(NO) NEWS ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB? A ...

(NO) NEWS ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB? A comparative content analysis of online news in Europe and the United States

Downloaded By: [Quandt, Thorsten] At: 12:48 2 September 2008

Thorsten Quandt

Facing growing competition from new forms of user-generated content like wikis and blogs, media companies now claim they will finally fulfill the promises of a ‘‘whole new journalism’’ on the Internet. This comparative content analysis of 10 online news media in five countries (United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany and Russia) is a ‘‘reality check’’ assessing whether these claims are true. Data on formal characteristics and content categories of 1603 full articles are used to identify national specifics as well as general trends in European and US online journalism. Looking at the overall findings of the study, one has to conclude that the promises of an interactive age of reporting are not fulfilled yet. Most of the websites analyzed revealed a lack of multi-media content, missing options of direct interaction with the journalists, a fairly standardized repertoire of article types, missing source/author attributions, and a general focus on domestic political news. KEYWORDS

comparative study; content analysis; online journalism

Introduction From its early days, the Word Wide Web has been the object of both visionary expectations and fears alike. This is especially true for journalism. In the 1990s, hopes were high that technological developments would also change the face of journalism: researchers and the public expected a ‘‘revolution’’ (Stephens, 1998), the ‘‘age of the net’’ (Heinonen, 1999) or the ‘‘future of journalism’’ (Pavlik, 1999), following Quittner’s visionary article on ‘‘a whole new journalism’’ (1995). Interaction between writers and audiences seemed to be possible, and the inclusion of multi-media content promised to open up new spheres of story telling. With the dotcom-bust of the late 1990s and early 2000s, companies around the globe reduced their online staff and decreased investments considerably (Chyi and Sylvie, 2000). While this cooled down some of the wildest expectations, there are still hopes for a new*and more democratic*idea of journalism (Hartley, 2000), backed by the technological possibilities of the Internet. Lately, journalism researchers focus on participatory forms of journalism, where the ‘‘people formerly know as the audience’’ (Rosen, 2006) actively contribute to the news content, resulting in a convergence between producers and consumers (also labeled ‘‘produsage’’; Bruns, 2005). While these concepts of a new journalism are helpful for thinking about our research objects in new and inspiring ways, actual research that backs up the underlying concepts is not always available. In the last few years, journalism researchers have primarily studied online journalists, their motives, opinions and work routines (Deuze, 2002; Quandt et al., 2006; Singer, 2003). The actual content of mainstream journalistic online media has been Journalism Studies, Vol. 9, No 5, 2008, 717738 ISSN 1461-670X print/1469-9699 online – 2008 Taylor & Francis DOI: 10.1080/14616700802207664


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somewhat neglected: while numerous smaller studies focus on specific aspects of online news, there is just a limited number of studies that aim for a broader description of the formal and topical characteristics of the overall news content. In contrast to the above expectations, these empirical studies consistently indicate that mainstream media companies have been slow in embracing the Internet’s new possibilities. With recent developments like blogs and wikis*and a growing competition from participatory journalism*these media companies now claim they will finally fulfill the visionary promises of a ‘‘whole new journalism’’, incorporating new forms of story telling and interactivity (Paulussen et al., 2007). This comparative content analysis of 10 online news media in five countries (United States, France, United Kingdom, Germany and Russia) is a ‘‘reality check’’ to assess whether these claims are true. By analyzing approximately 1600 full-text articles, we investigate what kind of topics and regions/countries are reported in stories in online newspapers, whether there are advanced multi-media features and possibilities for interaction, how the source attributions and link structures work, and whether we find user-generated content. Furthermore, the large dataset allows us to identify national specifics as well as general trends that are true for online journalism in Europe and the United States.

Literature Review The overall content of online news has been a somewhat weak point in journalism research in the past, as noted above. Nevertheless, there are a few content-oriented studies scattered amongst the numerous pieces on online journalism. In the late 1990s, Neuberger et al. (1998; see also Neuberger, 1999) analyzed the news of five online media and their print counterparts in Germany. They counted the amount of ‘‘shovel ware’’, interactive elements and links. According to this early study, between 5.6 and 37.2 percent of content in online media was taken from the parent medium. It was concluded that ‘‘edits are just minor, links to other offerings with similar topics are seldom, multi media and interactivity aren’t happening here’’ (Neuberger, 1999, p. 262, translated by author). In an exploratory content analysis of 100 US online newspapers, Schultz also focused on the interactive options of online media. The researcher coded the presence of various forms of interactivity, i.e. e-mail, chats, polls and surveys as well as online forums; on this basis, an index score was calculated to describe the overall level of interactivity. The overall scores were underwhelming, and Schultz concluded that ‘‘media organizations do not necessarily exploit this opportunity (to increase interactivity) effectively’’ (Schultz, 1999). In a similar way, Tankard and Ban analyzed news sites that were selected on the basis of the newslink.org site for interactivity, multi-media content and hypertext links. According to them, the sites under analysis were not ‘‘living up their potential’’ (Tankard and Ban, 1998)*94 percent of articles did not even contain a single link. Overall, these and other studies during the early phase of online journalism in the late 1990s (cf. Dibean and Garrison, 2001; Gubman and Greer, 1997; Massey and Levy, 1999; Peng et al., 1999) focused primarily on the formal and structural properties of the news content. They concurrently sketched a picture of online journalism lacking interactive, multi-media content, primarily relying on ‘‘shovel ware’’ taken from the print parents. An exception to the concentration on technological options is the trend study by Kamerer and Bressers (1998). In this study, the news content itself was also analyzed for the presence of national and local news. The authors found that the percentage of sites


