News organizations have been under financial pressure to streamline their activities for decades. Critics argue that this pressure undermines the quality of news, posing a severe threat to democracy. However, the effects of media consolidation on news quality are theoretically ambiguous and empirical evidence is scarce. To address this gap, we study the case of the Swedish newspaper industry between 2014 and 2022, a period where more than half of the country’s newspapers changed their owners. We collect over 2 million articles from 108 newspapers and apply state-of-the-art computational methods to create theoretically grounded, fine-grained measures of news content quality. Our results indicate that mergers are associated with slight increases in content quality. However, we also find evidence of content homogenization, as merging newspapers tend to slightly decrease their provision of local news, while relying more on content shared with co-owned newspapers.
{"title":"Media consolidation and news content quality","authors":"Marcel Garz, Mart Ots","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae053","url":null,"abstract":"News organizations have been under financial pressure to streamline their activities for decades. Critics argue that this pressure undermines the quality of news, posing a severe threat to democracy. However, the effects of media consolidation on news quality are theoretically ambiguous and empirical evidence is scarce. To address this gap, we study the case of the Swedish newspaper industry between 2014 and 2022, a period where more than half of the country’s newspapers changed their owners. We collect over 2 million articles from 108 newspapers and apply state-of-the-art computational methods to create theoretically grounded, fine-grained measures of news content quality. Our results indicate that mergers are associated with slight increases in content quality. However, we also find evidence of content homogenization, as merging newspapers tend to slightly decrease their provision of local news, while relying more on content shared with co-owned newspapers.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"113 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143030920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The “queer vanguard” theorizes how Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other television streaming platforms articulated intersectional lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and nonbinary (LGBTQ+) representations with attributes of narrative complexity, hipness, prestige, and authenticity in pursuit of subscribers. Streamers reworked branding strategies innovated in the 1980s and 1990s by cable and broadcast channels that produced Black-cast shows, and by cable channels in the early twenty-first century that centered gay and lesbian characters. Using an innovative approach that explores media practice as research method, I argue that streamers advanced the queer vanguard to attract subscribers to their original content, develop distinctive libraries, sustain subscribers’ attention, and expand their markets. As the streaming wars have ensued, digital distributors are returning to traditional television practices of appealing to mass audiences with ad-supported content that threatens the future of the complex, intersectional LGBTQ+ narratives that have been central to “Peak TV.”
{"title":"The queer vanguard: how television streaming platforms promoted intersectional LGBTQ+ content to establish their brands","authors":"Katherine Sender","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae049","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae049","url":null,"abstract":"The “queer vanguard” theorizes how Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and other television streaming platforms articulated intersectional lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and nonbinary (LGBTQ+) representations with attributes of narrative complexity, hipness, prestige, and authenticity in pursuit of subscribers. Streamers reworked branding strategies innovated in the 1980s and 1990s by cable and broadcast channels that produced Black-cast shows, and by cable channels in the early twenty-first century that centered gay and lesbian characters. Using an innovative approach that explores media practice as research method, I argue that streamers advanced the queer vanguard to attract subscribers to their original content, develop distinctive libraries, sustain subscribers’ attention, and expand their markets. As the streaming wars have ensued, digital distributors are returning to traditional television practices of appealing to mass audiences with ad-supported content that threatens the future of the complex, intersectional LGBTQ+ narratives that have been central to “Peak TV.”","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"35 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143027188","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Many families in the United States hold divergent political beliefs, which may cause relational issues between parents and affect the political socialization of their child(ren). Through a mixed-methods approach, we first assess data from in-depth interviews (N = 30) with parents in cross-cutting romantic relationships, or relationships where partners hold different political beliefs, to inductively explore the connection between parent politics and political socialization within the family. We find that parent political differences shape parent political communication, which is related to the political socialization of their child(ren). Drawing from these interviews, we employ survey data of cross-cutting and politically similar parents in the U.S. (N = 484), offering complementary evidence that cross-cutting parent relationships are negatively associated with expressiveness and political socialization, and that the relationship with political socialization is mediated by parent expressiveness. These findings showcase the role that parent disagreement plays in family political communication and political socialization.
