When Does the Public's Issue Agenda Affect the Media's Issue Agenda (and Vice-Versa)? Developing a Framework for Media-Public Influence*

Objective. The agenda-setting literature has demonstrated the media's ability to set the issue agenda for the public. One byproduct of this work is that researchers have produced some evidence suggesting that the audience will, on occasion, set the issue agenda for the media. Given disparate sets of findings, researchers do not have a framework to better understand on which issues the media will set the agenda for the public and on which issues the public will set the agenda for the media. It is the goal of this article to provide empirical support for a framework suggesting that the events comprising issue areas predetermine the direction of influence between the media's and the public's issue agendas. Methods. I construct a historical data set comprised of 35,000 stories from the nightly network news and responses to Gallup's Most Important Problem question. I look for evidence of causal influence between news issue content and public issue concerns using Granger analysis and vector autoregression. Results. Issue areas comprised of spectacular events, such as defense, will be reported by the media and subsequently affect the salience the audience assigns to those issues. In issues not normally comprised of spectacular and singular events, such as energy and environment, public issue concerns appear to drive issue coverage in the news. Issues such as transportation and education, which comprise few spectacular events and little public concern, will receive sparse coverage in the media. Conclusion. The findings provide support for a framework based on events; the types of events that typically comprise issue areas will affect the likelihood of those issues coming on the news agenda. This then affects the direction of influence between the public and the media. The framework supported here allows for the integration of the media effects and media content literatures. This has implications for understanding how the news agenda is constructed and how the commercial media meets democratic ideals.     

The nature of local news media issue coverage of U.S. House members

In this paper, I examine local newspaper issue coverage of House members after the campaign season has ended. While research on news coverage of campaign issues has been thorough, considerably less attention has been placed on issue coverage outside of campaigns. This is particularly the case for the local news media. Using an extensive content analysis of House member local newspaper coverage over a one-year period, I examine the nature of local and national issue coverage. I find that local issues are covered slightly more than national issues in reporting on House members. Further, members’ strategic use of press releases and the presence of newspapers’ Washington bureaus help explain whether a story will cover a local or national political issue.     

浅议我国纺织品出口的可持续发展

纺织品配额的取消,在引发国外贸易保护主义措施抬头的同时,也给我国纺织品贸易带来利好消息。面对机遇和挑战,应采取优化产品结构,加快技术创新;提高产品质量,创立自主品牌;改善经营环境,规避贸易风险;发挥政府作用,形成产业集群优势;更新营销理念,构建营销优势等对策,以实现我国纺织品出口的可持续发展。     

受众的细分对媒体定位的作用

准确的定位是新闻媒体生存与发展的基石。在市场经济条件下 ,受众因素对媒体发展的影响越来越大。新闻媒体要做到定位准确、风格鲜明 ,就必须对受众群体做细致的分类研究 ,引用受众的细分原则 ,使其在新闻传播中发挥应有的作用     

Slanted Objectivity? Perceived Media Bias,Cable News Exposure,and Political Attitudes*

Objectives. This research explores the consequences of a fragmented television news audience. The recent proliferation of a wide array of television news sources has influenced the manner in which a large number of Americans get their information about politics and government. The political consequences of media fragmentation and the polarization of the U.S. television news audience are explored. Methods. I analyze data on television news‐gathering habits and political attitudes collected from several surveys conducted by the Pew Research Center during the 2004 presidential election campaign. Results. The Fox News Channel has been the main beneficiary of television news fragmentation by appealing to those individuals who have become disillusioned with what they perceive as a liberally‐biased mainstream media. The findings show that the Fox News audience has a distinct set of political attitudes regarding President Bush and his opposition. Evidence also indicates that the Fox News audience has distinct voting behavior patterns, even when controlling for party identification. Finally, the results illustrate that Fox News watchers have perceptions of political reality that differ from the rest of the television news audience. Conclusions. The television news audience is divided along political lines. This division could contribute toward further political polarization among the U.S. mass public as the content of television news coverage of politics becomes less and less homogenized.     

School Consolidation: Whither China's Rural Education?

The School Consolidation Policy in the 1990s significantly impacted Chinese rural compulsory education and Chinese rural communities. Although this policy has been involved in many negative news reports, there is a lack of scientific research on it. To address the research gap, this paper first delineates the evolution of this policy, which was formed to balance the disparity between urban and rural education, accelerated by rural financial reformation and aborted due to various emerging problems. It then discusses the educational problems caused by the policy including misallocated resources, poor quality, rising costs, student safety issues, high dropout rate, and lost rural culture heritage. Through the analyses, this paper provides a clear picture of the development of Chinese rural education, and offers implications for improving educational policy, promoting educational quality, and securing educational rights of students in rural China.     

