Social and Physical Planning for the Elimination of Urban Poverty

The provision of public facilities is also a traditional planning emphasis, dating back to the days when the planner was an ally of the reformers who were fighting for the establishment of these facilities. Out of this has come the belief that public facilities are crucial agencies in people\u27s lives, that up-to-date facilities and programs will encourage intensive use of them and that this in turn will help significantly in achieving the aims of guided mobility planning. Despite the intensity of the planner\u27s belief in neighborhood and public facility use, there is no evidence that these two planning concepts are as important to low income people as they are to planners. Consequently, it is fair to ask whether such concepts are as crucial to the elimination of urban poverty and deprivation as is signified by their appearance in some guided mobility plans. The answer to this question requires a brief discussion of the nature of contemporary urban poverty

Koncentrált szegénység

Sokan szinte természetesnek tartják, hogy a nagyfokú szegénységgel jellemezhető környékek önmagukban is tovább terjesztik a szegénységet. Az ismert szegénységkutató, Herbert Gans szerint ez veszélyes mítosz. Ráadásul, mint hangsúlyozza, az Obama-kormányzat által nyilvánvalóan elfogadott feltevésről van szó. Mindennek az az eredménye, hogy nem a szegénység kiváltó okaira – például a munkahelyek hiányára –, hanem a szegénykörzetek felszámolását célzó programokra koncentrálják az erőfeszítéseket

Citizen participation in news

The process of producing news has changed significantly due to the advent of the Web, which has enabled the increasing involvement of citizens in news production. This trend has been given many names, including participatory journalism, produsage, and crowd-sourced journalism, but these terms are ambiguous and have been applied inconsistently, making comparison of news systems difficult. In particular, it is problematic to distinguish the levels of citizen involvement, and therefore the extent to which news production has genuinely been opened up. In this paper we perform an analysis of 32 online news systems, comparing them in terms of how much power they give to citizens at each stage of the news production process. Our analysis reveals a diverse landscape of news systems and shows that they defy simplistic categorisation, but it also provides the means to compare different approaches in a systematic and meaningful way. We combine this with four case studies of individual stories to explore the ways that news stories can move and evolve across this landscape. Our conclusions are that online news systems are complex and interdependent, and that most do not involve citizens to the extent that the terms used to describe them imply

The Passive Journalist: How sources dominate the local news

This study explores which sources are “making” local news and whether these sources are simply indicating the type of news that appears, or are shaping newspaper coverage. It provides an empirical record of the extent to which sources are able to dominate news coverage from which future trends in local journalism can be measured. The type and number of sources used in 2979 sampled news stories in four West Yorkshire papers, representing the three main proprietors of local newspapers in the United Kingdom, were recorded for one month and revealed the relatively narrow range of routine sources; 76 per cent of articles cited only a single source. The analysis indicates that journalists are relying less on their readers for news, and that stories of little consequence are being elevated to significant positions, or are filling news pages at the expense of more important stories. Additionally, the reliance on a single source means that alternative views and perspectives relevant to the readership are being overlooked. Journalists are becoming more passive, mere processors of one-sided information or bland copy dictated by sources. These trends indicate poor journalistic standards and may be exacerbating declining local newspaper sales

A Tale of Two Stories from "Below the Line": Comment Fields at the Guardian

This article analyzes the nature of debate on “below the line” comment fields at the United Kingdom’s Guardian, and how, if at all, such debates are impacting journalism practice. The article combines a content analysis of 3,792 comments across eighty-five articles that focused on the UN Climate Change Summit, with ten interviews with journalists, two with affiliated commentators, plus the community manager. The results suggest a more positive picture than has been found by many existing studies: Debates were often deliberative in nature, and journalists reported that it was positively impacting their practice in several ways, including providing new story leads and enhanced critical reflection. However, citizen–journalist debate was limited. The results are attributed to the normalization of comment fields into everyday journalism practice, extensive support and encouragement from senior management, and a realization that comment fields can actually make the journalists’ life a little easier

Mass media attention to welfare state reforms: evidence from Britain, 1996–2014

One of the core questions facing political scientists is how politicians are able to implement cutbacks without suffering electoral backlash. A possible explanation might be that the mass media refrain from reporting on welfare state reforms in a consistent way. In order to explore this, two unique datasets have been collected: one contains information on all policy reforms of British old age pensions and unemployment protection from 1996 to 2014, and the other contains hand-coded media articles that allow the tracking on a monthly basis of what reforms are picked up. It is found that the mass media report on cutbacks, but not on expansions, and that they prioritise easy-to-understand cutbacks over cutbacks that are more technical in nature

Seven characteristics defining online news formats:Towards a typology of online news and live blogs

Whilst live blogs have become an established part of the news media ecology, corresponding research is still in its infancy, especially that which examines the crucial question of sourcing practices. In this article we address some of the gaps in previous research by conducting a large comparative sourcing analysis of three UK news organisations - BBC News, the Guardian, and the Telegraph - that all regularly publish live blogs. We analyse sourcing practices across three different genres of live blogging and corresponding online news articles, through a comparative analysis of events broadly categorised as crisis, politics, and sport. Our findings suggest that there are some aspects of sourcing practices that are distinct to live blogs, such as directly embedding social media. However, when it comes to polyvocality (the diversity of who gets to speak), genre-specific journalism norms seem to account for more than the affordances of the platform itself and only in sport live blogs are demotic voices habitually included. Based on these findings we develop a typology of live blogging and online news articles, that documents the nuances in sourcing patterns across different news formats and genres, and provide a theoretical basis for future research in this field

“Our Relationship? It’s the Odd Mucky Weekend, Not a One Night Stand”: Journalists and aid agencies in the UK, and the current challenges to sourcing in humanitarian disasters

In humanitarian crises, the sources that journalists employ have always helped determine which stories achieve a high media profile, as well as play a part in framing the story. In particular, aid agencies acted as powerful gatekeepers to disaster zones, providing flights, transport, fixers and translators to journalists–and more recently, text, images and resources for the social web. Questions have been raised around transparency and objectivity in such reporting as a result. This paper draws on 40 semi-structured qualitative interviews with UK national journalists (broadcast, print and online) and aid agencies belonging to the UK's Disasters Emergency Committee. As a result, this paper builds on journalism studies looking at boundary (re)negotiations in journalism and the source-media relationship to show the current patterns in what has been described as a “mutually exploitative” relationship. It compares and contrasts what assistance journalists say they accept from aid agencies and what aid agencies report. It examines how both sides are often unwilling to acknowledge the close association. It will also look at how the increasing professionalisation of NGO operations including the employment of former journalists and producing their own content may be affecting the power dynamics. Finally, it asks whether the slow emergence of scandals means this relationship has not only affected stories that are covered but those that are not