The direction of media influence: Real-estate news and the stock market

This paper uses a novel identification strategy to test the influence of news media on the stock market. Because the stock market does not impact the media coverage of the housing market, a relationship between real-estate news and shares of companies engaged in the housing market is attributable media influence. I find that the content of reporting exhibits a significant relationship with stock returns, and the amount of news with the number of trades. These relationships exist even after controlling for known risk factors, housing market performance and intra-week correlation. This finding is consistent with the function of the media as a source of information and sentiment in financial markets.

Portuguese newspapers’ front-page and the coverage of European Cultural Capital: Porto 2001 and Guimarães 2012

Portugal hosted in the last thirteen years, two editions of the event European Cultural Capital; this paper intends to illustrate the coverage that Portuguese newspapers (daily newspapers Público, Diário de Notícias, Correio da Manhã and Jornal de Notícias, a weekly newsmagazine Visão and a weekly newspaper Expresso) made, through referrals in front-page and respective developments within the editions, to each of the events and that allows us to define the main moments that marked each of them, patterns of action, the major players, planning and programming types. The European Cultural Capital project elects, from year to year, cities of different EU member states with the main goal of “contributing to bring together the Europe´s people" (words of Mélina Mercouri, Greek Minister of Culture who, in 1985, proposed the launch of this initiative) and encouraging the elected urban space to present new cultural paradigms. In the genesis of this model is the cultural decentralization’s vector, a possibility to medium-sized cities of funding public works, restoring heritage and promoting themselves in touristic terms, of giving visibility to cities away from cultural and creative industries’ major distribution centers. A crucial factor to achieve this goal is media coverage. This paper outline the information that the Portuguese press ran over the two years that elapsed the latest editions of the European Cultural Capital in Portugal, namely that media coverage have deviated from the disclosure of the events’ schedule to suggest itineraries of visit and little or not even question the role that cities, promoting such initiatives, have as places of innovation in terms of cultural policies, artistic production and innovation, in urban and environmental regeneration, in economic revitalization, in training and creating new artists and new audiences and in boosting the confidence of local communities. The content analysis performed to articles shows how press is essential to the promotion of cities as cultural/touristic destinations as it stimulates consumption among residents and attracts visitors, with the possible dire consequence of turning the cultural journalist into an agent of touristic instead of cultural promotion.

Bonds away : baseball mythology and the 2007 home run chase

In 2007, Barry Bonds hit his 75 6th home run, breaking Hank Aaron's all-time record for most home runs in a Major League career. While it would be expected that such an accomplishment would induce unending praise and adulationfor the new record-holder, Bonds did not receive the treatment typically reserved for a beloved baseball hero. The purpose of this thesis is to assess media representations of the 2007 home run chase in order to shed light upon the factors which led to the mixed representations which accompanied BOlTds ' assault on Aaron's record. Drawingfrom Roland Barthes ' concept of myth, this thesis proposes that Bonds was portrayed in predominantly negative ways because he was seen as failing to embody the values of baseball's mythology. Using a qualitative content analysis of three major American newspapers, this thesis examines portrayals of Bonds and how he was shown both to represent and oppose elements from baseball's mythology, such as youth, and a distant, agrarian past. Recognizing the ways in which baseball is associated with American life, the media representations of Bonds are also evaluated to discern whether he was portrayed as personifYing a distinctly American set of values. The results indicate that, in media coverage of the 2007 home run chase, Bonds was depicted as a player of many contradictions. Most commonly, Bonds' athletic ability and career achievements were contrasted with unflattering descriptions of his character, including discussions of his alleged use of performance-enhancing substances. However, some coverage portrayed Bonds as embodying baseball myth. The findings contribute to an appreciation of the importance of historical context in examining media representations. This understanding is enhanced by an analysis of a selection of articles on Mark McGwire 's record-breaking season in 1998, and careful consideration of, and comparison to, the context under which Bonds performed in 2007. Findings are also shown to support the contemporary existence of a strong American baseball mythology. That Bonds is both condemned for failing to uphold the mythology and praised for personifYing it suggests that the values seen as inherent to baseball continue to act as an American cultural benchmark.

Between the headlines of the Israeli - Arabic conflict: the coverage of CNN and Al Jazeera

The purpose of this article is to analyze the coverage made by CNN and Al Jazeera (in Arabic) to operation Caste Lead and the Goldstone Report during 2008 and 2009. This investigation is based in the theory of Qualitative Analysis of Content, by Wildemuth and Zhang. The methodology follows up with the one proposed by the authors in the main theory, complementing it with the Gamson and Modigliani´s Framing theory. The methodology mention above display the different in the coverage development, determined by the geopolitical influences; being CNN more influenced by a Western pro USA and pro Israeli speech, while Al Jazeera is more prone to support the Palestinian cause, this is the thesis of this article. During the development of the investigation, the thesis was demonstrated to be only partially accurate as CNN was not completely supportive to the Israeli arguments during the coverage, but Al Jazeera did have preferential speech for the Palestinian cause.

