Public Service News Research Articles

The shadowy realm of news avoidance: Exploring public service news avoidance as negative social action

Abstract Studies on news avoidance rely on a range of theories to explain why news avoidance takes place and its potential consequences, and the debates on different ways of measuring news avoidance have been lively. Despite the numerous approaches and conceptualisations, there is room to theorise what news avoidance entails as a social phenomenon. In this study, we posit that news avoidance can fruitfully be approached as a form of negative social action embedded in a negative social space – a realm of the lifeworld filled with non-doings and non-appearance. We apply this approach, which opens up new questions in the field of news avoidance studies, to a case study of Swedes who opted out of national public service news in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. Findings suggest that avoiders of public service news occupy relatively precarious social positions, and that news avoidance is embedded in a broader negative social space.

Integration durch Repräsentation? Die Rolle des öffentlich-rechtlichen Rundfunks für den gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt

In view of a perceived crisis of legitimacy of public service broadcasting (PSB) and societal debates concerning its functional mandate, this article examines the integration mandate of PSB. It examines how the use of PSB is related to perceived representation and the subjective perception of social cohesion. The results indicate that a more intensive use of public service news services is associated with both a higher perception of representation and a more pronounced sense of community as an indicator of social cohesion. The findings thus underline the social importance of independent, diverse broadcasting.

Danish public service online weather from 2005 to 2022: From meteorological data and information to leisurely commonality

This article combines two neglected elements within the history of online news: public service news sites and weather reporting, and it does so by utilising web archives, which – surprisingly – do not figure very prominently in journalism history. The two elements have – in isolation and in combination – at least in Denmark, become increasingly important as the online news sections of the two public service institutions Denmark’s Radio (DR) and TV2 consistently are among the most visited news sites and since reporting on the weather has gained in prominence and more recently, at least on DR TV, has become increasingly educational in its linking to issues of climate change. This article focusses on online news and conducts a historical analysis of the weather reporting on DR.dk from 2005 to 2022. The analysis seeks to balance the coding of journalistic texts with considerations of the online form of journalism, which here broadly means reading the webpage as a text. A key focus in the analysis is how meteorological data have been woven into cultural and social narratives, some of which are linked to climate change.

Exploring the news media-dark personality nexus: Linking television news consumption, the Dark Triad, and perceived refugee threat

We examine the intricate relationship between media usage, personality traits, and perceived threat towards refugees. Using a diverse sample from six European countries (N = 9,085), we explore the moderating impact of Dark Triad traits on television news consumption. Our findings align with prior studies, indicating that public television news consumption is associated with lower perceived threat, while commercial news consumption shows the opposite pattern. These results likely stem from the divergent framing of migration in the media: public outlets emphasize compassion and integration, while commercial outlets lean towards sensationalism and fear-inducing narratives. Additionally, our study uncovers intriguing insights into the Dark Triad traits. While psychopathy is linked to heightened perceived threat, Machiavellianism and narcissism exhibit a negative association. Surprisingly, the positive relationship between commercial news consumption and perceived threat weakens among individuals high in Machiavellianism. These individuals, driven by self-interest and strategic thinking, may view refugees as potential resources rather than threats. Notably, we find no moderation effect of Dark Triad traits on public service news consumption. This suggests that sensationalized content resonates more with individuals high in these traits, while public service news, focusing on diverse perspectives, has a weaker impact on threat perceptions.

News Personalization and Public Service Media: The Audience Perspective in Three European Countries

By shining a light on the previously neglected combination of public service media (PSM) and the audience perspective, this paper adds to the debate on (algorithmic) news personalization. While news personalization may offer new opportunities, it can clearly also conflict with the PSM mission of universality of access, reach, and content. This empirical study compares the audience perspective on the news personalization of users and non-users of public service news in Germany, France, and the UK. Overall, the findings of the online survey show that users of public service news in Germany and the UK—in comparison to non-users of these services—perceive more risks such as missing out on certain topics or viewpoints, place greater value on a shared public sphere, and more strongly prefer a news selection primarily made by professional news editors. In France, however, the differences between users and non-users of public service news are rarely significant, which is interpreted against the background of the different media systems and the role of PSM. The findings add to the understanding of what public service news audiences expect PSM organizations to provide while keeping the difficult balance between personalization and universality.

