What is Online News?What is Online News?
سمعها helps to foster an informed citizenry that can fully benefit from and participate in democratic society. It is a key part of a healthy media ecosystem.
We have only a rudimentary understanding of the nuances in how sources flow from their various origins through social and other media into digital news (Lecheler and Kruikemaier 2016). There is also a dearth of research on live blogs, particularly where these are following breaking events and have regular updates.
Definition
Online News is information that’s gathered and reported through the Internet. This type of news is updated frequently and is accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. It usually includes a headline and a summary of the story. It may also include a photo or video. Some online news sites are free to use, while others require a subscription.
The definition of online news differs according to the site’s purpose and goals. For example, some sites are designed to foster public debate by presenting various viewpoints on important issues. Other sites provide a platform for professional and amateur journalists to share and discuss their work.
Generally, online news articles are read by people using computers. This commoditization of news diminishes its value, as readers do not have the personal connection with the writer. This is an ideal expression of Marx’s theory that alienation from the process devalues a product. Moreover, online newspaper editors view their readership as “hits” rather than humans.
Formats
News aggregators pull together a variety of stories from different sources and present them in one place. These can include websites such as Google News and Yahoo! News, as well as online services such as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages).
Online news sites also provide their own formats that can be accessed through browsers and apps. These include specialised forms of news videos designed to fit into social media feeds (pioneered by AJ+ and NowThis) and scrolly story formats such as snowfall-like storytelling and data visualisation.
Live blogs are a distinct category of online news that is designed to cover live or unfolding events. They typically feature time-stamped short updates that are authored by journalists and sourced from both authorised sources and eyewitnesses. Live blog sourcing practices exhibit characteristics of polyvocality and intertextuality, but genre-specific journalism norms appear to account for most of this variation rather than the affordances of the platform itself.
Audiences
Many online news outlets aim at a specific audience, mainly those who are rich and able to afford advertising. This approach neglects people who have low incomes or are living in remote areas, creating a vicious cycle where the media excludes these groups and politicians overlook them in policy decisions.
This approach also ignores the fact that people are exposed to a diversity of news stories, which is a key characteristic of today’s information environment. Using observational multiplatform data, this study shows that coexposure to different types of news is on the rise, and that ideological self-selection does not explain most of that exposure.
Our results show that content analysis scores based on deliberative theory and audience perceptions of the quality of news media correspond in almost all dimensions, with the highest correlation regarding relevance and the lowest—although still high—regarding contextualization. This finding holds true across two time periods and a variety of sources. Additionally, our research confirms that online journalists prioritize sourcing audience material that has been verified by another professional source, a practice that is particularly prominent in sports live blogs and politics live blogs.
Sources
The sources that online news comes from vary widely. Some online news comes from aggregators, such as Google News, that gather and display articles from various websites. Others come from individual newspaper websites or other media outlets such as television and radio transcripts. Still others come from press services, such as Reuters or AP, that offer news reports to many different media outlets.
Most empirical studies have analyzed sourcing patterns across different news formats and genres, but they often overlook a distinct and important online news format – the live blog. Such research demonstrates that online news sources do not always support the assumption of an elite-centric bias in journalism and that, more generally, genre-specific journalism norms account for more than just the affordances of the platform itself.
Online news also includes forums and share and discussion sites, where users can comment on and debate news stories. Such discussions can be an effective tool to get the public involved with a topic and can help shape future news coverage.
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