ARTICLE: Headless photos increase negativity towards obese people

News images that depict obese people from the neck down increase the readers’ negative attitudes towards the obese, a team of researchers found. They conducted two online experiments with 332 and 312 participants, respectively. In them, participants read a news article with a picture of an obese or an overweight person, some female, some male … Continued

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Published: 15 Nov 2019

ARTICLE: #GamerGate failed to capture the news agenda, confirming its adherents’ worldview

Despite the so-called “gamergaters’” attempts, news media eventually leaned away from their preferred interpretation of the #GamerGate events, Bridget M. Blodgett, of University of Baltimore, writes. Blodgett analysed 500 news articles published on the controversy since 2014. The #GamerGate controversy began with an American game developer, Zoë Quinn, of being accused of bribing journalists for … Continued

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Published: 25 Oct 2019

ARTICLE: Some news drive minorities to normative protest, others to violence

Different news have different effects on what kind of collective action minorities are willing to engage in, a team of researchers discovered. Muniba Saleem, Ian Hawkins and Jessica Roden, of University of Michigan, with Magdalena E. Wojcieszak, of University of California (author names not in original order), studied American Muslims and their reactions to US … Continued

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Published: 23 Oct 2019

ARTICLE: Calling minor gaffes scandals hurts journalism’s credibility

When journalists try to exaggerate and scandalize a small transgression, they undermine the public’s trust in journalism, a team of Radboud University researchers discovered. Paul Graβl, Gabi Schaap, Flavia Spagnuolo and Jonathan Van ’t Riet conducted an experiment with 128 Dutch university students, where the participants read different kinds of news articles and assessed both … Continued

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Published: 18 Oct 2019

ARTICLE: Sensational news coverage contributes to Islamist radicalization

Mainstream news media can contribute to the radicalization of Muslims into violent Islamists, write Philip Baugut and Katharina Neumann, both of the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich. They interviewed 34 Islamist prisoners and 10 former Islamists over how media and online propaganda had affected their radicalization. Online propaganda by Islamist preachers often derides the Western … Continued

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Published: 16 Oct 2019

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

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Published: 7 Oct 2019
Picture: untitled by Jason Leung, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: The field of comparative journalism research is growing

In the recent years, comparative journalism studies have become more common. They have focused on Western authorship, the study of Western countries and elite media, quantitative methods of analysis and political aspects of journalism, a new analysis finds. Folker Hanusch of the University of Vienna and Tim P. Vos of the University of Missouri did … Continued

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Published: 21 Jan 2019
Picture: Abstract fluid art by Lurm, license CC0 1.0

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