ABSTRACT Ethically, journalists aspire to report in an unbiased manner. However, this study raises questions about whether ‘unbiased’ should be the primary journalistic standard if it means that the media may avoid asking difficult questions. In this qualitative study, we examine two competing abortion initiatives in Nebraska, analyzing social media posts and news stories shared on X during the 2024 presidential election. Using the concept of news values of controversial political issues during a landmark presidential campaign, we explore how journalists explained the initiatives and, perhaps more importantly, what they omitted from their stories. Using Saldaña’s method for contextual analysis, we uncovered two themes focusing on power via financial largesse and nuanced conflict surrounding the ballot initiatives. While journalists acted as translators, gatekeepers, and sometimes amplifiers, highlighting their power in shaping democratic ideals, they primarily adhered to traditional news values. The resulting coverage from traditional journalists was sterile and lacked the nuance needed for audiences to understand the initiatives. Non-traditional journalists did not hesitate to use terms that were incendiary, yet familiar to many audiences, creating additional conflict.

ABSTRACT In contemporary digital news environments, photography plays a central role in attracting audience attention and shaping editorial storytelling. Image selection is increasingly embedded in convergent newsroom workflows involving multiple actors, platforms and constraints. This article examines how visual gatekeeping operates in such contexts through ethnographic observations and interviews conducted in five French-speaking daily newspapers in Belgium, France, and Switzerland. Our findings show that visual gatekeeping is a distributed and negotiated process involving multiple actors whose roles are variably defined within newsroom organizations. Beyond individual preferences or traditional news values, image selection is shaped by contextual influences linked to the temporality of news production, the publication medium (print or web), and anticipated audience engagement. We argue that visual gatekeeping is best understood as a context-driven and situated process, in which selection criteria vary depending on temporal, technological, and platform-specific conditions. This study contributes to a more nuanced understanding of visual gatekeeping as a situational and organizational mediated process in contemporary journalism.

ABSTRACT This study adopted a corpus-assisted discourse analysis to examine a stratified corpus of science news (N = 1,995) published in the news sections of Nature and Science. Guided by Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) framework, the study investigated how science journalists discursively constructed vaccine concerns before and after the outbreak of COVID-19. The findings revealed that Impact, Eliteness, and Proximity were the most prominent news values across both periods, though their discursive construction differed markedly. During the pre-COVID-19 period, Impact was associated with parental concerns and ethical considerations, Eliteness foregrounded government actors, and Proximity was geographically restricted to Anglo-American contexts. During the COVID-19 period, Impact expanded to encompass side effects among high-risk populations, vaccine hesitancy, and misinformation; Eliteness shifted towards pharmaceutical companies; and Proximity extended beyond Western nations to reflect a more global outlook. These shifts correspond to changing sociocultural contexts. Implications for science journalism practices are discussed.

ABSTRACT Universities are operating in a challenging and somewhat paradoxical situation in the domain of early childhood literacy education. Against a background of the very limited visibility of university research in the formulation of new policies and practices, there is a great deal of public discourse to which university researchers have contributed. Utilising corpus linguistics methods, the study explores two datasets collected in 2017–2022 from UK newspapers and Twitter, highlighting how university expertise is operationalised in these two types of public discourses on primary literacy. Findings show that while universities are referenced as key sources of expertise in both domains, their representation differs. Newspaper media frequently name specific universities as sources of research and authority, with some universities being cited relatively frequently. Selection and representation emerge from perceived alignments to the newspapers’ own news values and audiences. In Twitter social media interactions, universities play a broader role, with more involvement from overseas HEIs, and a broader range of content and style. There is a separation between academia and practitioners, suggesting limited influence and reach of academic Twitter. Highly effective academic institutional accounts communicate through varied strategies, sometimes heavily reliant on specific academic influencers. Our findings imply that there are opportunities for individuals, in universities or as alumni, and universities as a whole, to devise effective communication strategies in the domain of primary literacy education research, paying attention to both professional news and social media. This is likely to apply to other areas of university expertise.

ABSTRACT This study investigates how stigma surrounding depression is subtly produced in news discourse and how such communicative practices frame public representations of mental health. Drawing on a corpus-based discursive news values analysis integrated with multimodal analysis, we examine English-language media coverage of depression in China and the United States. Rather than relying on overtly negative labeling, stigma is enacted through implicit communicative strategies: expert voices dominate while people with lived experience are marginalized, referential patterns repeatedly associate depression with postpartum women and suicide, and visual resources index emotional distance and role-bound femininity. Together, these discursive and visual configurations constitute what we term silent stigma—a mode of meaning-making that constrains interpretive possibilities, structures audience stance, and normalizes limited social representations of depression. Cross-national comparison further reveals culturally patterned strategies. Chinese media tend to externalize depression through foreign exemplars and symbolic imagery, while U.S. media personalize it through maternal identity and individual narratives, reflecting different communicative logics of distancing versus individualization. The findings suggest communicative considerations for mental health reporting, including broadening narrative voices, avoiding narrow demographic framing, and adopting culturally responsive textual and visual strategies. The study thus contributes to health communication scholarship by showing how everyday media practices discursively configure the visibility and legitimacy of depression in public news discourse.

