Introduction to the special issue: News decisions and news values

Journalism Studies 13, 5-6, pp.718-728

While there is a large body of research on news values and news selection, most research does not clearly distinguish between the concept of news and news selection, on the one hand, and news values and criteria of newsworthiness on the other. These concepts are often treated as synonymous. This is problematic, as there may be many other factors aside from news values or criteria of newsworthiness that determine what becomes news, and as there may be differences between what journalists think should be, and actually is, important when deciding what's news. Against this background, this study investigates what Swedish journalists think is, and should be, important event properties when deciding what's news, and whether there are differences across journalists working for different kinds of media and depending on whether they work with online publishing. The results show that there are significant differences between the perceived normative and actual importance of investigated event properties when deciding what's news.

Sur le journalisme, About journalism, Sobre jornalismo, 2017

Objective: The goal of this paper is to suggest a mix of conceptual and methodological approaches through which the factors and dynamics influencing journalistic decisions during the process of news selection and evaluation are investigated in the context of countries of different journalistic cultures. Rationale: The need for devising analytical models operating at a meso-sociological level arises from the realisation that a great volume of research attempts to provide full explanations of news selection by using mainly micro or macro approaches, either of which can only partially serve that objective. Therefore, a bridge between the two is proposed here. Theoretical framework: Bourdieu’s field theory, Hanitzsch’s deconstruction of journalistic culture, Hantrais’s comparative research design, and Bryman’s logic of integrating research methods, are combined to serve the desired focus on the relationship between micro and macro societal factors. The starting point of this investigation is that the combined consideration of the theoretical domains of news values, news practice and journalistic professionalism is required, so that an adequate explanation of the dynamics of news selection and evaluation is produced. Methodology: To suit the above theoretical framework, a mixed methods approach is proposed, comprising: (1) a quantitative survey via questionnaire, establishing patterns and assessing the strength of various factors at play during news selection; (2) a qualitative focus group approach, simulating editorial meetings and shedding light on the decision-making process and the logic behind it. Conclusion: On the basis of an extensive literature review, complemented by empirical examples from an ongoing comparative research project, it is suggested that a meso-sociological approach in journalism research can bring micro- and macro-accounts of journalistic practice closer to each other.

for(e)dialogue, 2016

This paper tackles theoretical and methodological issues of a comparative research in three countries of different journalistic cultures (UK, Sweden and Greece) that contributes to an explanation of news judgement, called 'journalistic gut feeling' by journalists, as implemented in varying social contexts. A thesis of this investigation is that the combined consideration of the theoretical domains of news values, news practice and journalistic professionalism is required so that an adequate explanation of the dynamics of news evaluation is produced. The theoretical approach adopted is Bourdieu's 'field' perspective as applied in journalism research by Benson, while the methodological one is a comparative, mixed methods design that pays attention to contextual factors, drawing on suggestions by Bryman, Hantrais and Hanitzsch. The methods applied are a questionnaire survey of journalists and focus groups simulating editorial meetings.

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2018

How events become news has always been a fundamental question for both journalism practitioners and scholars. For journalism practitioners, news judgments are wrapped up in the moral obligation to hold the powerful to account and to provide the public with the means to participate in democratic governance. For journalism scholars, news selection and construction are wrapped up in investigations of news values and newsworthiness. Scholarship systematically analyzing the processes behind these judgments and selections emerged in the 1960s, and since then, news values research has made a significant contribution to the journalism literature. Assertions have been made regarding the status of news values, including whether they are culture bound or universal, core or standard. Some hold that news values exist in the minds of journalists or are even metaphorically speaking “part of the furniture,” while others see them as being inherent or infused in the events that happen or as discursively constructed through the verbal and visual resources deployed in news storytelling. Like in many other areas of journalism research, systematic analysis of the role that visuals play in the construction of newsworthiness has been neglected. However, recent additions to the scholarship on visual news values analysis have begun to address this shortfall. The convergence and digitization of news production, rolling deadlines, new media platforms, and increasingly active audiences have also impacted on how news values research is conducted and theorized, making this a vibrant and ever-evolving research paradigm.

CM: Communication and Media, 2016

In 1965, Galtung and Ruge initiated a rich strand of academic research on the notion of news values and the practice of gatekeeping in a context of international news reporting. Since its publication, many scholars have criticized, revisited, and put their findings to the test, often leading to somehow conflicting conclusions. In general, some studies tend to confirm their findings while others have uttered methodological concerns or came up with new or additional sets of news factors, hence arguing for a further specification of the model. In recent years, scholars also pointed towards the increasing impact of digital media on journalistic practices of news selection. Likewise, new perspectives on global journalism were introduced into the debate. In this article, we bring together these different perspectives in order to inform a broad discussion on Galtung and Ruge's legacy for the field of communication sciences in general and studies on journalism and international news selection in particular. We first assess how Galtung and Ruge's hypotheses hold up in an era of unlimited data. Second, we reflect on the need to integrate changing societal and cultural contexts of news selection, production and reception to understand news values today. Third, with contemporary journalistic practices and research in mind, we suggest an agenda for the study of news values in an era of global journalism.

2013

Atlantic Journal of Communication, 2015

2001

This study aims to shed light on the news selection process by examining the news values currently operational in British newspapers. The study takes as its starting point Galtung and Ruge's widely cited taxonomy of news values established in their 1965 study and puts these criteria to the test in an empirical analysis of news published in three national daily UK newspapers. A review of Galtung and Ruge's original study as well as a wider review of related literature is provided. The findings of the news content analysis are used to evaluate critically Galtung and Ruge's original criteria and to propose a contemporary set of news values.

This article examines whether there is a gap between the news choices of mainstream journalists and those of their public. It looks at the choices of both groups in relation to each other and explores whether these choices vary in connection with the occurrence of major political events. The heuristic value of this approach is demonstrated through a mixed-method study of the news choices of journalists and consumers in the main Argentine online sites. A content analysis of the top stories chosen by journalists of that country's two leading sites and the stories that consumers of these sites click most often yields two key results. First, during periods of relatively normal political activity, journalists choose stories about political, international, and economic subjects substantively more than consumers. Second, during periods of heightened political activity, consumers increase their interest in these stories, and the gap with the choices of journalists either disappears or narrows. Furthermore, interviews with journalists and with news consumers show that the presence of this gap during ordinary political times and its change during extraordinary periods are shaped by divergent and dynamic interpretive logics.