Print Media Coverage Research Articles

“To Terrorize the Public Mind”: How the British Press Reported the Fenian Dynamite Campaign, 1881–1885

ABSTRACT This study examines the coverage in the British print media of the Fenian dynamite campaign of 1881–1885. By examining a selection of the newspaper reporting done in the immediate days following the bomb blasts in urban centers, it can be seen that the press framed the campaign as a dramatic threat to the British people—but one they would overcome, even in the face of a frightening, unpredictable technological innovation that could put civilians in jeopardy. The metropolitan newspapers helped to shape how the British people understood the urban terrorist attacks. The press delivered to their readers vivid details about the novel and extraordinary nature of the dynamite threat, while also framing the shocking news to make their own political message and establish the narrative that even though it was under threat, Britain would triumph and hold fast to its place in the world—and onto its empire.

Themes and patterns in print media coverage of wildfires in the USA, Canada and Australia: 1986–2016

Background Media wildfire coverage can shape public knowledge on fire-related issues, and potentially influence management decisions, so understanding the content of its coverage is important. Previous research examining media wildfire coverage has primarily focused on either a single fire or issue, and provides little insight about the range of wildfire-related topics discussed in the media. Aims We aimed to assess wildfire topics covered in print media between 1986 and 2016 across the USA, Canada and Australia. Methods Machine learning-based automated content analyses were conducted to identify primary topics within news articles and to map relationships between topics. Key results News articles related to wildfire were clustered into four topic areas: Fire Response, Management, Environmental Conditions and Property Preparedness. Notable between-country differences emerge: the US media coverage focuses most on firefighting; Canadian coverage, climate change; and Australian coverage, preparedness. Conclusions Our results reveal that: (1) wildfire media coverage has increased over the past 30 years; (2) coverage is more varied than the common perspective, i.e. media continues to portray fires in a negative light; and (3) topic coverage varies significantly between countries. Implications These findings can help identify gaps in media coverage, and provide insights into critical topics, or relationships between topics, that may need additional emphasis in conversations about how to better learn to live with fire.

Shaping the ‘inexplicable’: A social constructionist analysis of news reporting of familicide-suicide

Media framing helps to shape our understanding of the meaning of news events, often problematically. This study examines how this process interacts with the phenomenon of familicide-suicide, where a person kills one or more family members before taking their own life. A social constructionist analysis of the print media coverage of three high-profile cases in Ireland highlights framing and discursive patterns, contributing to an explanatory framework that is misleading and lacking in an evidence base. As well as a tendency towards broad and poorly supported claims-making, several primary causal frames are prevalent: mental health; financial debt; fall from grace; and ‘out of the blue’, whilst a domestic violence frame is notable in its absence. Coverage is found to be episodic in character, linked to dramatisation and more simplistic explanatory frames, rather than evidence-based analysis of potential causal factors for these incidents. Findings raise important questions for journalistic practice, regarding processes of selection and salience of sources contributing to overall coverage that is partial and biased, rather than an ‘objective’ representation of the social world.

Media Coverage of Female Candidates’ Traits in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary

ABSTRACT The 2020 Democratic presidential primary featured more female candidates than any prior race of its kind, presenting a unique opportunity to analyze media coverage of women running for this distinctively masculine office. In this article, we explore themes in trait coverage for female candidates in 2020. Using a natural language processing (NLP) approach, we analyze a sample of print and online media coverage of the Democratic primary field just prior to the Iowa Caucus. We find that trait coverage largely emphasized warmth and competence, with a tendency to criticize female candidates for displaying insufficient warmth. Comparing white women to women of color, we find coverage of Harris, but not Gabbard, emphasizes racial and gender identifiers. The themes emerging from our trait analysis suggest women candidates continue to face obstacles in the form of gendered and sometimes racialized media coverage on their paths to the presidency.

