Study: English-Language Media and Spanish-Language Media Employ Different Strategies When Reporting on the Outcome of Political Debates

A new study has found that English-language media are significantly more likely to use interpretation while Spanish-language media employ more audience-engagement and factual reporting strategies when reporting on political debates.

The findings by Lindita Camaj, University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications Journalism associate professor, City University of London Associate Professor Lea Hellmueller, University of Western Ontario Assistant Professor Sebastian Vallejo Vera and University of Houston Assistant Professor Peggy Lindner were featured in “The Impact of Journalistic Cultures on Social Media Discourse: U.S. Primary Debates in Cross-Lingual Online Spaces” published in Digital Journalism on Oct. 10

The article features a cross-lingual project which examined how social media posts of Spanish- and English-language media impact incivility in user comments during the 2020 primary political debates in the U.S.

According to the authors, “We analyzed Facebook posts of news organizations that hosted the debates and used a state-of-the-art machine-learning model to analyze the corresponding comments. Our findings reveal distinct journalistic cultures on the post-level: English-language media are significantly more likely to use interpretation while Spanish-language media employ more audience-engagement and factual reporting strategies.”

They add, “We argue that in order to understand incivility in social media discourse during political debates, we need to consider journalistic cultures. While interpretative reporting explains lower levels of incivility in the English-language discourse, factual reporting explains lower levels of incivility in the Spanish-language discourse.”

Posted: October 31, 2024
Category: College News
Tagged as: Digital Journalism, Journalism, Lindita Camaj, Political Debates, Social Media