Because of their widespread use on the internet, hyperlinks have become a useful tool in information sharing and knowledge distribution in online communication, particularly in the realm of journalism. Their importance has received little scholarly attention, however. Against the backdrop of the sociology of professions, the purpose of this study is to determine how journalists approach hyperlinks and what they perceive to be their functions in online news. A national survey of newspaper editors and TV news directors in the United States shows that American journalists exhibit a sense of jurisdictional protectionism in online news. They appear to privilege US hyperlinks over foreign ones, especially internal links to their own websites. They are also predominantly against linking to foreign news media that cover the same events or issues. Financial consideration seems to be the main reason behind the journalistic preference.
The purpose of this study is to examine, through a longitudinal analysis, the priorities and beliefs that American newspaper editors hold toward foreign news reporting. Using the theory of cultural values as the framework, the study seeks to compare how American newspaper editors assessed the importance of factors in their selection of foreign news over time. The results show that the priorities of journalistic values in foreign news reporting remain fundamentally unchanged in the United States. More importantly, the factor structure of foreign news values was invariant between 1988 and 2008. The persistence of such values strongly indicates a shared professional culture that appears to cultivate a common worldview through journalistic practices in the newsroom.
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