{"title":"Cross-cutting families: how parent politics shape political communication and socialization practices","authors":"Emily Van Duyn, Kirsten Pool","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae051","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae051","url":null,"abstract":"Many families in the United States hold divergent political beliefs, which may cause relational issues between parents and affect the political socialization of their child(ren). Through a mixed-methods approach, we first assess data from in-depth interviews (N = 30) with parents in cross-cutting romantic relationships, or relationships where partners hold different political beliefs, to inductively explore the connection between parent politics and political socialization within the family. We find that parent political differences shape parent political communication, which is related to the political socialization of their child(ren). Drawing from these interviews, we employ survey data of cross-cutting and politically similar parents in the U.S. (N = 484), offering complementary evidence that cross-cutting parent relationships are negatively associated with expressiveness and political socialization, and that the relationship with political socialization is mediated by parent expressiveness. These findings showcase the role that parent disagreement plays in family political communication and political socialization.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"22 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142991998","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Stephen A Rains, Shelby N Carter, Levi S Ross, Michelle I Suarez
Drawing from theory about rumination, we examine the impact of verbal rumination over time and in conjunction with co-rumination in online health communities. Our analyses show that when users verbally ruminated in a message starting a thread (compared to when they did not), they were more likely to again verbally ruminate and to report a negative mood in the next thread they started. These relationships, however, varied over time as well as when other community members co-ruminated. When co-rumination from stronger ties or weaker ties in the community was present in responses (compared to when co-rumination was absent), users were less likely to continue engaging in verbal rumination. Users were also less likely to report a negative mood over time when co-rumination by stronger and weaker ties was present. This project advances our understanding of verbal rumination and co-rumination as communication phenomena in the context of online health communities.
{"title":"Talking about problems in online health communities: examining verbal rumination over time and in conjunction with co-rumination","authors":"Stephen A Rains, Shelby N Carter, Levi S Ross, Michelle I Suarez","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae030","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae030","url":null,"abstract":"Drawing from theory about rumination, we examine the impact of verbal rumination over time and in conjunction with co-rumination in online health communities. Our analyses show that when users verbally ruminated in a message starting a thread (compared to when they did not), they were more likely to again verbally ruminate and to report a negative mood in the next thread they started. These relationships, however, varied over time as well as when other community members co-ruminated. When co-rumination from stronger ties or weaker ties in the community was present in responses (compared to when co-rumination was absent), users were less likely to continue engaging in verbal rumination. Users were also less likely to report a negative mood over time when co-rumination by stronger and weaker ties was present. This project advances our understanding of verbal rumination and co-rumination as communication phenomena in the context of online health communities.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"5 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142924960","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article conducts a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshot data capturing responses from US mobile users and their broader ecosystems to a series of Daesh (ISIS) terrorist attacks in Europe and North Africa in 2017. It identifies four genres of mediatized rituals in observed responses. Three micro-ritual genres focus on individual reparative action detached from systemic analysis or obvious collective action. The fourth genre, accretion of violence, draws on the micro-rituals while aiming to mobilize users against the specter of a left-liberal-Islamist alliance, the decline of “Western Civilization,” and coming sectarian violence. These mediatized ritual genres overlap beyond a confined “space” or “time” as we might understand more traditional conceptions of ritual, and traverse platforms and events. Most urgently, the accretion of violence articulates transnational far-right authoritarian and conspiratorial discourses. The ritual accretion of violence reveals mediatized dynamics among contemporary anti-democratic subjects, with political implications beyond personalized reparative actions.
{"title":"Mobile and platform users’ mediatized rituals in response to terrorist attacks: a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshots","authors":"Andrew A Fitzgerald","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae052","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae052","url":null,"abstract":"This article conducts a discourse analysis of continuously collected screenshot data capturing responses from US mobile users and their broader ecosystems to a series of Daesh (ISIS) terrorist attacks in Europe and North Africa in 2017. It identifies four genres of mediatized rituals in observed responses. Three micro-ritual genres focus on individual reparative action detached from systemic analysis or obvious collective action. The fourth genre, accretion of violence, draws on the micro-rituals while aiming to mobilize users against the specter of a left-liberal-Islamist alliance, the decline of “Western Civilization,” and coming sectarian violence. These mediatized ritual genres overlap beyond a confined “space” or “time” as we might understand more traditional conceptions of ritual, and traverse platforms and events. Most urgently, the accretion of violence articulates transnational far-right authoritarian and conspiratorial discourses. The ritual accretion of violence reveals mediatized dynamics among contemporary anti-democratic subjects, with political implications beyond personalized reparative actions.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"34 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142908464","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article analyses the global dominance of three U.S.-based platforms (Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Netflix) on the streaming market. It investigates their reconfiguring of the TV industry around a global value chain, akin to other highly globalized industries, and characterized by the presence of a few lead firms operating in multiple markets and leveraging hundreds of suppliers worldwide. These streaming platforms benefit from transnational network effects and the coordination of supply chains on a global scale. By building large content libraries and accumulating foreign assets, they are transforming international trade flows in the process. Since 2020, the United States imports more audiovisual services, including movies and television programming, than it exports. This research demonstrates how the impact of these platforms is positive on local creative ecosystems, despite power asymmetries at play, and negative on local broadcasters.
