Abstract
A by-product of today’s hybrid media system is that genres—once uniformly defined and enforced—are now murky and contested. We develop the concept of news-ness, defined as the extent to which audiences characterize specific content as news, to capture how audiences understand and process media messages. In this article, we (a) ground the concept of news-ness within research on media genres, journalism practices, and audience studies, (b) develop a theoretical model that identifies the factors that influence news-ness and its outcomes, and (c) situate news-ness within discussions about fake news, partisan motivated reasoning, and comparative studies of media systems.
What is news? How is news defined? On the surface, these are straightforward questions. Yet, the meaning of news extends well beyond a type of media content, and toward a concept with deep democratic meaning. The “special status” (Fiske, 1987) given to news is based on two propositions: democracy depends on participation from an informed public, and news provides citizens with the information they need to participate (Schudson, 1998). As such, news occupies a unique space in the media environment—it is a media genre, a democratic concept, and the defining output of a profession. As such, questions of what is news and its impact on democratic orientations are the focus of much scholarly work.
For example, a large body of scholarly research approaches these questions from a production standpoint, identifying the news values and professional roles that underlie judgments about news coverage (Hallin & Mellado, 2018; Harcup & O’Neill, 2017; Mellado et al., 2017; Schultz, 2007), and the routines that shape evaluations of what news is (Gans, 1979; McGregor & Molyneux, 2018; Tuchman, 1978). While this research is important—and informs many of our theoretical propositions—not enough research has examined audience perspectives on what constitutes news. We address this gap by focusing on what we call news-ness, defined as the extent to which audiences characterize specific media content as news.
The question of news-ness harkens back to traditional audience theories of media genres and the distinguishing of one type of media from another (Fiske, 1987; McQuail, 2010), yet this classification faces significant challenges from hybrid media (Chadwick, 2013). In a world where media blend in unprecedented ways and long-held media expectations have become “unfixed” and “open to reimagining” (Baym, 2017, p. 12), do audiences still make assessments of genre and do such categorizations (if they occur) matter? We argue that media hybridization makes the classification of genres—and specifically the features that lead someone to consider content as more or less news-like—even more important for understanding audience sensemaking and response. With an influx of content and sources available to audiences in the modern media environment, including those that deceptively masquerade as “news” (Lazer et al., 2018), scholarly research needs to consider when audiences are likely to consider something news and how this label impacts their processing and response.
The concept of news-ness is well-suited to capture these dynamics. First, it is an audience-based concept that does not assume that assessments of news are straightforward and uniform. Instead, news-ness embraces the idea that audiences judge the degree to which specific media are “news”—and by observing variations in ratings of news-ness, we can learn about how audiences define news. In this article, we outline five factors that may contribute to news-ness: what is communicated, how it is communicated, by whom it is communicated, where the communication occurs, and who receives it (Lasswell, 1948). The emphasis on the audience’s conceptualization of news-ness does not ignore the role of content producers, but understands them as signals by which audiences come to see something as lower or higher in news-ness.
Second, news-ness can test the extent to which news still functions as a democratic concept held to certain standards essential for democratic engagement. News-ness, for example, can be a gateway into addressing questions like “What does the label of news even mean?” (when audiences consider a media message as higher in news-ness, does this also correspond to higher trustworthiness and relevance?) and “How does news affect audiences?” (do higher ratings of news-ness result in higher learning and participation?). Most importantly, news-ness can test these traditional expectations while also allowing for new standards to emerge.
In reflecting on the challenges of studying media in the hybrid media age, Höijer (2000) called for more research that simultaneously recognizes that “genres are powerful and put constraints on the audience” and embraces “the aspects in which audiences are powerful” in how they work on media (p. 204). We believe news-ness is a concept that captures these dualities.
News As a Media Genre
The question of how people determine news-ness fits within the larger framework of media genre. Media genres exist to help individuals distinguish between media, allowing audiences to “[find their] way in the luxuriant abundance of media output and for helping to describe and categorize content” (McQuail, 2010, p. 373). Many aspects of the current media environment are built around genre categorizations as a way to manage increased media choice: television programs, movies, podcasts, and interactive navigation tools often provide genre labels (e.g., comedy, drama, news) for audiences to filter their media options. In this vein, audiences are well-socialized into sorting and thinking about media in terms of genre.
