LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT VICE NEWS AN ANALYSIS OF NEWS VALUES PRACTICE IN V

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LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT VICE NEWS

AN ANALYSIS OF NEWS VALUES PRACTICE IN VICE NEWS’ CONTENT

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TABLE OF GRAPHICS

Table 1 The twelve news values of Galtung and Ruge 1965………8

Table 2 News Values Harcup and O’Neill 2016………..10-11 Table 3 News values categories ………..12

Table 4 Own list of news values ………..15

Table 5 News values translation of Caple and Bednarek (2012) and their linguistic devices………..29

Table 6 Presence of news value combinations ……….34

Figure 1 Front page of VICE News ………...23

Figure 2a Classification per of articles………..30

Figure 2b Articles per region………30

Figure 2c Articles per theme………...31

Figure 2d Articles per topic ……….31

Figure 3 Length of articles………..32

Figure 4 Presence of news values ………32

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1 INTRODUCTION

This thesis explores the media organization ‘VICE’. Stories of this organization are read, discussed and shared a lot on social media amongst my friends, and myself. In the VICE Digital media kit of January 2016, the company describes itself as “the fastest growing, #1 youth media company in the world”. Globally, it has 135 million unique visitors per month, 11 million subscribers to their YouTube channels and 76% of their audience is between the ages of 18 and 34. While many news organizations struggle to reach the youth, VICE states that they reach twice as many young people compared to other media channels (VICE digital media kit, 2016). It appears that the company is very successful in the current media era. Therefore, it is interesting to research all different aspects of VICE, to see how they reach so many young people all over the world. Accordingly, this thesis explores the content of one of the digital channels of VICE, namely VICE News. This research only focus on the news articles that are produced by VICE due to the fact that it a study that is part of the overall field of journalism studies. But, first an introduction to the media organization is given. Afterwards the cornerstones of the research are discussed.

1.1 VICE, A NEW EDGY MEDIA ORGANIZATION

VICE, now a ‘global youth media company’ (Bloomberg Media, 2017), started off as a street magazine called ‘the Voice of Montreal’ in 1994 (IP 2015, p. 27). It was created by Suroosh Alvi, Gavin McInnes and Shane Smith. The magazine, crafted for young adults, was at the time freely available and it mainly focused on topics related to youth culture, such as music, fashion, drugs, graffiti, and sex. VICE could be picked up at cafes, clothing- and music stores, but not much later, it was also distributed internationally. Back then the magazine had a distinct visual character that consisted out of graphic lay-outs that combined texts and photography. By 1999, VICE moved to Brooklyn (New York) and it gradually begun to expand into the company it is nowadays (Bødker 2016, p.2). In 2014, it had 36 offices located all around the world and it had an audience around tens of millions (nljobs.vice.com).

VICE is a multimedia network and owns different branches. So it has ‘vice.com’, the main website, which consists off an international network of different digital channels. It also leads a television and feature film production studio, a magazine, a record label, and a book-publishing division (nljobs.vice.com). VICE has ten different digital channels which all have their own specific theme. These are: Tonic (wellness, science and health-issues), W Waypoint (gaming culture), Noisey (pop music channel), i-D, Thump (dance and electronic music), The Creators Project (arts and creativity), VICE sports, Munchies (food channel), Broadly (feminism), Motherboard (technology) and VICE News (Vice.com).

The success of today’s VICE could not have happened without two major steps the company took in the 200s. In 2006 it added news to their content and, although, their original website was already launched in 1996 (Küng 2015, p. 79) as of 2007 it moved entirely towards the Internet as a cost-effective distribution network (Hamilton 2016, p. 10).

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5 that are represented. VICE thus seems to be alternative and edgy. But in the end, there is an enormous commercial formula behind the company. This is also evident in the investors VICE has at the moment, like Fox, which has Murdoch on its board, and Disney (Benson 2016).

1.2 VICE NEWS, THE CHANNEL OF INTEREST FOR THIS RESEARCH

In 2013 the digital channel VICE News was created. Shane Smith, co-founder and current CEO of VICE, explains1_{why they started doing news:}

“We were an entertainment brand, and then as we expanded around the world we realized that there were these serious problems and I said “Why isn’t anyone saying anything about this, where are the adults?” and I realized I had the biggest platform for youth in the world, so I will start saying something

about it, so we started doing News. And we weren’t perfect, but out audience said ‘yes’ […] and that’s been the fastest part of our business ever since.” (Küng 2015, p. 83).

VICE News is separated into beats2_{, such as politics, war & conflict, and environment, and also into regions}

(e.g. Africa, America, Asia & Pacific, Europe and the Middle East). It does not have to make commitments to fixed structures such as scheduled bulletins and rolling coverage. Additionally, VICE News tends to stay with certain topics long-term and prioritized topical news items, for example ‘Young and Gay’ (Küng 2015, p. 78). Vice News has a distinct tone and form. It practices ‘immersive journalism’ which means that journalists involve themselves in the news situation (Küng 2015, p. 81; Benson 2016). The journalism of VICE News is also often called ‘gonzo journalism’ which became famous by Hunter S. Thompson. It means that journalism blends experience and fiction (Küng 2015, p. 82).

VICE News has daily articles and videos published online at their webpage. But the organization also has a YouTube channel with over a million subscribers and over 250 million views since the channel was launched. (Küng 2015, p. 78) It specialized in first-person documentary (Hamilton 2016, p. 11) and its most famous piece of work is the five-part documentary ‘The Islamic State’. This opened VICE’s way into the making of serious news paralleled by winning respects and more than 20 million YouTube video views (Küng 2015, p. 84). VICE News reports events like no one else is reporting them and is reaching younger audiences than other news outlets attract (IP 2015).

1.3 STUDYING THE NEWS COVERAGE OF VICE

On the webpage of VICE News, the organization describes its work as follows:

“VICE News is an international News organization created by and for a connected generation. We provide an unvarnished look at some of the most important events of our time, highlight under-reported

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stories from around the globe, and get to the heart of the matter with reporters who call it like they see it.” (news.vice.com).

This thesis concerns the news covering of VICE News. What kind of stories does VICE News cover? And are they really that different? Therefore the central question of this thesis is the following: “How does VICE News cover news stories?” This question will be answered with news value theory. This field of study looks at news content of news organizations, and asks why precise this content is selected. Therefore, the research question of this thesis is:

“Which news values are apparent in VICE News’ content?”

