Journalism Between the State and the Market
Abstract
Using the Nordic media model as an empirical backdrop, Journalism Between the State and the Market defines and analyzes journalism’s fundamental problem: its shifting location between the state and the market.
This book examines how this distance is decreasing as journalism steps closer to both the market (algorithmically monetizing audiences) and the state (lobbying governments for subsidies and attacking public service broadcasting). The book analyzes journalism’s negotiated position between the market and the state in the age of disruptions, offering a theoretical foundation that seeks to account for the structural conditions of journalism in the digital age.
For scholars, graduates and students in journalism, news sociology and media and communication studies, Journalism Between the State and the Market provides a theoretical perspective that can be used as a valuable tool when studying and observing the current developments in journalism.
... Jakovljevic (2013) discute la financiación de la Agencia de Noticias Croata y su conformidad con las normas de ayuda estatal de la Unión Europea (UE), mientras que Jääskeläinen y Yanatma (2019) investigan la diversificación de las agencias de noticias nacionales en Europa, mostrando cómo la innovación en modelos de negocio ha permitido a estas agencias mantenerse competitivas en un entorno mediático cambiante. Sjøvaag (2019) Rantanen (2000) sugieren la necesidad de reformar las agencias de noticias estatales para mejorar su transparencia y objetividad, permitiendo que continúen desempeñando un papel significativo en la formación de la opinión pública. Dragomir (2018) analiza cómo los gobiernos utilizan la financiación para controlar los medios, afectando la independencia periodística. ...
... IICom (Instituto de Investigaciones en Comunicación)En contraste con lo expresado anteriormente, en los países no democráticos, los servicios de agencias de noticias son predominantemente estatales, lo que plantea desafíos significativos para la independencia editorial. La literatura destaca la necesidad de transparencia y objetividad en estos contextos, ya que los gobiernos a menudo utilizan la financiación para influir en los medios y controlar la narrativa(Dragomir 2018;Sjøvaag 2019). Los resultados de esta investigación apoyan esta preocupación mostrando que en los países no democráticos no existen servicios de agencias de noticias con financiamiento privado.La diversificación y la innovación se presentan como soluciones clave para la sostenibilidad de las agencias de noticias en un entorno mediático en constante cambio. ...
Esta investigación clasifica los servicios de agencias de noticias en los países miembros de las Naciones Unidas según el financiamiento y el tipo de servicio. Utilizando una metodología cuantitativa analítica, se recolectaron y analizaron datos de los estados miembros para identificar patrones y relaciones entre el tipo de financiamiento (estatal o privado) y factores como el sistema de gobierno y el PBI. Los resultados muestran una predominancia del financiamiento estatal en todo el mundo. También se observa que en países democráticos y económicamente desarrollados hay más servicios con financiamiento privado. En Latinoamérica se proyectan tendencias similares a nivel global. La investigación subraya la importancia de la independencia editorial y la diversificación para la sostenibilidad de las agencias de noticias en el entorno mediático actual.
... A key media policy goal in Norway is to stimulate media diversity, and the state has intervened in the market, as elaborated on below, to ensure a robust Norwegian media industry, media diversity, and to stimulate Norwegian language and culture (Enli et al., 2019;Sjøvaag, 2019;Sundet et al., 2020). A key measure is public service broadcasting (PSB). ...
... Notable works include the collected volume Power, communication, and politics in the Nordic countries (Skogerbø et al., 2020) that gives a solid introduction and overview of political communication in the Norwegian and Nordic context; the NORDICOM Research Centre site (Nordicom.gu.se) for newsletters, statistics, reports, and anthologies/monographs in English and Swedish; and Helle Sjøvaag's (2019) book Journalism between the state and the market about journalism in the Nordic region. ...
... Ferrucci (2018) holds the view that "as the audience and social media platforms continue to harness agency in the news production network, this will continue to erode journalists' sense of professional control, which could significantly affect the conceptions of professional norms" (ibid, p. 14). As a result of this, scholarship has described how professional journalists are currently engaging in exercises of boundary demarcation, setting themselves and their profession and reputation apart from alternative and/or fake news outlets (Sjøvaag 2019). Producing news for social media outlets such as Instagram signifies producing news for participating audiences with instant gratification and interactions such as likes, comments and shares (Boesman, Costera Meijer, and Kuipers 2021). ...
... Even in the digital era of native content for social media, their point resonates. Additionally, this corresponds with practices of boundary demarcation as well (Sjøvaag 2019), as the journalists working for @nws.nws.nws are aware of their duty to inform a difficult to reach target group with trustworthy news tailormade for them, particularly as said group of youngsters boasts highly fragmented media consumption patterns and little acquaintance (yet) with the trustworthiness and overall positive representation of VRT as the Flemish PSM. ...
Social media have become indispensable tools for (legacy) news companies and brands to increase online traffic for their own platforms. A recent trend is the production and dissemination of native news content specifically for and through platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. This paper uses a mixed methods research design to study the news production and content of @nws.nws.nws, a hugely popular Instagram channel targeting 13-17-year olds in Flanders (Belgium) which is maintained by the newsroom of VRT, the Flemish PSM. The explorative study highlights the differences in journalistic practice when producing news content for online platforms only and the changes it entails for traditional news values, dependency on social media platforms and media regulation.
... Over the past decades, a host of scholars have established a clear link between media and democratic societies, but also the possible negative effects of increased media market concentration on news diversity (Baker 2007;Fenton 2011;Karppinen 2008Karppinen , 2013McQuail 2013;Raeijmaekers and Maeseele 2015). Therefore, the commonly accepted viewpoint is that journalists and media companies, as the so-called 'fourth estate' (Van Aelst et al. 2008), have what is known as a 'social contract' with politicians and citizens (Sjøvaag 2019). This metaphorical contract states that journalists receive the means and opportunities to freely and critically report on events and present a diverse news offering to citizens. ...
... Conceptually, it is accepted that news content, unlike other types of media content, is not merely a product or commodity. This is fostered by its acknowledged endured political support and societal relevance and impact (Karppinen 2013;Sjøvaag 2019) and, mainly in Europe, also by strong competition of PSM without overt profit-driven motives. When looking at online news, other differences are laid bare. ...
Content recommender systems have become commonplace in all digital platforms, and they profoundly alter the media content presented to users. This also applies to news recommender systems (NRSs) used by media companies. However, as it is generally accepted that diverse news coverage is crucial to maintain democratic societies, the role of NRSs is frequently questioned. We assess the development processes of NRSs at three media companies: two private ones active in several European countries, and one public service broadcaster, using a previously established conceptual model for news diversity. Ultimately, we find that news personalization is currently still more of an idea than an actual recurrent practice, and that the application of NRSs is integrated and harmonized across countries and/or other types of new media types (e.g., streaming services) of the same company. We highlight similarities and differences in approaches, objectives and rationales between private and public companies. View Full-Text
... The increase in explanatory power of the multilevel analyses when fully accounting for between-outlet variation also informs this conclusion. The technological capabilities of editors gain additional traction as local news outlets in the three Scandinavian countries increasingly incorporate with larger news corporations, spreading technological resources to individual newsrooms (Sjøvaag 2019). ...
... Social media logics seem to exert its strongest influence over news outlets with a certain reach. On the one hand, this may be due to their 'popular' or 'tabloid' news language already being geared towards engagement, as reflected in the already rather personalized style of Scandinavian omnibus journalism (Sjøvaag 2019). On the other hand, publicly owned media display more frequent use of emojis than other outlets, suggesting that public service is among the more visibly affected by social media practices. ...
