Reading News Research Articles

College Students’ Fake News Discernment

The purpose of this study was to investigate variables that may be related to college students’ fake news discernment, inspired by Potter’s cognitive media literacy model (2004). The investigated variables included college students’ ability to discern fact from opinion, critical thinking skills, beliefs in their control over situations or experiences (locus of control), and the degree to which they engage in and enjoy thinking (need for cognition). The study employed a sequential explanatory mixed-methods research design.
 The survey quantitatively measured 296 college students’ fact and opinion discernment, critical thinking skills, need for cognition, and locus of control. Critical thinking was a variable positively correlated with the fact and opinion discernment, as well as the need for cognition respectively. The follow-up interview data with 19 college students further explained the survey results and their media literacy practices. They described how they discern fact from opinion and evaluate information when reading news online. They stated that polarized media environments and their prior knowledge made information evaluation difficult when reading news online. The participants also described the importance and motivation of discerning fact and opinion and evaluating information in news reports.
 The study findings inform considerations for media literacy education which strengthens students’ skills regarding fake news discernment. This study suggests future work that further investigates the studied variables, such as developing the fact and opinion discernment instrument with borderline statements and developing a media literacy model in the context of news reading.

Reading young adult South Africans’ reading of national television news

This article introduces a theoretical perspective on young adults’ television news-viewing choicesgrounded in the synthesis of reception aesthetics, socialisation theory and qualitative researchmethodology. It argues that this theoretical framework allows for a deeper contextual reading of thereader-text relationship and for the argument that, despite post-apartheid social transformation,young adult South Africans’ readings of locally produced television news texts are still ideologicallysituated sociocultural imports traceable to their differential class, race and gender positions in thecountry’s social structure. Evidence produced through focus-group interviews is used to supportthe position of the introduced theoretical framework.

How Does Internet Use Improve Mental Health among Middle-Aged and Elderly People in Rural Areas in China? A Quasi-Natural Experiment Based on the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS).

One of the most significant public health issues in rural China is how to improve the mental health of middle-aged and older individuals. Using 2013, 2015, and 2018 CHARLS panel data, this paper properly examined the effects of Internet use on the mental health of middle-aged and elderly people in rural China based on the difference-in-differences method. The findings are as follows: (1) Internet use effectively improves the mental health status of middle-aged and elderly people in rural China; (2) compared to the middle-aged group, Internet use has a more obvious effect on the mental health of the elderly; (3) further analysis showed that reading news, watching videos, and playing games online could significantly improve the mental health status of middle-aged and elderly people in rural China, while chatting online and other Internet activities cannot significantly improve mental health status; and (4) playing games, watching videos, and reading news have different effects on the mental health of middle-aged and elderly people in rural China. The results indicate that playing games have a better effect on depression levels than watching videos. In contrast, watching news had the lowest effect on depression levels among middle-aged and elderly people in rural China. The results of this study also show the latest evidence that Internet use can help China’s rural middle-aged and elderly populations to reduce social isolation, establish new social connections, gain social support, and, ultimately, achieve active ageing. Therefore, promoting multiple forms of interaction is an effective path to prevent loneliness, which has become the new policy direction of the government to create an age-friendly Internet environment using various measures in the future to eliminate the barriers to Internet access affecting the middle-aged and elderly in rural China.

Community empowerment through child-friendly village program in Bedahlawak Village, Jombang Regency

In the current era of globalization, there is access to technology that offers convenience, as well as its sophistication at this time. The existence of advances in the field of technology makes people often prefer to use advanced technology in the form of mobile phones or Cellphones in their daily lives. For example, in reading news through online media, watching news through digital platforms, they often use mobile phones instead of watching on television or reading in newspapers. This can lead to a new habit that is fond of operating mobile phones. That things like that will quickly and easily be imitated by their children. It is not uncommon to find that many parents often give mobile phones to their children to calm their crying child. Especially with the COVID-19 Pandemic, which requires people to work and study from home. Of course this will make the use of mobile phones more frequent, if things like this are done continuously it will become a bad habit if the role parents doesn't limit use of Cellphones or cell phones for children. With the frequent use or operation of mobile phones among children, what is feared is that they are dependent on mobile phones. The use of mobile phones will have good results if used in accordance with their functions and needs and will have bad consequences if the mobile phone has become a habit for children, from those who like to play outside house to often lock themselves in the room by only playing mobile phones or technological tools other sophisticated.

