Patterns of newsmaking in Western journalism : a content analysis of newspaper across six Western democracies and five decades

This cumulative thesis is based on a comparative content analysis of public affairs coverage in three press sectors (national, regional, weekly) in six countries (USA, GBR, GER, SWI, ITA, FRA) during routine periods from 1960 to 2007. This thesis investigates how context, time and newspaper type can influence political newsmaking in Western democracies in symptomatic ways. Journalism today has become more dependent on media market developments. Processes of economic liberalization and deregulation of media markets have induced commercialization trends of growing concentration and competition of media companies. To counter this intensified competition from attention, journalists increasingly operate according to their own motives that are shaped by “commercial” rules (imperatives of the market) and “professional” rules (professional aspirations of journalists). The empirical findings presented here indicate that a more commercial (audience-oriented) and a more professional (interpretative and critical) kind of newsmaking emerged but developed differently across countries, newspaper types and time. The main findings of this dissertation can be summarized as follows: First, this dissertation provides empirical evidence for an increase in highlighting the negative, sensationalist and emotional facets of the news, hunting scandals, privileging the viewpoints of common people, and emphasizing the private lives of politicians to attract large audiences. However, this transformation toward a more commercialized news reporting and thus a more “popular style” is, for example, less distinct in the Swiss newspapers and does not occur in German newspapers. British and American newspapers, in particular, seem to be forced to adapt to market pressures, as their levels of popularization in the news items increase the most. This shift toward a more entertainment-oriented approach to newsmaking raises legitimate democratic concerns when considering the argument that these developments lead to public cynicism and political apathy. Second, this dissertation also shows empirically that the profession of journalism is undergoing a profound transformation in that interpretative journalism has largely supplanted descriptive reporting. This characteristic of a more professionalized news reporting refers to the journalists’ aspirations to preserve their independence from political manipulation. A growing contextualization, profound interpretation of complex issues (answering why-questions, addressing causes and consequences of occurrences, showing connections to other events

Comparing journalism cultures in Britain and Germany: confrontation, contextualization, conformity

Many British newspapers proclaim strongly partisan political and moral positions, with headlines such as ?Get Britain out of the EU.? In contrast, German newspapers, during national events such as the refugee crisis, often take on the role of reflective observers. Previous comparative research has shown a link between journalists? output and professional attitudes. Using data from the Worlds of Journalism Study, this article analyses the professional attitudes of British and German journalists (N=1475) across three constituents of journalism culture: societal, epistemological, and ethical. Our analysis shows significant differences in all three constituents. We conclude that British journalists conceive of their professional role as more confrontational to those in power than their German colleagues. We also find some evidence that German journalists believe it more important to provide context and analysis ? aiming to assist audiences in their civic roles ? and that they are more likely to conform to professional codes, although only in general terms. Our findings contradict some earlier comparative studies that claimed a more passive role for British journalists. Our findings may also hold interest for others engaged in international comparative research, showing how the two-country comparison can identify, and account for, what is hidden in multi-country research designs

Visual mismatch negativity (vMMN): A review and meta-analysis of studies in psychiatric and neurological disorders

The visual mismatch negativity (vMMN) response is an event-related potential (ERP) component, which is automatically elicited by events that violate predictions based on prior events. VMMN experiments use visual stimulus repetition to induce predictions, and vMMN is obtained by subtracting the response to rare unpredicted stimuli from those to frequent stimuli. One increasingly popular interpretation of the mismatch response postulates that vMMN, similar to its auditory counterpart (aMMN), represents a prediction error response generated by cortical mechanisms forming probabilistic representations of sensory signals. Here we discuss the physiological and theoretical basis of vMMN and review thirty-three studies from the emerging field of its clinical applications, presenting a meta-analysis of findings in schizophrenia, mood disorders, substance abuse, neurodegenerative disorders, developmental disorders, deafness, panic disorder and hypertension. Furthermore, we include reports on aging and maturation as they bear upon many clinically relevant conditions. Surveying the literature we found that vMMN is altered in several clinical populations which is in line with aMMN findings. An important potential advantage of vMMN however is that it allows the investigation of deficits in predictive processing in cognitive domains which rely primarily on visual information; a principal sensory modality and thus of vital importance in environmental information processing and response, and a modality which arguably may be more sensitive to some pathological changes. However, due to the relative infancy of research in vMMN compared to aMMN in clinical populations its potential for clinical application is not yet fully appreciated. The aim of this review and meta-analysis therefore is to present, in a detailed systematic manner, the findings from clinically-based vMMN studies, to discuss their potential impact and application, to raise awareness of this measure and to improve our understanding of disease upon fundamental aspects of visual information processing

Dissecting the Shared Genetic Architecture of Suicide Attempt, Psychiatric Disorders, and Known Risk Factors

Background Suicide is a leading cause of death worldwide, and nonfatal suicide attempts, which occur far more frequently, are a major source of disability and social and economic burden. Both have substantial genetic etiology, which is partially shared and partially distinct from that of related psychiatric disorders. Methods We conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) of 29,782 suicide attempt (SA) cases and 519,961 controls in the International Suicide Genetics Consortium (ISGC). The GWAS of SA was conditioned on psychiatric disorders using GWAS summary statistics via multitrait-based conditional and joint analysis, to remove genetic effects on SA mediated by psychiatric disorders. We investigated the shared and divergent genetic architectures of SA, psychiatric disorders, and other known risk factors. Results Two loci reached genome-wide significance for SA: the major histocompatibility complex and an intergenic locus on chromosome 7, the latter of which remained associated with SA after conditioning on psychiatric disorders and replicated in an independent cohort from the Million Veteran Program. This locus has been implicated in risk-taking behavior, smoking, and insomnia. SA showed strong genetic correlation with psychiatric disorders, particularly major depression, and also with smoking, pain, risk-taking behavior, sleep disturbances, lower educational attainment, reproductive traits, lower socioeconomic status, and poorer general health. After conditioning on psychiatric disorders, the genetic correlations between SA and psychiatric disorders decreased, whereas those with nonpsychiatric traits remained largely unchanged. Conclusions Our results identify a risk locus that contributes more strongly to SA than other phenotypes and suggest a shared underlying biology between SA and known risk factors that is not mediated by psychiatric disorders.Peer reviewe

