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Press representations of autism and autistic people both reflect and help shape public attitudes towards autism and neurodiversity and may establish critical barriers to social integration for autistic individuals. This study examined such representations in UK newspapers in the period 2011–2020 using a corpus-based approach. It also considered how press representations changed over time and differed with regard to reporting style (tabloids vs broadsheets) and political orientation (left- vs right-leaning). We created the Autism UK Press Corpus, which included all documents (~24K) referring to autism in 10 national newspapers. We used document counts (normalised by newspaper size) to assess the 'newsworthiness' of autism. We also employed a synergy of corpus-based and critical-discourse-analysis methodologies to study lexicogrammatical patterns and uncover explicit and implicit attitudes towards autism. Our results showed that the coverage of autism increased slightly over time, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Newspapers emphasised adversities associated with autism, often used negative language, and tended to focus on boys. These representations shifted gradually towards more difference-based descriptions and included more diverse age/gender groups, especially in broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. We discuss the broad implications of these findings for the autism community and those interested in a more inclusive society. Any thriving society must recognise, accept and celebrate all of its diverse talent. But how accepting is British society towards autism and autistic people? This research addressed this question through the lens of the press since the press both reflects and helps shape public attitudes towards various social categories. We used specialised 'corpus-based' methods to carry out a large-scale study, which examined all articles referring to autism or autistic people in 10 national British newspapers in the period 2011–2020. We first investigated how often newspapers referred to autism. We found that the coverage of autism increased slightly over the years, suggesting that autism was becoming an increasingly newsworthy topic. Furthermore, the rise in autism coverage differed considerably between individual newspapers: it was more pronounced in the broadsheets than tabloids, and in left-leaning than right-leaning newspapers. But what was the focus of these articles? We found that newspapers emphasised the adversities associated with autism and portrayed autism with a lot of negative language. Newspapers also tended to focus on autistic children, and particularly on boys. There were some signs of change in more recent years, with some newspapers now representing autism as a difference and, in addition, referring to more diverse groups of autistic people. However, these changes tended to be confined to broadsheets and left-leaning newspapers. Our findings suggest that representations of autism in the contemporary British press are skewed towards stereotypically negative views, which may well hinder the acceptance of autism and the fostering of a more inclusive society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Selective dorsal rhizotomy (SDR) is a neurosurgical intervention to reduce spasticity in children with cerebral palsy. Parents researching SDR for their child may be influenced by framing of SDR in news media articles they read. This study examined framing of SDR in English‐language news media. Methods: Content analysis of English‐language news media articles including the search term 'rhizotomy' in the Factiva database published July 2015 to July 2018 in online or print form in Canada, New Zealand, Australia, United States of America and the United Kingdom. Results: One hundred and eighty‐six articles were identified describing 91 different children (45 male), almost all with cerebral palsy, median age 4 years old. One hundred and twenty‐six articles were written prior to surgery; in many articles, SDR surgery involved travel overseas and/or fundraising. SDR was described universally in positive terms with little discussion of risks. Content of articles variably included the specialized nature of SDR, parental frustration with their local health system and their hope for positive outcomes. There was geographical variation in both numbers of articles and content. Conclusions: SDR is a common focus in cerebral palsy news media articles in some countries. Framing in these articles supports SDR as a beneficial and specialized procedure and may lead families to believe they need to work outside their local health systems. As news media are likely an important influence on families' attitudes to SDR, clinicians should be aware of this influence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research explored the social representations of the 'vegetative state' across different cultural (India, Italy, and the UK) and social milieus (left‐leaning, right‐leaning, and religious/tabloid newspapers). The aim was to discover how public discourse engages liminality between life and death. Qualitative and quantitative text analyses were conducted on news headlines and full‐texts from British (n = 300), Indian (n = 300), and Italian (n = 300) newspapers published between January 1990 and June 2019. Our study shows three results: (a) the vegetative state is a potentially global issue that remains discussed with local timing and characteristics; (b) it is commonly represented in eight frames of different resonance across cultural milieus; (c) the news flows are organised on different dimensions (quality, political, and ideological). Results shed light on how liminality is discursively managed by the interplay of cultural resources and social positionings. In particular, this suggests a hitherto unrecognised function of the objectification process: personification as position‐taking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Appearing in the news media is crucial for interest groups. When making a media presence, groups carefully frame