Mass Media Attention Research Articles

Reading class: Digital evidence about fiction and social class

Recent years have seen the return of social class to popular fiction with the success of international authors like Édouard Louis, Annie Ernaux, Sally Rooney and Douglas Stuart. In Scandinavia, working-class authors have topped bestseller lists since 2022 and have drawn attention in mass media. This study looks at readers of “class fiction” by analyzing data from the digital book platform eReolen. Using data for loan time and geographic municipality, I argue that the popularity of class fiction has been fueled by media attention and gain many of its readers from relatively prosperous areas in Denmark – as opposed to the people represented in the books.

“Not Even Hell Must Look like This”—Print Media Narratives about the October 2017 Wildfires in Portuguese Public-Managed Forests

The unprecedented wildfires of 2017 in Portugal, particularly affecting the Centre Region, resulted in more than 100 deaths and numerous other dramatic socioeconomic and environmental impacts. Due to the unparalleled magnitude of these events, the extent of the burned area, and the catastrophic consequences, forest and fire management were placed at the center stage of public and political concerns, receiving wide mass media attention and amplification likely to shape public opinion and influence policy decisions. Through a quasi-qualitative content analysis approach, this article focuses on the media narratives conveyed by the news issued over two years (N = 1056) by eight newspapers of different periodicities and geographical scopes regarding the wildfires of October 2017 in the Matas do Litoral—coastal public-managed forest areas located in the Centre Region of Portugal. The analysis focuses on three main dimensions: the agents and actors mentioned and their power-related positions, the geographical coverage of the newspapers, and the relevance ascribed to emotions and feelings in the media narratives about the wildfires. The results demonstrate the relevance attributed in media narratives to the views of institutional agents and the negligence of local people’s voices. When particularly highlighting the material impacts of the wildfires, media narratives tended to focus less on people’s emotions and other non-tangible issues. The variation in these narratives according to the geographical scope of the newspapers and the publication time of the news strongly points out the need to address the heterogeneous character of the media coverage of wildfires.

Impact of cybersecurity awareness on mobile malware propagation: A dynamical model

Despite the recent increase in mass media attention to mobile malware, it is still one of the major mobile security threats due to the lack of cybersecurity awareness. The compartment mode can divide the individuals into different states whose name is often a combination of the state names. To explore the impact of the security awareness level of users on susceptible and infected mobile devices, we propose a novel Unaware-Susceptible Aware-Susceptible Latent Breakout Quarantine Recovery (SuSaLBQR) compartment model for mobile malware propagation. In this model, the susceptible mobile devices are divided into two sub-classes: the Su compartment and the Sa compartment depending on the security awareness level of their corresponding users. Based on some reasonable assumptions, a dynamical system is proposed to describe mobile malware propagation behaviors. To explore how malware ultimately spreads, two distinct equilibria (i.e., the malware-spreading and malware-free equilibria) are obtained. Furthermore, the global asymptotic stabilities of those two equilibria are proved by constructing the Lyapunov functions, respectively. The above analysis can provide a theoretical basis for controlling mobile malware propagation. Finally, based on the theoretical and numerical results, a discussion is provided. We find that the above two factors can significantly affect the presence and prevalence of malware in mobile networks.

Bearing witness poetically in a pandemic: documenting suffering and care in conditions of physical isolation and uncertainty

The COVID-19 crisis is still affecting millions of people worldwide. However, government and mass media attention to the continuing loss of life, severe illness and prolonged effects of COVID-19 has...

From causes to consequences, from chat to crisis. The different climate changes of science and Wikipedia

Understanding how society reacts to climate change means understanding how different societal subsystems approach the challenge. With the help of a heuristic of systems theory two subsystems of society – science and mass media – are compared with respect to communications about climate change over the last 20 years. With text mining methods metadata of documents from two databases – OpenAlex and Wikipedia – are generated, analyzed, and visualized. We find substantial differences as well as similarities in the social, factual, and temporal dimensions. While Wikipedia shows a much greater variety of concrete organizations, social movements, media outlets, and persons, science is more concerned with abstract interrelations of human action. In both systems, there is a shift in attention from describing the very phenomenon to questioning how to deal with this fact. This demonstrates for science a discursive shift from causes to consequences and for mass media a shift from chat to crisis. Science shows an ongoing growth process, while the attention of mass media appears cyclical.

