News Media Sources Research Articles

Working in precarity: examining mainstream discourses about street hawking in Ghana

Abstract This study sought to analyze how the media and the general public position street hawking in an economic environment typically constrained by neoliberal orthodoxy. We conducted a critical textual analysis of news articles, op-eds, and video clips from some of the most popular news media sources in Ghana and found that while informal work is often done in turbulent material conditions, marginality and precarity of street hawking are exacerbated by media and popular discourses that are anchored by neoliberalism. We also found that such discourses are resisted by counter-discourses. The study challenges neoliberal analyses of work and labor by explicating the tensions between the attraction to neoliberalism and the reality of its failures for informal work.

"Being Simple on Complex Issues" - Accounts on Visual Data Communication About Climate Change.

Data visualizations play a critical role in both communicating scientific evidence about climate change and in stimulating engagement and action. To investigate how visualizations can be better utilized to communicate the complexities of climate change to different audiences, we conducted interviews with 17 experts in the fields of climate change, data visualization, and science communication, as well as with 12 laypersons. Besides questions about climate change communication and various aspects of data visualizations, we also asked participants to share what they think is the main takeaway message for two exemplary climate change data visualizations. Through a thematic analysis, we observe differences regarding the included contents, the length and abstraction of messages, and the sensemaking process between and among the participant groups. On average, experts formulated shorter and more abstract messages, often referring to higher-level conclusions rather than specific details. We use our findings to reflect on design decisions for creating more effective visualizations, particularly in news media sources geared toward lay audiences. We hereby discuss the adaption of contents according to the needs of the audience, the trade-off between simplification and accuracy, as well as techniques to make a visualization attractive.

The Politics of Pandemic Emotions: How Trust in the Trump Administration and Distrust of the Media Affected the Psychological Toll of COVID-19

Initial studies of the COVID-19 pandemic’s emotional toll indicated different outcomes based on partisanship and media consumption. This study builds on prior research by utilizing a broad set of measures to test how (1) political party affiliation, (2) trust in President Trump, (3) news media sources, and (4) distrust in the media’s portrayal of the pandemic impacted self-ascribed increases in negative emotions during the later stages of the pandemic. Using original data from a national survey conducted in the early months of 2021, we confirm that news media and partisanship played a key role in Americans’ perceived increases in psychological distress. Specifically, we find that Democrats were more likely than Republicans to report increased worry and loneliness due to the pandemic. Viewers of CNN were also more likely to disclose increased worry, loneliness, and sadness than Fox News viewers. But both of these findings were related to and mitigated by issues of trust and distrust. In particular, trust that the Trump administration effectively responded to the pandemic was strongly associated with emotional stability above and beyond partisan differences. In addition, distrust of “mainstream media” coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic was linked with lower odds of increased negative emotions due to the pandemic.

Money talks: Analysing the PGA Tour-LIV Golf jurisdictional contest via Western media narratives

This paper analyses Western media narratives of the jurisdictional contest between LIV Golf, a novel upstart professional golf tour, and the long-established PGA Tour, generally understood to be the pinnacle of men's professional golf. In doing so, the paper seeks to answer two research questions: How do dominant incumbent sporting professions utilise the court of public opinion to defend their territory from encroachment by new rivals? What are the potential implications of such professions’ failure to successfully do so? Viewed through the lens of Abbott’s concept of ‘bump-chains’, this paper shines critical light on how the long-established and dominant PGA Tour and its partisan (but not full contingent of) members initially sought to defend their territory against encroachment by a new entrant to the profession of competitive golf, before capitulating and proposing a ‘merger’ with LIV Golf in June 2023, which as of July 2024, has still not materialised, nor the finer details even made public. Utilising a critical qualitative analysis of popular Western-centric news media sources, the paper argues that the PGA Tour adopted a three-fold set of defensive rhetorical manoeuvres to seek to de-professionalise LIV Golf and discredit it in the court of public opinion as a convincing rival to the incumbent profession. It concludes that the PGA Tour's rhetorical defence attempts and thus its position as a dominant superordinate were untenable in the face of the new entrant's reach and power. In doing so, the paper adds theoretical depth to our understanding of bump-chain attacks within the sporting arena, and also acts to highlight sporting jurisdictions’ vulnerabilities to encroachment by previously unconsidered entities. These findings bring implications for governing bodies and institutions in the sporting arena concerning the strength of their jurisdictional positions, extending beyond professional boundaries.

