A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies. Pippa Norris. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 398 pp. $59.95 hbk. $21.95 pbk. The main finding of Pippa Norris's study is that exposure to the news media is positively related to citizens' levels of political knowledge, trust, and participation, even after controlling for demographics, attitudinal factors, and cultural differences. Although various positive contributions of exposure to news media already have been documented in other research, never was the amount of evidence as monumental as in this book. Norris analyzed European Community, Eurobarometer, European Election and Post-election, British Campaign Panel, U.S. National Election, and Pew Center for the People and the Press surveys, providing individual and aggregate level, over-time and cross-sectional evidence supporting her virtuous media thesis. The book is set up as a challenge to "conventional wisdom" or "unquestioned orthodoxy" of media malaise theories that argue that "exposure to the news media discourages learning about politics, erodes trust in political leaders and government institutions, and dampens political mobilization." The problem is that there is a huge gap between the abundance of glib charges and the scarcity of empirical evidence of negative effects of news media. Consequently, Norris mostly relies on Michael Robinson's long ago retracted videomalaise claim and strays away from her main line of theorizing by reviewing studies that deal with the issues well outside the scope of her own study, such as effects of framing news stories, political advertising, and television entertainment. Findings of negative media effects in contexts other than elections and those tapping more specific types of media content and their particular features remain unchallenged by the Norris study. Norris acknowledges that "we need to compare the effects of variance in the media messages so that we can see whether people who consistently use one distinctive source (such as crime-focused local TV news) differ from those who use others (such as rightwing talk radio)" and that "our measures of media habits are often diffuse and imprecise," but she is still restricted in her research to measures of frequency of general newspaper and television news use. Nevertheless, Norris urges us to stopblaming the news media for political problems and instead to direct our attention to "the problems themselves." This call, without showing that media in many of their specific content characteristics or structures are not a part of problems that extend beyond voting and political campaigning, seems premature at best. However, Norris's study makes a significant contribution to communication research by most convincingly showing that the news media may be an important part of solutions to some of the social ills. …

A Virtuous Circle: Political Communications in Postindustrial Societies

The deceptively simple question “What is news?” remains pertinent even as we ponder the future of journalism in the digital age. This article examines news values within mainstream journalism and considers the extent to which news values may be changing since earlier landmark studies were undertaken. Its starting point is Harcup and O’Neill’s widely-cited 2001 updating of Galtung and Ruge’s influential 1965 taxonomy of news values. Just as that study put Galtung and Ruge’s criteria to the test with an empirical content analysis of published news, this new study explores the extent to which Harcup and O’Neill’s revised list of news values remain relevant given the challenges (and opportunities) faced by journalism today, including the emergence of social media. A review of recent literature contextualises the findings of a fresh content analysis of news values within a range of UK media 15 years on from the last study. The article concludes by suggesting a revised and updated set of contemporary news values, whilst acknowledging that no taxonomy can ever explain everything.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1461670X.2016.1150193

What is news? News values revisited (again)

In a high-choice media environment, there are fears that individuals will select media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on interest and/or partisanshi

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656

The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media

During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, (4) increasing fragmentation and polarization, (5) increasing relativism and (6) increasing inequality in political knowledge.

/pdf/political-communication-in-a-high-choice-media-environment-a-fa7g2xnfq4.pdf

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

Concerns about public misinformation in the United States—ranging from politics to science—are growing. Here, we provide an overview of how and why citizens become (and sometimes remain) misinformed about science. Our discussion focuses specifically on misinformation among individual citizens. However, it is impossible to understand individual information processing and acceptance without taking into account social networks, information ecologies, and other macro-level variables that provide important social context. Specifically, we show how being misinformed is a function of a person’s ability and motivation to spot falsehoods, but also of other group-level and societal factors that increase the chances of citizens to be exposed to correct(ive) information. We conclude by discussing a number of research areas—some of which echo themes of the 2017 National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Communicating Science Effectively report—that will be particularly important for our future understanding of misinformation, specifically a systems approach to the problem of misinformation, the need for more systematic analyses of science communication in new media environments, and a (re)focusing on traditionally underserved audiences.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/116/16/7662.full.pdf

Science audiences, misinformation, and fake news.

