Minorities and Communication 2018 Abstracts
Faculty Research Competition
Acculturation, Pluralism, Empowerment: Cultural Images as Strategic Communication on Hispanic Nonprofit Websites • Melissa Adams; Melissa Johnson, North Carolina State University • This quantitative visual content analysis investigated the use of acculturation, pluralism, empowerment, and resistance-themed messages and images in nonprofit strategic communication and digital intercultural communication. The study analyzed data from 135 U.S.-based Latino nonprofit websites. Based on study findings, the authors argue that these nonprofits may be missing opportunities to strengthen relationships and cultural ties with target publics. This analysis applies acculturation theory to visual communication and extends the literature on digital intercultural public relations.
Racially Framed: A content analysis of media frames in the coverage of the Ferguson controversy • Kris Boyle, Brigham Young University • After the death of Michael Brown in 2014, protests in Ferguson, Missouri, sparked nationwide discussion about race, police use of force, and police militarization. This study analyzes the media’s framing of the events in Ferguson, comparing coverage from local media (The St. Louis Dispatch) with national media (The New York Times). Both framed the events as a conflict between police and protesters. However, the Times used more race-based terms in its coverage than the Post-Dispatch.
‘Sharing Hope and Healing’: A culturally tailored social media campaign serving Native Americans • Rebecca Britt, The University of Alabama; Brian Britt; Jenn Anderson, South Dakota State University; Nancy Fahrenwald; Shana Harming • Social media campaigns designed to promote health can be effective when tailored appropriately and can successfully improve quality of life, including an increased number of living kidney donors among ethnic minorities. In the current manuscript, the authors discuss the results of a social media campaign designed to promote communication and education about living kidney donation and transplantation (LKDT) among Native Americans, who experience a uniquely great need for increased transplantation and suffer from a disproportionate number of related health burdens. Engagement, reach, and impressions were measured within the campaign for its duration via a set of hierarchical linear regressions. Notable results indicated that success stories about LKDT were statistically significant predictors of campaign engagement, reach, impressions, as well as negative feedback. Implications, limitations, and future directions for partnering with tribal communities, relevant stakeholders, and developing advertising and mass communication efforts are outlined.
Racist Media Representations of Police Shootings: The Problem of Primary Definition • Alfred Cotton, University of Cincinnati • The purpose of this paper is to analyze the narratives of two cases of police-involved shootings of Black men as presented in mass media to show how, if left unchecked, allowing elites and officials (particularly when they are representative of the individuals in the case) to define the narratives of such events can lead to misrepresentation of the narrative of the events. Only when video evidence disputing the police officers’ version of events did mainstream journalists begin to question the veracity of the officers’ claims their decisions to shoot these men were justified. The analysis examines the shifting discursive positions of the police, public officials, and media representatives over time and how those evidence a racist system of journalistic practices in American mainstream news media.
Impact of Media Use and Pro-Environmental Orientations on Racial/Ethnic Groups’ Attitudes Towards Ecobranding • Troy Elias, University of Oregon • This research uses national survey data from 1,180 Hispanics, African-American, non-Hispanic White, and Asian-Americans to explore the comparative likelihood of Hispanic, African-American, White, and Asian Americans engaging in pro-environmental behaviors and harboring pro-environmental orientations, in particular attitudes towards eco-branding. The results of the study indicate that Hispanic, African-American, White, and Asian-American respondents did not significantly differ in their attitudes towards eco-branding. Additional results indicate that Asian-Americans and Hispanics, to a relative extent, outpace everyone else in terms of pro-environmental attitudes, behaviors, and attitudes towards green purchasing. These results further disconfirm the notion that ethnic/racial minorities care less about the environment than racial minorities.
More than a Black and White Issue: Racialized Identity Constructs and Support for the Black Lives Matter Movement • Lanier Holt, The Ohio State University; Matthew Sweitzer, The Ohio State University • We examine which factors guide opinions about Black Lives Matter. We find ethnic identity predicts why African Americans’ have positive attitudes towards BLM, but is a poor predictor of Whites’ beliefs. Attitudes about social dominance better predicts which Whites will oppose BLM. However, when Whites discuss racial issues, the impact of social dominance is negated, leading them to more positively evaluate BLM. These processes have implications for communication about racial issues.
How Race, Gender, and American Politics Influenced User Discourse Surrounding the Jemele Hill Controversy • Guy Harrison, Youngstown State University; Ann Pegoraro, Laurentian University; Miles Romney, Brigham Young University; Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina • On September 11, 2017, ESPN’s Jemele Hill tweeted that United States President Donald Trump was a “white supremacist.” Online reaction was swift and divided. The purpose of this study was to analyze how people were discussing the incident on Facebook using the theoretical lens of framing. Results demonstrate that discussions devolved into stereotypical tropes and uncivil discourse. Ultimately, Hill’s race and gender became as much of a topic of contention as did her comments about Trump.
Media Effects and Marginalized Ideas: Relationships Among Media Consumption and Support for Black Lives Matter • Danielle Kilgo, Indiana University; Rachel Mourao, Michigan State University • Building research analyses of Black Lives Matter media portrayals, this inquiry uses a two-wave panel survey to examine the effects coverage has on the evaluation of the core ideas from the BLM agenda. Results show conservative media use increases negative evaluations; models suggest this relationship works as a multidirectional feedback loop. Mainstream and liberal media consumptions do not lead to more positive views on BLM.
An Examination of Non-White Crime Portrayals in Local Broadcast News • Jeniece Jamison, University of Memphis; Stephanie Madden, Pennsylvania State University • The purpose of this study is to examine trends in the coverage of crime stories in local broadcast television news. Findings showed that while whites may have been underrepresented as criminal actors, non-whites’ representation in crime stories were on par with their representation within the market area. Interviews from newsroom employees revealed newsrooms try to eliminate bias by hiring individuals from a variety of backgrounds, creating open dialogue concerning diversity in the newsroom, and considering the effects of crime on their communities before deciding to air a crime-related story.
Civil Rights and Sports: Jackie Robinson’s Continuing Crusade as a Newspaper Columnist • Raymond McCaffrey, University of Arkansas • This historical study explores the journalistic career of Jackie Robinson, who began writing a newspaper column for the African-American press after retiring from the Brooklyn Dodgers, the team with which he broke Major League Baseball’s so-called “color line” in 1947. Of particular interest is a consideration of Robinson’s use of his column to advance the growing movement of athletes fighting for civil rights on the sports field in the 1960s. This study involves a reading of hundreds of Robinson columns. This examination focused on the period after Robinson’s retirement from baseball in 1957, when the civil-rights trailblazer came to be labeled by some as an “Uncle Tom” because of what was viewed as a too conciliatory approach to race relations. This study suggests that a review of his columns throughout the 1960s reveals that not only did Robinson’s positions on numerous civil-rights issues evolve through the decade. He was strategic in his taking of positions, coming out early in support of key battles to advance civil rights on the sports field. Robinson ultimately came to take almost militant stands on major issues, a revelation considering he had once backed Richard Nixon and had been an outspoken critic of Malcolm X.
Old Stereotypes Made New: A Textual Analysis on the Tragic Mulatto Stereotype in Contemporary Hollywood • Brandale Mills, Norfolk State University • Historically, Black women’s most persistent images on-screen have typically neither been Black nor that of a woman, partly because of media’s love affair with damaging stereotypes such as the Tragic Mulatto, marked by gendered racism (Cartier, 2014; Mask, 2015). Media representations of Black culture, people and their communities have been a major force in shaping their portrayals in popular culture (Barnett & Flynn, 2014) and this has especially been true for fostering an environment of racial (in)tolerance and acceptance. While Black characters have historically shaped audience member’s perceptions, biracial representations in the media have provided a space for discussion and at times the disregard of multicultural politics. This study examined biracial female characters in films directed by Black women, using Black Feminist Thought to assess whether these depiction strayed from the historic portrayals of the tragic mulatto. The study’s finding illustrated evidence of the traditional tragic mulatto with elements of empowerment and liberation.
The Effects of Latino Cultural Identity and Media Use on Political Engagement and Vote Choice in Election 2016 • Maria Len-Rios, The University of Georgia; Patricia Moy • Using a post-2016 U.S. presidential election national Qualtrics panel survey (N = 720), we examined individual, cultural-identity and media variables predicting political knowledge, political participation and vote choice among Latino voters. Findings show acculturation was associated with greater political knowledge. Social dominance orientation decreased both political knowledge and participation. Print news and social media use fostered participation, while TV use eroded it. Spanish-language news negatively predicted knowledge. Gender was strongly associated with vote choice.
Representation of Minorities in Hospitals’ Online Platforms: Manifestation of Diversity in Images and Videos • Taryn Myers; Finie Richardson; Jae Eun Chung, Communication • While hospitals’ health promotion via social media has the potential to be a critical source of health information, research shows racial and ethnic disparities exist in health-related knowledge that may be, in part, related to media representation. The purpose of this study is to examine the racial and ethnic representation of people featured on Washington, D.C. hospitals’ social media platforms to understand how hospitals embed cultural competency into their health communication. By comparing the diversity of images on hospitals’ social media platforms with the demographics of hospitals’ neighboring communities, the researchers intend to highlight opportunities to improve targeted health messaging to underserved communities, particularly Black and Latino communities. Among the 1,305 images coded, the researchers found that Whites and Asians were over-represented while Latinos were severely under-represented in hospitals’ social media representation as compared to the community demographics. Enhancing minority representation on hospitals’ social media-based health promotion may contribute to addressing the disparities in healthcare.
Stuck in the myth of Model Minority: Representation of self in Asian Indian ethnic newspapers • Somava Pande, Washington State University • Extant literature posits that ethnic media play an important role in constructing their readers’ perception and knowledge of race and ethnicity. This study extends scholarship on Asian Indian ethnic media, by demonstrating how in the recontextualization of social constructs like borders, immigration, etc., in the current socio-political scenario Asian Indian ethnic newspapers construct their own group identity. Critical discourse analysis of 289 news articles revealed the presence of ambivalence as they represent their own group.
“To Ferguson, Love Palestine”: Mediating Life Under Occupation • Cristina Mislan; Sara Shaban, University of Missouri • Palestinian activists and Black protesters in Ferguson, MO created a transnational network of solidarity after recognizing their shared experiences of police brutality. The authors focus on both the online and offline politics of #Ferguson through a textual analysis of the digital media discourse and by conducting interviews with community activists. Findings reveal the shared ‘resistance culture’ made visible through digital media, emphasizing the affective expressions of Brown and Black voices resisting the force of militarization.
Student Paper
A Conceptual Model on Black Consumer-Brand Identity Congruence and Personal Care Purchase Intentions • Yewande Addie, UF; Brett Ball, University of Florida; Kelsy-Ann Adams, University of Florida • Nielsen reports black buying power is expected to increase nearly $1 trillion by 2021. Thus our research is rooted in offering intellectual support to exploring that economic contribution and filling existing gaps in academic literature on black female consumer relationship with brands. This study offers a conceptual model aimed at analyzing the potential impact of brand-consumer identity congruence between personal care brands and black female consumers and its influence on purchase intentions.
Marketing to One Color: An Analysis of the Emergent Themes in Cancer Television Commercials from 2014-2017. • Aqsa Bashir, University of Florida • There is considerable amount of research available on cancer incidence and mortality; however, the role of the media in framing cancer as a health issue has not been analyzed. This paper uses framing analysis approach to analyze cancer television commercials to better understand how the social marketers are portraying cancer to the masses. Four themes emerged from a framing analysis of the ads: emotional appeal, empowerment, social support and research advancements. Additionally, this study explored whether racial disparities and underrepresentation of racial minorities exist in cancer advertisements. The findings revealed that Blacks in particular are underrepresented in cancer advertisement even though cancer incidence and mortality rates are higher in the Black population. This study provides practical implications for cancer organizations and social marketers by offering insights on the popular themes being applied in cancer advertisements.
Racialized Reporting: Newspaper Coverage of Hurricane Harvey vs. Hurricane Maria • STEFANIE DAVIS, The Pennsylvania State Universtiy • There is little that is natural about natural disasters. Storm impact site to relief efforts are rooted in geographical, social, and racial inequalities. News coverage of natural disasters is subject to these same biases. This study aims to tease out the different news frames used in coverage of Hurricane Harvey (Texas) and Hurricane Maria (Puerto Rico). A content analysis of newspaper articles, supplemented by a qualitative textual analysis, suggests significant differences in framing techniques of each storm. Specifically, Maria was framed more politically than Harvey, and coverage of Harvey included more human interest stories than Maria. Implications on issues of geography, race, and citizenship are discussed.
____ Lives Matter: The Impact Of Exemplar Race and Story Frame on Percieved Issue Severity • Robert Jones, Missouri School of Journalism • Exemplification research on minorities has focused on the relationship between stereotypical portrayal of minorities and stereotypical judgments. Research that observes the interaction between exemplar race and frame in news media is lacking. The study observed the relationship between exemplar race and story frame on perceptions. Results show media that focus on the accounts of common folk are perceived as more credible than those that focus on accounts of police officers.
Immigrant frames and responses to mass media identity positioning • Debra Kelley, University of Minnesota, School of Journalism & Mass Communication • Somali-American women research participants call on discourses from mass media to negotiate social status and sexual identity and explain contradictions they exhibit in different discursive situations. For the immigrants in my study, mediation both enables and constrains representations of themselves. This paper provides a voice to these Somali-Americans, adding to a paucity of literature about the Somalis’ trajectory as one of the largest refugee groups in the United States and cultural conflicts inherent in re-locating.
Media Framing of the Movement for Black Lives: Tone and Changes Over Time • Michelle Perkins, University of Houston • Media attention is a vital factor in a social movement’s struggle against hegemonic norms, thus framing can greatly impact their influence. Frequency of coverage within the initial four years of Movement for Black Lives was compared to social occurrences to determine impacts on coverage. Employing a content analysis, the present study examined coverage about the movement to determine overall tone and changes in coverage over time, with results compared by ideology of the media outlet.
Black Masculine Scripts in Hip-Hop Media • Christin Smith • This paper investigates scripts of the Black masculine sexual body and Hip-Hop music based on Jackson’s Scripting the Black Masculine Body (2006). The scripts are the pimp, thug and roughneck, thug misses, stud, player, and baller scripts (Jackson, 2006). Through a textual analysis of Hip-Hop music videos and a semiotic textual analysis of Hip-Hop lyrics, this paper argues that Black bodies in Hip-Hop media have internalized negative inscriptions of their bodies to be true.
Media Management, Economics, and Entrepreneurship 2018 Abstracts
Open Competition
Substitutability and Complementarity of Broadcast Radio and Music Streaming Services: The Millennial Perspective • Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida; Rang Wang, University of Florida; Kyung-Ho Hwang, School of Liberal Studies, Kyungnam University • Digital technologies have redefined how audiences use audio media. Faced with great challenges, broadcast radio stations launched mobile apps to compete with music streaming services in engaging the largest generation in the U.S., the Millennial. Guided by the uses and gratifications approach, this study investigated the Millennial’s perceptions of the substitutability and complementarity of broadcast radio, its apps, and music streaming services through a national survey. Strategic implications for broadcast radio were provided. The paper was based on the collaborative work among partners from the academic, radio stations, and the mobile app industry with professional relevance.
The Impact of Organizational Climate on Trauma Suffering in Journalism • Kenna Griffin, Oklahoma City University • This study measures the role of the newsroom organizational climate in preparing journalists for trauma exposure and providing them with support afterward. The 829 respondents reported high levels of trauma exposure at work and intense symptoms as a result. Despite this, few journalists were trained about trauma exposure. This support would help them cope with emotions related to experiencing traumatic events and could help them avoid emotional trauma altogether, creating a more emotionally healthy profession.
Entrepreneurial News Sites as Worthy Causes? Exploring Readers’ Motivations Behind Donating to Latin American Journalism • Summer Harlow, University of Houston • “This study uses surveys with readers of entrepreneurial news startups in seven Latin American countries to examine their motivations for donating to journalism. Using the donor-organization relationship from public relations scholarship as a framework, this study showed content, independent/objective journalism, interactivity, and community as main motivating factors for donating. A lack of priority, techno concerns, and capitalism were reasons why readers did not donate. Professional and theoretical implications are discussed.
The digital linchpin for mobile startup? Exploring the social media knowledge and managerial skills of mobile entrepreneurs • Gejun Huang, The University of Texas at Austin; Wenhong Chen, The University of Texas at Austin; Bryan Stephens, The University of Texas at Austin • The flourish scene of high-tech entrepreneurship in the U.S has prompted growing academic interests in the relationship between social media and entrepreneurship. However, limited attention has been paid to exploring the degree to which entrepreneurs’ social media knowledge and managerial skills affect their business performances. This paper aims to fill this gap by investigating the variations of mobile entrepreneurs’ social media strategies from the perspectives of technological knowledge and IT managerial skills that derive from resource-based theory. Using qualitative data drawn from 45 semi-structured interviews with mobile entrepreneurs and advocates in the major U.S. tech hubs, we find the formation and implementation of their social media strategies are premised on social media knowledge and managerial skills. The knowledge and skills correspond with mobile entrepreneurs’ understanding of mobile technologies and user practices, their business development needs and network, as well as the broader industry context.
Examining Cord-Cutting Media Consumers: Usage, Perceptions, Motivations, and Segments • Hun KIM; Kyung-Ho Hwang, School of Liberal Studies, Kyungnam University; Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida; Byeng-Hee Chang, Sungkyunkwan University • This study investigates factors affecting consumer segments within cord cutting using IDT, U&G theory, the media substitution, channel repertoire and media usage. Theoretically, this study is an early study of consumer segment related to cord cutting and is based on IDT and U&G to analyze perceptions of two services consumer. Practically, this study provides practical insight to cord media and streaming video service industries.
The Economics of State-Run News Media Policy: A Case Study of Vietnam • Huyen Nguyen, Ohio University; Trung Bui • In Western world, government intervention via media policy is supposed to help correct market failures such as the existence of external cost/benefit on third parties, the lack of public goods, and the abuse of monopoly power (Rolland, 2008; Hoskins, McFayden & Finn, 2004; Picard, 1989). In still communist nations, government intervention is more often viewed as to protect political ideas (Chin-Chuan, Zhou & Yu, 2006; Silverblatt & Zlobin, 2004; Siebert, Peterson & Schramm, 1978). However, in the post-communist era, communist governments have always been steered towards a market economy, leading to their mixed media policy goals. In this study, the analysis of 267 policy tools and seven interviews with media scholars, news leaders and state officials in Vietnam, a still communist nation, unveil that correcting market failures is an involuntary and secondary goal of Vietnam news media policy. Besides, a survey of 40 news organizations indicates that organizations who perceive policy effectiveness tend to yield more revenues and commit more to news quality than those who do not.
McClatchy’s “Reinvention” and Socially Responsible Existentialists: An interview-based case study • Mark Poepsel, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • As the McClatchy news chain introduces a “Reinvention” plan in its newsrooms, some journalists are wary. Questions of autonomy arise when upper-level management hands down checklists and digital engagement targets. Journalists’ concerns must be balanced with the organization’s need to focus on digital revenues. Management’s efforts at financial salvation must be balanced with the need to preserve the social responsibility role of news outlets. This is a case study of a small-city news organization with national investigative journalism chops. This manuscript examines through the normative theoretical frame how journalists, accomplished at balancing their autonomy with social responsibility, respond to “Reinvention.”
Does Geographical Location Matter in Business-to-Business Advertising Expenditure Decisions? Evidence from Manufacturing Firms • Nur Uysal, DePaul University; Juan Mundel, DePaul University • Previous literature on advertising spending typically related advertising to the sales or profitability of the firm or industry. Even though the relationship between advertising and sales has been studied extensively, the results are usually muddied by other marketing mix elements, such as promotion and distribution effect. Although the marketing literature has showed an enduring interest in geographic location, there has been relatively scant research on geographical proximity as a determinant of B2B advertising expenditure in the advertising scholarship. Using Cluster Theory as a framework, this paper tests whether industry cluster affect B2B marketing expenditure decisions. The researcher constructed a study sample of manufacturing firms (with primary three-digit SIC between 200 and 399) with a high percentage of their assets and employees located at the firm’s corporate headquarters (N = 2331 firm-year observations from 651 firms). Results of a t test and a series of multiple regression analysis yielded empirical evidence that geographic proximity to an industry cluster location affects firms’ decisions on B2B advertising expenditure. Implications for media management research and theory are discussed.
Comparing Online and Offline Media Engagement: A Triangular Measurement Approach • Lisa-Charlotte Wolter, University of Florida; Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida; Daniel McDuff • Media engagement can serve as a useful approach for cross-platform effectiveness measurement and optimization. Through an industry-academic research partnership between a research university, Google/YouTube, and Microsoft, the study conducted online-offline cross-platform comparisons of YouTube and TV video usage experience using both implicit and explicit measurements. Results from the comprehensive lab-based mixed-methods study shed light on how the two video platforms differ in terms of attention and engagement – measured triangularly (cognitive, affective, behavioral). (Industry Relevance)
Legacy Media Versus Emerging Online Sources of News and Information: A Niche Study of Competition and Coexistence • Mohammad Yousuf • This study applied the Theory of the Niche to examine if the legacy news media competes with institution-generated content, activist-generated content, and user-generated content—three emerging sources of news and information. A survey of online media users (N=1,103) shows each of four content types has a moderate niche on news gratifications. Niche overlap coefficients suggest moderate to strong competition among the content types although the legacy news media maintains competitive superiority over all others.
Special Topics
Business Characteristics of a Network Media Agency: A Case Study Using a Dyadic Perspective of Agency–Client Joint Business Activities • Melanie Herfort, University of Bayreuth, Germany; Reinhard Kunz • This paper studies a media agency’s business characteristics using a dyadic agency–client view to explore the collaborative value of co-creation business activities. The paper applies a qualitative case study method based on a network media agency. We contribute that the knowledge about nonmedia services, such as content and technology, and their clients as business partners play a large role in furthering the business activities of this agency.
Emotional Responses to Online Video Ads: The Differential Effects of Self-Brand Congruity and Ad Duration • Todd Holmes, California State University Northridge • The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of self-brand congruity and ad duration and how these factors impact emotional responses to embedded online video advertisements. To achieve these aims, an online experiment was conducted based on a two (self-brand congruity) X two (ad duration) between-subjects design. Two dependent measures, emotional response to the ad (ERad) and emotional response to the brand (ERb) were used to examine the effectiveness of the ads and three brand personality dimensions (excitement, sophistication, ruggedness) were included in the model as replicates. Self-brand congruity was found to significantly impact respondents’ level of pleasure experienced when they viewed an ad for a brand that was low or high in excitement. Significant differences were found in terms of the pleasure that subjects ascribed to brands deemed to be low or high in sophistication. In addition, an interaction effect was found in the sophistication dimension with respect to arousal.
Mass Communication and Society 2018 Abstracts
Moeller Student Competition
Effects of Self-Construal and Environmental consciousness on Green Corporate Social Responsibility perceptions • nandini bhalla, University of South Carolina • “Using a 2 (location of the company: India vs. U.S.) x 2 (location of the CSR: India vs. U.S.) between subjects experimental design, the study examines the citizen’s attitudes, WOM, and purchase intent towards a fictitious company doing green CSR in India and in the U.S. A SEM model is created, and results indicated that the individuals’ self-construal orientation play an important role in perceiving and evaluating corporation’s environmentally-friendly initiatives.”
Nothing but the Facts? Journalistic Objectivity and Media Adjudication of President Trump’s False Claims • Deborah Dwyer, Student • Previous research indicates reporters tend to shy away from formally settling disputed claims when covering political topics. This does not assist readers in determining what is true, damaging their epistemic political efficacy and interest. This content analysis examines the type of adjudication practices journalists use when covering untrue statements made by U.S. President Donald Trump. Adjudication practices by outlets that audiences consider “conservative” or “liberal” are compared to determine if and how they differ.
