#galtung and ruge

[conhivemindcent]

Sorry to bring back up the Titan submersible, but I find it fascinating in a very morbid way. Mostly in terms of the news. This will be the media student in me talking but to me, it’s a perfect example of so many of Galtung and Ruge’s news values. I’ll also be looking at the migrant boat that sunk off the coast of Greece for similar comparison and why an American centric website would probably see more news relating to the submersible.

Put simply, one of Galtung and Ruge’s news values is proximity, aka how close to home it was and how meaningful it is to the people there. Since the submersible launched from Newfoundland, Canada would’ve gotten more news stories about the submersible. Meanwhile, the boat with the immigrants was found off the coast of Greece, with more stories about it there. Since the USA is closer to Canada than Greece, they got more stories about the sub than the boat.

Another value is currency. This is why me, a Brit, got more news coverage on the boat for the first few days. The UK has a known immigration problem and some really dodgy laws about it (basically in most circumstances you can only apply for a permit once you’re in the country but entering the country without a permit is illegal, so it’s a catch 22), so something about immigration would always be more relevant. However, the antithesis recency would affect how in the last few hours of the sub being missing when the air was thought to be running out (so morning and afternoon of 22nd June) there were more stories on the sub.

A fourth value is uniqueness. Sadly, a migrant ship sinking with people dying and going missing is not an uncommon thing nowadays. A maritime disaster involving billionaires touring the Titanic? Never happened before, I hope it will never happen again (and it most likely will not). Of course the news will focus on something that hasn’t happened before - when will they get the chance to do it?

There’s also the values of Elite People. These people were billionaires. The people on the migrant ship were most likely just normal unnoteworthy people. And also recency - the Messenia boat occurred in the 14th June, and by the time the debris of the boat had been discovered it has already been a week.

I think it is important we take these news values into consideration and also how we as a community on Tumblr can see how we played right into these. An American website with a large American usership would naturally gravitate towards an American story, no matter how global it claims to be. In addition, it’s unusual enough with such strange circumstances that jokes and criticisms were bound to occur. The continuity (another news value) of the story with the search was also intriguing, as we saw it play out first hand with the initial disappearance, the potential signals, the discovery of the wreckage. Add in a level of expectedness (another news value - these people would either be found or not, and let’s be honest they were more likely to be dead than alive) and we have a perfectly newsworthy story to top the trending page for a few days.

It’s something I find fascinating, how despite people saying we should focus on the Messenia migrant boat disaster, we were still echoing the news perfectly on the site. One thing I’ve noted is that I didn’t really see anybody mentioning it before the Titan set out, but once the searching started it started becoming more relevant and trending a little below it. This isn’t a call to do better, this is just something I’ve noticed.

If there’s any saving light, out of the estimated 750 (maximum) of migrants, 104 have been confirmed alive and rescued. And I’m so happy for that.

[ufedhin]

On viral women and the exploitation of news values in online news discourse

On viral women and the exploitation of news values in online news discourse

1. Introduction

Especially in recent years, online media has become increasingly influential in how audiences receive and perceive news stories. This, of course, can be traced back to the increasing numbers of people that use the internet on a regular basis and the increasing number of people that can be reached that way. It seems that with an ever-growing audience, in order to reach even more…

[robertscollegenotes]

Writing tips for journalism

Writing news is not particularly difficult anyone can do it, not everyone can’t do it well.  Like everything, writing takes practise.

To understand writing the news it becomes important to understand what the news is. News can be defined as "Newsworthy information about recent events or happenings, especially as reported by news media". But what makes news newsworthy?

The criteria by which news is judged are:

Is it new?Is it unusual? Is it interesting or significant? Is it about people?

Or, newsworthiness is define by news values.

A list of news values was put together by media researchers Johan Galtung and Marie Holmboe Ruge in 1965.

Threshold

Frequency

Negativity

Unexpectedness

Unambiguity

Personalisation

Meaningfulness

Reference To Elite Nations

Reference To Elite Persons

Consonance

Continuity

Composition

Galtung and Ruge’s wanted to understand why certain stories where not reported on.  While that is an interesting topic, I’ll save it for another blog post.

So, back to the writing tips. An important part of writing a journalism article is having an angle.  An angle means that your story is from with a particular “slant” in mind.  The best example is the overused “man bites dog”, why it is the golden example is due to how different it is.  The angle is the dog is being bitten by a man, instead of the dog biting the man.  That means the story has an interesting twist to it, the reader will want to ask more questions and hopefully the writer answers then using the five W’s: Who,why, when, what,where and how.

