Online News Domestication: the Italian and the British Case University of Amsterdam
Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme in Communication Science
Political Communication
Master’s Thesis
Name: Maria Giovanna Sarri Student Number: 11107219 Supervisor: Dhr. Dr. Jasper van de Pol
ABSTRACT
Online news is becoming more and more the medium through which we get informed the most. However are the online news exactly the same of the ones we get from a printed newspaper? With this study we investigate domestication, an artificial feature that journalists apply to foreign news to
“bring them closer” to their national audience. However even if this process was detected many times in printed news, there is almost no trace of it in online news. Two different media system (polarized and liberal), two different countries (Italy and United Kingdom) and two different foreign topics about the United States (presidential elections and shootings incidents) will be part of
a content analysis about domestication in online news. Because of the polarized media system in Italy, of the closer relationship between UK and US and because of the more opinionated Italian journalistic style, Italy was expected to show more domestication. On the contrary I found out that the level of domestication of Italy and UK are equally low, possibly demonstrating a change in the
Italian media system or journalistic style. This research opens up to deeper investigation on countries with a more different cultural background as a possible requirement for domestication in
the era of globalization. In addition new informations about online news are provided.
Keywords: domestication, online news, media system, Italy, United Kingdom, United States of America, presidential elections, shootings incidents
INTRODUCTION
Thanks to the internet, time and space do not matter much anymore, and the report of foreign political matters can affect our thoughts about national politics. One of the many duties of a
journalist is to be able to inform his/her audience, making the news understandable and clear, even when dealing with difficult matters or facts that happened far away (van Dalen & Van Aelst, 2012). Every day, exactly at the same time, we get to know what happens on the other side of the world and what is happening in our own town. In terms of how we get reached by the news, political or not, all the recent changes in technology create a very big gap between the experience of reading the news only on paper, that people had 50 years ago, and the one we have nowadays (Scammell, 2000).
Even if news from everywhere can reach us, still this does not mean that everybody around the world gets the same news; the homogenization of news is not considered a natural consequence of globalization (Gurevitch, Levy, & Roeh, 1991). Of course the globalization of the media made possible for people to be reached by facts that in the past we would not have been reached by, or at least not with the same amount of details and with such fast updates. However, it looks like readers find more important to get informed by the media about what has influences on their personal lives, because it happened geographically close to them, or it is linked with something that is happening geographically close to them. For this reason, facts that happen far still need to be elaborated by the media (journalists and editors) to produce news that are interesting and understandable enough for the audience.
Gurevitch et al. (1991) in their study came to the conclusion that because of the differences that exist in every national audience, the same fact is covered differently by every national media. According to them the national character of the news is then not affected by globalization. Many studies recognized the presence of domestication in the media (newspapers and television) showing the tendency of trying to bring closer what actually happens far away (Clausen, 2004; Curran, 2005; Ismail, 2008, 2010; Lee and Yang, 1996; Lee, Chan & Zhou, 2011; Nossek, 2006; Ruigrok and van
Atteveldt, 2007). Hereafter we consider domestication as “bringing it all back home” (Eide & Ytterstad, 2011, p.56), “the tendency for national news media to report foreign events in ways such that the news stories become more understandable for, relevant to, and/or resonant with local audiences” (Lee et al., 2001, p.275). Thus according to the previous theories about domestication, reporting foreign events including facts and information about the country of issue of the
newspaper, interests the domestic audiences more and enable the public to “better” understand the news. Through the artificial features of domestication the readers can easily link the news with facts about the country they live in.
Differently from the researches I cited before, here we will focus on domestication in online news. The necessity of doing a study about the presence of domestication in online news comes from the existing differences between the two type of media. The online newspapers are often seen by people as media that reach younger and bigger audiences and own different content. Indeed according to De Waal, Schönbach & Lauf (2005) “The use of online newspapers negatively relates to the use of print newspapers among the young” (p. 57), thus young people are using as
information source the online newspapers, preferring them to the printed ones, and even
accompanying them with the use of other news sites on the internet (de Waal, Schönbach & Lauf, 2005). However the most remarkable difference between printed and online news is in the content. The speed with which online news needs to come out, and is updated, allows journalists to write more about a topic than on the offline outlets (Franklin, 2014). In addition, the online news is also characterized by the presence of multimedia and “links,” making it more interactive and possibly (again) more appealing for the young audiences. Therefore because the articles online are expected to be different from the printed ones, this study is necessary to expand the knowledge about online journalism and the domestication process, on a societal as well as academical level.
