Quality Of News Research Articles

Accuracy prompts are a replicable and generalizable approach for reducing the spread of misinformation

Interventions that shift users attention toward the concept of accuracy represent a promising approach for reducing misinformation sharing online. We assess the replicability and generalizability of this accuracy prompt effect by meta-analyzing 20 experiments (with a total N = 26,863) completed by our group between 2017 and 2020. This internal meta-analysis includes all relevant studies regardless of outcome and uses identical analyses across all studies. Overall, accuracy prompts increased the quality of news that people share (sharing discernment) relative to control, primarily by reducing sharing intentions for false headlines by 10% relative to control in these studies. The magnitude of the effect did not significantly differ by content of headlines (politics compared with COVID-19 related news) and did not significantly decay over successive trials. The effect was not robustly moderated by gender, race, political ideology, education, or value explicitly placed on accuracy, but was significantly larger for older, more reflective, and more attentive participants. This internal meta-analysis demonstrates the replicability and generalizability of the accuracy prompt effect on sharing discernment.

Examining users’ news sharing behaviour on social media: role of perception of online civic engagement and dual social influences

ABSTRACT Rising prominence of social media coupled with a myriad of recent developments in the built-in features has allowed users to instantly share news both within and across their social networks, making news-sharing a savvy trend. Additionally, these platforms have enabled users to share news critical to social and civic responsibilities, as well as political news critical to healthy socio-political function. Given the prominence of citizen-driven digital journalism, even ordinary users and passive receivers of information have a powerful voice in modern society, making news-sharing on social media a significant phenomenon spanning across social, economic, and political boundaries. News-sharing behaviour on social media demands further empirical investigation, especially with respect to the roles of online civic engagement and social influences. Drawing upon Elaboration Likelihood Model and Social Influence Theory, this study proposes a research model to explore individuals’ news-sharing behaviour and validates the proposed research model using empirical data collected by a survey of 513 active social media users. Findings confirm that online news quality, news source credibility, perception of online civic engagement, perceived influence on others, and social influence play a crucial role in users’ news-sharing behaviours. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in light of these findings.

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.

Social Media and News: Content Bundling and News Quality

The growing influence of internet platforms acting as content aggregators is one of the most important challenges facing the media industry. We develop a simple model to understand the impact of third-party content bundling by a social platform that has a monopoly on showing user-generated content to consumers. In our model, consumers can access news either directly through a newspaper’s website or indirectly through a platform, which also offers social content. We show that content bundling, when unilaterally implemented by the platform, tends to harm publishers and to increase the dispersion of quality across outlets, with initially high-quality outlets investing more and low-quality ones investing less. With many heterogenous newspapers, the result is robust even if each newspaper can prevent the platform from using its content. When content bundling follows an agreement between the platform and publisher, its effects are reversed, as publishers’ profits go up while quality dispersion goes down. In a setup with heterogeneous consumers, we also show that the platform’s ability to personalize the mix of content it shows to users induces publishers to invest more in the quality of their content.This paper was accepted by Dmitri Kuksov, marketing.Funding: The authors thank the Net Institute for financial support. A. de Cornière acknowledges funding from Agence Nationale de la Recherche [Grant ANR-17-EUR-0010 (Investissements d'Avenir Program)], the Toulouse School of Economics Digital Center, and the Artificial and Natural Intelligence Toulouse Institute.Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.4341 .

Nudging Social Media toward Accuracy.

A meaningful portion of online misinformation sharing is likely attributable to Internet users failing to consider accuracy when deciding what to share. As a result, simply redirecting attention to the concept of accuracy can increase sharing discernment. Here we discuss the importance of accuracy and describe a limited-attention utility model that is based on a theory about inattention to accuracy on social media. We review research that shows how a simple nudge or prompt that shifts attention to accuracy increases the quality of news that people share (typically by decreasing the sharing of false content), and then discuss outstanding questions relating to accuracy nudges, including the need for more work relating to persistence and habituation as well as the dearth of cross-cultural research on these topics. We also make several recommendations for policy-makers and social media companies for how to implement accuracy nudges.

