News Values Research Articles

Artificial Intelligence Journalism: An Enquiry within the Framework of News Values and Ethical Principles

This study was conducted to examine the effects of artificial intelligence technology on journalistic practice. The study analysed the news of İbrahim Selçuk, an artificial intelligence-based columnist of Dünya Newspaper, one of the leading newspapers in Turkey, and evaluated them in terms of news value and journalistic ethics. Within the scope of the research, 10 news samples published between October 2023 and March 2024 were analysed by descriptive analysis method. The results of the analysis show how much the news produced by artificial intelligence comply with the principles of traditional journalism. The evaluation made within the framework of the basic concepts of journalism reveals that although artificial intelligence news is newsworthy, it faces certain difficulties in terms of journalistic ethics. However, it is noted that more research is needed to provide a deeper understanding of the role and effects of AI technology in journalistic practice. This study can be considered as an important step to understand the evolution of AI technology in the field of journalism and to guide future applications.

Journalist-Victim Relationship: Analysis of Cyber Media Reporting on the Land Conflict of the Sunda Wiwitan Indigenous Community

The relationship between journalists and sources influences reporting on conflicts in media. The news media's portrayal of conflicts can shape public opinion, which in turn can influence policy decisions. Governments and other stakeholders often pay close attention to media coverage and public reaction when making decisions related to conflicts. This study analyzes how the relationship between journalists and sources, in this case the victims from the Sunda Wiwitan indigenous community in Cigugur, West Java, in online media, relates to the land conflict and how it influences the resolution of the case. The researcher chose the theme of Sunda Wiwitan in relation to online media and conflict because the land conflict involving the Sunda Wiwitan indigenous community in Cigugur, West Java, is an issue that has received widespread media attention. Online media, with its fast and broad reach, often covers this conflict, although frequently in the form of short news pieces (hard news). This study uses a qualitative approach, employing a mixed method of content analysis, in-depth interviews which involving journalists and members of Sunda Wiwitan Community. The researchers analyze 113 news articles from national and local online media about the Sunda Wiwitan land conflict from 2020-2022. This study aims to examine how the relationship between victims in land conflicts and influential journalists affects media framing and agenda-setting.The research shows cyber media are interested to cover the issue as it carries news value of conflict and produce more news in form of hard news that features. The communication established between journalists or the media and victims or sources from the Sunda Wiwitan indigenous community influences the formation of media agendas and framing.The significant attention from online media and diverse sources influenced policy decisions regarding the Sunda Wiwitan land conflict.

Silenced Voices in Portuguese Public TV News: An Intersectional Analysis of the Representation of Women with Disabilities in RTP’s Telejornal

(1) Background: Studies on women with disabilities (WwD) are rare and tend to reveal certain representation patterns. This study aims to understand how and to what extent WwD and chronic diseases are deemed newsworthy in the Portuguese public news TV station RTP1 primetime news program. Feminist disability, standpoint, agenda-setting, and framing theories are used alongside the concept of intersectionality. (2) Methods: A mixed-method approach is adopted, combining quantitative content analysis of all broadcasted news in January 2020 (n = 704), and qualitative discourse analysis of news items on PwD (n = 5). (3) Results: The results reveal that disability is a reduced issue in Telejornal’s agenda. PwD, in general, are often portrayed in secondary roles and without a voice. The protagonists of news stories about disability or persons with disabilities are predominantly women without disabilities, occupying traditional roles as caregivers (mothers, nurses), while men are more often portrayed as public agents. Discourse analysis deepens understanding by uncovering the prevalence of negative news values and a problem-centred framing, often associated with negativity, rather than presenting solutions. (4) Conclusions: Consequently, WwD were found to be deprived of news representation with a more positive or ‘normal’ focus and an intersectional approach reveals a lack of inclusion, with the few existing news tending to focus on exclusion issues, portraying only white Portuguese women. This study underscores the urgent need for a more equitable approach in media representation, recognising the diversity and positive contributions of WwD to promote an inclusive narrative.

