Search

Generating unpaid mass media coverage has been shown to be the most cost-effective method of reducing smoking prevalence. This study looks at the feasibility of generating such unpaid coverage over a prolonged period. Press releases, letters for publication and articles on tobacco-related items Were sent to the local media by an initiative co-ordinated by a health authority cancer-prevention project. Between April 1990 and March 1992, this generated at least 1120 column-inches in the local and national press (81 per cent of the press coverage of tobacco by the three main Oxford papers). More coverage, was generated for policy matters (635 column- inches) than for items relating to knowledge or individual behaviour (485 column-inches). Half the press releases were used by the radio stations and all were published. This assessment concluded that it is feasible to initiate good coverage of health issues and to sustain this over a two-year period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Why do some newspapers remain critical in contexts of antipress repression while others do not? It has been argued that aggressions against journalists generate a deterrence effect on the watchdog role of the press. However, evidence of the press remaining critical in hostile environments appears to defy this claim. In this paper, I explore the relationship between violent government repression and the critical function of the press. Using an original data set of local Mexican newspapers from 2011 to 2013, I examine the direct effects of violence on front-page headlines. I find that while repression does deter critical coverage, the ultimate effect is contingent upon the configuration of strategic press allies in the locality, reviewed here as nongovernmental organizations, opposition parties, and newspaper publishers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Northeast part of India has always been in the news and public discourse for ongoing conflicts and violent events occurring from time to time. In such a context, the role media plays for resolution of such conflicts and restoration of peace cannot be ignored. Years-long, this part of the country has been suffering due to conflicts of various sorts and this has led to the loss of human lives and property of unaccountable proportion. Moreover, there are instances of such conflicts later resulting in civil wars and larger humanitarian crisis with people of one community perpetrating violence on the other. In such situations, women who are considered to be the most vulnerable among all have suffered the most. In this backdrop, the paper is a content analysis of six newspapers published from three selected states from the northeastern part of India. It looks at the way media, more specifically the print reacts to conflict situations and peace processes in northeast India. Apart from that, the paper also reflects upon the perception of the journalists towards the role print media is playing in conflict situations in Northeast India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer editing is a skill journalism students, and most college students, need to be effective and skillful writers. In today's fast-paced lifestyle, students do not spend enough time refining and reevaluating their writing. This research examined students' perceptions of grade-accountable assignments, focused on peer editing, and implemented into a journalism writing course. Students found the peer editing to be necessary, but unpleasant; however, the most relevant finding was students did not connect the idea of peer editing to the application of real-world job skills. This article explores thoughts on future implementation of peer-editing assignments to improve students' evaluation of their writing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The argument of the paper is that media narratives serve the dual function of (de)legitimation. While manufacturing legitimizing consent for consumerism, media narratives delegitimize the old patterns of existence as well by penetrating deep in cognition and creating anomalous desires that refuse to take cultural rigidities as given. Media screens provide visual (re)presentation of real places and social arrangements; with the aim to overturn them with conceived mirror images of perfect. These narratives are endowed with the power to create new self, territorialized in heterotopias of the screen. The new personifications are contested by "pious" adherents of cultural continuity. By opting for the technique of Critical Discourse Analysis; paper aims to revisit the discourses of women empowerment and dependency, in a Hindi commercial movie "Badrinath Ki Dulhania" (Badrinath's bride) (2017), and lifestyle advertisements of Fair & Lovely (Fairness Cream) (2002-2017) telecasted across South Asia, and an android phone Q Mobile (2016) in Pakistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interesting but under-researched area of journalism studies is the relationship between journalists, particularly foreign correspondents, and the intelligence services during the cold war. The aim of this paper is to consider whether there is any evidence to back up specific allegations made in the Soviet era press in December 1968 that in the post–Second World War period named leading British journalists working for the national newspapers had a covert relationship with the British Secret Intelligence Service that involved their recruitment as agents and the use of intelligence-derived material in their articles in the press. The paper raises questions about the methods of researching such alleged activities. Is it possible in the absence of files from the secret intelligence services to undertake a serious study of such activities? Does the development of