their messages to push political processes in their preferred direction and to maintain organisational support. This article provides a cross-country comparison of the frames used by interest groups appearing in the news media. The article addresses the extent to which groups portray their demands as intended to further the interests of group members or other societal groups or to appeal to benefits to the economy or to the public at large. The analysis uses a dataset registering interest group appearances in the news media in Denmark and the UK. It includes 1,958 group appearances in two major UK newspapers and 3,284 appearances in two comparable Danish newspapers. Differences in frame use are demonstrated across the two countries; between different policy areas as well as between different types of interest groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the presence of interest organizations in political news in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands between 1990 and 2017. Previous research on organized interests in the media revealed (1) a consistent overrepresentation of business interests across countries, but (2) also that this overrepresentation has decreased over time in a European context. However, these studies are snapshots of interest group patterns with either cross-country or longitudinal variation, and important players such as corporations have been largely excluded by European scholars. We argue that including corporations affects previous conclusions as it reveals substantial differences across countries and an increasing role of business interests in the news. We use a data set of Dutch and British news articles, in which we identified 34,657 interest organizations. This endeavor highlights that the distribution of organized interests in the media is skewed toward business interests and has not become more diverse. This suggests that the important insider role of business interests translates to outsider venues, which tells us something about how the news media maintain these patterns through the construction of news stories. These findings interfere with ideas of representativeness and flourishing democracies with a diverse public debate in which many different voices are expressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most studies of research integrity in the general media focus on the coverage of specific cases of misconduct. This paper tries to provide a more general, long-term perspective by analysing media discourse about research integrity and related themes in the Italian and United Kingdom daily press from 2000 to 2016. The results, based on a corpus of 853 articles, show that media coverage largely mirrors debates about integrity and misconduct. In fact, salient themes in the news include the importance to overcome the so-called "rotten apple" paradigm; the key role of public trust in science; and the need to address flaws in the peer-review system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: In politically contested health debates, stakeholders on both sides present arguments and evidence to influence public opinion and the political agenda. The present study aimed to examine whether stakeholders in the Soft Drinks Industry Levy (SDIL) debate sought to establish or undermine the acceptability of this policy through the news media and how this compared with similar policy debates in relation to tobacco and alcohol industries.Design: Quantitative and qualitative content analysis of newspaper articles discussing sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxation published in eleven UK newspapers between 1 April 2015 and 30 November 2016, identified through the Nexis database. Direct stakeholder citations were entered in NVivo to allow inductive thematic analysis and comparison with an established typology of industry stakeholder arguments used by the alcohol and tobacco industries.Setting: UK newspapers.Participants: Proponents and opponents of SSB tax/SDIL cited in UK newspapers.Results: Four hundred and ninety-one newspaper articles cited stakeholders' (n 287) arguments in relation to SSB taxation (n 1761: 65 % supportive and 35 % opposing). Stakeholders' positions broadly reflected their vested interests. Inconsistencies arose from: changes in ideological position; insufficient clarity on the nature of the problem to be solved; policy priorities; and consistency with academic rigour. Both opposing and supportive themes were comparable with the alcohol and tobacco industry typology.Conclusions: Public health advocates were particularly prominent in the UK newspaper debate surrounding the SDIL. Advocates in future policy debates might benefit from seeking a similar level of prominence and avoiding inconsistencies by being clearer about the policy objective and mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Considers official attempts to manage the press in Britain in the Houses of Parliament in the 18th and 19th centuries. • Differs from previous work in that it focuses on parliament and not the civil service. • Argues for greater awareness of pre-history of PR in Britain, following similar work in Germany and the US. This paper considers a topic that has received scant attention in the historiography of public relations: official attempts to manage the press in Britain in the Houses of Parliament in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Existing accounts of the emergence of government public relations in the UK have tended to focus on the civil service in the first half of the twentieth century, but this article sheds light on a series of earlier developments, including the allocation of seats for reporters in the viewing gallery of the Commons in 1803, the construction of dedicated Reporters' Galleries in both parliamentary chambers in 1847–52 and the creation of a Westminster Lobby in 1884. Taken together, these reforms improved journalists' access to parliament in an era in which direct governmental control over newspapers lapsed. Yet, they also allowed politicians to influence media commentary by determining who was permitted access to