Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

In April of 2012, three candidates (Boris Johnson, Conservative; Ken Livingstone, Labour; Brian Paddick, LiberalDemocrat) participated in a debate for the office of the Mayor of London. This study applied the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to this important campaign event. In this debate, acclaims (53%) outnumbered attacks (40%) whereas defences were the least common function (7%). Attacks were only directed toward the two leading candidates and the incumbent (Johnson) was attacked much more than the leading challenger (Livingstone). The incumbent acclaimed more (64% to 46%) and attacked less (24% to 51%) than the challengers. This relationship was particularly sharp when they discussed past deeds or record in office (75% of the incumbents statements on past deeds were acclaims, 25% were attacks; the incumbents attacked much more than they acclaimed, 91% to 9%, when they discussed record in office). These candidates discussed policy (77%) more often than character (23%). These results are compared with results of other studies of political leader’s debates in the literature.

The American presidential campaign in 2008 saw a sharp upturn in attacks in advertising: Was that an anomalous result or does in presage a trend in presidential advertising? Notably, the increase in negativity in TV spots was not accompanied by an increase in attacks in other media, such as televised debates. The 2012 American presidential general election featured Democratic incumbent Barack Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney. In sharp contrast to earlier campaigns (those prior to 2008), the two candidates combined used more attacks (66%) than acclaims (32%); this essay argues that this shift reflects a sea change in presidential election advertising prompted by the rising costs of presidential campaigns and candidates’ recent decision to decline federal campaign financing and raise money throughout the campaign.

Our research group Media Studio for quality journalism by the excellence project “Quality Journalism to new digital journalistic formats” has rescued a tool to measure the quality of the contents and to analyze treatment of specialized contents. The overall project objective is to find out what are the parameters that determine how journalistic work can be considered of quality. Furthermore, it will be necessary to establish the relationship between journalistic quality and profile of the profession and if that quality should be or not linked to the professional figure. We consider that the method value added journalistic developed at the Catholic University of Chile and Argentina is a real find for an objective assessment of quality journalism. This methodology evaluates the newspaper articles, focusing on two stages: the selection of the news (Gatekeeping) and the process of creating it (News making), based on the application analysis sheet. The second stage of the project will be to study the formation of specialized journalists in different national and international universities. The method assigned to each research is the analysis of content and interviews with specialized sources, respectively. After making both investigations we will notice if it exists an equivalence relation between quantity and quality of published information on fashion at the national and international media and the professional profile that configures the information. The comparative analysis shows on the one hand that quantity does not equal quality of information. Moreover, it is important to see what is the relationship between the training provided by prestigious universities and the quality of the articles published on the media. Is now a reality the media need to have specialized fashion journalists because is increasing the fashion information. Until now, it was limited to magazines and special supplements with a high level of technical language.

The research paper mainly focuses on how the reader react to a particular recipe or food blog and what kind of a feedback do they give-suggestive, positive or negative. The aim of the research is to find out how many people actually read the blogs and give necessary feedback, be it positive, negative or anything suggestive. The time frame for this research is considered to be two months.