News Media Organizations Research Articles

‘We cracked a hole in this very white structure’: Indigenous journalism practices in mainstream Australian news organisations

A new wave of anti-racist politics is challenging the racialised dynamics of news media reporting. This paper explores the experiences of Indigenous journalists working in mainstream news media organisations in Australia in this changing context, and their strategies to navigate the racial political economy and news values of the industry. While many have observed the growing number of Indigenous journalists working in mainstream news, Indigenous journalists’ experiences and practices in these contexts have rarely been canvassed. I analyse 11 in-depth interviews with practicing journalists in Australia to explore how they have their mediated their positions. I suggest that Indigenous journalists engage in a specifically Indigenous journalistic practice, informed by connections to place, community and culture. This can be understood as a contested practice of Indigenous sovereignty. It also highlights the racialised presumptions of news values, including notions of objectivity, authority and balance.

Twitter Based Sentiment Analysis of Russia-Ukraine War Using Machine Learning

Social media platforms and micro blogging websites can be used as a potential source for gathering opinions and sentiments from the public on a variety of topics, such as the present state of affairs in nations that have experienced conflict. Twitter, in example, offers a variety of text tweets that might link to feelings across time and geography. Using Textblob and Vader as a lexicon method, this research paper performs sentiment analysis over a dataset containing tweets regarding the situation before and after Russia invades Ukraine. It also performs standard machine learning over the dataset. This machine learning model categorizes opinions about Russia's invasion of Ukraine according to sentiments. The current study examines different machine learning algorithms and focuses on the Doc2Vec feature extraction approach utilizing Chi2 (χ2) as a feature selection. The objective of this research is to use Twitter to get people's opinions about the war. The current study helps news media organizations analyze public opinion, particularly that of Russia and Ukraine, about the conflict and draw attention to upcoming difficulties.

Relationship Status: It's Complicated. News Organizations and Social Media Platforms in Heavily Disrupted Media Environments

ABSTRACT The rise of social media platforms has profoundly changed the global media environment. Based on interviews with media professionals handling the social media strategy of Greek news organizations, this study analyzes the way news publishers in disrupted media environments experience their relationship with powerful platforms. Drawing on previous research that records news publishers’ concerns and critiques regarding the various implications of their asymmetrical relationship with platforms, we find that Greek news media adopt a different approach. First, we find that many of our interviewees lack critical considerations towards the power of platforms over news distribution and instead focus on positive considerations stemming from the news media organization—platform relationship. Second, we record a feeling of anxiety towards the possibility of messing up this relationship and a widespread fear about the impact that this could have on their traffic. Third, we find that the majority of news organizations do not have a clear social media strategy, but rather they are relying on their own theories about how social media algorithms work. Ultimately, we argue that disrupted media environments affect news organizations’ ability to be critical of platforms and thus hinder efforts to negotiate their own social media presence.

A Study on the Role of Constructive Journalism During Covid-19 Pandemic

An expansive proliferation of misinformation and fake news followed with the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, a devastating event with lasting scars that changed the world forever. While social media may have originally helped in connecting people and sharing information, it may have also triggered a heightened accessibility in spreading misinformation and fake reports during the pandemic. The Covid-19 outbreak cannot be held as the sole reason for the mounting scepticism among people over the mainstream news reporting or the rising news avoidance observed in recent years. The role of news media organisations during pandemic situations towards disseminating scientific and verified information is indispensable. However, a shift from the normative role of mass media as a mere informant and mute spectator to one that reflexively gathers and presents socially useful news for its audience could have quelled the misinformation-induced hysteria to a certain extent during the peak of the pandemic—a constructive approach. This study critically analyses the various discourses surrounding constructive journalism and its role during the Covid-19 pandemic. It was found that most discourses vouched for the inclusion of constructive approaches in news sharing during crises and in future. However, regional, geopolitical and socioeconomic differences may allude to different understandings and contextual applications of constructive journalism that would require greater academic research.

