Framing distance: local vs. non-local news in Hong Kong press

Geographical location as a “natural” attribute of news has always been a source of news manipulation. This research investigates how different community newspapers select, interpret, and package events originating in places of varying distances. Contextualized in Hong Kong, three media frames (authority, conflict, and attribution) are closely examined and theoretically connected to three types of newspapers (mass appeal, elite, and pro-establishment) across four locales (local, mainland China, Asian, and international). To test the hypotheses, a large-scale content analysis of 14 daily newspapers in Hong Kong was conducted. On the whole, findings supported the three hypotheses, showing that local news was systematically differentiated from non-local news in terms of the frequency of political authorities cited, presence of diversified opinions, and the likelihood of either individuals or institutions being blamed for social wrongs. Considerable variations were detected across different types of newspapers as well. Theoretical and social implications of the empirical findings are discussed.     

Hybrid social and news media protest events: from #MarchinMarch to #BusttheBudget in Australia

Public protest events are now both social media and news media events. They are deeply entangled, with news media actors – such as journalists or news organisations – directly participating in the protest by tweeting about the event using the protest hashtag; and social media actors sharing news items published online by professional news agencies. Protesters have always deployed tactics to engage the media and use news media agencies’ resources to amplify their reach, with the dual aim of mobilising new supporters and adding their voice to public, mediatised debate. When protest moves between a physical space and a virtual space, the interactions between protesters and media stop being asynchronous or post hoc and turn instantaneous. In this new media-protest ecosystem, traditional media are still relevant sources of information and legitimacy, yet this dynamic is increasingly underpinned by a hybrid interdependency between traditional news and social media sources. In this paper we focus on an anti-austerity government movement that arose in Australia in early 2014 and was mobilised as a series of social media driven, connective action protest events. We show that there is a complex symbiotic interdependency between the movement and the traditional media for recognition and amplification of initial protest events, but that over time as media interest wanes, the movements’ network becomes disconnected and momentum is lost. This suggests that the active role traditional media play in protest events is being underestimated in the current research agenda on connective action.     

Can World System Theory predict news flow on twitter? The case of government-sponsored broadcasting

Social media platforms provide world governments with the opportunity to distribute news content from their broadcast channels directly to foreign publics [Wallerstein, I. (1974). The modern world system. New York: Academic Press] World System Theory, which has successfully explained and predicted the structure of international news flow, is now being challenged. Specifically, these social platforms undermined assumptions regarding the one-way flow of information toward audiences and the exclusive institutional nature of the players in the international system. This study examines the unique case of government-sponsored news media and its international news flow. It finds that while the structure of the international news flow on Twitter exhibits a hierarchical core–periphery structure, non-institutional actors (e.g. bloggers) conformed less than institutional players (e.g. governments and news media) to that structure. This study also found that non-institutional actors assumed the role of bridging news sources and audiences, a role traditionally reserved for a small minority of elite news media. The growing and diversified pool of information mediators resulted in a more fragmented network of news flow, siloed, rather than interconnected. Research findings are synthesized and analyzed in the context of international broadcasting and social media scholarship.     

Online news media in the Web 2.0 era: from boundary dissolution to journalistic transformation

This paper examines how online news media have changed as the Internet has moved from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Based on medium theory and boundary theory, online news media are conceptualized as being regulated by the “participatory open media code”. The code analysis attempts to examine the newly emerged form and structure of online news. In the new interactive media environment, it is found that online news media have changed significantly in the following areas: (1) the inclusion of user-generated content; (2) user participatory interactivity; (3)YouTubization; (4) instant reporting; (5) sharing and community networking; and (6) customization through new communication technologies. The trend of growing reader participation in social dialogue is apparent around the globe. The transformed online media have provided good platforms for citizen participation in news. Yet, there are still constraints against quality participation.     

Stereotyping Online? Internet News,Social Media,and the Racial Typification of Crime

A substantial body of research indicates that television news consumption is associated with criminal stereotyping. However, less is known about how online media, such as Internet news and social media news consumption, is associated with such attitudes. Using a multisite sample of mostly young adults, the current study examines the relationships between multiple types of online news consumption and crime news engagement on racially typifying African Americans as violent, property, and drug offenders. Findings reveal that Internet news consumption is negatively related, but social media news consumption is positively related, to racially typifying African Americans as criminals. Beyond consumption, social media crime news engagement is negatively related to racial typification. Last, there is some evidence that the association between online media consumption and engagement varies by race and political ideology. Findings and direction for future research is discussed.     

Spaces for public orientation? Longitudinal effects of Internet use in adolescence

The article departs from an overarching research question: How does young people's engagement in different Internet spaces affect the development of their public orientation during adolescence? It analyses longitudinal panel data in order to explore how young people's public orientation develops during a phase in life (13–20) which is critical for political socialization. Data are derived from three waves of data collection among young people who were 13–17 years old at the time for the first data collection. The concept public orientation is measured by three indicators: young people's values, interests and everyday peer talk. These indicators are analysed with reference to respondents' Internet orientations, which we conceptualize as four separate but inter-related spaces (a news space, a space for social interaction, a game space and a creative space). The results primarily emphasize the importance of orientations towards news space and space for social interaction. Overall, the findings strongly suggest that orientations towards these spaces are related to adolescents' public orientation. The findings confirm the centrality of news and information in political socialization, but they also challenge the idea that social media facilities – such as Facebook, Twitter and blogging – enable forms of social interaction and creative production that have an overall positive impact on young people's public orientation.     