That being said, a supplied genre label is not the same thing as a perceived genre label (Buckingham, 1993; Höijer, 2000). Just because a story is labeled as news on a website does not mean that audiences will adopt the genre label. Audiences have agency in how they understand and make sense of media genres. Given this, it is striking that past research has found news to hold a relatively consistent meaning across countries, and among journalists and audiences (Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006). News is not merely a descriptive classification of a type of media, but a concept with deep connections to notions of democracy. In the section that follows, we reflect on how news has been defined in the past and the ways the current media environment challenges these assumptions.
The News-Democracy Narrative
News has long been considered a “special” and “high status” genre that should be distinguished from other types of media, such as entertainment, due to the normative role it plays in democratic society (Fiske, 1987, p. 238; Schudson, 1998). Woodstock (2014) describes this as the “news-democracy narrative,” where news is “the life-blood of a democracy” (Fenton, 2010, p. 3) and entertainment is viewed as a threat to news consumption, and therefore society (Prior, 2007; Putnam, 2000). The narrative imbues news with certain qualities necessary for a knowledgeable and participatory citizenry. For example, when the journalism profession in the United States embraced the norm of objectivity in the 20th century, it became a fundamental belief that anchored the meaning and routines of news (Deuze, 2005; Schudson, 1976; Tuchman, 1978). Surveys of U.S. journalists point to the importance of accuracy, fairness, neutrality, and serving as a watchdog (Gil de Zúñiga & Hinsley, 2013; Media Insight Project, 2018). This corresponds closely to what Hallin and Mancini (2004) describe as a liberal media system, where news is professionalized and detached from political influence and opinion-giving.
There is also evidence that the news-democracy narrative pervades audiences’ understandings of news. Even when criticizing news as boring and removed from their lives, Buckingham (2000) found that teenagers and young adults in the United Kingdom and United States were adamant that entertainment had no place in news (also Barnhurst & Wartella, 1991; Höijer, 2000). As one Dutch interviewee from Costera Meijer’s (2007) study stated, “news is like a whole-wheat sandwich: you eat it because it is healthy, not because it is tasty” (p. 96). So pervasive are expectations for news that even individuals who consume very little news still recognize its democratic value and use words like “objectivity,” “neutrality,” and “credibility” to describe their expectations (Edgerly, 2017; Woodstock, 2014). Indeed, the news values of U.S. audiences closely mirror those of journalists (Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006), placing emphasis on accuracy, fairness, and neutrality (Gil de Zúñiga & Hinsley, 2013; Media Insight Project, 2018).
The Hybrid Media Environment
Despite the past pervasiveness of the news-democracy narrative, particularly in liberal media systems, the rise in media hybridity poses significant challenges to traditional notions of news and its relationship to other media genres (Baym, 2017; Chadwick, 2013). It raises questions about how audiences assess the meaning and boundaries of news, especially when they encounter media that mix elements of news with entertainment and blur the lines of what is real or fake. These are questions that the news-ness concept embraces by opening new possibilities for audiences to decide what they consider news, what the concept means, and its effects.
A hybrid media system casts doubt on the seemingly simple genre boundaries of the past. No longer can instances of news and entertainment mixing be dealt with by devaluing stories or sections that focus on entertainment (Barnhurst & Wartella, 1991; Baum, 2003), if they ever were as walled off as these normative perspectives imply (Putnam, 2000). In its place is “an emergent paradigm of hybrid media that blends news and entertainment in unprecedented ways” (Baym, 2010, p. 5), where “traditional journalistic values of impartiality and objectivity, and fixed notions that confine journalism to ‘news’ and ‘information’, have lost much of their credence and authority” (Mast et al., 2017, p. 5).
The fluidity of modern media is best exemplified by the term “infotainment,” which encompasses the dual trends of “entertainment becoming more news-like” and “news becoming more entertainment-like.” We highlight four types of infotainment that undercut the tidiness of the news-democracy narrative: political satire, outrage media, soft news, and sensationalism.
