The thesis examines a mediated crisis and how The Straits Times and The Australian approach the reporting of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). It looks at how this mediated crisis exemplifies the culture of the national newspaper and in turn how the national newspaper has an historical influence on the national psyche. A total of 649 reports and headlines and 141 letters about SARS in The Straits Times (including The Straits Time Interactive) were examined from April 2003 to November 2003 as were 125 headlines from The Australian. The early sections of the thesis discuss how a crisis makes news; examine how the media report a crisis and what emphasis is given to aspects such as: actors, primary definers, vocabulary, lexical choices, subjects, themes, issues and value dimension or stance. The first chapter defines crisis, journalism and crisis journalism and discusses where the latter sits within the continuing expansion and development of major theoretical frameworks, including living in a risk society. The implication here is that crisis and risk have a symbiotic relationship. Historical perspectives of news are discussed in Chapter 2, and the newspaper is placed within the context of contemporary media. The chapter discusses how newspapers are aligned with the concept of the national mind and demonstrates the roles and formations of the two newspapers in relation to the SARS crisis. Chapter 3 codes the headlines, article titles and subtitles of The Straits Times and The Australian and using content analysis of the headlines, analyses the reporting of a serious health crisis SARS that lasted from March to November, 2003. The quantification within content analysis enables a researcher to read and interpret questions that relate to the intensity of meaning in texts, their social impact, the relationships between media texts and the realities and representations they reflect (Hansen et al, 1998). The theory and method of content analysis is used in this chapter to consider differences between The Straits Times and The Australian and to exemplify the media’s representation of the narratives of SARS as it happened in the countries of Singapore and Australia. Aspects of crisis and risk, the newspaper and the national mind, narratives, presentations, and post SARS events are discussed in the last chapter. It is concluded from these discussions there is a world narrative that tells the story of how the human condition likes to live and rely on a safe social environment always being available. The relationship between a mediated crisis and risk are also discussed. In addition, it is maintained that reporting in 2003 was not just about SARS but a way of reporting that allowed one to view journalism as an aid to good governance, particularly with regard to living in a risk and crisis-ridden society.

The purpose of this study is to analyze how two Swedish news media, Dagens Nyheter and Aftonbladet, reported on the coronavirus (COVID-19) before and after WHO declared COVID-19 a pandemic. The research questions examined were 1. how did the two chosen news media report about the coronavirus? 2. Is there a difference between how they reported before WHO declared it pandemic and after?  This study is a qualitative analysis of 12 strategically selected articles, three that were published by Dagens Nyheter before WHO declared a pandemic and three by Dagens Nyheter after the declaration and three that were published by Aftonbladet before the declaration and three by Aftonbladet that were published after the declaration. To understand our empirical material, we chose the following theories for our study; framing, agenda setting, crisis journalism, media logic and storytelling techniques. In our analysis we could see a pattern in all the articles we analyzed. It shows that all the articles we analyzed are unique and sensational as we live in a pandemic that has never happened before in modern time, that's why they all came at the top of the agenda. The reporting in the two news media portrayed a troubled and uncertain time, from which it can be seen that the alarming emphasis in the reporting of the corona is recurring in several of the articles. Our analysis also showed that Aftonbladet has a more dramatic and dramaturgical storytelling technique as it is an evening newspaper and the articles from Dagens Nyheter are written shorter and more concretely.

Detta är en jämförande studie om medierepresentationen av oljekrisen i Stavanger i Norge och Aberdeen i Skottland. I uppsatsens första del undersöker och jämför vi tre nyhetsartiklar från norska lokala tidningar i Stavanger med tre skotska lokala tidningar i Aberdeen genom en kvalitativ textanalys. I uppsatsens andra del lägger vi tyngd på journalisternas uppfattning om krissituationen och använder oss av semistrukturerade intervjuer. Genom kvalitativa intervjuer med norska och skotska journalister jämför vi hur de resonerar kring val av vinklar, nyheter, källor och hur de upplever sitt yrke och sin arbetsroll i relation till rapporteringen av oljekrisen. I arbetet lyfter vi fram skillnader i framställningen av situationen i Stavanger respektive Aberdeen. Vi använder oss av en etnografisk intervju i vårt tillvägagångssätt när vi träffar journalisterna, för att kunna använda detta som en ingång till historisk bakgrund för effekterna av oljekrisen och påverkan på städerna. En utgångspunkt för uppsatsen är att undvika att bedöma huruvida det rör sig om en kris eller inte och istället fokusera på gestaltningen i de valda medierna och journalisternas upplevelser av sitt arbete. Resultatet av vår studie visar att det finns nationella samband med hur journalisterna uppfattar oljekrisen. De norska journalisterna mörkar i högre utsträckning att det pågått en omfattande oljekris i Stavanger, medan de skotska journalisterna talar mer öppet om en kris. Vi kan genom denna studie konstatera att det återfinns skillnader i hur den lokala rapporteringen för oljekris sker, samt hur gestaltningen av oljekrisens konsekvenser ser ut i artiklarna som vi har valt att analysera.