网络新闻道德失范问题研究

伴随着互联网技术的不断发展，网络新闻以其独有的传播方式，逐渐改变着传统媒体的传播格局，并且也由此逐渐产生了侵权与虚假新闻等网络新闻道德失范方面的问题，这些问题阻碍了网络新闻的健康发展。针对网络新闻道德失范中存在的具体问题，在对其原因进行充分分析的基础之上，提出了有实效性的应对策略，以期推动网络新闻道德建设不断向前发展。     

Risk news in the world of Internet newsgroups

The coming of the Internet has provided those who are able to benefit from it new ways of giving and seeking information. These new contexts of communication include newsgroups , very much a text-based form of interaction with little visual enhancement. In the new era of 'risk society' (Beck 1992) people make use of newsgroups to talk about the risks which now confront the world, in their pursuit of trustworthy information and informants. Using the affair of Mad Cow Disease (BSE), with particular reference to the crisis in 1996, this article explores the dynamics of news exchange via the newsgroups as a process which is Interactive, International, Interested and Intertextual. These characteristics result in a form of discourse through which participants engage in the interpersonal social construction of risk. The credibility of the proposition that BSE poses a health risk to humans is the focus of their discussions: they are concerned with the nature of the evidence for that proposition and with the reliability of the sources responsible for endorsing it.     

Diverging patterns of interaction around news on social media: insularity and partisanship during the 2018 Italian election campaign

ABSTRACT

The paper considers how social media ecologies are affecting partisan engagement around political news and online attention economies by investigating the case of the 2018 Italian general election. By analyzing Twitter and Facebook interactions around political news in the lead-up to the election, we shed light on levels of insularity characterizing sources preferred by different partisan communities and investigate how specific patterns of active attention emerge around different sources and around stories proposing different framing of specific political actors. Our findings indicate that, on Twitter, sources mainly shared by supporters of populist parties (the Five Star Movement and the League) are characterized by higher levels of insularity compared to those shared by supporters of other parties. We also find that, on Facebook, news items published by highly insular sources receive a higher number of shares per comment. Finally, our analyses show that news presenting a positive framing of the Five Star Movement – the unique ‘cyber party’ in the system – receives a higher number of shares per comment compared to items presenting the Movement in a negative light, while the opposite is true for stories on all other political parties.     

The contribution of media consumption to civic participation

A national UK survey (N = 1017) examined the association between media consumption and three indicators of civic participation - likelihood of voting, interest in politics, and actions taken in response to a public issue of concern to the respondent. Multiple regression analysis was used to test the variance explained by media use variables after first controlling for demographic, social and political predictors of each indicator of participation. Media use significantly added to explaining variance in civic participation as follows. In accounting for voting, demographic and political/social factors mattered, but so too did some media habits (listening to the radio and engagement with the news). Interest in politics was accounted for by political/social factors and by media use, especially higher news engagement and lower media trust. However, taking action on an issue of concern was accounted for only by political/social factors, with the exception that slightly fewer actions were taken by those who watched more television. These findings provided little support for the media malaise thesis, and instead were interpreted as providing qualified support for the cognitive/motivational theory of news as a means of engaging the public.     

Testing news trustworthiness in an online public sphere: a case study of The Economist's news report covering the riots in Xinjiang,China

This paper explores the news trustworthiness and media credibility of The Economist's news report on 9 July 2009, and the communicative roles of 846 readers' responses. Theoretically guided by news translation and cultural resistance and the online public sphere, we applied online field observation and discourse analysis and achieved two main findings: First, although the news report covered the Xinjiang riots with comprehensive and attractive details, it violated the core journalism value of media credibility and journalistic objectivity by providing misleading pictures and significant unreliable and biased coverage. Second, the major communicative roles of the online readers' responses generally match Dahlberg's six conditions of an ideal online public sphere, which is still challenging but promising to realize.     

Citizen engagement and the illusion of secrecy: exploring commenter characteristics in censored online news articles

We address the conflict between citizenship engagement through news commenting, and censorship needs. News articles often contain forms of censorship to maintain security, with non-identification of individuals a means of information protection. Commonly used is the replacement of a name with a supposedly non-identifying initial, protecting the identity of military personnel, witnesses, minors, victims or suspects who need to be granted anonymity in the public sphere. We seek to understand the characteristics of commenters including awareness of the potential for social media to circumvent censorship, and attitudes towards censorship in news articles. Our study of censored articles collected from online news pages on Facebook, presents insights into participant characteristics including a strong correlation between personal network size and censorship support.     

