Bad News Travels Fastest: A Computational Approach to Predictors of Immediacy in Digital Journalism Ecosystems

Abstract

This paper studies the prevalence of immediacy in digital journalism from an ecosystem perspective. It combines insights into norms and routines in digital newswork with an analytical approach from news diffusion research and the power of computational methods to track story-based news flows at high granularity of time intervals in comprehensive media samples. We ask how attributes of news stories and situational preconditions of their production help explain whether the variety of newsrooms in a digital journalism ecosystem will converge on immediate story coverage so that wide-range bursts will emerge at the start of news diffusion processes. Based on the reconstruction of 95 news diffusion processes among 28 professional online news sites in Germany, we pool first reports from diffusion processes with the same attribute and compare the dynamics of the accumulation of issued first reports by attributes in event history analyses. We find that most news factors made no difference in a recurring pattern of basically fast diffusion dynamics. Only negative news and stories involving prominent personalities further accelerated diffusion processes and spread even faster. In contrast, events characterized by wide reach beyond small groups and the production break of many newsrooms during the night slowed down digital diffusion.

Keywords:

• Automated content analysis
• computational methods
• digital journalism ecosystem
• immediacy
• news diffusion
• news factors
• news flows
• newswork

Notes

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are openly available in the Open Science Framework at https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/B4YHS.

Notes

1 A limitation of this study arises from the fact that – despite diligent random checks – we cannot guarantee that the news items published via a news website’s homepage are identical to the ones distributed via its "homepage" RSS feed.

2 The number of diffusion processes each news site contributes to is as follows: Abendzeitung München (n = 56), Augsburger Allgemeine (n = 65), Berliner Kurier (n = 30), Berliner Morgenpost (n = 81), Berliner Zeitung (n = 74), Bild (n = 76), B.Z. Berlin (n = 54), Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (n = 76), Frankfurter Rundschau (n = 77), Hamburger Abendblatt (n = 93), Hamburger Morgenpost (n = 46), Handelsblatt (n = 74), Kölner Express (n = 71), Kölner Stadtanzeiger (n = 84), Leipziger Volkszeitung (n = 24), Mitteldeutsche Zeitung (n = 80), Neue Ruhr Zeitung (n = 91), Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten (n = 68), Der Spiegel (n = 90), Süddeutsche Zeitung (n = 46), taz (n = 62), tz München (n = 54), WAZ Niederrhein (n = 91), Welt (n = 76), Weserkurier (n = 16), Westfalenpost (n = 92), Westfälische Rundschau (n = 89), and DIE ZEIT (n = 83).

Additional information

Funding

This work was partially supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundeministerium für Bildung und Forschung) under Grant 01UG1232A.