International News Organizations Research Articles

Is it Time to ‘Send in the Clowns’? What Happens to the ‘Rest of the News’ in Social Media during Extreme Crises

Based on a qualitative analysis of news posts on traditional media Facebook pages, this work seeks to explore the way(s) in which established news organisations in the United Kingdom use their social media accounts in times of extreme crisis. Specifically, we seek to assess what (other) types of news are publicised through social media beyond those related to the crisis itself. Findings show that well-respected international news organisations choose to post news items that aim to (a) distract from a bleak reality, (b) suggest ways to cope with new challenges and (c) create a community to alleviate the sense of loneliness. We argue that social media posts about the ‘rest of the news’ in times of crisis do much more than emphasise the ‘softer’ aspects of the crisis; they attempt to deliver another kind of message that there are ways to cope with adversity and that, eventually, things will work out.

News framing of the 2014–15 Ukraine conflict by the BBC and RT

This article explores the dynamic relationship between international news organisations and politics in the United Kingdom and Russia. Using the 2014–15 Ukraine conflict as its case study, this research argues that humanitarianism has been applied to set the news agenda by RT. The BBC, on the other hand, used relatively less human rights frames but depicted Russia and Russia-backed separatists as responsible for the conflict. Despite the concepts of manufacturing consent and indexing may not capture the arguments in journalistic practice comprehensively, they are useful in explaining and revealing broader insights into the market and politics-driven media industry and the illiberal tendency in the reporting of international war/conflict in that news framing constitutes a vital soft power tool. This also raises the question that where should we draw lines of distinction between the state-sponsored soft power media RT and the publicly funded BBC.

Small world sampling: Qualitative sample reliability and validity for efficient and effective recruitment of journalists as research participants

One primary concern in researching journalistic practice and media production is the difficulty of gaining research access to media organizations and their media professionals. This paper theorizes Small World Sampling method for identifying and recruiting participants for qualitative research. Based on an ethnographic interview study involving 32 journalists at six different international news organizations, our Small World Sampling method created a direct research path into journalists’ professional occupational networks without having to negotiate indirect access through their non-journalist organizational gatekeepers (e.g. PR executives, HR department, managers). Small World Sampling allows the participant selection process to be guided by media practitioners’ expert and in-group knowledge of their professional network of media colleagues and acquaintances. More methodologically important, our Small World Sampling protocol offers a novel technique for demonstrating the qualitative reliability of the sampling process and for establishing the qualitative validity of the sample under study. Additionally, the paper introduces the concept of ‘contextual case studies’ offering additional nuance and insights enriching the conclusions drawn from the project’s main case studies. Beyond media and journalism research, we propose that Small World Sampling may also prove useful for other fields to facilitate research access into closed organizations, elite networks, and hidden communities.

DECARBONIZATION MANAGEMENT: DEVELOPMENT OF A SYNERGY MODEL OF ELECTROMOBILITY FOR CLIMATE CONSERVATION

The work uses an integrated approach, methods of analysis and synthesis. The research is based on the official data of world economic statistics, the study of data from international news agencies and organizations. The changes in the planet's climate under the influence of emissions of harmful substances into the atmosphere are shown. The analysis of the existing processes allows us to judge that the world community is already fully aware of the severity and possible consequences of climate change, but is not yet ready for taking radical effective measures to stabilize the situation. The need for systemic measures to preserve the climate was noted. It is pointed out that in the process of decarbonization management, the development of electromobility, which should be combined with environmentally-friendly methods of generating electrical energy, occupies the most important place. The synergistic effect of the proposed model for the development of electromobility is manifested in the fact that it can receive support not only from supporters of electromobility, but also from those who support the construction of private houses to ensure comfortable living for people. The analysis of the calculated indicators of obtaining electrical energy for different conditions is carried out. It is shown that among many options for using the synergetic model, there are those that quite reliably provide electric vehicles and households with energy. A synergetic model is proposed, which includes the management of a set of factors to ensure the process of balanced development of electric mobility, which has a number of advantages: ease of placement of electric vehicles; no air pollution; the possibility in some cases of fully charging electric vehicles with their own energy, meeting the needs of households, as well as the supply of excess energy to the external electricity grid; the ability to charge electric cars at home with your own charger, while such charging is not limited in time. Such synergetic model of electric mobility development should contribute not only to the widespread use of electric vehicles, but also to the creation of comfortable living conditions for people, so it can be much more attractive for implementation. The results of the work can be used in practice in the process of managing the development of real complexes of objects associated with the operation of environmentally-friendly transport.

