Suchergebnisse

Dieser Beitrag widmet sich der empirischen Überprüfung der These, dass Online-Medien zu einer Fragmentierung der politischen Öffentlichkeit führen. Auf Basis einer Bevölkerungsbefragung zur Informationsmediennutzung im Vorfeld der Nationalratswahlen 2013 in Österreich (n = 2.867) stellt er die Informationsrepertoires derjenigen Bürgerinnen und Bürger, die sich stärker online über das politische Geschehen informieren, denen der restlichen Bevölkerung gegenüber. Indem er die Publikumsüberschneidungen verschiedener Nachrichtenquellen als Netzwerk darstellt, zeigt er auf, dass das Netzwerk der Onliner dichter ist. Gleichzeitig sind auch für sie die wichtigsten Informationsquellen die Nachrichtensendungen des öffentlich-rechtlichen Fernsehens und deren Webseite, so dass eine Fragmentierung der politischen Öffentlichkeit auf Publikumsebene verhindert wird.

A secondary data analysis of 136 U.S. online newspapers' usage reports investigates how geography differentiates online newspaper audiences. Results showed that online newspaper penetration is stronger in the local market, but the local market accounts for less than 50% of the overall traffic—suggesting that the size of the long-distance readership is larger than previously anticipated. Larger newspapers tend to attain a larger online audience (in raw numbers), but all newspapers attain a substantial portion of online traffic from outside the print market. Online or not, geography still matters.

Janny Leung (University of Hong Kong - Faculty of Arts, School of English; Wilfrid Laurier University - Faculty of Liberal Arts) has posted The Audience Problem in Online Speech Crimes (Journal of International Media and Entertainment Law, 9(2), 189-234) on...

AbstractBased on the attention economy theory, this study used the regression analysis method to analyse the effect of online video information entertainment on audience attention's breadth, depth, engagement, and validity. The empirical research results show that highly positive and negative emotions significantly impact the audience's attention in infotainment. We found that content storytelling, star characters, soft news themes, and sensational headlines have a significant positive effect. From the perspective of online video and media platforms, time fragmentation significantly impacts the audience's attention positively and negatively. The diversification of presentation methods, the number of labels, and authoritative media have significant positive effects, whereas the number of topics has a significant negative impact.

Far-right activists have recently used social media to attract audiences of unprecedented scale. This paper argues that this online popularity can be explained by processes endogenous to social media, specifically engagement from online audiences such as likes, shares, and comments. A case study of the far-right, anti-Muslim group Britain First and its online activism on Facebook is used to test this hypothesis. The relationship between audience engagement and Britain First's activity, recruitment, and support on Facebook is modeled using time-series regressions, controlling for other relevant factors, including protests, framing, and exogenous events. The results show that changes in audience engagement are associated with long-term shifts in online activism, resulting in feedback loops where engagement begets further engagement. The findings demonstrate how the incentive structures of social media platforms can enable and constrain contemporary activism and how activists can develop tactics to exploit these systems to their advantage.

Many assume that in a digital environment with a wide range of ideologically tinged news outlets, partisan selective exposure to like-minded speech is pervasive and a primary cause of political polarization. Yet, partisan selective exposure research tends to stem from experimental or self-reported data, which limits the applicability of their findings in a high-choice media environment. We explore observed online audience behavior data to present a portrait of the actual online political news audience. We find that this audience frequently navigates to news sites from Facebook, and that it congregates among a few popular, well-known political news sites. We also find that political news sites comprise ideologically diverse audiences, and that they share audiences with nearly all smaller, more ideologically extreme outlets. Our results call into question the strength of the so-called red/blue divide in actual web use.

With new media technology everyone online can easily participate in creating news content. This is usually considered positive from a societal, democratic point of view, even if audience interaction is not necessarily seen as a positive feature by editors and journalists. As a response to the somewhat scarce research in this field, this article analyses a Swedish mail questionnaire survey on audience behaviour and attitudes in these matters. The analysis shows that there is only relatively little interest, from a general audience point of view, in participating in creating content on news sites. Likewise, the minority who are actually commenting on news articles, or otherwise participating in the journalistic process through blog-writing, seem to consider these activities as part of a creative leisure-time, rather than as partaking in democratic activities. The article further argues that the use of interactive facilities and content creation in the journalistic context tend to be yet another tool for persons already possessing substantial competence about society and political life and who are already busy in the online world.