Week 9 : Production of news & practice of journalism & environnemental communication

Question 1

What is a convention ?

Answer 1

Convention:
“A practice or technique widely used in a field”

Conventions are not arbitrary but are the result of routines

Question 2

Where do journalists find news ?

Answer 2

News net, news beats and news round

Question 3

What is a news beat ?

Answer 3

Beats are a
“regularly covered geographic or specialized area also known as a ‘specialities’, ‘specialisms’ or patches.` (Zelizer & Allan 2010)

Question 4

What is a news round ?

Answer 4

News rounds are:
“a process by which beat reporters develop schedules for visiting locations and talking to sources that are likely to produce news” (Croteau, Hoynes & Milan 2011)

Question 5

How can news be define ?

Answer 5

News values can be defined as:

“a system of criteria which are used to make decisions about the inclusion and exclusion of material’ and about what should be emphasised in the selected news stories” (Palmer, 2000)

Or

“The set of priorities that form the basis of decisions made by news organizations about the selection, positioning and construction of stories” (Hodkinson, 2011: 294)

Question 6

Johan Galtung & Mari Holmboe Ruge : How do events become news ?

Answer 6

Assumption:
The consideration of an event is culturally determined
Intuitively they identified (deduced) 12 factors as being important in the selection of news.

Question 7

What is the radio metaphor ?

Answer 7

Compare set of world events with the cacaphony of sounds on old fashioned radio receiver

Sounds only may become meaningful if one station is tuned in and listened to

Depends on: frequency, strength, clearness, unambiguousness, meaningfulness, mental consonance, unexpectedness …

(Galtung & Ruge, 1965: 65)

Question 8

Under what condition events can become news ?

Answer 8

IMPACT
Threshold 
Frequency
Negativity
Unexpectedness
Unambiguity 
AUDIENCE IDENTIFICATION
Personalisation
Meaningfulness
Reference to elite nations
Reference to elite persons
PRAGMATICS OF MEDIA COVERAGE
Consonance
Continuity
Composition

Question 9

How is the production of news organized ?

Answer 9

The production of news is organized by journalistic conventions and routines.

These routines structure what can become news

Equally, news values influence can is reported as news and how something is reported

Question 10

What did Galtung & Ruge do ?

Answer 10

Galtung & Ruge were amongst the first academics to identify news values; they identified 12 of them in three groups; these values continue to be refined by academics
Significance rests in how they shape and influence what is news

Question 11

What is the agenda setting theory ?

Answer 11

Discussed in this week’s seminal article McCombs and Shaw (1972) and in briefly in Laughey (2010):

Defined as:
An “effects” approach that shows how media influence the agenda of public issues around which political campaigns and other matters of public interest are established. (Laughey 2010, p. 199)

Question 12

What does the agenda theory argue ?

Answer 12

The theory reaffirmed the power of the media without necessarily accusing audiences of being passive dupes.

Audiences still believe that their judgement of the coverage is based on their own individual opinion.

The theory predicted a match between the media’s agenda and the public’s agenda.

Question 13

What do the media do to us ?

Answer 13

The media do not tell us what to think, they tell us what to think about.

Question 14

What are the four aspects that influence agenda setting ?

Answer 14

Four aspects deemed to influence agenda setting:

1) Frequency of repetition
2) Prominence of display
3) Degree of conflict
 4) Framing of an item

(McCombs and Gilbert 1986 in Laughey 2010: 22)

Question 15

What are the critique of the Agenda theory ?

Answer 15

Initially posed a critique of Agenda Setting:
News editors or “gatekeepers.”
Politicians and their spin doctors.
Public relations professionals.
Interest groups

Question 16

Agenda theory : Whose agenda ?

Answer 16

Media Agenda 
Public Agenda 
Policy Agenda
Corporate Agenda
These four are interrelated.

Question 17

What is good about agenda-setting theory?

Answer 17

It tells us how or why we come to prioritise the same issues as important.
It can predict correlation between coverage and public opinion
Empirical studies based on this theory can serve as basis for more research on political communication and public opinion

Question 18

Who is Most Affected by Media’s Agenda?

Answer 18

Those with a need for orientation
Relevance
Uncertainty

Question 19

What are the critiques for the Media Agenda theory ?

Answer 19

Audiences may react differently according to their degree of knowledge
Audiences can be very selective in their attention:
They may pay attention to certain topics and ignoring others
Some people may have formed their own opinion, e.g. re elections, and the coverage will not change this.
Does not deal much with presentational factors
Does not deal with competing agendas
Too much emphasis on the “gatekeepers”
Journalists may not be primary agenda setters

Question 20

Summary of agenda settings

Answer 20

Media may not only tell us what to think about, they may also tell us how and what to think about it, and perhaps even what to do about it

Media may also affect behavior, for example, influencing sentiment about the economy, about travel etc.

Question 21

How are agenda constructed ?

Answer 21

Evidence on media agenda setting suggests agendas are constructed as

A joint product between prominent sources and journalists;
Between prominent media and other media; and
According to the norms and traditions of journalism in a certain culture or country.