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Partisan news media, which often publish extremely biased, one-sided or even false news, are gaining popularity world-wide and represent a major societal issue. Due to a growing number of such media, a need for automatic detection approaches is of high demand. Automatic detection relies on various indicators (e.g. content characteristics) to identify new partisan media candidates and to predict their level of partisanship. The aim of the research is to investigate to a deeper extent whether it would be appropriate to rely on the hyperlinks as possible indicators for better automatic partisan news media detection.

The authors utilized hyperlink network analysis to study the hyperlinks of partisan and mainstream media. The dataset involved the hyperlinks of 18 mainstream media and 15 partisan media in Slovakia and Czech Republic. More than 171 million domain pairs of inbound and outbound hyperlinks of selected online news media were collected with Ahrefs tool, analyzed and visualized with Gephi software. Additionally, 300 articles covering COVID-19 from both types of media were selected for content analysis of hyperlinks to verify the reliability of quantitative analysis and to provide more detailed analysis.

The authors conclude that hyperlinks are reliable indicators of media affinity and linking patterns could contribute to partisan news detection. The authors found out that especially the incoming links with dofollow attribute to news websites are reliable indicators for assessing the type of media, as partisan media rarely receive links with dofollow attribute from mainstream media. The outgoing links are not such reliable indicators as both mainstream and partisan media link to mainstream sources similarly.

In contrast to the extensive amount of research aiming at fake news detection within a piece of text or multimedia content (e.g. news articles, social media posts), the authors shift to characterization of the whole news media. In addition, the authors did a geographical shift from more researched US-based media to so far under-researched European context, particularly Central Europe. The results and conclusions can serve as a guide how to derive new features for an automatic detection of possibly partisan news media by means of artificial intelligence (AI).

The peer review history for this article is available at the following link: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-10-2020-0441.

Purpose – Although scholars have long been interested in how social movements use mass media to forward their goals, sociological research almost exclusively focuses on the ability of activist groups to get their ideas and organizations in general audience, mainstream media coverage. This paper contributes to a more systematic understanding of media coverage outcomes by broadening the range of outlets considered relevant to political discourse. In addition to mainstream venues, we consider conservative and liberal/left outlets in our analysis of social movement organization media coverage.

Method – Using negative binomial regression, we analyze how organizational characteristics, organizational frames, political elites, and event type affect the rates of social movement organization media coverage in mainstream and partisan news venues.

Findings – We find that the independent variables play very different roles in mainstream and partisan media coverage outcomes. Specifically, while organizational characteristics and frames often enhance the media coverage outcomes of activist groups in mainstream venues, political elites have no effect at all. In contrast, organizational characteristics and frames do not affect social movement media coverage in partisan outlets, whereas political elites and event type do.

Originality of the paper – Conceptually, this research broadens how scholars think about the relationship between social movement groups and mass media as well as the factors that influence media outcomes.

This chapter examines the framing of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) Movement in mainstream media. An analytic sample of 4,303 articles collected from the Dow Jones Factiva database reveals variation in depth, breadth, and intensity of BLM coverage in the following newspapers between 2012 and 2016: The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Al Jazeera English. We review contemporary literature on racial inequality and employ Media Framing and Critical Race Theory to discuss the implications of our findings on public perceptions, future policy formation, and contemporary social protest worldwide.

This paper aims to analyze the ways socio-economic issues are represented in mainstream news media and how it is consumed, understood and interpreted by Israeli young adults (YAs). It examines how mainstream media uses neo-liberal discourse, and the ways YAs internalize this ethic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome its limitations.

This was a mixed methods study. First, it undertook content analysis of the most popular Israeli mainstream news media among YAs: the online news site Ynet and the TV Channel 2 news. Second, the authors undertook semi-structured in-depth interviews with 29 Israeli YAs. The analysis is based on an online survey of 600 young Israelis, aged 18–35 years.

Most YAs did not perceive mainstream media as enabling a reliable understanding of the issues important to them. The content analysis revealed that self-representation of YAs is rare, and that their issues were explained, and even resolved, by older adults. Furthermore, most of YAs' problems in mainstream news media were presented using a neo-liberal perspective. Finally, from the interviews, the authors learned that YAs did not find information that could help them deal with their most pressing economic and social issue, in the content offered by mainstream media. For most of them, social media overcomes these shortcomings.