Depression and Suicide among Undergraduate Students of a Public University in Ghana

Introduction: Incidents of suicide cases and its related episodes increases in tertiary institutions and attract extreme mass media attention with a high proportion of suicide among college students. Globally, over 800 000 people die of suicide every year and it is the second leading cause of death in 15−29-year-olds. This study assessed depression and suicidal tendencies among KNUST undergraduate students. Methods: This study employed a cross sectional study, Likert scaled questionnaires on self-esteem, depression, and suicidal behaviour. And also closed ended questionnaires on availability of suicide preventive services on campus. Results: The study found out that majority of the students had high level of self-esteem (84.20%). Also, the prevalence of depression among students in this study was 25.15% for major depression episode and 66.34% for people who at mild depression. Again, it was revealed in this study that a prevalence of 26.37% suicidal tendency and its related behaviour exist among KNUST undergraduate students. Depression and Suicidal tendency demonstrated a weak and insignificant correlation of r= 0.18, p<0.001), that high self-esteem becomes protective against individual suicidal tendency. Depression score also contributes to an increase in suicidality by 0.18 times with an increase in depression rate, this relationship was statistically insignificant (0.18; 95% CI = 0.15, 0.19; p<0.001). Conclusion: Majority of the students have no or little idea about the availability of suicide supportive services. More education programmes and awareness creation should be regular to increase students’ knowledge on the availability of suicide supportive services such as suicide hotlines/helplines on campus.

Informal central bank communication: The role of investor memories

Central bank informal communication became more frequent and acquired more mass media attention after the global financial crisis. Do investors remember past central bank communications when a new communication is released? Focusing on the United States, we show that abnormal stock returns increase as informal communications are repeated over time and within a short distance from each other.

Attacks on Educational Institutions.

Educational institutions around the world have long been targets of terrorist attacks. Schools, colleges, and universities often lack security measures against intentional threats and may be viewed as relatively easy, soft targets with high potential for mass casualties. The long-term psychosocial impact on children, youth, and survivors of terrorist attacks are significant and recovery remains a challenge. Deliberate attacks on students and children, in particular, can also often gain mass-media attention, provoke significant community unrest, and place a spotlight on the local government's inability to protect the vulnerable. This study is an epidemiological examination of all terrorism-related events targeting educational institutions from 1970-2019. Data collection was performed using a retrospective search through the Global Terrorism Database (GTD). The database was searched using the internal search functions for all events that occurred from January 1, 1970 - December 31, 2019. "Educational institutions" as a primary target type was selected for the purpose of this study and events were further sub-classified by country and attack type. All classifications were pre-determined by the GTD. The GTD listed 4,520 attacks against educational institutions, recording 3,732 deaths and 9,920 wounded. This accounted for 2.7% of all terrorist attacks (total 168,003 attacks against all target types). There has been a downtrend in attacks since the 2014 peak when 344 attacks were recorded that year. Pakistan recorded the most attacks with 969 events, followed by Afghanistan (369), India (311), and Iraq (279). The most common attack types included bombing/explosions (2290), facility/infrastructure attacks (636), armed assaults (628), hostage takings (kidnappings [415]), assassinations (357), unarmed assaults (72), unknown (67), hostage takings (barricade incidents [46]), and hijackings (9).Eight hundred seventy-three of the 4,520 attacks were recorded against teachers, professors, and instructors and 486 attacks were recorded against "other personnel" such as security and non-teaching staff. Terrorist attacks on educational institutions are rare but significant target types. In total, 41.2% of attacks on educational institutions occurred in South Asia, followed by 18.9% in the Middle East and North Africa. Western Europe and North America accounted for 3.9% and 3.6%, respectively. Educational institutions around the world should evaluate their risks and put in place appropriate hardening measures as well as preparedness and recovery plans to intentional threats.

Perception versus reality of the COVID-19 pandemic in U.S. meat markets

Disruptions to meat markets during the COVID-19 pandemic spurred mass media attention. While media deeming the U.S. food system ‘broken’ garnered a great deal of attention, the actual production and meat availability data does not support this conclusion. The U.S. meat supply chain, while certainly strained and with measurable consequence during periods of adjustment, proved ultimately resilient and rebounded quickly. Increased attention on meat supply chains may drive continued efforts to improve resiliency, but analyses of online media and U.S. production and cold storage data do not support a narrative that the system ‘broke’, but was perhaps ‘strained’ and ‘responded efficiently’. Findings indicate that public sentiment about U.S. meat supply overall was not as dominated by pandemic-era concerns as may be hypothesized.

Mind the gap: COVID-19 highlights the research void in pregnancy

The COVID-19 pandemic has generated massive media attention and with that has come the opportunity for the public to gain an in-depth view of the clinical research process—and the glaring lack of research involving pregnant people. It is well recognized that pregnancy presents unique challenges to scientific discovery and, consequently, that the number of clinical trials involving pregnant people is significantly limited.1 The surge in COVID-19 research provides a unique opportunity to evaluate the research landscape related to pregnancy.