In order to reach its audiences, journalism regularly turns to social media to promote its articles. This study sets out to ascertain competing communicative logics of Facebook posts as opposed to article teasers on news outlets’ websites. We look at Scandinavian news outlets as a most-similar three-country case with at least a third of all news consumers regularly using Facebook for news. The study builds on an extensive data collec- tion of all Scandinavian news outlets’ Facebook posts including their respective websites’ article teasers over the course of 11months. We investigate the use of news text grammar (e.g., punctuation or the use of pronouns) and social media features (e.g., hashtags or the use of emojis) alongside structural influen- ces from individual countries, outlet reach, and ownership. Findings show Facebook posts to include less punctuation while employing more calls to action through the use of question and exclamation marks. We conclude with a reinvigorated call for hier- archical considerations when investigating news outlets’ social media endeavours through editors’ experiences, available resour- ces to a news outlet, and institutional willingness to align with audiences.
... Chain-owned newspapers have likewise had an advantage in this shift, able to capitalise on the scale-enabled analytic resources of corporate organisations (Kalsnes, 2019). As a result, we see a concentration in the Nordic region, with local chains and independently owned newspapers seeking corporate ownership to an increasing degree (Leckner et al., 2019;Sjøvaag, 2019), not least to attain control over advertising markets. The question we ask in this regard is how newspaper companies in Scandinavia address this business model disruption, and what the algorithmic turn entails for the non-substitutability of local news. ...
... The mechanisms of the umbrella model thus describe how business model disruption can occur on both sides of the two-sided market, and along the different layers. As the model hypothesises non-substitutability in local news, this suggests major challenges to the local news industries, caused in large part by substitutions on the advertising side of the market (i.e., Google and Facebook), to which ownership concentration emerges as a typical solution for independent, local papers (Sjøvaag, 2019). To that end, if local newspapers can no longer offer nonsubstitutability on the advertising side of the market, the question is what this means for their network effect. ...
This article addresses the challenges facing local newspapers as the digital economy transitions to artificial intelligence (AI). We interview five CEOs of Scandinavian newspaper corporations, representing small, mid-sized, and large newspaper chains. The analysis focuses on three main factors emerging from the interviews – technological transformations, digital advertising markets, and corporate enrolment – and how they relate to business model disruption and the non-substitutability of local news. The analysis is set within the framework of the digital transformation, which, for the purpose of this study, we argue consists of two phases: getting online (until about 2014), and algorithmic adaptation (the introduction of programmatic advertising and audience metrics from about 2014). The analysis concludes that as non-substitutability is lost on the advertising side of the market, this challenges the umbrella model of newspaper publishing.
... Political and commercial influences are frequently conceived as binary oppositions that counteract each other. As Sjovaag (2019) puts it, the market could be considered, on the one hand, as a deliberating force that frees journalism from the grip of the state; on the other hand, it could be seen as a force that corrupts journalism through commercial pressure, in which case it needs the help of the state. The positive effect of the market could be that it liberates the media from taxation and state censorship (Curran, 2012), while it could endanger the media by pushing it toward consumerism, advertising, and lowest common denominator contentThus, the all-time challenge of the press is to secure its borders against these two forces-the market and the state-and to maintain and reinforce its autonomy to ensure the legitimacy in the third sphere of influence: civil society (Sjovaag, 2019). ...
... As Sjovaag (2019) puts it, the market could be considered, on the one hand, as a deliberating force that frees journalism from the grip of the state; on the other hand, it could be seen as a force that corrupts journalism through commercial pressure, in which case it needs the help of the state. The positive effect of the market could be that it liberates the media from taxation and state censorship (Curran, 2012), while it could endanger the media by pushing it toward consumerism, advertising, and lowest common denominator contentThus, the all-time challenge of the press is to secure its borders against these two forces-the market and the state-and to maintain and reinforce its autonomy to ensure the legitimacy in the third sphere of influence: civil society (Sjovaag, 2019). As we have seen, the spheres of journalism and politics are tightly interwoven, where political parties seek to expand their own interests. ...
... Sjøvaag (2019) identifies another weakness in the differentiation of influencing and explanatory factors within forms of dark participation. She emphasizes the need to integrate the economic interests of media organizations, as the creation of opportunity structures for dark participation or its non-regulation is often linked to the pursuit of financial self-interest (Sjøvaag 2019). According to Van Leuven et al. (2018), it is increasingly difficult for journalists to distinguish between elite and non-elite actors as originators of "dark" user-generated content. ...
Online communication has created a wide range of new opportunities for participation and fundamentally changed the practice of journalism from the late 1990s onwards. User‑generated content became an interesting – and valuable – resource for journalists and media organizations (Vujnovic et al. 2010). Online outlets (like news pages and blogs) were growing rapidly. Enthusiastic about the success of online communication, scholars held high hopes for the future of digital journalism: They envisioned new forms of participation as a guarantee for an ideal representation of citizen interests in public communication and future decision‑making processes. As a result, they predicted an overall strengthening of deliberative democracy. The role of recipients changed from passive consumption to active production within the newly created “we media” (Bowman and Willis 2003). Suddenly, a deconstruction of existing hierarchical structures and a transformation of journalistic production processes towards a more inclusive “conversation” (Kunelius 2001) seemed feasible. Several conceptual and empirical studies on “participatory journalism” (Singer et al. 2011) or “citizen journalism” (Allan and Thorsen 2009) explored these options for such a transformation of journalism.
... The Hallin & Mancini Model has generated an abundance of new research, applications and of course criticism (Bastiansen, 2008;Brüggemann et al., 2014;Flew & Waisbord, 2015;Willig & Nord, 2021). Sjøvaag (2019) has presented and overview of the critique of the Hallin & Mancini model. One point of criticism is that the theory is "stuck in the analog era". ...
Norwegian media and journalism have for some time struggled to cope with the crises brought by digitalisation and globalisation: an increased output and accessibility of free digital media and social media, the loss of readership and advertising revenue of print media, layoffs of journalists and an generally uncertain future of news. Put together these factors could possibly challenge the very foundation of the democratic corporatist media system of Norway. As the pandemic struck in 2020, one could expect the media crises to get even worse and possibly bring changes of a systemic level. But Norwegian media have seemingly handled the pandemic quite well, and the media system has definitely not been rocked by it. Possible explanations for this state of affairs: the media’s handling of the pandemic, media policy in the pandemic and the long-term status of the digital transformation of the media, will be discussed here.
... This class of systems may be called Automated Decision Making Systems (ADMS) [52]. For example, there are ADMSs that select our news [65], diagnose diseases [35], grant loans and issue credit cards [2,45]. The rapid adoption and surprising quality of generative AI models like GPT-3 and ChatGPT has journalists worry about their jobs, but also about factual errors, e.g. ...
Automated decision making systems take decisions that matter. Some human or legal person remains responsible. Looking back, that person is accountable for the decisions made by the system, and may even be liable in case of damages. That puts constraints on the way in which decision making systems are designed, and how they are deployed in organizations. In this paper, we analyze computational accountability in three steps. First, being accountable is analyzed as a relationship between an actor deploying the system and a critical forum of subjects, users, experts and developers. Second, we discuss system design. In principle, evidence must be collected about the decision rule and the case data that were applied. However, many AI algorithms are not interpretable for humans. Alternatively, internal controls must ensure that a system uses valid algorithms and reliable data sets for training, which are appropriate for the application domain. Third, we discuss the gover-nance model: roles, responsibilities, procedures and infrastructure, to ensure effective operation of these controls. The paper ends with a case study in the IT audit domain, to illustrate practical feasibility. CCS CONCEPTS • Artificial intelligence; • Applied computing → Law;
... La crisis del modelo de financiación de los periódicos es un asunto de interés público; no es solo una cuestión empresarial, sino también social y política. Se considera que los medios informativos desempeñan una función crucial en los sistemas democráticos (Sjøvaag, 2019). En primer lugar, son proveedores de información relevante y útil para que los ciudadanos tomen mejores decisiones. ...
