News Brand Research Articles

Digital News Audiences in Mexico: Age Segment Analysis

This study aims to determine whether news consumption, media trust, interest in news, and political affinity are correlated with the generational segment of the market, measured by the age of the digital audience. Furthermore, this study seeks to verify whether age is associated with digital audiences’ paying attention to journalists or news brands. This research is based on a survey of 2,005 people in Mexico by YouGov in 2022, commissioned by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford as part of its annual Digital News Report. The statistical method used was the chi-square test of independence between qualitative variables. The results showed that age correlates with consumption habits, media trust, interest in news, and citizens’ political affinity for digital audiences in Mexico. Moreover, age relates to whether digital audiences focus on journalists or news brands in Latin America. This study delves into the characteristics of digital audiences in Mexico and contributes from a media economics, media management, and media marketing perspective. It also helps media organizations assess their market strategy, market segmentation, and target markets based on the characteristics of digital news audiences in Mexico.

Media Circus and Mass Hysteria: The Representation of the Press in Flemish Fiction Series

By undertaking a textual analysis of five Flemish (Belgium) television series, this study contributes to the broader understanding of European journalism fiction. The findings underscore a prevailing negative representation of journalism, emphasizing commercial interests and portraying news outlets as disruptive forces in democratic processes. As such, the Flemish series advocate for a collaborative relationship between news media and government officials, aligning with a public service-oriented model. At the same time, a discernible pattern emerges wherein critical assessments predominantly target fictional news brands, systematically contrasted with more neutral portrayals of non-fictional news brands. Lastly, the series perpetuate gendered stereotypes thereby highlighting a lack of inclusivity.

Polarisation, News Consumption, and Beliefs in Misinformation and Conspiracy Theories: Early Signs of the Fragmentation of the Public Sphere in Iceland

A common explanation linked to increased polarisation has focused on changes in citizens’ information diets, with like-minded people apparently becoming increasingly isolated in online echo chambers. This article investigates whether news audience polarisation has increased in Iceland in recent years and if there is polarisation in Icelandic society concerning beliefs in misinformation and conspiracy theories. Iceland is an interesting case study since it is very small and still quite homogenous, but experiencing rapid societal changes and a media landscape in turmoil. We utilise data from representative surveys conducted in 2017 and 2022. Findings show that news consumption patterns in Iceland have shifted towards online platforms, with a significant increase in online news consumption across all age groups, and a decline in the use of traditional legacy outlets. News audience polarisation appears, however, to remain relatively low in Iceland, with most news brands reaching a mixed and centrist audience. We find that gender, education, and political ideology are related to beliefs concerning misinformation and conspiracy theories focused on climate change and refugees. Moreover, our results suggest that trust in the mainstream media, as well as news consumption from partisan outlets, are related to beliefs in misinformation and conspiracy theories.

Exploring the Relationship Between Stylistic Features and Reactions on Facebook: A Comparative Analysis of Newspaper Headlines and Status Messages

ABSTRACT Social media platforms have become omnipresent over the last fifteen years and have forced news outlets to repackage the distribution of their content, custom-tailoring their news in accordance with the platform-specific social media logic. How news consumers engage with news outlets' content has also become more complex and more granular, as they can now express emotions that go beyond the “like-button” by “loving” or “caring” about specific (news) content. In this study, we link these Facebook Reactions to the specific features of headlines by conducting a content analysis of 3,163 news articles published by five Flemish news brands on Facebook. Results have revealed that status messages contain more emotional stylistic features as compared to Facebook headlines. Secondly, headlines and status messages comprising these emotional features were more likely to generate affective responses (as expressed in the emoji they use, “love”, “haha”, “wow”, “angry” and “sad”). In doing so, this study has examined Facebook Reactions’ functionality as a potential proxy of emotional engagement with specific headlines in the online news environment.

Why mainstream news media still matter

It is frequently claimed that mainstream news organisations are in crisis and becoming ever more marginalised in the contemporary high-choice media environment. Such claims frequently conflate different challenges facing the industry, resulting in over-generalised claims about the prospects for established news brands. In this article, we identify four related crises: reach, resource, reputation and relevance. Through the analysis of each, we show that many claims about the displacement of mainstream news are overstated, but that the interactive aspects of these crises are presenting particularly significant challenges for local news production and news organisations orientated towards impartiality norms.

