New Media Environment Research Articles

The small, disloyal fake news audience: The role of audience availability in fake news consumption

In light of the recent US election, many fear that “fake news” has become a force of enormous reach and influence within the news media environment. We draw on well-established theories of audience behavior to argue that the online fake news audience, like most niche content, would be a small subset of the total news audience, especially those with high availability. By examining online visitation data across mobile and desktop platforms in the months leading up to and following the 2016 presidential election, we indeed find the fake news audience comprises a small, disloyal group of heavy Internet users. We also find that social network sites play an outsized role in generating traffic to fake news. With this revised understanding, we revisit the democratic implications of the fake news crisis.

And Deliver Us to Segmentation

Non-profit news publishers, a small but growing piece of the news media environment, often explicitly attempt to build strong ties with their audiences. Many assume this approach differs from that of legacy newsrooms, which have historically kept the audience at arm’s length. In this article, I argue that this distinction has blurred. In-depth interviews with reporters and editors at a daily newspaper (The Chicago Tribune) and a local news non-profit (City Bureau) reveal that: (1) both organizations are pursuing a more collaborative relationship with their audiences; and (2) this pursuit is ill-suited for the traditional mass audience approach to news production. I conclude that journalists aspiring to work more closely with the audience find greater success when that audience is narrow to begin with.

THE ACCESS PARADOX: MEDIA ENVIRONMENT DIVERSITY AND COVERAGE OF ACTIVIST GROUPS IN JAPAN AND KOREA

AbstractTo what extent is a diverse news media environment good for activists who seek attention for their cause? Scholars agree that activist groups depend on the media to reach policymakers and bystanders. Yet prior scholars have overlooked how factors that contribute to media environment diversity—including journalistic norms, market structures, outlets’ partisanship, and audiences’ news consumption habits—can have contradictory implications for activist groups. Disaggregating questions of gaining publicity from questions of the message and reach of coverage, this article shows that while pluralistic media environments are more accessible to activists, more homogeneous media environments help groups that manage to break into the mainstream news reach wider audiences with more coherent narratives. These findings challenge common assumptions about the news media in Japan and Korea. A paired comparison of hepatitis C-related activism in both countries demonstrates how the forces democratizing access to the media are paradoxically reducing the persuasive potential of publicity.

ICT 발전과 패션산업에서의 고객 참여

With the pervasiveness of digital environment and expansion of new media, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) leads the role of consumer to change from a passive customer into an active co-producer. As customer participation in the fashion industry increases, this study attempts to explore the cases of customer participation as a co-producer in fashion industry through analyzing business models of companies, including Threadless, Blank label, Cut on Your Bias, Acustom Apparel, Thinkgivers. The results show that customer participation is mainly facilitated through design participation in fashion industry, with different level of participation and IT as well as different contribution target. Compared to the past, consumer’s preference is reflected through participation before the stage of production. Results indicate three main characteristics of customer participation in fashion industry. First, value co-creations using customer experiences and understanding customer needs are important. Second, active online communication among customers are critical. Third, it is important to ensure customer’s own item. From a customer perspective, participation enables them to purchase their own distinctive product and offers exciting experience and satisfaction over the production processes, and compensation can be used to increase customer participation. On the other hand, companies using customer participation can take advantage of cost reduction in product development, inventory, and marketing. Customer participation, as a win-win strategy for business and consumer, is expected to expand further in the future with the development of ICT.

Political Participation and Ideological News Online: “Differential Gains” and “Differential Losses” in a Presidential Election Cycle

Observations of the contemporary news media environment often revolve around the topics of ideological polarization and blurred boundaries between mass and interpersonal communication. This study explores these topics through a focus on the association between ideologically oriented online news use, commenting on online news, and political participation. We hypothesize that both ideological online news use generally and proattitudinal online news use are positively related to political participation and that online news commenting creates “differential gains” by augmenting these relationships. Yet we also hypothesize that counterattitudinal online news use is negatively related to political participation and that online news commenting creates “differential losses” by exacerbating this relationship. Analyses of two independently collected and nationally representative surveys found that frequent ideological online news use, proattitudinal online news use, and commenting are all positively related to political participation. We found no evidence for differential gains as a result of online commenting but only for differential losses—counterattitudinal online news use interacts with commenting to create a negative relationship with political participation.