Comparison of Ensemble Methods for Detecting Hoax News

The spread of hoaxes in Indonesia has become a big concern for the public, especially now that the COVID-19 virus pandemic is hitting the whole world. Due to the large number of people who believe the hoax news regarding the COVID-19 vaccination that has spread on social media, many people refuse to carry out the COVID-19 vaccination as a form of government effort in dealing with this pandemic. Therefore, people need to be wiser when reading news on social networks. To help the public not to read hoaxes, it is necessary to classify the COVID-19 vaccine hoax. This study builds a system to classify hoax news on the COVID-19 vaccine. The model was built using the ensemble method by comparing the Random Forest and AdaBoost algorithms to choose a good classification for detecting hoaxes. In this research, there are use two test scenarios. The first scenario is an experiment using the Random Forest algorithm method and the second scenario is an experiment using the Adoboost algorithm method. The experimental results show that the first scenario produces a good accuracy value with the random forest algorithm method of 93.58%.

A Study on Visual Perception Differences between Hot Media and Cool Media ——Focusing on Image News and Text News Reading

The study attempted to investigate the visual perception differences between image news and text news using an eye-tracking device, the Tobii, to verify Marshall McLuhan's hot media and cool media theory. Experimental stimuli were four: two news items were edited as image news and text news, respectively. In order to analyze the subjects' visual responses to the actual viewing of the news content, we selected two parameters, Fixation Count and Total of Fixation Duration, from the multiple parameters recorded by the Tobii device. Then we used the AOI tool to divide the stimulus into two regions, the literal part and the whole material, analyzed these two parameters separately. The subjects in this study consisted of 22 people, and they were divided into two groups, each reading one text news item and one image news item. The experimental results showed significant visual perception differences in the Fixation Count between the subjects of the two media. This finding is consistent with McLuhan's hot and cool media theory, suggesting a significant difference between these media on human visual perception. For another parameter of total fixation time, however, although subjects spent more average time on text news relative to image news, this difference was not found to be statistically supported. This section is also discussed in this paper. The present paper discusses McLuhan's concept of hot and cool media and the distinction between the two concepts, the extension of the senses, the sensory ratio, and other important views. Through the vision data collected, this study explores the possibility of using an experimental approach to study McLuhan's theory of hot media and cool media from a sensory perspective. We hope that this research will provide ahelpful addition to understanding the more complex technical and cultural concepts underpinned by hot and cool media.

Predicting News Article Popularity with Multi Layer Perceptron Algorithm

Nowadays, news media seems to have been digitized. One of them is printed news which has now turned into online news. The increasing use of social media has made people interested in reading news online. News needs to attract readers with their headlines. Various online news media businesses want to know the future demand of readers, as well as whether the released news can reach more readers so that the news becomes popular. Therefore, with the increasing interest in online news today, this paper will analyze the performance of the Neural Network Algorithm and other artificial intelligence techniques in predicting the popularity of news articles that can help the media to know whether their news will become popular. The news article popularity prediction system can increase its revenue if there are advertisements in the news. The test results show that the accuracy of the Multi Layer Perceptron is 76% and Random Forest gives an accuracy of 70%.

Broadband usage for rural communities in the North Island of Aotearoa New Zealand

New Zealand government's Rural Broadband Initiative (RBI) aims to invest 400 million New Zealand dollar to provide 99% of New Zealanders with access to 50 Mbps peak broadband speed, with the remaining 1% at 10 Mbps by 2025. By 2017, stage 1 of the RBI has been completed, and research is needed to find out the level of usage, proficiency, and productivity achieved by then. Therefore, a survey was carried out to learn whether the rural residents and their communities are making good use of the new fast broadband connection. The survey collected data from 217 rural residents from North Island, and the results indicate that about half of the interview respondents are satisfied with the new broadband speed and the reliability which is offered by RBI stage 1. However, there is about 28% of the respondents disagreed with them. The majority of the Internet uses for rural residents are information searching, reading news, online entertainment, and online banking. Besides that, only a small proportion of respondents know how to utilize the Internet in their work/business and benefit/profit from it, e.g., using cloud technology capabilities and online marketing campaigns, etc. by then. Therefore, we argue that information and communications technologies (ICT) adoption is not only the availability of the infrastructure but also the beneficial outcomes of Internet availability. In other words, Internet skills in-depth training and education need to catch up with the infrastructure deployment, which is useful to fuel the digital productivity and inclusion for booming rural economies. The survey data-driven findings presented in this paper could serve as a reference to inform government policymakers and those who wish to create, invest, and take actions to speed up the economic and social growth of rural communities in Aotearoa New Zealand through the Internet while shifting from the Internet speed and traffic volume-driven to a more effective Internet connectivity and value-added driven rural economy.