Commentary: The Beat Goes On? Print Media Coverage of Anthropogenic Climate Change over the past three decades

Commentary: The Beat Goes On? Print Media Coverage of Anthropogenic Climate Change over the past three decades

Victims or intruders? Refugee portrayals in the news in Turkey, Bulgaria and the UK

News shapes audiences’ views of people and events beyond their immediate physical environment. Since the mass migration of refugees from Syria represents one of the worst humanitarian crises in modern history, its news coverage necessarily shaped the way global audiences understood the crisis. This qualitative study employs critical discourse analysis (CDA), specifically Van Leeuwen’s Discourse and Practice: New Tools for Critical Discourse Analysis (2008) as a social practice approach, to reveal and compare the discursive strategies used in the print media coverage of the Syrian refugees in three European countries: Turkey, Bulgaria and the UK. The findings show significant differences in the discourse used to describe the refugees and different approaches in terms of contextualization, spaces and actions depicted in the media coverage in each country. The study reveals the ongoing dialogue between journalistic practice and political decision making in three countries impacted to varying extents by the ongoing crisis.

Balance as bias, resolute on the retreat? Updates & analyses of newspaper coverage in the United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand, Australia and Canada over the past 15 years

Through this research, we systematically updated and expanded understanding of how the print media represent evidence of human contributions to climate change. We built on previous research that examined how the journalistic norm of balanced reporting contributed to informationally biased print media coverage in the United States (U.S.) context. We conducted a content analysis of coverage across 4856 newspaper articles over 15 years (2005–2019) and expanded previous research beyond U.S. borders by analyzing 17 sources in five countries: the United Kingdom (U.K.), Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the U.S. We found that across all the years of analysis, 90% of the sample accurately represented climate change. In addition, our data suggests that scientifically accurate coverage of climate change is improving over time. We also found that media coverage was significantly less accurate in 2010 and significantly more accurate in 2015, in comparison to the sample average. Additionally, Canada’s National Post, Australia’s Daily Telegraph and Sunday Telegraph, and the U.K.’s Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday (all historically conservative outlets) had significantly less accurate coverage of climate change over this time period than their counterparts.

Print Media Coverage on Climate Change Issues in Coastal Regions of Bangladesh: An Assessment of Professional Needs

The role of news media to communicate climate change issues is critical. Being one of the worst suffering countries from the climate change shocks, Bangladesh needs effective media coverage to raise mass awareness on the on hazardous effects of the climate change, adaptation and mitigation techniques. The Bangladesh media in general have no any agenda to deal with the issue except covering reports occasionally, particularly during the disaster period. The daily newspapers in the coastal regions of the country rarely cover climate change issues. Whatever they publish include mostly the disaster time reporting without much information and way-forwards. The present study was conducted to reveal the tendency of the print media coverage in the coastal region, figure out quality of the reporting and understand professional needs of the journalists. Content analysis approach was applied to assess the tendency and quality of reporting while Key Informant Interviews (KII) were carried out to understand the professional needs of the journalists. The study reveals that 72 percent reports were surface with an average column inch of 10.5. Only 7 percent reports were complete in terms of information and narration. Only 10 percent reports used expert’s interviews while using the sources didn’t adhere to the standard practice of journalism in most of the cases. The content analysis revealed major drawbacks of the journalist’s understanding of the climate change issues as well as standard practice of journalism. The findings from the KIIs suggested to improve the reporting skills and knowledge of the journalists working in the coastal regions in the field of climate change.

Pakistani Print Media as Political Propaganda Tool: A Study of Panama Issue

This research study examined the scenario of media as propaganda tool keeping in view the news reportage of the Panama issue as well as editorial coverage in Urdu print media. The study investigated the situation of whether the Urdu print media remained unbiased during reportage and editorial coverage of the big corruption scandal or it was used as a propaganda tool for the psychological warfare of the political arena. The paper assessed the position of factual and non-factual reportage and framed news reportage on the country's game-changer phenomenon. The study might be helpful to understand the scenario of news reportage on big corruption issues in the Urdu Print world of Pakistan. The results presented the outlines behind the framed news coverage, the picture of alteration into non-factual news, ignoring the facts and figures, and just focusing on the statements. The study also presented the view of meandering policies between reportage and editorials. It also indicated the changing policy regarding news reportage in terms of editorials and exposed the view of smearing position regarding ethical lees of news coverage. The study was the outcome of content analysis of Pakistani Urdu Dailies (three newspapers, Daily Jang, Daily Express, and Daily Dunya, were chosen as sample) to study the phenomenon, and in-depth interviews of senior communication experts were done to understand the scenario deeply.

