National News Research Articles

Local Newspaper Decline and Political Polarization – Evidence from a Multi-Party Setting

Abstract How does the decline of traditional news outlets affect political polarization? We provide novel evidence on this question by examining the link between local newspaper exits, media consumption, and electoral behaviour in a multiparty setting. Our empirical analysis combines a unique panel of all German local newspapers between 1980 and 2009, electoral returns, and an annual media consumption survey of more than 670,000 respondents. Using a difference-in-differences design, we demonstrate that local newspaper exits increase electoral polarization. Additional analysis points to changes in media consumption as the underlying mechanism driving this result: following local news exits, consumers substitute local news with national tabloid news. Our findings extend prior results in the US context to a multiparty setting and shed new light on the causal chain running from changing local news landscapes to electoral behaviour.

Comparative dimensions of COVID-19 visual health literacy: social media news imagery in Germany and China

The COVID-19 pandemic prompted governments worldwide to utilise social media news platforms for disseminating critical public health information and safety protocols. Visual aids, including photographs, videos, charts, and infographics, played a key role in conveying health-related messages. However, there are variations in visual communication practices across countries, influenced by local health communication habits and cultural contexts. This study examines these variations in the visual health discourse that emerged in China and Germany during the pandemic, focusing on metaphorical mapping as a central analytical tool. We introduce the concept of “visual dataset fingerprints,” outlining the distinct composition of public health visuals on eight social news media platforms in Germany and China. Our descriptive analysis encompasses over 3700 digital visual media posts related to COVID-19, shared by leading national news media accounts in German, English, and Mandarin on microblogs in 2022. As a preliminary outcome of our study, we observe differences in image use based on the analysis of 1678 media posts by four Chinese outlets and 1329 media posts by four German outlets. These differences may reflect variations in how public opinion, perceptions, and attitudes toward COVID-19 policies are shaped across languages and cultures. Through its comparative visual analysis, our pilot study offers the potential for a new research approach to global healthcare communication in social news media and digital visual cultures.

Content Analysis in the Publications of the digital media CDL Noticias: An Exploratory Study

This article is an exploratory study that aims to analyze the content of local and national news published in the digital media "CDL Noticias" during the month of November 2023. In this writing, a qualitative methodology was applied, which was developed through a content analysis, seeking to understand the informative panorama of the medium and to evaluate the importance that CDL assigns to each type of content by means of an observation sheet. The results highlighted in this research made it possible to identify the predominant topics, the approaches used and the frequency with which different types of news are addressed.

Global Media Sentiments on the Rohingya Crisis: A Comparative Analysis of News Articles from Ten Countries

The Rohingya crisis has been a significant issue for national and international news media, capturing their attention for an extended period and documenting various phases of the crisis. Previous research exploring the tones and portrayal of the Rohingyas in the news lacks comparative and temporal analysis of news sentiments. In this study, we aim to fill this gap by analyzing 8074 news stories on Rohingya issues published in 10 news media outlets from 10 countries between 2009 and 2023. Our computational sentiment analysis reveals that Rohingya-related news sentiments are predominantly negative and fluctuate over the years across different countries, showing little identifiable patterns. An ANOVA suggests significant variation in news sentiments among countries, with some countries exhibiting more similar sentiments than others, thus creating distinguishable groups. Some of our findings contradict previous scholarships, warranting further research and novel frameworks. Additionally, we encourage scrutiny of academic insights to address potential biases against news media’s journalistic integrity.

Gray hair and pink slips: An analysis of Twitter responses to gendered ageism

When Canadian broadcaster, Lisa LaFlamme, announced in August 2022 that CTV National News did not renew her contract, some observers suggested that the corporation’s decision resulted from LaFlamme’s choice to “let her hair go gray” during the pandemic. An international public outcry ensued on Twitter. Our study involved an examination of these tweets (n = 440). Analyses revealed that approximately 80 percent of tweets indicated opposition to LaFlamme’s dismissal, while only 2 percent indicated support and 18 percent indicated a neutral position. Among tweets expressing opposition, the most common justification, found in 79 percent of these tweets, centered on assessments of the employer’s decision as poor. The frequency of all other justifications for opposition was considerably lower, with only 26 percent of these tweets mentioning ageism, 22 percent mentioning sexism, and 20 percent mentioning a general sense of unfairness to LaFlamme. These findings suggest the salience of capitalist logics in shaping how the public frames gendered ageism in the workplace. Our analyses also suggest a view of responses to this inequality as personal bodywork choices. Together, these framings reflect a more individual- than structural-level critique of gendered ageism, knowledge of which can inform efforts to dismantle it.

