Abstract

Political Communications, International Communications, News Sociology, all claim to offer an explanation for what shapes the news, but provide extremely different, if not contradictory suggestions. Political communications almost takes for granted the fact that official actors have a major role in shaping news stories at the national level. International Communications points at several possibilities: structural economic imbalances lead to unidirectional news flows from rich countries towards poor countries; globalization causes news to become homogenised on a worldwide scale; news is geared to the tastes of local audiences by national news producers. News sociology, instead, argues that the news product of each media organization is the unique output of patterns of social interactions among media professionals. An international comparative study of the elite press framing of 9/11 in the US, Italy, France, and Pakistan reveals the limits of these approaches: none of them alone is able to explain the patterns of news contents that were detected in the empirical investigation.The analysis suggests that the content of press coverage in the newspapers under analysis is more effectively explained in terms of selection of newsworthy sources, guided by national interest, journalistic culture, and editorial policy. The study points to the benefit of adopting international comparative research designs and fundamentally argues that, if we want to explain news in the information age, we need to approach its study in a multidisciplinary perspective.

Talk to us

Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have

Schedule a call

Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.