coverage of military conflicts. The media coverage of the ongoing Eastern Ukrainian military conflict (Donbass conflict) presents a suitable case for this investigation. The strength of this study lies in the nature of the data that have been collected, namely articles that appeared in a Russian and a Ukrainian news outlet (September 2014 until January 2015) covering the same stories (same date, same event). Thereby, we investigate metaphor as a conceptual device and an element of framing that contributes to the distinct representation of the conflict in the selected outlets from the two countries. This research follows a qualitative research design, relying on Critical Metaphor Analysis (Charteris-Black, 2004), and Metaphor Power Taxonomy (De Landtsheer, 2015; Beer & De Landtsheer, 2004). We conclude that the selected Russian and Ukrainian media used metaphors for enemy construction, in particular the hostile imagery with “Colony” (Russian outlet) and “Fear” (Ukrainian outlet) as major source domains.

Low-skilled temporary foreign workers in Canada : how their subordinate status is discursively legitimated through public opinion

This paper attempts to show how public opinion discursively legitimates the subordinate status that low-skilled temporary foreign workers are assigned in Canada. The author first shows how this status has been created through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and, more specifically, the Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training. In order to analyze public opinion, comments made online in reference to news outlet articles concerning low-skilled temporary foreign workers were located. Using a dual labor market theoretical framework a critical discourse analysis is performed on these comments, attempting to uncover how power and dominance are reproduced within them. The results of this analysis demonstrate how the discourse contained within public opinion helps to maintain the current status faced by this population.

Low-skilled temporary foreign workers in Canada : how their subordinate status is discursively legitimated through public opinion

This paper attempts to show how public opinion discursively legitimates the subordinate status that low-skilled temporary foreign workers are assigned in Canada. The author first shows how this status has been created through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program and, more specifically, the Pilot Project for Occupations Requiring Lower Levels of Formal Training. In order to analyze public opinion, comments made online in reference to news outlet articles concerning low-skilled temporary foreign workers were located. Using a dual labor market theoretical framework a critical discourse analysis is performed on these comments, attempting to uncover how power and dominance are reproduced within them. The results of this analysis demonstrate how the discourse contained within public opinion helps to maintain the current status faced by this population.

Anatomy of a precarious newsroom: precarity and agency in Syrian exiled journalism in Turkey

This paper contributes to the ongoing debate on the precarisation of journalistic work by looking at the case of Syrian exiled journalists in Turkey, whose professional and personal lifeworlds are underpinned by multiple layers of precarity. The article builds on data collected during a 3-month-long period of participant observations at the newsroom of Enab Baladi, a Syrian news outlet based in Istanbul, Turkey. It develops a relational notion of precarity through insights from the growing body of work on precarity in the journalistic field, as well as research on precarity and migration. It proposes a multidimensional understanding of the ‘precarious newsroom’ that takes into account the people, organisation and place, as a way to map how different layers of precarity, and responses to them, are articulated, experienced and negotiated. Our research underlines the complex anatomy of the precarious newsroom as a paradoxical place and an amalgamation of precarity and agency.