Quality Newspapers Research Articles

Communicating Political Positions on European Issues: A Comparison of Parties and Newspapers in Seven Countries

This article starts from the observation that most voters know relatively little about positions and plans of political parties, especially when European Union politics is concerned. One reason for this could be that the main sources for political information, party communication and mass media coverage, provide voters only little concrete information about positions and plans of political parties. We ask how concretely, respectively vaguely, political parties and mass media communicate political positions prior to the 2014 European Parliament elections. We conducted a quantitative content analysis of all European Union–related press releases from 46 national political parties and of all European Union–related articles of 14 national quality newspapers from 7 European countries 12 weeks before the 2014 European Parliament elections. Our analysis shows that press releases as well as media coverage contain more concrete political positions on European Union issues than vague political statements. Other than expected, newspaper coverage provided the public with less concrete information than political actors did. Nevertheless, countries vary with regard to the extent to which party communication or newspaper coverage contain vague statements. We cannot find empirical support that the communication of concrete political positions depends on a party’s “extremity” of issue position or on the type of issue.

Who Differentiates between Muslims and Islamist Terrorists in Terrorism News Coverage? An Actor-based Approach

ABSTRACT The present study took an actor-based approach to explain news differentiation in terrorism coverage. Actors were defined as non-Muslim sources, Muslim sources, and journalists. Actors who generate undifferentiated statements actively link Muslims to terrorism, whereas actors who use differentiated statements explicitly distinguish Muslims from terrorism. We examined actor-specific, media-specific, and event-specific predictors of differentiation using a quantitative content analysis in Austria, Germany, and Switzerland, 2015–2017 (12 quality/tabloid newspapers, N = 1071 articles). Results reveal that non-Muslim sources and journalists are more likely to make undifferentiated statements and less likely to make differentiated statements compared to Muslim sources. This gap between Muslim sources on the one side and non-Muslim sources as well as journalists on the other side is more accentuated for severe terroristic attacks and for articles mentioning dead and injured victims. For differentiated statements, the gap is also more pronounced in tabloid newspapers as compared to quality newspapers.

Headlines for summarizing news or attracting readers’ attention? Comparing news headlines in South Korean newspapers with the New York Times

This study examined whether the headlines of newspapers in South Korea and the New York Times differed in terms of the semantic function – that is, summarizing news stories and the pragmatic function – that is, attracting readers’ attention. The New York Times is regarded as one of the news organizations that practices quality journalism, yet it also faces the pressure of market-driven journalism that focuses more on financial interests than the public interest. News organizations, popular as well as quality newspapers, have become unprecedentedly competitive in the new media context, pressured to increase audience attention, possibly influencing quality papers to emphasize the pragmatic function of attracting audiences by employing more sensational headlines. A content analysis of 749 news articles, which compared 10 newspapers in South Korea with the New York Times in the United States, showed that newspapers in South Korea more frequently employed headlines that highlighted the pragmatic function. Specifically, this study operationalized the semantic function to include headlines with factual information – that is, Who, When, Where, What, Why, and How – while the pragmatic function measured the extent to which headlines included four attracting devices – metaphors, adverbs, direct quotations, and questions. Findings of this study showed that only 4.9 percent of the headlines included more than four items of factual information among the Who, When, Where, What, Why, and How, whereas 74.9 percent of the headlines included more than one attracting device. Compared to the New York Times, the Korean newspapers were more likely to employ adverbs and direct quotations.

Unlocking the Newsroom: Measuring Journalists’ Perceptions of Innovative Learning Culture

ABSTRACT Thorough understanding of how “outside the box” ideas in the newsroom can be triggered and fostered is fundamental to grasp innovation in journalism, but is still largely uncharted territory. Comprehension of its key elements would enable news organisations to reinvent themselves and improve chances for survival. In this article we develop an instrument to investigate if and how newsroom workers and management perceive an Innovative Learning Culture (ILC). This survey enables us to locate which aspects of ILC are bottlenecks or foster creativity and innovation processes. First we focus on how the different aspects of ILC are perceived: which aspects are experienced to foster or hinder an overall ILC. In a second step we analyse how respondent characteristics influence perceptions of these processes. In combining these two steps, the survey can be used as a key to “unlock” the newsroom with respect to its creative and innovative potential. We validated the survey in the newsrooms of two Dutch national quality newspapers, each with a different history, culture, audience and size. Findings show that they have similar perceptions of which ILC-aspects typically foster or hinder ILC in their newsrooms. We discuss the outcomes and provide suggestions for future research.

