Actor Diversity and Viewpoint Diversity: Two of a Kind? A Four Country Study on the Diversity of News on Immigration

• In Event: Still the Marketplace of Ideas? Studying Diversity of News Content in Comparative Perspective

Abstract

News content diversity is considered to be an essential precondition for the promotion of the free expression of ideas and social pluralism. The concept of diversity has several components, with actor diversity, issue diversity and viewpoint diversity being the most important. In particular actor (or source) diversity and viewpoint diversity are assumed to be highly correlated. If there are more actors in the news we expect that also more viewpoints are expressed.
A content analysis of Belgian, Italian, German and British newspaper articles about immigration (2013-2014) allows for an in-depth evaluation of diversity. Firstly, we used Simpson’s diversity index to measure the distribution of the different social actors, issues and viewpoints represented in the news, and compared the results between newspapers, media companies and countries. First results indicate there to be a satisfactory level of diversity, ranging from moderate to high. The findings, however, also lead us to reject the hypothesis that actor diversity is a condition sine qua non for viewpoint diversity. A plurality of active actors in the news does not guarantee that a diverse range of viewpoints will be expressed. The results demonstrate that although the voice of immigrants is among the “loudest” in immigration news, neither immigrants nor the phenomenon of migration are characterised by positive viewpoints.

Authors

• Andrea Masini, University of Antwerp

• Marco Mazzoni, U of Perugia

• Sharon Coen, U of Salford

• Paolo Mancini, U di Perugia

• Peter Van Aelst, U of Antwerp