Level of Effectiveness and Seriousness on The Problems Encountered in the Implementation of Crime Prevention Strategies of The Philippine Na-tional Police in Olongapo City, Philippines

Every country is impacted by criminality on an economic, social, and political level. The national news in the Philippines typically reports on crimes against persons and property because of the prevailing belief that the country's economic standing is insufficient to support an individual's level of living. The Philippine National Police (PNP) in Olongapo City has not yet succeeded in implementing crime prevention and control, despite their best efforts to prevent crime. The Philippines uses foreign approaches to crime prevention that don't align with the nation's current criminality issues. The PNP organization is facing difficulty in crime prevention due to its inability to demonstrate its efficacy and efficiency in the performance of its duty. The primary aspect that leads to the prevention of crime is following the path of morality, virtue, and ethics by all the individuals. These morals and values would enable a person to focus on the achievement of his life and career goals and abstain from conducting any kind of criminal and violent acts.

The representation of disability in the Italian media: The case of Ansa

The representation of disability in the media significantly influences the social perception of disability among the general population, as well as among individuals with disabilities themselves. This study focuses on the case of Ansa, the primary Italian press agency, to examine its portrayal of disability and persons with disabilities in the year 2022. Through the content analysis of a corpus comprising 1692 articles collected via keyword search, the research aims to draw a ‘map’ that can describe the disability narrative conveyed by Ansa. Key findings highlight Ansa’s narrative as displaying a form of under-representation of disability. Physical and mobility disabilities dominate the discourse, adhering to the common mediatic ‘hierarchy of disabilities’. But even more clearly, Ansa’s representation tends to be generic, abstract and lacking in specificity, thus presenting disability as a depersonalised and collective label. The narratives predominantly revolve around political interventions, funding, and institutional aid, with limited attention given to personal life stories that rarely attain national news status. Ultimately, the agency’s portrayal appears as a narrative of disability without the disabled persons, representing the phenomenon as a systemic issue that can be resolved through public frameworks and policies, with no direct involvement of those affected. This reinforces the notion that disability is a depersonalised problem that always needs external solutions.

Trans News Matters: Media Coverage and Trans Minors’ Social Transitions in the Basque Country

ABSTRACT Parallel to the increase in media attention to trans issues over the last two decades, media delegitimization of trans rights and misrepresentation of trans people have decreased. Trans-friendly news coverage is crucial, as previous research suggests that the news media can influence the identification and social transition processes of trans youths. The present study aims to investigate the potential relationship between media coverage of trans issues and the social transitions of trans minors in the Basque Country (Spain). Various time series analyses were conducted for the period from May 2015 to December 2020 between different news media coverages and registrations to the Basque NGO of families with trans minors. The results indicate that news coverage focusing on trans issues, trans minors, and NGOs of trans families with trans minors can have an almost immediate impact on registrations to these NGOs and, by extension, on the social transitions of trans youths. Both national and local news media outlets are influential in forecasting registration numbers, along with progressive ones. However, conservative outlets do not show the same forecasting value. These findings highlight that news media has played a crucial role in the social transition of trans minors.

Experiences of healthcare workers who faced physical workplace violence from patients or their relatives in Nepal: a qualitative study

IntroductionWorkplace violence (WPV) against healthcare workers (HCWs) has become a global concern. Our aim was to investigate the firsthand experience of HCWs who faced physical WPV from patients or their...

Cabo Delgado in Peace: Memories and Forebodings

In 1996, Mozambican photographer Sérgio Santimano travelled to Cabo Delgado to carry out photographic work, with the objective of documenting the province in a time of peace and renewal. His travels resulted in the exhibition, Cabo Delgado: A Photographic Story about Africa (Cabo Delgado: uma história fotográfica sobre África), which consolidated his international renown. In this photo-essay, we revisit a selection of Santimano's photographs on Cabo Delgado, with the aim of offering an image different from that of devastation and death which has dominated the national and global news since an Islamist insurgency erupted in the province in October 2017. While providing a pathway into memories of Cabo Delgado as a place rich with life, history, culture and individuality, Santimano's photographs also offer eerie forebodings of the present.

Millions of climate refugees are coming!’ A critical media discourse analysis on climate change-induced migrants in Flemish press

ABSTRACT The rise in research, policy and news on climate change-induced migration has grown exponentially over the last two decades. Migration related to global warming is increasingly portrayed as inevitable and used to mobilise people to act immediately against climate change. By analysing the discourse of two Flemish news media journals (De Standaard and Het Laatste Nieuws) and the Belgian national news agency (Belga), indexed by the GoPress database (1985–2022), this paper aims to present how migration and climate change are linked to each other in the media, how this differs across media outlets, and reflects on potential outcomes of this framing. Results indicate that climate-induced migration is often portrayed in an apocalyptic way and seen as an inevitable threat that needs to be avoided. The used terminology and the portrayals of climate change-induced migration are not in line with the scientific evidence on this topic.