Submitted by JOSIANE SANTOS DE OLIVEIRA (josianeso) on 2018-08-16T15:46:10Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Moreno Cruz Osório_.pdf: 1552076 bytes, checksum: f89242265c71e36493d75b2b5ed328c2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-16T15:46:10Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Moreno Cruz Osório_.pdf: 1552076 bytes, checksum: f89242265c71e36493d75b2b5ed328c2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-04-25 / CAPES - Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / CNPQ – Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Esta tese dedica-se a elaborar o ciberacontecimento breaking news, uma formulação teórico-metodológica para compreender o breaking news no jornalismo contemporâneo realizado em redes digitais. À expressão breaking news é atribuída uma intensificação da relação entre as categorias substantivas dos valores-notícia oriunda dos níveis de extraordinariedade dos acontecimentos e as rotinas jornalísticas como procedimento chave para a realização do trabalho jornalístico. Considerando a capacidade de impor o determinismo jornalístico aos fenômenos como uma das características que mais distingue o fazer profissional, parte do pressuposto que, atualmente, tal habilidade possui contornos intrincados. Pois sua prática é suscetível a influências de um ecossistema midiático complexo, em rede, descentralizado, acelerado, fluído, e marcado pela multiplicação do número de atores capazes de construir a realidade. Partindo do ciberacontecimento, o conceito proposto de ciberacontecimento breaking news constrói teoricamente esta intensificação, oferecendo possibilidades de abordá-la empiricamente. Esta construção é realizada por meio de dois movimentos. O primeiro desenvolve a proposta teórico-metodológica. Busca interfaces com a Teoria Ator-Rede (TAR), com o conceito de rizoma, de Deleuze e Guattari, com o método da cartografia e a com prática da curadoria de conteúdo. Objetiva arquitetar a anatomia e a dinâmica do processo evenemencial de um acontecimento extraordinário ao se desenvolver em rede. O segundo movimento busca, na teoria do jornalismo recente, subsídios para sustentar o ciberacontecimento breaking news. Para isso, são analisados 75 artigos publicados em um período de dez anos (2007-2016) nos periódicos Journalism, Journalism Practice e Digital Journalism. Esta análise traça uma evolução da expressão “breaking news” na contemporaneidade observando as discussões realizadas em sua órbita. Elas nutrem e contextualizam as características do ciberacontecimento breaking news desenvolvidas no primeiro movimento. A abordagem do breaking news desenvolvida nesta tese sugere um processo de dispersão e de reconcentração das práticas jornalísticas, em um movimento cuja tendência é a ampliação das fronteiras do jornalismo. / This doctoral thesis develops the cyberevent breaking news, a theoretical-methodological proposal that aims to understand the breaking news in contemporary Journalism performed in digital networks. The expression breaking news here is understood as an intensification of the relationship between the substantive categories of the news values originated from the events’ levels of extraordinariness and the journalistic routine as a key procedure for performing the journalistic work. Knowing that the capacity to impose journalistic determinism to phenomena is one of the characteristics that distinguishes professional journalistic work, it is based on the assumption that, nowadays, this ability has intricate boundaries, since it is known that its practice is open to influences of a complex, networked, decentralized, accelerated, fluid media ecosystem that is characterized by the multiplication of the number of actors able to build the social reality. Taking the concept of cyberevent as starting point, the cyberevent breaking news builds the mentioned intensification theoretically, offering possibilities to approach it empirically. This construction is splited in two movements. The first one develops the theoretical-methodological proposal itself. It does this by creating interfaces with the Actor-Network Theory (ANT), with the Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of rhizome, with the cartography method and with content curation practice. The goal is to architect the anatomy and dynamics of the evenemential process of an extraordinary event when it happens in a network. The second one quests subsidies to sustain the cyberevent breaking news in the recent journalism theory. For this, 75 articles published over a period of ten years (2007-2016) in the journals Journalism, Journalism Practice and Digital Journalism are analyzed. This analysis traces an evolution of the expression "breaking news" in the contemporaneity observing the discussions that appears in its orbit. Such discussions feed and contextualize the characteristics of the cyberevent breaking news developed in the first effort. The understanding of the breaking news developed in this thesis suggests a process of dispersion and reconcentration of journalistic practices, in a movement that indicates the expansion of the journalism boundaries.

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the most impactful crises in recent times, with severe implications for people around the globe. Since its beginnings in late 2019, the crisis has been closely monitored by news media, which function as one of the primary information sources for the public. This study looks at the many different challenges the COVID-19 pandemic has brought upon journalism and how journalists reporting on the pandemic have been experiencing them. The project is based on the central premise that journalism holds an especially important position within the socio-political make-up of democratic societies, and employs the social responsibility theory of the press to argue that journalists should act with responsibility to the public in mind and stick to generally agreed on professional values. It further assumes, based on previous research, that a crisis calls for increased social responsibility but at the same time creates challenges for journalists, which put their ability to adhere to established standards at risk. To determine, which challenges of this sort journalists have experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic and how these have manifested, a series of semi-structured interviews has been conducted with German journalists who have been involved in reporting on the pandemic. The results show that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused major disruptions to newsrooms and has proven challenging to journalists in various ways regarding their work routines, physical safety, and emotional labour, which at times even put their ability to perform expected professional roles in jeopardy. This project adds to a growing body of research on COVID-19 from a journalism studies perspective, which can help determine grievances for the profession that need to be addressed and provide points of departure on how to deal with and prepare for future crises.