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Telling a Different Story: A Longitudinal Investigation of News Diversity in Four Countries

Year: 2022

Type: article

Abstract: News diversity is an important concern of journalism scholars, as its presence or absence can have a profound effect on democratic debate and the information available to citizens. Many have speculated that news diversity decreases over time, due to changing economic circumstances. This expectation especially applies to newspapers. Using nearly two decades of newspaper data from four European countries (Denmark, The Netherlands, Norway, UK), we do not find this expected decrease in news diversity. When conducting pairwise, automated comparisons between articles published on the same day in the same country, we rather find a modest over time increase in diversity between newspapers. This result suggests that newspapers differentiate rather than converge in the content they offer, shedding a more positive light on the evolution of the press in our current high-choice media environments.

Source: Journalism Studies

DOI: 10.1080/1461670x.2022.2111323

Authors: Erik de Vries, Rens Vliegenthart, Stefaan Walgrave

Institutions: University of Stavanger, Wageningen University & Research, University of Antwerp

Language: English

Topic: Media Studies and Communication

Subfield: Communication

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

Open Access status: hybrid

OpenAlex ID: W4294295848

FWCI: 3.05

Cites: 50

Cited by: 13

Related to: 10