Comparing levels of mediatization in television journalism: An analysis of political reporting on US and UK evening news bulletins

This comparative content analysis study (N = 946) examines how far political news is mediatized in the US and UK by systematically exploring the conventions used in television news bulletins. According to many of our mediatization of politics indicators – which included sound and imagebites, lip fla...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The international communication gazette 2014-10, Vol.76 (6), p.443-463
Main Authors: Cushion, Stephen, Rodger, Hugh, Lewis, Rachel
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Broadcasting
Commercialization
Comparative analysis
Content analysis
Conventions
Democracy
Evening
Freedom
Interventionism
Journalism
Journalists
Methodology (Data Collection)
News
Political communication
Politics
Precursors
Public Services
Television
Television news
U.S.A
United Kingdom
United States of America
Wrapping
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:This comparative content analysis study (N = 946) examines how far political news is mediatized in the US and UK by systematically exploring the conventions used in television news bulletins. According to many of our mediatization of politics indicators – which included sound and imagebites, lip flaps, journalistic visibility, ‘wrapping up’, live and interpretive news – broadcasters with the most public service responsibilities supplied the highest level of mediatized political news. Our study thus appears to challenge conventional academic wisdom that US journalistic interventionism is greater than other advanced Western democracies and that enhanced commercialization is a precursor to higher degrees of mediatization. We suggest that the form, structure and style of journalism should be understood more carefully by scholars when making sense of how far news is mediatized, since the greater length of UK television news conventions and the ability to ‘go live’ longer allowed journalists greater freedom to interpret politics.
ISSN:1748-0485
1748-0493
DOI:10.1177/1748048514533860