This research is relevant for a couple of reasons. First of all, VICE is a relatively young news organization that is not investigated a lot, yet. The most prominent studies are those of Küng (2015), Hamilton (2016) and Bødker (2016). But not one study yet did research the organization in relation to news value theory. Therefore this thesis adds some new information to the field of the studies on VICE. Secondly, the latest prominent piece of research, of Harcup and O’Neill (2016), insists that new research in the field of news values in relation to social media and the Internet itself is important. Indeed, most research of news values is done on print media or broadcast media. Therefore this thesis also fills another gap: namely, how online media make use of news values.

To answer the research question a mixed method of research is used. First a content analysis of 200 articles is carried out and, afterwards, twenty of these articles are analysed in detail by the means of discourse analysis. Overall, the workings of scholars Harcup and O’Neill, and Caple and Bednarek are used the foundation of this research.

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2 LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 NEWS VALUES

The aim of this thesis is to investigate how VICE News covers news. According to VICE itself, they are an alternative media organization. Furthermore, they describe their news coverage as unique in that they cover underreported stories and provide an unvarnished look at the most important events of current times. Therefore, it is important to research what kind of stories VICE News covers: so what is news according to VICE? In the next sections the question what is news? will be explored with the use of news value theory.

2.1.1 WHAT IS NEWS? AND TAXONOMIES OF NEWS VALUES

“When a dog bites a man, that is not news, because it happens so often. But if a man bites a dog, that is news.”

This quote is attributed to John B. Bogart, the editor of New York newspaper the New York Sun. It describes that unusual events are more likely to be covered as news than ordinary events. (Mott 1950, p. 376) But not only surprising events can become news. Hartley (1982) also states: “events don’t get into the news simply by happening…” (p. 76) He states that there are six topics news is often about: politics, economy,

foreign affairs, domestic affairs, occasional stories and sports (p. 38).

Galtung and Ruge were not the first scholars trying to answer the question: “what is news? And how are events becoming news?” but they have written the fundamental piece of literature in this field of study (Bell 1991, p. 151) that also will be the starting point and bases of this research. They were the first ones to come up with a clear list of factors that are presented in news stories that make those stories newsworthy. According to them, everyday, events are occurring in the world around us. The media have certain perceptions of these events which they subsequently translate into a media image: a news story. Because the media cannot cover everything, they have to make a selection in events. What to cover and what not to cover? (Galtung and Ruge 1965, p. 65).

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Table 1 The 12 news factors of Galtung and Ruge 1965

Frequency An events becomes news depending on its timespan it has to unfold. Threshold How bigger the impact of the event, the better are its chances of

becoming news.

Unambiguity The clearer a story is, thus the less unambiguous, the more newsworthy an event is.

Meaningfulness To what extent the audience on grounds of geographical and cultural relevance can identify with the event.

Consonance When stories are expected, journalists can prepare and make them already how they want them to be. So easier to cover.

Composition How the newspaper is constructed, it cannot al be about sports or foreign affairs.

Continuity A story that already is news, is easy to follow-up.

Unexpectedness If an events is less ordinary, it is more surprising and likely to be newsworthy.

Reference to elite nations

Stories concerned with global powers such as world powers, receive more attention than less influential countries.

Reference to elite people

Stories about important people receive more coverage, such as stories about the King or Queen.

Personalization When stories contain a human interest angle they are more newsworthy.

Reference to something negative

Bad news stories are more exciting than good news stories.

In their book News Discourse Caple and Bednarek (2012) examine the concept of news values. An overview of four different definition is given based on scholarly literature. News values are, first, the criteria or rules that news workers apply to determine what is ‘news’; second, imagined preferences of audience; third, qualities or elements that are necessary to make a story newsworthy and fourth, values by which events or facts are judged more newsworthy than others. The taxonomy of Galtung and Ruge falls under the last category of news values and this thesis also uses this definition.

According to Brighton and Foy (2007) the research of Galtung and Ruge was groundbreaking, and subsequent research in this field is built on this foundational work. But at the time the paper was written and Galtung and Ruge developed their theory, newspapers were still the essential source for news, broadcasting was still in its younger years and the Internet did not even exist. Besides this there was little transnational broadcasting, there was no live reporting (p. 2). A lot has changed since the 1960s, therefore various scholars have revised this classic work.

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9 eleven different values, some of which are comparable to the factors found by Galtung and Ruge (1965) and are just named different, while others are new. New values which they found are: drama, as a separate category for opposing viewpoints next to negativity; visual attractiveness and entertainment, which includes more than only human interest stories (Golding and Elliot 1979). It is visible that the research of Golding and Elliot is more directed towards broadcast journalism. They were more focused on visual news values. It is interesting to see that already in 1979 there were arguments for visual attractiveness being important for a story to be newsworthy. This is, in this context, based upon television news but in the current digital era it is also an important news value as will be discussed later on.

Harcup and O’Neill (2001) revisited the work of Galtung and Ruge by studying the original twelve news values in newspapers. They wanted to research if these values were still relevant 40 years later. They argued a couple of things. First, the news values frequency and unambiguity are no longer relevant. They concluded that every story in a newspaper could have the frequency factor and indeed lots of stories were indeed ‘new’ and therefore were news, but this is kind of the general definition of new(s): it is even in the word. But there were also older stories in the newspaper, just shovel-ware from local papers for example. Accordingly the news factor has not much meaning anymore. Also they were not surprised to find out that almost all stories were unambiguous because they studies the newspapers texts instead of the events behind it like Galtung and Ruge did. And journalists are trained to write clearly and unambiguously. Second, lots of stories were detected for referring to elite people. Harcup and O’Neill came to the conclusion that there must be made a distinction between celebrities and other elite people, nations, and institutions. The latter three they defined just under the news value: reference to the power elite. Third and unexpected, there were also stories found that were identified as good news. Not all stories were thus about something negative, therefore they defined the values: bad news and good news. Fourthly, they also created some new categories, such as entertainment. Within this category also falls the value picture opportunity, which also was already enhanced by Golding and Elliot 1979. But besides this this news value also contains references to sex, animals, humor and showbiz/tv. And last but not least, another new category Harcup and O’Neill developed is: newspaper agendas. This includes stories that sit the interests of the newspaper, such as commercial interest and reader/audience loyalty and identification. The news list of the scholars consisted out of ten news values: the power elite; celebrity; entertainment; surprise; bad news; good news; magnitude; relevance; follow-up and newspaper agenda (Harcup and O’Neill 2001).

