Publishers are intermediaries between original content producers, users and advertisers in the information value chain. Internet offers them an additional channel to accomplish these intermediary tasks, next to the traditional print channel. The emergence of this new communication channel threatens the profitable position of incumbent publishers, because internet reduces market entry barriers for new providers of free information. At the same time, internet offers publishers new opportunities to develop stronger relationships with users. Case studies of the online market for news, nice-to-know consumer magazines and need-to-know professional information in the Netherlands suggest that incumbent publishers use these opportunities more aggressively when they face stronger threats from new entrants. The main beneficiaries of the resulting intensified competition between publishers and new entrants are individual information users.
The contributions in this special issue show that the internet has several and contradictory impacts on newspapers. The internet intensifies competition on mature newspaper markets, but also offer newspaper publishers additional means to reinforce their competitive position. The way in which publishers use these new opportunities results in the ‘mediatization’ of the internet. The corresponding trend of the ‘internetization’ of traditional media is less strong and clear-cut. One consequence of these developments is that online news media, and in particular online newspapers, are subordinate and subservient to print newspapers, and therefore still in search of their own online role at the beginning of the 21st century.
The main focus of this article is related to the forms of mediated content that are offered in online space. Two specific aspects of new cyber-textuality are discussed - the notion of hyper-textuality and the potential of interactivity. Both characteristics are understood as new challenges that reflect specific communication potentials of the internet. In an empirical sense, the article tries to show the extent these significant forms of mediation are used in online media news. For this reason a comparison between media content in print and online media has been made. The findings reveal the lack of interactivity in practice and explore its diversity as a communication form between media producers and reader. Regarding the hypertextuality, the analysis shows the complexity of this concept, which in the realm of news media online is still maturing.
Much of the rhetoric surrounding new media has centred on their potential democratically to reform public communications through more diverse, more open and more accountable journalism and debate. This article details a study of Irish online news, based on observation of a variety of websites and on a series of interviews with journalists, to test whether this potential has begun to be realized and whether practitioners share such a vision. Enhancement of content, interactivity, immediacy, increased depth and new ways of telling stories are some of the possibilities that are present, or at least latent, in online news. But these possibilities are seldom or only partially brought to fruit. What emerges from observation of online news in action, and from discussions with those providing its content, is far from a revolution in media, but an expression of the cautious continuity, if not inertia, of media content and practice.
There is an abundance of literature published on the history of communication studies in Europe, in a number of countries and taking various approaches. However, more pan-European initiatives to take stock of earlier activities in the field are still seriously lacking, and even when recognized as such, almost without exception focus on the development of the field since the 1960s. In this article, Gazette’s 50th anniversary is embraced as an opportunity to investigate the still incomplete genealogy of the European institutionalization of research in the field of communication. In line with this journal’s raison d’etre, existing literature about the activities in the field during the 1950s is made available to a wider audience.
This article monitors news coverage on the European Union and EU-related matters in terms of news frames and news discourses adopted in online versions of seven quality newspapers (six European and one American) over a period of four months (December 2001-March 2002). During this period the EU Council Summit was held in Laeken, Belgium, on 14 and 15 December 2001. The selection of the national quality press outlets is carried out on the basis of a general, significant readership and centrality to the current media debate on European issues in the country. The seven countries are interesting cases in terms of their varying role in the history of European integration as well as their current attitude towards the EU. The research literature identifies five recurrent news frames (conflict, human interest, economic consequences, morality and responsibility): this article assesses the relative visibility of each of these news frames in the coverage on the EU and its institutions in the news outlets under study. Furthermore, it asks which discourse is more dominant when it comes to the shaping of European identity as portrayed in the news reporting. Four types of discourse (culture, expansion, in- and exclusion and power) are examined.
With little written on media in this oft-forgotten part of Asia, this article seeks to analyse a model of television development within a key post-Soviet state. The research found that there was little programme production or adaptation in Kazakhstan but much done by Russian television on which the former’s channels were dependent. The Russian programming was either broadcast directly, relayed in part by domestic channels or comprised individual programmes purchased for use locally. Thus this article argues that Russia acts as a sub-franchisor in redistributing global creative products, exploiting commonalities in the regional geolinguistic market created through its past communist imperialism. A national policy placing increasing emphasis on Kazak-ization of media has triggered demand for ‘localized’ programming in this transitional Central Asian economy. Yet given the market imperatives of privatized media, this has encouraged the dubbing and adaptation of successful regional and global programmes formats in Russian, rather than production of local originals. In doing so, Kazakhstan may be discerned to be supporting Russia in its role as a semi-periphery country in global cultural production and export, thus mediating capitalism within its non-European region of transitional economies.
This article examines UNESCO resolutions and programs on women in relation to telecommunications in the time period 1970-2000. It argues that in those three decades, UNESCO responded to the four UN world conferences on women by incorporating women into its programs of information and communication. The organization’s conceptualized relations between women and telecommunications are critiqued as simple and naive. Women are alloted only three roles in relation to telecommunications: as representations, as media professionals and as active participants of communication technologies. It is argued that if women are not seen as owners of telecommunications and inventors of technologies, women’s advancement and women’s empowerment will not be fully achieved.
