Determinants of Stories’ Prominence of Coverage in the News
Analyzing Coverage of the Netherlands in Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten
Zoé T. C. Verkaik 10097880 Master’s Thesis University of Amsterdam Graduate School of Communication Master’s Programme Communication Science
Supervisor: Judith Möller June 26th, 2014
Abstract
Various strands of research have examined what makes events newsworthy and what determines their prominence of coverage in the news. News value theory is the most dominant theory in the field, justifying the selection of news and the prominence of coverage of certain stories in the news with particular factors of newsworthiness of events. Based on this theory, this research looks into which factors determine the coverage of news concerned with the Netherlands and the Dutch Kingdom’s prominence in Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten’s newspapers. In particular, the type of event that a story revolves around, as well as the moderating effect of the type of actor that the events concern, are examined. Specifically, this research aims to answer: Does the type of actor that an event revolves around moderate the relationship between the type of event covered and its prominence of coverage in the news? Through a content analysis, the prominence of coverage of articles about the Netherlands published in the Daily Herald was measured. A two-way factorial ANOVA was then conducted with the data. It was found that although there is no strong moderating effect of types of actors on the relationship between types of events and the prominence of coverage of a story, there is still a clear main effect of the type of event on the prominence of coverage.
Determinants of Stories’ Prominence of Coverage in the News
Analyzing Coverage of the Netherlands in Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten
The world is in constant movement. All kinds of events and stories continuously occur in every corner of each street. Yet only a fraction of these happenings are communicated to the world through the news media (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Eijlders, 2006). What determines which of these events are actually covered in the news? How are news stories selected to be included in the news?
As has been established by numerous studies, journalistic news has the ability to
significantly influence public opinion about foreign nations (Brewer, Graf, & Willnat, 2003; Wu, 2003). Considering its powerful effect on the public opinion, what news purposefully chooses to focus upon is important to examine and understand. Scholars have analyzed multiple ways through which the news can play a role in affecting the public opinion, especially of foreign nations. Amongst others, these ways include: unrepresentative news (Perry, 1985; Perry, 1987), different tones of coverage (Fogarty, 2005; Eshbaugh-Soha, 2010; Haller & Norpoth, 1997; Shah, Watts, Domke, Fan, & Fibison, 1999; Stein, 1975), and the news media’s agenda setting
(Scheufele & Tweksbury, 2007).
Agenda setting underlines the relevance of this paper. It refers to the news media’s ability to affect the public opinion through its own agenda, namely which stories it chooses to focus on. In other words, it is the idea that there is a strong relation between what the media emphasizes and what its audience finds important (Scheufele & Tweksbury, 2007). Consequently, given that the media’s agenda sets the public’s agenda, it is highly relevant to look into what determines the
news media’s choices of selection and prominence, namely how much attention it chooses to award each story.
Numerous strands of research have investigated what influences the media’s agenda, the most dominant one of which being the news value theory (Eilders, 2006). News value theory justifies the prominence of coverage of certain stories in the news by pointing towards particular factors of newsworthiness in stories and events. In short, according to the news value theory, the media will cover an occurrence on the basis of certain characteristics of the story, namely
newsworthiness factors. The most commonly studied news values range from ‘negativity’ to ‘conflict’ and ‘relevance’ (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; McGregor, 2002; Shoemaker, Danielian, & Brendlinger, 1991).
This paper will be an addition to the field of news value theory in the form of a case study. It will specifically look at the case of three ex-colonial Dutch Caribbean islands’ –Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten– news media’s coverage of news about the Netherlands. It will investigate the relationship between types of events that are covered by the news and the
prominence of the events’ coverage, as well as the moderating effect of the type of actor an event revolves around. Generally, it will aim to examine which factors determine the coverage of news concerned with the Netherlands and the Dutch Kingdom’s prominence in Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten’s newspapers. This specific case relates to news value theory clearly and ideally, as news value theory will be important to understand and rationalize the relationship between types of events and their prominence in the news.
Numerous studies have been conducted to find which specific factors make an occurrence worthy of being covered prominently in the news (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Schulz, 1976; Bekius, 2003; Shoemaker et al., 1991; McGregor, 2002). Nevertheless, few
studies have looked at it in terms of differences between types of events specifically. Instead of looking at types of events, research usually looks at characteristics of events, meaning that they only look at one type of event and compare different traits of the same type of event. Thus, although news value theory has looked at events’ characteristics, the specific examination of the effect of the type of event covered is rather unexplored in the field of communication.
Furthermore, this paper will analyze the moderating effect of the type of main actor of the event, in order to answer the research question: Does the type of actor that an event revolves around moderate the relationship between the type of event covered and its prominence of coverage in the news?
Various established news values and a body of research applying newsworthiness factors have implied that the inclusion of a notable and definite main actor of an event will matter to the prominence of coverage it is awarded by the news media (Tresch, 2012; Danielian & Page, 1994; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001). Others have looked into the influence of certain characteristics of the main actor, such as its level of authority, its economic and political relation to the publishing nation, or its political ideology (Tresch, 2012; Gans, 1979; Danielian & Page, 1994; Lee, 2007; Wu, 2003). However, researchers have not yet focused on contrasting the effects of different types of main actors, in terms of their nature (e.g. humans, nations, or
institutions) rather than their characteristics. Although nature is in essence a characteristic in itself, research seems to solely investigate the news that already possesses a certain type of main actor, often when this is a person, and then compare the influence of traits of this actor (Tresch, 2013; Hayes & Guardino, 2010). This paper will take it a step back, and investigate whether the fact that an article prominently revolves around a concrete main actor influences its prominence
in the news. Furthermore, it will compare two types of main actors, namely persons versus institutions, to parallel their effect on events’ prominence of coverage in the news.
