Information Subsidies Research Articles

Attribute Agenda Building in An Environmental Crisis: News Coverage of MV X-Press Pearl Ship Incident in Sri Lanka

This study investigated the building of the attribute agenda of an environmental crisis, taking the MV X-Press Pearl shipwreck incident as a case study. English weekend newspapers for a year since the incident were used for a content analysis to identify the information subsidies and their respective attribute agendas. An analysis framework was developed based on information subsidies and their respective attribute agendas. Results indicated that the governmental bodies unrelated to the environment were the most frequently cited sources, followed by experts and local non-governmental organizations/ industries. Conversely, the public was the least cited information source. Environmental damage was the most frequently emphasized attribute, followed by law and agreements and prevention. However, policy was the least reported attribute. Considering the correlation between information sources and attributes, the Marine Environmental Protection Authority highlighted the mitigation agenda, while non environmental related governmental bodies emphasized prevention agenda. Policymakers focused on getting compensation, while governmental bodies emphasized law and agreements and Experts prioritized on environmental damage. The evidence for attribute agenda building was found further strengthening the agenda building hypothesis and information subsidies had their own attributes highlighted in media reports. The study delves into the practical implications of agenda building, which can influence media outlets. It suggests strategic communication planning, aligning coverage with objectives, and collaborating with environmental advocacy groups. This understanding informs decision-making, promotes balanced coverage, and enhances public engagement. It is important to additionally take into account the process used to establish the agenda in future research.

When Information Subsidies Go Live: Conceptualizing the Strategic Role of Personal Storytelling

This conceptual article argues that the strategic use of personal storytelling to attract public attention and gain political impact is insufficiently theorized in political communication, journalism studies, and lobbying research. Claiming the need to study backstage relations among interest groups, professional communication workers, journalists, and decision-makers, it conceptualizes how lay personal stories, with strong moral appeal and claim to authenticity, constitute a powerful form of live information subsidy in both indirect and direct communication strategies to influence decision-makers. Extending the classic theory of information subsidies, the article unpacks the particular value of personal storytelling regarding credibility, legitimacy, and appeal and hypothesizes how and when interest groups select, craft, exchange, and communicate lay personal stories to create public support and influence political decisions. The theorization of strategic personal storytelling is based on the synthesis of distinct research literatures and abductive multi-sited field studies of Norwegian interest groups, government communication, and journalistic source relations, heading the calls for more mixed-method, cross-disciplinary research to advance political communication overall.

University’s Official Instagram as a News Sources for The Media

Media relations play a crucial role in the public relations activities of universities, as they provide opportunities for increased media exposure. In today's journalism landscape, social media has become a prominent source of news for journalists. This includes official university accounts, which serve as valuable sources of information for journalists. Consequently, university public relations must understand the perspective of journalists when selecting and disseminating information through social media platforms. This article aims to explore how journalists utilize information from university social media accounts, specifically Instagram, as news sources. The concept of information subsidies is used to analyze the public relations activities involved in providing journalists with access to information and ensuring its quality. The research adopts a qualitative approach, utilizing interviews with journalists from the education sections of kompas.com and detik.com. The findings of this research highlight despite the prevalence of visual content, limited text, and informal language often used by university Instagram users, journalists still find value in quoting from Instagram. This suggests that the information available on social media platforms is sufficient to fulfill journalists' informational needs. Journalists also rely on university Instagram accounts as a source of news. The significance of higher education institutions acknowledging social media as a platform for distributing information to journalists. The prevalent topics covered in news articles include advice, contemporary matters, and education sector-related information. The majority of cited news items are derived from expert opinions or contributions from university lecturers. It is crucial to establish efficient strategies for social media management in order to accentuate various themes or content that showcase the expertise of university staff.