Epistemology of Fact Checking: An Examination of Practices and Beliefs of Fact Checkers Around the World

Epistemologies of journalism differ across genres, and fact-checking, as an independent operation or feature within existing news media organizations, can be considered a genre of journalism with its own epistemology. This paper explores the epistemology of fact-checking as expressed by fact-checkers from 40 fact-checking organizations serving more than 50 countries on six continents. Fact-checkers operate in various political, social, economic, and informational contexts, and yet reveal isomorphic norms, practices, and structures, particularly in the form of knowledge, production of knowledge, and defense of their knowledge. What emerged in interviews with fact-checkers is a shared belief in the ability to determine the objective truth of claims, which is validated by evidence and a transparent process of reproducibility or modeling the fact-checking process. This process is also seen as a way to convince the reader of the accuracy and trustworthiness of fact-checks. Fact-checkers define their role and work as a public service, and frequently offer media literacy and fact-checking training to the public and journalists to instill a culture of factuality. Overall, the cross-national findings suggest that as fact-checking is becoming increasingly taken-for-granted or institutionalized, fact-checkers share a common epistemology, promoting confidence in factually verifiable truth.

Journalistic Storytelling for Social Justice: A CDA of Global News Coverage of the Otodo Gbame Forced Evictions in Nigeria

ABSTRACT Despite the growing discourse on forced evictions around the world, very limited scholarship has explored the constitution, replication and/or transformation of a discourse of urban development and forced evictions in journalistic work. This study investigates the global news coverage of state-sanctioned forced evictions of Otodo Gbame community in Lagos, Nigeria—with specific attention to journalistic discursive construction of urban development and the reproduction of hierarchies of worth in journalistic work. Critical discourse analysis of 17 journalistic texts published online by national and foreign news media organisations during the Otodo Gbame forced evictions (November 2016–April 2017) revealed journalists positioned Otodo Gbame residents at the bottom of a hierarchical social order and as victims of an unfortunate circumstance without transforming that discourse into possibilities for social and environmental justice. Journalists prioritised institutional voices, used passive construction and detached expressive mode to downplay the social implications of state-sanctioned forced evictions, and reproduced hierarchies of worth in journalism and broader society. Considering journalism plays a crucial role in the social construction of reality, this study offers insights and directions for journalistic role expansion and the transformation of conceived journalistic roles into meaningful practice.

Evaluation of TikTok videos on acute pancreatitis: content quality and reliability analysis

BackgroundAcute pancreatitis (AP) is a common acute digestive system disorder, with patients often turning to TikTok for AP-related information. However, the platform’s video quality on AP has not been thoroughly investigated.ObjectiveThe main purpose of this study is to evaluate the quality of videos about AP on TikTok, and the secondary purpose is to study the related factors of video quality.MethodsThis study involved retrieving AP-related videos from TikTok, determining, and analyzing them based on predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Relevant data were extracted and compiled for evaluation. Video quality was scored using the DISCERN instrument and the Health on the Net (HONcode) score, complemented by introducing the Acute Pancreatitis Content Score (APCS). Pearson correlation analysis was used to assess the correlation between video quality scores and user engagement metrics such as likes, comments, favorites, retweets, and video duration.ResultsA total of 111 TikTok videos were included for analysis, and video publishers were composed of physicians (89.18%), news media organizations (13.51%), individual users (5.41%), and medical institutions (0.9%). The majority of videos focused on AP-related educational content (64.87%), followed by physicians’ diagnostic and treatment records (15.32%), and personal experiences (19.81%). The mean scores for DISCERN, HONcode, and APCS were 33.05 ± 7.87, 3.09 ± 0.93, and 1.86 ± 1.30, respectively. The highest video scores were those posted by physicians (35.17 ± 7.02 for DISCERN, 3.31 ± 0.56 for HONcode, and 1.94 ± 1.34 for APCS, respectively). According to the APCS, the main contents focused on etiology (n = 55, 49.5%) and clinical presentations (n = 36, 32.4%), followed by treatment (n = 24, 21.6%), severity (n = 20, 18.0%), prevention (n = 19, 17.1%), pathophysiology (n = 17, 15.3%), definitions (n = 13, 11.7%), examinations (n = 10, 9%), and other related content. There was no correlation between the scores of the three evaluation tools and the number of followers, likes, comments, favorites, and retweets of the video. However, DISCERN (r = 0.309) and APCS (r = 0.407) showed a significant positive correlation with video duration, while HONcode showed no correlation with the duration of the video.ConclusionsThe general quality of TikTok videos related to AP is poor; however, the content posted by medical professionals shows relatively higher quality, predominantly focusing on clinical presentations and etiologies. There is a discernible correlation between video duration and quality ratings, indicating that a combined approach incorporating the guideline can comprehensively evaluate AP-related content on TikTok.