The first section of this paper will consist of the theoretical background of the research – mainly pertaining to the field of news value theory¬–, as well as a theoretical rationale to
logically introduce the research’s hypotheses. The study’s variables will then be conceptualized, and the methodology of the research will be elaborated upon. Lastly, the results of the study will then be presented, leading to the conclusion of the research aimed at answering the initial
research question.
Theoretical Rationale News Value Theory
The essential theoretical rationale behind this research’s main relationships is based on news value theory, which attempts to define and establish what makes an event newsworthy, and examines to which events the news media is likely to pay attention (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; McGregor, n.d.; Shoemaker et al., 1991; Braun, 2009; Sande, 1971). As journalists cannot cover all happenings daily, how do they choose which events to include in the news? How do they determine how much space they will award a story? Several perspectives have been offered to answer these questions. Firstly, some scholars have examined the
psychological rationale behind journalistic choices of events (Donsbach, 2004), looking at the journalists rather than at the events. Another strand of research, namely the theory of news values –often also referred to as factors of newsworthiness–, has looked at characteristics of stories instead (Shoemaker et al., 1991; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001). This is the most prominent approach to understanding news selection and what news focuses most upon
(Eilders, 2006). Within this perspective and field of research, many studies have shown that occurrences that meet certain factors or criteria of newsworthiness receive most prominent news coverage (Lee, 2009; Lee & Choi, 2009; Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Shoemaker et al., 1991). Ultimately, according to these studies, news values pertaining to an event predict the extent to which the media will cover it –if at all–.
News value theory is certainly not a new field of research. As early as 1922, Lippmann was already writing about factors of newsworthiness and laying the basic idea for further developments of the theory (Lippmann, 1922; Donsbach, 2004). A few decades later, in 1965, Galtung and Ruge, introduced the first list of specific factors of newsworthiness, attempting to define what it takes for a foreign event to become news, and to be covered prominently in the news. These scholars soon became the ‘founding fathers’ of the news value theory, establishing that twelve different values determine an event’s likelihood of becoming news. These factors include: (1) frequency, namely the time it takes for an event to unfold; (2) threshold, referring to the intensity of the event; (3) unambiguity, meaning the clarity of the event; (4) meaningfulness, the cultural similarity of the event; (5) consonance, when the event corresponds to the audience’s expectations; (6) unexpectedness, an element of surprise and rarity; (7) continuity, the
development of an event that is already familiar and has caught the audience’s interest; (8) composition, a balance of different types of news to reflect the news medium’s desired composition of news; (9) reference to elite nations, although this is self-speaking, the elite nations may differ per country and culture; (10) reference to elite people, once more, elite people may be perceived differently in distinct cultures; (11) reference to persons; and (12) reference to something negative (Galtung & Ruge, 1965).
Galtung and Ruge (1965)’s work is still considered highly relevant. However, other studies have been conducted to further investigate the news selection process and factors of newsworthiness further (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; McGregor, 2002; Braun, 2009; Kheirabadi & Aghagolzadeh, 2012; Shoemaker et al., 1991). For instance, Harcup and O’Neill (2001) critically revised Galtung and Ruge (1965)’s work, attempting to adjust it to a more contemporary set of news values. By applying and examining Galtung and Ruge (1965)’s twelve newsworthiness factors to UK newspapers, Harcup and O’Neill (2001) proposed a new list of ten news values – some overlapping with Galtung and Ruge (1965)’s criteria, such as magnitude and bad news, while some are rather novel such as celebrity, entertainment, and good news.
Moreover, numerous other studies have added and are continuously adding novel news factors to the list, such as personalisation, negativism, factuality (Schulz, 1976 and Kepplinger & Bouwen, 2000, taken from Donsbach, 2004), competition (Bekius, 2003), deviance and different types of significance (Shoemaker et al., 1991), as well as visualness, emotion, conflict, and the ‘celebrification’ of the journalist (McGregor, n.d.). Other studies verify the established news values by applying them to real world cases (Braun, 2009; Kheirabadi & Aghagolzadeh, 2012; Lee & Choi, 2009; Sande, 1971). Ultimately, much research has been and is being conducted around the news and factors of newsworthiness, and various news values have been studied and established to be relevant. A number of these values will form the theoretical framework of this paper, as will be elaborated upon below.
Type of Event
Although research has been conducted to investigate specific characteristics of stories that determine the extent to which they will be covered in the news, as illustrated above, it has
yet to be established whether specific types of events (e.g. political, cultural, or economic) are more likely to be prominently covered than others. Distinguishing between the prominence of certain types of events would correlate greatly with the news values of previous studies, as it is in a way an application and verification of several values. Factors of newsworthiness will hence make the basic theoretical rationale behind the differentiation of types of events. In the case of the Dutch Caribbean islands’ coverage of events concerned with the Netherlands and the Dutch Kingdom, a couple of news values apply.
The principal of these applicable newsworthiness factors is ‘meaningfulness’ (Galtung & Ruge, 1965), otherwise covered by other scholars as ‘significance’ (Shoemaker et al., 1991), or ‘relevance’ (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001). These refer to an event’s inclusion of cultural proximity. This means that the more familiar occurrences will be awarded more attention. It moreover refers to stories about issues, groups, and nations that are relevant to the nation of the publishing
newspaper and to its audience. In this sense, an event in a culturally remote nation may still be meaningful, through a relevant pattern of conflict for instance (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). Moreover, a meaningful story is likely to be consequential to the publishing nation.