Open Competition
Examining the Rage Donation Trend: Applying the Anger Activism Model to Explore Communication and Donation Behaviors • Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; Denise Bortree, Penn State University; Brooke McKeever • A national survey (N = 1275) explored how individuals’ anger and efficacy predict attitudes toward political and social activism, related communication behaviors, and financial support behaviors. Findings revealed partial support for the Anger Activism Model, which was tested in this unique context. Efficacy emerged as a stronger predictor compared to anger, and path analysis suggests that while anger directly predicts attitudes and communication behaviors, it also partially predicts efficacy.
From Reality to Drama: The Role of Entertainment TV Storytelling in Empowering U.S. Hispanic Parents • Caty Borum Chattoo, American University School of Communication and Center for Media & Social Impact; Lauren Feldman, Rutgers University; Amy Henderson Riley, American University School of Communication and Center for Media & Social Impact • In 2017, the Univision network and Too Small to Fail, a prosocial multi-media campaign, produced media content across three television storytelling genres (scripted drama, reality TV, news) in order to entertain and educate Hispanic parents and primary caregivers of children aged 0-5 about early brain development, and consequently, the role of parents and caregivers in the successful development of young children. This experimental study assessed the impact of each TV genre and found significant direct effects on knowledge, attitudes, and behavior; the effects were mediated by perceived entertainment value and positive emotions.
Explaining the “Racial Contradiction:” An Experimental Examination of the Impact of Sports Media Use and Response Strategy on Racial Bias towards Athlete Transgressors • Kenon Brown, The University of Alabama; Joshua Dickhaus, Bradley University; Ray Harrison, Jefferson State Community College; Stephen Rush, The University of Alabama • Previous studies (Authors, 20XX, Authors, 20XX) have found that minority athletes were perceived more positively than their White counterparts, counterintuitive to previous research. In order to explain this “racial contradiction,” this study analyzes the racial differences in response to criminal accusations based on the response strategy utilized and the amount of sports news consumed by participants. A between-subjects, double blind experiment was conducted among 464 participants to examine how an athlete’s race, an athlete’s chosen response strategy, and participants’ level of sports news consumption affects the perception of athletes accused of criminal allegations. Results show that while low sports news consumers did not differ in their perception of an athlete, whether he was Black or White, high sports news consumers perceived Black athletes more positively than White athletes, supporting the “racial contradiction.” Also, results showed that while participants that were low sports news consumers accepted the White athlete’s use of denial more than the Black athlete, participants that were high sports news consumers accepted the Black athlete’s use of denial more than the White athlete.
Music Use and Genre Choice as Coping Strategies for Emotions • Jewell Davis; Li-jing Chang, Jackson State University • This study used a survey to explore music use and genre choice as coping strategies for emotions. A total of 605 people answered the survey. Results showed a plurality of the respondents use music frequently to help cope with stress, deal with an issue and express emotions. The study also found rock, country, and pop were top genre choices to help cope with specific emotions, and mood maintenance drives more music use than coping needs.
Effects of Scandals and Presidential Debates in the U.S. 2016 Presidential Elections • Esther Thorson, Michigan State; Weiyue Chen, Michigan State University; Leticia Bode • The study investigates the impact of the presidential debates and two political scandals (Trump groping scandal and Comey reopening of the Clinton email case) on attitudes toward Clinton and Trump, and vote intent. The data include 49 days of a rolling cross section sample of 100 U.S. adults. Results show the campaign events have major effects that differ by partisanship, and that candidate attitudes often mediate the effect of events on vote intent.
Individual differences in second-level agenda setting • Renita Coleman; Denis Wu, Boston University • Studies of individual differences in agenda setting focus primarily on the first level, not the second. This study found some individual differences that make people more susceptible to the media’s agenda of issues do not work the same for affect. Education works in the opposite direction, with the highly educated more protected against media influence. Political party affiliation helps inoculate against the media’s affective agenda, but only when it comes to the opposition party’s candidate.
Effects of Race, Attractiveness, and Mental Health Attribution in Mass Shooting News • Tao Deng, Michigan State University; Syed Ali Hussain; Samuel M. Tham, Michigan State University; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University • This study explored effects of shooter ethnicity, attractiveness, and mental illness on a Facebook post using a 2 (ethnicity: White-Muslim) x 2 (attractiveness: low-high) x 2 (mental illness: present-absent) between-subject factorial design (N = 699). Findings showed that negative stereotypes against Muslim can be intensified by reading mass shooting news with Muslim perpetrator. Combining Muslim ethnicity and mental illness, participants expressed less favorable attitude toward mental illness. This trend reversed when the perpetrator was White.
Why? Because I like you: Effects of familiarity on perceptions of media trustworthiness • Stephanie Dunn, Missouri Western State University • This paper assesses the role familiarity and parasocial relationships have on perceptions of trustworthiness and credibility, particularly in evaluation of political commentators. Research presented demonstrates how familiarity and PSR allow commentators to overcome retraction messages. Findings suggest increased familiarity and higher PSR generate more positive message evaluations, higher assessments of source credibility, and increased likelihood of persuasion.
PTSD and Depression in Journalists Who Covered Harvey • Gretchen Dworznik • Thirty journalists from some of the most hardest hit cities during Hurricane Harvey were surveyed for symptoms of posttraumatic stress (PTSD) and depression 2 months after the storm. 20% had storm related PTSD and 40% had depression. Though not all met the criteria for diagnosis, 90% were experiencing symptoms of both disorders to varying degrees. Implications for disaster coverage planning and newsroom managers are discussed.
Parents, Children, and Social Media: A Study of Value Congruence • Lee Farquhar, Butler University; Betsy Emmons, Samford University; Nia Johnson • This study examines value congruence, identity stewardship, and parent awareness of child’s behaviors. Participants had typical behavior patterns regarding social media use and concerns for privacy. However, parent monitoring of children’s online behaviors was remarkably low. These same parents were also confident that children were not taking part in behaviors they were not aware of. Lastly, value congruence was associated with open communication and positive behavior modeling, which supports past research.
Hot or Cold: #climatechange Societal Sentiment on Pinterest • Jeanine Guidry, Virginia Commonwealth University; Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Linsey Grove, University of South Florida • This study examined visual social media posts focused on climate change through a quantitative content analysis of 500 Pinterest posts. Posts from nonprofit organizations received the least engagement. Inclusion of perceived benefits of addressing climate change and self-efficacy were associated with increased engagement; however, these concepts were mentioned far less frequently than severity of and susceptibility to climate change, which did not drive engagement.
Errors and Corrections in Digital News Content • Kirstie Hettinga, California Lutheran University; Alyssa Appelman, Northern Kentucky University • A between-subjects experiment (N = 386) explores the effects of correction features and reader investment on perceptions of digital news content. Findings suggest that participants paid more attention to the source and the correction when they read from the digital news outlet (Yahoo.com), rather than the legacy news outlet (The New York Times). Findings also suggest that liberal readers cared more than conservative readers about the LGBT-rights-related correction. Recommendations for online corrections practices are discussed.
The Effects of Constructive Television News Reporting on Prosocial Intentions and Behavior in Children • Iris Van Venrooij; Tobias Sachs; Mariska Kleemans • To overcome negative effects of news on young audiences and, instead, foster prosociality, constructive journalism promotes the inclusion of positive emotions and solutions in negative news stories. We experimentally tested whether including constructive elements in a story about a disaster indeed increased prosocial intentions and behaviors among children (N=468; 9-13 y/o). Results showed that solution-based news led to less prosocial behavior than emotion-based and non-constructive news. Negative emotions, but not self-efficacy, served as a mediator.
D.C. media coverage of the District’s Death with Dignity Act • Kimberly Lauffer; Sean Baker, Central Michigan University; Natalee Seely • In 2016, the District of Columbia City Council passed the Death with Dignity Act. Afterward, Congress attempted to block implementation of the law by invoking its power first to overturn the law and then, when unsuccessful in that effort, withhold money from the District. Previous studies examining local media coverage of aid-in-dying legislation have identified several recurrent frames, including fear of abuse, good death vs. bad death, preserving rights/autonomy, and culture war. D.C. media invoked those frames as well as others more specific to the District and the publications within it
Framing and Persuasion: A Frame-building Perspective • Jiawei Liu; Douglas McLeod • Research on framing effects has demonstrated that exposure to frames leads to shifts in readers’ preferences and attitudes. Applying this to message construction, we expect that frames’ persuasive effects will also be reflected in the frame-building process: in order to change preference in a particular direction, the corresponding frame will be selected. Our experimental findings suggest that the link between persuasion and frame-building is strong for emphasis frames but relatively weak for equivalence frames.
“They’re Turning the Frogs Gay!” Credibility and Attributes of Parasocial Relationships with Alex Jones • T. Phillip Madison, University of Louisiana – Lafayette; Emily Covington, University of Louisiana – Lafayette; Kaitlyn Wright, University of Louisiana – Lafayette; Timothy Gaspard, University of Louisiana – Lafayette • Exploitation of Americans’ information diets by foreign powers for the purpose of creating civil unrest is a well-documented practice and relies on “knowing” people whom we will never meet. Much of our responses to fake news, whether we buy into it or not, center around the one-sided relationships we have with people whom we see in the media. Such relationships are called “parasocial relationships,” or PSRs (e.g., Horton & Wohl, 1956) and have a tendency to shape our senses of reality and reactions to those senses of reality. Horton and Wohl (1956) originally identified “para-social relationships” as the one-sided relationships audiences have with mediated personae, namely people we see on television. Parasocial relationships seem to be more powerful than ever, as illustrated by fake news, inflamed divisiveness in the western word, weaponization, and Russia’s countless bots, trolls, and social media pages. According to Westneat (2017), “The information war is real, and we’re losing it.” In this bizzare, new era, fake news occupies all forms of media. In fact, many of today’s societal problems have been blamed on the pervasiveness and influential nature of fake news. This study examines parasocial relationships as well as perceived credibility and viewing frequency of Infowars, hosted by Alex Jones. Through our sample of Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users (N = 584), we have explored which attributes of PSRs are related to perceived credibility of Alex Jones and viewing propensity. This research highlights the value of parasocial research as scholars navigate this post-2016 American presidential election news cycle. Parasocial relationships have become a large part of our identities and, thus, warrant thoughtful scrutiny.
Social (Media) Construction of Public Opinion in the Press • Shannon McGregor • A content analysis of election news and in-depth interviews with journalists documents the use of social media to report public opinion, classifying uses along the type of data, well as its function. Journalists used social media posts as sources of vox populi quotes, especially to showcase public reaction to media events. Social media firms marketed their quantitative metrics as public opinion to journalists, who reported these mostly in service of positioning candidates in the horserace.
Younger millennials’ media use: A qualitative gratifications and media repertoires approach • Danielle Myers LaGree, Kansas State University; Margaret Duffy, U of Missouri • The new media landscape has encouraged media multitasking behaviors. This exploratory study sought to understand why younger millennials are motivated to routinely attend to media across multiple sources and devices. An intregated uses and gratifications and media repertoires theoretical approach guided this qualitative study. In-depth interviews (N = 21) revealed that participants were more emotionally connected to their laptops than their cellphones and use media sources and devices to create work and entertainment spaces.
An experimental test of the effects of hurricane news about human behavior on climate-related attitudes • Jessica Myrick, Penn State University; Jeff Conlin • Mass communication about hurricanes–via traditional and online outlets–often features stories about morality. The best of us help others and the worst of us take advantage of the situation. The present study investigated how these types of hurricane news coverage, when displayed online featuring other users’ reactions, impacts climate-change intentions and policy support. A between-subjects online experiment (N = 514) was conducted using a 3 (news content: acts of kindness, acts of cruelty, control) x 3 (Facebook emoticon reactions: mostly love with some anger, mostly anger with some love, equal love and anger). Results reveal that emotional responses are key mediators of message effects.
Expanding Visibility on Twitter: Author and Message Characteristics and Retweeting • Chang Sup Park, University at Albany, SUNY; Barbara Kaye • Using a content analysis of 3,429 tweets about the South Korean Anti-Terrorism Act of 2016, this study finds that the tweets created by civil society, political actors, and mass media/journalists are more likely to be retweeted than the tweets written by ordinary individuals, suggesting the role of heuristic strategy. This study also finds that content factors influence retweeting (systematic strategy). Emotional tweets are more likely to be retweeted, and rationality of tweets moderates the association between author characteristics and retweeting.
Switchers & Seniors: Evaluating technology versus cohort-based changes in TV news consumption, 1984 -2008 • Patrick Parsons, Penn State University; Krishna Jayakar, Penn State University • This study uses cohort analysis and comparative simulation to gain a better understanding of the relative influence of technological displacement versus shifting demographic patterns in television news consumption from 1984 to 2008 with special attention to TV news consumption declines in the early and mid-1990s, prior to expansion of internet-based news. It considers implications of the research for current and near-future news consumption patterns.
The Effects of Flow in Mobile Gaming: Involvement, Spending Practices, and Attitude • Gregory Perreault, Appalachian State University; Samuel M. Tham, Michigan State University • This research studies free-to-play mobile game players in the United States (n=592) regarding their experience of flow, gaming involvement, and attitude towards the game’s financial model. Following Creswell and Clark’s (2007) exploration model of mixed methods, both qualitative and quantitative measures were utilized to identify and examine the variables. Even though participants reported low attitude towards advertising, the more involved participants indicated they would be accept alternative advertising if it led to more in-game currency.
Content Analysis of Music Alcohol-Dependent Women and Controls Associate with ‘Going Out’ versus ‘Staying Home’ • Anastasia Nikoulina, Indiana University; Thomas James, Indiana University; Joshua Sites, Indiana University; Edgar Jamison-Koenig, Indiana University; Glenna Read, Indiana University; Robert Potter, Indiana University • A content analysis of 636 songs was conducted for alcohol content, drug content, sexual content, risk-taking content, and musical tempo. The song corpus was created by female participants in a previous experimental study and represented their favorite titles for ‘going out with friends,’ or ‘staying home by yourself.’ Participants were selected for the experiment from two cohorts: those with self-reported alcohol dependency and controls. Results of the content analysis show that, as predicted by theory, Party Music was more likely to contain lyrical mentions of alcohol, drugs, and sexual behaviors. Party Music was also significantly faster in tempo than Home Music. These main effects did not interact with which cohort provided the titles. In addressing a research question, results show that regardless of cohort,Party Music was more frequently from the Pop and Hip-hop genre while Home Music was more often Rock and Indie.
Who is to blame? Analysis of government and news media frames during the 2014 earthquake in Chile • Magdalena Saldana, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile • This study relies on Entman’s definition of framing to analyze how the Chilean government and news media framed an earthquake occurring in Chile in 2014. Using structural topic modeling, 705 news stories and 174 press releases were content-analyzed to identify under which conditions the media may attribute blame when disasters are framed beyond the realm of accident. Findings are particularly relevant to understand the relationship between political actors and the press when disasters occur.
“What’s racist about deporting criminal illegal ‘Felons’?” Examining the link between emotion and cognition in tweets about immigration • Saif Shahin, American University; Laura Seroka, Bowling Green State University; Md Rezwan Islam, Bowling Green State University • This study examines nearly 4 million tweets about immigration posted during the 2016 U.S. presidential election (July-December). Sentiment analysis reveals Trust, Fear, and Anger to be the most prominent emotions. Topic modeling suggests Trust was on account of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, while Muslims and Mexicans aroused Fear and Anger. We also explain how emotions may produce cognitive connections among seemingly disparate issues and lead to post-hoc rationalization of anti-immigrant tweets.
Field and Ecological Explanations of Data Journalism Innovation: A Focus on the Role of Ancillary Organizations • Wilson Lowrey, University of Alabama; Lindsey Sherrill, University of Alabama; Ryan Broussard, University of Alabama • This study assesses the roles of ancillary organizations in data journalism innovation from the perspectives of both field and ecology paradigms using interviews with actors in the data journalism profession, including working journalists, leaders of foundations and professional associations, and educators. These two meso-level spatial approaches, field theory and ecology theory, are compared to shed light on the relative helpfulness of field approaches vs. ecology approaches in our social understanding of journalism and news construction.
Exploring Mechanisms of Narrative Persuasion in a News Context: The Role of Narrative Structure, Homophily, Stigma, and Affect in Changing Attitudes and Altruistic Behavior • Daniel Tamul, Virginia Tech; Mary Beth Oliver; Jessica Hotter, Virginia Tech • Two exploratory studies demonstrate, for the first time, that narrative persuasion can diminish the stigma attached to social groups featured in journalistic narratives. Study 1 shows narrative format improves attitudes toward Syrian refugees and this effect is mediated by narrative engagement and subsequently stigma, homophily, and meaningful affect. Study 2 replicates these findings against a separate participant pool, an additional story topic, and compares changes in engagement and stigma to a non-narrative fact sheet and a control condition.
What the fake?! How social media users define, spot, and respond to fake news • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Darren Lim, NTU Singapore • Through dyadic interviews involving 20 social media users in Singapore, where members of each pair are friends both offline and on social media, this study sought to understand how social media users define, spot, and respond to fake news. The study found that the participants define fake news in terms of facticity, intention, and ethics. They verify if news is real or fake based on their own gut-feel, the content itself, through interpersonal checks, and through institutional sources. Finally, whether or not they correct others who post fake news depends on issue relevance, interpersonal relationships, and personal efficacy. While correcting others might be consistent with their need to do what is right, it might also negatively affect their need to maintain social relationships.
Post-Network Television: Motivations, Behaviors, and Satisfaction in the Age of Netflix • Alec Tefertiller, Kansas State University; Kim Sheehan, University of Oregon • Newer video technologies such as smart TVs and web streaming applications have radically altered how audiences consume televised content. Using an online, national survey (N = 790), this study identified five motivational factors for television viewing, most notably relaxing entertainment. In addition, patterns of ritualistic and instrumental viewing were identified. Audience activity facilitated by new technology was strongly associated with satisfaction and affinity for the television medium.
Dual Influences of Media Figures on Young Undergraduates’ Life Values: The Role of Wishful Identification • Caixie TU; Stella Chia • This study examined media and social influences of media figures and proposed a theoretical framework wherein two influences exert effects on undergraduates’ values. This study also adopted a psychological mechanism of wishful identification to investigate how it mediated such two influences. The whole framework was tested by survey data. Results showed media consumption was directly associated with value endorsement. The indirect associations were mediated by interpersonal discussion about media figures and wishful identification with figures.
Don’t Believe the Next Tweet: Designing and Testing News Media Literacy Interventions for Social Media • Melissa Tully, University of Iowa; Emily Vraga; Leticia Bode • Scholars have called for media literacy interventions as a response to the spread of misinformation online. This study examines the effectiveness of “news media literacy” (NML) messages for Twitter. Using two experimental designs, this study tests NML tweets designed to mitigate the impact of exposure to misinformation and to boost people’s perceptions of their own media literacy and its democratic value. Findings suggest it is difficult to craft messages that achieve these goals simultaneously.
Creating Agents of Change through Civic Media Production, Critical Media Literacy and Experiential Learning • Cindy Vincent, Salem State University; Jennifer Jeffrey, Salem State University • This study applies the civic media model within a media literacy course to examine how the convergence of critical media literacy, civic education and experiential learning help college students understand themselves as engaged community members. Interviews with college students collected over three semesters is qualitatively analyzed to understand how civic media production and experiential learning build a sense of civic agency within college students as collaborators of voice, dialogue and critical consciousness.
Can Inspiration Cross Party Lines? How News Framing of Morality and Partisan Cues Influence Elevation, Disgust, and Moral Judgments of Political Actors • T. Franklin Waddell, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida • Do partisans judge political actors based on the consistency of their moral behavior, or does partisan affiliation override moral evaluation? An online experiment (N = 710) revealed that participants exposed to acts of altruism or redemption reported higher levels of elevation relative to control, while acts of transgression or falls from grace elicited higher levels of disgust relative to control. No evidence of moderation by partisanship was revealed. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Do Press Releases about Digital Game Research Influence Presumed Effects? How Comparisons to Real World Violence and Methodological Details Affect the Anticipated Influence of Violent Video Games • T. Franklin Waddell, College of Journalism and Communications, University of Florida • Do comparisons to real world violence or details about how aggression is measured in the laboratory affect the presumed influence of violent video games? An online experiment (N = 505) examined this question using a 2 (comparison to violence: present vs. absent) x 2 (measurement details: present vs. absent) between-subjects design. Results reveal that comparisons to violence elicit differential effects on presumed influence contingent on the presence of methodological details and respondent sex.
Is the Grass Greener on the Other Side of the Geofence? • Kearston Wesner • Geofencing technology enables companies to obtain users’ physical location and deliver customized communications, including political messages. But to accomplish this, some businesses transmit user data to third parties without consent. The privacy tort of intrusion and Federal Trade Commission actions target unfair or deceptive practices, but these avenues are inadequate. Users’ privacy should be safeguarded by creating a federal privacy statute that requires opt-in notification and periodic reminders of data collection, usage, and transmission practices.
Depictions of Asperger’s Syndrome on Prime-Time Television: An Intergroup Contact and Social Cognitive Theory Approach • Stephanie Whitenack, Louisiana State University; David Hamilton; Meghan Sanders • Certain depictions of Asperger’s syndrome (AS) on prime-time television can affect how individuals perceive the disorder (Holton, 2013). Learning and relational differences among those who view onscreen portrayals of AS can affect audiences’ understanding, perceptions, and behavioral intentions of the out-group. An experiment was conducted with a total of 130 participants. Results reveal that people identify with more explicit portrayals on screen, however this may produce greater intergroup anxiety when thinking about real-life interpersonal contact.
Conceptualization of the public health model of reporting through application: The case of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s heroin beat • Erin Willis, University of Colorado Boulder; Chad Painter, University of Dayton • This case study seeks to demonstrate the Cincinnati Enquirer’s use of the public health model of reporting and public health news frames. The Enquirer created the first newspaper heroin beat in January 2016. Enquirer reporters framed the heroin epidemic as a public health issue, focusing on solutions, contextualizing the issue through societal determinants of health, and incorporating the voices of constituent groups. Findings are discussed using news framing and the public health model of reporting.
Big Data and Journalism Transformations: Evaluating Automation as a New Entrant to the Journalistic Field • Shangyuan Wu, Nanyang Technological University; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Charles Salmon • As information circulates in unprecedented amounts, contemporary newsrooms are turning to automation to manage the data deluge. Amid falling revenues and newsroom closures, this study uses field theory and in-depth interviews to investigate how automation, as a new entrant, is transforming the journalistic field, including its impact on the field’s governing principles, the types of capital that journalists must acquire to remain competitive, and journalist attitudes towards the transformation and/or preservation of the field.
Undesirable Issue Indeed, but No Censorship Please! The Third Person Effect in Fake News on Social Media • Fan Yang, University at Albany, SUNY; Michael Horning, Virginia Tech University • An online survey (N =335) was conducted to examine the third person effect (TPE) in fake news and suggested that individuals indeed perceived a greater influence of fake news on others than on themselves. Although they evaluated fake news on social media as socially undesirable, they were also unsupportive of censorship as a remedy. Instead, individuals reported to be less willing to share the news they read on social media either online or offline.
Digital inequalities or personality differences? A longitudinal analysis of social media usage divides in China • Yiyan Zhang, Boston University; Lei Guo, Boston University; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna • This study contributes to the digital divide literature by better explicating a usage divide and by adding a China’s context based on a longitudinal analysis of varied social media uses among a national representative sample collected in mainland China. The results showed age and income significantly predicted many aspects of the usage divide, moderated by individuals’ personality traits. The study also demonstrated that the age- and income-generated usage divide were not significantly widened over time.
Student Competition
Stuck on Social Media: Predicting Young Adults’ Intentions to Limit Social Media Use • Nick Boehm • Health concerns of social media overuse (e.g., depression, anxiety, social isolation, etc.) warrant examinations of factors influencing the use of these technologies. While studies have characterized people’s adoption and use of social media, none have examined factors that would drive individuals to limit their social media use. This study found that an extended theory of planned behavior model significantly predicted intentions to limit daily social media use and behavior surrounding social capital maintenance and growth.
