News Messages Research Articles

Platform and Proximity: Audience Responses to Crime News on Desktop Computers and Smartphones

ABSTRACT This study explored how geographical proximity of news stories (local or international news stories) and bodily proximity of news platforms (reading news on a smartphone or desktop computer) affects people’s cognitive and emotional processing of news messages. The results suggested that geographical and bodily proximity interact to affect individuals’ attentional engagement with the news messages. Reading crime news that happens in a distant location on smartphones resulted in greater heart rate deceleration and self-perceived engagement, as compared to reading those stories on desktop computers.

How to Communicate Food Safety after Radiological Contamination: The Effectiveness of Numerical and Narrative News Messages.

Food risk and the safety of foodstuffs in the aftermath of contamination are highly sensitive issues to communicate. Food risks receive extensive attention from the news media, which requires messages to be carefully drafted to minimize harm and avoid unnecessary boycotts. Once a food risk is deemed eliminated, communication efforts must rebuild trust among consumers. The latter is a particularly difficult task after radiological contamination. This study tests whether numerical messages, narrative messages, or messages combining both elements are more effective in persuading the public to consume foodstuffs from Fukushima, a region that continues to battle stigma since the nuclear accident in 2011. We employ a survey-embedded experiment on a sample of the general Belgian population (N = 1085), during which respondents are presented with a mock news article presenting either a (1) numerical, (2) narrative, or (3) a combined message and test their subsequent evaluation of the article. We find that the numerical message leads to significantly higher perceived credibility and message acceptance than both the combined and the narrative message. Furthermore, we find that attitudes towards nuclear energy have a strong independent effect on message acceptance and evaluation, with those respondents who report a more positive stance towards nuclear energy more readily accepting the message. Food risk and safety communication may thus benefit from adopting a more detached, numerical approach for sensitive issues.

Slecht nieuws communiceren in de diergeneeskunde: wat is de goede aanpak?

Slecht nieuws kan gedefinieerd worden als elke boodschap met een nadelige invloed op het toekomstbeeld van de klant. Slechtnieuwsgesprekken komen frequent voor in de diergeneeskunde en de dierenarts-klantrelatie wordt in belangrijke mate bepaald door de manier waarop het slechte nieuws gecommuniceerd wordt. In de humane geneeskunde en meer recent ook in de diergeneeskunde bestaan verschillende richtlijnen om een slechtnieuwsgesprek uit te voeren met minder stress en meer voldoening bij zowel dierenarts als klant. In de uiteenlopende modellen kunnen vijf essentiële elementen gevonden worden. Als eerste is er de voorbereiding van het gesprek, met het creëren van een juiste setting. Vervolgens wordt het perspectief van de klant bevraagd, gevolgd door het kort en direct meedelen van het slechte nieuws zelf en het empathisch reageren op eventuele emoties. Verdere informatie en een planning volgen in kleine hoeveelheden op het moment dat de klant hier terug voor open staat.

Тексты массмедиа как средство формирования межкультурной коммуникативной компетенции иностранных студентов

The research objective includes developing methodology to work with mass media texts within the framework of a profile discipline, a basis for the formation of future crosscultural communication specialists’ professional skills and abilities. The article is written within the problematics of teaching Russian to foreign students with a focus on forming their crosscultural communicative competence. Scientific originality of the paper includes development of methodological recommendations on working with authentic materials with the regional component that broaden the framework of the course program and help students to prepare for further studies within their area of training. In conclusion, the author describes an algorithm of working with texts, substantiates cognitive and linguo-didactic value of news messages.

Guidance on communicating about uncertainties in nuclear emergency management

Within the European project CONFIDENCE, an extensive research programme has been conducted on a range of different tools, including Apps, SMS, numerical, narrative or mixed news messages and videos linked to uncertainty communication following potential nuclear or radiological emergencies. For this purpose, qualitative and quantitative research methods were applied in different European countries. Based on the results of these studies, we have formulated guidelines for efficient and effective communication about uncertainties that can be used in nuclear or radiological emergencies.

