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Thompson, Schetter & Silver, 2017). The following section will discuss different types of news media and how fake news in relations to journalism.
2.2 News Media during Crisis
During crisis, there is an urgent need to look for information, especially from news media.
Being the first main source people sought for, media outlets have been playing important roles in disseminating information. During these unpredictable events, news media is expected to deliver the much needed information (van der Meer et al., 2016). The public makes sense of what is happening through news media and expects news media can provide them with relevant and accurate information.
2.2.1 Traditional & Web-Only News media
As one of the most common media tools used to communicate risks and emergencies, traditional media is an important information vehicle to deliver important information to the public (Parmer et al., 2016). As traditional news media pick up online trends, traditional news media started to utilize online platforms, such as by having social media accounts or establishing traditional affiliated news websites (Chung, Nam & Stephanone, 2012). Traditional affiliated news websites reproduced its offline news into online content whereas web-only news can be defined as only-online news sites, lacking their offline counterpart, however, they are still produced by professionals (Huang, Yang & Chyi, 2013; Smyrnaios, Marty & Rebillard, 2010). Lastly, through the practice of social media, news organizations are able to promote news content, strengthen relationships with readers and especially, to drive traffics to each respective news website via sharing news' hyperlinks (Ju, Jeong & Chyi, 2014).
Through online platforms, people are able to share the news with their networks. News sharing within an online context is defined as the use of social media to post or recommend news
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content to a fixed group of people (Kümpel et al., 2015). Aside from traditional news media affiliated websites, as discussed in the above section, there are also news organizations that solely operate on online platforms. Known as web-only news or independent news online, they provide news without having its offline counterpart or newsroom structure of traditional news media, similarly, their scope is also only limited to their websites (Chung et al., 2012).
The shift of news consumption to online platforms can be seen as a prominence, especially during the state of emergency. In the context of a disaster crisis, people go to online platforms as they are in need of timely information (Cottle, 2014; Austin, Lu & Jin, 2012). Despite that, there is currently an issue faced by news professionals. First, trust in news media has diminished, leading people to seek information from alternative media (Bennett & Livingston, 2018; Pangrazio, 2018).
One of the consequences would be higher exposure and risks of unverified information by professionals. Secondly, in this information age, there is a high expectation of news outlets to publish valid information not just to appease the public's concerns, but to avoid being labeled as
"fake news" (Wishart, 2017; van der Meer et al., 2016).
2.2.2 Journalists during Crisis
As the aforementioned, the role of news media is crucial in the event of crisis, such as natural disaster. As one of the major sources of information, the public expects news media to always provide them with the latest and accurate updates. Scholarships on journalistic roles during crisis had noted several points, such as the positive and negative effects journalists could pose for victims (Ewart & McLean, 2018); acting as government watchdogs while handling disaster and providing positive assurance (Nieves-Pizzaro & Takahashi; 2019); and even being the institutions to “point” who should be responsible for a disaster (Ewart & McLean, 2014). Similarly, news media could also reflect local situations when non-local, nation-wide media might misreport
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certain aspects of a disaster event (Matthews, 2017). There are multiple roles journalists could play in the event of a disaster crisis, aside from providing information, journalists might ease the worry of victims and also to keep tabs on what the government did to aid victims. Factors such as journalists’ location (e.g., local or nationwide) or media’s positioning might influence how journalists approach disaster reporting. Nevertheless, the newsroom will always be responsible to update the public and expected to be both timely and accurate. These demands stress journalists and overwhelms them with workloads. Despite that, factual information are still much needed especially in this age of disinformation.
2.2.3 News Practices and Fake News
News professionals play an important role to regulate fake news, being the individuals behind media contents, they need to be able to access relevant information in order to accurately report and verify false information (van der Meer et al., 2016). According to Tandoc et al., (2018), when fake news intersects with journalism, it puts journalism at a disadvantageous position as fake news pulls people away from trusted news sources. In addition, with global decline of media and journalistic trusts (Pangrazio, 2018), it is necessary for news professionals to take actions to debunk fake news and restore their public’s faith in them.
Trust and credibility are important aspects of news media, regardless whether they are in the form of offline or online news. Both can both be understood based on how news is formed or sourced, the medium of news message and reputation (Fletcher and Park, 2017; Coleman, Morrison & Anthony, 2012). In a nutshell, journalists will always seek for accurate and valid information, thus different weight is placed on different news-sources, especially during crisis, where accuracy matters a lot. Aside from accurate reporting, given the threats posed by rampant circulations of fake news online, it is necessary for journalists to be committed in verifying
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information (Richardson, 2017). This is relevant as internet is not only adopted by users, but journalists have embraced the internet as one of their many sources (Cassidy, 2007) and given the risks of being exposed to fake news or false information, verification is important.
Therefore, it is crucial to understand the whole process on how news is being produced in order to ensure quality and presenting truthful information. In general, news process can be categorized into (1) news gathering, (2) news production or processing, and (3) news distribution (Karlsson, 2011). In the following section, notions of news gathering and news production will be discussed, in relations to fake news, such as maintaining quality and accuracy. Fact-checking and verification will also be discussed as a step in newsroom process.
2.2.4 News Gathering and Ensuring Credibility
As the first step in providing news and information to the public, newsgathering refers to the process journalists undergo to collect needed raw materials (Karlsson, 2011). When looking for materials, journalists can seek information and sources from other people (van der Meer et al., 2016) and also on the internet (Cassidy, 2007). However, when evaluating these two different types of sources, journalists may evaluate them differently although for the same reason, which is to ensure that they have the right sources.