(NO) NEWS ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB?

featuring national news was increasing, while local news was present in nearly all of the news sites under analysis. After this first wave of studies, the output of research was shrinking considerably, due to the dotcom bust dampening the hopes and interest in online journalism. However, in recent years, a number of content analyses continued to follow the research route outlined above. Much in the same vein as the early studies, Rosenberry (2005) content analyzed 47 online newspaper sites exploring the inclusion of links and interactive options, and whether they serve the purpose to improve public communication. As web technology has evolved in the meantime, there are some new options considered in this study*like blogs and links to community sites*however, the findings resemble the early studies: ‘‘few newspapers are using the Internet’s interactive technologies to improve the coverage of public affairs’’ (Rosenberry, 2005, p. 61). With similar ambitions, Oblak (2005) analyzed the front pages of 10 online papers (most of them located in Slovenia) and compared them with four print papers. She also differentiated between various forms of hypertextuality and interactivity, with mixed results: online-only news was more advanced both in its use of links and interactive options, while such options were very limited in the online offsprings of traditional (print) media. The impression that online websites do not fully use the potential of the Web might be due to a lack of a comparative perspective, though: when looking at the development of multi-media and interactive elements of 83 online news publications in the United States between 1997 and 2003, Greer and Mensing found that ‘‘Web sites are increasingly more sophisticated in news presentation, . . . multimedia and interactive elements’’ (2004, p. 98). So when comparing the status quo with earlier stages of development, some improvements are evident. Comparisons over time are a helpful tool to get things into perspective. It has to be noted, though, that this is not the only way of contrasting data: most of the studies described here were conducted in a US context. While the United States is certainly the Internet pioneer in many ways, there are still some doubts that findings can be transferred directly. Poor (2007) therefore compared the content of four news portals in four different countries (United States, Spain, Japan and Germany) over one week, and specifically looked for overlaps or nation-specific content. To his surprise, the author found limited evidence of connecting patterns*‘‘there was not large overlap between the sites for the sample week’’ (Poor, 2007, p. 21). He concluded that the sites, while being similar in their basic formal principle, are ‘‘different in terms of national culture, with its linguistic and historical factors’’ (2007, p. 21). With a much broader comparative approach, van der Wurff, Lauf and others organized a content analysis in 16 European countries (van der Wurff and Lauf, 2005). Much in the vein of the other studies mentioned above, they could identify a lack of advanced features in online news throughout Europe. They also found that the news was mostly dealing with domestic topics (especially national politics, economy and crime). As a result of these comparative findings, one has to conclude that there is no ‘‘World Wide’’ journalism on the Web, but a system of clearly defined language or even national zones. This is supported by other studies as well: as Halavais (2000) could convincingly show in a link analysis of websites, the national boundaries and language zones still play an important role in defining strongly linked sub-clusters of websites that are only loosely connected to the rest of the World Wide Web. These findings contradict the notion of a homogeneous worldwide journalism on the Internet and the simple

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transfer of US studies. On the other hand, there are also authors who stress that there is a tendency towards a Western professional norm that influences journalism throughout the world (Hanitzsch, 2007), resulting in a ‘‘cosmopolite’’ (Reese, 2001, p. 178) journalism. This effect might be strengthened by the dominance of English as the lingua franca of the Internet (Dor, 2004), thus making the journalistic patterns of English-speaking websites the role model for all other countries. These contradictory positions demonstrate the problem with current knowledge about online journalism content: given the importance of news sites, read by millions worldwide on a daily basis, we need to know more about them and their actual content. Most studies so far have only looked at the formal attributes of the websites from a technology-oriented perspective, analyzing whether the full potential of the Web is exploited by the news sites. These findings convincingly describe a very slow adoption of new technological options in the past, but it remains to be seen whether this still holds true nowadays. The content itself has been largely invisible in past studies, and there are no signs of clear reporting patterns; there are hints at national differences, which leave some doubts about the transfer of findings from the mostly US-based studies to other countries around the globe. So obviously, pressing questions regarding the content of news sites remain.

Objectives and Methodology In a first step of the study, and following the above discussion, we further clarified the research questions. The results of this process were three main research directions: .