How does a national, multilingual news agency contribute to news diversity? A mixed-methods case study

News agencies are regularly mentioned in scholarly works among the principal sources of information for legacy news organisations and titles, particularly in the 24/7 online news environment. However, little is known about how these agencies themselves source news. To fill this gap in scholarship, we present a case study of how Belgium’s national, multilingual news agency sources its science news. We first position our study within a conceptual framework combining insights from news diversity and translation studies research. Next, we operationalise a triangulation of a content analysis, a survey, and interviews with newsroom staff to shed light on the practices and policies that shape and constrain the inner workings of a national news agency in a small, multilingual media market. Our findings reveal a large, potentially worrying, dependency on information subsidies and their assumed factuality from press releases and other news agencies, largely sourced locally. We contextualise our findings within wider news agency and science journalism research.

Hedging as a Crisis Communication Strategy: The Case of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon (2016-2020)

This paper examined the use of hedging in information subsidies about the Anglophone Crisis. More specifically, it sought to determine which hedging devices were used in government information subsidies about the crisis, establish the discourse and communication functions of these hedges, and determine the crisis response postures reflected through hedging. The paper adopted a documentation and records method to obtain 83 information subsidies (speeches, communiques, reports, policy statements, media statements or ‘outings’, press releases, press conference presentations, press kits, etc.) from twelve government institutions. These twelve institutions were purposively chosen because of their centrality to the government’s crisis communications about the Anglophone Crisis between October 2016 and December 20. Nvivo was used for content analysis of information subsidies. Quantitative and qualitative methods of data analysis, presentation and discussion were used. The study identified six categories of hedging devices which served varied discourse and communication functions. For example, approximators and rounders were used to distance the government from particularly controversial claims about key crisis issues; while contrastive conjunctions served to highlight support for government crisis management strategies, protect government credibility, and diminish the amount of crisis responsibility attributed to the government. Conditionals were used to express beliefs, claims and stances about Anglophone Crisis events in a way that restricts potentially controversial interpretations. Plausibility and attribution shields reduce the force of government crisis managers’ claims by signalling uncertainty towards crisis messaging content and attributing particular crisis-related beliefs or commitments to other stakeholders. These findings show the role of hedging in crisis communication about the Anglophone Crisis. Given the divergence in crisis response postures reflected, this study recommends greater synchrony in the use of hedging devices.

PERAN AGENDA BUILDING BAGI PUBLIC RELATIONS

Public relations performs issue management as an effort to maintain the image and reputation of the agency. This study aims to determine the role of public relations in making agendas that increase the positive image of the government. This research is academically useful in developing a distinctive theory of public relations, namely the agenda of building information subsidies.
 The results show that public relations applies an agenda building strategy in narrative production. The theory of agenda building & information subsidies is used by public relations for positive public perception of the government. Agenda building starts from the planning process carried out by the crisis team, coordination meetings to sharpen issues, making communication strategies, media monitoring, media relations, news tone analysis, narrative production, evaluation, and information subsidies. Public relations has implemented the concept of agenda building information subsidies to influence public opinion through issue management with several steps, namely highlighting certain issues, paying attention to issues, framing media, connecting issues with other symbols, utilizing big data and artificial intelligence to capture issues comprehensively.
 Qualitative research was conducted by conducting interviews with 10 public relations workers working in government agencies. public relations utilizes various media to maximize agenda building, such as: big data, press conferences, websites, releases, twitter, Instagram, facebook, youtube live streaming, and so on. Data analysis using miles, hubberman, saldana and validity test with source triangulation.
 

An Island of Reliability in a Sea of Misinformation? Understanding PR-Journalists Relations in Times of Epistemic Crisis

ABSTRACT With technologies making sources more accessible than ever before, journalists’ prime concern is no longer obtaining data; but rather sorting information out – undermining the traditional role of information subsidies. This study exposes for the first time a unique form of “epistemic subsidies,” suggesting a new explanation for PR-journalists’ paradoxical relations. Using a mix of quantitative and qualitative reconstructions, in which Israeli news reporters from national news outlets accounted for the sources they used (N = 1,147), this paper reaffirms the persistence of the paradox, while shedding new light on it, showing that the relationship is based on reliability rather than trust. Information from PR sources is communicated to journalists in a significantly more reliable way than from non-PR – making reliance much safer. Analyzing the findings with a framework that is based on social epistemology and the intereffication theory, the paper suggests that the epistemically-virtues practices of PR act as “inductions,” which could result from an “adaptation” to journalists’ increasing epistemic needs. Findings also reopen the normative debate about the implication of reliance on PR, indicating that such reliance reduces vulnerability to factually incorrect messages, while not defending journalists from misleading messages or “spins.”

