Susana Salgado

Interpretive journalism: A review of concepts, operationalizations and key findings:

The overall purpose of this article is to review theory and research on interpretive journalism, one of the key concepts in research on the style and character of news journalism. While it is often claimed that news journalism over recent decades has changed from being predominantly descriptive to becoming increasingly interpretive, our review suggests that there is a lack of systematic research in this area. The literature is furthermore characterized by different conceptualizations and operationalizations of interpretive journalism, as well as by different normative assumptions. Taken together, this suggests not only insufficient conceptual clarity, but also problems related to the comparability and cumulativity of findings. To remedy this, and based on our review of how interpretive journalism has been conceptualized and operationalized, this article suggests how interpretive journalism should be conceptualized and operationalized in order to increase conceptual clarity, comparability across studies, and ultimately research cumulativity.

Political Information Opportunities in Europe: A Longitudinal and Comparative Study of Thirteen Television Systems

This study examines the supply of political information programming across thirteen European broadcast systems over three decades. The cross-national and cross-temporal design traces the composition and development of political information environments with regard to the amount and placement of news and current affairs programs on the largest public and private television channels. It finds that the televisual information environments of Israel and Norway offer the most advantageous opportunity structure for informed citizenship because of their high levels of airtime and a diverse scheduling strategy. The study contributes to political communication research by establishing “political information environments” as a theoretically and empirically grounded concept that informs and supplements the comparison of “media systems.” If developed further, it could provide an information-rich, easy-to-measure macro-unit for future comparative research.

Political communication in a high-choice media environment: a challenge for democracy?

ABSTRACT During the last decennia media environments and political communication systems have changed fundamentally. These changes have major ramifications for the political information environments and the extent to which they aid people in becoming informed citizens. Against this background, the purpose of this article is to review research on key changes and trends in political information environments and assess their democratic implications. We will focus on advanced postindustrial democracies and six concerns that are all closely linked to the dissemination and acquisition of political knowledge: (1) declining supply of political information, (2) declining quality of news, (3) increasing media concentration and declining diversity of news, (4) increasing fragmentation and polarization, (5) increasing relativism and (6) increasing inequality in political knowledge.

THE WEB IN AFRICAN COUNTRIES

This article questions if, and how the Internet is being used as a tool of democratization in emergent democracies. Focusing on the Angolan and Mozambican cases, it examines the medias influence in democratization and the potential of the Internet. Some preliminary conclusions from media analysis and interviews show that, in spite of limited access, the Internet, through information websites, online newspapers, blogs, etc., is strengthening civil society in different situations: disseminating the other media contents, stimulating the presence of different actors in the public sphere and the creation of new independent media, promoting participation and discussion, and influencing journalists, who use the Internet to look for new approaches and opinions.

Populist actors as communicators or political actors as populist communicators: cross-national findings and perspectives

Politics, Policy, Populism and Online Media: Investigating Possible (Dis)Connections and Actors in Modern Democracies. (reference IF/01451/2014/CP1239/CT0004)

Euro Crisis and plurality: Does the political orientation of newspapers determine the selection and spin of information?

This article studies the impact of right and left moderate political orientation of newspapers on the levels of plurality in the news coverage of the Euro Crisis in 20 newspapers from 10 European countries through a methodology based on Simpson’s D index. The expectation of finding distinct patterns of coverage leading to high levels of plurality was not fully supported and the results have shown that national frames influence levels of overall plurality more than political ideology.

Start Spreading the News: A Comparative Experiment on the Effects of Populist Communication on Political Engagement in Sixteen European Countries:

Although populist communication has become pervasive throughout Europe, many important questions on its political consequences remain unanswered. First, previous research has neglected the differential effects of populist communication on the Left and Right. Second, internationally comparative studies are missing. Finally, previous research mostly studied attitudinal outcomes, neglecting behavioral effects. To address these key issues, this paper draws on a unique, extensive, and comparative experiment in sixteen European countries (N = 15,412) to test the effects of populist communication on political engagement. The findings show that anti-elitist populism has the strongest mobilizing effects, and anti-immigrant messages have the strongest demobilizing effects. Moreover, national conditions such as the level of unemployment and the electoral success of the populist Left and Right condition the impact of populist communication. These findings provide important insights into the persuasiveness of populist messages spread throughout the European continent.

Conclusion: assessing news performance

Insights gained depend on the questions asked. This chapter describes the why and the how of our study’s approach. After outlining some principal research interests of comparative news analyses, we introduce a theoretical hierarchy of infl uences that needs to be observed in order to understand the construction of media content. In fi tting this model to the specifi c requirements of our study, we emphasize, in particular, the importance of integrating event-centered and mediacentered considerations, of incorporating an explicit comparative perspective, and of applying appropriate strategies of data analysis. The main part of the chapter introduces the explanatory factors that are used in this study to elucidate crossnational and cross-organizational differences in journalists’ use of the six core concepts of political news. The explanatory factors are systematized according to their level of analysis, and we provide a great many examples to illustrate their use in this study, together with concrete operationalizations. We conclude by situating our own approach in the recent development of explanation-oriented comparative news research.

Comparative Media Studies in Africa: Challenges and Paradoxes

Drawing on previous work on the role of the media in the democratization processes of the Lusophone African countries (Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe), this chapter addresses the challenges and paradoxes of conducting comparative research focused on contexts where there are constraints to democratic development (although at different levels and gradation), and on which reliable information on key indicators is often missing. These are societies with different cultural expectations of democracy and political leadership, which do not fit neatly into most Western world conceptualizations. The research looked into the news media functions in democratization contexts and the role that different types of media, including new media technologies, have in creating and supporting the necessary conditions of democracy and in shaping the type of democracy that is actually being built. Finally, by examining the relation between media and politics and the dynamics of media, political, and social change, the research outlines the most important media uses and effects in these democratization contexts.

Prospects for democracy, language and media in Lusophone African countries

The theory of ‘path dependency’ suggests that the past determines the construction of the present. This means that past experiences and decisions tend to constrain the extent to which reforms, including democratization, can be implemented in the present. The inheritance of past structures and established behaviours shapes and determines the type of decisions, institutions and organizations in the present. And cultural and political elements, as the country’s official language, carry important historical significance and act as ‘shapers’ of practices and institutions in the present, including the media. Considering that problems of new democracies are often seen as part of the legacy of their past, this article looks at the democratic and media development of countries with some similar features and pasts. It examines whether a past as Portuguese colonies, a common official language and the same type of organizational and bureaucratic structures determine a similar path followed by the Lusophone African countries after independence and during their ongoing democratization processes. This article relies on data collected in the scope of a larger study on the role and effects of the media in the Lusophone African democratization processes, which was based on a combination of research methods, including fieldwork, media analysis and interviews with politicians, journalists, bloggers and activists in Angola, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Sao Tome and Principe. These four countries gained independence in 1975, following the decolonization process initiated after the democratic revolution in Portugal in April 1974. They have the same number of years as independent countries, and their democratization processes were initiated roughly at the same time, in the 1990s (Huntington, 1991). After almost two decades of one-party rule, they initiated democratic reforms with the adoption of