Using qualitative and quantitative research tools, this article attempts to examine the media coverage of Palestinian children in relation to the current Palestinian uprising. The criteria for the selection of the news outlets and indicator categories were agreed upon by Birzeit University Media Institute and the UNICEF representative. The regional and international outlets selected were as follows: NBC TV (US), BBC World Service radio station (UK), The Guardian (UK), Aljazeera TV (Qatar), The New York Times and The Jerusalem Post. All the outlets are representative of regional and international categories and are leaders in terms of news-making or represent contrasting political views. The results of this particular study seem to confirm assumptions that Palestinian children have very little media access and issues relating to them rarely feature in the dominant news narrative despite the privileged position of the Middle East crisis in these international news agendas.
In light of low levels of international knowledge among the American public, the current study examines the roles that news attention, education, interpersonal discussion and international involvement play in the development of international knowledge. Predictor patterns for an American sample are quite similar for close- and open-ended knowledge measures. News attention, education and interpersonal discussion play positive roles. In terms of the interactive roles of these information inputs, interpersonal discussion news attention and international involvement interpersonal discussion narrow gaps in knowledge. Finally, there was one significant three-way interaction - that of education news attention interpersonal discussion.
This brief article examines WSIS as a staging of transnational political communication. Playing with the acronym, it explores a number of moments of articulation and contradiction within the WSIS process, including gender imbalance, the politics of the inside and the outside, the space between rhetoric and action, and the lack of media coverage of a media-focused event. It suggests that WSIS is as relevant for western publics as for southern publics, and that the articulation of civil society within WSIS can be seen as the globalizing of radical democracy.
Historically, analyses of change in mass media systems have tended to draw upon a ‘dissident vs state’ framework, derived largely from the western historical experience. In the case of China, a ‘state vs market’ scenario has been superimposed on this basic framework, in the context of which the Chinese Communist party-state is often portrayed as a monolithic entity intent on promoting market-oriented reform in China’s economic base, while keeping a tight grip on the country’s mass media system and political superstructure. These dominant analytical frameworks tend to mask a number of important dynamics unique to Chinese history and society, that have played a significant role in the mass media transformation process. The purpose of this article is to outline a new conceptual framework incorporating these unique dynamics. In particular, it is the contention of this article that many of the changes in China’s mass media system during the post-Mao period have been achieved by non-state actors, not in an adversarial process vis-à-vis the state, but through what may be called ‘creative renegotiation and expansion’ of new policy openings initiated by the state. The success of these non-state actors, furthermore, has been due to three major systemic factors: (1) the increasing ‘deideologization’ of the Chinese society set in motion by Deng’s pragmatic policies; (2) the gradual functional shift on the part of the local party cadres and bureaucratic authorities from ideological supervision to entrepreneurial collaboration with private investors; and (3) the increasingly common core of interest created by the media’s commercialization among the party cadres, bureaucratic bodies and media entrepreneurs and managers in extracting profits from the media.
This article explores the feasibility of applying the public trust doctrine (PTD) to the management of portals and search engines and discusses these tools’ crucial role for the materialization of the e-commons. The PTD establishes that certain resources are to be publicly owned and preserved because they are deemed essential for society. Through a theoretical and historical analysis of the doctrine, the authors contend that it is also possible to extend its application to cyberspace as a way to protect users’ right to navigate the Internet’s main gateways and roadways without ‘pay-per-placement’, targeted categorizations and other obstructions imposed by commercial web resources to access content.
Recent theories of communication for development consider the lack of political, economic and cultural power of lower-status sectors as the central problem to be addressed in development. The majority do not have access to the education, technical assistance, good health and housing needed to make a contribution to national development. A deeper issue are the cultural values which see minorities such as women as not capable of making a contribution. Thus, the new movements seek to ‘empower’ themselves by resignifying the meaning of gender, youth, race, ethnicity and region as key actors in the development process and therefore as worthy of access to resources. Empowerment is central to the process of development, but empowerment, it is argued, needs to be located within a broader framework, which sees the goal of development as the cultural and political acceptance of universal human rights. Power must be seen as a source of social responsibility and service. Movements cannot stop at their own empowerment but must gain the respect for the rights of all in the society.
This study content analyzes the depiction of Afghan women in AP (Associated Press) photographs during the Taliban regime and after the fall of the Taliban regime. Analysis is based on visual subordination, point of view, social distance, imaginary contact, behavior and general portrayal. Findings suggest despite signs of visual subordination and framing stereotypes, women after the fall of the Taliban regime are portrayed as more involved, interactive, more socially intimate and symbolically equal to the viewer. Analysis shows AP photographs portray a more complex version of Afghan women’s liberation. Women after the fall of the Taliban regime are depicted still wearing their burqas, reflecting the complexity of a social liberation movement in a traditional society.
This article examines the role of the community in determining why some news organizations invest in staff expertise in the area of international news and provide extensive international news content, while others do not. Data from daily newspapers in the US show organizational size rather than community factors to be the dominant influence on the news organization's commitment to specialization. Community factors did matter, however, and generally predicted more strongly for larger organizations than for smaller organizations.
