Volume 42, Issue 2

News content diversity is generally considered to be an essential precondition for the promotion of social pluralism. However, how diversity of news content should be conceptualized and measured is less clear. We use a content analysis of newspaper articles about immigration (2013−14) in Belgium (Flanders) to measure the diversity of actors and viewpoints in the news, and to study the link between those two subdimensions of content diversity. We find that the representation of a plurality of active actors in a news article seems to go hand in hand with a more diverse range of viewpoints. The findings show that there are no significant differences in the level of actor and viewpoint diversity between quality and popular newspapers. However, the length of the article has a positive effect on providing more diversity. Moreover, our results indicate that allowing for individual immigrants to talk in the reporting is fundamental to promoting a more positive representation of immigration in the news.

This article shows that the collaboration between social science and computer science scholars proves fruitful in enhancing conceptual and methodological innovation in research appropriate for the digital world. It presents arguments for ways in which a multi-disciplinary approach can strengthen media studies and nnovatively advance both research breadth and depth. To illustrate this interesting connection of both disciplines, we present the example analysis of large data from Twitter and discuss this analysis in a communication science research environment. We propose TwiNeR, a software tool that analyzes tweet content using an advanced language modeling approach for classifying tweets into five prototypical messages referring to ‘activities’ related to news and news sources in the Twitter network (i.e., source-fed article, user-fed article, content spread by user, other source content, other user content).

In radio, spokesperson credibility is a resource that can improve the effectiveness of a message, and its analysis requires the study of how voice qualities influence the listener. The aims of this study are to design and test the suitability of a scale of radio spokesperson credibility, and to analyse the effect of the phonoaesthetic function – that is, how a spokesperson’s gender, vocal pitch, accent and their interactions affect their credibility. We conducted a 2 × 2 × 2 experimental design via eight radio programmes in which we inserted a radio spot as stimulus material. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 987 Spanish radio listeners, and the advertised service was blood donation. The results allowed the validation of a scale of spokesperson credibility, traditionally used in audiovisual media, formed by three dimensions (attractiveness, expertise and trustworthiness), and provide several implications for the selection of a spokesperson for radio.

This article analyzes media-related policy-making practices in the bureaucratic realm of Indigenous affairs in Australia. It considers the implications of an increasingly media-oriented bureaucracy for particular social policies in the light of recent mediatization theory. A qualitative study explored how bureaucrats working in Indigenous affairs articulated their understanding of the news media’s role in policy development. The article identifies and describes five dimensions of mediatized bureaucratic practice – expertise, monitoring, anticipating, reacting and strategizing – and concludes that mediatized practices have permeated the very fabric of the policy-making process. It finds evidence of an increasingly intimate relationship between the logics and agendas of mainstream news media and bureaucrats working on complex and politically controversial policies. In Australia, mediatized policy-making practices contributed to both the intractability of Indigenous affairs policy and the introduction of radical policy solutions to address apparent policy failure. These findings add to the body of empirical research exploring the mediatization of policy-making and its implications for politically sensitive fields.

This study reviews research regarding the effects of source physical attractiveness on persuasion with focus on the interplay with source gender and receiver gender. Most evidence indicates that attractive female sources tend to be more persuasive than unattractive ones in attitudinal and behavioral measures. The results for male sources are equivocal, with few studies reporting the liability of male source attractiveness. Recipients’ sex is a poor predictor of source attractiveness impact for both male and female sources. The study’s contribution synthesizes decades of research on source attractiveness to suggest future research ideas for academics in marketing, psychology, and communications and to give recommendations for marketers, advertisers, and other practitioners aiming to influence people’s attitudes.

Inspired by the popularity of TV series such as Gossip Girl, The City and The Hills which revolve around the world of fashion, this article examines whether and how these series are related to young women’s willingness to purchase products that allow them to replicate the appearances of the main characters. The results demonstrated that in particular women with materialistic orientations would like to emulate the main characters. The mechanisms underlying this relation are that materialistic women watch fashion TV series to gain fashion inspiration; subsequently they watch these series more frequently, and this behavior is related to increased copy-cat intentions.

This study focused on the representation of minority groups on television, following the idea(l) that television as a mirror of society should convey a well-balanced representation of society. Results of a quantitative content analysis ( N = 325) revealed an underrepresentation of women, seniors and sexual minorities on Dutch prime time television and stereotyping in the representation of women and ethnic minorities. The results further revealed that the degrees of underrepresentation and stereotyping of the various minority groups varied between channel type as well as television genre.