Colorism and Love for Fair Skin: Exploring Digitization’s Effect on India’s Arranged Marriage Matrimonial Ads • Dhiman Chattopadhyay, Bowling Green State University; Sriya Chattopadhyay, Bowling Green State University • Previous studies have found the presence of colorism, especially a bias toward fair-skinned women, in India’s newspaper matrimonial advertisements, where fair complexion is equated with beauty among Indian women. Historically matrimonial advertisements in newspapers are posted by family elders, such as parents of prospective brides. This study explores if the advent of online matrimonial portals has empowered marginalized members of families such as prospective brides greater access to and control over posting matrimonial ads, and if this in turn has changed the way women are depicted in matrimonial ads. Textual analysis of 150 online matrimonial ads indicated that younger women such as would-be brides posted more ads in online media, compared to older family members such as parents; that while there was less overt focus on physical attributes of women such as fairness of skin, colorism was present in more subtle forms; and that while online ads described women’s skills, and desires, they were unable to break free from shackles of socially constructed patriarchal norms where women’s physical attributes such as fair skin were considered critical qualities. Findings were consistent with the tenets of Critical Race Theory that colorism is an ingrained feature of social systems and is constantly negotiated based on a group’s own social interests. Implications of the findings are discussed.
Asian International Students’ Mass Media Use and Acculturation Strategies: Considering the Effects of Remote Acculturation • Lin Li; Shao Chengyuan • Surveying Asian international students in two U.S. universities about their mass media use and acculturation strategies, this study found that American news media use before relocation was positively related to assimilation and negatively related to separation, whereas American TV use after relocation had positive effects on assimilation, integration, and marginalization through increased cultural knowledge. Asian TV use was found to be positively related to separation and negatively related to assimilation and integration across time periods.
Crisis Management on Social Media: Inoculation Strategy and Organizational Interactivity • Pratiti Diddi, PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY; Lewen Wei, Pennsylvania State University • In this study we conducted a three-phase online experiment to examine the efficacy of the inoculation strategy and organizational interactivity in bolstering attitudes in crisis management on social media. With exposure to crisis of selected issues, if not preempted, users’ threat levels went up; if preempted, on the other hand, low response rate to negative comments led to undesirable perceptions of the organization. Implications and limitations are discussed.
Discussing Vulcans, Hermione, Khaleesi, and the Winchesters: An evaluation of parasocial interactions in online fandom forums • Sara Erlichman, Penn State • As parasocial interactions (PSI) are increasingly becoming observable in online settings and associated with fandom, it brings to question the role of parasocial relationships (PSR) in fandom communities. By conducting a content analysis, this study analyzes whether PSIs were present in online fandom forums (i.e. Star Trek, Harry Potter, Game of Thrones, and Supernatural), as a possible indicator of fans actively maintaining their PSRs. The presence of parasocial interactions was supported in this study demonstrating the overlap of participatory fandom and fans’ relationship maintenance for fictional characters.
Social Media as an Emerging Institution: Expectations and Norms Online at the U.S. State House • Meredith Metzler • This paper draws on Polsby’s (1968) classic piece to ask: is social media an emerging political institution? Social media is a differentiated communication medium, but state legislative offices find it difficult to navigate. The perceived behavioral norms of the site—speed, confrontation, and boundary-less communication—conflicted with the legislators’ norms of “civil” interpersonal communication primarily with constituents. As social media emerges as an algorithmic communication institution, the conflicting norms will need to be reconciled.
Fake News Correction: How USDA Corrects Fake News about Organic Foods on Social Media • Keonyoung Park, Syracuse University; Jun Zhang, Newhouse School of Syracuse University; Laura Canuelas-Torres; Zheng Li • Building on the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion, we explored the effects of different social media sources (i.e. government, nonprofit organizations, news corporations, and businesses) in correcting misinformation from fake news about organic foods. We conducted an online experiment, using a Mturk sample of US adults (N=264). Government (i.e., USDA) was the only source with significant impact on leading individual’s efforts to correct previous knowledge. Users seem to activate the central processing during this activity.
Local to global via social media: Using social media for news could make you global-minded • Aditi Rao, University of Connecticut • Contemporary society is becoming increasingly global. This globalization is often referred to in the context of businesses, tourism, trade, education, etc. However, globalization of individuals, i.e., having a global mindset, especially in the context of social media is not often heard of. The current study aimed to investigate whether using social media for news correlated with global-mindedness. A cross-sectional survey administered online asked college students (N = 324) to indicate their news-seeking habits on the four social media platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat. A Global-Mindedness Scale was also included in the same survey to measure global-mindedness and its five dimensions (responsibility, cultural pluralism, efficacy, globalcentrism, and interconnectedness). Results showed a positive correlation between social media use for news and global-mindedness and its dimensions, except for globalcentrism. With regard to using social media for seeking news, Facebook and Twitter were found to be used the most. However, Snapchat and Instagram were the most used social media platforms. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Finding A Voice: Newspaper Editors and The Effect of Sexual Assault and Rape News • Susan Tebben, Ohio University • A qualitative study on newspaper editors in northern and southern Ohio. Using in-depth interviews, the study focuses on personal experiences and training and its effect on victim-naming policies, word choice in stories of sexual assault and rape, and the effect of an editor’s particular training and/or experience on how the topic is covered in newsrooms. Journalistic standards are consistent among the editors interviewed, but editorial decisions depend on the particular editor’s experience and training.
Underlying Effects of Endorser Identity and Bodily Addressing in Public Service Announcements • Lewen Wei, Pennsylvania State University; Arienne Ferchaud; Bingjie Liu • This study conducted a 2 x 2 between-subjects online experiment (N = 423) to explore audience reactions towards public service announcements (PSA) varying in the identities of message endorsers (peer vs. celebrity) and their bodily addressing styles (front vs. side), and the underlying psychological mechanisms. Findings suggest that on selected issues (anti-smoking and anti-sexual-abuse), celebrity endorsers with a frontal bodily addressing style induced more positive reactions to PSA via parasocial interaction experience with the endorser, whereas peer endorsers with a side bodily addressing rendered more message effectiveness via elicited empathy towards the endorser. Implications and limitations are discussed.
Law and Policy 2018 Abstracts
Open Competition
Making @YourState “Friends” With #Privacy: Rights and Wrongs In State Social Media Privacy Password Statutes • Jacob Elberg, University of Kansas; Genelle Belmas, University of Kansas • Since 2012, over half the states have adopted social media privacy laws to protect students and employees from demands of schools and employers for their passwords or social media content as a requirement of admission or employment. This paper evaluates the legal landscape of social media privacy in terms of vintage communications laws and cases as well as new state statutes and makes some recommendations as to the best ways to craft new statutes.
Artificial Authors: Making a Case for Copyright in Computer-Generated Works • Nina Brown, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications • For years, computers have dominated humans at chess, poker, and even Jeopardy! Now, increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence creates music, art, and even news stories. And though the purpose of copyright law is to encourage this exact type of artistic production, none of these works are protected because in the U.S., only humans can own copyrights. Instead of accepting the that law must lag behind technology, this paper explores whether copyright law can-and should-evolve.
First Amendment Envelope Pushers: Revisiting the Incitement-to-Violence Test with Messrs. Brandenburg, Trump & Spencer • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper examines weaknesses with the United States Supreme Court’s Brandenburg v. Ohio incitement test as its fiftieth anniversary approaches. A lawsuit targeting Donald Trump, as well as multiple cases pitting white nationalist Richard Spencer against public universities, provide timely springboards for analysis. Specifically, In re Trump: 1) illustrates difficulties in proving Brandenburg’s intent requirement via circumstantial evidence, and 2) exposes problems regarding the extent to which past violent responses to a person’s words satisfy Brandenburg’s likelihood element. Additionally, the Spencer lawsuits raise concerns about: 1) whether Brandenburg should serve as a prior restraint mechanism for blocking potential speakers from campus before they utter a single word, and 2) the inverse correlation between government efforts to thwart a heckler’s veto via heightened security measures and Brandenburg’s imminence requirement. Ultimately, the paper analyzes all three key elements of Brandenburg—intent, imminence and likelihood—as well as its relationship to both the heckler’s veto principle and the First Amendment presumption against prior restraints.
Report and Repeat: Investigating Facebook’s Hate Speech Removal Process • Caitlin Carlson, Seattle University; Hayley Rousselle, Seattle University • Facebook’s Community Standards ban hate speech. Users are tasked with reporting this content, but little is known about how Facebook responds to these reports. This study identified 144 (n=144) posts containing hate speech and reported them to Facebook. A qualitative content analysis was performed on the removed (n=64) and not removed (n=80) content. This revealed inconsistencies in the removal process that curtailed certain forms of expression and left users open to abuse.
Journalists’ Access to 911 Recordings: Balancing Privacy Interests and the Public’s Right to Know about Casualties • Erin Coyle, Louisiana State University; Stephanie Whitenack, Louisiana State University • Nine-one-one call recordings may capture unique distress from a person’s final moments of life. Journalists argue that publicly disclosing those recordings could shed light on matters of public interest, but publishing that content might emotionally devastate surviving family. This research explored whether and how state statutes, court opinions, and attorney general opinions address that potential conflict and determine whether journalists may access and publish content from 911 calls related to tragic death scenes. This research found a tendency for court rulings, statutes, and attorney general opinions to strike a balance between the public interest in learning about government actions and the likelihood for disclosure of 911 records to intrude upon privacy interests. Some struck that balance by allowing journalists to listen to tape recordings, releasing transcripts of calls, or redacting sensitive personal information prior to releasing records.
The Internet of Platforms and Two-Sided Markets: Implications for Competition and Consumers • Rob Frieden, Penn State University • This paper examines developments in the Internet marketplace that favor powerful intermediaries able to install a platform accessed by that both upstream sources of content and applications as well as downstream consumers. Ventures such as Amazon, Facebook and Google have exploited, “winner take all” networking externalities resulting in the creation of seemingly impenetrable barriers to market entry even by innovative companies. Courts and regulatory agencies recognize the substantial market shares these ventures have acquired, but refrain from imposing sanctions on grounds that consumers accrue ample benefits when platform operators use upstream revenues to subsidize downstream services. The paper examines digital broadband platform operators with an eye toward assessing the aggregate benefits and costs to both upstream firms and downstream consumers. It concludes that governments have failed to revise and recalibrate tools that examine potential marketplace distortions and assess the potential for damage to competition and consumers. The paper demonstrates how the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission have relied on economic and legal doctrine ill-suited for digital broadband market assessments. These agencies have generated false positives, resulting in market intervention where no major problem exists, and false negatives where undetected major problems cause harm without remedy. Additionally these agencies appear to misallocate their resources and attention on insignificant matters when more compelling problems exist.
Sheppard v. Maxwell Revisited: A “Roman Holiday,” a “Carnival” or “Decorum Comparable with the Best? • W. Wat Hopkins • Possibly the most common term used to characterize the trial of Sam Sheppard for the murder of his wife is “Roman holiday.” The Supreme Court of the United States reported that “bedlam reigned in the courthouse during the trial. Four months after the Supreme Court delivered its opinion, however, 10 journalists who covered the trial for respected media organization wrote the justices and told them they were wrong. The trial, they told the justices, was conducted with “decorum comparable with the best.” This paper explores the question of who was right – the Court or the reporters.
Anthem Protests & Public-College Athletes: Is There a Need for a Constitutional Audible? • Carmen Maye, Univ. of South Carolina • National-anthem protests reveal complexities associated with symbolic counter-speech tied to symbols of patriotism. For public-college officials and coaches, the complexity of game-time anthem protests extends beyond the court of public opinion. Uniformed collegiate student-athletes occupy a constitutional limbo-land in which the signals are mixed. Courts considering coach-imposed limits on anthem protests should eschew the traditional and school-specific options in favor of one that allows for a more direct balancing of interests.
“Walk” This Way, Talk This Way: How Do We Know When the Government is Speaking After Walker v. Sons of the Confederacy? • Kristen Patrow, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • “One prong of the three-part government speech test developed in Walker required the Court to examine whether reasonable observers would understand the message as the government’s. Determining what a “reasonable observer” might consider government speech is nebulous at best. Analysis of six cases shows that paths to limiting this ambiguity of the doctrine include requiring a clear message, the government to self-identify as the speaker, and medium scarcity.”
Seeking clarity: European press rights at peaceful assemblies • Jonathan Peters, University of Georgia • European intergovernmental organizations are developing guidelines to establish a baseline for press rights at peaceful assemblies. This paper contributes to those efforts in two ways. First, it reviews existing European press protections in the assembly context. Second, it discusses issues that should be addressed in the forthcoming guidelines. The scholarly value of this paper is to explore the procedural and substantive dimensions of European press rights at assemblies, while the practical value is to clarify key issues and suggest ways to address them.
Considering Fair Use: DMCA’s Takedown & Repeat Infringers Policies • Amanda Reid, UNC Chapel Hill • The 20th anniversary of the DMCA is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the First Amendment implications of this legislative compromise between copyright holders and online service providers. DMCA safe harbors were intended to protect business interests and expressive interests. As digital media are woven into modern daily life, this safe harbor schema needs recalibration to protect fair uses. To recalibrate, this paper explores how fair use considerations should be operationalized under the DMCA framework.
Transparency Reporting and Content Takedowns: Examining Internet Censorship in the United States and India. • Enakshi Roy, Western Kentucky University • Drawing on the literature on internet censorship this study investigates the practice of content takedowns carried out by the United States’ and Indian governments. To that end this research employs two studies. Study 1 examines the transparency reports of Google, Facebook, and Twitter from 2010- 2015 to find out what content is removed from these platforms. Study 2 through in-depth interviews with technology lawyers and authors of transparency reports finds out about the content removal process and its complexities. The findings show “defamation” is one of the most cited reasons for content removal in both the United States and India. “Privacy and Security” is another top reason for content removal in both countries. In India, “Religious Offense” was the most frequently cited reason for content removal. Findings reveal a disturbing trend where defamation notices were misused to request takedown of content that was critical of the governments, politicians, public figures, law enforcement officials, and police. The findings of this comparative study are important, they demonstrate several ways in which the internet is being censored even in democratic countries without the knowledge of the users. Such censorship maybe eroding the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitutions of both the United States and India.
Internet Memes and “Cultural Flourishing”: A Democratic Approach to Copyright • Yoonmo Sang, Howard University • This paper explores the socio-cultural implications of Internet memes in conjunction with legal and policy inquiry that involve copyright and freedom of expression. In doing so, the concept of cultural democracy is advanced to better understand Internet memes that are created and shared by ordinary people to express their emotions, ideas and opinions in order to better understand cultural and political events. This normative study unpacks implications of Internet memes and applies the concept of cultural democracy to Internet memes in the context of copyright law. This study ultimately argues that the concept of democratic culture provides an alternative understanding of copyright legislation as well as a viable theoretical justification for copyright reforms in support of users’ creative use of preexisting cultural works in the age of user-generated content.
The Artificial Marketplace: Examining Potential Changes to Marketplace Theory in the Era of AI Communicators • Jared Schroeder, Southern Methodist University • Artificially intelligent communicators, particularly since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, have occupied an increasing role in democratic discourse. Their natures, as non-human actors with fundamentally different capabilities and motivations than citizens, raise substantial questions about whether the marketplace of ideas theory, the Supreme Court’s dominant rational for freedom of expression, can persist in its current form. In other words, the growing presences of artificially intelligent communicators undermine some of the foundational assumptions of the marketplace approach. This paper contends that without some revisions to the fundamental building blocks of the theory, it will no longer be viable as a rationale for freedom of expression in the AI-infused discourse of the twenty-first century. To this end, this paper explores the increasing influence of artificially intelligent communicators, the traditional assumptions of the marketplace approach, the longstanding criticisms of the theory, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s conceptualization of truth, and judicial opinions regarding the rights of other non-human communicators, such as animals and corporations. This paper ultimately proposes a process-focused, public-good-based revision to the theory’s foundational assumptions. Ideally, such a revision would allow the theory to remain functional in the growing artificial marketplaces of the twenty-first century.
Give Me a ©: Refashioning the Supreme Court’s Decision in Star v. Varsity • Jared Schroeder, Southern Methodist University; Camille Kraeplin, Southern Methodist University; Anna Grace Carey, Southern Methodist University; Lauren Hawkins, Southern Methodist University • Fashion designers have struggled to establish their works as expressions that qualify for copyright protection. The Supreme Court’s decision last spring in Star v. Varsity was less of a victory for fashion designers than it might appear. The Court’s effort to clarify and apply the “separability test,” stopped short of providing the clarity needed to protect the works of fashion designers. This article contends that this confusion can be resolved by conceptualizing fashion designs as forms of art that are often applied to useful objects, rather understanding them as useful items that, if their designs can be conceptually separated from the object, can receive protections.
Confronting Power, Defining Freedom and Awakening Participation: An Argument for Expanding Media Law Education • Erik Ugland • This article contends that some understanding of media law and policy is now indispensable for citizens in the Digital Age and proposes strategies for expanding knowledge of these subjects. This knowledge is essential to citizens’ self-preservation and individual agency, it equips them to engage in emerging First Amendment debates, and it enables their participation in settling media policy dilemmas (surveillance, net neutrality, big data) whose resolution will ultimately affect the broader balance of social power.
Defamation Per Se and Transgender Status: When Macro-Level Value Judgments About Equality Trump Micro-Level Reputational Injury • Austin Vining, University of Florida; Ashton Hampton; Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper uses the September 2017 defamation decision in Simmons v. American Media, Inc. as a springboard for examining defamatory meaning and reputational injury. Specifically, it focuses on cases in which judges acknowledge plaintiffs have suffered reputational harm, yet rule for defendants because promoting the cultural value of equality weighs against redress. In Simmons, a normative, axiological judgment – that the law should neither sanction nor ratify prejudicial views about transgender individuals – prevailed at the trial court level over a celebrity’s ability to recover for alleged reputational harm. Simmons sits at a dangerous intersection – a crossroads where a noble judicial desire to reject prejudicial stereotypes and to embrace equality collides head-on with an ignoble reality in which a significant minority of the population finds a particular false allegation (in Simmons, transgender status) to be defamatory. The paper concludes by proposing variables for courts to apply in future cases where a dispute exists over whether an allegation is defamatory per se, rather than leaving the decision to the discretion of judges untethered from formal criteria.
Requester’s Paradox: Acknowledging FOIA’s Defects, Moving toward Proactive Disclosure • A.Jay Wagner, Bradley University • “Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco exposed long-standing issues in the FOIA. Her deliberate circumvention of records management rules and the State Department’s intentionally misleading response to FOIA requests demonstrated deep and troubling flaws in the contemporary FOIA paradigm. In looking at the laws and judicial interpretation that undergird records management and adequate search elements, the study finds little in the way of legal obligations and a court system limited in combatting the problems. FOIA requesters already suffer from a paradox – never truly knowing what records exist – and these twin failures further undermine the access mechanism. The study explores the unsteady foundation on which the FOIA rests and uses these failures to campaign for more reliance on proactive disclosure mechanisms. In considering proactive disclosure, the study looks at both international and domestic efforts where no request for information is needed. The United States has already experimented with expanding proactive disclosure, including a Justice Department pilot study and amended small elements to the FOIA statute in 2016.
International Communication 2018 Abstracts
Markham Student Paper Competition
Phillip Arceneaux, University of Florida • The West Africa we were shown: A visual content analysis of the 2014 Ebola epidemic • Via content analysis, this study investigated what themes of West Africa were visually publicized by U.S. newspapers, and if such themes mirrored coverage of African groups. Data were collected from the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Dallas Morning News. Quantitative findings suggest coverage favored victim-based frames which became significantly less negative once Ebola patients were in the United States. Such results contribute to literature regarding public perception of foreign affairs covered in the media.
William Edwards; Kyle Saunders • Perceptions and Reality of Press Freedom Following the Arab Spring: An Analysis of Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia • This study examines the relationship between perception of press freedom and both frequency of political news consumption and perception of government corruption in Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia in 2013. Results showed that frequency of political news consumption is positively correlated with a poor perception of press freedom in Egypt, and that poor perception of press freedom is positively correlated with perception of corruption levels in government in Egypt and Iraq.
James Gachau • Facebook Groups as Affective Counterpublics • Using counterpublic theory à la Nancy Fraser, Catherine Squires, Zizi Papacharissi, and Michael Warner, this article analyzes the media content shared on three Facebook groups’ walls. Based in Kenya, the first group identifies with freethought and atheism in a society that is predominantly Christian. The second group campaigns for a proud Black identity in a world increasingly perceived as hostile to Blacks. The third group espouses a feminist atheist identity against Judeo-Christian “white male supremacy.”
Chen Gan, 1990 • Influence of Cultural Distance on Female Body Image: Race, Beauty Type, and Image Processing • This experimental study aimed to investigate the role of cultural distance on beauty ideal, regarding different races and inclined beauty types, in women’s responses to idealized media images. A sample of 140 young Chinese women viewed advertisements containing East Asian models in Cute/Girl-next-door looks (CG), East Asian models in Sexual/Sensual looks (SS), Caucasian models in CG looks, Caucasian models in SS looks, or product-only images. Image processing variables (comparison, fantasy, and internalization) and body image outcomes (state mood and body satisfaction) were measured immediately after advertising viewing. It was found that exposure to CG-type models elicited higher comparison, fantasy, internalization, and improved positive emotions among participants than SS-type models. Model’s race only had effect on internalization, and participants exposed to Caucasian models reported higher internalization than those exposed to East Asian models. Moreover, regression analyses revealed significant relationships between image processing variables and body image outcomes. This study develops a framework for cross-cultural body image research and casts some implications on the influence of exposure to Western media on Chinese women’s beauty ideal and feminine values.
Gregory Gondwe, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO • News believability, trustworthiness and information contagion in African online Social networks: An Experimental design • This experimental study seeks to find out what kind of news source is most believable in Africa between those generated by the West and those generated within the African continent. Second, it measures the levels of contagion within those news stories from two different continents. Using Zambian and Tanzanian online news sources, the study employs experiments to argue that NWICO and McBride’s debates are still relevant in today’s digital age.
Volha Kananovich • Thanks, Obama: Internet Memes as Contested Political Spaces in the United States and Russia • Drawing on the concept of a meme as a “nationwide inside joke” and a potential vehicle of anti-elite political expression, this study compares the evolution of Obama memes in America and Russia. The findings show that, despite the broad participatory appeal of the format, the reach of the meme remains contingent on the socio-political context. This may constrain the meme’s diffusion outside the tight community of liberally minded, politically savvy Internet users.
Liudmila Khalitova, University of Florida; Sofiya Tarasevich, University of Florida • Assessing the role of international broadcasters as information subsidies in the international agenda-building process • This paper explores the agenda-building potential of government-sponsored international broadcasting (GIB) by focusing on the relationships between congruence of political culture and journalists’ practices regarding the use of foreign government-sponsored news content. The findings suggest that value proximity between a broadcaster’s home country and the host country increases the likelihood that the host country’s media will use the GIB as an information source and will accept frames promoted by the government that funds the GIB.
Claire Shinhea Lee • Making Home through Cord-cutting: The Case of Korean Temporary Visa-status Migrants’ Post-Cable culture in U.S. • With the rapid development of new media technology, many people are “cutting the cords” and viewing television through Internet-based video services via streaming or downloading. This study aims to better understand and contextualize this phenomenon through investigating Korean temporary visa-status migrants’ television viewing practices. Through 40 qualitative interviews and employing the framework of the domestication theory perspective, this paper examines how these deterritorialized individuals who experience dislocation make home through cord-cutting practices. By making use of the Internet and delivery technologies/ interfaces legally and illegally, Korean tempv migrants go beyond territorial limitations and make home materially, feel home affectively, and connect home relationally in their diasporic space. Moreover, the study debunks some utopian ideas about online audiences and shows what remains fixed in terms of transnational post-cable culture. I argue that the paper provides many insights into investigating contemporary television audiences and suggest a novel approach to studying migrant media practices.
