Diversity in the Norwegian News Media Landscape: A Hybrid Model for Evaluating Media Policy

The project has evaluated the effect of media regulation on the diversity of the Norwegian news media landscape. Evaluated regulations include ownership restrictions, press support and public service broadcasting. Approximately 830.000 news articles were collected 2015-2017 from 189 news media across the country, including print online and broadcasting media. The data has been analysed using hybrid information and communication science methods, including quantitative content analysis, Latent Dirichlet allocation and Named Entity Chunking. The analyses have primarily considered the diversity of voices and topics in the news in relation to structural and regulative variables. The project has adapted methods for processing and analysis of large amounts of digital media content. The analyses show that all news media in Norway contribute to diversity in some sense, as intended in media regulation, particularly in a mixed media system such as the Norwegian. Concretely, the project found that public service broadcasting contributes to diversity particularly through its focus on regional news; that local newspapers contribute particularly through their focus on local affairs and by improving the gender balance in the news; that national media contribute to diversity through their broad thematic coverage and foreign news coverage, and that niche papers contribute through their thematic foci. In addition, subsidised media are better at using nynorsk as written language. Ownership turned out to have little to no effect on media diversity, due in large part to the heterogeneous nature of corporate holdings.

Prosjektet har oppnådd de vitenskapelige og metodemessige målsetningene. Analysene har bidratt til policy-evaluering på mediefeltet gjennom to rapporter som leverte analyser til mediepolitisk arbeid under Kulturdepartementet. Metodeutviklingen har bidratt til internasjonalt samarbeid og søknad til EU-systemet (COST Action). Prosjektet har utviklet tverrfaglig samarbeid på tvers av informasjons- og medievitenskap ved UiB, gjennom Metodeforumet, og publiseringsresultatene har bidratt til at begge prosjektmedarbeidere har fått fast stilling. Samarbeidspartnere har blitt involvert gjennom publisering, konferanseakivitet og videre søknadsutvikling. Prosjektet oppnådde sine publiseringsmål.

The primary aim of this project is to arrive at a comprehensive and empirically grounded analysis of the diversity of the Norwegian news market. The main research question, asking: what is the level of diversity in the Norwegian news media landscape?, is approached empirically through the collection, processing and analysis of news items published by the printed, online, broadcast and handheld media on the local, regional and national levels; and theoretically by mobilizing data to analyze the diversity i n the output, emerging news logics, and agenda setting within the mediated public sphere from the vantage point of news sociology. Theoretical and methodological efforts will combine to answer the following set of research questions aimed at enabling the primary research objective of analyzing the diversity levels in the Norwegian news media: 1) To what extent does media regulation secure a diversity of voices, opinions and topics in the local, regional and national levels of the mediated public sphere? 2 ) What is the level of plurality of agenda setters in the news media landscape? 3) To what extent are the agendas of different publication platforms diverging, creating separate news logics to accommodate audience fragmentation? And 4) To what extent can Norwegian media policy be said to secure diversity in the overall news content available to audiences? The project employs an interdisciplinary approach to develop a hybrid methodology combining traditional content analysis with computational efforts, the reby moving media studies to the site of Big Data. I will create a Media Policy Research Group to facilitate cooperation on emerging methods with local collaborators as well as a network of international researchers. The results from the project will be d isseminated at national and international conferences, through the project website, and as articles in peer reviewed international journals.