Hybrid Media System Research Articles

Functions of Hybrid Media: How Parties and Their Leaders Use Traditional Media in Their Social Media Campaign Communication

Political campaign communication has become increasingly hybrid and the ability to create synergies between older and newer media is now a prerequisite for running a successful campaign. Nevertheless, beyond establishing that parties and individual politicians use social media to gain visibility in traditional media, not much is known about how political actors use the hybrid media system in their campaign communication. At the same time, the personalization of politics, shown to have increased in the media coverage of politics, has gained little attention in the context of today’s hybrid media environment. In this research we analyze one aspect of hybrid media campaign communication, political actors’ use of traditional media in their social media campaign communication. Through a quantitative content analysis of the Facebook, Twitter and Instagram posts of Finnish parties and their leaders published during the 2019 Finnish parliamentary elections, we find that much of this hybridized campaign communication was personalized. In addition, we show that parties and their leaders used traditional media for multiple purposes, the most common of which was gaining positive visibility, pointing to strategic considerations. The results have implications for both the scholarship on hybrid media systems and personalization of politics.

Managing Sponsored Content in Hybrid Media Systems: A Proposed Alternative Journalistic Practice

ABSTRACT Based on the emerging argument that understandings of digital content comprising both editorial and advertising components require alternative cultures for critical inquiry sufficiently sensitive to the online news environment, this study assesses the professional practice of balancing news and sponsored (commercial) information while focusing on preserving traditional journalism values within the realm of reasoned discussions of media ethics. In this qualitative content analysis study, different forms of sponsored content published in global media digital platforms are examined and inductive content analysis is employed.

Key newsmakers’ appearance dynamics in Ukrainian online mass-media news before and after the full-scale Russian invasion

The subject of the study is the dynamics of the presence of key newsmakers in the news of the leading independent online media in Ukraine in order to understand the features of the digital media environment and the specifics of its transformation during the full-scale invasion. The development of modern media is caused by the “hybrid media system” (Chadwick, 2013). Under the influence of digitalization, social networks, and new media, mass media have been changing. The media are no longer the first to produce news, their dependence on the government and leaders’ opinions is increasing, and instead the government can communicate with society without media. In addition, the amount of attention that audiences are willing to pay to news is decreasing, and mass media is no longer addressing the mass audience, but rather different audiences, which in the digital environment discuss their own interests and needs. However, the peculiarities of the media environment in the times of the full-scale invasion have not been studied yet. The purpose of the research is to analyse the dynamics of the presence of key newsmakers in online mass media and to identify the features of the transformation of the Ukrainian digital media environment during the full-scale invasion by the Russian Federation. The research methodology provides an automated algorithm for monitoring content in media (Python programming language). The object of the study is the headlines of the leading quality Ukrainian media: “Ukrainska Pravda” (50200 headlines) and “Dzerkalo Tyzhnia” (41328) for October 2021 — October 2022. As the result of the study, it was established that before the full-scale invasion there were practically no permanent popular newsmakers, which would be ready to generate messages for mass media. Mainly the media covered “covid” and the statements of the newsmakers about it. After February 24, in the first period, Zelenskyi appeared in the spotlight, and his popularity increased significantly. Other official sources appeared as well: the General Staff and the regional administrations — to control the agenda both at the national and regional levels. Over time attention to Zelenskyi decreased and the need for war analytics was observed. Along with official sources, there was also a single independent one. The perspective of the research is to compare the presence of key newsmakers in online media and social media.

En medieprovokatør bliver til: Personakonstruktioner og -transformationer i Eva Selsings retorik

With the concept media provocateur, a personification of Olivier Driessens’ concept media provocation, we refer to debaters who use provocative rhetoric and social media circulation to gain a prominent speaking position in traditional, journalistic mass media. In a close reading of selected texts by Eva Selsing, whom we regard as a paradigmatic case, we show how Selsing constructs and transforms her provocative persona across journalistic genres and thereby establishes herself as a media provocateur in a hybrid media system. In continuation of this, we discuss how provocative style may function as a catalyst for rhetorical agency for media provocateurs, the media they work for, and potentially the general public. However, as we see it, the public’s agency is dependent on publicist mass media to not only offer media provocateurs a platform and fortify the provocateurs’ self-presentation; public mass media must also take responsibility for and play an active role as curators of the public debate that the media provocateurs’ rhetoric creates

The Institution of Journalism: Conceptualizing the Press in a Hybrid Media System

This theoretical essay considers how the institution of journalism, now threatened by authoritarian attack and other challenges, has been conceptualized and proposes a refinement on previous definitions: An institution is a complex social structure—formed by an interlocking network of rules and activities, roles, technologies, norms, and collective frames of meaning–which work together to sustain its coherence, endurance, and value. Guided by this general definition, and to better accommodate new institutional forms of journalism specifically in the hybrid media system, I introduce a typology based on two dimensions: level-of-analysis and structural emphasis, that is whether on traditional news organizations or emerging assemblages. In balancing their roles as critic and champion, I argue that academic observers must not take institutional stability, coherence, and value for granted, which previous perspectives have over-stated, but rather take a more explicitly normative assessment of how different structures contribute to those qualities.