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10 list of news values: negativity, timeliness, proximity, superlativeness, eliteness, impact, novelty,

personalization, consonance and aesthetic appeal (Caple and Bednarek 2016). The last news value is

taking into account by Harcup and O’Neill (2016) because it arrives out of visual analysis which in current times is also important. They argue that really strong visuals can be a significant reason for making an event into the news. The last news value Harcup and O’Neill have add is shareability. According to them the value promotes stories that are likely to generate commenting and sharing on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook (Harcup and O’Neill 2016).

Table 2 News Values Harcup and O'Neill (2016)

Magnitude (Threshold) Stories are more likely to be newsworthy when they have a high potential impact; extreme numbers, occurrence or behavior.

Relevance (Meaningfulness) Stories that are cultural and geographical relevant to the audience are more likely to become news.

News organization’s agenda To what extent the story fits that the, ideological, commercial or as part of a campaign, the news organization’s own agenda.

Follow-up (Continuity) Stories that contain subjects that are already in the news. Surprise (Unexpectedness) To what extent stories have an element of surprise,

unusualness (contrast). Power elite (Relevance to elite

nations and elite people)

Stories concerning powerful nations, organizations, people, institutions or corporations are more newsworthy.

Celebrity Stories concerning people who are already famous (e.g. sport-, television-, movie stars) are more likely to become newsworthy.

Bad news (bad news) Stories with a particularly negative tone/topic (e.g. death, injury, defeat).

Entertainment Soft news stories concerning sex, animals, showbusiness,

sport, humor or lighter human interest are more likely to

become news.

Good news Stories that have a positive overtone/topic (e.g. recovery, celebrations, cures, wins).

Exclusivity Stories that are produced or made available first to the news organization (e.g. interviews, letters, investigations, surveys) are exclusive and therefore likely to become more newsworthy.

Conflict (bad news) Those stories that are about real dangerous warfare/conflict (e.g. strikes, warfare, conflict, fights).

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11 Shareability Stories that are likely to be shared on social media such as

Twitter and Facebook are more newsworthy.

Drama Stories that are comparable with soap operas. They are human interest but with a negative tone (e.g. escapes, accidents, court cases).

 In blue are the news values of Galtung and Ruge presented which are comparable to the value of Harcup and O’Neill.

2.1.2 SOME SCHOLARLY SIDENOTES ON NEWS VALUES

During the time the concept of news values has been discussed there have been different ways of looking at them. Galtung and Ruge’s standpoint is the most common way of studying news value and researching them (Harcup and O’Neill 2009, 164). The previous section has explored this way: treating news values as factors existing within an event or story that make such a story newsworthy.

Some scholars agree with the study of Galtung and Ruge and have developed or revised it, but others have more critical remarks on this study. This is partly due to the fact that scholars all define the concept of news values in a different way. And partly due to the fact that times are changing and news values mirror these changes. Tunstall (1971), for example, criticizes it for ignoring the visual aspects that news stories can have (p. 21). Other scholars criticize news value theory, in the form Galtung and Ruge have developed it, for ignoring the ideological meanings behind such rules of selection (Hall 1973, p. 181, 235; McQuail 1994, p. 271). McQuail: “News values cannot provide a complete explanation of all the irregularities of news composition.”

Donsbach (2014) agrees with McQuail and Hall that news values alone do not explain the whole selection process of news. He explains that news decisions of journalists depend on different features. Those are, News factors (Such as Galtung and Ruge’s), institutional objectives (expectations a journalist faces as a consequence of his/her employment status, related to form and content), the manipulative

power of public relations by News sources (e.g. influence of politics), and the subjective beliefs of journalists. But he concludes that also psychological processes explain news decisions: a need for social

validation of perceptions and a need to preserve one’s existing predispositions (p. 131). For this thesis the main focus lays on news factors: a traditional explanation of news decisions and selection. Subsequently it is important to address the concept of news values and define in specific what these are that are of use in this thesis.

Bell (1991) discusses something important in his book ‘The language of News Values’. According to him there are three different sets of news values, which are, I argue, important to note when start doing news values research. The first category concerns the content of news, it is about the nature of the events and actors of this story. These values are: negativity, recency, proximity, consonance, unambiguity,

unexpectedness, superlateviness, relevance, personalization, eliteness, quality of attribution and facticity.

The second category is about the news process, concerning continuity, composition, competition,

co-option, predictability and prefabrication. And the last category of news values concern the quality of the

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12 under the first category, as do those of Harcup and O’Neill.

Caple and Bednarek (2016) also support this clear distinction in news values. They define news values as the first category: “we define news values as the newsworthy aspects, happenings and issues, as opposed to aspects of news gathering and processing, or general news writing objectives. In other words, we reserve the term news values for Bell’s (1991) category of ‘values in news actors and events’ (Caple and Bednarek 2016, p. 439).

Table 3 News values categories

Bell (1991) Caple and Bednarek (2012)

Values in the news text News writing objectives Values in the news process News cycle/market factors Values in news actors and events News values

Gans’ (1980) point of view corresponds with the second category of news values according to Bell (1991). For him it is all about the term ‘suitability’. Hence, Gans argues that news stories become important by the following four things: rank in government, impact on nation and on the national interest, impact on

large number of people and it must be significant for the past and future. Brighton and Foy (2007) also

argue that in addition to the news values Bell identifies, external influences (competition, co-option, commercial interest etc.), is also an important news value. Allern (2002) also makes a distinction between traditional news values (the ones of Galtung and Ruge) and commercial news values. He develops four commercial news values which are supplemented with the traditional ones.

- The more resources – time, personnel and budget – it costs to cover, follow up or expose an event, etc., the less likely it will become a News story/

- The more journalistically a News source or sender has prepared a story for publication (the costs for such treatment being borne by the sender), the greater the likelihood that it will become News.

- The more selectively a News story is distributed, e.g., in a manner that allows a journalist to present the story as his or her own work, under a personal byline, the more likely it will become

News.

- The more a News medium’s strategy is based on arousing sensations to catch public attention, the greater the likelihood of a ‘media twist’, where entertaining elements count more than criteria like relevance, truth and accuracy

(Allern 2002, p. 145)

This again addresses the problem within news value studies: there is not one concrete universal theory of what news values are. Should we also take such commercial news values into mind? Or the journalists ideologies? These different conceptualizations of news values can be found back also in different theories of news decision and selection. Gans (1980) has outlined the following four. The first theory is that of

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13 second one concerns organizational requirements, such as commercial pressures like circulation rates and structure of the organization. The third theory is called the mirror theory, which implies the idea that journalism is holding a mirror up to the world. And last, the theory of external determinism which argues for the involvement of external factors like technology, ideology, culture, economy, sources and audience. How then, does this thesis addresses the concept of news values? According to Allern (2002) news values are general and abstract which can give the impression that such values are independent of time and place and therefore constants. But he argues that news selection is always a question of evaluating certain events. Accordingly, judgements of ‘newsworthiness’ will always vary between news desks, and they will change over time (p. 140). Zelizer (2004) states this argument. ‘All taxonomies of News Values must remain open to inquiry rather than be seen as a closed set of values for journalism in all time and places” (p. 55). Therefore in this thesis an own set of news values is developed based on this literature review instead of making use of an existing one. This list is created in the next section.