The countries on which we are going to focus in this study are Italy and the United
Kingdom. Italy is categorized as a polarized media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), characterized by opinionated news (Esser & Umbricht, 2013). As in many other countries, Italian journalists are
pointed out as influenced by politics and Italian politics was often influenced by journalists, resulting in a very blurred lined between the two worlds (Mancini, 1991). Because of these cooperating work between the two sides (journalists and politicians) the polarization of the news has always been very crystal clear. The journalists are often used as a mean by the politicians, to express their ideas and their opinions about matters they care about. This however is common to many countries, what is particular of a polarized media system, is that politicians turn only to certain newspapers to expose their ideas denying to be featured in others. Because of this
polarization the news is used as the place where to discuss every topic that will serve the politician purpose, even linking domestic news to foreign ones. In addition, because of the Italian tendency for “complex issues, often abstruse political problems, rather than detailed descriptions of events” (Mancini, 2000, p. 320) objectivity is not accounted as the most prominent feature of Italian
journalists, making the case the most interesting between the polarized media ones. This journalistic style responds to the request of the Italian public, that prefers when politics is explained, interpreted and commented by the national journalists (Mancini , 2000). Therefore because as said before Italy embodies the polarized media, where the news are opinionated and “personalized” (Esser &
Umbricht, 2013; Mancini, 1991), domestication is expected to be a common tool between the Italian journalists, that want to meet the needs of their audience.
In this study I will verify the presence of domestication comparing Italian online news and British online news. The UK is considered as a liberal media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), differently than Italy. However the British case is a very specific and interesting one as owns peculiar characteristics that differentiate it from the American and Northern Europe type
(Brüggemann et al., 2014). The British media system normally focuses on objectivity, plus more detachment and neutrality from the journalists (Schudson, 2001). Considering these characteristics, more detachment is also expected in terms of domesticating the foreign news with the introduction of comments and broader considerations to call to mind national facts.
To compare these two countries I will use two topics as case (on British and Italian online newspapers): (1) the last presidential election campaign in the United States of America and (2) the multiple shootings that happened in the southern United States involving African American people and police officers. Both cases have been news of interest globally, however not both topics will have political consequences for the national politics of the selected countries. Besides the
differences in terms of media system I mentioned before, the UK and Italy are a good comparison as the first is culturally closer to the US (the main topic of the articles chosen) because they share history as well as the same language, and they have always appointed how the two countries have a “special relationship”. Because of the many links and common points of these two countries the “bringing it all back home” should be very different from the one in Italy when talking about the United States. Furthermore because domestication is an artificial way to make news seem relevant for the home country (Lee et al., 200), it should be more present where there are less relevant consequences for the home country. For this reason I will also compare the two different cases (US elections/shootings incidents).
Therefore the research questions of this study about domestication are: “To what extent is the coverage of foreign events domesticated in Italian and British online news outlets?” and “To what extent does the degree of domestication depend on whether these events have consequences abroad?”.
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Clausen (2004) defines domestication as “by casting far-away events in frameworks that render these events comprehensible, appealing and ‘relevant’ to domestic audiences; by
constructing the meanings of these events in ways that are compatible with the culture and the ‘dominant ideology’ of societies they serve” (p. 206). According to this theory the homogenization of the news, and therefore the uniformity of content and style of news, can be considered not happening. On the contrary news seems to adapt to the national views of the issuing country.
Through the domestication process, journalists include some links that will help the audience to connect with the foreign story and assimilate it better (Silcock, 2002). In this way the media
processes the foreign news to give the article a “local” perspective, that will interest more the reader when reading of something that happened far away. In addition the inclusion of more known facts and cues in some cases help to discuss a hot national topic. To do so the journalists include national actors in the conversation about the foreign news (Alasuutari, Qadir and Creutz, 2013) as well as connections with the national culture and ideology to engage the audience (Gans, 1979).
This is not done with the only intent to inform the audience, there is also a “commercial” interest behind this. The domestication process has a very clear and desired result, that is attracting a bigger segment of the audience. The generated interest, created by linking national and foreign news/politics, will possibly bring the public to prefer the outlet they perceive closer to their ideals and interests.
The Italian case considered here to investigate domestication, is an interesting one because of the usual description of Italian media as controlled by the state and highly politically deployed. Therefore it is interesting to know how international matters are treated by Italian media when, and if, mixed with the national ones. When talking about foreign facts and politics the main topic is not the national politics, therefore the journalists have to include it in an artificial way when writing about foreign news. On the other side the more objective and detached British media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), with another type of partisan national press, as result of several market changes, will be an interesting comparison with the Italian media.