The morals that shape the news: A study of Aotearoa New Zealand’s newsrooms

This article explores the personal interpretation of the moral world Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom leaders are guided by when shaping the news, or, in other words, it poses the question: Do personal moral values play a role in Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom? In this study, we examine whether newsroom leaders view morals as a driver in news-shaping, or whether the news values of objectivity, accuracy and fairness prevail over personal morals when it comes to informing the news. The research was conducted by interviewing six newsroom leaders from different media companies in Aotearoa New Zealand and the interview data were analysed within the theoretical and philosophical framework adopted from Lakoff (2002). The research suggests that working professionals in the media industry were not able to discern where their morals ended and where the professional news values started. Furthermore, the interviewees affiliated with public service media responded that upholding moral values would not have a financial impact on the news media organisation, whereas those affiliated with private media responded that it would.

The morals that shape the news: A study of Aotearoa New Zealand’s newsrooms

This article explores the personal interpretation of the moral world Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom leaders are guided by when shaping the news, or, in other words, it poses the question: Do personal moral values play a role in Aotearoa New Zealand newsroom? In this study, we examine whether newsroom leaders view morals as a driver in news-shaping, or whether the news values of objectivity, accuracy and fairness prevail over personal morals when it comes to informing the news. The research was conducted by interviewing six newsroom leaders from different media companies in Aotearoa New Zealand and the interview data were analysed within the theoretical and philosophical framework adopted from Lakoff (2002). The research suggests that working professionals in the media industry were not able to discern where their morals ended and where the professional news values started. Furthermore, the interviewees affiliated with public service media responded that upholding moral values would not have a financial impact on the news media organisation, whereas those affiliated with private media responded that it would.

News Users' Evaluation of News Values for Victim Depictions in Disaster Coverage

News Users' Evaluation of News Values for Victim Depictions in Disaster Coverage

Accounting for teachers: changing representations of education in The Australian Financial Review 1993–2022

ABSTRACT The work of teachers, as representative of a significant area of social policy, occupies many column inches in newspapers internationally every year. This paper takes a close, systematic look at the education coverage of one national Australian newspaper, over a 30-year period from 1993 to 2022. Focusing on representations of school teachers in the Australian Financial Review (AFR), one of two Australian national daily newspapers, it presents a corpus-assisted discourse analysis of over 1,300 articles, using the conceptual lens of “news values” to take a close look at the ideas about teachers and their work in which the AFR has invested over the past 30 years. The analysis shows that while the focus was once on issues to do with remuneration, industrial action and school funding, that the educational purview of the AFR has broadened over the past 15 years to take in a more expansive view, both reflecting and reinforcing the expansion of the privatisation of education in Australia over this period.

What is news? Exploring differences in how younger and older cohorts use news in today’s media environment

ABSTRACT This study investigated how younger and older cohorts used news to meet their needs. It used diaries and focus groups with 25 New Zealanders to examine their news sources, characteristics of news they valued, and factors influencing their consumption. Using content analysis, this information was analysed through the lenses of news values and uses and gratifications theory. The findings showed news maintained a critical role in giving people information they wanted to know. Younger participants spent more than half of their time consuming news from non-traditional news sources and valued timeliness and shareability of news. Older participants generally used traditional news sources and had greater interest in elite persons, local news, and news that elicited emotion. Participants emphasised news credibility, suggesting veracity and live news are potential new news values. However, this study suggests personalised news consumption will disrupt the direct journalist/audience relationship and impact understanding of news value frameworks.

Signalling media professionalism: comparative social constructions of RT and CGTN

ABSTRACT The messaging content of Russia Today (RT) and China Global Television Network (CGTN) provides alternatives to those offered in mainstream western media. Comparative studies point to RT’s aggressive, ideological rhetoric and CGTN’s more tacit, celebratory, and culture-focused approach. This study adds to these understandings by examining how messaging strategies construct media professionalism – one of the four historic pillars of media systems analysis – to delegitimize media systems of rival states and build credibility of their own platforms and by assessing the dialectical role of key oppositional voices to Western media hegemony in the digital sphere. Using a mixed methods approach, we analyzed thousands of RT and CGTN’s Facebook posts across language accounts between 2017 and 2022. The study documents that RT and CGTN utilise arguments by comparison to assess competing news outlets and redefine scholarly modes of assessing media professionalism. The study identified four metrics used by RT and CGTN to evaluate media professionalism: source attribution, adherence to positive news values, distinctions from negative news standards of competing outlets, and relative commitment levels to free expression. It further reveals differences in RT and CGTN’s language-based, message targeting in relation to media professionalism.

