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News factors with their definitions, operationalizations, overall presence in economic news (% of news items), and intercoder-reliability results.
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The presence of news factors in journalistic products has been abundantly researched, but investigations into their actual impact on the news production process are scarce. This study provides a large-scale analysis of why news factors matter: Whether, how, and which news factors affect the prominence of news items and does this differ per outlet t...
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... measure the presence of news factors, a team of 22 student coders conducted a manual content analysis. Table 1 contains a summary of the measured news factors, their definitions, general presence, and reliability statistics. Average presence of the news factors is largely comparable with other studies analyzing the presence of content features in news (e.g. ...Similar publications
This chapter concludes Part I by summarising and discussing the key findings. Are there any differences in the legibilityLegibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generate printed material? Are there any differences in readers’ preferences and connotations between serif and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generat...
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... Norm compliance is the regular case in social interactions and evolves in a "noiseless," unspectacular way. It is the norm transgressions that produce irritations and frictions (Jacobsson and Löfmarck, 2008) and ultimately make a case newsworthy, containing conflict, personalization, and harm-as classic news factors would predict (Boukes et al., 2022). ...
Public discussions of controversial science fields like COVID-19 or climate science increasingly address inner-scientific structures and the norms guiding the scientific system—aspects that are normally discussed within the scientific community. However, not much is known about the endorsement of scientific norms by non-scientists and how those endorsements differ between controversial und uncontroversial science fields. We conducted a cross-sectional national survey in Germany ( N = 1007) to capture the public endorsement of scientific norms and explored the role of the science field, political ideology, and science news consumption. Results suggest that the endorsement of scientific norms is significantly higher in controversial fields than in less controversial fields. More left-leaning political ideology is connected to higher levels of norm endorsement; science news consumption is partly associated with lower scientific norm endorsement. We discuss our findings regarding their implications for the public’s image and understanding of controversial science fields.
... The studies conducted within ASCoR's Corporate Communication group on the coverage of corporations in the news have enriched various theoretical frameworks, such as agenda-setting theory (e.g., Kroon & van der Meer, 2021;Strauß & Vliegenthart, 2017) and news values theory (e.g., Boukes et al., 2022;Schafraad et al., 2016). Furthermore, other studies in this domain have demonstrated the direct impact and relevance of this media coverage for the involved corporations. ...
... Finally, the content in this study was examined to determine the prominence of queerness within the stories. Prominence can be used as a measure of a subject's value, based on the frequency of its reporting, dominant image or words used, or the amount of space given to a subject in a specific medium (Apuke & Omar, 2022;Boukes et al., 2022;Cotter, 2010;Fico & Freedman, 2001). The third research question was as follows: ...
... Prominence can shed light on the perceived importance of a subject, measuring the frequency of a subject's reporting, dominant image or words used, or the amount of space given to a subject in a specific medium (Apuke & Omar, 2022;Boukes et al., 2022;Cotter, 2010;Fico & Freedman, 2001). When analyzing the frequency of queer stories published in both types of magazines, a stark increase occurred in 2022. ...
... In this work, we seek to rectify this by focusing on a prominent source of publicly available, highly curated examples of prioritization decisions. News organizations' homepages are meticulously crafted by professional human editors: their layouts offer manifestations of the news organization's prioritization principles (Boukes et al., 2022). We use homepage layouts to study information organization at scale. ...
Information prioritization plays an important role in how humans perceive and understand the world. Homepage layouts serve as a tangible proxy for this prioritization. In this work, we present NewsHomepages, a large dataset of over 3,000 new website homepages (including local, national and topic-specific outlets) captured twice daily over a three-year period. We develop models to perform pairwise comparisons between news items to infer their relative significance. To illustrate that modeling organizational hierarchies has broader implications, we applied our models to rank-order a collection of local city council policies passed over a ten-year period in San Francisco, assessing their "newsworthiness". Our findings lay the groundwork for leveraging implicit organizational cues to deepen our understanding of information prioritization.