With the birth of Mediaset (Berlusconi’s mass media company) came the rise of what for Italy meant actual entertainment TV, and this also affected how the Italian news world developed afterwards. In addition to bringing a whole new concept about how to deliver news to the public, also the partisan division became clearer. Having a Prime Minister owning many information instruments, affected the polarization of the media in Italy, as maybe nowhere else in the world, and as stressed in the past, this polarized media can have important effects on people’s opinion
(Levendusky, 2013). Having a large range of options of newspapers helps giving to everybody what they want, and the possibility to choose information that is affiliated with the favorite party
(Mancini, 1991), especially in a very polarized media system like Italy. Therefore when looking to international news it is expectable that the articles will be more domesticated than in other
countries, because of the intent of the journalists to disclose the ideal of the party affiliated with the media outlet, as well as to be consistent with the values and interest of the opinionated audience. With the purpose to talk about the matters that the belonging media outlet upholds, the writers in Italy should use the domestication features more than the British ones. In fact the inclusion of national matters allows them to make clear which is their point of view, in a more easy way for the reader, even when talking about foreign facts. Because the public requires them to reveal their opinion and interpret for them the news, instead of a more objective “fact list” (more aligned with the British media system), Italian journalists need to captivate the interest of their readers, possibly introducing “local” facts in the foreign news.
As I said before in this comparison I will use articles that discuss news about the United States of America. This choice comes with the intention to have a topic that will require
domestication in one case and not in the other, according to all the consideration we previously made. The UK is a country that always had a close relationship with the US. The American country was a colony of the British Empire and therefore the two countries share origins, history, language and much of their culture. In addition to these common known similarities, the United Kingdom and the US also kept a close relationship in terms of politics. These “special relationship” was
recognized through many historical moments (Dumbrell, 2006), enough to become also a theme for a movie (The Special Relationship, 2010) and therefore well known by the public. On the contrary even if Italy had mainly a good relationship with the United States, they do not share the same culture or historical moments. Therefore, for the Italian public, more domestication is expected to be required as they will need more cues and links to interpret the US news and increase their interest about what is happening so far away from them.
Accordingly we have the first hypothesis of this study,
H1: Online news about both the US elections and the shooting incidents between African Americans and the US police are more domesticated in Italian online news compared to British online news
The domestication process is used by the media to include in foreign news, from
geographically far away places, contexts and links that make the news more understandable to their national audiences with the scope to appeal to the interests of the “local” public (Rodriguez, 2008). The US elections are going to politically affect both British and Italian politics therefore, the need for domestication in the articles that discuss this topic should be less. Both countries have strong relationships with the United States and their politics are somehow linked, but while a new
president at the White House will have remarkable results in Europe, the altercations happening in the south of the United States will not affect the national politics either in Italy or United Kingdom. The important connections, economical as cultural, between the US and UK make the elections of this year an important political fact that will have some effects on the internal politics of the British country. As I said, Italy had always good relations with the US, being also allies in the NATO and building strong connections between the last Italian Prime Minister and president Obama, who many times expressed his appreciation for Matteo Renzi’s work. Therefore, in terms of politics, the links and cues will be less necessary. Since the interconnections are more frequent, allowing the audience to already connect the news from the two countries, and feel the importance of the foreign matter, the need for the artificial help of domestication of the foreign news should be less (Clausen, 2004).
The shootings incidents case, even if of great interest, as it raised many concerns in the US and all over the world, is not going to affect directly Italian or British politics. The discussions and protests that were happening in America would not lead to any consequences in Italy or United
Kingdom in terms of political decisions or issues. Therefore more domestication is expected to be required. To make the audience interested and understand what is happening and the issues that are rising in the US, the journalists need to implement in their articles features like national politics, national characters and national issues (Alasuutari et al., 2013). For instance the journalists will have to give examples of cases that happened in the country of issue of the newspapers and include comments and facts from known “local” public figures, to give the audience a context they know well, and witness more often, to interpret the foreign news. In addition, the local information will make the audience feel that what is happening geographically very far from them, is not confined to that side of the world (Lee et al., 2011). Something that is happening far away could actually affect them in their lives as citizen of Italy or United Kingdom.
Accordingly we have our second hypothesis,
H2: Both in the United Kingdom and Italy, online news about the shooting incidents between African Americans and the US police is more domesticated than news about the US elections.