Other things to think about when writing news stories, is it about people.  Journalism and the news is about people, because it is the things people do to change the world which makes news.  Obviously, there will be stories that won’t have a human element, but as a general rule, news is about people.   News stories are all about how people are affected. Hopefully I got my point across           

Things to be mindful when writing a news story:

Think about how your story will look will photos might work. Is it for online or print? If so what is the main point of this story? And how will it translate on your chosen medium.

How do you want your story to end? On what note do you want to leave on?

One for the more important things to come away with from reading this entry  is have you included the three C’s?

Is your story clear? Who is your audience and will they understand clearly the information you are trying to convey in your article.

Is your story concise? keep to the key facts: the man bit the dog…

And is your story correct, make sure your facts, grammar and punctuation is correct and that when you write it is done professionally.

[ephemeral-blissfulness]

Lei! Ang pangit ng angle mo! Grabe kulang sa research! Magbasa ka ng news angle ha. Basahin mo si Galtung at si Ruge! Grabe ka naman! Grab grab lang ng photo sa marcopper, tapos i-cite mo na lang na di sayo photo hay naker! HAHAHAHAHA. PS 'di ko alam, Lei @d-blindside, eto pala sideline mo?

[judithcrousenhypercraft]

Research term “Cocooning”

Cocooning is happening, isn’t it?

““Two trends will cycle high in our culture: cocooning, our desire to shelter yourselves from harsh realities of the world, and fantasy adventure, our hunger for new and unconventional.” predicts Faith Popcorn, a futurist and founder of BrainReserve.

“Cocooning” is the consumer trend we can witness today. People fancy spending time at home as well as shop straight from the house. “My house is my temple” describes it the best. As the result of in-home-staying lifestyle, we see growing demand for the online shopping, home grocery delivery, and popularity of streaming like Netflix and HBO. According to Netflix, since the beginning of 2012, the number of streaming subscribers almost tripled showing 70 million customers in 2015.

Why would people hide inside four walls? There are multiple reasons to answer this question. One of them is to hide from external negative information. The media phenomenon “Global Village” described by Marshall McLuhan, is the turning the globe into village via the technology. News spread around the world in a matter of seconds. Moreover, by one of the Galtung and Ruge journalist rules, bad news is more newsworthy than good news. Just recall the biggest stories of 2015 (according to Guardian and ABCNews): Charlie Hebdo Attack in Paris, ISIS, European refugee crisis, Mass shootings in the USA, Germanwings plane crash, etc. World starts to look dangerous and unpredictable, and the only safe spot is under the blanket.“

http://www.focusingfuture.com/me-consumer/cocooning-is-happening-isnt-it/ 

[painted-bee-blog]

Does Oxfam's sex scandal invalidate their good work in Haiti?

Recently, there have been a huge number of articles globally surrounding the Oxfam scandal in Haiti. This began on the 9th February 2018 with an article printed by The Times titled "Top Oxfam staff paid Haiti survivors for sex". Within two days this had escalated dramatically, with allegations of the use of prostitues in Chad, and also claims of sexual abuse in Oxfam shops in the UK. Organisations such as The European Commission have threatened to stop funding Oxfam because they no longer meet their high ethical standards. But does this scandal invalidate the good work done by many Oxfam workers in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake?

Type "Haiti earthquake aftermath" into Google and this is the first image to appear:

It's easy to see the extent of the destruction caused by the 7.0 magnitude earthquake. The majority of buildings were not designed to withstand the impact of earthquakes, which is shown by the considerable amount of rubble covering the streets of Port Au Prince, Haiti's capital. This level of damage would have been almost impossible for the Haitian government to repair by themselves, especially considering that they were the poorest country in the Americas even before the earthquake. This demonstrates the need for NGOs such as Oxfam after a disaster, especially because of the country's remoteness and inaccessibility, making it difficult for supplies and resources to be brought in. Oxfam already had bases across Haiti, so they were responsible for most of the disaster response.

However, it has recently come to public attention that several senior staff working for Oxfam, including the director of operations in Haiti at the time, Roland Van Hauwermeiren, paid survivors for sex on multiple occasions, using the charity's money. The scandal hit international news within days, and some have argued that this invalidates the good work Oxfam does in countries like Haiti. While the charity seems to help developing countries in times of disaster, this shows that they can also hinder them. Haiti is a fragile country, and in this instance aid workers have taken advantage of that fragility and the vulnerability of people, exchanging money or resources for sex. Oxfam has published several papers stating that it is able to work in fragile countries (Rowlands, 2014), and this scandal demonstrates the opposite.

On the other hand, Oxfam's work in Haiti and other countries can be seen as invaluable. The photograph below is of a water bladder installed by Oxfam, the likes of which provided locals with clean, safe water, a necessity in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake.

