Category Archives: research

Data journalism in the UK 2024 election: a numbers game

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Bar chart: Case studies were used in only four of 50 articles by data journalists during the election More than half of articles had no original quotes at all.

Data journalism during the election lacked case studies and quotes from those outside of the Westminster bubble, according to an analysis of over 50 pieces published during the election campaign.

But the rare exceptions offer examples of how we can do better election data journalism which sets the agenda and gives voters a louder voice.

Read the full analysis here. It is part of UK Election Analysis 2024: Media, Voters and the Campaign, a publication which “captures the immediate thoughts, reflections and early research insights on the 2024 UK General Election from the cutting edge of media and politics research.”

The analysis can also be compared to previous reflections in 2015 and 2010.


The ‘Metajournalist’ and the return of personalised news: research on automated reporting

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Matt Carlson has written an interesting piece of research (£) into ‘The Robotic Reporter’: namely, automated journalism where articles are written by algorithms.

His interest lies largely in the “technological drama” of competing narratives and cultures – but along the way he identifies some developments and implications which appear in the minority of reports beyond those recurring stories of “augmentation or elimination” (of journalists’ jobs), but which may be more interesting. Continue reading →

16 reasons why this research will change how you look at news consumption

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Most research on news consumption annoys me. Most research on news consumption – like Pew’s State of the News Media – relies on surveys of people self-reporting how they consume news. But surveys can only answer the questions that they ask. And as any journalist with a decent bullshit detector should know: the problem is people misremember, people forget, and people lie.

The most interesting news consumption research uses ethnography: this involves watching people and measuring what they actually do – not what they say they do. To this end AP’s 2008 report A New Model for News is still one of the most insightful pieces of research into news consumption you’ll ever read – because it picks out details like the role that email and desktop widgets play, or the reasons why people check the news in the first place (they’re bored at work, for example).

Now six years on two Dutch researchers have published a paper summarising various pieces of ethnographic and interview-based consumption research (£) over the last decade – providing some genuine insights into just how varied news ‘consumption’ actually is.

Irene Costera Meijer and Tim Groot Kormelink‘s focus is not on what medium people use, or when they use it, but rather on how engaged people are with the news.

To do this they have identified 16 different news consumption practices which they give the following very specific names:

  1. Reading
  2. Watching
  3. Viewing
  4. Listening
  5. Checking
  6. Snacking
  7. Scanning
  8. Monitoring
  9. Searching
  10. Clicking
  11. Linking
  12. Sharing
  13. Liking
  14. Recommending
  15. Commenting
  16. Voting

Below is my attempt to summarise those activities, why they’re important for journalists and publishers, and the key issues they raise for the way that we publish. Continue reading →