Fake news on social media: Understanding teens’ (Dis)engagement with news

This article takes a qualitative approach to examine the role of fake news in shaping adolescent’s participation in news. Instead of experimental approaches that are common with similar research, the current study expands our understanding of teenagers’ engagement with news on social media using focus groups, interviews in addition to reviewing research reports by the Norwegian Media Authority. The study found that fake news is positively related to teens’ engagement with news. Contrary to reports that younger audiences have weak ties with news brands, this study shows that teens in Norway are led back to mainstream media to corroborate and fact-check news. This negates my initial assumption that fake news was bad because teens’ perspectives show fake news as positively triggering discussions around news encountered on social media. Teens engage with fake news for verification, which drives them off social media toward conventional media. This is good for news and for journalism

Love, Like or Angry in Times of COVID-19? Analysing News Brands’ Audience Engagement on Facebook Amidst a Pandemic

As an integral part of their online strategies and business models, news outlets diffuse their online content on social media platforms such as Facebook to increase traffic. They thereby succumb to the contingencies and constraints of third platforms infamous for their sudden changes in algorithms. In this article, we assess engagement patterns of 140,359 Facebook posts of 17 Belgian news brands between March 2020 and 2021. We map out differences in audience engagement of news outlets’ Facebook posts related and unrelated to the COVID-19 pandemic and differences between mainstream and alternative news outlets. We find that COVID-19-related posts generate more engagement and more so for mainstream media than for alternative media outlets.

Digital-native news media: Reach in 46 countries, top brands and user profiles in Spain

Digital-pure news publications have become competitive players in many countries, populating audience rankings in the context of a high-choice media environment. With the aim of gaining insight into the performance of digital-native news brands around the world and into how their audiences are similar or different to those of media with traditional roots in Spain, we draw on survey data for 2021 and 2022, respectively. First, we examine what proportion of online adults use any of the most popular digital-pure news brands in 24 mostly European countries and in 22 markets in America, Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, and we highlight how the main digital-native brands rank among online news sources, based on their weekly audience reach. Then we compare the user profiles of the five most-used online-only news organizations in Spain, against the audiences of the top five legacy brands (N = 2028), looking at reader loyalty, gender, age, income and education levels, and political leaning. With this media-centric approach to audiences, we find that digital-native news media brands either lead (in 15 out of 46 countries) or occupy some of the top positions by weekly reach in most markets, with Nordic countries standing out as an exception. In Spain, audiences of the top digital-native brands check them slightly less frequently than the users of news sites with traditional roots. News sites in our study are slightly more popular among males, older people, and more affluent and formally educated users who can define their political stance. Nevertheless, the diversity of editorial approaches found among sites in an externally pluralistic news media market inevitably results in brands with user profiles that show exceptions to these trends.

Quantifying digital-native and legacy, national and local news websites in Spain, their topic scope and platforms

Digital media have become an integral part of the journalism industry and of audience habits – in 2021 our research registered 2873 active news websites in Spain. First, this paper explores trends facing online news; it sets out the criteria used to identify a news brand as digital-native or non-native; and it presents the results of our classification. This includes: data on the presence of news titles both on proprietary platforms (print, radio, TV or app) in addition to their websites, and on external platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Telegram); their geographic scope (hyperlocal, local/regional or national/global); their subject (general or specialized coverage); and on ownership and language used. Almost 70% of the media were regional or local, while 60% covered general news, and one in three were linked to a print product, almost as many as those with their own app for users. Social media uptake is so widespread that more than 95% of the sites are on Facebook, with a similar number on Twitter, while more than 60% can be found on YouTube, and similarly on Instagram. Among specialized sites, sport is the largest category, comprising twice as many digital-native sites (106) than sites with traditional roots (46). The entertainment focus expands in the digital environment, and online-originated culture, business and science and technology outlets also outnumber legacy publications.

‘A tide of homeless, drug-addicted and mentally ill people’: Representing homeless people in MailOnline content

Councils across England are warning of a rise in the number of homeless people as Covid-19 pandemic protections such as the eviction ban are withdrawn (Watts et al., 2022). At the same time, research suggests that more people in England could become homeless by 2024 due to, inter alia, the cost-of-living crisis (The Guardian, 2022). This paper considers how homeless people and homelessness are represented in the biggest UK online news brand, MailOnline. Using corpus-assisted critical discourse analysis, it unveils the consistent dehumanisation, criminalisation and pathologisation of homeless people in articles published in 2021. Through a micro-linguistic analysis, it uncovers the discursive strategies used by journalists to represent homeless people negatively, such as functionalisation, individualisation, the use of statistics, and metaphors of natural disaster. The paper argues that these representations could contribute to a moral panic surrounding homelessness at a time when one might expect greater understanding due to the potential rise in homelessness. More research is needed to understand the ways in which these discourses map onto homelessness policies and are received by members of the British public.