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First, we would like to know whether news websites actually use new forms of (multimedia) presentation and offer opportunities for interaction, as indicated by the early prophecies of a ‘‘whole new journalism’’. Second, we wonder whether websites worldwide are depending on content from the same types of news sources (i.e. news agencies, parent companies etc.) and whether they indicate if they are just using ‘‘shovel ware’’ (re-using content); and in which direction they will lead the user by the means of specific links. Last but not least, we would like to identify the main topics and actors of news on the World Wide Web, as well as their geographic extension. By doing so, we can clarify whether there is some kind of ‘‘world wide journalism’’, which covers the same (types of) topics, or whether the well-know (language) boundaries and national reporting patterns still exist.

These research directions led to the design of a study which differs from most other online content analyses in several ways: We had to work comparatively, analyzing data from websites that are based in different countries. Furthermore, we had to code the theme structure and the content, and not only formal aspects, as was the case in most early online content analyses. We realized this study using some methodological innovations, which were only possible due to the advancement of computer technology: just recently, the growth of storage capacities and broadband connections allowed for making fully functional offline copies of websites with the help of a specialized software (in our case: Teleport Pro). Using such software in conjunction with a scheduler (which works much like a video recorder) and an arrangement of five download computers, we could download multiple websites synchronously.



For the country selection of our study, we chose a ‘‘most similar systems’’ approach, as described in more detail by Esser (2004) and others (Przeworski and Teune, 1970): the websites were chosen from the most important online media in the largest and most influential European countries (France, Germany, Russia,1 United Kingdom) and the United States. The selection of the sites was based on (1) orientation towards professionalized ‘‘quality’’ journalism (as opposed to some heavily entertainment-oriented offerings, like Bild.T-Online.de in Germany), (2) market leadership (number of users), and (3) accessibility by the general public. Hence, the selected sites can be regarded as being the most relevant online news sites in their respective countries.2 For our comparative study presented here, we analyzed the news sites of sueddeutsche.de, spiegel.de (Germany), news.bbc.co.uk, timesonline.co.uk (United Kingdom), le-monde.fr, lefigaro.fr (France), kommersant.ru, lenta.ru (Russia), newyorktimes.com, usatoday.com (United States) between 31 January and 13 February 2005 (see Table 1).3 All websites were accessed and saved at 12:00 of the respective local time, as this snapshot reflects very much the main ‘‘news of the day’’ that are produced by the main editorial staff and accessed by most users (although peak usage and production shifts also vary between countries and sites). Since a website might contain more than 200 articles that are accessible within two links from the front page, we applied some selection rules based on the importance of the articles: basically, only the prominently placed articles with teasers on the front page (i.e. that did not consist of a link only) were coded, since we expect them to be read by most users. The analysis of these articles is based on a standardized codebook with items focusing on formal categories as well as various content categories. The codebook has been prepared with comparability in mind, and the individual language versions were checked for equivalence of constructs and items with the help of native speakers that were able to identify problematic items. All websites have been coded by native speakers or people with long time first-hand experience within the respective countries, and they were trained and supervised by the same scientist. Furthermore, problematic codings were discussed using a project Web forum, allowing for a decentralized project management. As a result, inter-coder reliability was satisfying (at least 0.8 in most cases, with the exception of tendency ratings, which are not discussed in this paper). Overall, by planning and organizing the whole study ‘‘in house’’ with the help of native speakers, we could follow the guidelines for maximizing equivalence (for example described by Esser, 2004). A first look at the websites in our sample already reveals some similarities: on a basic structural level, the news sites in the four countries look pretty similar (cf. Figure 1). The layouts follow two main principles: the ‘‘weblog’’ style (spiegel.de, sueddeutsche.de, lemonde.fr), which structures the news in a uni-directional way from top to bottom, mostly based on importance and age, with the sub-division of various sections) and the ‘‘newspaper style’’ (visible in the other pages; here, several columns are used, so the hierarchical ordering is not as strict). Although the basic structures of international websites are fairly standardized, there are differences when it comes to the information depth and amount of text that is accessible from the front page. Our content analysis reveals that there are two groups of websites here: the German and Russian sites, as well as the Times, offer 11.618.0 articles (with at least a teaser text) off the front page, whereas the French and American sites, as well as the BBC, only give access to 6.49.4 articles on average. Some of these ‘‘low front page content’’ pages use many links instead: the French sites, for example, look very much

721

SP.DE 202 14.4

636.0

SD.DE 252 18.0

586.0

spiegel.de

573.0

BBC.UK 89 6.4

news.bbc. co.uk

939.7

TIME.UK 163 11.6

Timesonline.co. uk

684.5

MON.FR 123 8.8

Le-monde. fr

712.2

FIG.FR 131 9.4

lefigaro.fr

1233.0

NY.US 95 6.8

Newyork times.com

660.9

US.US 100 7.1

Usatoday. com

636.5

KO.RU 225 17.3*

kommers ant.ru

*kommersant.ru was offline on 31 January; so the average N per issue has been calculated on the basis of 13 sample days here. $ANOVA reveals that the differences are significant on a level B0.000, with df9, F 57.847.