To understand how this is relevant in this case study, it is important to look at the current state of affairs between the three islands and the Netherlands. The Netherlands and the Caribbean islands of Aruba, Curacao, and Sint Maarten share a long history of colonial ties (Oostindie, 2005). To this day, the nations continue to be bound by obligations, mostly based on treaties and agreements (‘New Constitutional Order’, n.d.). In fact, the last few years have been rather important for the three islands to develop as independent nations.
On the 10th of October 2010, Curacao and Sint Maarten acquired a new status, making the three islands autonomous countries within the Kingdom of the Netherlands – Aruba had
acquired an autonomous status prior to 10/10/10 – and hence, to a much greater extent than previously, independent from the Dutch government (‘New Constitutional Order’, n.d.). Since 10/10/10, the islands thus have their own governments. However, despite this increase in independence, the Netherlands has the obligation to continue assisting the islands in numerous ways during the transitional period of governmental independence. The assistance ranges from economic, legislative, welfare, and political support, and continues to take place today (‘Role of the Netherlands’, n.d.). The Netherlands offers assistance to and collaborates with the nations in various ways, particularly with regards to the justice system, the coast guard, and development funds. By sending qualified judges and public prosecutors to the three islands, the Netherlands assists in the necessary improvement of their justice system. The Netherlands moreover helps to combat drug –and human– trafficking, to keep border patrols, to supervise safe shipping, by playing an important part in financing and leading the Kingdom’s coastal guard. Moreover, the Netherlands provides the islands with several funds to help them develop positively into self-sustaining nations (‘Role of the Netherlands’, n.d.; ‘New Constitutional Order’, n.d.).
The Netherlands has met a great deal of its responsibility as an ex-colonial power until today. It firstly paid the majority of the islands’ debt in 2010, to give the newly autonomous nations a less challenging financial start (‘Role of the Netherlands’, n.d.). As mentioned it moreover supports –whether financially or through the provision of experts and supervision– the numerous changes in the islands, legislatively and socially. However, if the islands want to become autonomous and independent from the Netherlands, this reliance on Dutch support will have to decrease in the near future. At the same time, the Netherlands’ obligations to continue providing assistance to the islands will end soon (‘Role of the Netherlands’, n.d.). In fact, Dutch direct support to the three islands should have already stopped, but due to the islands’ inability to
keep to its own terms of the agreement, it remains in place today. The dis-attachment of the islands to the Netherlands will have to take place relatively soon though, which carries many potential risks for the islands. They will not be able to rely on financial aid to the same extent anymore, and will not be able to point to the colonial treaty for help in case of lowering of standards of living and wellbeing (‘New Constitutional Order’, n.d.).
Due to the islands and the Netherlands’ long history of colonial ties and their current state of affairs, the main news value that applies to their coverage of the Netherlands is that of
‘meaningfulness’. In particular, ‘meaningfulness’ applies to political and economic news in the Netherlands. It does apply to other types of events as well, but is most important at this point in time to political and economic events today as, considering their current relationship, they can potentially have a significant impact on their future as autonomous nations. For instance,
political events about new policies or new elections can directly influence them in the sense that they could change their relationship to the Netherlands. Similarly, economic news about the Netherlands can have great impact on the islands, as the economies of the islands and of the Netherlands are interdependent as well. A loss to the Netherlands can be a great loss to Aruba, Sint Maarten, and Curacao.
Although the general value of ‘meaningfulness’ applies, the more specific values of ‘political significance’ and ‘economic significance’ (Shoemaker et al., 1991) do as well.
Shoemaker et al. (1991) have found that events that show ‘economic significance’ and ‘political significance’ will be covered more prominently that those that have ‘cultural significance’, primarily due to their more direct consequences to the islands. This first part of the research, namely the analysis of the relationship between the type of event and the prominence of coverage the event receives, will hence apply and test Shoemaker et al. (1991)’s theory of
‘political and economic significance’, as well as the various other scholars’ notion of ‘meaningfulness’ and ‘relevance’ (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001), by examining the difference of prominence between different types of events in the news.
According to the news values mentioned and the current state of affairs between the Netherlands and the Caribbean islands, political and economic events are likely to be more meaningful than others –cultural events in particular – leading to the following hypothesis:
H1: Events that are most meaningful to the publishing media’s nation will be covered most prominently by the media. Hence, political and economic events that concern the Netherlands will be covered more prominently in the islands’ media than news about cultural events and other types of events that revolve around the Netherlands.
Type of Actor
After examining the relationship between the types of event covered and the prominence of coverage they are awarded, this research will continue by investigating the moderating effect of the type of main actor the news revolves around. Research in the field of news value theory has indicated various factors of newsworthiness that are directly related to the main actor in the story (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Shoemaker et al., 1991). Several news values established over the years suggest that the main actors of events will determine the newsworthiness of the event and the prominence of coverage it is awarded (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Shoemaker et al., 1991; McGregor, 2002). The following factors of newsworthiness relate to the event’s main actor:
- ‘Reference to persons’: This value refers to the ability of a story to be seen in personal terms. It is now also referred to as ‘personification’ (Galtung & Ruge, 1965).
- ‘People stories’: Stories that cover ordinary people acting in unusual situation, or unordinary people acting in ordinary situations. For instance, the USA president going on vacation with his family would have a people story value to it (Gans, 1979).
- ‘Human interest stories’: These are people story that evoke emotion in the readers (Gans, 1979).
- ‘Reference to elite people’: Coverage is likely to be awarded to stories concerning people that are already famous, such as politicians for instance. This value increases the news value of an event as well (Galtung & Ruge, 1965).