... To cover all aspects of the pandemic, the media have not left any angle un-essayed; Conflict is one of them. The news factor, Conflict, shoots up the importance of the articles, leading that story to cover more space and be more likely to appear on the front page (Boukes et al., 2020) [16]. Similarly, the Conflict frame was used to grab more people's attention; hence, most of the stories through this frame were published on the first page. ...
... To cover all aspects of the pandemic, the media have not left any angle un-essayed; Conflict is one of them. The news factor, Conflict, shoots up the importance of the articles, leading that story to cover more space and be more likely to appear on the front page (Boukes et al., 2020) [16]. Similarly, the Conflict frame was used to grab more people's attention; hence, most of the stories through this frame were published on the first page. ...
Since the coronavirus outbreak, the Media houses have focused on the health crisis fittingly. The news of the pandemic spread faster than the virus itself. The impact of media does not only originate with what information is being disseminated but also how it is framed. It gives Mass Media the credit for forming Public Opinion. This study aims to determine and compare the dominant frames in coverage of COVID-19 news. Based on readership and popularity, two English and two Hindi newspapers are selected. The study, descriptive in nature, uses Content Analysis as a tool of analysis. With the deductive approach, the researcher considered pre-determined frames (extracted from the previous literature) analyzed and compared the stories according to them. The time frame of this study was two months, starting from April 1, when the second wave in India intensified, to May 31, 2021. The unit of analysis included all articles, features, and columns published within the time frame. It was discovered that the Hope frame (18.4%) and Fear frame (16.8%) dominated the overall study. It was also found that there were similarities and differences in framing used by both English and Hindi newspapers.
... Therefore, media scholars have shown much interest in studying the media agenda, that is, the news that is selected and promoted by journalists. To examine the media agenda, researchers tend to focus on the (accumulated) prominence and length of stories in mass media such as newspapers, television or news websites (e.g., Boukes et al., 2022;Salwen, 1988). However, most of these studies focus on newspaper content or television newscasts, but rarely do they take into account the cross-media nature of the current news landscape, where news stories circulate across different legacy, online and social media platforms. ...
The research at hand centered around examining how news media manage their visibility, while navigating the challenges of invisibility posed by the platform economy. Platforms shape the visibility of news organizations and their content through algorithmic curation and moderation. In response, news organizations must exert considerable effort to maximize their visibility within these systems. The research identified and analyzed various deliberate promotional strategies aimed at enhancing an article’s visibility, including strategic posting across platforms, homepage placement, and extending content lifespan. By aggregating these strategies into a “promotion pressure” score, the study aims to unravel the circular relationship between news media’s content promotion strategies and audience engagement with news stories. Further analysis of the news articles with the highest promotion pressure shows that they are mostly related to major events, rely on news values such as conflict and personification, and frequently use clickbait headlines.
... In the same vein, Boukes, et al, (2020) further describe this as "a quiescent attitude of females towards journalism profession" and this has subsequently made their male counterparts to have prerogative dominance over them in the profession. The belief of most male folks in the Nigerian society is that journalism exposes the practitioners and makes the female colleagues lose their dignity. ...
Research has shown that many mass communication graduates have been produced every year in Nigeria. However, only a few of them venture into journalism as a career. Using a quantitative approach, the researcher examined the attitude of undergraduate mass communication students of Bingham University, Nigeria, towards journalism as a career. The population of the study consists of 300 registered 100 to 400 level students in the Department of Mass Communication. Census method was adopted to sample the perception of the respondents towards journalism as a career. Online questionnaire via Google form was employed for data collection and analysis. The data were analyzed and presented in tables and bar chart. Hinged on the Perception Theory, findings revealed that majority (61.2%) of the participants have positive attitude towards journalism as a career. However, further finding shows that the risky and hazardous nature of journalism profession in Nigeria; such as killing, kidnapping, assault and discrimination against journalists, poor remuneration among others, immensely influenced the decision of some students to venture into other professions or careers rather than journalism after graduation. Based on the findings, the study recommended that media organizations and the Nigerian government should ensure adequate security for journalists on the line of duty, provide attractive working conditions such as appropriate salaries and allowances as well as job security and protection of the life of journalists so as to make journalism profession more attractive to the teeming young graduates of mass communication in Nigeria.
