The News Gap: When the Information Preferences of the Media and the Public Diverge - The MIT Press

Commendation Quotes: By analyzing news as a dynamic system, Boczkowski and Mitchelstein can analyze the gap between the preferences of producers and consumers of news, show why that matters for a democratic nation, and discuss how we might address the risks associated with that gap. Commendation Quotes: Boczkowski and Mitchelstein use a fascinating methodology to explore a digital-content divide they argue mirrors profoundly different preferences between news creators and news users. "The News Gap" looks at enduring questions in important new ways. It will surely spark terrific arguments about what stories journalists should tell -- and how they should tell them -- in an age where audience analytics reign. Commendation Quotes: Boczkowski and Mitchelstein fill an important gap in our knowledge of how news markets really work. Through analyses spanning twenty news sites in seven countries, they elegantly and effectively describe the discrepancies between the stories news sites feature prominently and the stories consumers actually choose to read, comment on, and share. Publisher Marketing: The websites of major media organizations -- CNN, "USA Today," the "Guardian," and others -- provide the public with much of the online news they consume. But although a large proportion of the top stories these sites disseminate cover politics, international relations, and economics, users of these sites show a preference (as evidenced by the most viewed stories) for news about sports, crime, entertainment, and weather. In this book, Pablo Boczkowski and Eugenia Mitchelstein examine the divergence in preferences and consider its implications for the media industry and democratic life in the digital age. Drawing on analyses of more than 50,000 stories posted on twenty news sites in seven countries in North and South America and Western Europe, Boczkowski and Mitchelstein find that the gap in news preferences exists regardless of ideological orientation or national media culture, and that it is not affected by innovations in forms of storytelling, such as blogs and user-generated content on mainstream news sites. Drawing upon these findings, they explore the news gap's troubling consequences for the matrix that connects communication, technology, and politics in the digital age. Review Citations:

Choice 07/01/2014 (EAN 9780262019835, Hardcover)

Contributor Bio:  Boczkowski, Pablo J Pablo J. Boczkowski is Professor and Director of the Program in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University. He is the author of "Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers "(MIT Press) and "News at Work: Imitation in an Age of Information Abundance". Contributor Bio:  Mitchelstein, Eugenia Eugenia Mitchelstein is a PhD candidate in the Program in Media, Technology, and Society at Northwestern University.