ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the findings of a cross-national comparative research project, with an innovative methodology, the ways in which recent trans-local developments in the mediatised cultures of news have become 'territorialised' by audiences in two national regions in Europe: Denmark and Flanders. As important frames of references, news media constitute an indispensable element of our perception and making sense of reality. They offer ample opportunities to access and to fuel various domains of associational interaction. The study's analytical apparatus is innovative in its contribution to audience research by showing how our combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis integrates coherently and non-sequentially, generating valuable insight into the complex multifaceted field of news consumption. The integrated qualitative-quantitative method author used in our comparative study thus offers an innovative approach to cross-cultural comparative research, by preserving the contextual, qualitative anchorage of the news experience in each country, in a form that lends itself to more rigorous comparison than traditional qualitative research.