The funding model crisis for newspapers is a matter of public concern; and it is not only a business issue, but also a social and political one, as news organisations are considered to have an irreplaceable function in democratic systems. Technological and social changes have transformed the business model of news organisations so that, in a digital scenario with a strong competition for consumers’ attention, they have had to diversify their portfolio of income streams. In such a context, this study analyses the state of the diversification of revenue streams in the Spanish digital media market, using the available data from the total universe of digital media in the country. The article focusses on the two most common revenue streams related to user payment -subscriptions and memberships- and analyses the importance of four variables in this diversification of revenue strategies: their nature (digital native versus traditional), thematic scope (general versus specialised), territorial scope (local versus national), and the type of organisation that promotes it (traditional, new, or independent groups). The data obtained suggest that there are no universal formulae in the implementation of payment models for Spanish digital media. Specifically, there are significant differences in the revenue models between native and non-native digital media. Thus, payment strategies are more prevalent among non-native digital media than among native media. Furthermore, the non-native media that have opted for paid models tend to diversify their sources of income more than the non-native ones based on free model. Additionally, data show that paywalls and memberships are more usual among specialised non-native digital media and generalist native outlets. Also, payments are more often required by local and regional media than national outlets. From the ownership point of view, although the main Spanish media corporations are developing their revenue models, the pay-per-content model is also quite extended among organisations, associations, and foundations not linked with the traditional publishing groups. This study, due to its exhaustiveness, dimensions, and novelty, identifies in detail the current state of the implementation of the pay model for digital media in Spain, which can help and facilitate media managers in their decision-making.
... Scholarship appears to agree that a juxtaposition of automatized and manual coding processes is the best way forward (Boumans & Trilling, 2016;Günther & Quandt, 2016;Loecherbach et al., 2020). Hence, carrying out news content analyses and studying them involves an active duty to monitor democratic progress and development in nations around the world, as these fuel the availability of a free press and academia (Hendrickx et al., 2020;Sjøvaag, 2019). ...
For decades, news content analysis has been a staple in journalism research. It facilitates discussions and insights on sections of various types of media content, ranging from newspaper articles to tweets. However, it is usually carried out ad hoc for specific studies or projects, by researchers from various countries using a plethora of approaches. Notably, there is a lack of scientific knowledge and systematic analysis on what constitutes news content analysis, and content originating from which platforms, continents and/or countries are assessed. To contribute to scholarly knowledge, we ope-rationalise a structured literature review and therein assess 2,909 abstracts of English-language articles featuring news content analysis published between 2001 and 2020. Resumo Ao longo de décadas, a análise de conteúdo das notícias tem sido um elemento fundamental na pesquisa em jornalismo. Facilita a discussão e a compreensão de vários tipos de conteúdo dos media, desde artigos de jornal a tweets. Contudo, é ge-ralmente realizada ad hoc para estudos ou projetos específicos por investigadores de vários países, utilizando uma infinidade de abordagens. Em particular, verifica-se uma falta de conhecimento científico e de análise sistemática sobre o que constitui a análise do conteúdo das notícias, e que conteúdos originados em cada plataforma, continentes ou países são analisados. Para contribuir para o conhecimento académi-122 | MEDIA&JORNALISMO co, operacionalizamos uma revisão estruturada da literatura e nela avaliamos 2909 resumos de artigos em língua inglesa, publicados entre 2001 e 2020, que utilizam análise de conteúdo das notícias.
... News homogeneity studies remain valid as a means to investigate decreases in content diversity. Their results facilitate discussions on the unique contributions of media titles and brands to safeguarding the diversity of voices and opinions in the metaphorical marketplace of ideas, which has been linked numerous times to maintaining media pluralism and the principles of a critical citizenry and democratic society decisions (Amsalem et al. 2020;Bernstein et al. 2020;McQuail 1992;Papandrea 2006;Sjøvaag 2019;Sup Park 2014). As mentioned before, this has been linked to worries about possible negative effects of increased media market concentration on the diversity in opinions and voices reflected in the news. ...
In this paper, we outline a content analysis of 541,083 national and international news articles, all published between 2018 and 2020 in the print and online versions of the two newspapers of the biggest private media company in Flanders (Belgium). Through automated text analysis, we assess articles for their internal content overlap, which has been linked by scholarship to possible negative effects of increased media market consolidation. Results reveal that while the overall content overlap between the two newspapers has remained stable, one of the two titles has copy-pasted articles from the other one increasingly, while also recycling content more frequently across its own newspaper and website. These findings are positioned in Flanders' small and highly concentrated media market and subsequently contextualised in a broader perspective of news diversity within media markets and societies.
... Zo treden er dus ook steeds verregaandere synergieën op die indirect ook de nieuwsproductie negatief kunnen beïnvloeden, zoals ontslagen op redacties, het delen van software, chatapplicaties en gebouwen tussen verschillende titels (Hendrickx, 2019). Daardoor worden samenwerkingen en initiatieven om kant-en-klaarnieuws uit te wisselen steeds meer aangemoedigd en dreigt nieuwsdiversiteit af te nemen (Doyle, 2013;Sjøvaag, 2019). Verschillende wetenschappelijke studies wezen al uit dat de werking van mediaorganisaties en redacties hierdoor grondig aangetast kan worden, al blijven journalisten zich verzetten tegen beoogde veranderingen die mogelijk de kwaliteit van hun werk en werkomstandigheden kunnen aantasten (Hendrickx & Picone, 2020;Ryfe, 2017;Ryfe, 2009;Singer, 2010). ...
Content sharing at DPG Media’s Flemish newspaper brands
Belgium’s Dutch-speaking region Flanders has seen a wave of mergers & acquisitions (M&As) in recent years, leading to, according to the government-owned media watchdog, a highly concentrated Flemish media market (). The latest newly founded company is DPG Media, in which the majority of all commercially owned major Flemish news outlets has seen its newsrooms merged into the same Antwerp-based building in early 2020. In this paper, we assess content homogeneity between the print and online versions of the two main newspapers of DPG Media by coding and analysing a sample of articles from 2018, 2019 and 2020. Results reveal only limited increases in shared content for the time being. Through distinguishing betweeninternaland external media concentration, the study serves as a steppingstone towards further content analysis research, in Flanders and beyond.
... Yet, while there may be many similarities at a normative level, journalism and media come in so many different forms all over the world. Nordic media have a history that differs from the Anglo-American experience in many respects, e.g. by combining protection of press freedom with a significant level of regulation -reflecting the assumption that "media are a social institution and not simply a private business" (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 163; see also Syvertsen et al., 2015 andSjøvaag, 2019). Moreover, the Nordic countries are characterized by a high level of media distribution and consumption both when it comes to legacy and to social media (Enjolras & Segaars, 2011;Kalsnes, Krumsvik & Storsul, 2014;Newman et al., 2019). ...
Media Health: The Personal in Public Stories focuses on how journalists and other media actors apply personalized frames and narratives, both visual and verbal, in representing and conveying health issues.
