Understanding the role of the mass media in the EU Referendum

What role did the media play in shaping the result of the UK’s EU referendum? Mike Berry writes that the media was both the venue where each campaign concentrated their primary efforts, and a crucial mechanism for setting the political agenda. He notes that the Leave campaign generally navigated the media more effectively than the Remain side throughout the campaign

No alternative to austerity: how BBC broadcast news reported the deficit debate

This article examines how BBC News at Ten covered the emergence of the UK public deficit debate in 2009. A total of 25 days of coverage drawn from the first seven months of 2009 were subject to a source and thematic content analysis to examine how news bulletins explained the emergence, consequences and possible solutions to the rise in the public deficit. Results indicated that political and financial elites dominated coverage. The consequence was that the news reproduced a very limited range of opinion on the implications and potential strategies for deficit reduction. The view that Britain was in danger of being abandoned by its international creditors with serious economic consequences was unchallenged and repeatedly endorsed by journalists. Despite their limited record of success during recessions, austerity policies dominated discussion of possible solutions to the rise in the deficit. This research thus raises questions about impartiality and the watchdog role of public service journalism

The UK press and the deficit debate

The 2008 financial crisis initially appeared to challenge the sustainability of neoliberal finance capitalism. However, the focus of political and public debate soon shifted to state spending and the need for austerity. This research examines how this shift took place in the British press during 2009. The article begins by charting the rise of neoliberalism and its role in financializing the economy. It then examines how such developments impacted news production and made neoliberal perspectives more prominent in the media. This meant, as the data in this article demonstrate, that the key definers of the crisis in the media were among the strongest advocates of neoliberalism. Reporting of the deficit was characterized by fear appeals, the presentation of misleading data and false comparisons. Finally the article notes the consistent endorsement of austerity measures, by almost all newspapers, despite their consistent history of policy failure during recessions

Reporting on contested territory: television news coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict

This thesis is an examination of how British television news reported on the Peace Accords signed between Israeli and Palestinian negotiators at the Wye River Plantation, Maryland USA in October 1998. The research involves three elements. Firstly a review of the historiography of the conflict which sketches out the range of views on the history and origins of the dispute. Secondly a content analysis of the peace negotiations themselves. This examines how journalists drew on the range of views present in the historiography in order to contextualise coverage and provide explanations for the conflict. Thirdly the thesis looks at the various factors in production which influence the construction of news in this area, and links this to theoretical debates in the area

The Efficiencies Defence in Merger Analysis: A New Zealand Perspective

New Zealand's current competition laws like Canada's are comparatively new. The Commerce Act (the "Act") and Canada's Competition Act were both passed in 1986. The New Zealand Act in essence recognises the efficiencies defence. Where a merger is likely to result in the acquisition of a dominant position in a market it is open to the merger parties to apply to the Commerce Commission (the "Commission") under section 67 for authorisation prior to implementation. This process requires the Commission to identify and weigh the detriments likely to flow from the acquiring of a dominant position in the relevant markets and to balance those against the public benefits likely to flow from the acquisition as a whole. Since 1990 there has been explicit statutory guidance under section 3A that efficiencies must be taken into account in assessing public benefits. If the Commission is satisfied that the benefits outweigh the detriments the proposed merger will be authorised.Thus there are striking similarities between the New Zealand position section 96 of the Canadian Competition Act and the US governmental guidelines described in Professor Mathewson's paper. What follows is an outline of the Commission's approach in New Zealand. This outline reflects a more tolerant approach than is apparently the case in Canada. Indeed seven mergers raising dominance concerns have already been authorised on public benefit grounds

Saving refugees or policing the seas? How the national press of five EU member states framed news coverage of the migration crisis

