ARTICLE: Journalists still prefer traditional audience metrics

American journalists still find page views and social sharing to be the most useful audience metrics. Valerie Belair-Gagnon, Rodrigo Zamith and Avery E. Holton surveyed 520 American newspaper, magazine and online journalists. The authors represent the universities of Minnesota, Massachusetts Amherst, and Utah, respectively. Aside from the journalists’ metric preference, the authors wanted to investigate … Continued

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Published: 5 Feb 2020

ARTICLE: Online experiments can indicate audience preferences like field research does

Does an experimental setting affect news audiences’ behaviour? The question is a relevant concern to researchers who consider sending participants to a mock news website as part of their methodology: if the knowledge of taking part in a study affects the participants’ behaviour, the method is not externally valid. University of Texas at Austin researchers … Continued

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Published: 4 Feb 2020

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

ARTICLE: Running into news by chance might be a bad thing

Encountering news by chance on social media, i.e. “incidental news consumption”, can be detrimental to audiences’ news habits, Chang Sup Park, of State University of New York at Albany, and Barbara K. Kaye, of University of Tennessee, write. They conducted a two-wave panel study on South Koreans, with 1 008 participants completing both surveys. Park … Continued

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Published: 9 Jan 2020

ARTICLE: Most media inform better than mobile news apps

Citizens gain more political knowledge from almost any other news media than mobile news applications, a study on Danes discovered. Jakob Ohme, of University of Amsterdam, conducted a large-scale survey during the 2015 Danish election campaign. Over 9 000 people participated in the study, but only 1 108 completed both pre- and post-election surveys and … Continued

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Published: 20 Dec 2019

ARTICLE: Accusations of lying prompt self-reflection in German media

German news media has been recently met with an renewed flurry of Lügenpresse accusations. The term Lügenpresse, or “lying press”, dates back to the First World War, but is best known for its use by the German Nazi party. In recent years, the term’s use has resurged. Michael Koliska, of Georgetown University, and Karin Assmann, … Continued

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Published: 18 Dec 2019

ARTICLE: Civic participation affected more by age than news repertoire

Younger Israelis seem more eager for civic participation than their older peers, regardless of what news they consume. Sagit Dinnar, of the Open University of Israel, and Hillel Nossek, of Kinneret Academic College on the Sea of Galilee, studied the matter through so-called Q-sort methodology. It involved asking 36 Israelis to sort various news sources … Continued

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Published: 11 Dec 2019

ARTICLE: BBC’s senior journalists are disconnected from the public

Prominent journalists working for the British Broadcasting Corporation are very different from their audience, Gary James Merrill, of University of Roehampton, writes. He investigated the social constitution of 66 senior BBC journalists and compared them to national data. Merrill also included samples of senior Conservative and Labour politicians in the comparison. The journalists have more … Continued

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Published: 9 Dec 2019

ARTICLE: What news do Islamists consume?

Radicalized Islamists consume regular, mainstream news media – but almost always filtered by Islamist propagandists. Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich researchers Philip Baugut and Katharina Neumann interviewed 34 Islamists serving prison sentences and 9 so-called “scene leavers”, i.e. former radical Islamists. Most importantly, Islamist propagandists instructed their followers to avoid “Western” news media, claiming it … Continued

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Published: 6 Dec 2019

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