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Journalism Practice

ISSN: 1751-2786 (Print) 1751-2794 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjop20

Commercialization of Technology News

Hsiang Iris Chyi & Angela M. Lee

To cite this article: Hsiang Iris Chyi & Angela M. Lee (2017): Commercialization of Technology
News, Journalism Practice, DOI: 10.1080/17512786.2017.1333447

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1333447

Published online: 14 Jun 2017.

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COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY
NEWS
Quantity and quality dimensions

Hsiang Iris Chyi and Angela M. Lee

While technology news has become a major news genre, the coverage of high-tech products has
raised concerns regarding the commercialization of journalism. Drawing on salience transfer
and exemplication theory, this study explores how The New York Times and USA Today
covered Apple products along quantity and quality dimensions. A content analysis documented
a landslide in the amount of coverage on Apple products in both newspapers. Both iPhones and
iPads were disproportionately over-covered in relation to their market share. Over one-third of
the headlines about the iPhone covered the product favorably. The New York Times published
more stories about these gadgets than USA Today did, while USA Today was twice as likely to
portray iPhones in a positive light. These ndings have raised questions about the commercializa-
tion of technology news and its impact on journalism.

KEYWORDS Apple products; content analysis; exemplication theory; media ethics; object
salience; technology news

Introduction
With the proliferation of Web, social media, and mobile technologies, the publics
desire for technology news is greater than ever before, and technology news has thus
gained importance as a major news genre. However, some trends are indicative of potential
problems underlying the reporting of technology in the news.
First, the church and state tenet in journalismi.e., the separation of news and pro-
motional contentdoes not seem to hold in the coverage of technology. When major IT
manufacturers such as Apple Inc. introduce new products and services, some journalists
tend to transmit information provided by these corporations without independently asses-
sing the information and thus become marketing vehicles for high-tech companies
(Holiday 2012). With stories such as New iPhone 4 Adds a Camera for Video Chats (The
New York Times), All That Glitters Could Soon Be an iPhone; is a Golden Gadget
Coming? (USA Today) and So in Love with New iPad Mini; with its Retina Display, its
the Best Tablet Out There (USA Today), the boundary between news and promotional
content is tenuous at best.
Second, when it comes to technology news, Apple Inc. and its products seem to
receive disproportionately more coverage than others. This necessitates an empirical exam-
ination for a number of reasons. First, agenda-setting theory suggests that the public often
assumes what is salient on the media agenda to be more important than what is not
(McCombs 2014). Thus, should a company or product be covered more often than its com-
petitor, the public may get the impression that the company or product is more popular or
Journalism Practice, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/17512786.2017.1333447
2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

widely accepted in the market; and how the news media portray a company or product
may also inuence the ways in which the public perceives the company or product.
Taken together, prevalent, favorable narratives about a company or product may inuence
consumer perception by creating a false sense of a products popularity or the rms market
dominance, which, in turn, may affect consumer demand and contribute to unfair
competition.
These trends raise concerns regarding the commercialization of technology news. As
Ryan Holiday, a media critic, puts it:
The media and the public are supposed to be on the same side. The media, when its func-
tioning properly, should protect the public from marketers and their ceaseless attempts to
trick people into buying things But thats not true today Whats worse is that most
readers hardly even know whats going on because the content they get has been
dressed up and fed to them as news. (Holiday 2012)
In a broader context, news credibilitythe publics perception of a news outlets being fair,
unbiased, trustworthy, reliable, and believableis also at stake. However, to date, little
scholarly research has evaluated the degree of commercialization in technology news
and its impact on journalism. To ll this gap, this study seeks to empirically examine
news coverage of Apple products in relation to their competition in two major newspapers
in the United StatesThe New York Times and USA Todayalong both quantity and quality
dimensions.