Building the Science News Agenda: The Permeability of Science Journalism to Public Relations

The current study examines the influence of press releases about scientific studies in terms of their impact on news coverage. Using an innovative approach that allowed for analysis of a large corpus of text and calculation of similarity scores, we were able to trace the uptake of press release materials into news media articles. In some cases, up to 65% of sentences in science news articles reflected high similarity to press release material—a potent indication of how powerful information subsidies can be. While our results contain some good news for public relations practitioners, they also carry a warning for consumers of journalism and for the public science agenda, which may be left vulnerable to bad actors undermining the trust that the public, and journalists, have in science. News organizations that had a history of producing award-winning science journalism were much less likely to draw on press release materials, indicating the importance of topic area expertise in producing independent science journalism.

Investigating the role of professional disruption in Chinese journalists’ embrace of public relations: a social identity perspective

This study investigates whether the declining economic performance and social status of traditional news media, which are two dimensions indicating the professional disruption of journalism, are associated with journalists’ engagement in public relations (PR). The results of a cross-sectional survey reveal two paths to the PR-journalism boundary crossing, although the level of boundary crossing is overall controllable. First, economic disruption indirectly predicts journalists’ engagement in media pitching and media event planning through their identification with colleagues who have engaged in PR. Second, perceived waning social status both directly and indirectly predicts their engagement in media pitching and media catching, with their disidentification with PR practitioners as a mediator in the indirect relationship. These findings suggest that, while professional disruption may induce journalists to seek more information subsidy, their professional identity can be a source of both resistance against and support for this trend. Theories on social identity and intergroup relations are adopted to explain this dilemma.

Agenda Building Agenda Media Atribut Politik melalui Press Release dan Pemberitaan Koran

The research aims to analyse the agenda building by political Public Relations of the presidential candidates through press releases and how newspapers highlight it. This is a descriptive quantitative research using content analysis methods. The results of this study indicate that the political Public Relations of the Presidential candidates has well implemented the information subsidies in their press releases.

Influence of Political Tweets on Campaign Coverage: Building the News Agenda in Twittersphere

ABSTRACT Research has presented empirical evidence to suggest a causal relationship between how political actors use Twitter to share information and media coverage. This affirms the use of political tweets as information subsidies. Studies on this area from Sub-Sahara Africa and particularly Nigeria are however visibly absent. This study attempts to bridge this gap by exploring how tweets from two prominent presidential candidates in Nigeria’s 2019 general elections influenced media coverage of election matters during a four month period of November 2018 to February 2019. A total of n = 1,048 tweets were sampled for this study. Findings from our study affirm the existence of relationships between general issues—security, anticorruption, and economy—in Nigeria’s political discourse, political tweets of presidential candidates on these issues, and how these issues were prioritized in media coverage.

Victims and Voices: Journalistic Sourcing Practices and the Use of Private Citizens in Online Healthcare-system News

ABSTRACTThe opportunity for non-elite actors to share their opinions and experiences is often cited as a key democratic element of the media, developing in recent years alongside a rethinking of the audience as active contributors. Yet, given many of the temporal and resource-related newsroom pressures, the reliance on information subsidies and official or elite voices remains pervasive. This study focuses on coverage of healthcare and health policy, drawing on 14 weeks of news reports (n = 896) from five Irish websites. As well as recording the prevalence of private citizens, a novel methodology allows a deeper understanding of how journalists obtained these contributions, such as through “cannibalising” quotes from other media reports. While private citizens have salience in the news, this may primarily be due to journalists’ reliance on easily accessible information, rather than more fundamental democratic shifts in news reporting practices. Further analysis shows private citizens rarely appear as detached, informed commentators, but typically as victims with direct negative healthcare experiences. The findings and discussion reinforce the idea of news sourcing as a social system that is continually reproduced, steered by structural forces to do with signification, legitimation and available resources.