... Classifying media outlets into distinct types serves one important diagnostic goal of content analyses, i.e., explaining how structures related to media outlets affect the actual content. For example, Boukes et al. (2022) compared quality versus popular news media and public versus commercial broadcasting newscasts because they expect the "organizational structure, commercial pressure, and motivations" to differ among these types and affect which stories are given more prominence based on news factors. Löb et al. (2024) compared daily newspapers and online websites "as representatives for top-down news production and […] political blogs as a representative for bottom-up news production", because the former are expected to adhere more to professional standards and ethical principles, resulting in fewer elements of incivility (outrage) in news content. ...
“Types of media outlets”, often referred to as “media type” or “medium type”, is a variable that is widely used for content analyses of news media. The variable indicates which media outlets share certain characteristics. Grouping media outlets to media types ultimately helps reveal patterns and implications beyond the individual case of a specific outlet. Field of application/Theoretical foundation: The variable can be used for content analyses of print, broadcast or online media. It takes the form of a formal variable, with an underlying theoretical construct. As such, it provides important context information of the analyzed content. It is sometimes also labelled as “format” in research (cf. https://www.hope.uzh.ch/doca/article/view/2638; also Schwaiger & Vogler, 2023). Classifying media outlets into distinct types serves one important diagnostic goal of content analyses, i.e., explaining how structures related to media outlets affect the actual content. For example, Boukes et al. (2022) compared quality versus popular news media and public versus commercial broadcasting newscasts because they expect the “organizational structure, commercial pressure, and motivations” to differ among these types and affect which stories are given more prominence based on news factors. Löb et al. (2024) compared daily newspapers and online websites “as representatives for top-down news production and […] political blogs as a representative for bottom-up news production”, because the former are expected to adhere more to professional standards and ethical principles, resulting in fewer elements of incivility (outrage) in news content. In another large-scale manual content analysis of political news, Reinemann et al. (2017, p. 147) concluded that “medium type explains the extent to which more hard news or less hard news is published”: public service television and broadsheet papers offer more hard news than commercial television and tabloids. In the same analysis, the authors also follow a prognostic goal, which addresses implications for media use and reception. Outlets were selected based on their membership in certain types, as the authors assume that media types differ in their importance for different segments of society (e.g., reach, trust) (Hopmann et al., 2017). Finally, selecting outlets as representatives of media types helps answer the question how media “perform” based on normative criteria and which role they play in media systems (Magin et al., 2023; Freudenthaler & Wessler, 2023). Treating a media outlet not as an individual, “special” case but as a representative of a broader media type therefore helps reveal more general patterns. Hence, the variable is also useful in international comparative research, where types of media outlets can guide researchers’ sample selection of functional equivalents across countries (Hopmann et al., 2017). While the variable “media type” can be considered a formal variable which does not require complex interpretation by human coders (or is not even part of the coding as such but only used later to aggregate media outlets), researchers should treat this variable very carefully. In particular, they should pay close attention to its underlying theoretical construct and justify the classification criteria. As becomes clear, not all studies working with media types fulfill these demands, let alone define the term “media types”, which limits their theoretical contribution. References/combination with other methods of data collection: While the name of a media outlet is usually provided by databases