As I mentioned before some British newspapers are also affiliated with political parties, however research showed that British journalists rank better than Italians in objectivity (Donsbach and Klett,1993; Esser & Umbricht, 2013) and the United Kingdom media system is also not categorized as polarized as the Italian (Hallin & Mancini, 2004). Many times Italian journalists make a great use of emotions (de Swert et al., 2015) and of interpretations, commentaries and opinions (Mancini, 2000), therefore it is likely that a fact with less known political implications, like the shootings incidents, will have a greater use of these features to domesticate the news. Foreign news needs to be shaped in a more familiar way, to be more comprehensible and more in line with the type of news to which the audience is used (Alasuutari et al., 2013). Because the Italian audience is used to the presence of the opinion of the journalists as well as of known public figures (Mancini, 2000), the journalists should domesticate the news including national characters
in the articles, to deliver the opinion about the foreign news of somebody familiar to the audience. In a country like the United Kingdom, where the media are more objective, it is more likely that the use of domestication will not be as great as in Italy.
British journalists are used to report often news from the US (Ruigrok & van Atteveldt, 2007) and their public is more used to be informed about what happens in that country. As we said before the US elections are such a big event with consequences all over the world, that the audience is already interested in being informed about it, and already learned something about the topic as the politics of the United States involved Europe many times. Thus the possible difference between the two countries should be greater in the case of the shootings incidents, since is a topic that in the Italian case will have a greater need for domestication.
Accordingly we have our third hypothesis,
H3: The difference in domestication between online news in the United Kingdom and in Italy is larger for coverage of shooting incidents between African Americans and the US police than for coverage of the US elections.
METHODS
To analyze to which extent online news are domesticated in Italy and in the United Kingdom, was conducted a manual quantitative content analysis. This analysis will study the level of
domestication comparing the two countries, as well as the two topics, describing in which situations domestication is more present in the online articles in Italy and in the United Kingdom. A
quantitative content analysis approach has been chosen as it is considered by previous researchers to be the most effective way to analyze and do an accurate comparison and study cross-country
differences in the media (de Swert et al., 2015).
As introduced before, the countries that are part of the study are Italy and United Kingdom. Italy is a very typical example of a polarized media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004), and as
demonstrated by research characterized by opinionated news (Esser & Umbricht, 2013). On the contrary the United Kingdom has a liberal media system, very different from the Italian one (Hallin & Mancini, 2004).
The type of news considered for this study is only online news. Because of the nature of online news, the content is likely to be different from the offline news. As introduced before because there is no problem of space, the online newspapers can afford to post more news. The online media updates the readers with more details and information than on printed news. On this platform the journalists are entitled to develop more the stories, as well as to go deeper into the news. Online foreign news is not likely to be sacrificed to leave more space to national politics, or national chronicles because there is no issues with space limit. On the contrary the articles are going to be more because of the higher request for more updates and further information from the online readers, that show interest through the interactive tools available.
The online newspapers selected as sample are the three most visited online in each country; for Italy: La Repubblica, Il Corriere della Sera and La Stampa (audiweb.it, 2016 ); for the United Kingdom: The Guardian, The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph (National Readership Survey). In this way our sample is representative because we can consider these newspapers as opinion-leading in each country, since they have the highest circulation rate as well as the higher numbers of visitors online. Therefore it was possible to have results that can help understand the type of news that reach the majority of the population, not only the ones that buy a printed newspaper (analyzed in previous researches) but also the people that prefer the news online. Because of the use of online newspapers the collection of the articles might have been problematic. The search engines of these newspapers do not all work exactly in the same way, and because they are also in different
languages, having the same results in terms of articles, that were going to be part of the sample, could have been considered a problem. However I did not expect different results when using the same search queries. This because of the word’s choice that was very specific and detailed. Secondly, because considering that all the newspapers are national ones, available in the whole
country, and used to report foreign news, I expected the results to comprehend the same topics in very similar amounts of articles.
The period of time chosen for the analysis was of three months going from 1st of July 2016 until 1st of October 2016. The period chosen allowed to have enough articles for a comparison for both the topics. The US presidential campaign has been covered a lot during the 2016, but the shootings were matter of interest only during a certain period of time (mostly the end of the
summer). Therefore the period chosen allowed me to have lots of articles published covering the US shootings (that happened mostly in that period of time), but still having an equal sample about the US elections.
