Cities and their news media images
Introduction
Mayors, urban planners and policy makers are all concerned about their cities' coverage patterns in the news media (Avraham, 1993, Harris, 1976, Graber, 1989, Tilson and Stacks, 1997). These decision makers tend to accuse newspeople of distorting their cities' images by means of news definitions that focus mainly on negative events such as crime, violence and social problems, while ignoring positive events and important developments. The journalists and editors usually respond that their audiences prefer this kind of news. While it seems that both sides are right (and wrong) to some degree, analysis of the subject reveals that city media portrayal is much more complicated than either news definition or audience preference; rather, city representation in the news media is affected by a variety of factors. This paper is addressed to policy makers from local government who are interested in a better understanding of the factors which influence the construction of images of cities in the national news media. The discussion will illustrate how city coverage patterns are affected by four groups of factors: the city's characteristics, decisions made by the newspeople, the social – political environment and the city's public relations efforts.
The news media images of cities are only rarely touched upon among scholars in the fields of mass media, geography and urban studies. The lack of research is unexpected because of the increased importance and centrality of the mass media in our day-to-day lives. It is surprising that the images of cities do not receive more attention, as they are important and have a considerable effect—along with other factors—on the ability of cities to change their position in the growing national and global competition for various resources. A city's position in this competition might be affected by its image because people will usually hesitate to invest in, move to or visit cities that are covered mainly in relation to crime, poverty or social disorder.
The importance of a city's portrayal in the national media stems from our belief that such images affect three groups: the general public, the decision makers on the national level and the place's inhabitants. For the general public, the image of cities affects a multitude of decisions, including those about tourism, migration, investments, and transferring or establishing businesses (Burgess, 1982, Gould and White, 1986, Judd, 1995, Kotler et al., 1993, Kunczic, 1997, Paddison, 1993, Tilson and Stacks, 1997). For the national policy makers, the image affects decisions regarding revenue grants, capital and resources allocation, legislation and rule making (Walker, 1997). In addition, the external media image of a city affects the self image of the inhabitants and their relations with inhabitants of other cities (Ettema and Peer, 1995, Fredin and Kosicki, 1989, Galician and Vestre, 1987). It is for these reasons that it is important to research the media image of cities and to understand it.
People construct place images and cognitive maps according to the kind of information they receive from various sources; accurate information results in more precise perceptions (Kariel and Rosenvall, 1978, Gold, 1980). The role of the mass media in this process is crucial. While people usually become aware of occurrences in their immediate environment from direct contact with the events, they learn about events that occur in more distant places primarily from the media. Information about a far away place is not considered crucial to most people and thus they do not attempt to locate firsthand sources to verify what happened there (Kunczic, 1997). For this reason, the “reality” that the media transfers from distant places is conceptualized as the places' “objective” or “true” reality by those who do not live there (Adoni and Mane, 1984, Burgess and Gold, 1985, Gold, 1980, Pocock and Hudson, 1978, Relph, 1976).
The findings of various studies on cities' news media representation will help us present an integrated model that illustrates the types of factors involved in the construction of such images. Although a number of models have been presented in earlier studies (Dominick, 1977, Graber, 1989, Kariel and Rosenvall, 1978, Kariel and Rosenvall, 1981), this model is much more comprehensive and contains factors with which previous models did not deal. I will discuss these factors in the following pages, but first it is necessary to discuss the concept of media image and address the questions of how to measure the image of places in the news media, types of place images and levels of analyses in the field.
Section snippets
Measuring images of places in the news media
In every nation there are four types of city coverage patterns: (1) cities that receive a great deal of negative coverage; (2) cities that are ignored by the media unless they are being covered in a negative context; (3) cities that receive much positive coverage; and (4) cities that are mainly ignored by the media but when covered receive primarily positive coverage. Thus, research that has dealt with the coverage patterns of places in the media regard the subject in two dimensions: nature and
Types of place images
When discussing the image of places in the news media, there is a need to distinguish between “rich image” and “one-dimensional image”. Places with a rich image in the news media are places that receive coverage for a wide variety of subjects and events that occur in them, such as politics, economics, social events and cultural developments. Places with a one-dimensional image are those that only receive coverage when events of a certain nature take place within them, such as crime or
Two basic levels of analysis: national and international
In studies to date, coverage patterns of places in the news media are dealt with on two basic levels: international and national. The international level deals primarily with the coverage patterns of countries in the international news media. This level of analysis concentrates on the “imbalanced” news exchange between developed and developing nations that began after World War II (Kim and Barnett, 1996). The second level of analysis is the national, which deals with the coverage patterns of
City characteristics
Cities differ from each other in many aspects, including population size, geographical location, crime rate, etc. Do these varying city characteristics cause a difference in the quantity or nature of the coverage in the news media?
Editorial policy and the city coverage
In addition to the specific characteristics of a city, there is a need to examine the policy of media organizations towards the coverage of that city and the background of the newspeople who cover it. The term “policy” relates to the decisions made by the media organizations towards the coverage of a certain city. Examples include the decision whether or not to allocate reporters to cover the city, if the city's residents are considered to be a target audience of the media organizations, and
Social – political environment
The third question to be addressed is that of the social – political aspect of news coverage. By “social – political environment”, I mean the context in which the media operate and interact with different actors. Journalists and editors always operate within a certain social – political context which affects the ways they collect and report events. This context consists of the central values of their society, the political culture and the political arena, etc. (Johnson, 1997, van Dijk, 1996,
Public relations
The fourth question addresses the public relations efforts of cities. In the previous sections we saw that many types of factors can affect, in a positive or negative way, the image of a city in the news media. So far we have seen that a city's image is determined by factors over which, for the most part, the city does not have control. Cities cannot control the social – political context, the editorial decisions or most of their characteristics. This does not mean, however, that a city can not
Summary
The integrated model that has been presented allows cities' policy makers and researchers a better understanding of the many factors which take part in the construction of image of cities in the news media. It also enables us to predict to some degree the ways a city will be portrayed in the news media, providing we know what the other factors that may affect the coverage patterns of the city in the news media are. The complexity of the subject of cities' news media images makes it difficult
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