Disconnecting from digital news: News avoidance and the ignored role of social class

While research on news avoidance has surged in the last couple of decades, we are still at a scholarly shortage in terms of understanding and theorizing the relationship between social class and the inclination to tune out on the news. In addressing this gap, we rely on a mail-back survey with ten thousand Swedes to study how social class predicts the likelihood of avoiding news from different digital outlets. Results show that people at lower social positions, measured as their relative lack of cultural and economic capital, are significantly more likely to avoid online news. A lack of cultural capital predicts total news avoidance online, avoiding online public service news and the “quality news,” while it lessens the likelihood of avoiding “popular news” online. Lacking economic capital predicts total news avoidance online and avoiding the “popular news.” We conclude the article with three cultural sociological lessons for the study of news avoidance. We call for sensitivity in regard to (1) the multi-dimensional character of social inequality, (2) the symbolic value of different types of news genres and outlets, and (3) social inequality in the normative problematizations of news avoidance.

News, Threats, and Trust: How COVID-19 News Shaped Political Trust, and How Threat Perceptions Conditioned This Relationship

This study explores shifts in political trust during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, examining the role that media consumption and threat perceptions played in individuals’ trust in politics. We combine panel surveys taken before and during the first nation-wide lockdown with webtracking data of participants' online behaviour to paint a nuanced picture of media effects during the crisis. Our work has several findings. First, political trust, an attitude known for its stability, increased following lockdown. Second, consumption of mainstream news on COVID-19 directly hindered this increase, with those reading more news having lower over-time trust, while the relatively minor alternative news consumption had no direct effect on political trust. Third, threat perceptions a) to health and b) from the policy response to the pandemic, have strong and opposite effects on political trust, with threats to health increasing trust, and threats from the government policy response decreasing it. Lastly, these threat perceptions condition the effect of COVID-19 news consumption on political trust: perceptions of threat had the power to both exacerbate and mute the effect of media consumption on government trust during the pandemic. Notably, we show that the expected negative effect of alternative news on political trust only exists for those who did not think COVID-19 posed a threat to their health, while public service news consumption reduced the negative effect produced by government threat perceptions. The paper therefore advances our understanding of the nuanced nature of media effects, particularly as relates to alternative media, especially during moments of crisis.

THE CONVERSATION, TEN YEARS ON: ASSESSING THE IMPACT OF A UNIQUE SCHOLARLY PUBLISHING INITIATIVE

The Conversation (theconversation.com) represents a unique model for communicating scholarly research to the general public via explanatory journalism. Rather than relying on scholars’ personal networks, the promotional efforts of university press offices, or requests from science journalists for comments on current developments, The Conversation offers a platform for scholars across all disciplines to pitch their own stories, gain support from its in-house journalistic staff to develop those stories for a general audience, and see the resulting articles published under Creative Commons licences, enabling them to be republished by commercial and public service news outlets around the world. The overall success of this model, which may be described as ‘journalism-as-a-service’, is evident: articles from The Conversation are regularly republished by major international news outlets from the New York Times through CNN to The Guardian, as well as by domestic outlets across the eight countries and regions in which The Conversation now operates. This panel provides a broad-ranging and multi-faceted assessment of the status of the Conversation project, in its tenth year of operation. The current COVID-19 crisis has particularly highlighted the crisis of expertise and unevenness of scientific literacy amongst journalists, politicians, and the general public. The panel’s assessment of the successes and failures of one of the leading digital science communication initiatives of the past decade provides an important reality check, and offers new insights on what can be done to increase the visibility and impact of rigorous scholarly perspectives from all disciplines of research in public and political debates.

Trust in Danish journalists and news media: in decay or not?

In this article, we examine 1) how trust in Danish journalists and news media has developed over time, 2) whether trust in different types of news media differs, and 3) how people’s party preference affect their trust in journalists and news media. Our analyses are based on comprehensive data from the European Commission, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, Radius Kommunikation, and DR Media Research, and show 1) that trust in journalists and news media is stable over time, 2) that people have higher trust in public service news and quality newspapers and lower trust in tabloid news media, and 3) that party preference explains some variations in trust.

A softer kind of hard news? Data journalism and the digital renewal of public service news in Sweden

Over the past decade, data journalism has received considerable attention among scholars, pointing to novel forms of investigative reporting as well as new daily practices of news production. This study contributes to existing scholarship by conceptualizing data journalism through distinctions between hard and soft news in relation to service journalism. We analyze news produced by specialized data desks in Swedish public service organizations over a 5-year period (2015–2019) and propose a model for how service journalism attributes can be used as a bridge between the binary categories of hard and soft in data journalism. With this model, we point to how data journalism in public service organizations challenges established notions of soft and hard news and how hybrid production practices open up new research trajectories concerning the societal significance of news in the digital age.

