News values are the factors, defined by theorists Galtung and Ruge, that explain how journalists and news editors decide that certain news stories and images are considered newsworthy, while others are not. News values are applied to news stories in traditional newspapers, such as The Sun and The Guardian, online news sites, such as BBC News Online, and on news bulletins on the radio.
Immediacy - is the story a new story, is it 'breaking' - has it happened recently?
Familiarity - is the story geographically close to the audience, regionally or nationally?
Amplitude - is the story a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?
Frequency - does the event happen often?
Impact - can the audience identify with the story as having a profound effect on their lives? Are there threatening elements to make the audience feel in danger?
Predictability - did the audience expect the story to happen?
Surprise - is the story an unusual or unexpected event?
Continuity - has the story already been defined as news? Is it part of an ongoing or long-running story?
Conflict - does the story contain drama in describing disagreements, arguments, fights or battles between two or more people/organisations?
Elite People - does the story concern well-known people, such as celebrities (actors, popstars, sportsmen, politicians)?
Personalisation - is it a human interest story?
Negativity - is the story bad news?
Scandal - is the story likely to provoke moral outrage from parts of the audience?
One of the first bits of research I am going to do is to identify the news values of a number of different news stories (both national and local) and try to determine how the news values affect the position of the news story on the website and on bulletins.
No comments:
Post a Comment