Literature Review
Technology News
Research nds that online users like consuming technology news (Wu and Bechtel
2002). With the growing popularity and penetration of new media devices such as smart-
phones and tablets in contemporary society (Thomas 2014), technology news has gained
growing presence in major American newspapers. For example, USA Today, The Wall
Street Journal, and The New York Times all have specic sections dedicated to technology
news, and all three newspapers technology sections highlight personal technology.
Specically, USA Todays technology and electronics reviews section entails personal
tech, science and technology, and technology live, among other tech-centric coverage;
The Wall Street Journals Technology News & Analysis section includes stories on tech
companies and personal technology; and The New York Times Technology section encom-
passes personal technology, feature stories, latest news, and a technology blog.
Just as questions such as What is news? (Harcup and ONeill 2016) have long been
discussed and debated among journalism scholars, technology news also necessitates an
explicit, albeit evolving, denition. Consistent with content often found in the above-men-
tioned technology-related sections on mainstream newspapers, this study denes technol-
ogy news as content produced by professional journalists at mainstream organizations that
seeks to inform their readers on technologies. This working denition precludes baseless
speculations or rumors. In addition, just as news differs from columns, technology news
also differs from technology columns in that, drawing on Kovach and Rosenstiels (2014)
nine elements of journalism, news prioritizes truthiness, accuracy, independence, and trans-
parency, among other things, whereas columns could include the authors personal take on
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 3

issues. In other words, news is meant to inform, and columns may have more latitude to
focus on opinions.
Technology news as a news genre deserves an examination on its own. Ideally, tech-
nology news, like business or economic news (Welles 1991), requires that journalists have
specialized knowledge and training in order to not only report on an innovation but also
help audiences make sense of the innovation being reported. In reality, reporting technol-
ogy as a consumer product poses challenges to journalistic principles such as the separ-
ation of advertising and editorial content. In the case of Apple coverage, the press has
been accused of dress[ing] up the companys product messages and present[ing] them
to the public as news (Holiday 2012).
With the proliferation of news about personal technology, the question that ought
to be asked is: in what way can, or should technology news inform the public? To address
this question, this study will rst review principles of quality journalism, with an emphasis
on the distinction between news and promotional content.

Churnalism and Press Releases


Research shows that journalists have a complicated relationship with press releases.
One the one hand, journalists are wary of these information subsidies (Curtin 1998). On the
other hand, studies nd that journalists use between about one-third to almost nine-tenths
of press releases they receive (Hong 2008; Morton and Warren 1992a, 1992b; Turk 1985;
Walters and Walters 1992). With pressure to produce more and faster news content in
todays media environment (Lee 2015), journalists are incentivized to rely on materials pro-
vided by the public relations (PR) industry, a practice Nick Davies (2009) refers to as
churnalism.
Part of what contributes to churnalism has to do with PR writers effort to produce
content that can be easily incorporated into news articles. Research has identied a number
of ways press writers imitate news reporting conventions to reduce friction in journalists
adaptation (Jacobs 1999). Nonetheless, notable differences (should) exist between press
releases and news content, since the two have highly dissimilar objectivesthe former
is commercial in nature, but the latter prioritizes social good and social responsibility
(Commission on Freedom of the Press 1947; Kovach and Rosenstiel 2014).
Typically, press releases focus on the positive and serve marketing purposespar-
ticularly when it comes to new products and company performance (Bhatia 2014;
Catenaccio 2008; McLaren and Gurau 2005; Pander Maat 2008; Sissons 2012; Van Hout,
Pander Maat, and De Preter 2011). Pander Maat (2008) examined stylistic differences
between news reports and press releases, and proposed that the two differ in their
approaches to readability and neutrality. Specically, to improve readability, news
reports tend to use shorter and less complex sentences, more everyday language (e.g.,
people instead of employees, and buys instead of acquires). To uphold neutrality,
news reports frequently remove or replace company or product names, eliminate positive
phrasing, and introduce the company as a source for statement. While some press releases
do adopt news structures (e.g., the use of heading, lead, and body) (Pander Maat 2008), just
as some news reports have been found to incorporate promotional content from press
releases (e.g., journalists using quotes and sources provided by news releases without
additional perspectives) (Sissons 2012), press releases in general tend to include more posi-
tive evaluations that are deemed too promotional by conventional journalistic standards,
4 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

which is unsurprising given press releases and news reports serve different purposes
(Pander Maat 2008; Sissons 2012).
In their examination of 38 product launch press releases in the Dutch consumer
market and 49 corresponding news articles based on these press releases, Pander Maat
and de Jong (2013) found that news reports tend to provide less product or company infor-
mation and more contextual information, and less positive and more negative evaluations.
In addition, less than half of the information in the news articles originates from the press
releases. Such differences signify some important distinctions between news and pro-
motional content, but the extent to which US journalists play out such distinctions when
covering technology products remains a question.

