international news flow

Internet and Issues in Global Media

NEWS AGENCIES – INTERNATIONAL NEWS FLOWMangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

International News Flow• Global News Agencies• Growing Global Monopolies and their Impact

on News• NWICO, MacBride Report• Non-aligned News Agencies and their downfall



• The New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO or NWIO) is a term that was coined in a debate over media representations of the developing world in UNESCO in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

• The term was widely used by the MacBride Commission, a UNESCO panel chaired by Nobel Prize winner Seán MacBride, which was charged with creation of a set of recommendations to make global media representation more equitable.

• The MacBride Commission produced a report titled "Many Voices, One World", which outlined the main philosophical points of the New World Information Communication Order.



• The American media scholar Wilbur Schramm noted in 1964 that the flow of news among nations is thin, that much attention is given to developed countries and little to less-developed ones, that important events are ignored and reality is distorted.

• Herbert Schiller observed in 1969 that developing countries had little meaningful input into decisions about radio frequency allocations for satellites at a key meeting in Geneva in 1963.

• Intelsat which was set up for international co-operation in satellite communication, was also dominated by the United States.

• In the 1970s these and other issues were taken up by the Non-Aligned Movement and debated within the United Nations and UNESCO.



• NWICO grew out of the New International Economic Order of 1974.

• The New International Economic Order (NIEO) was a set of proposals put forward during the 1970s by developing countries through theUnited Nations Conference on Trade and Development to promote their interests by improving their terms of trade.

• From 1976-1978, the New World Information and Communication Order was generally called the shorter New World Information Order or the New International Information Order.

• Associated with the United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) starting from the early 1970s.

• Mass media concerns began with the meeting of non-aligned nations in Algiers, 1973; again in Tunis1976, and later in 1976 at the New Delhi Ministerial Conference of Non-Aligned Nations.



• The movement was kept alive through the 1980s by meetings of the MacBride Round Table on Communication, even though by then the leadership of UNESCO distanced itself from its ideas.

• The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity of 2005 puts into effect some of the goals of NWICO, especially with regard to the unbalanced global flow of mass media.

• Not supported by the USA unlike the WTO.



• A wide range of issues were raised as part of NWICO discussions. Some of these involved long-standing issues of media coverage of the developing world and unbalanced flows of media influence.

• Other issues involved new technologies with important military and commercial uses.

• The developing world was likely to be marginalized by satellite and computer technologies.



• The issue of four major global agencies based in New York, London and Paris controlling the world-wide flow of information.

• Their reportage of the ‘other world’ was limited to coups, natural disasters and wars.

• 80% of the world’s news flow was controlled by these agencies.

• An unbalanced flow of mass media from the developed world (especially the United States) to the underdeveloped countries. Everyone watches American movies and television shows.



• Advertising agencies from the developed countries, through the messages in their ads send profound messages to the underdeveloped world.

• In a way this was a cultural invasion and cultural imperialism, because the control of the flow of these advertisements was again, with the major agencies from the western – developed world.

• Some of the messages were also considered as inappropriate for the third world.



• The radio spectrum too was controlled by the developed countries. In fact 90% of the radio spectrum was controlled by a few countries, most of it for military use.

• The allocation of space for geostationary orbits for satellites was also a major issue. Developing countries did not have the capability of launching their own satellites.

• The problem of lack of space for future satellite launches was a major problem area.



• Satellite broadcasting of television signals into Third World countries without prior permission was widely perceived as a threat to national sovereignty.

• The UN voted in the early 1970s against such broadcasts.

• Use of satellites to collect information on crops and natural resources in the Third World at a time when most developing countries lacked the capacity to analyse this data.



• At the time most mainframe computers were located in the United States and there were concerns about the location of databases (such as airline reservations) and the difficulty of developing countries catching up with the US lead in computers.

• The protection of journalists from violence was raised as an issue for discussion. For example, journalists were targeted by various military dictatorships in Latin America in the 1970s.

• As part of NWICO debates there were suggestions for study on how to protect journalists and even to discipline journalists who broke "generally recognized ethical standards".

• However, the MacBride Commission specifically came out against the idea of licensing journalists.



• The MacBride Commission• The International Commission for the Study of

Communication Problems, known as the ’MacBride Commission’, was appointed to study all manner of problems of communication in the world.

• One of its chief tasks was to analyse communication problems, in their different aspects, within the perspective of the establishment of a new international economic order and of the measures to be taken to foster the institution of a “new world information order”. (UNESCO Work Plan for 1977-1978, 19C/5 Approved § 4155)



• UNESCO used the concept of a “world information order” rather than an “international information order”.

