The News Media: Keeping the Public Informed or Intelligence for the Enemy

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugene L. McFeely
Keyword(s):  
MedienJournal ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 30 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 37
Author(s):  
Li Xiguang

The commercialization of meclia in China has cultivated a new journalism business model characterized with scandalization, sensationalization, exaggeration, oversimplification, highly opinionated news stories, one-sidedly reporting, fabrication and hate reporting, which have clone more harm than good to the public affairs. Today the Chinese journalists are more prey to the manipu/ation of the emotions of the audiences than being a faithful messenger for the public. Une/er such a media environment, in case of news events, particularly, during crisis, it is not the media being scared by the government. but the media itself is scaring the government into silence. The Chinese news media have grown so negative and so cynica/ that it has produced growing popular clistrust of the government and the government officials. Entering a freer but fearful commercially mediated society, the Chinese government is totally tmprepared in engaging the Chinese press effectively and has lost its ability for setting public agenda and shaping public opinions. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 272
Author(s):  
Aaron C. Sparks ◽  
Heather Hodges ◽  
Sarah Oliver ◽  
Eric R. A. N. Smith

In many public policy areas, such as climate change, news media reports about scientific research play an important role. In presenting their research, scientists are providing guidance to the public regarding public policy choices. How do people decide which scientists and scientific claims to believe? This is a question we address by drawing on the psychology of persuasion. We propose the hypothesis that people are more likely to believe local scientists than national or international scientists. We test this hypothesis with an experiment embedded in a national Internet survey. Our experiment yielded null findings, showing that people do not discount or ignore research findings on climate change if they come from Europe instead of Washington-based scientists or a leading university in a respondent’s home state. This reinforces evidence that climate change beliefs are relatively stable, based on party affiliation, and not malleable based on the source of the scientific report.


Author(s):  
Patrícia Rossini ◽  
Jennifer Stromer-Galley ◽  
Ania Korsunska

Abstract While the debate around the prevalence and potential effects of fake news has received considerable scholarly attention, less research has focused on how political elites and pundits weaponized fake news to delegitimize the media. In this study, we examine the rhetoric in 2020 U.S. presidential primary candidates Facebook advertisements. Our analysis suggests that Republican and Democratic candidates alike attack and demean the news media on several themes, including castigating them for malicious gatekeeping, for being out of touch with the views of the public, and for being a bully. Only Trump routinely attacks the news media for trafficking in falsehoods and for colluding with other interests to attack his candidacy. Our findings highlight the ways that candidates instrumentalize the news media for their own rhetorical purposes; further constructing the news media as harmful to democracy.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-141
Author(s):  
G. Michael Bowen ◽  
Richard Zurawski ◽  
Anthony Bartley

News media presentations of STEM (and particularly science) in various formats have been critiqued for the many ways by which they misrepresent both the facts of the discipline and the practices of the discipline and the researchers in them. Another issue is that the material is presented in a format – basically a one-way transmission – with usually little opportunity for questions by the recipients (i.e., readers, listeners, viewers, etc.) to be addressed when they don’t understand something. One news media format which might allow this dialogic activity is the radio call-in show format which is structured so that the public can ask questions of a “scientist” with the opportunity for follow-up questions to address what are discontinuities in the listener’s understanding. In this paper we document the processes by which listener interests ultimately end up discussed in the radio broadcast and what influences the “science” that is presented on-air. Our analysis reports the ways in which the STEM topics and content are mediated by radio station personnel, often times distorting the factual content available to the public and misrepresenting the practices of the research fields, as they engage in information management practices which are typical of opinion-driven shows (such as those on the topics of politics or sports) which are designed to create controversy and drama to increase ratings.


2020 ◽  
pp. 292-344
Author(s):  
Vuk Vukotić

This article compares the language ideologies of language experts (both academic and non-academic) in online news media in Lithuania, Norway and Serbia. The results will reveal that language is understood in diametrically opposed ways amongst Lithuanian and Serbian academic experts on the one, and Norwegian academic experts on the other hand. Lithuanian and Serbian academic experts are influenced by modernist ideas of language as a single, homogenous entity, whose borders ideally match the borders of an ethnic group. Norwegian academic experts function in the public sphere as those who try to deconstruct the modernist notion of language by employing an understanding of language as a cognitive tool that performs communicative and other functions. On the other hand, non-academic experts in all the three countries exhibit a striking similarity in their language ideologies, as the great majority expresses modernist ideals of language.


