when the information preferences of the media and the public diverge
Published:
2013
Publisher:
The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts
"The websites of major media organizations -- CNN, USA Today, the Guardian, and others -- provide the public with much of the online news they consume. But although a large proportion of the top stories these sites disseminate cover politics,...
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Universitätsbibliothek der Eberhard Karls Universität
Inter-library loan:
No inter-library loan
"The websites of major media organizations -- CNN, USA Today, the Guardian, and others -- provide the public with much of the online news they consume. But although a large proportion of the top stories these sites disseminate cover politics, international relations, and economics, users of these sites show a preference (as evidenced by the most viewed stories) for news about sports, crime, entertainment, and weather. In this book, Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein examine the divergence in preferences and consider its implications for the media industry and democratic life in the digital age. Drawing on analyses of more than 50,000 stories posted on twenty news sites in seven countries in North and South America and Western Europe, Boczkowski and Mitchelstein find that the gap in news preferences exists regardless of ideological orientation or national media culture, and that it is not affected by innovations in forms of storytelling, such as blogs and user-generated content on mainstream news sites. Drawing upon these findings, they explore the news gap's troubling consequences for the matrix that connects communication, technology, and politics in the digital age
Includes bibliographical references and index. - Print version record
When supply and demand do not meetHow the content preferences of journalists and consumers diverge: the gap in the United States, Western Europe, and Latin America -- The difference that politics makes: the gap during a presidential election and a national government crisis -- New wine in old bottles: how storytelling matters in the gap between the supply and demand of online news -- Reading what's interesting, sharing what's bizarre or useful, and discussing what's controversial: gaps in various forms of interaction with online news -- The meaning of the gap for media and democracy.