parliament and what type of content made its way into print. A case can thus be made that Westminster, not Whitehall, played host to the earliest official attempts to manage the media in Britain, and this has important repercussions for current understandings of public relations history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the construction of the Estonian–Russian border incident of 2014, where an Estonian security officer ended captured by Russian authorities, in Finnish, Estonian and British press. It asks (a) How did the press construct the event and the actors in the reporting of the Kohver case in Finnish, Estonian and British press? What happened? Who did what? Who was responsible? What is the outcome of these constructions? Are there differences in national reporting? (b) Can ‘Finlandisation’ explain the discursive choices in the press constructions? By Finlandisation we refer to a hypothesis about the effects that the proximity of a major power in the context of international tension has on media discourse and culture more broadly. We argue that although the discourse of the Kohver case in Finnish, Estonian and British press could be subsumed under the term ‘Finlandisation’ in the case of the first two countries, a more fruitful approach would be to consider the discursive differences in the framework of the ‘domestication’ of news. This implies that explaining the tone of the news discourse is as much a matter of media logic as it is of underlying and/or implicit ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although largely forgotten, the newsreel industry was the first news broadcasting system to convey visual news reports to a worldwide audience. This study presents the first systematic, cross-national comparison of the news content delivered through this broadcasting system. Our analysis confirms that similar news content was internationally distributed and editorially “glocalized” to fit local audience tastes. Contrary to their reputation for being light and frivolous, newsreels during World War II were usually descriptive and straightforward. We conclude that the global newsreel system should be seen as a rudimentary precursor to today’s satellite news channels. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The liberty of the press became one of the main topics of public debate in the 1720s and 1730s in response to Walpole’s restrictive press policy. This debate was carried on mainly in newspapers such as theCraftsmanand theLondon Journal. Country and Court writers did not limit their discussions to legal questions, but conducted a lively debate about what press freedom actually was, and what role the press should have in political life. Among other things, they discussed to what extent it was appropriate for the press to take on an anti-governmental role. This debate is important, not least because it is a foil for one of the ‘classical’ eighteenth-century texts on the problem of press freedom, David Hume’s essay ‘Of the Liberty of the Press’. The debate reveals to what extent, and in what respects, Hume was breaking new ground in this essay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilising critical discourse analysis with corpus-assisted methods of analysis, this study examines the representation of China by English-language newspapers in China versus media in the UK. The study focuses on the linguistic realisation of attitudinal meanings in news reports about the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative. A sample of news reports by China Daily and Financial Times, dated between March 2015 and March 2016, was collected. Assisted by the corpora and corpus software AntConc and ConcGram, the study first investigated themes from the headlines and key paragraphs in the corpora of China Daily and Financial Times and then compared the classification scheme of the lexis using the concordance lines of key concepts in the Belt and Road Initiative in the two corpora. It was found that China Daily, like other Chinese mainstream media, has attempted to emphasise the initiative's positive attributes and construct positive images of China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. Images of China as represented in Financial Times are mixed and conflicting: on Utilising critical discourse analysis with corpus-assisted methods of analysis, this study examines the representation of China by English-language newspapers in China versus media in the UK. The study focuses on the linguistic realisation of attitudinal meanings in news reports about the One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative. A sample of news reports by China Daily and Financial Times, dated between March 2015 and March 2016, was collected. Assisted by the corpora and corpus software AntConc and ConcGram, the study first investigated themes from the headlines and key paragraphs in the corpora of China Daily and Financial Times and then compared the classification scheme of the lexis using the concordance lines of key concepts in the Belt and Road Initiative in the two corpora. It was found that China Daily, like other Chinese mainstream media, has attempted to emphasise the initiative's positive attributes and construct positive images of China as a peace-loving nation, an international cooperator, and an emerging global economic and responsible power. Images of China as represented in Financial Times are mixed and conflicting: on the one hand, China is portrayed as having a significant impact on the global economy; on the other hand, images of China as an authoritarian state, a militant and obstructive force, and a geopolitical threat prevail. The paper concludes with a recommendation that China continues to develop a locally grounded and globally minded media practice, in parallel with its renewed efforts to underline the power of Chinese culture in national development and international politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Those suffering with food allergies and intolerances need to consider risk every day, and professional organisations are increasingly enrolled in this risk management