digital sources and archives open new fields of detailed study? It also reveals the potential historical significance of the role journalists played in the reporting of key events and policy issues during the cold war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of the market has produced a differentiation inside the Chinese press between an ‘official’ press with traditional propaganda functions on behalf of the Communist Party and a ‘commercial’ press whose objective is to maximise revenue. Scholarly opinion has differed over whether marketization undermines Party control and whether new forms of journalism have arisen that lead to conflicts. These discussions have rested on little evidence as to the practises of Chinese journalism. This article presents empirical data on the extent of the differentiation, reporting on a content analysis of the national news in People’s Daily and Southern Metropolitan Daily. These titles are popularly believed to represent the polar opposites of official, orthodox journalism and commercial, liberal journalism. The evidence presented here demonstrates that while there are indeed significant differences in the journalism of the two titles, there remains a substantial overlap in their choice of subjects, their use of sources and the degree to which news is presented ‘objectively’. Southern Metropolitan Daily does display some ‘popular’ features and does contain more ‘watchdog’ journalism, but it shares with its official cousin an emphasis upon the party as the source for news. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to explore the media habits and preferences of rural audience in India. The study adopted purposive along with random sampling techniques to identify stakeholders in six states of the country who were targeted for the Bharat Nirman campaign conducted by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India. The results indicated that television is the best medium to target rural and semi-urban audiences for public service advertising. Doordarshan’s regional channels remained one of the preferred communication medium for accessing information along with other regional channels. Newspapers and radio appeared to seriously lag behind as mass media vehicles of choice in comparison to television. The mobile telephone had made some inroads; however, it was hardly being used as a medium for accessing public service information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides the message of the author as the editor of the "Journalism & Mass Communication Educator." He mentions his commitment to help scholarswho wish to publish their research and to affirm the primary mission of journal to address the professional needs of the journalism and mass communication educator as well as administrator on both secondary and collegiate levels. He also mentions the journal's top research papers.

The aim of this article is to examine press-party parallelism during the 2011 national elections in Turkey. The article reports findings from a content analysis of 9,127 news articles and editorial columns from fifteen newspapers regarding the trajectory of press-party parallelism over the course of the twelve-week national elections campaign period. We focus on two indicators of press-party parallelism: (I) respective "voice" given to the two leading parties, calculated as the ratio of news that quoted sources from the incumbent Adalet ve Kalkmma Partisi (AKP) to the leading opposition party Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP) and (2) news articles' tones toward AKP and CHP. The newspapers that were content analyzed were first categorized into three groups based on survey data regarding the voting intentions of their readers: (I) a group of "conservative" newspapers whose readers intended to vote primarily for AKP, (2) a group of "mainstream broadsheets," and (3) a group of "opposition" newspapers with a readership base intending to vote for CHP. The findings suggest that over the course of the election campaign, internal pluralism in both conservative and opposition papers declined in terms of voice given to respective parties and tone of news coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media codes of ethics comprise principles of ethics and good practice. Though media codes may vary from country to country, the global media and communication profession is guided by principles that share many common values for the simple reason that many social and individual values are universal. In the journalism profession, as an example, ethical practice would almost always revolve around universal values like accuracy, honesty, truth, objectivity and freedom. Though the Malaysian media adopt and practise many international principles, media practitioners have also to take cognizance of the socio-political sensitivities and sensibilities that shape and influence the workings and contents of the media. Qualitative interviews with media practitioners provide insights into how values and principles, both local and international, either go in tandem or clash and impact on media practices. This paper also studies the practicality and applicability of media codes in the face of rapidly-changing media values, contents and technology. The media occasionally violate ethical boundaries; however these are sometimes not perceived as digressions by media practitioners as media values and roles undergo a facelift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past US election cycle, and mirrored by similar events in Europe, two trends have come to dominate social discourse: truthiness (the validity of something based on how it feels) and post-fact (taking a position that ignores facts). Human discourse has always contained elements of these, but the nature of the Internet