What Makes Top Stories: Rethinking News Values in Digital Space

With the conceptualisation of news values, episodic attempts have dotted the journalism studies paradigm since (Galtung and Ruge, Journal of International Peace Research 2:64–90, 1965) laid the formal foundation for news-selection criteria to answer the ‘deceptively-simple’ question of ‘what is news?’ Most seminal studies on news values had focussed on traditional journalism, attempting to study what becomes news and understand the factors influencing news prioritisation. In the internet age, this chapter examines the relevance of traditional news values and introduces taxonomies peculiar to the digital space. By doing that, this chapter attempts to associate the assorted forms and presentation styles of digital news with the journalistic values of news prioritisation and identify newer dimensions to this concept contributed by the digital structural and functional fabrics and facets of online news. A selection of Asian news websites is quantitatively content analysed to examine what makes (top) news and secures the top-tier slots of their homepages. Finally, news values are restated, redefined and prioritised based on the analysis. Study results indicate the emergence of visuality, share ability, sociability and progression as factors influencing digital news selection, apart from the traditional-materialistic news values. Also, the analyses indicate that certain news beats and topics are prioritised for the prime slots.