Suchergebnisse

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.

This article applies a combination of an input-output content analysis and in-depth interviews with nongovernmental organization (NGO) communication professionals to determine whether the growing incorporation of press releases in editorial print content could be a new public forum through which international political actors, such as NGOs, could gain wider news access by serving as emerging key players in global civil society. The study indicates that Belgian news coverage of international aid issues is more often based on NGO press releases than government press releases. We also found that the agenda-building capacities of NGOs and government institutions are enhanced as journalists present information subsidies as original journalistic work in most cases. Nonetheless, we must tone down prevailing one-sided conclusions, as most press releases are not just copy-pasted. Instead, most are supplemented with additional sources and information. The data, moreover, identify different journalistic roles of NGOs according to their objectives. While some issue press releases to raise short-term public awareness and donations for humanitarian crises (mobilization), others have developed into established expert news source organizations that provide background information and reliable eyewitness accounts to journalists. [Reprinted by permission; copyright Sage Publications Inc.]

This article applies a combination of an input–output content analysis and in-depth interviews with nongovernmental organization (NGO) communication professionals to determine whether the growing incorporation of press releases in editorial print content could be a new public forum through which international political actors, such as NGOs, could gain wider news access by serving as emerging key players in global civil society. The study indicates that Belgian news coverage of international aid issues is more often based on NGO press releases than government press releases. We also found that the agenda-building capacities of NGOs and government institutions are enhanced as journalists present information subsidies as original journalistic work in most cases. Nonetheless, we must tone down prevailing one-sided conclusions, as most press releases are not just copy-pasted. Instead, most are supplemented with additional sources and information. The data, moreover, identify different journalistic roles of NGOs according to their objectives. While some issue press releases to raise short-term public awareness and donations for humanitarian crises (mobilization), others have developed into established expert news source organizations that provide background information and reliable eyewitness accounts to journalists.

This article presents a single case study investigating the role of change communication in the early stages of change implementation at a European government agency. It adopts a multimethod approach, relying on quantitative methods and adding qualitative components to clarify core assumptions. The quantitative part of the research relies on a survey of 718 staff members, based on existing instruments—the ICA audit, the Organizational Change Recipients' Belief scale, and the Cynicism about Organizational Change scale. The qualitative part of the research relies on 18 semistructured in-depth interviews. The findings demonstrate how a lack of clear, unambiguous communication proves a major obstacle for succeeding in unfreezing employees; it leads them to mainly think about their own self-interest, maintain the status quo and avoid needless risks.

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.

Since the new millennium, there has been a remarkable increase in audio-visual adaptations of superhero comic books (Garcia-Escriva, 2018). Whereas these adaptations used to include predominantly male superheroes, they have started to feature more female superheroes (Curtis & Cardo, 2018). An increase, however, does not imply diverse and rounded representations, since women in superhero movies tend to be depicted in stereotypical and sexualized ways (Kaplan, Miller & Rauch, 2016). Even though previous research has addressed the genre's politics of gender representation, there is a need for research that looks at televised female superheroes from a queer postfeminist lens. Therefore, this study conducted a textual analysis, informed by queer postfeminism and intersectionality theory, to explore how leading female superheroes in the series Supergirl are represented. We concluded that the superhero series Supergirl subverts hegemonic gendered identities through its depiction of both traditional and queer femininities.

Studies suggest that, at the routine level, news beats function as unique "micro-cultures." Exploring this "particularist" approach in news content, we compare how the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, infotainment, and civic roles materialize across 11 thematic news beats and analyze the moderating effect of platforms, ownership, and levels of political freedom on journalistic role performance in hard and soft news. Based on the second wave of the Journalistic Role Performance (JRP) project, this article reports the findings of a content analysis of 148,474 news items from 37 countries. Our results reveal the transversality of interventionism, the strong associations of some topics and roles, and the limited reach of news beat particularism in the face of moderating variables.