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1 – 10 of 51This research analyzes the alignment of story framing between Samarco and news media following the dam disaster in Minas Gerais in November 2015. Drawing on framing theory as the…
Abstract
This research analyzes the alignment of story framing between Samarco and news media following the dam disaster in Minas Gerais in November 2015. Drawing on framing theory as the underlying impetus, the study seeks to answer five major questions: RQ1: How did Samarco frame the mining tragedy in the aftermath of the dam collapse? RQ2: How did the news media frame the mining tragedy in the aftermath of the dam collapse? RQ3: Did the frames presented by Samarco and news media coincide? RQ4: Did the frames presented by Samarco and news media contradict? RQ5: What can be observed about the information flow and interaction between news media and the general public on social media? From a methods perspective, the study uses comparative textual analysis and NodeXL social network visualization to analyze the discourse around Samarco and information flow on social media in the aftermath of the tragedy. The results show that, while some social media content served as a forum for expressions of empathy toward survivors, social media content on Twitter mostly delivered a one-sided and positive view of the firm’s actions.
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Afshin Omidi, Cinzia Dal Zotto and Robert G. Picard
Tracing audience preferences via audience analytics software has become a vital strategy for many news organizations to ensure their competitiveness in media markets. Extant…
Abstract
Purpose
Tracing audience preferences via audience analytics software has become a vital strategy for many news organizations to ensure their competitiveness in media markets. Extant research also confirms the growing presence of these tools in digital news work in recent years across many local and international news media. However, little is understood about the analytics-driven tensions emerging among journalists and media managers. This paper aims to address this gap by drawing on the labor process theory, which critically analyzes labor and workplace transformations under capitalism.
Design/methodology/approach
The present study employs an interview-based qualitative methodology to deeply understand the factors at the base of the emerging tensions between news workers and managers brought about by audience metrics tools.
Findings
Results show how some perceptions, activities and contextual triggers related to analytics could make relationships between workers and managers problematic. The pressures felt by some journalists stemmed from the way their media managers introduced, interpreted, communicated and applied analytics in the workplace, which were not tied to the quality and learning goals related to journalists’ aspirations. As our evidence suggests, the analytics-induced tensions among news workers were rather an outcome of managerial deficits than of systematic plans to exploit journalists.
Originality/value
By identifying the nature of fundamental analytics-driven tensions in newsrooms, this paper contributes to our understanding of how media managers can embrace more effective approaches toward audience analytics, workforce and organizational performance.
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Michelle Janning, Tate Kautzky and Michelle Zhang
This content analysis of 62 local news stories from seven US locations published between March 1 and June 30, 2020, reveals how the migration of seasonal residents and short-term…
Abstract
This content analysis of 62 local news stories from seven US locations published between March 1 and June 30, 2020, reveals how the migration of seasonal residents and short-term renters into leisure and nature-focused amenity-rich settings during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the social meaning of home for year-round and seasonal or part-time residents. Four themes emerge relating to (a) local economies; (b) health and safety; (c) local government; and (d) insiders and outsiders. These themes are connected to each other in the larger explanatory story of second home real estate morality projects, defined as dilemmas, deliberations, and conflicting considerations made by individual and group stakeholders in the evaluation of acquisition, use, meaning, and dispossession of properties meant for residential use beyond the primary residence. Findings reveal that moral considerations of deservedness and citizenship among local residents and short-term residents are framed as deep and incompatible concerns surrounding economic stability and public health. This COVID-19-induced moral framing of the interplay between economic, health, and social concerns is situated in a cultural-relational analysis of marketplaces, using Viviana Zelizer’s (2005) “connected lives” approach to understanding how everyday economic interactions among and within families and neighborhoods are imbued with social and cultural meaning even in a time of crisis.
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Dilawar Ali, Kenzo Milleville, Steven Verstockt, Nico Van de Weghe, Sally Chambers and Julie M. Birkholz
Historical newspaper collections provide a wealth of information about the past. Although the digitization of these collections significantly improves their accessibility, a large…
Abstract
Purpose
Historical newspaper collections provide a wealth of information about the past. Although the digitization of these collections significantly improves their accessibility, a large portion of digitized historical newspaper collections, such as those of KBR, the Royal Library of Belgium, are not yet searchable at article-level. However, recent developments in AI-based research methods, such as document layout analysis, have the potential for further enriching the metadata to improve the searchability of these historical newspaper collections. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issue.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors explore how existing computer vision and machine learning approaches can be used to improve access to digitized historical newspapers. To do this, the authors propose a workflow, using computer vision and machine learning approaches to (1) provide article-level access to digitized historical newspaper collections using document layout analysis, (2) extract specific types of articles (e.g. feuilletons – literary supplements from Le Peuple from 1938), (3) conduct image similarity analysis using (un)supervised classification methods and (4) perform named entity recognition (NER) to link the extracted information to open data.
