Print and online news: remediation practices in content and form

Drawing upon the notions of remediation and bricolage, the present study investigates the content relationship of print and online news. The article analyses the main characteristics and changes occurring in the form of print and online news at a time when cultural, technological and economic imperatives nurture a new ethos in the practices of professionals and organizations. Print and online newspapers in Greece seem to share a symbiotic relationship, with the representational power of the print—articulated in news form and relevant news values and criteria—still being strong. Although displacement effects are hard to claim, both print and online media tend to refashion themselves. It remains to be seen whether this refashioning process will lead the two media to greater amalgamation, bringing them even to merge into one or whether divergence processes will prevail, generating distinct news forms

News content online: patterns and norms under convergence dynamics

The article investigates evolutionary trends in online news presentation and delivery in the light of convergence dynamics. The case study of Greece is an example of how convergence ideas are ‘normalised’ in the actual content due to countering forces exercised by the dominant professional culture and organisational models in the news business. The findings provide evidence that the outcomes of this new culture of high interconnectivity that come along with convergence cannot be ignored even in countries with no advanced employment of its potentialities. At the same time, questions on whether, under conditions of scarce resources and a weak journalistic culture, convergence affordances actually create spaces for a more open and inclusive journalism or are used mainly as vehicles for economic survival, smothering any other potential, are raised

Artificial intelligence and story-telling support: Do algorithms do It Better?

Journalism has always been shaped by technology (Pavlik, 2000); however, the changes brought about by increasing automation and algorithms are having a profound impact on how news is produced and consumed (Thurman, Lewis & Kunert, 2019). More specifically, automation techniques and algorithmic technology are (re)shaping content production by means of automated storytelling, data mining, news dissemination and content optimization (Diakopoulos, 2019). This study sets out to illuminate how algorithms can enhance story telling capabilities for the production of feature stories. A common thread of criticism associated with online stories is their offering fragmented bits of information (Eveland, 2003) and reproducing news stories, the so-called phenomenon of churnalism (Saridou, Spyridou & Veglis, 2017). Recent work (Andersen & Strömbäck, 2021) concludes no general learning effects from online outlets (as opposed to offline media), a finding raising serious questions regarding a broadly informed citizenry in the web 3.0 era. A key question thus is how, under severe time pressures imposed by the new media ecosystem, should professional agency and algorithms be blended together in order to efficiently and effectively produce news stories which contain a diversity of sources and views and avoid repetition and banal positioning. The study draws data from the collaboration of JECT.AI and SigmaLive. JECT.AI is a company which has produced a tool enabling journalists to discover a multitude of relevant sources and data, and thus positions, during content creation on a real-time basis. Robust work on professional practices and norms argues that journalists tend to sustain and reproduce dominant practices as a means to delineate their professional status and work norms (Singer, 2015). These include among others, the use of familiar and well-established sources to create news stories; however, such practices tend to reduce the diversity of sources and minimize creativity and plurality, and eventually the angles used to communicate information. As a response to this trend, this tool aims to support journalists in automatically retrieving news information with creative strategies that codified the expertise of experienced journalists (Maiden et al, 2019). SigmaLive is the leading mainstream news player in the online news landscape of Cyprus. JECT.AI has adjusted its tool in the Greek language used by SigmaLive. After implementing the tool for a period of 60 days, two questionnaires were developed: one for the journalists aiming to assess their experience with the tool and identify the perceived benefits and drawbacks, and one for the users aiming to explore the level of reader satisfaction when consuming stories developed by using the tool. Findings are deemed important in two ways; first, by identifying which design parameters and algorithmic input ensure maximum efficiency gains in terms of speeding up the monitoring of information and expanding real-time access to a variety of sources and data. Second, by assessing how this tool shapes story production in practice; is content produced by the aid of algorithmic data mining perceived as ‘better’ when compared to content produced solely by professionals? Can algorithmic data mining result in higher quality and more unique journalism that can offer a competitive edge in the marketplace while catering for a well-informed citizenry

