Search Results (625)

The framing of water infrastructure in the news influences how the public perceives future infrastructure development and associated social-environmental risks. This study examines English-language newspaper coverage of the Ken-Betwa river link, the first component of India’s National River Linking Program (INRLP) to receive approval. Data for this analysis comprised 316 newspaper articles, collected via a keyword search in LexisNexis API, from seven Indian English-language newspapers (Free Press Journal (India), Hindustan Times, Indian Express, The Economic Times, The Hindu, The Times of India (TOI), and Times of India (Electronic Edition)) published between 2004 and 2022. By applying LDA topic modeling, a type of generative probabilistic model, to this dataset, this study examines how evolving media narratives frame water infrastructure in India. Our results identify 23 distinct topics and three dominant frames: (1) a government policy frame, (2) INRLP comparative frame, and (3) environmental conservation frame. We find that these frames evolve, with early coverage emphasizing feasibility and government-led negotiations, and later articles highlighting environmental risks. Our analysis shows how media discourse reflects institutional logic and infrastructure milestones. This study demonstrates the value of computational methods for longitudinal media analysis, has the potential to reveal shifts in public discourse, and highlights power dynamics in environmental reporting. Full article

Expatriates and missionaries in China played a significant role in the development and transformation of Chinese architecture in the Late Qing period. However, a systematic comparison of their discourses and proposals on Chinese architecture has been hindered by a lack of historical literature and the complexities of fragmented data and methodologies. This article examines and compares the two most influential non-native newspapers: The North-China Daily News in English, edited by expatriates, and The Review of the Times in Chinese, founded by missionaries. By analyzing these two groups’ discourses and narratives on Chinese architecture, the study explores their similarities and distinctions, revealing the characteristics, strategies, attitudes, interests, and opinions of expatriates, missionaries, and non-missionaries in China on the transmission and transformation of architecture knowledge. The research highlights differences in their preferences for specific text types, subjects, and themes on Chinese architecture, as well as their attitudes toward native and foreign architecture, professional education, and architecture regulations in individual and official spheres. Despite these differences, overlapping characteristics and proposals existed among the three groups. The study further investigates the underlying reasons and mechanisms for their similar or divergent mindsets and behavioral patterns, drawing on human responsive psychology rather than relying on postcolonial or cultural theories. Full article

Putin’s Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and launched a massive invasion of Ukraine in 2022. This study is predicated on framing theory, which posits that the media contribute to the creation of individuals’ perceived reality. We analyzed how the European press presented Russian President Vladimir Putin during both episodes. Content analysis was used to examine a sample of 1009 opinion articles and editorials published in two leading newspapers in each of the five largest European economies. Subsequently, we quantified the frequency of the predominant frames as well as the tone (positive, neutral, or negative) the articles struck towards Putin. The results show that many more articles were published in 2022 than in 2014, and that the degree of negative views of Putin is also more pronounced in 2022. In both instances, historical motives were most often employed to frame Putin’s actions, such as Putin’s urge to reassert Russian influence in the former Soviet space and his reaction to the alleged lack of recognition of Russia as a superpower. Full article

This research analyzes the discourses and narratives surrounding the platform tourism economy in a highly touristified city, using Madrid as a case study. Rather than focusing on the socio-economic or spatial transformations themselves, the study examines how these processes are discussed, identifying the discursive strategies employed by different actors and ideologies, along with the power relations embedded in these narratives. A corpus of literature was compiled from twelve newspapers with varying ideological orientations and categorized according to political stance, access mode, and ideological radicalism. Using the LancsBox concordancer, a quantitative analysis was conducted to identify key discursive categories and preferred lexical items across ideological positions. These findings informed a subsequent in-depth qualitative analysis aimed at uncovering the rationalities behind each discourse: who speaks, how, and with what intent. The results reveal a dominant left-wing narrative that emphasizes institutional and economic mechanisms underlying platform tourism, highlighting associated social and urban harms. In contrast, conservative and liberal narratives are divided into two strands: a ‘heretic’ discourse that promotes and defends this new economic model, but also its urban results (e.g., gentrification), and a more institutional narrative framing platform tourism as inevitable and benign, thereby concealing the underlying structures of power. Full article