Separation of News and Promotional Content


Journalism and advertising have always needed each other. Just as commercial
journalism relies on advertising for the bulk of its revenue, advertisers rely on journalism
as an advertising delivery system to reach a wide range of audiences (Picard 2008). None-
theless, this nancial interrelationship has long been a concern in journalism, with the
inuence of advertising perceived as a potential threat to editorial independence. For
example, some advertisers exert inuence by withholding commercials or advertisements
to punish a media outlet that covered their companies or products unfavorably (Bettig
and Hall 2012).
To discourage this practice and minimize the effect of advertising on news, the
Society of Professional Journalists and some major newspapers, such as The New York
Times and The Washington Post, have made it explicit in the code of ethics and company
statements that no conict of interest, real or perceived, is tolerated (Society of Professional
Journalists 2012; The New York Times Company 2005; The Washington Post 2003). The goal
is to contribute to the publics trust in news content through the separation of news and
advertising.
In discussing the importance of avoiding conict of interest, the Associated Press and
the Society of Professional Journalists suggest in their guidelines that journalists should not
allow promotional materials to be misrepresented as actual news stories (Associated Press
2014; Society of Professional Journalists 2012). This is why emerging industry practice such
as native advertising invites criticism. Equally alarming is that some technology stories
become indistinguishable from promotional content (e.g., endorse a product as advertise-
ments do).
To what extent do existing ethics guidelines remain applicable when it comes to cov-
erage of new technology, which in many cases is also a product in the consumer market? As
the line between product promotion and news reporting continues to blur, this study seeks
to empirically examine the commercialization of technology news.

Object Salience and the Exemplication Theory


One difference between product promotion and news reporting lies in the intent, or
purpose of the content. Whereas product promotion aims at manufacturing a favorable
view toward a product, news reports should inform and educate the public (Kovach and
Rosenstiel 2014). Indeed, media effects research shows that news media are powerful in
telling the public what to think aboutwhat is salient on the media agenda would transfer
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 5

to the public agenda. The process is what the agenda-setting research refers to as salience
transfer (McCombs 2014).
Object salience is a key concept in agenda-setting research, dened as the relative
importance of an object (a public issue, public gure, or any other topic) in the media or
among the public. Empirically, object salience on the media agenda is measured by the
amount of media coverage. Once an object appears on the media agenda, the volume
of cumulative news coverage increases its salience over time, which in turn will transfer
to salience on the public agenda (Chyi and McCombs 2004). This process has been con-
rmed by numerous agenda-setting studies since the 1968 Chapel Hill study (McCombs
2014).
In the case of technology reporting, object salience is important because of its inu-
ence on consumer perception. To measure the salience of Apple products in relation to
competitors on the media agenda, this study addresses the following research question:
RQ1: How much coverage did major US newspapers devote to Apple products and
competitors?
In addition to the sheer amount of coverage, whether news media disproportionately
emphasize certain products over others also carries important social implications because
exemplication theory posits that people often neglect base-rate informationwhich is
the probability of an event or occurrenceand base their assessments on exemplars
(e.g., examples of single events or individuals that are meant to represent a trend or
larger social group) that are more specic and concrete, yet less reliable (Zillmann 1999;
Zillmann and Brosius 2000). In other words, when each technology news story is interpreted
as an exemplar, the consequence is that news consumers are likely to overestimate the
popularity and social importance of a product that receives an excessive amount of
coverage.
In the context of news, research suggests that human perception can be altered by
how information is presented in the news (Iyengar 1991). Particularly, the distribution of
exemplars and counter-exemplars matter in inuencing peoples perception of public
opinion (Zillmann and Brosius 2000). For example, an experimental study found that par-
ticipants who saw 10, as opposed to two, exemplars supporting a social issue (eviction
of violent immigrants in Germany) were more likely to estimate a signicantly higher
percentage of the German public supporting the same issuewith about 20 percent
difference between the two groups in perceived public opinion (Zerback and Fawzi 2016).
With regards to Apple coverage, this suggests that the publics perception of how
popular Apple products are may be inuenced by the amount of coverage devoted to
Apple products regardless of actual market share. In other words, if the majority of technol-
ogy stories focus on Apple products, news consumers may assume that Apple products
dominate the market even if that is not the case. This is known as base-rate fallacy (Bar-Hillel
1980), which posits that human beings implicitly devalue base-rate information in the face
of exemplars.
Given the consequences suggested by agenda-setting and exemplication theories,
this study seeks to examine whether the salience of certain technology products on the
media agenda (measured by the amount of coverage) is disproportionate to their actual
real-world salience (measured by market share), addressing the following research
question:
6 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

RQ2: To what extent did the amount of coverage reect Apple products market share?