Citizens as actors in the field of journalism: Exploring users’ agency and perceptions of participatory affordances

The concept of participatory journalism draws attention to the shortcomings of established journalism by emphasizing the role of the audience for boosting pluralism, transparency, deliberation and media accountability. Drawing on filed theory, the study attempts to shed light on whether the former audience can disrupt the field of journalism. To do so, it investigates the level and preferred forms of participation, and provides evidence on how users perceive of the participatory affordances offered through news media websites. Although users assign public discourse functions to participatory avenues, the study confirms the reluctant audience paradigm, and the popularity of tools enabling low editorial capacity. From a field perspective, it is argued that although users’ doxa denotes democratizing ideas about participation, their behavior is ultimately driven by their weak habitus (position) in the field. To use Bourdieu’s metaphor, the power in the journalistic game still lies in the hands of professionals; users are not willing or capable of disrupting the norms and practices of mainstream journalism

Producing protest news: Representations of contentious collective actions in mainstream print media

© 2015, University of Nicosia. All rights reserved. When covering protests, evidence suggests that the media tend to resort to the ‘protest paradigm’, a routinized template to produce protest stories, downsizing the scope, claims and mobilisation effects of the protest movements. This article examines the representations of protests by Cypriot mainstream media on the occasion of the recent economic remedies imposed by the EU/IMF. Framing analysis has indicated that media coverage adheres to the protest paradigm as the dominant frames of ‘drama’ and ‘inevitability’ signal an explicit effort to marginalise and delegitimise their claims, and therefore discredit their significance and potential to affect policy making. And yet, the findings suggest that the political orientation of the media does affect the representation of protests as the left-wing media provide empowering representations of the protests. Overall, however, media coverage is elite-sourced, episodic, lacking in-depth analysis and alternative policy suggestions. This study contributes to the protest paradigm thesis, and argues that recent evidence claiming a repair of the paradigm are counterbalanced in the case of protests that radically question the status quo. Finally, considering the moderate protest movement that developed in Cyprus, the findings are discussed in conjunction with specific traits of the Cypriot political culture providing some preliminary interpretation on how the politics of futility and fear coupled by the ‘responsible politics’ discourse articulated systematically in the media, can offer a degree of insight into the development of modest protest dynamics

When Journalism and AI intersect: Effects on Professional Ideology

Journalism has always been shaped by technology (Pavlik, 2000); however, the changes brought about by increasing automation and algorithms are having a profound impact on how news is produced and consumed (Thurman, Lewis & Kunert, 2019). More specifically, automation techniques and algorithmic technology are (re)shaping content production by means of automated storytelling, data mining, news dissemination and content optimization (Diakopoulos, 2019). This study sets out to illuminate how algorithms can enhance story telling capabilities for the production of feature stories. A common thread of criticism associated with online stories is their offering fragmented bits of information (Eveland, 2003) and reproducing news stories, the so-called phenomenon of churnalism (Saridou, Spyridou & Veglis, 2017). Recent work (Andersen & Strömbäck, 2021) concludes no general learning effects from online outlets (as opposed to offline media), a finding raising serious questions regarding a broadly informed citizenry in the web 3.0 era. A key question thus is how, under severe time pressures imposed by the new media ecosystem, should professional agency and algorithms be blended together in order to efficiently and effectively produce news stories which contain a diversity of sources and views and avoid repetition and banal positioning. The study draws data from the collaboration of JECT.AI and SigmaLive. JECT.AI is a company which has produced a tool enabling journalists to discover a multitude of relevant sources and data, and thus positions, during content creation on a real-time basis. Guided by the framework of professional ideology, and using qualitative data based on interviews with journalists who used the tool to produce content, this study provides evidence on the changing constituents of professional ideology in reference to the evaluation of JECT.AI, a computational news discovery (CND) tool. Findings indicate a major paradigm shift: the increased technologization of the newsroom manifested in tools using algorithms, data, and metrics, and the network logic of the platforms affecting news production and dissemination is cancelling out autonomy, a key boundary marker of professional journalism against commercial pressures. In contrast to previous research supporting journalists’ discomfort with technology’s disruptive impact on professional autonomy and judgement, our findings suggest a well-accepted reduction of autonomy compensated by performance gains raising questions about editorial agency and knowledge-generation in the digital era