Political satire, which eschews the journalistic norms of professionalism and objectivity in exchange for using satire and irony to discuss current events and critique public policy, is led by actors/comedians rather than trained journalists (Young, 2020). Outrage media, likewise, mixes traditional news elements (e.g., professional appearance, norm-based slogans like “fair and balanced”) with entertainment (e.g., name-calling, ridicule, personalization) to create emotionally provocative and often politically slanted content (Berry & Sobieraj, 2014; Mutz & Reeves, 2005). Yet, both political satire and outrage media produce substantive issue coverage and are seen as trustworthy by audiences (Bump, 2019; Gottfried & Anderson, 2014; Young, 2020), raising questions of whether they are not only seen as trustworthy but also as news.
Soft news and sensationalism reflect topics coverage decisions. Increased commercial pressure can result in journalistic role practices that emphasize nonpolitical topics and personal narratives over societal trends (Mellado et al., 2017), as well as “sensationalist production features” (e.g., visuals, forward-referencing headlines, language choices) that capture audience attention and provoke emotion (Otto et al., 2017, p. 142; Kilgo & Sinta, 2016). While distinguishing hard news (topics related to politics, economy, societal problems) from soft (all other topics, celebrity, lifestyle, crime) is not new (Tuchman, 1978), hybridity reinforces that these categories are not strictly dichotomous. Political topics, for example, can become “softer” if a story emphasizes a personal-angle, or reporters use an opinionated voice (Reinemann et al., 2011). Ultimately, it is unclear whether traditional production and topic boundaries still shape audience understandings of what news is, and whether defining something as news is a necessary condition for audience learning and participation.
While the examples of hybridization provided above are largely U.S.-based, hybridization of journalistic cultures is occurring around the world (Chadwick, 2013; Voltmer, 2013). A systematic coding of over 34,000 print news stories in 19 countries reveals an “intermingling” of contradictory coverage trends that challenge ideal notions of what news looks like (Mellado et al., 2017). The United States, for example, had a higher level of opinion coverage than expected from a liberal media system, while Spain and Greece had higher levels of watchdog coverage than expected from Polarized Pluralist systems. This research signals the “multilayered patterns of hybridity” (p. 960) that characterize how news is performed, which highlights the benefit of an approach focusing on the receiving side, and how audiences might similarly be developing multilayered, contradictory, different-from-ideal, notions of what news is.
In advocating for this focus, we acknowledge that embracing media as “both/and” (not “either/or”) can raise the question of whether genres labels are obsolete (Williams & Delli Carpini, 2011). When media regularly blur categorical lines, does it even matter what audiences consider to be news? We argue that hybridization makes media genres more important, not less. As the hybrid media environment creates audience expectations that are “unfixed, decentered, and open to reimagining” (Baym, 2017, p. 12), the genre labels audiences apply to specific media become more varied, yet more powerful, and important for research to consider. We propose the concept of news-ness as a way of capturing how audiences determine what is news, what news means, and why this genre label matters, in a hybrid media age.
News-ness As a Concept
We define news-ness as the extent to which audiences characterize a specific piece of media as news. This conceptual definition has three important components: (a) news-ness focuses on audience rather than producer definitions; (b) news-ness is not a “yes-no” categorical assessment, but one that emphasizes “degree rather than kind” (Baum, 2003, p. 6); and (c) news-ness is judged in relation to specific media examples. Together, the concept capitalizes on the “gut feeling” and “mental schema” individuals hold about news (Höijer, 2000; Schultz, 2007). Indeed, past studies have found people are able and willing to render judgments about whether specific examples should be considered news, yet they struggle to provide concrete definitions of news (Costera Meijer, 2007; Edgerly, 2017; Tuchman, 1978). In other words, news can be difficult to define, but people know it when they see it. News-ness capitalizes on this.