Contrary to research that has explored YAs’ consumerism of new media outlets, this article explores how YAs in Israel are constructed in the media, as well as the way in which YAs understand mainstream and new social media coverage of the issues most important to them. Using media content analysis and interviews, the authors found that Young Adults tend to be ambivalent toward media coverage. They understand the lack of media information: most of them know that they do not learn enough from the media. This acknowledgment accompanies their tendency to internalize the neo-liberal logic and conservative Israeli national culture, in which class and economic redistribution are largely overlooked. Mainstream news media uses neo-liberal discourse, and young adults internalize this logic, while simultaneously finding ways to overcome the limitations this discourse offers. They do so by turning to social media, mainly Facebook. Consequently, their behavior maintains the logic of the market, while also developing new social relations, enabled by social media.

This study examined the association between media consumers' attitudes toward COVID-19-related content on mainstream, on-demand and social media and trust in the government's ability to handle the pandemic crisis.

The study is based on an online survey of a representative sample of 1,005 Israelis aged 18 and over and focused on consumers' perceptions of media contents as a source of information, social solidarity, criticism and anxiety.

Findings indicate that mainstream media were the primary source of pandemic information. A positive association was found between perceptions of mainstream media as a source of criticism and trust in government's actions. This association was negative regarding social and on-demand media. The more mainstream media contents were perceived as anxiety evoking, the lower participants' trust in government's actions. A positive association was found between perceptions that social media encouraged social solidarity and trust in governmental action.

Policymakers should take into consideration that various media operate synergistically to continually construct reality.

This study focuses on consumers' perceptions of COVID-related media contents, which are especially important in the current era of media outlet proliferation, distribution and impact on the government. The unique contribution is in the integrated application of media malaise theory, virtuous circle theory and echo chamber theory to explain the correlation between media consumption and public trust during a global crisis in the era of diverse media outlets.

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2021-0299.

The aim of this paper is to examine how crises can be triggered online, how different social media tools escalate crises, and how issues gain credibility when they transit to mainstream media.

This exploratory study uses the multiple case study method to analyze five crises, generated online, throughout their life-cycles, in order to build analytic generalizations (Yin).

Crises are often triggered online when stakeholders are empowered by social media platforms to air their grievances. YouTube and Twitter have been used to raise issues through its large user base and the lack of gatekeeping. Facebook and blogs escalate crises beyond the immediate stakeholder groups. These crises are covered by mainstream media because of their newsworthiness. As a result, the crises gain credibility offline. Mainstream media coverage ceases when traditional news elements are no longer present.

If crises are increasingly generated online, this study aims to apply a framework to manage the impact on organizations.

How practitioners can use different new media tools to counter crises online and manage the transition of crises to mainstream media.

This is one of the first few studies that analyses how organizational crises originate online, gain traction and get escalated onto mainstream media. Understanding what causes crises to trigger online and gain legitimacy offline will enable practitioners to engage in effective crisis management strategies.

Purpose – The chapter examines the relationship between Black elected officials (as candidates and in office) and the media that covers them by examining how media use race when discussing these officials.Design/methodology/approach – The chapter uses a content analysis design. The basic strategy is to examine eight years’ worth of discussion in newspapers, both in Ohio and nationwide, concerning Mark Mallory as he runs for mayor of Cincinnati and then acts as mayor from 2005 to mid-2012.Findings – The chapter provides information on how the media (mainstream media and Black media) includes racial mentions when discussing Mark Mallory. The findings support my two main hypotheses: that Mark Mallory is more heavily racialized as a mayoral candidate in mainstream newspapers than he is as a sitting mayor, and that for Black newspapers, he is more heavily racialized at either stage (candidate or sitting mayor) than he is with mainstream newspapers.Research limitations/implications – Because the research only looks at one individual, the findings lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers should expand the focus to examine more Black elected officials and/or Black candidates for office.Practical and social implications – The chapter shows how discussions of race around a Black elected official may be beyond that official’s control.Originality/value – This chapter is original in showing how race can be made a part of the public media discussions of minority elected officials. The research design gives us a template for future study of the influence of race in media representations in minority politics.

The author explores questions of authenticity in the media industry by showing how right-wing media figures look to present their views as authentic by defining themselves as citizen journalists and positioning themselves in opposition to mainstream media. Looking at two case studies from the United States, Andrew Breitbart and Mike Cernovich, the author shows how the language of citizen journalism (amateurism, independence, immediacy) is co-opted by such figures to appeal to increasingly distrustful and antagonistic conservative media audiences.