venture (e.g. offering support, developing legislation, and enforcing laws). Following the release of new food allergen rules in the UK, theDaily Telegraph, a national broadsheet newspaper, published a letter and an article in March 2015 endorsed by 100 chefs criticising the legislation. The chefs felt that innovation and creativity were being harmed by the requirement to state the presence of 14 allergens in the dishes they cooked. Following the release, many food allergen-concerned consumers utilised social media to share their views. In this article we use qualitative research data, comments posted online and collected between 9 and 16 March 2015, to explore how claimants positioned themselves and others in the ensuing online debate, and how the debate itself was framed. The data included traditional news articles, online forum comments, individual Twitter posts, and Twitter discussions. We identified frames across the debate discourse that emphasised medical concerns around managing risks associated with food allergy/intolerance, the assignment of responsibility, fairness of access, the political nature of the debate, and the financial implications involved. We draw on Positioning Theory to illustrate how user-positions can be defined, redefined, and challenged in the light of new or varying information. Our findings have implications for understanding communication around managing food risks from both a consumer and business perspective, and understanding the progression of debates through both traditional and new media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study of British press coverage of Boko Haram, a militant group in Nigeria, concentrates on condensational symbols in news reports of one of its major acts of terrorism, the bombing of the United Nations House in Abuja, the country’s capital city, in August 2011. The study examines the visibility of Boko Haram in British newspapers before and after the attack. It identifies the condensational symbols that dominated the coverage and how these provided a particular trajectory that could have shaped newspaper readers’ understanding of the event. The study argues that the symbolic terms that journalists used in their reports were not only easily identifiable but were specifically chosen to simplify a complex story for audiences that were perhaps uninformed about the group and its activities. The terms also reflect the repertoire of news frames that journalists mine to reconstruct reality for their audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to the theory of instrumental actualization in mediated conflicts, the mass media tend to exaggerate events consistent with the editorial line. This theory was tested using press coverage in Germany, Switzerland, France, and the United Kingdom on the Japanese seaquake, the tsunami it caused, and the nuclear disaster of Fukushima. Within a period of seven weeks after the seaquake, the coverage in the four countries in 27 national newspapers and magazines on the three events was analyzed. As hypothesized from theory, German and Swiss media concentrated on Fukushima and stressed its relevance to domestic nuclear plants, whereas French and British media placed a greater emphasis on the tsunami and rarely related the nuclear catastrophe in Japan to domestic nuclear programs. In addition, there were remarkable correlations between the views of journalists and the bias of statements on nuclear energy presented in their news sections. Findings are discussed and related to the theory of public opinion and political decisions in liberal democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents a quantitative examination of how newspaper articles in the UK, France and Italy most commonly frame immigration and migrants. A developing literature on the securitisation of policy and discourse related to migration suggests the prominence of this narrative, but the prevalence of this particular portrayal of migration has not been placed into comparative context through cross-country analysis of the relative prominence of various immigration-related issues. To test the securitisation thesis I tabulate not only security narratives in the press, but also economic ones, comparing the relative frequency of these two broader narratives. The results indicate that it would be premature to speak of a pre-eminent securitised meta-narrative within the European press. I find that overt references to physical threat or crime occur relatively infrequently, with only the mention of the border being more common. Instead, issues with economic implications, such as the labour market, asylum and fiscal costs, exhibit at least equal salience, though the degree to which the press grants attention to specific economic or security issues varies substantially between countries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This research finds that the emergence of infographics as a regular phenomenon in UK news can be traced back toThe Daily Expressof the mid-1950s. These “Expressographs” were often used not as a means of conveying data accurately and objectively, but in order to propagate the paper's editorial line, and to further Lord Beaverbook's political interests. A series of editorial narratives are established via the literature onThe Daily Express, and its proprietor Lord Beaverbrook. These narratives are used as a framework to analyse statistical infographics published inThe Daily Expressbetween January 1956 and October 1959, by means of a combined content analysis and structural semiotic analysis. Best practice, as espoused in the information design literature, is used to identify misleading graphical methods in the sample, which were then analysed in the context of the editorial narratives identified. This study finds that infographics in UK news were the product of a lavishly financed organisation whose key decision-makers were deeply concerned with the impact of the visual in news. The purpose of these infographics was to perpetuate their employer's idiosyncratic view of how the world should be. Occupational norms and practices may account for some of the