Nyan Lynn, University of Kansas • The danger of words: Major challenges facing Myanmar journalists on reporting the Rohingya conflict • When covering the Rohingya conflict, Myanmar journalists were criticized for failing to question the government and army. They were also criticized for their reports, most of them are one-sided and lack of multiple voices. This research studied why Myanmar journalists failed to report this conflict professionally and what major challenges they have faced. This research interviewed 17 reporters and editors from 10 media outlets, most of them based in Yangon.
Ruth Moon, University of Washington • “They only threaten you or cut off your job”: How Rwandan journalists learn self-censorship • This paper examines the communication and implementation of a self-censorship norm among journalists in Rwanda. Using observation and interview data from eight months of fieldwork, I show that self-censorship in this context is communicated in a two-step process that can be understood using the concept of isomorphism from institutional theory. Editors and publishers are directly pressured to produce particular kinds of news coverage and pass on the expectation to reporters through obliquely communicated expectations.
Subin Paul, University of Iowa • The Qatar-Gulf Crisis and Narratives of Emotionality in Nepal’s English-language Press • This study examines the media discourse on the 2017-18 Gulf diplomatic crisis and its effect on one of the most marginalized populations in Qatar: Nepali migrant workers. While the diplomatic crisis made news headlines across the Middle East, Nepal-based newspapers were the only ones to cover the vulnerable migrant worker population in some detail. In writing about this population, three prominent English-language publications in Nepal, the Kathmandu Post, Republica, and People’s Review employed emotional storytelling. Drawing on Wahl-Jorgensen’s notion of the “strategic ritual of emotionality,” this study specifically analyzes the use of emotion in the three publications’ news coverage. The study finds that the publications engaged in the ritual of emotionality not by assigning that function to external news sources, as common in Western newspapers, but mainly through their own journalists and opinion writers who narrated their subjective viewpoints and concerns. This unreserved embrace of emotions and subjectivity in newswriting illuminates a unique, cultural mode of producing journalism.
Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition
Kirsten Adams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe; Meghan Sobel; Seoyeon Kim • “Pivoting” With the President’s Gaze: Exploring New York Times Foreign-Policy Coverage Across Nine Administrations • Through an analysis of 50 years of New York Times’ international news coverage (N = 20,765) across nine presidencies, ranging from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966 to Barack Obama in 2015, we apply an interpretive framework guided by presidential historians’ nonpartisan insights to an examination of the top-ten countries and topics covered during each administration in order to assess whether the Times’ gaze toward particular events or issues aligned with presidential “pivots” or priorities in foreign policy agendas. This study extends previous research on press nationalism and foreign policy coverage, updating this line of inquiry to examine whether or how an elite American newspaper covered international affairs throughout the past 50 years. We find limited evidence exists of an “echoing press” consistently following the “presidential gaze,” illustrating that events in the rest of the world can turn the press’ gaze away from policy goals; however, countries and topics covered during each administration do indicate some alignment with key presidential “pivots” or priorities over time. Further, some presidential and press priorities remained consistent across administrations, illustrating the linear way conflict and diplomacy carry over from one president to the next. This study documents and interprets changing patterns in foreign-policy coverage and contributes to a larger body of work discussing the complex roles of the president-as-newsmaker and of the press who cover – and sometimes “echo” – his administration’s efforts.
Aje-Ori Agbese • Thanks, Tonto and Mercy! Three Nigerian Newspapers’ Coverage of Domestic Violence in Nigeria, 2015-2017 • This study explored how Nigerian newspapers portrayed domestic violence and domestic violence cases in Nigeria. Through content and thematic frame analyses of three Nigerian newspapers from 2015 to 2017, the study found that Nigerian newspapers provided their audiences with a variety of information and failed to portray domestic violence cases as a social problem. Rather, they were portrayed as isolated incidents and blamed the victim for her death or beating.
Ali Al-Kandari, Gulf University for Science and Technology; Mariam Alkazemi, Virginia Commonwealth University; Deb Aikat, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Political and Cultural Forces on the Uses and Gratifications: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat in the U.S and Kuwait • Fundamentally disparate norms of politics, freedom and culture distinguish civil societies in U.S. and Kuwait and impact social media users. By integrating uses and gratifications theories, this study compares U.S. and Kuwaiti social media users’ motivations, time spent, and engagement with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, the leading social media platforms. Based on an audience-oriented survey of U.S. and Kuwaiti social media users, this study concludes that while Kuwaiti users were more likely to use Snapchat and Twitter, U.S. users were more likely to use Facebook and Instagram. Different free speech norms differentiate U.S. and Kuwait. Freedom of speech is not absolute in Kuwait like most nations in the Arab region. The U.S. protects free speech through the First Amendment to its Constitution. This explicates why Kuwaiti social media users’ motivation of learning and information through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat constituted mean values higher than users in the U.S.
Mel Bunce • Foreign correspondents and the international news coverage of Africa • This paper contributes to our knowledge of the factors influencing international news coverage of Africa. It presents the results of 67 interviews with foreign correspondents in sub Saharan Africa that explore the daily practices, working conditions and news values of these journalists. The interviews show that foreign correspondents in Africa have significant autonomy to shape news content – but only when they work at more elite news outlets – those which Pierre Bourdieu would describe as seeking ‘symbolic capital’.
Li Chen, WTAMU • When Hippocrates encountered Confucius – A textual analysis of representations of medical professionalism on Chinese medical dramas • Using the theory of Social Representation, the current research project studies the representations of medical professionalism on Chinese medical dramas. The study has three goals: 1) to reveal the anchoring of medical professionalism on Chinese medical dramas; 2) to examine the objectification of medical professionalism; and 3) to analyze the consistency and inconsistency between the localized medical professionalism and the medical professionalism codes proposed by medical scholars and professional associations such as Charter on Medical Professionalism. The results of the textual analysis suggest that medical professionalism was anchored within a Confucian framework: medical dramas used two typical terms, benevolent skills and benevolent heart, to describe the meaning of medical professionalism. Chinese medical dramas were found to add two more components to medical professionalism, making it inconsistent with conventional medical professionalism.
Karin Assmann, University of Maryland; Stine Eckert • ProQuote: A German women journalists’ initiative to revolutionize newsroom leadership • Using standpoint epistemology and critical mass theory this study examines outcomes of the so-called ProQuote [Pro Quota] initiative in Germany to bring at least 30 percent of women journalists into leadership per newsroom. In-depth interviews with 25 journalists in 12 newsrooms find somewhat increased transparency in personnel decisions; improvements in work culture; and more representation of women and diversity on the editorial agenda in all newsrooms that have reached or came near ProQuote’s goal.
Katherine Grasso; William Edwards • A Different Story: Examining the Relationship between Exposure to Snapchat’s “LIVE” Story Feature and Perceptions of Muslims and Arabs • Using Intergroup Contact Theory, the relationship between viewing content depicting Muslims/Arabs on Snapchat and viewers’ attitudes toward Muslims/Arabs was tested. In an online survey, 397 participants reported the frequency and nature of portrayals of Muslims/Arabs in news media, entertainment media, and on Snapchat. Participants’ attitudes about Muslims/Arabs were also measured. Portrayals of Muslims/Arabs on Snapchat were positive, but attitudes toward Muslims/Arabs were not better among Snapchat viewers than non-viewers. These tests, however, lacked statistical power.
Lyombe Eko; Natalia Mielczarek • Raping Europa Again?: Discursive Constructions of the European Refugee Crisis in Four German and Polish News Magazine Covers. • Newsmagazine covers are visual narratives that draw upon myths and archetypes to explain contemporary events. We analyzed how four German and Polish news magazine covers re-presented the European immigration crisis of 2015. The covers of Der Spiegel, Die Stern (Germany), WSieci and Polityka (Poland) couched critiques and concordance with government policy in ancient myths of difference between East and West. Despite discordance of form, the covers demonstrated concordance of substance with respect to the crisis.
BELLARMINE EZUMAH, Murray State University • De-Westernizing Journalism Curriculum in Africa through Glocalization and Hybridization. • The debate that dominant model of global journalism education is predominantly western has permeated the journalism education discourse for decades. Despite several attempts by scholars and international organizations, specifically, the UNESCO through the International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC), to de-westernize journalism curriculum, remnants of the dominant paradigm debate still persists. This paper recognizes the existence of western concepts in journalism education worldwide at the same time, concedes that striking attempts have been made to de-westernize and glocalize journalism curriculum. Essentially, this paper hinges on the thesis that instead of resisting the UNESCO model, reformation and adaptation through glocalization and hybridization is encouraged. As such, we further provide a practical application whereby both sides of the above argument are accredited and a hybridization intervention was applied in a collaborative venture between a US-based Scholar and Ugandan Scholars in developing a locally-congruent curriculum for a brand new journalism program at a university in Uganda.
Alex Fattal, Penn State • Target Intimacy: Notes on the convergence of the militarization and marketization of love in Colombia • This article looks beneath the linguistic hinges of “campaigns” and “targets” that connect military and marketing expertise, two spheres that are experiencing a tactical and epistemological convergence in Colombia. The plain of that convergence, I argue, is intimacy and the shared objective is the instrumentalization of love—in the pursuit of victory and profit. I trace how both sets of experts—generals and executives—have come to valorize and appropriate, by any means possible, intimacy, a fleeting index of love, in the context of the Colombian military’s individual demobilization program. Through ethnographic analysis I trace the way in which consumer marketers working with the military try to persuade guerrilla fighters to abandon the insurgency, and the ways military intelligence officers do the same. In juxtaposing the two respective the processes, I show how targeting serves as a switch that connects the counterinsurgency state and the marketing nation in Colombia.
Victor García-Perdomo, Universidad de La Sabana; Summer Harlow, University of Houston; Danielle Kilgo, Indiana University • Framing the Colombian Peace Process: Between Peace and War Journalism • This bilingual, cross-national study analyzes stories about the Colombian peace process that were engaged with on social media to understand the use of peace and war framing in news reporting. Results show that, even during peace talks, media use war narratives more often than peace frames, and social media users amplify more war than peace-oriented content. Proximity also was shown to be an important factor, as Colombian media used more war frames than foreign media.
Vanessa Higgins Joyce, Texas State University; Summer Harlow, University of Houston • Seeking Transnational, Entrepreneurial News from Latin America: An Audience Analysis • Digital-native entrepreneurial news sites from Latin America are generating change in the region’s industry. These news organizations are being accessed nationally and across national boundaries. This study examined, through the theoretical lens of social capital, factors contributing to the creation of transnational audiences for these news organizations. A survey of audiences for these independent news sites in Peru, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela indicated that economic capital, youth, and being female predicted transnational entrepreneurial news use.
Lea Hellmueller; Valerie Hase • Giving Voice to Terrorists: A longitudinal model explaining how national political contexts influence media attention toward terrorist organizations • Few studies have examined how national political contexts shape news attention of terrorism beyond the coverage of terrorist attacks. Based on an automated content analysis between 2014 and 2016 (N = 18,531), this study examines media attention in the US and the UK toward international terrorist organizations in a longitudinal setting. Results reveal that mediated visibility of terrorists is based on media’s political and national embeddedness besides characteristics of terrorist groups.
Lea Hellmueller; Matthias Revers, University of Leeds • Populist Journalism Challenging Media and Political Fields: Transnational analysis of right-wing meta-journalistic discourses • Anti-institutional media discourses have become an integral part of digital right-wing media (e.g. Big Journalism on Breitbart.com). Drawing on automated text analysis, this study analyzes media criticism of right-wing digital websites (2015-2017) in Germany, Austria, and the US. Media outlets, while focusing on anti-globalization discourses, embrace transnational logics of concerns for the decline of Western democracies. Discourses are theorized as space between journalistic and political fields that transcend national boundaries and contribute to social destabilization.
Liefu Jiang, University of Kansas; Peter Bobkowski, University of Kansas • Reading, commenting, and posting: Social media engagements and Chinese students’ acculturation in the United States • Through an online survey with 209 participants, this paper employs acculturation theory to investigate the relationship between social media use and Chinese students’ acculturation in the United States. The findings suggest that the use of western social media platforms is positively related to Chinese students’ acculturation. Specifically, consuming and creating engagements on western social media are positively related to students’ psychological adaptation, while contributing engagements on western platforms are positively related to sociocultural adaptation.
Ralph Martins; Shageaa Naqvi, Northwestern University in Qatar; Justin Martin, Northwestern University in Qatar • Predictors of Cultural Conservatism in Six Arab Countries • This study examined predictors of self-reported cultural conservatism/progressivism among nationals in six Arab countries (n=4,529): Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE. Many variables found in prior research to be correlated with conservatism in Western countries—support for censorship, income, support for cultural preservation, and others—were not positively associated with conservatism in Arab countries. In fact, willingness to censor media was mostly negatively associated with conservatism in the Arab countries studied here. Some variables did correlate with conservatism in ways reflective of countries where conservatism has been studied extensively; age was positively associated with conservatism and education was negatively correlated, for example, but these relationships were not consistent across countries. Self-reported conservatism differed significantly across countries; Emiratis and Tunisians felt more conservative than people in their countries, while Lebanese and Egyptians were more evenly split among conservatives and progressives.
Mireya Máruqez-Ramírez; Claudia Mellado; María Luisa Humanes; Adriana Amado; Daniel Beck; Jacques Mick; Cornelia Mothes; Dasniel Olivera; Nikos Panagiotou; Svetlana Pasti; Henry Silke; Colin Sparks; Agnieszka Stepinska, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan; Gabriella Szabo; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Moniza Waheed; Haiyan Wang • Detached watchdog versus adversarial reporting: a comparative study of journalistic role performance in 18 countries • This paper analyses the performance of the detached/passive and the adversarial/active orientations of the watchdog role (N= 33,640) from 18 countries, modelling the factors that better explain their presence in the news. The findings showed that the detached watchdog prevails around the world, although significant differences appear in the type of hybridization of journalistic cultures depending on the orientations – passive versus active – of the watchdog role. The data revealed that the adversarial/active type of watchdog prevails in advanced democracies with contexts of political and economic turmoil, and also in some transitional democracies from Eastern Europe; while the passive stance of this role peaks in liberal democracies such as the United States and Germany. Our results also indicate that societal variables are the strongest predictors of both types of orientations, but specially of adversarial reporting.
Rachel Mourao, Michigan State University; Weiyue Chen, Michigan State University • Covering protests on Twitter – The Influences on Brazilian Journalists’ Social Media Portrayals of the 2013 and 2015 Demonstrations • This paper uses a media sociology approach to untangle how multiple influences shaped the way Brazilian journalists tweet about left and right-leaning protests. Through a mixed methodology matching survey to social media data, we found that individual attitudes predict the way reporters tweeted about protestors, indicating that social media is a space for personal, not professional, expression. As a result, patterns of protest coverage were often challenged, suggesting that Twitter has not yet been normalized.
karlyga myssayeva, al-Farabi Kazakh National University; Saule Barlybayeva, al-Farabi Kazakh National University; Sayagul Alimbekova, al-Farabi Kazakh National University • Political News Use and Democratic Support: A study of Kazakhstan’s TV impact • This study examines the impact of television during the democratization process in Kazakhstan. Television plays a significant role as a public watchdog, with greater success than other media in disseminating a range of perspectives, information, and commentary in Kazakhstan. The analysis examines whether televised political news and information leads to support for democracy and increases public interest in the democratization process. The study discusses the utility and implications of the role of television in democratization.
Olga Kamenchuk, Ohio State University; erik nisbet • Liberation or Control? How do the attitudes of Russian Facebook users differ from those on Runet platforms Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki? • We examine the potential of social media to be a technology of liberation or control in Russia. We theorize that Facebook users, as opposed to users who only use co-opted Russian platforms will express more pro-democratic attitudes. Employing a nationwide household survey conducted in 2016 our analysis shows Facebook users are less trusting and more critical of the government and also express greater support for civil liberties than Russian’s who only use Vkontakte or Odnoklassniki.
BRETT LABBE, University of Indiana South Bend; SangHee Park, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater • U.S. News Media’s Framing of the ‘North Korean Crisis’ Under the Trump Administration: The New Ideological Foreign Affairs Paradigm • On 11 February 2017, North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of the Trump Administration. Over the ensuing year the North Korean government continued to defy international pressures through the intensification of its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. During this timeframe, an escalation of adversarial rhetoric between the Trump Administration and the Kim Jong-un military government gained widespread media attention for its potential to escalate into military aggression. This study analyzes USA Today coverage of the ‘North Korean crisis’, and its subsequent de-escalation following the announcements of diplomatic talks in March 2018 in order to gain insight into the nature of mainstream U.S. media framing of the issue. Consistent with ‘Cold War’ and ‘War on Terror’ framing scholarship, this study found that the mainstream U.S. media facilitates the construction of dominant, ideological narratives that guide dominant interpretations of the international system and the United States’ position and actions within it.
Subin Paul, University of Iowa; David Dowling • Dalit Online Activism: The Digital Archive as a Site of Political Resistance in India • As digital news archives maintained by mainstream media outlets and libraries proliferate across the world, much less is discussed in academic literature about the efforts of socially marginalized groups to document their news stories. Our case study of Dalit Camera (DC), an online news archive based in Hyderabad, India, examines how historically disadvantaged groups such as Dalits, or “Untouchables,” are leveraging digital tools to narrate their oppressive past to the outside world parallel to the rise of political censorship in India. As part of its archiving process, DC is preserving footage of Dalit resistance against the hegemonic domination by caste Hindus and is thus becoming a useful resource for journalism history scholars. Through their grassroots network of citizen journalists, DC is also engaged in reporting caste-based discrimination and violence today, contributing to the Dalit social movement for equality and justice. Using Manuel Castells’s insights on social movements in the digital age and situating the work of DC within the field of Subaltern Studies, our essay explores the challenges and politics of news archiving in contemporary India, in the process explaining how various socio-political factors curate the content of news archives, and consequently, the construction of journalism history.
Victoria Knight, University of Georgia; Ivanka Pjesivac, University of Georgia; Michael Cacciatore, University of Georgia • Otherization of Africa: How American Media Framed People Living with HIV/AIDS in Africa from 1987 to 2007 • This study examined otherization framing of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa in American media 1987-2007. The results of a content analysis of the representative sample of news articles from three outlets (N=421) show that American media overwhelmingly used otherization frames throughout the 20-year period, in relation to negative article tone. The study represents the first attempt to quantify otherization framing of Africa in HIV/AIDS context. The implications for international reporting and theory are discussed.
Jyotika Ramaprasad • Journalism Ethics and the BRICS Journalist • This paper presents results of a survey of journalists from BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) on their ethical orientations: absolutist, situationist, subjectivist, and exceptionist. These orientations are personal level generalized ethical beliefs based on a person’s relativism and idealism in the ethics arena. Individual, work related, and societal level factors are considered as correlates to assess how much they account for these beliefs.
Nataliya Roman, University of North Florida; Mariam Alkazemi, Virginia Commonwealth University; Margaret Stewart, University of North Florida • Tweeting about Terror: Using World Systems Theory to compare international newspaper coverage online • This study looks at news coverage of terrorist attacks on Twitter over a five-year period. It examines Twitter accounts of three American and three UK elite newspapers. This study found that World Systems Theory predicted terrorist attacks coverage in the American media, but not in the UK media. Terrorist attacks in core countries received significantly more attention than attacks in non-core countries in the American media. Also, this study revealed that just three terrorist attacks: January and November 2015 Paris attacks and Brussels 2016 bombings, accounted for nearly a half of the overall U.S. and UK tweets examined in this study.
Jane B. Singer, City, University of London; Marcel Broersma, Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen • Innovation and Entrepreneurship: International Journalism Students’ Interpretive Repertoires for a Changing Occupation • Amid ongoing media disruption worldwide, discourse about journalism has increasingly emphasized innovation within the newsroom and the rise of entrepreneurial initiatives outside it. This paper uses the concept of interpretive repertoires to understand how international students preparing for journalism careers understand innovation and entrepreneurialism in relation to changing industry circumstances and long-standing conceptualizations of occupational norms and behaviors. We find shared repertoires that embrace technological change, but generally within an acceptance of traditional normative practice.
Elizabeth Stoycheff, Wayne State University; Maria Clara Martucci; G. Scott Burgess, Wayne State Univesity • To censor and surveil: Cross-national effects of online suppression technologies on democractization • Using country- and multi-level analyses, we assess whether internet censorship and surveillance obstruct democratization, providing the first cross-national tests of online surveillance effects. Across 63 countries, online government monitoring is negatively associated with democratization, while internet censorship exhibits no additional effect. We theorize that suppression technologies erode democratic progress by thwarting collective action and examine how they affect individual-level disruptive political participation in a sub-sample of 21 countries. Together, these results suggest the need for greater scrutiny of surveillance and censorship technologies and the countries that use them. Political implications are discussed.
Linsen Su; Xigen Li • Perceived Agenda-Setting Effects in International Context: Media’s Impacts on Americans’ Perception toward China • The previous studies on agenda setting mainly address the effects on aggregate level without full consideration of individual differences. The current study puts forward a highly-related but different concept—the perceived agenda setting effects of media by the audience. The study confirms the existence of perceived agenda setting effects through a structured online survey (N=848) of American adults in April 2016. It finds that coverage on issue involving US interests has the strongest perceived agenda setting effect, while coverage on Chinese tourism has the least effect. The study finds that the media use, interest in China, and media trust are all positively related with perceived agenda setting effect, but direct experience of traveling to China has no significant effect. The study identifies the mediation effect of media use on perceived agenda setting effect through interest, but moderation effects of media trust and direct experience are not significant.
Miki Tanikawa • Is “Global Journalism” truly global? Conceptual and empirical examinations of the global, cosmopolitan and parochial conceptualization of journalism • An acute debate has arisen among some journalism scholars as to whether or not a brainchild of the age of globalization was born in the media world: global journalism. This study introduces the debate and conceptually clarifies the points of disagreement between the two camps including those who deny its existence. In a parallel quantitative study, measures developed to capture the concepts, “stereotypes” and “domestication” whose existence in the news journalism is viewed as inconsistent with the tenets of global journalism, were employed, and found that such content has increased in major international news media in the last 30 years.
Olesya Venger • Nation’s Media Usage and Immigration Attitudes in Europe: Exploring Contextual Effects Across Media Forms, Structures, and Messages • Drawing upon theories of social threat and media systems, the current study uses aggregate data on 20 European nations to examine the basic relationship between nation’s media usage, public attitudes about the general consequences of immigration, and their specific beliefs about immigrants worsening the nation’s crime problem. Nations with higher daily usage of newspapers and the internet were found to have more positive general attitudes toward immigrants, but television viewership was not significantly associated with these attitudes. Regardless of media source, national attitudes about immigrants causing crime were also unrelated to the density of media usage within these countries. Content analyses of several national newspapers (e.g., UK, Hungary, Sweden) were conducted to help understand the pattern of these aggregate relationships and other supplemental analysis revealed the moderating effects of nation’s media system on these results. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and their implications for future research on media’s role in shaping public attitudes about immigration and other social issues across different types of media forms, structures, and messages.
Anan Wan, University of South Carolina; Leigh Moscowitz, University of South Carolina; Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina • Online Social Viewing: Cross-Cultural Adoption and Uses of Bullet Screen Videos • Bullet screen technology, is an innovative way of presenting online videos, allowing viewers to contribute comments that simultaneously appear over the videos. Popular in East Asia, the technology is making its way to American audiences. This study employs a comparative qualitative focus group approach to explore how American and Chinese viewers respond to and interact with this new format of online videos. Three themes have emerged: 1) unique affordance, 2) barriers to adoption and usage, and 3) cultural differences pertaining to technology adoption and usage. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Aimei yang, University of Southern California; Wenlin Liu, U of Houston; Rong Wang • Discourse of the Cross-Sectoral Alliances Network in the Global Refugee Crisis: Studying CSR through a Global Perspective • The scope and magnitude of the current global refugee crisis is unprecedented. This crisis has posed severe challenges to social stability and sustainable development around the world. Surprisingly, in an era when corporations are expected to take part in addressing social issues, our initial assessment showed that some of the largest corporations in the world have communicated their alliances with NGOs and IGOs on the refugee issue quite differently. We draw upon the National Business System Theory and the Media Repertoires Approach to understand what factors influence corporations’ CSR communication of strategic alliances with nonprofit and public-sector organizations on the refugee issue. Findings of this study showed that countries’ economic inequality, citizens’ education level, and philanthropic culture, as well as the nature of digital media platforms affected the communication of cross-sector strategic alliances. Implications for CSR theory and practices are discussed.