Haber Oyunları: Deneyimlenebilir Gerçeklik, Ludenik Haber Okuma, Amaç ve Normların Çatışması

Gazetecilik, bilgi ve iletişim teknolojilerinin gelişmesine bağlı olarak medya üretim çeşitliliğinin yakınsaklığından etkilenmektedir. Üretim ilişkilerinin katılımcı kültürü benimsemesi ve transmedya hikaye anlatıcılığının gazetecilik formlarında etkili olması haber anlatısını da dönüştürmüştür. Bu kapsamda eğlence (hazcı) ve bilgi edinme (faydacı) ihtiyaçlarının sektörel yakınsaklığı, haber oyunlarının üretimine ortam sağlamıştır. Bu derleme çalışmanın amacı gazetecilik motivasyonları ile oyun motivasyonlarının disiplinlerarası ilişkiler içerisinde ortaya çıkardığı haber oyunları; ludenik haber okuma teorisi ile temellendirerek üretim ve tüketim ilişkileri, anlatı yapısı, zamansallık, etik kaygılar, ideolojik şüpheler ve merhamet yorgunluğu kavramlarıyla tartışmaktır. Gazetecilik için yeni bir anlatı biçimi olan haber oyun üretim ortamlarında örtüşen amaçlar ve çatışan normlar bir aradadır. Bu anlamda alanyazında yer alan araştırmalarda haber oyunlarının; haberciliğe getireceği yenilik ve okuyucuya sağlayabileceği kazanımların, gerçeklik ve merhamete dair şüpheler ile karşı karşıya kalabileceği görülmüştür. Bu şüphelere rağmen haber oyunları, oyunların eğlenceli ya da deneyimlenebilir unsurlarını haber anlatısına dahil ederek ve gazeteciliğin niteliğini koruyarak, içerikteki titizliği biçimsel çekicilikle birleştiren etkili bir içerik üretim yoluna dönüşebilir.

Ideologi Penggunaan Istilah-Istilah Covid-19 di Berita Online: Analisis Wacana Kritis Model Norman Fairclough

This study aims to describe the structure of the text (text dimension), discourse practice (dimension of social practice), and sociocultural practice (sociocultural dimension) against the use of COVID-19 terms in online news. The research method used is qualitative descriptive The critical discourse analysis approach Norman Fairclough used to find the depth of meaning of news texts containing COVID-19 terms. The term data about COVID-19 is taken from three websites, namely Bisnis.com, Kompas.com, and Liputan6.com. Based on the results of the analysis, it was concluded that, first, the text structure in the form of advisories, information, and education about events (events) increasing COVID-19 cases and policy actions taken by the government to reduce COVID-19 cases. Second, discourse practices include the identity of the government and society. Third, the dimension of sociocultural practice indicates policies that impact: (a) the marginalization of society, (b) social dominance, and (c) social wrong because the policies implemented are not to the conditions of society. The results of this study are expected to provide a correct understanding of the use of COVID-19 terms in online news so that the public can be more critical in reading news in online media.

Kallikattu Ithikasam Exhibit Humanities

The earth is a vast place inhabited by a variety of people. The lifestyles of the people living in each region or locality are different. People's food, worship, beliefs, professions, rituals, speeches, relationships, living conditions, etc., vary in the way of life in each locality. There is no need to visit such people to understand their way of life. Reading news about them we can understand. Thus innovation plays an important role in recording the lives of different people. Novels are generally classified as family novels, social novels, detective novels, and historical novels. Any kind of innovation can be said to be eligible for the award if it can express human thought or the eight types of human truths. One such award-winning novel is "Kallikattu Ithikasaam". The novels written by Padma Bhushan awardee Vairamuthu is the Kallikattu Ithikasaam. Vairamuthu says that the story of this novel had been brewing in his subconscious for many years. Time ordered him to carry this grief on his chest for forty-two years and place it in the coral ceremony of Ananda Vikadan; wrote; We can realize that his name is Vairamuthu from what he himself says in his preface. The word "kallikatu" refers to a village called Kallikatu, a parched forest where reeds grow profusely. So the word Ithikasaam means true story, readers of this novel will understand that this is a true story that happened in the village. The field of innovation "Kallikatu Ithikasaam" is created with the village as the center. In this, the storyteller has made good use of the speech cases, customs, proverbs and professions of the village people. Focusing on these, this article examines how the legend of Kallikatu Ithikasaam reveals the life of the people.