2.1.3 TOWARDS AN ‘OWN SET’ OF NEWS VALUES

As seen in the previous two sections there are some differences in identifying what news values are and which factors in a story determine why it becomes news. For this theses I agree with Caple and Bednarek (2016) that a clear definition of news values must be enhanced, as Bell (1991) has done. Therefore the starting point for this thesis is accordingly: that news values must be defined as the values of the first of Bell’s categories. News values are these values that make an event, actor or issue becoming newsworthy. Therefore I do not focus upon external influences such as commercial interest, advertisers or winning audience loyalty. Plus, there will not be a focus on the writing or style of the news text itself, such as its brevity, color and clarity. Accordingly the journalistic judgement theory of News decision and selection of Bell (1991) is enhanced here. News selection is about making use of practical routines, news values concerning the third category of Bell (1991) News values in actors and events.

In the next part of this thesis, a new list of news values will be developed based upon previous scholarly literature and taxonomies. While creating such a list, some things are taken into account. First of all, an online hybrid media organization (VICE News) is being analyzed. Therefore, when determining news values, online affordances must be taken into account. Such as: the use of social media in commenting and sharing, no limitation in amount of content, hyperlinking, and availability of combination of audio, video, visuals and infographics. Secondly, VICE as the entire media company has a specific audience niche: young people between the age of 18 and 34. And their content is often based upon youth culture. Despite the channel VICE News says to be covering serious news, I must keep in mind that news values concerning soft news can be of high value. And thirdly, VICE News states that they provide under-reported stories. Hereby they mean that they are covering different stories than other (mainstream) media do. Therefore, the list of news values based upon previous scholarly literature can be incomplete, due to the fact that the studies discussed before are done within the mainstream media sphere.

The original work of Galtung and Ruge has produced some news values that are still applicable in current times. These are threshold, meaningfulness, consonance, continuity, unexpectedness, reference to

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14 some of these news values but call them different (magnitude, relevance, surprise, power elite, bad News and follow-up). Especially meaningfulness can be an important news value as it indicates stories that are relevant for the audience of the media organization, as VICE has a specific audience. Harcup and O’Neill (2001) did make a further distinction in the news value category elite people of Galtung and Ruge. They make a distinction between elite people and celebrities. Subsequently they come up with two categories:

power elite, which contains elite nations, institutions and people, and celebrity. I agree with this distinction

because in current era lots of non-elite famous people are in the news. One can, of course discuss what the makes a person just famous and or also elite. These categories will be operationalized in section….of the methodology part. The two news values frequency and unambiguity will be left alone due to the fact that nowadays, due to the Internet, a story has no specific timeframe to develop anymore. And also, all stories must have at goal to be as unambiguous as possible, because this is a journalists writing goal. This is in line with the argument of Harcup and O’Neill for losing these two news values.

Furthermore, Harcup and O’Neill (2001) developed some new news values which are in my view also important to take into account. These are: good News and entertainment. The former is adopted on the foundation of the research of Harcup and O’Neill, no further literature on this news value could be found. The latter was already developed as a separate category in 1979 by Golding and Elliot. It contains more soft news concerning sex, animals and humor as topics. In their 2016 article Harcup and O’Neill further develop their news values, now taken into account the new media landscape. Especially for this thesis two of these are important, namely audio-visuals and shareability, because VICE News is an online multimedia platform, therefore these news values are adopted. Furthermore, exclusivity is also adopted as a value from Harcup and O’Neill because of evidence throughout time that VICE News has provided exclusive stories or documentaries, such as the IS-documentary.

There is one value that is really important in news, and also difficult to conceptualize. Galtung and Ruge called it reference to something negative and Harcup and O’Neill (2001) bad News. But, agreeing with Harcup and O’Neill 2016, this is a too broad category. They define three different news values that all refer to something negative, namely bad News, conflict and drama. In this theses this conceptualization will be adopted, but it is likely to be difficult when applying. Conflict concerns war and strikes, bad News about defeat, injury, death and loss, and drama will contain kind of entertaining human interest stories, but a bit darker (Harcup and O’Neill 2016, p. 10), such as escapes (man hunts), court cases, accidents, sieges and rescues. The fifth news value Harcup and O’Neill added in 2016 News organization’s agenda is left alone due to the reason that this, in my opinion, is more suited for the second category Bell introduces, about ideological and external influences and not about the story itself.

Besides these news values, human interest (personalization as Galtung and Ruge named it) must be made as a separate category. Harcup and O’Neill (2001) had put it under the news value ‘entertainment’ but in my view this is not always ‘entertaining’. Nowadays there is more citizen journalism findable on the World Wide Web and eye-witnessing is often used by VICE. Therefore this is depicted as a separate category.

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Table 4 own list of news values

Magnitude How big the impact of the story, how more newsworthy the story becomes. Relevance How much the story relates to its audience (proximity) relates to how

newsworthy the story is.

Consonance Expected stories, such as about conferences, elections, are more likely to become news.

Follow-up Stories that concern a topic/theme that is already newsworthy more easily become news.

Surprise When stories have a surprising, unexpected element, they are more newsworthy.

NLJ When a story contains elite people, elite nations or institutions as actor or topic, they are likely to be more newsworthy.

Celebrity A story concerning celebrities is more newsworthy than stories concerning normal people.

Good news A story that is about good news can be newsworthy, for example: economic growth, or new medical treatments.

Entertainment Stories that concern sex, animals and or humor.

Exclusivity A story that is exclusive for the news organization (also breaking news)

Audio-visuals When a story contains a picture/infographic/video that makes the story more newsworthy.

Shareability When the story contains elements that likely will cause the story to be heavily commented on and shared on social media platforms.

Drama Entertaining, Human Interest stories, but darker: escapes, court cases, sieges, accidents etc.

Conflict Stories concerning war, fights, strikes, splits etc.

Bad news Stories with a particular negative overtone, such as death, injury, defeat and loss.