{"title":"Streaming giants and the global shift: building value chains and remapping trade flows","authors":"Jean K Chalaby","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae040","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae040","url":null,"abstract":"This article analyses the global dominance of three U.S.-based platforms (Amazon Prime Video, Disney+, and Netflix) on the streaming market. It investigates their reconfiguring of the TV industry around a global value chain, akin to other highly globalized industries, and characterized by the presence of a few lead firms operating in multiple markets and leveraging hundreds of suppliers worldwide. These streaming platforms benefit from transnational network effects and the coordination of supply chains on a global scale. By building large content libraries and accumulating foreign assets, they are transforming international trade flows in the process. Since 2020, the United States imports more audiovisual services, including movies and television programming, than it exports. This research demonstrates how the impact of these platforms is positive on local creative ecosystems, despite power asymmetries at play, and negative on local broadcasters.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"38 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142849145","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Wei Jie Reiner Ng, Ya Hui Michelle See, Mike W -L Cheung
People are frequently exposed to different extents of affective and cognitive appeals, but it remains unclear whether appeals targeting emotions or beliefs are differentially effective across cultures. Hence, this meta-analysis investigates the relative influence of affective versus cognitive appeals for persuasion outcomes as a function of individualism-collectivism. Using 133 samples across 22 countries (N = 29,338), we found affective appeals to be relatively more effective than cognitive appeals in collectivistic societies, but both appeals were similarly effective in individualistic societies. These analyses demonstrate the fruitfulness of examining affective–cognitive appeals through a cultural lens, and suggest new directions for future research.
{"title":"The Influence of affective and cognitive appeals on persuasion outcomes: a cross-cultural meta-analysis","authors":"Wei Jie Reiner Ng, Ya Hui Michelle See, Mike W -L Cheung","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae042","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae042","url":null,"abstract":"People are frequently exposed to different extents of affective and cognitive appeals, but it remains unclear whether appeals targeting emotions or beliefs are differentially effective across cultures. Hence, this meta-analysis investigates the relative influence of affective versus cognitive appeals for persuasion outcomes as a function of individualism-collectivism. Using 133 samples across 22 countries (N = 29,338), we found affective appeals to be relatively more effective than cognitive appeals in collectivistic societies, but both appeals were similarly effective in individualistic societies. These analyses demonstrate the fruitfulness of examining affective–cognitive appeals through a cultural lens, and suggest new directions for future research.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142805344","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Despite the potential of visual disinformation to deceive people on pressing socio-political issues, we currently lack an understanding of how online visual disinformation (de)legitimizes partisan truth claims at times of war. As an important next step in disinformation theory and research, this article inductively mapped a wide variety of global visual disinformation narratives on armed conflicts disseminated via social media. The narratives were sampled through various international fact-checking databases, involving multiple social media platforms and countries. The analyses reveal that visual disinformation mainly consisted of existing footage that was decontextualized in a deceptive manner based on time, location, or fictionality. Moving beyond existing research exploring how decontextualized visuals offer proof for counter-factual narratives, our findings indicate that visuals contribute to the process of othering by constructing a “delusional rationality” that legitimizes mass violence and the destruction of the other. These findings have crucial ramifications for international policy and interventions at times of global armed conflicts that are covered widely across social media channels.
