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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.

This study aims to explore multifaceted corporate social responsibility (CSR) covered in popular English newspapers in the UK, USA, mainland China and Hong Kong from 2000 to 2016 via a computer-assisted analytical approach. This study moves the understanding of CSR away from corporate self-reporting to the mass media and raises interesting questions about the role of the news media in presenting CSR as a multifaceted, socially constructed concept.

Data were retrieved from CSR-related news articles from 2000 to 2016 that were archived in the LexisNexis database. Guided by the theoretical framework of agenda setting, a computer-assisted content analysis (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) was used to analyze 4,487 CSR-related articles from both business and non-business news sources. Analysis of variance was used to compare salient CSR topics in each country/region.

This study identifies newspapers as an alternate to corporations’ attempts to distribute CSR information and construct CSR meaning. The findings revealed that the news communicates a variety of CSR issues that are aligned or beyond what CSR was defined in corporate CSR reporting, as suggested in previous studies. In addition, CSR news coverages differ between the business and nonbusiness news sources. Furthermore, the media tone of CSR coverage significantly differed across the regions and between the business and nonbusiness newspapers.

Emerging topics in CSR news coverage, such as business education, could help companies identify untapped CSR realms in the market.

This study contributes to CSR communication research by adding a non-corporate perspective regarding what CSR means and should be focused on. The news media presents CSR using a heterogeneous approach as they not only provide surface reports on corporations’ CSR activities but also offer in-depth discussions.

The purpose of this study is to investigate whether news media as a form of social communication regarding pressing, important, and contemporary issues could be used as a leading indicator of technology adoption. For technology foresight, monitoring and analyzing energy technologies is in the spotlight due to their strategic importance to the agenda of competitive and sustainable economic growth.

The trends in renewable energy production and news media are determined and compared to draw inferences in foresight concerning the use of renewable energy technologies in energy production. Consequently, the data concern wind and solar energy production and their representation in news media in Germany and the UK. The analysis proceeds as a quasi-experiment treating each yearly observation of energy production as a function of news media data with lagged variables.

The study reveals consistent dynamics in the lag in the primary production of energy in related technologies compared to the media visibility of the respective technologies.

This study explores the prospects of using news media data in foresight analysis concerning renewable energy production and provides many fruitful avenues for foresight research in investigating relationships between technology adoption and media exposure.

This study aims to understand how media content and media sentiment in corporate social responsibility (CSR) news coverage affect investment performance, as reflected in the S&P 500 Environmental and Socially Responsible Index from 2010 to 2016.

Computer-assisted content analysis and sentiment analysis are employed to analyze 818 CSR-related newspaper articles from mainstream newspapers. Autoregressive model is used to comprehend socially responsible investment (SRI) performance.

This study reveals the impact of media content and media sentiment of CSR-related news articles on SRI. The authors’ findings indicate that such topics as recognition of a company's CSR contributions in CSR-related news articles are positively associated with SRI performance, whereas topics such as tax avoidance and environmental protection show a negative relationship with SRI performance. In addition, this study contributes to the authors’ understanding of framing bias in investment by confirming a significant positive association between an uncertain or constraining media sentiment and SRI performance, as well as a negative relationship between a litigious sentiment and SRI performance.

There has been limited attention to examining the effect of media coverage of CSR on the financial market. Since SRI is one of the most useful financial indices for SRIs, it is meaningful to explore the relationship between media coverage of CSR and SRI. To fill the research gap, this study specifically examines how media coverage of CSR-related issues is associated with SRI performance.

This study aims to examine the impact of news frames associated with traditional media and with Twitter discourse on social issues.

Using semantic network analysis, it identifies the role of new alternative channels as well as discussing ways of understanding and consuming news content in the changing media environment. Additionally, it focuses on the dominant Twitter communicators who rank high in betweenness centrality.

The results confirmed that traditional news media tend to superficially describe main events and media strikes without comment. They tended to consciously or unconsciously favor media corporations by engendering anxiety and conflict or by restraining reports on the rationales of the strike. Twitter discourse, on the contrary, positively represents the striker's arguments and frequently reveals support of the strike.

