The world of online news is a world where news consumers must make choices among a plethora of different news sources. Previous research points towards a fragmentation of news consumption across the citizenry. However, not enough attention has been paid to class, in particular cultural capital, and how it shapes how groups in society develop preferences for different categories of online news. Drawing upon a representative national survey in Sweden (N = 11,108), a country historically known for its egalitarian news consumption, we show that cultural capital engenders patterns of taste and distaste for different online national news providers. This is manifested in that those rich in cultural capital are more inclined to consume ‘quality’ news and to neglect ‘popular’ news. A relative lack of cultural capital is associated with a somewhat reverse pattern. News consumption in the online media landscape is a matter of cultural distinction.
In recent years, the Front National, under the leadership of Marine Le Pen, has experienced a political revival. In elections, membership numbers and public opinion polls, the party has made impressive gains. We argue in this article that these gains stem, at least in part, from a strategic repositioning of the party based on a more populist discourse and communication style. Through a content analysis of posts (press releases) on the party’s Facebook page from 2013 to 2015, we first highlight that, besides giving the Front National a more presentable image, Marine Le Pen has changed the Front National on two fronts: (1) she has rendered the party’s discourse more populist and (2) she has managed to reframe the party’s leitmotif of immigration. Second, through quantitative analysis of ‘Likes’ for each post, we find that this new discourse resonates well with Front National sympathizers.
This article discusses the shift in the representation of the family through a case study of Lost City (2012–2013). The programme challenges the dominant representations of the family on Turkish television that are mostly framed by a particular neighbourhood culture and are characterized by organic solidarity. As outsiders in Turkish society, a prostitute, a Kurdish family and a Black illegal immigrant challenge the unity of the Toptas family that has moved to Istanbul from the Black Sea region of Turkey and who are trying hard to survive against poverty and the ‘cosmopolitan culture’ of the city. The series problematizes the borders of the family as different members of the Toptas family develop new relationships extending the family to include the outsiders of Turkish society. Drawing on Turkish family dramas such as Super Dad (1993–1997), Father’s Home (1997–2002), The Falling Leaves (2005–2010) and Lost City, this article examines the discursive shift in the representation of the family on Turkish television.
Most content analyses of science news are conducted in large Anglo-American media markets. However, we speculate that the intimacy between sources and journalists in small media markets can influence science coverage. Here, we present a comparative analysis of Danish and British newspaper science news in 2012. We find that in both countries science news amounts to about 4% of the total news flow. We also observe that Danish science news more often than British science news is triggered by political events, gives priority to national stories and includes more coverage of humanities and social sciences. Contrary, British science news is more traditional and favours stories on health and the natural sciences often triggered by a journal article. We attribute these differences to intimacy between the public, media, political and scientific spheres in Denmark partly rooted in a closed corporatist media market compared to an open liberal market in the United Kingdom.
In contemporary society, the media landscape is complex and dynamic. Smartphones and tablets are proliferating, while the TV set is being passed over by other devices as the channel for TV content. These changes have implications on user behaviour, business models, technological platforms and content development. This article explores multi-screening, an emergent practice that combines watching TV and using a mobile device in articulation, by addressing the users’ motivations to engage in such practices. Our theoretical framework presents the state of the art of research on multi-screening and debates the main issues in the field using contributions from Mobile Communication Research and Uses and Gratifications Theory. Our empirical work consists of focus group discussions with multi-screeners, exploring the goals, needs, preferences and expectations associated with these practices. Our results identify uses where the activities on the TV and the mobile device are unrelated as more common, and two main gratifications are drawn out of these practices: utilitarian (associated with making a better use of time and being effective in accomplishing tasks) and affective (related to a constant and pressing need of being up-to-date with what is going on in the world and being connected to one’s network of relationships).