How have journalists been affected psychologically by their coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic? A descriptive study of two international news organisations

ObjectivesThe COVID-19 pandemic has presented unprecedented healthcare challenges. Journalists covering the pandemic at close quarters are working in ways akin to first responders, but nothing to date is known of...

Soft Power, Hard News: How Journalists at State-Funded Transnational Media Legitimize Their Work

How do journalists working for different state-funded international news organizations legitimize their relationship to the governments which support them? In what circumstances might such journalists resist the diplomatic strategies of their funding states? We address these questions through a comparative study of journalists working for international news organizations funded by the Chinese, US, UK and Qatari governments. Using 52 interviews with journalists covering humanitarian issues, we explain how they minimized tensions between their diplomatic role and dominant norms of journalistic autonomy by drawing on three – broadly shared – legitimizing narratives, involving different kinds of boundary-work. In the first ‘exclusionary’ narrative, journalists differentiated their ‘truthful’ news reporting from the ‘false’ state ‘propaganda’ of a common Other, the Russian-funded network, RT. In the second ‘fuzzifying’ narrative, journalists deployed the ambiguous notion of ‘soft power’ as an ambivalent ‘boundary concept’, to defuse conflicts between journalistic and diplomatic agendas. In the final ‘inversion’ narrative, journalists argued that, paradoxically, their dependence on funding states gave them greater ‘operational autonomy’. Even when journalists did resist their funding states, this was hidden or partial, and prompted less by journalists’ concerns about the political effects of their work, than by serious threats to their personal cultural capital.

Localising the Reporting of the 2014 Gaza War by the South African Press

ABSTRACT The longstanding Palestinian–Israeli conflict sees considerable attention worldwide and despite continuing downsizing, prominent international news organisations and agencies continue to maintain bureaus in Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories. This enables news outlets beyond the region, who lack the resources to produce original reporting, to provide their audiences with coverage of this distant conflict. Concerns have been raised about the dependence on such material, however. Using the 2014 Gaza war as a case study, this article examines news production practices in the South African context. The research involved a quantitative content analysis of news output during the war by prominent English print outlets in the country. This was supplemented with interviews with locally based media professionals. Despite relying entirely on international news material, the different outlets employed a variety of innovative strategies to localise the war for their readerships. It is these practices which demonstrate resilience in the face of significant challenges facing the commercial media in the country. The study contributes to enhancing scholarship on news production relating to the broader Israeli–Palestinian conflict in non-Western contexts. In addition, it provides important insights with respect to news production in South Africa related to this and other distant political disputes.

News narratives as identity performance: A narrative analysis of Taiwanese and international news coverage of interracial intimacy

ABSTRACTThis study examines news coverage of an assault upon an interracial couple that happened in Taiwan in 2015. Using narrative analysis from a social identity perspective, the study notes that Taiwanese news media suppressed gender salience in their coverage of this incident to construct a favorable Taiwanese identity; nevertheless, this strategy was performed at the price of reducing the urgency to combat sexism at a societal level. International news media framed the same event as a case of both racism and sexism; however, racism was given different symbolic meanings by different media, with each international news press conceptualizing racism in a way that met its local audience’s identity needs. In addition, both Taiwanese and international news organizations employed several social identity strategies in their news coverage to negotiate desirable international relations. These findings reveal that news media function as agents of international communication in today’s age of globalization.

