Reforming Media Coverage of Sexual Violence: The Subversive Journalism of US and UK Feminist Digital Media

PurposeThis paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults (YAs). It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations.Design/methodology/approachThis was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years.FindingsMost YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings.Originality/valueContrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media.

Negativity bias is one of the most salient features of news reporting. According to cultivation theory, this bias can foster anxiety about societal issues among news audiences. The relationship is, however, likely to depend on the audience’s news orientations and the issue under consideration. Drawing on a content analysis of mainstream and alternative news media and a three-wave panel survey, both conducted in Sweden, we examine how general and alternative news orientations relate to egotropic anxiety (worry about being personally affected or harmed) about violent crimes and climate change. The results show that while alternative news media portray violent crimes more negatively than mainstream news media, the opposite is true for climate change, which mainstream news media portray more negatively than alternative news media. Consistent with this finding, alternative news orientation is related to higher levels of anxiety about violent crimes, while general news orientation is related to higher levels of anxiety about climate change, illustrating how people seek information that concur with and thereby maintain or reinforce their beliefs. These results have consequences both for cultivation theory and for our understanding of the role played by mainstream and alternative news media in society.

Over the last few decades, the fields of sports media and mainstream news media have grown and evolved proportionally to one another, occupying different areas of the same field but having fundamentally different priorities and serving fundamentally different audiences. In recent years, however, a number of high-profile events have caused sports media and news media to blur together, creating an overlap that has not often been analyzed. This study is an examination of how mainstream news media covers stories traditionally covered by sports media, which sports stories mainstream media covers, and the differences between how sports media and mainstream news media cover the same stories. This study was performed by comprehensively researching the sports stories covered throughout the year 2016 by three mainstream news outlets -- the New York Times, CNN and NBC News -- and comparing them to the work done by ESPN and CBS Sports in the same year.;Over the course of the year studied, mainstream news outlets dedicated the most amount of time covering football and basketball, as well as Olympic sports, owing to the fact that the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro took place in 2016. In addition, an examination of the content of these outlets' coverage of sports during the year showed fundamental differences in how sports and news media approach the same stories. Mainstream news media coverage of sports stories tends to include more context for events and athletes, while sports outlets tend to assume that their audience already knows these things as a given. At the same time, sports outlets are more inclined towards framing stories on crime or social issues through the lens of how the event in question affects the competitive side of sports. Most of the differences stem from mainstream news media's need to reach an audience that might not actively follow sports, and its desire to relate sports events back to issues it already covers.

This study, conducted in Germany and Israel in May 2022, compares German and Israeli news media consumption concerning the Russian–Ukrainian war using a structured online questionnaire. A total of 1,310 and 509 valid questionnaires were completed in Germany and Israel, respectively, examining differences in how news consumers used media to access information. Specifically, objective and subjective proximity to Ukraine and Ukrainians, interest in politics and media perceptions were examined as potential predictors of use patterns of various media. For most variables, Germans and Israelis similarly sought news about the war, especially in mainstream news media. In Israel, objective and subjective proximities to Ukraine were the most significant predictors for consuming mainstream news media, with interest in politics and media trust being less important. In Germany, the latter factors predicted mainstream news media consumption more strongly than ties and subjective proximity, while trust in the mainstream media was not a significant predictor. Finally, the authors found that the lower the trust in mainstream media, the larger the volume of social media consumption about the war.

Public health crises like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic appear to be the perfect breeding ground for misinformation. As influential information sources, mainstream news media have a unique opportunity to use their platform to debunk and educate the public about misinformation. Despite evidence lending support to the potential for mainstream news media to play a larger role in combating misinformation in society, empirical explorations of how they have contributed to the management of misinformation remain scant. This study aims to address these major gaps in research by investigating how mainstream news dailies gatekeep and correct COVID-19 related misinformation in Singapore. The content of 164 news articles published by the mainstream news dailies in Singapore from January 1 to April 30, 2020 on COVID-19 misinformation was analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. Results show that the two main types of misinformation, fabricated and reconfigured misinformation, were covered almost equally by mainstream news media. Misinformation related to science and health were most frequently reported, followed by scams, and government policy. Statistically significant differences were found between how mainstream news media corrected the various types and topics of misinformation. Significant differences were also found within the various types, topics, and corrections of misinformation across the early stages of the pandemic. Taken together, these findings shed light on the critical role of mainstream news media as public education tools to correct misinformation during public health crises. From a theoretical perspective, these findings contribute to the understanding of media misinformation gatekeeping, and misinformation correction. From a practical perspective, it highlights the capacity and potential roles of the press in supporting government efforts to combat misinformation.