Paying for News Diversity? A Topic Diversity Analysis of Free and Paywalled Online News

ABSTRACT Media companies increasingly place (parts of) their online news content behind to compensate for shrinking digital advertising revenues. However, despite its prominence in the contemporary news environment, very few studies have assessed the effects of this practice on the diversity in the actual content provided to people. To fill this knowledge gap in scholarship, this study examines how diverse free and paid content is in several newspapers in Flanders (Belgium). Using a topic classification model and quantitative analysis of 287,856 online news articles, we differentiate between paywalled and non-paywalled articles, popular and quality news brands, two distinct media corporations and two diversity benchmarks: open and reflective diversity. Our findings reveal that in most cases, online news content behind paywalls is indeed more diverse, although the differences with freely available articles are often minimal. We also find that quality news titles do not necessarily score higher on topic diversity than their popular counterparts. These findings are contextualised within the Flemish media market as well as existing scholarship.

Functional-Semantic Basis of Meaning-Making Structure in News Narrative: Design Change of Australian Banknotes in German News Brands

Functional-Semantic Basis of Meaning-Making Structure in News Narrative: Design Change of Australian Banknotes in German News Brands

The value of podcasts to journalism: analysis of digital native media brands’ offerings, production and publishing in Spain

The growing popularity of podcasting is an opportunity for the news industry to identify new ways of delivering journa­lism and to find solutions to the challenges of digital transformation. Podcasts are tools that help the media adapt to the digital sphere by giving prominence to audio to extend their journalistic influence in the sonosphere. Given its disruptive nature, and since it breaks with the traditional content choices available, the analysis of this article focuses on what is offered in the form of podcasts by digital native media brands in Spain. It looks at the extent to which they are committed to this audio content and the type of journalism-based productions they promote and publish. To do this, a qualitative and quantitative content analysis methodology was used. This included an interpretation of data recorded in the Digital media map 2021 (Mapa de medios digitales 2021), updated as part of the Diginativemedia project (2019-2021). An in-depth study of a corpus –or sample– of 29 titles or series of podcasts published by 7 native news brands is also provided. These brands were selected because they publish podcasts and because, according to the Digital news report Spain 2021, they have the largest weekly reach among Spanish internet users. The results of the research show that only 1 in 4 digital media brands that offer podcasts (925) are native (232), and that it is the specialist native media outlets that are most committed to podcasting (140). Native media brands view podcasts as part of their journalism-based products and services, whose presence is beginning to grow as an exploration of their informative and expressive potential. In addition, it is podcasts that tackle current affairs using conversational formats –both audio and video– through serialised, original productions for the media outlet’s website and to provide a range of platforms.

Selective rating: partisan bias in crowdsourced news rating systems

ABSTRACT Crowdsourced news rating systems have been suggested as a solution to reducing the amount of misinformation online audiences see. This study expands previous research crowdsourcing by looking at how characteristics of the rating system affect user behavior. In an experiment (N= 1,021), two parameters of the rating system were manipulated. First, users were shown different varieties of news brands on the “menu” they were asked to rate. Second, participation was mandatory for half and voluntary for others. Results indicate partisans rated more news brands when they saw an ideologically dissimilar news menu than one that matched their ideology. Further, the trustworthiness rating of the mainstream news menu decreased when participants had a choice to participate rather than were forced. These results have important implications for understanding how users participate in crowdsourcing news credibility.

Signaling News Outlet Credibility in a Google Search

This study extends the literature on how transparency influences news credibility perceptions by examining trust signals at the news outlet level, rather than at the story level, as earlier research has done. Experiments in the United States ( n = 1,037) and Germany ( n = 1,000) found that exposure to trust signals in a Google search about a known news brand, rather than an unknown brand, and the German cultural context increased news credibility perceptions. Participants were more likely to click on trust signals that gave background about the news brand or offered ways to engage with a news outlet.

