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Special issue on incidental news published in Journalism

A special issue on incidental news that I co-edited has been published in the leading peer-reviewed journal, Journalism.

The issue was put together by guest editors Neta Kligler-Vilenchik from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel, Sebastián Valenzuela from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Mikko Villi from the University of Jyväskylä, Finland and myself from the University of British Columbia.

The issue explored the changes in how people stumble across information about current events through digital media when they were not actively seeking the news. The past few years have seen a significant increase in incidental news consumption on digital platforms and social media.

In our introduction to the issue, we explain how our main aim is a conceptual clarification of incidental news exposure, concluding:

“We offer this special issue as a conceptual starting point to help cohere the study of incidental news consumption across media and communication studies, with relevance to scholars coming from journalism studies, political communication, audience studies and more. Only through more conceptual clarity can we better address the integral question of the broader implications of incidental news consumption for a healthy functioning democracy.”

The seven papers in the special issue are:

Matthes, J, Heiss, R, Nanz, A, et al. (2020) Processing news on social media: The Political Incidental Exposure Model (PINE). Journalism.

Wieland, M, Kleinen-von Königslöw, K (2020) Conceptualizing different forms of news processing following incidental news contact: A triple path model. Journalism.

Thorson, K (2020) Attracting the news: Algorithms, platforms, and reframing incidental exposure. Journalism.

Kümpel, AS (2020) The Matthew Effect in social media news use: Assessing inequalities in news exposure and news engagement on social network sites (SNS). Journalism.

Barnidge, M (2020) Testing the inadvertency hypothesis: Incidental news exposure and political disagreement across media platforms. Journalism.

Weeks, B, Lane, D (2020) The ecology of incidental exposure to news in digital media environments. Journalism.

Mitchelstein, E, Boczkowski, P, Tenenboim-Weinblatt, K, et al. (2020) Incidentality on a continuum: A comparative conceptualization of incidental news consumption. Journalism.

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