https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2098-2630
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ABSTRACT
Journalism professionals and media experts have traditionally used normatively formed criteria to evaluate news quality. Although the digital news media environment has enabled journalists to respond at unprecedented speed to audience consumption patterns, little academic research has systematically addressed how audiences themselves perceive and evaluate news, and even less has focused on audio-visual news. To help fill this research gap, we conducted in-depth group interviews with 22 online news video consumers in the UK to explore their perceptions of online news videos—an increasingly popular news format. Thematic analyses suggest audiences evaluate online news videos using a complex and interwoven set of criteria, which we group under four headings: antecedents of perceptions, emotional impacts, news and editorial values and production characteristics. Some of these criteria can be positioned clearly in relation to the literature on news quality in general, while our documentation of the others contributes new, format-specific knowledge. Our findings offer journalists practical insights into how audiences perceive and evaluate a host of characteristics of online news videos, while our conceptual framework provides a foundation for further academic research on audience evaluations of online news videos, and even audio-visual news more generally.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 We define online news videos as audio-visual content that is specifically designed and produced for distribution and consumption over the internet. Online news videos differ from broadcast news as they are often self-contained packages that don’t require a news programme or anchor for contextualisation. Moreover, many online news videos are captioned, which means they can be consumed and understood with or without sound.
2 This 43% increase in weekly online news video consumption is an average. The increase in consumption in some countries—like the United States (33–61%), Canada (32–62%), the UK (22–39%) and France (22–48%)—was less, while in some other countries, like Turkey (29–95%), it was more.
3 Many researchers studying news quality identify credibility as a vital element (Gladney, Shapiro, and Castaldo Citation2007; Neuberger Citation2014; Prochazka, Weber, and Schweiger Citation2018; Urban and Schweiger Citation2014). Some posit that credibility differs from information quality while acknowledging similarities between the two concepts (Rieh and Danielson Citation2007; Hilligoss and Rieh Citation2008).
4 Thematic analysis can be described as “a process of making explicit the structures and meanings … in a text” (Gavin Citation2008, 275). In other words, it is an analysis of text for themes and patterns.
5 Using a text story as a basis, the platform chooses illustrative still and/or moving images, creating an initial edit with either captions or a voice-over. Some further manual editing is usually undertaken prior to publication.