Negativity as Criteria for Newsworthiness in Malaysian Newspaper Sports Corpus
Abstract
This study is an attempt to identify criteria for newsworthiness in Malaysian sports newspapers. It also seeks to find out how the media shapes the perception of Malaysians through sports news stories.Employing a corpus-based approach, with The Reuters Corpus Volume 1 and Malaysian English Sports News Corpus, the researchers of the study conducted a thematic analysis to look for recurring patterns that would detect the criteria for newsworthiness in the headlines and content of the corpus. It was found that football dominates the pages of the newspaper, and negativity, reference to elite people and nations are the most prominent news values. The patterns of language reveal a very negative sports world in which achievement and winning are stressed at all cost. Players and coaches are pressured to do well or they risk losing their jobs. Scandals are running rampant in the sports world as cases of corruption, drug abuse and bad behaviors among athletes and coaches are consistently reported in the news. Following McKane’s (2014) categorization of newsworthiness criteria, and using snowballing sampling method, 85 UKM students were asked to show their criteria for newsworthiness on a questionnaire, which resulted in a mismatch between the news stories and the readers’ expectations.
Full Text:
PDFReferences
Boyce, T. 2007. Health, risk and news (Vol. 9). Peter Lang.
Galtung, J. and M. H. Ruge. (1965). The structure of foreign news: The presentation of the Congo, Cuba and Cyprus crises in four Norwegian newspapers. Journal of Peace Research, 2 (1), 64-90.
Hajisama, W. 2012. Representation of Olympic Athletes In A Malaysian Online Newspaper. Masters Thesis, University of Malaya. http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/4022/2/Representation_of_Olympic_Athletes_in_a_Malaysian_Online_Newspaper.pdf [5 June 2016]
Harcup and O’Neill. 2001. What is news? Galtung and Ruge revisited. Journalism Studies. 2(2), 261-280. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/27381/1/What%20is%20news%20Original.pdf [19 May 2016]
Harcup, T., and O'Neill, D. 2016. What is news? News values revisited (again). Journalism Studies, 1-19.
Hoppe, S. 2011. All Eyes on Africa: The Representation of Transnational Television News during the 2010 FIFA World Cup. http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:424555/FULLTEXT01.pdf [1 June 2016]
Jalli, N. B. 2016. The effectiveness of social media in assisting opinion leaders to disseminate political ideologies in developing countries: the case of Malaysia. Jurnal Komunikasi-Malaysian Journal of Communication, 32(1), 233-260.
Jamilah, A. and Lateh, H. 2016. Media and the environment in Malaysia: An analysis on news coverage of landslide disaster in Kuala Lumpur. Jurnal Komunikasi, Malaysian Journal of Communication, 32(2).
Malaysian Online English Sports News Corpus (MOSNEC). 2015. Developed at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. https://tankimhua.wordpress.com/mosnec/
Matheson, D. 2005. Media Discourses: Analysing Media Texts. Open University Press.
McKane, A. 2014. News Writing 2nd Ed. Great Britain: Sage.
Messner, M. A. 2010. Out of play: Critical essays on gender and sport. Suny Press.
Rahim S.A. and Pawanteh L. 2010. The Local Content Industry and Cultural Identity In Malaysia. Journal of Media and Communication Studies. Vol 2(10), December2010. 215-220. http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/JMCS/article-full-text-pdf/3EC085511031 [6 February 2016]
Rose, T., Stevenson, M. and Whitehead, M. 2002. The Reuters Corpus Volume 1 –from Yesterday’s News to Tomorrow’s Language Resources. In LREC Vol. 2, 827-832. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mark_Stevenson4/publication/228558349_The_Reuters_Corpus_Volume_1From_yesterday's_news_to_tomorrow's_language_resources/links/542e95990cf29bbc126f2b96.pdf [29 December 2015]
Rowe, D. 2007. Sports Journalism: Still The ‘Toy Department’ of The News Media? Journalism. Vol. 8(4): 385–405 .DOI: 10.1177/1464884907078657
Rozin, P. and Royzman, E.B. 2001. Negativity Bias, Negativity Dominance, and Contagion. Personal and Social Psychology Review Vol. 5, No. 4, 296-320. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Edward_Royzman/publication/228778181_Negativity_Bias_Negativity_Dominance_and_Contagion/links/555bf42308ae91e75e76ae03.pdf [8 June 2016]
Sarimah Ismail and Hamedi Mohd Adnan. 2014. Profile of Sports Section and Sport Journalism Practice in Malaysian National Newspaper: Focus on Malay Language Print Media. ITMAR-2014, Vol. 1, 280-288. Global Illuminators.
Shoemaker, P and Cohen, A.A. 2006. News Around The World. Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.
Shoemaker, P. J., Vos, T. P., & Reese, S. D. 2009. Journalists As Gatekeepers. The Handbook of Journalism Studies, 73-87. http://www.rasaneh.org/images/news/atachfile/30-91390/file634600594129473750.pdf#page=94 [4 June 2016]
Sinclair, J. 2004. Developing Linguistic Corpora: A Guide To Good Practice Corpus and Text – Basic Principles.http://www.ahds.ac.uk/creating/guides/linguistic-corpora/chapter1.htm [12 September 2015]
Wahl-Jorgensen, K. & Hanitzsch, T. (eds.). 2009. The handbook of Journalism studies. New York: Routledge
Zubir, Z., and Kadir, Z. A. (2012). Festive season advertisement: Analysis of Malay identity construction. In International Conference on Humanity, History and Society (pp. 33-37).
Refbacks
- There are currently no refbacks.
e-ISSN: 2289-1528