Ethical reporting is supposed to be distinguishable from press releases because they


serve different purposes. Existing research on differences between press releases and news
reports nds that journalists tend to neutralize the self-promoting elements of press
releases. For example, Dutch journalists focus more on facts rather than evaluations, and
provide more contextual information since most press releases focus primarily on
company-related information (Pander Maat 2007, 2008). The ways in which news reports
achieve neutrality include removing company and product names, curtailing or eliminating
positive statements, and introducing a company as a source for statements (Pander Maat
2008). In the US context, however, such practices are not readily observable, especially in
the coverage of technology products.
It is therefore important to examine not only the amount but also the substance of
Apple coverage. The study by Pander Maat and de Jong compares news stories and
product launch press releases by examining the inclusion of the following types of infor-
mation: launch announcement, product information (e.g., price, how does the product
work), organization information (e.g., strategy or features of the company), and context
information (e.g., competitors of the product or company) (Pander Maat and de Jong
2013). Along these lines, this study evaluates the qualitative nature of Apple coverage,
addressing the following research question:
RQ3: What types of information did national newspapers emphasize when covering Apple
products?
Finally, this study examines whether individual news outlets take unique approaches
when covering technologies, addressing this research question:
RQ4: Did different national newspapers cover Apple products differently?

Method
To examine the amount of news coverage on Apple products, this study chooses to
focus on two of Apples signature products generating the most publicity for the rmthe
iPhone and iPad. Major competitors in these two product categories (i.e., smartphones and
tablets) were identied by US market share information gathered from industry reports. In
the smartphone market, the two market leaders are iPhone and Samsung phones, followed
by other brands such as LG, Motorola, HTC, and Google phones (Chitika 2014; comScore
2014). In the tablet market, Apple (iPad), Samsung, and Amazon (Kindle Fire) are three
major players in the United States (Chitika 2014).
This study analyzes news coverage in two major national newspapers: The New York
Times and USA Today. The New York Times is included because of its reputation as a news-
paper of record and an intermedia agenda-setter (Golan 2007; Reese and Danielian 1989);
USA Today is included because it is the most circulated newspaper in the country (Malcolm
2014) and appeals to a wider range of readers. The inclusion of these two national news-
papers offers a juxtaposing view of how an elite newspaper and a popular newspaper
covered Apple products.
To determine the quantity of news coverage on Apple products and competitors
(RQ1), keyword searches were performed through the LexisNexis database, using time
frames and syntaxes optimized for each product. Since news media often cover new
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 7

TABLE 1
Time frames and search syntaxes

Time frame

Gadget Start date End date Search syntax


iPhone June 29, 2006 January 31, COMPANY(Apple) AND HLEAD(iPhone)
2014
Samsung November 7, January 31, COMPANY(Samsung) AND HLEAD(phone
phones 2007 2014 OR smartphone)
Google Nexus January 15, 2009 January 31, COMPANY(Google) AND HLEAD(Nexus)
2014
iPad April 3, 2009 January 31, COMPANY(Apple) AND HLEAD(iPad)
2014
Samsung September 2, January 31, COMPANY(Samsung) AND HLEAD(tablet)
tablets 2009 2014
Kindle Fire November 15, January 31, COMPANY(Amazon) AND HLEAD(Fire)
2010 2014

HLEAD refers to Headline or Lead. For Samsung products, product names (e.g., Galaxy) were not
used as search terms because many articles on Samsung products did not include product names
but used generic terms such as phones or tablets instead.