Public and commercial news follow distinct logics. We evaluate this duality in television news coverage on immigration. First, by means of a large-scale content analysis of Flemish television news (N = 1630), we investigate whether immigration coverage diverges between both broadcasters. Results show that, despite an overall negativity bias and relative homogeneity between the broadcasters, commercial news contains slightly more sensational and tabloid characteristics than public news. The latter promotes a more balanced view of immigration. These differences are stable over time. Second, using cross-sectional and panel data, we assess whether a preference for public versus commercial news is associated with an attitudinal gap in anti-immigrant attitudes. Findings demonstrate that individuals who prefer commercial news are more negative towards immigrants. We suggest that differences in news content may explain this attitudinal gap. In light of the debate around ‘public value’ offered by public service media across Europe, we tentatively conclude that public broadcasters have the potential to foster tolerance and provide balanced information by prioritizing a normative view over a market logic. The linkage between news coverage and the gap in attitudes between commercial and public news viewers warrants closer investigation in the future.
This article offers an inquiry into the discursive construction of ‘terrorism’ by France 24, the French international broadcaster, in the aftermath of the attacks on Charlie Hebdo satirical magazine in January 2015. The article argues that the broadcaster seems to employ a relatively narrow definition of terrorism linking it to Islam and Muslims. France 24 portrays the attacks as an external phenomenon coming to France from outside. The blame is assigned to non-French factors, mainly to foreign extremist organisations, Islamist ideologues and overseas training. No reasons for violence are sought inside the country. Internal developments, such as discrimination, youth marginalisation, lack of educational and work opportunities, relations between law enforcement and the Muslim community that could potentially contribute to the acts, are not explored by the broadcaster’s investigative journalism. This narrow interpretation of ‘terrorism’ that assigns responsibility to Muslims, Islamic indoctrination and overseas training may further alienate Muslim communities in France’s already divided society. It points to narrow policy responses that focus mainly on stricter monitoring of Muslim minorities, on limiting combat and cross-border movement. This type of discourse excludes long-term policy solutions that address broader socio-politico-economic conditions in which ‘terrorism’ might flourish.
This article aims to determine the stances of media outlets during crises in a polarized media system such as Turkey. Adopting a content analysis methodology, this article analyses the framing strategies of three national newspapers affiliated with certain sociopolitical camps (namely, the pro-government Sabah, the anti-government Kemalist Sözcü and the pro-Gülen Zaman) to observe possible similarities/differences during the critical 17 December corruption probe. The findings not only confirm earlier studies on ‘press-party’ parallelism but also reveal ‘press-sociopolitical camp parallelism’ in Turkey’s polarized media system.
The Green Party of England and Wales is trying to move from being perceived as a party with a specific environmental focus to a broad-spectrum political force with policy and opinion across the full range of political issues. How does the UK press respond to this change of agenda by the party? An analysis of UK newspaper articles and Green Party press releases reveals a dissonance between what is discussed by the party and what is printed about the party. Further investigation reveals that, in relation to specific political events, Green Party opinion, even though appearing to widen the political debate on some key issues, was largely ignored by UK newspapers. These findings have implications for any minority or ‘core-issue’ party looking to widen its political agenda and electoral appeal.
This study explores the feasibility and usefulness of five generic frames (conflict, responsibility, economic consequences, human interest and morality) in analysing framing practices in a multifaceted journalistic field over time. We show that supplementing generic frames through the tonality expressed in news stories enhances analytical quality. Mapping Swiss media outlets by how they frame a highly polarizing policy, we identify different framing practices in covering the issue. Using multiple correspondence analyses, the results first show that, while cultural background and media partisanship lead to heterogeneity in how the issue is initially framed, the state’s involvement homogenizes framing practices over time. Second, unlike previous research, our study provides empirical evidence that both conflict frame and attribution of responsibility frame can measure the same underlying construct. Third, we find evidence that these two frames are strongly associated with a negative tone. Limitations and implications for future research are discussed.
