Browsing by Subject "news"

This thesis examines how representatives of service providers for news automation perceive a) journalists and news organisations and b) the service providers’ relationship to these. By introducing new technology (natural language generation, i.e. the transformation of data into everyday language) that influences both the production and business models of news media, news automation represents a type of media innovation. The service providers represent actors peripheral to journalism. The theoretical framework takes hybrid media logics as its starting point, meaning that the power dynamics of news production are thought to be influenced by the field-specific logics of the actors involved. The hybridity metaphor is deepened by using a typology for journalistic strangers that takes into account the different roles peripheral actors adopt in relation to journalists and news organisations. Journalism is understood throughout as a professional ideology encountered by service providers who work with news organisations. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with representatives from companies that create natural language generation software used to produce journalistic text based on data. Participants were asked about their experiences working with news media and the interviews (N=6) were analysed phenomenologically. The findings form three distinct but interrelated dimensions of how the service providers perceive news media and journalism: an area that sorely needs innovators (potential) but lacks resources in terms of knowledge, money and will to innovate (obstacles), but one that they can ultimately learn from and collaborate with (solutions). Their own relationship to journalism and news media is not fixed to one single role. Instead, they alternate between challenging news media (explicit interloping) and inhabiting a supportive role (implicit interloping). This thesis serves as an exploration into how service providers for news automation affect the power dynamics of news production. It does so by unveiling how journalists and news organisations are perceived, and by adding further understanding to previous research on actors peripheral to journalism. In order to further untangle how service providers for news automation shift the balance of power shaping news production, future research should attempt to unify the way traditional news media actors and service providers perceive each other and their collaborations.

This study explores immersive journalism and how virtual reality (VR) stories engage the recipient in real-life events. Immersive journalism can be characterised as a first-person experience of news, emphasising interactive qualities as well as a sense of presence, thus creating a notion of ‘being there’ in the virtual world. The study aims to shed light on the new field of immersive journalism as well as to explore the characteristics and constraints of VR stories in terms of engagement in conflict news. Particular interest is given to the notion of presence and the way in which media form and media content produce engagement as well as the ways in which VR aims to connect the recipient with the news story. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, the study combines theories from VR, audio-visual media, presence and media witnessing. The qualitative study employs close reading as the primary method. The New York Times (NYT) has been chosen as the news producer of VR stories since it is the pioneer in the field and provides the largest selection of VR stories. The data is delimited to conflict news, as tragedy can often be described as engaging audiences through distant suffering. The study results in four findings: (1) VR stories employ different narrative strategies to maintain proper distance between the phenomenon and the other and to enhance the experience; (2) the positioning of the recipient spatially in the VR narratives emphasises location, creates a sense of witnessing and focuses on the recipient’s own experience; (3) VR stories aim to construct a relationship between the recipient and the other; and (4) media form and media content aim to evoke various emotions, including empathy. This study finds that NYT VR stories aim to personally engage the recipient with conflict news and to increase emotional engagement. Media content and media form contribute to engagement, for example, in creating proximity to the other and evoking the recipient’s personal interest. Presence enlivens consumption of news and underpins the recipient’s freedom to generate his or her own understanding of events.

Memory has become one of the most vibrant areas of research within the field of media studies. Due to the technological advancements of the past two decades, our media consumption has developed globally. Collective memory and media memory scholars argue that our memories are increasingly influenced by media as well as our surrounding social groups. This study focuses on the media memories of the Lebanese diaspora in North America concerning two significant Lebanese political events. The main research questions are: What do the Lebanese living in North America remember about the two events? What is the role of media in the way they remember the events? This thesis also explores two sub-research questions: How do the participants’ social groups influence the way the individuals remember the events? How does their media consumption affect their memories? The data for this study was collected through semi-structured interviews with participants from two different age groups in the Lebanese diaspora in North America. The data was analyzed with thematic analysis, and the findings showed that participants remembered very specific details about the events from what they remembered seeing on the TV news. There were some noticeable differences between the memories of the two age groups. This could be contributed to the fact that for the younger participants, their families and other social groups affected their memories of the events. This pointed in the direction that their memories were influenced by the traumatic significance of these events for their social groups. There were types of memories evident throughout the analysis, which were categorized under the concepts of postmemory and flashbulb memories. Essentially, these memories also had influences rooted in social groups and/or media sources for the participants.