Picture: 941028-中時工會抗議-25 by Lennon Wong, license CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

ARTICLE: Politically active people in Taiwan still read print newspapers

Tien-Tsung Lee of the University of Kansas, and Yuki Fujioka of Georgia State University analyzed data from the Taiwan Communication Survey (TCS) from 2013, looking at which news and information sources are connected to civic and political participation. Their sample included 2 000 Taiwanese adults. Print newspaper reading was positively associated with both online and offline … Continued

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Published: 21 Mar 2018

ARTICLE: The audience reacts more strongly to political scandals, if the information is presented bit by bit

Dividing a news story about a political scandal into several pieces will have a stronger effect than presenting all information at once, Christian von Sikorski and Johannes Knoll, both of University of Vienna, write. The authors came to the conclusion after conducting an experiment with 171 university students. The participants all read a (fictitious) story … Continued

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Published: 16 Mar 2018
Picture: untitled by LudgerA, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Journalists are willing to engage with online commenters, but take action to limit the influence

The relationship between online commenters and journalists has been a tricky one. News organizations are struggling with how to allow for audience autonomy while still holding on to power and journalistic authority. J. David Wolfgang of Colorado State University researched how journalists attempt to frame commenting and its role alongside journalism. He did 1) a … Continued

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Published: 13 Mar 2018

ARTICLE: Who perceive the media to be biased?

What are the contributing factors that cause audience members to perceive the media to be biased? Jakob-Moritz Eberl, of University of Vienna, surveyed over 1 600 Austrians to investigate the question. First, Eberl’s analysis confirmed a number of background factors that contribute to perceived media bias, such as age, education, political interest, and political alignment. … Continued

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Published: 12 Mar 2018

ARTICLE: Quantifying audiences is not new, but it is more impactful than before

News organisations have been trying to measure their audiences for many decades – long before the internet and measuring instruments based on it proliferated, writes Rodrigo Zamith, of University of Massachusetts Amherst. Zamith’s recent article chronicles the history of audience quantification and reviews the research on it. The current increase in using analytical software and … Continued

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Published: 9 Mar 2018
CFP JRN

CFP | 27.4. | Vigilante audiences

The Erasmus Research Centre of Media, Communication and Culture is calling for chapter proposals for an upcoming, edited book on “Vigilante Audiences”. The volume will be published online in an open access format. The publication project also includes a two-day workshop, to be held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, in October 2018. The book will focus … Continued

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Published: 7 Mar 2018

ARTICLE: Automated news recommendation can be as good as human editors

Is automated news recommendation a threat to content diversity, leading to audience getting trapped inside “filter bubbles”? Judith Möller, Damian Trilling and Natali Helberger, all of University of Amsterdam, with Bram van Es, of eScience Center, investigated the question through a statistical simulation. The authors used a sample of almost 22 000 news articles published … Continued

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Published: 5 Mar 2018

REPORT: Twitter subcultures are wary of journalism

How do different subcultures interact with, and react to, mainstream journalism on Twitter? A team of American researchers investigated the matter through three American Twitter-spheres: “Black”, “Feminist” and “Asian-American Twitter”. The researchers analysed over 44 million Twitter messages which bore certain subculture-related hashtags, e.g. #blacklivesmatter, #girlslikeus and #freshofftheboat, respectively. In addition, 45 people were interviewed … Continued

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Published: 2 Mar 2018