When does print media address deforestation? A quantitative analysis of major newspapers from US, UK, and Australia

According to the economy-environment trade-off, good economic conditions raise citizens' concerns about the environment, while economic recessions reduce the interest. This paper explores this hypothesis in print media and considers the quantitative media coverage of deforestation in three English-language newspapers between 1995 and 2015. The empirical findings reject the economy-environment trade-off and show that print media coverage of deforestation exhibits a modest but significant increase during economic downturns and slows down in case of good economic conditions. The mass media can reflect public opinion on major environmental issues but at the same time, tend to influence public opinion selecting and framing newsworthy issues. A stable media attention on deforestation issues, even during economic recessions, can contribute to create public support and legitimization for ambitious environmental policies aimed at governing forest conservation.

‘A threat to the social order’: a ‘problem frame’ analysis of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia programme within print media

ABSTRACT This paper reports on print media coverage of the Safe Schools Coalition Australia (SSCA) in the two years until its federal review and loss of funding. Through applying Altheide’s theories of the ‘problem frame’ in mass media, articles from the 13 national and capital cities papers were analysed to ascertain the dominant productions surrounding the SSCA, and how these framed gender and sexuality diversity within and outside schooling environments. Analyses illustrated that print media dominantly constructed the programme using three ‘problem frames’. These relied on fear productions of the possible threat towards childhood innocence, heteronormativity, and cisnormativity. Depictions of threats to ‘freedom of speech’ also emerged. These findings produce new evidence that in this context, gender and sexuality diversity at school was overwhelmingly constructed as problematic. We argue that these constructions contributed to broader national discourses of gender and sexuality diversity as being dangerous or risky, especially for young people.

The Role Print Media Coverage in Promoting ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' A study with reference to leading newspapers in Rajasthan

The media plays a significant role in our lives by informing us about the happenings across the world and shaping our opinions on various issues. In this context, different forms of media have distinct utility in the dissemination of news and other important information. Print media is one of the most powerful and omnipresent tools for spreading information to a vast number of people in a cost-effective manner. The impact of the written word has never been underestimated and it remains a strong medium of communication and conversation. It is worth noting that reading written information leaves a long-lasting and deep impact on individuals and helps guide their views on a subject. Therefore, print media is of great significance in conveying information to different sections of the society and understanding their opinions which, in turn, has an impact on policy making.
 This study is aimed at ascertaining and analysing the role of print media in spreading awareness on the issues of cleanliness and sanitation amongst the people of India. In this context, the study involves the analysis of news-related data of two leading national newspapers, namely ‘Dainik Bhaskar’ and ‘Rajasthan Patrika’. The overall levels of cleanliness in India are alarmingly low with minimal facilities for disposal of waste which is a major challenge for many people. Although there have been several programmes and campaigns drafted and launched by the government of India to improve the mechanisms of waste disposal and enhance the cleanliness levels across the country, the issue of waste management remains a persistent problem for most Indians.
 Furthermore, the research methodology adopted for the study is 'Content Analysis’ which is an appropriate technique to analyse the contents of national English dailys. The study is focused on assessing the level of importance that the aforementioned newspapers have assigned to news related to cleanliness and sanitation issues. In this context, the findings of the study have revealed that both the newspapers have provided due significance to the aforementioned issues in their news coverage.

Print Media Coverage of Women Issues; National and Regional Newspapers of Sindh and the International Perspective


 
 Being the fourth pillar of society, media has the responsibility to highlight all the existing issues of society. Women are an integral part of our society and their ratio is continuously increasing in our population. Despite having an equal population ratio, they are facing numerous difficulties in daily routine and those issues are not being highlighted seriously in our media. Due to this, the women in our society suffers a lot. This study aims to find out and compare the coverage by the media to the issues of the women by the National and Regional Newspapers in Sindh and the international perspective related to coverage of women issues. For data collection purpose, three leading newspapers have been selected and previous international researches have been studied to get a clear global perspective. The selected Newspapers includes two national newspapers i.e. Daily Dawn and Daily Jang and one newspaper of regional level that is Daily Kawish. The nature of study is quantitative. For analyzing and collecting data, content analysis and comparative methods have been selected. In this regard the time period of one year has been chosen to collect the data which is from July 2015-June 2016. The most significant finding of this study is that regional newspaper is leading over national newspapers in terms of coverage and space of selected women issues.
 