The Semantic Network Approach: Opportunities and Restrictions (Example of Inflation Image in the Media)

This article focuses on there being a need for tools that can facilitate coding and analysis processes for news reports. The study was based on a set of economic news replete with specific terms, interpretations, expertise and metaphorical description of events. In most cases it can be argued that the content of the texts is complicated, thus “classical” content analysis may require additional iterations and increased attention to the analytical procedure. The study highlights the methodological, analytical features of the semantic network approach (SNA) in comparison with the content analysis and Text Mining approaches based on analyzing six economic news items containing the terms “rising prices” and “inflation”. SNA is distinguished by simplification of large unstructured data processing with emphasis on content. The preparation and calculation of network metrics for each news report leads to the most significant concepts being reflected. That simplifies the content analysis of a larger body of texts. In several cases visualization shows different semantic positions of “inflation” being a synonym for “rising prices” depending on the topic. As an important result, regardless of the volume and visual structure of the news message, these terms can be considered as leading in the corresponding storylines that can help conduct a discourse analysis with their mention. It is assumed that this approach will become a “supporting” tool for further quantitative and qualitative analysis of news reports, particularly on economic topics. The technical features of text preparation and semantic modeling programs can be considered as potential limitations of the approach, especially in the space of Text Mining.

КАТАЛОГИЗАЦИЯ СОЦИАЛЬНЫХ ТИПОВ В СМИ (на материале серийных перифраз)

The periphrases of humans in the language of the media from the position of secondary (repeated) nomination were studied. The purpose of the study was to identify serial periphrastic lines in media texts sharing the same structural and semantic model. The study is highly relevant due to the fact that personal names serve as a background of the news message by encoding the most important roles of humans in the society. A total of 11 serial peripheral lines were identified. A detailed description of the most frequent serial peripheral lines for naming humans in the language of the media was performed. A new model was introduced for analysis of serial periphrastic lines. It was proved that the formation of serial periphrastic lines in the media is conditioned by both linguistic and extralinguistic factors. The obtained results demonstrate that serial periphrastic lines help to a decrease the number of nominative options and favor the formation of social frames, which saves cognitive efforts of the addressee. The theoretical importance of the research is that the algorithm introduced for investigation of peripheral lines can be extrapolated to other typical descriptive lines. The results of the study can be also helpful in lexicography and teaching special courses on the language of the media and the theory of nomination.

Possibilities of artificial intelligence in assessing the impact of potentially dangerous texts in modern news discourse: problem of statement

The relevance of the stated problem reflects the study of the “friend-foe” dichotomy, which is clearly represented in the modern news discourse, since it reflects the most significant problems for society: migration, the COVID-19 pandemic, crime, various confrontations, problems of socially vulnerable citizens, etc. The subject of the research is to Refine the parameters for evaluating potentially dangerous texts for the subsequent creation of a library of software modules for theming and classifying news messages, including using AI technologies. Hypothesis: the proposed parameters of the system of interpretation of potentially dangerous text increase the chances of determining the prognostic level of the degree of propensity to illegal actions, so the creation of a digital library will help to quickly analyze the levels of potential dangers for the recipient. The use of digital technologies for psycholinguistic assessment of potentially dangerous texts optimizes the search and tracking of such texts, contributing to the development of measures to ensure the safety of the human psyche in conditions of massive impact on the recipient in order to change his personal attitudes. The author raises the problem of creating a single digital platform for evaluating such texts, noting the need for linguistic priority when creating semantic markup, which will allow us to qualitatively rank potentially dangerous texts. Such work requires the application of interdisciplinary efforts of specialists in the fields of linguistics, psychology, mythology, history, sociology, political science, cultural studies, mathematics, computer science and Digital Humanities. The practical value is unquestionable, since psycholinguodiagnostics of a person does not correlate with the potential danger of texts produced by such a person in society.

Associations Between Characteristics of Web-Based Diabetes News and Readers' Sentiments: Observational Study in the Netherlands.