OBJECTIVEDyspnea is a frequent yet potentially life-threatening complaint in emergency departments. This study aimed to compare the predictive accuracy of the National Early Warning Score and the Manchester Triage System for key clinical outcomes among dyspneic ED patients.METHODSWe retrospectively analyzed 726 adult dyspneic patients presenting to a tertiary ED. Demographics, initial vital signs, MTS triage category, and calculated NEWS values were recorded at admission. Outcomes included hospital ward admission, intensive care unit admission, in-hospital mortality, 48-hour reattendance, and length of stay. Statistical analyses comprised chi-square, Kruskal–Wallis, and logistic regression models.RESULTSThe mean age was 61.1 years, and 52.9% were female. Of the patients, 13.8% were admitted to wards, 3.2% to ICUs, and 2.3% died; 4.1% reattended within 48 hours. NEWS risk stratification strongly aligned with MTS categories (p<0.001). Higher NEWS scores were associated with older age, higher respiratory and pulse rates, lower blood pressure, and reduced oxygen saturation. NEWS independently predicted hospital admission (OR=4.47, p<0.001) and ICU admission (OR=1.94, p=0.001), whereas MTS predicted ICU admission (inverse association, OR=0.34, p<0.001) and mortality (OR=0.30, p<0.001).CONCLUSIONNEWS more accurately predicted hospital and ICU admission, while MTS was more strongly associated with mortality in dyspneic ED patients. These complementary roles suggest that combining both tools—or developing a dyspnea-specific hybrid model—may enhance risk stratification and improve outcomes.

Experts are an increasingly common feature of contemporary journalism but this influential category of news source is dominated by men. Evidence suggests this is not attributable to the limited pool of women experts but journalists’ entrenched ideas about the most suitable news sources, societal stereotypes about the gendered nature of expertise, and women experts’ own reticence. This article draws on in-depth interviews with 52 women experts from New Zealand universities to explore how they perceive journalism routines, practices and values impact their media work. Time factors, conflict framing, the hierarchy of news values, and journalists’ reliance on a small group of sources are key themes shaping women’s experiences. Women experts have a good understanding of how the news media work but struggle to interest journalists in angles related to gender, feminism and women’s work. Efforts to improve the representation of women sources in news must go beyond training and support to also consider the gender logics of contemporary news production and content.

Push notifications have become a crucial touchpoint between news organizations and mobile audiences, yet little is known about how organizations strategically frame these brief messages. Drawing on framing theory, this study examines 3,459 push notifications from 11 major news organizations using data from Project Push, overcoming previous data collection limitations. Through quantitative content analysis, we investigate how organizations differ in their framing approaches across topic selection, urgency, news type, locality, calls to action, clickbait language, and message length. Results reveal significant organizational variation: some outlets prioritize traditional news values with longer, urgent, informative notifications, while others emphasize engagement through shorter, clickbait-heavy messages. Topic-based patterns emerge, with inherently urgent topics receiving straightforward framing while softer news relies on curiosity-provoking language. These findings extend framing theory to the constrained mobile environment and demonstrate how organizational priorities and brand identities manifest in push notification strategies, with implications for audience engagement and journalistic credibility.

ABSTRACT This paper presents a new style of political communication, marked by emotionally resonant, self-reflective, and dual-function framing strategies, examining the influence of German politicians’ framing (Robert Habeck/Olaf Scholz) on media framing during the energy and gas crisis triggered by Russia’s attack on Ukraine in 2022. Findings reveal both politicians framed themselves positively and call for urgent solutions—Habeck by promoting security and individual responsibility, and Scholz by fostering optimism and government support. The press framed their crisis handling through urgency, hope, and authenticity. Negative binomial regression analysis confirmed partial influences of their strategic framing on media coverage, portraying Habeck’s management as urgent, hopeful, authentic, and positive, while sometimes also emphasizing concerns about gas shortages, reflecting public sentiment on nuclear and gas issues. Scholz was depicted positively, focusing on urgency, reasonable decisions, and government support. Some influential frames align with news values, but frame adoption remains partial and context-dependent. Findings suggest that crisis conditions foster a more personalized and emotionally stylized form of elite communication.