While our article is devoted to developing news-ness conceptually, we offer two examples of its measurement in different research contexts. We emphasize that the concept of news-ness is shaped by past scholarship using diverse methodologies. As such, we believe that news-ness has value for quantitative and qualitative research. For example, news-ness can be measured in a qualitative study by having individuals read different types of media stories (chosen to reflect a given research question) and then sort the stories, either in piles or along a continuum, and talk about their logic. A researcher may choose to explicitly anchor the continuum with labels related to news and relevant genres/concepts (e.g., news vs. entertainment, news vs. fake news, news vs. advertisement) or explore how people use these labels on their own. Such procedures measure news-ness by identifying the extent—as seen by word choices and language intensity—to which certain stories are considered news and on which grounds.
Taking a quantitative approach, news-ness can be used in an experimental study by randomly assigning people to view different media stories (based on the specific research question) and then assess news-ness. Under this approach, news-ness could be numerically measured through level of agreement, on a 5-point scale, with statements that make explicit reference to news (e.g., “This story is a good example of news,” “This story is not very news-like,” and “When I think about news, this is the type of story that comes to mind”). 1 With this measurement, news-ness captures the extent—as seen by higher or lower numerical ratings—to which certain stories are considered news.
Only two measurement examples are highlighted here. There are certainly other ways of operationalizing news-ness to reflect a specific research question and design. We offer three conceptual requirements that new measures of news-ness must achieve—a focus on audience definitions, an emphasis on degree over kind, and judged in relation to specific content—which provides flexibility, as new media systems require new ways of defining news.
In the next section, we situate news-ness within a larger conceptual model. The model begins with the most fundamental (and deceivingly simple) question that future studies of news-ness can provide a better understanding of: what is news?
Factors of News-ness
An overall model of news-ness is presented in Figure 1. The left side of the model accounts for production and contextual factors of a media message. By exploring how certain factors result in certain assessments of news-ness, scholars can learn more about what audiences consider to be news. We outline four fundamental message factors (Lasswell, 1948)—what is communicated, how it is communicated, by whom, and where. These factors reflect traditional notions of news, as well as how news is reshaped and differently practiced in today’s hybrid media age (Chadwick, 2013; Mellado et al., 2017; Voltmer, 2013). We then consider how a fifth factor—the audience who receives the message—can intersect with the message factors to explain news-ness. When applicable, we reference our past empirical research (based on three experiments with U.S. adults) which inspired and informed the conceptual model.
A conceptual model of news-ness.
What Is Communicated
Certain types of events, issues, or information will be more in line with audience notions of news, especially under the news-democracy narrative where news is expected to focus on hard news topics that are significant to society (Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006). Much of what we know about how journalists determine what is newsworthy falls under this factor. For example, research on news values finds that journalists view events reflecting proximity, magnitude, deviance, and the power elite as more deserving of news coverage (Harcup & O’Neill, 2017). Studying news-ness allows researchers to test whether these news values translate into different assessments of news-ness among audiences. Are stories about President Trump (given his elite status as president) or a local school closure (given its proximity) rated higher in news-ness than stories about an unobtrusive political issue or a school closure in another state? 2 Studies of news-ness can also identify the boundary work that audiences engage in when confronted with the hybridity of hard and soft news topics. How do audiences assess the news-ness of a story about a celebrity campaigning against proposed immigration policy or an athlete calling for Congress to take on gun control?
The type of information provided in a media message can also influence news-ness. In an experimental study, we explored how audiences rated the news-ness of four types of headlines (breaking, exclusive, fact check, opinion) about a potential government shutdown (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020). Despite the headlines focusing on the same topic, we observed significant differences in news-ness. There was a clear ordering from highest in news-ness (Breaking), to middle (Fact check, then Opinion), and lowest (Exclusive). In other words, information about unfolding events strikes at the heart of what U.S. audiences think about as news, especially in an always on media environment (Hermida, 2010); while the exclusive label, followed by a forward-referencing headline, was lowest in news-ness. At least in the context of a hard news, obtrusive topic (a governmental shutdown), the traditional news value of immediacy still holds weight for audience perceptions of news, whereas more fluidity appears to exist for the journalistic practices of fact checking and opinion-giving.