and social media has pushed truthiness and post-facts to new levels. The purpose of this paper is to explore the complicated relationship brands have with fake news and discuss the implications for brand management of a post-truth world. We explore the complicated relationship brands have with fake news: Brands both fuel fake news and are burned by it. Next, we turn to the intellectual and instrumental roots of the post-truth world: postmodernism and its technological enablers, show how marketing became a purveyor of the postmodern worldview, and how brands have increasingly adopted truthiness and post-fact positions. We offer managers a way out of the postmodern cul-de-sac, discussing ways brands can be rethought and managed in a post-rational world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2016 presidential election demonstrated the extent to which U.S. news has changed since its “high modernist” moment. Evidence of these shifts—fragmented and poorly monetized news markets, politicization of news content and funding, uneven professionalization, and even increasing openness to state involvement—have been documented in the literature for some years, but often framed as exceptions. This paper revisits Hallin and Mancini’s typology of news systems to suggest that as variants of Polarized Pluralist elements are entrenched in the American news system, it is drifting away from the Liberal model into a hybrid category of “Polarized Liberal.” Research and meta-journalism from the last decade are reviewed to characterize this hybrid model, which is applicable beyond the United States and might well become the focal point of convergence in the near future. Potential reasons for this transition are discussed, evoking sociopolitical and technological dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study utilizes a national survey of college newspaper advisers to assess the internal workings of the college newspaper and its value as a pedagogical tool. It finds significant differences between the degree of audience and marketing coupling occurring within college and U.S. daily newspapers as well as differences in student autonomy among college newspapers with varying financial foundations. The results call into question the role of the college newspaper within a changing media environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Journal of Psychiatry is the property of Sage Publications Inc. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This study explores the public discourse about Hong Kong's future beyond 2047 through the lens of local press media during the first half of the "unchanged 50years" since the handover. The data contains a number of 187 newspaper articles centered on the issue of 2047, extracted from 16 local news outlets in Chinese. Using qualitative and quantitative methods of content analysis, the study observes the development of media discourse over a long span of time and points out people's major concerns about Hong Kong's long-term future. It distinguishes three major discourses in terms of identity construction and modes of anticipation, and explores the links between future-oriented suggestions and real-world actions. As part of an ongoing research on Hong Kong's future narratives, this study contributes to the research on social mentality during the first half of the "one country and two systems" and explores how the future is imagined and built through discursive practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies on the "protest paradigm" have long explored how a society's mass media system frames the social movements occurring within that society. This study adopts a social movement diffusion perspective to sharpen the transborder dimension of the protest paradigm. Specifically, we introduce the concept of the "diffusion-proofing" protest paradigm, given that an understudied and undertheorized function of the protest paradigm is the prevention of the import of exogenous social movements. Taking the Hong Kong Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement as an example, we investigate how mainland China's mass media acted to prevent movement diffusion. Four transborder components of the diffusion-proofing protest paradigm are proposed: reactions, attributions, consequences, and solutions. Through content analysis, we argue that by highlighting these transborder components, China's newspapers attributed the movement's rise to foreign intervention, emphasized the movement's negative effects on both Hong Kong and mainland China, and revealed the uncompromising nature of China's reaction and the urgency of cross-border cooperation for containing the movement and its diffusion. Further, we identify two modes of reporting: a mainly descriptive mode that relied on a local framework to depict the movement and its local context and an evaluative mode that emphasized the level of deviance and foreign intervention, thus amplifying the movement's transborder effects and the need to prevent its diffusion. Notably, the level of deviance acts as a mediating channel between the two modes, transforming the local framework into a transborder one. The diffusion-proofing protest paradigm is also found to vary across media types and periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study compares the editorial coverage of the 2015 migration crisis in major centre-left and centre-right newspapers in three European countries affected (the UK, Germany and Greece). We test the empirical validity of the 'national media-system' hypothesis, and in particular the hypothesised characteristics of the different media systems these countries represent through a systematic content analysis of all editorials referring to the issue of migration/asylum for the period 2015–2016. For