Proximity and distance in the mediation of suffering: Local photographers in war-torn Aleppo and the international media circuit

This article studies the work and working conditions of local non-professional or semi-professional photographers in Aleppo 2016, and the way they manoeuvre in relation to international networks of journalists and editors as well as to Western norms of portraying distant suffering when seeking to reach global audiences. Theoretically, the article draws upon studies of the ethics of distant spectatorship as well as of practitioners’ perspectives on photojournalism in and from conflict zones. The analysis builds on interviews with local photographers, Aleppo Media Centre, non-governmental organization employees, news agency photo editors and international journalists who have worked in Aleppo as well as digital ethnography. We argue that the relationship between Aleppian photographers and international news organisations was characterised by mutual dependency, but that their relationship was concurrently wrought with inequalities and dilemmas as the photographers’ working conditions were characterised by physical, political and economic vulnerability.

Mitigating the Menace of Boko Haram: The Media Conundrum

Terrorism has become a recurrent feature in news headlines in both national and international news organisations. The Boko Haram group has become the foremost terrorist organisation in Nigeria and was labeled as the deadliest terrorist organisation by Global Terrorism Index of 2016 with over 6000 deaths to their name in 2015 alone. The United Nations recently released a report that over 5 million displaced persons by the Boko Haram conflict risk starvation and death in 2017. Their area of operation has expanded from Nigeria into Cameroon, Niger and Chad across sub-Saharan Africa and rumored to spread from Mali, Iraq and Syria with the pledge of allegiance by the Boko Haram Leader to the Islamic State (ISIS). This paper advocates that lack of viable community media organisations that provide information on rural communities may have played a part in the rise of the group. Journalists reporting conflicts are put in a complex situation where their access to conflict zones has been limited thus impacting on the quality of their reporting. The military is enjoined to provide greater access and protection for journalists covering the conflict as accuracy and objectivity are key elements in reporting and resolution of crises.

Promoting a global brand: a study of international news organisations’ YouTube channels

ABSTRACTFor international news organisations with sometimes limited access to cable and broadcast distribution outlets, self-generated YouTube channels offer an opportunity to share their content with a worldwide audience and to position themselves strategically. This content analysis of 475 YouTube videos posted by 4 international news organisations during 1 week examines what stories were covered and how, and offers insight into what that says about the organisations’ branding strategies. Included are the YouTube channels of Al Jazeera English, Cable News Network International, France 24 English and Russia Today English.

Historical Museums in Israel: Semiotics of Culture

<p>Tiny by physical size, the State of Israel retains some of the world’s most important cultural treasures, along with many other great cultural institutions. Archeological treasures have yielded much information as far as biblical history and have been well adapted to a Zionist narrative by both the Jewish press and international news organizations, such as the New York Times whose archives are replete with reports of Jewish history being dug up by the Jewish people. Once the State of Israel gained independence in 1948, the course was set for the development of historical museums whose discourse would reflect the most significant events in Jewish history, most especially the Holocaust and the state of constant warfare that continues to imbue the cultural consciousness of its citizens. In this paper we outline, through categorization, the various historical museums, which are currently operating. Furthermore, this article hopes to shed some light upon the cultural sensibilities conveyed through these institutions. This paper is about Israeli culture, mythology, and collective needs, as formed by and informed through a variety of historical museums. The working assumption is that in a historical museum culture is partially formed and at the same time the culture is influencing the contents and narratives on display inside the museum. It should be clear from the start that the discussion is held about Israeli museums as viewed by a Jewish population and created by and for Jews. Notwithstanding the multifaceted collective of Israeli society, this work is confined to and circumscribed by this demarcation. In the following sections, I intend to provide an explanation for this viewpoint from a historical perspective and also provide a framework of what constitutes a historical museum and justify the methodology of its employ. This will be followed by a discussion of the main categorical types of historical museums present in Israel, and finally a detailed accounting of specific museums.</p>