How Information Is Communicated
The second factor highlights the tone and angle emphasized in a media message. Journalistic practices have traditionally favored a dispassionate, serious style of delivery, relying on quotations from experts to add context and color (Baym, 2010). Yet, hybridity challenges these delivery modes, raising the question of whether humor, outrage, and sensationalism can be infused into the delivery of current events information and still be considered news (Berry & Sobieraj, 2014; Young, 2020). Does the same information or event—conveyed in a variety of tones or styles—result in different assessments of news-ness? Our initial work (Edgerly & Vraga, 2019) suggests that U.S. audiences consider information conveyed in a dispassionate way to be most news-like, while delivery tones that embrace conflict or humor are less news-like.
Beyond tone, emphasizing certain aspects of an event or topic can alter news-ness. A long line of research has investigated the different frames journalists use in their stories and the effects framing has on audience interpretations, attitudes, and behaviors (Borah, 2011). Another outcome could be ratings of news-ness. The decisions made about which details to emphasize and how to characterize an issue/event may lead audiences to consider certain frames as higher in news-ness over others. For example, episodic framing, which focuses on the personal consequences of a societal issue, may produce low news-ness compared with thematic framing, which contextualizes an issue within a larger societal trend (Glogger & Otto, 2019). Likewise, scholars have largely deplored the use of strategic or horse race coverage as a way of making political campaigns more sensational (Aalberg et al., 2012). What impact does this type of framing have on news-ness, especially when compared with other types of frames, like human-interest or consequence framing?
Who Communicates the Information
The source of a media message can also influence news-ness. In today’s media environment, audiences encounter information through a variety of sources. Source familiarity and reputation are helpful heuristics for making sense of messages without a close reading of content (Metzger et al., 2010; Sundar et al., 2007). This is also true for identifying media genre. Over time, certain sources can become more closely associated with certain media genres (Chandler, 1997; Young, 2020). Legacy journalism sources, for example, have a history of providing news to audiences, but our research has found mixed effects in terms of the news-ness of legacy outlets as compared with partisan sources (Edgerly & Vraga, 2019, 2020). Future research should also explore whether popular press sources fare worse than elite, particularly if the former has a reputation for providing higher levels of infotainment (Hallin & Mellado, 2018). Also, worth exploring is how source familiarity influences news-ness, given that audiences often encounter media from unfamiliar sources, especially on social media sites where they have less control of the messages they see (Thorson & Wells, 2016). In ambiguous source situations, what is the default (“I don’t know anything about this source”) assessment of news-ness?
Where the Information Is Communicated
Context is the final message-level factor in our model of news-ness. The current media environment makes news more fluid; it can be found in multiple spaces, formats, and locations. Therefore, where news is encountered may also shape people’s perceptions of the news-ness of that information.
Television (and digital video) provides audiences with a “multisense” experience, which may uniquely influence on ratings of news-ness as compared with printed-based formats (Eveland, 2003). Thus, media that combine visual and audio may be better able to use satire and outrage while maintaining high levels of news-ness (Berry & Sobieraj, 2014). For example, Hallin and Mellado (2018) found Chilean television journalists were likely to perform civic, watchdog, and infotainment roles, compared with print journalists, which could lead to medium-based differences in news-ness. How audiences assess news-ness on social media—where 68% of Americans say they get news (Pew Research Center, 2018)—is also of particular interest. Are ratings of news-ness different for a New York Times story that is read on Twitter verses in the printed newspaper? The norms and affordances of media spaces can result in news-ness that differs according to media form.
Context can also include the social cues that accompany media messages. The number of views, replies/comments, retweets/shares, and likes provide audiences with an idea of how much attention and engagement a message is receiving from others. These social cues influence story selection and persuasive power (Messing & Westwood, 2014; Sundar et al., 2007) and may also impact perceptions of news-ness, especially when source familiarity is low. A Twitter post with a lot of retweets may be considered higher in news-ness regardless of what is communicated or how it is communicated because it resonates with a larger number of people.
Individual Differences
Message factors can intersect with the fifth and final factor: who consumes the information. The attitudes, beliefs, and identities people bring to a media encounter influence their processing and evaluations (McQuail, 2010), particularly in a hybrid media environment (Baym, 2017). As such, audience notions of news-ness are likely not uniform, and instead, different types of audiences will differently assess the news-ness of a media message. While a range of individual differences may interact with content to produce ratings of news-ness, we highlight three that stand out as particularly important.