The Rise of Social Journalism: An Explorative Case Study of a Youth-oriented Instagram News Account

ABSTRACT Social media have become indispensable tools for (legacy) news companies and brands to increase online traffic for their own platforms. A recent trend is the production and dissemination of native news content specifically for and through platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. This paper uses a mixed methods research design to study the news production and content of @nws.nws.nws, a hugely popular Instagram channel targeting 13–17-year olds in Flanders (Belgium) which is maintained by the newsroom of VRT, the Flemish PSM. The explorative study highlights the differences in journalistic practice when producing news content for online platforms only and the changes it entails for traditional news values, dependency on social media platforms and media regulation.

In media we trust? A comparative analysis of news trust in New Zealand and other Western media markets

ABSTRACT In the age of misinformation, trust and trustworthiness – core values of journalism – have become more important as news companies reeling from the pandemic seek emergency funding for their operations from the public and funders look for trusted brands to support. Earlier studies indicated people are more willing to pay for trusted news brands, and recently, the public funding of news has been directed to institutions that are regarded as trustworthy news outlets, and provide information that is in the public interest. While the concept of trust is complicated and measuring it is challenging, trust has rapidly become a key inquiry in academia. However, New Zealand lacks in this research, and this study aims to start to fill that gap. The paper is based on our survey of 1204 New Zealanders, and comparable data from 38 countries surveyed in the Reuters Digital News Report 2019. The paper finds that trust in news in New Zealand is high when compared internationally, but a large proportion (47%) of citizens don’t trust the news. It also finds New Zealanders are more concerned about misinformation and disinformation than respondents in other Western societies.

Curating Quality? How Twitter’s Timeline Algorithm Treats Different Types of News

This article explores how Twitter’s algorithmic timeline influences exposure to different types of external media. We use an agent-based testing method to compare chronological timelines and algorithmic timelines for a group of Twitter agents that emulated real-world archetypal users. We first find that algorithmic timelines exposed agents to external links at roughly half the rate of chronological timelines. Despite the reduced exposure, the proportional makeup of external links remained fairly stable in terms of source categories (major news brands, local news, new media, etc.). Notably, however, algorithmic timelines slightly increased the proportion of “junk news” websites in the external link exposures. While our descriptive evidence does not fully exonerate Twitter’s algorithm, it does characterize the algorithm as playing a fairly minor, supporting role in shifting media exposure for end users, especially considering upstream factors that create the algorithm’s input—factors such as human behavior, platform incentives, and content moderation. We conclude by contextualizing the algorithm within a complex system consisting of many factors that deserve future research attention.

Does a Crisis Change News Habits? A Comparative Study of the Effects of COVID-19 on News Media Use in 17 European Countries

Exogenous shocks like the COVID-19 pandemic unleashes multiple fundamental questions about society beyond public health. Based on the classical concept of ‘need for orientation’ and the literature on the role of the media in times of crisis, we investigate to what extent the COVID-19 pandemic affected news consumption in comparative perspective. Based on a two-wave panel survey in 17 mostly European countries, our study targets the role of both legacy news brands (TV, radio, newspapers) and so-called contemporary news media (Internet-based and social media) during this global health crisis. Our results show an overall rise of news use across countries, but only for some types of news media. We find an increase of TV news consumption, and a higher reliance on social media and the Internet for news and information. This indicates that in times of crises and an unusually strong need for orientation, people mainly turn to news sources that are easily available and offer a more immediate coverage. Furthermore, we find the rise in news use to be mainly present among those who already have a higher level of trust in legacy media and among people that were more concerned about the impact of the pandemic.

Non-journalistic competitors of news media brands on Google and YouTube: From solid competition to a liquid media market

ABSTRACT News media are important for society, because they provide information on relevant topics based on journalistic norms, such as truthfulness and impartiality. However, traditional news brands have found new competition in non-journalistic digital media. Google and YouTube have disrupted the business model of journalism by creating platforms on which everything and everyone competes for consumers’ attention. Despite the recognised importance of this topic, empirical studies about the competitive situation of (journalistic) news media brands in the limitless digital media market are scarce. The aim of this study is to investigate the extent to which non-journalistic competitors replace traditional news media brands in relation to relevant topics. A programmed web scraping software automatically gathered Google and YouTube search results of trending topics (e.g. Industry 4.0, Blockchain, or CRISPR). Afterwards, a manual content analysis was conducted to classify the source of each search result (e.g. news media brand, corporate publisher, non-governmental organisation) (N = 556 Google results and 792 YouTube results). The findings show that news media brands still dominate on Google but placed a distant third on YouTube, behind amateurs and corporate publishing. News media brands should reconsider their strategies for YouTube with regard to presenting their content.