electronic products during their development phase,1 the designated time frame starts 12
months before the ofcial launch of a product, which ensures a comprehensive examin-
ation of its coverage, and ends in January 2014. Each LexisNexis search syntax consists
of two attributes: the company name (e.g., Apple) and the product (e.g., iPhone). Table 1
lists all search terms.
To compare the amount of coverage on Apple products against their market share
(RQ2), this study analyzed iPhones market share data retrieved from comScores US
mobile subscriber market share press releases from October 2010 to November 2012
(e.g., comScore 2011) as well as comScores US smartphone subscriber market share press
releases from September 2012 to January 2014 (e.g., comScore 2013); iPads 20102016
global market share data were provided by International Data Corporation (IDC).
To examine how The New York Times and USA Today covered Apple products (RQ3
and RQ4), a content analysis on the coverage of iPhones was conducted. To make sure
the analysis focuses on news articles that center on the product as opposed to news articles
that mentioned it in passing, this portion of the analysis includes news articles that have the
name of the product (i.e., iPhone) in the headlines, as journalism practice suggests that
headlines encompass central components of a news story. The sample consists of 434
news headlines215 from the New York Times and 219 from USA Todaywith the
product name (iPhone) in each headline.
The content analysis examines the following variables: whether the product is por-
trayed in positive, neutral, or negative light (coders were instructed to evaluate the
image of the product from a potential consumers perspective); reference to forecast of
future product release or press conferences; reference to product features (e.g., touch
screen, retina display, voice assistant); reference to price information; reference to problems
of the product (e.g., antenna reception issues); speculations about future product specica-
tions; reference to sales/revenue/prot data; reference to Apples competitors (e.g.,
Samsung); reference to Apples industry partners (e.g., AT&T).
8 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

The unit of analysis is the headline of the news article, which is the most salient
component of a news story (Manjoo 2013; Wauters 2010). Two coders, both undergraduate
students in Journalism, performed the coding after a training session. Two rounds of pret-
ests were conducted on 5 percent of the sample via random selection. This study adopted
the percent agreement approach,2 a standard reliability measure, when calculating inter-
coder reliability (Poindexter and McCombs 2000). The analysis achieved inter-coder
reliability between 85 and 100 percent for all variables.

Results
RQ1 asked about the amount of coverage the two national newspapers devoted to
Apple products and competitors. The analysis revealed that the amount of coverage was
very unevenly distributed. Within the time frame specied for each product (Table 1),
The New York Times published 579 articles about iPhones, 109 articles about Samsung
phones, and only 28 articles about Google Nexus. The same pattern characterizes USA
Todays smartphone coveragewith 386 articles on iPhones, 51 on Samsung phones,
and 26 on Google phones. For tablets, iPads also garnered far more attention than
Samsung tablets and Kindle Fire. Figure 1 illustrates the total amount of coverage each
newspaper devoted to these products.
Taking into consideration that some products have a longer history than others (and
thus may have accumulated more coverage over time), further analysis examined the

FIGURE 1
Amount of coverage: total number of articles since product launch
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 9

FIGURE 2
Frequency of coverage: average number of articles per month since product launch

frequency of coveragei.e., the average number of articles devoted to each product on a


monthly basis. The New York Times has published an average of 6.4 iPhone stories each
month since June 2006, compared with Samsung phones 1.4 stories per month since
November 2007 and Google Nexus 0.5 articles per month since January 2009. For
tablets, iPads also received much more attention than Samsung tablets and Kindle Fire
in both newspapers on a monthly basis. Figure 2 visualizes the frequency of coverage
for each of these products.
Table 2 presents the amount and frequency of coverage on the six products in both
newspapers. The New York Times published more stories on each of the six products than
USA Today. Both newspapers focused on Apple products when covering smartphone and
tablet products. Competitors such as Samsung, Google, and Amazon received only a
fraction of such attention.
RQ2 asked to what extent the amount of coverage reected Apple products market
share. Since market share changes over time, the analysis rst documented the amount of
coverage on iPhones and Samsung phones year by year (20072013). For each of these
years, iPhones consistently received more coverage than Samsung phones by a wide
margin. For example, in 2010, The New York Times and USA Today together published
10 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

TABLE 2
Amount and frequency of coverage: smartphones and tablets

The New York Times USA Today

Total number Average number of Total number Average number of


of articles articles per month of articles articles per month
Smartphones
iPhone 579 6.4 386 4.2
Samsung phones 109 1.4 51 0.7
Google Nexus 28 0.5 26 0.4
Tablets
iPad 218 3.8 156 2.7
Samsung tablets 31 0.6 19 0.4
Kindle Fire 16 0.4 5 0.1

Time frame as dened in Table 1.

