Hypermediating Journalistic Authority: the case of Ethiopian private media

This study, situated at the nexus between journalism, technology and society, focuses on the mediation of authority in the hypertextual environment. It explored the technology- journalism relationship as deployed in the Ethiopian media context where the private press is marginalized from access to official information. This particular context is important to examine the deployment of hyperlinks not only as a natural adoption but as a survival mechanism as well as a locus of meaning where authority is mediated in linking strategies. As such, the study selected two private news sites in this media landscape, Addis Standard and Ethiopia Observer, based on their frequent use of hyperlinks in their news reporting. With a critical approach drawing upon qualitative and quantitative social semiotics, the study conducted a multi-stage analysis following the links trajectory, navigational pathways, link precision, link destination and authorship. Data was collected over two periods to examine the interplay of the socio-political context in hyperlinking strategies; three months of initial data and six months of the ongoing Tigray war. Though the general linking patterns, such as total number of links, showed big gaps over the two periods, a notable rise for Addis Standard and a dramatic decline for Ethiopia Observer, in contrast to the global trend, both prioritized external linking. As the study progressed, in addition to the differential utilization of hyperlinks between the two news sites as a reflection of their status in the society, the study also revealed customization of use attuned to material realities. With a relatively strong presence in the Ethiopian media landscape and better access to sources and events, AS uses a notable proportion of its hyperlinking to call attention to its original reports while EO, a diasporic outlet frequently uses external linking to fulfill its information needs. Hyperlinking is also used by AS to show professional interventions in recycled stories for contextualization. Despite the methodological constraints of the study due to different external factors, the study showed the potential of hyperlinking strategies to shape the content of news. This was demonstrated by how EO gravitated toward government outlets in the second dataset establishing the “law enforcement operations” narrative of the government over that of the atrocities against civilians reported by popular international outlets who extensively reported the war

The Chinese Approach To Web Journalism: A Comparative Analysis

This thesis explores the distinctive forms of journalism that have emerged in mainstream news websites in mainland China. Two case studies, the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games and the H1N1 influenza pandemic in 2009, are employed to identify features in Chinese and Western news online. Specifically, a comparison is made between the in-depth news sections of popular mainstream news websites in China and those in the United States, the United Kingdom, and New Zealand. The study finds that the Chinese version of mainstream web news genre differs significantly from the Western version. This thesis argues that journalists’ practice is strongly context dependent. Distinctive economic, organizational, social and cultural factors contribute to shaping Chinese web journalism in a way that contradicts the notion of a homogeneous worldwide journalism or of a single set of norms for journalism. The study challenges the dominance of the political explanatory framework that considers political factors as the most important approach to study Chinese web-based media. In the face of a sparse literature and sporadic studies concerning the development of the internet as a novel platform in China for news production and transmission, this thesis aims to bring more academic interest to an overlooked research area and to contribute to a broader understanding of the actual diversity of global communication research