Push it to the limit

Abstract

Today, push notifications are arguably an essential part of regular people’s daily news consumption. This could not have been said only a few years ago – the evolution has taken place under a short period of time, and will most likely continue in the future. In light of this increased importance, both academically and for every-day life, this thesis explores the intermedia agenda-setting and homogeneity within push notifications of the six largest media outlets in Sweden. Every push notification from Aftonbladet, Dagens Nyheter, Expressen, Svenska Dagbladet, SR Ekot and SVT Nyheter between 20-26 November 2023 has been collected, and included in a content analysis. Results showed that the media outlets’ push notifications show tendencies of intermedia agenda-setting effects when the topics of said push notifications are compared. Furthermore the media outlets show a great deal of homogeneity in their reporting, with 55 percent of the push notification dealing with the same, or similar, topics. Additionally, results showed a short time lag between when a push notification first is sent out and then followed up by another media outlet, often only within a few hours after the first publication. This, we believe, could be seen as a result of intermedia agenda-setting effects, in which the lag thoroughly has decreased when compared to earlier studies on traditional and analogue news publications.