... Yet, while there may be many similarities at a normative level, journalism and media come in so many different forms all over the world. Nordic media have a history that differs from the Anglo-American experience in many respects, e.g. by combining protection of press freedom with a significant level of regulation -reflecting the assumption that "media are a social institution and not simply a private business" (Hallin & Mancini, 2004, p. 163; see also Syvertsen et al., 2015 andSjøvaag, 2019). Moreover, the Nordic countries are characterized by a high level of media distribution and consumption both when it comes to legacy and to social media (Enjolras & Segaars, 2011;Kalsnes, Krumsvik & Storsul, 2014;Newman et al., 2019). ...
Media Health: The Personal in Public Stories focuses on how journalists and other media actors apply personalized frames and narratives, both visual and verbal, in representing and conveying health issues. As the media will accompany individuals throughout their lives (Levin-Zamir & Bertschi, 2018), attention should be paid to how stories and experiences are shared with the public, especially when related to health and well-being.
... • main sources of news • pathways to online news • willingness to pay for online news • trust in the news In contrast to Sjøvaag (2019), who excluded Finland from the Nordic system, and Moe (2019), who excluded Sweden, we include all four Nordic countries belonging to Brüggemann and colleagues' (2014) Northern media system. We compare the audience patterns of the Nordic system with those of two other European media systems -the Central and Southern European media systems -also drawn from the model proposed by Brüggemann and colleagues (2014), and based on the most similar principle. ...
In media systems theory, the Nordic countries are often held to constitute a specific media system (Brüggemann et al., 2014). In this article, we put this claim to the test in the area of news consumption. Based on findings about the four Nordic countries Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland in the annual Reuters Institute Digital News Report (Newman et al., 2019), and inspired by previous studies of the audience dimension of media systems (Hölig et al., 2016; Peruško et al., 2015; Van Damme et al., 2017), we undertake a descriptive empirical analysis of the 2019 data of this 38-country study. Our study compares news audience practices in the Nordic countries with those of countries belonging to other supranational media systems. We find that while there are some internal differences within the Nordic media system, there are salient news consumption commonalities that are specific to the Nordic countries, such as preferred sources of news, pathways to news, paying for online news, and trust in the news.
... Subsidies, critics argue, would neither ban the spectre of market failure nor relax issues of media capture as a specific form of government failure. In this scenario, a benevolent government slips between the horns of a dilemma when asked for policy action to ensure both economic vitality and editorial diversity of the media (Lacy and Sohn 2011;Sjøvaag 2019). On the one hand, governors continue to financially subsidize their journalism as a genuine cultural asset worthy of political protection. ...
This study critically reviews scholarly debates on state aid for independent, professional news journalism in the public interest, its funding models and principles, the market failure paradigm, and policy efficacy. State aid is handed out by government agencies which believe that their support can help independent, professional journalism thrive in the digital, mobile, and platform-dominated future. Government support mainly comes as direct financial grants or indirect tax offsets. It aims at engendering economic opportunity and prosperity, while safeguarding journalistic independence and quality of output. Ideally, this shall foster the production, distribution and consumption of original and high-quality news in the public interest, which, in turn, shall keep people informed, facilitate public debate, and hold power to account. Still, this study finds arguments that government funding models for independent journalism in the public interest are limited by several critical challenges that endanger their principles, do not avert failure in the news media market and prevent effective policy governance. These deficits may even be exacerbated in the digital era.
The interaction between alternative and mainstream media is complex and often contentious. Mainstream journalists question the professionalism and political agendas of alternative media, while the latter criticize mainstream journalists for being biased and elitist. This paper investigates the positioning of alternative media in the journalistic field, both as a collective and as individual entities. Using the Strategic Action Field approach, we take an in-depth look at alternative media as challengers, approaching them as less privileged actors in the journalistic field. Through interviews with editors of alternative media in Norway, we engage with, and not merely discuss, antagonistic and agonistic actors in journalism. The study offers a nuanced understanding of how left-wing and right-wing alternative media, both collectively and individually, relate to other social actors in the field including media organizations (incumbents), press organizations and press councils (governance units), funders (state), and other alternative media (challengers). In the article, we identify three different positions, the anti-systemic, the independent and the pragmatic, pointing to different levels of knowledge of the journalistic field and strategic actions amongst alternative media.
So far, studies that investigate the effects of increased media ownership concentration across countries on corporations' management have been limited in size and scope, particularly from a European perspective. To approach this research gap, we conduct and analyze a series of expert interviews with executives and chief personnel of one trans-national European media. The findings allow us to shine light on how cultural and linguistic diversity and proximity play crucial roles in either fostering or limiting opportunities for synergy operations, digital transformation, and an internationally oriented management style of news media firms.
This article studies the algorithmic project News values at Swedish public service radio, from the perspective of datafied managerialism. Drawing on ethnographic observations and interviews with managers the study shows how the project, that outwardly works to automate news-sorting algorithmically, was employed to generate data about a number of internal journalistic activities, for a variety of purposes. Data was perceived of as a type of capital that could engender, amongst other things, increased knowledge about the internal workings of the organization, thus making it easier to audit its activities, and to standardize the practice of news-valuation throughout SR. Importantly, these goals were not planned in advance, but emerged over the course of the project. The results show how longitudinal approaches to algorithms and data-collection could benefit journalism studies, as they provide a more comprehensive picture of how data are operationalized in journalistic organizations.
In traditional news media, professional journalists are expected to follow the norms and practices created and perpetuated in the field to maintain autonomy and authority. Social media spaces lay outside these institutional boundaries, serving as public, semi-public, and private spaces for connection, interaction, publication, and amplification, as well as the commodification of the personal for users, including news professionals. This has given rise to tensions in journalism over the boundaries between the personal and the professional, and the public and the private, vis-à-vis the erosion of separation between editorial and commercial functions in journalism. This article proposes an analytical model to theorize journalistic identities in social media and how they interact with internal and external forces in digital spaces. Specifically, we address the identity (de)construction of journalists along a spectrum from professional to personal as it intersects with elements that impact identity, from publisher to product. This study expands the scope of journalism research to analyse the blurring of editorial and commercial decisions at the individual level, accounting for a break in the established relationship between publisher and product that has formed the basis of the news business for more than a century.
Several scholars and institutions have made attempts at defining and conceptualising news diversity, underlying its increasing relevance within and beyond academia. However, very few have operationalised it for a given media market , let alone in more than one simultaneously. In this paper, we critically assess existing theories and studies and present main shortcomings on the conceptual, methodological and empirical levels. We proceed by applying and testing two different frameworks and methods for assessing news diversity, co-developed by the authors separately from one another, to two different yet in many regards similar European media markets: those of Norway and Flan-ders (Belgium). In doing so, we seek to properly operationalise news diversity and expand the body of internationally comparative news-related research in times of fundamental change in the news industry, its production practices and markets. We highlight obstacles and best practices for future research.
The newspaper industry is in a deepening revenue crisis and the advertising side of the news business has virtually collapsed as a result of global competition with technology platforms, as well as the Covid-19 outbreak. This study examines the business of digital journalism through a revenue diversification lens and maps how the revenue streams of a national newspaper industry is shifting. Our case study is the Norwegian newspaper industry’s revenue streams from 2006 to 2019, a media market deemed particularly successful in making readers pay for news online. By means of industry data, we measure revenue diversification by applying the Revenue Diversity Index—an index which quantifies the number of revenue streams and the distribution amongst them for the whole newspaper industry. The findings identify a forced diversification which challenges assumptions of a simple and positive relationship between revenue diversification and economic performance. We find that revenue structures have flipped from an advertising based model to an audience dominated model, with a larger diversity of revenue sources but lower total revenues overall. The increasing prices of digital journalism may further expand knowledge gaps in the population between those willing and able to pay and those who are not.