the purposes of data collection, we develop an original coding scheme that combines concepts and categories from the extant literature on media systems, as well as the literature on migration-related news frames. Our findings largely confirm the relevance of media-system characteristics in the coverage of the crisis, although UK editorials are markedly more polarised than expected. We also find that there was no consensus-based editorial coverage in the initial phase of the crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizational culture manifests in core beliefs, values and cultural artefacts. This study examines the organizational artefacts, for example, management practices, stance with the outside world, and content choices of European student radio stations, based on survey data gathered from radio managers in 19 countries. Student radio stations are non-commercial media outlets connected to higher education institutes, at least partly managed and operated by students. Previous research on organizational culture and media systems are heuristics for this study in examining whether European student radio stations cluster regionally based on the observed cultural artefacts or whether they show convergence. In contrast to these studies, findings suggest that the region of the station does not determine its cultural artefacts. The studied stations give freedom of choice to individual station members and lean towards alternative content but are also systematic in their management. If any, mainstream media and podcasts are seen as competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When do the media cover far-right protests? News coverage matters for the entrenchment of the far right in contemporary democracies, but little comparative research has looked at what drives news attention to far-right mobilization. We apply a classic input–output process model of news selection bias to test the hypothesis that the visibility of far-right protests events depends on the characteristics of protest initiators, type of action, and reactions. We appraise this via logistic regressions on an original dataset of 5972 protest events retrieved from online press releases by far-right groups (input) and national quality newspapers (output) in 11 European countries (2008–2018). The analysis confirms that news media are particularly responsive to contentious action, protest around migration issues, and action–reaction chains between political opponents. Our findings shed light on the role of news organizations in the success of the far-right and on the pathways by which these movements shape public agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mortality salience refers to a state of conscious awareness of death and the inevitable conclusion of life, associated with psychological terror. The COVID-19 pandemic generated increased awareness of illness and death, and effectuated changes in death cognitions and people's experiences around psychological or sociocognitive domains of media and life goals. To understand these changes, this study administered the Multidimensional Mortality Awareness Measure (Levasseur et al., 2015) to 103 emerging adults in India, post which 6 participants proceeded for a semi-structured interview exploring pandemic experiences, news consumption and goal prioritization, to examine specific areas in relation to death cognition. The thematic analysis demonstrates psychological effects, and discusses developments in health and death-related psychological processes. Focus on career goals and health maintenance, cautious news consumption and disadvantageous impacts on mental health are seen, significant in navigating healthcare measures for emerging adults, as we move forward into this 'new normal'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During times of crisis, the press plays a crucial role in communicating and negotiating the crisis. Considering Germany's strong economic role in the EU, the German (media) perspective on European economic policy issues has a major influence on Europe. In 2018, Italy's debt crisis posed the risk of a new euro crisis and a domino effect on other countries. Contrasting views of how to resolve economic crises opposed each other, with the Maastricht criteria at the center. Despite high debt, the Italian government pursued a Keynesian policy by increasing the deficit to stimulate economic growth. The European Commission, however, insisted on neoliberal policies and compliance with the criteria. This study discusses the (non)emergence of a European public sphere through the economic policy framing of the Italian sovereign debt crisis. Using quantitative content analysis, the relative prevalence of frames rooted in competing economic policy paradigms (neoliberal/Keynesian) in press coverage is examined. The results show that the neoliberal paradigm and the call for austerity dominate coverage, indicating a possible European public sphere. However, the biased media framing in favor of the European Commission's and German government's interests partly contributes to strengthening the nationalistic perspective on this European issue. Overall, the press failed to present the issue in a solution-oriented and pluralistic manner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we explore the relationship between increased media market concentration and its effects on the diversity of news content. We assemble a dataset of 1,419,479 print and online 'hard news' articles published between 2018 and 2021 by the four largest newspapers in Flanders (Belgium). These include two popular and two quality titles owned by two rival media companies, which only emerged in recent years after a string of mergers and takeovers which fundamentally changed ownership diversity in the small yet increasingly concentrated Flemish media market. In our analysis, we compare articles for their similarity between titles belonging to the same company using automated text comparisons. We find that content is growing increasingly similar and expand the existing body of research on the link between media concentration and news (content) diversity in Flanders as well as beyond. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I analyze the warnings I gave prior to the new millennium concerning the possibility of terrorism visiting American soil. The sources of the problem are discussed in detail. These warnings were not showcased in academic journals gathering dust on some university library shelve. They were given to a variety of governmental agencies as well as discussed in the mainstream media. My sources are revealed for all to see. Unfortunately, my prognostications proved accurate when hijacked planes slammed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the possible consequences of mass media fragmentation over the structure and the functioning of democracy. Media fragmentation and audience segmentation are not new but they greatly increased in the very last years because of the long ongoing tendency towards commercialization and mostly because of the development of new media and the internet in particular. This has determined what is usually defined “the crisis of traditional journalism” that has become the very frequent topic of most of the seminar on journalism today. The last part of the paper looks at the possible consequences of these changes over the structure of democracy beyond the well rooted techno-optimism: increasing social and political polarization, new forms of political socialization, more complex process of social and political negotiation, new forms of public scrutiny. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work examines the dynamic relationship among elites, media, and the public during authoritarian rule. Using Brazil’s military regime (1964–85), it investigates whether changing press censorship influenced public support for military rule during the period of political liberalization. This paper uses the exposure-resistance model of opinion formation, in which a person’s probability of supporting a position depends first on her probability of exposure to and reception of an elite cue advocating that position, and secondarily on the probability that she resists that position once exposed. Her likelihood of exposure to and reception of elite cues increases with her attention to news media and the extent of her political awareness; her odds of accepting the positions advocated by elites depends on her political ideology and her critical capacity to evaluate the content and source of the cue. Using three public opinion surveys carried out between 1972 and 1982, and an analysis of newspaper content during the dictatorship, this research demonstrates that censored media convinced Brazilians to support military rule initially, only later during political liberalization, to expose them to increasingly critical coverage of the regime, convincing many to abandon their support for the regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I outline one strand in a genealogy of 'liveness', exploring the role of media in its emergence as a privileged spatio-temporal organization of experience. In order to consider the opportunities afforded by current developments in 'live methods' I then explore some of the implications for sociology of not simply studying practices of mediation but of inhabiting media, of being in medias res. Here I propose an amphibious sociology, for the potential it offers sociology to deploy methods reflexively in more than one medium, contrasting the methods of making distributive middles to the methods of establishing measures of representativeness, and exploring the opportunities and pitfalls of participation, or being in the middle. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study attempts to discern the frames that dominated the coverage of the 1994 Rwandan crisis and genocide in Kenya’s Daily Nation and Nigeria’s Guardian, two leading African dailies. The study found that there was a great deal of overlap between the two newspapers with regard to the major frames: bane of a nation, Rwandan national introspection, an(other) African cataclysm, together with world inaction and indifference emerged as the dominant themes. However, there were also differences in coverage. The national/regional interest emerged as a theme in the Daily Nation but did not develop in the coverage by The Guardian. Both papers also went to considerable lengths to explore the background to the crisis and its wider implications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study explores how the American news media frame the poverty issue, looking at the way the media present its causes and solutions. It also examines the notion of frame building, exploring the factors that may influence the media's selective uses of certain frames. Media attributions of responsibility are largely societal, focusing on the causes and solutions at the social rather than personal level. Liberal newspapers made more references than conservative -papers to social causes and solutions. Television news is slightly less likely than newspapers to make social-level attributions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information about several papers discussed at "MIT6 Conference, Stone and Papyrus: Storage and Transmission," held from April 24-26, 2009 in Boston, USA is presented. Topics include memory and heritage policy of France, media material archives of Sweden, and Web 2.0. The symposium featured several archivists including Rick Prelinger, Claude Mussou, and Pelle Snickars.