• The change in wording was made on the initiative of the Western countries, who wished to make the connection to the demand for a new economic order less explicit.

• The word “international” connotes relations among nations, whereas “world” prompts associations to global cooperation more generally, with concepts like “the global village” and “world government”



• Director-General M’Bow formulated the Commission’s brief or terms of reference in four points:

• (a) to study the current situation in the fields of communication and information and to identify problems which call for fresh action at the national level and a concerted, overall approach at the international level. The analysis of the state of communication in the world today, and particularly of information problems as a whole, should take account of the diversity of socio-economic conditions and levels and types of development;

• (b) to pay particular attention to problems relating to the free and balanced flow of information in the world, as well as the specific needs of developing countries, in accordance with the decisions of the General Conference; 14



• (c) to analyse communication problems, in their different aspects, within the perspective of the establishment of a new international economic order and of the measures to be taken to foster the institution of a ’new world information order’;

• (d) to define the role which communication might play in making public opinion aware of the major problems besetting the world, in sensitizing it to these problems and helping gradually to solve them by concerted action at the national and international levels. (Many Voices, One World, p 42)



• One of the countries, China, refused to be a part of the Commission.

• Nothing like this on this scale had ever happened before. The studies ranged from conceptual analyses to statistical compendia, surveys of national media legislation, and bibliographies. They were reported in roughly 100 publications. Thus, the MacBride Commission had a major impact on scholarship pertaining to international communication, as well.



• The volume consists of five parts. The first four report the findings of studies in four areas:

• 1) “Communication and Society” (historical and contemporary perspectives and the international dimension),

• 2) “Communication Today” (means of communication, expanding infrastructures, concentration, interaction, participants, disparities),

• 3) “Problems and Issues of Common Concern” (flaws in communication flows, dominance in communication contents, democratization of communication, images of the world, the public and public opinion),



• 4) “The Institutional and Professional Framework” (communication policies, material resources, research contributions, the professional communicators, rights and responsibilities of journalists, norms of professional conduct). The Commission had the ambition to treat their subjects from historical, socio-economic, cultural and political perspectives.

• The report treats all kinds of information and communication, from interpersonal communication to mass communication and digital communication from local, national and international points of view.

• The fifth part of the book, “Conclusions and Recommendations” offers some eighty policy recommendations of problems studied.



• [email protected]






POLITICS OF REPRESENTATION OF THE ‘THIRD WORLD’ IN THE INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• Third World is a categorical label used to

describe states that are considered to be underdeveloped in terms of their economy or level of industrialization, globalization, standard of living, health, education or other criteria for 'advancements'.

• The name Third World arose during the Cold War to refer to nations that did not belong to the similarly termed "First" or "Second Worlds". There is debate over the appropriateness of the term.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

First (blue), Second (red), and the Third World (green) countries during the Cold War (1946-90)





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• It has also sometimes been interpreted as a pejorative term - especially when used by citizens of erstwhile First and Second World countries. For example, in November 2008, Australian cricketer Matthew Hayden came under strong criticism in India for using the term.

• Back home in Australia after a 2-0 series defeat by India for the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, Hayden spoke about, what he perceived as, poor ground conditions and inordinate delays during matches "that happens in Third World countries"





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• The New World Information Order raised fundamental issues about the Freedom of Press, esp. the Western Press.

• The Third World countries directed at what they percieved as inequities in the flows of information, news and communication technologies.

• They believed that there was overtly negative reporting on their internal contitions and policies.

• The United States, on the other hand, saw the demands for a new world information order as a direct threat to the American principal of a free press and to access for US media organisations to developing countries.

• Major media organisations were mobilised to fight the initiative.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• Until the mid-1960s, the focus of debate in UNESCO was about the free flow of information and use of mass media to build ‘modern’ societies in the Third World.

• However, with the New World Information Order, it changed from just ‘free flow’ to the overwhelming dominance of the Western mass media and news agencies.

• The Western press and the Western news agencies were now charged with cultural dominance and imperialism.

• They preferred that the Western news agencies and media display the positive news disseminated by the Third World government agencies.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• They charged that the information about the Third World countries emphasised theur fragility, instability and corruption and suggesed that the economic imbalances stemmed NOT from European colonialism and neo-colonial forces, but from their own inability to sustain development.

• Third World countries argued that the distorted, negative treatment of their problems in the media neglected facts and real issues facing their nations and impeded their attempts to develop.

