PART ONE: MASS COMMUNICATION AND SOCIETY Public Communication and Public Interest Contested Territory Media Performance Traditions of Enquiry The `Public Interest' in Communication PART TWO: MEDIA PERFORMANCE NORMS Performance Norms in Media Policy Discourse The Newspaper Press Performance Norms in Media Policy Discourse Broadcasting A Framework of Principle for Media Assessment PART THREE: RESEARCH MODELS AND METHODS Media Organizational Performance Models and Research Options PART FOUR: MEDIA FREEDOM Concepts and Models of Media Freedom Media Freedom From Structure to Performance Media Freedom The Organizational Environment PART FIVE: DIVERSITY Varieties and Processes of Diversity Taking the Measure of Diversity Media Reflection Media Access and Audience Choice PART SIX: OBJECTIVITY Concepts of Objectivity A Framework for Objectivity Research Measuring Objectivity News as Information Measuring Objectivity The Evaluative Dimension of News PART SEVEN: MASS MEDIA, ORDER AND SOCIAL CONTROL Media and the Maintenance of Public Order Policing the Symbolic Environment Solidarity and Social Identity PART EIGHT: MEDIA AND CULTURE Questions of Culture and Mass Communication Cultural Identity and Autonomy Whose Media Culture? PART NINE: IN CONCLUSION Changing Media, Changing Mores Implications for Assessment

Media performance : mass communication and the public interest / Denis Mcquail

More and more people read the news online, e.g., by visiting the websites of their favorite newspapers or by navigating the sites of news aggregators. However, the abundance of news information that is published online every day through different channels can make it challenging for readers to locate the content they are interested in. The goal of News Recommender Systems (NRS) is to make reading suggestions to users in a personalized way. Due to their practical relevance, a variety of technical approaches to build such systems have been proposed over the last two decades. In this work, we review the state-of-the-art of designing and evaluating news recommender systems over the last ten years. One main goal of the work is to analyze which particular challenges of news recommendation (e.g., short item life times and recency aspects) have been well explored and which areas still require more work. Furthermore, in contrast to previous surveys, the paper specifically discusses methodological questions and today’s academic practice of evaluating and comparing different algorithmic news recommendation approaches based on accuracy measures.

News recommender systems – Survey and roads ahead

Hawaiian Sumo wrestlers Akebono and Konishiki had taken the top two rankings in a sport that had never seen a non-Japanese champion. Akebono was the first to reach Yokozuna, the highest rank. Konishiki, nicknamed “The Dump Truck,” is Ozeki, the second-highest rank. Both men wrestled their titles from the status quo. While the hierarchy of Sumo wrestling may not have broad in fluence in a global sense, the namesakes of these two champions would change the world .

The Future of Journalism

Background: To track and reduce the spread of COVID-19, apps have been developed to identify contact with individuals infected with SARS-CoV-2 and warn those who are at risk of having contracted the virus. However, the effectiveness of these apps depends highly on their uptake by the general population.
Objective: The present study investigated factors influencing app use intention, based on the health belief model. In addition, associations with respondents’ level of news consumption and their health condition were investigated.
Methods: A survey was administered in Flanders, Belgium, to 1500 respondents, aged 18 to 64 years. Structural equation modeling was used to investigate relationships across the model’s constructs.
Results: In total, 48.70% (n=730) of respondents indicated that they intend to use a COVID-19 tracing app. The most important predictor was the perceived benefits of the app, followed by self-efficacy and perceived barriers. Perceived severity and perceived susceptibility were not related to app uptake intention. Moreover, cues to action (ie, individuals’ exposure to [digital] media content) were positively associated with app use intention. As the respondents’ age increased, their perceived benefits and self-efficacy for app usage decreased.
Conclusions: Initiatives to stimulate the uptake of contact tracing apps should enhance perceived benefits and self-efficacy. A perceived barrier for some potential users is privacy concerns. Therefore, when developing and launching an app, clarification on how individuals’ privacy will be protected is needed. To sustain perceived benefits in the long run, supplementary options could be integrated to inform and assist users.

https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8673614/file/8673618.pdf

Adoption of a Contact Tracing App for Containing COVID-19: A Health Belief Model Approach.