Covering Turkey: The Dilemmas of Foreign Correspondents between the Desk and the Field

In the last decade, Turkey’s appeal for international news organizations has risen dramatically. In 1991, there were 85 accredited foreign reporters based in Turkey, the number was recorded as 145 in 2000, 200 in 2005. At the end of 2013, there were 317 accredited members of the foreign media, working for 284 different media organizations. This study accounts for the noticeable increase in the number of foreign correspondents in Turkey. By analyzing data collected via 20 in-depth interviews and online questionnaires, it offers insight on the personal and professional characteristics and practices of foreign journalists covering Turkey. The findings suggest that correspondents “feel responsible” for explaining the complexities in Turkey for their audiences, highlighting the dilemmas between the “desk” and the “field”. They also indicate that Istanbul as an emerging global city does in its own right attracts new media connections.

The Global News Challenge: Market Strategies of International Broadcasting Organizations in Developing Countries

AbstractReview of “The Global News Challenge: Market Strategies of International Broadcasting Organizations in Developing Countries”. Anne Geniets. Routledge 2013. 188 pages. ISBN: 978‐0‐415‐64066‐4. RRP US$125, £80.

Dilemas éticos y modelos deontológicos para el periodista usuario de medios sociales

El artículo se propone identificar los principales dilemas éticos emergentes en el uso de medios sociales por parte de los periodistas. Para ello, recorre experiencias recientes que dieron lugar a reflexiones sobre la necesidad de establecer pautas específicas para la publicación de contenidos en estos medios, y analiza las características y la pertinencia de las respuestas deontológicas a esos dilemas, ensayadas en los últimos dos años por distintas organizaciones periodísticas de proyección internacional. Finalmente, se clasifican y describen los modelos deontológicos de acuerdo con el grado de autonomía que las organizaciones conceden al periodista para que se exprese libremente en los medios sociales, y se plantea la necesidad de la autorregulación individual y de fortalecer el compromiso del periodista con la excelencia profesional.

WikiLeaks: news in the networked era

WikiLeaks is the most challenging journalistic phenomenon to have emerged in the digital era. It has provoked anger and enthusiasm in equal measure, from across the political and journalistic spectrum. WikiLeaks poses a series of questions to the status quo in politics, journalism and to the ways we understand political communication. It has compromised the foreign policy operations of the most powerful state in the world, broken stories comparable to great historic scoops like the Pentagon Papers, and caused the mighty international news organizations to collaborate with this tiny editorial outfit. Yet it may also be on the verge of extinction. This is the first book to examine WikiLeaks fully and critically and its place in the contemporary news environment. The authors combine inside knowledge with the latest media research and analysis to argue that the significance of Wikileaks is that it is part of the shift in the nature of news to a network system that is contestable and unstable. Welcome to Wiki World and a new age of uncertainty.

Constructing narratives as a means of legitimizing political power: Contextualizing the propaganda model in Iraq

This article examines the media coverage produced by several international news organizations about four bombings carried out in Baghdad in the months preceding Iraq’s national election conducted in March 2010. In particular, it utilizes the propaganda model postulated by Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman to analyse the construction of narratives of various government actors, and it seeks to determine the extent to which select news organizations were complicit in propagating an elite view. Iraqi and US government and military elites had a strong incentive to co-opt the media as they sought to convince, particularly the Iraqi public, that insurgent activity could not undermine the security that the Iraqi army and police forces maintained. Moreover, applying the five filters comprising the propaganda model suggests that elites positioned themselves to disseminate their narratives due, in part, to the high reliance by the media on official sources. Although the media coverage generally did not challenge various elitist views and did not provide alternative viewpoints, this article demonstrates that elites nevertheless failed to establish a homogenous consensus view. Several observations suggest that elite narratives lacked credibility because of incomplete, contradictory or false information. By revealing the inconsistencies within and between various elite narratives, the media thus fulfilled its basic functions as the fourth estate.