Reuters Institute digital news report 2014

This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 70,000 online news consumers in 36 countries including the US and UK. The report focuses on the issues of trust in the era of fake news, changing business models and the role of platforms. 
Some of the key findings from our 2017 research: 
Growth in social media for news is flattening out in some markets, as messaging apps that are (a) more private and (b) tend not to filter content algorithmically are becoming more popular. The use of WhatsApp for news is starting to rival Facebook in a number of markets including Malaysia (51%), Brazil (46%), and Spain (32%). 
Only a quarter (24%) of our respondents think social media do a good job in separating fact from fiction, compared to 40% for the news media. Our qualitative data suggest that users feel the combination of a lack of rules and viral algorithms are encouraging low quality and ‘fake news’ to spread quickly. 
There are wide variations in trust across our 36 countries. The proportion that says they trust the news is highest in Finland (62%), but lowest in Greece and South Korea (23%). In most countries, we find a strong connection between distrust in the media and perceived political bias. This is particularly true in countries with high levels of political polarisation like the United States, Italy, and Hungary. 
Almost a third of our sample (29%) say they often or sometimes avoid the news. For many, this is because it can have a negative effect on mood. For others, it is because they can’t rely on news to be true. 
Mobile marches on, outstripping computer access for news in an increasing number of countries. Mobile news notifications have grown significantly in the last year, especially in the US ( 8 percentage points), South Korea ( 7), and Australia ( 4), becoming an important new route to content and giving a new lease of life to news apps. 
In a related development there has been a significant growth in mobile news aggregators, notably Apple News, but also Snapchat Discover for younger audiences. Both have doubled usage with their target groups in the last year. 
Smartphones are now as important for news inside the home as outside. More smartphone users now access news in bed (46%) than use the device when commuting to work. 
Voice-activated digital assistants like the Amazon Echo are emerging as a new platform for news, already outstripping smart watches in the US, UK, and Germany. 
In terms of online news subscriptions, we have seen a very substantial ‘Trump bump’ in the US (from 9 to 16%) along with a tripling of news donations. Most of those new payments have come from the young – a powerful corrective to the idea that young people are not prepared to pay for online media, let alone news. 
Across all countries, only around one in ten (13%) pay for online news but some regions (Nordics) are doing much better than others (Southern Europe and much of Asia). 
Ad-blocking growth has stalled on desktop (21%) and remains low on smartphones (7%). Over half say they have temporarily disabled their ad-blocker for news in countries like Poland (57%), Denmark (57%), and the United States (52%). 
We have new evidence that news brands may be struggling to cut through on distributed platforms. In a study tracking more than 1,500 respondents in the UK, we found that while most could remember the path through which they found a news story (Facebook, Google, etc.), less than half could recall the name of the news brand itself when coming from search (37%) and social (47%). 
Austrians and Swiss are most wedded to printed newspapers, Germans and Italians love TV bulletins, while Latin Americans get more news via social media and chat apps than other parts of the world.

Reuters Institute digital news report 2017

The Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (RISJ) was established in 2006 within Oxford University to build on the Reuters Foundation Journalist Fellowship Programme that began in 1983. It now combines the Journalist Fellowship Programme with a research centre in international journalism and a commitment to lead debate on the future of journalism through a series of events and publications bringing together academics, journalists and policymakers to share their perspectives on the critical issues facing the industry. All these activities are described in more detail below. This Research Review is organised to help the reader gain a sense of the history, organisation, funding, personnel, publications, and research focus and output of the RISJ to date. In addition, our aim here is to provide an indication of our future plans as we enter the second phase of the Institute.

The reuters institute for the study of journalism

This year's report reveals new insights about digital news consumption based on a YouGov survey of over 20,000 online news consumers in the US, UK, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Finland, Brazil, Japan and Australia. This year's data shows a quickening of the pace towards social media platforms as routes to audiences, together with a surge in the use of mobile for news, a decline in the desktop internet and significant growth in video news consumption online.

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015

Preface and Acknowledgements. Introduction. List of Abbreviations. Section 1: The Impact of Convergence. 1. Converging Technologies, Changing Markets. Section 2: Regulating Analogue Broadcasting. 2. National Regulatory Traditions in France, Germany and the UK. 3. European Regulation of Analogue Broadcasting. Section 3: National and European Responses to Digital Broadcasting . 4. Regulating Access to Digital Broadcasting: The Advanced Television Standards Directive. 5. The Impact of European Competition Policy on Digital Broadcasting. 6. National Approaches to Digital Regulation. 7. From the European Information Society to Convergence: Co-ordinating or transcending National responses to digital broadcasting? Section 4: Conclusions. 8. Convergence: New Approaches. 9. Broadcasting Regulation, the Nation State and the European Policy Process. Bibliography

David A. L. Levy

Papers

Reuters Institute digital news report 2014

Reuters Institute digital news report 2017

The reuters institute for the study of journalism

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2015

Europe's Digital Revolution: Broadcasting Regulation, the EU and the Nation State