- ‘Celebrity’: Stories concerning ‘celebrities’ will be more likely to be covered than those who do not (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001).
- ‘The Power Elite’: Through the ‘power elite’ news value, stories revolving around powerful individuals, organizations, and/or institutions will be more newsworthy and prominent in the news (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001).
- ‘Elite Nations’: Elite nations’ actions are more consequential than other nations’, and hence stories concerning them will be more covered more prominently (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). Kariel and Rosenvall (1984) touch upon this notion as well, labeling it ‘eliteness of nations’.
Further research has also found that media tends to be biased towards certain actors (Tresch, 2012; Danielian & Page, 1994; Hayes & Guardino, 2010). Often, high ranking political actors and organizations that are rich in resources will be covered more prominently than other actors, as their actions are likely to be more directly influential to the readers (Telsch, 2012; Gans, 1979). Moreover, it was found that economically influential voices are presented more prominently (Danielian & Page, 1994), and that actors that share newspapers’ ideologies will be dominantly present in the news (Hayes & Guardino, 2010). In addition, studies have found that,
when it comes to actors such as nations or institutions, volumes of trade between nations (Ahern, 1984; Wu, 2003), colonial ties between nations (Meyer, 1989), economic interactions between nations (Wu, 2003; Charles, Shore, & Todd, 1979), the presence of news agencies in nations (Wu, 2003), nations’ populations (Charles et al., 1979; Rosengren, 1977; Wu, 2003), and nations’ geographic proximity (Wu, 2003) are clear conductive determinants of nations’ prominence in foreign news.
Although this great body of literature solely looks at characteristics of certain actors, it makes clear that the type of actor that a story revolves around matters. The type of actor at the center of the story will influence the prominence of coverage of the event, hence implying that an actor will be important to the event’s prominence of coverage. This can be comprehended through man’s disfavor for abstractness. People simply prefer seeing a tangible actor to an event as it reduces the abstractness of the event itself (Galtung & Ruge, 1965), leading to the following hypothesis:
H2: Articles that notably revolve around a concrete main actor – whether an individual, a group of individuals, an institution, or a nation – will be more prominent than those that more abstractly do not possess a definite main actor.
As illustrated by this hypothesis, the body of research reviewed above implicitly shows that stories concerning notable concrete and definite actors will be more newsworthy. It
moreover determines which characteristics of certain actors define their prominence of coverage. However, it has yet to be established which type of actor is more powerful in affecting a story’s newsworthiness. This paper will attempt to make a first step in doing so.
The literature identifying different kinds of main actors can be divided into two groups with overlapping ‘themes’. The first group overall indicates that a story that revolves around a
person – or sometimes a group of individuals – is newsworthy and is likely to be covered prominently (See ‘reference to persons’, ‘celebrity’, ‘reference to elite people’, ‘people stories’, ‘human interest stories’, and ‘personification’) (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Gans, 1979). The second group indicates that news about (powerful) institutions and nations will be newsworthy and hence also covered prominently (See ‘elite nations’ and ‘the power elite’, the factors of ‘trade’, ‘population’, ‘eliteness of nations’, ‘presence of news agencies’, ‘colonial ties’, ‘economic interactions’) (Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Ahern, 1984; Wu, 2003; Charles et al., 1979; Rosengren, 1977). As institutions and nations are much larger and can often have much more impact on society than individuals, it could be logical to expect news that revolves around institutions or nations to be covered more prominently than news concerning individuals
(Kheirabadi & Aghagolzadeh, 2012). However, a strong psychological argument can be applied contrarily, and will make the opposing argument more logical. This will be applied to this research.
The psychological rationale behind hypothesizing that ‘concrete’ persons being at the center of the news will be more powerful, and their ability to increase stories’ newsworthiness and prominence is once more based on a natural tendency of man to be able to accord a concrete subject to each action (Galtung & Ruge, 1965). This holds for persons, institutions, nations, and other actors as well. However, stories that are concerned with people as main actors allow for the influential process of identification (Giles, 2003). This means that stories that revolve around persons, or perhaps small groups of persons, allow their audience to identify with the actors’ actions as humans (Gans, 1979), which cannot be the case with institutions or nations. It is hence an illustration of identification, a concept that refers to a psychological relation between
identification is likely to occur, as the reader of the news can identify with the main actor as a human being. Doing so, the reader can imagine the event’s main actor speaking and acting as is described in the article, and hence ultimately place himself or herself in the main actor’s shoes. This is a process of central imagination (Braddock, 2011) that is important to journalists, as it will catch the audience’s attention (Lee, 2009). Seeing that obtaining the audience’s attention is a commercial journalistic goal, and that identification increases the likelihood of audience’s
personal comprehension of and identification with the story, it will be hypothesized that
journalists are likely to place more prominent coverage on stories in which the main actor is an individual. Hence, it is expected that the moderating role of people as the main actors of a story is greater than that of institutions and nations. This paper will not take the profession, age, level of authority, or other characteristics of the individual actor itself into account. Doing so would only look at stories that already solely revolve around people or institutions, without contrasting the two types of main actors, and studies have already been conducted to analyze the influence of such individual characteristics (Telsch, 2012; Hayes & Guardino, 2010; Danielian & Page, 1994). Rather, this paper will take it a step back, to compare the influence of the inclusion of persons as main actors to that of institutions. To do so, the following hypothesis, based on the psychological idea of identification, will be tested:
H3: There is a moderating effect of the type of actor an event revolves around, which will make the main effect relationship stronger. An event will be covered more prominently if it clearly revolves around a person or group of persons.
