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
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ARTICLE: Index on Censorship advocating for freedom of expression

The magazine Index on Censorship has since 1972 provided a platform for identifying, highlighting and challenging censorship and abuses against freedom of expression. It has been one of the most important freedom of speech or anti-censorship publications in the world, a new study states. John Steel of the University of Sheffield, examined the inception and … Continued

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Published: 15 Mar 2018
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ARTICLE: US television coverage of Nigeria is mostly negative

Western media coverage of Africa has long been a subject of controversy. US television news portray Nigeria mainly in a negative light, a new study by Oluseyi Adegbola and Sherice Gearhart of Texas Tech University, and Jacqueline Skarda-Mitchell of the University of Nebraska Omaha (authors not in original order), finds. Authors analyzed television coverage of … Continued

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Published: 6 Mar 2018
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ARTICLE: Legacy media still have the strongest online audience overlap in the US and UK

A new study by Subhayan Mukerjee and Sandra González-Bailón of the University of Pennsylvania, and Sílvia Majó-Vázquez of the University of Oxford (authors not in original order), created a novel way to find out how people consume news online. Researchers tracked the browsing behaviour of web users and looked at the networks they form while … Continued

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Published: 15 Feb 2018
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ARTICLE: US national discourse has constructed China as a potential enemy ‘Other’

China is arguably the most important partner and rival for the United States. Su-Mei Ooi of Butler University, and Gwen D’Arcangelis of Skidmore College, look at the US news and political discourse about China, and how China is being ‘othered’. The researchers analyzed official policy documents, statistics and other texts along with news media articles … Continued

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Published: 13 Feb 2018
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PAPER: Right-wing supporters shared the most fake and junk news in the US

Who reads and shares most junk news? Researchers studied social media distribution of so-called junk news websites in the United States, during three months, between 20 October 2017 and 19 January 2018. On Twitter, a network of “Trump supporters” shared the widest range of known junk news sources, a data memo by the University of … Continued

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Published: 8 Feb 2018
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ARTICLE: Push and pull forces of mediatization

When discussing mediatization of politics, it is important to distinguish between the different actors involved. Jay G Blumler of the University of Leeds, and Frank Esser of the University of Zurich, introduce a dual perspective of mediatization. They studied the 2015 UK General Election Campaign, especially BBC interview programmes, key campaign activities and views from … Continued

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Published: 6 Feb 2018

ARTICLE: TV and search engines people’s first choices for political information

Where do people choose to get political information, and how much do they learn from it? Researchers analyzed data from a national sample of U.S. adults from 2011 and 2012, measuring for political knowledge of the respondents. Internet searches have come to rival television news as a source of political information, the authors state. 35% … Continued

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Published: 31 Jan 2018