Journalism Studies

Vállez, Mari; Boté-Vericad, Juan-José; Guallar, Javier; Bastos, Marco T.

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2372437pmid: N/A

This study examines the publication strategies of legacy news outlets on Twitter following the company’s acquisition by Elon Musk. We used SCImago Media Rankings to identify the news organizations with the highest online audiences, namely The Guardian, The New York Times, USA Today, The Independent, and The Washington Post. Data was acquired through the Twitter Academic API v2 and the SEMrush platform at the beginning of 2023 and covers all of 2022. The database includes website audits that monitor the web traffic of a domain, with the aggregate data subsequently processed using R packages and Atlas.ti. Our analyses show that a higher presence on Twitter leads to a substantive increase in social traffic, as seen with The Independent. This is in sharp contrast to the other news outlets. These differences remain irrespective of their topical news coverage, broadly focused on the Russo-Ukrainian war, or compositional feature in their messages, which largely lack typical Twitter features like hashtags and @-mentions. We conclude our analysis by discussing the communication strategies of news organizations on Twitter following the company’s acquisition by Elon Musk in 2022.

Thomson, T. J.; Zhang, Shixin Ivy; Ren, Qumo; Chen, Yuan Aqua

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2372436pmid: N/A

Visual news can be a broad topic and encapsulate a myriad of forms, conventions, and representational content. The present study delves deeply into the image-based side of news to explore how visual news is produced, framed, and presented at four print and digital news outlets in urban and regional parts of Australia and China. We first conducted a qualitative denotative, stylistic-semiotic, and ideological framing analysis of a total of 1,408 images, published as part of 674 articles. Next, we deepened our understanding of the image analysis results through semi-structured interviews with 14 editorial staff in the visuals departments at these four outlets. Using framing theory and the hierarchy of influences model as theoretical lenses, this study uncovers how economic, social, and political factors affect the types of visual stories that journalists in these countries cover and sheds light on how those stories are presented. Specifically, our results indicate that outlets in Australia illustrate their news more than comparable outlets in China and that the types of visuals used also differed considerably. Online templates and editor directives influenced visual news in Australia to a greater degree while comparable Chinese news outlets paid more attention to audience expectations and political considerations.

Palmer, Lindsay; Bhatia, Kiran

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2371840pmid: N/A

This paper investigates how war correspondents working for U.S.-based news organizations Tweeted about the early stages of the 2022 war in Ukraine, focusing particularly on instances when these war reporters contributed to a distinctly transnational version of what Matt Carlson has termed “metajournalistic discourse” (2016). Defining this concept as the “public expressions evaluating news texts, the practices that produce them, or the conditions of their reception” (Carlson [2016]. “Metajournalistic Discourse and the Meanings of Journalism: Definitional Control, Boundary Work, and Legitimation.” Communication Theory 26 (4): 349–368 , 353), we argue that from February to May of 2022, U.S. war correspondents constructed a discourse that situated their own labor within the boundaries of what counts as the most acceptable form of war journalism, representing their reportage as the most independent and transparent form of war reporting. Conversely, they situated the work of Russian and Ukrainian journalists outside this boundary. The paper ultimately argues that journalism scholars should think more transnationally about the discourses that discuss journalistic labor.

Grieves, Kevin; Salkin, Erica

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2371851pmid: N/A

Disruptive journalistic innovation tends to challenge established news organizations and practices from the outside in and from the bottom up, especially when that innovation is driven by those considered on the periphery of accepted professional journalism. Journalists are skeptical about both those whom they perceive as “outsiders” and about potential threats caused by disruptive innovation. This study explores the journalistic discourse around four media innovations led by figures who defy clear classification into insider or outsider categories: CNN, USA Today, The Huffington Post and Semafor. Content analysis of coverage of the launch of these disruptors suggests greater acceptance of radically new media approaches when their purposes align with fundamental journalistic ideals. This U.S.-focused case study also contributes to the existing body of international research by examining how journalistic acceptance or rejection of entrepreneurial figures’ ventures relate to perceptions of those individuals’ belonging in the realm of journalism.

Cronin, Anne M.

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2371858pmid: N/A

This article re-examines debates about transparency in journalism by using a sociological framework that analyses how transparency is held in a dynamic tension with secrecy. I use a specific empirical case study as the grounding for my analysis and then proceed to expand its scope to consider significant developments in transparency in the media. I take as my case study the relationship between UK journalists and public relations (PR) practitioners. Specifically, I analyse the ways in which press releases are shaped by PR practitioners, targeted at journalists, and are taken up by journalists in a UK news media context in which such “information subsidies” may be becoming ever more prevalent. Reframing transparency as one element in a compound phenomenon (the secrecy–transparency dynamic), I argue that practices of both transparency and secrecy are not merely situated within social contexts but are active in creating society and social relations. This approach pays close attention to how power operates in this shifting dynamic and offers new challenges for thinking about journalism’s role in society.

Choi, Jaewon Royce; Malthouse, Edward C.

doi: 10.1080/1461670X.2024.2372428pmid: N/A

Popularized with the term “news desert,” the decline of the number of newspapers has cast a gloom over the future of American democracy. However, there has been little research on what factors are related to such phenomena. To fill this gap, we construct a theoretical framework based on previous research relating market conditions to news deserts, and study how news deserts relate to social capital. Our analyses find population, and education have strong negative associations with news deserts and potential journalism divides, where newspapers decrease disproportionately according to the community’s African American composition. Age has a weak negative association with news deserts. Furthermore, our analyses reveal that having more newspapers has a positive effect on community social capital in its economic connectedness, cohesiveness, and civic engagement. Consequently, economic connectedness and cohesiveness positively impact the number of newspapers next year, showing evidence of a virtuous circle. This study advances the discussions around the “news desert” a step forward by empirically investigating its social impact on our communities.