News Media

This book sheds light on how the public engage with, make sense of, and discursively evaluate news media constructions of people from asylum seeking backgrounds. As a case study, the author discusses her recent research combining Critical Discourse Analysis with a cultural studies Audience Reception framework to examine the perspectives of 24 Western Australians who took part in semi-structured interviews. During their interviews, participants were asked open-ended questions about: their general views on people seeking asylum, including Australia’s policy responses, their media engagement habits and preferences, and their views concerning how the Australian media represents people seeking asylum. The author compares and contrasts this research with broader interdisciplinary discussion, and the book will therefore appeal to students and scholars of migration, political communication, sociology, audience reception, critical media studies and sociolinguistics.

This book explores the different ways Francophone research on news media has faced the challenges of dependence and independence from three complementary perspectives. The first is economics - how can sustainable business models be developed and to what extent can crowdfunding help to maintain the financial and editorial independence of newsrooms?

This book provides the first systematic, empirical analysis of the media’s approach to US vice-presidential selection (or the “veepstakes”). In their news coverage, Devine finds that media outlets typically treat vice-presidential selection as little more than a game—by focusing on how potential running mates might help to win the election, rather than how they might help the next president to govern. Based on an original content analysis of hundreds of veepstakes profiles from 2000–2020, this book quantifies the news media’s relative emphasis on various selection criteria, in general and across different electoral circumstances. The analysis suggests that journalists generally fail to serve the public interest by emphasizing electoral over governing considerations. However, Devine also points to positive examples of media coverage that help the public to evaluate potential running mates’ governing credentials, and suggests ways in which scholars, journalists, and citizens might encourage media outlets to provide more substantive, responsible coverage of the vice-presidential selection process in future elections.