biases identified, but cannot account for the breadth, range and consistency of bias found across the sample, which constitutes an example of mid-twentieth-century propaganda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Frederick Porter Wensley was one of Scotland Yard's ‘Big Four’ detectives, head of the Metropolitan Police Criminal Investigation Department and responsible for establishing the Flying Squad. On his retirement in 1929, he used the two bound scrapbooks of press clippings and photographs he had collated to document his personal life and career to inform his 1931 autobiographyDetective Daysand serialized press articles. Through examining the interaction of material between scrapbooks and autobiographical writings, this article explores how Wensley constructed his post-retirement persona as ‘celebrity detective’ from a canny understanding of what had made him a commercial subject for the press. It argues that Wensley recast his life to promote his own successes at the expense of a narrative of police unity, providing a vehicle for him to suggest further changes to the structure of the police force without official sanction. By juxtaposing this against tightening legislation on police communication with journalists during the inter-war period under the Official Secrets Acts, this article demonstrates how the ‘celebrity’ that Wensley sought to occupy was increasingly regarded as irreconcilable with police ability to effect ‘impartial’ regulation, anticipating the concerns raised by the 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press. The article thus charts a turning point in defining the relationship between police and press. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Calls for a referendum on UK's membership in the EU entered permanently into the political debate, and several surveys showed that many British citizens may like to leave the European community. This article examines the portrayal of the EU in the British press during the eurozone recession. It presents analysis of news sections in four newspapers: The Guardian, The Times, The Sun and The Daily Mail, which was conducted between November 2011 and July 2012. The research shows inaccuracies in the coverage of the eurozone crisis that lead to a very unfavourable portrayal of the EU as an artificial, undemocratic organisation dragging Britain and the world into financial problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we examine how and why the media construct food risks, from the perspective of ‘media actors’ (people involved in different types of media) using data from 30 interviews conducted in 2013 with media actors from Australia and the United Kingdom. In modern society, many risks are invisible and are brought to the attention of the public through representations in the mass media. This is particularly relevant for food safety, where the widening gap between producers and consumers in the developed world has increased the need for consumer trust in the food supply. We show the importance of newsworthiness in construction of media stories about food risk using Beck’s ideas on cosmopolitan risk to interpret the data. We note the ways in which the strategies that media actors use to construct stories about food risk amplify the risk posed potentially creating consumer anxiety about the safety of the food system. It is important for food regulators and public health professionals to be aware of this anxiety when presenting information about a food incident so that they can target their message accordingly to decrease anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the coverage of Naples since 2000 in the Guardian and the Independent, paying particular attention to their portrayal of the Camorra and the refuse crisis. It argues that this coverage was not simply riddled with stereotypes but was also characterised by significant inaccuracies and omissions. Analysts in Italy have detailed how the trash emergency in 2008 was the outcome of corporate malpractice and institutional complicity and that organised crime, although intent on exploiting the situation, was not a determining factor. The British press, instead, tended to conflate the breakdown of the urban waste cycle with the dumping of toxic waste and, by inverting cause and effect, to point the blame at the Camorra. These accounts, it is argued, are partially explained by the very nature of foreign news that seeks out dramatic and clear-cut stories for an otherwise disinterested audience. They also reflect the heightened interest in the Camorra following the Secondigliano War and the English translation of Roberto Saviano's Gomorrah. However, the article suggests that it is the press's assumption that Naples is already an ‘out of the ordinary’ urban setting that ultimately precludes the possibility of an informed coverage of the city and its predicaments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study conducts a framing analysis of British popular press representations of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) during 1939–41, when the definition of the Soviet Union as Ally was conceived, dismissed, revived and finally embraced with an enthusiasm that endured to the eve of the Cold War. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which the press framed an initially inscrutable third party to a bilateral conflict, and how it handled that party's transformation into an official ally. The definition of the Soviet Ally is found to be consistently reassuring and relational, with the Soviet frame depending upon other parties (particularly Britain) for much of its content. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article explores prospects for media reform in Great Britain, following the Leveson Inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press. Lord Justice Brian Henry Leveson proposes the regulation of media ethics by voluntarily becoming a member of an independent regulatory structure. According to the authors, aside from addressing unethical and irresponsible journalism, good journalism should also be stimulated through incentives.