157 stories on iPhones, while only 9 articles were about Samsung phones. In 2013, when the
gap was the least prominent, still 123 stories focused on iPhones and only 63 on Samsung
phones (Figure 3).
Figure 4 presents iPhones market share in the US mobile subscriber market from
October 2010 to November 2012. During this period, smartphone penetration was below
50 percent. Samsung was the market leader, while Apple penetrated no more than 20
percent of the overall mobile market. However, the overwhelming amount of coverage
was devoted to iPhones as presented in Figure 3.
Starting toward the end of 2012, comScore surveyed smartphone subscribers only
thus Figures 4 and 5 are presented separately. In this more narrowly dened market, Apple
was the leading brand. Figure 5 presents iPhones market share in the US smartphone
market from September 2012 to January 2014. Apples market share was 5683 percent
more than Samsungs. Still, compared with the difference in the amount of coverage pre-
sented in Figure 3, iPhones received disproportionate coverage during these years.
On the tablet side, the analysis rst documented the amount of coverage on iPads
and Samsung tablets year by year (20102013). For each of these years, iPhones received
more coverage than Samsung tablets by a wide margin. For example, in 2012, The New York
Times and USA Today together published 123 stories on iPads and only 17 articles on
Samsung tablets. In 2013, when the gap was the least prominent, still 56 stories focused
on iPads and only 15 on Samsung tablets (Figure 6).
In terms of market share, Apples iPad as the rst tablet in the world enjoyed high
market share in 2010 when it was rst launched, which has since been characterized by
a downward trend (Figure 7). The amount of coverage as illustrated in Figure 6,
however, increased substantially from 2010 to 2012, suggesting a disconnect between
market share and the amount of coverage. In contrast, Samsung tablets gained substantial
market share by 2013 and 2014 (Figure 7), but they did not receive a proportionate amount
of coverage, as Figure 6 indicates.
Overall, iPhones and iPads were both disproportionately over-covered in relation to
their market share.
RQ3 asked what types of information these two newspapers emphasized when cov-
ering Apple products. Results of the content analysis showed that more than one-third (36.2
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 11

FIGURE 3
Amount of coverage of smartphones by year: total number of articles published in The
New York Times and USA Today

FIGURE 4
Share of iPhones versus Samsung phones in the US mobile market. Market share data
were retrieved from comScore US mobile subscriber market share reports (October
2010 to November 2012)
12 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

FIGURE 5
Share of iPhones versus Samsung phones in the US smartphone market. Market share
data were retrieved from comScore US smartphone subscriber market share reports
(September 2012 to January 2014). Unlike in Figure 4, market share data were based
on smartphone subscribers only

percent) of the headlines (N = 434) portrayed the iPhone in a positive light,3 with 46.3
percent portraying it neutrally,4 and 17.4 percent casting a negative light.5
Regarding the substance of the content, about 6.7 percent of the headlines focused
on product features,6 another 6.7 percent focused on the performance of the product in the
market in terms of sales, revenue, or prot (of which 60 percent reported better-than-
expected performance, and 31 percent reported worse-than-expected expectations),7 5.3
percent forecast product release or press conferences,8 3.7 percent speculated the speci-
cations of future products,9 and 2.5 percent mentioned price information.10 All these poten-
tially serve advertising purposes or resemble press releases because they emphasize
positive attributes of the product. But also 6.5 percent of the headlines featured problems
of the iPhone.11
In addition, 11 percent of the headlines introduced the iPhone in a competitive
context by naming a competitor, and 15.4 percent mentioned Apples industry partnership.
RQ4 asked whether these two publications covered Apple products differently. In
terms of quantity, The New York Times devoted much more attention to these products
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 13

FIGURE 6
Amount of coverage of tablets by year: total number of articles published in The
New York Times and USA Today

than USA Today did. For all the products under study, the former published more articles
than the latter (Table 2).
Along the quality dimension, cross-tab analyses revealed a major difference in the
tone of the headlines. Specically, 48.8 percent of USA Todays headlines portrayed the
iPhone in a positive light; only 23.7 percent of The New York Times headlines did so. In
other words, USA Today was twice as likely to portray the iPhone favorably as The
New York Times (2 = 31.9, df = 2, p < 0.001). No other signicant differences between
these two newspapers were found, such as forecast of future product release or press con-
ferences, reference to product features, price information, problems of the product, specu-
lations about future product specications, reference to sales/revenue/prot data, and
reference to Apples competitors or industry partners.