The complexity of online patient education materials for wound care strategies: A readability analysis

BackgroundIn the United States, over 6 million people are affected by chronic wounds. Patients often rely on the Internet for treatment information; however, these educational materials typically exceed the average eighth-grade health literacy level. This study aimed to assess the readability and language accessibility of online patient education materials on wound care strategies. MethodsA search was conducted on Google for articles related to wound care strategies. The first 12 unique websites from each search strategy were selected for further analysis. Readability was assessed using 11 tests, with the mean scores calculated for each. ResultsA total of 66 articles pertaining to wound care strategies were retrieved from 43 websites. All articles had an average reading grade level of 13.5 ± 2.5 and an average reading age of 18.7 ± 2.5 years. Websites were categorized by the following sources: academic (34.9%), reagent/biologic manufacturers (27.9%), wound care (18.6%), news media organizations (14%), and other (4.7%). Flesch Reading Ease Score, graded from 0 for most difficult to 100 for least difficult, was found to be highest for academic websites (44.2, P = .01) and lowest for news media websites (24.9, P = .01). Academic websites were available in the more languages compared to all other website categories (P < .01). ConclusionOnline materials related to wound care strategies often exceed the National Institute of Health recommended eighth-grade reading level. This study emphasizes the need for healthcare providers to create more accessible educational materials to address the gap in health literacy and optimize patient care.

Coding Competencies across Roles: Computer Programming Practices in News Media Organizations

ABSTRACT Computer programming, or what is commonly known as coding, is an emerging skill supporting the development of digital products in news media organizations. Through the application of practice theory—a hybrid approach that includes elements of field theory, actor–network theory and structuration theory—we examine the ways in which coding competencies are practiced within and across different roles, for different purposes. This exploratory study uses online interviews with 19 news product managers and leaders–or those who are tasked with the management, development, testing, and launching of digital news products–offering unique insight on coding practices across functions. Results highlight the usage, value and nuances of coding skills, providing insight into the activities, materiality, and reflexivity of computer programming as it emerges across roles in a news organization.

The Power of Numbers: Four Ways Metrics are Transforming the News

The benefits of analytics on news media organisations’ revenues and traffic have been well documented, yet their consequences for news production and content remain double edged. To date, most empirical studies on their use and influence have focused on newsrooms in developed countries, with less attention paid to their impact on journalism practice in emerging and transitional media systems, which are often characterised by relationalism, informal economies, extensive state-owned enterprises and relatively low internet penetration rates. Building on interviews with twenty journalists, this study examines how journalists in transitional Egypt adapt to web analytics and how they perceive the influence of audience metrics on their journalistic practice. Based on their testimony, we identify four ways that metrics are changing journalistic practices and news content that relate to their role as agenda-setters, as newsroom change agent, as facilitators of institutional capture, and as drivers of tabloidisation. Each of these have power implications that are discussed in relation to ongoing debates in the field of digital journalism.

Care and Carelessness in the Niger Delta: Nature’s Gift, Humanity’s Ineptness

ABSTRACT This piece looks at the environmental endowments of the Niger Delta region against the backdrop of environmental devastation, in the area, as occasioned by human activities. While the former has been aptly described as nature’s gift, the latter has been classified as humanity’s ineptness. The approach was simply theoretical with an expansive review of cognate secondary data. By way of applying precepts to concepts, it was inferred that the environmental beauty of the Niger Delta region has been lost at the altar of a global thirst for fossil fuel exploration. This act of carelessness by humanity has engendered a biodiversity deficit. In order to restore the glory and beauty of the region as occasioned by care it is recommended that news media organizations should frame the environmental endowments of the region as matters of great concern, nurture, and attention while discouraging acts of carelessness that fall within the conspectus of environmentally harmful practices.

In the COVID-19 pandemic, who did we trust? An eight-country cross-sectional study.