The Use of Primaries by Political Parties: The Case of PASOK

This paper examines the primary elections of the PanHellenic Socialist Party (PASOK) which were held on 5th and 12th of December 2021. Six candidates run for the position of the president in the first round and two runners-up in the second. As mentioned in the literature, there is a dearth of primary elections studies relative to general elections. The latter attract the attention of mass media for the obvious reason: they determine who or which party will govern the country or any other political entity. Nevertheless, there is a growing literature on primary studies. There are three aspects researched in this literature: (a) primary elections systems, (b) why a political party decides to hold primary elections and (c) the selection criteria of candidates and voters. This paper uses the existing literature to analyze some facets of the history of PASOK’s primary elections, emphasizing the most recent one of 2021. The most important conclusion emerging from this analysis is that ideology did play a role, particularly the candidates’ stance on their possible collaboration with the right-wing or the left-wing parties, which has been a controversial issue in the last decade. Another important conclusion is that PASOK voters opted for a younger candidate primarily because they wanted to get out of the current stalemate of PASOK’s low performance in general elections. As predicted from the literature, the competition between the six candidates resulted in a large turnout on the ballot date even though other factors played a positive role such as very good weather and a wide media coverage. Keywords: primaries, elections, voting, political parties, PASOK, Greece

Analysis of Coverage of Vladimir Putin’s Visit to China on TV Channels RT and CGTN

The visit of the President of Russia to China has always been a major event, attracting wide attention of mass media of the two countries. The article presents the results of the analysis of coverage of Vladimir Putin’s visit to China in February 2022 based on the material of the international TV channels RT and CGTN. The features of the coverage of this topic by two media are shown in terms of the number of messages and the tone of coverage.

PENGELOMPOKAN KABUPATEN/KOTA DI PROVINSI JAWA TENGAH BERDASARKAN JUMLAH PEREMPUAN (USIA 18+) KORBAN KEKERASAN DENGAN MENGGUNAKAN K-MEANS CLUSTERING

Violence against women is one of the cases that often gets attention and news in various mass media and electronic media today. In Komnas Perempuan's Annual Records, there were 406,178 cases of violence against women reported and handled throughout 2018. This number increased compared to the previous year's 348,466 cases. This study was conducted to try to group 35 districts/cities in Central Java into 3 clusters based on the number of women (age 18+) victims of violence. Grouping is done using the k-means cluster method. The regencies/cities in Central Java are grouped into 3 clusters, namely: cluster 1 there is 1 Regency/City with a high number of women (age 18+) victims of violence, cluster 2 there are 4 Regency/City with a high number of victims of violence. female (age 18+) victims of violence. moderate, and cluster 3 there are 30 districts/cities with a low number of women (age 18+) victims of violence.

The Dynamics of Investors’ Reactions to Informal Central Bank Communications

Central bank informal communications became more frequent and acquired more mass media attention after the global financial crisis. Do investors react to the content (e.g., future expansionary or restrictive policy) of informal central bank communications? And especially, do investors have a memory of past “similar” speeches? Focusing on informal Central Bank communications in the United States, we show that speeches with an expansionary content positively influence cumulative abnormal stock returns. However, this effect is lower when there is more intense past informal communication with the same expansionary tone. This weakening effect is stronger when the previous expansionary speech is further back in time, suggesting a lack-of-confidence in the monetary policy’s effectiveness (skepticism hypothesis).

Russian Organised Crime in Catalonia and Its Prevalence

Russian organized crime is active at the transnational level, where crimes could be committed on the territories of different countries. Spain, due to it specific features, is a rather attractive ground for illegal activities of many criminal organizations, including groups formed by citizens of the ex-USSR states. Organized crime in Spain is not distributed evenly throughout its territory, but is rather concentrated in most socially and economically developed areas, and the autonomous community of Catalonia is now holding the second place by the number of officially registered crimes. Its developed infrastructure makes it possible for organized crime, including Russian organized crime, to increase its activities in this autonomous community. The author notes that Spanish criminology faces certain difficulties, some of them methodological in nature, when studying the activities of Russian organized crime in Spain. This circumstance does not make it possible to fully implement research findings regarding its criminal nature. The author presents general characteristics of Russian criminal groups. They are shown to have a high degree of organization, and specific types of criminal activities connected with their antisocial orientation are described. It is rather often that Russian criminal organizations attract a great deal of mass media attention, which creates the impression that they are wide-spread. In Spain, any criminal organization created by citizens of the ex-USSR states is defined as «Russian mafia». However, in spite of considerable media coverage, the degree of Russian organized crime’s presence on the territory of Catalonia should not be overstated. Using the analysis of official data from the Catalan Department of the Interior, the author concludes that Russian organized crime does not hold a dominant position in the overall structure of organized crime in the region as its specific weight does not exceed 2 %.

