Picture: Tile pattern pastel by Andrew Ridley, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: Swedish young people getting news from social media

Annika Bergström and Maria Jervelycke Belfrage of the University of Gothenburg, examined young people’s news-gathering on social media in Sweden, using a combination of representative survey data (respondents aged 16 to 25) and qualitative interviews with 44 people aged 16 to 19. According to the survey conducted in 2015, 91% of respondents read news via … Continued

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Published: 16 Jan 2018
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ARTICLE: When news are distant, stories shared by friends and newspapers are as credible

What makes news seem credible on social media? Edson C. Tandoc Jr., of Nanyang Technological University, researched the question through an experiment with 82 Singaporean university students. The participants each read two (fake) news articles shared to them on Facebook. The articles were shared by either the prestigious Singaporean newspaper The Strait Times or personal … Continued

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Published: 15 Jan 2018
CFP JRN

CFP | 16.4. | Fake news and filter bubbles

The journal Quaderns del CAC, published by the Catalonian Audiovisual Council, is calling for article submissions for its upcoming thematic section on fake news. The section is entitled “Fake news, algorithms and filter bubbles” and it accepts articles written in English, Catalan, and Spanish. The journal is open access. The section is particularly interested in … Continued

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Published: 15 Jan 2018
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ARTICLE: Hard news pictures engage younger audience

What kind of photojournalism is best at engaging the audience? T.J. Thomson and Keith Greenwood, both of University of Missouri, investigated the question through a Q method study with 30 American Instagram users. Thomson and Greenwood selected 16 Instagram accounts of established news organisations and photojournalists. They then selected the three most well-received images from … Continued

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Published: 8 Jan 2018
Picture: Lion’s Head at dusk by Marcelo Novais, license CC0 1.0

ARTICLE: The moral panic about ‘fake news’ in South Africa

Proliferation of fake news websites and fake social media accounts have raised concerns also in South Africa. The phenomenon should not be understood outside of its particular contexts of production and consumption, writes Herman Wasserman of the University of Cape Town. The study provides an exploratory overview of different types of media output. A very … Continued

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Published: 19 Dec 2017
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ARTICLE: Who re-tweets clickbait links on Twitter?

Who forwards “clickbait” links on Twitter, and how do those Twitter messages differ from “non-clickbait” tweets? Abhijnan Chakraborty, Rajdeep Sarkar, Ayushi Mrigen and Niloy Ganguly, all of Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, studied the questions by analysing millions of tweets and re-tweets. The team started with 12 media organisations present on Twitter. This included both … Continued

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Published: 15 Dec 2017
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ARTICLE: Negative comments undermine news’ credibility

If online news articles are accompanied by negative comments, the readers will find the articles less credible, T Franklin Waddell, of University of Florida, discovered. Waddell conducted an online experiment with 289 Americans, who were exposed to a news story about heroin addiction. In the experiment participants viewed the same news article, but under eight … Continued

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Published: 11 Dec 2017
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ARTICLE: Why and how do Singaporeans share news?

How do people choose what news to share – and with whom? Debbie Goh, Richard Ling, Liuyu Huang and Doris Liew, all of Nanyang Technological University, investigated the question by focus group interviews with over 60 Singaporeans of various ages and backgrounds. There are two main types of news-sharing behaviour, the authors found. First, the … Continued

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Published: 27 Nov 2017
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ARTICLE: Media mainly kept their informative role during Twitter discussions of four big conflicts

Svetlana S. Bodrunova and Ivan S. Blekanov of St. Petersburg State University, and Anna A. Litvinenko of Freie Universität Berlin (authors not in original order), looked at Twitter discussions concerning four recent conflicts in the United States, Germany, France, and Russia. They compared how the roles taken by media differed by analyzing a total of … Continued

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Published: 23 Nov 2017