Use of Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and Robustly Optimized Bert Pretraining Approach (RoBERTa) for Nepali News Classification

News classification is a technique of classifying news documents into predefined groups. One of the earliest problems in Natural Language Processing was the categorization of news. Huge number of news is generated from different news portals each day and it is difficult to consign the specific types of news from that portal. News must be assigned into respective appropriate classes as users want to read certain type of news automatically as per the need. Text classification has been done by using different machine learning algorithm like Support Vector Machine (SVM), Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). However, Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and Robustly Optimized Bert Pretraining Approach (RoBERTa) have not been fully scrutinized for Nepali news classification tasks. This research develops two models for Nepali news classification namely BERT and RoBERTa by collecting news data from various national news portals. Precision, Recall, F1 score and accuracy are used to evaluate the effectiveness of the model. Both models are trained and tested with AdamW optimizer with learning rate 1e-5 i.e., 0.0001. While comparing both models, RoBERTa found to be better than BERT model with accuracy 95.3 percent.

Tensions between the professional and academic worlds of journalism: Paradoxes of the Brazilian reality

For 40 years, Brazil was one of the few places in the world in which the regulation of journalistic activity was based on the requirement of a university degree, which associated being a journalist with having an academic qualification and not necessarily a professional one, unlike other countries that established or not licensing/accreditation systems. In the light of historical sociology, this article aims to scrutinize this intricacy of relationships between the professional and academic worlds of journalism, based on the case of the largest media market and scholarship in Latin America. It is shown how, between 1969 and 2013, there was tension and resistance on the part of international press associations, national news media companies and renowned journalists in relation to the mandatory diploma defended by the unions; as well as there were disputes and demands, within the community of professors and researchers, for the emancipation of journalism education in relation to communication studies.

Analisis Eksistensi Dan Urgensi Hakikat Pendidikan Kewarganegaraan Dalam Kasus Penyalahgunaan Narkotika Di Kalangan Selebritas Indonesia

Drug abuse among celebrities in Indonesia is increasingly widespread, as evidenced by the number of news events both on television, national news websites and even in magazines. Drug abuse among Indonesian celebrities seems to be a place of escape from the problems of the life they live. Of course, drug abuse can be detrimental to oneself, causing negative stigma, loss of work for the celebrity and others, especially if it is done by celebrities who can be a bad example for the community. Celebrities have an influential position in changing people's perspectives and mindsets. Drug abuse is a social problem that can be caused by factors that influence it, one of which is a lack of understanding of civic education. The importance of understanding and learning civic education from elementary school to college can change awake behavior and shape character in accordance with the value of the precepts contained in Pancasila. Civic education can be one part of prevention in some relevant cases, for example drug abuse. This is in line with the importance of civic education which has been explained in the Indonesian Law No.20 of 2003 concerning the national education system, chapter 10 regarding the curriculum, article 37 paragraphs 1 and 2 which explain that Civics Education is one of the lessons that are mandatory in the curriculum of basic education, secondary education to higher education. Character building in civic education will become a habit so that it cannot be influenced by the surrounding environment, so that drug abuse among celebrities only becomes a mere entertainment spectacle by the community and cannot be imitated and only becomes a lesson for bad examples in society.

The shadowy realm of news avoidance: Exploring public service news avoidance as negative social action

Abstract Studies on news avoidance rely on a range of theories to explain why news avoidance takes place and its potential consequences, and the debates on different ways of measuring news avoidance have been lively. Despite the numerous approaches and conceptualisations, there is room to theorise what news avoidance entails as a social phenomenon. In this study, we posit that news avoidance can fruitfully be approached as a form of negative social action embedded in a negative social space – a realm of the lifeworld filled with non-doings and non-appearance. We apply this approach, which opens up new questions in the field of news avoidance studies, to a case study of Swedes who opted out of national public service news in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that avoiders of public service news occupy relatively precarious social positions, and that news avoidance is embedded in a broader negative social space.

Korean Ethnic Newspapers at a Crossroads

abstract: Ethnic and local news media face critical challenges due to the loss of traditional subscribers and relatively fewer resources in comparison with national and global news media companies. Responding to the changing news media market and environment, this article deals with the current challenges of ethnic news media and projects some possible future plans.