or easily identifiable by human coders, media type is not necessarily. Sometimes, common databases like the international database Lexis-Nexis or the Swiss database Swissdox Essentials categorize available outlets into types but their classification scheme does not necessarily match theoretical constructs researchers are interested in. In any case, the variable “type of media outlet” makes an ex ante categorization of media content possible. A combination with automated content analyses or any other manually coded variables is possible. Example studies Media types are groups of media outlets which share certain characteristics (Udris et al., 2020). However, there is no standard operationalization of media types in the literature, and it is unclear which of the many characteristics are the most important ones to make for a media type. Classification criteria can refer to a socio-geographical space (e.g., regional or national newspapers: Umbricht & Esser, 2016), publication schedule (e.g., dailies or weeklies: Umbricht & Esser, 2016), a channel, medium or platform (e.g., TV or radio news: Strömbäck & van Aelst, 2010, media outlets on TikTok: Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2023), sometimes connected with the legacy or history of an outlet (e.g., “digital native”: Vázquez-Herrero et al., 2023, or “digital-only”: Benson et al., 2018), a business model (e.g., cost-free newspaper or subscription newspaper: fög, 2023; “mass market” websites or “upmarket” websites: Hopmann, 2017), ownership and regulation structures (e.g., public or private TV news: Strömbäck & van Aelst, 2010; outlets owned by a company traded on the stock market or by a privately held company: Benson et al., 2018), the relation to political actors and/or political leaning (e.g., newspapers “left of center” or “right of center”: Hopmann et al., 2017; “mainstream” or “alternative media”: Reinemann et al., 2024). Often, researchers use a combination of classification criteria (e.g., regional private TV news: fög, 2023 or Seethaler, 2015). Sometimes, researchers even compare different criteria and use them as factors to test which of those have an impact on the content – for instance whether differences within the group of newspapers are larger than between newspapers and TV news (Strömbäck & van Aelst, 2010). Codebook example: Oehmer et al. (2020) Medium Operationalization Studies Cross-media Öffentliches Radio (Public broadcaster: radio) Öffentliches Fernsehen (Public broadcaster: TV) SRG-SSR Online (öffentlich) (Public broadcaster: online) Privatfernsehen (Private TV) Abonnementszeitungen (Subscription newspapers) Abonnementszeitungen-Online (Subscription newspapers online) Sonntagszeitungen/Magazine (Sunday papers / magazines) Online Pure (Online pure player) Pendlerzeitungen (Commuter papers) Pendlerzeitungen-Online (Commuter papers online) Boulevardzeitungen (Tabloid papers) Boulevardzeitungen-Online (Tabloid papers online) fög (2023) Cross-media Kauftageszeitungen (Paid-for daily papers) Gratistageszeitungen (Cost-free daily papers) Überregionale öffentlich-rechtliche Radiosender (Supra-regional radio programs by the public broadcaster) Überregionaler Privatradiosender (Supra-regional radio programs by private broadcasters) Regionale öffentlich-rechtliche Radiosender (Regional radio programs by the public broadcaster) Regionale Privatradiosender (Regional radio programs by private broadcasters) Überregionale öffentlich-rechtliche Fernsehsender (Supra-regional TV programs by the public broadcaster) Überregionale Privatfernsehsender (Supra-regional TV programs by private broadcasters) Branchenspezifische Online-Anbieter (Online news providers from the media industry) Branchenfremder Anbieter (Online news providers from outside the media industry) Seethaler (2015) Cross-media Abonnement-Online (Subscription newspapers online) Boulevard/ Pendler-Online (Tabloid papers / Commuter papers online) Sonntagszeitungen/ Magazine (Sunday papers / magazines) Öffentlicher Rundfunk (Public service broadcaster) Eisenegger et al. (2020)Codebook: Oehmer et al. (2020) Cross-media Stock market traded Stock market traded with dominant shareholder Privately held Civil Society Public (Both “legacy” outlets (TV, radio, print) and “digital-only” outlets were selected.) Benson et al. (2018) Cross-media Mainstream news outlets: Broadsheet daily national newspapers (online editions) Tabloid newspaper (online edition) News