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News Can Help! The Impact of News Media and Digital Platforms on Awareness of and Belief in Misinformation

Sacha Altay, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen Nielsen, Richard Fletcher

International Journal of Press/Politics, volume 29, issue 2 (2024), pp. 459-484

"Does the news media exacerbate or reduce misinformation problems? Although some news media deliberately try to counter misinformation, it has been suggested that they might also inadvertently, and sometimes purposefully, amplify it. We conducted a two-wave panel survey in Brazil, India, and the UK ... more

Discussing the Role of TikTok Sharing Practices in Everyday Social Life

Andreas Schellewald

International Journal of Communication, volume 18 (2024), pp. 909-926

"A crucial element of TikTok consumption is the act of sharing TikTok videos with others, such as friends. In this article, I draw on ethnographic fieldwork with young adult TikTok users based in the United Kingdom to investigate this practice. I show how people use TikTok’s “For You” page as ... more

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Eyewitness Textures: User-Generated Content and Journalism in the Twenty-First Century

Michael Lithgow, Michèle Martin

Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press (2024), 365 pp.

"News consumers have come to expect and demand the unprecedented immediacy of experience and coverage of breaking news offered by photographs, video clips, audio recordings, tweets, commentary: content created by ordinary citizens. The use of user-generated content is a salient aspect of how journal ... more

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The Routledge Companion to Journalism in the Global South

Bruce Mutsvairo, Saba Bebawi, Eddy Borges-Rey (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2024), xxiv, 491 pp.

"Responding to mounting calls to decenter and decolonize journalism, The Routledge Companion to Journalism in the Global South examines not only the deep-seated challenges associated with the historical imposition of Western journalism standards on constituencies of the Global South but also the opp ... more

Digital Development Strategy 2024-2030

UK International Development (2024), 55 pp.

Contesting personalized recommender systems: A cross-country analysis of user preferences

Christopher Starke, Ljubisa Metikos, Natali Helberger, Claes de Vreese

Information, Communication & Society (2024), 20 pp.

"Very Large Online Platforms (VLOPs) such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube wield substantial influence over digital information flows using sophisticated algorithmic recommender systems (RS). As these systems curate personalized content, concerns have emerged about their propensity to amplify polar ... more

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Countering violent extremism through internet intermediaries: A typology for cross-country comparison

Vincent Pak-Hong Wong

Global Media and Communication, volume 20, issue 1 (2024), pp. 3-22

"This paper examines the counter-violent extremism and anti-terrorism measures in Australia, China, France, the United Kingdom and the United States by investigating how governments leveraged internet intermediaries as their surrogate censors. Particular attention is paid to how political rhetoric l ... more

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Charity representations of distant others: An analysis of charity advertising supporting international causes in UK national newspapers

David Girling, Deborah Adesina

University of East Anglia, School of Global Development (2024), 32 pp.

"We are pleased that this project has provided evidence indicating an improvement in the representation of distant others in INGO adverts. On the whole, there is a marked difference in the organisation of cast and characters present in charity’s communications imagery and pitiful images are nearly ... more

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The Global Faith and Entertainment Study: A Study of Attitudes and Perceptions Regarding Faith and Religion in Entertainment

HarrisX;Faith & Media Initiative (2024), 25 pp.

"The study seeks to understand consumers’ and decisionmakers’ perspectives on how current entertainment media treats themes of faith, religion and spirituality in its narratives and characters, if there is a market for more accurate and diverse representation of faith, and what opportunities exi ... more

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Making a place for technology in communities: PlaceCal and the capabilities approach

Stefan White, Kim Foale

Information, Communication & Society, volume 26, issue 6 (2023), pp. 1067-1086

"We discuss how a capability approach to information technology in neighbourhoods with low social capital can create embedded and sustainable Community Technology Partnerships (CTPs) that connect residents and institutions together, reducing barriers to social participation and collaborative action. ... more

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Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2023
Top Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Kirsten Eddy, Craig T. Robertson, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 158 pp.

"Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) now say they prefer to start their news journeys with a website or app – that’s down 10 percentage points since 2018. Publishers in a few smaller Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are ... showing a weaker connection with news brands’ own websites and apps than previous cohorts – preferring to access news via side-door routes such as social media, search, or mobile aggregators. • Facebook remains one of the most-used social networks overall, but its influence on journalism is declining as it shifts its focus away from news. It also faces new challenges from established networks such as YouTube and vibrant youth-focused networks such as TikTok. The Chinese-owned social network reaches 44% of 18–24s across markets and 20% for news. It is growing fastest in parts of Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. • When it comes to news, audiences say they pay more attention to celebrities, influencers, and social media personalities than journalists in networks like TikTok, Instagram, and Snapchat. This contrasts sharply with Facebook and Twitter, where news media and journalists are still central to the conversation. • Much of the public is sceptical of the algorithms used to select what they see via search engines, social media, and other platforms. Less than a third (30%) say that having stories selected for me on the basis of previous consumption is a good way to get news, 6 percentage points lower than when we last asked the question in 2016. Despite this, on average, users still slightly prefer news selected this way to that chosen by editors or journalists (27%), suggesting that worries about algorithms are part of a wider concern about news and how it is selected. • Despite hopes that the internet could widen democratic debate, we find fewer people are now participating in online news than in the recent past. Aggregated across markets, only around a fifth (22%) are now active participators, with around half (47%) not participating in news at all. In the UK and United States, the proportion of active participators has fallen by more than 10 percentage points since 2016. Across countries we find that this group tends to be male, better educated, and more partisan in their political vie ws. • Trust in the news has fallen, across markets, by a further 2 percentage points in the last year, reversing in many countries the gains made at the height of the Coronavirus pandemic. On average, four in ten of our total sample (40%) say they trust most news most of the time. Finland remains the country with the highest levels of overall trust (69%), while Greece (19%) has the lowest after a year characterised by heated arguments about press freedom and the independence of the media." (Summary, page 10) more

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2024
Top Insights

Nic Newman, Richard Fletcher, Craig T. Robertson, Amy Ross Arguedas, Rasmus Kleis Nielsen (eds.)

Oxford: Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism (2023), 167 pp.

"In many countries, especially outside Europe and the United States, we find a significant further decline in the use of Facebook for news and a growing reliance on a range of alternatives including private messaging apps and video networks. Facebook news consumption is down 4 percentage points, acr ... oss all countries, in the last year. • News use across online platforms is fragmenting, with six networks now reaching at least 10% of our respondents, compared with just two a decade ago. YouTube is used for news by almost a third (31%) of our global sample each week, WhatsApp by around a fifth (21%), while TikTok (13%) has overtaken Twitter (10%), now rebranded X, for the first time. • Linked to these shifts, video is becoming a more important source of online news, especially with younger groups. Short news videos are accessed by two-thirds (66%) of our sample each week, with longer formats attracting around half (51%). The main locus of news video consumption is online platforms (72%) rather than publisher websites (22%), increasing the challenges around monetisation and connection. • Although the platform mix is shifting, the majority continue to identify platforms including social media, search, or aggregators as their main gateway to online news. Across markets, only around a fifth of respondents (22%) identify news websites or apps as their main source of online news – that’s down 10 percentage points on 2018. Publishers in a few Northern European markets have managed to buck this trend, but younger groups everywhere are showing a weaker connection with news brands than they did in the past. • Turning to the sources that people pay most attention to when it comes to news on various platforms, we find an increasing focus on partisan commentators, influencers, and young news creators, especially on YouTube and TikTok. But in social networks such as Facebook and X, traditional news brands and journalists still tend to play a prominent role. • Concern about what is real and what is fake on the internet when it comes to online news has risen by 3 percentage points in the last year with around six in ten (59%) saying they are concerned. The figure is considerably higher in South Africa (81%) and the United States (72%), both countries that have been holding elections this year. • Worries about how to distinguish between trustworthy and untrustworthy content in online platforms is highest for TikTok and X when compared with other online networks. Both platforms have hosted misinformation or conspiracies around stories such as the war in Gaza, and the Princess of Wales’s health, as well as so-called ‘deep fake’ pictures and videos." (Executive summary, page 10) more

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The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio

Kathryn McDonald, Hugh Chignell (eds.)

London: Bloomsbury Academic (2023), xiv, 554 pp.

"The Bloomsbury Handbook of Radio presents exciting new research on radio and audio, including broadcasting and podcasting. Since the birth of radio studies as a distinct subject in the 1990s, it has matured into a second wave of inquiry and scholarship. As broadcast radio has partly given way to po ... more

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The Media and Inequality

Steve Schifferes, Sophie Knowles (eds.)

Abingdon; New York: Routledge (2023), 264 pp.