This paper explores the emergence of the media reform movement in the state of Florida in 2008. Focusing on the development of a statewide coalition, the paper details the tensions between local and national policy agendas, the barriers faced by local activists as they attempt to build support for the concept of media reform in their communities, and the diversity of interests represented under the banner of media reform. This case study also reveals an ideological bias toward the left among the movement activists currently working in Florida, signaling a need to harness the broad-based dissatisfaction that exists across the political spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mort Zuckerman, property billionaire, media magnate and intellectual giant, says papers need a new business model — and customers must pay [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the description of China in leading German daily and weekly newspapers during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. On the basis of a brief outline of the main China narratives in German media since the 1950s, this paper analyses China-related articles which were published during the period August 8-15, 2008. It argues that reports on China are mostly based on well established German notions of China and centre around the image of a despotic and/or dangerous China. Therefore, they primarily refer back to the source culture and contain little information of value regarding the target culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As consumer culture pervades the social life of citizens in America and Europe, it becomes increasingly important to clarify the relationship between consumption and citizenship. With this in mind, faculty and students at the University of Wisconsin organized a conference titled ‘The Politics of Consumption/The Consumption of Politics.’ Held in October 2006, the meeting provided a forum for leading scholars to discuss the interplay of markets, media, politics, and the citizen-consumer. Revised and expanded versions of the papers they presented are collected in this volume with the goal of advancing this emerging area of inquiry. It is our hope that the essays and research papers we have collected here help define the next wave of theory building and research inquiry on the intersections of consumer culture, civic culture, and mass culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the social and cultural roles of ethnic print media in the country within the prism of Canada's multicultural policy. Specifically, the article examines how the ethnic groups are framed in the mainstream national media in Canada and then examines how these ethnic media are [re]constructing their own identities in contrast to their framed identities in the mainstream national print media such as the Globe and Mail, National Post and Toronto Sun. In exploring the overall socio-political impacts of these ethnic print media on the social fabrics and cultural identity in Canadian society, Montreal Community Contact, an ethnic newspaper of the black community in Montreal, is used as a case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Vietnam News is an English language daily newspaper produced on behalf of the Vietnamese Government, as part of its market reform policies. Drawing on an analysis of 100 translations from the Vietnamese press and their rewrites by the paper's foreign sub-editors, as well as on interviews with sub-editors and journalist-translators working at the Vietnam News, the article documents the translation and adaptation decisions that constitute the process of globalizing the discourse of the Vietnamese press in this particular instance. Three kinds of decisions are discussed in turn: translation decisions affecting the English used, translation/adaptation decisions affecting journalistic style, and translation/adaptation decisions affecting cultural and ideological references in the source texts. The article ends by asking whether the Vietnamese press is best sewed by closely following the Anglo-Australian model, as it does at present, or by developing its own distinct local style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses updates on issues related to the journal "Ear, Nose & Throat" as of December 2019. Topics mentioned include trends in the purview of scientific and medical publishing, the transition from paper reprints of the journal's published articles to online content, and the publication's goal to appeal broadly to otolaryngologists in practice.

Previous research has shown that visual images of political candidates can influence voter perceptions. This study examines newspaper photographs of candidates to determine whether the favorableness of these pictures is related to the "political atmosphere" of individual newspapers. In particular, we examine 435 candidate photographs from several races covered by seven newspapers during the 1998 and 2002 general election seasons. Based on our analysis, we conclude that candidates endorsed by a particular newspaper—or whose political leanings match the political atmosphere of a given paper—generally have more favorable photographs of them published than their opponents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Newspapers represent `communities talking to themselves'.' We report on the resuscitation in October 2003 of a tong-dead nineteenth and twentieth century community newspaper in the drought-stricken rural outback of Queensland, Australia, using simple digital publishing systems with reporting and production staff based near the Great Barrier Reef, on the coast more than 735 kilometres away to the north-east. The successful project illustrated the importance of local editorial control within the community newspaper model, as well as the potential of journalism to build positive community processes and structures during such projects. A survey of people who bought or read the first new edition also revealed an unexpectedly high capacity, given current received wisdom of `the digital divide', within the financially-depressed town's residents to use emerging digital technologies to receive news and informational content. When coupled with data gathered from other recent surveys of news technology use, the authors identify key areas for future research into news distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the distribution requirements for digital services on separate content distribution systems. With the launch of digital broadcasting in many European states, the key drivers were considered to be its subscription and pay-per-view components. Little attention has been given to content policy. This article suggests