新媒体环境下“最美”典型报道的模式与反思

对中央电视台、人民网、《人民日报》、人民论坛等媒体中关于“最美司机吴斌”的相关报道进行分析，由此探究新媒体环境下“最美”人物报道的传播模式。并对中央新闻媒体中的“最美”系列报道进行梳理，从政治、社会和媒体三方面总结出“最美”报道产生的原因。经过进一步分析，对“最美”典型报道的一些问题：报道在语言和角色选取上显示出民粹主义的特征；报道的集中化和内容的重复使受众产生了审美疲劳；为了迎合报道潮流制造“最美”假新闻的现象。因此本文认为媒体在进行“最美”典型报道时，要警惕“最美”报道的虚假化，防止报道的民粹化，同时重视受众的审美心理。This paper is based upon the case studies on “The most beautiful driver Wu Bin” in China Central Television, People’s Daily Online, People’s Daily and People’s Forum. The assay researched new mode of communication of typical reports in the new era. At the same time, this paper sorted out the series reports of the most beautiful after the news of Wu Bin and summarized the reasons of this phenomenon. Besides the reason on the social environment of moral anomie, the government and new media both are the significant bulldozers in this process. Some ideas have been found in this research. The idea that characteristics of the populism displayed in the aspects of reported language and the selection of roles. The audience has already been tired on such reports. In addi-tion, there are an increasing number of series typical reports and even some media created fake news in order to meet the taste of the audience. In conclusion, according these ideas mentioned before, this paper argues that the media should pay more attention on the fatigue emotion of au-dience, meanwhile, they ought to guard against this type of reports being populism and the fake news reported.

Advancing Cancer Control Research in an Emerging News Media Environment

Cancer is both highly feared and highly newsworthy, and there is a robust body of research documenting the content and effects of cancer news coverage on health behaviors and policy. Recent years have witnessed ongoing, transformative shifts in American journalism alongside rapid advances in communication technology and the public information environment. These changes create a pressing need to consider a new set of research questions, sampling strategies, measurement techniques, and theories of media effects to ensure continued relevance and adaptation of communication research to address critical cancer control concerns. This paper begins by briefly reviewing what we know about the role of cancer news in shaping cancer-related beliefs, attitudes, behaviors, and policies. We then outline challenges and opportunities, both theoretical and methodological, posed by the rapidly changing news media environment and the nature of audience engagement. We organize our discussion around three major shifts associated with the emerging news media environment as it relates to health communication: 1) speed and dynamism of news diffusion, 2) increased narrowcasting of media content for specialized audiences, and 3) broadened participation in shaping media content. In so doing, we articulate a set of questions for future theory and research, in an effort to catalyze innovative communication scholarship to improve cancer prevention and control.

A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush by Lori Cox Han (review)