Discussion
As the rst empirical examination on US newspapers coverage of Apple products,
this study generated a number of ndings worthy of discussion. Along the quantity
dimension, both newspapers devoted a great amount of coverage on iPhones and iPads
in relation to their competition, leading to both products high salience on the media
agenda. Not only that, both iPhones and iPads were disproportionately over-covered in
relation to their market share, compared to their competitors. It should be noted that
The New York Times also frequently published articles on gadgets such as iPhones and
iPads in its technology blogs (e.g., Bits). While we did not include articles from those
blogs in this study because they were online-only, if we were to consider the amount of
coverage on Apple products available on all platforms, the disparity between market
14 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

FIGURE 7
Share of iPads versus Samsung tablets in the global tablet market. Market share data were
provided by IDC Personal Computing Devices Tracker

share and disproportionate over-coverage of Apple products in The New York Times is even
greater.
These ndings raise several questions: Why did Apple products receive so much cov-
erage? Should they? Some suggested that Apple gets more media attention because of pre-
dictable product cycles and excellent PR practicefor example, offering journalists
attending their press events access to both the new product and sources (Slabbert
2014). On the demand side, Apple means trafc (Wright 2015). Given todays metrics-
driven practice in most newsrooms (Groves and Brown-Smith 2011; Lee, Lewis, and
Powers 2014; MacGregor 2007), it is increasingly difcult for journalists to resist the tempta-
tion to prioritize eyeballs.
Granted, technological innovation is important and deserves news coverage, and
Apple, because of its invention of the iPhone and iPad, is (or was) denitely an innovator
in mobile technology. Still, that does not justify the observed landslide in the amount of
coverage, because not all reincarnations of the iPhone and iPad represent revolutionary
technological advancements that warrant so much media attention (e.g., when the
newer models featured bigger screens or faster processors). Competition exists, and
market share is an indicator of the relative importance of a product in societythe more
people using a product, the more relevant that product is to the general public. This is
not to say that market share should drive news coverage, but if the amount of coverage
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 15

does not generally reect a products relevance in society, it is likely that unbalanced cover-
age prompts demand that otherwise may not exist (e.g., by promoting news consumers
intention to purchase Apple products). While news media are supposed to serve the
public, it is not uncommon that they are accused of serving corporate interests instead
(Bettig and Hall 2012). Given the plausible impact of exemplars on base-rate fallacy, the
over-coverage of Apple products deserves further investigation through critical lens.
In addition to analyzing the amount of Apple news, this study also examined quali-
tative aspects of such coverage. Given that over one-third of the iPhone stories in The
New York Times and USA Today portrayed the product favorably and 17.4 percent cast a
negative light, the suspicion about the blurred boundary between news and promotion
in technology news is at least partially conrmed. In fact, USA Todays propensity (nearly
50 percent) to portray iPhones favorably is daunting. From the media ethics perspective,
one must ask: To what extent are such news stories different from promotional content,
or even native advertisements? Are they violating codes of ethics and hurting news credi-
bility? Since an independent press is sine qua non to ethical journalism, any form of conict
of interestreal or perceivedis unacceptable because it undermines news credibility and
decreases news consumption, which inadvertently harms democracy.
From consumers perspective, how do such stories provide value in a manner that is
unbiased and informative amidst countless online sources offering similar information?
While reframing PR information is a relatively easy, inexpensive way to produce news,
such reports generally are of little value to readers (Pander Maat and de Jong 2013).
While some readers may want all they can know about the next Apple gadget,
empirical ndings from this study suggest that news coverage about Apple products is pro-
blematic along both quantity and quality dimensions. Technology news should quantitat-
ively reect an innovations social importance and qualitatively deliver unique value to
news consumers.

Limitations and Future Studies


Despite this studys attempt to advance empirical understanding of the nature of
technology news, it is constrained by a few limitations. First, this study only analyzed
content in two national newspapers. Given different newspapers have different organiz-
ational norms and emphases, ndings from this exploratory study may not be generalized
to other newspapers. Future studies are encouraged to incorporate a wider range of pub-
lications, including major technology sites such as CNET.
Similarly, due to resource constraints, our content analysis centers on the coverage of
iPhones only. A more comprehensive approach would be to also examine the coverage of
products manufactured by Apples competitors.
In addition, the content analysis only examined headlines, rather than the actual
articles, because this methodological decision allowed for the inclusion of all relevant
stories about the iPhone in the two newspapers (as opposed to a subset of the stories).
Research suggests that headlines dictate whether most news users (especially online
news users) end up reading the rest of a news article, and many news users read
nothing beyond headlines when consuming news (Manjoo 2013; Wauters 2010).
However, one study has found that when comparing news reports and press releases in
corporate news, news reports tend to offer more contextual information in body infor-
mation (i.e., information about competitors) than headlines (Pander Maat and de Jong
16 HSIANG IRIS CHYI AND ANGELA M. LEE

