Vincent Campbell

Blogs, news and credibility

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the emergence of blogging in the news sphere. If blogs represent a genuinely new breed of news provision, then they should adhere to some of the founding principles of mainstream news and journalism. A key principle in this respect is news credibitility.Design/methodology/approach – This paper presents a review of recent literature about news blogging and assesses whether news blogs manifest many of the core attributes of mainstream news and journalism. The review considers the attributes that have previously been identified as defining good quality news and competent journalism and then applies some of these principles to “news” blogging.Findings – There is no doubt that blogs have emerged as news sources of increasing significance and there have been occasions when they can be influential in setting news agendas. The essential qualities of credibitiltiy and capturing public trust in the news sphere, however, often depends upon the established reputation ...

Blogs in American politics : from Lott to Lieberman

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the rhetoric and reality of the impact of political blogs in the specific context of American politics, where online, mainstream media and academic accounts suggest blogs have had significant impacts on political communication.Design/methodology/approach – This paper examines three high profile events in which blogging has been implicated as particularly influential, and re‐evaluates them in the context of established political science approaches. These events are the resignation of Trent Lott in 2002; Howard Deans presidential campaign of 2003‐2004; and the Connecticut primary challenge to Joe Lieberman in the 2006 Senate mid‐term elections.Findings – Re‐evaluating these cases in the context of established theories of American politics suggests that the perception of blogs as a progressive new force, that can be decisive in a politicians success or failure, is an over‐optimistic and over‐simplified interpretation of the nature and consequences of this n...

Theorizing Citizenship in Citizen Journalism

Citizen journalism has become a prominent term referring to a variety of newsgathering and reporting practices conducted via a range of new digital technologies. The scholarly literature on citizen journalism, however, has tended to concentrate on its significance for journalism theory and practice while comparatively neglecting underlying questions about the theories of citizenship utilized within citizen journalism. This article examines the range of theories of citizenship at work in citizen journalism, highlighting problems in trying to locate citizen journalism practices and practitioners within definitional debates around citizenship. It explores how some theories construct citizen journalism as a tool for citizenship whilst others construct it as constituting a form of citizenship in its own right. The article identifies a range of problems within these theories in terms of their capacity to understand the relationship between citizen journalism and citizenship. It argues that fully understanding and situating citizen journalism requires moving beyond the journalism-centered focus which dominates the literature towards a consideration of citizen journalism that incorporates theories and practices of citizenship alongside those of journalism.

The extinct animal show: the paleoimagery tradition and computer generated imagery in factual television programs

Extinct animals have always been popular subjects for the media, in both fiction, and factual output. In recent years, a distinctive new type of factual television program has emerged in which computer generated imagery is used extensively to bring extinct animals back to life. Such has been the commercial audience success of these programs that they have generated some public and academic debates about their relative status as science, documentary, and entertainment, as well as about their reflection of trends in factual television production, and the aesthetic tensions in the application of new media technologies. Such discussions ignore a crucial contextual feature of computer generated extinct animal programs, namely the established tradition of paleoimagery. This paper examines a selection of extinct animal shows in terms of the dominant frames of the paleoimagery genre. The paper suggests that such an examination has two consequences. First, it allows for a more context-sensitive evaluation of extinct animal programs, acknowledging rather than ignoring relevant representational traditions. Second, it allows for an appraisal and evaluation of public and critical reception of extinct animal programs above and beyond the traditional debates about tensions between science, documentary, entertainment, and public understanding.

The Changing Nature of Party Election Broadcasts: The Growing Influence of Political Marketing

This paper reports findings from a study of the changing nature of the narrative contents and production formats of Party Election Broadcasts (PEBs) produced by the Labour, Conservative, and Liberal Democratic parties for UK general elections from 1979 to 2010. This analysis tracked production changes that might signal a movement on the part of the political parties toward using marketing-oriented techniques of the kind found in televised advertising. Although PEBs are not technically classified as advertisements by the broadcasting industry, but rather as programs, they nevertheless present an opportunity to political parties to promote themselves and their policies. Using content analysis, it was found that PEBs have grown progressively shorter from 1979 to 2010 and become faster paced. They have become more sophisticated as productions with wider use of dramatized documentary formats rather than talking heads, popular music, and professional performers.

