News Quality in the Digital Age

Regina G. Lawrence is Research Director of the Agora Journalism Center at the University of Oregon, and editor of the journal Political Communication. Dr. Lawrence’s books include When the Press Fails: Political Power and the News Media from Iraq to Katrina (University of Chicago Press, 2007, with W. Lance Bennett and Steven Livingston), Hillary Clinton’s Race for the White House: Gender Politics and the Media on the Campaign Trail (Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2009, with Melody Rose); and The Politics of Force: Media and the Construction of Police Brutality (University of California Press, 2000). Philip M. Napoli is the James R. Shepley Professor of Public Policy in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University, where he is also the Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Research and the Director of the DeWitt Wallace Center for Media & Democracy. He is the author/editor of seven books, including, most recently, Social Media and the Public Interest: Media Regulation in the Disinformation Age (Columbia University Press, 2019).

PART 1: FOUNDATIONS






Introduction



Communication Technology and Threats to Democracy: We the People are (also) the Problem

PART 2: MEASUREMENT APPROACHES TO NEWS QUALITY

3. Social Media Metrics and News Quality

4. Is that News for Me? Defining News-ness by Platform and Topic

5. User Comments as News Quality: Examining Incivility in Comments on Perceptions of News Quality

6. Beyond the "Trust" Survey: Measuring Media Attitudes through Observation



PART 3: ALGORITHMIC SYSTEMS AND NEWS QUALITY



7. All the News that’s Fit to Tweet: Sociotechnical Local News Distribution from the New York Times to Twitter

8. Out of Control? Using Interactive Testing to Understand User Agency in News Recommendation Systems

9. Gaming AI: Algorithmic Journalism in Nigeria

10. Editorial Values for News Recommenders: Translating Principles to Engineering



PART 4: NEWS QUALITY, GOVERNMENT, AND MEDIA POLICY



11. How Australia’s Competition Regulator is Supporting News, but not Quality

12. Government Interventions into News Quality

13. Conclusion