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.

Comunicación corporativa durante la pandemia por la COVID-19. Un análisis de las portadas de la prensa económica española durante el 2020 / Corporate communication during the COVID-19 pandemic. An analysis of the front pages of the Spanish business press in 2020

The COVID-19 pandemic that arrived in 2020 has affected the entire media landscape and also corporate communication. This research has analysed the main topics on the front pages of the three Spanish economic newspapers during 2020: Expansión, Cinco Días and El Economista. The evaluation of the main front page topics has made it possible to quantify the extent to which the pandemic has displaced the coverage devoted to corporate communications in organizations. In addition, it has been possible to observe which organizations have successfully spreading their messages and which specific issues have been most related to the pandemic. The results obtained show that the health crisis has absorbed the main topics of the front pages of the economic newspapers, leaving only half of the coverage available for other topics. Within this phenomenon of absorption, the effects on employment had the greatest prominence with a 10% presence in all the headlines analysed. The coverage on unemployment is especially important if it is related to the tourism sector, which was the industry with the highest presence on the front pages (36.6% of all topics categorized as COVID-19). The significant presence of both topics indirectly points to the important weight of tourism in the Spanish economy. However, it is not possible to state that all related topics were negative because there was also coverage focused on economic recovery (4.4%). On the other hand, in the space not occupied by the pandemic, it was observed that the coverage of the Caixabank - Bankia merger was the most important in comparison with the coverage of the rest of the organizations. This business initiative achieved 2.65% of front page topics since the pandemic began, in a scenario that was very limited. In general, mergers and acquisitions was the most important topic in 2020, as the second most covered specific topic was the failed merger between Banc Sabadell and BBVA. Telefonica was also among the companies with the most front-page coverage, although with a greater diversity of topics. The rest of the companies analysed also showed a wide variety of corporate topics as dividend management, cash flow movements and business diversification. It was also noted that the coverage achieved on the front pages maintained a business focus and wasn’t a vehicle for disseminating CSR efforts related to the pandemic. This is a very significant result because much recent literature has argued that during the pandemic, CSR has played an important role in the communication strategies of organizations. However, it seems that these actions have not been enough important to get a prominent position on the front page of Spanish business newspapers. The most important conclusion that can be drawn from this research is that corporate communication by organizations did not disappear during 2020 despite the ravages of the pandemic, but was reduced by 50%. This reduction also shows a very important effect to take into consideration. During the year 2020 organizations had to work much harder to be in the spotlight even though the economic coverage of the analysed media did not completely disappear because of the pandemic.

The (real) need for a human touch: testing a human–machine hybrid topic classification workflow on a New York Times corpus

The classification of the items of ever-increasing textual databases has become an important goal for a number of research groups active in the field of computational social science. Due to the increased amount of text data there is a growing number of use-cases where the initial effort of human classifiers was successfully augmented using supervised machine learning (SML). In this paper, we investigate such a hybrid workflow solution classifying the lead paragraphs of New York Times front-page articles from 1996 to 2006 according to policy topic categories (such as education or defense) of the Comparative Agendas Project (CAP). The SML classification is conducted in multiple rounds and, within each round, we run the SML algorithm on n samples and n times if the given algorithm is non-deterministic (e.g., SVM). If all the SML predictions point towards a single label for a document, then it is classified as such (this approach is also called a “voting ensemble"). In the second step, we explore several scenarios, ranging from using the SML ensemble without human validation to incorporating active learning. Using these scenarios, we can quantify the gains from the various workflow versions. We find that using human coding and validation combined with an ensemble SML hybrid approach can reduce the need for human coding while maintaining very high precision rates and offering a modest to a good level of recall. The modularity of this hybrid workflow allows for various setups to address the idiosyncratic resource bottlenecks that a large-scale text classification project might face.

