Nexis UK Research Articles

Conjecturing Fearful Futures: Journalistic Discourses on Deepfakes

ABSTRACT This paper investigates journalistic discourses on “deepfakes” as the future of fake news. We analyze journalistic discourses on deepfakes over an 18-month period from 1 January 2018, when a GoogleTrends search demonstrates that the term first began to circulate, to 1 July 2019, shortly after an altered video of Nancy Pelosi, the US Speaker of the House, circulated on social media. Based on a comprehensive thematic analysis of English-language news stories on the topic, drawn from Nexis UK, we suggest that journalistic responses to deepfakes reveal deeper anxieties both about the future of the information environment and journalism’s role within this environment. Concerns that the audiovisual nature of deepfakes makes them inherently more believable than previous fake news forms leads to worries over the impending weaponization of deepfakes by resource-rich “bad actors.” At stake is the trustworthiness of media content, and journalists’ role in providing verified content to the public. We argue that journalists conjure up speculative worst-case scenarios around deepfakes—what we refer to as “conjectured specifity” to highlight the vital importance of journalism as a bulwark against fabrication and a defender of truth.

New Ways of Working? A Rapid Exploration of Emerging Evidence Regarding the Care of Older People during COVID19.

Health and social care staff have had to quickly adapt, respond and improve teamwork, as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our objective was to rapidly summarize the emerging evidence of new ways of working in the care of older people during this period. We conducted an exploration of the emerging evidence within the timeframe of 1 March 2020 to 11 May 2020. To capture a broad perspective, we undertook thematic analysis of Twitter data which was extracted through a broad search for new ways of working in health and social care. For a more in-depth focus on the health and social care of older people, we undertook a systematic scoping of newspapers using the Nexis UK database. We undertook a validation workshop with members of the interprofessional working group of the Irish National Integrated Care Programme for Older People, and with researchers. A total of 317 tweets were extracted related to six new ways of working. There was evidence of using telehealth to provide ongoing care to patients; interprofessional work; team meetings using online platforms; trust and collaboration within teams; as well as teams feeling empowered to change at a local level. 34 newspaper articles were extracted related to new ways of working in the care of older people, originating in England (n = 17), Wales (n = 6), Scotland (n = 6), Ireland (n = 4) and Germany (n = 1). Four main themes were captured that focused on role expansion, innovations in communication, environmental restructuring and enablement. The results of this exploration of emerging evidence show that health and social care teams can transform very rapidly. Much of the change was based on goodwill as a response to the pandemic. Further analysis of empirical evidence of changing practices should include the perspectives of older people and should capture the resources needed to sustain innovations, as well as evaluate gaps in service provision.

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.

Health Care Apps Reported in Newspapers: Content Analysis.

BackgroundNewspapers are considered one of the most viewed and influential media sources in both the United Kingdom and United States. However, information about how newspapers portray health care apps to the readers has been lacking.ObjectiveThis study investigated the reporting on health care apps in newspapers published in the United Kingdom and United States.MethodsThe Nexis UK database was used to identify and select relevant articles. Systematic content analysis of the articles that met the inclusion criteria (articles of any format that contained reference to health care apps or medical apps) within the highest circulated newspapers in the United Kingdom and United States over a period of 10 years (2006-2015) was conducted. Interrater reliability of coding was established using a 10% sample of the chosen articles.ResultsA total of 220 (151 UK and 69 US) relevant newspaper articles were retrieved. Health care apps were most frequently reported on in the Daily Mail and The Guardian (UK newspapers) and in the New York Times and the Washington Post (US newspapers). An exponential rise in published scientific articles (PubMed) on health care-related apps was noted during the study period. A total of 26.4% (58/220) and 19.1% (42/220) of the retrieved newspaper articles appeared in the features and main news sections, respectively. General information about health care apps was the main theme coved by the newspapers (45.9%, 101/220). Most of the articles represented a societal point of view (72.3%, 159/220). The main focus of the articles was on general health matters (48.2%, 106/220) and specific disease matters (36.8%, 81/220). Diabetes was the most frequently mentioned disease in the articles. A high proportion (91.4%, 201/220) of the articles mentioned benefits of using health care apps mainly for personalized care, whereas 24.1% (53/220) of the articles commented on related risks such as anxiety and confidentiality issues. Almost half (45.9%, 101/220) of the articles mentioned potential facilitators to the use of apps; less than 10% (16/220) discussed barriers. Most of the articles (83.6%, 184/220) were judged as having balanced judgment on the present topic and more than half (60.0%, 132/220) of the articles were judged to be of generally low quality.ConclusionsHealth care apps were not widely reported in newspaper articles in the United Kingdom and United States over the study period; however, there appeared to be much more recent interest. Characteristically, the articles focused more frequently on societal impact and on general health rather than on disease-specific apps.