Age is one such factor. Youth and young adults have only known a media environment of high-choice and hybridity, thus how they make sense of news and the standards they hold for news may differ from older adults (Gallup/Knight, 2018). They may be more flexible in the types of media they allow into the news-democracy narrative, like considering digital-native sources or satirical media as high in ness-ness. Younger adults, for example, are more likely to say they trust political satire, compared with older adults (Gottfried & Anderson, 2014).
Prior media experiences can also shape news-ness. Because media genres are not automatically known and adopted, the media that people regularly spend time with can shape their expectations for news (Buckingham, 1993). A recent study by McGregor and Molyneux (2018) found that journalists who were regular users of Twitter had a different sense of which topics and stories were newsworthy, compared with journalists who did not regularly use Twitter. The same may be true for people who are regular Twitter users and how they access news-ness. Similarly, regular consumers of hybrid media forms, like satire or outrage, may consider media that embrace satire or conflict as higher in news-ness, than people who aren’t regularly consumers of these hybrid forms.
Political orientations also play a role in shaping news-ness ratings. Young (2020) argues that conservative and liberals differ in their judgment of hybrid media, with conservatives preferring “sharp distinctions between categories, between people, and between concepts” (p. 161), while liberals are more comfortable with hybridity (e.g., satire and celebrity activism). This is something we found with Democrats rating a satirical headline as higher in news-ness, while Republicans rating it as significantly lower (Edgerly & Vraga, 2019). In addition, political congruence strongly shapes what partisans consider news. Partisans tend to rate media messages as higher in news-ness when it agrees with their political viewpoints and lower when it disagrees (Edgerly & Vraga, 2019). For example, Republicans rated a headline attributed to Fox News as higher in news-ness, compared with the same headline attributed to MSNBC or the Associated Press, while the opposite was true for Democrats (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020). Such patterns align with motivated reasoning literature (Taber & Lodge, 2006), suggesting that the very definitions of “what is news” can be shaped by partisan processing.
The Meaning of News-ness
The middle of our news-ness model addresses a second fundamental question: what does news mean? Is news still a special and high-status genre (Fiske, 1987), or has its meaning shifted to something less lofty, or more rooted in emotions? Past research finds that audiences have a relatively solid schema for the genre and concept of news (Costera Meijer, 2007; Höijer, 2000; Shoemaker & Cohen, 2006). This mental picture is largely rooted in the news-democracy narrative that was prominent throughout the 20th century, and aids audiences in categorizing and interpreting a given media message. However, shifts in the hybrid media environment may be altering the underlying dimensions of news. As Mellado et al. (2017) found in their study of how news is practiced, modern understandings of news can reflect contradictory combinations that are a departure from the ideal narratives of the past. Baym (2017) describes this as the “unstable mixtures” and “uncertain assemblages” that have replaced uniform understandings of media systems and categories (p. 12). Our model of news-ness allows for clarifying what related considerations emerge when rating a media message as high in news-ness, compared with low, to examine the extent to which the meaning attached to news has fundamentally changed.
To capture this openness, the center of the news-ness model explores the range of norms, emotions, and attributes that are activated when assessing-news-ness. For example, if audiences (or certain segments) expect news to be fair, neutral, and factual (Media Insight Project, 2018), then considerations of news-ness should correspond to salient thoughts about fairness, neutrality, and factualness. However, the possible considerations associated with news do not stop here. An affective dimension of news-ness should also be explored. Certain audience segments may consider a story to be “absolutely news” while also describing it as “exciting” (Berry & Sobieraj, 2014), or remarking that it makes them “anxious” or “upset” (Woodstock, 2014). A more complex sensemaking process may be at work where criteria are not universally applied, but rather, certain criteria are used when characterizing specific messages as news. For example, thoughts about relevance and playfulness may be associated with The Daily Show’s high ratings of news-ness (Young, 2020), while a different set of thoughts—fairness and neutrality—are associated with a New York Times article rating high in news-ness. Likewise, the same thoughts, feelings, and attributes may not be linked with news-ness for all audiences, but differ by audience characteristics.