It’s a Matter of Timing. How the Timing of Politicians’ Information Subsidies Affects What Becomes News

ABSTRACT From all information subsidies that politicians send out on a given day, only a few make it into the news media. The literature on news selection tries to understand which factors enhance the chance that a message gets covered. This paper contributes to that literature by studying one specific factor: the timing of the dissemination of the message. Between July 2017 and July 2018 we gathered all press releases, press conferences, and tweets of more than 200 Belgian politicians. During the same period, we collected all articles of 15 print and online news media. Via a combination of automated and manual content analysis, we measured to what extent politicians’ information subsidies were covered in the news and investigate whether success can be explained by their timing. The results show that timing matters, and that different information subsidies face different timing opportunities. Press releases and press conferences are most successful when they are disseminated at times when the journalistic demand for “new” information is high (e.g., in the absence of big events or during political recess). This sometimes works for Twitter as well, but tweets receive especially more coverage when they are published at times when journalists need additional viewpoints about existing stories (e.g., when they deal with an ongoing big event or when they are sent out in the middle of the day). All in all, this paper puts “timing” on the map as a non-negligible factor of the news selection process.

Participatory Surveillance Based on Crowdsourcing During the Rio 2016 Olympic Games Using the Guardians of Health Platform: Descriptive Study.

BackgroundWith the evolution of digital media, areas such as public health are adding new platforms to complement traditional systems of epidemiological surveillance. Participatory surveillance and digital epidemiology have become innovative tools for the construction of epidemiological landscapes with citizens’ participation, improving traditional sources of information. Strategies such as these promote the timely detection of warning signs for outbreaks and epidemics in the region.ObjectiveThis study aims to describe the participatory surveillance platform Guardians of Health, which was used in a project conducted during the 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and officially used by the Brazilian Ministry of Health for the monitoring of outbreaks and epidemics.MethodsThis is a descriptive study carried out using secondary data from Guardians of Health available in a public digital repository. Based on syndromic signals, the information subsidy for decision making by policy makers and health managers becomes more dynamic and assertive. This type of information source can be used as an early route to understand the epidemiological scenario.ResultsThe main result of this research was demonstrating the use of the participatory surveillance platform as an additional source of information for the epidemiological surveillance performed in Brazil during a mass gathering. The platform Guardians of Health had 7848 users who generated 12,746 reports about their health status. Among these reports, the following were identified: 161 users with diarrheal syndrome, 68 users with respiratory syndrome, and 145 users with rash syndrome.ConclusionsIt is hoped that epidemiological surveillance professionals, researchers, managers, and workers become aware of, and allow themselves to use, new tools that improve information management for decision making and knowledge production. This way, we may follow the path for a more intelligent, efficient, and pragmatic disease control system.

A Typology of News Sourcing: Routine and Non-Routine Channels of Production

ABSTRACTThis article presents a novel typology for analysing the routinisation of news and daily newsroom practices. Drawing inspiration from the work of Sigal, Tuchman and others, the framework—comprising eight categories—provides a reconceptualisation of routine and non-routine channels of news production to facilitate an exploration of source material, focusing on initial story triggers. One contribution which is particularly useful relates to the subcategorisation of the traditionally singular “routine” channel; although the broad concept of routine source material is familiar, it has generally not been systematically deconstructed in previous analyses. Considering different types of routine news allows for a deeper understanding of how these channels are integrated into contemporary daily news production and the role of internal newsroom and external actor dynamics. This is particularly relevant in an era in which there is a high usage of information subsidies, passive news reporting, cannibalised content, and desk-bound work. As such, the application of this model provides insights into the dominance and subordinate use of various channels in contemporary newsrooms. The discussion also illustrates how such a typology can aid empirical research with reference to the content analysis study from which this framework was developed.