{"title":"The visual nature of information warfare: the construction of partisan claims on truth and evidence in the context of wars in Ukraine and Israel/Palestine","authors":"Michael Hameleers","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae045","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae045","url":null,"abstract":"Despite the potential of visual disinformation to deceive people on pressing socio-political issues, we currently lack an understanding of how online visual disinformation (de)legitimizes partisan truth claims at times of war. As an important next step in disinformation theory and research, this article inductively mapped a wide variety of global visual disinformation narratives on armed conflicts disseminated via social media. The narratives were sampled through various international fact-checking databases, involving multiple social media platforms and countries. The analyses reveal that visual disinformation mainly consisted of existing footage that was decontextualized in a deceptive manner based on time, location, or fictionality. Moving beyond existing research exploring how decontextualized visuals offer proof for counter-factual narratives, our findings indicate that visuals contribute to the process of othering by constructing a “delusional rationality” that legitimizes mass violence and the destruction of the other. These findings have crucial ramifications for international policy and interventions at times of global armed conflicts that are covered widely across social media channels.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"18 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142696798","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Richard Fletcher, Simge Andı, Sumitra Badrinathan, Kirsten A Eddy, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, Camila Mont'Alverne, Craig T Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Anne Schulz, Benjamin Toff, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen
Changing levels of public trust in the news are of deep concern to both researchers and practitioners. We use data from 2015 to 2023 in 46 countries to explore how trust in news has changed, while also exploring the links with sociodemographic variables, differences by media system, and changing patterns of news use. We find that (a) there has been a small overall decline in trust in news since 2015, but also that (b) there are different trends in different countries. More specifically, trust has declined more in media environments that have become less structured by television news use, and increasingly structured by social media news use. Our findings underscore how changing structures of media use may be central to explaining trust dynamics in recent years, which suggests new avenues for restoring trust where it has eroded.
{"title":"The link between changing news use and trust: longitudinal analysis of 46 countries","authors":"Richard Fletcher, Simge Andı, Sumitra Badrinathan, Kirsten A Eddy, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, Camila Mont'Alverne, Craig T Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Anne Schulz, Benjamin Toff, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae044","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae044","url":null,"abstract":"Changing levels of public trust in the news are of deep concern to both researchers and practitioners. We use data from 2015 to 2023 in 46 countries to explore how trust in news has changed, while also exploring the links with sociodemographic variables, differences by media system, and changing patterns of news use. We find that (a) there has been a small overall decline in trust in news since 2015, but also that (b) there are different trends in different countries. More specifically, trust has declined more in media environments that have become less structured by television news use, and increasingly structured by social media news use. Our findings underscore how changing structures of media use may be central to explaining trust dynamics in recent years, which suggests new avenues for restoring trust where it has eroded.","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"129 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142690591","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Based on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul, Turkey, this article explores the affective attachments circulating around urban spaces of journalism in Istanbul, with particular attention to how experiences of urban life shape journalists’ imaginaries of their relationship to each other, the city, their audience, and the broader “public” of Turkey. This article considers how journalistic life and practice is a form of subjectivity that hinges upon spatialized affects and affective spaces. These affects emerge as the physical landscapes and spaces of journalism alter, whereby journalists attach and reflect on different spaces as they try to make sense of their professional lives amidst the uncertainties of spatial change. This article orients the narratives presented—which highlight themes of professional solidarity, dispossession, and social isolation—to argue that definitions and practices of journalism are “embedded in the changing rhythms and dynamics of urban life” (Rodgers et al., 2014: p. 106).
{"title":"“It’s chaos”: affective spaces of journalism in Istanbul","authors":"Caitlin M Miles","doi":"10.1093/joc/jqae035","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/joc/jqae035","url":null,"abstract":"Based on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Istanbul, Turkey, this article explores the affective attachments circulating around urban spaces of journalism in Istanbul, with particular attention to how experiences of urban life shape journalists’ imaginaries of their relationship to each other, the city, their audience, and the broader “public” of Turkey. This article considers how journalistic life and practice is a form of subjectivity that hinges upon spatialized affects and affective spaces. These affects emerge as the physical landscapes and spaces of journalism alter, whereby journalists attach and reflect on different spaces as they try to make sense of their professional lives amidst the uncertainties of spatial change. This article orients the narratives presented—which highlight themes of professional solidarity, dispossession, and social isolation—to argue that definitions and practices of journalism are “embedded in the changing rhythms and dynamics of urban life” (Rodgers et al., 2014: p. 106).","PeriodicalId":48410,"journal":{"name":"Journal of Communication","volume":"19 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":7.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142684256","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}