Systematic sampling was applied and the newspapers was accessed through the online archive of the outlets. The specific terms used for the research will be “presidenziali USA Clinton Trump” and “sparatoria Tulsa O Charlotte O San Diego O Baton Rouge” for the three Italian newspapers, and “United America elections Clinton Trump” “shootings Tulsa OR Charlotte OR San Diego OR Baton Rouge” for the three British newspapers. The words in the case of the shootings had to be very specific to not get from the archive many articles that were not actually related with the topic of our interest. In this way we got from all the media outlets news that had as main topic the same facts, being able to be part of the same sample group.
All the articles published, resulting from the search through the newspapers websites, were downloaded and divided in the category US elections and Shootings. To have a random selection of articles, all the articles available online from the search with the words previously named, were listed in different lists for every newspaper, in chronological order of publication from the most recent until the oldest (considering only the period of interest for our study). To each article was given a number from 1 to forward. Afterwards from these lists a random sample was drawn of articles for the content analysis. Random numbers from the lists were picked using the website random.org. The first list as well as the list with all the random number (the sampled articles) were saved in case of necessity later during the study, as well as to prove the reliability of the method.
All the days of the week were considered for the sample, because differently from printed newspapers, news online are published on Sunday too and if normally the Saturday is considered a day when more news are published, this is not relevant for online news, where the number of articles are on average mostly the same for each day. These considerations are relevant for all the outlets, both countries and both topics, therefore the comparison was possible since there was not big disparities, in terms of articles published per day.
With regard to the reliability of the study three coders were involved, one Italian mother tongue and fluent in English for all the articles, plus two more coders, one for the english articles and one for the italian ones. These coders re-coded the 10% of the articles each, one english mother tongue for the British articles and one Italian mother tongue (and fluent in english) for the Italian articles (α= .86) A list of articles randomly picked was sent to them for the analysis together with the link for a survey on Qualtrics, with the questions of the codebook.
To test to which extent the Italian online news is domesticated I used one variable, a scale constituted by 7 items. Mentions of nationals within the foreign news were studied, as well as statements, moves and acts from domestic actors (Alasuutari, Qadir and Creutz, 2013). These features helped verify wether national actors are inlaid in foreign news articles, to give opinions and comments from known actors, and to give familiar cues to the audience to follow the story and understand better the foreign news. From the study of Alasuutari et al. (2013) I took the following items: (1) explicit reference to the country of issue of the newspaper; (2) reference to similar national case; (3) presence of the name of nationals in the article; (4) involvement of nationals in the facts described in the article; (5) presence of statements, moves and acts by domestic actors. From the study of Clausen (2004) was taken the item about the presence of visual materials. According to the study visuals help the understanding of the news and are faster cues than the written word. Because I focused on visuals from the US, the presence of these visuals would instead impede the connection between the foreign news and the “local” reader. The last item concerned the use of “us” that creates national loyalty. “When a foreign news item is defined as ‘theirs’, that is,
unrelated to the journalists’ own country, the coverage assumes a distant and analytical stance” (Liebes,1992; Nossek, 2004 in Alasuutari et al., 2013, p.694), thus on the contrary, the use of us increase the proximity between the reader and the news coming from a foreign country. At the beginning the coder had to check also some general information about the article that he/she was going to code (identification number of the list, country of issue, source of the article, type of article [as defined by BBC], date of publication, section on the website and topic of the article) (see
appendix A for codebook example).
The sample used for the analysis comprehends 345 articles (N=345). 164 articles were from Italian sources and 180 from online newspapers from the United Kingdom. The total of the articles were divided as follows: 17.4% from La Repubblica, 15.4% from il Corriere della Sera and 14.8% from La Stampa. Regarding the United Kingdom sources 17.7% of the articles were from The Daily Telegraph, 17.4% were from The Daily Mail and 17.1% from the Guardian. There were slightly fewer articles collected from Italy as one of the two topics was less present on the online websites of the newspapers considered in this study. However the results are very homogenous.
Of all the articles 128 were at least shared one time on Facebook. The most frequent sections were the collected articles were present are for the Italian sources “Esteri” (24.6%) and “Mondo” (6.7%) and “News” for the English ones (16.8%). The majority of the articles in the sample were news articles (191, 55.4%) while the rest were feature articles (126, 36.5%) and editorial, columns or opinion pieces (27, 7.8%). The two topics were equally covered, 47.8% of the articles were about the US elections and 44.9% about the shootings that took place in the US. However the 7% of the articles sampled were not identified as belonging to one of the two topics.
