Factors influencing international reporting
Macro perspective based on international communication structure Dependency theory, cultural imperialism, cultural hegemony, globalization, etc.
Perspective of news production: Shoemaker and Reese ideology: Fundamental belief in political ideology, economic system and national culture which serves as a cohesive and integrating force in a society. Ideology is considered the predominant force in shaping the news content, defined as the "systematic engineering of mass consent to the established order.“ National interest: All media have the patriotic consensus on national identification
Extra-media influence Political force: Law, regulation, license, tax, censorship. Journalists are pressures to censor and self-censor from public officials more often than from business. In the name of national security
Economics: profit, competition, market, advertiser and audience Population in the market The degree of urbanization Education of the population Immigrants
Sources：Sources influence news content by facilitating or constraining the diffusion of information according to their interest Eg. government
Organizational influence Ownership Newspaper positioning and image Organization’s news philosophy: newspaper’s position on what its role should be for its readers and society as a whole Organizational culture: strong or weak Eg. The degree of attention to international news Logistics of news gathering and processing: media size, access to news agencies, staff number in international news office, number of foreign offices and correspondents, technology etc.
Socialization in the newsroom: Knowledge about the hierarchy for news decisions Career path to advancement News policy and reward system Professional norms Communication pattern
Work routine: the patterned, routinized, repeated practices and forms that media workers use to do their jobs Deadline, time slots or pages for international news, reliance on news wire
Individual influence gender Interest Values, political inclination background, experience resources varying skills in presenting information in depth and on deadline with a great deal of accuracy and style editing ability
Perspective of news content and news selection context- oriented：influence from world system and international relations, with focus on the context of news events, which directly affects the number and content of new stories about a certain country or area. 1)Features of a certain country: politics, culture, economy, geography, etc. 2）interaction between two countries: language and cultural relationship, colonial relations, geopolitical relations, trade relations, interaction of national interests, etc. 3）logistics: infrastructure and human resources for international news reporting in a certain country
Criticism: not based on a systematic theory Criticism: not based on a systematic theory. Hard to show the complicated relations between dependent variables and variables. Results differ from study to study.
event-oriented： Contextual influences are not taken into consideration It is about how different features of news events influence news values of the news stories. Shoemaker ：deviance is important. How to measure deviance: 1) the degree of the influence on the local society 2) the degree of the influence on the US norms if it happens in America
Galtung & Ruge：frequency, threshold, unambiguity, meaningfulness, consonance, unexpectedness、continuity, composition, relevance to elite nations, relevance to elite people, persons, negativity Peterson：meaningful, in line with national elitism, negativity
criticism：It is hard to measure deviance and negativity criticism：It is hard to measure deviance and negativity. There are problems with the precision of research. The two paths are never well combined together. Each emphasizes different factors and thus they lack comparability
What do you think? What about research methodology?