Media phenomena coined as issue attention cycles, media hypes or scandals describe processes in which attention towards issues and news frames converges in news markets. But what drives these processes? This article explores a new theoretical framework, which draws on Economic Theory (i.e., Path Dependence Theory, Principal-Agent Theory, Herd Behaviour Theory and Behavioural Economic Theory), incorporates results from journalism and mass communication research and discusses a process in which journalists and their sources (i.e., whistleblowers, social media users and public relations experts) interact. Specifically, they engage in different types of herd behaviour related to the allocation of attention towards issues and news frames. These self-reinforcing mechanisms then lead to lock-ins-which under certain conditions can be un-locked. JEL: D03, D21, D80, Z00

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This study develops and tests a theoretical framework, which draws on herd behavior literature and explains how and under what conditions tabloids’ attention to misinformation drives broadsheets’ attention to misinformation. More specifically, the study analyzes all cases of political and business misinformation in Switzerland and the U.K. between 2002 and 2018, which are selected based on corresponding Swiss and U.K. press councils’ rulings (N = 114). The findings show that during amplifying events (i.e., election campaigns and economic downturns) tabloids allocate more attention to political and business misinformation, which, in turn, drives broadsheets to allocate more attention to the misinformation as well–and especially if the misinformation serves broadsheets’ ideological goals. Moreover, the findings show differences between Swiss and U.K. media markets only in the case of business misinformation and suggest that the attention allocation process depends in particular on the strength of the amplifying event in a media market. Thereby, this study contributes to the understanding of how and under what conditions misinformation spreads in media markets.

The advertising industry and the media industry have long been tied together to reach their main objectives. The advertising industry used media as ad vehicles to embed and transport their ad messages and the media needed advertising money to finance and subsidize their activities. Additionally the advertising income of media outlets depends on economic changes -be they cyclical or structural. Journalistic media seem to be more affected by cyclical downturns than other media types, and they seem to be at least as much affected by structural changes than other media. Structural changes in advertising as well as the possibility to combine advertising in new ways, lead to a loss of advertising money for journalistic media. While advertising money is still important in the financing of journalistic media, at the moment the future of this funding source is unclear. Most likely, advertising revenue will not be large enough to finance newsrooms that are designed to make important contributions to democratic societies.