This article analyses sound indicators as compulsory elements that separate information content from commercial content in order to preserve the rights of consumers and following the legal regulations and codes of conduct. The study has been carried out using a sample of 372 intersection spaces broadcast by the most popular Spanish commercial generalist radio stations and coded following certain variables such as time slot, commercial content, audio signal input separation and audio signal output separation. The results provide substantial evidence regarding the lack of social responsibility of radio owners towards their audience as well as the passivity with which government and self-regulation bodies protect the rights of listeners to be warned of the commercial nature of these radio broadcasts.
Using examples from a number of different European countries, this article analyses the increasingly prominent position of traditional telecommunications companies, such as British Telecom (UK), Deutsche Telekom (Germany), France Telecom/Orange (France) and Telefonica (Spain), in the contemporary sports media rights market. The first part of the article examines the commercial strategies of telecommunications operators and highlights how their acquisition of sports rights has been driven by the need to ensure a competitive position within an increasingly converged communications market. The second part of the article then moves on to consider the regulation of the sports media rights market. Most significantly, this section emphasises the need for further regulatory intervention to ensure that increased competition for sports rights leads to improved services and lower prices for consumers, rather than merely endlessly spiralling fees for the exclusive ownership of premium rights that are then passed on to sports channel and/or broadband subscribers.
Croatia internalised the European normative requirements in its legislative system and restructured the media system in the process of the European Union accession completed in 2013. The media restructuration had a double social role: self-adaptation to the new communicative possibilities, both democratic and technological, and assignment of new social roles to actors mediating new values through the rapidly growing production of information and communication and thus influencing the differentiation of the public sphere. This article takes a socio-cultural and socio-historical approach to the development of media policies in Croatia, particularly with regard to recent changes of digitalisation of television broadcasting and online content production. It shows how this complex process led to missed opportunities for the strengthening of the public service broadcaster in the digital sphere. Additionally, it provides analytical explanations to this long-term restructuration process.
This article studies the impact of right and left moderate political orientation of newspapers on the levels of plurality in the news coverage of the Euro Crisis in 20 newspapers from 10 European countries through a methodology based on Simpson’s D index. The expectation of finding distinct patterns of coverage leading to high levels of plurality was not fully supported and the results have shown that national frames influence levels of overall plurality more than political ideology.
Instructed theoretically by the critical discussion on the media’s alignment with the institutions of power in societies, this study examines how the Greek legacy press framed the discussion over the crisis, by focusing on the bailout agreements Greece signed with the troika during the period 2010–2012. The analysis, following a three-step process in frames’ detection, focuses on the associations of actors and their responsibility, causes, solutions and effects of the crisis and the bailouts, as appearing in the news texts studied, and reveals a de-contexualised neoliberal discourse articulated through three distinct frames: the dependency, the (non)liability and the austerity frame. The representations of the financial crisis in the newspapers studied largely echo the neoliberal voices and strengthen the hegemonic discourse over the necessity and inescapability of the bailout policies, feeding the ‘masterframe’ of the neoliberal vision of the crisis.
According to the predominating discourse, the radio spectrum has been converted into a technological platform of strategic importance for the economic development of countries. Wireless Internet and the promises of access at ‘any time, in any place’ add political and economic pressure to a platform, which has been an almost exclusive monopoly of radio and television for years. The main aim of this article is to study the radio spectrum management in Spanish broadcasting from its origins until the present day. The article also seeks to show the existing relationship between how frequencies are managed and the resulting broadcast model.
The Convention on diversity of cultural expressions – adopted by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization in 2005 – is a main international instrument within the global governance of cultural and audiovisual industries. For its part, the European Commission played a critical role in the negotiation, leading to the Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions’ adoption. In this respect, the article aims to explore why and how the Commission uses the Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions throughout the recent European Union trade negotiations, for which purposes and how the Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions influences the European Union foreign policy and its objectives. The article is more concerned with analysing the policy process through which the Commission’s strategy is formulated in light of the Convention on Diversity of Cultural Expressions and of the place of cultural and audiovisual industries within the European Union trade agreements and also concerned with understanding whether the Commission’s autonomy is transformed into influence within the policy process.
