Traditional News Outlets Research Articles

Does It Matter Where You Search? Twitter versus Traditional News Media

AbstractWe compare news in Twitter with traditional news outlets and emphasize their differential impact on Eurozone's sovereign bond market. We reveal a two‐way information flow between Twitter's “Grexit” tweets and “Grexit” mentions in traditional news which suggests not only that both types of news serve as important empirical predictors for the sovereign bond market but also that the “old” (traditional news) and the “new” (Twitter) media are connected; however, the influence of Twitter on traditional news is stronger. Grexit tweets raise the Greek spread more than Grexit mentions in traditional news. Weak contagion effects are reported for Portugal and Ireland.

‘Social Media Help Me Distinguish between Truth and Lies’: News Consumption in the Polarised and Low-trust Media Landscape of Greece

ABSTRACT How do citizens in countries with weak institutions and highly disrupted media landscapes navigate news? We examine a typical South European case, Greece, via cross-national data sets. Combining data from a pool of different surveys, we show that in Greece – unlike the other five countries of the sample – social media are more trusted than news media to help individuals navigate their news environment. A thematic analysis of open-ended survey answers indicates that Greek respondents embrace alternative news sources (social media, digital-born outlets) in record-high numbers because of their distrust of traditional news outlets. Taking into account the historic interplay of media and political institutions, we present Greece as a dystopian case for news organisations and the information environment in countries with weak institutions.

Investigating Disinformation in Middle East Mainstream News – Operationalization, Detection, and Implication

AbstractThis paper develops some discursive resources and models to analyze how and why disinformation permeates mainstream media. It draws on certain linguistic strategies and propaganda models helpful to unravel disinformation in mainstream media coverage, with focus placed on two main Arabic speaking 24/7 news channels in the Middle East. These strategies and models are used to conduct exploratory critical analyses of data drawn from the online news websites of the two news outlets. The paper presents the trends characterizing disinformation in the Middle East, but more importantly the discursive and social patterns and practices the media employ when publishing news intended to discredit and harm rather than inform. The study’s contribution is twofold: First, it provides a discursive framework for the analysis of disinformation in traditional news outlets. Second, it provides an analytical framework to investigate how disinformation pervades mainstream media. The study’s data and analysis support the lines of research on how patriotic ethics guide coverage and how the selection of discursive patterns responds to interests of hegemonic powers with a say in media organizations’ affairs.

Comparing the knowledge gap hypothesis in the United States and Singapore: The case of nanotechnology

This study examines the knowledge gap hypothesis in the United States and Singapore in the context of nanotechnology. This study proposes that academic discipline serves as a better indicator than education levels in predicting nanotechnology knowledge gaps. To reflect the contemporary media landscape, this study examines how attention to online media and documentaries alongside traditional news outlets affect individuals' nanotechnology knowledge. In both countries, online media and documentaries, as well as traditional news outlets, were related to nanotechnology knowledge to various extents. While the knowledge gap hypothesis was not observed in Singapore, results revealed that increased media attention and interpersonal discussion widened knowledge gaps between individuals from science and non-science disciplines in the United States. Education levels failed to reveal a consistent moderation effect. Taken together, the interaction analyses revealed that academic discipline predicted nanotechnology knowledge gaps more consistently than education levels in the United States. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Non-Jewish Jew: Walter Lippmann and the Pitfalls of Journalistic “Detachment”

Walter Lippmann has been touted by historians as “the most wise and forceful spokesman for the ideal of objectivity” during the years when objectivity became journalism’s foundational professional standard. But Lippmann has also been roundly criticized as a self-hating Jew for columns about assimilation and the rise of Hitler, columns that, like all his writing, were shaped by his own, idiosyncratic belief in journalistic “detachment.” His mishandling of what was then called “the Jewish question” highlights the dilemma of weighing a journalist’s professional commitment to detachment against the contrary assertion that the best journalism “comes from somewhere and stands for something.” The full story of this controversy offers clarity about poorly understood challenges with standards that traditional news outlets and digital platforms still face today.

