Annelore Deprez

To Read or Not to Read Can Policy Support the Future Reader Market? A Flemish Case Study

For some time European newspaper markets have been confronted with decreasing circulation and readership figures. Research focused on patterns of consumption reveals that young people in particular spend less time reading newspapers. Since 2003, the government in Flanders has supported the Newspapers in Education programme in search of more qualitative and long-term alternatives to press subsidy, aimed at the preservation of the future readership market. As a result, the government and Flemish newspaper publishers distribute almost 1 million newspaper copies to schools every year. Each school year, approximately 100,000 students participate in the Newspapers in Education project. Over the years the financial support has grown and recently the Flemish government decided to substantially increase its contribution to γ1.2 million, which will make it possible to expand the target group considerably, beyond the original focus on 16- to 18-year-olds. The research presented in this article analyses the shifts in pre and post test design survey results of the participants who took part in the Newspaper in Education project between February and May 2005.

Foreign reporting and sourcing practices in the network sphere: A quantitative content analysis of the Arab Spring in Belgian news media:

This article analyzes foreign news coverage and sourcing practices in contemporary newsrooms. It builds on theories concerned with the interplay between digital technologies and journalistic practice to explore the use of social media sources at professional journalistic outlets. The central research question deals with the diversity of sources in Belgian newspaper and TV news coverage of the grass roots uprisings in Egypt, Tunisia and Syria in 2011. The quantitative content analysis shows how journalists under normal circumstances in their coverage of the street protests in Egypt and Tunisia still value traditional sourcing practices. In contrast, coverage of the Syrian uprising displays more characteristics of network journalism practices, which can be related to factors of proximity regarding news values. Moreover, we found that when covering Syria, Belgian journalists relied more on on-the-ground, non-mainstream sources that circumvented the restricted information access by means of digital networks and social media platforms.

Reporting the European Union: an analysis of the Brussels press corps and the mechanisms influencing the news flow

This article sketches a picture of the journalists involved in European Union (EU) reporting. Firstly, it presents an overview of the entire body of EU-accredited journalists, examining how they are distributed across the various nationalities, the different forms of media and whether an historical evolution can be traced in either distribution. Secondly, the mechanisms influencing the news flow on EU topics are described, using information gathered from numerous interviews with EU journalists from 10 European countries. The researchers distinguish structural, geographical, economical and policy-related obstacles influencing the EU newsflow. As an example of a media-related obstacle the authors focus on the privileged position of the Financial Times.

HEROES IN THE SPORTS PAGES: The troubled road to victory for Belgian cyclist Tom Boonen

Concepts such as myth and archetype offer interesting opportunities for research on media content. Both concepts, however, have very diffuse definitions and operationalizations stemming from specific fields of application. As a result, the concepts of myth and archetype have proved difficult to translate into a transparent and replicable research design to study journalistic output. This paper aims at a thorough operationalization of the hero myth/archetype. The hero archetype will be explored in detail as it is one of the most common archetypal narratives. The archetypal hero journey is translated by developing an operational hero grid in which the archetypal hero narrative is classified in nine sequences and three constituent components. The Flemish press coverage of cyclist Tom Boonen is analyzed to test empirically the developed research tool. While the emphasis of this paper lies on the empirical testing of this research tool, it also aims to broaden empirical data on the coverage of sport figures in the press. Results clearly show myth at work in the newspaper reporting on Tom Boonen.

About Pseudo Quarrels and Trustworthiness

Digital technology, the internet and mobile media are transforming the journalism and media landscape by influencing the sourcing process. We combined in-depth interviews and a content analysis of the 1424 Twitter “followings” of eight Belgian health journalists to clarify how they use the platform to monitor and use sources. The findings show that top-down actors are overrepresented in the journalists’ sourcing practices and that Twitter is not used to reach out to bottom-up actors, especially ordinary citizens. We found that health journalists mainly use Twitter to monitor other media actors, indicating a process of inter-media agenda setting. In line with previous studies, health experts are the second most important group of sources as they play an important role in translating complex health matters. Overall, the interviews suggest that Twitter is used in a basic fashion for news sourcing, mainly to stay up to date and search for story ideas.

Bottlenecks in the coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: the coverage of the first and second intifada in the Flemish press

Various authors suggest that the public’s knowledge of the Israeli—Palestinian conflict is inadequate. As it is generally accepted that public opinion on international news items is mainly formed by media content, the international media are often held responsible for sustaining the prevailing misconceptions about the Israeli—Palestinian conflict by covering the conflict parties in a biased and imbalanced way. This study focuses on the representation of Israelis and Palestinians in the news coverage of the first and second intifada by the Flemish press. By way of a content analysis, evolutions and discrepancies in the coverage of both intifadas are described in a longitudinal analytical perspective. The authors conclude that the portrayal of the Palestinian actors shifts from a rather positive view during the first intifada period to a more critical portrayal during the period of the second intifada. At the same time, there is an opposite move in the representation of the Israeli actors in the conflict. Although our results show differences in the distinct portrayals, they do not provide sufficient evidence to conclude unequivocally that the coverage of the first and second intifada is unbalanced. Indeed, the authors find that while some variables definitely favour the Israeli point of view (e.g. the use of sources), others clearly sustain the Palestinian side (e.g. the individualization of victims). In other words, the Flemish dailies cover the first and second intifada in quite a balanced way, contrary to what international studies on the coverage of the Israeli—Palestinian conflict have concluded regarding the media in different national settings.

THE CENTER FOR JOURNALISM STUDIES, GHENT UNIVERSITY

The Center for Journalism Studies (CJS) was founded in 2007 and based in the Department of Communication Sciences, within the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at Ghent University. Initially, the Center was established to support both the teaching of journalism studies on the master of communication sciences programme and research on a broad range of journalism-related issues. The Center pursues different lines of investigation and specifically aims at expanding theoretical, practical, legal and technical aspects of journalism and news production at both the multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary research levels. In this Review, we focus on various aspects of the research centre*including its organization, staff, publications, research focus, output and future plans*to provide a detailed view of the objectives and activities of the Center for Journalism Studies.