Vulnerable children, stigmatised smokers: The social construction of target audiences in media debates on policies regulating smoking in vehicles.

Following restrictions on smoking in vehicles carrying children in several countries, legislation to safeguard minors from second-hand smoke exposure in vehicles is under-consideration or has been implemented across the United Kingdom. This article presents the first investigation into social constructions of children, smokers and smoking parents in newsprint media and coverage of debates about protecting children from exposure to second-hand smoke in vehicles. Using Scotland as an example, articles on children’s exposure to second-hand smoke published between 1 January 2004 and 16 February 2014 in three Scottish newspapers were identified using Nexis UK. In all, 131 articles were thematically coded and analysed. Children were portrayed as vulnerable and requiring protection, with few articles highlighting children’s ability to voice concerns about the dangers of smoking. Smokers and smoking parents were mainly portrayed in a factual manner, but also frequently as irresponsible and, in some cases, intentionally imposing harm. Individual smokers were blamed for their recklessness, with only a small number of articles mentioning the need to assist smokers in quitting. Supporters of legislation focused on corresponding discourse, whereas critics directed debates towards established arguments against policy, including individual freedom, privacy and problems of enforcement. Focusing on children’s vulnerability to second-hand smoke might have increased support for legislation but risked a side effect of smokers being stigmatised. The media and supporters of public health policy are encouraged to consider appropriate approaches to raise awareness of the health harms of second-hand smoke to children while avoiding unintended stigmatisation of those in which they want to encourage behaviour change.

Social Misfits or Victims of Exclusion? Contradictory Representations of Irish Travellers in the Irish Press

One of the most significant current discussions in discourse studies is the media representation of socially disadvantaged groups (KhosraviNik, 2009; Baker et al., 2008; van Dijk, 1991). The aim of this study is to examine the Irish media’s attitude towards Irish Travellers who have been pushed to the fringes of society with allegations that their nomadic lifestyle is incompatible with industrialised Irish society (Moore, 2012; van Hout, 2011; McVeigh, 1997). The dataset for this paper is comprised of newspaper texts from The Irish Times, The Irish Independent and The Irish Daily Mail printed between January 2012 and September 2014. Data were gathered through the Nexis UK database. Because the newspaper corpora vary greatly in size, the analysis was carried out in two stages. First, corpus software AntConc 3.4.3 (Anthony, 2014) was used to obtain high frequency words in the whole corpus to gain an insight into the discourse topics associated with Travellers. Second, journalistic commentaries from three newspapers on the 2014 Oireachtas report were taken into consideration for the analysis of APPRAISAL resources which show evaluative stance of the writers through ATTITUDE, ENGAGEMENT and GRADUATION categories (Martin and White, 2005). Legitimation strategies which were used to justify evaluative stance were also investigated in this stage. The quantitative analysis shows the dominance of ATTITUDE categories in all corpora. The liberal Irish Times positively appraised Travellers and the Oireachtas Report, and justified their support for ethnic recognition through a moral evaluation of previous discrimination policies. The politically right-centre Independent and Daily Mail had rather negative attitudes, and they legitimized their opposition through moral evaluation and rationalization grounded upon the stereotypical images associated with Travellers.