Discrepancies in the portrayal of Japan’s nuclear water release in Chinese and US media outlets: A corpus-based news values analysis of marine disputes

This article aims to explore the reactions and cognitions of Chinese and US societies toward Japan’s nuclear water release by comparing the methods used to construct this event in media reports from these two countries. Adopting corpus linguistic methods and a discursive news value analysis approach, this study examines news values through key words, nomination strategies and photographs in Chinese and US mainstream English language news coverage. The results show that by exercising overall control in multimodal news devices, the Chinese media dominantly constructed Japan’s nuclear water release as an environmentally harmful and legally irresponsible behavior for international society and demonstrated a prominent antagonistic position and critical attitude, while the US media mainly constructed Japan’s nuclear water release as a technically safe and politically rational behavior and manifested its neutral position and acceptive attitude. The results indicate that the acceptance of US society was supported by Japan’s technical treatment of nuclear waste water and by Japan’s political authorities’ justification for their behaviors, while the opposition of Chinese society was supported by their inquiries about the illegality of Japan’s behavior and their worries about the damage caused by Japan to the ocean environment and to the security of the international community. This study revealed the social cognitive grounds for supporting the political positions of the two countries in terms of Japan’s nuclear water release and demonstrated an effective sociological analysis method for examining the maritime disputes and marine strategies of different countries.

The Nature of Visual Disinformation Online: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Alternative and Social Media in the Netherlands

ABSTRACT Online political disinformation often relies on decontextualized or manipulated images. Visual content can make disinformation more attention-grabbing and credible as it offers a direct index of reality. Yet, most research to date has mapped the salience and nature of disinformation by exclusively focusing on textual content. Responding to urgent calls in the literature, this paper relies on an inductive qualitative analysis of visual disinformation disseminated by alternative media platforms. Based on the analysis, we propose a typology of different applications of visuals in disinformation: (1) Signaling legitimacy and adherence to conventional news values through seemingly unrelated images; (2) illustrating authoritative expert consensus through the visualization of disinformation by alternative experts; (3) emphasizing widespread social support for unconventional truth claims through the inclusion of visuals depicting the vox populi; (4) offering decontextualized proof for conspiracy theories and counter-factual claims. This typology intends to inform future empirical research that aims to detect disinformation narratives across different (digital) contexts.

Is checkworthiness generalizable? Evaluating task and domain generalization of datasets for claim detection

The spread of misinformation has reached a level at which neither research nor fact-checkers can monitor it only manually anymore. Accordingly, there has been much research on models and datasets for detecting checkworthy claims. However, the research in NLP is mostly detached from findings in communication science on misinformation and fact-checking. Checkworthiness is a notoriously vague concept whose meaning is contested among different stakeholders. Against the background of news value theory, i.e., the study of factors that make an event relevant for journalistic reporting, this is not surprising. It is argued that this vagueness leads to inconsistencies and poor generalization across different datasets and domains. For the experiments, models are trained on one dataset, tested on the remaining, and evaluated against the results on the original performance, against a random baseline, and against the scores when the models are not trained at all. The study finds that there is a drastic reduction in comparison with the performance on the original dataset. Moreover, often the models are outperformed by the random baseline and training on one dataset has no or even a negative impact on the performance on the other datasets. This paper proposes that future research should abandon this task design and instead take inspiration from research in communication science. In the style of news values, Claim Detection should focus on factors that are relevant for fact-checkers and misinformation.

Men’s Violence against Women as Portrayed in the Swedish Media: The Construction of Victimhood and the Role of the Perpetrator

Men’s violence against women is an international problem and while global and national initiatives have been created to better the criminalization process, the influence of news reporting on violence against women has not been successfully addressed in such policy. The aim of this study is to contribute to understanding how media frames violence against women in the Swedish context, which is both highly protective of crime reporting and where violence against women is a central policy and public discussion issue. A mixed methods approach was used in the analysis of 295 digital news articles that were published by four media outlets (Aftonbladet, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet and Dagens Nyheter) within the period January 1st, 2019–December 31st, 2021. The study found that digital news articles first frame the issue of violence against women as episodic, but later transform into a thematic frame when follow-up articles were written on a given case. The study found a construction of victimhood by Swedish news media that allowed for two victim personas to be identified: the ideal victim and the ideal minority victim. In connection with the portrayal of the victim, the study also identified two different portrayals of the perpetrator: the ideal foreign perpetrator and the Swedish perpetrator. Both the description of the victim and perpetrator allowed for insights to be made regarding the role of racialization in news reporting and how this effects the framing of social issues. Finally, the study presented a set of news values that were most frequently found in articles that reveal several news factors of violence against women that contribute to the topic being seen as newsworthy.