In total, Oxfam provided clean water to around 400,000 people in Haiti. The image focuses on displaced children filling buckets of clean water to take back to their temporary accommodation, one of the many ways in which Oxfam helped local people. Despite this, there has been almost no reference of this in recent news, the focus solely being on the sex scandal that has just been uncovered.

So what has caused this scandal to become international news so quickly? Twelve factors of 'newsworthiness' which lead to an event becoming international news are outlined by Galtung and Ruge (1965). These include meaningfulness, unexpectedness, and reference to elite people or elite nations. Looking at these factors it is easy to understand why the Oxfam scandal became a news story so quickly. For example, Oxfam International is based in England, an 'elite' nation, and the main person it concerned was the director of operations in Haiti, an 'elite' person. Additionally, the scandal is meaningful as it involved the use of prostitution, and possibly also exploitation of minors for sex. It is also very unexpected, due to Oxfam's standing as a prominent international charity, meaning it has a reputation to uphold.

Of course this is a complex issue, because NGOs like Oxfam are vital in the recovery process of developing countries after a disaster, but at the same time this exploitation of young women only exacerbates the problems they are trying to solve. However, despite this controversy, we must also encourage the work of thousands of volunteers, who only think to help others. The work of these people must continue, so it seems the way forward is tighter regulation, both within the charity and within governments globally. In the wake of the scandal, Oxfam has announced a plan to fight against abuse within the charity, while the Haitian government is conducting a full investigation. One thing is certain - finding a solution without defunding charities such as Oxfam is imperative to ensure that the good work may continue.

References

Galtung, J., and Ruge, M., (1965). The Structure of Foreign News. Journal of Peace Research, Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 64-91.

Rowlands, J., (2014). Making the Impossible Possible: An overview of governance programming in fragile contexts. Within and Without the State. [Online] Available at: http://oxfamilibrary.openrepository.com/oxfam/handle/10546/331984

[paulbradshaw]

via https://www.galtung-institut.de/en/2015/galtung-and-ruge-news-values-an-update-by-prof-galtung-october-2014/

[emmafrancesjournalismpr]

MED4105 Journalism PR and The Media. Week 4.

The News Value of 'Celebrity'

‘Graeme Turner (2004) Understanding Celebrity. Sage: London’

‘Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill (2001) Journalism Studies, Vol 2, Issue 1, pp. 261-280: What is News? Halting and Ruge revisited′

This specialist reading is ‘The Economy of Celebrity’ by Graeme Turner (2004).  It primarily bases itself upon globalisation and media convergence within the media industry and the convergence within the technology used as delivery platforms for information and entertainment. Graeme Turner’s argument is that celebrities are developed to purely make money and that their names are created as a marketing tool.

‘Film producers use of stars as a means of attracting investment to their projects, marketers use celebrity endorsements as a means of profiling and branding their products’ (Graeme Turner 2004 p.g. 4). 

This quote idolises the fact that celebrities are seen as more of a marketing product rather than what they are famous for as such. ‘They are paid for their labour, celebrities are also property’ (Dyer, 1986: 5): that is, they are financial asset to those who stand to gain from their commercialisation’ (Graeme Turner 2004 p.g 5). 

The structure of celebrities is built on their personality. In this reading it highlights that the celebrities personal aim is to have a steady, viable career through the ‘astute distribution and regulation of the sale of their celebrity-commodity’ (Turner, Bonner and Marshall, 2000:13). It also gets the point across that celebrities need to somewhat learn how to market themselves to modify and improve the quality to build loyalty. 

Entertainment and communication industries are highly promoted throughout the publicity industry which attracts publicists, research firms and so on. ‘The celebrities themselves are handled by the representation industry’ and ‘The production of the celebrity image is coordinated through the appearance industry’ (Graeme Turner 2004 p.g 12) clearly states that to make a celebrity a lot of effort and business has to be incorporated to make them ‘perfect’ which shows that the celebrity world is somewhat fake by its representation Graeme Turner is showing.

‘News values’ are one of the most opaque structures of meaning in modern society.’ (Hall 1973:181). The second reading I have decided to explore is ‘What is News?’ by Tony Harcup and Deirdre O’Neill. This links with my first specialist reading because it highlights the attributes news has within popular cultures. This reading moreover is about different ideologies and theories about news and its importance within celebrity culture and has a wide variety of methodologies by ‘Galtung and Ruge’. They primarily focus on ‘How events become news’ and published their findings on ‘The structure of foreign news’ in the ‘Journal of International Peace Research in 1965′. 

If I was to research into celebrity news values I would consider how the news values corrupt todays society with current celebrities by doing an ethnography. 