Abbreviation N (articles) Average N per issue Average words per article$

sueddeuts che.de

TABLE 1 The sample (left to right: German, English, French, US and Russian websites)

221.5

LE.RU 223 15.9

lenta.ru

644.8

1603 11.6

Overall

722 THORSTEN QUANDT




FIGURE 1 Analyzed websites, basic structure (at the time of the study) (upper left to lower right: spiegel.de, sueddeutsche.de (Germany), news.bbc.co.uk, timesonline.co.uk (United Kingdom), lemonde.fr, lefigaro.fr (France), newyorktimes.com, usatoday.com (United States), kommersant.ru, lenta.ru (Russia)

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like commented link lists. One might speculate that there are some nation-specific differences when it comes to the information presentation on the websites, given the fairly low variance between sites of one country origin (with the exception of the British sites; however, the BBC’s broadcast heritage obviously plays a significant role here). However, the average number of articles does not tell us the whole story: the information depth is also depending on the average length of the articles. Here, the New York Times and the Times take the lead, followed by the French sites. They offer very long pieces, up to 1233 words on average for the New York Times. It is interesting to note that at the same time, these sites do not position many pieces on the front page*this seems to be a deliberate ‘‘reduction’’ that stresses the focus on news depth rather than on news variation. The Russian Lenta marks the opposite extreme: while there are many articles featured on their front site, most of them are very short pieces (221.5 words on average). It is notable, though, that the most websites in our sample offer many long articles, with up to 5372 words (for New York Times, reflecting the nature of stories in the print edition of this paper, with an above average length of articles). This contradicts some early predictions that online news pieces have to be short and concise. In contrast to this assumption, we found background articles and ‘‘documentation packages’’ that used the unlimited space on the Internet for an exhaustive coverage of the respective events.

Findings In this section, we would like to answer the questions developed in the previous sections of this article. We will present the findings according to our research directions, starting with formal characteristics, followed by a discussion of the websites’ relational qualities, and the analysis of the content and actors.

Formal Characteristics of the Sample Early research on journalistic websites assumed that, freed from the constraints of papers and television, they will offer new ways of covering events (Neuberger et al., 1998). The basic idea behind this is the notion that limited space, the static layout of paper-based news, the pressures of a linear medium like TV and other limiting factors do confine the news production to a rather inflexible and limited coverage. So do the news sites finally use the Internet’s potential, or do they still remain in the traditional boundaries of print journalism, as described in earlier studies? When looking at the types of articles in our sample (cf. Table 2), we get a somewhat mixed impression: the German and British sites do experiment with various forms of reporting. Besides the standard news items, there are a fair number of background pieces, reports, comments and subjective forms of writing. The French, Russian and American sites, on the other hand, stick to neutral, informative, but standard news items. There is nearly no variation, with only a few background pieces and comments. So this points to a different understanding of writing for online news: while the German and British news people use the Internet’s unlimited space for offering analysis and comments, their French, Russian and American colleagues obviously have an informative, less subjective journalism in mind; this echoes findings from journalism surveys in conventional journalism (see Weaver, 1998).

64.7 5.2 7.1 0.4 0.0 14.7 6.3 1.2 0.4

60.9 2.5 15.3 0.0 0.5 6.9 8.9 5.0 0.0

SP.DE 47.2 0.0 21.3 2.2 3.4 13.5 1.1 11.2 0.0

BBC.UK 42.3 2.5 15.3 0.0 3.7 8.6 17.8 8.0 1.8

TIME.UK 95.9 0.8 3.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

MON.FR 83.2 0.8 16.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

FIG.FR 73.7 0.0 1.1 0.0 2.1 18.9 3.2 1.1 0.0

NY.US 99.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

US.US

82.2 2.2 3.1 3.6 0.0 1.8 7.1 0.0 0.0

KO.RU

96.4 0.4 2.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.0 0.0

LE.RU

74.6 1.4 8.5 0.6 1.0 6.5 4.5 2.7 0.2

Mean share

*Nearly all group differences (and in the multiple codings: nearly all row differences) were significant at p B0.000. This is true for all of the tables with distribution analyses, and a result of the high number of cases. However, we have to stress that due to the nature of the codings, most analyses showed a considerable number of empty cells, which is problematic even for non-parametric tests. Therefore, we feel that it is necessary to interpret the data carefully, and excluded an argumentation on the basis of the (somewhat misleading) statistical significance.