Scuba diving-related fatalities in the Philippines from 2008 to 2022 as reported in online news media

The present study aims to investigate the demographics and characteristics of scuba diving fatalities in the Philippines which can help in the identification of local trends and ultimately in the development of appropriate preventive measures. Data on scuba diving-related fatalities in the Philippines from 2008 to 2022 were manually retrieved from online news media sources. Information on age, sex, nationality, certification, purpose, and causative factors, whenever possible were collected and analysed. A total of 39 fatalities were identified having a median age of 43.5 (range 20–80). Majority of victims were males (n = 30), and of foreign ethnicity (n = 26). Asphyxia was identified as the possible disabling injury in almost half of the cases (n = 17). The causes of death based on autopsies were determined only for few cases which included drowning (n = 2), heart attack (n = 1), and traumatic injuries from a dynamite blast (n = 1). Potential vulnerable groups were identified to be the ageing population and foreign tourist divers. In the absence of an existing database, this preliminary report provides the best available evidence at this time concerning scuba diving fatalities in the Philippines.

The Seed of Doubt: Examining the Role of Alternative Social and News Media for the Birth of a Conspiracy Theory

Consuming conspiracy theories erodes trust in democratic institutions, while conspiracy beliefs demotivate democratic participation, posing a potential threat to democracy. The proliferation of social media, especially the emergence of numerous alternative platforms with minimal moderation, has greatly facilitated the dissemination and consumption of conspiracy theories. Nevertheless, there remains a dearth of knowledge concerning the origin and evolution of specific conspiracy theories across different platforms. This study aims to address this gap through a large-scale, cross-platform examination of the genesis of new conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Jeffrey Epstein. Through a (semi-) automated content analysis conducted on a distinctive dataset comprising N = 8,020,314 Epstein-related posts posted on both established platforms ( Twitter, Reddit) and alternative platforms ( Gab and 4Chan), we demonstrate that conspiracy theories emerge early and influence public discourse well in advance of reports from established media sources. Our data shows that users of the studied platforms immediately turn to conspirational explanations, exhibiting skepticism towards the official representation of events. Especially on alternative platforms, this skepticism swiftly transformed into unwarranted conspiracy theorizing, partly bolstered by references to alternative news media sources. The present study shows how conspirational explanations thrive in low information environments and how alternative media plays a role in turning rational skepticism into unwarranted conspiracy theories.

Emotional content reduces the cognitive effort invested in processing the credibility of social (mis)information.

Emotionality likely is a key factor affecting our susceptibility to misinformation. However, the mechanisms underlying this observation are not well understood. Specifically, when people derive social information from person-related news, they rely predominantly on emotional content, apparently unperturbed by the credibility of the source. To help explain this bias, we here contrast two hypotheses of information processing reflected in changes in pupil size during news-based judgments: Emotion and cognitive effort. Thirty participants were first exposed to websites of well-known trusted or distrusted news media sources exhibiting headlines about unfamiliar persons, followed by social judgments. As expected, emotional relative to neutral headline contents lead to faster and more strongly valenced judgments. In line with the cognitive effort hypothesis, credibility modulated pupil size with larger pupils for headlines from distrusted sources, however only in response to neutral headline contents. Source credibility did not modulate pupil size in response to emotional headline contents. Instead, pupil size was smaller for emotional compared to neutral headlines for both trusted and distrusted sources. This pattern of findings suggests that emotional contents yield fluent social judgments that are made with relatively little mental effort-even if based on untrustworthy news. Cognitive resources to evaluate the credibility of news may primarily be allocated when emotional contents providing (false) fluency are not available. This insight into the biases underlying the processing of potential misinformation may be used as a protection against biased opinions and judgments. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The explanatory function of metaphor scenario in the Serbian pro-vaccine discourse

