How does online news curate linked sources? A content analysis of three online news media

Abstract

This article examines journalists’ curatorial practices with regard to linked and embedded sources on three news media platforms: the online version of a legacy news medium, a native online explanatory news medium, and an online citizen news medium. Our goal is to explore the curatorial practices in online journalism, and the continuity and changes in journalistic gatekeeping in the online environment. Our results demonstrate that established journalistic traditions are still prevalent in online news. Meanwhile, links to digital archives are widely used to contextualize news subjects. Explanatory journalism and citizen journalism do exhibit characteristics of what Herbert Gans calls ‘multiperspectival’ news, which covers a wider variety of social institutions. We discuss differences in the prevalence of the curatorial treatments of various types of linked sources in relation to journalists’ views of their roles, and the online news media’s organizational and technological natures.

Finding the news and mapping the links: a case study of hypertextuality in Dutch-language health news websites

“…Starting in the 2010s, a third wave of research recognizes the overall dominance of internal hyperlinks in news, but differentiates between linking behavior in different types of online journalism (Sjøvaag, Moe, & Stavelin, 2012). Progressive genuine external hyperlinking is found most in citizen journalism (Paulussen & D'heer, 2013), blogs (Coddington, 2012) and alternative net-native explanatory news websites (Cui & Liu, 2017). Rather than considering hyperlinking as an entirely novel practice, these studies identify it as a process of normalization that is shaped by existing professional journalistic norms which differ according to the type of news outlet (Coddington, 2014).…”

“…The discord between commercial and journalistic incentives for using hyperlinks is often measured by quantifying the ratio of internal and external hyperlinks within websites. Despite the relative dominance of internal linking on news websites in general (Karlsson et al, 2015), previous research shows that the occurrence of internal and external hyperlinks varies according to news websites' socialization in the principles of institutional journalism (Cui & Liu, 2017). New entrants to the field, such as blogs, citizen journalism and net-native explanatory news websites, are more likely to use external hyperlinks than news websites of legacy media brands (Coddington, 2012;Cui & Liu, 2017;Paulussen & D'heer, 2013;Sjøvaag et al, 2012).…”

“…Given the exponential growth of online information, locating, editing, enriching and organizing relevant high-quality information on a specific topic into a coherent whole has become an important addition to online journalists' skillset (Bakker, 2014;Cui & Liu, 2017). Hypertextuality constitutes the most obvious means for this type of digital content curationsometimes also pejoratively referred to as aggregation (Bardoel & Deuze, 2001;Cui & Liu, 2017).…”

“…Given the exponential growth of online information, locating, editing, enriching and organizing relevant high-quality information on a specific topic into a coherent whole has become an important addition to online journalists' skillset (Bakker, 2014;Cui & Liu, 2017). Hypertextuality constitutes the most obvious means for this type of digital content curationsometimes also pejoratively referred to as aggregation (Bardoel & Deuze, 2001;Cui & Liu, 2017). By inserting hyperlinks to source, structure and contextualize health information, news consumers can click on links and navigate through the complex online health information landscape, thus engaging in a process metaphorically referred to as 'way-finding' (Pearson & Kosicki, 2016).…”

The Use of Politeness Strategies in the Indonesia’s 2019 Presidential Campaign Teams on Online News Media

“…In journalism, when many news organizations are avidly building their online presence and some are indeed taking a 'digital first' strategy, curated information has also garnered much attention [4]. One of the news media function in a democracy is the reporting of politics and institutions.…”