Why is There Diversity in the News? On the Explanatory Power of Structure and Practice

• In Event: Diversity in the News

Abstract

This study offers the first multidimensional process-oriented account of news diversity by reconstructing the work dynamic behind hundreds of individual news items (N=848), across popular and elite press, and encompassing print, broadcast and online Israeli media, breaking with previous work which studied diversity on fewer media, on the basis of news content or by reference to fewer practices. A controversy can be detected in the literature regarding the rationales underlying diversity in news production. An institutional school argues that diversity levels change as a function of organizational dictates; a cultural view posits that it's all about widely held social values and ideologies; a pragmatic view explains diversity in terms of a practical necessity. Our findings suggest that institutional and pragmatic considerations are paramount in explaining diversity in the news, while the role of social and cultural values remains intractable. We discuss the deeper theoretical and methodological consequences of this finding.

Authors

• Yigal Godler, Ben Gurion U of the Negev

• Zvi Reich, Ben-Gurion U of the Negev