Feasibility study of an intervention program to enhance self-confidence of kindergarten teachers who deal with radiation-related health concerns from parents with young children

BackgroundFollowing the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station accident in March 2011, radiation anxiety was high among residents in affected areas. Enhancing radiation-related health literacy is effective in reducing radiation anxiety. This feasibility study aimed to examine a novel intervention program to enhance the self-confidence of kindergarten teachers who deal with radiation-related health concerns from parents in order to determine the feasibility of conducting a future randomized controlled trial.MethodsTeachers and administrative staff of two private kindergartens in Fukushima City and members of Media Doctor Japan (a research group for enhancing the quality of health news reporting in Japan) were recruited for study participation. Participants were randomly assigned to intervention and control groups. The intervention group participated in the intervention program, comprised of lectures, group discussions, and presentations. The control group received the same written materials used in the intervention program. The primary outcome of this study was feasibility, assessed via four questions concerning program acceptability and described without quantitative analysis. Secondary outcomes were self-confidence concerning parent consultation (1 question, 4-point Likert scale), radiation-related health knowledge (5 question quiz, 1 point for each correct answer, score: 0–5), and health literacy (assessment developed by Ishilawa, et al., score: 1–5) assessed numerically before and after the intervention. Means and standard deviations of outcomes before and after the intervention and their changes in both groups were reported with groups of participants (kindergartens and the Media Doctor Research Japan) reported separately. No quantitative analyses were performed for secondary outcomes.ResultsFive and six kindergarten workers and seven and seven Media Doctor Japan members participated in the intervention and control groups, respectively. Reported acceptability was generally positive, and only one participant gave a negative response regarding program usefulness. Improved self-confidence was found in kindergarten employee participants. Radiation-related health knowledge was higher after the intervention in both kindergarten teachers and Media Doctor Japan members. The amount of change was higher in the intervention group than in the control group.ConclusionsThe intervention program enhanced self-confidence in kindergarten employees. The feasibility of the intervention program for a larger randomized controlled trial was ascertained. Time to conduct lectures and group discussions should be increased to further enhance health literacy.Trial registrationsUMIN000042527 [University Hospital Medical Information Network (UMIN) Center] registered on November 25, 2020.

Change in News Access, Change in Expectations? How Young Social Media Users in Switzerland Evaluate the Functions and Quality of News

Online media environments have changed the way young people access news. Despite much research on the topic, the expectations of journalistic news by young adults who have turned their back on traditional news media remain unclear. We use a novel multimethod qualitative online study design to investigate the perceived quality, functions, and expectations toward journalistic news of young adults in Switzerland who use social media as their main source for news and rarely consume traditional media. Nineteen young adults between 20 and 25 years of age with different educational levels participated in our study in May 2020. Our results show that even though the participants only occasionally use traditional news media channels, they still consider journalistic news relevant and appreciate quality standards of professional journalism such as actuality and veracity (Swart 2021b). Among the functions of news, the participants highlighted sociability and identification. Exchange and discussion of news are, thus, of high relevance online but also offline. Also, the participants show a high affinity toward news on mobilizing topics, which are of interest to themselves and their peers, and motivate them to engage with news more intensely. According to the participants, news should be attractively prepared, such as with audiovisual formats and easy to understand and integrate into everyday life. The participants also expressed a preference to consume news articles from different media brands within a single platform. Our study outlines a fruitful path for comprehensive qualitative research with innovative online tools.

