The study is placed at the intersection of the classical debates on freedom of the press and freedom of expression, and discussions on the challenges to journalism’s gatekeeping role in contemporary online communication contexts. It explores the decision-making rationale of news websites’ moderators from three leading Slovenian news websites who keep hate speech at the gates by reviewing and selecting users’ comments for publication under news items. By using document analysis, newsroom observations and interviews the authors identified initial automated moderation, prevalent post-moderation, occasional reactive moderation and narrowed pre-moderation. These methods construct an enduring online communication space through the dynamic nature of the relations between moderators (gatekeepers) and online users (the gated). This, in many ways, is a Sisyphean task, and indicates four-way gatekeeping of hate speech that is articulated in the nuanced relations between structures, such as time, financial resources, work organisation and human agency.
COBISS.SI-ID: 33123677
Studies of political communication on Twitter which focus on the relationships between politicians and journalists are rare; moreover, they neglect the importance of mutual retweeting (when politicians retweet messages of journalist and vice versa). This study examines these relations through the prism of mutual granting of relevance and communicative roles that are being taken over. Analysis of this relationship involves three methods: by network analysis we identify four communication samples regarding granting of relevance through retweeting among journalists and politicians: coalition, traditional, control and individual communication pattern. These are then combined with interviews done with key players that have been identified in these patterns. By analysing quantitatively the content of attributions to the original message, we investigate the nature that it reflects and categorise them by mediative, advocative, critical, entertaining or communitarian communicative roles that actors are undertaking. The survey also finds that the actors when retweeting assume intermediary roles and very rarely modify the content of the original message.
COBISS.SI-ID: 519423
Using the methods of content analysis and in-depth interviews the author analyses the three most visited Slovene news sites (24ur.com, Planet Siol and MMC RTV SLO) to answer the following research questions: 1. What is the connection between the measured attention of the audience and the placement of news items on the webpages; and 2. How do editors perceive the use of methods of quantifying audiences and results of public opinion polls in their work. The content analysis revealed that 24ur.com was the most specific case in the analysed time-period, because it focused almost exclusively on the most popular topic at the time. The analysis of interviews showed that the number of “clicks” is the most important quantitative resource that influences the work of editors. They view poll results primarily as an interesting news item and not as a relevant factor in editorial decision making.
COBISS.SI-ID: 32854109