• The Third World felt that there was a neeed for global change in telecommunications, news flows, intellectual property rights and international advertising.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• D. R. Mankekar, former chairman of the

Coordinating Committee of the Non-Aligned Countries’ Press Agencies Pool express Third World views of the western domination of the news quite clearly:

• They [the West] fail to realise that their obduracy is being construed by the Third World as a disguised attempt to tighten on them the grip of colonialist hegemony through Western media in the name of freedom of information.






• Western control over the flow of information, then, constituted a form of colonialism in the eyes of the Third World, and thus represented a direct threat to the national sovereignty of developing nations.






Africa in the Western Media

Paper presented at the Sixth Annual African Studies Consortium Workshop,

October 02, 1998)by

Rod Chavis






• Western Media organizations employ to specifically dump negative news materials and information when reporting, communicating, or disseminating anything concerning Africa.

• the U.S. consumes about 60% of the world's resources but has only a fraction (4.1 %) of the world's population.






• With the stroke of a journalist's pen, the African, her continent, and her descendants are pejoratively reduced to nothing: a bastion of disease, savagery, animism, pestilence, war, famine, despotism, primitivism, poverty, and ubiquitous images of children, flies in their food and faces, their stomachs distended.






• For a long time a myth has been spread in India (and many other countries in the world) that certain sections of the Western media, particularly the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which is hailed as a trail-blazing ‘independent’ organisation, report every major development objectively and fairly.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• True to their up and down form, one again Indo-Pak relations appear to be heading south with the Pakistani strongman deciding to open another ‘front’ against India. India has been accused of violating the 1960 World Bank brokered Indus Water Treaty by constructing a dam on Chenab in Jammu and Kashmir and that it would ‘deprive’ the farmers in Pakistan’s part of Punjab of irrigation from that river.

• However, the point is that the BBC and many other prominent Western newspapers and airwaves reported the Baglihar talks almost entirely based on what the Pakistanis said. The only pretence of ‘balancing’ the Baglihar story was to add a phrase that ‘India denies the (Pakistani) charge (of violation of the Indus Water Treaty)’.

• The treaty allows waters from three rivers to flow into Pakistan while giving India the exclusive rights over two other rivers flowing from Kashmir. How has the Western media assumed that India has no case in Baglihar?





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• The violation of the (14-month long) ceasefire along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistani troops was a serious matter. But the reports carried in the Western media could well have been a straight copy from what the Pakistani government handout said: ‘utterly baseless’ (the Indian charge).

The incident was sketchily reported a day after it occurred but most of the Western media relied on the version put out by Islamabad, which, expectedly, denied the role of its troops. The Western media bought the ridiculous Pakistani statement that they heard some ‘loud explosions’ along the LoC but could not say who was responsible.

• The Pakistanis were not asked to comment how 60 mm and 82 mm mortar shells used by the Pakistani army were found some 15 km inside the Indian side of the LoC. Some foreign channels even tried to link the mortar shelling to the Baglihar controversy and suggesting that the ‘explosion’ came from the Indian side as no casualty was reported by India.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• Take the tsunami tragedy. That initial reports concentrated on losses in Indonesia and barely mentioned that India was among the countries affected by the tsunami waves. But that was perhaps a pardonable ‘miss’ as the full scale of devastation caused by a huge natural disaster of the type that hit parts of South and South-east Asia on December 26, 2004 is not known immediately.

• By the time the losses in India were relayed to the world, the Western media started to turn its focus on how shabby the Indian relief and rehabilitation efforts were as though elsewhere everything was going fine. There is little to doubt that the reason for the Western ire against India was the result of India refusing to accept aid from the rich Western world who are more used to seeing sights of supplicating Third World nations, especially when in distress, lining up for ‘alms’.

• The Indian High Commissioner in the UK was grilled for half an hour over the BBC with the anchor going round in circles in trying to get His Excellency to admit that the relief efforts by Indians have been a disaster and it was a mistake to have turned down Western help.






• FEAR plays a great role in the Western Media’s approach to the Third World

• Iraq, Afghanistan, Bin Laden and previously Saddam Hussein plays on the minds of the Western public.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• So what are the challenges faced by

international journalists?• The first challenge is to get started in the field.• Most of the times, journalists are not well versed

with foreign affairs.• They have to move past the culture shock and

confusing situations to become knowledgeable.• Most journalists prefer learning from scratch

than arriving at the foreign location with preconceived notions.






• The second challenge is developing personal relationship, family.

• Common to both, parachute journalists and immersion journalists.

• They manage by either taking the family to their place of assignment, or let the spouse bear the responsibility of the family.






• The third obstacle is that of stress and burnout.

