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Abstract
This article provides an empirical basis for discussions of public service news on the Web. Through innovative use of computer-assisted data gathering and structuring, and a combination of quantitative methods, we present the results from a large-scale analysis of the online news content of the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation, NRK. The study reveals not only specifics of the online news genre, but also the dual role of NRK as a public service broadcaster. nrk.no fulfils regional content provisions by having a heavy local news focus on the website's “inside”. Simultaneously, its front page profile suggests NRK operates in direct competition with commercial national online news actors. The article offers new insights into the nature of online news as offered by a large, traditional media institution. These insights are key to any discussion of online journalism, as well as the future of public service broadcasting. Furthermore, through the employment of innovative computer-assisted data collection and structuring, the article aims to contribute to the development of the methodological arsenal of journalism studies.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research presented in this article was funded by the Norwegian Media Authority. The authors wish to thank Dag Elgesem, Maren Agdestein, Joachim Laberg, Linn Lorgen and Gyri S. Losnegaard.
Notes
1. NRK (est. 1933) is publicly owned and mainly license fee funded. In 2010, it was number one in the market for television and radio news and the third most frequently visited online actor in Norway (TNS-Gallup, 2010).
2. Our translation, from §17 in the 2009 NRK statutes, available at http://www.medietilsynet.no/Documents/Tema/Allmennkringkasting/090629_NRK_vedtekter.pdf.
3. Based on the available data, we estimate that 74,430 articles are close to the representing the whole population for 2009, only short of 5000–10,000 published articles. There is no reason to assume any thematic patterns in the lacking content. Dataset 1 was collected and treated by way of computer software on the basis of an index file of published articles on nrk.no for 2009.
4. The preselected dates for datasets 2 and 3 were: Monday 19 January; Wednesday 11 February; Thursday 12 March; Friday 24 April; Sunday 21 June; Tuesday 18 August; Wednesday 16 September; Thursday 15 October; Friday 13 November; and Saturday 5 December 2009.
5. See www.python.org.
6. Beautiful Soup is free open source software by Leonard Richardson (see http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup).
7. Inter-coder reliability was established through three rounds of testing using three separate coders measuring Cohen's Kappa (κ). Included in the reliability sample were 100 items from dataset 2 (N=2162) and 100 items from dataset 3 (N=1192). Results for dataset 2 showed reliability ranging from 0.43 to 0.86 (from 70 to 97 percent raw agreement). Results for dataset 3 showed reliability ranging from 0.17 to 1.00 (from 74 to 100 percent raw agreement). High distribution and low variance resulted in a low κ for some of these categories (Neuendorf, 2002, p. 151). As raw agreement remains high within the low κ-scoring categories, the study still retains acceptable reliability. Inter-coder reliability was not tested on the computational analysis.
8. Such features are often discussed as interactive. The concept of interactivity is, of course, a highly contested and notoriously amorphous term, and a thorough treatment is beyond the scope of this article. However, following Chung (2008), the features we focus on here could be labeled human and human–medium interactivity (which allows for users’ communication with peers and journalists, as well as provision of user-generated content), and medium and medium–human interactivity (which in various ways allow for control and customization of content) (Elgesem et al., Citation2010 for further discussion).
9. Our analysis only measures the use of Flash-based video files, and does not register links to autonomous Web-TV services.
10. News items from a foreign location that were covered because of proximity to Norwegian matters. Examples include the royal family's visits abroad and the success of foreign sports teams with Norwegian players.
11. War, terror and political violence were coded under the politics variable.