Perception and determinants of Social Networking Sites (SNS) on spreading awareness and panic during the COVID-19 pandemic in Bangladesh

IntroductionThe COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented and unique fallout worldwide and creates colossal disruption in human survival. During the pandemic, social networking sites (SNS) played a significant role in disseminating news related to the pandemic. MethodsThis research is based on primary data collected from 400 successful respondents via online Google Form. Bivariate Pearson's Chi-square and multivariate binary logistic regression analysis were performed to determine the impact of the explanatory variables on the study variables. ResultsThis study reveals that most respondents (n = 360, 90 %) use SNS to get up-to-date news, and 72.5 % (n = 290) read health-related information. The highest number of participants (n = 386, 96.5 %) were Facebook users. Multivariate binary logistic regression reveals that “reading news on SNS” and “sharing information related to COVID-19 on social media” significantly influence the spread of awareness of COVID-19. “Unauthentic news sources” and “stop using social media to stay away from panic” also have a substantial impact on the spread of panic during the COVID-19 pandemic. ConclusionSNS has become an inevitable medium of information carrier nowadays. Social media users are found significantly aware of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of this study might assist the concerned persons in taking the necessary steps to propagate authentic news and regulate appropriate policies to prevent spreading misinformation.

Putting a Human Face on the Algorithm: Co-Designing Recommender Personae to Democratize News Recommender Systems

Algorithmic recommender systems are on the rise in various societal domains, including journalism. While they offer great promise by making useful selections of large content pools, they raise various ethical and societal concerns due to their alleged lack of transparency, diversity and agency. Especially in the news context, this has serious implications because access to information is crucial in democratic societies. In this article we empirically explore the idea of algorithmic recommender personae as a productive socio-technical solution to these problems. We present the results from a two-phased qualitative study with Dutch and Belgian news readers (N = 27) to 1) co-design potential news recommender personae by inductively discerning core news reading motivations and relevant features, and 2) evaluate the most promising personae on their usefulness. Results highlight three distinct recommender personae (Expert, Challenger and Unwinder) that correspond with news consumers’ most salient reading motivations. We conclude that, in an increasingly automated future, allowing users more control and including them when designing recommender systems is key. With this study we hope that media organizations take up the challenge towards developing human-centered and responsible algorithmic systems that serve the public good.

The Reasoning behind Fake News Assessments: A Linguistic Analysis

This paper investigates how individuals reason about the authenticity of the news content they consume. While researchers have conducted much work on fake news detection and prevention, we know relatively less about how news readers reason about the content that they read. Using data collected through Amazon Mechanical Turk, we analyzed over 1,000 justifications that news readers provided about why they believe (or fail to believe) given news articles. We included both fake and credible articles in our analyses and examined the novelty of the news topic as a possible contingency factor that differentiated the reasoning provided. Based on our psycholinguistic analyses, we found that news readers employ both cognitive and motivated reasoning and that agreement with the ground truth impacts the reasoning more than a news topic’s novelty. Our insights contribute to the literature on news consumption and reasoning in the context of evaluating fake news. Furthermore, this knowledge contribution has implications in areas such as news veracity intervention and tool design. Lastly, we offer a methodological contribution via using linguistic analysis in a novel way to assess the quality of open-ended survey questions.

Inappropriate Use of Words 'Jihadist' and 'Islamist' in Western Media's Reports on Bombing Attacks

A specific term in Islam's vocabulary, 'Jihad', has been increasingly popular among news readers. Considering huge impacts of news reports, people may expect a lot that mass media can also create news stories that spread values of peace, but do not cultivate seeds of hatred on a certain belief, or persons in society. Not only do the editors and journalists pay attention to the speed of writing, editing and publishing many stories but also consider possible social and even political impacts of their stories on the society. The study is expected to give a significant contribution to media industries as the focus of the study is aimed to give enlightening and right explanation on words, phrases or terms that will be used by media industries in the hope their reports will no longer hurt people, especially Muslims, and/or Muslim organizations as the mass media will hopefully understand the meaning of the terms, words, and phrases which will be used in their stories about any terror incidents, and will eventually give positive impacts to certain groups of people and/or organizations.

Why attacks on Doctors are Increasing?

Every day we watch or read news about patient’s or their relative’s conflicts with doctor. Hence question arises Why in recent years such incidences are increasing? I think as medical practioner we have to introspect on this issue.
 As per my opinion and experience patient as well as doctors both are equally responsible for such conflicts. As we all know truth is always bitter and, in this article, I would like to point out some sensitive areas of medical practice, there can be irreconcilable difference over this discussion.