Following Politicians on Social Media: Effects for Political Information, Peer Communication, and Youth Engagement

Young citizens increasingly turn to social media platforms for political information. These platforms enable direct communication between politicians and citizens, circumventing the influence of traditional news outlets. We still know little about the consequences of direct contact with politicians on such platforms for citizens’ political participation. Here, we argue that the interplay of different actors in the political news diet of citizens should be investigated from a networked communication perspective. Relying on a cross-sectional survey of young Danes (15–25 years old, <em>n</em> = 567), we investigate the relationship between following politicians on social media and: (a) the composition of young citizens’ political media diet; and (b) their civic messaging and campaign participation. Following political actors on social media relates to increased campaign engagement and can be a catalyst for young people’s exposure to campaign news, but their friends and followers function as the main node of their political online networks. We document a process of the de-mediation of politics on social media: Established news media lose influence as primary information sources for young citizens. We discuss these results in the context of users’ active curation and passive selection of their political social media diet.

False News On Social Media

In the past few years, the research community has dedicated growing interest to the issue of false news circulating on social networks. The widespread attention on detecting and characterizing deceptive information has been motivated by considerable political and social backlashes in the real world. As a matter of fact, social media platforms exhibit peculiar characteristics, with respect to traditional news outlets, which have been particularly favorable to the proliferation of false news. They also present unique challenges for all kind of potential interventions on the subject. As this issue becomes of global concern, it is also gaining more attention in academia. The aim of this survey is to offer a comprehensive study on the recent advances in terms of detection, characterization and mitigation of false news that propagate on social media, as well as the challenges and the open questions that await future research on the field. We use a data-driven approach, focusing on a classification of the features that are used in each study to characterize false information and on the datasets used for instructing classification methods. At the end of the survey, we highlight emerging approaches that look most promising for addressing false news.

More Than a Hashtag: Excitement, Anguish and the Semblant of #MeToo

#MeToo generated what has been deemed 'exciting' debate about contemporary feminism and misogynist violence. Through popular media, such as Twitter and Instagram, women rallied around a hashtag which has been covered in traditional news outlets (NYT, Time etc.) as galvanizing a global feminist movement. In this essay, I use Lacanian psychoanalysis to understand such excitement as jouissance. Further, I suggest that the #MeToo 'mo(ve)ment' also pivots off a different affect to excitement: that of anguish–which demands an understanding of a divided, in this case, 'Woman' subject. I suggest that this not-whole Woman '#Me' of #MeToo does galvanise, but in the site of the Real.

Don?t Trust #CDNMedia: Twitter Posts From Eight Canadian Communities During #elxn42

Originally designed for networking and to deliver mostly inconsequential information, social media is becoming more prevalent in political landscapes [81], while traditional local news environments are diminishing. Part of a global trend, local news outlets in Canada are closing faster than new ones spring up to replace them [51]. This trend is concerning in light of a report by the Knight Commission [46], which described the availability of local information something which is as vital to the healthy functioning of communities clean air, safe streets, good schools, and public health [46]. When the news being shared is political in nature, one can argue that it is uniquely vital to society, political news helps citizens make informed decisions, particularly during election time [46]. As traditional media outlets close, and particularly in light of recent Facebook algorithm changes, many people turn to alternative sources of news, like Twitter to find out about current and politically relevant information in their communities [36], [58]. This trend presents us with questions: Does Twitter currently function an alternative political news source for communities outside major media centers, particularly when traditional news outlets are being closed? And if not, how is it currently functioning with respect to election news?

