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The Rise of Tabloidization: Decline of Moral Values and How to Measure It

Publication at Faculty of Social Sciences |
2016

Abstract

The tabloidization of news is a term used more and more frequently when discussing a general decline of media standards. And also when talking about the focus on the entertaining side of events or on rather simple topics in news which is a trend associated with an economic imperative and a lack of moral values in the society as a whole.

There is an expectation that we can observe tabloidization in any kind of media content. The paper is focused particularly on the Czech Television representing the public service media in the Czech Republic and the evolution of its evening news regarding the tabloidization.

Specific attention is paid to the operationalization of variables indicating the tabloidization. It differs quite significantly from the 'traditional' way of measuring the volume of tabloidization which is focused almost solely on topics presented in the news through the hard news/soft news dichotomy.

Here the whole set of variables was defined following the current trends in research related to this field. The content analysis then showed not only trends occurring in the evening news produced by the Czech Television, but also drew an attention to methodology when comparing two different approaches to the tabloidization measurement.