Характер перших англійських газет очима сучасника драматурга Бена Джонсона в його п’єсі “Склад новин”

The nature of the first English newspapers through the eyes of a contemporary playwright Ben Jonson in his play “The Staple of News” is considered. These first-born publications inherited from their predecessops – actually the books, socalled “News books”, “Fair bulletins”, “News ballads”, “News”, “Newsletters”, hybrid publications (two pages of printed messages and two blank pages for handwritten information for the areas where there was still no printing press) – a book format and two-column layout, which restrained development of journalism. The things were not better in terms of filling the content of first periodicals. The journalistic profession was just getting back on its feet, and its criteria were developed through a long process of “trial and error”. In addition, the quality of news was strongly influenced by the political factor in the form of censorship bans directed to coverage of domestic political news and ethical behavior of journalists as well as by the economic factor which dictated the fastest possible profit and caused neglecting the reliability of information and other standards of journalistic profession, which were not completely comprehended at that time. On the other hand, the continuous lies or half-truths in the newspapers could also repel the regular and potential readers, and this factor played a restraining role in descent of these publications to the level of gossip and hearsay. The Dutch newspapers were dominated before the appearance of the first English newspapers in the information space of Misty Albion, which came to the attention of Robert Burton, the English clergyman, writer and scientist. Being a skeptic and pessimist, he called his book “Anatomy of Melancholy” (1621) for good reason. In the same year, the first English newspaper “Corante, or Weekely Newes from Italy, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Bogemia, France and the Law countreys” appeared under the Dutch influence. Four years later, the second newspaper “Mercurius Britannicus” was published. The first newspaper was depicted in detail and the second one was depicted briefly in the play of the English playwright Ben Jonson “The Staple of News” (1625). Оbviously this is the first English work dedicated to the newspaper and its journalists.

Daily News Verification as Organizational Work: A Study of Taiwan’s Four Major Newspapers

<p>本研究深度訪談四大報共30 位記者與主管，從組織角度探析日常新聞查證慣例與實踐。本研究發現查證慣例主要起於新聞個案，浮現於組織互動。除非是重要新聞，否則報社多將查證視為記者工作與責任。報社對新聞查證的要求顯現於守門關卡多寡、核稿者是否有路線相關知識，及核稿者與記者的互動。由此來看也可見報社對紙本的查證要求高於即時新聞，尤其後者「搶快」、「爭先」透過組織激化，加上其能接受少量訊息且可不斷更新，提高容忍新聞錯誤「瑕疵」的程度。最後，本研究強調報社能發揮團體優勢，進行查證。尤其跨線查證能獲得不同路線消息來源的回應、交叉確認、分頭查證持續式新聞，甚至發現更多證據，改變原有新聞設計，提高新聞品質。</p> <p> </p><p>This study conducted in-depth interviews with 30 journalists, who work for Taiwan’s four major newspapers, to analyze the practice of daily news verification at an organizational level. The study found that news verification norms as a routine emerge during the news production process and in organizational interactions. Except for important and influential news stories, the responsibility for news verification is always regarded as the job of individual journalists rather than that of the organization. Further, the news organization’s policy requirements of news verification depend upon the number of gatekeepers, sub-editors’ domain and contextual knowledge, and the interaction between sub-editors and journalists. Based on the above, the news organizations have higher standards of news verification for print news than for online real-time news. Certain flaws in online real-time news stories, which can be short and continuously updated, are often tolerable since they have to be fast and be the first in a competitive market. Finally, the study emphasizes that news verification can be more efficiently accomplished by coordinating journalists of different specialties, interviewing each of the interested parties in different fields, and collaboratively cross-checking information for corroboration when covering the continuing news. This process may even uncover more evidence that may change the original news coverage and improve the overall news quality.</p> <p> </p>

Problems and Countermeasures of TV News Broadcasting in the Era of Media Integration

With the development of science and technology, TV, as a kind of media, plays an increasingly important role in the national economic and social development. People know and understand the world and society through TV news. When people watch TV news, they are not only satisfied with listening to sound and watching pictures, but also pursue deeper spiritual satisfaction and aesthetic pleasure. Furthermore, the requirements of TV news announcers in all aspects are becoming higher and higher. This paper analyzes the problems of TV news broadcasting in the age of integrated media, and explores how to improve the quality of TV news broadcasting and meet the personalized needs of the public.

