News Values Revisited: A Comparison Between Citizen and Mainstream Media in Hong Kong

Abstract

News values is a research topic that has received extensive attention in the scholarship. However, previous studies have not widely examined news values in the context of Citizen Journalism. Drawing on Harcup and O’Neill’s (2017. “What is News?: News Values Revisited (Again).” Journalism Studies 18 (12): 1470–1488) contemporary news values model, this study employs a content analysis of 420 Citizen Journalism and mainstream news lead articles in Hong Kong media, collected respectively from the local outlets StandNews and MingPao. The results show that Citizen Journalism publication StandNews tends to adopt and make similar use of news values to the mainstream MingPao in publishing its articles, which suggests that in Hong Kong, Citizen Journalism is increasingly closing the gap with mainstream media in terms of the editorial decisions that lead to the publication of news stories and, more in general, in terms of newsworthiness. This study intends to contribute to the comprehension of how news values compare between Citizen Journalism and mainstream news outlets, and therefore whether Citizen Journalism presents traits of newsworthiness.