This study examines content curation on the front pages of four Spanish digital newspapers: two legacy media outlets, El País and La Vanguardia, and two purely digital, elDiario.es and El Español. This exploratory and unprecedented research aims to understand the characteristics of front-page news curation in digital press in terms of themes, authorship and genre, origin and temporal range of curated content, types of sources used, the function of curated links, and techniques employed to add value to the presented information. The CAS (Curation Analysis System) methodology is used for content analysis of a selection of news items from different time slots and days of the week, following the constructed week method. The results provide a better understanding of the characteristics of curation on newspaper front pages, comparing them with other curation studies in journalistic products, such as media newsletters and live news. Full article

This study examines how major newspapers in South Korea and China portrayed national crisis management during the COVID-19 pandemic. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative content analysis with qualitative interpretation, this study systematically analyzes news frames and editorial tones across various phases. The qualitative analysis further clarifies the quantitative results. Editorials from The Chosun Daily, Hankyoreh, People’s Daily, and Ming Pao covering the period from 1 January 2020, to 31 March 2023, were reviewed. The research categorizes the pandemic into three distinct phases: the global spread of COVID-19, vaccine rollout, and living with the virus. It applies three news frames: crisis response, international relations, and responsibility attribution. In the initial phase, most newspapers focused on the crisis response frame, highlighting national mobilization and social solidarity. Notably, The Chosun Daily emphasized the international relations frame with the strongest critical tone. The crisis response frame continued to dominate in the second phase, accompanied by an increasingly critical tone. In the final phase, as the pandemic began to stabilize, the international relations frame significantly declined due to fewer global differences in pandemic responses. The results suggest that the media’s portrayal is influenced by political orientation and approaches to crisis management perspectives. Full article

Coastal cities are increasingly exposed to the risks posed by climate change, including rising sea levels, intensified storms, and coastal erosion. In this context, risk communication plays a crucial role, as it can shape public perception, promote preparedness, and influence both emergency responses and long-term mitigation strategies. This study investigated how disaster-related risks are framed in the media, focusing on the case of Naples, Italy, following a severe coastal storm surge that struck the city’s waterfront on December 2020. Using Dynamic Latent Dirichlet Allocation (DLDA), the research analyzed 297 newspaper articles published between 2020 and 2024 to examine the evolution of media narratives over time. The findings reveal four dominant patterns: (1) a prevailing economic discourse centered on financial damages and compensations, with limited references to resilience planning; (2) a temporal framing that presents the storm as a sudden, exceptional event, disconnected from historical precedents or future climate projections; (3) a lack of emphasis on the social experiences and vulnerabilities of local residents; and (4) minimal discussion of tourists’ exposure to risk, despite their presence in high-impact areas. These results highlight key limitations of media-driven risk communication and underscore the need for more inclusive, forward-looking narratives to support urban resilience and climate adaptation in coastal cities. This research offers valuable insights for urban planners, policymakers, journalists, and disaster risk reduction professionals, helping them to better align communication strategies with long-term adaptation goals and the needs of diverse urban populations. Full article

This study examines the impact of economic policy uncertainty (EPU) on agricultural land conversion. Using a newspaper-based index of EPU and a comprehensive panel dataset covering 270 prefecture-level cities in China, we estimate a city fixed effects model to explore this relationship. Our results indicate that a one-standard-deviation increase in EPU leads to a 22.2% increase in the conversion of agricultural land to urban residential, commercial, and industrial uses. This finding suggests that the surge in EPU triggered by the global financial crisis accounts for approximately 45% of the increase in agricultural land conversion. The adverse effect on agricultural land preservation mainly stems from intensified fiscal pressures and heightened demands on local governments to meet economic growth targets. To address potential endogeneity concerns, we employ the one-period lagged U.S. EPU index and its temporal variations as an instrument for China’s EPU, leveraging cross-country spillover effects. Our instrumental variable estimates confirm the validity of the land conversion effect and its underlying mechanisms. Furthermore, we find that the effects of EPU are particularly pronounced in cities located in non-eastern China and those that depend heavily on fixed asset investment for local economic development. Finally, our analysis of potential policy interventions to mitigate EPU-induced agricultural land loss suggests that strengthening market-oriented reforms and reducing province-level quotas on agricultural land conversion can effectively offset the impact of rising EPU. Full article