Migration from the Middle East and Africa to Europe increasingly hit the headlines in 2014-5 as the unprecedented scale of deaths at sea was gradually recognised as a newsworthy and important story. This article presents findings from research commissioned by UNHCR to measure how the issue of migration was framed in the news media across the EU. We compare the national press coverage of five member states: UK, Sweden, Germany, Spain and Italy, focusing upon the main themes of news coverage, reasons for and responses to migration outlined. We find striking variations in framing between national contexts, but also a significant disconnection, overall, between causal interpretation and treatment recommendation framing. We conclude that the resulting fragmented frames of European migration news in themselves signify ‘crisis’ - an unsettled discourse reflecting shifting anxieties between humanitarian concern to save refugees, and a securitising fortress mentality to better police European and national borders

Press coverage of the refugee and migrant crisis in the EU: a content analysis of five European countries

In 2014, more than 200,000 refugees and migrants fled for safety across the Mediterranean Sea. Crammed into overcrowded, unsafe boats, thousands drowned, prompting the Pope to warn that the sea was becoming a mass graveyard. The early months of 2015 saw no respite. In April alone more than 1,300 people drowned. This led to a large public outcry to increase rescue operations. Throughout this period, UNHCR and other humanitarian organisations, engaged in a series of largescale media advocacy exercises, aiming at convincing European countries to do more to help. It was crucial work, setting the tone for the dramatic rise in attention to the refugee crisis that followed in the second half of 2015. But the media was far from united in its response. While some outlets joined the call for more assistance, others were unsympathetic, arguing against increasing rescue operations. To learn why, UNHCR commissioned a report by the Cardiff School of Journalism to explore what was driving media coverage in five different European countries: Spain, Italy, Germany, the UK and Sweden. Researchers combed through thousands of articles written in 2014 and early 2015, revealing a number of important findings for future media advocacy campaigns. Most importantly, they found major differences between countries, in terms of the sources journalists used (domestic politicians, foreign politicians, citizens, or NGOs), the language they employed, the reasons they gave for the rise in refugee flows, and the solutions they suggested. Germany and Sweden, for example, overwhelmingly used the terms ‘refugee’ or ‘asylum seeker’, while Italy and the UK press preferred the word ‘migrant’. In Spain, the dominant term was ‘immigrant’. These terms had an important impact on the tenor of each country’s debate. Media also differed widely in terms of the predominant themes to their coverage. For instance, humanitarian themes were more common in Italian coverage than in British, German or Spanish press. Threat themes (such as to the welfare system, or cultural threats) were the most prevalent in Italy, Spain and Britain. Overall, the Swedish press was the most positive towards refugees and migrants, while coverage in the United Kingdom was the most negative, and the most polarised. Amongst those countries surveyed, Britain’s right-wing media was uniquely aggressively in its campaigns against refugees and migrants. This report provides important insights into each country’s press culture during a crucial period of agenda-setting for today’s refugee and migrant crisis. It also offers invaluable insights into historical trends. What emerges is a clear message that for media work on refugees, one size does not fit all. Effective media advocacy in different European nations requires targeted, tailored campaigns, which takes into account their unique cultures and political context

Probabilistic forecasting of heterogeneous consumer transaction-sales time series

We present new Bayesian methodology for consumer sales forecasting. With a focus on multi-step ahead forecasting of daily sales of many supermarket items, we adapt dynamic count mixture models to forecast individual customer transactions, and introduce novel dynamic binary cascade models for predicting counts of items per transaction. These transactions-sales models can incorporate time-varying trend, seasonal, price, promotion, random effects and other outlet-specific predictors for individual items. Sequential Bayesian analysis involves fast, parallel filtering on sets of decoupled items and is adaptable across items that may exhibit widely varying characteristics. A multi-scale approach enables information sharing across items with related patterns over time to improve prediction while maintaining scalability to many items. A motivating case study in many-item, multi-period, multi-step ahead supermarket sales forecasting provides examples that demonstrate improved forecast accuracy in multiple metrics, and illustrates the benefits of full probabilistic models for forecast accuracy evaluation and comparison. Keywords: Bayesian forecasting; decouple/recouple; dynamic binary cascade; forecast calibration; intermittent demand; multi-scale forecasting; predicting rare events; sales per transaction; supermarket sales forecastingComment: 23 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl