Does it lead if it bleeds? An analysis of Toronto newspapers and their coverage of trauma-related events

This thesis explores the ongoing perception of news media as an outlet that is fixated on sex, death and violence, through an analysis of three GTA newspapers. I argue that despite this consistent perception and the more recent push to online news media, trauma-related news stories do not dominate the news media landscape. A quantitative method was used to analyze the three newspapers to determine the actual percentage of trauma-related news stories in each of the newspapers and their online counterparts. Scholarship in the areas of news values, sensationalism and tabloidization, and the negativity bias also informed this thesis. The results of the research indicated that the percentage of trauma-related news stories was significantly lower than that of the percentage of overall news stories. However, secondary results indicate a difference in the types of trauma-related news stories between tabloid newspapers and broadsheet newspapers. The primary conclusion of this thesis is that the perception of news media needs to be reconsidered as the data does not support the existing perception

The News Media’s Influence on Criminal Justice Policy: How Market Driven News Promotes Punitiveness

This Article argues that commercial pressures are determining the news media\u27s contemporary treatment of crime and violence, and that the resulting coverage has played a major role in reshaping public opinion, and ultimately, criminal justice policy. The news media are not mirrors, simply reflecting events in society. Rather, media content is shaped by economic and marketing considerations that frequently override traditional journalistic criteria for newsworthiness. This Article explores local and national television\u27s treatment of crime, where the extent and style of news stories about crime are being adjusted to meet perceived viewer demand and advertising strategies, which frequently emphasize particular demographic groups with a taste for violence. Newspapers also reflect a market-driven reshaping of style and content, resulting in a continuing emphasis on crime stories as a cost-effective means to grab readers\u27 attention. This has all occurred despite more than a decade of sharply falling crime rates. The Article also explores the accumulating social science evidence that the market-driven treatment of crime in the news media has the potential to skew American public opinion, increasing the support for various punitive policies such as mandatory minimums, longer sentences, and treating juveniles as adults. Through agenda setting and priming, media emphasis increases public concern about crime and makes it a more important criteria in assessing political leaders. Then, once the issue has been highlighted, the media\u27s emphasis increases support for punitive policies, though the mechanisms through which this occurs are less well understood. This Article explores the evidence for the mechanisms of framing, increasing fear of crime, and instilling and reinforcing racial stereotypes and linking race to crime. Although other factors, including distinctive features of American culture and the American political system, also play a role, this Article argues that the news media are having a significant and little-understood role in increasing support for punitive criminal justice policies. Because the news media is not the only influence on public opinion, this Article also considers how the news media interacts with other factors that shape public opinion regarding the criminal justice system

The News Media\u27s Influence on Criminal Justice Policy: How Market-Driven News Promotes Punitiveness

This Article argues that commercial pressures are determining the news media\u27s contemporary treatment of crime and violence, and that the resulting coverage has played a major role in reshaping public opinion, and ultimately, criminal justice policy. The news media are not mirrors, simply reflecting events in society. Rather, media content is shaped by economic and marketing considerations that frequently override traditional journalistic criteria for newsworthiness. This Article explores local and national television\u27s treatment of crime, where the extent and style of news stories about crime are being adjusted to meet perceived viewer demand and advertising strategies, which frequently emphasize particular demographic groups with a taste for violence. Newspapers also reflect a market-driven reshaping of style and content, resulting in a continuing emphasis on crime stories as a cost-effective means to grab readers\u27 attention. This has all occurred despite more than a decade of sharply falling crime rates. The Article also explores the accumulating social science evidence that the market-driven treatment of crime in the news media has the potential to skew American public opinion, increasing the support for various punitive policies such as mandatory minimums, longer sentences, and treating juveniles as adults. Through agenda setting and priming, media emphasis increases public concern about crime and makes it a more important criteria in assessing political leaders. Then, once the issue has been highlighted, the media\u27s emphasis increases support for punitive policies, though the mechanisms through which this occurs are less well understood. This Article explores the evidence for the mechanisms of framing, increasing fear of crime, and instilling and reinforcing racial stereotypes and linking race to crime. Although other factors, including distinctive features of American culture and the American political system, also play a role, this Article argues that the news media are having a significant and little-understood role in increasing support for punitive criminal justice policies. Because the news media is not the only influence on public opinion, this Article also considers how the news media interacts with other factors that shape public opinion regarding the criminal justice system

The Audience in the Mind's Eye: How Journalists Imagine Their Readers

The conventional wisdom of the digital era is that journalists can now know their audiences in far more intimate detail than at any other time in the history of the profession. Previously, journalists based their audience knowledge primarily on their closest social circles. Now, new tools can help them solicit readers’ feedback, analyze and understand readers’ behavior, and open new channels for conversation. These new capabilities promise to shine a light on the abstract audience—making one’s readers present, quantified and real. Drawing on the existing literature and an original case study, this paper asks whether the new tools of the digital age have indeed influenced the “audience in the mind’s eye.” Our evidence indicates that for the most part, they have not. In reviewing findings from the case study, we were struck by how little seems to have changed since the print era. Although they seemed more open to audience knowledge, the ways in which these reporters thought about their audiences was remarkably similar to those reported in classic ethnographies of the 1970s. The paper concludes with some hypotheses about why this may be so, and offers some possible approaches to improve audience awareness in the newsroom—in particular, a new perspective on the necessity (and difficulty) of diversity. It is our hope that this paper will inspire future research and experimentation—to narrow the gap between the audiences journalists have in mind and the audiences they serve

Looking left or looking right?

