Searching for online news content: the challenges and decisions

ABSTRACT

This paper raises questions about the reliability of findings arising from an online publishing environment. Focusing on a case study of the Victorian media’s reporting of violence against women, it argues that many studies that are presented as accurate and empirical representations of online media coverage may be questionable. This is because of the increasingly inconsistent and ad hoc nature of the online databases used to collect the content. This raises deep problems surrounding the findings and claims that can be made by media research and the future of empirical media analysis. There are warnings of the inadequacy of standard methods used to collect content and suggestions are made such as, triangulation of different databases and the combination of computational and human methods. However, there is no definitive solution to this problem nor are there set protocols on how to proceed in this area of study. This paper aims to provide the research community with a transparent account of the challenges and decisions made when grappling with the issue of collecting online news content. It is suggested that a more proactive collaboration between newsroom archivists, database services and researchers is needed going forward.

KEYWORDS:

• Online news
• digital news
• online content
• content analysis
• databases
• archives

Acknowledgments

I would like to acknowledge Dr Margaret Simons and Prof. Jenny Morgan for their guidance and expertise throughout the project referenced in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. The project is an Australian Research Linkage Project LP150100321 ‘Violence Against Women – A Media Intervention’. The Chief Investigators were Margaret Simons, Jenny Morgan, Kristin Diemer, Michael Flood, Kelsey Hegarty, Denis Muller and Laura Tarzia. The author was the research assistant on the project. The partner organisations were VicHealth, Domestic Violence Victoria, the Victorian Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission.

2. ‘Big Data’ has been used in the sciences to refer to data sets large enough to require supercomputers, but more recently, such datasets can also be accessed on desktop computers. For example, Twitter messages on a particular topic. Boyd and Crawford (2012) wrote, ‘Big Data is less about data that is big than it is about a capacity to search, aggregate and cross-reference large data sets’ (p.663).

3. LexisNexis is a corporation which provides computer-assisted access to legal and business research and journalistic documents (https://www.lexisnexis.com.au/en).

4. WayBackMachine is an internet archive which works with libraries and other partners to archive important webpages (https://archive.org/about/).

5. Pandora is a collaboration of Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisation which archives online publications. It was established by the National Library of Australia in 1996 (http://pandora.nla.gov.au/about.html).

6. The Herald Sun is Australia’s largest circulation daily newspaper owned by News Corporation, Australia’s dominant newspaper publisher. Roy Morgan research indicated that the Monday-Friday edition was read by 848,000 people. The paper circulates primarily in Melbourne and rural and regional Victoria (Roy Morgan, 2017 http://www.roymorgan.com/industries/media/readership/newspaper-readership). It has always been a print publication but also operates a website and social media presence. Most of the content on the website is behind a ‘paywall’ available only to subscribers.

7. The Age is owned by Fairfax Media and is a daily newspaper that circulates in Melbourne and rural and regional Victoria. According to Roy Morgan, its readership Monday-Friday was 458 000 (Roy Morgan, 2017 http://www.roymorgan.com/industries/media/readership/newspaper-readership). The Age was also traditionally a print publication but also operates a website and social media presence.

8. Mamamia is the largest independent women’s website in Australia and produces multi-media content including news, opinion, social commentary, political analysis and other lifestyle content.

9. Factiva is a Dow Jones product and features nearly 33 000 sources, including licenced publications, influential websites, blogs, images and videos (http://www.dowjones.com/products/product-factiva/).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under grant LP150100321; Australian Research Council [LP150100321].

Notes on contributors

Annie Blatchford

Annie Blatchford (Phd. Candidate), Centre for Advancing Journalism, University of Melbourne, Australia, [email protected]