Dutch News Media Research Articles

Exploring the Value of Computational Methods for Metajournalistic Discourse: The Example of COVID-19 Reporting in Dutch Newspapers

ABSTRACT The COVID-19 pandemic raised questions about trust in journalism and the quality of news reporting during societal crises. While journalists and media professionals frequently offered critical reflections based on personal experiences and observations, computational methods are not widely used to support these evaluative processes. We aim to extend the conversation on metajournalistic discourse by considering the inclusion of empirical methods for monitoring journalistic practices. By disclosing our findings about Dutch news media’s corona reporting between 2019 and 2022, we demonstrate how computational methods for content analyses of news texts can yield empirically informed insights into different facets of journalistic performance. The corpus includes 106,616 corona-related articles from national and regional newspapers in the Netherlands. We deployed text analytical methods such as topic modelling and named entity recognition to explore Dutch corona reporting in respect to different normative criteria (informing, monitoring, offering platforms for discussion and opinion, interpretation, analysis, and setting public agendas). The study was requested by a large Dutch newspaper to receive a systematic-empirical analysis of journalistic practice for self-evaluation. We argue that computational methods combined with qualitative analyses can stimulate dialogue and critical reflection among news media professionals.

The Early 1730s Shipworm Disaster in Dutch News Media

This article investigates the interaction between society, government and news media during the 1730s shipworm disaster in the Netherlands. It focuses on the quality of the information news media provided and the effects the governmental use of news media while addressing the population had in activating them to fight against the shipworm. The article demonstrates that newspapers did not neglect the topic for at least two years following the discovery of the shipworm, nor did they include much information about governmental policies against the disaster. However, more news circulated in pamphlets and news digests, many of which were advertised in the newspapers. The article concludes that the news media reacted soberly to the shipworm disaster.

How similar, how different? On Dutch media depictions of older and younger people

ABSTRACTBy providing information on society at large, the media help to establish and maintain relations between various social groups, such as between younger and older people. They may also disturb the formation or maintenance of such relations,e.g.by stimulating the ‘othering’ of the out-group members. The aim of the present study was to trace how the different strategies of ‘othering’ are applied by Dutch news media in their portrayal of older and younger citizens. The analysis showed that the most notable discrepancies in the media coverage of the two age groups appear in (the nature of) their evaluation. While the negative descriptors of older characters relate more frequently to their (alleged) incompetence, the negative depictions of younger actors refer predominantly to their lack of benevolence. In the case of positive evaluations the reverse is true: older characters are more often presented as warm and younger people as competent. The results of the study are interpreted in the light of literature on social distance and (social) practices of ‘othering’.

Has the Dutch news media acted as a policy actor in the road pricing policy debate?

The media is seen as an important player in road pricing policy implementation processes. Yet, it is not clear whether the media is actually a policy actor, like politicians or interest groups, which pursues a particular policy positions. This paper empirically examines whether the Dutch news media was objective in its reporting of the Dutch road pricing policy debate (which took place between 1998 and 2010) or whether it acted as a policy actor through biased reporting. We applied Westerstahl’s Objectivity Framework to the media coverage by five leading national newspapers. Our main conclusion is that the Dutch news media was not objective and acted as a policy actor in the Dutch road pricing policy debate. Although all the newspapers violated objectivity to the same degree, they clearly adopted different policy positions. One popular newspaper was negative and the other mixed whereas all three quality newspapers were positive with the exception of one which sometimes inclined to a mixed position. All newspapers generally maintained the same position over the relatively long period of the road pricing debate.

I like news. Searching for the ‘Holy Grail’ of social media: The use of Facebook by Dutch news media and their audiences

News media are increasingly using Facebook as a platform for distribution and user interaction. This article focuses on how Dutch media use Facebook and how audiences participate. By using Facebook, media outsource part of their distribution to a third party platform, avoiding maintenance costs while also hoping for additional revenues because of the increased website traffic. Results indicate that offline and online presence of legacy media do not predict their footprint on Facebook. Media do not seem to have a clear strategy on using Facebook, which leads to an underperformance on the social media platform with low participation and minimal interaction. As users ‘like’ media and ‘share’ stories, ‘audience distribution’ would be a better term to describe these practices than ‘audience participation’.

(Re)presentation of ethnicity in EU and Dutch domestic news: a quantitative analysis

In November 2003, national teams in the 15 ‘old’ EU Member States analysed a one-day’s domestic coverage in national and regional daily press, for a total of 10 different newspapers per country. In order to broaden the analysis, an additional week’s coverage in the Dutch news media was carried out. The following question was central to both studies: to what extent and in what way are ethnic minorities (re)presented in the news? This quantitative analysis adopts a new approach in that the same coding instrument was used in all participating countries. The focus was not only on the news figuring ‘coloured’ people, but on all domestic news stories. This inclusive approach allowed for the impact of deep-seated news values and other recurrent news-making practices on general news contents to be compared with news stories about ethnic minorities. European and Dutch news stories’ (re)presentations of ethnicity are compared in this respect.