Discrimination against Roma is a reality across Europe. The extent to which stereotyped, discriminatory beliefs of this minority group are reflected or reinforced by news media has received only limited attention. This study investigates media framing of Roma and explains variation in how European news media frame Roma in diagnostic and prognostic terms. We content analysed 825 news articles from newspapers in the Netherlands, Germany, Slovakia, the Czech Republic and the United Kingdom for the period 2010–2012. Results show that attention for Roma is clustered around key-events and differs considerably between countries. Our analyses of frame variation, based on multilevel modelling, indicate a duality in the use of frames, with Roma being both portrayed as victims and perpetrators. Variation in these portrayals could be ascribed mainly to sources and newspaper types. This study contributes to our understanding of the factors that account for problem-emphasizing portrayals of Roma in European countries.
European countries show greatly differing patterns of active participation in their news usage, such as sharing, liking or commenting on articles. While there are many more Internet users actively participating in southern Europe, the population with online access in central and northern Europe is rather restrained. The reasons for these differences cannot be found in the individual characteristics of age, formal education or news interest. Rather, the lack of performance of traditional media institutions may encourage citizens to participate actively. The unfulfilled tasks and functions of the media seem to be compensated in this way. Additionally, an online population that is characterized by early adopters, as is the case in countries with low Internet penetration rates, is significantly more active than a more heterogeneous online population in countries with a higher penetration rate.
This article is based on a comparative study of online campaigning and its effects by country and over time, using four of the largest European Union member states (France, Germany, Poland and the United Kingdom) as a case study. Our research explores the extent of embeddedness of online campaigning, the strategic uses of the whole online environment and in particular the use of the interactive features associated with web.2.0 era. However, our research goes beyond studies of online campaigning as we also determine whether online campaigning across platforms matters in electoral terms. Our data support the normalization hypothesis which shows overall low levels of innovation but that the parties with the highest resources tend to develop online campaigns with the highest functionality. We find that there is a vote dividend for those parties which utilized web.2.0 features the most and so offered visitors to their web presence a more interactive experience.
The Journal Editor(s) hereby issue an expression of concern for the following review article:
"Legacy of Elisabeth Noelle-Neumann: The spiral of silence and other controversies" by Slavko Splichal, European Journal of Communication, 2015, Vol. 30(3), 353–363. DOI:
An investigation is currently in process in relation to this article in response to a threat of legal action submitted to the European Journal of Communication in which it is claimed that the article contains false allegations and defamatory statements. These claims do not reflect the views of the editors of European Journal of Communication who remain fully confident of the integrity and expertise of Professor Splichal.
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The past decade has seen the emergence of a new kind of documentary making that marries documentary storytelling and the principles of strategic communication. Strategic impact documentary is a transmedia practice that aims to achieve specific social change by aligning documentary production with online and offline communications practices. The contemporary media environment is one in which a wide range of organizations work to achieve their political and social goals through the media. This article highlights key characteristics of an emerging form of professional documentary production, drawing attention to formal development and changing contexts of production and the implications of this for our understanding of the link between documentary and social change.
This article is concerned with the symbolic power of individualized media technologies in the peripheral contexts of capitalist globality and modernity. In a critique of studies that have suggested that technologies as structuring agents of social positions of the users seem to emerge from the neo-liberalization of the non-West and from the specific use of digital technologies, I argue that such a positioning has a deeply historical character. Its historical roots are to be found in the social, political and cultural regimes of modernity, where it is demanded that agents define and shape themselves in terms of a capacity to adjust to technological practices and to employ technologies in order to occupy distinct positions within social relations. By focusing on the social history of telephony in the post-war era through the 1970s, I show the ways in which a technology such as telephony can become a forceful agent of symbolic power that structures and deepens social distinctions within the peripheral contexts of capitalist globality and modernity.