BackgroundAlthough experts agree that Web-based health information often contains exaggeration and misrepresentation of science, it is not yet known how this information affects the readers’ sentiments.ObjectiveThis study aimed to investigate whether specific aspects of Web-based diabetes research news are associated with positive or negative sentiments in readers.MethodsA retrospective observational study of the comments on diabetes research news posted on Facebook pages was conducted as a function of the innovations’ developmental phase, the intended treatment effect, and the use of strong language to intensify the news messages (superlatives). Data for the investigation were drawn from the diabetes research news posted between January 2014 and January 2018 on the two largest Dutch Facebook pages on diabetes and the corresponding reader comments. By manually coding these Facebook user comments, three binary outcome variables were created, reflecting the presence of a positive sentiment, the presence of a negative sentiment, and the presence of a statement expressing hopefulness.ResultsFacebook users made a total of 3710 comments on 173 diabetes research news posts that were eligible for further analysis. Facebook user comments on posts about diabetes prevention (odds ratio [OR] 0.55, 95% CI 0.37-0.84), improved blood glucose regulation (OR 0.68, 95% CI 0.56-0.84), and symptom relief (OR 0.31, 95% CI 0.21-0.44) were associated with less positive sentiments as compared with potential diabetes cures. Furthermore, comments on innovations supported by preclinical evidence in animals were associated with more positive sentiments (OR 1.46, 95% CI 1.07-1.99) and statements expressing hope (OR 1.47, 95% CI 1.01-2.14), when compared with innovations that have evidence from large human trials. This study found no evidence for the associations between language intensification of the news posts and the readers’ sentiments.ConclusionsOur finding that the attitudes toward diabetes research news on Facebook are most positive when clinical efficacy is not (or not yet) proven in large patient trials suggests that news authors and editors, as well as medical professionals, must exercise caution when acting as a conduit for diabetes research news.

The effects of scandalization in political news messages on political trust and message evaluation

Recent decades have seen an increase in the frequency of ‘scandalization’ in political news, a practice in which journalists try to persuade the public that there is a scandal, sometimes by exaggerating the importance of minor mistakes or improprieties. At the moment, little is known about the effects of this practice on news consumers. In this study, we investigated the effects of scandalization on news consumers’ evaluations of the politician involved in the scandal, as well as the news message itself. We expected that such responses would be contingent on the perceived severity of the alleged transgression. We conducted an experiment in which we randomized participants (128 undergraduate students at a Dutch university) into a 2(mild versus severe transgression) X 2(scandalization versus control) between participants design. The results showed that, in the mild transgression condition, a scandalizing message caused participants to perceive the alleged events as less serious than a control message, and that scandalization resulted in lower levels of perceived message appropriateness and message trust. No effects of scandalization were found in the severe transgression condition. We conclude that scandalization does not inevitably lead to lower levels of political trust and increased political cynicism. It can, however, lead to lower levels of trust in news reporting when the transgression is seen as mild.

Information Behavior Culture of the RuNet Audience

The purpose of this study is to analyze the formation of a media consumption culture in the information-rich multiconfessional and bilingual region of the Russian Federation – the Republic of Tatarstan. The authors of this article conducted a survey of 200 respondents aged 19-55 who are active users of the RuNet. The survey was carried out among students of the Kazan State Institute of Culture and Kazan Federal University, as well as media professionals from the Republic of Tatarstan. The anonymous survey was conducted in January-March 2019. Of all the respondents participated in this survey, 56% were aged 19-20. Eighty-three percent of the respondents were female – students, teachers and media workers of the Republic of Tatarstan. Sixty-five percent of them combined their education with work. Ninety-eight percent of the respondents received information from the Internet, 76% watched information programs on television, 27% listened to the radio and only 7.5% of the respondents still read newspapers. Sixty-eight percent of the surveyed trusted messages received from news agencies, while 78% trusted news messages received from news aggregators. Ninety percent of the respondents trusted information received from online media; 11% trusted the information received from social networks and only 4.5% of the respondents trusted the information discussed in blogs. The high percentage of trust to information obtained from the media and the low percentage of trust to information obtained from blogs indicates the current culture of media use and media literacy of the population in the situation with fake news. Of all the respondents answering the question "Do you refer to the source of information you use on the Internet?", 91.5% answered positively. Disturbingly, 92.5% of the surveyed believe that they do not have to pay for the information received from online media. The authors explain the refusal to pay for content with a small amount of exclusive and analytical materials in the information field of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Fake News Identification and Classification Using DSSM and Improved Recurrent Neural Network Classifier

ABSTRACTThe widespread use of social media has enormous consequences for the society, culture and business with potentially positive and negative effects. As online social networks are increasingly used for dissemination of information, at the same they are also becoming a medium for the spread of fake news for various commercial and political purposes. Technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) tools offer great promise for researchers to build systems, which could automatically detect fake news. However, detecting fake news is a challenging task to accomplish as it requires models to summarize the news and compare it to the actual news in order to classify it as fake. This project proposes a framework that detects and classifies fake news messages using improved Recurrent Neural Networks and Deep Structured Semantic Model. The proposed approach intuitively identifies important features associated with fake news without previous domain knowledge while achieving accuracy 99%. The performance analysis method used for the proposed system is based on accuracy, specificity and sensitivity.