More Bang for the Buck: Media Freedom and Organizational Strategies in the Agenda-Setting of Human Rights Groups

Studies investigating the agenda-setting of human rights groups disagree on both their prospects of garnering political attention, and the factors that help them in that quest. This study makes the argument that we need to take account of both macro-institutional opportunity structures and actor-level strategies in order to gain a more complete understanding of the group-media interface. Specifically, it posits that the urgency of social problems only drives media attention toward groups if a country’s media landscape is sufficiently free, and that within these institutional constraints, groups themselves can enhance their media access by providing newsmakers with information subsidies. These claims are substantiated by way of a novel cross-nationally comparative data set of more than 1,000 domestic election monitoring and advocacy organizations. Findings show that media attention is structurally limited by the degree to which the news media serve as an open arena, and that even in countries with a free press, few groups achieve media access. At the same time, the most successful groups are not necessarily the most resourceful ones. Rather, strategic choices to invest in media effort, narrow policy engagement, and professionalization substitute for scarce resources, thereby giving groups “more bang for their buck.” The results clarify the causal mechanisms behind the dominance of resource-rich groups on the media agenda and reinforce calls for more globally comparative research into media agenda-setting.

A seleção das fontes via WhatsApp no BandNews Rio, 1ª edição, e os conceitos de participação, interação e acesso

O artigo analisa as interações entre ouvintes e jornalistas via WhatsApp no BandNews Rio, 1ª edição, e a forma pela qual são acionadas como fontes para a construção da notícia no rádio. Com base no modelo AIP, de Carpentier, e na distinção entre os conceitos de participação, interação e acesso, diferenciam-se os modelos de subsídio de informações pela audiência no radiojornalismo. O objetivo é analisar a seleção das fontes populares e o exercício de encaixe temático dessas vozes em lugares de fala distintos dos setores profissionalizados ou oficiais da sociedade.

NGOs’ Advocacy in the 2015 Refugee Crisis: A Study of Agenda Building in the Digital Age

In the 2015 European refugee crisis, nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) offered help and actively advocated for millions of refugees. The current study aims to understand what communication strategies are most effective for NGOs to influence media coverage and the public’s social media conversations about refugees. We found that agenda building on traditional media and in social media conversations require different strategies. Specifically, although providing information subsidies could powerfully influence traditional media coverage, its effect waned in the context of social media conversations. In contrast, NGOs’ hyperlink network positions emerged as the one of the influential factors for NGOs’ prominence in social media conversations. Moreover, stakeholder-initiated engagement could influence agenda building both in traditional media coverage and social media conversations. Finally, organizational resources and characteristics are important factors as well. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Between sealed borders and welcome culture

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the German and Hungarian Governments’ mediated public diplomacy (mpd) efforts during the European migrant crisis and their reflection in the international news media.Design/methodology/approachThe study relies on a quantitative content analysis of English press releases and interviews distributed by the governments and their reflection in CNN and Al-Jazeera English. Overall, a sample of 483 texts was coded. Herein, the main actors, topics, frames, and information subsidies were analyzed. A comparison of the public diplomacy efforts and their reflection in the news then allows for assumptions about their potential impact on the news.FindingsThe data shows that the Hungarian Government uses more information subsidies in their communication than their German counterpart. Hence, the news agenda shows more similarities to the main topics put forward in the Hungarian sub-sample. The news framing, however, is more favorable toward the perspectives put forward in the German public diplomacy.Practical implicationsThe results indicate that well planned and designed messaging does not guarantee successful communication. It also shows that critical journalism still plays an important role in the international news production.Originality/valueThe paper’s main contribution is that it goes beyond the war-based case studies on mpd and investigates one of the most relevant transnational issues in the last decades. In addition, it sheds light on why the media reflect some sponsored frames while they mostly discredit others.

Will you run it? A gatekeeping experiment examining credibility, branding, and affiliation within information subsidies

Information subsidies from military and civilian public relations practitioners receive varying degrees of acceptance by media gatekeepers. Using an experimental design, this study examined organizational affiliation within media gatekeeping. Television news decision-makers were randomly assigned one of five mock live news reports with only the reporter’s clothing and on-air title manipulated. Results indicated affiliation did not affect gatekeeper use. Higher credibility was attributed to spokespersons with no organizational affiliation, and to military practitioners over civilians.