Findings
The results show that the proposed workflow improves the accessibility and searchability of digitized historical newspapers, and also contributes to the building of corpora for digital humanities research. The AI-based methods enable automatic extraction of feuilletons, clustering of similar images and dynamic linking of related articles.
Originality/value
The proposed workflow enables automatic extraction of articles, including detection of a specific type of article, such as a feuilleton or literary supplement. This is particularly valuable for humanities researchers as it improves the searchability of these collections and enables corpora to be built around specific themes. Article-level access to, and improved searchability of, KBR's digitized newspapers are demonstrated through the online tool (https://tw06v072.ugent.be/kbr/).
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To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian…
Abstract
Purpose
To elaborate the nature of fact-checking in the domain of political information by examining how fact-checkers assess the validity of claims concerning the Russo-Ukrainian conflict and how they support their assessments by drawing on evidence acquired from diverse sources of information.
Design/methodology/approach
Descriptive quantitative and qualitative content analysis of 128 reports written by the fact-checkers of Snopes – an established fact-checking organisation – during the period of 24 February 2022 – 28 June, 2023. For the analysis, nine evaluation grounds were identified, most of them inductively from the empirical material. It was examined how the fact-checkers employed such grounds while assessing the validity of claims and how the assessments were bolstered by evidence acquired from information sources such as newspapers.
Findings
Of the 128 reports, the share of assessments indicative of the invalidity of the claims was 54.7%, while the share of positive ratings was 26.7%. The share of mixed assessments was 15.6%. In the fact-checking, two evaluation grounds, that is, the correctness of information and verifiability of an event presented in a claim formed the basis for the assessment. Depending on the topic of the claim, grounds such as temporal and spatial compatibility, as well as comparison by similarity and difference occupied a central role. Most popular sources of information offering evidence for the assessments include statements of government representatives, videos and photographs shared in social media, newspapers and television programmes.
Research limitations/implications
As the study concentrated on fact-checking dealing with political information about a specific issue, the findings cannot be extended to concern the fact-checking practices in other contexts.
Originality/value
The study is among the first to characterise how fact-checkers employ evaluation grounds of diverse kind while assessing the validity of political information.
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John Thomas Flynn and Lloyd Levine
A quick search of the headlines of major newspapers reveals a treasure trove of technology procurement gone wrong. While the private sector seems to adopt and implement new…
Abstract
A quick search of the headlines of major newspapers reveals a treasure trove of technology procurement gone wrong. While the private sector seems to adopt and implement new technology seamlessly and quickly to deliver for customers, the government struggles to accomplish technology purchases and integrations with the same ease. As governments in the United States are looking to retain their current workforce and attract the next generation of workers, the technological capabilities and ethos of governments will be paramount. With nearly every industry being transformed by technology and Generation T being the first generation to have an ingrained “technology first” mindset, the ability of governments to attract these workers depends, in large part, on the ability to transform their government technology culture, policies, and practices.
In this chapter, the authors examine the administrative branch and observe two key components at the root of most technology failures: poor organizational structure in the bureaucracy and the lack of an empowered Chief Information/Technology Officer. Building upon case studies from Massachusetts and California, this chapter looks at the factors related to failure or success to understand the technology procurement culture. The chapter concludes by presenting four key “best practice” principles of public policy and administration that can be implemented by almost any governmental entity to improve their acquisition and implementation of technology.
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Emily Howell, Koti Hubbard, Sandra Linder, Stephanie Madison, Joseph Ryan and William C. Bridges
This study investigates the following research question: What pedagogical strategies are necessary for the success of HyFlex course design? The findings to this question are based…
Abstract
Purpose
This study investigates the following research question: What pedagogical strategies are necessary for the success of HyFlex course design? The findings to this question are based in new media literacies and help to further pedagogy in an emerging HyFlex model while also grounding in needed theorization.
Design/methodology/approach
This study uses design-based research (DBR) across two iterations and four doctoral, higher education courses, using mixed methods of data collection and analysis.
Findings
Six pedagogical strategies influential for HyFlex research are presented, each grounded in a new media literacy skill.
Originality/value
These six pedagogical strategies help practitioners grappling with the HyFlex or blended learning model merge traditional pedagogy with how this might be tailored for students entrenched in a participatory culture.