论新闻核

优秀的散文都有散文眼.散文眼是由散文的炼意需要而产生的.散文有了"眼",散文所创造的情景交融、意象聚合的新与深的意境就有了凝聚点,散文就能达到深刻的思想性与尽可能完美的艺术性的统一.新闻写作应借鉴散文这种炼意的笔法,在提炼新闻主题上追求新与深,需要有散文眼式的"新闻核".画龙点睛,设置新闻核,则可以增强新闻作品的思想性、教育性和指导性.     

Online news diffusion dynamics and public opinion formation: A case study of the controversy over judges’ personal opinion expression on SNS in Korea

On the Internet, the line between news and opinion becomes blurred in terms of content and form. In this sense, the processes of news diffusion on the Internet and online public opinion formation are integrated. This study selects one Korean example about the private tweet of a judge about government social network service (SNS) regulation and analyzes citation networks from one news/opinion to another news/opinion. By relying on social network analysis (SNA) methods, this study examines how news/opinions diffuse and how they interact and influence each other's ideological frame within agencies sharing the same ideology and between agencies whose ideologies contrast. The results show that public discourse on the Internet is clearly polarized and fragmented along political ideological lines. Additionally, the findings show that the winner is the conservative bloc because it succeeds in achieving within-bloc solidarity and ensures the resonance of news frames with the cultural values of Korean society. Implications for these findings in modern democracy are also discussed.     

Exit, Voice and Quality in the English Education Sector

The use of choice as a mechanism to improve public service delivery is now well established in the UK. Current policy discourse additionally considers voice as a further, complementary, user-driven mechanism. In this article I scrutinize the assumption that choice (exit) and voice complement each other in creating user-driven incentives to increase quality for all consumers in the context of education. I do this by going back to Hirschman's thesis on 'Exit, Voice and Loyalty', focusing in particular on the definitions of quality put forward by him. I apply his analysis to the English education sector and show that, while the current policy discourse evokes the language of Hirschman, it doesn't follow through on the actual implications of his analysis. In particular, I argue that in the current system, choice and voice may complement each other for only a subset of consumers.     

Searching for ‘analysis’ in the southwest: AM vs. PM newspapers in four ‘fire zones’

Never in the history of newspapering has our Fourth Estate been so unsure of what its premiere medium should be doing as we approach the 21st century. Because daily newspaper circulation and readership have been declining since 1987, every newspaper consultant in America has an opinion about what papers must do. This exploratory study focuses on what Southwest media managers think newspapers must do—provide analysis and context in local news coverage. Context is defined and eight competing southwestern newspapers in Alburquerque, El Paso, Phoenix, and Tucson are content analyzed for “analysis” by investigating 200 seperate 1994 editions in this non-probability, purposive benchmark sample.     

An Experimental Test of the Effects of Fictional Framing on Attitudes*

Objectives. Most studies of media effects in political communication focus on news media. A smaller body of work extends theories of news media effects to fictional entertainment media. Just as news media engage in priming and agenda setting, these studies suggest that fictional media do as well. In this study, we deal with fictional media's framing of issues. No research has sought to test the effects of framing in explicitly fictional media on political opinions. We develop the outlines of a theory we call “fictional framing” and test it in an experiment. Methods. Participants in our treatment group watched the film Cider House Rules. The movie frames the issue of abortion in the case of incest in a pro‐choice way, and frames morality in terms of following one's own conscience. Results. The film influenced opinions in ways consistent with the framing of these issues. Conclusions. Since abortion opinions and moral values tend to be entrenched, we consider this a strong first test of the effects of fictional framing.     

Culture wars in South Australia: the sex education debates

School sexuality education has been a component of Australia's successful and internationally recognized HIV/AIDS strategy since the 1980s and has been well accepted in the community. However South Australia is experiencing a re‐emergence of opposition to school sexuality education orchestrated by groups associated with the United States‐based Christian Right. In this paper I will outline sex education policy developments in Australia and the United States as a framework for discussing the controversy generated around the Sexual Health and Relationships Education (SHARE) program in South Australia in 2003. In doing so I give attention to the similarities between the strategies deployed by the opponents of SHARE and those used to install abstinence‐only‐until‐marriage sex education as national policy in the United States. I will argue that, rather than a phenomenon indigenous to South Australia, these debates are part of an international movement to progress the political goals of the Christian Right.     

FM local newscasts in the Southwest: A disappearing service

This 2004 investigation of FM radio stations in seven southwestern states presents a snapshot of where radio news might be heading early in our new millennium. Radio is rarely the topic of discussion, giving it the dubious identity of the “forgotten medium.” Seven discrete variables in the form of YES|NO questions are formulated from a 1993 to 2004 literature review that takes into account the demise of radio news on the FM dial. An e-mail questionnaire was answered by management at N = 61 FM stations regarding newscasts in their daily programming. The picture for radio news on the FM dial is gloomy as budget cuts and consolidations impact the newsroom.     

论新闻的真实性

真实是新闻报道的根本原则.我们党历来重视新闻的真实性,在不同的革命和建设时期都强调必须坚持新闻报道讲真话的原则.在新的历史条件下,坚持新闻的真实性,就要按照江泽民同志提出的"三个代表"的重要思想和要求,从讲政治的高度,切实提高新闻工作者对坚持新闻真实性的认识,不断增强新闻工作者的政治素质和业务素质.     

