Reader opinion in the digital age: Tabloid and broadsheet newspaper websites and the exercise of political voice

Richardson, John; Stanyer, James

doi:10.1177/1464884911415974

Cited by 68 publications

(57 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…As such, our findings in relation to popular newspapers seemed to differ from that of Richardson and Stanyer (2011) who contended that online readers of tabloid papers were drawn to comment on substantive issues rather than on lifestyle and human-interest musings and celebrity and sport stories. We believe that the divergences between our results were mainly caused by the differences in terms of our samples and data sets as well as by the dissimilarities in terms of political and journalistic culture and online readership.…”

Section: Editorial Policies Of Online Newspapers and Reader Commentscontrasting

confidence: 89%

Editorial Policies, Journalistic Output and Reader Comments

Ürper¹,

Çevikel²

2014

Journalism Studies

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This article investigates how reader comments are related to editorial policies and journalistic output. It attempts to explore differences and similarities between popular and quality online newspapers in terms of readers' reaction to different subject categories. Our findings, based on a quantitative content analysis of two serious-popular and one semi-serious online newspaper in Turkey, revealed a number of parallels between editorial choices and reader comments. First, the distribution of reader comments on popular newspapers resembled each other in that sports and entertainment constituted a substantial proportion of overall comments. Moreover, subject categories that ranked high on the home pages of online newspapers ranked high in reader comments as well. Thus, the news categories prioritized by online newspapers on their home pages not only constituted the bulk of their journalistic output but also accounted for the majority of reader comments. We argue, in the light of our findings, that the public sphere created by reader comments has a number of structural limitations which seriously undermine its potential to support a more deliberative democracy and more participatory journalism. The dominance of soft-news categories on the home pages of popular newspapers not only narrows the range of information available for the general public but also largely confines reader comments into a restricted selection of subject categories which are heavily imbalanced in favour of sports and entertainment.

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Section: Editorial Policies Of Online Newspapers and Reader Commentscontrasting

confidence: 89%

Editorial Policies, Journalistic Output and Reader Comments

Ürper¹,

Çevikel²

2014

Journalism Studies

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“…Rose and Novas (2004) (Richardson andStanyer, 2011, McQuail 2013), however this is seen by some as increasing the potential for democratic debate in the media (Richardson and Stanyer, 2011). Normative theories of media and society discuss the function of the press in general and journalists in particular.…”

Section: Discussion: Responsibilising Eaters Through the Mediamentioning

confidence: 99%

Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK

Wells

2017

Geoforum

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Citation: Wells, R. (2017). Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK. Geoforum, 84, pp. 228-238. doi: 10.1016Geoforum, 84, pp. 228-238. doi: 10. /j.geoforum.2016 This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent AbstractThe media are one of the main arenas in which nutrition information is framed and developed. Research has shown a predominantly individualistic framing of diet--related health issues such as obesity, type--2 diabetes and coronary heart disease in international media coverage. These issues are framed as personal, 'lifestyle' issues rather than requiring policy or structural change. In addition, research has shown a tendency in nutrition research and media coverage of it, to emphasize individual ingredients or components more than overall diet. The media have a tendency to report diet related research simplistically, often without contextualization. Taking a case study approach, this paper analyses UK news media coverage and framing of British Medical Journal (BMJ) published research into dietary fibre and bowel cancer risk. I investigate how the health issue fibre and bowel cancer is framed and dissect the process of mediation (from press release to mass media to local media), analysing the shifting 'geographies of responsibility' that result. This paper argues that media coverage of research into diet and bowel cancer can be explained by the technologies, conventions and routines of media representation. Key gatekeepers were found to have an important role in framing the information that was reported. Taking a critical approach, this paper argues that like obesity, type 2 diabetes and coronary heart disease, coverage of nutritional means of preventing bowel cancer is set predominantly in the 'lifestyle' frame, often laying responsibility for increasing dietary fibre at the door of the individual rather than looking at broader social, economic, or political drivers of dietary change.

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“…However, the content of online comments cannot be said to be representative of the general public, given that the profile of those commenting is unknown (Laslo, Baram-Tsabari, and Lewenstein 2012) and that the opinions expressed belong to individuals who have access to the internet, and choose to read and comment on online news articles. Previous research has suggested that those who tend to comment on media articles are 'blindly opinionated', that is they use the comments section to voice their own point without engaging in a dialogue with other participants (Richardson and Stanyer 2011). A number of studies have found that the majority of individuals who engage in Strategies for dismissing dietary risks 7 commenting on an article are more likely to make negative comments on or disagree with the subject matter of the article (Freeman 2011;Glenn, Champion, and Spence 2012;Bezreh et al 2012;Chmiel et al 2010;Secko et al 2011).…”

Section: Online Methodology: the News Media's Comments Sectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Strategies for dismissing dietary risks: insights from user-generated comments online

Regan

Shan

McConnon

et al. 2014

Health, Risk & Society

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Communication around chronic dietary risks has proved challenging as dietary health risks are ostensibly met with attenuated perceptions of their likelihood and consequences. In this article we examine the strategies that an online public use to negotiate risk messages from expert stakeholders that may be incongruent with their own position on a risk. Progressing from conceptualisations of amplification as laid out in the social amplification of risk framework, we are particularly interested in understanding whether and how amplifications of risk may be attributed toward other stakeholders. The article presents an analysis of comments posted on a website oriented to a British audience. These comments were left by members of the public in reply to two online media articles published in 2012 reporting on an Strategies for dismissing dietary risks 2 epidemiological study carried out in the United States on the risks of red meat consumption.We found that the comments generally expressed resistance to the risk message, embodied in two main strategies. The first strategy was to discount the message itself by deploying rules of thumb that undermined the applicability of the general risk message to the particularities of the individual. The second strategy was to undermine the risks by casting doubt on the credibility of the message source. Together, these strategies allowed the commenters to argue that the risks and the process of communicating them resulted in an exaggerated picture.These findings highlight that by attributing amplification to others, further polarisation of risk views between stakeholders may occur. Thinking about amplification as an attribution provides a distinct and significant conceptual contribution to the study of incongruent risk responses.

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Reader opinion in the digital age: Tabloid and broadsheet newspaper websites and the exercise of political voice

Cited by 68 publications

References 13 publications

Editorial Policies, Journalistic Output and Reader Comments

Editorial Policies, Journalistic Output and Reader Comments

Mediating the spaces of diet and health: A critical analysis of reporting on nutrition and colorectal cancer in the UK

Strategies for dismissing dietary risks: insights from user-generated comments online

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