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Previous research has attributed media convergence to, among other things, where the news was originally published. That research, however, has struggled to identify causal relationships between a news item's publication in a particular outlet and journalists' perceptions of a story's newsworthiness. This relationship is difficult to identify because of the correlation between publication in a particular outlet and many other factors that also impact newsworthiness. This paper uses an experiment embedded within a survey of over 1,500 U.S. political journalists to test the impact of a news story's previous publication history on journalists' views of the newsworthiness of that news item. Compared with previously unpublished stories, the publication of a news story in a national paper has no significant positive effect on the perceived newsworthiness of a story. The origin of a story in a local outlet, however, causes journalists to perceive that story to be less newsworthy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the last two decades have seen a concerted effort to understand the role and place of African journalism in covering events on the continent, there has been little focus on who journalists chose to quote as sources in their stories. This despite scholarship on sources being vital to our understanding of how journalists gain the "raw materials" to produce stories about events. Thus, while scholarship has begun taking Africa's coverage of itself seriously, there has been a slower uptick in focusing on whom African journalists give voice to as co-constructors of events. This silence is even more perplexing, considering that scholars and observers have been critical of who is quoted as a source when the global north covers events unfolding in Africa. This paper shows that African suffering was made legible for African audiences through a combination of American, English, and Sudanese voices. Specifically, it finds that African journalists are –counterintuitively - vital players in silencing some African voices in their construction of knowledge about the atrocities in Darfur. Despite the criticism leveled at journalism fields in the global north over their perceived silencing of African voices, African journalists are similarly engaged in this silencing as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores shifts in political trust during the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in Switzerland, examining the role that media consumption and threat perceptions played in individuals' trust in politics. We combine panel surveys taken before and during the first nation-wide lockdown with webtracking data of participants' online behaviour to paint a nuanced picture of media effects during the crisis. Our work has several findings. First, political trust, an attitude known for its stability, increased following lockdown. Second, consumption of mainstream news on COVID-19 directly hindered this increase, with those reading more news having lower over-time trust, while the relatively minor alternative news consumption had no direct effect on political trust. Third, threat perceptions a) to health and b) from the policy response to the pandemic, have strong and opposite effects on political trust, with threats to health increasing trust, and threats from the government policy response decreasing it. Lastly, these threat perceptions condition the effect of COVID-19 news consumption on political trust: perceptions of threat had the power to both exacerbate and mute the effect of media consumption on government trust during the pandemic. Notably, we show that the expected negative effect of alternative news on political trust only exists for those who did not think COVID-19 posed a threat to their health, while public service news consumption reduced the negative effect produced by government threat perceptions. The paper therefore advances our understanding of the nuanced nature of media effects, particularly as relates to alternative media, especially during moments of crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict framing is key in political communication. Politicians use conflict framing in their online messages (e.g., criticizing other politicians) and journalists in their political coverage (e.g., reporting on political tensions). Conflicts can take a variety of forms and can provoke different reactions. However, the literature still lacks a systematic and theoretically-grounded conceptual framework that accounts for the multi-dimensionality of political conflict frames. Based on literature from political epistemology, political communication, and related fields such as psychology, we present four conceptual dimensions of political conflicts: (1) the style (civil/uncivil); (2) the subject (personal/substantive); (3) whether it is about underlying moral/epistemic principles or not (deep/superficial conflict); and (4) whether it concerns a normative or factual issue. Results of a content analysis of newspaper articles and politicians' tweets confirm the usage of these conflict dimensions in the Netherlands during a non-election period. Interestingly, most of the conflicts are civil, substantive, and do not highlight deep fundamental clashes. In light of the current societal concerns about the lack of respect in political debates and the deepening of our political divides, these findings can be considered encouraging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis tests two distinct predictions regarding local newspapers' coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. A public service view of local newspapers predicts that a robust local newspaper sector would mitigate the politicized national partisan rhetoric surrounding COVID-19; reducing the disparity in social-distancing behaviors between predominantly Republican and predominantly Democratic counties by increasing compliance in Republican counties. The alternative hypothesis, informed by a demand-side view of the market pressures local newspapers face, predicts that increased competition between local newspapers will increase the degree to which local newspapers amplify the rhetoric of national officials in line with the partisan composition of their community, further polarizing adherence to social-distancing behaviors across predominantly Republican versus predominantly Democratic counties. The results of this analysis offer strong support for the second hypothesis; but, an additional analysis of vaccination rates offers a more nuanced perspective than a simple public service versus demand-side dichotomy would imply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the news media landscape has been characterized by two distinct patterns: a decline in newspaper circulation, and a persistent degree of ideological slant in newspapers' position. We explore a possible nexus between these two phenomena by means of a model that extends some recent developments in the empirical spatial theory of voting to the reader's choice with respect to newspapers. We assume that ideological proximity to a newspaper affects the choice made by a consumer to read it. Newspapers will then compete among themselves to maximize their respective readerships by finding an optimal placement in the ideological space. However, newspapers can also decide to target readers of a specific type. As we will show, this is a crucial step to take into consideration. We empirically apply our model to the Italian case. We show that Italian newspapers appear largely to behave as theoretically expected. However, the "ideological force" behind this conclusion must be sought in newspapers' competition with respect to that subset of readers which can be identified as regular ones. This result highlights a possible mechanism driving a persistent newspaper ideological slant in time of lower newspaper circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]