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16 2.2 SOMEWHAT DEEPER INTO ‘VICE’ – ALTERNATIVE AND HYBRID MEDIA

2.2.1 THE ‘ALTERNATIVE’ IDENTITY OF VICE

VICE is by many people seen as an alternative media organization despite having a big audience and commercial investors. That VICE sees itself also as being alternative is expressed in an interview Simon Houpt of ‘The Globe and Mail’ had with Suroosh Alvi in 2014. He asks here a crucial question:

“You’ve always positioned yourself as being the alternative to the mainstream. The trailer for Vice News says it’ll bring people the news that others are either too lazy or calcified, or scared by corporate interests to pursue. But who’s to say what’s ‘mainstream’ anymore? You guys are partly owned by

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and a global ad agency.”

Alvi argues that their investors have a minority stake in the business. “We have total control of the company, we’re privately held, there’s no one bossing us around, we have 100 per cent complete creative control over everything we do.” Besides this, he states that their niche is becoming very big because this group of people between 18 and 34 is not satisfied by the news they are getting from the more traditional sources,“… which is why we’re trying to respond to them.” (Houpt 2014). But, there are also expressions of VICE being mainstream media floating around on the World Wide Web. For example, find in an article, combined with video, published in September 2016 of Robbie Martin, a director of documentary series, and Mnar Muhawesh, founder and CEO of MintPress News. They argue that VICE has become leading the mainstream media meanwhile they are still hiding behind a hipster, edgy façade. Especially, the channel VICE News is covering mainstream narrative stories that have the same tone as Washington’s actions, such as ‘Russia-phobia’ topics (Muhawesh 2016).

Küng (2015) argues that “those who have grown up with a traditional concept of what constitutes quality news, have problems categorizing organizations like BuzzFeed and Vice as news providers.” (p. 3-4). Defining VICE as being alternative media or mainstream media seems to be a difficult task. Hamilton (2016) argues that it looks like VICE News is straddling mainstream and alternative journalism. And he states that, therefore, it is better to speak of the media company as being a hybrid media form. In the next two sections the problems concerning the identity of media in general as mainstream or alternative, and hybrid media are discussed.

2.2.2 ALTERNATIVE MEDIA

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17 question: “do we use ‘alternative’ as a catch-all for anything that isn’t available at our local newsagents? Is it a synonym for ‘underground’, ‘radical’, ‘oppositional’, - even ‘samizdat’?” (Atton 2002: 2). Another famous scholar in this field, Harcup, also argues that definitions of alternative media are not fixed or universally accepted (Harcup, 2005: 361).

Each of these scholars have conceptualized alternative media in a different manner, but with common similarities. So does Downing, defining alternative media as ‘radical media’, and media as counter-hegemonic and challenging the status quo (Downing 2011). Atton, also represents this line of thought. According to him alternative media are small and created by groups or individuals that are against the current media system (Atton 2002). Rodriquez, conceptualizes alternative media as ‘citizens’ media’. By this she means that alternative media is first and foremost for the people and by the people, and thus it is embedded within the everyday lives of citizens (2001).

Guedes Bailey, Cammaerts and Carpentier, authors of ‘Understanding Alternative Media’, are aware of this hard conceptualization of alternative media. They argue that there is not one clear theory that defines a common definition. There are a lot of media organization that are labeled as, or naming themselves, alternative. This caused that theories adopting one approach of what alternative is, are focusing on only certain characteristics and therefore are ignoring other important aspects of what alternative media is (Guedes Bailey, et al. 2007, p.5).

They come up with four approaches based on scholarly literature, such of Atton (2002), Servaes (1999) and Rodriguez (2001), for defining what alternative media are. First, alternative media can be seen as media that are serving a community. Thereupon the media organization is the voice of the community and covers topics that are of communities’ interests. Often people of the community participate actively within the organization. Second, alternative media can be depict as opposed to the mainstream and state broadcasting media. In this view, the alternative media is thus counter-hegemonic and non-commercialized. Often, those people that are agreeing with this approach do not trust the ‘old’ existing media and sometimes accuse them of not telling the (whole) truth. The third approach describes alternative media as a crucial link to civil society in democracies. It argues that alternative media is needed for protecting and enhancing democracy and, therefore, it participates in the public debate. The final approach defines alternative media as rhizomatic media (Guedes Bailey et al. 2007). This is building on the theory of rhizome, which is developed by Deleuze and Guattari in 1987. The theory is the opposite of the ‘arbolic’ thinking, which is hierarchical, stationary and linear. In contrast, the rhizomatic is thus “non-linear, anarchic and nomadic” (Carpentier, Lie and Servaes 2003, 61). These media are crossroads where people from different communities or with different ideologies meet and join forces. Often those people belong to a certain interest group. Furthermore, within these media, there is more freedom, hence there can be state or market incorporation (Guedes Bailey et al. 2007). Those ‘rhizomatic community media’ do not only give a voice to those communities, but can “also function as a catalyzer, rearticulating impartiality and neutrality and grouping people and organizations already active in different types of struggle for equality (or other issues)” (Carpentier, Lie, and Servaes 2003, 62).

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18 blurred the boundaries between the two.

Accordingly, she points out that recent empirical studies provide rich support for the vision that alternative and mainstream media have much in common and that this commonality between the two strands is not a new development but existed throughout history. An overview of similarities is given. First, alternative media are not always anti-commercial and can have, comparable to mainstream media, the dream to be financially viable. Even when this clashes with alternative views. Secondly, blogs are not only coherent within the alternative media sphere. Mainstream media do more and more adopt this style of journalism. Thirdly, content does not always differ that much between the two strands which resulted out of different content analysis researches. Fourthly, the distinction that alternative media favours ‘advocacy’ and mainstream media ‘objectivity’ as one of their news values have raised questions. This is due to the observation that mainstream media news values are changing the last years, plus they are adopting more news values of alternative media. Therefore the strict distinction between the two media strands in relation to their use of news values, such as advocacy and objectivity, begins to disappear. Fifth, ‘citizen journalism’ does no longer exclusively belongs to the alternative sphere, as mainstream media also makes some effort into this field of inquiry. And last but not least, because flows of personnel of both strands move in both directions, the newsrooms also begin to blur (Rauch 2016). In short, according to Rauch, “the two different worlds have merged due to technological advancements in communication, increased interdependency, rise of relatability and greater expectations of transparency in media” (Rauch 2016, p. 762).