新闻媒体的社会责任与文化品位

社会责任构成新闻传播活动的基础,提高新闻作品的文化品位是社会责任的题中应有之义。近年来,某些舆论导向出现偏差,使新闻作品呈现泛娱乐化、低俗化的倾向,都是着眼市场占有率、弱化社会责任所致。鉴于此,新闻工作者必须践行社会效益优先的原则,赋予新闻作品以深邃的思想内涵,培养受众健康向上的审美情趣,以促进大众文化品位的提升。     

Journalists as first responders

ABSTRACT

Covering terrorist attacks has posed numerous challenges to mainstream media across the world. Bringing information to the public quickly remains a primary goal for news media, but the journalistic duty to tell the truth comes with an increased responsibility for the accuracy of reports. When news is broken by civilian eyewitnesses and is posted by social media before it has even gone through the barest of verification checks, news media editors struggle to fulfil the task of informing the public while reporting on stories that hold the potential to alarm the audience. This paper offers some insights into the ways the New Zealand news media organised reporting on the March 15th terrorist attack in Christchurch. Based on face-to-face interviews with selected editors of major news organisations in New Zealand, it investigates the ways they operated in this situation. It explores key moments in editorial decision making on 15 March 2019, the first day of coverage of the terrorist attack. It focuses on the ‘first responder’ elements of news media work – speed and accuracy in providing information about the mosque attacks – to identify how journalistic norms are adapted and changed to report this breaking news.     

试论新闻策划的合力导向

加入WTO之后 ,国内媒体要想做大、做强 ,加大在国际上的声音 ,必须加强新闻策划 ,必须强调新闻合力 ,因此 ,研究新闻策划的合力导向是十分重要的。事实证明 ,媒介合力导向的传播效果来自于精深的策划 ,同样 ,新闻策划也需要发挥合力导向的作用 ,两者相辅相成 ,共同促进。在新闻策划的合力导向实施过程中 ,应遵循导向正确的原则、集思广益的原则、慎重筹划的原则以及目标整合的原则 ,以保证新闻传播事业能够形成整体功能和综合效应 ,使影响新闻事业效果的各个因素朝着正确的方向、沿着最佳的路线协调一致 ,同步前进。     

“党派实在论”的结构诠释学

如果政治宣传,意识形态以及党派性等概念真的从这些概念本身的内涵来界定自身,那么,在追逐某个政治议程时,这些概念由于存在明显的偏见,从而会导致自相驳斥的结果。因此,毫不奇怪,这些沟通类型的显明特征之一就是宣称它们在精准和公平地再现实在,并且否认存在政治偏见的丑恶内涵。笔者称这种类型为“党派实在论”,即被政治驱动的媒体演出,它们象征性地把自己呈现为是在实在论类型下运作的。本文的问题是,党派性媒体报导是如何在追逐自身的政治议程的同时创造出一种中立且无偏见的实在论表象的。为此,本文借用文化社会学的结构诠释学方法,以“奥莱利实情”这档非常流行的美国电视新闻节目作为党派实在论的分析案例。本文认为,“奥莱利实情”是通过如下几个范畴来生产一种用以诠释新闻的“党派实在论”框架的：主持人形象建构、围绕二元对立符码形成复杂的潜在意义结构,以及一套精致奥妙的修辞技巧。虽然这档节目自诩是一扇投射现实的简单窗户,但事实上,它启用一套精妙的党派文化系统来确证观众通过这扇明显中立的窗户所看到的东西能够支持节目制作人的政治利益。为了让新闻呈现在一定程度上暗合各种党派结论但又看起来依然是实在论,而非充斥着偏见,节目的每个情节和片段都依据一个意义结构来搭建问题。这个意义结构虽然具有强烈的党派结论导向性,但又能给人一种对各方观点都进行过理性思考的外表。本文认为,这种针对意义结构的深度分析对于理解作为政治沟通类型的“党派实在论”具有重要意义。     

Closing pathways: refugee-background students and tertiary education

Abstract

Recent changes to policies and funding for tertiary education are exacerbating an already difficult situation for refugees aiming to earn university degrees. No one intended to create the barriers that the refugee-background community faces; government agencies continue attempts to improve educational outcomes for those who arrive as refugees. The root causes of this situation are the complexity of the refugee situation and a lack of holistic knowledge about this diverse group of New Zealand residents among policy makers and educators. In addition, the complexity of interactions among policy changes and refugee situations has prevented any single agency from predicting outcomes of its policies for refugee-background students. In this paper, I discuss how new policies interact with a range of existing barriers faced by refugees pursuing degrees and how, without urgent attention, this will constrict or close pathways into and through university study. I further suggest that the strongest foundation for an effective program to provide equitable access to university education is including refugee-background students among those groups who receive equity consideration.