Print News Research Articles

Representations of refugees and asylum seekers during the 2013 federal election

Immigration policy, arrival modes, human rights, and international obligations have all been part of the debate that has ensued over the Australian Government’s policy response towards refugees and asylum seekers. This debate was a central campaign focus in the lead up to the 2013 Australian federal election and was accompanied by extensive media coverage. This media coverage is a significant contributor to the representation of refugees and asylum seekers to the Australian public. This study explores how refugees and asylum seekers were represented in Australian print news media in the period immediately before and after the 2013 federal election. Using news framing and critical discourse analysis, this study examined 162 articles, published between 7 August and 8 October 2013, in Australian newspapers. The analysis revealed two opposing themes in the representation of asylum seekers: refugees and asylum seekers were represented as either a threat requiring a military intervention or as victims requiring management. The findings of this study demonstrate the ways in which the print media contribute to a polarised representation of refugees and asylum seekers and the potential deleterious effect of this dichotomous construction to an informed public opinion.

Online News Production, Consumption and Immediacy: The Remediation Perspective

Evidence suggests that media displacement theory has limitation to explain the current development in news industry. This paper turns to the work of Bolter and Grusin on remediation which promotes the idea that old media are being transformed into new digital forms. Anchoring on this idea, this paper offers ways of understanding the processes in which online news sources repurpose print news for digital spaces via remediation. Three processes were identified; (1) borrowing the content and reusing it in a different format, (2) borrowing the format only and not the content, and (3) absorbing the older medium in its entirety. The paper also explores users’ experience with new news media and suggests that greater interactivity and user control in online environment indicate the experience of immediacy. To achieve immediacy is the goal of all media, and its manifestation ranges from an improved experience to a sense of being there (or presence) in media use. Linking remediation and literature in journalism studies, this essay contests the straightforward definition of news immediacy and introduces a theoretically driven concept focusing on a sense of presence in news consumption. The dimension of immediacy adds to our knowledge of the complementary use of online and print news media, and is central to the issue of media survival and competition in today’s digital age. Keywords: immediacy, remediation, online news, news consumption, media displacement

Deflection, disassociation, & acknowledgement: a content analysis of the 2011–2014 media framing of hydraulic fracturing and Oklahoma earthquakes

In June of 2014, geologists reported that, for the first time, more earthquakes greater than magnitude 3.0 occurred in Oklahoma than in California [Terry-Cobo, 2014]. In Oklahoma, the frequency of earthquakes that are strong enough to be felt has increased 44 times in recent years and this has been correlated to a dramatic increase in high-volume, horizontal hydraulic fracturing (HVHHF) operations [Hume, 2014]. The aims of this study are: (1) to determine how hydraulic fracturing, commonly called fracking, and Oklahoma earthquakes are framed by print-based media at the local, national, and international levels; (2) to understand how the association between these factors has evolved over time; and (3) to further analyze the differences between experts on the subjects of causality and threat characterization (e.g., severity). A total of 169 print news reports were included for analysis: 48 local/Oklahoma reports (28% of total sample), 72 national reports (42% of total sample) and 49 international news reports (30% of total sample). The findings reveal significant differences in the frame techniques, sources of information, and the foci of subject matter between three different media scales in print based media. Results, discussion and implications are provided.

A network perspective on mediated Europeanized public spheres: Assessing the degree of Europeanized media coverage in light of the 2014 European Parliament election

The European Union has become an active political player in the political realm, raising the question about the European Union’s linkages with all aspects of political life reflected in national Europeanized public spheres. This study offers empirical evidence on the extent to which mass media support, challenge or even ignore political representatives in European Union affairs, and thus legitimize, respectively delegitimize European Union governance. The analysis is based on large-scale content analyses of print, TV and online news gathered before and after the 2014 European Parliament election in Austria ( N = 6432). Semantic networks show that national media focus on the European Union’s legislative body, the implications of the European Union’s exclusive competences on the nation state and on well-established European Union member countries. In doing so, national Europeanized public spheres constituted by the media legitimize the European Union’s governance in these areas while other aspects of European integration are ignored.

Content Analysis of US News Stories About E-Cigarettes in 2015.

Coverage of e-cigarettes in the news media may shape public perceptions about them but little is known about such news content. This content analysis characterized discussion of e-cigarettes in leading print and online US news sources in 2015. We searched Access World News and Factiva databases for e-cigarette-related news articles appearing in the top 30 circulating newspapers, 4 newswires, and 4 online news sources in the United States in 2015 (n = 295). Coders identified the presence of various e-cigarette topics (e.g. regulation), and benefit and risk statements. Nearly half of articles (45.1%) focused primarily on e-cigarette policy/regulatory issues, although e-cigarette prevalence (21.0%) and health effects (21.7%) were common main topics. Concerns about youth were frequently mentioned, including the rise in youth e-cigarette use (45.4%), gateway to smoking potential (33.9%) and appeal of flavors (22.4%). Youth e-cigarette prevalence was more frequently mentioned than adult prevalence in articles discussing FDA regulation (61% vs. 13.5%, respectively). News articles more frequently discussed potential e-cigarette risks or concerns (80%) than benefits (45.4%), such as smoking harm-reduction. Quoted physicians, researchers, and government representatives were more likely to refer to e-cigarette risks than benefits. In 2015, rising rates of e-cigarette use among youth and policy strategies to address e-cigarettes dominated US e-cigarette news stories, leading up to their FDA regulation in 2016. Statements about e-cigarettes' potential risks were frequently attributed to trusted sources such as physicians, and outnumbered claims about their harm-reduction benefits. Such coverage may impact e-cigarette risk perceptions, use intentions and policy support. In the year leading up to the FDA's Deeming Rule, concerns about youth use or potential use were frequently discussed in e-cigarette news. News articles more frequently discussed potential e-cigarette risks/concerns compared to potential harm-reduction benefits relative to tobacco cigarettes. While such coverage may inform the public about potential e-cigarette risks, they may also contribute to increasing perceptions that e-cigarettes are as harmful as tobacco cigarettes. E-cigarette risk and benefit statements were most frequently made by or attributed to researchers and physicians in articles, which is significant given that they may be particularly trusted sources of e-cigarette risk information.

Metaphor use in the political communication of major resource projects in Australia

This article explores the patterns of political communication surrounding the environmental regulation of major Australian resource projects during the Business Advisory Forum of April 2012. The Forum discussed business and government responses to major project approvals to improve national productivity at a time when these projects also posed significant implications for anthropogenic global warming. The article’s method is to examine print news articles published during this period. While the international literature has long demonstrated how the American fossil fuel lobby has employed metaphor to characterise climate change as a ‘non-problem’—therefore allegedly making regulation of greenhouse gas emissions economically and politically unnecessary—no Australian study of metaphor use in climate science news has been conducted. This article, in finding news stories on so-called ‘green tape’ environmental regulation were saturated with metaphor clusters, argues that journalistic metaphor use has made the complex issue of environmental regulation accessible to mass audiences. But, in so doing, we also argue this metaphor use has supported business and government’s position on environmental deregulation of major projects. Finally, this article also argues that some journalists’ use of metaphors encouraged policy-makers to adopt, and re-use, journalists’ own language and, in so doing, allow those journalists to be seen as complicit in the shaping of softer public attitudes to the impact of major projects on anthropogenic climate change.

Through a different gate: An automated content analysis of how online news and print news differ

We investigate how news values differ between online and print news articles. We hypothesize that print and online articles differ in terms of news values because of differences in the routines used to produce them. Based on a quantitative automated content analysis of N = 762,095 Dutch news items, we show that online news items are more likely to be follow-up items than print items, and that there are further differences regarding news values like references to persons, the power elite, negativity, and positivity. In order to conduct this large-scale analysis, we developed innovative methods to automatically code a wide range of news values. In particular, this article demonstrates how techniques such as sentiment analysis, named entity recognition, supervised machine learning, and automated queries of external databases can be combined and used to study journalistic content. Possible explanations for the difference found between online and offline news are discussed.

Global issue, developed country bias: the Paris climate conference as covered by daily print news organizations in 13 nations

To understand how media portrayed the pivotal 2015 UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COP21) in Paris, we assessed 2580 articles that appeared during the 2 weeks of the conference in the online versions of the two or three leading print newspapers in four developed countries, six emerging economies, and three developing countries: the USA, France, UK, Australia, India, China, South Africa, Brazil, Bolivia, Nigeria, United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, and Bangladesh. Categorization by key topics revealed that much of the coverage left readers with little understanding of many of the issues discussed at COP21, and in particular, those of high priority to developing nations. For example, there was little coverage of adaptation to climate impacts and far higher coverage of emissions reductions (mitigation). Print stories largely were updates on the talks, or focused on activists, the actions of world leaders at the conference, and the environmental effects of climate change. Furthermore, articles under-reported key issues for poorer nations such as equity, human rights, and the effects on human populations. Online coverage by print news organizations was heavily skewed towards the developed world, with little discussion of the most vulnerable countries or the issues that are important to them. These trends highlight the bias of coverage to developed nation perspectives and the persistence of journalistic norms that seek to emphasize drama, novelty, and balance in news coverage.

Power revealed: masking police officers in the public sphere

Demonstrations which spill over into conflict have always required the police to distinguish between members of the public exercising their right to protest and members of the public engaging in criminal activity, i.e. between ‘good protesters’ and ‘bad protesters’. Journalists who depended heavily upon official sources when constructing news narratives have historically reproduced these distinctions and, as a result, images of violent protesters have frequently been used to delegitimize their claims. However a number of high profile investigations into the policing of protest in the UK mean that police officers are also being subjected to distinctions made by inquiry panels between ‘good police officers’ and ‘bad police officers’. Thus a new trope is emerging in popular print and online news narratives in which the actions of the police rather than protesters are becoming the object of the public’s attention. These dynamics are explored with reference to the ways in which confrontations between protesters and police were pictured in the aftermath of Ian Tomlinson’s death. The article focuses in particular on the way in which images highlighting acts of concealment became a significant strand in online and offline news narrative as they developed in the years between Tomlinson’s death in 2009 and the civil suit brought against PC Harwood in 2012. The author argues that images of police officers in militarized helmets and without identity tags become synonymous with the opacity that initially characterized the police force’s response to the death of Tomlinson. She concludes by suggesting that this lack of transparency contrasted with the extended visibility offered by mobile phone footage of the demonstration and contributed to the police’s inability to frame G20 protesters as violent agitators.

Protecting Teachers or Protecting Children? Media Representations of Vergara v. California

Over the past five years, the laws governing teachers’ employment have been at the center of legal and political conflicts in state courts and elections across the United States. Vergara v. California challenged five California state statutes that provide employment protections for teachers. Drawing on the theory of political spectacle, we conducted a media content analysis of 42 print news media articles published prior to the court’s decision in June 2014. Two aspects of political spectacle, the use of metaphor and the illusion of rationality were the most salient and deployed in ways that were more closely aligned with the student plaintiffs’ claims than the statutes’ defenders. We conclude by highlighting how the framing of these and other similar stories may shape subsequent debates about public education in the United States.

Fear of the Fear of the Flu: Assumptions About Media Effects in the 2009 Pandemic

In this article, we present a qualitative study of the Norwegian print news coverage of the 2009 pandemic. In initial research, we found fear to be a notable aspect of the coverage. In studying a relevant subsample in-depth, we discovered that, although there was no sound basis on which to make conclusions about what effects the coverage was having on the public, various actors—including media themselves—came on the mediated scene to express fears that it would create fear and panic. We argue that the mediation of the pandemic can hence be seen as a peculiar case of the “third person effect,” that is, the phenomenon that people tend to believe that other people are more severely influenced by the mass media than what they believe themselves to be. This, we suggest, has some implications for how we think about communication in future pandemics and other crises.

“Making It Happen”: Deciphering Government Branding in Light of the Sydney Building Boom

“Making It Happen”: Deciphering Government Branding in Light of the Sydney Building Boom

Earned print media in advancing tobacco control in Himachal Pradesh, India: a descriptive study

BackgroundThe Union-Bloomberg Initiative tobacco control projects were implemented in Himachal Pradesh (a hilly state in North India) from 2007 to 2014. The project focused on the establishment of an administrative...