Die Bereitstellung journalistischer Leistungen befindet sich in einem strukturellen Wandel, der bestehende Geschäfts- und Finanzierungsmodelle von Medienanbietern in Frage stellt. Eine rein marktbasierte Bereitstellung von Qualitätsjournalismus erweist sich als zunehmend schwierig und auch der erhöhte Informationsbedarf und Konsum von Zeitungen im Kontext der Corona-Pandemie hat aufgrund der gleichzeitig kriselnden Werbemärkte an dieser Situation wenig geändert. Von dieser Situation sind insbesondere Lokal- und Regionalzeitungen betroffen, was zu erheblichen Konzentrationsprozessen im lokalen Medienangebot geführt hat. Sowohl normativ aus demokratie- und öffentlichkeitstheoretischer Perspektive als auch empirisch mit Blick auf die nutzungsseitige Relevanz von Medienanbietern, die Artikulations- und Partizipationsmöglichkeiten im lokalen Raum schaffen, kommt lokalen Medien eine zentrale Bedeutung zu. Vor diesem Hintergrund wird sowohl seitens der Wissenschaft, der Medienpolitik und teilweise auch der Branche selbst das Erfordernis einer Ausweitung öffentlicher Förderung von Qualitätsjournalismus diskutiert. Das vorliegende Gutachten leistet einen Beitrag zu dieser Debatte und untersucht aus kommunikations- und rechtswissenschaftlicher Perspektive, wie ein Fördersystem für die Unterstützung von (Lokal)Journalismus effektiv und rechtssicher gestaltet sein kann, um die Bereitstellung journalistischer Leistungen zu stärken.
Information production, dissemination, and consumption are contingent upon cultural and financial dimensions. This study attempts to find cultures of engagement that reflect how audiences engage with news posts made by either commercial or state-owned news outlets on Facebook. To do so, we collected over a million news posts (n = 1,173,159) produced by 482 news outlets in three Scandinavian countries (Denmark, Norway, and Sweden) and analyzed over 69 million interactions across three metrics of engagement (i.e. comments, likes, and shares). More concretely, we investigate whether the patterns of engagement follow distinct patterns across national boundaries and type of outlet ownership. While we are skeptical of metrics of engagement as markers of specific cultures of engagement, our results show that there are clear differences in how readers engage with news posts depending on the country of origin and whether they are fully state-owned or private-owned outlets.
This article analyses strategic and organisational fit in corporate newspaper mergers in the context of the digitalisation of local newspaper markets. Using the 2019 acquisition of Nordsjø Media by Amedia in Norway as case, we analyse how eight editors-in-chief perceive the process of incorporating small, low-frequency, print-oriented monopolistic newspapers into one of Scandinavia's largest newspaper chains. The semi-structured interviews were analysed in light of perceived strategic and organisational fit in a principal-agent theoretical framework, the aim of which is to shed light on corporate ownership effects in consolidated newspaper markets. The analysis reveals the precarity of independent ownership in digitising news markets, to which corporatisation emerges as a necessary and welcomed solution. We find the strategic fit as perceived by editors to be tied to technological resources and scale economics, while organisational fit is hampered by the speed and pressure of corporatisation processes. While these results largely support findings from previous acquisition studies in the news industries, the contribution of this analysis lies primarily with the necessity of scale required by the technological transformation that forces independent newspapers to submit to larger chain operations and how it influences considerations of fit in disruptive digital news markets.
Recent digital transformations of the media landscape have altered media economics. Media outlets are experiencing a decline in newspaper circulation and are struggling to develop new revenue streams within digital media. Newspaper publishers are accustomed to a two-sided revenue model geared towards readers and advertisers. In digital publishing, such two-sided revenue models must be further developed. This article describes a model in which journalistic content functions as an engine for digital traffic, and how that market position is used to promote other commercial digital services. Unlike earlier advertising models, the media company itself has become both the advertiser and the owner of the promoted services. This article’s contribution is a description of how new revenue streams are being developed around digital journalistic products. A case study of the Schibsted Media Group, including examples from the media outlets VG (Norway) and Aftonbladet (Sweden), is used here as the empirical source.
Citizen participation in the news-making process has been a hopeful promise since the 1990s. Observers hoped for a rejuve-nation of journalism and democracy alike. However, many of the enthusiastic theoretical concepts on user engagement did not endure close empirical examination. Some of the major fallacies of these early works (to whom the author contributed himself) will be outlined in this article. As a bleak flip side to these utopian ideas, the concept of "dark participation" is introduced here. As research has revealed, this type of user engagement seems to be growing parallel to the recent wave of populism in Western democracies. In a systematization, some essential aspects of dark participation will be differentiated. Finally, the benefits of (also) looking at the wicked side of things will be discussed.
Over the last decade, a network of far-right alternative online media has emerged globally. At the same time, legacy news media have suffered a decline in trust and revenues. In this context, the present article analyses how journalistic authority is questioned and challenged in far-right alternative media, highlighting how these websites claim authority as media critics. The study rests on a qualitative analysis of 600 news articles published on far-right alternative online sites containing evaluations of legacy news media or journalists; it identifies five different positions of authority employed by far-right media critics, constituted around particular forms of knowledge: (i) the insider position (knowledge of the professional journalistic field); (ii) the expert position (factual legitimacy built on statistics and facts); (iii) the victim position (experiential legitimacy as media victim); (iv) the citizen position (democratic legitimacy/representing the people) and (v) the activist position (street legitimacy through confrontation and active resistance).
Roughly a decade has now passed since the full-scale introduction of digital terrestrial television (DTTV) across the European continent. In Scandinavia, DTTV put an end to the so-called duopolistic television market model, in which a fee-financed public service broadcaster (PSB) competed with a commercial, but carefully regulated, broadcaster—a hybrid. The hybrid concept was an attempt to maintain a diverse broadcasting market also in small linguistic markets. Building on the theoretical framework of market failure, this article compares the impact on external and internal market pluralism of the protectionist policy of Norway, which has chosen to keep a hybrid channel also in the new multi-channel environment, and the non-interventionist policy of Sweden, in which the hybrid concept has been abandoned. The results point to a problematic trade-off, where the more public service-oriented Norwegian hybrid TV2 has experienced plummeting market shares, whereas the Swedish “former-hybrid” TV4—following a clear reorientation towards more market-oriented programming—has been able to uphold theirs. The findings highlight the increasing difficulties of designing effective national media policies in the globalised media landscape.
The article presents a network analysis of 22,861,013 geocoded external hyperlinks, collected from 230 Danish, 220 Norwegian and 208 Swedish news websites in 2016. The analysis asks what the structural properties of the Scandinavian media systems—including its geography and ownership structures—mean for news outlets’ centrality within the hyperlinked news ecology. The analysis finds that whereas incumbent legacy media occupy central positions, about one third of the network is absent from the hyperlinked interaction, primarily local, independently owned newspapers. A multiple linear regression analysis shows that national distribution and corporate ownership correlates to network centrality more than other predictors. As brokers in the network consist of the large, legacy, capital-based news organisations, hyperlink connectivity is primarily characterised by proximity to the centres of power, corporate ownership, agenda setting incumbency and national distribution.