Reviewed by: A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush by Lori Cox Han Sara A. Mehltretter Drury A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush. By Lori Cox Han. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2011; pp. xi + 242. $40.00 cloth. Lori Cox Han begins her book, A Presidency Upstaged: The Public Leadership of George H. W. Bush, by recounting the complex legacy of the single-term president. Initially viewed as a static president who occupied the White House in between two "dynamic and skilled communicators" (Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton), George H. W. Bush's legacy continues to be debated by scholars (1). Han argues that Bush's tenure in office and his presidential legacy can be better understood by focusing on the "public presidency"—the president's communication to the American public, his relationship with the press, the communication strategies employed by the advisers to the president, and the media responses to the White House. Furthermore, Han contends that Bush's public leadership was constrained by the context of his presidency, particularly the changes in political media coverage. Throughout the book, Han builds her argument that Bush was upstaged in three major areas. First, Reagan upstaged Bush by creating a "public [End Page 617] expectation" of presidential communication that the press simultaneously resented and expected to be fulfilled by the new president (200). Second, Bush's public presidency and communication were upstaged by "the changing technology and news media environment during the late 1980s and early 1990s" (200). Finally, just as his predecessor upstaged Bush, his successor, Bill Clinton, upstaged the Bush presidency and solidified Bush's initial legacy as an ineffective communicator and incapable leader. In six chapters, Han examines the scholarly assessments of George H. W. Bush, the internal dynamics within the Bush White House, a variety of external factors, two case studies on Bush's public speeches, and a final assessment of the Bush legacy and our understanding of the contemporary public presidency. The book is meticulously researched, with comprehensive sources from newspapers, television shows, memoirs, and the George H. W. Bush Presidential Library, including fascinating materials newly obtained through Han's Freedom of Information Act request. After a review of existing scholarship in the first chapter, chapter 2 details the various strategies taken by the Bush administration during its four years in the White House, drawing on an impressive number of archival documents. Han's citation of memoranda from Marlin Fitzwater, the Press Secretary and chief architect of Bush's public communication strategy, demonstrates that the Bush White House actively made decisions to move away from Reagan's "Great Communicator" strategies of giving national addresses, speaking "over" Congress and the press. In contrast, the Bush team designed their communication strategy to emphasize substance over style (18). To underscore the importance of giving the press access to policymaking details, the president made himself available for "real interaction between him and White House reporters" (21). Bush primarily relied on smaller public events to communicate policy rather than on large, national addresses. For example, Bush discontinued the weekly radio address begun by Reagan (and reinstituted, Han notes, by Clinton). The White House communications team worked to keep Bush off, rather than on, the national stage, holding smaller "roundtable interviews" and Q&A sessions with niche publications such as McCalls' (targeting 5 million women readers), Outdoor Life, Prevention (health and fitness), Flame (a Christian publication), and Good Housekeeping (35). While Bush actually participated in more public activities in his four years than Reagan during his first term, Han concludes that the Bush White House never quite learned the lesson [End Page 618] that more press access does not equal more favorable or more comprehensive coverage of policymaking. Overall, the lack of a strong, overarching "vision thing"—as the Bush team called it—plagued Bush throughout his presidency (43). In chapter 3, Han's comprehensive research strongly supports her assessment of the changing dynamic between the news media and the presidency during the late 1980s and early 1990s. This section of the book will be of great interest to scholars looking at the relationship between the media and the contemporary...

Considering the consequences: Australian country newspapers and news impact on communities

The news media are often criticised for not considering the impact of their reporting on audiences. Journalism conventions and market demands are seen as militating against concern with the consequences of news coverage, and this is frequently highlighted as one of the reasons for decreasing public trust in the media. However, such criticisms may apply primarily to news outlets in metropolitan areas, where media environments are competitive and the risk of alienating or offending some readers, viewers or listeners must be balanced against the need to attract as wide an audience as possible. Outside cities, the news media environment tends to be less competitive, and this, along with factors such as individual journalists’ greater public visibility and accessibility, may encourage a greater concern with the impacts and effects of news reporting. This conclusion is supported by the findings of a study into relationships between Australian country non-daily newspapers and community in Victoria and South Australia, suggesting that journalistic conventions such as objectivity may require reinterpretation in non-metropolitan environments.

Effects Of Developing New Media Environment On The Communication Education

Yakinsayan ve donusen yeni iletisim ortamlari iletisim ve medya sahasindaki kullanici, egitimci ve ogrencilerin gunluk hayatlarini ve is-okul gundemlerini degistiriyor. Bu calismada yeni iletisim ortamlari alaninin yayincilik acisindan gelisimi ve guncel durumu ile bunun iletisim fakultelerindeki egitimin guncellenmesine etkisi ele alinmaktadir. Yeni iletisim ortamlari, yayincilik sektorunde koklu degisikliklere ve sirketlerin eski is modellerini terk edip yenilerini benimsemesine yol acmaktadir. Ayni durum yayincilik egitiminin verildigi iletisim fakultelerinde buyuk capta gozlenmemektedir. Bu calisma icin genis capli literatur taramasi disinda, Turkiye ve dunyada onde gelen iletisim fakultelerinin mufredatlari da incelenmistir. Degisen medya ve yayincilik ortamina iliskin bilgiler verildikten sonra, yayincilik egitiminde gorulen degisime deginilip yapilabileceklerden bahsedilmis ve mufredati duzenlemekten sorumlu akademisyenler ile bundan etkilenecek ogrencilere yonelik oneriler siralanmistir.