Six of the seven variables used to detect the presence of domestication were computed 1=Yes 2=No. The only variable that was computed differently was the one about the presence of visual materials from US sources, this last variable was computed 1=Yes, 2=No and 3=not available to allow the option to identify the presence of visual materials of not certain origin according to the coder. Because the presence of visual materials would asses lack of domestication the variable was
recoded afterwards as 1=No, 2=Yes and 3=not available, in this way the coding 1 will show presence of domestication features and the coding 2 will show the lack of domestication features, while the coding 3 was not an indicator of domestication and therefore was not recoded. To carry out the analysis the 7 variables were computed in one scale of 7 items (the domestication_scale).
RESULTS
As shown in Table 1 for all seven variables the mode was the coding 2 and therefore an indication of lack of domestication features.
Table 1. Frequencies for the 7 indicators of domestication Items Average Percentage of articles that
show domestication
Standard deviation
presence of visual materials from US sources
1.96 4% .406
explicit reference to the country of issue of the newspaper
1.84 16% .364
reference to a similar national case
1.92 8% .278
nationals named in the article
1.90 10% .307
involvement of nationals in the facts
1.92 8% .274
statements, moves and acts by domestic actors
1.93 7% .250
presence of the pronoun “we”
1.61 39% .488
To test Hypothesis 1, An Independent Samples t-test was used to control the difference of means between the two countries using the previously computed scale (the domestication_scale). The difference results to be not significant and there is no difference in domestication between United Kingdom (M= 1.86, SD= .207) and Italy (M= 1.87, SD= .217). Accordingly we can reject the first hypothesis. In addition each variable that was part of the scale was checked singularly (as shows Table 2). The variables show again lack of domestication in Italy and United Kingdom. The only remarkable fact is that with regard to the variable about the presence of the pronoun “we” (or
“noi” in Italian), the percentages are quite different. In the 78.7% of the Italian articles the pronoun is not present, while in the English articles in not present only in the 45% of the articles. To prove the statistic significance of the difference between the two countries considering this specific variable an analysis through Independent Samples t-test was carried out. This revealed that the mean for the use of the pronoun “us” or “we” in the Italian articles (M= 1.79, SD= .411) was significantly higher (therefore less use of it) than the mean for the British articles (M= 1.45, SD= .499) (t (342) = 6.792, p= .000).
Table 2. Results concerning Hypothesis 1 Variables Percentage of YES
for Italy Percentage of Yes for UK t-values p-values presence of visual materials from US sources 5% 3% -.479 .632 explicit reference to the country of issue of the newspaper 21% 11% -2.464 .014 reference to a similar national case 10% 7% -1.232 .219 nationals named in the article 15% 7% -2.425 .016 involvement of nationals in the facts
10% 7% -1.045 2.97
statements, moves and acts by domestic
actors
7% 7% -.015 .988
presence of the pronoun “we”
21% 55% 6.792 .000
To compare the domestication for the topics US elections and the shooting incidents, and hence test the second hypothesis that both in the United Kingdom and Italy, online news about the shooting incidents between African Americans and the US police is more domesticated than news about the US elections, another Independent Samples t-test was conducted. Through this analysis the means for each topic were compared. The dependent variable was the domestication scale computed before and the independent variable was the main topic of the article. The only two groups considered in this last variable were US elections and the shootings as of interest in the
hypothesis, the articles coded with 3 were previously excluded from the sample. The test revealed that the mean for the domestication scale was significantly higher for the shootings incidents (M= 1.92, SD= .183) than for the US elections (M= 1.84, SD= .211) (t (318) =-3.382, p= .001).
Therefore because the higher the mean the less the domestication the second hypothesis can also be rejected as proved that in both United Kingdom and Italy online news about the US elections are more domesticated than the online news about the shootings incidents.
To test the third hypothesis the cases were selected to use in the first Independent Samples t-test only the articles that were about the US elections and in the second Independent Samples t-test only the ones about the shootings incidents. The means for UK and Italy were
compared to see if the difference in domestication between online news in the United Kingdom and in Italy is larger for coverage of shooting incidents between African Americans and the US police than for coverage of the US elections. The first analysis (the US election cases) did not show any significant different between the two countries were the mean scores were nearly identical (for Italy: M=1.844, SD= .226; for the UK: M= 1.845, SD= .197). The second Independent Samples t-test, where the selected cases were the articles of the shootings incidents, revealed a non statistically significant difference (for Italy: M= 1.97, SD=.140; for the UK M=1.89, SD=.202). Therefore we have a confirmation of what we found out with the rejection of the first hypothesis (there is no difference between the two countries in terms of domestication) and we can reject the third hypothesis too.
CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION
As said in the introduction, domestication was detected many times in several studies (Gurevitch et al., 1991; Clausen, 2004; Curran, 2005; Ismail, 2008, 2010; Lee and Yang, 1996; Lee et al., 2001; Nossek, 2006; Ruigrok and van Atteveldt, 2007; Eide & Ytterstad, 2011) however in this case, when analyzed online news, I did not find any trace of domestication features in the articles. Studying both the United Kingdom and Italy did not show any difference between the
online news of the two countries, in terms of domestication, introducing some new information about online news as well as the domestication process.
To answer to the research questions exposed in the beginning, I proved that there is no domestication in the coverage of foreign events in Italian and British online news outlets. Both countries showed no influence of domestication, to the same extent, contradicting the theories applied for printed news (Alasuutari, Qadir and Creutz, 2013). Even when the countries have been compared using the two topics of interest of this study no change in the domestication level has been detected. Of the two topics, only one had political and economical consequences for the UK and Italy (the presidential campaign), nevertheless this did not affect the domestication use. Equally the media system did not increase or lowered the use of domestication features that with printed news were detectable.
The presence of internal politics when talking about international politics or international chronicles was not detected while doing this analysis. For example Italian as well as British politicians were barely named, and similar cases that could help the reader in linking what is happening abroad with what happens in their own country (Lee et al., 2001) were not present as much as expected.
Because of the lack of domestication, we can infer that possibly the homogenization that was not revealed by the studies about printed news could be happening for what concerns the online news. However if we can say that the level of domestication is equally low in the UK and in Italy we cannot say that the two countries get the same news. Because the content was not checked, in this study we cannot confirm or exclude if the lists of facts that were included in the articles were the same. However, we can asses that the online articles of the countries considered here are not the result of a process of domestication of the news, at least not the one that was detected in previous studies about printed news.
The main conclusion that we can draw from this study, and the answer to one of mine research questions, is that journalists do not use domestication in Italy and UK when discussing US politics and chronicles in online news outlets.
Italian newspapers belong to a polarized media system (Hallin & Mancini, 2004) where politicians express their political scopes and ideas using the newspapers as a medium, and turning to the ones that agree more with their ideology. For the public Italian characters, every fact, even foreign news, becomes something that can affect voters mind, and thus is useful to reach new voters or electoral segments. At least these were the premises coming from the studies about domestication on printed news, and the media systems divisions. On the contrary here we have the proof that this is not applicable to the online news in Italy, while the results about the UK confirmed the previous studies on domestication and printed news. The difference in domestication of the two countries was not significant, demonstrating how the type of media system did not affect the resulting domestication, as well as the fact of being more connected on a cultural level (in the case of the UK) did not draw a bigger line of difference between domestication in Italy and in the United Kingdom.
Previous studies about the domestication process focused also on countries outside of Europe. Because of the existence of those studies, it would be interesting to research in the future if the lack of domestication, that was revealed by this study when considering online news, is also happening in other countries, with very different cultural background from the one of the so called Western world. In this way, it will be possible to affirm if it is certainly the cultural background an influent factor for domestication to happen, considering that through this study we can already exclude that the geographical distance affect the process.
Indeed starting from this study it will be interesting for future research to expand this project about domestication. I only focused on two european countries that even if own two different media system are still two countries that relates in different ways to the US, many times and in many fields, making the choice interesting for what concerns studying countries that could use
domestication even if linked historically and culturally to the country taken into account. The cultural background of Italy and United Kingdom even if different within them, does not give answers about the possible presence of domestication in online news when the online news reports are about a country with a very far and less known cultural background. According to the literature I exposed in the beginning sections, in this case, for the reader should be harder to understand the politics, as well as the chronicle facts and all the possible external features and characters that might be named in the news. Even if the US are as far from Europe as Indonesia or South Africa, the geographical distance in this case can matter less than the cultural one. Countries that
geographically could be considered closer like Turkey, are normally considered by the western Europe more distant than North America.
During the collection of the data the Italian sample revealed to be smaller than the British one. However this did not affect the study or the results, but besides it allowed us to know that the attention dedicated to the shootings incidents can be considered minor, or at least different. This showed one more existing difference between UK and Italy in terms of their news reports about the United States of America.
