With the emergence and rapid acceptance of online news come new and varied opportunities for user engagement with content, along with alternative metrics for capturing those behaviors. This study focuses on interactive engagement with online news videos. We propose a theoretical framework for conceptualizing user engagement on a continuum from exposure to interactivity. Furthermore, we make a distinction between user-content (e.g. commenting) and user-user (e.g. replying to another user's comment) modes of interaction. We then explore publicly available measures of these concepts and test a series of hypotheses to explore commenting and conversational behaviors in response to YouTube news videos. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications for advancing our understanding of user engagement with online news.

This study examines 4 online news sites to compare stories that journalists display most prominently with stories consumers read most frequently. We find that journalists' chosen stories are “soft” with respect to subject matter but not story format, and that these choices diverge from consumers' choices, resulting in a choice gap. The study design makes important methodological contributions by using the story as the unit of analysis, operationalizing “soft news” in terms of subject matter as well as format, and considering the influence of journalists' and consumers' choices on each other. This article discusses the implications of the findings on such issues as the dynamics of agenda setting, the prospects for consumer‐authored content, and the watchdog function of the media.

Amid the pressure and enthusiasm for researchers to share data, a rapidly growing number of tools and services have emerged. What do we know about the quality of these data? Why does quality matter? And who should be responsible for data quality? We believe an essential measure of data quality is the ability to engage in informed reuse, which requires that data are independently understandable. In practice, this means that data must undergo quality review, a process whereby data and associated files are assessed and required actions are taken to ensure files are independently understandable for informed reuse. This paper explains what we mean by data quality review, what measures can be applied to it, and how it is practiced in three domain-specific archives. We explore a selection of other data repositories in the research data ecosystem, as well as the roles of researchers, academic libraries, and scholarly journals in regard to their application of data quality measures in practice. We end with thoughts about the need to commit to data quality and who might be able to take on those tasks.

No abstract

This study analyzes the language through which journalists comprehend the nature and meaning of the urban community. It employs content analysis and interviews with reporters to critique the discourse of urban pathology - that is, the conceptual system often used to think and write about economically distressed neighborhoods. Rather than suggesting that all the “bad news “from these neighborhoods merely be balanced with “good news,” this study promotes a vocabulary of community assets - a set of terms that can enhance the power of journalistic language to describe the community. Such a vocabulary, the study concludes, would make a useful contribution to the practice of civic journalism.

No abstract

In 2009, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies (ISPS) at Yale University began building an open access digital collection of social science experimental data, metadata, and associated files produced by ISPS researchers. The digital repository was created to support the replication of research findings and to enable further data analysis and instruction. Content is submitted to a rigorous process of quality assessment and normalization, including transformation of statistical code into R, an open source statistical software. Other requirements included: (a) that the repository be integrated with the current database of publications and projects publicly available on the ISPS website; (b) that it offered open access to datasets, documentation, and statistical software program files; (c) that it utilized persistent linking services and redundant storage provided within the Yale Digital Commons infrastructure; and (d) that it operated in accordance with the prevailing standards of the digital preservation community. In partnership with Yale’s Office of Digital Assets and Infrastructure (ODAI), the ISPS Data Archive was launched in the fall of 2010. We describe the process of creating the repository, discuss prospects for similar projects in the future, and explain how this specialized repository fits into the larger digital landscape at Yale.

No abstract