The Internet and the Global Public Sphere

Sparks, Colin

doi:10.1017/cbo9780511613852.005

Cited by 53 publications

(49 citation statements)

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“…Anonymity can have both a beneficial and adverse impact on discussions (e.g. Klotz, 2004;Sparks, 2001;Witschge, 2004); it is certainly plausible in light of the empirical findings hitherto, that the ability to "avoid taking responsibility for one's opinions" (Klotz, 2004: 117) adversely affects the discussions in online reader comments. Hence, we would call for more systematic studies comparing anonymous to non-anonymous readers' comments to be conducted in future research.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Newspapers’ Readers’ Comments - Democratic Conversation Platforms or Virtual Soapboxes?

Strandberg

Berg

2013

revistacomsoc

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Online discussions between citizens have been subject to scholarly debate and several empirical studies for a substantial period of time. Scholars have envisioned these as potential venues for citizens' deliberation. Often, however, empirical findings do not support these notions. The quality of discussion is often not up to the standards of truly deliberative discussions. Nonetheless, there are strains of evidence suggesting that online discussion venues applying facilitators, fixed topics and actively enforcing discussion rules, may avoid many of the problems with discussion quality. This article therefore examines whether readers' comments on a Finnish newspaper's website resemble democratic conversations. During the course of three weeks in spring 2010, we content analyze 300 reader comments. Our findings indicate that although there are strains of democratic conversations to be found in online reader comments, there are also many instances in which the opposite holds true.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Online Newspapers’ Readers’ Comments - Democratic Conversation Platforms or Virtual Soapboxes?

Strandberg

Berg

2013

revistacomsoc

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“…Online public spheres are often said to be more inclusive and with the capacity to create new spaces for deliberation. Internet and the new media are also presented as possible driving forces in the transnationalization of the public sphere (Sparks 2001;Bohman 2004). Since the area of risk governance to a large extent is characterized by a need for transnational discussions and decisions and an increased involvement of citizens, the issue of how environmental risks (e.g., in relation to the Baltic Sea area) are framed and discussed in online media is an important area for further research.…”

Section: Consequences Of Media Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

Framing Environmental Risks in the Baltic Sea: A News Media Analysis

Jönsson

2011

AMBIO

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Scientific complexity and uncertainty is a key challenge for environmental risk governance and to understand how risks are framed and communicated is of utmost importance. The Baltic Sea ecosystem is stressed and exposed to different risks like eutrophication, overfishing, and hazardous chemicals. Based on an analysis of the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter, this study discusses media representations of these risks. The results show that the reporting on the Baltic Sea has been fairly stable since the beginning of the 1990s. Many articles acknowledge several risks, but eutrophication receives the most attention and is also considered the biggest threat. Authorities, experts, organizations, and politicians are the dominating actors, while citizens and industry representatives are more or less invisible. Eutrophication is not framed in terms of uncertainty concerning the risk and consequences, but rather in terms of main causes.

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“…They are produced and sold on a relatively large scale, which reduces average costs per issue to acceptable proportions. The Internet threatens this practice of bundling and mass production (Sparks, 1999). Online, it is technically and economically feasible to unbundle the newspaper and to distribute different 406 Richard van der Wurff, et.…”

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confidence: 99%

Online and print newspapers in Europe in 2003. Evolving towards complementarity

Wurff¹,

Lauf²,

Balčytienė³

et al. 2008

Comm

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This article assesses online newspapers in Europe from a media evolutionary perspective, ten years after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Comparing print and online front pages of 51 newspapers in 14 countries in 2003, we argue that online newspapers complement print newspapers in modest ways. Online, publishers put more emphasis on service information, offer additional news items, that nonetheless report on similar topics in similar ways, and add personal interactivity, content selectivity and realtime news to the print news offering.One subset of online newspapers charges for services, and offers more content and personal interactivity. Another, partly overlapping subset offers more original news; in a short and anonymous format. Overall, however, online newspapers in Europe make up a heterogeneous group, suggesting that online newspapers still have to find their definite form and role in the European news market. Keywords: media evolution, online newspapers, print newspapers, Europe Online newspapers in EuropeThe development of online newspapers is a major, yet unfinished experiment in innovation in the newspaper industry. It has caught the imagination and attention of scholars and experts, who advanced enthusiastic views of how the Internet could improve the provision of news and debate in society, as well as gloomy predictions of how print newspapers and traditional newspaper publishers would become obsolete. At a more concrete level, the development of online newspapers is a continuous search for ways to use Internet technology to improve existing practices of news production and consumption. Communications 33 (2008) Richard van der Wurff, et. al. This paper assesses how newspaper publishers and editors have dealt with these challenges. Our focus is on serious European newspapers in 2003, ten years after the introduction of the World Wide Web. Our approach is media-evolutionary and comparative. We investigate how publishers position online newspapers on the intermedia news market in relation to print newspapers. Our guiding hypothesis is that new media initiate a media evolutionary process in which old and new media alike are forced to adapt to each other and find new and different niches (Dimmick and Rothenbuhler, 1984;Lehman-Wilzig and Cohen-Avigdor, 2004). What particular niches old and new media, and in our case, print and online newspapers, eventually occupy is a question for empirical research. Beginning to address this question, we investigate in this paper to what extent print and online newspapers offer the same or different types of editorial and non-editorial content and services.Building on previous studies that investigated online newspapers in individual countries in the late 1990s, this study describes in detail the front pages of 51 print and online newspapers in 14 European countries in 2003. We compare the types of content and editorial information offered in print and online newspapers and assess so-called Internet features. We attempt to construct a typology of onlin...

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The Internet and the Global Public Sphere

Cited by 53 publications

References 0 publications

Online Newspapers’ Readers’ Comments - Democratic Conversation Platforms or Virtual Soapboxes?

Online Newspapers’ Readers’ Comments - Democratic Conversation Platforms or Virtual Soapboxes?

Framing Environmental Risks in the Baltic Sea: A News Media Analysis

Online and print newspapers in Europe in 2003. Evolving towards complementarity

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