Brexit-related food issues in the UK print media: setting the agenda for post-Brexit food policy

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore how Brexit-related food issues are being presented in the UK print media.Design/methodology/approachUsing the news database Nexis UK, relevant articles were identified based on key search terms, “Brexit” and “Food” or “Farm!” or “Agriculture!”. The search criteria were set to include articles with three or more mentions of these terms. The search period was 6 April to 5 July 2018.FindingsThe quality newspaper genre, and remain-supporting newspaper, The Guardian, in particular, dominated food Brexit coverage. In total, 17 distinct food Brexit issues were covered, with food security and subsidies receiving the most coverage in leave-supporting publications and agriculture, trade and labour receiving the most coverage in remain-supporting publications. Dominant narratives and frames can be identified in the reporting, illustrating newspapers' tendency to promote certain viewpoints in support of their own standpoint on Brexit. In all publication types, political voices feature far more prominently than any other stakeholder group, highlighting the significant potential for this group to influence public opinion and the post-Brexit food policy agenda.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors only examined newspapers over a limited period. Reporting in other media and at different stages in the Brexit negotiation process may differ.Practical implicationsMedia reporting on food Brexit issues has the potential to influence post-Brexit food policy.Originality/valueThis is the first study to look at reporting on food Brexit in the UK media.

The Eurozone crisis and Euroscepticism in the European press

ABSTRACT The representation of EU debates in the mass media has received comparatively little attention in studies on Euroscepticism, despite criticism on the EU having become mainstream since the early 1990s in particular. Recently, a number of salient crises have brought European politics to the fore like never before. This article presents an analysis of different types of criticism on and opposition towards the EU as present in media at the height of the Eurozone crisis in 2012. Using a four-fold typology, it looks at views about the EU and its policies as present in coverage by quality newspapers in Austria, Ireland and the Netherlands. An analysis of 1,085 claims from 454 articles shows that, rather than rejecting integration or EU involvement in certain policies, criticism was predominantly aimed at existing policies and on presenting different policy options.

The Great Secession: Ethno-National Rebirth and the Politics of Turkish–German Belonging

Germany is facing a contemporary mainstreaming of the far right, which has a long tradition of wanting “Turks out!” Turkish immigrants have been the main strangers in Germany following the guest-worker treaty signed in 1961, physically close as friends, yet culturally distant as foes. From September 2015 onwards, German–Turkish politics of belonging, the Turkish issue, underwent a contentious period resulting in secessions between German and Turkish authorities in September 2017. Against this background, this article asks: How did mainstream political actors in Germany emplot the Turkish issue while a far-right challenger party sought to establish a far-right narrative of ethno-national rebirth? The temporal unfolding of the Turkish issue is explored by drawing on media analysis (n = 1120), interpretive process-tracing and narrative genre analysis of claims raised by political actors in German and Turkish newspapers. In order to visualize how the Turkish issue evolved between 2000 and 2017 in media discourse, 546 articles in the mainstream quality newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were collected. The Great Secession period between 2015 and 2017 was selected for an in-depth case study. To conduct interpretive process-tracing and narrative genre analysis of this case, another 574 articles in the German Süddeutsche Zeitung and Turkish Hürriyet were analysed. In so doing, this article contributes to (1) the study of belonging and identity by adopting a novel approach to boundary studies, combining narrative genre analysis with Habermas’ communicative action theory, and (2) the study of political strategies of adapting, ignoring or demarcating far-right contenders by, again, introducing a narrative approach to political communication and mobilization processes. The analysis shows that, in the first stage of the Great Secession period, inclusionary and exclusionary boundaries competed, while in later stages inclusionary boundaries were cast aside by exclusionary boundaries after reputable mainstream party-political actors adopted and thus legitimized far-right story elements.