While news-ness may be related to other concepts like credibility, it remains a distinct concept. News-ness is not another word for credibility. It captures the degree to which something is considered news—not (necessarily) its credibility. News has a long association with notions of democracy and citizenship, which can shape its meaning (Buckingham, 2000; Fiske, 1987; Putnam, 2000; Schudson, 1998). The same is not true of the concept of credibility, which operates in many domains (e.g., advertisements can be evaluated as highly credible). When someone exclaims, “I absolutely do not consider that to be news!” this meaning can extend beyond considerations of low credibility and can produce an effect different from credibility judgments. In our recent research (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020), we find that news-ness and credibility are positively correlated, yet news-ness still has a distinct impact on how audiences respond a media message (something we elaborate upon in the next section).
Ultimately, the concept of news-ness allows for more flexibility in uncovering how certain media message factors influence audience ratings of news-ness (left side of the model) and what considerations underlie the meaning of news-ness (center of the model). We offer only a few possibilities, as marked with dashed lines, of what news-ness might signify to audiences. Testing these relationships, and exploring others, is key to understanding the extent to which audiences (or certain segments) are reimagining the meaning of news when they encounter different types of media.
Why News(-ness) Matters
The final aspect of our model addresses the outcomes of news-ness. News-ness is a valuable concept because it captures the openness and variability in assessments of news, which in turn can influence how audiences are affected by media.
Genre labels provide audiences with a frame of reference for what they should get out of the media encounter (Höijer, 2000). The frame for news should be especially powerful. According to Schramm (1949), the fundamental characteristics of cognitive processing change when individuals consume news compared with other types of media such as entertainment or persuasion (also Kim & Vishak, 2008). Moreover, part of the news-democracy narrative involves the expectation that news enables democratic citizenship by facilitating learning about ongoing issues and participation in political and community activities (Putnam, 2000; Schudson, 1998). Media that are lower in news-ness may not be expected to facilitate these outcomes, and therefore, audiences won’t put forth the effort to learn or participate.
We expect news-ness to channel the effect that specific media messages have on audiences. Research finding that outrage and pro-attitudinal media are effective in spurring political participation (Wojcieszak et al., 2016; Young, 2020), or the debate over whether humor or satire programs can result in learning (Becker & Bode, 2018; Kim & Vishak, 2008; Xenos & Becker, 2009; Young, 2020), may be less of an indication that hybrid media are producing democratic effects, and more of an indication that some people consider these media messages to be news, and thus their encounters produce “news-like” effects. For example, Feldman (2013) found that learning from the same media message is dependent on genre classification—individuals who categorized The Daily Show as news (or a mixture of news and entertainment) paid more attention and learned more compared with those who believed The Daily Show was purely entertainment content. Thus, understanding when certain audience segments consider a media message to be higher in news-ness (while other segments consider it lower in news-ness) can explain differential effects.
Higher ratings of news-ness can also produce less-than-ideal outcomes. In our study of a potential government shutdown, we find that audience intentions to verify are channeled through news-ness, such that higher ratings of news-ness lead to lower intention to verify (Edgerly & Vraga, 2020). In other words, when audiences consider something to be more news-like, it releases them from the need to verify the message information. On its own, this finding may be unalarming. However, we also show that breaking headlines are rated highest in news-ness, which leads to lower intent to verify. Given the unfolding and error-prone nature of breaking news, this outcome may be less-than-desirable. Moreover, we find that headlines coming from a congruent source (e.g., Republicans seeing a Fox News headline) results in higher levels of news-ness, and thus lower intentions to verify. We argue that such tendencies are likely to fuel misperceptions and partisan divides.
While the questions about what is news and what news means are shifting and complex, these definitions carry even more weight when we consider their potential consequences. We have mentioned only a few relevant outcomes of news-ness, there are others that warrant exploration and can shed light on how news-ness shapes evaluations of content and effects.