All the News You Want to Hear: The Impact of Partisan News Exposure on Political Participation

In a news media environment characterized by abundant choice, it is becoming increasingly easy for Americans to choose news sources slanted toward their own political views rather than sources providing more diverse perspectives. This development poses a challenge to ideals of deliberative democracy if people who consume politically like-minded news disproportionately populate the electoral process, while those presumably reaping the benefits of exposure to more diverse views in the news (e.g., more informed, tolerant attitudes) withdraw from politics. Using panel data collected during the 2008 presidential campaign, this study investigates the proposition that exposure to news slanted toward one's own partisan views increases political participation, while exposure to news with the opposite partisan slant depresses participation. The results suggest that, while exposure to partisan news does not alter the strongly habitual decision to turn out, the hypothesized energizing and enervating effects of exposure do appear for other behavior during the campaign; the partisan hue of the news sources citizens choose to consume affects both when voters decide and their levels of participation over time.

Polarized News Media and the Polarization of the Electorate

An increasing amount of empirical evidence suggests that in democracies that usually divide into two camps during a campaign season, the news media environment is fragmented and polarized. An emerging concern is whether the electorate in such divided societies would be pulled by polarized news media outlets and become polarized as well. This study, employing a series of agent-based simulations that takes into account polarized news media, communication networks, and individual differences all together, explores the effect of a polarized news environment on increases in extremist opinions and in the proportion of individuals with divided communication networks. It also identifies circumstances under which individuals perceive division within their communication networks. The findings suggest that the effect of a polarized news media environment on polarizing the electorate may be overestimated, while the homogenizing effect of communication networks may be underestimated.

Trends in news coverage about skin cancer prevention, 1993‐2006: increasingly mixed messages for the public

To provide a comprehensive overview of trends in news coverage about sun protection issues in an Australian setting over a 14-year period. A content analysis was performed on all relevant articles (N=547) published in two major daily newspapers, The Age and the Herald Sun, from 1993 to 2006. Articles were coded for article type, prominence, theme, spokesperson, topic slant and opinion slant. The most frequent themes were the health effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation exposure (24% of articles), education/prevention (14%) and product issues (12%). Themes that became more dominant over time were vitamin D issues, solaria issues and fake tans. Sixty per cent of articles included a pro-sun protection spokesperson and 12% an anti-sun protection spokesperson, with the profile of anti-sun protection spokespeople increasing over time. Half the articles reported on topics positive for sun protection, whereas 18% reported on negative topics; however, this difference narrowed considerably from 2001 onwards. In opinionated articles, the opinions expressed by authors were mainly positive (57%) rather than negative (7%) for sun protection. The findings suggest that the mix of sun protection issues covered and views of sun protection have changed over time, resulting in greater coverage of controversies and issues not necessarily positive for sun protection objectives. These findings imply that evaluation of paid skin cancer prevention public education campaigns may need to take account of the changing news media environment in which they take place.

Studying the Sociology of Journalists: The Journalistic Field and the News World

AbstractThis article makes a case for a socially situated and theoretically sophisticated approach to the sociological study of journalists. This is urgently needed for us to understand the increasingly complex news production environment and the rapidly evolving nature of journalistic practice. Two theoretical approaches to studying the sociology of journalists are outlined and discussed. The first is a development of Pierre Bourdieu's field theory; the second – the ‘news world’ approach – emerges from the social worlds approach commonly associated with Howard S. Becker. Each approach on its own shows considerable promise for the analysis of the increasingly complex news media environment. The article concludes that the journalistic field and the news world approaches could be combined to create a new framework for the sociological study of journalism that would provide a way forward for the important empirical research on journalists that is now needed.