By examining types of events and types of actors, as outlined by the three hypotheses, it will become clear what the media covers most prominently. Such knowledge is important to the subject of the stories – in this case, the Netherlands. To be able to understand which messages to
send to the media, and to hopefully have some sort of control over the media’s agenda, it is important for the Netherlands to know what newspapers report about the nation.
Method
A 4x4 two-way factorial Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was conducted to test all hypotheses at once. The choice of test was made according to the fact that the dependent variable is continuous, the independent variables are independent, and most importantly, the primary aim of this paper was to determine whether there is an interaction between the independent variables on the dependent one. Conducting an analysis of variance thus fit the objectives of the research (Agresti & Franklin, 2009). To conduct the test, the data was collected manually from printed newspapers, as will be explained below.
Measures
As indicated by the hypotheses, three relationships were tested. Firstly, the relationship of the main effect between the type of event that was covered in the article, and the article’s
prominence of coverage was assessed. Secondly, the moderating effect of a main actor was investigated, followed by the comparison of two types of actors: individuals and institutions. Dependent Variable: Prominence of coverage. For each of these hypotheses, the dependent variable of prominence of coverage was based on three factors, namely (1) the length of the story, (2) the position of the article, and (3) its ‘visualness’. The word count of each article indicated the length that it was given. The fact that it was published on the front page reflects it position in the newspaper, and whether it was accompanied by a visual – a picture, graph, or photograph – indicates its ‘visualness’. The combination of these three factors suggested the
prominence of the story. The dependent variable was hence a weighted variable, combining the three factors of length, front page, and visual aid. To account for the position of the article, the length was multiplied by two if the story was published on the front page of the newspaper. This was based on previous research’s operationalization of the visibility of institutions in the media (Boomgarden, Vliegenthart, de Vreese, & Schuck, 2010). Although previous studies further measured the visibility of the institution through the number of referrals to it in an article
(Boomgarden et al., 2010), this was less relevant to this research, as referring to Dutch people or Dutch things would count as referrals as well, besides referrals to the Netherlands as a nation. Hence, instead, another factor was taken into account to measure the prominence of coverage of an issue, namely visual aids. To do so, the product of the length and the position was multiplied by 1.5 if a visual aid such as a photograph, a drawing, or a graph accompanied the story. Multiple visual aids were not accounted for.
To summarize concisely: articles were weighted to account for their prominence in the newspaper through their length (word count), their position in the newspaper (word count x 2 if the article made the front page; word count x 1 if the article did not make the front page), and their accompaniment of a visual aid (word count x position x 1.5 if a photograph or picture accompanies the article). Ultimately, the prominence was hence measured as follows:
Prominence of coverage = length (word count) x position x visual aid
Type of event. The types of events that articles concerned were categorized as (1) political, (2) economic, (3) cultural, and (4) other. ‘Political’ events were those that referred to political
occurrences in the Netherlands. These could be in the national framework of the Netherlands, but also in an international context, including in relation to the Caribbean islands. They could be
based on policy issues, politicians’ and political parties’ stances, politicians’ and political parties’ actions, political elections, etc.
‘Economic’ events referred to stories that concerned economic occurrences in the Netherlands. Once more, this could be in a national or international context, as long as the Netherlands played a role in the article. Often, economic events were related to (un)employment, salaries, levels of poverty, retirement, and larger companies’ financial situations.
‘Cultural’ events referred to stories that concerned events related to the Dutch culture. This could be through Dutch cuisine, Dutch fashion, Dutch music, or anything of the kind. If an event took place at a local place in a Dutch city, such as a church, a museum, or the zoo, it would also fall under this category. Moreover, events that were directly related to things such as crime rates or local education would also fall under ‘cultural. Lastly, ‘other’ referred to any type of event that did not fall under the categories of ‘political’, ‘economic’, or ‘cultural’.
Inclusion of notable main actor. A story was considered to include and to prominently revolve around a main actor if a concretely stated actor was mentioned in the story’s title. This actor could be a nation, a politician, an institution such as the European Union or the United Nations, an animal, an object, etc. It had to be definite however. A policy or a statement would hence not be considered concrete actors. Actors were coded to be absent or prominently present. An actor is notably present if a title includes a clearly structure subject-verb agreement. The subject of the verb would then be considered an actor. If there was no verb in the title, or if the verb was in the passive tense, the first sentence of the article would be examined and evaluated in the same way. If it was once again in the passive mode, then it will be coded that the actor is absent. The same held for verbs in the progressive tense.
main actor was then coded either as not applicable, a person/group of individuals, an institution, or other. Several types of actors’ moderating effect were hence not analyzed, such as objects and animals. However, other actors such as politicians, Dutch citizens, a member of the royal family, and different ministries or the United Nations, clearly fell under one of the two categories of people or institutions. The category ‘persons’ referred to actors such as individual politicians or groups of people. Generalized groups such as ‘doctors’ or ‘women’ hence fell under this
category, as did personal names. The category ‘institution’ included all kinds of political organizations, of small or large scale. Political parties were thus coded as institutions, as were human rights organizations etc.
Sample
The content analysis was conducted on all printed issues of the Daily Herald published in the month of March of 2014. The period of data collection was chosen in an attempt to avoid any ‘disturbing’ events, and hence represent a relatively stable period of time. A total sample of 26 printed newspapers was examined. In these papers, all articles that are relevant to the
Netherlands were examined, with a total of 184 articles. These were articles that specifically spoke of the Netherlands, whether about the nation-state itself, about its politics or politicians, about its economy, about its culture, about one of its citizens, or about a small event in the nation itself. If the article was about the Netherlands in the context of the Dutch Kingdom, it was analyzed as well. However, if it only concerned one of the islands of the Dutch Kingdom, it was not taken into account. Often, these articles about the Netherlands were published under the ‘Islands/Dutch Kingdom’ section of the paper, but many were found in other sections such as ‘International’ as well. In total, 184 articles satisfied these criteria and were analyzed.