Using self-reported data from children at age 10–11 years in 2008 and at age 12–13 years in 2010 (n = 113), this study examines bedtime habits, parental permissiveness about television viewing and the most-viewed television programmes. Later bedtimes (both during the week and at the weekend) were reported in 2010 and were related to reported parental permission to watch television freely. Parental attitudes towards television viewing were reported as having become more permissive over time. The Finnish soap opera Salatut elämät and the American animated sitcom The Simpsons were the most popular programmes. The findings are discussed in relation to health.
Taking the case of the relationship between small European public broadcasters and the international content sales activities of BBC Worldwide, this contribution analyses if and to what extent the commercial arm of public service media institution BBC is strengthening the hegemonic position of Anglo-Saxon content in European media markets, and undermining the objectives public broadcasters stand for. To this end, it takes a comparative approach, combining and triangulating results from analysis of relevant documents, from BBC Worldwide and from public broadcasters that acquire their programmes, with data from semi-structured expert interviews with representatives from small European public broadcasters’ acquisition departments. Results indicate that, despite its public service claims, BBC Worldwide is an international content distributor like any other and that its activities contribute to cultural homogenization of audiovisual content in Europe, thus limiting small European public broadcasters’ possibilities for content universality, creativity, diversity and quality.
This article analyses the news coverage of German federal presidents’ private lives and personal characteristics. The federal president is the only constitutional entity in Germany to consist of just one person. Automatically, the incumbent’s personality is important in determining how the person exercises the role. Although the federal president’s office possesses little hard power competences, as a politician the federal president has an integrative function and is one of the most powerful opinion leaders of the country. A successful presidency therefore hinges on mediated visibility. Recently, political communication scholars have identified a trend towards intimization politics. This article specifically investigates how news coverage of the German federal president has developed since 1949. The results are twofold: first, the mediated visibility of the federal president has increased over time. Second, the current analysis does not provide evidence for a trend towards intimization politics.
While plenty of research has provided important insights into the uses of the Internet by politicians during elections, a relatively scarce amount of work has looked into these uses outside of such parliamentary events. This article seeks to remedy this lack of research by presenting a study on the ‘routine’ uses of two of the currently most popular social media services – Facebook and Twitter. Focusing on politicians elected to the national parliaments of Norway and Sweden, the article employs novel methodologies for data collection and statistical analyses in order to provide an overarching, structural view of the day-to-day social media practices of Scandinavian politicians. Findings indicate that use levels are rather low for both services – the median amount of tweets sent and messages posted on Facebook is close to one per day. Further analyses reveal that the most active politicians could be labelled as ‘underdogs’, as they are more likely to be younger, in opposition and out of the political limelight.
This article examines the relationship between different ownership types in broadcast news to determine the portrayal of election coverage as a strategic game against a focus on policy issues. Using a content analysis of six television and radio programmes during the 2011 Irish general election, we test hypotheses about differences in coverage provided by public service programming with equivalent private sector coverage. Our findings improve upon two key aspects of earlier research on game-policy frames. First, we show that commercial outlets can produce content that has democratic value, and suggest that before reaching definitive judgements not only it is necessary to distinguish between radio and television programmes but it is also advisable to study individual programming on each medium. Second, in a key market segment, we show that there is a clear distinction between editorial choices on policy content between public and private radio. These findings suggest that policy-orientated private programming may react to factors such as a culture of public service broadcasting as well as regulatory interventionism. We also suggest that there are cases where policy-rich private programming is driven by different editorial values from its public counterpart which can benefit the public.
This article analyses the children’s programmes which were made by, and broadcast on, Spanish television channel Televisión Española from the time when programme schedules were first published in the press (1958) until the end of the Franco era (1975). The programming is then linked to the evolution of Televisión Española as an institution, as well as with the social and political context of the nation. The study takes into account the days and times of transmission, programme duration, the number of new shows broadcast per year and the most common content/formats. Each programme’s structure, its characters, the role of the presenter, involvement of children and the values and ideas conveyed are also assessed. We will demonstrate that the dictatorship initially used these programmes to promote patriotic and religious feelings, and later on, to prepare children and young people for the new social and economic realities of the country (such as urbanisation and industrialisation).