Purpose – This paper aims to understand the level of synergy between print and online activity and to assess the influence of print/online synergy on the log of circulation change. Design/methodology/approach – In order to meet this aim the authors conducted an empirical study of 100 regional newspapers supplying news media services in the UK. Two hypotheses grounded in a conceptual model were developed. The authors used Pearson correlation and (stepwise) regression analysis to test two hypotheses (H1 and H2). Findings – H1 provides us with some interesting findings. The first is that higher priced newspapers attract more unique Internet users and mobile Internet access. Higher priced newspapers who have been in business longer and have established brands attract more online readers. Also, because these issues are more expensive there is more incentive to go online to read the papers for free. Note that this last explanation is consistent with the analysis provided for H2, the beta for price is negative. The negative coefficient indicates that the circulation change of higher priced papers has reduced more. Therefore circulation change impacts greater upon premium price newspapers for an elite rather than a broad readership. The regression results presented here indicate that established firms with premium pricing, providing multiple platform distribution and specialist digital editions with free online content, have circulations that are reducing less.Practical implications – While reducing the rate of circulation decline, current levels of online presence are not reversing it. There is a need for online presence to be focused on more targeted segments/niches of circulation such as "hyper-local" news. This suggests a much clearer consideration must be made by newspapers with a premium price for an elite rather than a broad readership. Social implications – News organizations now find themselves less socially relevant as consumers turn towards the Internet for alternative sources of "news". News media firms are having to rebuild their brand identity and market positioning in the online marketplace. Higher priced newspapers have been in business longer and have established brand recognition for providing elite services. This is vital if they are to retain their community influence (as trusted sources of locally produced news, analysis and investigative reporting into public affairs). Commercial influence is determined by their social influence and the demise of newspapers would significantly threaten news plurality, democracy and public service journalism at the local community level. Originality/value – The originality of this work concerns its specific focus on the influence of print/online synergy on the rate of circulation change. The news media industry is an under-researched area of Internet scholarship. The study is significant on two counts: first, it estimates cross-media synergies based on print and online interaction at an aggregated level; and second, it identifies different combinations of cross-media exposure over individual media effects. It combines both print and online measures of circulation. Of most importance, the study is able to show that synergy is complementary and has had a positive effect on log circulation change by reducing it by a smaller number. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared on 3 May 2007 from a holiday apartment in Portugal. Over five years and multiple investigations that failed to solve this abducted child case, Madeleine and her parents were subject to a process of relentless ‘intermediatization’. Across 24–7 news coverage, websites, documentaries, films, YouTube videos, books, magazines, music and artworks, Madeleine was a mediagenic image of innocence and a lucrative story. In contrast to Madeleine’s media sacralization, the representation of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, fluctuated between periods of vociferous support and prolonged and libellous ‘trial by media’. This article analyses how the global intermediatization of the ‘Maddie Mystery’ fed into and fuelled the ‘trial by media’ of Kate and Gerry McCann in the UK press. Our theorization of ‘trial by media’ is developed and refined through considering its legal limitations in an era of ‘attack journalism’ and unprecedented official UK inquiries into press misconduct and criminality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recent years, historians of twentieth-century Britain have made relatively little use of the popular press as a source. This is partly due to the practical problems of working with newspapers (pre-digitisation); there has also been, however, a widespread perception that popular journalism is predictable, trivial and politically and socially conservative, and therefore not worthy of sustained scholarly attention. These attitudes are starting to change, encouraged by the process of digitisation. Nevertheless, substantial gaps remain in our understanding of the impact of the press. This article is in two sections; the first examines how popular national newspapers have been used in political narratives, and the second explores their place in discussions of social and cultural change. The article argues that not only have entrenched stereotypes prevented historians from properly understanding the nature of popular newspapers, they have also led to them misinterpreting broader developments in British politics, society and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Irish and Muslim communities in Britain are, or have often been, constructed negatively in public discourse, where they have been associated with terrorism and extremism. Despite similarities in the experiences of these communities, little comparative research has been conducted. We address this gap by implementing a critical discourse analysis of national and diaspora press coverage of events involving Irish and Muslim communities that occurred in Great Britain between 1974 and 2007. We identified a consensus within the press that “law-abiding” Irish and Muslim people must stand up against “extremists” within their ranks and defend what newsmakers perceive are British values; in this way Irish and Muslim communities are constructed as both inside and outside Britishness. We conclude that the construction of these communities as “suspect” happens mostly in the ambiguity of news discourse, which contributes to fostering a socio-political climate that has permitted civil liberties to be violated by the state security apparatus. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Literature on immigration and race relations in 1960s Britain has consistently emphasized legislation of this period as "racist" in intent. Insufficient attention has been paid to the deconstruction of the language surrounding anti-immigration sentiment. In the context of the 1968 Kenyan Asians crisis, Commonwealth Immigrants Act, and Race Relations Act, popular anti-immigrant sentiment was not couched in singularly definable terms of racism. However, much opposition to immigration was expressed in a manner that suggested a defensive and exclusive sense of British national identity, described in terms that reflected concerns about the appendages of the postwar welfare state. This language suggests that anti-immigration sentiment ought to be placed in a broader context of economic and socio-political decline in Britain, rather than read exclusively as an expression of some objectively definable notion of "racism." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the validity of the arguments presented by Professor Gavin Phillipson regarding the effective protection of Article 8 rights in Great Britain. It says that the positive, legal requirements' imposition on media organizations to notify earlier the subjects of the stories of journalists where these might encroach on purported Article 8 rights is not needed in order that the Great Britain fulfills its European Convention obligations. It mentions the basic premise that damages are not enough to recompense harms done through the private information's publication or the interim injunction in privacy cases. It examines the practical implications of the imposition of prior notification requirement and its effect on media freedom.

This article examines the character of the coverage of Africa in the UK press by conducting a content analysis of six newspapers over a 15-day period. The results of this investigation suggest that the character of the UK press coverage of Africa is not as marginalized, negative or trivial as it is often accused of being. This investigation also finds that there are significant differences between 'tabloids' and 'broadsheets' in terms of the quantity of articles, the topics covered and the use of negative framing. This article seeks to fill a conspicuous research gap and to draw attention to the important but largely unacknowledged role of the UK press in informing citizens about Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media's role in wartime has long been the subject of controversy, marked by claims that media promote, or indeed constrain, military action, and over the impact of patriotism and new technologies on wartime levels of media autonomy. Based on a detailed examination of U.K. press and television coverage of the 2003 invasion of Iraq and of the U.S./U.K. coalition's media briefings, this report summarizes initial findings concerning media management and press content. We show that the coalition consistently promoted the humanitarian case for war, humanitarian operations and `slow but sure' military progress, while U.K. press coverage largely reflected this focus upon military progress, accepting and even promoting the broader humanitarian rationale for war. Nevertheless, we uncovered a degree of media criticism that emerged in response to events outside the coalition's control, such as civilian and military casualties. We also direct readers to further outputs from the project analyzing various aspects of British media coverage of the invasion in greater detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the context of a sharp rise in Americans' access to foreign news, especially since September 11, 2001, this article examines the limits of effectiveness of such foreign news influences in influencing the public debate on major policy issues within the United States. With the focus on a major U.K.-originated news story--the "Downing Street Memo" and subsequent leaked U.K. government documents--the article applies and expands the concepts of boundary maintenance and news repair beyond the domestic news realm and considers these as mechanisms by which the U.S. mainstream news media can still contain and limit the effectiveness of such stories in the U.S. public sphere. This study shows that although the rise of the Internet provides substantial new openings for important foreign-originated news stories in the United States, U.S. news media retain some ability to close down stories perceived as threats to their journalistic credibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This contribution examines print media coverage of the cultivation and consumption of genetically modified (GM) crops in the UK press. It draws on arguments from Beck and Bauman to consider how the GM debate undertakes the discursive regeneration of security, purity, order and certainty through the invocation of the modernist categories of nation and boundary. A combination of in-depth textual analysis of national newspaper coverage and interviews with key media sources was used to explore how discourses of nation are promoted by different actors, and how the UK press then mediate these different viewpoints according to their own news values and reportage categories. In particular the contribution explores how the symbolic power invested in the concept of nation is an example of individual and societal self-deception; for in the globalised world we now inhabit, new technologies like genetic modification cannot be controlled by old frontiers like nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Iraq War was a defining media event. This study used quantitative content analysis to explore the websites of prestige news media in the United States and the United Kingdom, as well as Egypt and Qatar, examining both the frames used by news media in their coverage of the conflict, as well as the voices heard - and unheard - throughout the coverage. The analysis showed that the "tale of war" was constructed differently by the different international media. Arab online news media were more likely to use the military conflict