Political Journalism Represented by Headline News: Canadian Public and Commercial Media Compared

Abstract

Abstract. Headlines play a key role in influencing how and about what citizens are informed. In news media, their task is threefold: to represent stories, signal informational hierarchy and draw publicity for (or sell) what follows. This article examines the representative dimension of headline news content for the 2006 Canadian federal election campaign, testing whether public media headlines more faithfully reflected story-level coverage than commercial media. Comparing both public and commercial media coverage of this watershed election presents a unique opportunity to assess whether the overarching macro-incentive of commercial media—profit-making—may have influenced micro-level relationships between headlines and stories. Results of 55-day multiplatform analysis (N = 11,002) involving CBC election media and 12 commercial newsrooms reveal few differences with respect the representativeness of headlines from public and commercial media, save for the presence of journalists' opinion in headline content.Résumé. Les titres influencent comment les citoyens sont informés, et à propos de quoi ils en pensent. Les titres ont trois objectifs dans les nouvelles : ils résument les nouvelles, signalent quelles nouvelles sont les plus importantes, et vendre l'histoire complète qui suit. L'article examine le niveau de représentativité des titres dans les nouvelles sur la campagne de l'élection fédérale canadienne de 2006. Plus précisément, il teste si les titres venant des médias publics sont plus représentatifs que les nouvelles dans le média commercial. En comparant la couverture médiatique dans cette élection structurante, nous explorons si la motivation des médias commerciaux, notamment le profit, peut influencer le lien entre les titres et les articles. Les résultats de l'analyse multiplateforme de la campagne qui durait 55 jours (N = 11 002) incluent la couverture sur la CBC et 12 médias commerciaux. Ils indiquent qu'il n'y a pas beaucoup de différence dans la représentativité des titres entre les sources publiques et commerciales, sauf la présence de l'opinion dans le contenu des titres.

Does Democracy Die in Darkness? An Examination of the Relationship between Local Newspaper Health and Turnout in Municipal Politics

“…Fourth, and relatedly, future research could explore the relationship between Canada's public broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and local voter turnout. Some studies demonstrate that public media provide a greater benefit to political knowledge than commercial media in most countries (Aarts and Semetko, 2003; Tóka and Popescu, 2009; Soroka et al, 2013; Andrew, 2013). Fifth, future work would benefit from adopting a longitudinal design as opposed to the cross-sectional approach utilized here.…”

The Effect of Marketing Activities on Web Search Volume: An Empirical Analysis of Chinese Film Industry Data

“…Thus, it plays a critical role in inducing consumers to search for information about the related movie. In addition, news headlines are frequently used to measure the media effect on the prior literature [31][32][33][34].…”

Millennial students’ metalinguistic knowledge on headlines Using Grammaticality Judgment Test

“…Cruz, 2010;Perfetti et al, 1987;Quinn & Lamble, 2008) include, but are not limited to:  A comma is used in lieu of the conjunction 'and'  Active verbs are better than the passive verbs  All forms of verb be (both helping and copular) are omitted  An infinitive 'to + verb' is used for future stories  Articles such as a, an, and the omitted  Positive heads, not the negatives ones, are preferable  Present tense is used even for past stories With all these characteristics assembled above, it is clear that the headlines serve a number of pragmatic purposes. For instance, Andrew (2013) maintains that because they are sensational headlines, they are enough to induce political engagement such as interests, discussion and debate. The more cases of engagement, the more economic costs, advantages and incentives (cf.…”

“…The more cases of engagement, the more economic costs, advantages and incentives (cf. Andrew, 2013;Iyengar et al, 2010;Richardson, 2007) these headlines exact on different media organizations. This assertion is not unlikely given that the different journalistic styles and strategies are observed in the name of "competition culture and journalistic culture" (Popescu & Toka, 2009, p. 4) for readership.…”