"Patterns of news consumption are changing drastically. Citizens increasingly rely on social media such as Facebook to read and share political news. With the power of these platforms to expose citizens to political information, the implications for democracy are profound, making understanding what ... is shared duringelections a priority on the research agenda. Nevertheless, to the best of our knowledge, no study has yet explicitly explored how elections transform news sharing behaviour on Facebook. This study begins to remedy this by (a) investigating changes in news coverage and news sharing behaviour on Facebook by comparing election and routine periods, and by (b) addressing the ‘news gap’ between preferences of journalists and news consumers on social media. Employing a novel data set of news articles (N = 83,054) in Mexico, findings show that during periods of heightened political activity, both the publication and dissemination of political news increases, the gap between the news choices of journalists and consumers narrows, and that news sharing resembles a zero-sum game, with increased political news sharing leading to a decrease in the sharing of other news." (Abstract) more

"Democratic nations around the globe are facing increasing levels of false and misleading information circulating on social media and news websites, propagating alternative sociopolitical realities. One of the most innovative actors in this process has been the Russian state, whose disinformation ca ... mpaigns have influenced elections and shaped political discourse globally. A key element of these campaigns is the content produced by state-funded outlets like RT and Sputnik, whose articles are republished by underfunded or sympathetic local media, as well as coordinated groups that attempt to shape mainstream political narratives. Using a tailored text-as-data approach, we examine the thematic and linguistic differences in articles produced by U.S. and Russian state-funded and mainstream outlets in Serbia. We use 11 features (frames and in-text characteristics) to construct an article country-source classifier with a high degree of accuracy. The article contributes toward an understanding of the structural characteristics of Russian statefunded news in the Western Balkans, enhances the application of computational text analysis in Serbian, and provides suggestions for the application of text-as-data methods to the study of online disinformation." (Abstract) more

"[...] this study provides an extensive overview of conceptualizations and operationalizations of media diversity in different fields using a systematic literature review (1999–2018). This showed a lack of theorizing and linking of conceptual with empirical work in media diversity research. Based ... on this, we develop a framework on how to move forward: Regarding conceptualization, we call for focusing on different places in the journalistic information chain instead of the classical exposure-supply distinction. Methodologically, automated approaches (e.g., analyzing digital traces) and qualitative approaches (e.g., capturing perceptions of diversity) should receive more attention. For analysis, matters of balance and disparity need to be stressed more, especially discussing possible limits to diversity. Overall, research into media diversity thus needs to be addressed in interdisciplinary collaboration." (Abstract) more