Catálogo de publicaciones - revistas

<jats:p> Digital media transform news. First, we see this in changing use patterns. Young people today show a decline in interest in traditional news formats and practices, such as watching the evening news on TV or reading a daily newspaper. But digital media also transform production and distribution of news, leading to new ways to conceptualise and understand news. In the light of these profound transformations in audience behaviour many have started to question the concept of news in news research. In the light of such altered production and distribution contexts which are likely to fundamentally impact on audiences’ definitions and perceptions, this article sets out to explore alternative ways to understand and conceptualise news, beyond traditional news research. What is news today, and how can we study it from the perspective of news audiences, without resorting to preconceived notions? We propose a theoretical approach based in classic phenomenology which, we argue, will open up for further reconsideration of the concept as well as providing a potentially fruitful basis for research on digital news consumption. Phenomenology takes human existence as its vantage point and explores how human subjects exist and create meaning in their everyday lives in relation to basic categories such as time, space and (sociocultural) relevance. We argue phenomenology to be particularly relevant for exploring new meanings of news as the basic dimensions of phenomenology not only coincide with the basic dimensions of news consumption, but also of those of news values; time, space, and (sociocultural) relevance. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Drawing on interviews with a diverse group of adults living in the United States, this study examines news media literacy and how perceptions of personal bias and news bias affect news choices and interpretation in general and evaluation of two news stories specifically. Findings suggest that while people recognize that their worldviews shape their news choices in the abstract and believe that news bias occurs for a variety of complex reasons, when faced with analyzing stories, they point to political partisanship connected to specific news outlets as the root of bias in news with most relying on source cues to make their assessments. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article examines patterns of gender discrimination in the authorship of news stories in general, and opinion pieces in particular. Drawing on feminist media scholarship, content analysis of 3013 articles from eight Argentine news sites and their respective social media accounts during 2017 shows that 32.63 percent of the stories with bylines were authored by women; stories about sports, politics, and crime were less likely to have a female byline; there were no significant differences across news sites; and this gap was smaller on the Facebook and Twitter accounts of the news outlets examined than on their home pages. In the case of opinion pieces, the percentage with female bylines dropped to 15 percent, which amounts to a significant difference with other genres even after controlling for other variables, such as topic or news site. On the basis of these findings, we reflect on how factors such as news topics, the format of the news article, and the type of digital source interact with gender as a structuring mechanism of media representations. </jats:p>

<jats:p> In light of concerns about decreasing news use, a decline in interest in political news or even active avoidance or resistance of news in general, the idea of ‘incidental news’ has been seen as a possible remedy. Generally, ‘incidental news’ refers to the ways in which people encounter information about current events through media when they were not actively seeking the news. However, scholars studying incidental news through different theoretical and methodological perspectives have been arriving at differing evaluations of the significance and implications of this phenomenon – to the extent of downright contradictory findings. This introductory piece posits the aim of this special issue on Studying Incidental News: a conceptual clarification of incidental news exposure. In this issue, scholars coming from different approaches, ranging from cognitive processing, ecological models, emergent practices and a focus on platform affordances, show how different theoretical perspectives help account for various dimensions of incidental news consumption, and thus help explain the often conflicting findings that have been suggested so far. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Research on incidental news exposure in the context of social media focuses on ‘successful’ incidental news exposure – when unintended news contacts result in active engagement and knowledge gains. However, we lack both theoretical and empirical approaches to the far more likely case that people keep on scrolling through their newsfeed without any post triggering active engagement. To fill this gap, the article conceptualizes a triple-path model of incidental news exposure on social media as a process. Building upon the Cognitive Mediation Model, dual system theories on information processing and recent empirical findings, three different pathways of incidental news processing are identified: automatic, incidental and active. The triple-path model thus allows to theorize the learning potentials that can plausibly be expected from each incidental news exposure path as a starting point for future research. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article argues for new approaches to the study of incidental exposure that better account for the role of algorithms, platforms, and processes of datafication in shaping the likelihood of news exposure online. It offers a critique of three themes prominent in the incidental exposure literature: (1) incidental exposure connotes accidental exposure to news on social media, (2) news content is ubiquitous on social media, and (3) incidental exposure can be conceptually distinguished from intentional exposure to news on social media. This article proposes a new metaphor to reframe research on incidental exposure: ‘attraction’ to news. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Social network sites such as Facebook and Twitter have become a key part of online users’ news diets. On social network sites, even individuals who are not motivated to seek out news are believed to be exposed to news posts due to the sharing activities of friends or inadvertently witnessing discussions about current events. Research on this incidental news exposure (INE) has largely focused on its potential for positive effects on information gain or political participation, while simultaneously turning a blind eye to the inequalities in news exposure and engagement. This article aims to address this issue by proposing and explicating the existence of a ‘Matthew Effect’ in social media news use. It is argued that INE research needs to consider the unequal chances to both be exposed to news on social network sites and to actually engage (i.e. read and interact) with ‘accidentally’ encountered news content. </jats:p>

<jats:p> The profusion of information about current events in digital media makes it likely that individuals are exposed to news through the course of everyday life, even when they are not motivated to do so. Yet, such incidental news exposure and its consequences depend on a multitude of characteristics that are unique to individuals and the social and information environments they inhabit. This complexity makes it difficult to evaluate the broader democratic implications of incidental exposure. To address this challenge, we propose an ecological model that offers a more comprehensive framework for theorizing and studying incidental news exposure in digital media environments. The model organizes factors influencing incidental exposure into six ecological levels that span individual and environmental domains. It further distinguishes state-like factors (i.e. malleable, context-dependent) and trait-like factors (i.e. stable, context-independent). We demonstrate how the model can (1) better define types of incidental exposure, (2) theorize how factors can interact across levels to shape exposure and its consequences, and (3) identify promising areas for future research. </jats:p>

<jats:p> This article seeks to contribute to theorizing the dynamics of incidental news consumption. Through an analysis of 200 semi-structured interviews with people in Argentina, Finland, Israel, Japan, and the United States, we show that intentionality in news consumption can be viewed on a continuum, which goes from deliberately setting apart time to access the news on specific outlets to skimming through unsought-for news on social and broadcast media, with intermediate practices such as respondents setting up an environment where they are more or less likely to encounter news. Drawing on structuration theory, this article conceptualizes incidental news in the context of the wider media environment and across multiple levels of analysis and explores how individual agency and social structure interact to shape information acquisition practices. </jats:p>

<jats:p> Based on a study of US high school students from predominantly working-class, immigrant backgrounds, this article illustrates how young people used social media to share personal opinions, experiences and news about environmental problems affecting their neighborhood, ultimately helping to change public policy. It reveals how the interpersonal connectivity facilitated by social media can create opportunities for youth voice and collective identity that inspire connective action. Youthful online practices of sharing personal stories, links, photos, memes, videos and other online artifacts of engagement exemplify ‘connective journalism’ through which young people create and share narratives about their personal experiences and concerns that, in turn, allow them to see themselves as members of a larger community or counterpublic of people facing similar experiences and grievances. These connective journalism practices have implications for the ways we think about journalism, political activism and youth citizenship. </jats:p>