Metaphor has been established and extensively examined as one of the tools experts deploy to explain, simplify and transform complex scientific discourse into the knowledge suitable for the audience of non-experts. However, relatively little research has been conducted on metaphor scenario (Musolff 2006, 2016a) and its role in this process. Therefore, in this paper we explore how metaphor scenario is used to explain Covid-19 vaccines’ safety and effectiveness to the population in an understandable manner in order to speed up the immunization process in Serbia. By analysing a data set gathered from various Serbian electronic news media sources ( NovaS , N1 , Danas , Vreme , Večernje novosti , Mondo , Politika , Telegraf , Krug ) published from January to December 2021, we aim to explore (1) how the three metaphor scenarios, combat, container and movement, may help simplify complex scientific concepts in the pro-vaccine discourse; and (2) how the conceptual elements of these scenarios and their interconnected relations are used for this purpose. The findings showed that these conventional scenarios manifest their explanatory potential by means of several sub-scenarios, whose conceptual elements establish useful mappings relying on rarely used components of source domains. The results confirm that metaphor scenarios may be used strategically by medical experts as an apt explanatory tool to simplify challengingly complex scientific concepts to the general public. The paper contributes to current research on the role that metaphor and other cognitive instruments play in science popularization.

Polarization and reliability of news sources in Wikipedia

PurposeWikipedia's inclusive editorial policy permits unrestricted participation, enabling individuals to contribute and disseminate their expertise while drawing upon a multitude of external sources. News media outlets constitute nearly one-third of all citations within Wikipedia. However, embracing such a radically open approach also poses the challenge of the potential introduction of biased content or viewpoints into Wikipedia. The authors conduct an investigation into the integrity of knowledge within Wikipedia, focusing on the dimensions of source political polarization and trustworthiness. Specifically, the authors delve into the conceivable presence of political polarization within the news media citations on Wikipedia, identify the factors that may influence such polarization within the Wikipedia ecosystem and scrutinize the correlation between political polarization in news media sources and the factual reliability of Wikipedia's content.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conduct a descriptive and regression analysis, relying on Wikipedia Citations, a large-scale open dataset of nearly 30 million citations from English Wikipedia. Additionally, this dataset has been augmented with information obtained from the Media Bias Monitor (MBM) and the Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC).FindingsThe authors find a moderate yet significant liberal bias in the choice of news media sources across Wikipedia. Furthermore, the authors show that this effect persists when accounting for the factual reliability of the news media.Originality/valueThe results contribute to Wikipedia’s knowledge integrity agenda in suggesting that a systematic effort would help to better map potential biases in Wikipedia and find means to strengthen its neutral point of view policy.

Muslim Ban during Trump’s Presidency through the Target Population Framework

One of the controversies that defined Donald Trump’s presidency was his travel ban policy, which targeted immigrants from many Muslim-majority countries in 2017. While researchers have analyzed the rhetoric, discourse, and indirect speech acts of President Trump and American politicians to fully understand the enforcement of the travel ban, the number of studies investigating how politicians utilize the social construction of immigrants to support or oppose the travel ban is limited. Hence, it is crucial to thoroughly study how political actors socially construct immigrants to justify their policy positions on the travel ban. In this article, we contextualize the travel ban policy within the literature on the social construction of target populations, one of the prominent theories of policy processes. To that end, we examine four types of data sources: legal documents, relevant tweets posted by politicians, think tank publications (op-eds, releases, and commentaries), and news articles published during the travel ban debates. In light of our analysis, we find that not only policymakers but also members of the judicial system, news media sources, and think tanks construct immigrant identities in a way that justifies their policy positions on the travel ban. Our findings underscore the need for a nuanced and well-rounded debate on travel restrictions concerning the reconstruction and reimagination of immigrant identities by various actors. We also contend that future research could greatly benefit from analyzing the social construction of immigrants by different policy actors in a comparative fashion.