The perspective of citizens and the media concerning the responsibility of corporations

PurposeIn the public debate, companies are confronted with conflicting expectations regarding their responsibility. An inconsistent understanding of the responsibility of corporations may affect the acceptance of corporate actions. The purpose of this study is to take this observation as a starting point and to analyze corporate responsibility assessments of different actors.Design/methodology/approachIn the course of two online surveys conducted by a polling institute at the end of January 2017, 1,003 German citizens were asked about their expectations concerning the responsibility of corporations. One survey was mainly focused on clothing manufacturers, the other one on banks. Moreover, a content analysis of nationwide German quality newspapers aims at showing the media perspective. By using an extensive combination of keywords, 1069 articles were analyzed for the period from 1 January to 31 December 2016. The coding revealed 345 relevant articles containing 717 responsibility-related judgments.FindingsOverall, the systematic comparison of both perspectives show differences between societal perspectives and therefore presents an explanation for conflicting expectations concerning the responsibility of corporations.Research limitations/implicationsThe measurement of judgments on responsibility is a complex endeavor. Findings may be limited due to an extensive coding process and a restricted comparability of the two surveys and the content analysis. Moreover, findings are focused on clothing manufacturers and banks only.Originality/valueA focus on responsibility assessments delivers a deeper understanding of different perspectives concerning the responsibility of corporations in the public debate.

Media attention to large-scale corporate scandals: Hype and boredom in the age of social media

We investigate how media attention to large-scale corporate scandals has changed over time, and how the clustering of different scandals alters media attention to individual scandals. Building on the literature on media agenda-setting, we examine quality newspaper coverage for a sample of 123 major corporate scandals between 1990 and 2016. Whilst previous studies have typically examined specific corporate scandals in isolation, we find that the interplay of scandals is characterized both by crowding-in processes (or hype effects) – which predominantly occur when scandals fall into different categories – and crowding-out processes (or boredom effects) – which dominate when scandals are of one and the same category. Over time, and reflecting the emergence of social media, we find substantial changes in attention patterns, where more recent scandals have attracted significantly higher peaks of attention followed by a much steeper decline.

Linguistic, Pragmatic, and Stylistic Peculiarities of 2018 FIFA World Cup Representation in British Media-Discourse

The purpose of the present research is to analyse linguistic, pragmatic, genre and stylistic peculiarities of the articles from British mass-media which cover the organization and the results of the 2018 World Cup. The importance of such analysis is determined by the necessity to investigate the public evaluation of the phenomenon under study. This will contribute to the understanding of mundane interpretations of sport in a particular culture and analyse the means of the country’s image formation. Quality and tabloid newspapers were used as the basis for the analysis, with the aim of creating an integral picture of the world’s attitude to the World Cup. The methods of discourse analysis and the analysis of the communicative situations let the author conclude that political discourse has an enormous influence on sport discourse. The politicization of sport discourse happens because of the discussion of topics from the conceptual sphere POLITICS, through the inclusion of controversial issues, on which Russia has not yet reached an understanding with the world community, into defamatory contexts. In the framework of sport discourse, the ‘friend-foe’ opposition becomes explicit, which is also characteristic of political discourse. In the British mass-media the materials with a positive illocutionary intention are mostly realized alongside with the foregrounding of politically charged issues and axiologically marked concepts. The analysis of publications in foreign mass-media is important for the purpose of understanding that ambitious sport projects help to ruin the stereotypes about Russia and create a positive image of the country on the world arena.

Editorial journalism and political interests: Comparing the coverage of Dilma Rousseff’s impeachment in Brazilian newspapers

The article investigates how Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo – two of the leading Brazilian quality newspapers – expressed their editorial positions on the impeachment of the ex-president Dilma Rousseff. The comparative study encompasses quantitative and qualitative methods to examine 506 editorial texts published between 2015 and 2016. By using Content Analysis, the research found out that Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo take different positions along the process: each newspaper presents particular arguments to justify the impeachment’s legitimacy; regarding the solution for the political situation, O Estado de S. Paulo fully supports the impeachment, while Folha de S. Paulo asks for the then president and her vice-president to resign. In the end, both organizations agree in their editorials that Rousseff has to be removed from office. At the same time, Folha de S. Paulo and O Estado de S. Paulo try to avoid being seen as actors conspiring against democracy, which makes them dispute whether Rousseff’s impeachment was or not a coup. This research provides the opportunity to investigate to what extent journalism loosens its place as a watchdog to behave as a demanding actor.

What news from the sea? Assessing the presence of marine issues in the Portuguese quality press

The current study aimed at characterizing the marine news in a Portuguese quality newspaper between October 2002 and December 2010. The search for keywords related to the marine environment resulted in the collection of 1309 news items, with a mean number of 13.22 news per month. These modest values seem to be related to the low public interest and knowledge on environmental and science themes shown in several national surveys. Nevertheless, there were two peaks in the number of news corresponding to the oil spills of the tanker Prestige in Spain and the rig Deepwater Horizon in the USA. The most common themes on the studied news were pollution, marine species/habitats and fisheries, while others such as coastal planning or marine science research were less relevant. Additionally, it was found that news about marine sciences frequently used only a neutral tone (78%), with the occasional use of a positive (12%) and or a negative tone (10%).