Trust is a key determinant of health, but has been undermined by the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated infodemic. Using data from eight countries, we aimed to epidemiologically describe levels of trust in health, governments, news media organisations, and experts, and measure the impact of political orientation and COVID-19 information sources on participant's levels of trust. We simultaneously conducted a stratified randomised online cross-sectional study across eight countries on adults aged ≥18 years between 6 and 18 November 2020. We employed crude and adjusted weighted regression analyses. We included 9027 adults with a mean age of 47 years (range = 18-99), of whom 4667 (51.7%) were female. Trust in health experts ranked highest across all countries (mean (x̄) = 7.83; 95% confidence interval (CI) = 7.79-7.88), while trust in politicians ranked lowest (x̄ = 5.34; 95% CI = 5.28, 5.40). In adjusted analyses, political orientation and utilised information sources were significantly associated with trust. Individuals using higher levels of health information sources trusted health authorities more than those using lower levels (mean difference = 1.12; 95% CI = 1.02, 1.14). Similarly, individuals using higher levels of government information sources (mean difference = 1.55; 95% CI = 1.43, 1.64) and those using higher levels of new media information sources (mean difference = 1.17; 95% CI = 1.06, 1.28) had highest trust in governments/politicians and news media, respectively. However, there was little difference in trust in health, government, or news media between individuals using higher or lower levels of social media information sources. Trust is a key determinant of health, but has been politically fragile during this infodemic. High compliance with public health measures is key to combatting infectious diseases. In terms of people's trust, our findings suggest that politicians and governments worldwide should coordinate their response with health experts and authorities to maximise the success of public health measures.

The News Media Bargaining Code: Impacts on Australian journalism one year on

AbstractThe Australian News Media Bargaining Code (NMBC) is the first successful legislative attempt to compel digital platforms to pay news media organisations for third party news content. This paper focuses on the NMBC after its first year to explore whether the Code was successful in meeting one of its publicly stated purposes; supporting public interest journalism. We argue that the Code delivered outcomes that met the ACCC's policy objectives around an industry power imbalance, but there are several issues that remain unaddressed. Using semi‐structured interviews from Australian news media executives involved in negotiations with Meta and Google during the initial implementation of the Code, we explore: (a) how news organisations used financial compensation provided by agreements under the Code, (b) how individual organisational priorities were framed and articulated, and (c) whether these actions have supported public interest journalism in Australia. Our findings indicate that many of issues with the Code have emerged mostly from the unintended impacts of the Code, including: lack of designation of platforms within the legislation, the registration criteria for news outlets eligible to enter negotiation, and the definition of stakeholder relationships within the legislation.

Decolonising Journalism in Aotearoa New Zealand: Using a Tiriti-Led Framework for News Practice

ABSTRACT In 2020, newspaper conglomerate and owner of Aotearoa New Zealand’s largest news website, Stuff, issued an historic public apology for its racist portrayal of Indigenous Māori after an internal investigation showed it had contributed to stigma, marginalisation and stereotypes against Māori. This study explores what has changed since Stuff’s apology and, by deploying an analytical framework grounded in Māori worldviews and Te Tiriti o Waitangi (the founding treaty signed between Māori and British colonisers), demonstrates how an Indigenous lens can help news organisations better identify and rethink Western-centric journalistic norms to develop more inclusive and equitable practice. The study analyses Stuff’s then largest newspaper, The Press, via a content analysis of two constructed weeks, one before Stuff’s apology (n = 480 articles) and another post-apology (n = 430 articles), along with a topic modelling analysis of 5091 articles published between 2016 and 2021. Analysis grounded in kaupapa Māori and te Tiriti shows some improvement in news coverage—as well as opportunities for more equitable representation by incorporating Indigenous tikanga (custom) in reporting practice. It also finds ongoing problems, indicating more fundamental and transformative action is needed for news media organisations to meet their commitments to anti-racism and de-Westernising the field.

Domain-specific influence on Facebook: How topic matters when assessing influential accounts in four countries

Against the backdrop of rising concern over misinformation and disinformation, a growing number of studies have considered the important role played by influential social media accounts when particular news stories attract attention online—with special attention given to Facebook, the most widely-used social network for news. However, little is known about what kinds of accounts are among the most influential information curators on Facebook, and where news organizations fit into this broader landscape. In this study, we examine how influence on Facebook plays out across different national contexts and different topics. We draw on a unique dataset from CrowdTangle, sampling over a six-month period in 2021 across four countries (Brazil, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States). We compare what kinds of sources (e.g., news organizations, politicians, or other kinds of influential accounts and groups) are among the most influential accounts in each location when it comes to three specific subjects: COVID-19, political leaders in each country, and climate change—which we also compare to general queries that do not specify a subject domain. Our findings show that the types of influential accounts on Facebook vary considerably by subject domain and country. News media accounts are among the largest share of these influential accounts in each country, but not necessarily the types of news media organizations presumed to be most influential offline.

