Soft News With Hard Consequences? Introducing a Nuanced Measure of Soft Versus Hard News Exposure and Its Relationship With Political Cynicism

Abstract

Soft news with hard consequences? Introducing a nuanced measure of soft versus hard news exposure and its relationship with political cynicism Boukes, M.; Boomgaarden, H. Disclaimer/Complaints regulationsIf you believe that digital publication of certain material infringes any of your rights or (privacy) interests, please let the Library know, stating your reasons. In case of a legitimate complaint, the Library will make the material inaccessible and/or remove it from the website. Please Ask the Library: http://uba.uva.nl/en/contact, or a letter to: Library of the University of Amsterdam, Secretariat, Singel 425, 1012 WP Amsterdam, The Netherlands. You will be contacted as soon as possible. Download date: 13 May 2018Running head: SOFT NEWS WITH HARD CONSEQUENCES? AbstractThe possibly detrimental consequences of soft news are subject of popular and academic debate. This study investigates how watching particular news genres -soft versus hard -relates to cynicism about politics among Dutch citizens. A nuanced and novel scale measuring relative exposure to soft versus hard news is introduced using nonparametric unidimensional unfolding. The analysis of three public opinion surveys demonstrates a strong relationship between people's position on this hard-versus-soft-news exposure scale and political cynicism. People who watched relatively more soft news were more cynical about politics than people who watched relatively more hard news. This relationship was not conditional on individuals' level of political knowledge and interest.

The Softening of Journalistic Political Communication: A Comprehensive Framework Model of Sensationalism, Soft News, Infotainment, and Tabloidization

“…It seems that journalists, politicians, but also scholars have an “intuitive understanding” (Reinemann et al, , p. 2) of the development they want to describe. Yet for HSN, for example, “no commonly accepted definitions exist” (Baum, , p. 92; Boukes & Boomgaarden, ). Similarly, Esser () describes tabloidization as a “diffuse” (p. 291) concept, and Grabe, Zhou, and Barnett () state that “the very use of the term sensationalism as if it were precisely defined deserves further scrutiny” (p. 636).…”

Political relevance in the eye of the beholder: Determining the substantiveness of TV shows and political debates with Twitter data

“…Yet, by collecting tweets about other television programs, Web sites or other media, one can easily follow the same approach to determine to which extent these outlets are of a political nature. Hence, scholars can overcome the oversimplified dichotomy of dividing media outlets in either soft or hard news categories (Baum, 2003;Boukes and Boomgaarden, 2015;Williams and Delli Carpini, 2011) and more precisely determine political relevance through the eyes of the audience. This also means that future research would have to expand on our explorative findings to come to a more formal description of relevance, in order to provide researchers with a standard that goes beyond relative comparisons.…”

“…However, dividing all news into either being hard or soft is problematic because most programs are not purely hard or soft, entertaining or informing. Such thinking in terms of "either-this-or-that" extremes neglects the observations that most news coverage reflects characteristics that apply to both hard and soft news (see Boukes and Boomgaarden, 2015;Zelizer, 2007). Categorizing programs in these two mutually exclusive alternatives is, therefore, artificial.…”

“…Such a classification, thus, is flawed and should be replaced by other methods. One alternative is to look at audience characteristics and how these overlap between programs (Boukes and Boomgaarden, 2015). However, this requires extensive survey data that often is not available and expensive to collect.…”

“…Whereas for newspapers or newscasts the political relevance is not doubted, entertainment programs, such as talk shows, still do not get the academic scrutiny they deserve (Williams and Delli Carpini, 2011). Developing a method to demonstrate the substantiveness of these outlets is of crucial importance for breaking down the artificial hierarchy that exists between news programs and infotainment (Boukes and Boomgaarden, 2015). This methodology will also provide practitioners and policy-makers with a better way to assess public perceptions, content and political relevance of programs.…”