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This chapter interrogates the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on print newspaper industry in Zimbabwe. COVID-19 affected the global economy due to various lockdowns and travel restrictions imposed by governments in attempt to stop the spread of the virus. This severely affected media houses, especially newspaper companies that depended on sales as their potential customers stayed home. The pandemic came against the backdrop of constant changes affecting the print media industry. Digitalisation and the resultant fragmentation of the audiences affect the way audiences consume media products. Against this milieu, this chapter investigates how these changes affected or shielded media houses from the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Two leading newspaper companies in Zimbabwe, Alpha Media Holdings and Zimbabwe Newspapers Group (1980) Ltd are used as case studies. The chapter deploys both the critical tradition to the study of media economics (political economy of the media) and the theory of the firm to argue that the traditional economic model of depending on casual sales for survival is outdated. The chapter documents the adverse effects of the pandemic on journalism practice highlighting how the impact was more pronounced in the privately owned newspaper companies than in government-controlled ones.

Purpose: This study is concerned with media representation of crime in the Israeli press. It examines the pattern of offenses reported in two daily newspapers of seemingly different characteristics, the “elitist” Haaretz and the “popular” Israel Hayom. Methodology/approach: Crime reports appeared in the news pages during November 2016 were content analyzed in both newspapers by using a coding scheme, which operationalized several variables relating to type of crime, characteristics of offenders and victims, and court proceedings. Findings: Violent and sex offenses featured disproportionately in the news reports in both newspapers, while conventional property offenses were under-reported relative to their prevalence in official crime statistics. In terms of the characteristics of offenders and victims, the vast majority of offenders portrayed in crime stories were adult Jewish males. Women were more likely to appear as victims of crime rather than perpetrators, and more likely to appear as victims of sex offenses rather than other offenses. Research limitations: This study was based on an analysis of crime stories which appeared in two newspapers during one-month period of time. Future research should extend the sample size and collect data from a longer period of time and from additional media outlets. Originality/value: Media coverage of crime stories has not yet been researched in Israel. Beyond the interest in the Israeli case or the potential contribution to comparative global knowledge, the value of the study may lie in expanding the lens of scholarship of media’s construction of crime.

Purpose: One of the objectives of this research was to identify whether “mad”, “bad” and “sad” frames, identified in modern news reporting in other Western nations, are also evident in historical newspapers in New Zealand, a nation geographically distant. Methodology/approach: Qualitative content analysis was used to analyze reporting of multiple-child murders in New Zealand between 1870 and 1930. Content was sourced from a digitized newspaper database and identified media frames were analyzed under the categories of “mad”, “bad” and “sad”. Findings: Historical New Zealand media constructed “mad,” “bad,” and “sad” frames for the killers, however, instead of being classified with a single frame many killers were portrayed using a combination of two or even three. In some cases, media ignored facts which could have provided an alternative portrayal of the killers. In other cases, no obvious frames were employed. Research limitations: This research does not include analysis of media frame building in modern news reporting. Originality/value: Media construction of frames for multiple-child killers in historical New Zealand news reporting has not been explored before.

This paper discusses data-collection strategies that use digitized historical newspaper archives to study social conflicts and social movements from a global and historical perspective focusing on nationalist movements. I present an analysis of State-Seeking Nationalist Movements (SSNMs) dataset I, which includes news articles reporting on state-seeking activities throughout the world from 1804 to 2013 using the New York Times and the Guardian/Observer. In discussing this new source of data and its relative value, I explain the various benefits and challenges involved with using digitized historical newspaper archives for world-historical analysis of social movements. I also introduce strategies that can be used to detect and minimize some potential sources of bias. I demonstrate the utility of the strategies introduced in this paper by assessing the reliability of the SSNM dataset I and by comparing it to alternative datasets. The analysis presented in the paper also compares the labor-intensive manual data-coding strategies to automated approaches. In doing so, it explains why labor-intensive manual coding strategies will continue to be an invaluable tool for world-historical sociologists in a world of big data.

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.

COVID-19 affected all global activities. The print media industry was one of the affected fields. This research investigates the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 brought to the Ethiopian newspapers. Political Economy of Media theory is used to analyse data obtained from documents and in-depth interviews with managers of two leading media houses; the government-owned Ethiopian Press Agency (EPA) and the private Capital newspaper. The findings show that print media faced two key challenges. First, their circulation decreased due to the COVID-19 as a result of the economic recession. This was compounded by the second challenge, based on the fact that not only don’t these newspapers own printers, they also lack a established formal distribution infrastructure. As a result, they still had to pay highly for printing while selling copies at a reduced price. However, media hybridisation, innovative projects, and sponsored pages helped the newspapers stay on the market. This study recommends that newspaper publishers run their printing machines, expand the media technology, change the attitude of print journalists, and capacitate them to utilise media hybridisation as important solutions.