Summer Harlow

User-Generated Racism: An Analysis of Stereotypes of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in YouTube Videos

This study examines representations of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in YouTube videos, exploring whether YouTube serves as a type of alternative media where the status quo is contested. Results show that most videos analyzed perpetuated racial stereotypes. Further, videos that included stereotypes, most of which contained user-produced content, were more popular. The authors argue citizens to a large extent use YouTube to perpetuate the same stereotypes found in the mainstream media, rather than use it as an alternative counter-public sphere.

OPENING THE GATES

In the light of newspapers’ struggle to maintain readers and viability in the digital era, this study aims to understand better how newspapers in Latin America are responding to this shift toward user-generated and multimedia content. Using a content analysis of 19 newspapers from throughout Latin America, this study found that newspaper websites are bringing citizens into the virtual newsroom on a limited basis, allowing them to interact with each other and with the newspaper but only to a modest degree. Thus, while all newspaper websites have some multimedia content and most have Facebook and Twitter accounts, few allow readers to report errors, submit their own content, or even contact reporters directly. Further, most online newspaper articles include photos, but video, audio and hyperlinks rarely are used. These results further our understanding of how online interactivity is changing the traditional role of journalists and how Latin America is responding to the challenge.

A political boss and the press: The impact on democracy of two Brazilian newspapers

When Brazil’s then-president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was implicated in a bribery scandal in 2005, Senator Antônio Carlos Magalhães from the state of Bahia emerged as one of the president’s most vocal critics. This study relied on a content analysis of scandal coverage in two competing Bahia newspapers: A Tarde, which had no overt political ties, and Correio da Bahia, which Sen. Magalhães owned. Results showed that Magalhães’s newspaper, Correio da Bahia, excluded citizens’ voices and covered Sen. Magalhães more extensively and favorably than did the competing newspaper, A Tarde. Thus, Correio da Bahia succumbed to owner influence, potentially threatening democracy by allowing Magalhães to set the newspaper’s agenda.

A new sensation? An international exploration of sensationalism and social media recommendations in online news publications:

The well-known phrase ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ describes the sensational approach that has penetrated the history of news. Sensationalism is a term without complete consensus among scholars, and its meaning and implications have not been considered in a digital environment. This study analyzes 400 articles from online-native news organizations across the Americas, evaluating the sensational treatment of news categories and news values, and their associated social media interaction numbers on Facebook and Twitter. Findings suggest that ‘hard’ news topics like government affairs and science/technology were treated sensationally just as often as traditionally sensationalized categories like crime or lifestyle and society. In addition, audiences are not necessarily more likely to respond to sensational treatments. This study also finds that online-native news organizations use sensationalism differently, and there is significant variation in publications from the United States, Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico.

To Share or Not to Share

Audiences play a fundamental role in disseminating and evaluating news content, and one of the big questions facing news organizations is what elements make content viral in the digital environment. This comparative study of the United States, Brazil and Argentina explores what values and topics present in news shared online predict audience interaction on social media. Findings shed light on what news values and topics trigger more audience responses on Facebook and Twitter. At the same time, a comparison between popular content produced by traditional media versus online-native media reveals that the former lean more toward government-related news and conflict/controversy news values than online native media. Brazilian stories prompted more social media interactivity than content from the United States or Argentina. Through content analysis, this study contributes to improving our understanding of audiences’ news values preferences on social networks. It also helps us to recognize the role of users’ online activities (sharing, commenting and liking) in the social construction of news and meaning inside the networked sphere. Finally, it opens an old media debate about whether providing and sharing too much media content with conflict, controversy and oddity could potentially hinder understanding and agreement in society. Articles were collected via media tracking and the data collection company NewsWhip.

The Symbolic Annihilation of Women in Globalization Discourse: The Same Old Story in U.S. Newsmagazines

This quantitative and qualitative analysis of Time and Newsweek explores how women are incorporated into a globalization discourse that often is seen as a masculinized public sphere. Results indicate that although female journalists integrate women into the news more than their male counterparts, females are invisible in globalization discourse. When discussing female empowerment via globalization, it is through an economic lens with an eye to the impact on womens traditional roles as wives and mothers.

Losing focus: goal displacement at an alternative newspaper in El Salvador

This study examines whether a Salvadoran alternative newspaper maintained its critical, independent, and alternative position after the country’s first leftist president was elected and the newspaper no longer was in opposition to the government. Via a content analysis and in-depth interviews that drove the content analysis, this study improves our understanding of ‘alternativeness’ in a non-US context. Using a theoretical lens founded on alternative media scholarship and sociology’s displacement theory to examine the newspaper’s radical purpose, the study found that once the left came into power after decades of rightist and authoritarian rule, the newspaper’s alternative mission and goals were displaced, becoming less radical and more propagandistic. Pro-government coverage increased and coverage of social movements, civil society, and other traditionally ‘alternative’ topics decreased. Journalists at the newspaper acknowledged the shift in goals and lessening of radical purpose, but clung to the newspaper’s ‘alternativeness’.

Regenerating Journalism: Exploring the “alternativeness” and “digital-ness” of online-native media in Latin America

This study maps the emerging digital media landscape of online-native news sites in Latin America, interrogating to what extent these sites challenge mainstream, traditional journalism. Researchers identified and analyzed the region’s online-native sites, exploring their influence and “alternativeness”—in terms of ownership, funding, content, degree of activism, and organizational goals—and their “digital-ness,” in terms of the sites’ inclusion of multimedia, interactive, and participatory digital features. In general, results show that the most influential online-native sites are attempting to renovate traditional, outdated modes of journalism, serving as alternatives to mainstream media and aiming to change society, even if the sites do not necessarily self-identify as “alternative” per se. Their emphasis on using innovative, digital techniques is important for re-conceptualizing not just the role of journalism in a digital era, but also journalism’s relationship to alternative media and activism.

Story-Chatterers Stirring up Hate: Racist Discourse in Reader Comments on U.S. Newspaper Websites

With reader comments posted to newspaper websites seemingly becoming increasingly vitriolic, newspapers across the country are weighing the pros and cons of allowing readers to post anonymous comments online. Using a content analysis of online reader comments from a random sample of U.S. newspapers, this study explores how readers discuss race in online newspaper forums, and provides insight for editors struggling to meet the objectives of the Kerner Commission. Results show that reader comments included racial terms, even when the article did not. Further, when reader comments mentioned race, they tended to be negative, reiterating stereotypes. Latinos were mentioned more often than other races/ethnicities in the comments, and comments that mentioned Latinos also were likelier to be negative. Beyond eliminating anonymous commenting, this study suggests newspapers should reconsider “color-blind” policies that ignore race and make a concerted effort to publish more articles that tackle race-related issues.

Quality, Innovation, and Financial Sustainability

Entrepreneurial, independent digital media sites arose in response to disruption in the journalism industry brought on by emerging technologies. This study explores this trend in Latin America from the perspective of audiences. Based on surveys of readers of entrepreneurial digital news sites in Guatemala and Nicaragua, this mixed-methods study offers a snapshot of who these readers are and what they are interested in. Results showed readers of the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan news sites valued equally quality journalism and innovation, but differed when it came to the importance they placed on the sites’ business models. This study also illuminated a new dimension of innovation, one from the readers’ perspective. While some respondents associated innovation with use of new technologies, in general readers defined innovation as unique (to the region) and alternative (to mainstream media) ways of doing journalism; their definition, unlike that of journalists, was not necessarily technologically driven.