Exploring Traffic Flows in the Online News Media Ecosystem

For more than two decades the news industry is faced with instability and confusion. Within a fluid and hyper-competitive news media ecosystem (Anderson, Bell & Shirky, 2012) news organizations face dwindling revenue and declining journalistic authority -in terms of both trust and impact (Nielsen & Selva, 2019). Significant worries about the future of journalism are often mitigated by the proliferation of (non-profit) web natives which experiment with forms of civic journalism (Harlow & Salaverría, 2016; Nelson, 2019). On the other hand, research suggests that news consumption patterns reveal legacy-related benefits for well-established outlets (Arrese & Kaufmann, 2016), while algorithmic recommendations by the platforms tend to decrease diversity to news exposure (Carlson, 2017; Diakopoulos, Trielli, Stark & Mussenden, 2018). Employing data from similarWeb (similarWeb.com), we investigate the flow of user internet traffic related to the Greek news organisations ecosystem between March – May 2019. Using the top 100 news sites by traffic as the unit of analysis, we attempt to map the relative size of attention different types of news organisations attract, as measured by clicks. Subsequently, treating the various websites as nodes forming a network, we employ Social Network Analysis to explore the connections, in terms of traffic flow exchanges, between the various sites, as well as the flows from outside toward the media ecosystem (e.g. through direct traffic, searches, social media etc.). The study contributes to the broader discussion on evolving attention patterns of news consumption and power balances between media outlets as well as between platforms and news companies

News consumption patterns during the coronavirus pandemic across time and devices: The Cyprus case

The corona virus pandemic sparked a renewed interest in news consumption patterns. When major crises occur, people experience an increasing need for information and sense-making; given the extraordinary impact of this health crisis on people’s social and work life, relevant work support a ‘rally around the news’ effect, news fatigue and news avoidance, doomscrolling and a trend toward mainstream and trusted news outlets. This study explored how the corona virus pandemic shaped news consumption patterns in Cyprus. The results show that news use hit record levels at the onset of the crisis, followed by corona news fatigue in the following months. Increased news consumption levels and greater engagement with the news were recorded again in the last couple of months of 2020 when the second wave of the pandemic hit Cyprus. Direct traffic to widely used and trusted sources doubled while a crisis boosting effect on mobile access to the detriment of computers was recorde

Exploring Traffic Flows in the Online News Media Ecosystem

For more than two decades the news industry is faced with instability and confusion. Within a fluid and hyper-competitive news media ecosystem (Anderson, Bell & Shirky, 2012) news organizations face dwindling revenue and declining journalistic authority -in terms of both trust and impact (Nielsen & Selva, 2019). Significant worries about the future of journalism are often mitigated by the proliferation of (non-profit) web natives which experiment with forms of civic journalism (Harlow & Salaverría, 2016; Nelson, 2019). On the other hand, research suggests that news consumption patterns reveal legacy-related benefits for well-established outlets (Arrese & Kaufmann, 2016), while algorithmic recommendations by the platforms tend to decrease diversity to news exposure (Carlson, 2017; Diakopoulos, Trielli, Stark & Mussenden, 2018). Employing data from similarWeb (similarWeb.com), we investigate the flow of user internet traffic related to the Greek news organisations ecosystem between March – May 2019. Using the top 100 news sites by traffic as the unit of analysis, we attempt to map the relative size of attention different types of news organisations attract, as measured by clicks. Subsequently, treating the various websites as nodes forming a network, we employ Social Network Analysis to explore the connections, in terms of traffic flow exchanges, between the various sites, as well as the flows from outside toward the media ecosystem (e.g. through direct traffic, searches, social media etc.). The study contributes to the broader discussion on evolving attention patterns of news consumption and power balances between media outlets as well as between platforms and news companies