NDM: News Values

Galtung and Ruge (1981) defined a set of news values to explain how journalists and editors decided that certain stories and photographs were accepted as newsworthy, while others were not. 

The following list is adapted from their work:

Immediacy: 

has it happened recently?

Familiarity: 

is it culturally close to us in Britain?

Amplitude: 

is it a big event or one which involves large numbers of people?

Frequency: 

does the event happen fairly regularly?

Unambiguity: 

is it clear and definite?

Predictability:

did we expect it to happen?

Surprise:

 is it a rare or unexpected event?

Continuity: 

has this story already been defined as news?

Elite nations and people: 

which country has the event happened in? Does the story concern well-known people?

Negativity:

 is it bad news?

Balance: 

the story may be selected to balance other news, such as a human survival story to balance a number of stories concerning death.

How has new and digital media technology changed Galtung and Ruge’s news values? How would you update them for 2015?

Immediacy:

Changes in technology has allowed news to be spread a lot more quickly compared to previous era's, this is due to the uprising of social media, networks such as snapchat, twitter and facebook has allowed for breaking news to be shared and made viral a lot more quicker then before, news institutions are really only used for proof checking and for full information.

Familiarity:
Social media has allowed for the whole world to be in one place, its brought many voices and opinions together and has allowed for a more democratic way of news being distributed.

 Amplitude:
NDM has allowed for bigger events to be distributed to a more larger audience and more local news can target those in a area, for example, snapchat distributes "stories" from large big events around the world to everyone and also has "stories" for people in a specific area like London only.

Frequency:

Social media usually makes new stories go viral and spread to larger audiences, regular stories are still always talked about too, examples like tv shows is a great way for NDM to help the entertainment industry.

Unambiguity:
NDM has allowed for us to become citizen journalists, we can now report our own news and get it heard quickly and to a large amount of people, this does also mean that loads of people make up hoax stories and false info for attention, genuine news is now also more raw and un edited, making it much more straight up and heavy to watch.

Predictability:

NDM has allowed for more unpredictable news to be spread quickly, in the event, anyone can pull out there phone and record news, before a crew would be needed and in some cases they may arrive too late, therefore meaning not many stories are covered.

Surprise:

As social media means news will be distributed much more quickly, we get news instantly, meaning bad news can be a quick surprise to us.

Continuity:
NDM allows more constant fresh news to be produced due to citizen journalism.

Elite Nations and People:

This means that more central countries and stories are put forward compared to others, such as USA news.

Negativity:
NDM has allowed for more news to be produced, this means we will find out about much more negative news than before, a good example would be the police beatings and executions in USA.

Balance:

NDM has no balance, anything is shared, this is much different compared to traditional tv news which had a playlist to be shown which had balance for viewers.