Suchergebnisse

Various authors suggest that the public's knowledge of the Israeli—Palestinian conflict is inadequate. As it is generally accepted that public opinion on international news items is mainly formed by media content, the international media are often held responsible for sustaining the prevailing misconceptions about the Israeli—Palestinian conflict by covering the conflict parties in a biased and imbalanced way. This study focuses on the representation of Israelis and Palestinians in the news coverage of the first and second intifada by the Flemish press. By way of a content analysis, evolutions and discrepancies in the coverage of both intifadas are described in a longitudinal analytical perspective. The authors conclude that the portrayal of the Palestinian actors shifts from a rather positive view during the first intifada period to a more critical portrayal during the period of the second intifada. At the same time, there is an opposite move in the representation of the Israeli actors in the conflict. Although our results show differences in the distinct portrayals, they do not provide sufficient evidence to conclude unequivocally that the coverage of the first and second intifada is unbalanced. Indeed, the authors find that while some variables definitely favour the Israeli point of view (e.g. the use of sources), others clearly sustain the Palestinian side (e.g. the individualization of victims). In other words, the Flemish dailies cover the first and second intifada in quite a balanced way, contrary to what international studies on the coverage of the Israeli—Palestinian conflict have concluded regarding the media in different national settings.

Frame analysis, based on the hybrid frame concept, has proved difficult to translate into a comparative, replicable and longitudinal research design. This article seeks to place the study of media frames in a wider theoretical framework with special interest for the various methods of empirical research. The article focuses on a further operationalization of the law and order frame and the injustice and defiance frame as introduced by Wolfsfeld. For this purpose, different framing and reasoning devices are ascertained and applied to the study of the coverage of the First and Second Intifada in the Flemish press. While its emphasis lies on the empirical testing of a framing research tool, this article also aims to broaden empirical data on the coverage of the Intifada beyond the American, British and Israeli media context.

Abstract
Digital technology, the Internet and mobile media are transforming the journalism and media landscape by influencing the news-gathering and sourcing process. The empowering capacities of social media applications may constitute a key element for more balanced news access and 'inclusive journalism'. We will build on two contrasting views that dominate the social media sourcing debate. On the one hand, the literature shows that journalists of legacy media make use of social media sources to diversify their sourcing network including bottom-up sources such as ordinary citizens. On the other, various authors conclude that journalists stick with their old sourcing routines and continue to privilege top-down elite sources such as experts and government officials. In order to contribute towards this academic debate we want to clarify the Twitter practices of professional Belgian health journalists in terms of how they use the platform to monitor potential sources. Therefore, we examined the 1146 Twitter 'followings' of six Belgian health journalists by means of digital methods and social network analysis. Results show that top-down actors are overrepresented in the 'following' networks and that Twitter's 'following' function is not used to reach out to bottom-up actors. In the overall network, we found that the health journalists mainly use Twitter as a 'press club' to monitor media actors. If we zoom in specifically on the 'following' network of the health-related actors, we found that media actors are still important, but experts become the most followed group. Our findings also underwrite the 'power law' or the 'long tail' distribution of social network sites as very few actors take a central position in the 'following' lists while the large majority of actors are not systematically monitored by the journalists.

For some time European newspaper markets have been confronted with decreasing circulation and readership figures. Research focused on patterns of consumption reveals that young people in particular spend less time reading newspapers. Since 2003, the government in Flanders has supported the Newspapers in Education programme in search of more qualitative and long-term alternatives to press subsidy, aimed at the preservation of the future readership market. As a result, the government and Flemish newspaper publishers distribute almost 1 million newspaper copies to schools every year. Each school year, approximately 100,000 students participate in the Newspapers in Education project. Over the years the financial support has grown and recently the Flemish government decided to substantially increase its contribution to γ1.2 million, which will make it possible to expand the target group considerably, beyond the original focus on 16- to 18-year-olds. The research presented in this article analyses the shifts in pre and post test design survey results of the participants who took part in the Newspaper in Education project between February and May 2005.

This article analyzes foreign news coverage and sourcing practices in contemporary newsrooms. It builds on theories concerned with the interplay between digital technologies and journalistic practice to explore the use of social media sources at professional journalistic outlets. The central research question deals with the diversity of sources in Belgian newspaper and TV news coverage of the grass roots uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria in 2011. The quantitative content analysis shows how journalists under normal circumstances in their coverage of the street protests in Egypt and Tunisia still value traditional sourcing practices. In contrast, coverage of the Syrian uprising displays more characteristics of network journalism practices, which can be related to factors of proximity regarding news values. Moreover, we found that when covering Syria, Belgian journalists relied more on on-the-ground, non-mainstream sources that circumvented the restricted information access by means of digital networks and social media platforms.