that broadcasters and their associated interactive services will require national and European regulation to prevent the disenfranchisement of audiences who may not be able to pay for the full range of public and commercial television services. Such provisions will be subject to equitable and non-discriminatory access on each network. The paper explores the main difficulties facing the transmission of multiplex terrestrial content over digital cable, satellite and fixed line networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract This article investigates the media construction of female bodies in relation to the symbolic processes of nation-making through the European handball championships in 1998. The focus is on mediated texts from Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Norway and Romania, in which cultural differences and similarities through cultural metaphors in a feminist perspective are the main issues. Contradictions and ambivalences are also included in the analysis. If sport contributes to the construction and reconstruction of national identities in a global world, the following four criteria must be included. First, the sport must be mediated as having a glorious history (Denmark, Hungary, Norway and Romania). Second, if this is applied to women's sport, the sport must be represented as 'sex-appropriate' in a historical context and/or today (Denmark, Hungary, Norway and Romania). To do so, female athletes cannot be understood as 'the Other' in the overall context which is analysed (Denmark, Hungary, Norway and Romania). Third, the athletes' bodies must be mediated as aggressive, tough, strong and non-fragile, with power to play in competitions in a historical context and/or today (Denmark, Germany, Hungary, Norway and Romania). Fourth, European championships in the sport must be presented as media events in the country (Denmark and Norway). For countries in the former eastern bloc, both state politics and politics in the field of handball may have a decisive say as to whether the sport is mediated to contribute to the (re)construction of national identities (Hungary and Romania). Claims that national myth-making is supposed to deny issues of gender is problematized through the concept of doxa (what is taken for granted and not reflected upon). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the second part of this paper is taken from Wallack, L. (2000). The role of mass media in creating social capital: A new direction for public health. In B. D. Smedley & S. L. Syme (Eds.), Promoting health: Intervention strategies from social and behavioral research (pp. 337-365). Washington, DC: National Academy Press. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have lamented the regulation of electronic media as an encroachment on the First Amendment guarantee of press freedom. They argue that the licensing process creates the possibility and means for politicians to meddle with broadcasters' content decisions, and they cite a long history of political interference to support their claims. From this literature, the authors define three specific hypotheses concerning the chilling effect of broadcast regulation:(1) news organizations with broadcast holdings will present more positive coverage of elected officials, (2) news organizations with broadcast holdings will present a narrower range of editorial positions, and (3) these effects will be magnified when political control of the presidency and Congress is united under a single party. These hypotheses are subjected to a rigorous empirical test based on 469 newspaper editorials commenting on presidential State of the Union addresses between 1970 and 1995. The authors predict the expected editorial stance of newspapers as a function of environmental and internal factors and define editorial bias as the difference between their expected and observed editorial stances. Based on these data, support is found for the chilling hypothesis. Newspapers with broadcast holdings systematically write editorials that are more positive, and the difference is statistically significant. They also tend to offer a narrower range of editorial positions, although this difference does not attain standard levels of statistical significance. These effects, however, do not appear to be magnified by unified party control of the executive and legislative branches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The resource-based view proposes that reputation is a resource leading to competitive advantage. Past research tested this by using Fortune ratings to measure reputation, but these ratings are theoretically weak. This paper integrates mass communication theory into past research to develop a concept called media reputation, defined as the overall evaluation of a firm presented in the media. Theoretical and empirical analyses indicate that media reputation is a resource that increases the performance of commercial banks. (c) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much of the conventional wisdom about partisan media effects is based on the single case of the United States. Without more comparative research, we know little about whether the findings are generalizable, however, and thus cannot be certain of their causes. But comparative research presents several challenges. This paper takes advantage of the case of the War on Iraq to examine the effects of partisan press coverage on perceptions of leaders and ultimately on voting behavior in two countries, the United States and Britain. We test three competing hypotheses of partisan media effects. We find support for the argument that the reputation of the incumbent party moderates the influence of partisan coverage on perceptions of war but also show that opposition partisan media coverage undermines perceptions of the qualities of incumbent leaders. Media outlets that support the incumbent do not have similar positive effects. We conclude that the war cost a left-wing leader, Blair, more than a right-wing leader, Bush, because of (1) the ambivalence of incumbent-supporting newspapers in Britain, (2) the absence of a parallel to the boost in approval that incumbent-supporting newspapers provided for Bush, and (3) greater damage to perceptions of Blair’s attributes among readers of opposition-supporting newspapers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the democratic role of journalism in new democracies is heavily debated, systematic empirical analysis is scarce. This paper studies how the performance of the watchdog and civic journalism role in Chilean newspapers develops during 22 years of democratic transition. We challenge the homogenization-thesis, which has often characterized