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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 paper presents the findings of a project that aims to analyze the ethical treatment of the news, with special attention to the reporting of violent events, as it is carried out by digital news outlets from the State of Chihuahua (Mexico).

A media observatory was established to collect and analyze the 9,115 news reports of violent events from February to June 2019 and was published by 12 digital news outlets in Chihuahua. Quantitative data analysis was carried out using three analytical axes – ethics, human rights and violence. Each axis was, in turn, subdivided into three criteria, and this paper identifies how compliant were each news outlet and individual news report with those criteria.

Data analysis established that 5,385 of the news reports (59.1 per cent of the total news analyzed) met all the nine desirable criteria, whereas other subsets did not comply with up to a minimum five criteria. How the observed news outlets and their reports complied with the criteria used is specified in this paper.

The methodology used and the data analyzed seek to develop ethical and socially responsible journalism. Hence, this paper offers various possibilities, such as raising new questions related to journalistic deontology, helps engage responsible journalists and also represents an area of opportunity for library and information professionals who are immersed in digital environments (e.g. digital libraries and library professionals that are the ideal professionals to store, manage and disseminate the records produced by media observatories). Moreover, the data analyzed help to set a maximum limit for the non-compliance with each of the criteria analyzed, which can even lead to the development of an ethical and social responsibility accreditation that can be granted to news outlets with the best practices for journalism.

Wikipedia's inclusive editorial policy permits unrestricted participation, enabling individuals to contribute and disseminate their expertise while drawing upon a multitude of external sources. News media outlets constitute nearly one-third of all citations within Wikipedia. However, embracing such a radically open approach also poses the challenge of the potential introduction of biased content or viewpoints into Wikipedia. The authors conduct an investigation into the integrity of knowledge within Wikipedia, focusing on the dimensions of source political polarization and trustworthiness. Specifically, the authors delve into the conceivable presence of political polarization within the news media citations on Wikipedia, identify the factors that may influence such polarization within the Wikipedia ecosystem and scrutinize the correlation between political polarization in news media sources and the factual reliability of Wikipedia's content.

The authors conduct a descriptive and regression analysis, relying on Wikipedia Citations, a large-scale open dataset of nearly 30 million citations from English Wikipedia. Additionally, this dataset has been augmented with information obtained from the Media Bias Monitor (MBM) and the Media Bias Fact Check (MBFC).

The authors find a moderate yet significant liberal bias in the choice of news media sources across Wikipedia. Furthermore, the authors show that this effect persists when accounting for the factual reliability of the news media.

The results contribute to Wikipedia’s knowledge integrity agenda in suggesting that a systematic effort would help to better map potential biases in Wikipedia and find means to strengthen its neutral point of view policy.

The current study examines the media's depiction of demands to defund the police. Although this call to action has been a part of the public discourse for decades, the call has reached mainstream attention following the police-involved death of George Floyd in May 2020. Black Lives Matter, the American Civil Liberties Union, Color of Change, and other prominent organizations have endorsed this call. However, there is a lack of agreement on the “correct” meaning of this socio-political movement.

The authors performed an inductive content analysis of the news articles using MaxQDA, a qualitative data analysis program. The authors focus on the text and its themes and patterns in the descriptions of #DefundThePolice, both implicit (e.g. tone) and explicit (e.g. defining the movement as problematic). The codes were further refined following open coding to fully develop the existing patterns. The results are organized by the themes within the articles. The findings also include direct quotes to reinforce the themes.

In the authors' content analysis of news reports, the authors find that the US and UK news outlets report definitions that parallel the M4BL's description of the movement. In this respect, media coverage reflected the basic tenets of the movement accurately as opposed to using definitions that misrepresent the group's primary objective. Although these sampled news articles generally adhered to the basic description of the defund movement, the authors found that the overall substance and tone of coverage varied across outlets. This divergence yielded five overarching themes that included: the involvement of corporate America in the defunding debate, the frequent use of opinion pieces, mentions of history for informing the debate, the inclusion of the police perspective, and reporting that seemed to tie the defund movement to increases in violent crime.

This article explores how the mass media reports and defines the #DefundThePolice movement. Although much debate surrounds this issue, there is limited understanding of the mainstream news media's depiction of the movement. The current study addresses this research gap and informs the defunding debate by examining whether media descriptions of the movement coincide with the Movement for Black Lives benchmark delineation.

The post-millennial or Generation Z constitutes people born in 1997 or after. This study theorizes how news consumption habits of the post-millennial generation are reshaping the news. As the newest generation of media users, Generation Z or the post-millennials, comprising people born in 1997 or after, will inherit the millennial legacy. Generation Z has embraced the visual, verbal, and viral aspects of digital and social media platforms. They rarely engage with traditional news sources, which they deem as nearly extinct.