• Decades of living away from home, away from the family, meeting deadline after deadline takes the toll.

• Hence, shifting jobs or place of work becomes more of a necessity to maintain ones sanity.






• The fourth challenge is the gender and racial bias faced by female and minority journalists while working overseas. Interestingly, representatives of both groups said their minority status was more of a help than a hindrance in reporting, and aided them to either gain the trust of sources in international situations or to catch them off guard.






• And the fifth challenge is simply how best to tell a story.

• Both print and broadcast journalists debate which is better — colorful feature writing or concise, factual accounts of the news.

• In the end it seems a mix of the two is best for capturing the attention of the audience.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• The hunger for more news is increasingly

satisfied by the websites.• More and more people tend to prefer the

internet over newspapers for learning about what is going on abroad.

• Even when there are thousands of correspondents abroad, are there enough of them?

• The answer is no.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• Only 6% of Americans could answer 5 basic questions about the world, while 37% of them could not answer any of them.

• This clearly shows how much the Western world is interested in knowing about the Third World.

• Overall the US performed the words among the eight developed countries.

• Even though channels like CNN has actually increased the number of correspondents abroad, more and more media organisations now rely on the news wire services to fill up their ‘World News’ columns.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• In television news, Hess found that: “…no country, with the possible exception of

Russia, was explained and presented coherently enough so that attentive viewers could believe they understood how life was lived there. The narrow span of TV foreign news, largely government related and driven by events, differed markedly from the broader and more balanced array of subjects in domestic news. International environmental problems, education, science and the arts were rarely mentioned. Half the world’s 180 or so countries were never noted.”





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• Correspondents both veteran and novice gleefully

tell stories of escaping bullets and bombs, of meeting world leaders, of wandering into forbidden places and facing unpredictable situations.

• Reporting from a foreign country is a thrilling challenge for any journalist, but the initial confusion and personal isolation felt when thrown into an unfamiliar situation can be daunting. These obstacles affect both parachute and immersion journalists.





Mangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai• Parachute journalists, or “firefighters,” leap from crisis to crisis across the globe to cover the story of the hour as fast as possible. They may find themselves in the Middle East one day and Moscow the next, or pulled suddenly from a war situation to cover an earthquake on the other side of the globe.

• In exchange for this exciting lifestyle, parachutists sacrifice stability in their lives and often lack advanced understanding of the situations in which they find themselves.

• Immersion journalists, on the other hand, I defined for the purposes of this thesis as those who remain in a single region for a year or more. They may stay in a country for decades, learning the language and culture and filing news stories from their home bureau.




WRITING FOR THE WEBMangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

Writing for the Internet Media





• In reporting on the day’s events, journalists rely most fundamentally on two key relationships: the relationship with their news sources and with their audiences. These relationships are most fundamental for at least three reasons.

• First, without reliable sources, a journalist cannot get the facts needed to prepare the story.

• Second, without an audience, there is no point in telling the story.

• Third, and most important, maintaining integrity in the relationships between journalists, their sources and their audiences is fundamental to establishing and maintaining the credibility, or believability, of journalism, the only real value a journalist has.





• When the integrity of the reporter-source-audience relationship is violated, not only does the individual journalist suffer, but the credibility of the entire news organisation or even institution is damaged.

• Jayson Blair, who, as the Times(2003) itself admits, ’fabricated comments, concocted scenes and lifted material from other newspapers and wire services’





• The reporter who gets too close to a source can sometimes fail to ask the tough question, the question that needs to be asked ... and answered to fully inform the public.

• Convergence is transforming the reporter-source relationship, partly by introducing more technology into the equation.





• The scenario prior to convergence• Telephone – to set up interviews• Sense of the tone?• Fax, teleprinter?• Some sources deluge reporters with

written communication, including press releases, but most reporters generally disregard or discount this type of communication as public relations.





• The rise of computer-mediated communication has begun to erode face-to-face and even telephone interviews.

• When on deadline, reporters may take whatever means they can get to reach a source ... and that may often be email.

• Expert sources, especially those in science, medicine or higher education, may have a strong preference for email communications, and may specifically request that a source contact them via email, particularly if they want a timely response.





• For the business news wires, reporters rarely leave their desks, doing almost all their reporting either via the phone, email or other internet-based communication.

• On the other hand, email communication, can provide certain improvements to the reporter-source relationship

• Journalists with tight budgets





• Use of the internet and email by journalists has grown dramatically from 48% in 1998 to about 65% in 2001.