This research conducts a comparative content analysis of two leading English-language newspapers, The Kathmandu Post and Rising Nepal, to examine the media framing of China’s cultural and educational diplomacy in Nepal. This study employs a frame analysis methodology alongside a qualitative content analysis approach to systematically examine thirty news items published from 2021 to early 2025. Key themes were coded and examined based on frequency and contextual framing, including cultural interaction, Chinese language promotion, Confucius Institute coverage, education diplomacy, and geopolitical alignment. Rising Nepal demonstrates a clear state-centric editorial stance, frequently articulating a supportive tone that emphasizes bilateral collaboration, strategic partnership, and mutual growth, thereby highlighting a significant contrast in representational patterns. This research argues that these contrasting frames signify underlying ideological and geopolitical affiliations, rather than merely editorial choices. This research contributes to the expanding body of literature on soft power, media and culture diplomacy, and the geopolitics of influence in South Asia by integrating media framing theory with qualitative analysis. Full article

Herein, we address the peculiar lack of scientific reporting on odor potent chloroanisoles (CAs) in the built environment. We have searched and critically examined sources beyond peer-reviewed scientific journals, namely research conferences, parliamentary records, newspaper articles, and cartoons. We provide evidence that CAs evolved on a large scale in Swedish buildings in the early 1970s and evoked a typical sticky malodor that was attributed to mold and gave rise to the term “mold houses”. The term first appeared in Swedish newspapers in 1978, and the media attention increased rapidly. The malodorous “mold houses” reached the Swedish parliament and led to economic compensation for afflicted homeowners. The “mold houses” became “sick houses” as researchers, predominantly from Sweden, introduced and became world leaders on the “sick buildings syndrome” (SBS). Researchers became aware of the CAs but did not mention them in peer-reviewed articles, just as they did not mention a well-known source of the sticky malodor, namely, legacy preserved wood where CAs were formed through microbial methylation of toxic chlorophenols (CPs). Thus, the mold story from the early 1970s was maintained and prevented the malodorous CAs from becoming recognized as indicators of the presence of hazardous CPs. Our study is the first to report the impact of an indoor malodor, not only on a few people, but on society. Full article

This paper explores how sound design in the Harry Potter film series shapes the symbolic significance of written words within the magical world. Sound mediates between language and meaning; while characters gain knowledge by reading and seeing, viewers are guided emotionally and thematically by how these written texts are framed through sound. For example, Harry’s magical identity is signalled to viewers through the score long before he fully understands himself—first through music when he speaks to a snake, then more explicitly when he receives his letter from Hogwarts. Throughout the series, characters engage with a wide array of written media—textbooks, letters, newspapers, diaries, maps, and inscriptions—that gradually shift in narrative function, from static props to dynamic, multi-sensory agents of transformation. Using a close analysis of selected scenes to examine layers of utterances, diegetic sounds, underscore, and sound design, this study draws on metaphor theory and adaptation theory to examine how sound design gives writing a metaphorical voice, sometimes framing it as character, landscape, or moral authority. As the series progresses, becoming more autonomous from the literary source, written words take on greater symbolic significance, and sound increasingly determines which texts are granted narrative power, whose voices are trusted, and how viewers interpret truth and agency across media. Ultimately, written words in the films are animated through sound into agents of growth, memory, resistance, and transformation. Thus, the audio-visual treatment of written magic reveals not just what is written, but what matters. Full article

