ARTICLE: Fact-checkers cannot transcend partisan divides

Americans’ views of fact-checking sites are highly politicized, Michigan State University researchers Craig T. Robertson, Rachel R. Mourão and Esther Thorson write. They surveyed a representative sample of 1 033 Americans over their views on and use of fact-checking sites. People who self-identified as liberals or who consumed liberal or mainstream news were more favourable … Continued

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Published: 14 Jan 2020
Picture: untitled by Sora Sagano, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: The first year of reporting #MeToo in Indian English language press focused on celebrity stories

A new research article by Suman Mishra of Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, examines the phenomenon of news domestication and shows how hashtag activism originating in one country can have very different resonance in another. Mishra did a textual analysis of 641 news articles from five prominent English language newspapers: The Hindustan Times, The Times of … Continued

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Published: 8 Jan 2020

ARTICLE: Worry over finances makes audiences pay for local news

Audience members who worry over the financial situation of their local news outlets are more willing to pay for news, Manuel Goyanes, of University Carlos III de Madrid, discovered. Goyanes analysed survey responses from almost 35 000 Americans, collected in 2018. The author investigated three factors’ connection to audience members’ willingness to pay for local … Continued

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Published: 2 Dec 2019
Picture: untitled by Paweł Czerwiński, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Working in news media often spills over to family life, and vice versa

Work-life balance is a difficult one to handle in a newsroom job. A new study seeked to find out perceptions, strategies and advice from newsrooms workers. “Every respondent reported some degree of difficulty while attempting to balance the nontraditional schedules and long hours inherent in the news industry along with caring for families and self-wellbeing”, … Continued

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Published: 2 May 2019
Picture: capturing a few textural images through the window at a stop sign by Tim Foster, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: What do journalism textbooks teach about reporting suicide?

Journalists’ use of news values on specific topics change as societal and scientific norms change. A new research article shows how this transformation can be seen in the case of suicide coverage. Perry Parks of Michigan State University analysed journalism textbooks published in the United States between 1894 to 2016. Suicide has long been a … Continued

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Published: 26 Apr 2019
Picture: What’s going on here by John Schnobrich, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: How advertising tech firms see fake news, and how this affects the business of journalism

Different online marketing platforms and programmatic advertising has made it possible to profit from producing fake news. On the other hand, also legitimate news organizations use this infrastructure and the same tools for their livelihood. Joshua A. Braun and Jessica L. Eklund, of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, wanted to find out how the programmatic … Continued

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Published: 1 Feb 2019
Picture: SH-60B helicopter flies over Sendai by United States Navy, public domain

ARTICLE: Western newspapers used a cultural framework when reporting the Great East Japan Disaster

The Great East Japan Disaster of 2011 provides an important case study through which to evaluate how the western media cover Japan. Besides the nuclear crisis, limited attention has been paid to news reporting across the multiple overlapping disaster. Jamie Matthews of Bournemouth University did a critical discourse analysis of coverage of the disaster in … Continued

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Published: 22 May 2018
Picture: North America satellite orthographic by NASA, public domain, cropped and modified

ARTICLE: The US news system as “polarized liberal”

While many of the changes in United States’ media are discussed in relation to the 2016 election and Donald Trump’s presidency, “they are the symptoms of broader systemic dynamics that have been fermenting years before Trump first announced his bid”, a new study by Efrat Nechushtai of Columbia University, argues. The article uses Hallin and … Continued

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Published: 9 May 2018
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ARTICLE: Data journalism producing abstract categories

The world around us is not naturally organized into categories for statistical analysis. For the purposes of data journalism, discrete, unique incidents, events, and people must be rendered as similar, so that abstract categories may be created and compared, a new study states. Wilson Lowrey and Jue Hou, of the University of Alabama, studied data … Continued

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Published: 7 May 2018
Picture: Polar bear by Andy Brunner, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Framing of climate change news has only limited effects to selective exposure

Framing of the stories plays only a limited role in driving exposure to climate change news, a new study finds. Lauren Feldman of Rutgers University and P. Sol Hart of the University of Michigan, conducted two news browsing experiments, testing six different climate change frames. The experiments were done with national samples of adults in … Continued

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Published: 3 May 2018