News reception and authoritarian control in a hybrid media system: Russian TV viewers and the Russia-Ukraine conflict

Authoritarian regimes attempt to control the circulation of political information. Scholars have identified many mechanisms through which actors can use broadcast and digital media to challenge or sustain authoritarian rule. However, while contemporary media environments are characterised by the integration of older and newer forms of communication, little is known about how authoritarian regimes use different media simultaneously to shape citizens’ perceptions. In order to address this issue, this study relies on focus groups and investigates Russian TV viewers’ cross-media repertoires and their reception of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. It argues that some citizens evaluate state-aligned television narratives as more credible when they are reinforced by similar narratives in digital media. Citizens’ reactions to this synchronisation are predicated on their type of media use. For not very active news consumers, the reliance on digital media can verify the regime’s narratives in television news. Others can escape the synchronisation effect by actively searching online for additional information or not using digital media for news. These findings show how authoritarian regimes can utilise the advantages of hybrid media systems to shape citizens’ perceptions and specify the conditions under which citizens can escape the effects of the regime’s simultaneous use of different media.

Women’s Use and Abuse of the News Media during the COVID-19 Pandemic on Mumsnet

This article analyses news sources used by women to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic on the UK parenting website Mumsnet. By using a non-political online “third space” aimed at women, Mumsnetters are able to avoid the aggression women face when they attempt to discuss news in the wider public sphere of the Internet. This third space can also act as a “trusted friend,” allowing women to access important news via a third party. Mumsnetters’ discussion of the news around COVID-19 complicates previous studies’ findings that women prefer to discuss news relating to health, education and the local community rather than politics and international affairs. Mumsnetters discuss the COVID-19 pandemic as both a health story and a political story. They use mainly digital journalism sources, either directly from the mainstream news media or indirectly via social media such as Twitter, thus participating in a hybrid media system. However, some Mumsnet discussants demonstrate a hostility and distrust towards mainstream news sources, even suggesting collusion between the media and the UK government, which has implications for the clear dissemination of government messages around the pandemic.

Media Pluralism and Democratic Consolidation: A Recipe for Success?

The Tunisian political transition has succeeded in building a working, yet fragile governance beyond ideological and political divides. Political debate across media platforms has become open and dynamic, but the media–politics nexus thrives within a complex system of clientelism forged on shifting alliances between politicians and business tycoons, including recapture by agents of the former regime. The media–politics interplay is taking competitive and antagonistic forms, effectively exacerbating polarized conflicts. This paper reflects on the notions of hybrid media systems, agonistic pluralism, and civic culture, based on data collected in a focus group conducted in Tunis in May 2019 that brought together representatives from media, politics, and civil society complemented by interviews with leading journalists and media stakeholders. This paper argues that the relationship between media and politics is interdependent and marked by confrontation and adaption; the uncertainty of the transition is leading to a complex and volatile power struggle in which neither media nor politics have the upper hand in defining the terms of the game. This ambivalent relationship, taking place within a new system of clientelism, has had a mixed outcome on the process of democratic consolidation.

Digital heuristics: How parties strategize political communication in hybrid media environments

This article proposes the concept of digital heuristics to model and explain political communication strategies in the complex environment of hybrid media systems. Insights from recent psychological and political research on heuristic decision-making are combined with literature on the current structural context and features of online communication in order to make the case for a heuristics-oriented approach to political communication strategies. I argue that despite the growing importance of data analytics, in increasingly dynamic and uncertain communication environments, political actors mainly design their strategies according to simple rules (heuristics) that rely on selective information (as well as trial and error) rather than to complex models. Analyzing interviews with communication managers from major political parties in Germany and the United Kingdom, I identify and conceptualize two types of digital heuristics in use: hybridity-based and algorithm-based. The article concludes with considerations for a future research agenda using the concept of digital heuristics.

