An Exploratory Case Study on Data Breach Journalism

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 hospitals and the healthcare sector stand out. With these results, the paper advances the study of data breaches by considering these from the perspective of media and journalism.