Eesti Päevalehe ja Postimehe võrguväljaannete uudiste kvaliteet: Eesti uudised 2006. aasta märtsis
Date
2006
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Tartu Ülikool
Abstract
Description
The aim of the Bachelor's thesis "The quality of news in the online publications of Eesti
Päevaleht and Postimees: the news of Estonia in March 2006" was to compare the quality
of online-news of the two publications.
Under the "equality of news" it was considered whether the texts are in accordance with the
"classical" requirements of news writing: objectivity, following the criteria of news-
worthiness, correct use of sources, informativeness. Taking these requirements into
consideration the author tried to find answers to the following four research questions:
1. When comparing the online news of Postimees and Eesti Päevaleht, what kind of
differences can be detected in the criteria of news-worthiness?
2. When comparing Eesti Päevaleht and Postimees, which differences can be found
in the use and variety of sources?
3. Which differences are there in the informativeness of the news in Eesti Päevaleht
and Postimees?
4. When comparing Eesti Päevaleht and Postimees, which differences can be
detected in the following of the principles of objectivity and balance?
The method of research was content analysis combined with qualitative text analysis.
The sample consisted of the news of both publications during one week time. Altogether
the sample consisted of 199 texts.
The results showed that the texts of both of the publications were very similar in their
correspondence to the criteria of news-worthiness. This could indicate that the
newspapers have the same understanding of the formed criteria of news-worthiness.
As to the use of sources, it turned out, that only few sources are used in the news. Often
there is only one or none. However, Postimees tends to use sources more often than Eesti
Päevaleht.
Very often both publications use executives and top managers as their sources. From
among them the use of the government and Riigikogu members as sources is particularly
frequent.
When speaking about informativeness, it can be said, that the situation is rather satisfying
in both publications. The main news-questions (what, who, where, when) are provided
with answers. The questions "how" and "why" are answered more rarely.
There was a big difference in the use of photos between the two publications - there were
four times as many photos in Postimees as there were in Eesti Päevaleht.
When it comes to objectivity, it can be said, that the number of news that can be
considered neutral in tone is bigger in Eesti Päevaleht, whereas Postimees' news are more
neutral in the use of sources.
Keywords
H Social Sciences (General), bakalaureusetööd, uus meedia, võrguväljaanded, uudised, ajakirjandusžanrid, kvaliteet