Twitter in the News: An Analysis of Embedded Tweets in Political News Coverage

This study examines the growing journalistic practice of embedding full tweets in online political news coverage. Against the background of a hybrid media system, we pursue three research goals. First, we evaluate the scope of the Twitter-in-the-news phenomenon relative to news coverage as a whole. Second, we examine the functions of embedded tweets. Third, we identify characteristics that increase the likelihood that tweets will be selected for publication in a news article. We combine computational methods with a manual content analysis and analyze political news coverage of one month outside election periods in four German online news outlets. Our results show that embedding tweets in the news is not a niche phenomenon but has been established as a routine journalistic practice to a moderate extent. In the majority of news articles, the function of tweets is to illustrate an argument or information provided in the text. Geographical proximity and – with some dependencies – the number of popularity cues increased the likelihood of a tweet to be picked up for reporting. The paper shows how transformation processes currently observed in journalism manifest themselves in reporting.

A virus in the hybrid media system: how the Conte government communicated the coronavirus crisis

On 30 January 2020, two Chinese tourists tested positive for Covid-19 and were immediately admitted to the Istituto Spallanzani in Rome,1 a centre of excellence for the treatment of infectious dise...

Influencers in the Political Conversation on Twitter: Identifying Digital Authority with Big Data

Interactivity is a defining characteristic of social media. Connections among users shape the network and have a direct impact on the political conversations that take place on digital platforms. In the hybrid media system, digital discussions can have an impact on both the agenda of mainstream media and the offline political life. In this context, determining who and how social influence is exercised is crucial. My objective is to identify the influencers with the greatest digital authority to guide and determine the political conversation on Twitter. For this, I have studied the process to form a Government in Spain. Machine learning techniques are used on a big data sample of 127.3 million tweets. The analysis is based on social network analysis and uses eigencentrality, a measure that determines the digital authority of users. This study focuses on the 250 accounts of the most prominent influencers. The results show that the political and media elites extend their leading roles as influencers in the digital environment. However, there is also evidence of the beginning of the breakdown of its monopoly on digital public debate and its opening to new social actors. Additionally, the data demonstrate the importance of the external socio-political context as a determining element of the exercise of social influence in the political conversation on Twitter.

Exploring E-petitioning and media: The case of #BringBackOurGirls

The Internet and Web 2.0 have created novel forms of collective action and political participation, the dynamics of which have attracted considerable scholarly attention. E-petitioning, a genre of technology-based collective action tools, makes it possible for members of the public to address government decision makers directly with their requests for policy-related action. In this paper we explore the effects of Twitter, other forms of online media, and television news broadcasts on the accumulation of signatures in e-petitioning. We analyze the case of “Bring Back Our Girls,” a Change.org petition initiated in spring 2014 following the abduction of 276 young female students from the Government Girls Secondary School in Chibok, Borno State, Nigeria by heavily armed members of the Boko Haram, an Islamic extremist group. The petition targeted government leaders around the world. We found evidence that tweets and certain forms of online media, together with cable news items, are related to the likelihood of individuals to sign an e-petition. The results provide evidence in support of a hybrid media system in which diverse forms of media behave with diverse logics and impacts in their effects on e-petitions.

The twink next door, who also does porn: networked intimacy in gay porn performers’ self-presentation on social media

ABSTRACT The performer–viewer relationship premised on mediated intimacy is a pivotal element of porn. As social media afford more interactivity and flexibility for pornographic relationship-building, gay porn performers start to have an active presence on platforms like Twitter to not only promote their works, but also showcase what is ‘behind the scene’. This study provides a qualitative analysis of the Twitter feeds of performers affiliated with Helix Studios, a gay porn producer specializing in the twink genre. It is found that a networked intimacy is constructed through performers’ Twitter self-presentation. The networked intimacy pivots on the fantasy of the twink body, the romantic and sexual bonds among performers, and the fandom-facilitated interactions. Relational labour is dedicated to the authentication of performers’ professional persona through their private life. Under this aesthetics of authenticity, intimacy is commodified to sell sex, and sexuality is essentialized into a staged congruity between sexual acts and desires. Networked intimacy, as a common condition for gay porn production and consumption in a hybrid media system, develops into a multilayer shape on social media platforms. This case study of Helix Studios performers’ tweets reveals both precarities and potentials of networked intimacy in gay porn.

Public Sphere in Hybrid Media Systems in Central and Eastern Europe

The article explores the concept of hybridity in relation to political and media-related change and its implications for the contemporary public sphere in Central and Eastern Europe. Two key approaches to hybridity are contrasted and examined to this end: the well-established concept of the hybrid media system, defined in terms of a combination of older and newer media logics in platform societies in the times of late modernity, is contrasted with the concept of hybridity in political and media systems in relation to unsuccessful regime change and democratization or recent illiberal backsliding. Hybridity as the outcome of longue durée contextual conditions, as well as the more recent mediatization, is present also in the contemporary public spheres in CEE countries in relation to specific conditions and contingencies of individual mediascapes.