Enriching Great Britain's National Landslide Database by searching newspaper archives

Our understanding of where landslide hazard and impact will be greatest is largely based on our knowledge of past events. Here, we present a method to supplement existing records of landslides in Great Britain by searching an electronic archive of regional newspapers. In Great Britain, the British Geological Survey (BGS) is responsible for updating and maintaining records of landslide events and their impacts in the National Landslide Database (NLD). The NLD contains records of more than 16,500 landslide events in Great Britain. Data sources for the NLD include field surveys, academic articles, grey literature, news, public reports and, since 2012, social media. We aim to supplement the richness of the NLD by (i) identifying additional landslide events, (ii) acting as an additional source of confirmation of events existing in the NLD and (iii) adding more detail to existing database entries. This is done by systematically searching the Nexis UK digital archive of 568 regional newspapers published in the UK. In this paper, we construct a robust Boolean search criterion by experimenting with landslide terminology for four training periods. We then apply this search to all articles published in 2006 and 2012. This resulted in the addition of 111 records of landslide events to the NLD over the 2 years investigated (2006 and 2012). We also find that we were able to obtain information about landslide impact for 60–90% of landslide events identified from newspaper articles. Spatial and temporal patterns of additional landslides identified from newspaper articles are broadly in line with those existing in the NLD, confirming that the NLD is a representative sample of landsliding in Great Britain. This method could now be applied to more time periods and/or other hazards to add richness to databases and thus improve our ability to forecast future events based on records of past events.

Harms to ‘others’ from alcohol consumption in the minimum unit pricing policy debate: a qualitative content analysis of UK newspapers (2005–12)

Background and aimsMinimum unit pricing is a fiscal intervention intended to tackle the social and health harms from alcohol to individual drinkers and wider society. This paper presents the first large-scale qualitative examination of how newsprint media framed the debate around the harms of alcohol consumption to ‘others’ during the development and passing of minimum unit pricing legislation in Scotland.MethodsQualitative content analysis was conducted on seven UK and three Scottish national newspapers between 1 January 2005 and 30 June 2012. Relevant articles were identified using the electronic databases Nexis UK and Newsbank. A total of 403 articles focused on the harms of alcohol consumption to ‘others’ and were eligible for detailed coding and analysis.ResultsAlcohol harms to wider society and communities were identified as being a worsening issue increasingly affecting everyone through shared economic costs, social disorder, crime and violence. The availability of cheap alcohol was blamed, alongside a minority of ‘problem’ youth binge drinkers. The harm caused to families was less widely reported.ConclusionsIf news reporting encourages the public to perceive the harms caused by alcohol to wider society as having reached crisis point, a population-based intervention may be deemed necessary and acceptable. However, the current focus in news reports on youth binge drinkers may be masking the wider issue of overconsumption across the broader population.

The UK language learning crisis in the public media: a critical analysis

Low levels of foreign language learning in the United Kingdom have been attributed to a lack of interest and motivation which, it is claimed, is partly fostered by the media. The present study examines 90 UK newspaper articles that contributed to the public debate on the language learning crisis in the UK between February 2010 and February 2012. Articles were drawn from both national (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland) and regional newspapers via Nexis UK. Adopting a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) theoretical perspective, the authors analyse the themes mentioned in different newspapers, before relating the findings to the target readership demographics of individual newspapers, in order to show how themes identified in particular publications, as well as in the press of the four UK nations, relate to the target readerships and the political context of language policies within England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

A comparative study of British and German press articles on ‘organised crime’ (1999–2009)

Organised crime is the topic of many popular fiction teledramas and films, such as The Sopranos, The Godfather and Goodfellas. The relationship between fiction and fact is delicate. We argue that the same can be said for the influence of the press. How far does the press construct, rather than objectively recount an image of organised crime? We extracted 389 British and German articles from national newspapers that reported organised crime between 1999 and 2009, from the Lexis Nexis (now Nexis UK) database and the online archives of a number of German newspapers. We then analysed them using quantitative and qualitative methods of textual analysis. In this article, we analyse the British and German press discourses on organised crime between 1999 and 2009, to identify their rhetoric and compare their reporting. To do this, we will 1) define terms and explain our methodology; 2) provide a general overview of statistics; 3) provide two specific analyses of reporting of organised crime and 4) discuss our findings.