The Choice Gap: The Divergent Online News Preferences of Journalists and Consumers (original) (raw)
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This article examines whether there is a gap between the news choices of mainstream journalists and those of their public. It looks at the choices of both groups in relation to each other and explores whether these choices vary in connection with the occurrence of major political events. The heuristic value of this approach is demonstrated through a mixed-method study of the news choices of journalists and consumers in the main Argentine online sites. A content analysis of the top stories chosen by journalists of that country's two leading sites and the stories that consumers of these sites click most often yields two key results. First, during periods of relatively normal political activity, journalists choose stories about political, international, and economic subjects substantively more than consumers. Second, during periods of heightened political activity, consumers increase their interest in these stories, and the gap with the choices of journalists either disappears or narrows. Furthermore, interviews with journalists and with news consumers show that the presence of this gap during ordinary political times and its change during extraordinary periods are shaped by divergent and dynamic interpretive logics.
An Economic Theory of News Selection
1988
Over the years, journalists, social scientists, and government commissions have defined news in a variety of ways, but their definitions consistently lack the notion that, above all, news is a commodity and must sell. Within the'journalism profession, and particularly in television news, the potential for conflict between a media corporation's interest in maximizing profit and a journalist's obligation to maximize public understanding is rarely acknowledged. Yet the best interest of the corporation in getting the most for its stockholders often conflicts with the best interest of the public in understanding its environment. This pessimistic conclusion about journalism rests on a theory of news as a transaction between an information provider and consumer. An informal cost/benefit analysis based on this theory can be used to develop a model for predicting news content. In this model, where news is seen as a transaction, the probability of an event or item of information being covered by corporate media is inversely proportional to the cost of discovery (what a news corporation expends to learn of events and information) and the cost of assembly (what a corporation expends to create the news account), and is proportional to the anticipated breadth and intensity of its appeal to audiences that advertisers value. The implicaticns of this theory include the suggestion that news corporations are unlikely to accept social responsibilities that conflict with business interests. (Fifty-four references are listed.) (MM)
Consumers, News, and a History of Change
The SAGE Handbook of Web History, 2019
As we near the third decade of the Web, attention is needed on the integral impact of the Web’s historical development on a range of social, cultural, economic, and political facets of society. The influence of the history of the Web is particularly significant with regard to the ways that humans connect, share, and communicate. In this context, the impact has been deeply evident in the trans- formation of consumption within the news industry. In essence, a history of news media has quickly become a history of the Web. As such, this chapter provides a comprehensive review of Web history as related specifically to the news media industry. The chapter focuses on Web history and the context of news media in the United States from 1990 through 2015. Specifically, the scope covers a history of change on the Web and related impacts with regards to the ways in which consumers engage with the news media eco- system. Emphasis is placed on production, distribution, and consumption patterns related to print news media and key legacy broadcast news media. In doing so, this chap- ter examines the ways that consumers access news and information by mapping out the changes in consumer behavior with regard to Web history and access to news. A key point throughout this chapter is the notion that many present-day changes in news media consumption can be traced back to historical changes in news media content on the Web, thus providing a window into best practices for future adaptation.
News selection criteria in the digital age: Professional norms versus online audience metrics
Journalism, 2015
On newspaper websites, journalists can observe the preferences of the audience in unprecedented detail and for low costs, based on the audience clicks (i.e. page views) for specific news articles. This article addresses whether journalists use this information to cater to audience preferences in their news selection choices. We analyzed the print and online editions of five national newspapers from the Netherlands with a mixed-method approach. Using a cross-lagged analysis covering 6 months, we found that storylines of the most-viewed articles were more likely to receive attention in subsequent reporting, which indicates that audience clicks affect news selection. However, based on interviews with editors we found that they consider the use of
News organizations’ challenges in the digital environment are typically portrayed as the result of their inability to harvest sufficient revenue from advertising or subscriptions and this is often characterized as a form of market failure justifying public intervention. This presentation argues that the fundamental problem is not financial, but related to news as a product itself. The conceptualization of what constitutes news and how it should be structured and presented is skewed by legacy news products that have been steadily losing customers for decades. The presentation argues that that much of what was valuable to legacy media in the past no longer produces value today, that news is not equally valuable to all consumers, and that news organizations must rethink what news they produce, how it is produced and delivered, and what types of relationships they will have with customers in the digital age.
Consumer Demand for Cynical and Negative News Frames
Commentators regularly lament the proliferation of both negative and/or strategic ("horse race") coverage in political news content. The most frequent account for this trend focuses on news norms and/or the priorities of news journalists. Here, we build on recent work arguing for the importance of demand-side, rather than supply-side, explanations of news content. In short, news may be negative and/or strategy-focused because that is the kind of news that people are interested in. We use a lab study to capture participants' news-selection biases, alongside a survey capturing their stated news preferences. Politically interested participants are more likely to select negative stories. Interest is associated with a greater preference for strategic frames as well. And results suggest that behavioral results do not conform to attitudinal ones. That is, regardless of what participants say, they exhibit a preference for negative news content.
Broken News: Market Segmentation and Selective Exposure in Online News
2013
I wholeheartedly thank my dissertation committee for taking the time to assist me by providing constructive criticism, helpful suggestions, and keen attention to detail in all phases of the research and revision process. Your expertise and interests in the content areas related to my research were the reasons I sought each of you out to serve on my committee, and I am so grateful that each of you agreed to serve. Dr. Ann Creighton-Zollar, thank you for your feedback on the digital divide project I did in your sociology seminar which was the impetus for this study. Dr. Judy VanSlyke-Turk, thank you for your help as I developed my proposal and literature review for this dissertation. Dr.