As we explained in the beginning, because the US elections are such an important event with consequences in Europe too, I expected lack of domestication in both countries, with even some differences, always according to the theories. For this reason the second topic was chosen to analyze the effects of a topic, with no direct consequences on the countries used as sample, in terms of presence of domestication. The results showed that even if the topic was not one that could draw possible consequences for the two countries taken into account, the domestication was still at low levels. For this reason we can infer that a very different background of the country which the article is talking about and the country of issue of the news, could count more, possibly increasing the need of domestication to make the topic more interesting and understandable for the audience. Because of the great amount of detailed information about the United States of America that reach Europe, we can say that the Europeans might consider themselves deeply informed about the US politics,
and almost about everything that happens in the American country. Therefore, the necessity of linking the foreign US politics with the “local” one is apparently very low.
This study also becomes an additional proof of the existing difference between online news and printed news. The features used in previous study that revealed the presence of domestication were all applied to the printed news. We cannot affirm which are the reasons for this difference, however, we can see it is very present. The reasons behind might come from the journalists perceptions of their different audiences in the two newspapers version, as well as from a general development that comes from the more space that can be dedicated to the breaking news online, compared to the printed version. Having more space can help them to follow the news for more time and in more details, and therefore they might think that their public needs less help for what concerns understanding and feeling interest in the international topic of a geographically far away country.
We can also infer that the Italian journalistic style can be living a change for what concerns the online news. The polarized media system could be changing, or at least influence less the online news, that could be starting to get closer to the liberal media type, typical of the UK.
Through this study we can then answer to the research questions I exposed in the beginning. I proved that there is no domestication in the coverage of foreign events in Italian and British online news outlets. Both countries showed no influence of domestication to the same extent contradicting the theories applied for printed news. Even when the countries have been compared using the two topics of interest of this study no change in the domestication level has been detected.
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Appendix A Codebook Aim of study
The aim of this study is to discover to which extent news are domesticated in Italy compared to United Kingdom. The articles will be here coded to check the compatriots or nationals involvement, mention of statements, moves and acts by domestic actors, reference to national elections and national chronicles, mention of the impact on the country of issue and of the country of issue in general, the presence of visual material from foreign sources, and the use of “us”.
Coding
The coder needs to follow the instructions given in the codebook and use the Excel program for the coding work.
General information about the article
• Identification number (indicate which is the number of the article on the given list)
• Country of issue (if in Italian to code from Italy, if in English to code from United Kingdom) 1- Italy
2 - United Kingdom • Source of the article: 1- La Repubblica 2- Il corriere della sera 3- La Stampa
4 - The Guardian 5 - The Daily Mail 6 - The Daily Telegraph
• Date of article (indicate which is the date of publication online of the article DD/MM/YYYY) • V1 Section on the website (Indicate the section where the article was published, e.g. Politica,
Politics, Esteri, Worlds. If not available code as “not available”)
• V2 Type of article (Indicate the type of the article. If it is not available, the coder needs to decide after a read-through).
1 - News article (news articles inform readers about things that are happening in the world or in the local area).
2 - Feature article (They may be triggered by a story that has been in the news for a while. The purpose of a feature is not just to tell you what has happened, but to explore or analyze the reasons why).
3 - Editorial, columns or opinion pieces (pieces by 'personality' writers) • V3 Topic of the article (Indicate the main topic of the article)
1 - US elections/presidenziali USA
• V4 Is there any visual material from an american (intended as United States of America) source? (e.g. CNN, CBS, FOXNews). Some indication must make clear the source is another media outlet from US, if not clear code as “not available”
1 - Yes 2 - No
3 - Not available
• V5 Does the article make any explicit reference to the country of issue of the newspaper? (e.g. use of the name of the country of issue of the newspaper)
1 - Yes 2 - No
• V6 Does the article make any reference to similar national case (intended as in the country of issue of the newspaper) to the ones happened in the US?
1 - Yes 2 - No
• V7 Are any nationals (intended as of the same nationality of the country of issue of the newspaper) named in the article?
1 - Yes 2 - No
• V8 Are any nationals (intended as of the same nationality of the country of issue of the newspaper) involved in the facts described in the article?
1 - Yes 2 - No
• V9 Are any statements, moves and acts by domestic actors (intended as of the same nationality of the country of issue of the newspaper) mentioned in the article?
1 - Yes 2 - No
• V10 Is the pronoun “us” (“noi" in italian) used in the article? 1 - Yes