Li ZHI, Cityu University of Hong Kong; Limin Liang • Media Improvisations and Bureaucratic Tensions in China:Transcending media control & news routines in disasters • In the controlled media environment in China, marketized media go beyond their normal reporting mode when bureaucratic tensions arise in the propaganda system’s response to major disasters. This study builds on the framework of regulated marketization and the literature of fragmented authoritarianism in understanding Chinese media and the propaganda system. Through analyzing 36 significant disasters and conducting a case study on one typical disaster, it reveals how marketized media get the chance to strive for more autonomy and improvise new strategies to report disasters. Regulated by the Party-State, marketized media must follow the propaganda apparatus’s reporting guidelines in routines. The media’s journalistic roles, norms, obligations are confined to the limited realm delineated by the reporting guidelines. Even in the very unexpected and newsworthy disasters, the marketized media need to abide by the guidelines. They could not go beyond the routine practices and improvise strategies to accommodate the disasters, when the Party-State’s control are strict and consistent. However, sometimes, the propaganda agencies involved in disasters may lack good coordination or have conflicts of interests. Such tensions delay, suspend, and nullify some of the strict reporting guidelines, making disasters venues for improvisations.
History 2018 Abstracts
The Amateurs’ Hour: South Carolina’s First Radio Stations, 1913-1917 • John Armstrong, Furman University • This paper provides evidence that South Carolina’s first civilian radio stations appeared in 1913, not 1930, as has been suggested in histories of the state. Based on primary sources, it also provides a case study in how a poor, highly rural state made its first contact with radio broadcasting and radio networking through the efforts of amateur radio operators.
“Your paper saved Seattle”: E.W. Scripps, a man of contradictions, responds to the Star’s coverage of the General Strike of 1919 • Aaron Atkins, Ohio University • In February 1919, unionized workers across trades joined shipyard laborers in Seattle in an effort to raise stagnant shipyard wages, frozen for two years during U.S. involvement in World War I. The joint effort resulted in the country’s first labor action recognized with a general strike designation. Newspaper mogul E.W. Scripps built his media empire on a business model championing the working class and supporting labor unions. He owned the Seattle Star, one of the pillar daily newspapers of Scripps’s organization. Following the conclusion of the strike, Scripps was informed that Byron Canfield, editor of the Seattle Star, had turned the Star into a mouthpiece for the city’s mayor leading up to and during the strike, and used it to vilify the workers and call repeatedly for the strike to end. This paper examines the Star’s coverage of the strike and Scripps’ response through original copies of his personal letters, essays, and disquisitions, housed in a special collection at the Ohio University library. It determines whether Scripps supported his editor and newspaper when doing so would help his paper turn a profit, or whether he held fast to his pro-working class business model at a time when the actions of the working class directly and negatively affected one of his pillar news operations.
Elmer Davis and His Anti-McCarthyism Broadcasts on ABC Radio • Ray Begovich, Franklin College • Using primary sources from the Library of Congress, this study examines how broadcaster Elmer Davis, of ABC Radio, challenged the anti-communism tactics of Joseph McCarthy. The study shows how Davis was an early McCarthy critic, and that Davis’ challenges to McCarthy were years ahead of Murrow’s famous See It Now TV takedown of McCarthy. The study provides examples of how Davis repeatedly called for common sense in the first month after the beginning of McCarthyism.
“We matter”: The launching of a counter-narrative Black public affairs program in Columbia, S.C. • Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina • Through oral history interviews and archival documents, this article examines how African American public affairs shows, like Awareness, played an integral role in the Civil Rights Movement by presenting a counter-narrative to what was seen on mainstream news. Through this counter-narrative, Awareness had the unique ability to elevate the conversation beyond protests and demonstrations, and deeply discuss issues that could potentially alter the Southern mindset of stereotypical Blacks and improve race relations in the South.
Pulpit and Press Pioneer: Samuel E. Cornish, the Minister, before founding Freedom’s Journal • Kenneth Campbell, University of South Carolina • Before becoming a founding editor of Freedom’s Journal, America’s first African American newspaper in 1827, Samuel E. Cornish trained in Philadelphia to be a minister in the Presbyterian Church. It was an interesting choice given that black religious denominations were being formed, a number of other white denomination had black congregations, and the Presbyterian Church supported African colonization of blacks. Cornish, who became the second African American licensed as a minister in the Presbyterian Church (1819), began his ministry preaching in rural Maryland, Delaware and Pennsylvania (1819-1821). He moved his ministry to New York and established the first African American Presbyterian Church in the city (1821-1823). This first-time detailed examination of this aspect of his background shows his decision to join the Presbyterian Church resulted in coverage in newspapers and magazines and exposed him to contacts with white leaders who might have influenced him as he helped found Freedom’s Journal.
The War Council: Editors’ Publicity Campaign for Louis D. Brandeis’s 1916 Supreme Court Nomination • Erin Coyle, Louisiana State University; Elisabeth Fondren, Louisiana State Univeristy; Joby Richard, LSU • This study reveals ways “publicity friends” sought to influence public opinion during the Supreme Court nomination of Louis D. Brandeis in 1916. Editors of The New Republic, Harper’s Weekly and La Follette’s Weekly coordinated publicity for Brandeis, their friend, fellow progressive, and political ally. The analysis of archival sources shows that these advocates strategically used publicity to support Brandeis, consciously engaging in agenda building to shape public opinion and persuade senators to support Brandeis’s appointment.
Constructing (“Typhoid”) Mary Mallon: How Public Health and Journalism Criminalized the Healthy Carrier • Katie Foss, Middle TN State University • In 1907, health officials blamed Mary Mallon for transmitting typhoid fever, forcing her to live in quarantine for 26 years. Newspaper coverage analysis of what would become the case of “Typhoid Mary” demonstrates how her intersectionality as a woman and immigrant of low socioeconomic class in this unique cultural moment immortalized Mary as the public health scapegoat. Moreover shifting models in journalism and medicine highlight the growing acceptance of public health authority over personal autonomy.
Walter Lippmann and the Follies of Detachment • Julien Gorbach, University of Hawaii at Manoa • This study examines Walter Lippmann’s fraught relationship with his American Jewish heritage, and the implications that had for his ideas and practice of journalism. Lippmann has been touted by journalism historians—most notably Michael Schudson—as “the most wise and forceful spokesman for the ideal of objectivity” during the years when objectivity became adopted as the foundational standard for the profession. But Lippmann has also been roundly criticized as a self-hating Jew for columns about Jewish assimilation and the rise of Hitler, columns that, like all his writing, were shaped by a belief in journalistic detachment. Lippmann’s mishandling of what was then called “the Jewish question” highlights the dilemma of weighing a journalist’s professional commitment to detachment against the contrary dictum that the best journalism “comes from somewhere and stands for something,” as National Public Radio’s Scott Simon once put it. The imbroglio is a story worth revisiting, not only because it yields fresh insight into objectivity by focusing on a key challenge for its most famous champion, but also because it offers clarity about Lippmann’s nuanced ideas of reporting and news that remain poorly understood, despite the extraordinary attention that already has been paid to his work.
The German-American Press and Anti-German Hysteria during World War I • Kevin Grieves, Whitworth University • During World War I, the German-American press became a lightning rod for anti-German sentiment in the U.S. New rules required German-language papers to supply English translations, and many publications faced bankruptcy. Some of the most strident attacks came from English-language journalists. This study examines how editors of German-language newspapers positioned their publications during World War I, responded to attacks from other journalists, and how they articulated their professional stance in relation to loyalty to the government.
Henry Luce’s American & Chinese Century: An Analysis of U.S. News Magazine’s Coverage of General Chiang Kai-shek from 1936 to 1949 • Danial Haygood, Elon University; Glenn Scott, Elon University • Time magazine founder Henry Luce was accused by his critics of using his media empire to support and promote General Chiang Kai-shek and his ruling Chinese Nationalist party during the pre-war, World War II, and Chinese Civil War eras. This research reviews the U.S. news magazines’ coverage of Chiang to determine how the general was presented and if these portrayals were different. The research also determines whether a Luce agenda was included in Time’s coverage.
Driving and Restraining Forces Toward the Marketization of Broadcasting in the UK in the 1990s • Madeleine Liseblad, Arizona State University • Broadcasting evolved rapidly in the United Kingdom in the 1990s. All aspects of the television newscast changed and broadcasting became properly marketized. This case study examined societal driving and restraining forces, using change theory and force field analysis. Driving forces included competition, technology, and American consultants, while restraining forces included a resistance to change, money, unions and a fear of Americanization. The ITV franchise auction and privatization were both driving and restraining forces.
Retreat from the Golden Age: Russian Journalists & Their World, 1992-2000 • Rashad Mammadov; Owen V. Johnson, Indiana University • The overall processes in the first decade of independent Russian media can be described as the path of the media from its golden age of political independence in early 1990s, to the establishment of partial government control along with increased proximity to the ruling elites by the presidential elections of 1999 and transfer of power to Vladimir Putin in the year 2000. We argue that although understanding of professionalism among Russian journalists may differ from western standards, primary reasons why Russian media gave up much desired independence were complicated economic realities of transitional society, raising interest of the new financial elites-oligarchs in media and re-asserted political influences.
“Songs of the Craft:” poetry in 20th-century U.S. newsrooms • Will Mari, Northwest University • Throughout the twentieth century, reporters and other news workers not only wrote about the news, they wrote about each other, their bosses, their daily grind in the newsroom and journalism itself in the form of poetry. This occupational verse was a way to relieve workplace tension, vent about controlling editors and annoying readers, and fulfill a playful impulse (and kill time between assignments). Written by practicing journalists for their newspapers and trade publications, it also occasionally appeared in memoirs and dedicated collections of workplace poetry. More prosaically, it was written on scraps of notepad paper or typed up to be posted to newsroom bulletin boards. Newsrooms were not known as centers of reflection—loud, busy, swirling with immediate concerns (primarily deadlines, but also editors)—but reporters nonetheless found space for poetry. This paper explores how occupational poetry, sometimes called “doggerel” by critics but even by its own creators (who were often self-deprecating), was part of American journalism’s professionalization project and reflected changing newsroom values, priorities and a broader white-collar consciousness among news workers. Ephemeral by nature, newsroom poetry nonetheless survives into the present as an important commentary on the occupation.
Winning Women’s Votes: Dotty Lynch and the Gender Gap in American Politics, 1972-1984 • Wendy Melillo • Dorothea “Dotty” Lynch became the first female pollster to head the polling unit for a presidential campaign. As the chief pollster for Gary Hart’s 1984 race for the Oval Office, she developed the first women focused strategy to be used in a presidential campaign. Based on a decade of work tracking a phenomenon in American politics known as the “gender gap,” Lynch’s work is significant for the contribution she made to help explain why the gender gap existed. She also pioneered the way for women in public opinion polling to work on presidential campaigns in a field heavily dominated by men.
Textbook News Values: A Century of Stability and Change • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • This paper examines the historical contingency of news values as evidenced in journalism historiography and more than a century of journalism textbooks dating to 1894. Textbooks are important distillers and (re)constructors of journalists’ conceptions of news and not-news. Findings suggest that while key news values such as timeliness, proximity, conflict, and impact have held stable since the early 1900s, the way those values are applied to reporting depends on the socio-cultural context of the era.
Mortimer Thomson’s Witches: Undercover Reporting on the Fortune-Telling Trade • Samantha Peko, Ohio University • In 1857, the New-York Tribune hired a “stunt boy ” Mortimer Thomson to go undercover to have his fortune read for a series titled The Witches of New York. The series was launched in response to a number of advertisements for clairvoyants who offered services from matchmaking to curing illness. Thomson’s satirical accounts of his adventures at the “witches'” homes were a popular read for audiences as it sought to expose the clairvoyant’s deceptions.
Voices on Woman’s Suffrage: Lingering Structures of Feeling in 1917 U.S. Letters to the Editor • Lori Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee • Following the cue of cultural studies scholars Raymond Williams and James Carey, this study attempts to recover the cacophony of voices chiming in on woman’s suffrage that echoed across America through published letters to the editor in fourteen mid-sized and mass-circulating newspapers in 1917, a pivotal year in the battle for woman’s suffrage. Overall, a census of 386 letters to the editor related to woman’s suffrage were analyzed through a discourse analysis.
Newspapers as Quasi-Stationery in Nineteenth Century America: The Economic Role of the Letter-Sheet Price-Currents • Bradford Scharlott, retired; Matthew Baker, Westminster College, UT • Letter-sheet price-currents appeared in at least 22 American cities between 1819-1869. These publications were newspaper/stationery hybrids, with at least half of their space filled with commercial information, and the rest left blank for writing a letter on. Middlemen merchants used these for communicating with their customers, often paying to have their firm’s “business card” information prominently displayed, thus personalizing the publications. Advances like telegraphic services and interregional trains killed off the letter-sheets by the 1890s.
Southern Education Report: An examination of a magazine’s contribution to education news in the civil rights era • Melony Shemberger, Murray State University • The U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) is one of the most pivotal ever rendered by the highest court. The monumental ruling ended a segregated system in education and affected education news. This paper explores the Southern Education Report, a bi-monthly magazine (1965-69) published by the Southern Education Reporting Service, and argues that it contributed the kinds of education news that mainstream news media failed to cover.
‘More news space:’ Money and Publisher W. E. ‘Ned’ Chilton III, 1953-1984 • Edgar Simpson, Central Michigan University • The owner/publisher of West Virginia’s largest newspaper, The Charleston Gazette, spent his time in an oak-lined office in the newsroom, exhorting his editors and reporters to uphold his philosophy of sustained outrage. This study, using the theory of the public sphere, examines this philosophy and how it related to his unusual approach to business, including his own advertisers.
The Rationales for Public Relations: The Engineering of Human Interactions • Burton St. John, Old Dominion University • The field of public relations has long attempted to signify the value it offers to societal discourse, deliberation, and decision making. This work finds that public relations, in its attempts to establish itself as a field, has articulated four rationales that all focus on engineering human interactions. This work ends by pointing to how public relations needs to moderate its four rationales so that it can more adequately address the concerns of multiple publics.
Journalism with the Voice of Authority: The Rise of Interpretive Journalism at The New York Times, 1919-1931 • Kevin Stoker, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • This study examines that early evolution of interpretive journalism at The New York Times from 1919 to the 1931, when the newspaper’s Sunday edition began to devote an entire section to interpretive reporting and commentary. Based on Richard V. Oulahan’s reporting and an examination of the business correspondence of The New York Times, this paper chronicles the evolution of interpretive reporting from a type of reporting unique to a particular journalist to an institutionalized style of reporting appearing in the Sunday Times. This study shows that the emergence of interpretive reporting at the Times coincided with Oulahan’s tenure in Washington, the expansion of international coverage, editorial innovations in the Sunday paper, and response to interpretive commentary in a competing newspaper.
Race and Rhetorical Choices: Newspaper Coverage of Detroit’s Twelfth Street Riot • Brandon Storlie, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The July 1967 riot in Detroit, Michigan, was one of the most violent race-related conflicts in American history. Common themes developed in both local and national media coverage of the event, including widespread use of wartime imagery. This study examines the frames and techniques used by three major newspapers when covering the riot and ultimately questions whether local news outlets are those best equipped to cover violent events within their own communities
Making China Their “Beat”: A Collective Biography of U.S. Correspondents in China, 1900-1951 • Yong Volz, University of Missouri; Lei Guo • This study examines the social composition of the U.S. correspondents in China during the first half of twentieth century. Borrowing Bourdieu’s concept of capital and adopting the collective biography approach, this study analyzed the demographic characteristics and career paths of 161 such correspondents to illustrate the opportunity structure and its historical variations in the largely unstructured field of foreign correspondence in China during its formative years.
The Delphian Society and Its Publications: A Historical and Cultural Analysis of a Primer for Middle-Class Women’s Education • Sheila Webb, Western Washington University • The Delphian Society was founded in Chicago in 1910 to educate women in the great ideas of Western society so they could become productive and knowledgeable citizens at a time when women were reconceptualizing their roles in public and civic life. This study examines the publications of the Society; describes the historical backdrop in which the Society was founded; analyzes the importance of the self-education and self-culture movements; and places the publications within the Progressive milieu. At the forefront of exploring adult education, the Society dovetails with other efforts at middle-class edification as the Book of the Month Club and such magazines as Life, which attempted to shape and elevate the taste and discernment of its middle-class readers. The Society partook of the same energy as the newly formed correspondence courses and drew members from the well-established women’s clubs. Each of these venues helped define what was worth knowing. However, the Delphians were unique: no other texts, institutions, or organizations were devoted to women’s education at the highest level or fostered deliberative social interaction and civic advancement. No scholarly work has been done on the publications. This study considers two themes, both related to women’s and cultural history. The first is an analysis of the Society itself, which reflected the growing interest in women entering public life fully prepared with a foundation in the history, art, literature, and politics of the Western world. The second thread considers the Society as fulfilling the role of cultural intermediary in the formation of taste publics, and argues that the role of cultural intermediaries was performed by the editors and writers of the Delphian publications, who could be considered missionaries of culture to their readership. Reader response theory informs the interpretation of how members benefited; the concept of imagined communities is applied to the national conversation in which members engaged.
Electronic News 2018 Abstracts
Media Use and Political Participation: A Comparative Study of U.S., Kenya, and Nigeria • Oluseyi Adegbola, Texas Tech University; Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University • This study compares whether news use across media platforms is differently related to online and offline political participation in the U.S., Nigeria and Kenya. Through secondary analysis of data collected from a worldwide survey of adults (N = 1,775), this study found country-specific differences in how both views on national politics and media use predicted political participation. Specifically, there were differences in the effects of traditional and new media on online and offline political participation.
Poles Apart: Influence of Ideology, Partisan Social Media Use, Discussion and Polarization on Belief Gaps • Tom Johnson, University of Texas at Austin; Heloisa Aruth Sturm, University of Texas at Austin; Lourdes Cueva Chacón, University of Texas at Austin; Jordon Brown • The role of social media in the 2016 election shows the need to study its influence on the belief gap. This study examines the extent to which ideology, partisan social media use, polarization, and political discussion on social media influence false beliefs toward race and immigration. We found that partisan social media use is linked to affective polarization, conservative social media use increases belief gaps on immigration, and issue polarization is linked to belief gaps on both immigration and race.
Factors Motivating Customization and Echo Chamber Creation Within Digital News Environments • Brooke Auxier, University of Maryland, College Park; Jessica Vitak, University of Maryland • In today’s digital environment, news consumers may experience information overload. To combat feelings of unease associated with the influx of news content, some consumers tailor their news ecosystems. This study explores customization and identifies motivating factors. Results from an online survey (N=317) suggest that consumers who diversify their online news streams report lower levels of anxiety related to current events. Findings also suggest differences in reported anxiety levels and customization practices across the political spectrum.
Real Time Political Deliberation on Social Media: Can Televised Debates Lead to Rational and Civil Discussions on Broadcasters’ Facebook Pages? • Lindita Camaj, University of Houston • As broadcast news organizations partner with social media to generate real time reactions to live political debates, this article explores how this trend impacts discussions among their Facebook page users. Data from the 2016 U.S. elections suggest that comments posted on the Facebook pages of ABC and NBC were more rational and civil than comments posted on the Facebook pages of CNN and Fox News. Moreover, discussions prompted by candidate acclaims and policy issues resulted in more deliberate conversations than discussions prompted by opponent attacks and candidate character.
Small Station with Big Voices: Giving a Microphone to Communities Through Student-Citizen Collaborations • Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky; Mike Farrell, University of Kentucky; Kakie Urch, University of Kentucky; Yung Soo Kim • This study offers insights into citizens working with emerging reporters in a journalism capstone course at a U.S.-based university from the perspective of journalism as process and collaboration. Their joint efforts resulted in radio news stories airing on local broadcast stations. Through a series of conversations, unchanged views were found regarding the roles each group was viewed to perform, but mutual respect was developed as citizens gained skills/journalistic style; students gained community connections/general life lessons.
“I know from personal experience”: Shared news consumption and citizen knowledge exchange on Reddit • Corinne Dalelio, Coastal Carolina University; Wendy Weinhold • This study is an investigation into aspects of citizen knowledge sharing around news in the informal online “community of practice” found on Reddit.com/r/news, such as tacit vs. explicit knowledge sharing, tone and incivility, and knowledge questioning. It was found that: 1) incivility was not a hindrance to knowledge exchange, 2) tacit and explicit knowledge sharing occur with equivalent frequency, and 3) knowledge of other participants was questioned more often than that of an outside source.
Personalized news in the age of distraction • Lisa Farman, Ithaca College • This experiment explored the extent to which the cognitive load experienced during multitasking affects attitudes toward and recall of personalized online news. Personalization led to more positive attitudes toward news, and distraction led to worse news topic recall but better detail recall. Distraction also led to less perceived credibility of the news website, which led to more negative attitudes toward the news. No interaction effects were observed, and there were no differences based on multitasking habits.
Technical Frames, Flexibility and Online Pressures in TV Newsrooms • Victor García-Perdomo, Universidad de La Sabana • This research takes a socio-technical approach to understanding TV changes brought by online video platforms. This paper explains how online professionals working for TV stations are implementing digital technologies into their newsrooms to reinforce their online presence. Through participant observation and in-depth interviews, it shows how socio-economic forces and journalistic practices shape technology but, at the same time, it reveals how platforms impose their logic on news production and make producers to lose some control.
How do Lebanese television channels engage with Twitter? An exploratory study into its uses • Claudia Kozman, Lebanese American University; Raluca Cozma, Kansas State University • Through a content analysis of tweets belonging to local television channels in Lebanon, this study sought to examine patterns of their Twitter usage. Guided by the uses and gratifications framework, the current research found that Lebanese broadcast media use Twitter as a one-way tool to disseminate information, rarely making use of its interactivity features. These media tended to discuss news more than any other function, focusing mainly on politics and public affairs.
Frames and sources of links in the climate discussion on Twitter, 2012-2015 • JA Lavaccare, Michigan State University; Kjerstin Thorson, Michigan State University; Luping Wang, Cornell University • We analyzed the 200 most tweeted links during 10 major events related to the climate change issue to find what media sources were most commonly shared, and how this changed over time (2012-2015) and across events. We find that mainstream news media remain dominant. In the second phase of the study, we analyzed framing of the climate issue in widely shared news stories, and how the popularity of frames has changed over time. Notably, a Morality frame was boosted by two major speeches from Pope Francis.
When Everything Else Fails: Radio Journalism during Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico • Yadira Nieves; BRUNO TAKAHASHI, Michigan State University; Manuel Chavez, Michigan State University • In an era of over-reliance on online media technologies in disasters this research assesses the journalistic functions played by Puerto Rican AM radio stations in Hurricane Maria. Throughout the emergency there was total loss of electricity and communications nonetheless local radio maintained operations. This study is one of a few that explore journalistic practices during a disaster in the context of a Spanish-language media system. Through a qualitative analysis of in-depth interviews to radio workers researchers found that in spite of having preparedness plans the magnitude of the disaster led to improvisation and the embracing of alternative journalistic roles. While radio workers were also victims of the disaster they were forced to take on first responder roles.
Prosodic elements for content delivery in broadcast journalism: A quantitative study of vocal pitch • Shawn Nissen, Brigham Young University; Quint Randle, Brigham Young University; Jenny Lynnes, Brigham Young University; Jared Johnson, Oklahoma State University • Through a quantitative analysis, this exploratory study examined the prosodic elements of mean pitch, pitch variability and pitch range in a sample of 450 voiceovers and throws from 90 male and female broadcast reporters and anchors from larger markets across the United States. Findings indicate that compared to typical speakers in the general population male broadcasters actually speak with an elevated mean pitch, more pitch variability and use more range. However, female broadcasters were found to speak at slightly lower mean pitch levels when compared to other female speakers in the general population (but like males with more variability and range). It is hoped that this study will serve as a starting point in moving broadcast vocal coaching from that of just an art to a bit more of a science.
