To follow or not to follow? How Belgian health journalists use Twitter to monitor potential sources

Digital technology, the internet and mobile media are transforming the journalism and media landscape by influencing the news gathering and sourcing process. The empowering capacities of social media applications may constitute a key element for more balanced news access and “inclusive journalism”. We will build on two contrasting views that dominate the social media sourcing debate. On the one hand, literature shows that journalists of legacy media make use of social media sources to diversify their sourcing network including bottom-up sources such as ordinary citizens. On the other hand, various authors conclude that journalists stick with their old sourcing routines and continue to privilege top-down elite sources such as experts and government officials. In order to contribute to this academic debate we want to clarify the Twitter practices of professional Belgian health journalists in terms of how they use the platform to monitor potential sources. Therefore, we examined the 1146 Twitter “followings” of six Belgian health journalists by means of digital methods and social network analysis. Results show that top-down actors are overrepresented in the “following” networks and that Twitter’s “following” function is not used to reach out to bottom-up actors. In the overall network, we found that the health journalists mainly use Twitter as a “press club” (Rupar, 2015) to monitor media actors. If we zoom in specifically on the “following” network of the health-related actors, we found that media actors are still important, but experts become the most followed group. Our findings also underwrite the “power law” or “long tail” distribution of social network sites as very few actors take a central position in the “following” lists while the large majority of actors are not systematically monitored by the journalists

Towards more balanced news access? A study on the impact of cost-cutting and Web 2.0 on the mediated public sphere

In order to assess the impact of cost-cutting and digitalization on the expansion or contraction of the mediated public sphere, we developed a quantitative and longitudinal content analysis focused on sourcing practices for foreign news reporting in four Belgian newspapers (1995-2010). The results show little to no shift in the news access of different types of sources. Political sources dominate foreign news output, but ordinary citizens also play a significant role. Although it becomes clear that Belgian journalists often do not explicitly mention their use of news agency copy, recycled news articles or PR material, our findings indicate that concerns about cost-cutting in newsrooms or sanguinity about the democratic potential of Web 2.0 seem fairly exaggerated, at least in the Belgian context

Bottlenecks in the coverage of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict: the coverageof the first and second intifada in the Flemish press

Various authors suggest that the public's knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is inadequate. As it is generally accepted that public opinion on international news items is mainly formed by media content, the international media are often held responsible for sustaining the prevailing misconceptions about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by covering the conflict parties in a biased and imbalanced way. This study focuses on the representation of Israelis and Palestinians in the news coverage of the First and Second Intifada by the Flemish press. By way of a content analysis evolutions and discrepancies in the coverage of both Intifadas are described in a longitudinal analytical perspective. We conclude that the portrayal of the Palestinian actors shifts from a rather positive view during the First Intifada period to a more critical portrayal during the period of the Second Intifada. At the same time, there is an opposite move in the representation of the Israeli actors in the conflict. Although our results show differences in the distinct portrayals, they do not provide sufficient evidence to conclude unequivocally that the coverage of the First and Second Intifada is imbalanced. Indeed, we find that while some variables definitely favour the Israeli point of view (e.g. the use of sources), others clearly sustain the Palestinian side (e.g. the individualisation of victims). In other words, the Flemish dailies cover the First and Second Intifada in quite a balanced way, contrary to what international studies on the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict have concluded regarding the media in different national settings

Internationale conflictberichtgeving in de Vlaamse geschreven pers: een longitudinale framing- en representatieanalyse van de Eerste en Tweede Intifada

Literature shows that media coverage of international conflicts is unbalanced and biased. Within the framework of media having an important impact on public perception it is important to research media portrayals of conflicts. Therefore we opted to study the coverage of the First and Second Intifada in the Dutch speaking written press on the basis of a longitudinal framing and representation analysis. In the first place we considered theoretical reflections on the central concepts framing and representation. We paid attention to the content of the terms, identified and considered various frame processes and focussed on important international empirical researches. However the main objective of this dissertation was to carry out a thorough empirical study concerning the newspaper coverage of the First and Second Intifada. As method we opted to combine different research designs. First we developed a new measuring instrument simplifying the identification of frames in the coverage of the First and Second Intifada. We defined and operationalised the selected Intifada frames, considered various methods to research those frames, constructed a new measuring instrument and finally carried out the research. Next to the frame analysis we conducted a representation analysis. International research on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is indeed focussed on representation and less on framing. By studying variables such as the incidence of contextual information, the labelling of acts and actors and the representation of sources and victims it was possible to consider results in an international setting. Through in-depth interviews with journalists involved in the coverage of the Intifadas, we finally confronted our research results with journalistic opinions. Overall we can conclude that discrepancies and evolutions in the coverage of the Intifadas are definitely noticed. However an answer to the central question concerning the unbalance and bias in the coverage is not easy and straight. Some researched variables obviously played into the Israeli hands, others were in favour of the Palestinian actor. But a pro Israeli bias that is observed in various other studies is clearly not supported in this dissertation. In other words the Dutch speaking written press is overall quite balanced contrary to global findings on international news output

Journalistiek in maatschappelijk perspectief : een inleiding tot journalistieke theorie en onderzoek

Journalistiek in maatschappelijk perspectief is het eerste Nederlandstalige handboek dat het studiedomein van de journalistiek beschouwt vanuit een academische invalshoek. Het illustreert diverse perspectieven op journalistieke actoren, processen en thema’s en baseert zich hiervoor op standaardwerken binnen het domein van Journalism Studies.Elk hoofdstuk vertrekt vanuit de belangrijkste klassieke studies in de massamaatschappij. Vervolgens wordt besproken hoe die studies worden uitgedaagd door de huidige netwerkmaatschappij. De auteurs leggen uit wat een journalist doet en hoe redacties werken, waarbij ze onder meer focussen op het profiel van de journalist, het nieuwsselectie- en nieuwsproductieproces en de gangbare businessmodellen binnen de journalistiek. Verder is er ook aandacht voor de nieuwsconsument, die een steeds actievere rol speelt via smartphones en sociale media. Ten slotte gaan de auteurs ook in op een actuele kwestie: het publieke debat over fake news. Dit boek is geschikt voor iedereen die voor het eerst kennismaakt met journalistiek als studiedomein, maar ook voor wie een breed inzicht wil krijgen in het functioneren en de rol van journalistiek in de maatschappij

Online news (still) in transition? Content analysis of the use of hypertext, multimedia and interactivity in Flemish online news = Online kranten (nog altijd) in transitie? Een inhoudsanalyse van het gebruik van hypertekst, multimedia en interactiviteit in Vlaamse online kranten

Deze studie onderzoekt in welke mate de Vlaamse nieuwssites hln.be en standaard.be hyperlinks, multimedia en interactiviteit verwerken in hun verslaggeving anno 2016. Uit een kwantitatieve en kwalitatieve inhoudsanalyse blijkt dat deze digitale journalistieke kenmerken op een eenzijdige manier aangewend worden. De meerwaarde die ze te bieden hebben, wordt dus nog steeds niet optimaal benut door traditionele nieuwsorganisaties