Quantitative and qualitative analysis of linking patterns of mainstream and partisan online news media in Central Europe

PurposePartisan news media, which often publish extremely biased, one-sided or even false news, are gaining popularity world-wide and represent a major societal issue. Due to a growing number of such media, a need for automatic detection approaches is of high demand. Automatic detection relies on various indicators (e.g. content characteristics) to identify new partisan media candidates and to predict their level of partisanship. The aim of the research is to investigate to a deeper extent whether it would be appropriate to rely on the hyperlinks as possible indicators for better automatic partisan news media detection.Design/methodology/approachThe authors utilized hyperlink network analysis to study the hyperlinks of partisan and mainstream media. The dataset involved the hyperlinks of 18 mainstream media and 15 partisan media in Slovakia and Czech Republic. More than 171 million domain pairs of inbound and outbound hyperlinks of selected online news media were collected with Ahrefs tool, analyzed and visualized with Gephi software. Additionally, 300 articles covering COVID-19 from both types of media were selected for content analysis of hyperlinks to verify the reliability of quantitative analysis and to provide more detailed analysis.FindingsThe authors conclude that hyperlinks are reliable indicators of media affinity and linking patterns could contribute to partisan news detection. The authors found out that especially the incoming links with dofollow attribute to news websites are reliable indicators for assessing the type of media, as partisan media rarely receive links with dofollow attribute from mainstream media. The outgoing links are not such reliable indicators as both mainstream and partisan media link to mainstream sources similarly.Originality/valueIn contrast to the extensive amount of research aiming at fake news detection within a piece of text or multimedia content (e.g. news articles, social media posts), the authors shift to characterization of the whole news media. In addition, the authors did a geographical shift from more researched US-based media to so far under-researched European context, particularly Central Europe. The results and conclusions can serve as a guide how to derive new features for an automatic detection of possibly partisan news media by means of artificial intelligence (AI).Peer reviewThe peer review history for this article is available at the following link: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2020-0441.

Communication network analysis to advance mapping ‘sport for development and peace’ complexity: Cohesion and leadership

Attempts to map the global sport for development and peace field have revealed only some aspects of its complex organisational structure, failing to depict the web of relations in which diverse stakeholders are embedded. Based on the principles of complex systems, this study applies a communication network perspective and the analytical instruments of hyperlink network analysis to advance mapping sport for development and peace complexity and to reveal the significance of the stakeholders’ structure for power relations, cohesion and leadership processes in the sport for development and peace field. The research extends the current mapping by depicting an international network of 520 organisations and 2279 links. The stakeholders differ according to the level of involvement in sport for development and peace practice, the field of main activities, and origins (the global North and South). The density of the network is extremely sparse, which means that less than 1% of all possible ties are realised. Furthermore, it ratifies the leading role of the global North in sport for development and peace efforts. Findings also disclose difficulties in establishing relations between delivery organisations that can be attributed to competitive context and shortage of resources. The study provides clarification of existing power relations and helps to find development strategies and a more inclusive and equitable policy formulation aimed to create equal opportunities for leadership.

Hyperlink Network Analysis of a Tourism Destination

Hyperlinks critically impact the online visibility of a tourism destination and the effectiveness of information flow between tourism organizations and enterprises on the Internet. This study investigates the hyperlink network of the tourism industry in Western Australia. Network analysis is applied to explore, analyze, and visualize this network of 1,515 tourism websites. Several dimensions of network structure are examined, and the results indicate that the hyperlink network of this destination has a very sparse, centralized and hierarchical structure, and that the websites tend to form communities based on their geographical locations. Public tourism organizations and information services play a central and significant role in the destination network. The key implication for organizations and the industry as a whole is that education about the instrumental importance of hyperlinks could increase interconnectivity and therefore industry performance.

Energiewende’s Lone Warriors: A Hyperlink Network Analysis of the German Energy Transition Discourse

This paper explores the integration of different social fields within the German Energy Transition (Energiewende) discourse in the election year 2013 by analysing the hyperlink structures online. Energiewende describes the fundamental transition from non-renewable energy to sustainable sources. This goal is both ambitious and controversial. Numerous stakeholders try to make their voices and interests heard and as such politics has to both disseminate and collect information in order to include all relevant groups from different social fields in the political process. This discourse is also visible online. By analysing the hyperlink structures we are able to see the attention distribution of different actor groups in the network. This study shows that most actors tend to link within their own social field and do not aim for a more integrated public sphere. Especially political actors appear to be lone warriors who neither look left or right and mostly link within their own party and ignore other actors. Whereas social field as the media or public administration are relevant within the network we find that scientific actors are ignored by all fields, except for their own.

Hyperlinked Suicide

Background: The relationship between the Internet and suicide is a topic of growing concern among suicide researchers and the public, though to date few have actually attempted to investigate the accessibility and prominence of suicide-related information online, and there have been no comprehensive studies of site networking structure. Aims: To assess the visibility of various types of online information to suicide-risk individuals, and to assess the prominence and accessibility of “pro-suicide,” suicide prevention, and support sites by measuring their networking structure. Methods: Employing empirically derived search terms, we used the web-based Virtual Observatory for the Study of Online Networks (VOSON) to conduct hyperlink network analysis (HNA) of suicide-related websites. Results: Pro-suicide sites are rare and marginal, while sites dedicated to information about suicide as well as sites dedicated to prevention policy and advocacy are readily accessible. Conclusions: The networking structure of suicide-related Internet content has not been described previously. Our analysis shows that HNA is a useful method for gaining an indepth understanding of network traffic in relation to suicide-content websites. This information will be useful for strengthening the web presence of support and suicide prevention sites, and for monitoring changes over time.