Standard news item Interview Background/analysis Info/encyclopedia Lead Report Comment/critique Other subject forms Others

SD.DE

TABLE 2 Type of article (% of all coded items per medium*)


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Slide show Video stream Audio stream Combinations Other No multi-media

8.7 0.4 0.8 0.0 0.0 90.1

SD.DE 13.4 2.0 0.0 2.0 2.0 80.7

SP.DE 3.4 23.6 4.5 14.6 0.0 53.9

BBC.UK 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0

TIME.UK 4.9 0.8 0.0 0.8 6.5 87.0

MON.FR

TABLE 3 Multi-media content (% of articles with respective content per medium)

1.5 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 98.5

FIG.FR 13.7 6.3 0.0 3.2 2.1 74.7

NY.US

7.0 11.0 1.0 19.0 2.0 60.0

US.US

0.4 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 99.6

KO.RU

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 100.0

LE.RU

5.3 4.4 0.6 4.0 1.3 84.5

Mean share

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The analysis of multi-media content reveals more differences between the websites*but these differences are only partially country specific (cf. Table 3). Actually, seven of the 10 websites do not enhance more than one-fifth of their articles with multimedia content, so there is some sort of cross-national consent that this is not a required part of online journalism. If websites offer multi-media content, they mostly use slide shows (which can be also used as a means of producing more clicks and boosting the stickiness of the site). There are some exceptions to the rule, the most obvious one being the BBC website, which offers many of the multi-media elements that were expected by the early visions of a ‘‘whole new journalism’’. This can be clearly attributed to the television/radio heritage of this site*obviously, the website tries to transport the parent medium’s characteristics to the Internet and can rely on pre-produced material from the BBC’s various radio and TV studios. However, to a somewhat lesser extent, the USA Today and New York Times websites also offer video streaming and some video/audio combinations or animations. It is probably not a coincidence that these are US-based sites*as Internet development started in the United States, online journalism is most advanced there (as it had more time to develop, reaches a higher readership in general, and therefore is relying on a healthier economic basis*which is important when offering the more expensive ways of online coverage). The pattern is not as clear when it comes to the options for interaction (cf. Table 4). Here, we do not find a standard set of options that unifies the international websites. The German and English websites as well as the New York Times offer specific e-mail addresses of the authors and feedback forms, as well as contact addresses. In some cases, they also offer linked forums and other options. The French Le Monde and the Russian Kommersant do offer discussion forums on a much more regular basis, with Kommersant linking nearly every article with a (user-driven) forum. They do not use other types of interaction, though. USA Today only offers e-mail addresses in some articles. Finally, Figaro and Lenta do not offer any options for interaction at all. That said, while there are ways to contact the journalists offered by some websites, this does not guarantee that they are reached directly. As has been noted elsewhere (Quandt, 2005), e-mails are very often filtered by editorial assistants who pre-select and answer some user posts. Furthermore, more direct ways of contact and interaction are missing completely: we could not find one single chat link in more than 1600 coded articles*so basically, the user’s interaction possibilities with the media still remain indirect and without ‘‘obligations’’ (to answer or even read the users’ input) on the side of the journalists. Overall, we can conclude that there is no coherent way of organizing user contacts and interaction; however, the level of interaction options is underwhelming throughout the sample, especially when taking the early expectations for online journalism into account. The finding echoes other studies that also found just limited or no interaction options in current online journalism (see above), so this is no singular result, but a broadly supported description of the status quo in online journalism.

Sources and Links Earlier research indicates that online journalism is highly dependent on external sources and parent media. The ‘‘copy & paste’’ principle seems to be acceptable for some online journalists (Quandt, 2005), so ‘‘shovel ware’’ is the core material for many of the

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E-mail Feedback form Contact address Forum link Chat link Other options

61.1 8.3 1.2 5.6 0.0 0.4

SD.DE 18.3 0.0 0.0 7.4 0.0 3.0

SP.DE 1.1 16.9 3.4 1.1 0.0 3.4

BBC.UK 9.8 11.7 2.5 0.0 0.0 0.0

TIME.UK 0.0 0.0 0.0 22.8 0.0 0.0

MON.FR 0.0 0.0 6.1 0.0 0.0 0.0

FIG.FR 21.1 0.0 2.1 16.8 0.0 1.1

NY.US

24.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

US.US

0.0 0.0 0.0 96.4 0.0 0.0

KO.RU

0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

LE.RU

13.5 3.7 1.5 15.0 0.0 0.8

Mean share

TABLE 4 Options for interaction (% of articles with respective content per medium); multiple codings were possible, therefore the columns can add up to more than 100 percent