Rehash or Reset? Examining the intermedia agenda setting effect between Twitter and newspapers on climate change • Yan Su, Washington State University • The purpose of this study was to explore the intermedia influence between Twitter’s and newspapers’ agenda on climate change. Accordingly, using Trump’s announcement of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement as a dividing point, the current study compares the issue agendas on Twitter and newspapers before and after the announcement, analyzing both rank-order correlation and cross-lagged correlations between the two platforms. Results suggested that newspapers influenced Twitter before the announcement, while Twitter conversely influenced newspapers’ agenda within five days after the announcement was released, which challenged the assertion that individuals often discuss online within a few days of the reported news coverage. However, although reciprocity appeared, Twitter’s influence was found ephemeral, newspapers regained the dominant role in intermedia agenda setting from the sixth day after the announcement.
Reactance to fact checking: Facebook users’ evaluations of and intentions to share fake news • Shawna White; Nicole Lee, North Carolina State University • Fake news has become a prominent topic since the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Facebook developed a fact-check warning system designed to identify misinformation. We conducted a 2 (warning/no warning) x 2 (RNC/DNC) between-subjects online experiment (N = 235) to test the efficacy of this system, and to investigate whether psychological reactance produces backfire effects. Results revealed the negative outcomes outweighed the positive, explained in part by reactance, particularly when retracted misinformation aligned with partisan predispositions.
Cultural and Critical Studies 2018 Abstracts
Objectified Yoga: Commodity, Identity, and Embodiment in US Women’s Magazines • nandini bhalla, University of South Carolina; David Moscowitz, University of South Carolina • Using framing analysis, this research examines the portrayal of yoga in the U.S. women’s magazines. Textual analysis of narrative and images from three popular women’s magazines demonstrates how the representation of yoga objectifies one type of female embodiment for the purpose of commodity. The majority of images featuring the bodies of slim, white, upper-class women perpetuate not only the commodification of yoga, but also media framing of its negotiation and appropriation to support a multi-million-dollar industry.
The Symbolic Annihilation of Wendy Davis in the 2014 Texas Gubernatorial Election • Jordon Brown • The 2014 Texas gubernatorial election was similar to the rest of that year’s election results. This race, however, was marred with misogynistic attacks leveled at Democratic candidate Wendy Davis. This research explores two incidents – her Republican opponent thanking a supporter who called her “Retard Barbie” and when protest posters identified her as “Abortion Barbie” – through the lens of symbolic annihilation, and how the top five Texas newspapers used omission, trivialization, and condemnation in their coverage.
“Without Women There Is No Revolution:” A Feminist CDA of Ni Una Menos’s Twitter Communications • Ayleen Cabas, University of Missouri • This paper examines the Twitter communications of the Argentine collective Ni Una Menos to assess its strategies to advance feminist politics and goals in the country. By means of a feminist critical discourse analysis, the study finds that the online discourse of Ni Una Menos was geared towards the transformation of awareness into collective action, and the creation of empowered identities for victims and allies.
A Theoretical Model on How the Media Play a Role in Celebrification Analyses: Based on Bourdieu (1986) and Driessens (2013) • Li Chen, Syracuse University • Beginning with the construction of public persona in the media, the current paper proposes a theoretical model on celebrification analyses addressing the accumulation of three capital forms: cultural, celebrity, and social capital. Once these capital forms are recognized by the audience via the media, they are converted to symbolic capital, exactly at that moment the individual achieves the celebrity status. This theoretical model aims to provide clarification for further empirical exploration on celebrification.
“For India is to be Redeemed!”: Reflections of an American Missionary in British India • Khadija Ejaz • This paper uses Orientalism to analyze a nineteenth century book by an American missionary – the founder of Indian Methodist Christianity – about colonial India. He conceives of two Orients in India, that is, Islam as a rival to Christianity and Hindus in need of Christian salvation. This enables a religious justification for colonization that, while unexpectedly is not revealed to be shared by all Europeans and Christians, mirrors previously studied gendered aspects of colonialism.
The end of ombudsmen? 21st-century journalism and reader representatives • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder • In May of 2017, The New York Times announced it would eliminate its public editor position, something a growing number of news organizations have done in the 21st century. Using the theory of metajournalistic discourse as a framework and textual analysis as a methodology, this study examines how actors within or on the boundaries of the journalism industry reacted to the news and defined the ombudsman position. The data illustrated that today’s public editor should be a watchdog of the news organization, perform some public relations functions, be a conduit between readers and a newsroom, and build trust with readership. The coverage of the Times’ decision was unilaterally negative. Finally, the author then argues the merit of the position in today’s journalism industry.
Ignoring Our Own Cultural Imperialism: New York Times’ International Coverage of Birth Control 1960-2002. • Ana Garner; Christina Mazzeo, Marquette University • Ignoring Our Own Cultural Imperialism: New York Times’ International Coverage of Birth Control 1960-2002. The United States has spent decades and billions of dollars in reproductive aid to foreign countries in order to further its economic and political interests. Between 1960-2002 the New York Times covered U.S. efforts to regulate reproduction in non-U.S. countries. The newspaper reported on U.S. involvement in birth control and family planning abroad, but largely ignored non-U.S. citizen voices and failed to question U.S. policies and fiscal and cultural role in regulating reproduction abroad.”
Identity Formation and Voter Suppression: The Iconography of Fake Memes in the 2016 Presidential Election • Melissa Janoske, University of Memphis; Robert Byrd, University of Memphis; Dana Cooper, University of Memphis • This study offers a new methodological perspective on understanding visuals with iconography, which allows for analysis of both real and fake social media-based memes from the 2016 presidential election, visuals rich in social, political, and cultural history. Here, the iconographic approach uses description, analysis, and contextual interpretation, as well as the roles of identity formation and belongingness, in order to better understand the impact and future of memes in the American political process.
Resilience, Positive Psychology, and Subjectivity in K-pop Female Idols: Evolution of Girls’ Generation from “Into the New World” (2007) to “All Night” (2017) • Gooyong Kim, Cheyney University of Pennsylvania • This article examines how music videos of Korean popular music (K-pop) promote a discourse of resilience as a neoliberal ideal of female subjectivity. In a therapeutic narrative of overcoming obstacles and achieving goals, the videos provide audiences with a message that individuals have to be responsible for their success and well-being rather than complaining external, institutional hindrances. While ostensibly promoting female empowerment, the videos update and reinforce patriarchal gender norms and expectations.
Talking back: Journalists defending attacks against their profession in the Trump era • Michael Koliska, Georgetown University; Alison Burns; Kalyani Chadha, University of Maryland, College Park • The survival of the institution of journalism is dependent on a cultural discourse, which can be described as institutional myth. The recent attacks and accusations that equate journalism in the United States with being ‘fake news’ have led journalists and news organizations to defend this institutional myth. This research examines the various discursive strategies employed by journalists to uphold public legitimacy of journalism as an institution, through an analysis of their public responses.
Trash and Treasure TV • Sean Leavey, Rutgers University – School of Communication and Information • This paper focuses on a subgenre of reality television (RTV) that I call “Trash and Treasure TV.” I argue that Trash and Treasure TV surfaced after the Great Recession to promote neoliberal ideologies of risk-taking, self-reliance and entrepreneurship at precisely a time when well-paid jobs and the social safety net continued to erode. Although, as demonstrated by data gathered through interviews and observation, there are limits to the influence of RTV as technique of governmentality.
Between Emotion, Politics and the Law: Narrative Transformation and Authoritarian Deliberation in a Mediated Social Drama • Limin Liang • Through studying media discourses surrounding a land-disputes-triggered vengeful murder in China and its subsequent trial (the “Jia Jinglong Case”), the article examines “narrative transformation” in a contentious social drama and similar events’ deliberative potential for an authoritarian society. Previous studies adopting the social drama paradigm usually follow how events move from an instrumentality-driven “crisis” phase to a value-driven “ritual” phase. However, in this case, crisis was preceded by a verdict sentencing the accused to death that failed to be seen as fair, after scholars made concerted calls for leniency via social media. Henceforth, what ought to be a ritualized trial regressed into a political contest, as “a victim’s story” turned into “a revenge story” symbolizing larger social injustice. But “a strategic contest” does not exhaust the meaning of the case, which also produced a liminal moment inviting reflexivity on the norms governing social life. The paper proposes a model for authoritarian deliberation in which “events crystalize into issues”. It argues that while the alliance between state and media/intellectual elites in a Chinese society with declining ideological hegemony is sustained by instrumental interest, contentious events provide opportunities to bring elite dissent into sharp relief. In this case, media engaged other social institutions in a contentious public performance that ultimately affirmed the perpetuation of schism than consensus, but in its process also encouraged deliberation.
Imagining the Other: Transnational Documentaries & the Politics of Sexuality • Shehram Mokhtar • This paper focuses on recent transnational documentary films that address the question of non-normative sexuality in the non-Western world. These documentaries include festival-centered films produced independently and features commissioned by broadcasting organizations such as the UK’s BBC Three and U.S. based youth driven VICE Media. These films, directed towards and available online for transnational audiences, produce a popular discourse of universal sexuality. This discourse reifies Euro-American center and its teleological temporal schema imagines the sexuality of the other as lagging behind the center requiring the labor of catching up to its ideals. While these films make visible the center, they deploy tropes that devoid others of epistemological agency, historical specificity, and contextual complexity. In this paper, I closely read documentary films and features such as Oriented (2015), How Gay is Pakistan (2015), Dream Boat (2017), and Being LGBT in the Islamic Republic of Pakistan (2017) and demonstrate how they function individually as well as in cohesion with one another to produce a discourse of sexuality within the frameworks of freedom and unfreedom, abundance and lack, and timeliness and belatedness.
The People Could Fly: (Re)Imagining the Slave Experience Through Afrofuturistic Readings of a Black Folktale • Taryn Myers • “They say the people could fly. Say that long ago in Africa, some of the people knew magic. And they would walk up on the air like climbin up on a gate. And they flew like blackbirds over the fields” (Hamilton, 1985, p. 166). This is the introduction to Black folktale, The People Could Fly, written by world-renowned children and young adult fiction writer, Virginia Hamilton. This introduction illustrates the purpose of this essay which is to demonstrate the traces of mythical Africa that exist in Black folktales. By theorizing Hamilton’s folktale through the framework of Afrofuturism, this essay will highlight the emancipatory potential prevalent in Afrofuturistic renderings of the Black American experience. This analysis will specifically focus on the folktale named for the title of the book, The People Could Fly.
Old Norms, New Platforms: Objectivity and U.S. Reporting About Race in a Digital Era • Carolyn Nielsen, Western Washington University • This study examined the journalism norm of objectivity as conceptualized by U.S. reporters who cover racial issues in Traditional and emerging, digitally enabled models of journalism called Interactive Race Beat and Journalism 3.0. Data from interviews with journalists in each model show how Traditional journalists who cover racial issues are pushing back against objectivity as an outdated norm and how journalists working in the two emerging, digitally enabled models never subscribed to the concept of objectivity because it centers Whiteness, tells reporters to ignore their own identities, and serves to perpetuate racial stereotyping. These findings, interpreted through the lenses of new institutionalism and the Hierarchy of Influences Model, show a strong departure from a longitudinal body of scholarship documenting how Traditional journalists have strongly valued objectivity as a norm. Data also show how reporters in the new models did not bring objectivity into new journalism spaces.
The Discipline-Autonomy Paradox: How Journalism Textbooks Construct Reporters’ Freedom Just to Tear It Down • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • This study foregrounds the paradox in journalism culture whereby journalists are taught both that they have substantial freedom of judgment and that they must constrain such judgment to meet the narrow, often unspoken common-sense expectations of their peers. Through the lens of Foucault’s concept of discipline, I analyze this contradictory discourse in 75 journalism textbooks spanning the birth of formal journalism education at the turn of the 20th century through the present era.
Tsunamis on the U.S.-Mexico Border? Use of metaphors in news coverage of unaccompanied minors • Christa Reynolds, University of Arizona; Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante, University of Arizona • This study uses content analysis to examine newspaper coverage of unaccompanied Central American minors who crossed to the United States in 2014. The paper builds on previous research on immigration coverage that focuses on the use of metaphors and the sources that are included in news reports. Findings demonstrated that metaphors were used in more than half of all news reports, suggesting that this practice not changed much in the past 20 years.
Public Discourse at a Moment of Racial Reckoning in a Progressive City: An ideological analysis • Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Applying racial formation theory, this research argues that when progressivism becomes the status quo, it loses its focus on reform and progress. A Critical Discourse Analysis reveals how the ideology evolves into a “racial project” perpetuating systems of oppression. When a moment of racial reckoning emerges, politicians, activists, journalists, and engaged citizens employ discursive strategies to uncover privileges, call out (dis)-trusting relationships, and reclaim the dominant narrative around what reform and progress really look like.
Democratizing Online Journalism Labor: Freelance Journalists’ International Battles Over Digital Rights • Errol Salamon, University of Pennsylvania • Grounded in a critical political economy of communication approach, this paper builds on the concept of alternative communication, examining the labor organizing efforts of freelance journalists at the international level and the digital media tools that they use to resist unfair freelance contracts. It relies on a digital labor standpoint methodology of documentary sources from a freelancers’ international labor organization and one media company.
Numinous Fortune and Holy Money: Dave Ramsey’s Cruel Optimism • John Sewell, The University of West Georgia • This essay is an ideological analysis of Dave Ramsey’s best-selling book, The Total Money Makeover, to parse how its messages implicitly and explicitly promote neoliberal ideology. It is argued that Ramsey persuades by melding the bootstrap narrative, the appeal of American “givens,” and a self-presentational style akin to Lakoff’s (2002) “strict father” model, delivering an oversimplified message to an audience desirous of “straight talk.” Ramsey’s rhetoric supports neoliberal ideology by overlapping popular American mythologies and motifs to deliver a message of virtuous independence that is attained, quite simply, by (first) paying one’s bills and (then) amassing wealth. Building wealth is a virtue, and the wealthy are the virtuous. Ramsey’s common sense worldview finds its basis in the amorphous religiosity of just plain folks and cruel optimism. Ramsey deftly straddles the tangible, lived world of economics and the intangible world of the spiritual by positioning himself as neither a prophet nor an expert, either a prophet or an expert, and as being both a prophet and an expert—whichever of these argumentative positions works best, given the exigencies of a particular utterance. Ramsey paints himself as a rebel who mounts his opposition from within the system: He is a rich capitalist who defies lenders and America’s culture of debt; he is suspicious of academics and avowedly anti-elitist; the personal finance strategies he advocates are framed as nonconformity, nevertheless yielding a contingent neoliberal Truth that is anything but emancipatory for the lower-middle class readers Ramsey claims as over half of his audience.
Teenagers, Terrorism, and Technopanic: How British Newspapers Framed Female ISIS Recruits as Victims of Social Media • Sara Shaban, University of Missouri • In 2015, three teenage girls from London were recruited by ISIS via social media. British news discourse focused on the role of gender and technology in ISIS recruitment. Through the lens of technopanic, a textual analysis of British newspapers revealed two dominant themes: 1) the victimization of female ISIS recruits and 2) the technological fetishism of social media focused on individualized solutions rather than engaging discourse on the appeal of anti-Western ideologies.
Othering by historicizing: The journalistic technique of locating foreign societies in the past • Miki Tanikawa • Drawing on cultural theories, this article probed the “myth” in the news (international) using a combined quantitative and qualitative framework for investigation. Three major newspapers in three different countries were content analyzed and found that most articles that pivot on well-known foreign cultural stereotypes or a mythical image invoke one of three types of theme/content: a well-known point of ancient history, a media myth built over decades or a “lived” experience of the audience.
Taxi Drivers as Reporters: Studying the Distinctive Journalism of the UTCC Voice Newsletter • Krishnan Vasudevan, Philip Merrill College of Journalism, University of Maryland, College Park • In 2008, a group of immigrant taxi drivers in Chicago began publishing a monthly newsletter called the UTCC Voice. The newsletter blends elements of investigative journalism, community organizing and opinion writing. As the multimodal grounded analysis of this study found the UTCC Voice is a space for taxi drivers to report on human rights abuses against them, develop a cohesive voice and identity, and present themselves outside the realm of harmful stereotypes.
Anti-Establishment Voices: Tensions of Fascism and Postmodernity in Balkan Rock Music • Christian Vukasovich • Following the Balkan civil wars ethno-nationalism continues to impact identity both in the former Yugoslav republics and abroad among the diaspora. The rise of ethno-nationalism and far right populism in political discourse has been preceded and is presently accompanied by fascist discourse in popular culture throughout Europe. In this paper the author examines how a popular rock music group (Laibach) rearticulate fascist symbolism through their polarizing concert events. More specifically, the author conducts a rhetorical analysis of both groups’ music, images, pageantry and lyrics in order to interrogate the celebrations of fascism in their performances. The author examines the tensions reproduction and representation, as well as how the concerts discursively construct history, culture, nationhood, religion and belonging that undermine contemporary ideologies of fascism through extreme performance and deconstruction.
Glocal Television Possibilities: When Guyana Meets US Appeals • Carolyn Walcott, Georgia State University; Emeka Umejei, Wits, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa • This paper examines the responses of Guyanese audiences to the flow of cultural products from Hollywood through the lens of hybridity and homogenization. Building on the concept of Contra-flow of cultural artifacts, the study provides an audience reception analysis of 560 Guyanese. A total of 560 questionnaires were self-administered on 560 Guyanese in the capital city and its outskirts, based on a random sample of respondents’ representative of the demographics within those areas. The findings suggest a predominant local appeal for global content based on perceived superior production quality. The survey also reveals an appreciation for locally produced genres that meet international standards thus accounting for the hybridization that characterizes local productions that borrow from US formats. Homogenization also reveals itself through local films produced by CineGuyana film producers as Glocalized cultural artifacts capable of creating modest cultural contraflows.
Local Identity in a Global City: Social Media Discourse of Hong Kong Localist Movement • Yidong Wang • The discursive construction of a local identity was central to the Hong Kong localist movement. I investigated how this local identity was constructed in Facebook posts by localist groups. It was found that the colonial past was purified through the narrative of the “local youth” and was used to distance the local identity from the Chinese identity. However, the redemption of the local through the non-local failed to institutionalize the interests of local communities.
Making Sense of Tastemaking: How Music Journalists Interpret Culture — and Their Place in It • Kelsey Whipple, University of Texas at Austin • Through in-depth interviews with 10 music journalists at various American publications, this research applies critical cultural theory and the concepts of taste and high vs. low culture to lifestyle journalism and cultural criticism. It explores how music journalists interpret popular culture and situate music journalism within it. Although music journalists don’t like to be labeled “tastemakers,” they contribute to the development of taste while seeking to inform readers about music and create distinct authorial voices.
Examining Affordances of African Agency through Cultural Brokerage in Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown • Tewodros Workneh, Kent State University • An award-winning CNN prime time culinary adventure reality television show, Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown explores various global social groups and their cuisine. Drawing on postcolonial approaches and the intercultural contact notion of cultural brokerage, this study critically examines the portrayal of Africa and Africans in Parts Unknown. The study concludes, whereas immersed brokers in the show resurface outdated and clichéd images of Africa, hybrid brokers offer pathways of African agency.
Communication Technology 2018 Abstracts
Faculty Paper Competition
No time to think: The impact of smartphone technology on mindfulness and reflection • Mary Beth Bradford, Florida Southern College • As smartphones have become more prevalent in society, so have become consequences. Using research from Carr (2010) and Turkle (2015), this study investigated the relationship between smartphones and reflection, mindfulness and hyperactivity. The results showed that smartphone addiction symptoms of withdrawal are significantly related to hyperactivity and negatively related to reflection. Phubbing, which is snubbing others with a smartphone, is negatively related to levels of mindfulness. Social media addiction was not a significant predictor.
Pro-Vaxxers Get Out: Anti-Vaccine Advocates Influence Questioning First-Time, Pregnant, and New Mothers on Facebook • Amanda Bradshaw, University of Florida; Summer Shelton, University of Florida; Easton Wollney, University of Florida; Debbie Treise, University of Florida; Kendra Auguste • Facebook has revolutionized health information-seeking behavior with crowd-based medical advice. Decreased vaccination uptake and subsequent disease outbreaks have generally occurred in localized clusters based upon social norms; however, geographically unrestricted Facebook networks may promote parental refusal congruent with digital identity formation. Interactions within the largest closed Facebook group for vaccination choice were analyzed through the lens of Social Influence Theory. Anti-vaccination advocates impacted questioning mothers’ expressed vaccination intentions through both informational and normative influence processes.
Anyone Can Be a Troll: Predicting Behaviors and Perceptions of Uncivil Discourse Among Reddit Users • Daniel Montez, Brigham Young University; Pamela Brubaker, Brigham Young University; Scott Church, Brigham Young University; Ching (Jina) Shih, Brigham Young University; Spencer Christensen, Brigham Young University • Uncivil discourse is an increasingly pervasive problem on computer-mediated communication platforms. This study examined predictors of trolling behaviors as well as perceptions of trolling among 438 Reddit users. A path analysis indicated malicious motives mediated the relationship between personality traits (i.e., the Dark Triad) and online incivility. Outspokenness did not directly or indirectly predict incivility. Results also showed that both those with malicious motives who more or less serve as malicious online lurkers, as well as those who are uncivil online (i.e., trolls), view trolling as a functional approach to online discourse. This was further supported as both groups of individuals considered trolling as not being dysfunctional. Those who merely observed incivility on Reddit did not consider trolling to be a functional part of online discourse. Age, time spent on Reddit, and the Dark Triad did not predict functional/dysfunctional perceptions of trolling.
Risk Factors for Cyberbullying Victimization: A Survey of Adult Internet Users in 19 Countries • Tiernan Cahill, Boston University; Kate Mays, Boston University; John Donegan, Boston University; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James H. Liu, Massey University • Research on cyberbullying has historically focused primarily on the experiences of children and adolescents and been limited to cross-sectional associations between risk factors and outcomes. The present study expands the understanding of causal risk factors for cyberbullying victimization among adults through a longitudinal panel survey of Internet users in 19 countries. The risk factors investigated include demographic attributes, online behavior, and personality attributes.
Emotional expression and social media practices: A social identity-based perspective • Xi Cui, College of Charleston • This study explores general patterns of the relationship between emotional expressions and social media practices such as hashtags and post sharing with three datasets of two breaking events and one longitudinal collection. We assume a social identity perspective and attend to the identity meanings of various hashtags. Findings deepen our understanding of identity-driven social media uses in different topical contexts and possible influence of strategic self-presentation in moderating the expressions of emotions and identities.
Predicting Cellphone Use while Driving and Walking Among College Students • Tao Deng, Michigan State University; Juan Mundel, DePaul University; Kristen Lynch, Michigan State University; Anastasia Kononova; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University • Amidst growing concerns related to use of cellphones while driving and walking, we explored different predictors of risky cellphone use, including demographic factors, psychological individual differences, and problematic use of technology using a cross-sectional survey of college students at a large Midwestern university (N = 577). Results showed that problematic social media use had the strongest predictive power on cellphone use while driving and walking, with psychological individual differences predicting risky cellphone use while driving.
Facilitating Role of Opinion Climate in Speaking Out: Testing Spiral of Silence in Social Media • Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University • Through secondary analysis of data collected from a nationwide survey of adults (N = 956), this study uses the spiral of silence theory to examine the facilitating potential of the opinion climate cultivated on social media. Specifically, the role of individuals’ previous experience of online harassment via social media in speaking out is examined. Results identify potential positive effects of like-minded online opinion environment in facilitating speaking out behavior.
From the Margins to the Newsfeed: Social Media Audiences’ Disruption of the Protest Paradigm • Summer Harlow, University of Houston; Danielle Kilgo, Indiana University • This content analysis expands protest paradigm research, examining the relationship between social media audience engagement and newspaper articles about protests in 2017. Results showed stories that were not posted to social media housed more negative frames and devices that delegitimize protesters. For select protests, audiences engaged more with articles with legitimizing content, suggesting users, like journalists, follow a paradigm that legitimizes some protests and marginalizes others.
