IS THERE JOURNALISM AFTER THE CORONA CRISIS?

Journalism is hard hit by the corona crisis. How will journalism survive? Here is a summary of impressions about the development of (print) journalism in the Western world.

1. Journalism is vital for information in a democracy especially in this corona crisis. Credible information and fighting fake news in the pandemic is a priority. The New York Times almost has a day job in correcting Trump. Journalists should be free to do research, find the facts and interview key persons. Hungary put journalist almost under censorship to fight what is called fake news by the government. The Czech Republic is limiting access of the media to government officials.

2. The demand for credible information is rising, more page views at online media, small rise in subscription. Newspapers sides in the US saw visits to their online news sides doubling.

2.1 Because of the high demand for information some media are making corona news free, for example the New York Times.

3. However the rising demand for information and the surge in page views does not cause an increase in income of the media. Esp print media are losing income because decreasing advertisements. In the UK for example advertising revenues are taking a massive blow. Some local publishers say they are down by 50%, some national titles by 30%.

4. The consequences of this drop in income is obvious. Newsrooms are closing; journalist are laid off or furloughed; part time contracts are not renewed; and free lance activities are scaled down. A New York Times analysisfound that more than 28,000 news media employees in the United States have been subject to pay cuts, furloughs or layoffs since the corona virus started to spread across the country. In Australia News Corp, the Rupert Murdoch-controlled publishing group, has suspended the print editions of 60 newspapers

5. News media and the journalists are vital for democracy in this crisis, help from the government is unavoidable. Especially local media need help. In Denmark for example the government discussed to allocate around €24m to save local media. The Guardian in the UK writes about an interesting proposal to save journalism as an essential public good. The NUJ launched its own news recovery planwhich suggested a windfall tax of 6% on digital firms.

5.1 Google already understands the problem and is offering help for newsrooms. The company isn’t disclosing the size of what it’s calling its Journalism Emergency Relief Fund, but in a blog post, Google VP of News Richard Gingras said the goal is to fund “thousands of small, medium and local news publishers globally,” through awards ranging from “low thousands of dollars for small hyper-local newsrooms to low tens of thousands for larger newsrooms, with variations per region.”

6. Newsroom could be locked down because of protections measures against the virus but journalist are continuing work. Remote, from home and in small teams. “The newsrooms that will survive and thrive in a post-COVID-19 world will be the newsrooms that embrace the shift to distributed teams”, writes Niemanlab . The NYTimes wrote about their changes in the newsroom: “Journalists across more than a dozen departments, and a few continents, are stepping up — and shuffling roles — to meet the challenge”.

6.1 Now that we work remote and online for a longer period traveling will change. Video conferencing proved to more efficient, saving time and money. Zooming in stead of flying. Working on a story together with a small team is a piece of cake using Teams. And finally training data journalism could be helped by using e-learning environments like Moodle.

7. In reporting on the pandemic data are vital. Understanding numbers and visualizations are highly demanded qualifications. Data journalism: analyzing data - corona data - with free tools for a wide audience is a top priority.

NL CORONA DATA IN R DASHBOARD

On R-bloggers I run into an article "How to create a simple Corona virus dashboard specific to your country in R" (https://www.r-bloggers.com/how-to-create-a-simple-coronavirus-dashboard-specific-to-your-country-in-r/) by a Belgium data scientist Antoine Soetewey. He created his own dashboard  based on data from Johns Hopkins Corona virus resource center (https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html). He made the source of his dashboard visualizations public and invites everyone to rewrite it for his own country.

Here is my dashboard for the Netherlands: https://rpubs.com/peterverweij/591967

Here are more resources: "Top 15 R resources on Novel COVID-19 Coronavirus", https://towardsdatascience.com/top-5-r-resources-on-covid-19-coronavirus-1d4c8df6d85f 

TWITTER POPULISME VAN WILDERS EN BAUDET

Twitter heeft de politieke communicatie veranderd. Ten eerste creëert Twitter een gelijk speelveld. Iedereen kan twitteren. Er is in principe geen onderscheid tussen de participanten, of het nu politici, journalisten of burgers zijn. Een tweede belangrijk effect van Twitter is dat het directe communicatie mogelijk maakt tussen politieke leiders en hun aanhang. De journalistiek als filter en spreekbuis wordt gepasseerd.
De Amerikaanse president Trump heeft het regeren middels Twitter tot een kunst verheven. Ook Nederlandse politici laten zich niet onbetuigd en gebruiken Twitter om direct met hun aanhang te communiceren. Het doel is om een bepaald item op de politieke agenda te zetten of om druk op de besluitvorming uit te oefenen. Twitterpopulisme zou omschreven kunnen worden als een vorm van politieke legitimatie via Twitter en de druk van de Twitter aanhang. In het onderstaande wordt dit populisme in het twittergedrag van een aantal politici nader onderzocht.

