The reach of commercially motivated junk news on Facebook

Commercially motivated junk news -- i.e. money-driven, highly shareable clickbait with low journalistic production standards -- constitutes a vast and largely unexplored news media ecosystem. Using publicly available Facebook data, we compared the reach of junk news on Facebook pages in the Netherlands to the reach of Dutch mainstream news on Facebook. During the period 2013-2017 the total number of user interactions with junk news significantly exceeded that with mainstream news. Over 5 Million of the 10 Million Dutch Facebook users have interacted with a junk news post at least once. Junk news Facebook pages also had a significantly stronger increase in the number of user interactions over time than mainstream news. Since the beginning of 2016 the average number of user interactions per junk news post has consistently exceeded the average number of user interactions per mainstream news post.Comment: 18 pages, 4 figures, submitted pre-prin

Caught between Innovation and Tradition: Young Journalists as Normative Change Agents in the Journalistic Field

The necessity of innovation within the newsroom, and the rise of entrepreneurial initiatives outside it, have become increasingly apparent in the past decade. A common thread in this discourse is the desire for young journalists to be “change agents” who foster innovation and thus stretch existing boundaries in the profession. Employers hope new hires, seen as attuned to their generation’s news use and as offering fresh knowledge and insights, will be able to drive new journalism initiatives that can attract a younger audience and so improve the enterprise’s odds for economic sustainability. Using a longitudinal three-wave survey among students enrolled in two leading journalism programs in Britain and the Netherlands, we explore whether students’ perceptions of innovation and entrepreneurialism are in line with this optimistic industry discourse. Do students perceive themselves as change agents who will be challenging and potentially shifting the boundaries of journalism? Or do they adhere to traditional ideas about norms and behaviors that have been ingrained in the doxa and habitus of the journalistic field over previous decades? We find that although journalism students favor the idea of “innovation” and see the value of engaging audiences, they define change predominantly in terms of technology rather than more substantive cultural transformation

Nieuwe journalisten door nieuwe bronnen? Een landelijke inventarisatie van het internetgebruik in de Nederlandse journalistiek

Contains fulltext : 19159_nieujodon.pdf ( ) (Open Access)39 p

"Uit onderzoek blijkt..." : Een inventarisatie van wetenschapsjournalistiek in Nederlandse media.

Hoe functioneert wetenschapsjournalistiek op dit moment in Nederland? Om die vraag te beantwoorden voert het Rathenau Instituut een verkenning uit. Het doel van deze verkenning is om te reflecteren op de stand van de wetenschapsjournalistiek in Nederland en een blik te werpen in de toekomst. Dit onderzoek, dat deel uitmaakt van deze verkenning, bevat een inventarisatie van wetenschapsjournalistiek in de Nederlandse media. Het doel hiervan is tweeledig: een inzichtelijk beeld geven van (1) wat de diverse media doen aan wetenschapsjournalistiek en 2) welke functies van wetenschapsjournalistiek de media daarmee vervullen

Sensationalism in front page photographs:Content analysis of Dutch popular and quality newspapers

GABI SCHAAP & ALEXANDER PLEIJTER Sensationalism in front page photographs: Content analysis of Dutch popular and quality newspapers Sensation in the news has been a longtime cause for social and scientific debate. Sensational news is thought to substitute 'serious' information needed for serious citizen deliberation. A trend towards more sensationalist news has been described for television. This study analyses quality and popular newspaper photographs in terms of sensationalist content and form. Quantitative content analysis of the five major newspapers in the Netherlands shows that a slight majority of newspaper photographs shows sensational content (i.e. dramatic events such as violence, disasters, or crime). A minority of the photographs has sensational format features (e.g., emotions, close-ups, personalization). In eight out of eleven variables, popular newspapers contain more sensational photographs than quality newspapers. However, in some instances differences in sensationalism within the two groups are greater than differences between the groups