Thieves like us: the British monarchy, celebrity, and settler colonialism

ABSTRACTThis article considers how the treatment of the British Royal Family as celebrities simultaneously maintains and displaces the white diasporic ties between Commonwealth settler nations. The media production and consumption of the House of Windsor in terms of celebrity culture is a crucial way in which the British monarchy is legitimised as an important part of civil and public life in settler countries such as Australia and New Zealand. This article focuses on print news reporting of two state visits by Prince William to Australia and New Zealand in 2010 and 2011. As part of this reporting, I examine the mediation of protocols of sovereign welcome and recognition by and for the Royal Family and Gadigal and Māori peoples in terms of their contribution to a civic polity that normalises settler durability. Although Royal visits are enabled by white diasporic links between settler countries and the United Kingdom, I argue that media tropes of celebrity aura and divine charisma function to ex-nominate whiteness and race from media reporting on the British Royal Family. The celebritisation of constitutional monarchy has the effect of obscuring the racial and religious power that authorises constitutional monarchy as well as these states’ settler colonial histories.

Exploring Australian journalism discursive practices in reporting rape: The pitiful predator and the silent victim

This article draws on the qualitative research component of a mixed-methods project exploring the Australian news media’s representation of violence against women. This critical discourse analysis is on print and online news reporting of the case of ‘Kings Cross Nightclub Rapist Luke Lazarus’, who in March 2015 was tried and convicted of raping a female club-goer in a laneway behind his father’s nightclub in Sydney, Australia. We explore the journalism discursive practices employed in the production of the news reports about the Lazarus trial. Our analysis shows how some lexical features, quoting strategies and structuring elements serve to minimise the victim’s experience while emphasising the adverse effects of the trial on the accused. Furthermore, we demonstrate how such practices allow for the graphic representation of the attack in a salacious manner while minimising the impact of the crime on the victim by selectively referencing her victim impact statement. We found some differences between print and online news stories about this case, some of which may be attributable to the greater space available to the telling of news stories online. We conclude that in news reporting of the Lazarus case, routine journalism discursive practices, such as the inverted pyramid news-writing structure and decisions about who and what to quote, serve simultaneously to diminish the victim’s experience while objectifying her. These results build on international findings about media reporting practices in relation to violence against women and add substantially to what we know about these practices in Australia.

‘Taking the Politics out of Broccoli’: Debating (De)meatification in UK National and Regional Newspaper Coverage of the Meat Free Mondays Campaign

AbstractThis article addresses UK society's relationship with meat and specifically explores the extent to which a process of ‘de‐meatification’ is underway in this context and one of the mechanisms involved. It does so through analysis of reporting of the Meat Free Mondays (MFM) campaign in the national and regional British print news media. MFM offers a convenient yet powerful vehicle for trying to understand shifting meanings of meat not least because it directly challenges, and generates debate about the dominant – meat based – diet. The article concludes by arguing that a shift is taking place in the status of meat within UK society with the print news media acting as a mechanism that is working in support of de‐meatification. However, these conclusions are qualified in a number of important ways, including the anthropocentrism of the (de)meatification debate, its geographical variability and its weakly politicised character.

Analysis of print news media framing of ketamine treatment in the United States and Canada from 2000 to 2015.

ObjectivesThere are multifaceted views on the use of ketamine, a potentially addictive substance, to treat mental health problems. The past 15 years have seen growing media coverage of ketamine for medical and other purposes. This study examined the print news media coverage of medical and other uses of ketamine in North America to determine orientations and trends over time.MethodsPrint newspaper coverage of ketamine from 2000 to 2015 was reviewed, resulting in 43 print news articles from 28 North American newspapers. A 55-item structured coding instrument was applied to assess news reports of ketamine. Items captured negative and positive aspects, therapeutic use of ketamine, and adverse side effects. Chi-squares tested for changes in trends over time.ResultsIn the 15-year reviewed period, the three most frequent themes related to ketamine were: abuse (68.2%), legal status (34.1%), and clinical use in anesthesia (31.8%). There was significant change in trends during two periods (2000–2007 and 2008–2015). In 2008–2015, print news media articles were significantly more likely to encourage clinical use of ketamine to treat depression (p = 0.002), to treat treatment resistant depression (p = 0.043), and to claim that ketamine is more effective than conventional antidepressants (p = 0.043).ConclusionsOur review found consistent positive changes in the portrayals of ketamine by the print news media as a therapeutic antidepressant that mirror the recent scientific publications. These changes in news media reporting might influence the popularity of ketamine use to treat clinical depression. Guidance is required for journalists on objective reporting of medical research findings, including limitations of current research evidence and potential risks of ketamine.