The data set of this study was specialized, not generalized. However, the findings extend literature relating to the role of journalism and alternative channel. For example, this study indicated that the change of media environment has reinforced partiality of news, including both traditional and alternative channels.

The findings imply that the advent of new media does not purely represent a laymen's voice and rather tends to strengthen the partiality of media, including both traditional and new media, beyond selective exposure on content of the receiver.

By clarifying the influence of alternative channels, this study suggests the counterpart of traditional journalism in the near future.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate whether or not public relations efforts in corporate social responsibility (CSR) influence the news media in corporate crisis situations.

The study conducted a content analysis of press releases and news media based on traditional human-coded cross-lag analyses and a machine learning technique, a novel method of big data analysis to test hypotheses.

Results indicate that CSR press releases indeed influenced the news media. During the crisis point, however, agenda-building was not observed.

Corporations need to continue CSR activities and provide public relations materials consistently even after a crisis, as an agenda-building role could be recovered.

The study examines the relationship between CSR and crisis situations in an agenda-building theoretical framework. The authors introduce agenda-building in the corporate sector with machine learning techniques.

This paper is an investigation of the volume, nature and tone of news media coverage of the federal Lifeline Program from its inception to 2018. It aims to examine whether news media coverage is correlated with significant episodes of reform in the program.

Using the ProQuest Major Dailies database, articles covering the “Lifeline Program” were analyzed. Specifically, a quantitative codebook was developed, based on the literature, and four coders were trained to systematically analyze the 124 articles that discussed the program between 1985 and 2018.

The findings suggest that reforms in the program were preceded by significantly higher volumes of media coverage; however, the analysis is unable to confirm that negative media coverage has a stronger agenda setting effect. In addition, no significant difference was found between positive and negative news stories in their use of research-based information.

This study is interdisciplinary in its ability to combine policy and journalism studies as a mechanism to understand the relationship between the two forces.

This paper aims to explore the extent to which global reporting initiative (GRI) standards reflect the material concerns of stakeholders in developing countries, with particular reference to Latin America.

The main dataset was a sample of 120 media articles that discussed corporate conduct related to COVID-19 from both developing (Chile, Mexico and Peru) and developed (Australia, UK and the USA) countries. Concerns evident from those articles were compared and then mapped to applicable GRI standards to identify relevant disclosures and gaps. Findings were triangulated by drawing on two additional datasets: Latin American GRI-related academic literature (in Spanish) and submissions to GRI standards.

Media analysis reveals significant differences between developing and developed country concerns, as well as gaps in GRI disclosure requirements in relation to customers, labour standards and corporate interactions with non-government organisations and governments. Analysis of Latin American literature corroborates the concerns raised in media articles regarding employment. Additionally, it points out country-specific issues and calls for increased reporting of corruption. Analysis of the GRI standards development process reveals marked underrepresentation of developing countries, which may contribute to the observed deficiencies in the GRI standards.

This paper contributes to the (surprisingly rare) research concerning the quality of GRI standards and responds to calls for greater attention to developing countries in the SEA literature by showing that GRI standards may not fully meet the needs of users in the developing country context of Latin America. The paper also contributes to practice via specific recommendations for improvement to GRI standards and the standard-setting process and provides a summary of the key findings from Spanish-language Latin American literature.

The purpose of this study explores the effects that media coverage of corporate social responsibility (CSR) news related to primary stakeholders (e.g. customers, employees and investors) and secondary stakeholders (e.g. community) have on the market value of companies, measured as the impact generated in the positive and negative abnormal returns for those companies.

Using a sample of 195 online papers published in the most important Spanish business newspaper during 2015, the authors implement an event study and a regression analysis that confirm the importance of CSR news for corporate financial goals.

The findings show that negative CSR news related to primary stakeholders such as investors and customers generate significant abnormal returns for companies that are notably larger than the abnormal returns generated by secondary stakeholders (e.g. community). Similarly, positive news related to primary stakeholders such as employees are the only positive news that affect market reactions significantly.

The study provides an empirical analysis that clarifies how media coverage of different types of CSR news affect the market value of companies. In doing so, the paper contributes to previous literature significantly because scant research exists that has compared the differential effects of CSR news focused on primary and secondary stakeholders. The findings are discussed under the premises of the managerial perspective of stakeholder theory.