 
 
 

Media Coverage and Stock Market Returns: Evidence from China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC)

This paper aims to analyze the print media coverage of the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) to trace the changes in investor positive and negative market attentions and their impact on stock market returns. We access the daily and weekly coverage of CPEC by national and international newspapers from the Bloomberg database over the period from 2015 to 2018. Using the Harvard psychological dictionary, we categorize the news headlines into two categories such as; news with positive sentiments and news with negative sentiment. We then relate the positive and negative news sentiment to the stock market returns, using quintile analysis, OLS, and VAR models. The results show that investors react quickly and significantly to positive news. They pay more for the same stock if the positive news stream increases and hence the stock market return also increases. In contrast, the investors do not react with the same passion to increase in negative news. These findings are in line with the theoretical rationale of the disposition effect. The study presents empirical evidence on the spillover effect of print media coverage on stock market returns with respect to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) which is considered a game-changer for the economy of Pakistan. Moreover, this study presents novel evidence that investors react quickly and significantly to the positive news whereas, to the negative news they react passively.

Особливості висвітлення в українській пресі епідемії тифу 1919-1920 рр. у Східній Галичині

The article makes an attempt to elucidate the specificity of coverage of epidemics, specifically the typhus epidemic in the Eastern Galicia during 1919–1920s in the Ukrainian-language interwar press. The object of the research is the Ukrainian mainstream press of Galicia (the social-democratic newspaper Vpered (Lviv) and the Ukrainian émigré press in the USA (the newspaper Svoboda (Jersey City). The study aims to elucidate peculiarities of epidemic communications in the editorial bent of the Ukrainian press, in particular narratives, functional direction, and approaches to the typhus epidemic coverage in different print media. The Research Methodology: bibliographical heuristics, logical methods, functional analysis, diachronic comparative analysis, narrative configuration in qualitative analysis (D. Polkinghorne (1995). The main results/findings: the common and different approaches, narratives and functions in the typhus epidemic coverage have been elucidated on the basis of the analysis of corpus of the West Ukrainian and émigré press. This research shows commonality of informative function as well as divergence of preventive function on the example of the typhus epidemic communications during 1919–1920s by the different Ukrainian periodicals of that time. Research novelty/originality: We have elucidated a focal place of grand-narrative of victimization in the editorial policies of the researched Ukrainian-language press. The conclusions have been drawn and the research avenues have been put forward, in particular in the context of modern media studies of epidemic communications in the Ukrainian media. Keywords: the Ukrainian mainstream press; newspaper; Vpered; Svoboda; the Polish periodicals; coverage; epidemic; typhus; epidemic communications; victimization grand-narrative; 1919–1920s; Eastern Galicia; Poland.

The Practice of Peace Journalism in the Coverage of Rohingya Crisis: A Study on Bangladeshi Newspapers

Abstract In modern journalism conflict resolution has become one of the significant issues. This paper evaluates the print media coverage of Rohingya crisis, which is one of the world’s most discussed topics in recent years. This study is based on the notion that media has potential to impact conflict prevention and its resolution. Based on their circulation, this study selected four Bangladeshi national daily newspapers. The aim is to examine Rohingya conflict-related news and editorials. The primary results confirmed that the issue’s coverage is negatively presented and consistently concentrated on abuse, violent incidents and the lack of peaceful solutions. It concludes that Bangladeshi print media did not play any crucial role in the peaceful resolution of the Rohingya crisis.