Mapping the Health Information Landscape in a Rural, Culturally Diverse Region: Implications for Interventions to Reduce Information Inequality.

The media is an important source of health information, especially critical in rural communities with geographically-dispersed populations that are harder to reach through other channels. Yet health information is unequally distributed; these information disparities are compounded in rural areas, which may contribute to health disparities. We identify and describe health-related news in a culturally-diverse rural California county characterized by high levels of poverty, unemployment, low educational attainment, and over half of Mexican-origin. We conducted a census of all available print news sources and then used content analysis to identify and characterize all health information printed in a 6-month study period. A total of 570 health-related articles were published. Five newspapers accounted for more than 80% of published health-related articles (n=466); only one targeted the majority Latino population. The most common topic was access to health care/insurance/policy (33%), followed by diet/nutrition (13%), infectious disease (10%), and general prevention (9%). Just over one-quarter of health-related articles included useful information. Differences across newspaper types existed: independent newspapers reported more on health-related events compared with chain newspapers, and both ethnic-targeted newspapers and independently-published papers were more likely to include useful information compared with chain newspapers. While this region suffers from high rates of obesity and diabetes, there were relatively few articles on obesity and diabetes themselves, or linking behavioral risk factors with these conditions. One area we found absent from coverage pertained to the numerous environmental health threats prevalent in this heavily polluted, agricultural area (just 40 articles discussed environmental health threats). We also discovered that coverage of social determinants of health was lacking (just 24 of the 570 health articles), which was notable in a region that suffers extreme economic, educational, and health disparities. This analysis of a rural region's local news coverage of health issues demonstrates significant opportunity to engage with rural local media, particularly ethnic media, to disseminate health information. Such a strategy holds considerable promise to advance public health goals using a multilevel approach: From an individual perspective, improving the amount and utility of the information can inform and educate publics in areas with otherwise low levels of health information access. From a policy perspective, improving coverage of the social determinants of health could shape public opinion to support policies that improve health.

Thinking inside the frame: A framing analysis of the humanities in Danish print news media.

The humanities, the natural and social sciences all represent advanced and systematic knowledge production-and they all receive public funding for doing so. However, although the field of public understanding of science has been well established for decades, similar research attention has not been directed at the humanities. The purpose of this study is to argue the case for further research of public understanding of the humanities and to take a first step in that direction by presenting a study of the framing of the humanities in Danish print news media. Different framings of the humanities are analyzed. Despite the differences in the issue-specific frames, the generic framing of the humanities shared by most articles is as follows: 75% explicitly frame the humanities as deficit, while the remaining 25% are more neutral. Consequently, if newspapers constitute the only source of information concerning the humanities, newsreaders may not be much wiser in understanding what the humanities might be-but they will know that whatever the humanities is, it is broken and useless.

Constructing Dysfunction: News Coverage of Teenagers and Social Media

Cultural storytellers such as journalists play a meaningful role in shaping how adults think about the role that social media play in teenagers’ lives. To better assess what adults might be learning, we employed a critical, qualitative approach to examine how contemporary news media constructed cultural understandings of teens’ relationship with social media. Our analysis of 339 print and online news articles from 2013–2014 found that the news media constructed a mediated reality that placed dysfunction as the defining characteristic of teens’ relationship with social media. The news articles consistently positioned teenagers and social media as at odds with one another, entwined in an unhealthy, frequently dangerous union. Discussions of the self-expressive, creative, and communicative practices of teen social media users were undermined or absent altogether. Altogether, the coverage created a mediated reality that denied teenage agency and obscured the diversity of teenagers’ experiences and social media practices.