thinking about the role of the media in democratic transition, assuming an automatic unidirectional trend toward more critical professionalism, where reporters increasingly act as watchdogs by taking the side of ordinary citizens against the political and economic elite. We argue that a rise in critical professionalism is often limited to a brief honeymoon period after the return to democracy. We furthermore argue that to understand changing role performance during democratic transition, one needs to look at specific developments of the media (press freedom, journalism education, advertisement income, and circulation) and developments in the political context, in particular the degree of political conflict. These hypotheses are tested with a unique data set consisting of a content analysis of 20,201 news articles, which make up representative yearly samples of newspaper coverage in Chile between 1990 and 2011. We find no trend toward more watchdog and civic journalism, and limited influences of developments of the media. At least for the performance of these two journalistic roles in Chile, changes in journalism during democratic transition can best be explained by the honeymoon hypothesis and the degree of political conflict. The generalizability of these findings to other transitional democracies is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health promoters who use the mass media to encourage people to change their health behaviours usually underestimate the importance of audience's mental predispositions, which may determine their susceptibility to such influences. This paper presents research findings that show how some elements of an audience's mentality are related to their attitudes towards healthy lifestyle promotion in the mass media (HLPMM). The research project, undertaken between 2007 and 2009, comprised: a qualitative study using in-depth interviews (N=30); a self-administered survey on a purposive sample (N=237) and a computer-assisted personal interview or interviewing (CAPI) survey on a representative sample of Polish adult population (N=934). The findings from the first two studies were used to construct a scale to investigate the attitude towards HLPMM. This scale was applied in a nation wide survey and, as a result, four dimensions of the attitude were identified: (1) appraisal of the idea of HLPMM; (2) appraisal of HLPMM practice; (3) propensity to receive media messages promoting healthy lifestyle and (4) propensity to avoid such messages. Moreover, the survey results confirmed the hypotheses whereby a higher degree of individualism, a higher degree of authoritarianism, a weaker demanding orientation and generalised trust are related to a more positive attitude towards HLPMM. The aforementioned relationships indicate that producers of media messages promoting a healthy lifestyle need to take account of their audience's mentality, since knowledge of mental predispositions of the target audience may help them make the message more suitable for specific recipients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While research into non-Western media systems and professional norms are growth areas in journalism studies, little is known about the policies of news organisations beyond a few celebrated global brands. This exploratory study is situated in that gap. It examines 12 reputable media organisations in seven territories – China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines and Taiwan. Through interviews with top-level editors and executives, the study analyses their stated policies with regard to commercial conflicts of interest. In particular, how they deal with pressures from owners and advertisers who want favourable news coverage and how they respond to the demand for commercial deals that blur the boundaries between editorial and advertising. The study responds to recent calls in media ethics scholarship for critical-empiricist research on the 'possible' world, focusing on actually existing exemplars rather than abstract ideals. The 12 organisations have adopted a range of responses to these pressures. In general, most have policies aimed at preserving their editorial integrity even as they become more accommodating to the market. Our interviewees point to the importance of organisational culture, more than written policies, in maintaining professionalism: most of the organisations were founded by journalist-publishers whose ethos continues to exert a strong influence. While these organisations have lessons for others, it may be unrealistic to expect their culture of journalistic independence to diffuse beyond a small set of principled media outlets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is a follow-up to an article published in the American Behavioral Scientist in 2017, titled "Shaping public opinion for confrontation: Catalan independence claims as represented in Spanish, Catalan, Valencian, and Basque Editorials." At that time, our study was based on opinions expressed in mainstream newspaper editorials during two significant events in Catalonia's recent history: the demonstration against the Spanish Constitutional Court ruling on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia of July 10, 2010, and the mass pro-independence demonstration held on September 11, 2012. The research sought to compare the press reports published in Catalonia, Valencia, and the Basque Country with those from the rest of Spain (primarily Madrid). This study applies the same methodology to analyze editorial pieces published during the campaign prior to the Catalan parliamentary elections on December 21, 2017. This date was historically significant for Catalonia because for the first time since the restoration of democracy following the Franco regime, the Spanish state had intervened in Catalonia's self-rule by using Article 155 of the Spanish constitution to call snap elections. At the time, the lead candidates for the pro-independence parties were Oriol Junqueras (Republican Left of Catalonia) and Carles Puigdemont (Together for Catalonia), the former in prison and the latter abroad (or in "exile," according to secessionists). In light of the opposing opinions and perspectives, we believe it is worth analyzing and comparing mainstream editorials from Catalonia (Barcelona) and Spain (Madrid) once again, to ascertain the dominant narratives used in both to explain the Catalan and Spanish position and frame of reference. We have extended the scope to include mainstream online as well as printed media with a view to achieving a better understanding and providing a wider overview of the public agenda and debate at that time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]