Journalism is a source-driven practice, and regardless of the issue context, such as coverage during the crisis, there are three relevant criteria utilized by journalists to evaluate their sources (van der Meer et al., 2016). These criteria are namely (1) journalistic judgment toward source qualities, (2) sources' activities and (3) the relationship between newsmakers and sources. Firstly, journalists evaluate the qualities of each respective source based on their credibility and knowledge.
Credibility refers to whether a source can be accounted for their claims and to evaluate if a particular source can be evaluated as having accurate information.
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According to Reich (2011), credibility evaluation is necessary to determine if a source's information is worthy to be included in news content. Whereas, knowledge refers to the extent a source portrays knowledge or having information related to the issue; knowledge is as important as being credible, but they differ as a source can possess the knowledge but not credible in the sense that they have their own hidden agenda.
Secondly, sources' activities are conceptualized by willingness and timeliness. Journalists have to ensure that a source is willing to share the information they have at hand but at the same time to acknowledge that they have time pressure (Broersma & Graham, 2013). Timeliness as an aspect of newsgathering is extremely important for news professionals. According to van der Meer et al., (2016), when crisis struck, there is a pressing need for information and journalists have a tighter deadline and as a result, they need to seek information from sources that not only have the information but they can provide relevant information in accordance with their time pressures.
Lastly, van der Meer et al. (2016) also included the relationship between a source and journalist is also an important determinant when journalists undergo the process of obtaining information;
journalists tend to reach out to sources they are both familiar and trusted. Based on the good rapport between sources and journalists, even during a crisis, there is a chance that these trusted sources indirectly influence news content.
2.2.5 News Processing and Content Quality
News processing is defined as the process of transforming raw materials gathered during news gathering into news content mediated by journalistic routines or procedures (Karlsson, 2011).
The way information is journalistically processed will result in varying information quality, such as information that have not been filtered to meet audience needs will have lower quality (Himma-Kadakas, 2017). Information gathered during the news gathering process will be processed again
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in order to fit in with requirements of news media organizations and at the same time, considering the audience too (Reese & Shoemaker, 2016; Tanikawa, 2016).
Additionally, during the process of creating news content, news professionals are guided with a set of news production processes in order to produce good journalism or to reduce bias and predispositions (Albæ k, Skovsgaar & de Vreese, 2017). According to Himma-Kadakas (2017), within the context of fake news, there are times when news professional found themselves caught within the web of misinformation; usually, due to pressing deadlines or needs to produce large quantities of news, news professionals skipped or skimmed through steps (e.g. filtering) thus resulting to errors in reporting. In the news processing phase, not all information gathered in during the initial phase of news gathering will be selected as part of news constructions.
As the next step of producing news content, after information gathering, news professionals will go through news construction and news correction. Based on Himma-Kadakas (2017) study, news construction is defined as the writing, planning and organizing information gathered, followed by producing a draft. Meanwhile, news correcting is defined as the revision stage, where news professionals go through their content to check facts, rewrite and correcting writing errors such as grammar, style and typos.
Past studies on news construction such as Maat and de Jong (2012) on producing news from press-release revealed that journalists only used half of the original information they gathered during the stage of information gathering. Other studies also include processing and organizing information before news professionals construct news accordingly to their audience guided by organizational routines (Hodgetts et al., 2008). Likewise, news correction is necessary to not only avoid typing errors, but more importantly to ensure news content are suitable to be published. Both journalists and editors are responsible in revising and correcting information errors before
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delivering it to the audience (Vandedaele, 2017). Study of Vandedaele, de Cuypere and Van Praet (2015) on sub-editors and correcting news content, results showed that oftentimes at this phase, one of the most revised news were those that were in high-stakes, for example if it will appear in headline news.
2.2.6 News Distribution on Social Media
Regardless of whether a news organization has its offline counterpart or not, trust is essential when distributing news via online platforms. Similar to traditional news media, information on online platforms have to be perceived as accurate and contents are credible (Chung et al., 2012). The digital era provided people with benefits of being exposed to multiple varieties of news sources, but at the same time, exposes them to unfiltered information (Fletcher & Park, 2017). Online platforms, especially social media such as Facebook has become a popular and relevant vehicle for distributing news (Lischka, 2018). Moreover, by using social media, news professionals can drive audience to their news websites to increase web traffic.
Tracing the development of news distributions from the past, compared to the past when news media relied on traditional one-way news distribution channel, such as TV or newspaper, by using the internet, news media can create their own traditional affiliated news sites (Chung, 2008).
However, Al-Rawi (2016) stated that as social media gained prominence, news media organizations realized the importance to use social media as a vehicle to distribute information, such as to engage with the audience or the ease of distributing information. For example, in the instance of crisis or breaking news, people will sought for information on social media (Shu et al., 2017), and news organization have to make use of social media to deliver needed information.
With the surge of fake news in recent years especially on social media, news organizations are faced with challenges because fake news were able to attract more audience; as a result, news
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organization have to even more compete for audience and ensure the public will consume news from legitimate sources (Lischka, 2018; Tandoc et al., 2018). Additionally, by using social media for news distribution, news organizations will be able to reach audience that may not be reached when distributing news from other media and also, to deliver quality-information for their audience (Al-Rawi, 2017).