But, scholars also name some clear differences between alternative and mainstream media. A couple of differences and characteristics are presented. According to Kenix (2015), alternative media are still less commercial in their ideology than mainstream media and are not seeking for profit but to be financially viable. Besides this, Hamilton (2008) argues that alternative media have as their goal, not maximizing profits, but to maximize audience size or to have a major powerful impact on society, thus criticizing the status quo. Further, Rauch (2016) expresses this difference. To her, alternative media are more explicit and vocal about their motivations and ideologies, as opposed to mainstream media whose job is to maximize profit.

Besides these scholarly views, various audience research also resulted in differences between the two strands of media. People identified alternative media in forms of producing information that mobilizes people’s participation, covering events that are not covered by mainstream media, and criticizing corporations. Plus being non-profit and independent from advertisers was not identified as a characteristics of the alternative sphere by the audience (Rauch 2016, p. 763). Hitherto, there is still not a clear usable definition of alternative media. But, for the purpose of this thesis it is not important to adopt a specific or general definition of alternative media. I agree with Rauch that in this digital era, it is becoming harder and harder to make a clear distinction between both strands of media. But it is important to note that there are scholars and audiences that make a distinction between the two. And that some media organizations clearly define themselves as being mainstream or alternative. While, this thesis does not adhere to a certain definition, it does tries to answer the following question:

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19 By all means, it is important to discuss the concept of ‘alternative’ in relation to media, of which the company VICE is part. But alternative media can also include: graffiti, badge-making, experimental film-making, creative writing and fanzine production (Harcup 2016). For the reason that this thesis studies journalism, it is even more important to go a level further and to have a look at alternative journalism.

According to Harcup (2014), alternative journalism are the elements of alternative media practices that involve reporting and/or commenting on factual and/or topical events (Harcup, 2016). In other words, Harcup says: “whereas the mainstream has a tendency to privilege the powerful, alternative media are set out to privilege the powerless and the marginal; to offer a perspective ‘from below’ and to say the ‘unspoken’” (Harcup 2003, 371). Harcup does thus make a clear distinction between the two strands of journalism. He further conceptualizes the concept: the practices of alternative journalism often take place within open and participatory media organizations that are professionalized and non-commercial. Besides this alternative journalism often rejects mainstream journalism, accordingly journalists working for alternative media may identify themselves opposed to mainstream journalists. They may see themselves as to be working to different news values, covering different stories, giving a voice to different sources, working with different ethical values and being a real watchdog, not only of the state but also of the mainstream media (Harcup 2016).

2.2.3 HYBRID MEDIA

This part of the literature review will give some insights into the field of hybrid media, and hybrid news practices in specific. As said before, Hamilton (2016) argues that defining VICE as alternative or mainstream media is a difficult task. Accordingly, the states that it is better to speak of the media company as being a hybrid media form. But before the focus is put on VICE, a general examination of the term ‘hybrid media’ is given.

Chadwick (2011) describes the new hybrid media sphere as a mixture between old and new media. Old media, television, radio and newspapers, are still often seen as mainstream, but this character is changing. They are adapting and evolving, while new media are becoming more popular and part of a new set of mainstream news. According to him, the “new news media outlets are in the process of being integrated into what is becoming a mainstream digital political news system” (Chadwick 2011, p.5).

Gulyas (2016) states that definitions of hybridity vary depending on the various disciplinary fields of research but that “it has been commonly used to refer to processes, and their outcomes, of mixing and blending of hitherto distinctive elements (Gulyas 2016, p. 3). In her research she compared the social media adoption by journalists in different countries. Therefore she has adapted the notion of hybridity defined by Chadwick. “Complexity, interdependence and transformative potential, three constructs of hybridity, provided the framework for her analysis” (Gulyas 2016, p. 16). Furthermore, according to Papacharissi, hybridity in the media landscape resulted in the further blurring of boundaries between hard news, information and entertainment and the creation of subtle shifts in the balance of power in shaping news production (Papacharissi 2015, p. 29).

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20 journalists have integrated new ways of news production into their routines, such as the use of social media (Mast et al. 2016, p. 3). In the current digital era a variety of hybrid journalistic processes take place. According to Mast et al. 2016 the general characteristic of these processes is that traditional values of journalism, impartiality and objectivity, and the fixed rules that connects journalism to news and information, have lost their power and accountability. Next to these changing values also new ones are created, such as immediacy, appeal and affect (Mast et al. 2016, p. 3). They conclude with the argument that hybridity is more complex than just the merging of two or more elements to make a new one. “It can be more than the mixing of genres, the blending of business models or the collaboration between professional and amateur journalists” (Mast et al. 2016, p. 7).

Chadwick (2013) argues that thinking of media as being hybrid can help to overcome the problem to make a distinction between old and new media. “Hybrid thinking rejects simple dichotomies, nudging us away from “either/or” patterns of thought and toward “not only, but also” patterns of thought. It draws attention to flux, inbetweenness, the interstitial, and the liminal. It reveals how older and news media logics in the fields of media and politics blend, overlap, intermesh, and coevolve” (Chadwick 2013, p. 4). According to him, it is not relevant to label every organization in a certain way, thus calling it alternative or mainstream. He argues for hybridity, thus both options are possible at the same time.

Hamilton (2016) agrees with this statement and comes up with some key emergent forms of hybridization in digital media spheres to make the concept less abstract. The first form in which hybridization is identifiable is in media intervention. Mainstream media and alternative media both work together with social movements to effect social change. Secondly hybridization can be found in the connection between digital recording, social media and personal accounts. This citizen witnessing becomes more important in the new media landscape, as well as for old and new media. The final example Hamilton explores is that hybridization can be seen as an institutional form: hybridizations between news and marketing industries. According to him is the multimedia conglomerate VICE a clear example of this last example (Hamilton 2016). The next section will zoom in on VICE as a hybrid and alternative media organization.

2.2.4. VICE AS A HYBRID MEDIA ORGANIZATION

First of all, one thing has to be made clear. When reviewing the literature on alternative media it became clear that defining what alternative media are, and if VICE could be as such depicted, would be a difficult task. After reviewing the little amount of literature that is yet written on the identity of VICE, the solution emerged. This thesis adheres to the argument that Hamilton has made about how to approach VICE. As said before, it is best to look at the organization as a hybrid form instead of labelling it as being mainstream or alternative. Now this is clear a close examination of VICE as a hybrid concept is presented.