Protesters at the news gates: An experimental study of journalists’ news judgment of protest events

Media attention is a key political resource for protesters. This implies that journalists are a crucial audience to which protesters seek to appeal. We study to what extent features of protest, of journalists, and of news organizations affect journalists’ news judgment. We exposed 78 Spanish journalists to vignettes of asylum seeker protests. Four features were systematically manipulated: protesters’ worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment (WUNC). The experiments scrutinize the extent to which journalists consider a protest newsworthy (presence) and the likelihood that a protest is featured on a newspaper’s front page (prominence). Our results show that in terms of media presence, high turnout is key. Highly unified protesters, in contrast, are considered less newsworthy. Regarding prominence, strongly committed demonstrators more easily make it to the frontpage. Individual characteristics of journalists have no direct effect on news judgment. Journalists’ editorial status and ideological (outlet) placement only moderate the effect of some of the protest features, although in terms of front-page placement a more potent adversary versus ally effect is distinguished.

Calm the farm or incite a riot? Animal activists and the news media: A public relations case study in agenda-setting and framing

The ideological differences between animal activists and primary producers are long-standing, existing long before the advent of social media with its widespread communicative capabilities. Primary producers have continued to rely on traditional media channels to promote their products. In contrast, animal activists have increasingly adopted livestreaming on social media platforms and ‘direct action’ protest tactics to garner widespread public and media attention while promoting vegetarianism/veganism, highlighting issues in animal agriculture and disrupting the notion of the ‘happy farm animal’. This paper uses a case study approach to discuss the events that unfolded when direct action animal activists came into conflict with Western Australian farmers and businesses in 2019. The conflict resulted in increased news reporting, front-page coverage from mainstream press, arrests and parliamentary law changes. This case study explores how the activists’ strategic communication activities, which included livestreaming their direct actions and other social media tactics, were portrayed by one major Australian media outlet and the farmers’ interest groups’ reactions to them.

Instrumen Suplemen Konversi (ISK) Perguruan Tinggi

Implementation of tertiary accreditation is the assessment and recognition of the quality and performance of an institution. The Conversion Supplement Instrument (ISK) is an additional accreditation instrument used for decision making on the conversion of an accredited ranking obtained by the Standard 7 College Accreditation Instrument to a new accreditation rating in accordance with the Higher Education Accreditation 3.0 instrument. This research uses a qualitative method (Qualitatitive Research), with a literature study approach. What is meant by library research (Library Research) the author seeks information that is relevant to the subject matter. Higher Education Conversion Supplement (ISK) instruments consist of: front page, university identity, team identity preparation of ranking conversion report, preface, format of conversion supplement instrument (permanent lecturer, temporary lecturer, higher education quality assurance system, cycle internal quality assurance system, exceeding SN-PT, quality assurance mechanisms leading to Outcome Based Accreditation for accreditation of study programs and scientific publications. === Pelaksanaan akreditasi perguruan tinggi adalah penilaian dan pengakuan tentang kualitas dan kinerja suatu institusi. Instrumen Suplemen Konversi (ISK) adalah instrumen akreditasi tambahan yang digunakan untuk pengambilan keputusan konversi peringkat terakreditasi yang diperoleh dengan Instrumen Akreditasi Perguruan Tinggi 7 Standar menjadi peringkat akreditasi baru sesuai dengan instrumen Akreditasi Perguruan Tinggi 3.0. Penelitian ini menggunakan metode kualitatif (Qualitatitive Research), dengan pendekatan studi pustaka. Yang dimaksudkan dengan studi pustaka (Library Research) penulis mencari informasi yang relevan dengan pokok pembahasan. Instrumen Suplemen Konversi (ISK) perguruan tinggi terdiri dari: halaman depan, identitas perguruan tinggi, identitas tim penyusunan laporan konversi peringkat, kata pengantar, format intrumen suplemen konversi (dosen tetap, dosen tidak tetap, sistem penjaminan mutu perguruan tinggi, siklus sistem penjamian mutu internal, pelampauan SN-PT, mekanisme penjaminan mutu menuju Outcome Based Accreditation akreditasi program studi dan publikasi ilmiah.