• Email also makes it more practical and efficient to fact check stories, especially those dealing with complex technical issues, including health, science, technology or business. In the past, the reporter might first conduct a face-to-face interview, and then fact check with a phone call.

• But doing fact-checking over the phone necessarily limits what can be done on deadline; it also reduces the chances of error detection since the source will not actually see what is written and may not catch, discern or effectively correct an error heard over a phone call from a harried reporter. Via email the source can check and verify the details.





• There is a danger that if the report is critical of the source or that of an organisation the source may take legal action to suppress the report.

• Technology has also given reporters greatly expanded access to entire classes of source material previously rarely if ever seen. For example, remote sensing satellite imagery is now a routine part of reporting on a variety of stories, ranging from environmental reporting to military conflict.





• A year ago I doubt if anyone in newsrooms could tell you what a DEM (digital elevation model) was or even what GIS is. Now every significant news entity is exploring how to integrate geographical data into its news graphics.

• Dubno, an expert in newsroom technology applications, notes on his website that ’Broadcasters are using these [satellite] pictures to reveal denied areas of the Earth: taking viewers to places where governments or nature otherwise bar access. In recent days, North Korean and Iranian nuclear sites have been made public





• Using GIS allows you to take data and present it in a graphical format that can really grab readers. You can run a chart that says taxes went up this much in 50 or 500 different towns, but if you color code each town, with the biggest increases in red and the smallest in green, everyone’s looking at the map to see if their town is red or green. I don’t know if there’s a chart if they have the same reaction to a column of percentages.

• Convergence also poses serious challenges to the independence of journalists in covering military conflict or even conflict or crime situations on the domestic front.





• Just as convergence has exerted dramatic impact on the reporter-source audience relationship, it is also changing the relationship between journalists and relationship their audiences.

• In days past, reporters would typically write or produce their reports, and only the most unusual stories would generate more than a letter or two, or phone call (typically from a source misquoted) from the

• audience. With the rise of email, most reporters who have published their email addresses get deluged with emails from their readers, viewers or listeners.

• The Middleberg-Ross survey shows that many reporters consider responding to readers via email as part of their job with more than half doing so at least occasionally.

• The Middleberg-Ross survey shows that by 2001 a majority• of journalists were using the internet to develop story ideas

compared with just 30 per cent in 1998.





• In his book, Digitizing the News, MIT Professor Pablo J. Boczkowski explains:

• News in the online environment is what those contributing to its production make of it. News is moving from being mostly journalist-centered, communicated as a monologue, and primarily local, to also being increasingly audience- centered, part of multiple conversations and micro-local

• With the advent of Google, everyone can broadcast information and everyone can research information across the intellectual universe. The problem is, as it’s always been, determining the bona fides of the data and the merits of the information conveyed.





• Moreover, reporters must always bear in mind their main function: to report. They cannot afford to get side-tracked into tangential conversations with readers or sources, or worse, start worrying about the consequences of a story to the extent that they experience reporting paralysis.

• A journalist maintains a fine balance between telling the public what it needs to know, even when the truth may cause hurt or pain, and being responsible and ethical in reporting and respecting personal privacy.





• Blogs also blur the boundary between who is a source, an audience member or a journalist. In some cases, the creator of a blog may be all three. Bloggers may see an item reported in a traditional news outlet, gather their own information, and post a response on their blog.

• Consider the blog of journalist J.D. Lasica. 12 On 26 May 2004, he wrote about when ’consumers are creators’. He quoted from Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab

• Convergence, she said, ... puts the focus not on the consumer, our audiences, but on the supplier, the news organizations. It becomes an exercise in Us vs. Them.... I think we are focusing on the wrong ’C’ word. Rather than - focus on convergence, we should be focusing on connections and how new digital tools can help us build all kinds of innovative, new connections with our audiences. The potential of new media is not simply more noise but more meaningful interaction and hopefully more meaningful learning.





• Audience expectations are also evolving. News via the internet is on-demand and instantaneous. In a broadband environment, it is media rich and highly interactive. Audiences are increasingly accustomed to and demanding news that is customised to their interests.





• Reporters are increasingly supplementing, and sometimes supplanting, face-to-face news gathering with internet-based reporting. Web-searching, email and list-serves are increasing staples in the reporting food chain.

• Although most reporters still rely on personal interviews and observations, they often rely on the internet for material when on deadline, weekends or doing follow-up work, including fact checking. Moreover, with economic short-falls afflicting most news organisations, the need for increased productivity is a pressure felt acutely in a growing proportion of news rooms, and this sometimes translates into journalistic shortcuts.





