Charlotte Wien

An Anatomy of Media Hypes: Developing a Model for the Dynamics and Structure of Intense Media Coverage of Single Issues

■Media hypes are a well known phenomenon. They occur on a regular basis and attract much media attention, but there is very little knowledge about them. This article supplements Vastermans analysis of the phenomenon and presents new empirical evidence. Through a case study of five Danish media hypes occurring between 2000 and 2005, the article shows that not every event has the potential to trigger a media hype: it must, of course, satisfy the general news values, but should also contain some violation of norms, be suitable for public debate and, finally, it must be possible for the media to cover the event from a variety of perspectives. Concerning the structure and dynamics of the media hype, the article concludes that media hypes begin with a trigger event, they last approximately three weeks and come in several, usually three, waves of decreasing intensity. ■

What's the Fuss About? The Interplay of Media Hypes and Politics

Media hypes on social problems occur on a regular basis and they seem to generate a lot of political activity. This article asks the question whether media hypes have any influence on public policies central issue of the hype—and if any, what kind of influence? Five media hypes on the same subject area (the care for and spending on the elderly) are analyzed.Their immediate influence on policy making is traced, and although the media often is assumed to exercise real political power through media hypes, no—or only few—traces of such direct political influence is found. Instead media hypes are used strategically by politicians to forward their ongoing work and their positions in the public debate, thus if the media gains political influence because of media hypes one can only see this influence as diffuse and not directly linked to the media hypes themselves.

Changing media representations of youth in the news – a content analysis of Danish newspapers 1953–2003

Media plays an important role in shaping public perceptions of youth. Previous studies have shown consistently negative images of youth in news media through a heavy focus on crime, accidents, and moral decay. Most research in this area has only collected data over short timeframes, which makes it difficult to register possible changes in modes of representation. The present study has sought to overcome this short come by emphasizing long-term data collection, by focusing on how newspapers have portrayed youth in the period 1953–2003. On the basis of quantitative content analyses of Danish newspapers, we find a strong emphasis on crime and accidents; however, culture takes up almost as much space. Furthermore, we cannot confirm a tendency toward increasingly negative media representations regarding young people. Our data show more neutral portrayals and an increase in news items quoting young people.

Defining Objectivity within Journalism

Abstract The article seeks the roots of the journalistic concept of objectivity in various theoretical schools. It argues that the concept of objectivity in journalism originates in the positivistic tradition and, furthermore, that it is strongly related to tan earlier theoretical school within historiography. Journalism has made several attempts have been made by journalism to break free of the positivistic objectivity paradigm, none of them very successful, however. The paper discusses each of these attempts. Finally, using the concept of objectivity as a prism, the paper sketches out what might be termed a landscape of journalism theory.

Commentators on daily news or communicators of scholarly achievements? The role of researchers in Danish news media

The objective of this article is to analyze the role played by researchers in news media. The method is a quantitative content analysis of 640 newspaper articles combined with two surveys: of journalists (N = 362) and researchers (N = 342) respectively. The conclusions are that researchers from the soft disciplines mainly contribute to hard news or background items, where their role is to comment on daily events as public experts. They do this because they consider it career enhancing. The journalists who use them as sources are often inexperienced journalists. However, they set the agenda. Both parties perceive the cooperation positively although researchers tend to be more reserved than the journalists.

Teaching online information retrieval to students of journalism

In the beginning of the 1990s it was decided to start educating journalists at two Danish universities. This was decided in the hope that such academic journalists would carry greater insight into that work. Therefore for the curricula of these students of journalism some traditional academic disciplines were introduced. One such academic discipline was information retrieval. It was clear, however, that the information retrieval course had to be designed specifically for the students of journalism, as the information needs of journalists differ from the information needs of more traditional academic disciplines. Thus, this article describes the work done in order to develop such a course for students of journalism. Firstly, it analyses the information needs of journalists on a theoretical basis. Secondly, an empirical study analyses which information retrieval resources are available to Danish journalists. Finally, it combines the theoretical and the empirical findings in arguing that it is necessary to provide students of journalism with a theoretical understanding of how online information retrieval works, and also practical experience with several information retrieval resources that they are supposed to use in their daily work.

Contradicting incentives for research collaboration

This study describes the Danish publication award system (BFI), investigates whether its built-in incentives have had an effect on publication behavior at the University of Southern Denmark, and discusses the possible future implications on researcher incentives should universities wish to measure BFI on the individual level. We analyzed publication data from the university CRIS system (Pure) and from SciVal. Several studies indicate that co-authored scholarly journal articles attract more citations than single author articles. The reason for this are not clear, however, research collaboration across institutions and countries is commonly accepted in the research community and among university managements as one way of increasing the researcher’s and institution’s reputation and impact. The BFI system is designed to award scholarly publication activity at Danish universities, especially publication in international journals of high status. However, we find that the built-in incentives leave the researcher and his or her institution with a dilemma: If the researchers optimize their performance by forming author groups with external collaborators, the optimal way of doing so for the researchers is not the optimal way seen from the perspective of the university. Our analysis shows that the typical article has 6.5 authors, two of which are internal, and that this has remained stable since the introduction of the BFI. However, there is variation across the disciplines. While ‘the Arts and Humanities’ and ‘the Social Sciences’ seem to compose author groups in a way which does not optimize the performance of the institution, both ‘Health’ and ‘the Natural Sciences’ seem to optimize according to criteria other than those specified in the BFI.

Push and pull escape travel motivations of Emirati nationals to Australia

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine the escape motivations of the emerging market and provide suggestions for Australia’s promotion. This study adopts the push and pull framework to identify travel motivations of Emirati nationals to Australia. Design/methodology/approach This study uses a series of focus groups and in-depth interviews to understand the escape motivations that encourage Emiratis to leave their home country and travel to Australia for a holiday. Findings The results indicate that Emiratis are motivated to travel to Australia by three escape factors: physical, interpersonal and fun. The internal motivations that encourage Emiratis to escape their home country are inseparable from Australia’s external attributes that attract the Emiratis to the country. Originality/value The study contributes to the theory of tourist motivation by supporting it in the culturally different Muslim/Arab context, which has not been explored before. The authors argue that it is not so much what Australia offers and what escape needs the Emiratis can fulfil in Australia, but rather that Australia serves the Emiratis well and meets their escape needs.