What follows what? Relations between economic indicators, economic expectations of the public, and news on the general economy and unemployment in Germany, 2002–2011

This study aims to understand dynamic agenda-building and agenda-setting processes between real-world indicators, public expectations (PEs), and aggregated news on the general economy and unemployment for the four most popular general news outlets in Germany from 2002 to 2011: two public service, a commercial news show, and a tabloid newspaper. Vector autoregression models and Granger causality tests reveal that (1) news tone (NT) relates to real-world indicators; (2) PEs for the general economy and unemployment are partly set by the tone of news on the general economy, especially during recession times; and (3) PEs can forecast the future real-world economy

Spieltheoretische Überlegungen zum digitalen Journalismus

Dieser Beitrag verknüpft Theorien und Konzepte der Organisationsforschung und wendet sie zur Erklärung des Entstehens des redaktionellen Angebots von Nachrichtenorganisationen im digitalen Kontext an. Der Beitrag konzipiert Nachrichtenorganisationen als hybride Organisationen, die sich widersprüchlichen institutionellen Logiken verschrieben haben. Dabei lösen manche Entscheidungen - wie das Posten von Nachrichten im Clickbait-Stil - ein Dilemma zwischen publizistischen Normen und ökonomischen Zielen aus, das zunächst innerhalb der Organisation ausgehandelt werden muss. Werden kommerzielle Logiken vor dem Hintergrund von Kurationsalgorithmen sozialer Plattformen priorisiert, nutzen auch traditionelle Nachrichtenmedien Clickbait-Überschriften und weichen damit von professionellen Normen ab. Spieltheoretische Ansätze beschreiben, mittels welcher Spielstrategien Nachrichtenmedien abweichende Inhalte auf digitalen Plattformen anbieten.This article links theories and concepts of organizational research and applies them to explain the emergence of editorial supply of news organizations in the digital context. The article conceives news organizations as hybrid organizations that are committed to contradictory institutional logics. Some decisions - such as the posting of clickbait-style news - trigger a dilemma between journalistic norms and economic goals that must first be negotiated within the organization. If commercial logics are prioritized against the background of curation algorithms of social platforms, traditional news media also use clickbait headlines and thus deviate from professional norms. Game theoretical approaches describe the game strategies by which news media supply deviating content on digital platforms

Wie Facebook den Regionaljournalismus verändert: Publikums- und Algorithmusorientierung bei der Facebook-Themenselektion von Regionalzeitungen

Facebook ist zur wichtigsten Quelle für Webseiten-Traffic von Online-Nachrichten-Angeboten geworden. Um den Facebook-Traffic-Anteil zu maximieren, müssen Nachrichten möglichst weit innerhalb von Facebook verbreitet werden – und die Nachrichtenanbieter den Spielregeln des News Feed-Algorithmus folgen. Diese Studie untersucht, inwieweit sich durch Facebooks algorithmusgesteuerte, interaktionsbelohnende Nachrichtendistribution die redaktionelle Themenselektion verändert. Dazu werden die Themen von Facebook-Posts und Printausgaben von drei deutschen Regionalzeitungen für 2015 und 2016 inhaltsanalytisch verglichen. Ergänzend werden Experteninterviews mit Social-Media-Redakteuren zweier Regionalzeitungen geführt. Ergebnisse zeigen eine Interaktions- und Algorithmusorientierung bei der Themenselektion der Social-Media-Redakteure. Die Redakteure folgen den Spielregeln des News Feed-Algorithmus jedoch nicht bedingungs- und strategielos. Um die Interaktion und Reichweite zu maximieren – aber auch um Hardnews zu platzieren – werden verstärkt Human-Interest-Themen gepostet. Diese Softnews sorgen für Reichweite und Interaktionen, Hardnews für die Informiertheit der User. Somit verzichten Redaktionen der Regionalzeitungen nicht auf relevante Themen auf Facebook, aber nutzen einen höheren Anteil an Softnews, um ihre Facebook-Reichweite nicht zu gefährden

Can consumption predict advertising expenditures? The advertising-consumption relation before and after the dot-com crisis in Germany

Two contradictory schools of thought—the activists and the determinists—predict that either diffusion of knowledge (e.g., through advertising) leads to economic growth or that economic growth increases marketing and advertising activities. This study assesses the causal relation between corporate advertising expenditures and private consumption applying vector autoregressive (VAR) models to aggregate German quarterly data from 1991 to 2009. Results indicate a break in the advertising-consumption relation after the dot-com crisis. Hence, the macroeconomic advertising-consumption relation is not stable over time. Since 2001, consumption has Granger-caused advertising expenditures. This change suggests a higher relevance of consumer behavior for advertising budgeting decisions

Deliberative Diversity for News Recommendations: Operationalization and Experimental User Study

News recommender systems are an increasingly popular field of study that attracts a growing interdisciplinary research community. As these systems play an essential role in our daily lives, the mechanisms behind their curation processes are under scrutiny. In the area of personalized news, many platforms make design choices driven by economic incentives. In contrast to such systems that optimize for financial gain, there can be norm-driven diversity systems that prioritize normative and democratic goals. However, their impact on users in terms of inducing behavioral change or influencing knowledge is still understudied. In this paper, we contribute to the field of news recommender system design by conducting a user study that examines the impact of these normative approaches. We a.) operationalize the notion of a deliberative public sphere for news recommendations, show b.) the impact on news usage, and c.) the influence on political knowledge, attitudes and voting behavior. We find that exposure to small parties is associated with an increase in knowledge about their candidates and that intensive news consumption about a party can change the direction of attitudes of readers towards the issues of the party