Coherence in hybrid texts: The case of the Patient Information Leaflet genre

This article investigates the degree of coherence in a particular type of hybrid text, viz. the Patient Information Leaflet, which is a lay-oriented genre fusing original and derived textual elements. Having their source in the specialized genre named Summary of Product Characteristics, derived segments undergo various kinds and degrees of registerial simplification in the transfer to the Patient Information Leaflet. Given this complex textual genesis, the aim of the article is to investigate the nature and degree of coherence in the Patient Information Leaflet genre, and, more specifically, to investigate the degree of integration between derived and non-derived elements. Following Halliday/Hasan’s (1976) definition of the coherence concept, the article examines the genre’s contextual coherence in the form of registerial consistency and its text-internal coherence in the form of cohesiveness. For the investigation of cohesiveness, the analytical framework known as Cohesive Harmony Analysis (Hasan 1984, 1985) has been applied to a sample text from the genre, and likewise to a parallel lay-oriented, but non-hybrid text from the health column of a British quality newspaper, which serves as a control. While the investigation confirms already well-known problems with registerial consistency in the Patient Information Leaflet genre, the analytical results reflect a high degree of cohesiveness, and one that is even markedly higher than that of the non-hybrid control text. Further, the results reflect a high level of integration between derived and non-derived segments in the Patient Information Leaflet.

EXTERNAL MEDIA IMAGE OF UKRAINE (BASED ON “THE GUARDIAN” MATERIALS)


 
 
 
 The purpose of the article is to identify the main tendencies of the coverage of Ukrainian themes by the British media resource The Guardian during 2013– 2019. The selection of the research object is based on the media type (“quality newspaper”, which does not depend on the influence of large capital, political parties and any other institutions), its reputation and the developed multi-platform model of content distribution among the international audience.Having used the methods of monitoring, comparative and quantitative content analysis of the array of texts, published on the online resource theguardian.com for the period of time from 2013 till 2018, the specificity of the presentation of Ukraine by one of the most influential international media is analyzed and as a result, we can state that it tends to be of a sporadic nature. The study is based on the manual search of publications, which included over 4,000 materials of various genres on Ukraine-related topics. As the selection criteria, we used the thematic direction of the texts, the chronological framework (2013-2018), and the context of events.The survey results have showed that there are certain gaps in the implementation of Ukraine's information policy, the level of interest in Ukrainian topics depends on the degree of events’ resonance, and the main focus of the British media is on the reforms implementation, the introduction of a visa-free regime with the EU, the provision of financial assistance to Ukraine and adaptation of Ukrainian legislation in line with the European law norms. The study has found that there is a rather negative trend: the British press mentions Ukraine mainly in the context of the actualization of Russian issues, which does not contribute to the formation of a country’s positive image among international community. Only a competent systematic information policy, which ensures the nuances of a comprehensive coverage of Ukrainian eurointegration aspects, can improve the situation, described in the article. Given the active phase of the European integration processes in Ukraine, namely the introduction of a relevant action plan and the reforming process in the key public spheres in line with EU requirements, it is extremely important to inform the global community about the progress, being made towards the European future of Ukraine. The following can be achieved through the formulation and dissemination of clear “messages” about Ukraine among the international media that will protect the country’s interests, improve its image and ensure a permanent presence in the global information space.
 
 
 

Covering rape

The focus of this paper is a corpus study of the representation of rape in the mainstream quality press in the UK and a discussion of the broader social implications of such representation. This paper uses corpus analysis tools to study the discourse that surrounds the terms ‘rape’ and ‘raped’ and their collocates in a corpus of four British quality newspapers and compares the findings of the corpus analysis with corpus-external data (e.g. statistics on rape crimes, government reports, rape myths) to determine whether (and to what extent) the images foregrounded by the press in the corpus echo such contextual information. On the basis of this comparison, I argue that the representation of rape in the corpus reflects and reinforces dominant stereotypical understandings of rape rooted in patriarchal conceptualisations of gender roles and sexualities and perpetuated by established professional practices in mainstream journalism.