A JOURNALISTIC DEFICIT

This article examines the extent and nature of British television news programmes’ coverage of European elections. A sample of national terrestrial prime-time television news programmes were content analysed during the 2004 Euro-election campaign, and compared with a previous analysis conducted on the same outlets’ coverage of the 1994 Euro-election campaign. The original study of the 1994 campaign identified a number of key characteristics of that election, including the dominance of domestic political issues and actors, and a marked lower level of news media coverage and editorial interest in the campaign relative to national general elections. This study examines whether those patterns of Euro-election coverage in British television news persisted in 2004, representing what could be called a journalistic deficit, compounding existing problems of limited activity on the part of the political parties, and a lack of knowledge, interest and participation amongst the British electorate when it comes to European elections.

Looking Out or Turning in? Organizational Ramifications of Online Political Posters on Facebook:

Academic analysis of the growth and nature of political campaigning online has concentrated largely on textual interactions between politicians, parties, their members, and supporters, as well as voters more widely. In evaluating the shift from traditional to online campaigning techniques, the use of social media’s increasingly visual capabilities has been comparatively neglected in research. This article considers one type of online visual political communication, the online political poster, in terms of its strategic campaign functions relating to persuasive and organizational roles. The article uses a case study of an extensive data set of online political posters collected from political parties in the United Kingdom, on Facebook, between September 2013 through to and including the general election in May 2015, to try to understand how parties used online political posters and how audiences responded to them. The findings show that despite a clear emphasis on sharing images, very few received widespread attention, arguably limiting their persuasive role. However, their prevalence suggests a role relating to parties trying to maintain relationships with existing online supporters as a form of displaying virtual presence, credibility, and belonging, paralleling the function of traditional window posters and yard signs but in a social media setting.

Party Branding: A Case Study of Online Political Posters

Many voters rely on simple cues, in the forms of images and slogans, for aiding their voter choice. Hence key brand information must be distilled to make party messages as widely accessible as possible. Online political posters provide opportunities for political parties to extend their voter reach, particularly amongst those low engagement and participation voters for whom branding is especially helpful in their typically peripheral processing of political messages. This chapter analyses the frequency and purpose of their usage to suggest that while the sharing of these posters was limited, they may have increased familiarity with political messages and broadened the appeal of parties. By providing a means for engaging in party political activities, social media may be responsible for a genuine shift in the relationship between British political parties and the electorate.

The Importance of Citizenship: Theoretical Issues in Studying Citizen Journalism in International Context

International comparative research into traditional journalism has shown that the notion of what journalism is and what it means to be a journalist varies significantly around the world (reported by Weaver and Willnatt [The Global Journalist in the 21st Century, Routledge, London, 2012]). Unlike studies of traditional journalism, the literature on citizen journalism has arguably had an international and comparative dimension from the outset, and within that literature debate has focused pretty much exclusively on the practices, nature and form of the journalism produced within citizen journalism (e.g. reported by Thorsen and Allen [Citizen Journalism: Global Perspectives Volume 2, Peter Lang, New York, 2014]). By comparison, however, citizen journalism debates in the literature have spent significantly less time considering the conceptualisations of citizenship within citizen journalism. This chapter will highlight the range of conceptualisations of citizenship often more implicit than explicit in discussions of citizen journalism and will argue that—when considered in international context—questions of the conceptualisation and meaning of citizenship are at least as important, arguably even more important, in attempts to research and understand citizen journalism in the variety of civic contexts in which it exists.

Analytical Frameworks: Science, Documentary and Factual Entertainment

Campbell explores the relationship between science, documentary and factual entertainment, discussing the conceptual and analytical framework that can be used to analyse contemporary factual entertainment television programmes. The chapter shows how factual programmes’ claims to the scientific and also documentary, are problematic, highlighting questions around the rise of so-called subjunctive documentary, linked to the use of CGI. The chapter will then focus on the use of animation and CGI in documentary. Campbell argues that a holistic analytical framework is needed that addresses these techniques used in factual television depictions of science, and that rather than as vehicles for the simple transmission of scientific knowledge, analysis shows how they often represent science as spectacular, awe-inspiring and sublime.