Why did we ever imagine that we knew what journalism is? Why do so many people speak as if there was this Thing called Journalism that has only recently been called into question? A volume of papers devoted to ‘rethinking journalism’ understandably assumes that this is an especially appropriate moment for reconsideration, that journalism stands at a time of epochal change, and that there are grounds for concern that some of the elements of change do not bode well for journalism or for some valued features of society and politics that journalism is said to support – notably, democracy. I agree with these premises, but I worry that they may seem to imply that we know what journalism was, at least up until yesterday or the day before yesterday.

PurposeThe modern high-choice news environment has changed the way people consume news. We examined the structure of news repertories, the role of news trust (and cynicism) in shaping news repertoires, and the effects of different news repertoires on political participation in the South Korean news environment, where news portals function as major news sources.Design/methodology/approachWe conducted a two-wave national survey of adults in January and February 2022 with a three-week time interval. Latent profile analyses and latent profile regression were employed.FindingsFour major news repertoires were identified: news portal-concentrated, portal and TV combination, all except print and SNS, and platform omnivores. Trust in mainstream news media was found to be high in the following order: platform omnivores, all except print and SNS, portal and TV combination, and portal-concentrated repertoires. Cynicism about mainstream media was found to be higher among the users of portal-concentrated repertoire than those using the other three repertoires. Those who rely mainly on news portals for news (i.e. portal-concentrated) were less likely to participate in politics.Originality/valueThis study provides comprehensive insights into how audience perceptions of trust and cynicism toward mainstream news media shape news consumption patterns in today’s high-choice media environment. In particular, the findings of this study illuminate the function of news portals as a substitute platform for those who exhibit lower trust and higher cynicism toward mainstream news media.

Academic writing on ‘terrorism’ and the availability to the mainstream media and policy-makers of terror ‘experts’ have increased exponentially since 11 September 2001. This paper examines the rise of terror expertise and its use in one particular public arena – the mainstream news media. Using a combination of citation analysis and media analysis, the paper presents a ranking of the most influential terror experts in the mainstream news media in the Anglophone world. It is shown how what has been called an ‘invisible college’ of experts operates as a nexus of interests connecting academia with military, intelligence and government agencies, with the security industry and the media. The paper then takes a small number of case studies of some of the most prominent experts who exemplify the dominant trend in the field and examines the networks in which they are embedded. The last part of the paper uses the data generated to re-examine theories of ‘terrorism’ and the media, of ‘propaganda’ and ‘terrorism’, and of ‘source–media’ relations. It is suggested that the study of terror experts shows the need to study and theorise the media in a wider context by focusing on the relations between media content and production processes and wider formations of power. In so doing, the paper attempts to connect studies of media and terrorism to wider studies of terror and political violence.

In contemporary media environments, mainstream news media have become increasingly challenged by political alternative media. Even though research on how political alternative media cover politics and society has increased, there is still limited research comparing how political alternative media and mainstream news media cover key political events, such as election campaigns. To fill this gap, the purpose of this study is to compare election news coverage in political alternative and mainstream news media, drawing theoretically on theories related to mediatization and structural bias on the one hand, and politicization and political bias on the other. Empirically, the overarching research question is how election coverage in left- and right-wing political alternative and mainstream media differs. Findings suggest that political alternative media do function as an alternative to mainstream news media in that they offer more politicized coverage of election campaigns. However, left-wing, and right-wing political alternative media also constitute alternatives to each other in how the election campaigns are covered.

Constructive or solutions-focused news is often promoted as a way to mitigate news avoidance and declining levels of trust in mainstream news media. The constitutive element of the constructive approach is the prioritization of solutions-focused news stories. Rather than reporting negative, conflict-driven news about societal issues, journalism should focus more on presenting concrete solutions to problems. This study examines how solutions-focused journalism is applied and enacted in mainstream news media in Sweden. By drawing from research on news discourse and news as narrative, we examine journalism as a storytelling practice, analyzing both the “story”—what is told about solutions to problems - and the “telling”—how is it told, i.e., the forms of expression used by journalists. The aim is to analyze how solutions-focused news stories are constructed in journalistic news discourse through a repertoire of storytelling devices. This study presents a qualitative analysis of a corpus of 218 solutions-focused news stories sampled from press, radio, TV, and online news in Sweden. The results describe the prevalence and characteristics of solutions-focused news, identifying the three main formulas for solutions-focused storytelling in mainstream news media. We also outline the potential challenges the solutions-focused approach presents to professional news journalism.