One in four students in the United States is part of an immigrant family. The purpose of this study is to enhance our understanding of the barriers that immigrant students experience in US public schools by critically analyzing how newspapers portray barriers to success, as the goals and processes used in media differ from those of peer-reviewed research. The authors used a document analysis, a qualitative research methodology, and reviewed 67 newspaper articles on immigrant children struggling in US schools. The results show that immigrant students struggle with language barriers, discrimination, mental health, financial stress associated with higher education in the US, lack of preparedness and resources to provide education, lack of familiarity with policy, lack of cultural knowledge about the US, lack of parent involvement, and work and familial obligations. Results also indicate that newspapers published more articles about immigrant struggles during certain time periods, such as Spring 2015 through Winter 2016 and again Summer 2020 through Spring 2021. The paper provides implications for (1) research, suggesting a need for more qualitative primary data collection, (2) practice, including enhanced training, improved mental health referrals and collaborations, and (3) policy, which could include welcoming policies at the school level and advocacy efforts for immigrant student rights under the incoming presidential administration. Full article

This study investigated how the front-page designs of digital newspapers differ based on institutional origin—comparing platforms that were born-digital with those that have transitioned from print—focusing specifically on their appeal to Generation Z audiences. Grounded in Media Richness Theory, this research employed a mixed-methods approach that combined a quantitative visual content analysis with qualitative semi-structured interviews. In the quantitative phase, the front pages of ten Saudi digital newspapers (five digital-native and five digital-migrant) were systematically analyzed to identify differences in their layouts, typography, multimedia usage, and interactivity. The qualitative phase then explored Generation Z users’ perceptions of the design clarity, visual engagement, and interactive affordances, as well as their suggestions for improving interface usability. The results indicate that digital-native newspapers more closely adhere to contemporary digital design standards and demonstrate significantly higher levels of media richness. This study contributes to digital journalism scholarship by offering both theoretical insights into interface-centered richness and practical design recommendations for enhancing user experience and engagement among younger audiences. Full article

Sport and sports communication is growing. Sport is an integral part of (everyday) communication in both traditional and so-called new media. Digitalization poses major challenges for sports journalism. In connection with the changing media consumption, the crisis of the majority of print media and the increasing globalization and standardization of sports at the international level, this applies above all to daily newspapers. In addition, sports newsrooms have been described as “toy departments”. This paper discusses the findings of the 2021 International Sports Press Survey (ISPS) on the current state of the quality of sports reporting in daily newspaper and confronts these findings with the results of the 2011 study. Against the backdrop of quality journalism based on diversity, the quantitative content analysis examines 6614 articles from eight countries. The 2021 ISPS results highlighted several key findings regarding the quality and diversity of sports journalism. These included the persistent underrepresentation of women as both authors and protagonists in sports reporting, a focus on current events over in-depth research, and a limited use of sources. However, when compared to data from a decade ago, there is evidence of a slight positive trend towards increased diversity and improved quality in sports journalism. Full article

A representative sample of Maltese citizens (N = 384) was surveyed about their perception and attitude towards animal welfare and animal-friendly foods. Knowledge about animal welfare was self-evaluated as moderate (36%) or good (27%), and mass media (television, web and newspapers) were the primary information source (73%). Dairy cows were perceived as having the highest welfare (average rating 3 on a 1-to-5 scale), while conditions for broilers and pigs were perceived as more critical (average rating 2.7). Respondents consider animal welfare important (64%), the availability of welfare-friendly products in Malta limited (49%), and would support a national animal-friendly label (84%). Although 49% were willing to pay more for animal-friendly products, the accepted price increase was limited (increase below 10% for 37% of respondents, 20% were not willing to pay more and 27% were price-sensitive). Chi-squared analysis showed that the respondents’ profession impacted the support towards an animal welfare label (p < 0.01), with business operators being the least interested. Urban respondents were more critical toward farm animal welfare and more supportive of establishing a national welfare label than rural respondents (p < 0.05). The latter were less convinced that their choices can influence the welfare of farm animals (p < 0.01). Women were more willing to pay for welfare improvements than men (p < 0.01). These findings emphasize a significant concern for animal welfare among respondents, coupled with a moderate willingness to pay. The strong support for a national animal welfare label warrants the question as to whether transparent labelling would allow consumers to translate their sensibility into ethical purchasing behaviour. Full article