<abstract xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><p>This article assumes a media system perspective on the local news media structure in Norway, using a dataset of 847,487 news articles collected from 156 Norwegian news outlets in 2015–2017. Using a series of hypotheses, the analysis uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling to ascertain to what extent local journalism meets community information needs through infrastructure, output and performance. The analysis finds that the size of the publisher and the size of the community covered matter more for hard news coverage than regulatory factors. To that end, the results indicate that the Norwegian local media system is somehow shaped by the geography of the political landscape. The results and their contributions are discussed in light of media systems theory and local journalism structures.</p></abstract>

This article assumes a media system perspective on the local news media structure in Norway, using a dataset of 847,487 news articles collected from 156 Norwegian news outlets in 2015–2017. Using a series of hypotheses, the analysis uses Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modelling to ascertain to what extent local journalism meets community information needs through infrastructure, output and performance. The analysis finds that the size of the publisher and the size of the community covered matter more for hard news coverage than regulatory factors. To that end, the results indicate that the Norwegian local media system is somehow shaped by the geography of the political landscape. The results and their contributions are discussed in light of media systems theory and local journalism structures.

Journalism and the political structure

Nordicom Review

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

The local media system in Norway

This article assumes a media system perspective on the local news media structure in Norway, using a dataset of 847,487 news articles collected from 156...

Journalism and the political structure

Published Online: Oct 25, 2019

Page range: 63 - 89

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0034

Keywords
local news media, media systems, political journalism, LDA, statistical analysis

© 2019 Sjøvaag, H., Pedersen, T. A. & Lægreid, O. M., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Journalism and the political structure

Published Online: Oct 25, 2019

Page range: 63 - 89

DOI: https://doi.org/10.2478/nor-2019-0034

Keywordslocal news media, media systems, political journalism, LDA, statistical analysis

© 2019 Sjøvaag, H., Pedersen, T. A. & Lægreid, O. M., published by Sciendo

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License.

Keywords
local news media, media systems, political journalism, LDA, statistical analysis