Power and satire in the front-page images of Mariano Rajoy: visual motifs as political humour

This article explores the use of photography and visual motifs as forms of political humour in contemporary media. By studying the representation of former Prime Minister of Spain Mariano Rajoy in the front pages of three Spanish newspapers (El Mundo, El País and La Vanguardia) between 2011 and 2017, the paper identifies and questions the liaisons between power and satire present in the so-called “serious” press, focusing on how different photographic traits concerning layout, composition and gestures reflect ideological choices. This photographic satire developed by printed media is then framed within a figurative tradition that goes back to Spanish royal portraiture, from Velázquez to Goya, which employs common strategies for the visual depiction of power, including satirical and humorous attributes to push specific political agendas. This examination, based on the quantified study and the visual analysis of more than 7,500 front pages, is part of the national research project Visual Motifs in the Public Sphere: Production and Circulation of Images of Power in Spain, 2011-2017. In order to determine a useful procedural approach to satirical expressions in photographs, defining which front pages invoke a remarkable satirical content, this article also presents a comparative study and a categorisation based on formal (im)balances related to the concepts of visual motif and humour.

Text Mining and Sentiment Analysis of Newspaper Headlines

Text analytics are well-known in the modern era for extracting information and patterns from text. However, no study has attempted to illustrate the pattern and priorities of newspaper headlines in Bangladesh using a combination of text analytics techniques. The purpose of this paper is to examine the pattern of words that appeared on the front page of a well-known daily English newspaper in Bangladesh, The Daily Star, in 2018 and 2019. The elucidation of that era’s possible social and political context was also attempted using word patterns. The study employs three widely used and contemporary text mining techniques: word clouds, sentiment analysis, and cluster analysis. The word cloud reveals that election, kill, cricket, and Rohingya-related terms appeared more than 60 times in 2018, whereas BNP, poll, kill, AL, and Khaleda appeared more than 80 times in 2019. These indicated the country’s passion for cricket, political turmoil, and Rohingya-related issues. Furthermore, sentiment analysis reveals that words of fear and negative emotions appeared more than 600 times, whereas anger, anticipation, sadness, trust, and positive-type emotions came up more than 400 times in both years. Finally, the clustering method demonstrates that election, politics, deaths, digital security act, Rohingya, and cricket-related words exhibit similarity and belong to a similar group in 2019, whereas rape, deaths, road, and fire-related words clustered in 2018 alongside a similar-appearing group. In general, this analysis demonstrates how vividly the text mining approach depicts Bangladesh’s social, political, and law-and-order situation, particularly during election season and the country’s cricket craze, and also validates the significance of the text mining approach to understanding the overall view of a country during a particular time in an efficient manner.

RECOMMENDED FOR YOU: INVESTIGATING THE USE OF ALGORITHMIC NEWS RECOMMENDATION IN THE SCANDINAVIAN DAILY PRESS

This paper investigates the Scandinavian daily press’ efforts in and perspectives on algorithmic news recommendation. News recommender systems provide news organisations with new opportunities to offer more relevant and personalised news experiences, but their increasing use has also raised several concerns about whether and how algorithms should undertake important editorial decisions. Current literature offers only limited empirical insight into the actual use of these technologies in journalism, and this paper is the first to map the use of news recommender systems in the Scandinavian media system. Drawing on interviews with all 19 national newspapers within the Scandinavian daily press, the findings reveal that 17 newspapers use news recommender systems and 14 of these use personalisation. Most newspapers expressed positive attitudes toward the technologies, highlighting increased relevance and better opportunities to drive subscriptions. The extent of the use of news recommendation at the specific news media organisations is still limited due to concerns about algorithms interfering with journalistic priorities and a reluctance to jeopardise the brand value of the front page. Some newspapers address these concerns by allowing for editorial control through subjectively estimated journalistic input, revealing that journalistic norms and ideals affect the design and implementation of algorithms in journalism.