Mothers, terrorists, or victims? The framing of Dutch and Belgian women in the Syrian camps and the question of repatriation in news media

Following the fall of ISIS in March 2019, thousands of women affiliated with the movement, along with their children, were brought to Kurdish-controlled camps in north-eastern Syria. Since then, an international, political, and juridical debate raged on regarding the repatriation of Western female detainees in the camps and their children. This paper aims to evaluate how Dutch and Belgian women in the Syrian camps have been framed by their national news media in the context of political discussions on their repatriation. Our qualitative framing analysis identifies six distinct framing packages: the criminal, terrorist, victim, regret, mother, and bad parent frames. Moreover, our analysis highlights how the frames, and their intersection with different modes of othering, shifted as the debate moved to the question of their repatriation. Finally, we also discuss differences in the framing, argumentation, and frame advocates between the two contexts.

Associations between news coverage, social media discussions, and search trends about celebrity deaths, screening, and other colorectal cancer-related events

ObjectiveColorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of cancer death among both men and women in the United States. CRC-related events may increase media coverage and public attention, boosting awareness and prevention. This study examined associations between several types of CRC events (including unplanned celebrity cancer deaths and planned events like national CRC awareness months, celebrity screening behavior, and screening guideline changes) and news coverage, Twitter discussions, and Google search trends about CRC and CRC screening. MethodsWe analyzed data from U.S. national news media outlets, posts scraped from Twitter, and Google Trends on CRC and CRC screening during a three-year period from 2020 to 2022. We used burst detection methods to identify temporal spikes in the volume of news, tweets, and search after each CRC-related event. ResultsThere is a high level of heterogeneity in the impact of celebrity CRC events. Celebrity CRC deaths were more likely to precede spikes in news and tweets about CRC overall than CRC screening. Celebrity screening preceded spikes in news and tweets about screening but not searches. Awareness months and screening guideline changes did precede spikes in news, tweets, and searches about screening, but these spikes were inconsistent, not simultaneous, and not as large as those events concerning most prominent public figures. ConclusionsCRC events provide opportunities to increase attention to CRC. Media and public health professionals should actively intervene during CRC events to increase emphasis on CRC screening and evidence-based recommendations.

Transforming the value chain of local journalism with artificial intelligence

AbstractWith their advertising and audience revenues in decline, local news organizations have been experiencing comparatively high degrees of disruption in recent years. Artificial Intelligence (AI) offers opportunities for local news organizations to better cope with the economic challenges they face. However, local news organizations need to carefully prioritize where AI will create the most value. After all, they serve customers in the audience and advertising markets, with external effects on society. At the same time, they are limited by scarce resources, which constrains the implementation of AI. Therefore, based on Porter's value chain, this article pursues two goals. First, drawing on previous research, we provide a systematic overview of activities for which local news organizations see the biggest potential of AI to create value. Moreover, we highlight promising AI use cases based on benchmarking with national news organizations. Second, we discuss local news organizations’ challenges in implementing AI and how they might overcome such obstacles.

Urgensi Guru Dalam Konteks Moderasi Beragama

Indonesia is a country with all the diversity that exists. Ethnic, cultural and religious diversity are some of the forms of diversity that exist in Indonesia. Prolonged conflicts in the name of religion often occur in various regions in Indonesia. Mosques are burned, churches are attacked, religious leaders are subjected to cruelty by irresponsible hands, suicide bombings in the name of religion, radicalism and discrimination in the name of sara issues often occur and become national news. For this reason, an attitude or perspective is needed to be a resolution to the conflict. Religious moderation is a moderate perspective, attitude and behavior in religion, namely understanding and practicing religious teachings without extremes. Neither extreme right nor extreme left. Basically, normative Islam itself has a wasathiyah character, moderation. Religious moderation education in strengthening national insight is important especially in recent years the diversity on earth Indonesia is being tested by the existence of extreme religious attitudes expressed by a group of people in the name of religion. This happens in actions in the real world and statements in cyberspace. This exclusive and intolerant group is dangerous for the religious climate in Indonesia. This research is a type of library research. What is called library research or often also called library studies, is a series of activities using library data collection methods, reading and recording and processing research materials. The world of education is the foundation of hope for strengthening the values of religious moderation. The high participation of the Indonesian people in establishing and organizing religion-based educational institutions needs to be directed to strengthen this idea. Religious moderation education needs to be developed along with the character building of students. Religious moderation education is expected to answer the target of the mental revolution of students to continue to develop the values of peace and tolerance. Keywords : Religious Moderation, Teacher, Urgency