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AbstractThe contemporary availability of data and the growing possibility of their processing have also influenced the journalistic field. Several global news companies have embraced and enhanced forms of data use. This article provides an overview of research and analysis on the journalistic use of data. It discusses three broad definitions of data, computational, and automated journalism. It then debates their epistemological implications at each stage of news production (access, processing, and editing). Finally, it outlines factors that influence their future implication, focusing on education.

The paper analyses six rounds of the European Social Surveys (from 2000 to 2012) to explore how 1) media uses, 2) unconventional and 3) conventional (i.e. voting) forms of political participation have changed in sixteen European countries. Additionally, the research considers one of the latest surveys to investigate the relation between media use and participation in the contemporary period characterized by open data and e-government. The level of digitization in each country is assessed according to its infrastructure, the legal framework (namely the Freedom of Information Act), the quality of the data available from the public administration, and e-government development in terms of online services. The research question is whether use of the Internet and the level of national digitization affect unconventional forms of political participation. The results demonstrate that both the country's level of digitization at the macro level and the use of the Web at the individual level are co-determinants of the forms of political participation considered. However, the level of digitization does not affect voting.

Questo articolo presenta una analisi del contenuto effettuata durante i tre mesi precedenti alla campagna elettorale del febbraio 2013. L'analisi è stata effettuata su programmi di intrattenimento politico quali: quattro talk show (Ballarò, Servizio Pubblico, La quinta colonna, Porta a Porta); due programmi di approfondimento su diversi temi dell'attualità condotti attraverso interviste (Che Tempo che fa e Le Invasioni Barbariche); due contenitori mattutini quali Uno mattina e Mattino 5, uno pomeridiano Pomeriggio 5, i dibattiti di Domenica Live e infine un programma satirico come Striscia la notizia. L'analisi mette in relazione il livello di logica dei media dei programmi rispetto alle rappresentazioni che sono date dei politici quando sono assenti e rispetto alle performance dei politici. La ricerca discute due risultati principali: 1) i politici accettano livelli crescenti di media logic solo fino a una certa soglia, dopo la quale si sottraggono alle regole imposte dai programmi, 2) l'atteggiamento più marcatamente pop è spesso mantenuto dai politici per favorire e incorniciare contenuti politici.This paper presents a content analysis accomplished during the three months of the Italian election campaign in Febraury 2013. The analysis has been made on political entertaining program: four talk shows (Ballarò, Servizio Pubblico, La quinta colonna, Porta a Porta); two TV programs on current affairs (Che Tempo che fa e Le Invasioni Barbariche); two breakfast TV programs (Uno mattina e Mattino 5) and one afternoon TV program, Pomeriggio 5; the fake news Striscia la Notizia. The analysis inquiries the representations that the TV programs make of politics and politicians both when the political actor is on the stage and when is behind the scene. The research discusses two main results: 1) politicians do not accept a higher and higher level of media logic imposed by the TV programs; 2) politicians follow the media logic in order to pursue their own political logic.

This study looks at political polarization from Italian political journalists' perspectives and investigates (a) how they conceive political polarization and (b) how they navigate it in their daily work. Empirical data shed light on a number of main factors shaping journalists' perceptions of political polarization, pinpointing the existence of "media polarization." The findings also revealed five ideal-typical strategies adopted to deal with a polarized environment: mitigating, aligning, nurturing, creating, and ignoring polarization. The reflections proposed throughout the article suggest new perspectives through which to analyze the topic, fostering a debate beyond the case study.

AbstractThe contemporary media environment represents the greatest challenge ever to journalism's legitimacy. Surveys conducted in different parts of the world highlight a decline in trust in news media. Due to the numerous changes in the news media environment, different investigative tools are required to grasp the mechanisms underlying news media trust from those adopted so far. This article provides a review of existing media trust research and argues that it is necessary to investigate news media trust (also) from a qualitative perspective because today understanding media trust is as crucial as measuring it.

The contemporary media systems present hybrid logics and features that imply an increasingly interdependence among actors, media and communication formats. The hybrid media system approach underlines that legacy news media and non-elite media actors construct flows of news through different media technologies and according to complex temporal structures. A media environment arises in which traditional distinctions between concepts like 'online' and 'offline', 'producer' and 'audience', 'citizens' and 'journalists' become blurred. The emphasis appears to be on change more than continuity, and on difference more than similarity. Although the hybrid media approach is appreciated by numerous contemporary media scholars, hybridity in media often remains an all-encompassing concept and few attempts have been made to measure it. This article assesses the level of hybridity by investigating journalists' uses of sources. It considers mainly journalists' use of sources by the medium for which they work (from newspapers to web or radio) and the kinds of news that they produce (hard or soft news, business/finance, tech/science). The assumption is, therefore, that, within a homogeneously hybridized media system, journalists use the same sources regardless of the medium for which they work and the topics with which they deal. This objective is pursued by analysing the data collected via a survey conducted by means of structured interviews with a sample of 1424 Italian journalists between October and November 2016. The findings show that the analytical distinction among platforms for which journalists work still matters in terms of sources. Except for the use of Facebook and Google, journalists have still very defined paths to collect sources according to the medium they work for. The article has implications also for the literature on journalists' authority and expertise.

Going beyond source and content pluralism, we propose a two-dimensional audience-based measure of perceived pluralism by exploiting the practice of "social TV". For this purpose, 135,228 tweets related to 30 episodes of prime time political talk shows broadcast in Italy in 2014 have been analyzed through supervised sentiment analysis. The findings suggest that the two main TV networks compete by addressing generalist audiences. The public television offers a plural set of talk shows but ignores the anti-political audience. The ideological background of the anchorman shapes the audience's perception, while the gender of the guests does not seem to matter.

In Comparing Media Systems (2004), Hallin and Mancini identify three models of media systems: the Mediterranean, Corporatist and Atlantic models. They distinguish them according to newspaper circulation, political parallelism, levels of professionalisation and role of the state in the media system. This article extends their analysis by interpreting the media systems in terms of confidence in institutions. How does the use of media affect institutional support? Using the Eurobarometer dataset integrated with data on media consumption (newspaper circulation and television viewership), this article explores the relationship between the media and institutional trust. Overall, the results obtained from multivariate analysis reinforce Hallin and Mancini's theoretical approach. The research also reveals that media's influence on the level of citizens' confidence in institutions has a positive effect - in contrast to the opinion that media increase distrust in institutions. Adapted from the source document.

In the current public sphere, the "deliberative model of democracy" may represent both the necessary benchmark and the best lens through which to view developments in the public debate. Democracy can never become really deliberative without the active participation of news media. The assumption of this article is that if news media are to disseminate knowledge, trust in them is crucial. This article examines an aspect neglected by studies on media trust: trust in journalists. It presents the results of a longitudinal survey carried out in May and September 2020 in Italy, right at the end of the first mass Covid-19 lockdown (Wave 1) and after the first pandemic summer (Wave 2), therefore a time when there was a great need for quality information. The main findings reveal that the use of social media decreases trust in journalists; furthermore, those who mainly rely on political institutions' social media accounts for information place less trust in journalists than those who mainly rely on journalistic sources on those platforms. Instead, the use of traditional media (radio, television, newspapers) increases trust in journalists.