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smaller news sites. While we could not realize a full inputoutput analysis here, in order to check for the use of external source material, we coded explicit (author/source mentioned at the beginning or end of the text) or implicit (name mentioned in the text) author attributions in the articles (cf. Table 5). With the exception of two media (Spiegel and BBC), the news sites indicate an author or source in nearly every individual case. It might seem surprising that the two quality media Spiegel and BBC do not always mention the author in each case, however their sites imply that if not otherwise indicated, the article is written entirely by (unknown) members of their newsrooms.4 But what is more remarkable is that in approximately three-quarters of all cases, the news sites name a specific journalist as the (mostly sole) author. Other authors and sources are only indicated for some media. Most notably, the German sueddeutsche.de (43.7 percent of all cases), the French Le Monde (85.4 percent) and USA Today (80.0 percent) mention news agencies quite often, while the other media usually do not reveal that they used agency material. Other authors and sources are negligible: only the German media mention other media as the authors in a fair number of cases, which is due to the inclusion of cross-promoted magazine articles on these websites. These findings are astonishing, given journalism studies’ knowledge about news production processes: it is highly unlikely that news media do not rely heavily on agency material; some studies actually found that up to 80 percent of material was coming from agencies (Baerns, 1991 [1985]). So Le Monde’s source attribution is probably the most reliable, while other sites simply did not make their editorial practice transparent. We have to stress that these findings are very unfortunate*with the increased possibilities of searching and re-using information on the net, near-time production and high market pressure, we feel that there is a clear danger that copy & paste becomes the basic principle, whilst the user simply does not know where the material is actually coming from. The information flow on the Internet does not only allow for copying information from other sources, though*it also offers the possibility of linking the articles to other websites, thus leading the user to new websites (cf. Table 6). All of the coded media made heavy use of links inside the website. Some also linked inside the articles*this was the case if they offered very long background pieces in several parts. A fair number of media also added hyperlinks to other websites where the user can find additional information concerning that topic (see ‘‘other links’’ in Table 6). Four media (the French and German sites) also used links for cross-promotion: linking to other (online) publications belonging to the same publisher. Actually, we also found links to partner websites, and even commercial sites. This might indicate a blurred line between editorial and commercial content; in most countries, there are explicit rules to clearly separate ads and news content in print or TV media*obviously, the separation is eroding in the online environment.

Topics, Actors, Regions Last but not least, we turned to the contents of the articles and coded the respective content categories and the geographic extension of the content. A first look at these topic categories (cf. Table 7) reveals that there seem to be some nation-specific patterns in the coverage, as well as some overall tendencies. Generally speaking, the main emphasis of the coverage is on national politics and the economy, followed by human-interest stories, international politics, crimes, sport and culture. This distribution pattern is reflecting similar patterns that are known from content analyses of press and TV coverage (e.g. Heinderyckx,

729

97.6

8.7 65.5

5.6 43.7

6.0 8.7

0.4

0.4 3.2

Specific author

Editor/journalist Implicit Explicit/byline

News agency Implicit Explicit/byline

Other media Implicit Explicit/byline

User Explicit/byline

Other sources Implicit Explicit/byline

SD.DE

1.5 0.5

0.5

15.8 6.4

2.0 0.0

5.4 50.5

69.3

SP.DE

0.0 1.1

0.0

0.0 0.0

0.0 0.0

0.0 39.3

40.4

BBC.UK

0.6 8.0

0.0

0.0 0.0

0.0 1.8

1.2 89.0

98.8

TIME.UK

0.0 0.0

0.0

0.0 6.5

3.3 85.4

80.5 13.0

100.0

MON.FR

TABLE 5 Source/author (% of articles with mention of respective author per medium)

0.0 0.0

0.0

0.0 0.0

0.8 9.9

11.5 84.0

97.7

FIG.FR

0.0 0.0

0.0

0.0 1.1

6.3 12.6

3.2 85.3

100.0

NY.US

0.0 0.0

0.0

0.0 0.0

3.0 80.0

2.0 19.0

100.0

US.US

0.0 0.4

0.0

0.0 0.0

0.0 0.9

0.0 94.7

96.0

KO.RU

0.0 0.0

0.0

1.3 0.0

0.0 0.0

98.7 0.0

100.0

LE.RU

0.3 1.3

0.1

2.3 2.3

2.1 23.4

21.1 54.0

90.0

Mean share

730 THORSTEN QUANDT


Internal link inside article Link inside website Link to publications of same publisher External link to partner External link to e-commerce Other links

42.9 52.8 11.5 3.2 2.8 3.2

SD.DE 11.4 64.4 7.4 4.0 5.4 14.9

SP.DE 1.1 89.9 0.0 0.0 1.1 83.1

BBC.UK 31.3 63.8 0.6 0.6 0.0 12.3

TIME.UK 0.0 84.6 7.3 7.3 0.0 4.1

MON.FR 0.0 61.8 3.1 1.5 0.0 0.8

FIG.FR

57.9 86.3 0.0 0.0 15.8 29.5

NY.US

1.0 66.0 0.0 0.0 4.0 12.0

US.US

0.0 69.3 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0

KO.RU

0.0 96.0 0.9 0.0 0.0 87.0

LE.RU

14.6 73.5 3.1 1.7 2.9 24.7

Mean share

TABLE 6 Links (% of articles with respective link per medium); multiple codings were possible, therefore the columns can add up to more than 100 percent


731


Politics, national Economy Human interest Politics, international Crimes Sport Culture, art, media Medicine, health Research, technical Disasters Social affairs Other