Beyond the News-Democracy Narrative
Overall, news-ness captures how audiences recognize and give meaning to the label of news, and how this channels their response. We see this as a valuable contribution, as there are at least three competing “news narratives” that future studies of news-ness can inform. First, studies of news-ness may find that the traditional news-democracy narratives continues to persist (Buckingham, 2000; Höijer, 2000; Media Insight Project, 2018). Audiences may still be applying the news-democracy narrative—and norms like fairness, credibility, and professionalism—to render the use of satire, outrage, or soft news topics as unbefitting of the news label. If so, studies will find that audiences (or certain segments) characterize media as low in news-ness when they do not adhere to traditional news forms (e.g., when embracing humor or opinion-giving).
It is also possible that studies of news-ness will find support for a different news narrative. One where audiences (or certain segments) are reworking the news-democracy narrative to fit the modern media environment. Audiences could still be relying on traditional news norms like fairness, credibility, and professionalism, but are applying them to a wider range of content, creating flexibility and intermingling in what is considered news and what is not. As one interviewee in Edgerly’s (2017) qualitative study explained, she considered The Daily Show to be news because “you can be professional and hilarious at the same time.” And even though audiences are developing new notions of what news can look like, this judgment—that the Daily Show is news—is still necessary for producing effects, like learning or participation (Feldman, 2013).
A potential third narrative also exists. Studies of news-ness may find that the modern media environment makes the label of news negative, or different, from the past. In a world where anyone can call themselves a journalist or news organization (Lazer et al., 2018), the term may hold little positive value. Under this narrative, audiences (or certain segments) no longer subscribe to the news-democracy narrative, and thus do not consider news a “special” or “high status” genre (Fiske, 1987) that is necessary for democratic participation (Woodstock, 2014). Evidence for this possibility is seen in recent surveys finding that 77% of U.S. adults say mainstream news organizations report “fake news” (Lima, 2018), while 46% believe the news media fabricate stories about President Trump and his administration (Shepard, 2017). Perhaps even more damning for the news-democracy narrative is that one in three Americans believe the news media hurt democracy, and one in four believe the news media neither hurt nor help democracy (Media Insight Project, 2018). These findings may underscore a larger shift in the devaluing of news within liberal media systems, like the U.S.
Given these possibilities, future studies of news-ness can shed light on the conditions in which these varied narratives take hold among certain audiences and media systems.
Conclusion
The concept of news-ness offers several important contributions to the field of journalism and mass communication research. First, it places audiences at the center of sensemaking processes, recognizing the important role-played by their characterizations of media content and ensuing effects. Second, leaving news-ness as an open concept not only allows researchers to examine when people recognize something as higher or lower in news-ness, but also what this classification means and how it affects them. Traditional definitions of news have emphasized its objectivity, its attention to issues of public importance, and its relevance to the public (Deuze, 2005; Gans, 1979; Schudson, 1976). Studying news-ness allows us to test whether these same standards apply, or whether new ones have emerged. We contend that defining “what is news?” will not be consistent for all audiences, content, or platforms. This flexibility is required for an audience-based concept characterizing today’s media.
Third, news-ness has great utility in multinational, comparative studies. While our focus has been on the U.S. media system and audiences, we see a lot of synergy with recent work exploring how hybridity shapes journalistic role performances that eschews clean categorization of media system types (Mellado et al., 2017). New combinations of role performances and new clustering of countries are taking shape. This begs the question of how audiences in different countries determine what is news and its meaning. The conceptual message factors that we outline in the news-ness model (Lasswell, 1948)—what is communicated, how, by whom, and where—are relevant beyond the U.S. system. Similar to the results of Mellado et al. (2017), future studies of news-ness may find that patterns cut across countries and media systems. In addition, the relationship between journalistic role performances and audience ratings of news-ness is an area worth exploring. Taken together, studies of role performance and news-ness characterize the production and reception forces that give shape to an overall journalism culture.
Finally, recent attacks on the news media and use of the term “fake news,” which has garnered substantial public and academic attention (Amazeen & Bucy, 2019; Lazer et al., 2018), highlight the importance of understanding how audiences recognize news and its meaning. If news holds little meaning among the public, then calling something “fake news” would have little impact. In this vein, studies of fake news are, at the fundamental core, studies about how people understand what is news. News-ness is a concept for studying deceptively simple questions in a complicated media environment.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
