Distinguishing News, Journalism, and Promotional Content in the Digital Age

The rise of digital news consumption has led to a blurring of the lines between what is news and what lies outside it. In this project, I examine existing definitions of news and propose a procedure for identifying a news organization via a mixed-methods case study of the grants committed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The procedure is based on the definition of journalism developed by Shapiro (2014). The coding scheme also identifies three subcategories of news organizations: journalistic organizations, non-promotional news republishers, and promotional news organizations.