[500wordsblr-blog]

It's oh so quiet: The Yemen and British Media Silence

In a media age characterised by globalisation, the increasing prominence of citizen journalism and stories being selected for their ability to conform to news values (Galtung and Ruge, Brighton and Foye) it is perhaps surprising that a conflict resulting in a wide scale humanitarian crisis, which arguably feeds our morbid curiosity for learning of human suffering, has been largely ignored by the Western Neo Liberal media.

According to the UN, over 10,000 people have been killed in the Yemeni conflict so far. Whilst the United States has been accused of providing Saudi Arabia with a ‘blank cheque’ to tackle the issue of the Houthi (Shia) rebels, channeling funds into the offence in the Yemen; the UK also has blood on its hands. The lucrative arms trade that has been created between the U.K. and Saudi Arabia is estimated to have been worth at least £3.3 billion in the first year of the conflict alone. Further, Amnesty International provided former defence secretary Michael Fallon with evidence that UK licensed cluster bombs were being dropped on Yemeni civilians. What’s more, the Riyadh have access to twice the number of British made war planes than the RAF does. In January 2016, Cameron stated that Britain played no direct involvement in the warfare, stating the country plays no part in a Saudi led coalition. Yet there is involvement, albeit it indirect.

A UNICEF report found that six children have been killed or maimed everyday since the conflict begun.

British media moguls, or what Curran dubs ‘Press Barons’ are thus reluctant to cover the wide scale humanitarian crisis in the Yemen as it would reveal, to the masses, the complicity of the British in such horrific war crimes; the unwavering support for the Saudis means we are effectively at war. But this war doesn’t fit in with the ideological agenda of the British establishment; it does not provide them with an opportunity to present themselves as heroes or imperialistic saviours of those who find themselves under autocratic rule. Whilst many acts of warfare provide the government with an opportunity to demonstrate the triumphs of Western Democracy; just look how we ‘saved’ Iraqis from Saddam, the conflict in the Yemen does not fit neatly into this narrative. As Jones stated, in his seminal work, ‘The Establishment’, all of Murdoch’s 179 publications demonstrated an unwavering commitment to the Iraq war, even when the war on terror fell out of public favour, reflecting the close relationship between the media and the political elite. This war in Yemen, however, is one the press choose to ignore as, aside from its complex roots in the Arab Spring, there is no way to manipulate British involvement so as to depict it in a positive and just light.

[conhivemindcent]

I wanted to add to my previous reblog about the Times Person of the Year and it having no relation to the Isreal invasion of Palestine. Once again, hello Galtung and Ruge.

1) Continuity. In the case of 2022’s person of the year, it was Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. Russia had been actively invading Ukraine since February that year. It had heavily dominated the news cycle in 2022, and into 2023. Meanwhile, in the case of 2023 it was Taylor Swift, who had been making news with her huge Eras tour. But with the Isreal/Palestine not-war-but-invasion-type-beat, it has only been occurring since late autumn of 2023.

2) Proximity. Swift is American. So is the Times magazine. A lot of winners are American or directly involve America.

3) Reference to elite persons. Taylor is a huge celebrity, and a recent billionaire (the last time I brought up news values was also over billionaires. I suspect tumblr will be more sympathetic towards her

4) Personalisation. A lot of people can relate to TS songs.

5) Politics. This is, in my honest opinion, the main reason why she was chosen. The Times is reflective of modern American culture, a culture which is very set against Russia but is more sympathetic towards Isreal. Who would jump to defend Ukraine, but be more hesitant towards Palestine. Taylor Swift is generally not controversial. You can dig up dirt on her, and tbh. I don’t care if you do.

But she is not a big “if you talk about this you will get death threats” issue. Isreal and Palestine is. It’s a lot more controversial, and you can manipulate the truth both ways and sway a lot of people. Lord knows I’ve been swayed to both sides, and with so much disinformation going round (especially with AI generation, god I hate AI generated propaganda for both sides), Taylor is just a safe option.

But also look at the other nominations. Hollywood strikers, Xi Jinping, Elon Musk, Sam Altman (the CEO of OpenAI), Trump Prosecutors, Barbie, Charles III. All of these people are controversial to someone. There’s also Jerome Powell, who idk what he has to do with this but that’s cause I’m not American and this is a very American list. A lot of winners are American presidents, and again: the Times is American.

But also fucking Putin is on there. Why the fuck is Putin on there?!

None of these people (afaik) have anything to do with Isreal or Palestine or the genocide going on. This list was more likely than not chosen months in advance. And honestly, Taylor Swift is well known to the average American and let’s be fair, she’s good at making frontline news because

6) Unambiguous. Taylor is a massively popular pop star who has a huge tour and a lot of people like her. That’s it. Nothing deeper. She just is.