magazines (online editions) Regional newspapers (both print and online) Web provider National TV newscasts Most-watched TV special (during the pandemic) Alternative news outlets: (two outlets selected based on reach data) Reinemann et al. (2024) Cross-media Newspapers: Upmarket (left of center) Upmarket (right of center) Mass-market Television, news bulletin: Public Commercial Websites: Upmarket Hopmann et al. (2017) TV & Print “Media types”: Commercial TV news Public service TV news Tabloid newspaper Quality newspaper “Media channels”: TV news Newspapers Strömbäck & van Aelst (2010) Print National Regional Weekly (Tabloids were explicitly excluded.) Umbricht & Esser (2016) TikTok(news organizations) Digital Native Press TV channel TV programme Radio & Television Vázquez-Herrero et al. (2022) References: Benson, R., Neff, T., & Hessérus, M. (2018). Media ownership and public service news: how strong are institutional logics? The International Journal of Press/Politics, 23(3), 275–298. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161218782740 Boukes, M., Jones, N. P., & Vliegenthart, R. (2022). Newsworthiness and story prominence: How the presence of news factors relates to upfront position and length of news stories. Journalism, 23(1), 98-116. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884919899313 Eisenegger, M., Oehmer, F., Udris, L., & Vogler, D. (2020). Die Qualität der Medienberichterstattung zur Corona-Pandemie. In fög – Forschungszentrum Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft / Universität Zürich (Ed.), Jahrbuch Qualität der Medien 2020. Schweiz – Suisse – Svizzera (pp. 29–50). Schwabe. https://doi.org/10.5167/uzh-192622 fög – Forschungszentrum Öffentlichkeit und Gesellschaft / Universität Zürich (Ed.). (2023). Jahrbuch Qualität der Medien 2023. Schwabe. https://doi.org/10.24894/978-3-7965-4894-9 Freudenthaler, R., & Wessler, H. (2022). Mapping Emerging and Legacy Outlets Online by Their Democratic Functions—Agonistic, Deliberative, or Corrosive? The International Journal of Press/Politics, 27(2), 417–438. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612211015077 Hopmann, D. N., & et al. (2017). How we did it: approach and methods. In de Vreese, Claes H., F. Esser, & D. N. Hopmann (Eds.), Comparing political journalism (pp. 10–21). Routledge. Löb, C., Rinke, E. M., Weinmann, C., & Wessler, H. (2024). Unpacking the Determinants of Outrage and Recognition in Public Discourse: Insights Across Socio-Cultural Divides, Political Systems, and Media Types. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 29(1), 273-294. https://doi.org/10.1177/19401612221084206 Magin, M., Stark, B., Jandura, O., Udris, L., Riedl, A., Klein, M., Eisenegger, M., Kösters, R., & Hofstetter Furrer, B. (2023). Seeing the Whole Picture. Towards a Multi-perspective Approach to News Content Diversity based on Liberal and Deliberative Models of Democracy. Journalism Studies, 24(5), 669–696. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2023.2178248 Oehmer, F., Eisenegger, M., Udris, L. & Vogler, D. (2020). Codebuch zur Studie «Die Qualität der Medienberichterstattung zur Corona-Pandemie». https://zenodo.org/record/3958929#.X24FDu1CQuU Reinemann, C., Maurer, M., Kruschinski, S., & Jost, P. (2024). The Quality of COVID-19 Coverage: Investigating Relevance and Viewpoint Diversity in German Mainstream and Alternative Media. Journalism Studies, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2024.2326642 Reinemann, C., Stanyer, J., & Scherr, S. (2017). Hard and soft news. In de Vreese, Claes H., F. Esser, & D. N. Hopmann (Eds.), Comparing political journalism (pp. 131–149). Routledge. Schwaiger, L., & Vogler, D. (2023). Formats and Genres: Collecting formal variables during content analysis. In F. Oehmer-Pedrazzi, S. H. Kessler, E. Humprecht, K. Sommer, & L. Castro (Eds.), Standardisierte Inhaltsanalyse in der Kommunikationswissenschaft – Standardized Content Analysis in Communication Research (pp. 59–66). Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden. Seethaler, J. (2015). Qualität des tagesaktuellen Informationsangebots in den österreichischen Medien. Eine crossmediale Untersuchung: Im Auftrag der Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH (RTR) und der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Schriftenreihe der Rundfunk und Telekom Regulierungs-GmbH No. 1). https://www.rtr.at/medien/aktuelles/publikationen/Band1-2015.pdf Strömbäck, J., & van Aelst, P. (2010). Exploring some antecedents of the media’s framing of election news: a comparison of Swedish and Belgian election news. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 15(1), 41–59. https://doi.org/10.1177/1940161209351004 Udris, L., Eisenegger, M., Vogler, D., Schneider, J., & Häuptli, A. (2020). Mapping and Explaining Media Quality: Insights from Switzerland’s Multilingual Media System. Media and Communication, 8(3), 258–269. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v8i3.3140 Umbricht, A., & Esser, F. (2016). The push to popularize politics. Journalism Studies, 17(1), 100–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2014.963369 Vázquez-Herrero, J., Negreira-Rey, M.-C., & López-García, X. (2022). 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... The higher number of news items from Reuters indicates a potentially greater emphasis or resource allocation by the agencies towards covering the Russia-Ukraine War compared to Xinhua. This could be due to various factors such as editorial priorities, audience demand, or access to information sources (Boukes, Jones, and Vliegenthart 2022). The sustained attention from both agencies during the initial phase of the conflict suggests its perceived significance and newsworthiness. ...
The Russia–Ukraine War has emerged as a highly contentious global issue since 2022. While China and the UK are not directly involved in the conflict, considerable attention has been drawn to their positions and perspectives on this event. In such context, conducting a comparative study on how the British and Chinese mainstream media cover the Russia–Ukraine conflict can provide valuable insights into the influence of ideological differences on news framing and shed light on the respective stances of these two news agencies. Employing an interdisciplinary methodology, this study integrates corpus tools, critical discourse analysis, text mining, and emotion computation to systematically analyze news reports covering the Russia–Ukraine War from Reuters and Xinhua between 2022 and 2023. Results show different patterns in the news reports from the two investigated news agencies, including the monthly publication of news articles, the occurrence of prominent entities, and the thematic emphasis. Additionally, significant variations are identified in specific dimensions of emotion and emotional intensity, indicating the divergent stances of the two news agencies on a range of significant issues.
... untuk diseleksi dan dilakukan penyuntingan untuk memastikan kualitas dan ketepatan berita yang dipublikasikan ke Tunasmalang.id. Proses editing/penyuntingan adalah salah satu langkah krusial dalam produksi berita, karena editor memastikan informasi yang disampaikan akurat, objektif, dan bebas dari kesalahan sehingga kualitas dan kredibilitas berita dapat dipertanggungjawabkan (Boukes et al., 2022). Berita-berita terpilih yang ditampilkan di Tunasmalang.id ...
Tunasmalang.id as an online news portal from PDM (Pimpinan Daerah Muhammadiyah) Malang City has not functioned optimally due to a lack of human resources for news production and a simple website display. This community service program aims to optimize the online news portal Tunasmalang.id through a citizen journalism approach and improve its website so that it represents PDM Malang City. The method used journalism training with a learning by doing system, and improves the appearance of the Tunasmalang.id website. This community service succeeded in forming citizen journalist contributors who came from members of the Muhammadiyah Autonomous Organization throughout Malang City, who producting news content on Tunasmalang.id. The presence of citizen journalist contributors has increased the quantity and variety of news content on Tunasmalang.id. Website improvements give Tunasmalang.id a different appearance from before, and the Tunasmalang.id website can represent PDM Malang City. Community service states that the citizen journalism approach does not only function for the development of Tunasmalang.id as an online news portal, but can also empowering members of the Muhammadiyah Autonomous Organization throughout Malang City to become citizen journalists. The citizen journalism approach and improving the appearance of the website make Tunasmalang.id is a man of extension that delivers information about PDM Malang City and the reality that is happening in society.