Twitter versus Traditional News Media: Evidence for the Sovereign Bond Markets

This paper compares news in Twitter with traditional news outlets and then emphasizes their differential impact on Eurozone's sovereign bond market for a homogeneous news topic. We find a two-way information flow between Twitter's “Grexit” tweets and the respective mentions in traditional news outlets. The influence of Twitter on the traditional news is consistently more prolonged, especially in high-activity periods. We also assess the differential impact of the two news sources on sovereign spreads over and above the impact of economic/financial fundamentals, namely measures of default risk, liquidity risk and global financial risk. Our focus is on the borrowing costs of Eurozone's periphery; for comparison reasons, we also consider France as a core Eurozone country. The effect of Twitter on the Greek sovereign spread is positive and of higher magnitude than that of traditional news outlets. Weak contagion effects are recorded primarily for the case of Portugal and Ireland.

Back to the Future

The emergence of “fake news” during the Brexit referendum and Trump election campaign sent news organisations scurrying to establish teams of journalists to debunk deliberately misleading stories and verify facts. This paper examines steps to counter false stories and asks whether normative values of objectivity are about to enjoy a comeback. Typical markers of objectivity (freedom from bias, detachment and fact-based reporting) date back to the nineteenth century and, despite being ingrained in the Anglo-American news culture, have always been subject to challenge. Recently, the growth of partisan and populist media has illustrated deep distrust in traditional news outlets and is questioning whether it is time to jettison objectivity. But are we experiencing a backlash? Through interviews with senior UK-based journalists at legacy news organisations and analysis of editorial policy statements prompted by a UK parliamentary inquiry, the paper explores how fake news is rekindling debate about objectivity and its potential to make quality journalism stand out. It argues that legacy news organisations in the United Kingdom have seized the opportunity to highlight the value of normative practices that draw on familiar components of the objectivity paradigm. But few have the financial strength to bolster the rhetoric with additional editorial resources.

Researching Fake News: A Selective Examination of Empirical Studies

The term “fake news” came to dominate public political discourse in late 2016 regarding possible efforts by Russian agents to manipulate the US Presidential election. A similar alarm was raised during subsequent European elections the following year. This widespread concern was twisted into an epithet by some political figures, particularly President Trump, to describe traditional news outlets. Eventually, the alarm and name-calling transformed into a serious topic for empirical research, and the initial fruits of that work are beginning to appear. This short article provides a panorama of the scholarship emerging around fake news and illustrates this work by examining in more detail two radically different studies. The article concludes with suggestions for extending this initial research. But first, some background is provided to set the stage.

The special taste of snack news: An application of niche theory to understand the appeal of Facebook as a news source

Facebook has become an important source for political information since news posts are an essential part of the content that is shared and spread within the SNS. The present study applies the uses and gratifications approach and the theory of the niche to understand the specific appeal of Facebook as a source for political news. We compare the gratifications obtained from political Facebook news with those of political television news and newspapers. For this purpose, we conducted an online survey of Internet users (N=422). Results show that users hardly ever visit Facebook with the primary intention to find political information. Interestingly however, they estimate that about a quarter of the posts they receive contains political information. The most important dimension of gratifications obtained from political Facebook news content are “entertainment” and “killing time”. In these dimensions, Facebook is superior to political television news and newspapers. For “balanced information”, “surveillance”, and “social utility”, the two traditional sources outperform Facebook. Analyses of niche breadth and overlap demonstrate that Facebook has a comparatively narrow niche and a low overlap with the two traditional news outlets. This means that political news content on Facebook serves a very specific function which is complementary to other sources. Users mainly turn to political news posts on Facebook for reasons related to distraction. However, their value can be seen in the fact that users might this way get in touch with political news that they otherwise might not have been exposed to at all.

Influencing Myself: Self-Reinforcement Through Online Political Expression

Over the past decade, various online communication platforms have empowered citizens to express themselves politically. Although the political impact of online citizen expression has drawn considerable attention, research has largely focused on whether and how citizen-generated messages influence the public as an information alternative to traditional news outlets. The present study aims to provide a new perspective on understanding citizen expression by examining its political implications for the expressers themselves rather than those exposed to the expressed ideas. Data from a national survey and an online discussion forum study suggest that expressing oneself about politics provides self-reinforcing feedback. Political expressions on social media and the online forum were found to (a) reinforce the expressers’ partisan thought process and (b) harden their pre-existing political preferences. Implications for the role the Internet plays in democracy will be discussed.