Sweden, NATO and the role of diasporas in foreign policy

Abstract When and how do diasporas influence the foreign policy of liberal democratic states? Few studies have sought to conceptualize how diasporas affect strategic bilateral relations between states. We argue that these non-state actors are an increasingly important factor in western liberal democratic societies, which challenge traditional theories of foreign policy. To explore when and how the transnational societal ties and interests of diaspora groups affect foreign and security relations between states, we develop a triadic analytical model of state–diaspora interactions and specify key contextual factors. To illustrate the dynamics at play, we analyse the influence of the Kurdish diaspora in Sweden on Turkish–Swedish bilateral relations in the wake of Sweden's decision to apply for full NATO membership. Our case-study builds on semi-structured interviews as well as news media sources, speeches and official documents. The study shows that the Kurdish diaspora demonstrates an independent role and an ability to shape the policy process due to the permeability of the political system. As a result, the policy-process is becoming more domesticated, thereby constraining the role of the executive. The article contributes important insights to policy-makers and diplomats on what impact transnational state–society relations can have on foreign policymaking.

Discursive Strategies of China-Related News in Chinese and Western Social Media

With the development of social media, the landscape of international news dissemination has changed significantly. This research is conducted to discover the discursive strategies of Chinese and Western news outlets in China-related news reports on Twitter, one of the most widely used social media platforms. The key objective is to examine China-related news reports on Twitter to explore the different discursive strategies employed by Chinese and Western news media in reporting China. To achieve these objectives, the research data were collected from the Twitter accounts of People’s Daily China, an official news outlet representing the Chinese media, and the New York Times, a leading American/Western news agency. Based on the data analysis, certain discursive strategies were identified in the practices of Chinese and Western media that are causing differences in constructing China’s international image. These results might assist the international audience in gaining a more objective understanding of China and help Chinese news media sources improve their reporting strategies and international communication capacity.

COVID-19: Examining the Roles of Traditional and Social Media Attention in the Amplification of Risk

This study used a nationally representative survey of U.S. residents ( N = 1,969) to examine whether attention to information about COVID-19 in traditional news media sources and on social media correlated with a higher perceived risk of personal and public harm. As anticipated, we found a positive association between attention to COVID-19 information in traditional news media sources and the perceived risks of COVID-19. We also found a positive association between attention to COVID-19 social media posts and perceived risks but only among Republicans. Other predictors of increased risk perception included age, being female and awareness of a local stay-at-home order.

Combating propaganda texts using transfer learning

Recently, it has been observed that people are shifting away from traditional news media sources towards trusting social networks to gather news information. Social networks have become the primary news source, although the validity and reliability of the information provided are uncertain. Memes are crucial content types that are very popular among young people and play a vital role in social media. It spreads quickly and continues to spread rapidly among people in a peer-to-peer manner rather than a prescriptive. Unfortunately, promoters and propagandists have adopted memes to indirectly manipulate public opinion and influence their attitudes using psychological and rhetorical techniques. This type of content could lead to unpleasant consequences in communities. This paper introduces an ensemble model system that resolves one of the most recent natural language processing research topics; propaganda techniques detection in texts extracted from memes. The paper also explores state-of-the-art pretrained language models. The proposed model also uses different optimization techniques, such as data augmentation and model ensemble. It has been evaluated using a reference dataset from SemEval-2021 task 6. Our system outperforms the baseline and state-of-the-art results by achieving an F1-micro score of 0.604% on the test set.

Who are the future farmers? Media representations of youth in agriculture, food security and ‘modern’ farming in Indonesia

In Indonesia, state and non‐state actors frame youth attrition from agriculture as a food security concern and propose policy solutions focused on ‘modern’ farming techniques. Using a critical framing analysis of five national Indonesian news media sources from 2010 to 2020, we examine how government, development and private sector actors portray youth in agriculture, and the underlying assumptions that inform related policy and development agendas. Our analysis reveals contrasting portrayals of youth in agriculture. Youth are often depicted as averse to farming, while also being innovative adopters of modern farming techniques, equipment, and digital technologies. We argue that media frames reflect and reinforce the dominant discourses of state and non‐state actors, which have a productivist orientation, proposing technical, capital‐intensive agricultural solutions to food insecurity and related issues. News media pays comparatively less attention to structural barriers to youth entry and success in agriculture, such as limited access to land and finance and unfavourable terms of trade.