The Diversity Experiment at the Metropolitan State University of Denver

This is an untarnished statement after events surrounding Black Lives Matter and the #Metoo movements of the past years. However, when we look at the reality of diversity inside the newsrooms in America, we quickly realize how far we are from a newsroom representing most ethnic sectors of the American population. This article looks closely at how diversity, when incorporated inside the journalism classroom, can improve the quality of news produced by journalists in the newsroom. The hypothesis is simple: an ethnically diverse newsroom is necessary for news organizations to provide a well-researched story that represents different voices. Society is changing. It is becoming more diverse. Newsrooms will fail and be left behind if they do not reflect this change. Joanne Bourgault, President, and CEO of Interviews, believes that: “Maintaining a diverse workforce and providing inclusive content are imperative for the longevity of any media platform” (Bourgault, 2021). Many experts agree that diversity can have a monumental impact on the quality of journalism because a more diverse staff is likely to produce a broader range of stories and perspectives. Our data will ultimately confirm that any successful efforts to improve diversity in the classrooms, like the one taken at The Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU-Denver), will eventually have positive results in enhancing the diversity hiring practices of news media organizations. The news outputs these media organizations develop should accurately reflect the diverse society it serves. In gathering this content, an ethnically diverse journalist can and will contribute to better and more engaging content.

FROM MCDONALDIZATION OF THE SOCIETY TO MCDONALDIZATION OF NEWS: MC-JOURNALISM

This study emphasizes the negative consequences of the digital age on journalism within the framework of the McDonaldization concept introduced by George Ritzer. The McDonaldization thesis is used today to express the situations that lead to the uniformization and standardization of societies and covers all areas where production-consumption processes are involved. Ritzer, who likens the developing societies to a giant McDonald's restaurant, claims that the society is organized according to similar production methods, just like the functioning of McDonald's. According to this idea, criteria such as efficiency, effectiveness, rationality, and profitability are also society's criteria in general. This means the sameness of lifestyles, clothing, social and cultural relations, entertainment, politics, production, and consumption. Thus, McDonaldization covers all areas of society, not just the food industry. This situation also shows itself in the field of journalism. As a matter of fact, in the modern communication age, the news has become a commodity that is rapidly produced and consumed. Therefore, the idea that employees in the McDonaldization thesis should do their job efficiently and quickly is reflected in the news production process in the same way in journalism. For this reason, quantity comes to the fore in the news; the number of news begins to increase rapidly, while quality news decreases remarkably. Just as fast-cooked and fast-consumed food harms human health, fast-produced and consumed news might cause the structure of society to deteriorate. Thus, today's news production processes are similar to the principles of the McDonaldization process. In this context, today's news production processes will be discussed in the focus of efficiency, predictability, calculability, and control principles, which Ritzer discussed within the framework of McDonaldization theory. When the relevant literature is investigated, it is noteworthy that few studies are examining the relationship between journalism and the concept of McDonaldization. In this context, the study is vital in dealing with the concept of McDonaldization and the relationship between journalism in detail.

Bangladesh health journalism: A pilot study exploring the nature and quality of newspaper health reporting

Introduction: The media is an important source of health-related information for patients, general public, policymakers and health professionals and has a large influence on their knowledge and opinions. No studies so far have explored the content, nature and quality of health journalism in Bangladesh. Objectives: To i) explore the nature and quality of media coverage of health stories in Bangladeshi newspapers, ii) understand the perceptions of reporters about medical- and health journalism, including the perceived barriers and facilitators, and iii) identify factors influencing health reporting. Methods: In a mixed-method pilot study, during a five-month period, all medical and healthcare related news articles published in three leading Bangladeshi daily newspapers (N=461), were content analyzed, and journalists were asked in a questionnaire about their knowledge and medical skills. Results: Only 44% of the articles reported in a positive tone on health services aspects, while 27.1% were related to malpractice or treatment errors. Many articles contained questionable medical information (49.9%), mostly regarding unregistered clinicians (67.5%), often referred to as ‘doctor’. Treatment errors by unregistered clinicians were reported seven times more often than those by registered physicians (p<0.001). A survey was completed by 23 selected medical- or health journalists (77% response); most of them (78.3%) had no previous training in health journalism and in only 26.1% this was offered by their media house. Journalists self-reported their own insufficient understanding of medical terminology (73.9%), ethics (95.7%) and relevant laws (91.3%). Conclusion: This study is an eye opener about shortage of medical knowledge among health journalists in a developing country. This shortage may often result in misinformation regarding medical (mal)practice, health laws and ethics. There is ample room for improvement of the quality of health news reporting and health journalism skills in Bangladesh. N=287