13.9 27.0 10.7 3.2 3.6 12.7 9.5 4.0 6.3 2.4 4.8 2.0

SD.DE 22.8 19.8 7.4 7.4 5.0 9.4 10.9 1.5 6.9 2.0 1.5 5.4

SP.DE 36.0 5.6 22.5 4.5 5.6 2.2 3.4 5.6 3.4 2.2 6.7 2.2

BBC.UK 25.8 16.0 22.1 4.3 1.8 9.8 2.5 1.8 1.2 2.5 11.0 1.2

TIME.UK 47.2 3.3 4.9 13.0 6.5 4.9 2.4 5.7 2.4 4.9 0.0 4.9

MON.FR

TABLE 7 Topics (% of articles mentioning the respective topic category per medium)

39.7 9.9 6.9 13.0 6.9 0.0 8.4 6.1 4.6 1.5 0.0 3.1

FIG.FR 42.1 12.6 9.5 9.5 9.5 3.2 3.2 5.3 2.1 1.1 1.1 1.1

NY.US 36.0 9.0 15.0 12.0 10.0 2.0 0.0 2.0 2.0 7.0 0.0 5.0

US.US

37.8 17.3 4.9 7.6 11.1 8.0 9.3 0.0 1.3 1.3 0.4 0.9

KO.RU

27.8 14.8 3.6 6.3 18.4 5.8 6.7 6.3 7.2 1.8 0.0 1.3

LE.RU

32.9 13.5 10.8 8.1 7.8 5.8 5.6 3.8 3.7 2.7 2.6 2.7

Mean share

732 THORSTEN QUANDT




1993; see also Shoemaker and Cohen 2006). While it might not come as a surprise, it stresses that*in contrast to earlier expectations*online journalism is fairly conventional when it comes to topic categories. That said, there are considerable differences between the individual websites, and they seem to be linked to national news habits as well. There are striking similarities between the websites inside a country, while they differ considerably from country to country. The German websites feature less national politics in relation to the other countries’ sites; on the other hand, they offer more economy news, sports and culture. Overall, they offer a varied spectrum of news, with a less-pronounced focus than the sites in other countries. The British websites feature an average number of political news, but many more human-interest stories than the websites in other countries, and a considerable amount of ‘‘social affairs’’ news. The French websites primarily offer political news: Overall, 60 percent of Le Monde’s articles and more than 50 percent of Figaro’s news can be seen as political, with 13 percent of each site’s articles being international politics. The US sites show a somewhat similar pattern, also with about 50 percent of political news content for each site. Furthermore, we find an above-average number of crime-related stories on both US sites. Last but not least, the Russian websites also hint at some national preferences: they cover mostly politics, economy, but also a lot of stories on crime as well as cultural news. Again, the pattern here is conventional in the sense that it clearly reflects the news interests of the audiences in the respective countries, and echoes the patterns found in other news media as well. For example, it is not surprising that crime stories play a more important role in the US and Russian media, as crimes are a more central problem to the public in these nations. Beyond these basic content categories, the meaning of articles can be defined by other variables as well, one of the most important being geographical extension. This tells us about the perceived relevance of nations, and the resulting construction of power relations in the world. The importance of the United States as the remaining super power is obvious when looking at the geographic scope of the coverage (cf. Table 8): in the German and UK media, US-related news can be observed in a considerable number of cases, and the same is true for the Russian Lenta. Only the French websites largely ignore the United States in their news. Besides this detail, we find some interesting patterns here: most obviously, the bulk of articles focus on the national context only. So while the World Wide Web could offer possibilities for covering much more, the news sites mostly stick to the expected news interests of their audiences, thus reproducing the well-known geographic bias in the news coverage. It is also obvious that the websites only refer to regions where the respective countries have a vital interest: so the websites of the EU members Germany, France and the UK also discuss topics of the EU, while the Russian sites turn towards the former Soviet states and their ‘‘old’’ allies from the former ‘‘Eastern Bloc’’, and US news is very much influenced by the news on Iran/Iraq, Afghanistan and the Middle East. Actually, the news from the Middle East clearly tops all other parts of the world (excluding the United States itself) in the US online news. Largely non-existent are other parts of the world: South America, Australia, the Far East and Africa only play a minor role in the coverage. Overall, we find that the World Wide Web is not as ‘‘global’’ as we might believe, at least when it comes to news. The content is very much limited by the traditional, national context and the (expected) interests of the users. Even the US and UK sites, which are not ‘‘handicapped’’ by language barriers, focus very much on domestic news.