Based on 2019 meta-analytical research review of 16 key studies (published between 2017 and 2019) of media consumption habits of post-millennials, this research study delineates news consumption habits of post-millennials. It theorizes how this new generation of media users are embracing the visual, verbal, and viral media to reshape news content. The propensity of the post-millennials to participate in the news cycle shapes their rapidly changing preferences and usage patterns.

Over the years, news consumption has varied among different age groups. Newspapers and television were popular with the Silent generation, comprising people born between 1928 and 1945. The Internet significantly transformed media use among baby boomers, the generation born between 1946 and 1964, and Generation X, which constitutes people born between 1965 and 1980. The rise of social media has significantly transformed media use of millennials or Generation Y, born between 1981 and 1996. They were the first generation to come of age in the new millennium.

Unlike Generation X and boomers, the post-millennials or Generation Z sparsely engage with traditional news sources they deem as nearly extinct, including print media such as newspapers and magazines. They rarely watch television news or listen to radio. They report different news values with less concern about accuracy and more attention toward entertainment and interaction.

What is the relationship between a social movement and the media coverage it receives? Using data on the Tea Party and supplementing it with a broad dataset of coverage in nearly 200 state and local newspapers over an 18-month period, I address key questions on the recursive relationship between media coverage and mobilization. Results provide support for the mobilizing influence of the media. Instead of following protest activity as post-facto news, coverage tended to precede mobilization and was its most important predictor. Second, the conservative media occupied a distinct and indirect position in impacting mobilization. Though not direct predictors of mobilization, conservative media coverage was a strong predictor of subsequent coverage in the broader media. Further, this influence was asymmetrical, with the general media having no impact on conservative media. Finally, results suggest that the conservative frame of “liberal media bias” enabled a unique mobilizing effect where negative coverage in the broader media increased mobilization. These findings shed light on the dynamic relationship between movements, protests, and the media, and that of conservative movements in particular.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how college students’ social media use affects their school e-mail avoidance and campus involvement.

The study employed face-to-face interviews and self-administered survey/quantitative data.

Communication and business students are more involved on campus and likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors. Social media and text messages are not the culprits of school e-mail avoidance. University departments, student organizations, and faculty advisors’ e-mails are most likely to be avoided. Social media users can be categorized as either “instant communicators” or “online content curators.” Facebook is the only social media brand conducive to campus involvement.

This study only used one university’s students as sample. In examining school e-mail avoidance, it only focused on the source of e-mail. The study is limited by its sole reliance on quantitative behavioral data.

University administrators and academic advisors need to reconsider the e-mail communication to students, target at the instant communicator social media users, and use Facebook to create a strong sense of community and campus involvement for their students. Marketers can utilize the two social media user groups in selecting social media in targeting to students.

The study offered empirical evidence to explain how social media affect students’ school e-mail avoidance and the role of campus media and specific social media outlet on campus involvement. It advances the knowledge of media choice of students and the social media user groups.

Racism in the United States is complex given the cultural logics that uphold notions of “post-race” or “colorblindness” as a means for understanding racialized events. The various forces at play within media institutions create paradoxes in the power that the media wields in society. Utilizing the concept of “media spectacle” and putting it into dialogue with colorblind racism, the author looks at local coverage of the 2009 arrest of Henry Louis Gates. The author’s primary concern is to identify not only the narratives that uphold or challenge colorblind racism during racialized events, but also the dynamic in which racialized events are mediated in contemporary society. Through a critical discourse analysis of two Boston newspapers, the author demonstrates the way colorblind racism adapts during a racialized event. This study demonstrates the contested nature of the media and nuance to the ways we understand colorblind racism in an increasingly mediated society.

This chapter presents an overview of the Brazilian regional media groups that are characterized by cross-ownership of media outlets in the four main reference platforms for news coverage: daily print, radio, broadcast television, and Web.

The research uses institutional documents to explore the history and operating mode of the groups that own the 50 best-selling newspapers in the country. The theoretical approach is guided by the notion of “spatialization” applied to business communication by Vincent Mosco, and by the concepts of “region,” “regionality,” and “regionalization” based upon authors aligned with the critical thinking approach in the field of geography.

The study identifies the multiple geographical scales at which these groups operate, as well as their dominant business models and the sources of their owners’ capital. Based on this analysis, it argues that the variables which are applied to the large-circulation media at a national level cannot be automatically transferred to the regional and local levels.

The study of regional media reveals a landscape that has not received adequate attention from communications researchers worldwide. It also points to problems which deserve more investigation and elaboration. This represents a new challenge for media studies, for the political economy of communication, and for the nascent field of geography of communication.

This chapter provides a distinctive and nuanced approach to the Brazilian media system. It can inspire other studies on regional communication which take into account the specificities of their geographic scales.