Media (SELECTION AND PRESENTATION)
General
News made based off news values, set of criteria making "newsworthy" stories. These values reflect desire for profit by encouraging ratings, hits and circulation stories. Selection is also based on agenda-setting, reflecting the interests of media owners.
Media making profit.
Make profit by advertising - which is why they depend on rating, hits and circulation.
Important to present news in a way that doesnt offend advertisers (cutting off some stories completely).
CURRAN - profits.
Media outlets can shy from making criticisms about society or politics, meaning that the minority or alt opinion is under-represented in media. The mainstream view is used, media is quite conservative.
Globalisation and new tech.
Globalisation means there's a mass of news providers globally to choose from. New tech such as smartphones, Twitter and TV means news is instantly available from anywhere, 24 hours a day.
Citizen Journalism
New tech has created opportunities for citizen journalism. New media (videos on a phone that can be uploaded to Twitter, Youtube etc.) means ordinary people are more involved in collecting, reporting and spreading news stories.
This is transforming journalism (Bivens).
Agenda setting
People only discuss and form opinions about things they know about, in most cases it is media which provide this information. Media's influence in providing subjects for discussion is known as agenda-setting.
McCOMBS - agenda setting.
Argues that media doesn't only have influence over what we think about, but also how we think about certain subjects.
Norm setting.
Norm-setting refers to the way media reinforces norms, and isolates those who don't conform by making them victims of unfavourable media reports.
Norm setting is achieved by:
- Encouraging conformist behaviour.
- Discouraging non-conformist behaviour.
- Media representations.
News values and newsworthyness.
Events reported in news have been through a filtering process - journalists and editors decide what is newsworthy. Journalists operate in the framework of news values. In this sense, news is a social construct.
Galtung and Ruge - newsworthiness.
Newsworthy items overdramatise the elements of a story which make it more newsworthy. The importance of news values is due to economic pressure of needing profit.
BECKER - actions of journalists.
Argues journalists operate within the hierarchy of credibility. They attach greatest importance to the views of the powerful and influential.
Churnalism
Refers to process of journalists churning out articles based on second-hand news agency reports based on pre-packaged material from press releases and other sources, rather than doing research themselves.