The Daily Herald was chosen as a paper to be analyzed, being the only newspaper representing the islands (with a main representation of Sint Maarten) that focuses elaborately on international news. Other newspapers, such as Amigoe, focus on news from Curacao, Sint Maarten, and Aruba, hence leaving out international news altogether.
Coding
A short codebook was created to determine the type of event covered (See Appendix), and the type of actor that it prominently concerned. The codebook attempted to evaluate and classify the news in the clearest and most objective way possible. The unit of analysis of the research and coding consisted of each article analyzed. The author of this paper coded all the 184 articles. A second coder then repeated the coding of the articles of the newspaper published on 03/01/2014, the first day of the sample, with the same codebook. By conducting a Krippendorf’s Alpha, the inter-coder reliability was measured and the study’s reliability hence verified. With a Krippendorf’s Alpha of 1 (See Table 6), the data was reliable between coders. The second coder was another Master student of Communication Science at the University of Amsterdam.
Data Transformation
Before conducting the analysis, various assumptions were tested. With the original data, the assumption of homogeneity of variance was violated, with a significant Levene’s test (See Table 1). Therefore, the data was transformed according to Tukey’s Ladder of Powers for λ = 0, and thus with the formula of log(x). To test that the homogeneity of variance assumption was now indeed met, the test was run once more. As can be seen in Table 2, the data transformation
successfully made the model meet the assumption. The analysis was hence conducted with the transformed variable.
Results
Through a 4x4 Analysis of Variance (Factorial ANOVA), the three hypotheses are tested in the order in which they are presented above. Before conducting the analysis, the assumptions necessary to ensure the analysis’ fit for the model are verified. The assumption of normality is not met entirely, as outliers are included in the data. However, these are consciously not removed from the data set, as a factorial ANOVA is fairly robust to small deviations as such (Agresti & Franklin, 2009). The rest of the assumptions are met after the data is transformed, as explained in the methods section. A two-way ANOVA is thus conducted.
As seen in Table 3, the research model is overall significant with F(1,168) = 2.596, p=.002, and η2 = .188, as around 19% of the variation in the data can be explained by its results with R=.188 (See Table 3). The significance of the independent variables individually and interactively will be discussed in terms of the hypotheses as well as in their respective order.
H1: Events that are most meaningful to the publishing nation will be covered most prominently by the media. Hence, political and economic events that concern the Netherlands will be covered more prominently in the islands’ media than news about cultural events and other types of events that revolve around the Netherlands.
This first hypothesis, testing the main effect of the model, is only confirmed partially by the results of this research. As can be observed in Table 3, there is a statistically significant effect of the type of events on the prominence of coverage with F(3,168) = 5.06, p = .002, η2 = .083. To see where this difference is, Helmert contrasts are conducted (See Table 4). As can be observed
in Table 5, the significance of the relationship lays between political events and other types of events. In order to determine exactly between which types of events the significance lies, a post hoc test is run. As can be seen in Table 5, the significance of the independent variable is driven by the significant differences between political events and economic events with M = .2733, SE = .07, p > .05, and between political events and cultural events with M = .1719, SE = .06, p > .05. However, economic events do not show such significant trends. Therefore, only part of the first hypothesis can be confirmed. Although the results do illustrate that political events are covered more prominently than other types of events, they do not demonstrate similar results for economic events.
H2: Stories that notably revolve around a concrete main actor – whether an individual, a group of individuals, an institution, or a nation – will be more prominent than those that more abstractly do not possess a definite main actor.
The second hypothesis is rejected entirely, as can be observed in Table 3. The variable was not accounted for as a separate moderator, as it is implicitly considered in the types of actor as ‘not applicable’. Although it is based on the assumption that journalists will be more likely to write prominently about events with a notably clear actor – already in the story’s title or first sentence, in order to correspond to people’s preference to see a cause to an event – the analysis has not confirmed this assumption. The more abstract stories that either used the passive voice in their title and first sentence, without providing a subject to an action, and those without a
concrete actor were covered significantly more prominently than those that have a clear notion of an actor through nations, organizations, people, or such concrete actors.
The following hypothesis nevertheless solely looks at the stories that revolve around events with a concrete main actor, made clear in the title of the story or the first sentence thereof.
H3: There is a moderating effect of the type of actor an event revolves around, which will make the main effect relationship stronger. An event will be covered more prominently if it clearly revolves around a person or group of persons.
As can be observed in Table 3, the third hypothesis is not confirmed either. The interaction of the influence of types of events, presence of actors, and types of actor remains slightly insignificant, as observed in Table 3, with F(9,168) = 1.9, p = .055, partial η2 = .092. There is thus no clear moderating effect of the type of actor on the main effect of types of events on a story’s prominence of coverage. Moreover, the difference in distinct types of actors’
influence on the prominence of coverage is highly insignificant, rather surprisingly, with F(3,168) = 1.615, p > .05, and η2 = .028. There is hence also no main effect of types of main actors used in a story on the prominence of coverage the story is awarded.
Additionally, when considering these results, it is important to remember and to take into account that they are based on a non-normal distribution. Although this is not changed
purposefully, some may argue that it decreases the results’ generalizability. However, this research decisively did not remove the outliers as a factorial ANOVA is firstly a test sufficiently robust to account for such a small amount of outliers, and secondly, to retain a complete set of data to increase the truthfulness and accuracy of this research.
