2. News waves in a changing media landscape 1950-2014

Abstract

Over time the number of news waves seem to be increasing. Due to intensif ied competition, journalists are increasingly responding to stories in other media and audience preferences, at the expense of stories on political issues. By using the digitalized archive of the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, news waves were automatically identif ied in the four million articles from 1950-2014. Contrary to expectations, the amount of news waves has not increased linearly since the 1950s, but shows a U-curve, with more waves in the 1950s than in the 1970s. Political content in news waves peaked in the 1990s. The general shape of news waves consists of a small lead, a sharp and narrow peak, and a slow decline.