Application of distributed ledger technology as one of the digital integration mechanisms of supply chains

The article has been devoted to the system analysis of supply chains digital integration. The main goal is to study the practical significance of the blockchain in terms of digital integration of supply chains, to identify areas for further development. World experience of implementing blockchain projects in supply chains has been analyzed, trends in the use of digitalization technologies in logistics have been identified, components of digital supply chain integration have been considered. The general scheme of work with information is the collection of relevant data from news messages, evaluation of requests on the Internet by statistics analysis tools “Yandex. Choice of words” and “Google Trends”, analysis of legal and law enforcement documents using the search and analytics capabilities reference-legal systems, study of intellectual property through the service “Yandex. Patents». Systematization of the data was carried out by expert methods by the specialists of the Logistics Department from the State University of Management. The phenomenon of the popularity of the term “blockchain” has been examined, a plenty of papers, news articles, legal acts, devoted to the blockchain (distributed registry) and related with it technologies has been studied. The shortcomings of the blockchain, complicating the practical commercial application of technology in logistics and the economy as a whole, has been systematized; domestic legal support, regulating the issues of blockchain, cryptocurrency and related concepts has been analyzed; innovations (technologies, inventions, platforms and systems), related to the digitalization of the economy have been classified, and the components of digital integration of supply chains and logistics business processes have been formulated. The results of this study can be used to consolidate information about the opportunities and problems of blockchain in connection with related technologies, as well as in making decisions about the application of blockchain in logistics in order to integrate modern supply chains.

Brand as a cognitive mediator: investigating the effect of media brands as a structural feature of textual news messages

PurposeThis study investigates how media brand knowledge, defined as a structural feature of the message, influences emotional and attentional responses to, and memory of, news messages.Design/methodology/approachSelf-reports, facial electromyography (EMG) and electroencephalography were used as indices of emotional valence, arousal and attention in response to 42 news messages, which varied along the valence and involvement dimensions and were framed with different media brands varying along the familiarity and credibility dimensions.FindingsCompared to the no-brand condition, news framed with brands elicited more attention. The memory tests indicated that strong media brands override the effect of involvement in information encoding, whereas details of news presented with Facebook were not well encoded. However, the headlines of news framed with Facebook were well retrieved. In addition, negative and high-involvement news elicited higher arousal ratings and corrugator EMG activity. News framed with familiar and high-credibility brands elicited higher arousal ratings.Research limitations/implicationsRelevant for both brand managers and audiences, the findings show that building credibility and familiarity both work as brand attributes to differentiate media brands and influence information processing.Originality/valueThe results highlight the importance of media brands in news reading: as a structural feature, the brand is used as a proxy to process the message content. The study contributes by investigating how the type of source influences the reception and encoding of the mediated information; by investigating the emotional effects of brands; and by confirming previous findings in media psychology literature.

ВЕРБАЛЬНАЯ РЕКОНСТРУКЦИЯ КРИЗИСНОГО СОБЫТИЯ В НОВОСТНЫХ ОНЛАЙН-СООБЩЕНИЯХ СМИ

The article is devoted to the problems and peculiarities of the formation of an event’s media image and its verbal reconstruction in news messages of the online media. Analysing the primary presentation of an event related to the Syrian crisis, the author comes to the conclusion that its verbal reconstruction in the news feeds of online publications is characterized by multiplicativity, language and stylistic nebulosity, syntactic redundancy, lexical repetitions, and the lack of integrity and completeness, which, in turn, leads to reliability violation and interference in information transition into knowledge.

