Download Newsworthiness and blogs

Newsworthiness and blogs
A proposal to examine how media
professionals and readers perceive
the news content in blogs
By Cher Phillips
Overall question
• Subject of the study will look at the
newsworthiness of blogs compared to a
newspaper in a local community and in a larger
city
• The overall question will examine if the material
in blogs meets the criteria for newsworthiness
with media professionals and with readers
testing gatewatching theory
Model
• Where the idea came from: “News around the world” by
Pamela Shoemaker and Akiba A. Cohen
• Shoemaker and Cohen studied newsworthiness in two
cities (one small and one major) each in 10 countries
around the world
• Headlines from the content analysis were ranked by
focus groups consisting of media professionals and
readers
• Rankings were then compared with original placement
in news and to generate info on how media professionals
and readers judge news content
• Focus group results were then compared to how
prominently the stories first ran
Study results
• News and newsworthiness are different
constructs
• News is a social artifact
• Newsworthiness is a cognitive concept (people
measure what’s newsworthy)
• Finding: “What people – even journalists – think
is newsworthy does not necessarily become
news.”
• Difference between newsworthiness and news
may be increasing
Question: Apply this to blogs
• What would we find out if we studied blogs by
examining their content for newsworthiness?
• Is there a way to find out how newsworthy
individuals think blogs are?
• Would media professionals publish the same
kind of content a news blog publishes?
Research/Lit review directions
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Lit review will cover three areas:
Blogging studies and history
Newsworthiness studies
Theoretical application
Blog, internet research
• A 2005 Pew study showed 50 million Americans
use the Internet for news on a typical day. In a
study of 3,011 adults, 71% got their news online
and 9% of all Internet users had been to news
blogs.
Horrigan, John B., “Online News For many home broadband users, the internetis a primary news source.” 22 March 2006 Pew Internet and
American Life Project. Accessed April 24, 2007 <http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/178/report_display.asp>
Blogging as Journalism
• In a 2006 study, the Pew Internet and American Life
Project found 34% of 233 self-identified bloggers
consider their blogs a form journalism, 65% of bloggers
do not
• Practices contributing blogs seen as journalism included
verifying facts (56 percent do this sometimes or often),
linking to cited source material hosted on another site
(57 percent do this sometimes or often), quoting people
or sources (15 percent do this often) and citing
copyrighted material (12 percent do this often)
•
Fox, Susannah and Amanda Lenhart. “Bloggers: A portrait of the internet’s new storytellers.” July 19, 2006 Pew
Internet and American Life Project. <http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/186/report_display.asp >
Bloggers as gatekeepers
• In 2005 study, Byran Murley and Kim Smith
compared bloggers to Colonial-era pamphleteers
• The authors found bloggers don’t want to be
journalists as much as they want to fulfill the
gatekeeper role without doing the original work
of journalists.
Murley, Bryan and Kim Smith. “Bloggers Strike a Nerve: Examining the intersection of blogging and journalism.”
AEJMC 2005 Convention San Antonio, Texas, Aug.10-13, 2005, University of South Carolina. Columbia, SC
Bloggers influence on readers
• In a study published in 2006, Wirtz and Jones
applied a two-step flow of information model to
the influence of bloggers on the blog readers
• They found people who spend more time online
are more likely to read blogs, people who
consumed radio and national newspaper news
were more likely to read blogs, while people who
watched TV news were less likely to read blogs.
Citzen blogging content
• In a 2007 study, Jan Schaffer looked at 500 citizen
media sites (31 case studies and 191 survey respondents),
• Individuals running the sites connected success to
impacting their communities by challenging local
mainstream media to improve, raising awareness with
citizens
• Site adminstrators say they added value to the
community with 82 percent of sites provide content
unavailable elsewhere, 61 percent reporting they
watchdogged local government, and 27 percent saying
they site increased voter turnout
•
Schaffer, Jan. “Citizen Media: Fad or the Future of News? The rise and prospects of hyperlocal journalism.” J-Lab:
The Institute for Interactive Journalism <http://www.kcnn.org/research/citizen_media_report/>
Relationship of opposition
• Journalists and bloggers have a relationship that
was born in opposition that is reflected in access
and privilege.
• But the kinds of issues arising from disputes
over access and privilege hint that the content
covered may be as newsworthy as newspaper
content.
• Popular media sources can illustrate issues and
struggles
Watchdog’s watchdog
• In 2004, bloggers showed that Dan Rather and
CBS News ran a bogus report on President
George W. Bush’s National Guard record.
• In 2002, the mainstream media ignored former
Majority Leader Trett Lott’s comments asserting
the nation would have been better off segregated
until bloggers and online commentators pressed
the issue keeping the story in the forefront until
the popular press was forced to report on it.
Gillmor, Dan. We the Media:Grassroots Journalism By the People, For the People. Sebastopol: Orielly, January 2006.