The quality of referendum debate: the UK's electoral system referendum in the print media

This paper analyses the quality of debate surrounding the UK’s 2011 electoral reform referendum as represented in the print media. It first considers how debate quality in the context of a referendum campaign may best be conceptualized. It then uses content analysis of media coverage to investigate three aspects of that debate: its quantity; the balance between Yes and No arguments, and the quality of reason-giving. It finds that the quantity of debate was comparable to other recent electoral reform referendums. Coverage was predominantly, but not overwhelmingly, hostile to change. The different indicators of the quality of reason-giving present a mixed picture. The paper concludes by considering how the analysis could be extended through further comparison with other cases.

NGO's use of the media to create changes in corporate activities and accountabilities : evidence from a developing country

This paper investigates how social and environmental NGOs use the news media to create changes in the operations and associated accountabilities of multinational companies operating in, or sourcing products from, a developing country. In this research, we explicitly seek the views of senior officers from global and local NGOs operating in Bangladesh, as well as the views of journalists from major global and local news media organisations. Our results show that social and environmental NGOs strategically use the news media to effect change in the operating and disclosure policies pertaining to corporate labour practices. More particularly, both the NGOs and the news media representatives stated that NGOs would be relatively powerless to create change without media coverage. Our results also show that the media agenda has been responsible for creating improvements in working condition within Bangladesh, but further improvements are necessary. This is the first known study to specifically address the joint role of NGOs and the news media in creating changes in the social and environmental operating and disclosure practices of organisations operating in developing countries.

Media discourse and Iraq's democratisation : reporting the 2005 constitution in the Australian and Middle Eastern print media

This paper analyses in detail the coverage of two milestones in Iraq's shift towards democracy: the drafting and approval of the constitution by Iraq s interim government (August 2005) and the ratification of this constitution via the Iraqi polls (October 2005). Aside from some rudimentary quantitative analysis, a critical discourse analysis method is utilised to compare and contrast the discursive practices used in three of Australia s leading daily newspapers (The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age) with three Middle Eastern English-language papers (The Daily Star, Anadolu Agency and the Jordan Times). The paper finds that the Australian print media continues the neo-Orientalist tradition of media coverage of Middle Eastern democracy, while the Middle Eastern press eschews these discourses in favour of a more open, varied debate on Iraq s constitution and the future of democracy across the region.

One tweet does not a revolution make : technological determinism, media and social change

This paper discusses the problematic influence of technological determinism in popular news media coverage and analysis of the Arab Spring events of 2010-11.

The purpose is to develop insights into how and why elements of a ‘soft’ technological determinism inflect both journalistic practice and news discourse in relation to the Arab Spring. In particular it discusses how the ‘bias of convenience’ and a journalistic obsession with the ‘continuous present’ connect with this determinist inflection to create a potential distortion in the journalists’ ‘first rough draft’ of history in relation to significant and complex events such as social revolution.

The gendered world of sports reporting in the Australian print media

The mainstream news media have long been charged by feminist and critical media scholars of largely excluding women from its sports coverage, and concomitantly highlighting the ongoing relative absence of female sports reporters. With the 2012 London Olympic Games just past, it is timely to reflect on two areas of sports journalism that recieve sparse scholarly interest from the majority of Australian journalism academics, as technology issues and the future of journalism debates take precedence. The Olympics typically generate more media exposure for female athletes than usual, nevertheless, it remains that there are particular types of 'gender appropriate' events that attract mainstream news media attention during the Games, and other sporting events in general. This paper analyses a month of pre-Olympic sports coverage and general sports coverage in two major Australian newspapers, finding that while pre-Olympic coverage includes more women's sport than in general sport, sportsmen and men's sport remains highly privileged in both areas. The fact that horseracing recieves three times more media coverage than women's sports in this study clearly identifies sportswomen's marginalised status. The paper also maps the number of female sports reporters at these two newspapers, and concludes with some insights into a newsroom culture that typically rejects women as athletes and as sports reporters

Indian news media : from observer to participant

This book makes a new and significant argument that Indian news media is no longer just an observer but an active participant in the events that direct the nation. It explores the changing role of Indian news media and their performance in the past 25 years by closely examining media coverage of some landmark events within the context of India’s globalising polity, which has led to privatisation, widespread engagement with new communication technologies, and the rise of individualism. The challenges of globalisation have caused significant changes in news processes and procedures, which this volume details by examining media’s coverage of events and issues such as paid news, anti-graft movement, sting journalism, Delhi gang-rape protest, politics-media nexus and neo-liberalism’s impact on the industry’s performance.
The book places Indian media’s evolution in the context of economic, political and sociological developments in the country. It takes a multi-disciplinary approach to evaluate reportage in a multitude of media platforms. The theoretical exploration of the changes in the Indian media landscape draws from academic disciplines of ‘media studies’, ‘journalism,’ ‘cultural studies’ and ‘sociology’. This book follows the authors’ earlier work, titled Indian Media in a Globalised World (SAGE/2010).