2013). Nonetheless, since news headlines are often a lot shorter than news articles, they
offer an opportunity to examine the kinds of information that is prioritized given space con-
straints. In other words, compared to a 500-word news article, editors use of a dozen words
in the headlines offers clues as to what they think are the essence of the news articles, or
what they think will effectively grab news readers attention (Lake 2011). After all, the per-
ceived newsworthiness of a story hinges on the journalists ability to synthesize key infor-
mation in the headline and the lead paragraph (Thomson, White, and Kitley 2008).
Finally, it should be noted that Apples biggest competitor, Samsung, is a Korea-
based company. Since cross-cultural differences (in PR strategies or managerial styles, for
example) may play a part in how technology products are marketed to US consumers,
future studies may explore cross-cultural factors and assess how they inuence media cov-
erage, if at all.
In sum, this exploratory analysis has raised questions regarding the commercializa-
tion of technology news along quantity and quality dimensions. Ultimately, the purpose
of news is to inform the public (Kovach and Rosenstiel 2014), not to cultivate or promote
consumerism; and technology news should be no exception.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Dylan Baddour and Ren Castro for their contribution
during the research process. We also thank Jitesh Ubrani and Mike Shirer for their assistance
with IDC Personal Computing Devices Tracker data.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
No potential conict of interest was reported by the authors.

FUNDING
This project was supported by the Student Enrichment Fund offered by the School of Jour-
nalism at the University of Texas at Austin.

NOTES
1. For example, the rst iPhone was ofcially launched on June 29, 2007, but Apple made
the announcement on January 9, 2007, several months before the ofcial launch.
2. Percent agreement is the number of agreements divided by the total number of
measures.
3. Headlines that suggest the product is innovative, popular, or successful are considered
positive. For example, After iPhone Sales Bonanza in China, Apples Prot Nearly
Doubles (The New York Times); Finding Home for Old iPhone; Early Adopters Look
Forward to New Version (USA Today).
4. Headlines that are descriptive in nature or present a balanced view about the product are
considered neutral. For example, Clues in an iPhone Autopsy (The New York Times);
Latest iPhone Apps Bring New Featuresand Costs; Search, Cut and Paste Functions
in Next Wave (USA Today).
COMMERCIALIZATION OF TECHNOLOGY NEWS 17

5. Headlines that suggest disappointment or faults with the product are considered nega-
tive. For example, Verizon Deal May Expose iPhone Flaws (The New York Times); Static
Continues for iPhone Debut; Software Hitches, Demand Shortfalls Frustrate Buyers (USA
Today).
6. For example, Apple Packs All Kinds of High-tech Goodies into iPhone; In Addition to
iPod, Theres E-mail, Camera (USA Today).
7. For example, Apple Prot Doubles in its First Quarter; Sales of iPhones, iPads Soared
During Holidays (USA Today); Apple Prot Soars Stunning 125%; Worldwide Sales of
iPhone Get the Credit (USA Today); Apple Misses iPhone Forecasts; Shares Plunge
10% After Hours (USA Today).
8. For example, Worry Over Sales Spurs Talk of Cheaper iPhones (The New York Times);
Verizon Finally to Get iPhone? Announcement Planned for Tuesday (USA Today).
9. For example, Anticipation for iPhone 5 (The New York Times); Apple Tells F.C.C. it is Still
Pondering Google Voice Application for the iPhone (The New York Times); For Apples
Next Trick ; After iPhone Comes What? (USA Today).
10. For example, Let the iPhone Hype Begin Again; New Versions Faster, Only $199, and
Arrives July 11 (USA Today); Early iPhone Buyers to Get $100 Credit; Many Angry
About Quick $200 Price Reduction (USA Today).
11. For example, Dropped Calls Plague iPhone 3G; Apple and AT& T Working Together on a
Software Fix (USA Today); iPhone 5 Woes Go Beyond Maps; Customers Gripe About
Battery Life, Wi-Fi Issues (USA Today).

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Hsiang Iris Chyi (author to whom correspondence should be addressed), School of Jour-
nalism, The University of Texas at Austin, USA. E-mail: chyi@mail.utexas.edu. Web:
irischyi.com
Angela M. Lee, School of Arts, Technology, and Emerging Communication, The University
of Texas at Dallas, USA. E-mail: angela.lee@utdallas.edu. Web: http://www.utdallas.
edu/atec/lee/

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