Is journalism a transnational field? Asymmetrical relations and symbolic domination in online news

Are all transnational exchanges ‘fielded’? This article explores the limits of the concept of transnational field by focusing on the case of journalism. At first glance, journalism might seem to be the perfect example of a transnational field. The frequency, speed and extent of international exchanges between media outlets has increased dramatically with the development of online news, leading media scholars to develop the concept of ‘global news’. Yet I argue that such international exchanges do not necessarily constitute a field. Using ethnographic methods, I analyse the circulation of online news between the United States and France, two countries with strikingly different journalistic traditions. Specifically, I compare two editorial partnerships between US and French websites, one linking prestigious online magazines across the Atlantic and the other connecting tabloid-oriented news sites. I find that editorial content does not circulate seamlessly between the two countries. Based on this study, the article proposes three criteria that must be met for transnational fields to exist: competition over the legitimate definition of the field, reciprocal field effects, and the existence of common stakes. More broadly, the article contributes to defining the limits of the concept of ‘transnational field’ for the study of international exchanges.     

Examining the impact of news attention and education on political tolerance in Hong Kong

This study examines the interrelationships amongst and between news attention, education, and political tolerance. Based on the theoretical presumption that the mainstream news media tend to reflect the prejudices and ideologies of the dominant groups in a society, news portrayal of groups regarded as deviant and/or controversial can be expected to be negative in valence. Hence, news attention is expected to lead to more negative attitudes toward such groups, which in turn breeds intolerance toward them. Meanwhile, education may moderate the relationship between news attention and tolerance. Research questions and hypotheses are examined through analyzing the data from a representative survey conducted in Hong Kong. The findings confirm the negative, indirect effect of news attention on tolerance through attitude toward deviant groups. Education is also found to relate to tolerance in a complicated and contradictory manner: while education has a direct positive effect on tolerance, it also strengthens the negative impact that attitude toward deviant groups has on tolerance. The theoretical and social implications of the findings are discussed.     

Public relations practitioners’ management of fake news: Exploring key elements and acts of information authentication

Using a thematic analysis of open-ended questions answered by current public relations practitioners in the United States, this study examined how public relations (PR) practitioners currently understand fake news and the strategies they use to verify information. Fake news is conceptualized as an important organizational issue that requires monitoring and management by PR practitioners. Participants identified manipulative intentions and misleading content intended to harm reputation as key elements of fake news. The current findings suggest that PR practitioners rely on both traditional news media and crowdsourcing to verify information. Finally, to differentiate clients’ content from fake news, participants emphasized the need to maintain control as the official source of information, avoid any controversies in official responses, and adhere to PR professional standards and ethics.     

Effects of government public relations on international news coverage

Using content analysis of an international newspaper and a government publication, this study examines the influence of newsworthiness and public relations efforts on international news coverage, one of the key sources for understanding other countries. Grounded in gatekeeping theory, this study hypothesizes strong relations between three variables (newsworthiness, public relations involvement, and international news coverage) in the context of several South Korean news stories.     

Breaking bad news with CONSOLE: Toward a framework integrating medical protocols with crisis communication

This paper develops the CONSOLE (Coherence, Orientation, Nuance, Support, Ongoing, Leadership, Emotions) framework to guide practitioners on how to break bad news effectively to stakeholders during crises. Arguably the first study integrating well-established medical protocols such as SPIKES (Baile et al., 2000) and COMFORT (Villagran et al., 2010) with crisis communication literature, the CONSOLE framework is applied on four aviation crises to examine the manner in which organizations communicate bad news on social media platforms, which are increasingly used to communicate with stakeholders (Siah, Bansal & Pang, 2010). Data was obtained during the height of the crises (Vasterman, 2005) from official Twitter and Facebook pages of Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia and Asiana Airlines. Findings showed that the airlines’ communication of bad news to stakeholders suffer from emotional deficit. Practitioners can use the CONSOLE framework to break bad news in a holistic and empathetic manner during crises.     

Contested news values and media performance during the Umbrella Movement

Social crises are a huge challenge to the performance of the media. The norms and routines of news making with which journalists comply can become problematic in the context of intensive public sentiment and empathy. News values, including the sacred belief in objective reporting, are questioned in the light of controversies over editorial judgment within and outside the newsroom. I examine the contested news values that manifested in the Umbrella Movement of Hong Kong in 2014. In particular, I focus on the arguments and deliberations regarding news objectivity, which involved several parameters of the performance of the media during this social crisis.     

Innovativeness,personal initiative,news affinity and news utility as predictors of the use of mobile phones as news devices

This study examines the predictors of the use of mobile phones as news devices and tests different roles of innovativeness and personal initiative in second-level adoption, which refers to the acceptance of a distinctive function serving a communication purpose other than that for which a technology device was originally designed. Taking the use of mobile phones to access news as a case of second-level adoption, findings indicated that personal initiative was a stronger predictor of mobile phone use than innovativeness, but the effect of innovativeness on mobile phone use moderated by personal initiative was not confirmed. News affinity was a significant predictor of the frequency and amount of time mobile phones were used as news devices, while news utility was a weak predictor of the frequency of mobile phone use. The findings partly confirmed the different roles of innovativeness and personal initiative in the context of second-level adoption.