Different privileges
• In 2006, the Associated Press reported video
blogger Joshua Wolf spent a record setting 226
days in prison for refusing to turn over video
coverage of a street protest. California’s shield
law protects journalists, but failed to protect
bloggers from a federal investigation. Wolf cut a
deal with prosecutor’s for his release, making the
video public.
Access reflecting a changing culture of
content?
• 2005 – Garret Graff was first blogger granted a daily
White House press pass
• 2006 — Blogger Mark Evan’s was “dis-invited” from
press events by Nortel, a company he wrote about in
his blog.
• 2007 – Jay Lassiter’s press pass for covering the
state legislature were yanked by police
• 2007 – two press seats were set aside for bloggers in
the Scooter Libby Supreme Court trial.
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Katharine Seelye, White House Approves Pass for Blogger, New York Times, March 7, 2005
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/07/technology/07press.html
DUBLIN, Califiornia , “Blogger freed after record contempt stint” POSTED: 4:51 p.m. EDT, April 4, 2007,
http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/04/04/jailed.journalist.ap/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
New Jersey Blogger Gets Press Pass Yanked, National Journal Online,
http://beltwayblogroll.nationaljournal.com/archives/2007/07/new_jersey_blog.php
Bloggers get press seats at Scooter Libby trial , Cyberjournalist.org, http://www.cyberjournalist.net/news/003971.php
Newsworthiness measures - deviance
• Shoemaker and Cohen used two predictors to
determine newsworthiness
• Proposal suggests accessing content for three
dimensions of deviance
• Normative – news that breaks the norm
• Pathological/Social Change – news that
challenges status quo of the social system
• Statistical – just odd, unusual or novel
Newsworthiness measures – Social
significance
• Shoemaker and Cohen used four dimensions of
social significance to indicate newsworthiness
• Proposal suggests accessing content for the
following four dimensions:
• Political – impacts or potentially impacts
governments
• Economic – impacts potentially impacts monetary
systems
• Cultural – impacts or potentially impacts social
systems
• Public -- impacts or potentially impacts well being
Theoretical question
• Proposal will apply gatekeeping theory to the
content of blogs and newspapers by asking focus
groups to rank the content
• By applying gatekeeping theory, the opportunity
arises to test gatewatching theory
Gatekeeping to Gatewatching
• Gatekeeping of traditional journalism consists of
three gates: the newsgathering or the “input gate,”
the news produced or the “output gate,” and news
generated by reader and editorial response or the
“response gate”
• Interactive nature of the media today changes that
• Axel Bruns gatewatching theory suggests that
journalists roles will eventually be alongside
bloggers as gatewatchers, rather than gatekeepers,
connecting information to give it context for their
readers
Bruns, Axel. “Gatewatching, not gatekeeping: Collaborative online news.” Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy,
2003:107, May 2003: 31-44(14)
Potential research questions:
a. How does the news content in blogs and in newspapers
compare?
b. What content overlaps between blogs and newspapers?
c. What kinds of content differs?
d. Do media professionals find that the material in blogs is
newsworthy?
e. Do readers find that the material in blogs is newsworthy?
f. How often would media professionals publish the content
that bloggers publish?
g. What kind of content clears the media professionals’ gates
and what content does not?
Research Method
• Compare published material for the same time period in two
target cities:
• Smaller, peripheral city should have a hyperlocal blog (blog
centered around a specific location) maintained by citizen
journalists (not professional journalist, professional bloggers
OK)
• One example of a candidate city: The Muncie Star Press
(http://www.thestarpress.com/apps/pbcs.dll/frontpage) and
the Muncie Free Press (http://www.munciefreepress.com/)
Other suggestions?
• Larger city can be a paper of record like the Washington Post
(national paper of record with comments) and then a national
blog like the Huffington Post.
(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/) Idea is to target from the
top blogs in Technorati’s (http://technorati.com/pop/blogs/)
most popular blogs. Other suggestions?
What to do with comments?
• A difference in analyzing content in the first
phase of the study: comments
• Discussion area – how to gauge comments as
predictors of newsworthiness? By the number of
responses? Suggestions?
Second phase of study: ranking
• The model study’s scope was extremely wide—
covering 10 countries and delved more deeply
into the discussion of the focus groups
• This proposal narrows the scope to media
professionals and readers ranking headlines
pulled from the newspapers and blogs that could
be done with surveys
Gatewatching test
• During the ranking, to test gatewatching theory,
offer test subjects headline sets to rank for
newsworthiness
• Then, ask media professionals and readers to
check off headlines from blogs if they would
cover, assign or think that the story should be
covered in a newspaper
Relevance to course
• Study examines the news content at the
individual level to determine what content is
news and newsworthy
• The study also takes a seminal communication
theory, gatekeeping, and tests its successor
gatewatching
• When it comes down to what we see in the news,
the final test of gatewatching is deeply connected
to how individuals – media and audience – see
content as having news value