Conclusion/Discussion
By analyzing the moderating effect of the type of main actor of the event, as well as the main effect of different types of events on the prominence of a story’s coverage, this research aims to answer the following research question: Does the type of actor that an event revolves around moderate the relationship between the type of event covered and its prominence of
coverage in the news? The clear answer is no. There is no moderating effect of the type of actor that a story revolves around on the main effect of the type of events covered and the prominence of coverage it is awarded. However, there is a significant relationship between the type of event and the prominence of coverage, confirming previous research in the field of news value theory. In addition to the results concerning the main effect, the results provide various interesting insights, with regards to the research and the results themselves and to what further research may want to take into account as well.
In order to answer the main research question, a factorial ANOVA was conducted through SPSS on a sample of 184 articles from the Daily Herald. Partially, this tested the main effect of the types of events on the prominence of coverage. The hypothesis was based on previously conducted research based on the theory of news values. By finding that there is a significant relationship between the type of event and the prominence of coverage it is awarded (See Table 3), the importance of various news values – namely meaningfulness, relevance, as well as political significance –‘s influence on stories’ prominence of coverage is confirmed (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Shoemaker et al., 1991). By showing that political events are covered significantly more prominently that economic events and cultural events, the values that apply to the type of event are hereby demonstrated. This paper hence serves as a case study to confirm part of the news value theory and hence previous research in this way. Nevertheless, the results of economic events are rather surprising, seeing the potential effect of economic happenings in the Netherlands on the Caribbean islands. Perhaps this can be justified by a sense of cultural congruence (Sheafer & Gabay, 2009), through which the citizens of the islands identify with and in some way look up to culture in the Netherlands as an example to follow. This would hence call into question the current situation in the Caribbean islands, and the
application of news values to certain stories and types of events.
Besides investigating the influence of the type of event on the prominence of coverage a story is awarded, this research also examined the influence of the type of actor an article revolves around. Although an article’s type of actor clearly does not have a significant effect on the
prominence of coverage awarded to the story, it is interesting to see that the interaction between the effect of the type of event and the type of actor is solely slightly insignificant. In other words, the interaction of type of event and type of actor shows a marginal trend towards significance, which is worth mentioning. It will not be argued that it is ‘basically’ significant, as there is a clear-cut limit of p = .05 that has been established for a logical reason and hence ought to be followed and respected. This research hence does not claim to find a moderating effect of the type of actor that an event revolves around on the relationship between the type of event covered and its prominence of coverage in the news. However, it does show that the moderating effect is quite marginally significant, and will hence point out that the sample size of this research may be limiting the effect’s significance. As n = 184 is a relatively limited sample, further research that examines the interaction of the effects of types of actors and types of events on a story’s
prominence of coverage may want to consider applying the same principles and analyses to the problem, but do so with a bigger sample. It is plausible that the sample size of this research restricts the results’ significance, meaning that (more) significant results could have been found without this limitation. It may hence be worthwhile to conduct this research with a bigger sample.
The time span of the research is another limitation of the research to take into account. This goes hand-in-hand with the relatively small sample. Articles about the Netherlands were taken for a period of one month of printed versions of the Daily Herald. Although it can provide
a general overview, one month may not be entirely representative of the entire year. Moreover, a further restriction to the study is the author’s inability to determine the precise audience of the paper. Due to lack of available data, it is not clear exactly who reads the Daily Herald in the three islands. This may hence limit the study’s results’ generalizability, and the usability of its results, as it is not able to account for the precise interests of the Daily Herald’s specific audience, if any.
To conclude, the ultimate objective of this research is to be able to have a clear view of what and whom the Caribbean islands cover when publishing news about the Netherlands. This research has shown that political events are clearly covered most prominently, particularly in comparison to economic events and cultural events. This confirms previous studies and much literature focusing on political significance, relevance, and meaningfulness as news factors key to determining events’ prominence (Galtung & Ruge, 1965; Harcup & O’Neill, 2001; Shoemaker et al., 1991). As economic events are not covered significantly more prominently than other events, this calls the importance of economic events in the Netherlands to the Caribbean islands into question. Perhaps they are not as interdependent as expected. Lastly, the moderating effect of the type of actor an event and article notably revolves around has a marginally significant effect that calls for further research with a bigger sample.
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Tables Table 1
Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances
Dependent Variable: Total
F df1 df2 Sig.
3.157 15 168 .000
Tests the null hypothesis that the error variance of the dependent variable is equal across groups.
a. Design: Intercept + TypeOfEvent + Type_Actor + TypeOfEvent *
Table 2
Levene’s Test of Equality of Error Variances
Dependent Variable: Transformed_Prominence2
F df1 df2 Sig.
1.590 15 168 .081
Tests the null hypothesis that the error variance of the dependent variable is equal across groups.
a. Design: Intercept + TypeOfEvent + Type_Actor + TypeOfEvent *
Table 3
Tests of Between-Subjects Effects
Dependent Variable: Transformed_Prominence2 Source
Type III Sum
of Squares df Mean Square F Sig.