Declining legacy media seriously affects local journalism in Sweden. Since 2004, nearly every second local office for local newspapers has been closed, and local coverage is diminishing. In a parallel development, new types of hyperlocal media are growing, according to a national mapping of local media ecologies. The study presented here is based on two surveys: one of local municipalities and one of independent hyperlocals. The key question is: are hyperlocals filling the gap? In many cases, the motivation behind new hyperlocal media has been discontent with declining media coverage from legacy media. In general, however, the pattern is more complicated; most hyperlocals grow in places where legacy media is also present. The main conclusion is that hyperlocals are only partly filling the gaps from declining legacy media, while parts of Sweden are becoming "news deserts." Another important result is that hyperlocals are developing both in print and online, often in combination, to create a sustainable business model.
The democratic importance of journalism is related to public good aspects of media products, as well as news media’s positive externalities. Journalism of high quality helps ensure we are all better informed and thus benefits democracy. Lack of investigative journalism may incur large social costs. However, journalism as a public good is difficult to fund on a commercial basis. Historically, an economic solution for media companies has been advertising subsidies, plus different types of public and private support. Today, the long-time marriage between news organisations and advertisers is severely weakened, and nothing so far suggests that digital revenues alone can finance a varied, broad and original news production. In the eyes of capitalist investors, news organisations represent the past, not the future. This article discusses, on the basis of Scandinavian media experiences and recent policy reforms, the necessity of a media policy and a funding system that acknowledges quality journalism as societal knowledge production and a public good.
This paper examines the 2016 US presidential election campaign to identify problems with, causes of and solutions to the contemporary fake news phenomenon. To achieve this, we employ textual analysis and feedback from engagement, meetings and panels with technologists, journalists, editors, non-profits, public relations firms, analytics firms and academics during the globally leading technology conference, South-by-South West, in March 2017. We further argue that what is most significant about the contemporary fake news furore is what it portends: the use of personally and emotionally targeted news produced by algo-journalism and what we term “empathic media”. In assessing solutions to this democratically problematic situation, we recommend that greater attention is paid to the role of digital advertising in causing, and combating, both the contemporary fake news phenomenon, and the near-horizon variant of empathically optimised automated fake news.
Leading scholars chart the future of studies on technology and journalism in the digital age.
The use of digital technology has transformed the way news is produced, distributed, and received. Just as media organizations and journalists have realized that technology is a central and indispensable part of their enterprise, scholars of journalism have shifted their focus to the role of technology. In Remaking the News, leading scholars chart the future of studies on technology and journalism in the digital age.
These ongoing changes in journalism invite scholars to rethink how they approach this dynamic field of inquiry. The contributors consider theoretical and methodological issues; concepts from the social science canon that can help make sense of journalism; the occupational culture and practice of journalism; and major gaps in current scholarship on the news: analyses of inequality, history, and failure.
ContributorsMike Ananny, C. W. Anderson, Rodney Benson, Pablo J. Boczkowski, Michael X. Delli Carpini, Mark Deuze, William H. Dutton, Matthew Hindman, Seth C. Lewis, Eugenia Mitchelstein, W. Russell Neuman, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen, Zizi Papacharissi, Victor Pickard, Mirjam Prenger, Sue Robinson, Michael Schudson, Jane B. Singer, Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, Rodrigo Zamith
Declining revenues from offline and online ads has led publishers to pursue new avenues, such as native advertising: camouflaging ads as news. Critics of native advertising claim that this form of advertising blurs the boundaries between editorial and commercial content, and can reduce the audiences’ trust in editorial content. However, little research has assessed the possible effects of native ads on audiences’ trust in news. With an experimental design embedded in an online survey (N = 733) representative of the Norwegian population, this study explores the consequences of political native advertising for citizens’ trust in political news. This article discusses how political native advertising poses a challenge to the boundary between journalism and advertising as well as the boundary between journalism and powerful elites. Our study examines (1) how prominently native advertisements should be labelled in order for readers to recognize them as advertising content and (2) whether exposure to such ads reduces readers’ trust in political news. Our most important finding shows that when explicitly labelled, native advertising by political parties can reduce people’s trust in political news.
Public media's contributions to democracy are well established. Less widely known are the specific policies that make these contributions possible. This study finds that professional autonomy and civic accountability in public media are supported by (1) funding established for multiyear periods; (2) legal charters that restrict partisan government influence while also mandating the provision of diverse, high-quality programming; (3) oversight agencies, whose " arm's length " independence from the government in power is bolstered through staggered terms and the dispersal of authority to make appointments; and (4) audience councils and surveys designed to strengthen links to diverse publics. Public media governed by policies that continue and extend, rather than depart from, these best practices will likely be the most successful in maintaining their civic mission online.
Prior research examines the effects of a strong market orientation on a news organization, looking at both content and journalists’ perceptions. But recent technology allows for more weakly market-oriented newsrooms, an under-researched area of inquiry. This study, utilizing long-form interviews with 23 journalists at digital news organizations with weak market orientations, examines journalist perceptions of market orientation. The data show that journalists perceive positive effects of this orientation on their organization through more time for stories, more ability to engage with the audience and more overall autonomy. However, the journalists believe negative effects include a lack of innovation, an unstable funding structure, and a lack of perceived credibility from the audience. These results are discussed through the lens of market theory for news.
The controlling function of the media is essential for freedom of expression in a democratic society. One of the pre-conditions of this controlling function is independence in relation not only to the state but also in relation to commercial interests. It is the latter relationship that is the focus of this article.
Recent changes in the media landscape have put pressure on the independence of the media. Commercial interests seem to gain more influence on media content. The distinction between journalism and advertising has become less clear and it is not always maintained despite both legislation and self-regulation that dictate such a division.
The aim of this article is to analyse the consequences of the changes in the media landscape and the challenges posed to the infrastructure for freedom of expression in Sweden, including legislation and self-regulation. The analysis is made with the help of the analytical distinction between market-driven and democracy-driven freedom of expression.
Recent digital transformations of the media landscape have altered media economics. Media outlets are experiencing a decline in newspaper circulation and are struggling to develop new revenue streams within digital media. Newspaper publishers are accustomed to a two-sided revenue model geared towards readers and advertisers. In digital publishing, such two-sided revenue models must be further developed. This article describes a model in which journalistic content functions as an engine for digital traffic, and how that market position is used to promote other commercial digital services. Unlike earlier advertising models, the media company itself has become both the advertiser and the owner of the promoted services. This article's contribution is a description of how new revenue streams are being developed around digital journalistic products. A case study of the Schibsted Media Group, including examples from the media outlets VG (Norway) and Aftonbladet (Sweden), is used here as the empirical source.
Since the introduction of online newspapers in the mid-1990s, the industry has striven for the introduction of user payments. One potential innovation could be package deals for access to more titles. Based on innovation theory and principles of fair division, this article discusses how revenue might be distributed among participants if a model for joint payment was successful.
The present article discusses the importance of the early years of mass communications in order to understand the shaping of them – the power of creating mass media for whole nations. It begins with references to scholars studying large nations and asks whether their results can be generalized to smaller countries. Therefore, it uses Norway as a case study. To what degree were Norway’s four major mass media – press, film, radio and television – formed institutionally in their early years? And if they were formed in this way, how long did the consequences of such a formation last? These questions have been neglected topics in research, so in order to answer them we also need to rethink the connections between the different media.