Corrigendum to Election Night Broadcasts and the Hybrid Media System: a case study of Australia

Corrigendum to Election Night Broadcasts and the Hybrid Media System: a case study of Australia

#AidToo: Social Media Spaces and the Transformation of the Reporting of Aid Scandals in 2018

ABSTRACT In 2018, sexual abuse scandals concerning Oxfam GB and Save the Children UK, which had been known about for some years in the industry, finally received widespread coverage. Applying Greer and McLaughlin’s [Greer, C., and E. McLaughlin. 2017. “Theorizing Institutional Scandal and the Regulatory State.” Theoretical Criminology 21 (2): 112–132. doi:10.1177/1362480616645648] scandal model and building on Langer and Gruber’s [Langer, A. I., and J. B. Gruber. 2020. “Political Agenda Setting in the Hybrid Media System: Why Legacy Media Still Matter a Great Deal.” The International Journal of Press/Politics. doi:10.1177/1940161220925023] work on agenda setting in a hybrid media system this paper uses in-depth interviews with whistleblowers, legacy media journalists, and those who created alternative media spacesto analyse changing aid-journalism relationships. The findings suggest the scandals were previously kept out of the public domain for several reasons: aid agencies’ use of deflective media strategies and legal threats; fears by whistleblowers that such stories could assist the conservative media’s anti-aid agenda; and unsuccessful approaches to liberal media outlets. The move from latency to amplification came about because of investigations by legacy media journalists, but also media spaces such as WhatsApp and the Fifty Shades of Aid Facebook group. These spaces allowed women to share stories and form connections and. The paper examines the transformative the interplay of legacy and social media in a hybrid system and argues for the consideration of closed as well as open social media spaces when considering the process of scandalisation.

Análisis discursivo en sistemas híbridos de medios: una aproximación metodológica

This paper proposes a methodological approach to the study of discourses in the hybrid media system (Chadwick, 2013). The hybrid media system is defined as a new type of system in which traditional and emerging media are assembled, changed and flow gradually to create new forms. One form of hybridization is the relationship between social networks and television, in which both media model and build each other. Various studies (Gruber, 2017; Vaccari et al., 2016) have demonstrated the importance of the study of hybrid media system to explore the construction of meanings in new media contexts, especially in political contexts. This study is part of a qualitative paradigm that incorporates the principles of critical discourse analysis for the analysis of semiotic resources used in 30,000 tweets with hashtags of five Chilean political television programs broadcast during 2016, which promote online public debate and participation. Based on the analysis of online texts and television programs, it was established that the argumentative strategies and resources used constituted an expansion of the televised political debate and a space for interaction of social network users with traditional media. The decision to directly involve these users in television programs has implications for the understanding of the symbolic limits of the policy. The inclusion of new actors has the potential to model the quality of debate and argumentation in the digitally mediated public sphere.

Policymaking, Ideational Power and the Role of the Media

The ideational power framework developed by Carstensen and Schmidt has sought to make explicit the manner in which ideas can exert an influence over policy outcomes. However, one key feature of this theoretical framework has not yet been adequately conceptualised: the communicative process through which policy entrepreneurs convey their ideas to the general public. This article focuses on one specific form of communicative discourse as a means of generating widespread public support for a given policy proposal: public discourse via the media – be it print, broadcast or social media. We argue that the ideational power literature should recognise the media as a powerful entity in its own right rather than merely depicting the media as an implement for political communication. We contend that the ideational power framework could usefully incorporate a characterisation of the media that has recently emerged from political communications research: the hybrid media system. In order to illustrate how the communicative process inherent in ideational power can be understood in terms of a hybrid media system, we undertake a comparative review of two empirical studies which assess political discourse during the 2016 US presidential election from the perspectives of ideational power and hybrid media systems.

Election Night Broadcasts and the Hybrid Media System: A Case Study of Australia

This article presents an analysis of broadcast election night coverage, contemporaneous social media data, and semi-structured interviews focused on the 2018 Victorian state election to assess the extent and nature of media hybridity that occurred. This work contributes to the field by providing the first analysis of the hybrid media system using a case study event in Australia, the first study of a second-order election, and by focusing in detail on how journalistic processes and decisions shape hybridity and how these are, themselves, shaped by hybrid logics. It finds some evidence of hybrid norms and actions, but in other ways coverage followed traditional media logics.