Reconciling conflicting predictions about transience and persistence of management concepts in management fashion theory and new institutionalism

PurposeAlthough drawing from neoinstitutional theoretical apparatus and ontology, management fashion theory is understood as a theory that explains the transitory nature of popular ideas and practices while institutional theory explains their stabilization, persistence and further institutionalization. In a nutshell, it seems that being opposed to each other, these two theories describe and predict different, incommensurable diffusion trajectories and organizational behaviour patterns. The purpose of this paper is to unify these two competing perspectives.Design/methodology/approachThis paper makes an attempt toward further unification of management fashion theory with new institutionalism by offering an alternative understanding and conceptualization of institutional change and deinstitutionalization and by distinguishing emerging concepts from already popular fashions.FindingsMost emerging concepts never achieve popularity and disappear while few of them achieve massive media attention and diffuse widely becoming new management fashions. Once these concepts have achieved a wide popularity institutional forces would favor them and lead to further institutionalization. Institutional change is understood not as a deinstitutionalization of existing management fashion in terms of erosion, discontinuity or disappearance but as a decline in its media coverage while media attention focuses on new fashionable concept. The former management fashion gets institutionalized, institutional change occurs in terms of shifting attention toward new fashion and diffusion and institutionalization cycle restarts. Institutional prediction of isomorphism and institutionalization as irreversible tendencies thus can be unified with MF prediction about the bell-shaped curves in fashions’ popularity. Therefore, postulates and predictions of management fashion theory can be derived from new institutionalism and vice versa.Practical implicationsThe paper aims to cover, generalize and explain different trajectories of various management and organizational concepts, deducing theoretical propositions from both institutional theory and management fashion theory. Theoretical and methodological ideas offered in this paper can be helpful in future research on management fashions and diffusion. Studies on the evolution of management concept can benefit from proposed categorization and causal relationships between different stages of the life cycle.Originality/valueUnifying seemingly conflicting and disparate perspectives and views allows making organization theory more coherent in terms of both explanatory power and ontological commensurability. Following other mature sciences, we share the same notion of progress, namely, the aim of achieving unification and demonstrating that different organizational theories still describe the same reality.

The Interplay Between Social Movements and Media: From Creative Ways to Grab Media Attention to Spreading Fake News

Throughout this study we have attempted to identify how the media approached the protests from the period 2017-2019, protests which showed a massive change for the better concerning Romanian civic engagement and shaped a culture of protest characterized by a highly creative and humorful approach. In order to attract the attention of mass-media and to maximize the impact of their actions, protesters made use of modern communication tools and resorted to intricate choreographies and symbols. Social media played an important role in the organization and promotion of the protests, facilitating the transmission of information and acting like a catalyst of the popular discontent.

Welfare state reforms and mass media attention: Evidence from three European democracies

AbstractThe mass media is conventionally assumed to play an important role in welfare state politics. So far, however, we have very little systematic theorizing or empirical evidence of when and how the mass media reports on welfare state reforms. Building on news value theory and the welfare state reform literature, we develop a set of hypotheses about mass media reporting on welfare state reforms. We argue that mass media attention is conditioned not only by the direction of reforms, with cuts getting more attention than expansions, but also by the election platform that the incumbent party ran on in the last election as well as by the policy reputation of the government. Drawing on a new dataset including about 4,800 news articles in British, Danish and German quality newspapers from 1995 to 2014, we find supporting empirical evidence of our expectations.

Украинофильство как примечательная черта медиаобраза польско-украинского поэта Томаша Падуры

The article shows the specific features of the formation of Tomasz Padura’s media image and its transformation into a symbol of the Polish-Ukrainian unity. It has been proven that the attention of the Ukrainian mass media is concentrated on the most weighty and outstanding facts of the poet’s life and work. Those facts represent several informative aspects: narrow biographical, ideological, creative, memorial, and futuristic. Each of those aspects has its content aimed at the melioration of Tomasz Padura’s image as an exemplary Polish Ukrainophile, a symbol of the Polish-Ukrainian unity. The symbolization of this image has several functions: the historical-typological one allowing to trace the main stages of the image transformation; the methodological one which stresses its significance for the contemporaries; the communicative one which ensures the continuous attention to the poet, and the marketing function promoting Tomasz Padura’s name as a brand from the point of view of the commercial success.

Sustainable mobility and the American press: The newspaper coverage of electric vehicles (1995-2015)

Scholars have long debated about the economy-environment trade-off, for which the economic conditions affect the attention of citizens and mass media towards environmental issues. This paper explores this theme within the US press and studies which factors are associated with the media coverage of electric vehicles (EVs) in four major national newspapers between 1995 and 2015. According to the empirical estimates, the media attention towards EVs shows a weak association with good economic conditions, policy initiatives in support of sustainable mobility, and tenures of Democratic presidents.