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21 look for news, they also come across a lot of branded content and other merchandise of VICE. Therefore the organization can not be called mainstream or alternative, but they do a little of both (Hamilton 2016). Küng (2016) also points out that VICE can be called an old media-new media hybrid. According to her, the content is kind of traditional due to their focus on hard hitting news reportage. But these stories are distributed on new digital platforms and even sometimes produced in a ‘social media millennial style’. “The tone VICE uses in its coverage it challenging and alternative but their financial success is due to deal-making with advertisers, funders, and distributors” (p. 89).

Bødker (2016) discusses the hybrid nature of VICE presented in the combination of youth culture, lifestyle and hard news. He also argues that identifying VICE as a form of media hybridization is helpful in placing the media outlet, and also other newcomers, in the contemporary digital media landscape. He explores different forms of evidence within the company for being hybrid. First, he calls VICE hybrid in terms of connecting its covering of youth culture and popular culture to its covering of international newsworthy issues. Secondly, VICE is seen as a hybrid media format due to its connections to other media institutions, such as CNN, YouTube and HBO. Thirdly, VICE’s hybrid character shines through in its combination between being a magazine and a broadcaster. Although Bødker names only this combination, VICE is even more than just those two outlets, it also contains a film production studio, a record label and a book-publishing division. Furthermore, Bødker states that VICE does news in a different way than other media organizations do. The organization uses social media feeds, citizen journalism but also critical commentary. These different forms of reporting combined into one style can be called hybrid. And as Bødker goes on, Vice.com, the main website, is also in itself a hybrid media format. It consist out of various channels, sections, themes and countries. This is specifically good to see in the variation of the digital channels, such as motherboard, munchies, thump etc. All these platforms have their own logo, style and typography, but together they form an online umbrella platform: Vice.com (Bødker 2016).

3. METHODOLOGY

For answering the research question: “Which news values are apparent in VICE News’ content?” a mixed method of research is used. First a content analysis will be conducted on 200 articles and supplementary a discourse analysis will be conducted upon 20 of these. For conducting the content analysis a code book (appendix A) is used concerning the sixteen news values developed in the previous section. All these values are operationalized in the next section.

3.1 CONTENT ANALYSIS

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22 quantitative description of the manifest content of communication” (p. 18). In his article “Media content analysis: its uses; benefits and best practice methodology, Macnamara gives an overview of the research method. He explains that some scholars, such as Neuendorf, argue that content analysis must always be quantitative. And that others, such as Shoemaker and Reese, argue also for exercising qualitative content analysis (Macnamara 2005). Content analysis works with manifest and latent content, two concepts developed by Berelson. The former contains the concrete content which is on the surface, the latter contains the underlying meaning behind this data. Examples of manifest content are: how many times a word appears, how many times someone is mentioned. Examples of latent content are: defining themes, level of meaning. This requires thus judgement and prior knowledge and expectations of the researcher (Bryman 2012). The analysis of news values is an example of analysing themes/concepts, thus latent content.

3.1.1 SAMPLE

As the sample of this research online articles of news.vice.com are collected. Due to the fact that the website changed around September 2016 an online web archiving machine was used, namely wayback

machine at archive.org.

The site contains different sections and regions in which the news is structured. Due to limitations by using this archive machine, it was not possible to select stories from each section or category on a specific date. Therefore, of all chosen dates the eight stories presented on the homepage under the heading ‘in the news’ are selected. This is based on the hypothesis that the audience is also likely to read these stories more often than others that are not primarily presented on the homepage. For the analysis only textual articles are selected. The content of video, image and audio is not analysed due to the time and work limits of this thesis.

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23

Figure 1 Front page of VICE News

3.1.2 OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE NEWS VALUES

According to Neuendorf (2002) operationalization is the process of turning concepts into measurable variables. All sixteen news values, which are discussed in section 1.3.3, are developed into such variables, some of them with associated indicators. A whole overview of how to apply this can be found in the code book (appendix A).

o Magnitude

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24 o Relevance

This concept is more difficult to operationalize, because finding something relevant is subjective in nature. What is meaningful to someone is perhaps not meaningful to someone else. Therefore there is coded for three specific indicators to code as objective as possible. (a) When an article explicitly addresses how a topic could affect the audience of the news organization, (b) when a story is made meaningful by explaining what it could mean in practice, and (c) when the story concerns something that is part of youth culture, then it fits within VICE’s identity (e.g. soft drugs, graffiti, music, arts), this is called the cultural proximity. Furthermore, geographical proximity is also part of the news value relevance. This means that how geographically closer the country is to the news organizations’ country, how higher the proximity. However, for VICE geographical proximity is not relevant because it is an international media company with an international audience and bureaus all over the world.

o Consonance

Stories contain this news value when they are about events that are expected to become news (e.g. outcome of elections, traditions, conferences, sport matches, etc.). Beforehand, a journalist can already make a template for the story, this results in that stories are prefabricated before the event is going to happen. Such stories are easy to produce and people are expecting the story in the news, therefore it becomes more newsworthy. One can never code for this value when the event has just happened and was thus not preannounced.

o Follow-up

This news value concerns stories that are a follow-up of previous news stories. The coding is easily on the World Wide Web, thanks to online affordances, such as hyperlinking stories. VICE News uses different tools for referring to their own produced related news stories. (a) With hyperlinks in the text itself, (b) with the headlines of other stories presented as links in between the stories paragraphs, and (c) referring in words towards another news item within the text. But not all linked related stories are per se previous stories on which the follow-up is written. For example, sometimes these articles concern comparable events, but not the same. Thus, when coding for the news value follow-up there must be a linked story that exactly concerns the same event and is written by VICE itself.

o Surprise

Operationalizing this concept is very easy and straightforward and concerns the following question: is the event unexpected? It is not about the story itself is unfolding surprising, due to that this is a writing technique. But really about the event of the topic itself. The “man bites dog” illustration, portrayed in section 2.1.1, explains this news value very well. Furthermore, this category of surprise contains no specific indicators because it is so obviously, one can just think of unusual happenings.

o Elite power

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25 this category. First of all, this indicator is separated into two indicators: elite people in a story can be actors (the main characters) or sources. As being an actor, the person is very important for the story and as a source he or she can play a less important role. Secondly, when concerning politicians, only the presidents/premiers of elite nations are coded as elite people. And thirdly, also non-politician elite people are coded. Some examples of these are people in high leadership functions of NGOs, IGOs, major corporations, gangs, military forces etc. For operationalizing elite nations and institution the conceptualization of Schulz 1982, p. 151 is used. He defines elite nations as the ‘permanent members of the Security Council, the most industrialized countries of the world and the countries with the highest value in world trade’. In short, elite nations can thus be identified as those countries with the highest HDI (Human Development Index), of which a list is presented in appendix B. Schultz (1982) defines elite organizations (institutions) as: ‘the UN and its bodies, parties represented in government, and Unions (p. 151). For this thesis, major corporations, like oil companies, and major NGOs do also fall under this category. Elite institutions can also be coded as an actor, then it often has enormous influence, or as a source in a story, with perhaps less influence.