This study analyzes visual communication in sports photography on Instagram @explorepersib and examines the creative workflow from image capture to publication. The research is motivated by the dominance of sports photography as primary content and strong audience responses, yet constrained by the absence of formal standards, creative misalignment between photographer and media team, and situational field challenges. Conducted on the Instagram account @explorepersib, this study employed a qualitative descriptive method with in-depth interviews, documentation of posts, and non-participant observation. Findings reveal that visual communication is shaped through news value, match atmosphere, and the EDFAT technique to produce varied visual narratives, while the creative process prioritizes photo selection based on news value, aesthetics, and engagement potential. The study concludes that consistent EDFAT use, clear selection standards, and proper workflow documentation are essential to maintain content quality and visual storytelling strength.

ABSTRACT This study extends the literature on shareworthiness and news values to examine threatening language as a predictor of engagement with content from the social media accounts of various media organizations, ranging in their ideological extremity. We first examine the relationship between threatening language and engagement with Facebook news content from 20 different media organizations. Next, we examined whether this relationship varied based on the ideological extremity of a media organization, ranging from nonpartisan to hyper-partisan. Finally, we examined whether, among partisan and hyper-partisan outlets, the relationship between threatening language and engagement varies based on whether the in- or out-group is mentioned. In general, our results revealed mixed findings for the relationship between frequency of threatening language and engagement levels, with the direction of this relationship varying by metric and year. Additionally, we found that this relationship varied based on the ideological extremity of the media outlet and whether group-related language was utilized in the content as well.

It is becoming more common for established news organizations to begin using generative AI for the production of news. How do readers respond to these news organizations when AI has first been introduced, and can AI news disclosures be used to improve the trustworthiness and financial value of AI content? An online experiment ( N = 713) was conducted in the immediate aftermath of ESPN introducing AI generated news to their web site. Study results found that exposure to an AI disclosure before exposure to sports news written by AI improved perceptions of news trustworthiness relative to sports news without preceding AI disclosure. Mediation analyses reveal that perceptions of AI disclosure, supervision, helpfulness and ethicality mediated effects of the AI disclosure on message trustworthiness and the perceived financial value of AI-written news. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

ABSTRACT This study presents an inductive analysis of the narratives and representations of artificial intelligence in digital newspapers in five Latin American countries and Spain between 2022 and 2023. A combination of qualitative and quantitative methodologies was employed in the analysis of the textual corpus, with the support of automated and manual content analysis techniques. The comparative study reveals similarities, differences and unique characteristics among the digital newspapers analysed. The results demonstrate the prevalence of texts with limited news value, superficiality, curiosity and information about specific products. These are juxtaposed with news items addressing more profound and contemplative matters pertaining to AI, which are pervasive in discussions surrounding the centrality of the human being and quintessential human actions in which this technology is becoming increasingly embedded. The main findings indicate the need to cultivate specialised reporting, public discourse and literacy through quality journalism to accurately convey the benefits and risks associated with AI.

News coverage of crime is an enduring emphasis within journalism research, in part because such coverage has the potential to meaningfully shape how audiences understand crime policy and their own safety. Drawing from the literature on news values, this article uses the prospect of desensitization as a lens through which to examine crime coverage. Focusing on a particularly salient form of U.S. crime—high-casualty mass shootings—we consider competing expectations about the possibility that, as shootings have grown more routine over time, news coverage exhibits signs of desensitization. Drawing on an original dataset of national news coverage focusing on all 263 high-casualty mass shootings that took place in the U.S. from 2013 to 2022, we find little evidence of desensitization. Rather, news coverage shows signs of continued—in some cases even growing—sensitivity to this violence. Implications for journalists and the public are discussed.

Abstract China has garnered significant international attention due to its unique position in climate change, both as the world’s largest developing country and the largest major emitter. However, China’s climate action remains an underexamined topic in media studies. In the present study, we focus on the media presentations of China’s climate action framed by its state-controlled English media. By combining discursive news values analysis and corpus-assisted discourse analysis, the findings demonstrate that China’s leadership role is articulated as making proactive contributions to global climate governance, grounded in its acknowledgment of anthropogenic climate change and its commitment to the Paris Agreement. Such representations are predominantly constructed through Eliteness and Positivity, which reinforce China’s national image as a responsible and proactive major power. This study can deepen the understanding of the discursive relationship between language, news values, and media ideology in climate communication discourse.