The author discusses the role of economic concentration in limiting public access to information and reducing opportunities for public discourse. Picard examines the government policies that have contributed to the erosion of democratic participation and have permitted the growth of large commercial press entities, unobstructed by anti-trust provisions. He relates recent public policy responses to this problem to democratic socialist ideology and develops a social-democratic theory of the press which draws upon ideas and policies found throughout the Western world. Picard provides a democratic framework for understanding the changing nature of media economics and state-press relations and offers proposals for achieving both a democratically functioning press and broader popular participation.
This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary 'crisis of journalism'. Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these 'objective' changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms.
In this volume a group of distinguished legal and political theorists and experts on journalism discuss how to reconcile our values concerning freedom of the press with the enormous power of the media - especially television - to shape opinions and values. The policy issues treated concern primarily the extent of justifiable government regulation of the media and the justification for regulating television differently from newspapers. The volume contains some highly original and groundbreaking analyses of philosophical issues surrounding the First Amendment of the US Bill of Rights. This is a book for anyone seriously interested in the rights to free speech and expression in technologically advanced societies.
Native Advertising examines the emerging practices and norms around native advertising in US and European news organizations. Over the past five years native advertising has rapidly become a significant revenue stream for both digital news “upstarts” and legacy newspapers and magazines. This book helps scholars and students of journalism and advertising to understand the news industry’s investment in native advertising, and consider the effects this investment might have on how news is produced, consumed, and understood. It is argued that although they have deep roots in earlier forms of advertising, native ads with a political or advocacy bent have the potential to shift the relationship between news outlets and audiences in new ways, particularly in an era when trust in the media has reached a historic low point. Beyond this, such advertisements have the potential to shift how media systems function in relation to state power, by changing the relationship between commercial and non-commercial speech. Drawing on real-world examples of native ads and including an in-depth case study contributed by Ava Sirrah, Native Advertising provides an important assessment of the potential consequences of native advertising becoming an even more prominent fixture in the 21st-century news feed.
This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary 'crisis of journalism'. Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these 'objective' changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms.
This collection of original essays brings a dramatically different perspective to bear on the contemporary 'crisis of journalism'. Rather than seeing technological and economic change as the primary causes of current anxieties, The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered draws attention to the role played by the cultural commitments of journalism itself. Linking these professional ethics to the democratic aspirations of the broader societies in which journalists ply their craft, it examines how the new technologies are being shaped to sustain value commitments rather than undermining them. Recent technological change and the economic upheaval it has produced are coded by social meanings. It is this cultural framework that actually transforms these 'objective' changes into a crisis. The book argues that cultural codes not only trigger sharp anxiety about technological and economic changes, but provide pathways to control them, so that the democratic practices of independent journalism can be sustained in new forms.
This tripleC contribution is based on a research seminar that took place at the University of Westminster on January 22, 2014. It featured a conversation with Nicholas Garnham that was chaired by Christian Fuchs. We publish here both the audio-recording as well as a printed version, for which the audio version acted as foundation, but that was entirely re-written.The task of the paper and the seminar was to revisit some of Nicholas Garnham’s ideas, writings and contributions to the study of the Political Economy of Communication and to reflect on the concepts, history, current status and perspectives of this field and the broader study of political economy today. The topics covered include Raymond Williams’ cultural materialism, Pierre Bourdieu’s sociology of culture, the debate between Political Economy and Cultural Studies, information society theory, Karl Marx’s theory and the critique of capitalism.
The 2016 presidential election demonstrated the extent to which U.S. news has changed since its “high modernist” moment. Evidence of these shifts—fragmented and poorly monetized news markets, politicization of news content and funding, uneven professionalization, and even increasing openness to state involvement—have been documented in the literature for some years, but often framed as exceptions. This paper revisits Hallin and Mancini’s typology of news systems to suggest that as variants of Polarized Pluralist elements are entrenched in the American news system, it is drifting away from the Liberal model into a hybrid category of “Polarized Liberal.” Research and meta-journalism from the last decade are reviewed to characterize this hybrid model, which is applicable beyond the United States and might well become the focal point of convergence in the near future. Potential reasons for this transition are discussed, evoking sociopolitical and technological dynamics.
The move to high-choice media environments has sparked fears over audience fragmentation. We analyze news audiences across media platforms (print, television, and online) in 6 countries, going beyond platform-specific, single-country studies. We find surprisingly high levels of news audience duplication, but also that cross-platform audiences vary from country to country, with fragmentation higher in Denmark and the United Kingdom than in Spain and the United States. We find no support for the idea that online audiences are more fragmented than offline audiences, countering fears associated with audience segmentation and filter bubbles. Because all communication exists in the context of its audience, our analysis has implications across the field, underlining the importance of research into how trends play out in different contexts.
This report is based on examination of more than a thousand academic and stakeholder studies on the relation between and impact of public service media and private media. It presents a closer review focusing on the most relevant 36 academic publications and 16 industry publications. We find that —1) There is a significant amount of research that assess the political impact of public service media. We review 23 academic studies and 4 stakeholder studies. The evidence-based consensus in this area is based on a growing number of studies by different researchers using different kinds of data and approaches, with the majority concluding that public service media have a net positive impact on (a) the amount of hard news produced and (b) levels of political knowledge, and, by extension, they may also (c) incrementally increase political participation. It is important to note that this research often also find the same positive impact for some forms of private sector media, most notably morning newspapers and that research still suggests that especially newspapers produce the largest proportion of news output in most countries. 2) There is less research on the social impact of public service media. We discuss 11 academic studies and 5 stakeholder studies that examine public service media impact on social trust, broader knowledge about society (beyond politics), and the degree to which media content reflects the diversity of society itself. The studies reviewed tend to point towards a net positive impact of public service media when it comes to trust, knowledge, and diversity. But the limited number of studies means that there is little or no replication and hence no basis for identifying an evidence-based consensus on the social impact of public service media. American research has suggested that private sector media can help increase social cohesion, but other researchers argue that media undermine social capital. There is no evidence-based consensus in this area. 3) There is little research that assesses the market impact of public service media. There are very few academic publications on this subject, and most of them are of limited relevance when it comes to assessing the likely market impact of public media in the contemporary media environment. The most robust research studies carried out in this area are funded by stakeholders, including government agencies, public service media organisations, and private sector media organisations (and in the latter two cases findings tend to support the funders’ political priorities). We review 2 academic studies and 7 stakeholder studies. On the whole, existing studies provide little evidence for a negative market impact of public service media upon domestic private sector media. But the limited number of studies and the dearth of independent research means there is no clear evidence - based consensus. The academic and stakeholder research reviewed thus provide s strong evidence that public service media have a positive political impact, some evidence that public service media have a positive social impact, and little evidence that public service media have a negative market impact.
Newspapers exist in markets that are difficult to define and serve. Market structures are beyond their control, but not beyond their understanding – and their survival will depend on how well newspapers understand.
This article provides insight into the strategic priority of various approaches towards user involvement and how these are changing over time. A longitudinal series of surveys studying prioritizations among editorial staff identify a redefinition of user involvement in digital media: from 2012 to 2015 the role of users has been reframed from co-producers to distributors. This indicates that promotion and business development gain prominence at the expense of the traditional focus on user participation to ensure media’s social role. At the same time, the approaches increasing in importance are those least likely to challenge the traditional understanding of journalists’ professional role.