The perception of political messages may not only be shaped by textual information, but also by its visual appearance. An online experiment investigated how newspaper articles’ layout style and text slant affect the perception of a newspapers’ political orientation on the left-right axis. The layout versions were based on a prior analysis of correlations between design and political direction of quality newspapers. Results suggest the existence of political layout effects: a conservative layout style led to the source of a left-wing slanted text being estimated more right-wing, especially for left-wing-oriented participants. However, it had no effect when it was combined congruently with a right-wing slanted text. A progressive layout style had only an effect for participants with more knowledge on quality newspapers, leading them to locate the source more left-wing

Sexualisation's four faces: sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the Bailey Review

This paper explores the considerations of sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the recent UK government report Letting Children be Children. This report, the Bailey Review, claimed to represent the views of parents. However, closer reading reveals that, while the parents who were consulted were concerned about both the sexualisation and the gender stereotyping of products aimed at children, the Bailey Review focuses only on the former and dismisses the latter. ‘Sexualisation’ has four faces in the Bailey Review: it is treated as a process that increases (1) the visibility of sexual content in the public domain, (2) misogyny, (3) the sexuality of children, and (4) the mainstream position of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviours and lifestyles. Through this construction of ‘sexualisation’, gendered relations of power are not only hidden from view but also buttress a narrative in which young women are situated as children, and their sexuality and desire rendered pathological and morally unacceptable as judged by a conservative standard of decency. Comparison of the treatment of sexualisation and gender stereotyping in the review is revealing of the political motivations behind it, and of wider discourse in these areas

‘Love it or loath it’: a cross-national comparison of tabloid reading experiences in the UK and Germany

This thesis comprises a cross-national comparison of readership responses to the British tabloid The Sun and the German red-top Bild. The study is of qualitative nature: it draws on extensive material derived from a total of 18 focus groups conducted in both countries, in which 104 diverse adults participated. The first study to compare tabloid reading experience cross-nationally, the research sets out to explore how readers of The Sun and readers of Bild make sense of the papers, and how they evaluate them. The results are analysed with regards to emerging similarities and differences, which are pointed out and discussed in relation to the specific social and cultural contexts in the UK and Germany. While many academic approaches to genre consider popular newspapers hazardous to the workings of democratic society; this study takes a different approach. Drawing on a range of academic ideas that can largely be associated to the intellectual tradition of ‘cultural studies’, the research foregrounds the social and cultural functions of the popular press from the readers’ point of view; focussing in particular on notions of belonging and community as expressed in the construction of citizenship, social participation and collective identity formations. Among the key results of the study, cross-nationally shared modes of engagement with tabloids are highlighted, which contribute to an often tension-filled character of the reading experience. Moreover, the papers’ highly stimulating potential is stressed. I develop my idea of the ‘negotiative space’ generated by tabloids; arguing that this greatly contributes to readers’ development of their ‘vision of the good and bad’. Moreover, the thesis emphasises the significance of the popular press to various kinds of readers’ social and cultural identity formations; particularly with regards to notions of nationhood and national identity

The Impact of User-Created Content on Traditional News

This paper discusses the current news industry dynamic as a result of dual participation by individuals as consumers and producers of news. The topics to be discussed include the role of Web 2.0 and social media in supporting a possible transition away from professionally produced news and the impact of these activities on modern day journalism. This paper will also attempt to account for consumer perception of User Created Content (UCC) compared to traditional media content, what these currently held perceptions might mean for the future of journalism, and for the evolution of the audience. Prior research, various survey results, case studies, and real life examples will be used to provide reasoning as to what may become the news cycle of the future

A Comparative Study of Presentational Formats

As early as 1970, Ivan Illich predicted that in the future, there would be a move towards ‘deschooling society’. At the outset of the new millennium, explosion in the production of information ignited a need for the shift from the significance of having ‘what’ to ‘what to do’ with the information. Indeed, developments in communication technologies not only facilitated and expedited reaching information but also enabled and ensured learning outside the schools - lifelong learning. After schooling, adults learn most of what they know from the media. The present paper challenges the adaptation of technology by media for raising awareness and learning the current issues and suggests that technology, indeed, should be used in media and education, however, after being challenged. This study challenges the use of technology for receiving information. It presents the results of bicommunal research conducted in Cyprus upon the already existing and suggested presentational formats. The present study sets out to explore attitude of the tertiary students towards already existing and alternative media sources used for receiving the news. It is suggested that rather than adopting ‘what is given’ by the technology, if media education challenges and suggests new forms for presentation of the information, this will facilitate learning, particularly learning from the media, which is the main source of information for masses after formal schooling

Rape discourses in Turkey : the case of Turkish television series Fatmagül'ün Suçu Ne?

Ankara : The Department of Communication and Design, İhsan Doğramacı Bilkent University, 2012.Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2012.Includes bibliographical references leaves 80-99.The television series Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne?, which first aired in September 2010, turned in to a phenomenon. The rape scene in the first episode was anticipated for months and after it aired, scene was talked about for very long time. In mass media, series was addressed widely. There were many different criticisms regarding the rape scene. Mainly, it was blamed for vividly representing the act of rape, thus encouraging and rape and humiliating women in various newspaper articles. However, while doing so, newspapers employed a number of rhetoric that may be elucidated as normalization of rape discourse through concealing by deceiving and trivializing rape. In this study, newspaper articles related to Fatmagül’ün Suçu Ne? published in Zaman, Hürriyet, Posta, Radikal and Cumhuriyet newspapers are studied and evaluated in terms of discourse they employ in order to determine rape discourses in Turkish newspapers.Yener, YaseminM.S