Instagramming Social Presence: A Test of Social Presence Theory and Heuristic Cues on Instagram Sponsored Posts • Erika Johnson, East Carolina University; Seoyeon Hong, Rowan University • This study investigates Social Presence Theory, using sponsored posts on Instagram. By testing a 3 (social presence) x 2 (heuristic cues) x 2 (source of sponsorship) mixed subjects experiment (N = 378), the results showed significant main effects of social presence, heuristic cues, and source on social media engagement. Results show that higher social presence, higher likes (heuristic), and official sources lead to higher social media engagement. Our findings provide empirical evidence for how to effectively deliver sponsored contents on Instagram.
I DON’T USE FACEBOOK ANYMORE: An investigation into the relationship between the motivations to leave Facebook and the Big Five personality traits • Seoyeon Hong, Rowan University; Klive (Soo-Kwang) Oh, Pepperdine University • This study linked the Big Five personality traits with motivational factors to leave Facebook. The Big Five were expected to predict eight factors retrieved from existing literature. Results showed that neuroticism was positively related to addiction, banality, peer pressure, and privacy while conscientiousness was negatively related to peer pressure, addiction, annoyance, and emergence of new platforms. Openness was positively related with banality but negatively with addiction and peer pressure. Theoretical and practical interpretations are also discussed.
Who are the second screeners? Personality traits predicting dual screen use • Brigitte Huber; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James H. Liu, Massey University • This study investigates the relationship between personality traits and second screening for politics worldwide. Employing two-wave panel-data from 19 countries, this study tests how the Big Five personality traits relate to dual screening practices. Results show that extraversion positively predicts second screening. In contrast, agreeableness and openness to new experience are negatively related to second screening. Moreover, multilevel analysis is performed to test whether the between-country variation is related to cultural and technical indicators.
Pundits, Presenters and Promoters: Investigating Gaps in Digital Production among Social Media Users Using Self-Reported and Behavioral Measures • Ke Jiang; Rui Wang; Lance Porter; Martin Johnson • We investigate the relationship between the social characteristics of social media users and their production of digital content. Matching survey data with self-reported user profiles and a year’s worth of actual posts on Twitter, we found four dominant fields of discussion and three main types of actors participating in these discussions. Pundits, presenters and promoters tweeted about different combinations of lifecasting, politics, promotion and entertainment to gain digital capital in 2016.
Developing and Testing Web-based Avatar Customization as a Self-Affirmation Manipulation Tool • Hyunjin Kang, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University; Hye Kyung Kim, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University • In two lab experiments, this study tested the potential of web-based avatar customization as a new self-affirmation manipulation method. Study 1 (N = 126) found that the process of avatar customization has a self-affirming effect equivalent to a widely used self-affirmation method. Study 2 (N = 139) further found that avatar customization reduces defensive processing of self-threatening health information among those who most likely to be defensive. We discuss practical implications and future research directions.
Effects of User versus Object Agency in Interaction with Smart Objects: A Moderated Mediation Model of Anthropomorphism and Perceived Connectedness • Hyunjin Kang, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University; Ki Joon Kim, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong • In human-IoT interaction, both users and smart objects can exercise own agency. The current study examines interplay of the locus of agency (user vs. object) and anthropomorphic cues on user responses to interactions with IoT mediated by sense of connectedness. Experiment results (N =71) indicated that users generally exhibit more positive responses to IoT interactions when they have own agency. Yet, anthropomorphism was shown to relieve agency tension among users when objects have own agency.
The effects of gratifications on the continuance intention to use a mobile instant messenger service • Hyunjung Kim • In this study, we examined the motivational factors associated with the intention to continue to use an MIM service and explored the relationship between the size of an MIM group chatroom and the respective effects of the motivational factors. The results demonstrate that the effect of the social interaction gratification on the intention to continue using the MIM was greatest among those who mainly use the service for small-group chatrooms with three to five members.
Checking in During Irma: Investigating Motivations, Emotions, and Narratives on Facebook’s Safety Check Feature • Seoyeon Kim; Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jeanine Guidry, Virginia Commonwealth University • This study investigated public discourse on social media during the recent natural disaster Hurricane Irma through a quantitative content analysis of 750 Facebook posts. Levels of public engagement across different motivations for use, emotions, and crisis narratives were examined. Posts elicited higher engagement when users were motivated by information sharing; expressing fear/anxiety; and using victim narratives. Emotions across different crisis narratives are also discussed.
Snapchat Usage from the International Perspective: Comparison between the United States and South Korea • Haseon Park, University of North Dakota; Soojung Kim, University of North Dakota; Joonghwa Lee, University of North Dakota • This study explored international differences in Snapchat usage between the United States and Korea by taking long-term orientation, separateness self-schema, and motivations into account. The results from online survey revealed that both long-term orientation and separateness had positive relationships with attitudes toward Snapchat and intention to use Snapchat. Motivations that significantly influence attitudes toward Snapchat and intention to use Snapchat were also found to be different between the two countries. Implications are discussed.
YouTube, show me “How-to”: exploring parasocial interaction and self-efficacy mechanism governing behavioral intent in YouTube tutorial videos • Hyosun Kim, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point • A web survey was conducted to examine how “How-To” videos on YouTube affect purchase intent toward the products featured in the videos. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the findings suggest that perceived authenticity predicts parasocial interaction, which then affects self-efficacy to predict purchase intent. Thus, results revealed a significant mediating role of parasocial interaction and self-efficacy in the learning process that positively affects people towards buying the product they learned about from the YouTube tutorial videos.
Characteristics of Compensated Consumer Reviews and the Effect of Compensation Disclaimer on Attitude and Purchase Intention • Su Jung Kim, Iowa State University; Ewa Maslowska, University of Amsterdam; Ali Tamaddoni, Deakin Business School • This paper examines different characteristics and effects of compensated versus self-motivated reviews, and the mechanisms behind these effects, using mixed methods in two studies. The findings of text mining analyses suggest that, despite compensated reviews provide more elaborate and evaluative content, they are perceived less helpful than self-motivated reviews. The findings of a randomized experiment suggest that compensation disclosure negatively influence consumers’ attitude and purchase intention via increased suspicion of the reviewer’s ulterior motives.
Peer-To-Peer Connections: Perceptions of a Social Networking App Designed for Young Adults with Cancer • Allison Lazard; Adam Saffer; Lindsey Horrell; Catherine Benedict; Brad Love • Objective: Social support is a critical, yet frequently unmet, need among young adults (YAs) affected by cancer. YAs desire age-appropriate resources that will help them connect to members of the YA cancer community. Given the overwhelming adoption of smart phones among YAs, a peer-to-peer, social networking mobile app is a promising intervention to provide this desired social support if the design affords meaningful connections. Methods: We interviewed 27 members of the YA community to assess perceptions of the Stupid Cancer app. Findings: Most participants expressed interested in using the app to connect with other YA survivors/caregivers. Connection preferences varied by prevalence or rarity of one’s cancer diagnosis. Additional themes shared included: juxtaposition of the desire for profile anonymity versus profiles with more personal information such as pictures, the need for multiple matching algorithms and filter options to find connections that meet varying support needs, and desire for tailored messaging and chat room features (e.g., topic-specific, search capabilities). Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate the promise of using an app-based platform to fulfill YA cancer survivors’ unmet peer support needs. Practical Implications: Peer-to-peer networking apps should be designed so users can control their identify and customize connection features in this underserved cancer population.
Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Social Capital: Examining the Impacts of Mobile, PC, and Tablet Uses on Bonding and Bridging Social Capital • Hoon Lee; Scott Campbell • This study aims to tease out the distinctive repercussion of a particular ICT use for the accrual of social capital. Our results demonstrate mobile phone use is positively associated with bonding capital, whereas using desktop PC explains enhanced bridging capital. It is further shown that private-oriented use of mobile phone mainly contributes to the cultivation of bonding capital while using desktop PC for political ends is the key predictor of augmented bridging capital.
A Review of Media Addiction Research from 1991 to 2016 • Louis Leung, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Cheng Chen • In this review study, a descriptive analysis was conducted of the media addiction research published from 1991 to 2016. The search of all academic output published in 13 major academic databases within the 26-year period yielded 1,099 SSCI/SCI articles that were relevant to this study. The review was focused on the trends, developmental periods, study domains, themes, research methods, measurement instruments, and research purposes in the field of media addiction. The implications of these findings for future media addiction research are discussed.
Does being an expert make you more negative? An investigation of subjective expertise and electronic word-of-mouth communication • Jiangmen Liu; Cong Li, School of Communication, University of Miami • This study aims examines how communicator’s subjective expertise impacts generation of eWOM and through what mechanisms. A 2 (subjective expertise: high vs low) 2 (anonymity: anonymous vs real identity) 2 (audience size: large vs small) between-subjects experiment conducted online. Results revealed a two-way interaction between subjective expertise and anonymity on eWOM valence. Findings provide theoretical contributions to eWOM research by exploring the influences of communicator characteristics and platform characteristics on eWOM generation.
Issue-Based Micromobilization via Call-to-Action Message: Path analysis model linking issue involvement to expressive action in social media • Elmie Nekmat, National University of Singapore; Ismaharif Ismail, National University of Singapore • This study investigates identity- and perceptual-based factors determining individual expressive support for issue-driven collective action on social media. A mediated pathway model positing influence of personal issue involvement via individual-group identification, perceived individual-network issue opinion congruity, and perceived participative efficacy on likelihood to engage in expressive support (commenting, ‘liking,’ ‘sharing’ of message and information) was evaluated. Results reveal group identification as robust mediator of issue involvement, predicting expressive support irrespective of user issue attitudes. Perceived participative efficacy is the strongest predictor of likelihood to express support but, like perceived individual-network opinion congruity, demonstrate variances between users with different levels of issue involvement and attitude. Results suggest a more intricate micromobilization process that needs to consider contextual issue-group positions and status quo in society, as well as counter-groups dynamics on social media.
The Emotional Consequences of Social Exclusion through Social Media • Dominik Neumann, Michigan State University; Nancy Rhodes, Michigan State University • Using social media affords an unfiltered window into the lives of friends. Although this can facilitate positive relationships, it also affords awareness of social activities friends are enjoying, that the user has not been included in. We report an initial, qualitative investigation into perceptions of self-exclusion and ostracism and emotional consequences of these types of exclusion. Thinking about an ostracism situation led to higher anger, and lower regret and happiness than thinking about self-exclusion.
News Finds Them, and Then What? How Post-Millennials Engage with Social and Mobile Media News • Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, University of Connecticut; Preeti Srinivasan, University of Connecticut • The reliance on social and mobile media for news is changing how young adults engage with and learn from news. Focus groups with current college students (N = 60) explore how they experience news via different media formats and how the content influences them. Results reveal social and mobile media as imperfect but unavoidable convenience, a general hesitation to engage publicly with news content, and a sense of awareness of but not learning from news.
Twitter versus Facebook: Discussing Controversial Issues on Social Media • Mustafa Oz, Southern Indiana University • Abstract: This study compares how do people express their opinions on the Facebook versus on Twitter. It was sought to understand whether people were more willing to express their opinions on some social media channels than others. It was assumed that fear of isolation and affordances may influence users’ opinion expression behaviors on social media websites. Overall, the results suggested that people were more likely to express their opinion on Twitter than Facebook when they think the majority does not support their opinion.
Smartphone and Self-Extension: Functionally, Anthropomorphically, and Ontologically Extending Self via the Smartphone • Chang Sup Park, University at Albany, SUNY; Barbara Kaye • This paper focuses on the blurring boundary between the smartphone and humans and aims to identify types of self-extension people experience through smartphone use. Based on in-depth interviews with 60 smartphone users, the findings support three types of self-extension via the smartphone – functional extension, anthropomorphic extension, and ontological extension. The findings suggest that smartphone users perceive that the smartphone has become an important part of their self and influences their identity.
Big data and crowdfunding for startups: An application of social capital theory • Sun-Young Park, University of Massachusetts Boston; Boon Thau Loo • Crowdfunding is a recent financing phenomenon as a tool for startups to raise seed funding for them. Utilizing big data analytics for crowdfunding platforms, such as AngelList (N = 744,036) and Crunchbase (N = 10,156), and social media sites, such as Facebook (N = 37,761) and Twitter (N = 70,563), our research investigates the impact of social engagement on startup fundraising success through the lens of social capital theory. The results show cognitive, structural, and relational dimensions of social capital sources served as important predictors of fundraising for startups.
Predicting Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot Use in South Korea: The Roles of Socio-Demographic Characteristics, Innovativeness, Sense of Belonging, and Computer Self-Efficacy • Kyungeun Jang, Yonsei University; Jinyoung Choi, Yonsei University; Seonggyeol Cho, Yonsei University; Namkee Park, Yonsei University • This study explored the factors that affect individuals’ adoption and use of AI chatbots, focusing on socio-demographic characteristics, innovativeness, sense of belonging, and computer self-efficacy. The study fills the gap between the current use of AI chatbots and the lack of empirical studies that examined the predictors of adoption and use of the technology. The study is also expected to stimulate future research, calling for attention to individual and psychological factors for AI chatbot use.
Take them there: From narrative engagement to behavioral intention in cause-related immersive storytelling • Geah Pressgrove; Nicholas Bowman, West Virginia University; Jennifer Knight • This study explores the role of immersive storytelling in a prosocial context. Across three stories, using immersive storytelling technologies (such as head-mounted displays) led to the highest levels of presence, but there was no association between presence and increased attitudes towards the story content. Only narrative engagement impacted attitudes. Data suggests that telling engaging narratives that increase the viewer’s self-efficacy, independent of immersive technologies, are key to behavioral intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
How Many Will Read It on Reddit? A Model That Predicts Rankings of Reddit News • Aditya Ravindra Bhat; Ronald Yaros, University of Maryland • Research investigated social media sites in the context of user engagement and sharing of news, but few studies have focused on how user interactions could predict the ranking of news sources. 8,300 postings were collected from Reddit – the fourth largest news aggregator in the U.S. – to develop a new formula that can predict rankings of news sources. Initial results indicated the formula can successfully predict Reddit rankings with at least 70 percent reliability.
Predictors of Multiscreen Use: A Comparative Study of the United States and the Netherlands • Claire Segijn, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities; Anastasia Kononova • Previous cross-country studies found that media multitasking was most prevalent in the US and the least prevalent in the Netherlands. The current study seeks explanations for these differences by comparing survey data from the US (n = 314) and the Netherlands (n = 328) and examining audience, media, and cultural factors as predictors of multiscreening, a specific form of media multitasking. The results showed that media factors are the most important predictor of multiscreen use.
Hey Alexa! Tell us Why People Adopt and Trust Voice Activated Digital Assistants • Claire Sauter, St. John Fisher College; Morgan van der Horst; Mary Wilson, St. John Fisher College; Sophia Germano, St. John Fisher College; Ronen Shay, St. John Fisher College • This study employed a survey (n=235) content analysis, and pseudo-experiment to examine the factors that contribute towards the adoption of Alexa, Google Home, and Siri devices. The findings demonstrated perceived companionship with the virtual assistant was the strongest predictor of adoption; statements before wake words are not found in device transcriptions; emotions towards assistants are positive, but neutral towards the degree of privacy; and perceived usefulness is a predictor of trust for all brands studied.
Who Will Reply to A Troll? A Network Approach to Understanding Trolls in Online Communities • Qiusi Sun; Cuihua Shen • This study investigated trolls’ influence in online communities by examining how individual members react toward trolls. Trolls are antisocial individuals provoking emotional responses and disrupt discussions. Using social identity theory and a dataset from YouTube, the study found out that individual members’ centrality, discussion network’s density, other members’ previous response to trolls, and the community’s cumulative response to trolls and the negativity of troll posts are associated with individual members’ likelihood of responding to trolls.
Social media and the classroom: Reversing the knowledge gap through tweets • Jason Turcotte • Knowledge gap theory demonstrated mass media’s role in facilitating learning disparities between the haves and have nots. The knowledge gap is also conditioned by the medium, yet the role of digital platforms is less clear. As social media plays an increasingly routine role as an information source and as a pedagogical tool, this study examines the effectiveness of incorporating social media in mass communication instruction.
Who leads the conversation on climate change?: A study of the global network of NGOs on Twitter • Hong Vu; Hung Do; Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas; Yuchen Liu, University of Kansas • Using a big data approach, this study investigates how climate change NGOs across the world communicate and interact on Twitter. It found that the Global North/South hierarchy is perpetuated in the network of these NGOs, with those from the Global North and Oceania dominating the conversations on climate change. Our social network analyses identified several types of centralities, conceptualized as connectivity, as predictors of an organization’s interactivity and posting. Implications for interorganizational communication and online opinion leadership were discussed.
Space-body Relationship: Visualizing Geolocation on Instagram and the Implications on Psychological Well-being • Shaojung Sharon Wang, National Sun Yat-sen University • This study investigated how location-based image sharing on Instagram might provide meaning for socio-spatial interaction processes by connecting bodies with locations. The results of an online survey showed that the use of Instagram features and visual appeal of an Instagram profile can both significantly predicted the users’ sense of space. Users’ sense of space had a positive impact on inner space and online social support and both inner space and online social support positively predicted three aspects of perceived interpersonal attraction: physical attraction, sexual attraction, and group attraction. The three aspects of perceived interpersonal attraction can further positively predict psychological well-being (PWB). Theoretical implications on how Instagram users might shorten the inner distance and trigger social perceptions by exhibiting external spatial beauty on a visual-oriented social platform to achieve PWB are discussed.
Information Control as a Mood Enhancer: Mood Management through Website Interactivity • Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina; Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Reece Funderburk, University of South Carolina • This paper examines the interplay between mood (positive, negative, and neutral) and website interactivity (high and low) on responses to brand websites. Participants in a negative mood reported greater mood change and more positive attitudes toward a high-interactivity website whereas people in a positive mood exhibited non-significant mood change and comparable evaluations of the websites with different levels of interactivity. Participants in a neutral mood reported non-significant mood change but more favorable attitudes toward a high-interactivity website.
‘This Message Will Self-Destruct’: Brand Use of Ephemeral Content on Snapchat for Strategic Communication • Brooke Smith, Brigham Young University; Christopher Wilson, BYU; Pamela Brubaker, Brigham Young University • This study seeks to understand why and how brands use ephemeral content on platforms like Snapchat. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 23 brand social media managers who were involved in with brands’ Snapchat account. The results show that the ephemerality of the content shared on Snapchat was a key driver in platform adoption. Also, brand representatives wanted to reach younger audiences by telling them authentic visual stories. However, brands must balance the desire for carefully crafted brand stories the rawness characteristic of ephemeral content.
The Alternatives to Being Silent: Exploring the Opinion Expression Avoidance Strategies for Discussing Politics on Facebook • Tai-Yee Wu, National Chiao Tung University; Xiaowen Xu; David Atkin • This study integrates the theories of planned behavior and spiral of silence to examine one’s opinion expression avoidance on Facebook political discussions. Survey results suggest that self-efficacy and subjective norms promote the intention to adopt both tacit and “hassle” avoidance strategies. The latter could even benefit individuals with higher fear of isolation to less explicitly reveal disagreements if normative influence decreases. Findings from this comprehensive framework expand present understandings of online opinion expression and withdrawal.
When Journalism and Automation Intersect: Assessing the Influence of the Technological Field on Contemporary Newsrooms • Shangyuan Wu, Nanyang Technological University; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Charles Salmon • In this era of “big data,” where information circulates in unprecedented amounts, this paper examines the use of automation in newsrooms to manage the data deluge – not from the perspective of news workers, but from the technologists driving these digital innovations instead. Using field theory and in-depth interviews with technological firms, this study maps out the principles and practices of the technological field and the pressures and powers it exerts on the journalistic field today.
How Does Customization Influence Conspicuous Consumption among Socially Excluded versus Included Consumers? • Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Nanlan Zhang, University of South Carolina; nandini bhalla, University of South Carolina; Anan Wan, University of South Carolina • A lab experiment was conducted to analyze how the interplay between social exclusion and customization influenced consumers’ tendency of conspicuous consumption. The results indicated that compared to socially included participants, socially excluded participants expressed a significantly stronger tendency of conspicuous consumption after customizing a website. However, such a difference between social exclusion and social inclusion was not observed among participants who just read the information on the website without customizing it. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed and future research suggestions also provided.
Relationships between Gameplay Motives, Gaming Activities, and Quality-of-Life Perceptions among Older Game Players • YOWEI KANG, KAINAN UNIVERSITY, REPUBLIC OF TAIWAN; KENNETH C.C YANG, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO, USA • Older adults have increasingly become an important and profitable segment. This empirical research analyzed data from 127 older game players (>55 years old) in Taiwan and examined how their gaming activities were influenced by their use motives and whether playing digital games could subsequently influence their quality-of-life (QOL) perceptions. The linear regression analyses found that the motive to seek social connectedness positively predicted their gameplay duration (β=0.36, t=2.76**). Participants’ motive to obtain relaxation also positively predicted their gameplay frequency (β=0.93, t=12.00***). In terms of their quality-of-life perceptions, our study found that gameplay frequency positively predicted participants’ satisfaction with their own material living conditions (β=0.13, t=2.87**) and social relationship with family members (β=0.34, t=4.03***). Commitment to playing digital games, on the contrary, negatively predicted participants’ satisfaction to take part in productive and main activities (β=-0.29, t=-3.28***).
Beyond the “Good or Bad” Typology: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association between Social Media Use and Psychological Well-Being • Fan Yang, University at Albany, SUNY; Ruoxu Wang, The University of Memphis • A meta-analysis of 54 studies was conducted to examine the association between social media use and psychological well-being. Using social media does not necessarily link to users’ psychological well-being because the relationship between the two is contingent upon different types of social media use (active versus passive), motivations for social media use (instrumental versus relational), and age of social media users. However, the association does not vary by social media platforms (Facebook versus others).
Student Paper Competition
Repurposed Geo-data and the Counterpublic: Folk Theories of Remote Check-ins to Standing Rock on Facebook • Jeeyun Baik, University of Southern California • This study defines social media users’ remotely checking in to political locations as an evolving form of counterpublic. It conducted a case study on Facebook check-in posts to Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 2016 where the users virtually stood with protesters who were fighting against the Dakota Access oil pipeline construction. Analyzing the discourse across the public remote check-in posts, five folk theories were identified regarding solidarity, counter-surveillance, privacy, education on geo-data and debunking rumors.
Whenever, Wherever: The Persuasive Effects of Commercials Experienced with Mobile Virtual Reality • Priska Breves, University of Wuerzburg; Nicola Dodel, University of Wuerzburg • With the rise of mobile VR, advertisers started producing immersive commercials in order to engage and persuade consumers. A 2×1-between-subjects-experiment (N=62) was conducted in participants’ living rooms under natural conditions, where they either experiencing the immersive commercial with a cardboard HMD or on a laptop. Serial moderated mediation analyses indicated positive effects of mobile VR due to elevated feelings of spatial presence; however, persuasive effectiveness was only increased if reported cybersickness was low or moderate.
The Effects of Modality, Device, and Task Differences on Human-likeness in Virtual Assistant Interaction • Eugene Cho, Penn State University; Maria D. Molina, Penn State University; Jinping Wang, Penn State University • This study attempts to explore the effects of modality, device, and task differences on attitudes toward virtual assistants (VAs), and the mediating roles of perceived human-likeness. A 2 (modality: voice vs. text) X 2 (device: mobile vs. laptop) X 2 (task type: hedonic vs. utilitarian) mixed factorial experimental design was employed. Findings suggest that voice (vs. text) interaction was mediated by higher level of perceived human-likeness to evoke more positive attitudes toward the VA system, but only with utilitarian (vs. hedonic) tasks. Interestingly, interaction using laptops (vs. mobile phones) also enhanced perceived human-likeness of the virtual agent. This study offers theoretical and practical implications for VA research by exploring the combinational effects of modality, device, and task differences on user perceptions through human-like interactions.