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Anat Toder Alon and Hila Tahar
This study aims to investigate how message sidedness affects the impact of fake news posted on social media on consumers' emotional responses.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to investigate how message sidedness affects the impact of fake news posted on social media on consumers' emotional responses.
Design/methodology/approach
The study involves a face-tracking experiment in which 198 participants were exposed to different fake news messages concerning the COVID-19 vaccine. Specifically, participants were exposed to fake news using (1) a one-sided negative fake news message in which the message was entirely unfavorable and (2) a two-sided fake news message in which the negative message was mixed with favorable information. Noldus FaceReader 7, an automatic facial expression recognition system, was used to recognize participants' emotions as they read fake news. The authors sampled 17,450 observations of participants' emotional responses.
Findings
The results provide evidence of the significant influence of message sidedness on consumers' emotional valence and arousal. Specifically, two-sided fake news positively influences emotional valence, while one-sided fake news positively influences emotional arousal.
Originality/value
The current study demonstrates that research on fake news posted on social media may particularly benefit from insights regarding the potential but often overlooked importance of strategic design choices in fake news messages and their impact on consumers' emotional responses.
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María Teresa Macarrón Máñez, Antonia Moreno Cano and Fernando Díez
The pandemic has enhanced the global phenomenon of disinformation. This paper aims to study the false news concerning COVID-19, spread through social media in Spain, by using the…
Abstract
Purpose
The pandemic has enhanced the global phenomenon of disinformation. This paper aims to study the false news concerning COVID-19, spread through social media in Spain, by using the LatamChequea database for a duration from 01/22/2020, when the first false information has been detected, up to 03/09/2021.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative analysis has been conducted with regard to the correlation between fake news stories and the pandemic state, the motive to share them, their dissemination in other countries and the effectiveness of fact checking. This study is complemented by a qualitative method: a focus group conducted with representatives of different groups within the society.
Findings
Fake news has been primarily disseminated through several social networks at the same time, with two peaks taking place in over a half of the said false stories. The first took place from March to April of 2020 during complete lockdown, and we were informed of prevention measures, the country’s situation and the origin of the virus, whereas the second was related to news revolving around the coming vaccines, which occurred between October and November. The audience tends to neither cross-check the information received nor report fake news to competent authorities, and fact-checking methods fail to stop their spread. Further awareness and digital literacy campaigns are thus required in addition to more involvement from governments and technological platforms.
Research limitations/implications
The main limitation of the research is the fact that it was only possible to conduct a focus group of five individuals who do not belong to generation Z due to the restrictions imposed by the pandemic, although a clear contribution to the analysis of the impact of fake news on social networks during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain can be seen from the privileged experiences in each of the fields of work that were identified. In this sense, the results of the study are not generalizable to a larger population. On the other hand, and with a view to future research, it would be advisable to carry out a more specific study of how fake news affects generation Z.
Originality/value
This research is original in nature, and the findings of this study are valuable for business practitioners and scholars, brand marketers, social media platform owners, opinion leaders and policymakers.
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Farhad Nazir, Norberto Santos and Luís Silveira
This paper aims to discern the potential dimensions amid the duality of heritage tourism and peace. Reflecting on the phases of destruction and rebuilding of Seated Buddha of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to discern the potential dimensions amid the duality of heritage tourism and peace. Reflecting on the phases of destruction and rebuilding of Seated Buddha of Jahanabad, this study used the content analysis of 40 news sources, to unravel the resultant avenues of heritage tourism and peace.
Design/methodology/approach
Following the qualitative research strategy, the interface of NVivo 12 has been used to transcribe the textual and visual content of media news. The media news aired on the incident of destruction phase in 2007, and rebuilding drive in 2012–2016 were the two sets of collected data. A hierarchy of thematic analysis was adopted to identify nodes, subthemes and themes.
Findings
Findings of this study highlighted six themes: peaceful imagery, PI; heritage dissonance, HD, vs interfaith harmony, IH; peace allegory through restoration, PAR; precursor of heritage sustainability, PHS; community heritage consonance, CHC; and heritage touristic valuation, HTV.
Research limitations/implications
This study lacks statistical data of the quantitative research domain. Aimed at a single heritage site, it analyzed limited number of news sources.
Practical implications
This study offers implications for industrial, theoretical, managerial and governmental stakeholders in their respective domains. Moreover, it also provides takeouts for common readers.
Originality/value
This study contends a significant research issue and analyzes the destruction and rebuilding of a heritage site in a developing country. Primarily in the sociogeographic context of the research issue, the resultant dimensions are novel and demanding.
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