Breaking news implies that something urgent, important and newsworthy happened, assuming that viewers will be more curious about this event. As the mass media have continued to develop, the form of breaking news also keeps on changing. Today, the internet plays a primary role as a platform of breaking news. With online news services providing a plethora of real-time breaking news to audiences, there is a concern that online breaking news has little news value. Some scholars warned that the increase in the number of breaking news would finally impoverish the quality of journalism. Thus, this study tried to ascertain the credibility of online breaking news. This study conducted a 2 (news with/without breaking label) ⅹ 2 (high and low news value) factorial-designed experiment. The result of the experiment suggested that neither breaking news label nor newsworthiness would not increase or decrease the credibility rating. It would be possible to assume that there was no effect of such two components because audiences have already grown accustomed to the prevalence of the label breaking news and continual update of the headline of online news. Journalists might arbitrarily label specific news as breaking news, but they would keep in mind that calling something “breaking news” neither helps nor hurts. / text

The study analyzed a convenience sample of published accounts of death penalty cases and life without parole cases. The objective of the study was to explore factors that influence the selection of cases for coverage in books, think tank reports (e.g., Heritage Foundation), and periodicals and factors related to coverage of homicides resulting in a death penalty sentence or a life without parole sentence (often termed “America’s other death penalty”). Since this study was exploratory, hypotheses were not offered. However, prior research on the death penalty and on life without parole offered several clues. For example, since black offender/white victim homicides were more likely to result in a death penalty sentence, it was expected that such homicides would more likely to be covered. Since conservatives were more likely to favor the death penalty and liberals were likely to oppose it, it was expected that coverage would vary by how conservative or liberal the coverage source. For example, how the Heritage Foundation covered cases was expected to be different from coverage by Human Rights Watch. In summary, my study revealed opposite results of previous research studies. The results of my study are probably skewed because of the small sample size. A bigger sample size would more than likely resulted in more accurate and reliable results.

Syftet med undersökningen är att analysera varifrån nyheterna har sitt ursprung och hur återanvändandet av nyheter ser ut i fyra av de största riksmedierna under en arbetsvecka. De fyra medier som ingår i undersökningen är Svenska Dagbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Sveriges Televisions Rapport och Sveriges Radios Ekot. I undersökningen ingår 356 analysenheter och det är en kvantitativ undersökning. För att förstå och analysera resultatet har teorierna gatekeeping, mediernas kommersialisering och nyhetsvärdering använts. Undersökningens resultat visade bland annat att 27 procent av analysenheterna består av köpt eller kopierat material från nyhetsbyråer eller material som är omskrivet från andra medier. Undersökningen visar också att det är stora skillnader mellan olika medietyper. Den största andelen material från nyhetsbyråer kom från tidningarna Dagens Nyheter och Svenska Dagbladet (såväl procentuellt som i absoluta tal). Både Ekot och Rapport hade en betydligt lägre frekvens byråmaterial som de hänvisade till. Såväl radio- som tv-materialet är det ofta svårt att hitta ursprunget till, därför faller mycket material under ”går ej att avgöra”.