News Coverage of the Greek Sovereign Debt Crisis in German Public Service Broadcasting: A Case Study Analysis in Tagesschau, Heute, Brennpunkt and ZDF Spezial

ABSTRACT This study analysed German public-service news coverage of the Greek sovereign debt crisis in the regular news bulletins Tagesschau and heute and the special broadcasts Brennpunkt and ZDF spezial (which provide supplementary reporting on special events) to establish whether the coverage met standards of relevance, neutrality, balance, diversity and analytic quality. It found that although the news coverage was commensurate with the relevance of the topic and satisfied the criterion of diversity, it fell short when it came to the criteria of neutrality, balance and analytic quality. During the study period, the coverage focused on a very small number of topics, journalists allowed their own value judgements and opinions to creep into news and reports, and overall there was an evident slant against the position of the Greek government.

Navigating Alarming Media Messages About Nutrition and Health

This study focuses the emerging need for young people to critically respond to alarming messages in contemporary media highlighting the potential benefits or harms of certain foods. Besides being technical, advancements in the field of nutrition reported in media are often of tentative and speculative character, primarily selected and constructed on the basis of their news value rather than as representing established knowledge. The study aims to study students’ capabilities to navigate and critically respond to controversial media messages about health and nutrition in the context of science education. Our theoretical point of departure is in the concept “an examined life” in the critical reflection tradition of Socrates and the Stoics. We analyze how groups of upper secondary science class students engage in critical examination of a controversial message about cow’s milk encountered through Swedish public service news media on the Internet. The results illuminate that even when controversial findings are produced by a reputed university and communicated through independent media, students are capable of discerning the need to scrutinize such findings and are capable of performing such critical examination drawing on experiences of scientific investigations. Students’ openness to question authoritative voices in society and to illuminate the new findings on milk from multiple perspectives reflects how “an examined life” may be enacted in the context of science education. Inviting students to participate in related activities shows promise for enabling a critical examination of themselves and others in ways deemed important for democratic citizenship.

Serving the populist agenda. How German public media broadcasters inadvertently facilitate populist movements by evoking fear and anger

The term Media Populism is used to indicate a ‘involuntary complicity’ between news media and populist movements based on the convergence of commercial media logic and populist communication style. It grants populists and their messages a high degree of media visibility. According to the literature, this applies more to tabloid media and infotainment content in commercial television than to upmarket media outlets and news programs. In this paper, we refer to another form of involuntary collaboration between news media and populists that is not based on similar communication styles, but simply on the fact that news media have to report on topics which populists claim issue ownership for. This applies foremost to upmarket media and public service broadcasting, which are obliged by their own quality standards or legal mandate to report completely and comprehensively on all topics of public concern. We are especially interested in the emotional response of German audiences to news coverage on two topics: mass migration and the role of Islam in Germany. With the help of two experiments, we demonstrate that public service news reporting on these issues provokes strong negative emotional reactions. What is more, our results indicate that media induced fear and anger lead to increased support for anti-migration and Islam-critical demands. Hence, German public service broadcasters may not only be ‘secret accomplices’ in creating negative emotions towards Muslim migration, but also facilitate populist movements.

Selective Exposure to Public Service News over Thirty Years: The Role of Ideological Leaning, Party Support, and Political Interest

The transition from a low-choice to a high-choice media environment has led to concerns about audience fragmentation, ideological enclaves, and selective exposure to partisan news media consistent ...

Political Economy of Media Entrepreneurship

The rise in internet penetration and the growing number of digital device users have spurred a new wave of digital media entrepreneurship in India. In a media landscape dominated by corporate controlled mainstream news media that are susceptible to commercial and political pressures, some of these digital news media start-ups claim to offer news as a public service devoid of any corporate funding and profit-orientation. But how does the technology-aided public service news model work and what are its challenges? Using a case study of IndiaSpend, a not-for-profit digital news media start-up, this paper examines the public service news model. A critical analysis of the data collected through interviews and texts shows that IndiaSpend's business model reinforces hegemony as it is dependent on corporate funding and technology corporations. In the absence of public funding and government support, it is difficult to sustain such a model.

Media Ownership and Public Service News: How Strong Are Institutional Logics?