Citizen Forums: Examining a Journalistic Transparency Initiative’s Capacity to Foster Understanding, Connection, and Trust

ABSTRACT This exploratory research introduces and evaluates the effectiveness of a “citizen forum” transparency initiative. Survey research shows that most U.S. citizens have a weak sense of connection to news organizations. Many U.S. Americans question the news media’s trustworthiness, believe that their news media sources undervalue their audience, and feel that news media do a poor job of explaining story production. Designed to address such disconnects, this research initiative involved conducting two day-long events in two different U.S. Midwestern towns. Inspired by “citizen academies” facilitated in other local civic contexts, the initiative featured in-person panels and forum discussions with journalists and journalism educators. Panel participants talked about journalism-related issues and engaged with audience-posed questions/comments. Employing survey questionnaires and focus group interviews, this study’s mixed-method research agenda was structured to examine the extent to which such citizen forum programming can serve to promote understanding of journalism, facilitate a sense of connection with local journalism, and bolster/sustain news trust more generally. Ultimately, this multi-pronged case study offers evidence of positive outcomes relative to citizen forums promoting “engaged journalism,” though not without caveats and challenges.

The Role of the Nonprofit Sector within the Climate Change Discourse: The View Through Russian News Media

Abstract This study attempts to understand the role of the nonprofit sector within the climate change discourse in Russian news media. It explores the news media coverage of climate change and nonprofit sector through the quantitative review of Russian news articles published within the five-year period of 2016–2021. We find that the nonprofit sector generally gains positive media coverage, and the climate change is presented as mostly a national and political issue, while the scientific discussions are very rare. Government and nongovernment news media sources diverge in their coverage on the topic. The state-owned media views the climate change as a national issue relying predominantly on Russian official sources, and praising assistance that the Russian government provides to the nonprofit sector. On the other hand, the nongovernment media highlights the political aspects of the climate change, includes government critique, and often draw on business and foreign sources.

IMPACT OF THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC ON THE MOBILITIES OF CENTRAL ASIAN MIGRANTS

The COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictive measures introduced in Russia and Central Asian countries have seriously disrupted the mobility patterns of migrant workers from Central Asia. The purpose of this study is to describe the new patterns of mobility that emerged both domestically and internationally during the COVID-19 pandemic, to study the policy measures taken by the governments of Russia and Central Asian states and their consequences for the mobility of migrants from Central Asia. To identify salient pandemic-related events impacting mobility and changing patterns of mobility of Central Asian migrants, the study heavily relied on a combination of pandemic-related official documents and national and regional news media sources.

Framing post-disaster collective action as ‘good news’: Possibilities and tensions

This article examines the development and implications of positive news media coverage of a crisis volunteer group across a decade of disaster responses. We investigate the case of the Student Volunteer Army in Aotearoa New Zealand, a group that has been positioned as a potential blueprint for youth-led disaster response. Drawing on in-depth interviews and news media sources, we trace how a distinct framing of the group as ‘good news’ consolidated across successive disasters, initially in media reporting and then through active cultivation by the group. The findings demonstrate the potential for positive media coverage of disaster volunteerism to assist people’s recovery and provide crisis volunteer groups with important leverage to further their operational abilities and challenge exclusionary power structures in post-disaster environments. However, our analysis also warns that simplifying accounts of post-disaster collective action to create ‘good news’ can produce internal tensions within crisis volunteer groups and reinforce the hierarchies and inequities that characterize disaster response.

Enacting Resistance, Performing Citizenship: Trajectories of Political Subjectification in the Post-Democratic Condition

Dominated by the ‘weak postsocialist civil society’ thesis, Central and Eastern Europe has generally been uninspiring for social movement scholars. In recent years, a growing body of scholarship has challenged this pessimistic notion, highlighting the emergence of grassroots activism. What remains under-researched, however, is the process of political subjectification of society’s apolitical segments through contentious practices. Informed by pragmatic sociology, this article explores three case studies – of student, civic and environmental movements, respectively – that demonstrate how citizens constituted themselves as collective political subjects by performatively enacting their citizenship through resistance in post-democratic Montenegro (2010–2015). Through analysis of news media sources and interviews with activists, this article postulates three trajectories of political subjectification – political becoming, political bonding and political embodying – by which citizens (re)gain their civic autonomy, allowing them to challenge dominant power relations and to attain political legitimacy to think, speak and act as relevant political actors on the public stage.