On 1 January 2013, Germany and Finland made the switch from the traditional broadcasting licence fee tied to television-set ownership to a compulsory excise duty collected from all citizens, households and places of business. This article compares the changes in these countries’ public service media funding arrangements on the basis of John Kingdon’s ‘multiple streams’ framework of public policy-making which, to date, has been rather neglected in studies of media policy-making processes. Drawing on the analysis of policy documents and interviews with policymakers and other stakeholders involved in the respective processes, we investigate how the actual reforms materialized, which other possibilities were neglected and why this has been the case.
This article is concerned with a comparative assessment of public service and commercial broadcast media in Ireland, specifically in relation to their respective capacities to reflect and promote migration-related diversity and migrant integration. The core material drawn upon in the article derives from the findings of a recent exploratory, pilot-level European research project (‘Media for Diversity and Migrant Integration’, MEDIVA) involving Ireland and five other partner-European Union member states which sought to identify and assess the form and extent of diversity management practices in the media at the different levels of journalistic production with special reference to Third Country Nationals or persons without European Union citizenship. In this article, we first consider how processes of cultural diversification in European countries are reflected in broadcasting policies, before fixing our focus on public service broadcasting in the ‘local’ context and the changing broadcasting landscape in Ireland. We then move to our empirical-level study which examines the MEDIVA findings regarding the roles and representations of Third Country Nationals in the context of RTE and TV3, comparatively. The performance of these broadcasters in this respect is assessed and examined in terms of programme production processes, recruitment practices, media training and content output. The transformations that Irish society have experienced in terms of the demographics of its population over the past two decades make Ireland a very interesting if not unique case study here. We then consider the extent to which the Irish setting resonates with the broader European context, and seek to identify specific points of correspondence and difference between the Irish broadcasting experience and that of the other countries participating in the MEDIVA project. While the nature of the differences in the approach of public service and commercial broadcasters to migrant diversity may prove to be relatively minor, they nevertheless demonstrate an interesting and significant divergence when considered from a range of perspectives.
Using a representative sample of 635 active professional journalists, this study is one of the first to examine the prevalence of non-lethal workplace victimization experiences and the extent of fear of crime among journalists. The results indicated a relatively high prevalence of physical victimization, an exceptionally high prevalence of psychological abuse and an average prevalence of property victimization among professional journalists. Additionally, it was found that journalists overall had relatively low levels of fear of crime at work. The analysis also revealed the sociodemographic and employment characteristics of professional journalists who were more closely associated with different types of victimization and fear of crime at work.
Modern politicians need to diversify their communication strategies to reach a wide range of citizens/electors. Communication of political programmes must be associated with the effective communication of the private sphere. However, does this rule apply to a scenario in which the political stage is not ruled by politicians? By presenting the results of a content analysis of four Italian tabloids and by relying on an interview with the communication officer of Italian former premier, this study shows how political popularization develops in the era of the technocrat. The authors claim that the search for ‘mediated intimacy’ with the citizens/electors does not exclusively represent a concern for professional politicians. The need to personify political action is not only dependent on the necessity to maximize the electoral turnout, but it also depends on the acknowledgement of the fact that any public officer cannot avoid opening the doors of his or her own private sphere.
Documentary reconstruction is a creative production decision which involves reconstructing a reality or event rather than filming it as it occurs spontaneously. This article studies the use of the resource in the filming of nature documentaries for the series El Hombre y la Tierra. All of the action scenes in the series were reconstructions, which required rehearsals and involved a large amount of editing work. Without documentary reconstruction and the handling of animals it would have been impossible to film the majority of the hunting sequences, and the series never would have achieved the success that it did. Even today El Hombre y la Tierra is a point of reference in entertainment in nature documentaries and continues to raise debate about how to communicate the lives of wild animals in a respectful and truthful way to ever more demanding audiences, as well as about the need for, and boundaries of, entertainment in scientific television programmes.