In this article we review research published since the publication of Comparing Media Systems which seeks to operationalize concepts discussed in that work and to test the framework proposed there or to put forward alternatives or revisions. We focus on works that deal with the original 18 countries covered in Comparing Media Systems, and consider the progress made in developing quantitative measures across these cases for key variables, research testing the grouping of cases in Comparing Media Systems, research extending the comparative analysis of Western media systems to new media, and research on convergence toward the Liberal Model. In the final section, we focus on limitations of the research produced during the 10 years following the publication of Comparing Media Systems, particularly the heavy emphasis on quantitative operationalization, and some of the difficulties in using quantitative analysis to investigate complex, dynamic systems.
Subsidies constitute a prominent media-policy instrument, serving to correct media-market failures. However, because they interfere in the market, and because the commercial media market is under structural pressure in the digital age, there is much debate about the role of media subsidies. Within this context, this article revisits the foundation of media subsidies in certain developed democracies, aiming at qualifying the current discussions. Focusing on the Nordic countries, the article explores the connection between the social-democratic welfare-state regime and the extensive public frameworks for media subsidies found in this region. The article argues that even though continuity rather than disruption characterises the systems of direct and indirect subsidies, the current developments point towards a recalibration of the ways the Nordic countries subsidise media in the future.
Building on a survey of media institutions in eighteen West European and North American democracies, Hallin and Mancini identify the principal dimensions of variation in media systems and the political variables which have shaped their evolution. They go on to identify three major models of media system development (the Polarized Pluralist, Democratic Corporatist and Liberal models) to explain why the media have played a different role in politics in each of these systems, and to explore the forces of change that are currently transforming them. It provides a key theoretical statement about the relation between media and political systems, a key statement about the methodology of comparative analysis in political communication and a clear overview of the variety of media institutions that have developed in the West, understood within their political and historical context.
Lokale og regionale nyhetsmedier har tradisjonelt vært den viktigste og vanligvis også den eneste kanalen for lokal politisk journalistikk. Med utgangspunkt i kommune- og fylkestingsvalget i 2015 undersøker denne studien fra Stjørdal i Nord-Trøndelag på hvilken måte disse mediene i dag legger til rette for at borgere kan gjøre informerte valg. Datamaterialet består av innholdsanalyser og intervjuer med lokale politikere. Studien viser at lokalavisenes patriotiske tolkningsramme er framtredende, noe som trolig bidrar til å fremme identitet og tilhørighet. I kombinasjon med ei stadig mer redusert regional nyhetsdekning gir dette imidlertid et noe mangelfullt tilbud av politisk journalistikk.
Nøkkelord: lokal journalistikk, politisk kommunikasjon, tolkningsrammer, lokal offentlighet
The present article aims to shed light on the broader paradigm change that has led to native advertising as a revenue model for the publishing business recently. The early emergence of native advertising is thus described in the light of branded content and brand culture strategies, a set of marketing practices that modify firms’ branding through a fresh editorial approach. The development of the native advertising concept is further problematized as a manifestation of the intertwined and blurring lines between communication and information, i.e., between marketing and journalism practices. We finally discuss potential implications of this type of sponsored content and some managerial recommendations.
Taking Journalism Seriously: News and the Academy argues that scholars have remained too entrenched within their own disciplinary areas resulting in isolated bodies of scholarship. This is the first book to critically survey journalism scholarship in one volume and organize it by disparate fields. The book reviews existing journalism research in such diverse fields as sociology, history, language studies, political science, and cultural analysis and dissects the most prevalent and understated research in each discipline.
Historically, government regulation has significantly impacted the room for manoeuvre enjoyed by media managers, especially in public service media but increasingly also in privately owned firms. Currently stakeholders of many different kinds attempt to influence media industries, using a number of manipulative techniques that include censorship, subsidies and sometimes bribery as well as collective action undertaken by lobbies and nongovernment organisations (e.g. citizen interest groups). This chapter discusses the core aspects of media regulation from a European perspective because this part of the world arguably features the most complex and continuous development in these aspects. Our particular interest investigates media governance, which is not understood as an external given but considered as a premise of strategic management. It is argued that to secure an appropriate remit for an industry or firm to that guarantees a longer-term licence to operate, media managers must engage different audiences and authorities in relation to restrictive as well as prescriptive regulation. Achieving that requires approaching media governance from a stakeholder perspective, which inherently involves a broad variety of actors who can influence, and in turn may be influenced by, media operators and operations—private as well as public service based.
This chapter argues that the process of globalisation means that comparative research is no longer a choice but rather a necessity. Since, also, the transnational critiques of cross-national research appear compelling, comparative approaches now require a sound theoretical and political as well as methodological underpinning. Using examples from media and communications research, I argue that approaches which seek to do away with the importance of ‘nation’ go too far, and that instead the role of the nation, as a unit of analysis, should be rethought in terms of a civic/democratic or civic republican model rather than either extreme of the ethno-cultural nation or the cosmopolitan ideal.
Western Media Systems offers a critical introduction to media systems in North America and Western Europe. The book offers a wide-ranging survey of comparative media analysis addressing the economic, social, political, regulatory and cultural aspects of Western media systems. Jonathan Hardy takes a thematic approach, guiding the reader through critical issues and debates, introducing key concepts and specialist literature. Western Media Systems is essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students studying comparative and global media.
Media and Democracy addresses key topics and themes in relation to democratic theory, media and technology, comparative media studies, media and history, and the evolution of media research. For example: • How does TV entertainment contribute to the democratic life of society? • Why are Americans less informed about politics and international affairs than Europeans? • How should new communications technology and globalisation change our understanding of the democratic role of the media? • What does the rise of international ezines reveal about the limits of the internet? • What is the future of journalism? • Does advertising influence the media? • Is American media independence from government a myth? • How have the media influenced the development of modern society?
In Media Regulation, two leading scholars of the media examine the challenges of regulation in the global mediated sphere. This book explores the way that regulation affects the relations between government, the media and communications market, civil society, citizens and consumers. Drawing on theories of governance and the public sphere, the book critically analyzes issues at the heart of today's media, from the saturation of advertising to burdens on individuals to control their own media literacy.
Lunt and Livingstone incisively lay bare shifts in governance and the new role of the public sphere which implicate self-regulation, the public interest, the role of civil society and the changing risks and opportunities for citizens and consumers. It is essential reading to understand the forces that are reshaping the media landscape.
From the theory of "deliberative democracy" to the politics of the "third way," the present Zeitgeist is characterised by an attempt to negate the inherently conflictual nature of democratic politics. Political thought and practice are stifled by a misconceived search fro consensus and the promotion of a bland social unanimity which, as Chantal Mouffe shows, far from being the sign of progress, constitute a serious threat for democratic institutions. Indeed, in many countries this 'consensus of the centre' is providing a platform for the growth of populist right-wing parties which, by presenting themselves as the only 'anti-establishment' forces, are trying to occupy the terrain of contestation deserted by the left. Taking issue with the work of John Rawls and Jurgen Habermas on one side, and with the tenets of the third way as practised by Tony Blair and theorised by Anthony Giddens on the other, Mouffe brings to the fore the paradoxical nature of modern liberal democracy. Against those who affirm that, with the demise of the left/right divide, antagonism has been eliminated from contemporary post-industrial societies and that an all-inclusive politics has become possible, she argues that the category of the 'adversary' plays a central role in the very dynamics of modern democracy. Drawing on the work of Wittgenstein and Derrida, and engaging with the provocative theses of Carl Schmitt, she proposes a new understanding of democracy in terms of 'agonistic pluralism' which acknowledges the ineradicability of antagonism and the impossibility of a final resolution of conflicts.