1,721,429 research outputs found
Political balance
No full textBefore every election campaign, the French Conseil supérieur de l’audiovisuel (CSA) publishes detailed rules on how much news coverage candidates are allowed to have vis-à-vis one another in the electronic media to ensure what it calls pluralisme politique (e.g., CSA 2011). Also outside election times, the CSA continuously monitors news coverage by electronic media and can sanction broadcasters for not complying with regulations. While, of the modern democracies, France may have the strictest regulations on news media content, other Western democracies also have authorities that monitor and control news coverage (mainly public broadcasters) or have informal rules that determine news coverage of politics (Hopmann, Van Aelst, and Legnante 2012; Kaid and Strömbäck 2008)
The explanatory logic:Factors that shape political news
No full textInsights gained depend on the questions asked. This chapter describes the why and the how of our study’s approach. After outlining some principal research interests of comparative news analyses, we introduce a theoretical hierarchy of infl uences that needs to be observed in order to understand the construction of media content. In fi tting this model to the specifi c requirements of our study, we emphasize, in particular, the importance of integrating event-centered and mediacentered considerations, of incorporating an explicit comparative perspective, and of applying appropriate strategies of data analysis. The main part of the chapter introduces the explanatory factors that are used in this study to elucidate crossnational and cross-organizational differences in journalists’ use of the six core concepts of political news. The explanatory factors are systematized according to their level of analysis, and we provide a great many examples to illustrate their use in this study, together with concrete operationalizations. We conclude by situating our own approach in the recent development of explanation-oriented comparative news research
Political balance in the news: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings
No full textBalance is a notoriously difficult concept to operationalize. It has typically been investigated by examining the issues raised in elections, as well as the volume and favorability of coverage of political actors. However, even after collecting these measures, it is difficult to determine precisely what would constitute ‘balanced’ coverage. Based on a comprehensive overview of previous research in western democracies, we argue that political balance can be defined according to a political system perspective (where coverage reflects politically defined norms or regulation) or a media routine perspective (where coverage results from journalistic norms). Unless forced to follow norms, western broadcasting seems to comply with a media routine perspective. Empirically, newspaper coverage is sometimes imbalanced according to both perspectives. Finally, we discuss why only a systematic analysis of explanations across time and space makes it possible to determine whether politically ‘imbalanced’ news is the result of partisan bias or not
Conclusion:Assessing News Performance
No full textAt the outset, we asked if there is any good news about the news and, if so, where the good news is. In academic research and public discussions about news and democracy, one fi nds different interpretations of the state of current news provision. A tendency towards pessimism about current news performance is commonplace. Although there is an overall proliferation of both traditional and newer forms of online news availability and supply (Esser, de Vreese et al. 2012), many suggest that the performance of news providers is getting worse. In more or less explicit terms, the decreasing quality of news is seen as having a negative impact on the quality of political life and democracy. Set against the pessimism and caution in the public debate and literature on news quality and the performance of political journalism, we were not optimistic that we would fi nd good-quality news or that we would be able to offer some good news as a positive antidote, so to speak, to the pervasive pessimism in the literature
How we did it:approach and methods
No full textThe chapter proceeds as follows. In the fi rst part, the period of sampling and its various steps are presented, involving countries, news outlets, and news articles. In the second part, we provide a short overview of the codebook. The third part presents our testing of inter-coder reliability, both across countries and within countries. We then briefl y explain how our analyses in the subsequent chapters were conducted and why. The chapter’s concluding section refl ects on some of the advantages and challenges of the data sources and the methods that we have chosen
Harte Zeiten – Hard News?
Get PDFIn den letzten 30 Jahren wurden Veränderungen der Nachrichtenberichterstattung oft unter Rückgriff auf die beiden dichotom verstandenen Konstrukte „Hard News“ und „Soft News“ beschrieben. Der vorliegende Artikel baut dagegen auf einem multidimensionalen Ansatz zur Unterscheidung von „Hard“ und Soft News“ auf und untersucht erstens den Anteil „harter“ und „weicher“ Nachrichten in der politischen Berichterstattung von 160 Medienangeboten in 16 westlichen Demokratien. Zweitens werden Determinanten des Anteils von Hard bzw. Soft News in den jeweiligen Ländern bzw. Medien bestimmt, indem die inhaltsanalytischen Befunde mit externen Daten über Charakteristika der Meso- (Medienorganisation) und Makroebene (Mediensystem, politisches System, ökonomische Situation) kombiniert werden. Die Ergebnisse zeigen zum einen, dass sich die Prävalenz von Hard bzw. Soft News zwischen den Ländern stark unterscheidet. Zum einen hängt der (harte bzw. weiche) Charakter politischer Nachrichten von der Mediengattung, aber auch den politischen und ökonomischen Rahmenbedingungen sowie der Beschaffenheit des Medienmarktes ab
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