Background: The popularity of esports in Indonesia has driven the emergence of esports journalism as an integral part of sports journalism. Unlike traditional sports, esports grew out of gaming culture, which makes esports journalism a distinctive practice. In Indonesia, this phenomenon has driven various digital-native media outlets focused on esports coverage. However, studies on how local media manage their editorial and business operations in this field remain limited. Purpose: This research explored how IndoGamers–one of the pioneers of esports media in Indonesia–performs its newsroom and business management functions. Methods: It used a case study method with primary data collected through interviews with four members of the newsroom team, along with secondary data, analyzed using the POAC management model (Planning, Organizing, Actuating, and Controlling). Results: The results show that the editorial process no longer relies on conventional news values but is entirely driven by Google trends and SEO logic. Nevertheless, IndoGamers provides in-depth news coverage, especially concerning the benefits of esports. Therefore, it does not merely portray esports as a form of entertainment. The division of journalistic tasks based on specific game specializations–without involving external contributors–demonstrates the dominance of platform logic in newsroom management. Conclusion: These findings affirm that esports journalism requires a management model responsive to data, real-time trends, and digital visibility demands. It offers theoretical and practical contributions to digital media studies and newsroom management in the algorithm era. Implications: Thus, IndoGamers’ practice of aligning editorial decisions with Google search trends and SEO logic demonstrates that data-driven strategies function not only to increase traffic, but also as a mechanism to maintain the relevance and accessibility of educational esports coverage while simultaneously fostering more positive and socially valuable narratives for audiences.

This study addresses the problem of limited journalistic writing skills among students of the Indonesian Language and Literature Education Program, particularly in composing structured, factual, and ethical news texts. Many students experience difficulties in applying news values, organizing information based on the 5W+1H principle, and using appropriate journalistic language. The purpose of this study was to provide structured assistance in news text writing and to examine its effectiveness in improving students’ news writing competence. The methodology employed was a mentoring-based training model using a descriptive qualitative and quantitative approach. The participants were university students of the Indonesian Language and Literature Program. The mentoring activities were conducted through workshops, guided practice, group discussions, peer review, and individual feedback sessions. Data were collected through observation, writing tests (pre-test and post-test), and documentation of students’ news texts. The results showed a significant improvement in students’ ability to identify news elements, organize information coherently, apply journalistic language features, and produce accurate and objective news texts. The average post-test scores increased compared to the pre-test results, and students demonstrated higher motivation and confidence in writing news. The study concludes that mentoring in news text writing is effective in enhancing students’ journalistic writing skills and can serve as an alternative model for strengthening writing instruction in higher education.

Generative AI tools can produce images that visually mimic professional photojournalism. Our study examines how these tools simulate journalistic image production by reproducing news values commonly found in visual reporting. Using the Discursive News Values Analysis (DNVA) framework, we analyzed a dataset of 84 images-28 real and 56 AI-generated-based on news coverage of the Israel–Hamas conflict. The analysis compares the presence of 10 established news values, as perceived by journalism students, across real and AI-generated visuals. The study argues that while AI can mimic the form of newsworthiness, it may also blur the boundary between representation and simulation. Findings suggest that AI-generated visuals often foreground values such as negativity, personalization, and aesthetic appeal-mirroring dominant journalistic patterns. This alignment may contribute to a standardized visual language that simplifies complex events and reinforces existing representational norms in conflict reporting, shaping how such events are mediated and understood.

Grounded in the theory of intersectionality, this study proposes an approach to unpack the nuances of aging in the era of misinformation. Instead of focusing solely on individual aging factors and the digitally relevant divide, this approach enables an in-depth analysis of how older adults’ experiences with misinformation can be constrained by structural factors and the broader digital landscape, alongside information policies in local contexts as the broader background. Meanwhile, this approach allows for a contextualized comprehension of the agency of older adults, illuminating their prioritization of news values which might not always lie in the authenticity. Guided by this approach, our study gives voice to the low-income older female adults in China, revealing their ongoing engagement with misinformation during the COVID-19 infodemic where exacerbated digitalized information inequalities were likely to be accompanied by their evolving definition of misinformation and information sharing behaviors.

This paper examines how journalistic discursive strategies are employed in news coverage of the events following October 7, focusing on how international media construct meaning, legitimacy, and newsworthiness in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict amid intensified violence and global attention. Drawing on a corpus of 50 news articles from Al Jazeera and 50 from The New York Times, this study applies Fairclough’s (2013) social dialectical approach alongside Bednarek and Caple’s (2012) Discursive News Values Analysis to uncover the linguistic mechanisms through which journalists construct newsworthiness. The analysis focuses on how evaluative language, attitudinal positioning, emotionality, and interpersonal stances are mobilised to shape audience perception, influence public sentiment, and advance specific ideological frames. Findings reveal stark differences in the two outlets’ discursive strategies, shaped by divergent socio-cultural norms, political agendas, and institutional values. These patterns not only reflect deep-rooted biases but also risk perpetuating hostility, entrenching narratives of division, and narrowing the space for peace-oriented dialogue. Crucially, the study highlights how such linguistic constructions diminish the prospects for conflict resolution by reinforcing antagonistic frames and undermining empathy across audiences. By critically studying the interplay between language, ideology, and conflict, this paper contributes to the introduction of a news values discourse-based typology in peace journalism, one that reimagines news reporting as a tool for de-escalation, mutual understanding, and sustainable peacebuilding in conflict-ridden contexts.