Online news reporting: A comparative textual analysis of hard news live blogs and traditional online news articles and a reader response analysis using appraisal

van Driel, Martine Alexandra (2018). Online news reporting: A comparative textual analysis of hard news live blogs and traditional online news articles and a reader response analysis using appraisal. University of Birmingham. Ph.D.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the differences between live blogs and traditional online news articles, and differences in how readers evaluate them. Building on developments in reader response studies, news media studies, and studies of evaluative language, I analysed live blogs and traditional online news articles for their structure and use of evaluative language. I show how live blogs present news events as more temporally close to the reader than traditional online news articles and ascribe evaluations of the reported news events to news actors, while traditional online news articles present evaluations ofthe news events more often as objective. Additionally, I conducted twenty interviews in an experimental setting with live blog or traditional online news article readers. I used qualitative linguistic analysis to investigate evaluations of the news texts and evaluations of the news events following the Appraisal framework. This analysis showed that all readers implicitly evaluated news events following news values. It also showed that readers of live blogs were more likely than traditional online news article readers to evaluate news events as affective, ascribing these evaluations to the inclusion of social media, primarily Tweets, in the live blogs.

Type of Work: Thesis (Doctorates > Ph.D.)
Award Type: Doctorates > Ph.D.
Supervisor(s):
Supervisor(s)EmailORCID
Bennett, JoeUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
Page, RuthUNSPECIFIEDUNSPECIFIED
Licence:
College/Faculty: Colleges (2008 onwards) > College of Arts & Law
School or Department: School of English, Drama and American & Canadian Studies, Department of English Language and Linguistics
Funders: None/not applicable
Subjects: P Language and Literature > PE English
P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN1990 Broadcasting
URI: http://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/8423

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