Xenophobia in South Africa: An Insight into the Media Representation andTextual Analysis

This paper examines print media coverage of xenophobicrelated behaviours and its possibility to incite xenophobic violence in South Africa considering the fact that the press has had accusations of publishing unbalanced and inconsistent stories about xenophobic-related violence. The method adopted was textual analysis of the selected South African newspapers’ headlines. Thus, this paper has made use of headlines from the Daily Dispatch, The Citizen, Sunday Times, Business Daily, and Independent Online news (IOL), between the period of May 2008 to August 2018. Interestingly, most of the selected newspapers in this paper have published vastly during this period, and they have been accused of misrepresentation, biasness, unbalanced reportage mostly on xenophobic-related violence. The findings of this paper revealed that these headlines are capable to putting readers on the edge and thus incite xenophobic violence across the country. In an attempt to discourage xenophobic behaviours, this paper has therefore recommended peace journalism and Ubuntu journalism as alternative models for reporting xenophobic violence and conflict.

Assessing Print Media Coverage on Environmental Issues in Pakistan: A Study of Major Newspapers in Pakistan

Nowadays, Pakistan faces sever environmental problems in spite of existing laws willing to defend the sustainable environment. In today’s environmental crisis, print media has a unique role to play among various stakeholders which consists of policy makers, Government, NGO’s and the public at large level. No one can deny from the role of print media as a source of information about education for millions of readers. There are many newspapers such as national Urdu, English and regional published daily in Pakistan. In Pakistan, media is also divided language with series of media in vernacular languages including Sindhi, Punjabi and Pashto. In this research, the content analysis of three newspapers Daily Dawn, Daily Jang and Daily Kawish was done of 2016, year to check the Length and Frequency of five major environmental issues Water Crisis, Agriculture Crisis, Pollution, Climate change and Deforestation. The data of following issues were analyzed by using tabulations month wise and finally year wise. English newspaper Dawn has given more coverage to these concerned issues, while secondly Urdu Jang newspaper has given coverage and Kawish has covered less number of stories regarding five major environmental issues.

Print Media Coverage of Environmental Issues in the COVID-19 Pandemic: An Ecolinguistic Analysis

The coverage of environmental issues is of great importance to Moroccan newspapers, namely As-Sabah, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Massae. The present study explores the frequency of articles that covered environmental issues and investigated the newspapers’ professionalism in writing environmental reports on man’s environmental setting violations. The Research was accomplished through the framework of ecolinguistics to categorize and analyze all environmental stories that extended from March to July 2020. The sums of 308 issues of the three newspapers were manually checked to identify the issues reported about environmental problems. The findings revealed that environmental coverage by the three newspapers was feeble. Precisely, only 73 newspaper issues pertaining to the three newspapers contained at least one environmental title. Practically, identified environmental articles were manually searched and treated based on a keyword selection such as environment, forest, animals, water, pollution, air, irrigation, deforestation, and overgrazing, among other words. In total, the final sum of environmental articles published by the three newspapers during the COVID-19 period were 92 articles (1.8%) over 4922 total articles published by 73 issues. The role of print media is determinant in covering environmental topics to maintain the public informed about the protection of environmental resources during the COVID-19 pandemic. Unfortunately, this role is far from being achieved given the feeble interest devoted to environmental issues and the way through which the newspapers have produced environmentally based stories. To remedy this situation, some recommendations are afforded to improve the writing of environmental reports in line with ecolinguistics principles and environmental journalism ethics.Â

Influence of content, events and culture on the public discourse about medical genetics in Switzerland – A quantitative media content analysis

Medical genetics is a broad and expanding field with many important implications for society, but knowledge about media coverage of this topic from recent years is lacking. This study aims to identify topics in medical genetics emerging in print media coverage in Switzerland by quantitatively analysing their occurrence in the public media discourse and assessing culturally conditioned differences between two Swiss language regions. We conducted a quantitative media content screening of print media and news agencies in the German- and French-speaking regions of Switzerland, and eight topics were identified. They demonstrate the large variety of topics in medical genetics present in public discourse. Coverage was dominated by legislative voting on genetics issues and by the preventive surgeries of the Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie. We found only small differences between the language regions, and coverage was strikingly similar for most variables.