An Exploratory Case Study on Data Breach Journalism
Jukka Ruohonen, Kalle Hjerppe, Maximilian von Zastrow

TL;DR
This paper investigates data breach journalism through text mining analysis of databreaches.net, revealing reporting patterns, sentiment, and coverage scope, and advancing understanding of media portrayal of cybercrime incidents.
Contribution
It introduces a novel case study of data breach journalism, applying text mining to analyze reporting characteristics and sentiment in cybercrime news coverage.
Findings
Steady publishing pace with high-quality sources
Articles exhibit strong emotional sentiment
Coverage includes diverse breach types, notably healthcare sector
Abstract
This paper explores the novel topic of data breach journalism and data breach news through the case of databreaches.net, a news outlet dedicated to data breaches and related cyber crime. Motivated by the issues in traditional crime news and crime journalism, the case is explored by the means of text mining. According to the results, the outlet has kept a steady publishing pace, mainly focusing on plain and short reporting but with generally high-quality source material for the news articles. Despite these characteristics, the news articles exhibit fairly strong sentiments, which is partially expected due to the presence of emotionally laden crime and the long history of sensationalism in crime news. The news site has also covered the full scope of data breaches, although many of these are fairly traditional, exposing personal identifiers and financial details of the victims. Also…
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Taxonomy
TopicsTechnology and Data Analysis · Privacy, Security, and Data Protection · Innovation in Digital Healthcare Systems