and violence of war frame, whereas Coalition media emphasized the rebuilding of Iraq frame. Differences in the tone of coverage and the use of sources across the four news media were also found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the UK and US were staunch allies before and during the Iraq War, differing sociopolitical milieus existed within the countries regarding support for the war. This cross-national content analysis compared stories on antiwar protest by leading newspapers in each country to determine if the differing sociopolitical environments were reflected in each nation's press coverage. Results indicate that the US press invoked the ‘protest paradigm’ to a greater extent than its UK counterpart by being more likely to implement marginalization techniques in its coverage of protest- ers. Additionally, a greater number of marginalization techniques were associated with negative overall story tone toward the protesters within US coverage when compared to UK coverage. These results underscore the importance of cross-national research in examining the generality of contemporary mass media theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This case study, focusing on the Scottish press, analyzes emerging media constructions of Scottish identity as articulated through the prism of the new Scottish parliament, with the focus on that institution's preliminary relationships with the United Kingdom and the European Union, The study covers a six-month period leading up to the historic opening of the new parliament in July of 1999. It provides a clearer picture of how Scotland's political relations with the UK and the ELI were being framed and presented at that time, as the Scottish nation and its new polity began the process of redefining themselves within these larger entities. Four dominant media packages are identified, each of which articulates a different vision for Scotland's future in relation to the UK and the EU. Three of the four packages emphasize versions of the Scottish-UK relationship that place Scotland in a subservient or regressive position vis-à-vis the UK. However, one of the identified packages represents a genuinely original framework for Scotland's external relations, and provides a progressive model for medium-and long-term media coverage of these relations, However, in order for this package to predominate, a number of institutional and cultural factors reinforcing the status quo must be overcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the role of mass media in elections in Great Britain. Use of the Internet in the conduct of electoral politics; Television coverage of elections; Efforts by political parties to court the press; Decline in newspapers' influence on public opinion.

What role does the local media, particularly the local press play, in the local constituency campaign during UK general elections? Drawing on interviews with MPs and candidates and evidence from a series of content analysis studies of local newspapers, this article reviews the extent to which the local press offers coverage to political actors during and outside the period of the election campaign. It argues that the pressure to court the local media and to build a local profile is rarely matched by extensive coverage and that this should raise questions about the place of the local press in the local constituency campaign. The paper also sets out the strategies used by MPs and candidates to court the local press and argues that this reflects the very limited role that the local press plays within the local constituency in respect of its political coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A content analysis examined the way majorities and minorities are represented in the British press. An analysis of the headlines of five British newspapers, over a period of five years, revealed that the words ‘majority’ and ‘minority’ appeared 658 times. Majority headlines were most frequent (66% ), more likely to emphasize the numerical size of the majority, to link majority status with political groups, to be described with positive evaluations, and to cover political issues. By contrast, minority headlines were less frequent (34%), more likely to link minority status with ethnic groups and to other social issues, and less likely to be described with positive evaluations. The implications of examining how real-life majorities and minorities are represented for our understanding of experimental research are discussed. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research presents a content analysis of the major British tabloids over the last decade of the 20th century. Using the conceptual lens of tabloidization and the framework of McLachlan and Golding, this study shows that the coverage of tabloids can be characterized by a dominance of `soft' and home stories, by a significant presence of headlines and visuals and a personalized angle of coverage. Over time, the coverage has become mores `tabloidized' in its form and style, but has remained constant in its range of contents. Theoretically, the results indicate that the evolution of tabloid coverage has been heterogeneous, which supports the idea that the press can be in a process of homogenization only in the areas of form and style of coverage, but not in terms of range of content. Moreover, these changes suggest that tabloidization (as a feature directly related to tabloids) should not be considered a static concept. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the impact of press as a purveyor and mediator of civic constructs of progressiveness and improvement in Great Britain. Structural/functional change and legitimacy of press; Material existence of the commercialized press; Expressions of popular legitimacy.

This editorial discusses the role of journalism in world events. The author discusses the infamous "Downing Street Memo" on the Iraq War, circulated around the British government and reported to the public by the British press. The author examines how this news story was managed by the British press, and compares the practice of journalism in Great Britain with journalism in the U.S. The author notes that the U.S. media largely ignored the "Downing Street Memo" story, despite the fact that it was considered highly important in Great Britain.