TWO FACES of TWITTER POPULISM in THE NETHERLANDS (summary, viz and data)

(this is a summary of my Dutch articles about twitter populism in the Netherlands)

Twitter is an interesting tool for politicians: it creates possibilities for direct communication with the public. Journalists as intermediary between voters and politicians become obsolete. The American president Trump is using this tool to create government based on populism: surpassing the parliament in decision making or putting pressure on the parliament through direct public support.  In Netherlands two right-wing members of the house of representatives are following this successful communication using Twitter.

Two Faces
I have downloaded and analyzed the tweets of these tow politicians: Geert Wilders, leader of the PVV(freedom party) and Thierry Baudet (forum for democracy). The outcome of this research is that both are right-wing populists. The content of their tweets shows that populism has two faces: a blue collar version(Wilders) and a more intellectual version(Baudet). While Wilders tweets express an open xenophobia; Baudet tweets focus on sovereignty, anti-EU arguments are used to wrap up xenophobia in immigration.

Here is a scatterdiagram showing the tweets of Wilders and Baudet, together with the tweets of leader of the socialists(Asscher and the Greens(Klaver)

(click to enlarge)


Explanation: The position of the documents with tweets of the four politicians are the red circles. The horizontal line is the x dimension, explaining 49% of the variations. I define this dimension as: from xenophobia to identity. The Y axis, explaining 37%, is from cooperation to sovereignty. The beginning and end of both axis are the red squares. These positions can be confirmed by the world clouds

Below you find a link to my data uploaded in Voyant, so you can inspect the data. Click top right to export or choose an other visualisation; click down left to choose a document.

DATA TWITTER POPULISME

Twitterdata van Wilders, Baudet, Asscher en Klaver geupload naar Voyant.
Hier is de interface voor het maken van analyse en visualisaties.

Rechtsboven verschillende  opties voor analyse; linksonder selecteer documenten.
De gemaakte analyses kunnen ook worden geexporteerd!

VOYANT TOOLS
(klik op export rechtsboven om te vergroten of andere analyse)


Hieronder een scatterdiagram van de vier twitterbestanden:
(klik om te vergroten)

Toelichting: De positie van de vier documenten met tweets is rood omcirkelt. De eindpunten van de dimensies zijn de rode vierkanten. De x as heb ik geinterpreteerd als: van vreemdelingenhaat naar identiteit; deze as verklaart 49% van de variantie. Y as heb ik opgevat als: van samenwerking naar souvereiniteit; verklaart 37% van de variantie.

TWO FACES OF TWITTER POPULISM IN THE NETHERLANDS

Twitter - mini-blogging or messaging service on the internet - has changed the process of communication. In professional communication networks like for example journalism Twitter is an important new source. Twitter brought fundamental change

in professional political communication networks. The classical model of communication of Berelson and Lazersfeld, known as ‘two step flow of communication,’ seems to have lost it predominance to Twitter. Direct communication to the audiences gained in importance. An important issue in discussion about the consequences of Twitter is the idea of equality in the process of communication. Because in principle the technology behind Twitter does not discriminate between users, whether they are politicians, journalists or ordinary citizens. This equality between users lowers the threshold to participate in the process of communication, and therefore it is said Twitter contributes to democracy. With references to the classical study of Jurgen Habermas about the changes in the public sphere, Twitter could enhance the process of democratic decision making and contribute to open public debate.

Optimism

This technological optimism about Twitter emerged in the nineties of past century when the Internet was still freely developing. However, in the light of recent developments, especially the rise of populism on Twitter, one can have serious doubts. In this study we will analyze the tweets of two Dutch politicians: Geert Wilders (PVV, Party for Freedom) and Thierry Baudet (FvD, Forum for Democracy), Both parties are relatively new in the Dutch political landscape. They both rose because of the resistance against the neo-liberalism that replaced the traditional party system based on religion and ideology.

HET TWITTER-POPULISME VAN WILDERS EN BAUDET

Twitter heeft het communicatieproces fundamenteel veranderd. In professionele communicatienetwerken als de journalistiek  is Twitter een belangrijke nieuwsbron. In politieke netwerken heeft  het klassieke communicatiemodel van Berelsen en Lazarsfeld aan belang ingeboet. Niet meer ‘two step flow’, maar directe communicatie is het trefwoord. Een belangrijk punt in debatten over het effect van Twitter is dat het een gelijk speelveld creëert. Immers, er zijn in principe geen technologische aspecten die een onderscheid maken tussen de participanten, of het nu politici, journalisten of burgers zijn. De verlaging van de drempel schept gelijkheid die ten goede komt aan het democratische proces is de redenering. In die zin zou Twitter bijdragen tot een vergroting van de democratische besluitvorming en publieke discussie, vaak met verwijzingen naar Habermas’ studie over openbaarheid.

Dit technologisch optimisme, dat hand in hand ging het de opkomst van Internet blijkt nauwelijks stand te kunnen houden in het licht van de feitelijke ontwikkelingen. Meer in het bijzonder als we kijken naar het twitteren van Wilders en Baudet.