News Recommendations from Social Media Opinion Leaders: Effects on Media Trust and Information Seeking

Polls show a strong decline in public trust of traditional news outlets; however, social media offers new avenues for receiving news content. This experiment used the Facebook API to manipulate whether a news story appeared to have been posted on Facebook by one of the respondent's real-life Facebook friends. Results show that social media recommendations improve levels of media trust, and also make people want to follow more news from that particular media outlet in the future. Moreover, these effects are amplified when the real-life friend sharing the story on social media is perceived as an opinion leader. Implications for democracy and the news business are discussed.

The Rise of Online News Aggregators: Consumption and Competition

The rise of news aggregator sites is a notable phenomenon in the contemporary media landscape. Outperforming traditional news outlets, online news aggregators, such as Yahoo News, Google News, and the Huffington Post, have become major sources of news for American audiences. Facing economic hardships, some news organizations cast blame on news aggregators for stealing their content and audiences. However, the relationship between news aggregators and traditional media outlets on the demand side has not received sufficient scholarly attention. Through a national survey of 1,143 U.S. Internet users, this study integrates the uses and gratifications paradigm and an economic approach to predict aggregator consumption and examine market competition. In terms of consumption, among demographic factors, age and ethnicity are the two major predictors of aggregator use. Among psychological factors, opinion motivations is the only non-predictor of aggregator use, suggesting that users do not seek opinion-driven content when they visit aggregator sites. In terms of competition, this study uncovers non-competitive relationships between three major news aggregators and 13 major TV, print, and social media news outlets. Such findings are at odds with industry sentiment and the proposed model serves as a basis for further theorizing news aggregator consumption.

Just Communicating

Just Communicating

CDC and social media: Missed connections?

During the 2011–12 influenza season, how effective was CDC at communicating important information to the general, nonmedically trained public? According to social media analysts at iMedSocial (www.imedsocial.com), the answer is "not very."

Figuring Out #Fukushima: An Initial Look at Functions and Content of US Twitter Commentary About Nuclear Risk

This study takes an exploratory look at Twitter content in the USA about the emergency at Japan's Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear power station. In particular, I focus on the concepts of the “atrophy of vigilance” from the risk communication literature and the message functions fulfilled for social media users. Two important results emerge from this analysis. First, Twitter content in the USA reflected a cautious approach, mainly suggesting an informative versus interpretive function and rarely mentioning risk or hazard outright. Second, this informative emphasis on risk dominated the content of tweets in the few days following the emergency but decreased substantially within 2 weeks afterwards; it was then overtaken by an interpretive risk emphasis. In addition, toward the end of this period, tweets were more likely to include hyperlinks to websites of traditional news outlets. Implications for the empirical study of social media and risk communication are discussed.

How the 'natives' and the 'hybrids' are transforming South African journalism

Addressing the American Society of Newspapers Editors in April 2005, Rupert Murdoch, media mogul and owner of News Corporation, made several profound statements which were reported in The Independent (2005-04). Firstly he said: 'Like many of you, I am a digital immigrant. I wasn’t weaned on the web, nor coddled on a computer. I grew up in a highly centralised world where news and information were tightly controlled by few editors, who deemed to tell us what we could and should know.' Secondly, he stated: 'The peculiar challenge, then, is for us digital immigrants – many of whom are in positions to determine how news is assembled and disseminated – to apply a digital mindset to new set of challenges.' Thirdly, Murdoch cited a Carnegie Report, which stated: 'There is a dramatic revolution taking place in the news business today, and it’s not about TV anchor changes, scandals at newspapers or embedded reporters. The future is being altered by the technology-savvy young people [natives] no longer wedded to traditional news outlets or even accessing news in traditional ways.'