ARTICLE: Swedish newspapers depict single mothers as reluctant heroes

How are single mothers represented in Sweden’s leading newspapers? Disa Bergnehr, of University of Borås, and Helena Wahlström Henriksson, of Uppsala University, tackled the question through content analysis. They investigated four Swedish newspapers’ output from three years (2015-2017) and analysed the articles that made mention of single motherhood. In the end, single mothers or single … Continued


ARTICLE: How does China Daily represent Chinese Muslims?

The state-aligned newspaper China Daily covers Chinese Muslims in a paternalistic manner, Meng Ye, of Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Peter Thomas, of University of Leicester, write. They studied the paper’s coverage of Muslims between 2001 and 2015 through corpus-assisted discourse analysis. The total sample included 747 articles, most of them news stories. Topics deemed … Continued


ARTICLE: News diversity declines within Mediahuis titles

The Belgian media conglomerate Mediahuis is increasingly recycling news between four of its Flemish titles, Jonathan Hendrickx, of Vrije Universiteit Brussel, writes. Hendrickx analysed nearly 12 500 news articles published by Het Nieuwsblad, De Standaard, Gazet van Antwerpen and Het Belang van Limburg. In addition the author spent 62 days observing the journalists working at … Continued


ARTICLE: Western Afro-pessimism seeps into African media

African news on Africa are largely negative and thus follow Western notions of the continent, Michael Yao Wodui Serwornoo, of University of Cape Coast, writes. He analysed over 13 000 news stories on other African countries published by four Ghanaian newspapers. The newspapers’ coverage is highly dependent on international sources, Serwornoo found. The BBC World … Continued


ARTICLE: News about child sexual exploitation have gotten worse

British newspapers’ coverage of child sexual exploitation (CSE) was better in late 1990’s than in mid-2010’s, Katie Elliott, of London Metropolitan University writes. She analysed the framing of 390 articles on CSE, comparing two time periods: 1997-1999 and 2014-2015. The articles came from three newspapers, The Times, Daily Mail and Mirror. Articles in the first … Continued


ARTICLE: Populist rhetoric on immigrants is more common in Danish than in Swedish or Norwegian press

Danish newspapers are noticeably more populist in writing about immigration than their Swedish or Norwegian counterparts, Hilmar Mjelde and Jan Fredrik Hovden, both of University of Bergen, write. They analysed over 4 000 newspaper articles on immigration, published since 1970 in the three countries. The authors operationalized “populism” as calls for (or celebrations of) strong … Continued


ARTICLE: Business interests are more prominent in news than thought

Business interests have much greater presence in news than previously thought, University of Amsterdam researchers Ellis Aizenberg and Marcel Hanegraaff write. The authors analysed of over 350 000 British and Dutch newspaper articles, taking into account which “organized interests” were present in them. Earlier studies had shown business interests’ presence in the news was not … Continued


ARTICLE: Sympathetic victims predict the use of photographs in crime news

If a homicide involves a “sympathetic victim”, the event is likely to be covered with photographs, noticed Walter Works and Jennifer S. Wong, both of Simon Fraser University. The inclusion of photographs in the coverage will, in turn, affect the audience’s impressions and recall of the crime, potentially distorting public understanding of crime, the authors … Continued


Picture: Reflection by Ozan Safak, license CC0 1.0

REPORT: High level of distrust in news in Turkey

People’s trust and mistrust in news media Turkey indicate a very polarised society and news media, a new report by Servet Yanatma of the University of Oxford, shows. The report is supplementary to the Digital News Report 2017 by Oxford’s RISJ Institute, and is based on the survey done for the report. Television is the … Continued


Picture: Geometric wood pattern by Teo Duldulao, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Convergence and de-convergence at a Chinese newsroom

A well-established organizational culture and a working routine  are crucial for legacy media when adapting to rapid changes in the digital age, a new study states. Ke Li, of the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, did ethnographic research at the Chinese newspaper Beijing News for four months. Li proposes a convergence and de-convergence model of … Continued