Jumping the Shark

Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News

“…D' Angelo and Esser 2014;Peleg and Bogoch 2014;Haßler, Maurer, and Oschatz 2014;Sampert et al 2014;Esser, Strömbäck, and de Vreese 2012;Djerf-Pierre et al 2014). Therefore, if mediatization can be an explanation for rising media attention for negative incidents, it is expected that coverage of negative incidents, such as aviation incidents, increasingly contain facets of mediatization.…”

Infotaining Canadian Politics? Measuring Infotainment in English-Language Newspaper Coverage of the 2019 Canadian Federal Election

“…Scholars have suggested that the ways that different media structure their communications (for example, the repeated and predictable use of certain formats, styles and logics in communicating their stories, information, and so on) accumulate to produce a broad set of stylistic rules (or media culture) to which other institutions (including political parties and political journalists) increasingly adapt (Altheide 2004: 294). In fact, Sampert et al (2014) have argued that there is strong evidence that Canadian political actors are increasingly adapting/tailoring the development and communication of their political perspectives and policies to better accommodate the dictates of the media formats, genres, and so on, of the prevalent media logic/culture. If these perspectives are accurate, then our findings suggest that we may be facing a situation in which not only the strategic electoral campaign choices of political actors (for example, what issues to prioritize during the campaign, how to communicate their policies) but also their core commitments (for example, policies, values, goals) are being increasingly influenced (whether consciously or semiconsciously) by judgments about the degree to which they can be easily communicated and performed within an infotainment style.…”

“…Moreover, there are other studies that have examined news coverage in Canada which, while not examining infotainment explicitly, have touched on certain elements of sensationalism, the production of soft news, and other characteristics that are also central to infotainment (for instance, Edge, 2016; Hackett and Zhao, 1998; Prato, 1993; Rose and Nesbitt-Larking, 2010; Taras, 1990, 2008). Other examples of this include several key longitudinal studies, such as Bastien (2020), which found evidence of an increase in strategic framing and a decrease in factual reporting styles within televised leaders’ debates, and Sampert et al (2014), which found a growth in a number of reporting characteristics typical of the infotainment format, including increased use of opinion, photos (appearance over content), combative or game-like language, and a personalized focus on candidates over parties, all of which they argue point toward a growth in the use of “media logic” to structure political communications. In addition, both episodic and competitive or game-like framing of politics have been identified in Canada's political news coverage.…”

Battling for Votes: The Ascent of the Permanent Campaign in Canada

“…10 As a result, politicians now "take intensive training in voice, hand gestures, and other body language." 11 This exemplifies the focus on the image more than ever, while restricting access to those can provide more substantial information to the public at the same time. The Harper government is seen as especially private and inaccessible as "the search for better control over "the message" resulted in considerable tension with journalists of the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery in Ottawa" through various changes to rules.…”