ABSTRACT
Disinformation is not a new phenomenon. Even so, in recent years its relevance on the public agenda has increased, as the victory of Brexit supporters in the UK or the election of Donald Trump for US president have showed. Academic interest runs parallel to the consideration of disinformation as a growing priority for governments and international organizations. On the other hand, the emergence of the Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the decline of regional media, already affected by the digital transformation and declining business models, now challenged by the platforms, which became essential mediators in the advertising market. The decline of regional media leaves communities in a state of serious vulnerability as information is increasingly consumed through social media, where disinformation easily proliferates. As in the pandemic context, disin-formation is also a virus that spreads quickly and has a high potential for damage to democracy, namely at a local level. It is precisely where we intend to focus the debate, curiously where it has been little present. It is precisely from the local public sphere that responses to disinformation can emerge, namely in a collaborative relationship between journalists and (other) active members of the community.
ABSTRACT
In May 2020, at the height of the first COVID-19 lockdown in Queensland, Australia, the nation's biggest news organisation, News Corp, announced they were closing many of their regional journals. For much of regional Queensland, the onset of news deserts looked probable until Victorian-based Star News Group filled the void left by News Corp. This paper looks at these changes from the perspective of journalists working for Star newspapers in the Queensland regional centres of Noosa and Gympie—and it reveals the challenges facing community journalism in post-Murdoch regional Queensland. This chapter also analyses the capacity of these news publications to do the kinds of journalism that sustain democracy at the local and regional levels. In doing so, the chapter reveals issues surrounding the sustainability of the publications themselves. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ABSTRACT
In this study, we evaluated the differences between national and local newspapers coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain using a dataset of 421,438 Facebook posts. We assessed the trends in the interest in COVID-19 of local and national newspapers, measured as the proportion of COVID-19 news;and also, the trends in the interest of their readers, measured as the proportion of interactions related to COVID-19. While the overall interest in COVID-19 in local and national newspapers was similar and high, some differences were observed between several of the pandemic phases. National news media interest was higher during the long central phases of the pandemic, but certain news fatigue was observed by the end of 2021. Local news media interest seemed more constant throughout the pandemic. Surprisingly, the overall interest of national and local newspapers was consistently lower than the interest of their readers. Our study also shows homogenous responses among local newspapers during the key phases of the pandemic and heterogeneous responses in the remaining phases. Finally, we found that in the case of local media, their news and interactions were more correlated with the national epidemiological indicators (i.e., cases and deaths) than with the local indicators. © 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
ABSTRACT
Journalism innovation, according to service innovation theory, is about providing new journalistic services that create value for audiences, society, and the news organisation itself. This study explores how local news media responded to the Coronavirus crisis in terms of service innovation. Based on interviews with editors and top management representatives at two local newspaper groups in Norway (N = 20), we show how local newspapers developed new digital services in response to audiences' need for guidance, overview, and a sense of togetherness, and how the media operations generated revenues in the process. Theoretically, the study identifies two key innovation dynamics in local journalism during a crisis: A social-economic value creation dynamic which captures how local newspapers appropriate their business model to accommodate new service offerings and balance social and economic value creation considerations;and a service system-audience experience dynamic which captures how innovation in journalistic offerings are linked to concurrent innovations in journalistic production processes. This research enhances the understanding of journalism innovation as a value-creating phenomenon and the factors that stimulate such value creation during crises. [ FROM AUTHOR]