Trust through Transparency? How Journalistic Reactions to Media-Critical User Comments Affect Quality Perceptions and Behavior Intentions

User comments to digital news often contain media criticism, detrimentally affecting how others perceive the quality of news and possibly lowering media trust. It remains an open question, however, how journalistic reactions can mitigate these effects. Based on premises of engagement moderation, accountability, and transparency in digital journalism, we conducted an online experiment investigating how critical user comments and journalistic reactions affect quality perceptions and behavioral intentions towards a news media brand. Results show that media-critical comments lower perceived brand quality, but only among media cynics, whereby increasing it among media supporters. Journalists admitting mistakes only enhances perceived brand quality for media cynics, while denying does so for everyone and decreases cynics’ intention to comment negatively. Lastly, explaining why a mistake was made or not boosts brand quality perceptions overall, suggesting that transparency is a viable strategy for improving media trust in the long run.

Understanding the link between audience engagement metrics and the perceived quality of online news using machine learning

This article aims to explain the perceived quality of online news articles. Discovering which elements of a news story influence readers’ perceptions could drive online popularity, which is the paramount factor of digital news readership. This work explores an approach to use tree-based machine learning algorithms to address this problem based on selected characteristics, which measure engagement, drawn from prior research mostly developed by communication scientists. A proposed extended model is used to examine the association between the engagement features and perceived quality concerning all the articles depending mainly on their genre. To demonstrate the capacity of using predictive analytics to facilitate journalistic news writing the proposed methodology is applied on a novel data set with 200K articles in total constructed from a blog site. The results of phase A, indicate interesting correlations between the features and the perceived quality of the articles. In stage B, the paper seeks to extract a set of rules that can be used as guidelines for authors in the writing of their next articles, indicating the probability of popularity that their articles may gain if these rules are taken into consideration.

The Implementation of Prophetic Values to Maintain Journalist Professionalism

Campus journalism is a place for students to develop their potential in the journalism field. Students who are agents of change not only provide quality news but also provide moral value in the news production process. Quality news can be raised through the role of a journalist in writing news (information). Prophetic journalism is a journalistic concept taken from the nature of the prophets. In this paper, we examine the application of the concept of prophetic journalism –journalism that imitates the prophetic characteristics of the Prophet Muhammad– among campus journalists. Prophet Muhammad is known for his four characteristics: siddiq (delivering accurate information), amanah (trustworthy as a source of information), tabligh (delivering information in its entirety), fathanah (a journalist is required to be smart in revealing the truth of the news). The data from this study is the result of observations from the daily life of the researcher when carrying out the news production process with other campus journalists ranging from electronic media (radio & television), print, and online. The results of this study indicate that campus journalists at UIN Sunan Ampel Surabaya apply prophetic journalism well. By implementing the prophetic characteristics of the Prophet Muhammad when carrying out journalistic activities, journalists can maintain the professionalism of journalists. By using ethnographic research methods or commonly referred to as field research, researchers make observations as the main data and are equipped with in-depth interviews with several campus journalists. We also propose the nature of Prophet Ibrahim to be incorporated into the concept of prophetic journalism as well. Prophet Ibrahim is known for the story of his courage to seek the truth and reveal it when everyone was against it. This courage is important in supporting journalistic activities among students and professionals.

