This study conducted a cross-national television news content analysis in 14 countries to compare the elements of sensationalism appearing in four types of media systems. A secondary analysis was further employed to examine the relationship between news sensationalization, news competition levels, and professionalism of these countries. Results reveal that crime-, accident-, and disaster-related news remain the staples of sensational news across countries. Dual broadcasting systems devoted more sensational news coverage than commercial broadcasting systems. Sensational formal features were found to be limited in all broadcasting systems. Celebrities and ordinary people tended to pose as news actors to personalize and dramatize the news more frequently than allowing officials or authoritative sources to legitimate the stories. Furthermore, news competition has been confirmed as an impact to the boom of news sensationalization. More professional journalists report more soft news than less professional ones.
Video sharing websites have become an indispensable online service to Internet users. We aim to investigate the relationships between motivations of using video-sharing websites, online reputation management, innovation orientation, and video-sharing website usage behaviors, and how these factors affect gratification obtained from video-sharing website usage. This study employs focus group interviews and online questionnaire surveys. The research findings reveal that the higher the interpersonal media related motivations, such as participating or sharing, the higher the level of involvement of video-sharing website usage behaviors is. However, the mass media related motivations, such as browsing or consuming, are irrelevant to the level of usage involvement. The earlier users adopt video-sharing websites, the higher level of usage involvement is. The more value video-sharing websites' users put for video sites' performance perception, the lower level of usage involvement is; on the contrary, the more value video-sharing websites' users put for impression management, the higher level of usage involvement is. Taken as a whole, the higher level of usage involvement, the higher level of gratifications acquired from using usergenerated video-sharing websites is. This paper establishes a comprehensive behavior model of video-sharing websites, which is helpful both for online media research and business practice. It is worthy of noting that the findings are based on survey data from a single country, and may impact this paper's external validity.
PurposeThe blogging phenomenon has become a primary mode of mainstream communication for the Web 2.0 era. While previous studies found that campaign web sites did not realise two‐way communication ideals, the current study aims to investigate potential differences in communication patterns between campaign blogs and web sites during Taiwan's 2008 general election, with the aim of exploring whether the blogging phenomenon can improve the process of online political communication.Design/methodology/approachThe study used a content analysis approach, the web style analysis method, which was designed specifically for analysing web content, and applied it to an online campaign context in a different political culture, using Taiwan's general election as a case study.FindingsResults indicated that the themes of both campaign blogs and web sites focused on “attacking opponents” rather than focusing on political policies or information on particular issues. However, campaign blogs and web sites significantly differed in all other dimensions, including structural features, functions, interactivity and appeal strategies. Overall, in terms of the online democratic ideal, campaign blogs appeared to allow more democratic, broader, deeper and easier two‐way communication models between candidates and voters or among voters.Research limitations/implicationsThe current study focused on candidates' blogs and web sites and did not explore the other vast parts of the online political sphere, particularly independent or citizen‐based blogs, which play significant roles in the decentralised and participant‐networked public spheres.Originality/valueThe study illuminates the role of hyperlinks on campaign blogs. By providing a greater abundance of external links than campaign web sites, campaign blogs allowed more voters, especially younger ones, to share political information in a manner that is quite different from the traditional one‐way communication model. The paper also argues that interactivity measures should be incorporated into the web style analysis method.
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