News Around the World: Content, Practitioners, and the Public

by Shoemaker; Pamela J.

• ISBN13: 9780415975063
• ISBN10: 0415975069
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-12-20
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

What's news? A front-page news story in the United States might not appear in a newspaper in China. Or a minor story on German television may be all over the airwaves in India. ButNews Around the Worldshows that the underlying nature of news is much the same the world over and that people--no matter what their jobs or their status in society--tend to hold similar notions of newsworthiness. In this richly detailed study of international news, news makers and the audience, the authors have undertaken exhaustive original research within two cities--one major and one peripheral--in each of ten countries: Australia, Chile, China, Germany, India, Israel, Jordan, Russia, South Africa, and the United States. The nations were selected for study based on a central principle of maximizing variation in geographic locations, economic and political systems, languages, sizes, and cultures. The remarkable scope of the research makes this the most comprehensive analysis of newsworthiness around the globe: 10 countries studied, each with a university country director 2 cities in each country examined, one major and one peripheral 60 news media studied (newspapers, television, and radio news programs), resulting in 32,000+ news items analyzed 80 focus groups with journalists, public relations practitioners, and audience members 2,400 newspaper stories ranked according to newsworthiness and compared with how prominently they were published. News Around the Worldprovides remarkable insight into how and why news stories are reported, testing and improving a theory of cross-cultural newsworthiness, It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand international media and journalism.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Part 1 Theory and Method	1	(34)
1 Introduction	3	(4)
2 Evolution and News	7	(16)
3 Methodology	23	(12)
Part 2 Data Analyses across the Countries	35	(56)
4 Topics in the News	37	(12)
5 Deviance in the News	49	(16)
6 Social Significance in the News	65	(18)
7 The Perception of Newsworthiness	83	(8)
Part 3 Country-by-Country Analyses	91	(242)
8 What's News in Australia?	93	(26)
CHRIS LAWE-DAVIES and ROBYNE M. LE BROCQUE
9 What's News in Chile?	119	(22)
SOLEDAD PUENTE and CONSTANZA MUJICA
10 What's News in China?	141	(24)
GUOLIANG ZHANG AND JONATHAN J.H. ZHU, WITH BING HONG, SHENGQING LIAO, GANG HAN, WEI DING, YUN LONG, and YE LU
11 What's News in Germany?	165	(24)
CARSTEN REINEMANN and MARTIN EICHHOLZ
12 What's News in India?	189	(26)
KAVITA KARAN
13 What's News in Israel?	215	(24)
AKIBA A. COHEN and NOA LOFFLER-ELEFANT
14 What's News in Jordan?	239	(20)
MOHAMMED ISSA TAHA ALI
15 What's News in Russia?	259	(24)
NATALIA BOLOTINA
16 What's News in South Africa?	283	(26)
DANIE DU PLESSIS
17 What's News in the United States?	309	(24)
ELIZABETH A. SKEWES and HEATHER BLACK
Part 4 Conclusions and Appendices	333	(22)
18 What's News? Theory Revised	335	(20)
Appendix A Content Analysis Codebook	355	(12)
Appendix B Distributions of Deviance Intensity Scores for the Ten Countries	367	(4)
Appendix C Distributions of Social Significance Intensity Scores for the Ten Countries	371	(4)
Endnotes	375	(2)
References	377	(6)
About the Contributors	383	(6)
Index	389