Speaking the language of market segmentation: How newsworkers describe their organization’s target audience

News organizations are placing a greater emphasis on knowing their audience as a route to facilitate engagement and generate revenue. Drawing on a national survey of individuals working for U.S. news organizations, we examine how newsworkers describe their organization’s target audience. Combining quantitative content analysis with a qualitative thematic analysis of open-ended survey responses, we find that the majority of U.S. newsworkers use some combination of demographics or psychographics to describe the audience for their work—representing a substantial uptake of marketing segmentation language compared to earlier research on how journalists understand their audiences. However, that marketing-like sophistication comes with a cost: Newsworkers' target audience descriptions are shaped by financial imperatives, emphasizing white, older, high socioeconomic status groups. These findings are discussed in terms of the journalism industry’s lack of diversity, suggesting that this issue also extends to the imagined target audiences of news media organizations.

‘The non-interference principle’: Debating online platforms’ treatment of editorial content in the European Union's Digital Services Act

The article discusses the negotiations surrounding the treatment of journalistic content in relation to content regulation in the context of the European Union's Digital Services Act. News media organisations lobbied for a privileged treatment of editorial content from platforms’ content moderation systems during the Digital Services Act's negotiations in the European Parliament, which came to be known as ‘non-interference principle’. Although the principle did not make it to the final version of the Digital Services Act, a provision related to the respect of media pluralism and media freedom by platforms was added. This article draws data from in-depth interviews with stakeholders, as well as from an analysis of legal and communication documents. It aspires to shed light on the political-economic tensions that shaped the final version of Digital Services Act and how the European Union attempted to integrate the asymmetric relationship between news media and platforms in its regulatory agenda.

Journalistic Verification Practices From the BBC World News and Al Jazeera English

News media organizations are a part of the institution of public knowledge. Through journalism, news media organizations inform and educate the public on matters of public concern. However, the digitalization of news media and new affordances brought forth by digital technology have challenged the journalistic field. Complexity in the news media landscape, particularly with the proliferation of fake news, has pushed greater demand for news organizations to ensure that news produced is correctly and accurately verified, especially in newsrooms’ adoption of user-generated content (UGC). Breaking news reports are more prone to the utilization of UGC as newsrooms compete for immediacy. For 24-hour news channels, its credible image is vital for future sustainability in a challenging media landscape. This study adopts the gatekeeping theory as it identifies the verification process by two 24-hour news channels—BBC World News and Al Jazeera English—as part of daily news operations. Based on in-depth interviews conducted with news media practitioners from both news channels, five methods of verification are adopted.

Semantic Search Engine Optimization in the News Media Industry: Challenges and Impact on Media Outlets and Journalism Practice in Greece

In today’s digital media environment, search engines constitute a significant gateway to news and an important source of traffic for online news outlets worldwide, identifying the significance of top rankings in search results. In this context, search engine optimization (SEO) has entered newsrooms as an essential element of disseminating the content of online media organizations, creating new practices and challenges for media professionals. However, the transition to the Semantic Web (SW) and the development of major search engines in recent years have led to the emergence of Semantic SEO as a new approach to old SEO practices, creating at the same time new challenges for the news media industry. This study investigates the application of Semantic SEO inside newsrooms and its impact on journalism and news media organizations. Drawing upon a series of semi-structured interviews with Greek SEO experts and a systematic review of the notion of semantic search and the corresponding semantic SEO technologies, the objective of this work is to present an analysis of how Semantic SEO affects news media and journalism content as well as to identify some of the technological practices that could contribute to enhancing the discoverability of news content in the changing context of online search.

Framing science in the time of Covid-19 pandemic: Lessons from CNN Philippines’ reportage

This century has necessitated scholars to probe the credence of science in the news reportage of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, this paper aims to establish the locus of science as treated by CNN against the backdrop of this global health crisis. Using Nisbet’s (2009) typology as the new paradigm in public engagement as informed by content analysis, this paper argues that CNN Philippines’ news articles are mostly framed as scientific/technical uncertainty which holds science with the highest esteem in decision-making, but it also disregards its authority for political reasons. As guided by Yanovitzky and Weber (2019), this paper also articulates that the functions of CNN as a news media organization in the reportage of science are mobilization and awareness which provoke action among policy actors through relevant information. Further, this paper offers a perceptive look into an emerging dimension for science communication scholars: the gulf between science and politics which surfaces the politicization of key pandemic decisions.