News coverage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and President Obama's announced Clean Power Plan (CPP) served as data for two case studies. Social network analysis was used to investigate the sources used by cable giants CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. Both case studies show the extent of sourcing varies across the three news outlets, with CNN using the smallest network, MSNBC using the largest, and Fox falling somewhere in between. Ultimately, the source networks of the three cable outlets were highly fragmented with the exception of high-profile politicians. While the number of sources used in PPACA coverage stayed relatively stable, sourcing of the CPP decreased over time. Results suggest different sourcing patterns and contextually driven agenda-building processes.

Health journalists often use personal stories to put a "face" on a health issue. This research uses a sociology-of-news approach, based on data collected from 42 in-depth interviews and three surveys with health journalists and editors [national (N = 774), state (N = 55), and purposive (N = 180)], to provide a first look at how important journalists think exemplars are to their stories. Results show journalists select exemplars to inform, inspire, and/or sensationalize a health issue. Some of the strategies journalists use to locate exemplars pose ethical concerns. Further, journalists rank the use of exemplars lower in aiding audience understanding compared with the use of experts, data and statistics, and definitions of technical terms.

The cognitive mediation model (CMM) proposes indirect paths to news learning such that news surveillance increases news learning through attention to the news and elaboration about the news. But there is a need for additional research that tests key postulates of the CMM especially for media targeting underserved populations. The present study tested three versions of the CMM to model ethnic newspaper learning within a low-income, Spanish-speaking population ( = 150). The original CMM was not supported by the data as elaboration was not related to knowledge; however, a simplified version of the CMM (surveillance → attention → knowledge) was supported. Moreover, a serial mediation model that included a measure of health maven was supported such that news surveillance was positively related to knowledge through maven-ness and attention.

This paper addresses the subject of letters to the editor as one of the longest standing forums for public discussion and debate by ordinary citizens. To show how the voice of ordinary citizens is presented in letters to the editor during national election campaigns over a period of ten years (2008, 2013 & 2017), we are focusing on the Austrian A newspaper with an exceptionally high market share of up to 40% during the examination period, a heavy focus on the letters section with three pages per day, and a self-declared willingness to take a stance, especially during election periods. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 530 letters to the editor and 525 articles in the politics section as well as survey data from the Austrian national election study on the political positions of the readers, we find that letters to the editor in the do not reflect, but complement the articles in the politics section. The tone of the letters is more negative than that of news articles, but the letters closely reflect the readers' political positions, therefore offering identification with the paper.

With the rise of innovation and entrepreneurship as avenues for journalists to take in their search for journalistic work, we need to critically interrogate how these terms are understood. Various journalism institutions are pushing a particular understanding of journalism, and of what constitutes meaningful and innovative journalism. In this paper, we review the literature on these themes and draw on experimental research done by one of the authors to argue for a more process-oriented approach to journalistic innovation and entrepreneurship. As a researcher-maker, one of the authors created an innovative journalistic project and tried to develop a business model for this project. She participated in an accelerator process organised by one of the main funds aimed at journalism innovation in the Netherlands. We show that one existing, and prevalent, understanding of innovation in journalism is one that is linear, rational and outcome-oriented. We challenge this understanding and draw on process-oriented theories of innovation to introduce the concepts of effectuation, improvisation and becoming as new lenses to reconsider these phenomena. These concepts provide clearer insight into the passionate and improvisational nature of doing innovative journalistic work.

This paper responds to calls for theory-building about news sharing on social media, arguing for a unified understanding of sharing practices both online and off. Developing a theoretical understanding of news sharing requires broadening our gaze to include other communicative technologies, such as postal mail, email, voice calls, and in-person conversation. In a conceptual contribution based on reflections about my participation in long-term multi-method collaborative studies in the US, I argue that news sharing is an act of at the core. I also propose a three-dimensional model of news recirculation. The first two dimensions, and , are ideological - although they widely misrecognized as properties of specific channels and platforms. People enact a third dimension of practice, , when they recirculate news.

This paper explores trust-building strategies in future-oriented news discourse, marked by a high degree of uncertainty. While current research mainly focuses on audiences' perceptions of news credibility, this study addresses news trust from a production standpoint. We examine the trust-building efforts of media actors, focusing on their discursive labor within the context of election projections. Drawing on rich data from five election rounds in Israel and the US, we qualitatively analyzed 400 news texts and 400 tweets that were produced by 20 US and 20 Israeli media actors. This textual analysis was supplemented by 10 in-depth interviews with Israeli journalists. Our findings demonstrate three types of journalistic trust-building rhetoric in election coverage: facticity, authority, and transparency. These strategies result in a two-fold form of trust, which re-affirms traditional notions of accuracy and validity, while also challenging the ability of newspersons to obtain them in contemporary political and media cultures. Overall, these strategies hold unique opportunities and challenges for sustaining public trust in journalism and illuminate the complex communicative labor involved in building trust with news audiences. Our findings also highlight the importance of studying trust not only in relation to the past and the present, but also in future-oriented discourse.

During major long-term crises, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, news media are crucial sources of information for the public. This study aimed to explore the frequency of COVID-19-related news consumption based on (1) phase of the pandemic, (2) socio-demographic characteristics, and (3) news information channels. The study used a dynamic cohort design with 18 rounds of data collection, including 306,692 responses from 83,180 unique respondents in the Netherlands from 17 April 2020 to 11 September 2022. Results showed that the frequency of general COVID-19-related news media consumption varied throughout the pandemic, following a general decreasing trend with relative spikes often coinciding with periods of stricter behavioural regulations. TV news, newspapers, and online news websites were the most popular news information channels among the respondents. Furthermore, multilevel regression analyses identified several socio-demographic factors influencing news consumption and preferred channels, namely age, migration background, living status, health status, and trust in government - these results remained stable throughout the pandemic. This study highlights the importance of selecting appropriate news channels to effectively reach different socio-demographic groups and shows that during a prolonged crisis, news consumption about the crisis fluctuates with worsening conditions but generally follows a decreasing trend.

Online news can be shared and promoted via social media, mobile push messages, newsletters, "most read" boxes, or the like. This can result in feedback loops, in which views attract even more views. Using full click logs for five regional newspapers in the Netherlands, spanning 12,108,263 views of 17,982 articles for each minute over the course of 13 weeks, we shed light on potential feedback loops. While article placement and promotion decisions indeed increase their views, we find these effects to be short-lived, contradicting the feedback-loop hypothesis. Exceptions in line with the feedback-loop hypothesis mostly concern social media: If an article is spread via social media, it is not only clicked more, but also clicked on for a longer period of time.