When Guy Debord wrote The Society of the Spectacle in 1967, he was criticizing a society that was saturated by mass media and the endless stream of representations they crank out. This article argues that the society of the spectacle as described by Debord has mutated into a new form, best described as the society of the machinery. In it, the focus on representations is complemented by an obsession with the machinery that produces said representations. The mechanism can be seen at work in phenomena as diverse as America’s Next Top Model, the by-now obligatory Director’s Commentary on DVD releases, or the success of Hollywood and television tourism. In the society of the machinery, the dominant ideological form is the debunking mode that combines a hermeneutics of suspicion with a conservative refusal of utopianism, making it a particularly effective ideological tool for pacifying society. The second part of the article traces how the change from spectacle to machinery has occurred. Drawing on the work of Boltanski and Chiapello, the article contends that the society of the machinery is a by-product of the Situationist critique of the spectacle. Contemporary capitalism has split the Debordian critique into the artist critique and the social critique, and has incorporated the former while neutralizing the latter.
The link between mass media systems and politics is widely acknowledged and has been confirmed by a significant amount of research. However, the degree of this tie and the forms that it can take vary significantly according to different national contexts. By conducting a comparative analysis that is centred on three cases in the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy, this study addresses the overlap between media and politics from a dual perspective: the politicization of public service broadcasting and the permeability of the political system for media-related personalities or practitioners. The data show that the natural connection between political and media systems is never completely absent, although profound differences can be detected in the extent and in the implications that these connections can have for the entire system.
This article conceptualizes media provocation, a common but understudied practice of mediatized protest and resistance, marketing or (self-)promotion and awareness raising. It is defined as a mediated act that questions or contravenes norms, values, laws, rules and symbolic power, thereby intentionally running counter to the normal horizon of expectations in a certain situation or context. As such, media provocation can have a major impact on public debate, politics and the course of events. In this article, the key elements of media provocation are initially examined and subsequently illustrated by drawing on a case study on Stijn Meuris, a Belgian rock artist and television personality. In 2010, he announced his refusal to vote in the next elections, although it is mandatory in Belgium for all adults to vote. The findings of this case study demonstrate the contingency of the component ‘intentionality’ in the definition of media provocation.
Debates over the extent of graphic imagery of death in newspapers often suffer from generalized assertions that are based on inadequate or incomplete empirical evidence. Newspapers are believed to display death in very graphic ways, with particularly the tabloid press assumedly leading a race to the bottom. This article reports the results of a study of tabloid and broadsheet images of death from the 2010 Haiti earthquake in eight Western European and North American newspapers. It shows that, far from omnipresent, graphic images of death are relatively rare. While tabloids overall display a larger percentage of graphic images, this was not the case everywhere, with particularly the UK, Canada and the US displaying strong similarities between tabloids and broadsheets. In Austria, Germany, Norway and Switzerland, on the other hand, there were distinct differences between the two types. The article argues that different extents of tabloidization may account for these differences.
This article explores the emergence of the concept of ‘media literacy’ within UK communications policy, focusing particularly on the period leading up to the 2003 Communications Act. While broadly deregulatory in intention, the Act gave the new media regulator, Ofcom, a duty to ‘promote media literacy’. This article explores the origins of this theme, the different discourses and definitions in play, and the roles of the various agents involved. It argues that there were some significant strategic shifts in the debates around media literacy, which reflect broader tensions between neoliberal and social-democratic tendencies within New Labour’s communications policy. The article suggests that this resulted in a lack of clarity about the definition of media literacy, the scope and nature of Ofcom’s role, and the means by which the policy might be implemented – problems that partly account for the subsequent demise (or significant redefinition) of media literacy as a theme within communications policy towards the end of the decade.