Explicit terror prevention versus vague civil liberty: How the UK broadcasting news (de)legitimatise online mass surveillance since Edward Snowden's revelations

Snowden’s initial revelations aimed at establishing a public debate on online surveillance informed through the media. Media should serve the public’s need for information and offer various viewpoints and sources to enhance public debates. This study assesses how online surveillance is justified or countered in British broadcast news since the 2013 Snowden revelations for five selected major events in news coverage ending with the Charlie Hebdo aftermath in Paris in early 2015. The critical discourse analysis shows that UK broadcasts cover justification and delegitimation arguments of online surveillance. Online surveillance legitimation combines rationalisation (terror prevention) and moral evaluation (public security) arguments, which are often expressed by governmental actors. The broadcast discourse tends to give governmental, pro-surveillance actors a voice by default. The detailedness of terror threat descriptions increases over time. In 2013, ‘terrorist attacks’ are rather factually mentioned. In 2015, several ways leading to a loss of lives through terror are explicitly stated, which strengthens the instrumental rationality legitimation arguments. Delegitimising arguments predominantly use moralising and mythopoetic arguments (civil liberties) that are expressed by Snowden himself or politicians, yet rarely by non-governmental organisations, and very rarely by citizens. It is harder for non-governmental actors to continuously interpret the broadcast discourse. Therefore, what exactly is at stake when online mass surveillance increases remains obscure in the news discourse. The surveillance discourse should be richer in order to give the audience a chance to understand the vague and less tangible contra-surveillance arguments better

Fluid institutional logics in digital journalism

The negotiation of competing institutional logics is relevant for organisations active in multi-institutional domains. News organisations are active in the domains of democracy and business, and, through digitisation, they are active in the digital technology domain. This article describes how journalism negotiates competing logics of these domains, i.e. professional, market, managerial, and technology (tech) logics. Analysing n = 744 individual NiemanLab Predictions for Journalism from 2014 to 2019, findings indicate that journalism aggregates and integrates competing logics in a fluid way, keeping synergies across logics and plurality of logics high. The field of journalism is shaped by the competition of four logics: While tech logics induce changes in professional, market, and managerial logics, professional logics remain the dominant moral compass for journalists

Strategic renewal during technology change: Tracking the digital journey of legacy news companies

Digitization represents an incrementally competence-destroying technology change for legacy news companies. This study analyses strategic and operational renewal of six incumbent news publishers in the UK, Finland, and Switzerland based on narratives of their annual reports. Their digital journey is coined by two transformations: digitizing news business operations and lateral diversification into non-news-related digital markets. Thereby, willpower represents a corporate capacity that indicates the willingness for renewal. Lateral diversification renews the companies’ profit formula, which leads to a negative cost-benefit perception regarding future investments in digital journalism by some incumbents. These incumbents communicatively prepare to incrementally abandon their core journalism business. From the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) perspective, annual report narratives represent instruments for legitimizing corporate restructuring and repositioning

Wie Facebook den Regionaljournalismus verändert: Publikums- und Algorithmusorientierung bei der Facebook-Themenselektion von Regionalzeitungen

Facebook ist zur wichtigsten Quelle für Webseiten-Traffic von Online-Nachrichten-Angeboten geworden. Um den Facebook-Traffic-Anteil zu maximieren, müssen Nachrichten möglichst weit innerhalb von Facebook verbreitet werden – und die Nachrichtenanbieter den Spielregeln des News Feed-Algorithmus folgen. Diese Studie untersucht, inwieweit sich durch Facebooks algorithmusgesteuerte, interaktionsbelohnende Nachrichtendistribution die redaktionelle Themenselektion verändert. Dazu werden die Themen von Facebook-Posts und Printausgaben von drei deutschen Regionalzeitungen für 2015 und 2016 inhaltsanalytisch verglichen. Ergänzend werden Experteninterviews mit Social-Media-Redakteuren zweier Regionalzeitungen geführt. Ergebnisse zeigen eine Interaktions- und Algorithmusorientierung bei der Themenselektion der Social-Media-Redakteure. Die Redakteure folgen den Spielregeln des News Feed-Algorithmus jedoch nicht bedingungs- und strategielos. Um die Interaktion und Reichweite zu maximieren – aber auch um Hardnews zu platzieren – werden verstärkt Human-Interest-Themen gepostet. Diese Softnews sorgen für Reichweite und Interaktionen, Hardnews für die Informiertheit der User. Somit verzichten Redaktionen der Regionalzeitungen nicht auf relevante Themen auf Facebook, aber nutzen einen höheren Anteil an Softnews, um ihre Facebook-Reichweite nicht zu gefährden

Surveillance discourse in UK broadcasting since the Snowden revelations

The surveillance discourse in British broadcast news since the Snowden revelations covers justifications and challenges. Justification focuses on authorisation and rationalisation strategies stating terror threats explicitly, which are often expressed by governmental actors. Delegitimation strategies predominantly use moralising and mythopoetic arguments of civil liberties and are expressed by Snowden himself, politicians, rarely by journalists, non-governmental organisations, and very rarely by citizens. However, what exactly is at stake when mass surveillance increases remains obscure in the broadcast discourse. The surveillance discourse should be richer especially in order to give the audience a chance to understand the less concrete contra-surveillance arguments better