Toward More Persuasive Diabetes Messages: Effects of Personal Value Orientation and Freedom Threat on Psychological Reactance and Behavioral Intention

This study seeks to explore more effective ways of creating tailored health messages in order to help self-management of diabetes symptoms. Personal value orientation and freedom threat as antecedents of psychological reactance are investigated as potential elements reflecting to tailored health messages and leading to more or less persuasive effects on self-management. Using these elements, the current study examines whether invoking an individual’s personal value orientation (i.e., two extreme value orientations: self-enhancement and self-transcendence) and threatening an individual’s freedom in health news messages about diabetes influence psychological reactance and affect suggested health behaviors. Based on the literature regarding tailored message strategies, value theory, and psychological reactance theory, a 2 (personal value orientation: self-enhancement value vs. self-transcendence value) x 2 (value-invoking message: invoked vs. non-invoked) x 2 (freedom threat: high vs. low) between-subjects factorial design experiment with within-subjects topics on diabetes (2: nutrition and physical activity) was conducted for prediabetes/diabetes adults. The findings are (1) direct effects of personal value orientation on psychological reactance, (2) direct effects of freedom threat on psychological reactance, and (3) the interaction effects of value orientation and freedom threat on psychological reactance and behavioral intention. Implications are discussed.

Emotionally Charged: Exploring the Role of Emotion in Online News Information Seeking and Processing

This study examines how news stories framed in terms of discrete emotions (anger, fear, hope) influence online news message processing and information seeking. Results revealed that participants who read the approach emotion stories (anger and especially hope) spent more time on the story page than those who read the avoidant emotion (fear) story. These two emotional frames also differentially affected the information that people selected post-exposure in emotion-consistent ways. Overall, the findings deepen our understanding of the role that the emotional framing of news stories plays in determining how consumers respond to and selectively engage with online news content.

Reading, Watching, and Tweeting About Sports: An Analysis of Sport-News Retention

Much research has been conducted relating to uses-and-gratification theory and how audiences select their news medium and message. Research has examined how newspapers, television stations, and social media outlets such at Twitter present news. However, no research has examined from which medium the audience retains the most information. Through the lens of uses-and-gratification theory, this exploratory study used a 4 × 1 experimental design to fill this gap. A convenience sample of 285 students at a large Midwestern university was invited to participate. A total of 122 responded to the invitation (N = 122). While most reported getting the majority of their sports news via television, participants who were presented news in print scored significantly higher on a retention test than did their counterparts who consumed news via television or Twitter. Avid sports fans retained more information, and the presence of links and images in Twitter did have an impact on how much news was retained. Implications for further research are also discussed.

Fake Profiles Types of Online Social Networks: A Survey

Today, OSNs (Online Social Networks) considered the most platforms common on the Internet. It plays a substantial role for users of the internet to hold out their everyday actions such as news reading, content sharing, product reviews, messages posting, and events discussing etc. Unfortunately, on the OSNs some new attacks have been recognized. Different types of spammers are existing in these OSNs. These cyber-criminals containing online fraudsters, sexual predators, catfishes, social bots, and advertising campaigners etc.OSNs abuse in different ways especially by creating fake profiles to carry out scams and spread their content. The identities of all these malicious are so damaging to the service providers and the users. From the opinion of OSNs service providers, the loss of bandwidth moreover the overall reputation of the network is affected by fake profiles. Thus, needing more complex automated methods, and tremendous effort manpower to discover and stopping these harmful users.This paper explains different kinds of OSNs risk generators such as cloned profiles, compromised profiles, and online bots (spam-bots, chat-bots, and social-bots). In addition, it presents several classifications of features that have been used for training classifiers in order to discover fake profiles. We try to show different ways that used to detect every kind of these malicious profiles. Also, this paper trying to show what is the dangerous type of profile attacks and the most popular in OSNs.

On Different Sides: Investigating the Persuasive Effects of Anger Expression in Political News Messages

Anger expression is increasingly prevalent in political news messages. However, the persuasive effects of expressing anger in a political context have received scant attention from researchers. We conducted two experiments to investigate the hypothesis that anger expression is detrimental to persuasion because it runs counter to well‐established social norms for the polite expression of opinions. We created political news messages including a persuasive appeal by a politician that was supported either with an expression of anger or with an expression of nonemotional disagreement. The results of Experiment 1 (N = 120) showed that anger messages were perceived as less appropriate than control messages, and that politicians expressing anger were perceived as less likable and less competent than politicians who disagreed in nonemotional terms. In Experiment 2 (N = 1,005), the negative effects of anger expression on perceived likability and competence were replicated. Also in line with Experiment 1, anger messages were perceived as less appropriate, but this time only for those with negative a priori attitudes toward the advocated position. In contrast, those with positive a priori positions toward the advocated position perceived anger messages as more appropriate than the control messages.