Partial Eta Squared Corrected Model 3.753a 15 .250 2.596 .002 .188 Intercept 628.928 1 628.928 6526.511 .000 .975 TypeOfEvent 1.463 3 .488 5.060 .002 .083 Type_Actor .467 3 .156 1.615 .188 .028 TypeOfEvent * Type_Actor 1.648 9 .183 1.900 .055 .092 Error 16.189 168 .096 Total 1123.736 184 Corrected Total 19.942 183
Table 4
Contrasts Results
TypeOfEvent Helmert Contrast
Dependent Variable Transformed _Prominence
2
Level 1 vs. Later Contrast Estimate .226
Hypothesized Value 0 Difference (Estimate - Hypothesized) .226 Std. Error .059 Sig. .000 95% Confidence Interval for Difference Lower Bound .110 Upper Bound .342
Level 2 vs. Later Contrast Estimate -.095
Hypothesized Value 0 Difference (Estimate - Hypothesized) -.095 Std. Error .085 Sig. .267 95% Confidence Interval for Difference Lower Bound -.262 Upper Bound .073 Level 3 vs. Level 4 Contrast Estimate .051 Hypothesized Value 0 Difference (Estimate - Hypothesized) .051 Std. Error .079 Sig. .518 95% Confidence Interval for Difference Lower Bound -.105 Upper Bound .208
Table 5
Multiple Comparisons
Dependent Variable: Transformed_Prominence2 Tukey HSD
(I) TypeOfEvent (J) TypeOfEvent
Mean Difference
(I-J) Std. Error Sig.
95% Confidence Interval Lower Bound Upper Bound
Political Economic .2733* .07233 .001 .0856 .4610 Cultural .1719* .05683 .015 .0244 .3193 4 .1603 .06310 .057 -.0034 .3241 Economic Political -.2733* .07233 .001 -.4610 -.0856 Cultural -.1014 .07555 .537 -.2975 .0946 4 -.1129 .08037 .498 -.3215 .0956 Cultural Political -.1719* .05683 .015 -.3193 -.0244 Economic .1014 .07555 .537 -.0946 .2975 4 -.0115 .06677 .998 -.1848 .1618 4 Political -.1603 .06310 .057 -.3241 .0034 Economic .1129 .08037 .498 -.0956 .3215 Cultural .0115 .06677 .998 -.1618 .1848
Based on observed means.
Table 6
Krippendorff’s Alpha Reliability Estimate
Alpha LL95%CI UL95%CI Units Observrs Pairs Ratio 1.0000 1.0000 1.0000 32.0000 2.0000 32.0000
Codebook
1. How many words does the article consist of, excluding the title, the date, and the location of the occurrence?
Enter numeric value.
2. Is the article, or at least part of the article, published on the front page of the printed newspaper?
1 – Yes 2 – No
3. Is the article accompanied by at least one visual aid (a photograph, a picture, or a graph)? 1 – Yes
2 – No
4. What is the prominence of coverage of the article?
Articles are weighted to account for their prominence in the newspaper through their length (word count), their position in the newspaper (word count x 2 if the article made the front page; word count x 1 if the article did not make the front page), and their accompaniment of a visual aid (word count x position x 1.5 if a photograph or picture accompanies the article). Ultimately, the prominence is hence measured as follows:
Prominence of coverage = length (word count) x position x visual aid Enter numeric value.
5. What type of event is covered by the article?
The types of events that stories concern are categorized as (1) political, (2) economic, (3) cultural, and (4) other.
‘Political’ events are those that refer to political occurrences in the Netherlands. These can be in the national framework of the Netherlands, but also in an international context, including in relation to the Caribbean islands. They can be based on policy issues, politicians’ and political parties’ stances, politicians’ and political parties’ actions, political elections, etc.
‘Economic’ events refer to stories that concern economic occurrences in the Netherlands. Once more, this could be in a national or international context, as long as the Netherlands plays a role in the story. Often, economic events are related to (un)employment, salaries, levels of poverty, retirement, and larger companies’ financial situations.
‘Cultural’ events refer to stories that concerned events related to the Dutch culture. This can be through Dutch cuisine, Dutch fashion, Dutch music, or anything of the kind. If an event takes place at a local place in a Dutch city, such as a church, a museum, or the zoo, it will also fall under this category. Moreover, events that are directly related to things such as crime rates or local education will also fall under ‘cultural.
Lastly, ‘other’ refers to any type of event that does not fall under the categories of ‘political’, ‘economic’, or ‘cultural’.
1 – Political 2 – Economic 3 – Cultural 4 – Other
6. Is a concrete actor prominent in the article?
A story was considered to prominently revolve around a main actor if a concretely stated actor was mentioned in the story’s title. This actor can be a nation, a politician, an institution such as the European Union or the United Nations, an animal, an object, etc. It has to be definite
however. A policy or a statement will hence not be considered concrete actors. Actors were coded to be absent or present. An actor is prominent if a title includes a clearly structure subject-verb agreement. The subject of the verb will then be considered an actor. If there is no verb in the title, or if the verb is in the passive tense, the first sentence of the article will be examined and
evaluated in the same way. If it is once again in the passive mode, then it will be coded that the actor is absent. The same holds for verbs in the progressive tense.
1 – Yes 2 – No
7. What type of actor is prominent in the article?
While looking solely at the stories that include a main actor, the type of main actor is coded either as not applicable, a person/group of individuals, an institution, or other. Several types of actors’ moderating effect are hence not analyzed, such as objects and animals. However, other actors such as politicians, Dutch citizens, a member of the royal family, and different ministries or the United Nations, clearly fall under one of the two categories of people or institutions. The category ‘persons’ refers to actors such as individual politicians or groups of people. Generalized groups such as ‘doctors’ or ‘women’ hence fell under this category, as do personal names. The category ‘institution’ includes all kinds of political organizations, of small or large scale. Political parties were thus coded as institutions, as were human rights
organizations etc.
0 – Not applicable
1 – A person or a group of persons 2 – An institution