Sociolinguistic Phenomena in Arabic Language Learning Through Direct Method

This study was aimed at analyzing the sociolinguistic phenomena during the implementation of the direct method in Arabic language learning at PP Al Iman Putri. The method used in this study was a case study method with a qualitative approach. The results of this study reveal that the sociolinguistics contributes to language learning, i.e., sociolinguistics as is a sub-discipline that studies language related to social factors to be the main provision for students when they pursue their studies in Middle Eastern countries. Sociolinguistics phenomena found in learning Arabic through the direct method were carried out by the means of various linguistic activities i.e., morning dialogue activity, correction of incorrect or inappropriate vocabularies, Arabic speech, learning activities using Arabic (with direct method), language court program (a program held by language department to punish those who do not use Arabic in their daily communication), Arabic drama, Arabic story telling, news reading in Arabic, Arabic vocabulary, and competition of nahwu and sharf (Arabic grammar) and mahfudzat.

Impact of a Long Lockdown on Mental Health and the Role of Media Use: Web-Based Survey Study.

BackgroundDue to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Czech population experienced a second lockdown lasting for about half a year, restricting free movement and imposing social isolation. However, it is not known whether the impact of this long lockdown resulted in habituation to the adverse situation or in the traumatization of the Czech population, and whether the media and specific media use contributed to these effects.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to elucidate the effect of the long lockdown on the mental health of the Czech population, and the role of exposure to COVID-19 news reports and specific forms of media news use in mental health.MethodsWe conducted two consecutive surveys in the early (November 2020) and late (March/April 2021) phases of the nationwide lockdown on the same nationally representative group of Czech adults (N=1777) participating in a longitudinal panel study.ResultsOur findings showed that the self-reported symptoms of anxiety and depression increased in the second observation period, confirming the negative effect of the pandemic lockdown as it unfolded, suggesting that restrictive measures and continuous exposure to a collective stressor did not result in the strengthening of resilience but rather in ongoing traumatization. The results also suggest a negative role of the media’s coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in mental health during the early, and particularly late, phases of the lockdown. Furthermore, we found several risk and protective factors of specific media news use. The media practice in news consumption connected to social media use was the strongest predictor of exacerbated mental health symptoms, particularly in the late phase of the lockdown. Moreover, news media use characterized by internalization of information learned from the news, as well as negative attitudes toward media news, were associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression. Conversely, the use of infotainment, together with an in-depth and contextual style of reading news articles, were related to improvement of mental health.ConclusionsOur study showed that the long lockdown resulted in traumatization rather than habituation, and in more pronounced effects (both negative and positive) of media use in mental health.

Curate: A news app for the millennial news consumers

Nowadays we access news on smartphones and tablets and this virtual news reading is increasing day by day, so there is an obvious need for reading news in personalised virtual app interactions. We collectively analysed a set of studies that addressed the concerns in the process involve in the development of versatile news app interfaces. The goal of this application is to deliver the news extracted from different platforms at a single place as fast as possible. On a priority basis, firstly we surveyed the users, secondly their preferences, and lastly conduct; this analysis of survey outcome into three primary types of readers. This evaluation illustrates the different advantages of the familiarization for various users of the news app and the viability of interactive interfaces for news apps. Then we implemented and developed an Interactive news app.

Dynamics of the Use of Digital Media as a Source of Information During Media Transition

There has been dynamic in the transition of the use of media by news readers from conventional media (Kompas print media) to new media (Kompas.com and KompasTV Instagram account). This causes a change in the communication process starting from the way of producing, delivering, capturing, and disseminating news as well as the content of the news itself which is different from people's habits earlier. The originality of this paper builds on the main ideas constructed from the theory of Uses and Gratification by focusing more on three aspects; audience, media (news content), and function of the media. This study uses a qualitative method with a constructivist analysis and a news content analysis unit that focuses on Kompas.com and KompasTV Instagram account at the onset of Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 in Indonesia by mapping news content based on keywords for the Covid-19 pandemic and the Corona virus news search. This study found that the reading interest among the Indonesian people is more inclined to news that has an audio-visual format than the newspaper format. This is evident from the audience’s feedback in the comment section compiled from data findings. In addition, the lack of the audience’s control results in the poor communication culture among the people, so that there is a potential for media bias and fake news. This study has limitations in that it does not discuss the reader interest from the perspective of conventional news (Kompas print media). Therefore, there should be further comprehensive research by comparing the two types of media.