• F-Shaped Pattern For Reading Web Content

• Eyetracking visualizations show that users often read Web pages in an F-shaped pattern: two horizontal

stripes followed by a vertical stripe.





• This dominant reading pattern looks somewhat like an F and has the following three components:

• Users first read in a horizontal movement, usually across the upper part of the content area. This initial element forms the F's top bar.

• Next, users move down the page a bit and then read across in a second horizontal movement that typically covers a shorter area than the previous movement. This additional element forms the F's lower bar.

• Finally, users scan the content's left side in a vertical movement. Sometimes this is a fairly slow and systematic scan that appears as a solid stripe on an eyetracking heatmap. Other times users move faster, creating a spottier heatmap. This last element forms the F's stem.





• The above heatmaps show how users read three different types of Web pages:

• An article in the "about us" section of a corporate website (far left),

• A product page on an e-commerce site (center), and

• A search engine results page (SERP; far right).





The F viewing pattern is a rough, general shape rather than a uniform, pixel-perfect behavior.

On the e-commerce page (middle example), the second crossbar of the F is lower than usual because of the intervening product image. Users also allocated significant fixation time to a box in the upper right part of the page where the price and "add to cart" button are found.

On the SERP (right example), the second crossbar of the F is longer than the top crossbar, mainly because the second headline is longer than the first. In this case, both headlines proved equally interesting to users, though users typically read less of the second area they view on a page.





• Users won't read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. Exhaustive reading is rare, especially when prospective customers are conducting their initial research to compile a shortlist of vendors. Yes, some people will read more, but most won't.

• The first two paragraphs must state the most important information. There's some hope that users will actually read this material, though they'll probably read more of the first paragraph than the second.

• Start subheads, paragraphs, and bullet points with information-carrying words that users will notice when scanning down the left side of your content in the final stem of their F-behavior. They'll read the third word on a line much less often than the first two words.





• Web pages have to employ scannable text, using• highlighted keywords (hypertext links serve as one form

of highlighting; typeface variations and color are others)• meaningful sub-headings (not "clever" ones)• bulleted lists• one idea per paragraph (users will skip over any

additional ideas if they are not caught by the first few words in the paragraph)

• the inverted pyramid style, starting with the conclusion• half the word count (or less) than conventional writing





• Research has yielded several interesting findings.• Among other things, the authors found that

the Back button is now only the 3rd most-used feature on the Web. Clicking hypertext links remains the most-used feature, but clicking buttons (on the page) has now overtaken Back to become the second-most used feature. The reason for this change is the increased prevalence of applications and feature-rich Web pages that require users to click page buttons to access their functionality.

• Of course, Back is still the user's lifeline and is so frequently used that supporting it remains a strong usability guideline.





• Lower-Literacy Users: Characteristics• Lower literacy is different than illiteracy: They read word for

word and often spend considerable time trying to understand multi-syllabic words.

• Lower-literacy users focus exclusively on each word and slowly move their eyes across each line of text. This gives them a narrow field of view and they therefore miss objects outside the main flow of the text they're reading.

• Lower-literacy users don't scan text. As a result, for example, they can't quickly glance at a list of navigation options to select the one they want. They must read each word in each option carefully.

• Their only other choice is to completely skip over large amounts of information, which they often do when things become too complicated.





• Improving Usability for Lower-Literacy Users

• Prioritize information. Place the main point at the very top of the page, where even readers who typically give up after a few lines will see it.

• Avoid scrolling all together





• Avoid text that moves or changes, such as animations and fly-out menus. Static text is easier to read. This guideline also helps international users (who might need to look up words in a dictionary) and users with motor skills impairments (who have difficulty catching things that move).





• Streamline the page design. Place important content in a single main column, so users don't have to scan the page and pick out design elements in a two-dimensional layout. This guideline also helps low-vision users and users of handheld devices (such as smartphones), which narrow the field of view.





• Simplify navigation by placing the main choices in a linear menu. This helps users clearly understand the next place to go, without requiring them to scan the page for options.

• Optimize search. Make your search tolerant of misspellings (which also helps seniors, who are particularly prone to making typos). Ideally, a user's first search hit should answer the query, and all hits should provide short, easy-to-read summaries.





• We have derived three main content-oriented conclusions from our four years' of Web usability studies [Nielsen 1997a]:

• Users do not read on the Web; instead they scan the pages, trying to pick out a few sentences or even parts of sentences to get the information they want

• Users do not like long, scrolling pages: they prefer the text to be short and to the point

• Users detest anything that seems like marketing fluff or overly hyped language ("marketese") and prefer factual information.