Alternative news media are largely independent players in the news environment, which allows them to publish more alternative, and possibly more radical, news content. Do they utilise their independence to display actors that are underrepresented in the mainstream news? And does it affect the actor diversity in their news coverage and the journalistic environment as a whole? This study scrutinises the differences in actor diversity and actor presentation in articles published by alternative and mainstream news media to gauge if alternative media are more one-sided and if they contribute to the external actor diversity of the news environment. We analyse a sample of news articles on migration and social affairs published by two mainstream media and four alternative outlets. Despite limited differences in article-level actor diversity between alternative and mainstream news media, our findings highlight that right-wing and left-wing alternative media exploit their editorial independence differently to highlight other actor categories. Left-wing alternative news media present more civil society actors, while right-wing alternative news outlets pay more attention to right-wing politicians and parties. Thus, alternative news media are not that different in terms of internal actor diversity, but they modestly advance the external actor diversity in the news environment.

RESISTING THROUGH CITIZEN JOURNALISM: A CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS ON THE BLACK LIVES MATTER MOVEMENT ON TWITTER

In the contemporary digital media landscape marked by the presence of disinformation and fake news, the aim of this study is to perform a comparative analysis of mainstream news media and fake news websites, and to identify the multimodal resources characteristic of them. In particular, the study focuses on newsbits and newsbites, which comprise clusters of headlines, leads, hyperlinks, and images (Knox 2007), because they arguably represent the most salient features of any news websites. A representative corpus of newsbits and newsbites was compiled from mainstream news media and fake news websites that meet the criteria of such websites defined in the study. In total, 8 newsbites and newsbits were collected from 2 mainstream news media and 2 fake news websites. The study primarily draws on Bednarek and Caple’s (2012) approach to news discourse, which affords ways to perform a complex multimodal analysis of text and image, as well as explores the concepts of news values, parameters of evaluation, text-image relations, and communicative functions of images. As the primary objective of newsbits and newsbites is to entice readers to read the full article, the creation of compelling newsbits and newsbites is the shared goal of both mainstream news media and fake news websites, even though their broader objectives or ethical standards may not align. The manipulative impact of linguistic modes is more pronounced in the case of fake news websites because they rely on attracting clicks through controversial evaluations or alternate perspectives of some existing news. On the other hand, mainstream news media create more engaging and clickable newsbits and newsbites with higher emotional pull via the interplay of text and real-life images.

Alternative media users have low trust in mainstream media but use them, nonetheless. Departing from this paradox, this study explores why the users seek out mainstream media and how they combine alternative and mainstream content. Qualitative interviews with 25 users of Danish alternative media show that they especially use mainstream news for general orientation but also to fulfil social, opinion, and entertainment needs, as part of everyday habits, and because of unwanted incidental exposure. Furthermore, the study identifies two distinct ways of combining alternative and mainstream media. (1) A clear division of labor where mainstream media provide orientation on current affairs and parts of the picture on topics the users consider biased in mainstream news; and alternative media give counterbalance by providing the missing pieces. (2) An unclear division of labor where alternative and mainstream media play overlapping roles, rendering alternative media less important to the users. The findings suggest that the use of alternative media only makes sense in combination with mainstream news and give little indication that they could entirely displace mainstream media. However, this must be understood in relation to the specific Danish media context and the study concludes by discussing the findings’ relevance in other media contexts. The findings are based on a small sample and cannot be generalized to all Danish users of alternative media.

Through the analysis of over 1,600 articles from four British news organisations, this thesis reveals distinct patterns in the political content of economic and business news in the first decade of the 21st century. In each of the three case studies – economic globalisation; private finance and public services; and Tesco - the Telegraph newspapers, The Times and the Sunday Times were overtly supportive of laissez faire, the primacy of profit, and reduced government regulation. The Guardian-Observer gave some exposure and credence to ideas from the left but tended to exclude the more radical thinking. Although the BBC is often accused of having a left-wing/anti-business bias, this thesis demonstrates that its reporting has far more in common with the right-wing newspapers than the generally progressive Guardian-Observer. Two further empirical chapters, based on interviews with 26 journalists and editors, explain these findings. The first describes the convergence of the mainstream news media around a shared set of deeply-entrenched assumptions and working practices that are hardwired to reproduce elite interpretations of the economic environment. The second explanatory chapter explores the concept of house tradition, and considers the extent of political divergence of the four mainstream news providers, and contrasts their positions with those of four ‘alternative’ news organisations, the New Statesman, the New Internationalist, Corporate Watch and Private Eye.