The genetics of the mood disorder spectrum:genome-wide association analyses of over 185,000 cases and 439,000 controls

Background Mood disorders (including major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder) affect 10-20% of the population. They range from brief, mild episodes to severe, incapacitating conditions that markedly impact lives. Despite their diagnostic distinction, multiple approaches have shown considerable sharing of risk factors across the mood disorders. Methods To clarify their shared molecular genetic basis, and to highlight disorder-specific associations, we meta-analysed data from the latest Psychiatric Genomics Consortium (PGC) genome-wide association studies of major depression (including data from 23andMe) and bipolar disorder, and an additional major depressive disorder cohort from UK Biobank (total: 185,285 cases, 439,741 controls; non-overlapping N = 609,424). Results Seventy-three loci reached genome-wide significance in the meta-analysis, including 15 that are novel for mood disorders. More genome-wide significant loci from the PGC analysis of major depression than bipolar disorder reached genome-wide significance. Genetic correlations revealed that type 2 bipolar disorder correlates strongly with recurrent and single episode major depressive disorder. Systems biology analyses highlight both similarities and differences between the mood disorders, particularly in the mouse brain cell-types implicated by the expression patterns of associated genes. The mood disorders also differ in their genetic correlation with educational attainment – positive in bipolar disorder but negative in major depressive disorder. Conclusions The mood disorders share several genetic associations, and can be combined effectively to increase variant discovery. However, we demonstrate several differences between these disorders. Analysing subtypes of major depressive disorder and bipolar disorder provides evidence for a genetic mood disorders spectrum

Bipolar multiplex families have an increased burden of common risk variants for psychiatric disorders.

Multiplex families with a high prevalence of a psychiatric disorder are often examined to identify rare genetic variants with large effect sizes. In the present study, we analysed whether the risk for bipolar disorder (BD) in BD multiplex families is influenced by common genetic variants. Furthermore, we investigated whether this risk is conferred mainly by BD-specific risk variants or by variants also associated with the susceptibility to schizophrenia or major depression. In total, 395 individuals from 33 Andalusian BD multiplex families (166 BD, 78 major depressive disorder, 151 unaffected) as well as 438 subjects from an independent, BD case/control cohort (161 unrelated BD, 277 unrelated controls) were analysed. Polygenic risk scores (PRS) for BD, schizophrenia (SCZ), and major depression were calculated and compared between the cohorts. Both the familial BD cases and unaffected family members had higher PRS for all three psychiatric disorders than the independent controls, with BD and SCZ being significant after correction for multiple testing, suggesting a high baseline risk for several psychiatric disorders in the families. Moreover, familial BD cases showed significantly higher BD PRS than unaffected family members and unrelated BD cases. A plausible hypothesis is that, in multiplex families with a general increase in risk for psychiatric disease, BD development is attributable to a high burden of common variants that confer a specific risk for BD. The present analyses demonstrated that common genetic risk variants for psychiatric disorders are likely to contribute to the high incidence of affective psychiatric disorders in the multiplex families. However, the PRS explained only part of the observed phenotypic variance, and rare variants might have also contributed to disease development

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts

Changing Political News? Long-Term Trends in American, British, French, Italian, German and Swiss Press Reporting

This study intends to examine the relevance of Hallin and Mancini’s characterizations of media systems for explaining news output produced by print media embedded in these systems. We employ a longitudinal design comparing print outlets from six Western systems (USA, GBR, GER, SUI, FRA, ITA) in 1960/61 and 2006/07. While we find clear convergence in the preference for opinionated stories in covering politics, the use of objectivity-related and negativity-related reporting features continues to differentiate journalism models. Although institutional aspects of media systems cannot be expected to be directly reflected in content, we are able to confirm several expectations by Hallin and Mancini, including their suspicion that France and Great Britain are borderline cases of their respective models. We conclude that similar technological and economic changes around the world as well as growing transnational exchanges between the national models have not led to an across the board, wholesale homogenization of news practices

The evolution of objective and interpretative journalism in the western press. Comparing six news systems since the 1960s

A content analysis of 2,422 political news stories from national and regional newspapers examines the different ways in which the hard-news paradigm has been adopted in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France, and Italy between the 1960s and 2000s. The study traces how hard news practices diffused differently across borders, and how they have been combined with elements of interpretation and opinion over time. This process has led to the formation of three distinct news cultures. Conclusions are drawn for a broader understanding of the evolution of news journalism and the appropriate classification of Western media systems

The push to popularize politics: Understanding the audience-friendly packaging of political news in six media systems since the 1960s

This study offers a five-item based measurement of popularization of news (combining sensationalization, scandalization, emotionalization, common people narrative and privatization of public figures) to examine a core assumption in the comparative literature, namely the convergence in Western journalism toward the Liberal Model. A content analysis of more than 6000 stories from 18 news outlets (regional, national and weekly papers) in six press systems (United States, Great Britain, Germany, Switzerland, France and Italy) stretching across five decades (1960s to 2010s) finds an increase but no convergence in the popularization of political news. Factors located at the national and the organizational levels correspond in characteristic ways with differences in the use of popularization-related strategies. With the growing need to offer additional attractions to oversaturated consumers, further increases in popularized political news are to be expected in the future but only according to specific conditions