Botlitica: A generative AI-based tool to assist journalists in navigating political propaganda campaigns

The hype on generative AI has raised concerns about the spread of disinformation but also opened up new opportunities for hybrid journalism. The proliferation of political propaganda campaigns spread across digital media during election periods constitutes a challenge for journalists who struggle to exercise information gatekeeping. AI-based tools can in principle help, but journalists are resistant to using them since they are sceptical about their compliance with news values and their scarce user-friendliness. To cope with such issues, we present Botlitica, a GPT3-based chatbot able to answer users’ questions according to the information shared on different social media by a given political party which is, thus, embodied by the AI agent in the conversation. The back-end and front-design of the chatbot are devised to privilege transparency. We report the results of a preliminary evaluation of Botlitica which show that the tool fastens journalists’ capabilities to navigate propaganda campaigns inducing them to exercise critical thinking.

The Effect of Implementation of the National Early Warning Scoring System 2 on the Outcomes of COVID-19 Hospitalized Patients

Abstract Introduction It is crucial to have tools to predict the clinical deterioration of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients. We aimed to study the efficacy of the National Early Warning Scoring System (NEWS2) application in predicting the risk of clinical relapse and outcomes in hospitalized COVID-19 patients at Palestinian specialized centers for COVID-19. Patients and Methods A quasi-experimental design was applied. A sample of 384 adult patients was divided into two groups. For the pre-NEWS phase (control group) and the post-NEWS phase (study group), all study participants were observed until death or hospital discharge. Results Comparing the pre-NEWS phase with the post-NEWS phase, a significant decrease was found in the mean length of hospital stay from 8.1 ± 5.5 to 6.4 ± 5.3 days (p = 0.002) and a reduction in the mortality rate from 19.8% during the pre-NEWS phase to 12.5% during the post-NEWS phase (p = 0.071). The predictive value of NEWS was an excellent predictor of admission to the intensive care unit (ICU), as indicated by an area under the receiver operating characteristic curve of 0.91 (95% confidence interval: 0.87–0.96, p < 0.001). Also, a significant difference in the frequency of monitoring patients' vital signs was observed between the control group (pre-NEWS phase) and the study group (post-NEWS phase) following clinical deterioration (10.1 ± 7.8 [pre-NEWS phase] vs. 23.4 ± 0.7 [post-NEWS phase], p < 0.001). Conclusion Implementation of NEWS2 showed a significant improvement in hospitalized COVID-19 patient outcomes (length of stay, predicted ICU admissions, mortality rate, and frequency of vital signs measurements), which indirectly raised the follow-up of those patients by the medical team and attributed to a significant prediction of their deterioration.

Discrepancies in the newsworthiness of maritime security in Chinese and US media outlets: a corpus-based discursive news values analysis

This article analyzes and compares the news values constructed in the English news reporting from Chinese and US mainstream media around events concerning maritime security, revealing how the related events have been packaged and sold differently in the two societies, uncovering the discrepancies in Chinese and US social visions on maritime security, and exploring the social attitudes underpinning the constant conflicts between the two countries in the marine sphere. Adopting corpus linguistic methods and the discursive news values analysis (DNVA) framework, this study examines news values through keywords, naming strategies, and images contained in Chinese and US mainstream English news outlets. The results show that Chinese media established the news values of Positivity and Proximity prominently through both textual and visual reporting, by emphasizing common international interests, advocating diplomatic joint cooperation and demonstrating optimistic attitudes towards the future of marine environment. By contrast, US media keenly construed Negativity and Eliteness, by highlighting the exclusive national interests/security of the US, dwelling on threats from other countries and distinctly demonstrating worries, fears, anger and violence. The differences in newsworthiness reflect that maritime security has been constructed in discrepant ways in Chinese and US society: as international joint security with optimistic perspective in China, and as exclusive national security with pessimistic perspective in US. This study has improved and supplemented the results of the previous China-US marine policy studies by the findings of the social emotions/cognition towards maritime policy revealed through newsworthiness analysis.

