Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism

The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society

Social Network Analysis

Some mass communications scholars have contended that uses and gratifications is not a rigorous social science theory. In this article, I argue just the opposite, and any attempt to speculate on the future direction of mass communication theory must seriously include the uses and gratifications approach. In this article, I assert that the emergence of computer-mediated communication has revived the significance of uses and gratifications. In fact, uses and gratifications has always provided a cutting-edge theoretical approach in the initial stages of each new mass communications medium: newspapers, radio and television, and now the Internet. Although scientists are likely to continue using traditional tools and typologies to answer questions about media use, we must also be prepared to expand our current theoretical models of uses and gratifications. Contemporary and future models must include concepts such as interactivity, demassification, hypertextuality, and asynchroneity. Researchers must also be willing to explore interpersonal and qualitative aspects of mediated communication in a more holistic methodology.

/pdf/uses-and-gratifications-theory-in-the-21st-century-123uck608n.pdf

Uses and Gratifications Theory in the 21st Century

Tracking new topics, ideas, and "memes" across the Web has been an issue of considerable interest. Recent work has developed methods for tracking topic shifts over long time scales, as well as abrupt spikes in the appearance of particular named entities. However, these approaches are less well suited to the identification of content that spreads widely and then fades over time scales on the order of days - the time scale at which we perceive news and events.We develop a framework for tracking short, distinctive phrases that travel relatively intact through on-line text; developing scalable algorithms for clustering textual variants of such phrases, we identify a broad class of memes that exhibit wide spread and rich variation on a daily basis. As our principal domain of study, we show how such a meme-tracking approach can provide a coherent representation of the news cycle - the daily rhythms in the news media that have long been the subject of qualitative interpretation but have never been captured accurately enough to permit actual quantitative analysis. We tracked 1.6 million mainstream media sites and blogs over a period of three months with the total of 90 million articles and we find a set of novel and persistent temporal patterns in the news cycle. In particular, we observe a typical lag of 2.5 hours between the peaks of attention to a phrase in the news media and in blogs respectively, with divergent behavior around the overall peak and a "heartbeat"-like pattern in the handoff between news and blogs. We also develop and analyze a mathematical model for the kinds of temporal variation that the system exhibits.

/pdf/meme-tracking-and-the-dynamics-of-the-news-cycle-53qye34bd9.pdf

Meme-tracking and the dynamics of the news cycle

Rapid change in the news industry and the prevalence of layoffs, buyouts, and closings have led many newsworkers to experience job insecurity and worry about their long-term futures in journalism. Our research uses a case study of employees at an independently owned media company in the United States to explore the various ways newsworkers respond to this culture of job insecurity and how their responses affect efforts to change news practices. Findings demonstrate that those who believe their jobs are at risk are unlikely to change their practices and even some who perceive job security are reticent to initiate change. As a result, the culture of job insecurity in the news industry has a limiting effect on changes to journalism practice.

/pdf/newswork-within-a-culture-of-job-insecurity-producing-news-525toixwyo.pdf

Newswork Within a Culture of Job Insecurity: Producing news amidst organizational and industry uncertainty

This study explores how the social dimensions of a reporter’s world shape ethical decisions through parallel surveys of daily newspaper reporters in Israel and one Midwestern US state. Through regression analysis, we found that personal factors (gender, years of education) were not related to ethical decisions nor were professional factors (professional experience, professional membership, having studied journalism). In contrast, the social context element (country of practice) was relevant for two of three ethical situations. We also found that personal, professional and social dimensions varied in their utility to ethical decision-making from situation to situation. Considering a reporter’s ethical predisposition, this study found that personal value systems may be more important for ethical decision-making than formal written codes. This study suggests that ethical foundations shared across nations can create cultural bridges – but that diverging ethical perspectives also may create journalistic barriers.

/pdf/a-cross-cultural-look-at-serving-the-public-interest-j1uqlasq1m.pdf

A Cross-Cultural Look at Serving the Public Interest American and Israeli Journalists Consider Ethical Scenarios

In May 2007, Scots voted into office a party and a political leader publicly committed to holding a referendum on independence from Great Britain within four years. This study analyzes nearly 4,800 comments appended to stories on the scotsman.com website, offering one of the first detailed looks at user-generated content on a newspaper-affiliated website in the context of a national election. It explores the evolving nature of online political community and the ways in which newspapers are accommodating a networked environment in their political coverage, addressing issues of citizen and journalistic engagement within a communal space.

/pdf/separate-spaces-discourse-about-the-2007-scottish-elections-8rpsibcnf8.pdf

Separate spaces: Discourse about the 2007 Scottish elections on a national newspaper Web site

A growing number of newsrooms are experimenting with Virtual Reality (VR) and other immersive storytelling techniques, typically supported by technology companies that see journalism as a potential...

/pdf/virtual-reality-360-video-and-journalism-studies-conceptual-3igbatm84t.pdf

Virtual Reality, 360° Video, and Journalism Studies: Conceptual Approaches to Immersive Technologies

It is no news to anyone involved with the media, from the newsroom to the boardroom to the classroom, that journalism is at a crossroads as an occupation, a business, a content form, and a public good. This is perhaps particularly true of journalism in the traditional news medium of record, the newspaper, where enormous uncertainty surrounds virtually every facet of the enterprise as it adjusts to being part of a digital network. This essay uses a framework familiar to journalists and journalism educators -- the traditional “five Ws and an H” of who, what, when, where, why, and how -- to address some of the significant issues facing corporate and newsroom managers, as well as journalists themselves.

/pdf/five-ws-and-an-h-digital-challenges-in-newspaper-newsrooms-2qtkf4i1em.pdf

Jane B. Singer

Papers

Newswork Within a Culture of Job Insecurity: Producing news amidst organizational and industry uncertainty

A Cross-Cultural Look at Serving the Public Interest American and Israeli Journalists Consider Ethical Scenarios

Separate spaces: Discourse about the 2007 Scottish elections on a national newspaper Web site

Virtual Reality, 360° Video, and Journalism Studies: Conceptual Approaches to Immersive Technologies

Five Ws and an H: Digital Challenges in Newspaper Newsrooms and Boardrooms