Diversity and Concentration of Online News

Special Report: The Internet and News Plurality
A Large-Scale Study on French News Websites
By Emmanuel Marty, Franck Rebillard, Stéphanie Pouchot, Thierry Lafouge
English

The diversity of online news is assessed through a content analysis of tens of thousands of articles, published by approximately two hundred French websites. Editorial diversity seems to be significant, with websites addressing hundreds of topics each day. However, this diversity is unevenly distributed: a few major, overexposed topics emerge, while many others remain isolated in the meanders of the Web. Each website’s contribution to this dual trend reveals a gap within the online news field, between a media mainstream held by infomediaries (portals, aggregators) and conventional online media on the one hand, and the editorial originality brought by blogs and Internet pure players on the other.

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