• Users Want to Search • Waiting is Unpleasant • Conventional Guidelines for Good Writing

are Good • Scanning is the norm, that text should be short

(or at least broken up), that users like summaries and the inverted pyramid writing style, that hypertext structure can be helpful, that graphical elements are liked if they complement the text, and that users suggest there is a role for playfulness and humor in work-related websites.





• Simple and Informal Writing are Preferred • Credibility is an Important Issue on the Web • Outbound Links Can Increase Credibility • Humor Should be Used with Caution • Users Want to Get Their Information Quickly • Text Should be Scannable • Text Should be Concise • Users Like Summaries and the Inverted Pyramid

Style (in which news and conclusions are presented first, followed by details and background information)

• Hypertext is Well-Liked • Graphics and Text Should Complement One Another





• Summary: Active voice is best for most Web content, but using passive voice can let you front-load important keywords in headings, blurbs, and lead sentences. This enhances scannability and thus SEO effectiveness.




NEWS AGENCIESMangesh Karandikar, DCJ, University of Mumbai

NEWS AGENGIES





• Corporate form of news has had a significant impact on the means and methods of news collection and distribution, both domestically and internationally.





• The relationship between news agencies and newspapers is a microcosm of the competitive forces in news industries

• These forces are most effectively observed in the context of corporate form





• News agencies have to be studied by looking at

• 1) the importance of internal competitive forces in determining news agency corporate form; and

• 2) the inuence of corporate form in news collection.





• The competitive forces that have shaped the media are little different from other industries, namely: the threat of new entrants; bargaining power of customers and suppliers; threat of substitute products; and jockeying among current contestants.

• It is however difficult to determine what exactly the newspapers compete for.





• A number of factors determine the boundaries of newspaper markets, among which the most important may be area of coverage

• Geographically speaking, several types of newspaper exist, among which the three most prevalent are local, regional and national. The degree to which these newspapers interact and compete has in part to do with the interconnectedness of the economy and the corresponding flow of information





• Relationship among these several classes of newspaper may be said to depict a series of concentric circles

• The local newspapers nested inside the territory of the regional newspapers, which are in turn circumscribed by the territory of the national newspapers





• Jockeying among contestants occurs between like publications and between newspapers of different classes.

• The geographic factors that shape the field of competition include: proximity to the point of news collection and the location and circulation of competing newspapers. Local newspapers actively compete against each other, and they may share their collective territory with a regional or national publication.





• In the dissemination of information across countries that span more than one time zone, and across national boundaries, publication time, and the time at which news was dispatched, influence access.





• Starting during the second half of the nineteenth century, publication of multiple daily editions, which enabled greater throughput and increased advertising revenue, and the emergence of a strong evening newspaper field, created another competitive catalyst.

• Morning newspapers, for example, sought to withhold from evening newspapers, and retain for their own publication, information pertaining to news events occurring during the day.





• Not all news is born equal. There are two broad categories of news:

• Spontaneous and manufactured. • Spontaneous or spot news contains not only such things as

natural disasters or political debates, but the variety of news put out by various bodies. This news comes to news outlets either direct

• for example through publicity agents or stock exchanges• or indirect, as through news agencies

• Manufactured news is created, or dug up by the paper itself. For example, an exclusive interview or investigative report. Sometimes a spontaneous story will have a manufactured follow-up

• e.g., an interview with a widow after a terrorist bombing.





• It is in the arena of manufactured news, more so than spontaneous news, that newspapers achieve advantage, because this sort of reporting offers a greater opportunity for individual enterprise, and, by extension, the development of reputation and goodwill.





• It is advantageous, therefore, to cooperate or rely on a third-party, and thereby spread costs and alleviate the threat of competition, in the collection of spontaneous news.

• This may be achieved, albeit with different results, either through the market or through vertical integration.

• Reuters, being a proprietary agency established to sell information, is an example of the former; Associated Press (AP), being formed and owned by several American newspapers, is an example of the latter.





• The principal difference between the two models being that proprietary agencies, like Reuters, exist foremost to make profit, while mutual agencies, being organised along not-for-profit lines, such as AP, exist foremost to gather news.





• AP, being a product of vertical integration, gained by having its clientele invested in its continued success, but the association was subject to principal-agent problems because the newspapers which owned and managed it tended to act in their own interest, often to the detriment of lesser newspapers within the association and certainly to those publications barred from membership.

• Reuters, being a joint-stock company run by independent managers, had greater mobility in serving clients and increased adaptability in developing new services, but being subject to a substantial profit motive it encountered difficulties meeting the varied expectations of its newspaper clientele.