This article analyzes the extent to which diverse institutional logics (stock market, privately held, civil society, public) are linked to the exercise of one important mode of media ownership power: public service orientation. The research draws on a content analysis of a total of fifty-one news organizations in Sweden, France, and the United States, representing, respectively, Hallin and Mancini’s democratic corporatist, polarized pluralist, and liberal models. We find that two types of institutional logics—affordance and homogenization—shape the amount and type of public-service-oriented news. On average, public-service-oriented news was highest at civil-society-owned media, but there was significant variation within this category: We call this kind of institutional logic an affordance logic because it affords but does not guarantee a certain kind of news content. Public media, on the other hand, exhibited the least deviation across outlets within each country, thus exemplifying a strong homogenization logic. All forms of ownership, but especially privately held and civil society media, exhibited significant variations across individual organizations. Economic field dominance, as in the United States, did not produce greater homogenization across ownership fields as predicted by field theory.

Konstruksi Berita Layanan Publik Dalam Program "Sumut Dalam Berita" TVRI Sumatera Utara

This research is conducted to determine the construction of public service news in ‘Sumut Dalam Berita’ program aired on TVRI North Sumatera. With the phenomenological approach, this research used Theories of Influences on Mass Media Content by Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese. This study conducted an in-depth interview with an internal level of TVRI North Sumatera that is managerial level and the external party who cooperate with TVRI that is North Sumatera Provincial Government. The results show that : (1) public service news is being a part of the cooperation between TVRI North Sumatera and the Provincial Government. TVRI also receive funds from local budgets for operations activities, (2) each level of the influence of media content starting from individual level to ideological level contributes to public service news production in ‘Sumut Dalam Berita.’ Sometimes there are overlaping between the ideal and practical concepts experienced by the journalist in delivering public information to the public. The contribution of this research is to give insight to journalists and editors on how to produce news, especially on public services without ignoring news value.

Uneasy Bedfellows

News consumption has shifted increasingly to new platforms and gateways such as social network sites (SNS) with Facebook leading the way. Accordingly, journalists must cope with this “uneasy bedfellow” and provide news on Facebook to attract otherwise hard-to-reach audiences. This is even more relevant for public service broadcasters (PSBs), whose mission is to serve the interests and needs of every citizen. Bound to their public service mission, PSBs have to generally fulfill specific normative requirements such as diversity within their coverage, particularly to a higher degree than their commercial counterparts. Consequently, these requirements should be transferred to public service online supply in general and to public service supply on platforms such as Facebook. Whereas these demands have at best been roughly discussed, they have not been investigated to date. Therefore, we conducted a content analysis of the most viewed public service and commercial German TV newscasts and their respective Facebook sites, and analyzed whether public service news outperform commercial news on Facebook and whether they perform as good as on TV in terms of diversity (diversity of issues and of people and groups). Results show that public service news on Facebook show an even higher performance (albeit slightly) than on television.

Public Service News and Digital Media

How are public service media services delivering news in an increasingly digital environment? And what action do they need to take to remain competitive in a fast-evolving global digital landscape? A new Reuters Institute report looks at how public service news organisations in six European countries (Italy, Poland, the UK, France, Germany and Finland) are navigating an increasingly digital landscape. What are the idea conditions that allow a public service news organisation to flourish? And who is remaining competitive in a shifting media environment? The report explores differing approaches, and warns that without strategic action that prioritises digital media, mobile platforms, and social distribution, some public service news organisations risk losing touch with their audience – the public they exist to serve and which funds them.

Ensuring public service news provision in the era of networked communications

The authors argue the continuing importance of public service values for journalistic practice and news provision in the emerging context of networked communications. Divergent perspectives regarding the economic viability of news production in for-profit and nonprofit sectors are reviewed, in application to two categories of media organizations: legacy media and digital native media. The authors assess the contemporary situation for news firms in the USA and Europe to arrive at a general understanding. Results suggest the public service ethos in journalism is at risk. This encourages the importance of collaborative efforts on the part of policymakers, news providers, and the academic community to address a complex set of problems in news production and provision today. The article makes a case for preserving historic professional values in journalistic practice but is not focused on the narrower interests of a particular sector or institutional arrangement. The authors encourage developing a comprehensive contemporary news media system to secure ongoing innovation, enhance diversity, and advance quality. The article concludes with actionable proposals regarding media policy, operational partnerships, education, and professionalism.