"This book brings together a vast range of pre-eminent experts, academics, and practitioners to interrogate the role of media in representing economic inequality. It explores and deconstructs the concept of economic inequality by examining the different dimensions of inequality and how it has evolve ... more

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Communicative Justice in the Pluriverse: An International Dialogue

Joan Pedro-Carañana, Eliana Herrera-Huérfano, Juana Ochoa Almanza (eds.)

New York: Routledge (2023), xxiv, 176 pp.

"The book identifies and explains the unequal power relations in place that limit the possibilities of communication justice, the challenges and difficulties faced by activists and communities, the ways in which communities and movements have confronted power structures through discourse and materia ... more

“Fair and Balanced”: What News Audiences in Four Countries Mean When They Say They Prefer Impartial News

Camila Mont 'Alverne, Sumitra Badrinathan, Amy Ross Arguedas, Benjamin Toffet al.

Journalism Studies, volume 24, issue 9 (2023), pp. 1131-1148

"Impartial news, or news without a partisan slant or overt point-ofview, is overwhelmingly preferred by news audiences worldwide, yet what such preferences mean remains poorly understood. In this study, we examine what people mean when they say they prefer impartial news. We draw on qualitative inte ... more

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Social media images and conflicts

Mette Mortensen, Ally McCrow-Young (eds.)

London; New York: Routledge (2023), xii, 137 pp.

"This collection considers how digital images and social media reconfigure the way conflicts are played out, represented and perceived around the globe. Devoted to developing original theoretical frameworks and empirical insights, the volume addresses the role of user images and social media in rela ... more

Discourses, Modes, Media and Meaning in an Era of Pandemic: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis Approach

Sabine Tan, Marissa K. L. E. (eds)

New York; London: Routledge (2023), xvi, 276 pp.

"Using a multimodal discourse analysis approach, this dynamic collection examines various discourses, modes and media in circulation during the early stages of the pandemic, and how these have impacted our daily lives in terms of the various meanings they express. Examples include how national and i ... more

UK Aid Match: Real Aid or Charity-Washing?

Martin Scott

All-Party Parlimentary Group for Aid Match;University of East Anglia (2023), 32 pp.

"UK Aid Match (UKAM) is a match-funding scheme, funded by the UK government, designed to incentivise greater charitable giving amongst the UK public towards projects that reduce poverty in developing countries. For every £1 donated to a UKAM charity appeal, the government also contributes £1 of UK ... aid – usually up to £2 million. This report examines UKAM’s communication requirements and considers their potential limitations, contradictions, inconsistencies, and political implications. UKAM’s overall aim is to allow the British public to have a say in how UK aid is spent and provide opportunities to engage with international development issues, whilst boosting the impact of civil society projects to reach the poorest people in developing countries8. According to the UKAM documents analysed for this report, all participating Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) are required to comply with various communication requirements, to be eligible for government matchfunding, most notably to use a pro bono communications partnership that can provide at least 400,000 opportunities for the UK public to view information about the appeal and the match funding offer. [...] This report shows that UKAM appeals have generally been very successful in achieving their communications objectives. Since 2011, UKAM appeals have generated over 14 billion unique Opportunities To be Viewed (OTVs) by the UK public. These communications include appeals involving Ministers, Parliamentarians or the Secretary of State receiving over 45 million OTVs in 2019 alone14. In just the February 2020 round of UKAM , the ‘value in kind for pro bono communications’ of the 1.7bn OTVs was given as £2.2 million. However, this report also highlights several concerning contradictions with UKAM’s current communication requirements. For example, setting a minimum requirement for generating ‘Opportunities to View’ (OTV) appears likely to restrict the participation of NGOs with smaller marketing capabilities. This limits the extent to which UKAM can achieve its stated objective – in line with two consecutive Conservative Party Manifesto commitments – to ‘give the public a say in how a portion of the UK aid budget is spent. This report also notes that UKAM funding has only amounted to approximately 0.2% of UK Official Development Assistance (ODA) since 2011, while ODA has been reduced to 0.5% of Gross National Income (GNI)18. Given this, the 14 billion OTVs generated by UKAM may inadvertently give the UK public a misleading impression of the true extent to which they are directing a portion of the UK aid budget to their favoured charities. In fact, there is evidence to suggest that – rather than giving the UK public a greater say in directing UK aid – incentivising campaigns to have greater reach may instead be providing greater reputational benefits to government Ministers – who charities are required to feature in their campaigns." (Executive summary, pages 5-6) more