The Revealed Demand for Hard vs. Soft News: Evidence from Italian TV Viewership

The role of the media in informing the public has long been a central topic in journalism studies. Given that social media platforms have become today’s major source of news, it is important to understand the impact of social media use on citizens’ knowledge of current affairs. While people get news from multiple platforms throughout the day, most research treats social media as a single entity or examines only one or two major platforms ignoring newer social media platforms. Drawing on news snacking framework, this study investigates how using some of today’s most popular social media platforms predicts users’ current affairs knowledge, with particular attention to Snapchat and its news section Discover. A survey conducted in the United States (N=417) demonstrated that each of the platforms is distinct: Twitter is a strongly positive predictor of knowledge, Facebook a marginally significant negative predictor, Reddit a significantly negative predictor and Instagram not a significant predictor. Overall Snapchat use has no significant association with users’ knowledge of current affairs, whereas Discover use has a negative relationship. Further analysis revealed that mere exposure to Snapchat is positively related to soft-news knowledge and attention to Discover is negatively related to hard-news knowledge.

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Sacrificing Credibility for Sleaze

Web Design and Development ◽

10.4018/978-1-4666-8619-9.ch057 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 1267-1282 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Jenn Burleson Mackay ◽

Erica Bailey

Keyword(s):

News Media ◽

Source Credibility ◽

Online News ◽

News Stories ◽

Soft News ◽

Credibility Scale ◽

Act Utilitarianism ◽

Traditional Stories

This chapter uses an experiment to analyze how mainstream journalists' use of sensationalized or tabloid-style writing techniques affect the credibility of online news. Participants read four news stories and rated their credibility using McCroskey's Source Credibility Scale. Participants found stories written with a tabloid style less credible than more traditional stories. Soft news stories written with a tabloidized style were rated more credible than hard news stories that also had a tabloidized style. Results suggest that online news media may damage their credibility by using tabloidized writing techniques to increase readership. Furthermore, participants were less likely to enjoy stories written in a tabloidized style. The authors conclude by utilizing act utilitarianism to argue that tabloidized writing is an unethical journalistic technique.

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