2021 ◽  
pp. 313-343
Author(s):  
Lena Maria Schaffer ◽  
Alessio Levis

AbstractEnergy transitions are based upon policy choices of sovereign nation states. Hence, politics plays a role in determining which policies governments implement and which sectors are targeted. Our chapter looks at the evolution of public discourse on energy policy as one important factor reflecting policy discussion and contestation within the political arena. Our descriptive and explorative analysis of the early public discourse in Swiss energy policy between 1997 and 2011 contributes to three main issues. First, it makes a case for the disaggregation of energy policy and its public perception to add to our understanding of energy transition pathways. We argue that looking at sectoral discourses as well as sectoral policy outputs allows for a more comprehensive understanding of the idiosyncrasies of Swiss energy policy regarding temporal as well as sectoral variation. Second, an increased politicization of energy policy may affect future policy choice, and thus any account on energy transition policy needs to scrutinize potential feedback effects from policies that manifest via policy discourse. Third, and on a more methodological stance, we argue that our approach to use news media as a representation of the public discourse via structural topic models can help to explore and explain the evolving national policy priorities regarding energy transition.


Author(s):  
T. Zhao ◽  
W. Liu ◽  
W. Ma

Based on the needs of the news media on the map, this paper researches on the news map compilation service, conducts demand research on the service of compiling news maps, designs and compiles the public authority base map suitable for media publication, and constructs the news base map material library. It studies the compilation of domestic and international news maps with timeliness and strong pertinence and cross-regional characteristics, constructs the hot news thematic gallery and news map customization services, conducts research on types of news maps, establish closer liaison and cooperation methods with news media, and guides news media to use correct maps. Through the practice of the news map compilation service, this paper lists two cases of news map preparation services used by different media, compares and analyses cases, summarizes the research situation of news map compilation service, and at the same time puts forward outstanding problems and development suggestions in the service of news map compilation service.


Author(s):  
Lorie Donelle ◽  
Richard Booth

Twitter® is a popular microblogging site that allows users to disseminate information in 140 characters of text or less. A review of literature indicated that, to date, there has been little inquiry into the health based discussions conceptualized and enacted within and among Twitter® users. Methods for this qualitative study included a directed content analysis, guided by the Public Health Agency of Canada’s Determinant of Health (DOH) framework was completed to explore health based discussions on Twitter®. A 24-hour cross-section of tweets (N=2400) containing the word or hashtag ‘health’ were collected for analysis. Findings revealed predominant themes of health services, personal health practices, and education. Many of the tweeted messages reflected existing political and social issues publicized within the global mass media. This study also considered the evolving dynamic behind the conceptualization of health and how it is co-constructed through news media, advertising, and social network technologies. Discussion of the emerging themes and implications for practice are presented.


PCD Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-124
Author(s):  
Arum Sekar Cendani ◽  
Pulung Setiosuci Perbawani

Indonesian society is familiar with the terms 'public figures' and 'celebrities', but the distinction is often not understood properly. The public's interest in content that focuses on entertainment, lifestyles, and gossip, as well as the presence of a media that facilitates such content, makes the process of 'celebrating' common. This process has resulted in the private space of public figures being transformed into objects of public consumption.Scandals are often quite popularly discussed among the public, especially when their subject is a public figure. However, studies of how scandals affect the public and its political behaviour have not been widely documented. In 2018, Indonesian news media began widely covering the divorce of well-known politician Basuki Tjahaja Purnama (BTP/Ahok) from his ex-wife Veronica Tan, and this brought questions of extramarital affairs to the surface in the midst of a heated local election atmosphere. This situation was divisive, and received various public responses. Previous studies have shown that scandals tend to negatively affect popular attitudes towards the politicians involved in them. In Indonesia, scandals have been common, widely recognised by the public, but their effects are never discussed in depth. Therefore, this study, which involved around 400 respondents, seeks to provide an overview of how the Indonesian public responds to politicians involved in scandals and how such scandals affect politicians' electability. The results of this study show that scandals do affect the public's political attitude, but not in the ways suggested by existing studies.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Bernard Whelan

<p>The field of journalism in New Zealand has gone through significant changes in the last few years, with the onset of digital technologies, their impact on the funding of journalism and on readership, and in turn on the way journalism is performed. Therefore, the aim of this study is to understand how leadership empowers learning in newsrooms and, in turn, contributes to the training and development of journalists. The intent here is to contribute to the constantly evolving field of journalism as it deals with the digital changes driving what is arguably the most concentrated period of change in its history. Appreciative Inquiry (AI) has typically been used in organisations to manifest positive change for people. However, for this study I have creatively adapted and applied the Appreciative Inquiry framework to situate qualitative research methods inside three newsrooms in New Zealand. Focus groups in each newsroom were comprised of individuals from different hierarchical levels of the workplace. As the lead researcher I led the groups who operated as co-researchers following the AI process of four phases comprising Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny seeking to understand how leadership empowers learning in newsrooms. The findings were initially drawn from an analysis of the themes which arose in the discussions. From the findings I use AI theory and adapt the AI process to propose a Relational Newsroom framework for use in newsrooms. By embedding newsroom groups constantly using the 4-D cycle of AI and involving the public in live interaction process with newsroom decision-making, the framework would generate practices of communication, trust, personal leadership and structure identified in the findings. This study concludes with proposals in the form of action statements for use in both news media and journalism school newsrooms to have journalists engaged and involved in creating the future of the field.</p>


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