• Despite these fundamental differences in organisation, between the late 1850s and 1930s, AP and Reuters, along with the national agencies of France and Germany, were the key members of an international cartel of news agencies.

• These organisations, like the newspapers they served, discovered that it was disadvantageous to compete directly for spot news, and their cartel ensured adequate coverage, while raising barriers to entry.





• In addition, cartel agreements specified markets in which each agency could sell its news. Although the flow of news abroad and the establishment of bureaux in foreign countries was highly subject to economic, political and social considerations, such as international trade, imperial interests and cultural affinity, news exchange among countries was also influenced by corporate form.





• ASSOCIATED PRESS





• Cooperation in the collection of spontaneous news limits competition, and lowers costs associated with news collection

• It was also becomes an instrument of control.• In the 1840s, competition among the

newspapers of New York City for European news caused these papers to cooperate.

• Cooperation reduced costs associated with spot news collection and permitted investment in special correspondence, which was certainly a more profitable employment of funds.





• Geographic proximity to the point of reception enabled the New York papers to exert control over European news and to sell this news at profit to other associations that emerged throughout the country as the telegraph network expanded.

• These associations also existed to limit competition among the several large news-papers of a particular region and to manage the distribution of information to peripheral publications.





• The New York association retained a dominant position until the 1890s,

• The advent of a trans-Atlantic cable in 1866 diffused access to news information from Europe and loosened the grip of the New York association over other agencies.

• With direct access to Europe, the Western Association, which included papers in the growing cities of the mid-west, found it could cut out the middleman and obtain its news independently of New York.

• Technology played a big role in the dissemination of news.• in 1882, owing to the consolidation of Western Union, the

Western Association and New York association joined forces to prevent the telegraph company from entering the news business





• in 1893, when the contract of 1882 with Western Union expired and there was an opportunity for revision of terms, the western association broke away to form what became Associated Press (AP).





• The competition induced cities and regions to exchange information and create information networks.

• This competitive matrix produced a network effect that enabled specific forms of corporate organisation.

• In exchange for exclusive access to a publication's spot news, the association granted franchise rights that barred prospective competitors from receiving its news report.

• These regional associations paid dividends to a select group of stockholding members





• Such practice created dissatisfaction among papers outside the inner circle who felt they were subsidising the newsgathering efforts of a select group.

• The mid-western papers developed a not-for-profit model to achieve these ends.

• After the associations split and the AP was formed, it assured the smaller papers throughout the country by promising them a say in the management of the news agency.





• Actually, the smaller newspapers just became something like small shareholders of a corporation.

• What AP did, was to charge these ‘shareholders’ cost wise instead of remuneration wise.

• This system of pricing kept newspapers tied to AP and ensured its continued success.





• To entice larger newspapers to membership AP issued stock for placement with a select group of first-class publications. These shares, being part of a not-for-profit company, did not pay dividends, but ensured to stockholders a proportionate number of votes in the appointment of a board.

• In this way control of the association was geographically dispersed, but retained by a particular class of newspaper.

• In fact, AP, with this innovative business strategy drove the other organisations based in New York to bankruptcy.





• But there were problems..• Conflicts of principals and agents. • The tension between market share and market

value was the chief source of these problems, as it is in many information industries.

• The largest American newspapers, being virtual owners of the organisation, and having a considerable say in its management, preferred to exclude new members, which, although beneficial to them in the short-term, was disadvantageous to the long-term success of the agency.





• In addition, and as the history leading up to the foundation of AP suggests, controlling members employed the agency for their advantage and disregarded the needs of other sectors of the press.

• Gradually these conflicts led to reforms, either from within or legally imposed.

• AP was forced to liquidate and reincorporate in New York because of its monopolistic and restrictive attitude.

• There were several anti-trust litigations.





• In addition, AP's corporate model inhibited diversification of its news product and hindered the adaptation of new technology.

• The services of AP remained bland, and traditional in comparison with the new upcoming agencies.





• Although AP successfully developed new technology for a news-photo service, its implementation engendered animosity between large and small newspapers. Papers with large circulation could afford to pay for the service.

• Smaller papers, although they could not pay, were required to provide pictures for the service.

• Subsequently they discovered that the same photos supplied to the association were being used in competition against them by larger members.





• The development of broadcasting in the United States created similar problems. Large newspapers established radio stations to compete with broadcasting companies in the transmission of news, and pushed for the AP report to be permitted on air.

• The majority of newspapers, which could not afford to start radio stations, protested against this trend, and prevented AP from serving broadcast companies, while competing agencies gained control of the market.

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