This study investigates news consumption on mobile devices with the goal of identifying where mobile devices fit into people’s media repertoires and how consumption patterns on them are different from those on other platforms. Results suggest that mobile devices are almost always used along with other platforms for getting news, that news sessions on smartphones are shorter than on other platforms, and mobile news consumption happens more times per day and is spread throughout the day. Implications for the study of news consumption, news producers, and consumers are discussed.

/pdf/mobile-news-consumption-a-habit-of-snacking-1992vlqiav.pdf

Mobile News Consumption: A habit of snacking

News is increasingly being consumed on a multitude of media devices, including mobile devices. In recent years, mobile news consumption has permeated individuals’ news consumption repertoires. The main purpose of this study is twofold: (a) gain insight in how mobile news outlets infiltrated the broader news media repertoires of mobile device owners and (b) understand in what circumstances mobile news is consumed within these news media repertoires. The key is to understand how and why this widening agency in appropriating various places and social spaces in everyday life relates to general news media consumption (Peters, 2012). This two-phased study aims to illuminate how mobile device owners position their mobile news consumption in relation to other types of news media outlets. First, a guiding cluster analysis of a large-scale questionnaire (N = 1279) was performed, indicating three types of news consumers. Second, in order to thicken the originally derived clusters, a mixed-method study was set up, co...

/pdf/what-s-appening-to-news-a-mixed-method-audience-centred-my1lfuornm.pdf

What's APPening to news? A mixed-method audience- centred study on mobile news consumption

News producers are increasingly experimenting with news in virtual reality and 360° video, which is often presented as the ultimate form of immersive journalism as it provides viewers with a first-...

360° Video Journalism: Experimental Study on the Effect of Immersion on News Experience and Distant Suffering

Scholarly work argues that mobile technology facilitates serendipitous news consumption. This article examines how users understand serendipity in mobile news consumption and whether this l...

Mapping the Mobile DNA of News. Understanding Incidental and Serendipitous Mobile News Consumption

As people’s willingness to pay for digital news remains low, this article investigates whether people would be willing to share personal data as a new currency for accessing news. Increasingly, news organizations collect personal data and track cross-media consumption to build detailed knowledge about and (re)connect with digital news consumers. This article presents the results of an industry-driven big data project that allows news organizations to engage with their audience more deeply by suggesting personalized content recommendations, serving targeted advertising and/or improving the user experience. It presents the concept of the datawall, where the user pays with their data, and delivers new insights into the challenges facing data-driven business models.

/pdf/consumers-willingness-to-share-personal-data-implications-5gf7scwv5n.pdf

Consumers’ Willingness to Share Personal Data: Implications for Newspapers’ Business Models

Traditional recommender systems provide personal suggestions based on the user's preferences, without taking into account any additional contextual information, such as time or device type. The added value of contextual information for the recommendation process is highly dependent on the application domain, the type of contextual information, and variations in users' usage behavior in different contextual situations. This paper investigates whether users utilize a mobile news service in different contextual situations and whether the context has an influence on their consumption behavior. Furthermore, the importance of context for the recommendation process is investigated by comparing the user satisfaction with recommendations based on an explicit static profile, content-based recommendations using the actual user behavior but ignoring the context, and context-aware content-based recommendations incorporating user behavior as well as context. Considering the recommendations based on the static profile as a reference condition, the results indicate a significant improvement for recommendations that are based on the actual user behavior. This improvement is due to the discrepancy between explicitly stated preferences (initial profile) and the actual consumption behavior of the user. The context-aware content-based recommendations did not significantly outperform the content-based recommendations in our user study. Context-aware content-based recommendations may induce a higher user satisfaction after a longer period of service operation, enabling the recommender to overcome the cold-start problem and distinguish user preferences in various contextual situations.

/pdf/a-user-centric-evaluation-of-context-aware-recommendations-45xbtma1rx.pdf

Kristin Van Damme

Papers

What's APPening to news? A mixed-method audience- centred study on mobile news consumption

360° Video Journalism: Experimental Study on the Effect of Immersion on News Experience and Distant Suffering

Mapping the Mobile DNA of News. Understanding Incidental and Serendipitous Mobile News Consumption

Consumers’ Willingness to Share Personal Data: Implications for Newspapers’ Business Models

A user-centric evaluation of context-aware recommendations for a mobile news service