Economy through a lens: Distortions of policy coverage in UK national newspapers

This paper shows that communication of economic news varies across newspapers in the United Kingdom. We develop new time series of economic news tonality using a unique dataset of policy influenced articles published in major UK newspapers. We show that the volume and tonality of news respond to current economic conditions. For example, the nature of news changes around events of economic uncertainty such as the global financial crisis and the post-EU referendum periods. We also provide illustrative evidence that communication differs across newspaper formats. Tabloids, as opposed to quality newspapers, tend to express news more negatively, and mostly report policy-related news during periods of economic stress. The integral importance of these results is illustrated by news reaction curves showing a strong positive relationship mostly lasting three months between consumer sentiments and news.

The Discursive Appeal to Solidarity and Partisan Journalism in Europe’s Migration Crisis

The article analyses the discursive appeal to solidarity in the mass media during the unfolding of Europe’s migration crisis. Solidarity was claimed by numerous actors in the public discourse to legitimise political decisions and mobilise public opinion. While it seems that the call for solidarity was shared by many actors, media studies show the ‘partisan journalism’ of media outlets. Thus, the political orientation of media outlets influences their coverage of public debates. Hence, to what extent do different quality newspapers cover the same solidarity claims in times of crisis? In order to answer this question, the crisis coverage of two German and two Irish newspapers with centre-left and centre-right political orientations is examined via the discourse network methodology. Germany is selected due to high political parallelism and a strong affectedness by the crisis, while Ireland is selected because of low political parallelism and a weak affectedness by the migration crisis. The findings demonstrate that partisan journalism persists during Europe’s migration crisis. Especially German party actors are present in both countries, underpinning the central position of Germany. Regarding the appeal to solidarity, political solidarity claims prevail in all four newspapers, indicating the political-institutional asymmetry in the Common European Asylum System. The study contributes to the strategic framing of concepts in public debates and demonstrates that the left-right distinction of media outlets is hardly affected by the migration crisis.

Exploration of a fragmented discourse. Privacy and data security in Süddeutsche Zeitung: 2007–2017

<p>The goal of this exploratory case study is to identify different facets of news reporting on surveillance, privacy and data security, and more specifically, how risks in this context are portrayed. The theoretical foundation consists of two elements: 1) the concept of mediatized risk culture, and 2) the discursive arena model of risk communication, which provides the normative background for assessing news reporting. A text-mining approach (topic modeling) is applied to analyze relevant coverage of the German quality newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. The study yields a total of seven topics which belong to three categories: violation of privacy norms, power and law enforcement, and datafication. The results show that despite the de-mystification of digital technology after the Snowden leaks, coverage has recently become more affirmative and less focused on risk. We conclude that this may indicate a normalization of mass surveillance and data harvesting even in Germany, a society which traditionally values privacy. In order to add more context to our findings, however, further qualitative analyses were needed. The paper serves as a starting point for further research on media reporting of surveillance, privacy and data security.</p>

El encuadre del islam y los musulmanes: la cobertura periodística en España

Spain ranks low among European democracies regarding negative attitudes toward Muslims and Islam. Islamophobia does not appear to be a contentious issue in the Spanish political arena as to the definition of 'us,' even though Moroccans have become the largest migrant community, and even though Spain is currently one of the three major Member States of first entry into the Union from Middle East and North Africa. By conducting a media frame analysis, the aim of this paper is to know whether and to what extent the Spanish large-circulation quality newspapers portray Muslims and Islam as strange, monolithic and problematic. Variations according to ideology and the nature of the events reported are taken into account. This is an empirical and longitudinal study covering an entire year. Conclusions are expected to further contribute to comparative investigations.

The discourse of assisted dying in the British vs Italian news media

This paper proposes an investigation into the discourse that surrounds and informs the communication of medically assisted death. The aim is to produce an analysis of assisted dying discourse in the British vs Italian news media to investigate how they construct this type of discourse in terms of actors, ideologies, and cultural aspects. This has been done by collecting a corpus of texts on the topic from English and Italian speaking online quality newspapers. The collection was analysed using quantitative and qualitative methods. The perspective adopted for the qualitative interpretation was that of Critical Discourse Analysis for the socially relevant issues that the topic addresses. Results show how the language used by the media to deal with this bioethical issue reflects that a) in both corpora, actors tend to be the same, including doctors, patients, courts and parliament, especially in the UK, where a law on assisted dying has not been passed yet; b) in both countries, powerful ideologies are at play, principally in the form of Christian views and especially Catholic ones in Italy; c) some cultural differences emerge, especially as regards the diverse legal systems and the specific cases of British or Italian citizens whose stories have contributed to raising awareness on the issue and to influencing the political debate about it in the respective countries.