News Values

How has new and digital media technology changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values?

How would you update them for 2014?

In a blog post, write how each news value has been affected by the growth of new and digital technology.

E.g. Immediacy is more important than ever due to news breaking on Twitter or elsewhere online. However, this in turn changes the approach of other news sources such as newspapers as the news will probably already be broken by the time the paper is published so different angles might be required.

Immediacy: has it happened recently? -> This has become crucially important due to new and digital technology such as Twitter, phones, apps etc. News can break on Twitter and become old news within a few days. While the news breaks on Twitter newspapers will be writing their articles which obviously will end up being published the day after and by then the story would have already had several different angles covered leaving newspapers to recap other views or to rewrite a view similar to theirs.

Familiarity: is it culturally close to us in Britain? -> I guess with new and digital technology we have become more globally aware of news stories which affect other countries both big and small, U.K. users of the internet could also go to U.S. news sites. I believe that nowadays due to technology we are only interested in stories which are big in the U.S. or has some sort of British individual being affected, the more British people affected then the more it'll be covered by from several online sites aimed at the U.K.

Amplitude: is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people? -> Amplitude has been affected by the growth of new and digital media because if it is a big event then more people are most likely going to be concerned and affected which therefore leads to more UGC and the UGC is typically raw footage quite shaky which seems more realistic and therefore grabs more attention than professionally edited footage.

Frequency:  did the event happen fairly quickly? -> Events which happen quite quickly are typically recorded on phones and UGC and the scene of the incident tends to have already been cleared up or blocked off before new reporters can get on scene.

Unambiguity: is it clear and definite? -> If it isn't clear and definite then new and digital technology now allows many confused people to group together ideas on forums and end up forming several possible clear ideas

Predictability: did we expect it to happen? -> If the event was expected to happen then ideas would have already been formed about the event occurring through social media and forums therefore possibly affecting immediacy as the news is already old to those who spoke about the news on forums

Surprise: is it a rare or unexpected event? -> Usually a rare or unexpected event would go viral through social media

Continuity: has this story already been defined as news? -> Before gatekeepers were able to say what is and isn't news but now thanks to the internet, apps, social media and technology audiences feel more empowered and are more able to create news or choose what is news

Elite nations and people: which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people? -> If the event occurred in a foreign country then the news is most likely going to break over social media and if it concerns well-known people the story will go viral

Negativity: is it bad news? -> If the news is bad then it typically causes a lot of talk on blogs, forums etc and involves a lot of user comments in the comment sections online, it could also spark debates between commenters

Balance: the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death -> New and digital media has caused balance to potentially become unbalanced as one story may spread more virally than another and audiences are therefore some sort of gatekeeper and have chosen one story to be more important than another.