Diversity in the Norwegian News Media Landscape: A Hybrid Model for Evaluating Media Policy, 2017

The primary aim of this project was to eavluate the effect of media regulation on the diversity in the Norwegian news media landscape. The regulations evaluated include ownership restrictions, press support for newspapers, and protection of public broadcasting. Around 830,000 news articles from 189 news media from all over the country was collected in the period 2015-2017, including paper, web and broadcasting. The data was analyzed using hybrid methodology, including quantitative content analysis, Latent Dirichlet allocation and Named Entity Chunking. The project adapted existing methods for processing and analyzing big data with digital media content. The analyzes showed that the Norwegian media contribute to diversity in one way or another. The results showed that public broadcasting contributes to diversity in particular through its focus on regional news, that local newspapers contribute in particular through a focus on local conditions and by improving the gender balance, that national media contribute to diversity through their breadth and foreign news coverage, and that niche newspapers contribute through their thematic focus. In addition, media with media support, including NRK, is better at using Nynorsk. Ownership proved to have little or no effect on the diversity in the news media landscape, primarily explained by the composition of newspapers under different groups of companies.