The legend of King O’Malley

Review of The Legend of King O'Malley at La Mama's Carlton Courthouse

Our girth is plain to see: an analysis of newspaper coverage of Australia's future 'fat bomb'

The news media plays an important role in making visible and shaping public understandings of health and health risks. In relation to overweight and obesity, it has been suggested that the media is more likely to engage in alarmist reporting in a climate in which it is taken for granted that obesity is an 'epidemic'. This study analyses Australian media coverage of a report on overweight and obesity, Australia's Future 'Fat Bomb': a report on the long-term consequences of Australia's expanding waistline on cardiovascular disease, by one of Australia's leading health and medical research institutes. Our study found that the report was consistently framed across media outlets as showing that Australia is the 'fattest nation' in the world, having overtaken the Americans. This is despite the fact that the Fat Bomb study did not include international comparisons and was based only on data from middle-aged Australians. Because reports of increasing rates of obesity had already been widely covered in the media, the press needed to find a new way of signifying the problem, which was provided by comments made by its lead author in publicising the report. Consistent with previous research, there was a notable absence of critical commentary on the study and a failure to test the claims of its lead author. We conclude that this reporting could have contributed to a policy environment in which the perceived threat of obesity is deemed to be so great that efforts to contain it may be subjected to less scrutiny than they warrant. © 2011 Taylor & Francis.

A changing climate of skepticism: The factors shaping climate change coverage in the US press

Skepticism toward climate change has a long tradition in the United States. We focus on mass media as the conveyors of the image of climate change and ask: Is climate change skepticism still a characteristic of US print media coverage? If so, to what degree and in what form? And which factors might pave the way for skeptics entering mass media debates? We conducted a quantitative content analysis of US print media during one year (1 June 2012 to 31 May 2013). Our results show that the debate has changed: fundamental forms of climate change skepticism (such as denial of anthropogenic causes) have been abandoned in the coverage, being replaced by more subtle forms (such as the goal to avoid binding regulations). We find no evidence for the norm of journalistic balance, nor do our data support the idea that it is the conservative press that boosts skepticism.

Lost in Translation? Russian Media Portrayals and Laypersons’ Interpretations of Angelina Jolie’s Breast Cancer Discourse

In May 2013, Angelina Jolie revealed that because she had a family history of breast and ovarian cancer and carried a rare BRCA gene mutation, she had undergone a preventive double mastectomy. Media coverage has been extensive around the world, including in Russia, not an English-language country, where all global news is inevitably filtered by translation. After examining the reactions of Russian mass media and members of the public to Jolie’s disclosure, I consider what transformations have occurred with Jolie’s message in the process of cross-cultural transfer. I explore the mass media portrayal of Jolie’s announcement, laypersons’ immediate and prolonged reactions, and the reflections of patients involved directly in the field of hereditary breast cancer. To my knowledge, this multifaceted and bilingual project is the first conceptualization of Jolie’s story as it has been translated in a different sociocultural environment. I start with examination of offline and online publications that appeared in Russia within two months after Jolie’s announcement. In this part of my analysis, I conceptualize the representation of Jolie’s case in Russian mass media and grasp what sociocultural waves were generated by this case among general lay audiences. Another part of my study contains the results of qualitative in-depth interviews. Eight women with a family history of hereditary breast cancer were recruited to participate in the research. The findings represent Jolie’s case through the eyes of Russian women with the same gene mutation as Jolie. Consolidating my findings, I argue that Jolie’s announcement was misinterpreted and misrepresented by Russian mass media, as well as misunderstood by a considerable part of the media audience. Jolie’s perspective on hereditary breast cancer mostly remained unheard among members of the Russian public. I make suggestions about the reasons for such a phenomenon, and demonstrate how Jolie’s case is implicated in politics, economics, and the culture of contemporary Russia.

“Seismic cultural change?”: British media representations of same-sex ‘marriage’

The legal recognition of same-sex relationships is a contested terrain that has been hotly debated by feminists. This article provides a social constructionist analysis of the UK newspaper media coverage around the time of the introduction of the Civil Partnership Act (2004). In examining the 348 national newspaper coverage over a three month period (November 2005–January 2006) we highlight three prevalent, and conflicting, themes: ‘same-sex marriage becomes legal under the Civil Partnership Act’; ‘couples will not get full legal status’ and ‘marriage is a heterosexual business’. We discuss these media representations and argue that the heteronormativity of the coverage provided little space for more radical constructions of same-sex relationship recognition.