o Celebrity

Stories that have celebrities as actors or sources contain the news value celebrity. Here, just as with elite power, reflects the hypotheses that actors in a story have more influence than sources. According to Harcup and O’Neill (2001), p 270-271, celebrity are people such as soap stars (TV stars), film stars, sports stars and royalty. Accordingly, Obama is not depicted as a celebrity but Beyoncé is.

o Good News

Not all news is about bad happenings as many people may think. A story is considered good news when it is about something positive without containing any negative tone. According to Harcup and O’Neill (2001) good news contains stories that have specific positive elements, like cures and rescues. Therefore, such positive stories are those concerning “act of heroism, resourceful children, miracle recoveries, lucky escapes, happy anniversaries, prize winning, and triumphs over adversity” (p. 272). McIntyre (2016) also describes good news as “stories with particularly positive overtones, such as rescues, cures, acts of heroism, economic growth, reunifications, or love”. According to him these stories are most commonly not about conflict. For the identification of this news value these two definitions are combined. Furthermore, because this category is very subjective in nature, it is more difficult to code. This subjectivity exists because one’s opinion is not always the same as another one’s opinion. For example, person A agrees with new anti-LGBT laws, while person B disagrees with it. Therefore this category is only coded when it clearly contains good news that has not at all a possible negative side. E.g. ‘solutions for the environment (triumph over adversity), peace after war (reunification), etc.

o Entertainment

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26 animals it is not always entertainment news. This is for the reason that some stories are negative in tone and often about dead, harassment and violence. Besides this, humour is subjective in nature, because every person finds something funny in another way. Therefore this indicator is only coded when it is explicitly stated, e.g. ‘now it will be funny’.

o Exclusivity

This concept concerns news stories that are exclusively made by the media organization. Such stories are prominent and foremost breaking stories. When this is state explicitly in textual form, this news value is coded. Stories that have a press agency as a source (Reuters, AMP etc.) are in anyway not exclusive. VICE argues that they often produce their own stories, and that these are different than other stories. Therefore this value exclusivity can be identified as a symbolic value, it defines the media organization.

o Audio-visuals

According to Harcup and O’Neill (2016) the news value audio-visuals is present in articles when stories have arresting photographs, video, audio or infographics. It is important to note that such visuals are only arresting when they add some relevant value to the news story. When such a visual is just an illustration of the text it does not count as an indicator.

o Shareability

Trilling et al. (2017) conducted a study with the following research question: How can News sharing on

social media be predicted by characteristics of the News article? The operationalization of the concept of

shareability in this thesis is partly based on their findings and conclusions. According to them: “The most shares will be received by an article about the own country (or at least another western country) and not written by a news agency. Of less, but still considerable importance, is the presence of conflict, while human interest works only on Facebook (where it has strong influence)” (p. 16). Besides this, articles that are positive in tone instead of negative are more likely to be shared, and furthermore, popularity of topic does not influence the sharing. García-Perdomo et al. (2017) did a comparable research and concluded that the values timeliness, conflict & controversy, and impact & prominence resulted in the most shared stories on social media. Under timeliness they consider breaking stories, current events and events relative to time. Impact and prominence are stories written about celebrities/elite that also have a significant level of impact (magnitude). The indicators of this concept are thus based upon these results.

o Drama

Stories that contain the drama indicator are sort of entertaining human interest stories but with a darker negative tone to it. One can think of events that happen in soap series. News stories that contain this news value are not per concerning violence. While doing the pilot study, another aspect became clear. Namely, often these stories concern a certain dispute, between people, countries, companies etc. Therefore the following indicators are created: escapes, court cases, sieges, dramatic accidents,

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27 o Conflict

This is one of the easier concept to operationalize. It is a variable in stories when it has one of the following indicators: war, conflict, fights, strikes, coupes, and splits as a theme, or when the story discusses one of those events. While doing the pilot study another important indicator was found, namely terrorism. It is difficult to separate the indicators war, conflict and terrorism. In short, stories concerning the indicator war are those that are about territorial/civil wars, such as the Israel/Palestine war, Syria war, Crimean war, and the Sudanese war. Such a story does not per se have to contain a violent occurrence, as long as it is about ongoing war, this indicator is identified. The indicator conflict is more difficult to operationalize. These stories are about major conflicts that are not yet developed into war. An example of this is the ongoing struggle between North Korea and the world. Stories concerning terrorism are often about terroristic organizations, like Taliban, Islamic State (IS), Boko Haram, Al Shabaab, Al Qaida, etc. Besides this, it often concerns attacks or fights. But not all stories that fall under this category are per se violent. Sometimes these are, for example, about recruiting people to join such organizations or about precautions. Also when such terroristic organizations fight over territory, like IS in Syria and Iraq, then this story falls not under terrorism but under the war indicator. Some more specific rules and examples are presented in the codebook.

o Bad News

Indicators of bad news concern stories that have a negative overtone, such as death, injury, defeat and loss (of workplace for example). But these stories are not dramatic, and are also not about wars and conflicts. They are often describing a clear negative occurrence, without contesting sides. Examples are shootings, arrests, traffic accidents, natural disasters or environmental hazard. Often stories that are negative but do not fall under the categories drama or conflict fall under this category. Furthermore, bad

news stories are often about one-off happenings, they thus concern short-term events. Bad news stories

related to death are then, for example, stories that concern people or animals that died due to traffic accidents, once upon a time shootings, murder etc. Besides this, it is important to note that negative news stories can fall under drama, or conflict, or bad news. Only one category of the three can be coded.

o Human interest

Stories that are told from a Human Interest angle, thus told by ordinary people, or stories with an ordinary person as an actor fall under this category. Such stories can be positive and negative, thus concerning something good or something bad. When a story is about a negative event, it falls not directly under the

drama category because it can also concern conflict or bad News. For example, when a person tells his or

her story about living in a war zone. Than this story is coded under the news value conflict and human

interest. Not the whole story has to be about an ordinary person, thus also features or reportages that

LET’S HAVE A LOOK AT VICE NEWS AN ANALYSIS OF NEWS VALUES PRACTICE IN V