Moderating with the Mob: Evaluating the Efficacy of Real-Time Crowdsourced Fact-Checking


 
 
 Reducing the spread of false news remains a challenge for social media platforms, as the current strategy of using third-party fact- checkers lacks the capacity to address both the scale and speed of misinformation diffusion. Research on the “wisdom of the crowds” suggests one possible solution: aggregating the evaluations of ordinary users to assess the veracity of information. In this study, we investigate the effectiveness of a scalable model for real-time crowdsourced fact-checking. We select 135 popular news stories and have them evaluated by both ordinary individuals and professional fact-checkers within 72 hours of publication, producing 12,883 individual evaluations. Although we find that machine learning-based models using the crowd perform better at identifying false news than simple aggregation rules, our results suggest that neither approach is able to perform at the level of professional fact-checkers. Additionally, both methods perform best when using evaluations only from survey respondents with high political knowledge, suggesting reason for caution for crowdsourced models that rely on a representative sample of the population. Overall, our analyses reveal that while crowd-based systems provide some information on news quality, they are nonetheless limited—and have significant variation—in their ability to identify false news.
 
 

A Novel Approach for Detection of Fake News using Long Short Term Memory (LSTM)

Online media for news consumption has doubtful advantages. From one perspective, it has minimal expense, simple access, and fast dispersal of data which leads individuals to search out and devour news from online media. On the other hand, it increases the wide spread of "counterfeit news", i.e., inferior quality news with purposefully bogus data. The broad spread of fake news contrarily affects people and society. Hence, fake news detection in social media has become an emerging research topic that is drawing attention from various researchers. In past, many creators proposed the utilization of text mining procedures and AI strategies to examine textual data and helps to foresee the believability of news. With more computational capacities and to deal with enormous datasets, deep learning models present a better presentation over customary text mining strategies and AI methods. Normally deep learning model, for example, LSTM model can identify complex patterns in the data. Long short term memory is a tree organized recurrent neural network (RNN) used to examine variable length sequential information. In our proposed framework we set up a fake news identification model dependent on LSTM neural network. Openly accessible unstructured news datasets are utilized to evaluate the exhibition of the model. The outcome shows the prevalence and exactness of LSTM model over the customary techniques specifically CNN for fake news recognition.

The COVID-19 pandemic: Resilience of Indonesian journalists

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced the global news industry to adapt to the current crisis. In some Global South countries, challenges have also come from an existing political instability and economic limitations. Indonesia represents a Global South country where its journalists have struggled to maintain the quality of news while many have faced layoffs. This research involved a survey data with 100 respondents, some interviews and observations, which indicated that in the COVID-19 pandemic Indonesian journalists have been severely affected and are not sufficiently equipped or prepared to face any accelerated and sudden changes caused by the coronavirus. However, in some instances, journalists have been able to deploy advanced digital technology and work collaboratively to provide quality information during the pandemic. The article argues that mastering journalism data and collaborative work should be embraced to enhance the resilience of the journalist community.

The role of collaborative journalism in West Papua: A Jubi and Tirto case study

In this article, the author explores the collaboration between Tirto and Jubi in reporting on the Wamena and Jayapura riots in September 2019 in what has been described as the Papuan Uprising. The collaboration was greatly influenced by the desire of both media to improve the quality of news on human rights violations in West Papua. Tirto is an Indonesian online media outlet. Its journalists often criticise various government policies and the Indonesian political world through headlines, news and special articles. Tirto won an award as the Most Innovative Cyber Media in the 2017 Adinegoro Journalism Awards organised by the Indonesian Journalists Association. In the following year, Tirto became the only media outlet in Indonesia to receive an award from the International Fact-Checking Network (IFCN). Jubi is a general news media service from West Papua which reports on the West Papuan conflict, especially human rights issues. At the conceptual level, one can expect an accurate and in-depth report resulting from the journalism collaboration between Tirto and Jubi. However, at the practical level, a question arises about what the collaboration means for the life of West Papuan journalists? Research results using qualitative content analysis and interviews suggest that the collaborative journalism they created was able to restore West Papuan journalists’self-esteem. These findings can contribute to the enhancement of the knowledge in the field of journalism and provide valuable information for West Papuan journalists.