Picturing a quality local news visual: Perspectives from non-specialist journalists

This study explores a key question around local visual news: what do non-specialist journalists regard as a quality news visual? This study focuses on still images as the most ubiquitous building block in the local visual news landscape, whether as thumbnails that are shared with links on social media platforms, as hero images accompanying articles, as photo galleries, or as still frames extracted from videos. Much of what we know about a quality news visual comes from the perspectives of visually literate specialists: photo editors, photojournalists, and related roles. Yet, despite the ubiquity of photographs within print and digital news, they are increasingly being made not by staff photojournalists but, rather, by freelancers, words-based reporters, or community members. As these dynamics have shifted over the past two decades, scholarship has struggled to keep up with how non-specialist journalists define the attributes and properties of a quality news visual. This study aims to address this gap within the context of local and regional news using an interview-based approach and finds that interviewees most commonly defined quality news photographs through the lens of news values, followed by technical considerations and narrative dimensions, aesthetics, the perceived effect the visual had on the audience, how the visual was made and presented, and who or what was photographed.

Risky business: How metrics obfuscate journalistic values with traffic volumes in digital news production

Based on ethnography from Australian digital newsrooms, this research shows how content production is split into two forms: Original news reporting is considered an act of ‘journalistic discovery,’ while content produced to appease metric indicators is considered an act of ‘metric confirmation.’ By conceptualising the digital space as a “glut of occurrences” (Tuchman, 1978: p.44-45) to be filled, the two case studies shown in this work inform how temporality and metrification intertwine to posit metric confirmation as low-risk, low-cost, high-gain work, while acts of journalistic discovery are comparatively high-risk and high-cost, with unknown outcomes. I argue that the inundation of metrics into newsrooms obfuscates other more crucial news values and poses challenges for the future of journalism when digital distribution is increasingly dependent on third parties while responsibility for commercial success has been shifted onto editorial staff.

The Impact of Current Trends in Health Care on the Pharmaceutical Sales Force of the Future

Drug manufacturing is undergoing a life-changing development compelled by current flows in healthcare. This abstract explores the deep impact of these styles on the drug auction force of the future. The convergence of science, switching healthcare examples, and developing patient expectations is changing the countryside at which point drug companies run. One main style is the growing focus on embodied cures and point-in-direction therapies. Advances in genomics and the accuracy of cures are changing the way diseases are pronounced and medicated, making it necessary to have a deep understanding of these complex changes. The marketing lawyers of the future must be outfitted to communicate the profit of these tailor-made situations to healthcare pros and navigate complicated experimental disputes. Additionally, the rise of mathematical health forms and telemedicine is changing the established buying model. As virtual interplays become more widespread, pharmaceutical demand counselors must become accustomed to doing business with healthcare professionals through mathematical channels. This demands an ability set that blends mechanics proficiency with productive ideas. Moreover, the emphasis on patient-in-the-middle care is a fluctuating administrative movement. The pharmaceutical reduction force of the future must not only use accompanying healthcare providers but also connect with conversant and enabled inmates. Building relationships with subjects and providing valuable news for further traditional device analyses will be critical for their benefit. In conclusion, the evolving healthcare landscape is changing the role of the drug sales force

“Scooped by the Town Drunk”: Unpacking the Effects of COVID-19 on Rural Journalism Work

Journalists serving rural communities are crucial sources of information across the U.S.; they also face challenges and opportunities unlike those of their peers at large urban outlets. In this study, we take the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to examine how these journalists define their group identities. We focus on local news creators to ask: How has COVID-19 influenced the identities of small-town and rural journalists in the U.S.? Using an approach informed by actor-network theory and social identity theory, we analyze interviews conducted during the height of the pandemic with 35 rural and small-town journalists across the Midwest, Appalachia, and Gulf South regions to understand the effects of COVID-19 on journalistic identities. We find that the pandemic disrupted the newsgathering process, depunctualizing it in a way that highlighted the centrality of relationships to the rural journalist’s identity. First, by physically distancing journalists from their sources, COVID-19 highlighted the importance of in-person connections. Second, by increasing the amount of contentious news available to report on, COVID-19 highlighted the tension between preserving news values and protecting community relationships. Our findings highlight the far-reaching effects of one actant in a network and the ways journalists in crisis situations negotiate conflicting pressures.