733

0.8 52.0 2.8 0.0 6.3 1.6 5.6 6.0 0.0 0.8 1.6 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.8 17.9 3.6

1.5 43.1 1.0 0.0 11.9 1.5 4.0 4.5 0.5 2.0 1.5 0.5 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.5 23.3 4.0

SP.DE 0.0 0.0 58.4 0.0 3.4 4.5 2.2 2.2 1.1 6.7 0.0 0.0 2.2 0.0 1.1 0.0 18.0 0.0

BBC.UK 0.6 0.0 59.5 0.0 12.9 1.8 5.5 2.5 1.2 3.7 0.6 0.6 0.0 1.2 0.6 0.0 9.2 0.0

TIME.UK 28.5 0.8 0.8 0.0 3.3 1.6 4.1 7.3 2.4 10.6 5.7 0.0 0.0 0.8 4.1 0.0 30.1 0.0

MON.FR 45.8 0.8 1.5 0.0 0.8 1.5 1.5 12.2 0.8 6.1 0.8 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.8 0.0 27.5 0.0

FIG.FR 0.0 0.0 1.1 0.0 58.9 4.2 0.0 0.0 1.1 24.2 4.2 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.0 6.3 0.0

NY.US 1.0 0.0 2.0 0.0 39.0 9.0 2.0 1.0 1.0 30.0 6.0 0.0 0.0 1.0 0.0 1.0 7.0 0.0

US.US

0.0 0.0 0.9 58.2 3.6 1.3 4.0 4.4 9.8 1.3 2.7 0.0 0.0 0.0 0.4 0.4 12.0 0.9

KO.RU

0.9 0.0 4.0 35.4 11.7 0.0 3.6 4.0 5.8 10.8 7.6 0.0 0.0 0.4 1.3 0.9 12.6 0.9

LE.RU

7.9 9.7 13.2 9.4 15.2 2.7 3.3 4.4 2.4 9.6 3.1 0.1 0.2 0.4 0.9 0.4 16.4 0.9

Mean share

*Including Israel and Palestine (both were coded individually; however, to our surprise, the number of articles relating to Israel and Palestine was very low, actually 0 for most media, so that we decided to use the sum index for the data presentation). Numbers above 40% in dark grey; numbers above 10% in light grey.

France Germany United Kingdom Russia United States Italy Other EU countries Europe (rest) Former Soviet States Middle East* Far East/Asia Canada North America South America Africa Australia Multinational/global None

SD.DE

TABLE 8 Regions/countries (% of articles relating to that country/region per medium)

734 THORSTEN QUANDT




Conclusions The technological and social changes connected with the Internet are assumed to have a huge impact on democracy and journalism. As we have described above, a lot of journalism scholars expected online journalism to become the driving force behind a revolution in journalism. Looking at the sum of our findings described in the previous section, we have to conclude that the revolution did not happen. What unifies the websites analyzed here is a similar formal structure, the lack of multi-media content, the missing options of direct interaction with the journalists, a fairly standardized repertoire of article types, missing source/author attributions, a general trend towards the coverage of national political events, and the limited scope of the news (which is dominated by events of regional or national proximity). There are many national specifics, though, which can be attributed to differing journalistic cultures and audience interests in the respective countries. Overall we can condense these findings to the following conclusion. Online journalism, as it is offered by the market leaders in the respective countries, is basically good old news journalism, which is similar to what we know from ‘‘offline’’ newspapers. Obviously, audiences and journalists alike are not thinking journalism across national boundaries but are still limited by their use and reporting habits. That said, this might be just natural, following the traditional news values, which reflect the relevance for the users. Furthermore, the websites do not make use of the World Wide Web’s potential for new types of writing, producing, linking and interacting*but maybe that is also not an issue for the users. It is highly likely that they just want their usual news*fast and reliably. However, our study also offered a comparative look at topical patterns and the geographical coverage, which make national specifics in international online journalism visible for the first time. It would be very interesting to see whether the same patterns apply to more unconventional ways of news production and distribution on the Web. Do weblog and community news have similar limitations? And do their users really care, if this will be the case? These are important questions for further research, as participatory forms are heavily discussed in journalism studies today. So maybe beyond the cautious online strategies of the media companies and the organized settings of online newsrooms, there is the place for experimentation and innovation that we could not find in the leading online news in the five countries analyzed here.

NOTES 1.

2.

Russia can be seen as a deviation from the ‘‘most similar systems’’ approach*its political, economic and social structure is different from the Western European countries. However, we felt that it might be helpful to contrast the findings of the largest EU countries with a large Eastern European country in order to see whether similarities are only due to the Western European context or more general trends in online journalism. There are more top sites in most countries under analysis, and the choice of two is certainly a difficult one in many cases. For example, the inclusion of the BBC as the only site without a newspaper parent is somewhat inconsistent with the other sites. However, we still decided to include it here based on its importance as an online news source in the United Kingdom (and around the world).

735

736

THORSTEN QUANDT 3.

4.

The two weeks analyzed here were chosen since they did not include any nation-specific specialities (like elections) or international topics that could influence the composition of the news portfolio worldwide (like the outbreak of a disease or a war). For a discussion of the meaning and development of bylines in journalism, see also Reich (2007).

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Thorsten Quandt, Institut fu¨r Publizistik- und Kommunikationswissenschaft, Freie Universita¨t Berlin, Garystr. 55, 14195 Berlin-Dahlem, Raum 279, Germany. E-mail: [email protected]