The Softening of Journalistic Political Communication: A Comprehensive Framework Model of Sensationalism, Soft News, Infotainment, and Tabloidization | Zendy

Otto Lukas | Zendy; Glogger Isabella | Zendy; Boukes Mark | Zendy

Open Access

The Softening of Journalistic Political Communication: A Comprehensive Framework Model of Sensationalism, Soft News, Infotainment, and Tabloidization

Author(s) -

Otto Lukas,

Glogger Isabella,

Boukes Mark

Publication year - 2017

Publication title -

communication theory

Language(s) - English

Resource type - Journals

SCImago Journal Rank - 1.671

H-Index - 81

eISSN - 1468-2885

pISSN - 1050-3293

DOI - 10.1111/comt.12102

Subject(s) - sensationalism , journalism , politics , clarity , popularity , media studies , political communication , sociology , news media , political science , law , biochemistry , chemistry

Despite the scholarly popularity of important developments of political communication, concepts like soft news or infotainment lack conceptual clarity. This article tackles that problem and introduces a multilevel framework model of softening of journalistic political communication, which shows that the 4 most prominent concepts—(a) sensationalism, (b) hard and soft news ( HSN ), (c) infotainment, and (d) tabloidization, and, additionally, (e) eroding of boundaries of journalism—can be distinguished in a hierarchical model. By softening, we understand a metaconcept representing developments in political journalism that are observed on different levels of investigation, from journalism as a system (macrolevel) down to single media items (microlevel).

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