Video Cultures: Television Sociology in the “New TV” Age

We argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power. Granting that such work is theoretically and methodologically diverse, we employ an organizational frame that groups political-economic approaches on the one hand and cultural approaches on the other. Political-economic approaches largely attend to issues of power at a macro level, focusing on how ownership and control of television along with the organization of television production practices shape and influence content; cultural approaches focus more on the expressive and symbolic dimensions of television programming and reception. At the same time, contemporary changes in the medium threaten to make past research on television appear quaint and anachronistic. The industry's transformation of television into continually emerging sets of multifaceted digital-interactive technologies challenges researchers to draw enduring perspectives from the older work and assess how they apply to the new-media environment. Consequently, we suggest the term “video cultures” in lieu of “television sociology” as a way of capturing future trends.

‘The Democracy of Conversation’: The Panel and the Public Sphere

If news is a fundamental part of the public sphere and ideals of democracy, then continuing assertions about the public's lack of engagement with its topics is a worrying trend. However, much of this worry may be conflated by a lack of understanding about both the lived experiences of audiences (particularly youth audiences) and the news media environment more generally. This paper examines The Panel, a Ten Network ‘new’ news program which appears to have a significant deal of power in the mediatised postmodern public sphere. Through its discursive format, and by making news more comprehensible and interesting, the program is able to increase the potential for everyday ‘rational-critical’ debate at the heart of the public sphere (Habermas, 1989: 117). This theory is examined here through the use of interviews with members of The Panel's production team and focus groups conducted with youth audiences.

Closer to the masses: Stalinist culture, social revolution, and Soviet newspapers

Loon-Dermota, Ken.... And Well Tied Down: Chile's Press Under Democracy. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003.193 pp. $64.95. Ken Leon-Dermota's analysis is a case study of Chile's press and the effects wrought by a concentration of media ownership into corporate hands of an emphatically narrow ideological stance. It is a study relevant to historians of American and European media, where a similar trend in consolidated ownership is occurring. Officially, Chile is a democracy with a free press. Its current elected government evolved from a U.S.-backed military coup in 1973 that brought to power dictator Augusto Pinochet. coup had ejected from office Socialist President Salvadore Allende. Prior to and during Allcnde's rule, the Chilean media, under diversified ownership, vigorously debated political ideas. Political parties, from communist and socialist to marginally democratic and fascist, had newspapers and radio stations that presented their respective views. Allende owned a significant share of Radio Portales, which regularly broadcast his government's views. ElMercurio, the nation's most powerful newspaper, led the opposition. Free-market economists, trained at the University of Chicago and given a forum at E/ Mermrio, teamed with conservatives at Catholic University, in the business community, and in the aristocracy to create the public perceptions necessary for a coup. During Pinochet's iron-fisted rule, opposition news media were at first closed or purchased, but eventually the news media environment loosened, and opposition media appeared. Opposition newspapers regularly printed investigative reports on the dictatorship, though not always without government reprisals. Indeed, the news media were instrumental in convincing Pinochet to call elections, which put the dictator out of the presidency though his collaborators in the media, in the business community, at Catholic University, and in the aristocracy remained in control of the country. conservative elite in Chile retains its strong grip on the country largely by manipulation of public opinion through its control of the media, Leon-Dermota discovered during a year-long investigation. He shows that as Pinochet was leaving the presidential palace in 1990, a few wealthy Pinochet friends and collaborators engineered the purchase of the nation's newspapers, radio stations, and magazines using public funds (Chile's television stations remain in the hands of the state or are otherwise co-opted.). The owners of these media control the practice of journalism and manipulate public perceptions so as to perpetuate the ideals of the dictatorship, even under democracy, he concludes. …

Effects of the News Media Environment on Citizen Knowledge of State Politics and Government

This multivariate analysis shows that residents in and near Richmond, Virginia, where the state capital is located, are significantly more knowledgeable about state politics than are residents living elsewhere in the state, especially in the northern Virginia – Washington, D.C. metro area. A newspaper content analysis demonstrates that Richmond-area residents are exposed to far more news of state politics and government than are residents of northern Virginia. The study suggests that the media environment is highly important in providing the opportunity for citizens to learn about politics.