Playing the Visibility Game: How Digital Influencers and Algorithms Negotiate Influence on Instagram • Kelley Cotter • Algorithms regulate who and what gains visibility on social media. Yet, discussions of algorithmic power often neglect the ways knowledge of algorithms might constrain their power. Through a thematic analysis of online discussions among Instagram digital influencers, I observe that influencers actively learn about the platform’s algorithms and pursue influence as if playing a game. Influencers’ discursive interpretations of algorithms—and the “game” more broadly—intervene between the algorithms and influencers to shape influencers’ behaviors.
Moving with presence: A 4-week virtual reality-based exergame training with cognitive challenges on executive functions in people aged 50 and over • Tim Huang, Michigan State University • The older population, which has grown dramatically, is at a considerably higher risk for having problems related to the aging of the brain. Exergames show the potential to combine the cognitive benefits of physical activity and attractiveness of videogames and been found to be more effective as a tool for cognitive improvement in older adults. However, the mechanism by which exergames led to cognitive improvement has not been fully explored. The current research investigated the impacts of immersion (i.e., VR) and types of task-load on cognitive benefits in the context of exergaming and hypothesized the feeling of presence as a mediator between immersion and cognitive benefits. A 4-week exergame training, which consisted of eight 20-minute exergame sessions, was designed to test the hypotheses and answer the research question of the current research. The experiment was a 2 (high immersion vs. low immersion) x2 (task-relevant vs. task-irrelevant loads) between-subject factorial design. The results (N=41) showed that task-irrelevant load led to cognitive improvement immediately after a single-bout training, and immersion had an impact on cognitive impact after the 4-week training. However, the results after the 2-week training showed that both factors played an important role. Furthermore, spatial presence mediates the impacts of immersion on cognitive benefits. The significance of this study includes both theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.
Predictors of Peer-to-Peer Communication among Elder Adults within an Online Interactive Communication System • Juwon Hwang, UW-Madison; Junhan Chen • Despite the benefits and growing interests in online communication using technology among elder adults, little is known about the factors that predict engagement in a computer-mediated social support (CMSS) communication among elder adults. Based on an interactive communication system for elder adults, we explore how psychosocial and physical well-being characteristics predict engagement in peer-to-peer communication. Of eligible participants who were 65 and older, and have experienced one or more of clinical criteria of this study, we analyzed 174 of participants who were assigned to the intervention and used the interactive communication system during the 6-month study period. Results indicated that participants who have better emotional well-being but more physical symptoms were more likely to engage in online peer-to-peer communication. Specifically, elder adults with higher social support and a bigger size of the social network, and those with less depression were more likely to engage in peer-to-peer communication, whereas those with more physical symptoms and worse physical quality of lives were more likely to interact with peers.
How should an embodied conversational agent carry out small talks? The effect of the agent’s passivity in small talks on user psychology • Jin Kang, The Pennsylvania State University; Lewen Wei, Pennsylvania State University • We examined how an embodied conversational agent (ECA) should carry out small talks with human users. In a 3 (agent type: active vs. passive vs. control) x 2 (topic: selfie vs. etiquette) between-subjects online study, participants interacted with a fictitious ECA who engaged in small talk as an active participant or a passive observant of human culture. We found that the passive agent elicited higher threat to uniqueness and perceived interactivity than the active agent.
Snapping Up Legacy Media: Using Theory of Affordances to Explain How News Outlets Behave on Snapchat • Eun Jeong Lee, Texas State University • This study uses an affordances approach to explore how U.S. media outlets utilize Snapchat to reach young people, the audience least engaged with traditional media. Using content analysis and interviews, this study found that publishers on Discover adopt Snapchat’s affordances and adapt their story topic and presentation of content with an emphasis on the visual. Yet, differences emerge between traditional “legacy” and “new” media outlets, especially in news judgment.
International Student’s Social Networking Sites Use, Perceived Social Support, and Acculturative Stress • Lin Li • This study examined the mechanisms through which ethnic and host social networking site (SNS) use influenced international students’ acculturative stress. By surveying international students in an American university (N = 263), the study found that host SNS use was associated with less acculturative stress through the increased level of social support from the host country, while ethnic SNS use was associated with more acculturative stress through the decreased level of social support from the home country.
Intermittent Discontinuance: The case of Twitter • Margaret Yee Man Ng • Early studies tend to view innovation discontinuance as a one-time complete abandonment of an innovation in use. However, this study argued that post-adoption behavior is not simply a binary distinction between use and non-use, but is a wide array of practices enacting varied degrees of engagement with and disengagement from an innovation. Using a national Twitter user survey (N = 419), this study identified differences (i.e., demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics) among continuing adopters, intermittent discontinuers, and permanent discontinuers.
Normalized Incivility: Two Studies of Social Cues in Online Discussion Environments • David Silva, Washington State University • Civility is required for democratic political communication, but the frequency of incivility online presents a vexing problem. This study approaches incivility from a social psychological framework and tests the efficacy of social cues on discussion intention. Findings from two experiments show group norms predict group identification, which affects communication intentions. Some social cues reduce perceptions of normative incivility, but others have adverse effects. Best practices and future research are discussed considering these results.
The Effects of Expectation Fulfilment of Likes on Anxiety and Depression: The Role of Perceived • Lipei Tang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Using a cluster sampling method, this study (N = 475) proposed and tested a moderated mediation model to examine the effect of expectation fulfilment of Likes on social media on anxiety and depression. Results found both conditional direct effect and conditional indirect effect of expectation fulfilment on people who Liked on anxiety and depression through perceived social support (importance of social media post as moderator). Theoretical implications are discussed.
“NextDoor People Are Nuts”: Analyzing Twitter Perspectives About the People and Purpose of NextDoor • Kelsey Whipple, University of Texas at Austin • This qualitative textual analysis examines how social media users characterize NextDoor, the private, geo-specific social platform dedicated to fostering neighborhood communities online, on another social platform: Twitter. By exploring the major themes of Twitter public discourse about NextDoor, this study seeks to analyze NextDoor’s role within a larger network of virtual online communities, as well as understand what type of people are assumed to use it and how users share and prioritize information.
Self-control and Media Multitasking: The Role of Conflict Identification and Intrinsic Motivation • Shan Xu, Ohio State University; Guanjin Zhang, Ohio State University • Based on the preventive interventive (PI) model of self-control, the current study investigates how trait self-control influences multitasking while studying and pinpoints two mediators: intrinsic motivation and conflict identification. Results from a survey study suggested that students who scored high on trait self-control were more likely to identify a conflict between media multitasking and schoolwork, and had a stronger intrinsic motivation toward study, which in turn decreased media multitasking during educational activities.
Human-like vs. Robot-like Voices: The Impact of Voice Cues of a Virtual Health Assistant and Health Information Sensitivity on Users’ Perception and Behavioral Intentions • Hyun Yang, The Pennsylvania State University; Ruosi Shao, Penn State University • This study shows (1) the relationship between voice cues of a virtual health assistant and perceived social presence; (2) the relationship between perceived social presence and credibility; (3) the moderating effect of trustworthiness beliefs in machine/human on the relationship between voice cues and perceived credibility; (4) the effects of perceived credibility on self-disclosure and behavioral learning intentions; and (5) the effect of health information sensitivity on self-disclosure intention. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.
Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk 2018 Abstracts
Encouraging Safe Wildlife Viewing in National Parks: Effects of a Risk Communication Campaign on Visitors’ Behavior • Katie Abrams, Colorado State University • Seeing wildlife in their natural habitat with little to no boundaries or protections can have some undesired consequences, especially as people get up close to animals. In four national parks, we tested the effects of a risk communication campaign designed using several elements from previous research and relevant theories on how close national parks’ visitors got to wildlife. Results showed, once the campaign was in place, fewer visitors were observed within unsafe distances to wildlife in three of the four parks.
Mapping perceived barriers to science communication: Inter-issue and inter-group comparisons • Lee Ahern, Penn State; Sushma Kumble, Towson; Jeff Conlin; Jinping Wang, Penn State University • The science of science communication has established that barriers to science communication are different for different science issues, for different audiences, and in different contexts. The research presented here takes a novel approach to measure and visualize the public’s—and scientists’—perceived barriers to effective science communication for specific issues. Results provide face validly for the approach, with known audience difference and issue differences mapping out significantly differently across perceived barriers to effective science communication.
Barriers in Communicating Science for Policy in Congress • Karen Akerlof, American Association for the Advancement of Science, George Mason University; Maria Carmen Lemos, University of Michigan; Emily T. Cloyd, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Erin Heath, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Selena Nelson, George Mason University; Julia Hathaway, George Mason University; Kristin Timm, George Mason University • How does Congress use science? And what are the barriers that staffers experience in finding, interpreting, and using scientific information in energy, environment, and science portfolios? This qualitative study of 16 interviews with Republican and Democratic staffers from the House and Senate applies a science usability model to the hyper-polarized legislative context, finding similarities, and some potential differences, between “strategic” use of science to support or defend policy positions and “substantive” use in policy decisions.
A Content Analysis of e-Cigarette Brand Messages on Social Media • Jordan Alpert, University of Florida; Huan Chen; Alyssa Jaisle, University of Florida • Although rates of cigarette smoking in the U.S. are declining, E-cigarettes (e-cigs) are rapidly expanding. While there is no definitive conclusion yet on the dangers of e-cigs, data indicates that e-cigs can be addictive and dangerous since they contain nicotine. The FDA permits e-cig brands to market their products, but imposed restrictions on messages that promote flavors and claims that e-cigs are healthier than cigarettes. However, these rules can be circumvented within social media platforms like Twitter. The objective of this study was to perform a content analysis of tweets posted by the top selling e-cig brands on Twitter to identify and categorize the most frequently utilized communication strategies. Using the hierarchy of effects framework, over 500 tweets were analyzed, which resulted in behavioral messaging as the most often used messaging strategy, followed by affective and cognitive. Findings indicate that brands are creating messages in Twitter to engage with followers, offer discounts, and advertise flavors. However, tweets about the positive health effects of using e-cigs were minimal. Implications of unregulated messages within social media include attracting young adults to become part of the e-cig community, which can lead to trial and frequent usage.
Exploring differences in crisis literacy and efficacy on behavioral responses during infectious disease outbreaks • Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Brooke Liu, University of Maryland; Seoyeon Kim; Yan Jin • This study examined the effects of efficacy and literacy on individuals’ information seeking and protective action taking during infectious disease outbreaks through a nationally representative survey of 1,164 U.S. adults. New measures of crisis efficacy and disaster literacy were tested. Results revealed that crisis efficacy, organizational efficacy, and disaster literacy drove information seeking and protective action taking, while health literacy did not. Interestingly, disaster literacy negatively predicted both information seeking and protective actions.
Shall we? Let’s Move! • Aqsa Bashir, University of Florida • Beyond her status as the wife of the first African American U.S. president, former First Lady Michelle Obama is famous for her commitment to health and fitness. In 2010, she launched the Let’s Move! Campaign, aimed at combating childhood obesity in order to achieve a healthier future for America. Little research has examined the media coverage this campaign received. Hence this paper describes a framing analysis of media coverage by two popular news sources, one conservative—FOX News, and one liberal—CNN. The analysis revealed three distinct frames: healthy future for American children, policy change, and exercise is trendy. Furthermore, the campaign received more positive coverage from the liberal news source as compared to more neutral coverage by the conservative news source.
Strategic Communication as Planned Behavior: What Shapes Scientists’ Willingness to Choose Specific Tactics • John Besley, Michigan State University; Kathryn O’Hara, Carleton University; Anthony Dudo, University of Texas, Austin • Truly strategic science communicators make careful choices about the goals and communication objectives they seek to achieve. They then select the tactics that have the most likelihood of allowing them to achieve their communication objectives ethically and efficiently. However, little previous research has sought to develop and test theory aimed at understanding these choices. The current study therefore aims to contribute to the development of a theory of strategic science communication as planned behavior based on the Integrated Behavioral Model. It does so in the context of exploring Canadian scientists’ reported willingness to choose six different tactics as a function of attitudes, normative beliefs and efficacy beliefs. The results suggest that beliefs about both response-efficacy and self-efficacy, and perceptions of ethicality and norms, are important predictors of willingness when considering a tactic. Differences between scientists in terms of demographics and related variables provide only limited benefit in predicting such willingness.
Bringing People Closer: The Pro-Social Effects of Immersive Media on Users’ Attitudes and Behavior • Priska Breves, University of Wuerzburg • This experimental study (N = 85) examined how varying the degree of immersiveness of a short documentary about a remote health issue influenced users’ reported spatial presence, feelings of empathy, perceived issue importance, and behavior. Participants watched the documentary using either a high-quality VR headset (HTC Vive), a low-quality cardboard VR headset or a regular computer screen. Technology’s immersiveness affected the dependent variables as predicted, increasing spatial presence and resultant attitudes and behavior.
Vulnerable live patients, powerful dead patients: a textual analysis of doctor-patient relationships in popular Chinese medical dramas • Li Chen, WTAMU • Using Framing Theory as a theoretical framework, this study examined depictions of patients and doctor-patient communication in Chinese medical dramas. Two major findings were revealed by the textual analysis. First, medical dramas extended the definition of “patient” to include family members, an outcome of the impact of Confucian ethics. Second, doctor-patient communication was found to be two-fold: conversations during interventions were typically paternalistic, while conversations about non-medical issues exhibited consumeristic features. Doctors’ unshakable dominance during interventions resulted from patients’ lack of awareness of their rights as independent individuals, while doctors’ vulnerable position in medical disputes resulted from systemic deficits in the current legal system. Both trends challenged the typical doctor-patient relationships described by previous literature. The study showed that media dramas defined and presented inherent problems in doctor-patient communication, identified and pointed out (either directly or indirectly) the causes of most of these problems, and made moral judgements about these issues using vivid individual stories, but they did not attempt to offer solutions to the problems. Theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed.
The Effects of Format and Language on Information Retention of Climate Change News Narratives in Digital Presentations • Christina Childs DeWalt, Florida Atlantic University • Reporting on climate change has been a special challenge for journalists, but new approaches to storytelling may help curb some of the inherent confounds found in environmental discourse. Through experimental analysis, this study examines how anthropomorphic language (assigning human characteristics to non-human agents) and non-linear digital news story formatting can impact online media consumers retention of information presented in climate change news narratives.
Campus sustainability: An integrated model of college students’ recycling behavior on campus • Moonhee Cho, University of Tennessee • Proposing an integrated model based on multiple theoretical approaches, the study examined factors influencing college students’ campus recycling intention and actual recycling behavior. An online survey results with a total of 475 responses found that self-determined motivation, attitude toward recycling, perceived behavioral control, and negative anticipated emotion had direct effects on campus recycling intention while recycling intention, self-determined motivation, and household recycling influenced actual campus recycling. Both theoretical and practical implications are also provided.
Social Media and Concerns about Global Climate Change: News Use and Political Ideology in 20 Countries • Trevor Diehl, University of Vienna; Brigitte Huber; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James H. Liu, Massey University • This study tests the relationships between political ideology and social media for news in forming public concerns about global climate change in 20 countries. Little is known about how dependency on social media shapes attitudes toward climate change, especially in non-Western contexts. Theories of risk perception are examined using multi-level comparative analysis with survey data (N=21,218). This study contributes to conversations about the ability of media technologies to create informed public opinion on science issues.
Health Behavior Intention: A Concept Explication • Ciera Dockter, University of Missouri • Health behavior intention is considered one of the most effective ways to measure and predict an individual’s behavior, but research in health communication and related fields indicate the concept needs revision. Differing concepts are used interchangeably, and operationalization and measurement of health behavior intention do not take into account the many factors that can influence health behavior intention. This explication addresses these issues by providing a new conceptual definition and operationalization of the concept.
Examining the Effect of Climate Change Images on People’s Estimation of Egocentric Psychological Distance • Ran Duan, Michigan State University; BRUNO TAKAHASHI, Michigan State University; Adam Zwickle • Climate change has been widely perceived as a psychologically distant risk, that is, its uncertain impacts will affect other people, will happen in other places or sometime in the future. In this study, relying on construal level theory, we examined how the level of abstraction and concreteness of climate change imagery affects viewers’ perceived psychological distance of climate change, including spatial, temporal, social, and hypothetical (level of uncertainty) distances. Participants (n=402) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions, one that had abstract images and one with concrete images. Results showed that the abstract and concrete images successfully activated people’s abstract and concrete mindsets respectively, and people who viewed abstract images were more likely than those who viewed concrete images to perceive climate change as a spatially and temporally distant issue.
Understanding the role of gatekeeping in New England journalists’ priorities for reporting on aquaculture • Kevin Duffy; Laura Rickard, University of Maine; Paul Grosswiler, University of Maine • Print news media tend to equate aquaculture with risk – a surprising finding given journalists’ general aversion to risk reporting. By framing aquaculture as “risky”, news producers build an agenda, potentially influencing public opinion. To understand risk culture surrounding aquaculture, research must examine not only newspaper content, but also perceptions of public mediators disseminating such messages. Using Q-method, we examine New England journalists’ (N = 15) perceptions of aquaculture’s news value, suggesting theoretical implications for gatekeeping.
Seatbelts Don’t Save Lives: Discovering and Targeting the Attitudes and Behaviors of Young Arab Male Drivers • Susan Dun, Northwestern University in Qatar; Amal Ali • Our two-part, mixed methods study, first investigated the driving beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of young Arab men then created and evaluated a message targeting their seatbelt beliefs and attitudes. There was change in the desired direction. The results provide information necessary for communication campaigns to specifically tailor persuasive messages for this high-risk yet understudied group of young Arab men in a bid to save lives and decrease the injuries that result from traffic accidents.
Reaching an At-Risk Population: Visual Health Communication Campaigns for Migrant Workers • Susan Dun, Northwestern University in Qatar; Amal Ali; Bothayna Al-Mohammadi, Northwestern University; Sana Hussain; Muhammad Muneeb Ur Rehman; Muhammad Humam, Northwestern University in Qatar • The needs of a rapidly globalizing world have created a demand for construction and maintenance labor, much of which has been done by migrant workers from developing countries resulting in approximately 258 million migrant workers operating around the globe. Such laborers are often a vulnerable population because of low literacy levels and unsafe work conditions. Developing effective health message campaigns to assist migrant workers to understand how to navigate health systems and receive care is necessary to improve their quality of life. The purpose of our project is to test the effectiveness of primarily visual communication messages targeted at educating and motivating migrant workers to utilize available health resources. Following standard health communication campaign procedures, our project has three stages: Phase 1 formative research where we interviewed migrant workers to assess their health conditions, health facility utilization and preference of channel and media, results which we report here. In phase 2 we are currently developing visual communication messages targeting the issues we discovered in the formative research, a process we anticipate completing by mid-April. In phase 3 we will conduct the evaluation research, testing message comprehension and persuasiveness in May 2018. We are partnering with a labor supply company who will use the revised messages to communicate with their employees, resulting in, hopefully, an actual increase in the quality of life of the workers. As expected, we discovered a lack of understanding of and difficulties in navigating the health care system; problems which our visual communication messages should help alleviate.
Latitudes, Attitudes, And Climate Change Agency • Troy Elias, University of Oregon; Mark Blaine, University of Oregon; Deborah Morrison, University of Oregon; Brandon Harris, University of Oregon • This research uses international survey data from 1,211 Brazilians, Costa Ricans, Nigerians, and Americans to examine which media, psychological, and cognitive variables influence the tendencies of Brazilian, Costa Rican, Nigerian, and American consumers to participate in pro-environmental and green purchasing behaviors. Results of the study indicate that America lags behind Costa Rica, Brazil, and Nigeria in pro-environmental attitudes, pro-environmental identity, attitudes toward green purchasing, and pro-environmental behaviors.
Engagement in Cancer Screening: Theoretical Exploration Using A Meta-Analytical Structural Equation Modeling Approach • Guangchao Feng, Shenzhen University; Zhiliang Lin, Jinan University; Wanhua Ou, Shenzhen University; Xianglin Su, Shenzhen University • The present study aims to explore the theoretical underpinning of low participation in screening programs through a model-based meta-analysis. It was found that the health belief model is the most adopted theoretical framework. Moreover, the intended uptake of screening was only positively predicted by cues to action, health literacy, and perceived susceptibility, and behavior was negatively predicted by intention.
Examining the Impact of Motivational Salience and Involvement on Visual Attention to Scientific Information • Laura Fischer, University of Kentucky; Courtney Meyers, Texas Tech University; Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University; Courtney Gibson, Texas Tech University; Mathew Baker, Texas Tech University • Literature suggests scientists struggle to make information salient to consumers, and the value-oriented frame may be a way to connect with consumers through increased motivational salience. To evaluate the effects of competing message frames on visual attention, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted to understand participants’ attention to messages about two agricultural science issues. The results indicated the reader devoted more time to reading advertisements that were framed to be more motivationally salient.
In the Crosshairs: The Perils of Environmental Journalism • Eric Freedman, Michigan State University • Journalists covering environmental issues around the globe are at heightened risk of murder, arrest assault, threats, self-exile, lawsuits, and harassment because environmental controversies often involve influential business and economic interests, political power battles, criminal activities, and corruption, plus politically, culturally, and economically sensitive issues concerning indigenous rights to land and natural resources. This study uses in-depth interviews to explore such situations, including the psychological effects on these journalists’ sense of mission and professional practices.
Risk perception, efficacy belief, and safety climate: Use of risk perception attitude framework to examine information seeking for workplace health and safety among flight attendants • Timothy Fung • Using the risk perception attitude framework (RPA), this survey study examined the joint influence of risk perception, efficacy belief, and safety climate on flight attendants’ intent to seek workplace health and safety information. Findings showed that significant differences in information availability and negative attitude toward service protocols and work-related guidelines were observed among the four RPA groups. Safety climate moderated the effect of efficacy belief on the relationship between risk perception and information seeking intent.
The role of counterfactual thinking in narrative persuasion: Its impact on patients’ adherence to treatment regimen • Timothy Fung • The purpose of this study is to explicate the underlying process of how narratives, accompanied with counterfactual thinking, exert cognitive and affective influence on audiences. One hundred thirty-six patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis participated in a 2 (Goal failure) by 2 (Counterfactual thinking) between-subject factorial experiment. The analyses showed that promotion-/prevention-framed failure and additive/subtractive counterfactuals jointly influenced the patients’ anticipated regret and mental simulation, which, in turn, influenced their attitudes and intentions toward treatment adherence.
Journalists, Policy, and the Role of Evidence in the News • Nicole Gesualdo, Rutgers University; Matthew Weber, Rutgers University • Evaluating the presence of research evidence in the news can reveal how journalistic practices affect the ways in which audiences assess information, such as the credibility of policy proposals. This study uses content analysis to analyze the type and quantity of evidence in articles about regulations on food marketing to children, and the language choices made in the articles. Results indicate consistency in language use across time and news organizations, suggesting established norms and routines.
Tweeting in the Midst of Disaster: A Comparative Case Study of Journalists’ Practices Following Four Crises • Amber Hinsley, Saint Louis University; Hyunmin Lee, Drexel University • This comparative case study examines how local journalists used Twitter as a crisis communication tool during four emergency situations in the U.S. The public’s retweeting and liking patterns also identified messages that resonated with them. A content analysis found that while local journalists used objective reporting most frequently across all crises, there were variances in Twitter practices of journalists covering the two man-made crises. The two natural disasters showed more similarities. These findings can help develop best-practices strategies for journalists and benefit emergency management personnel as well.
Time to Work Out! Examining the Behavior Change Techniques and Relevant Theoretical Mechanisms that Predict the Popularity of Fitness Mobile Apps with Chinese-Language User Interfaces • Guanxiong Huang, City University of Hong Kong; Enze Zhou • Eyeing the huge potential mHealth market in China, developers both inside and outside of China have created an increasing number of fitness mobile applications with Chinese-language user interfaces. The present study analyzes the content of those fitness mobile apps (N = 177), with a particular focus on their behavior change techniques and relevant theoretical mechanisms. It finds that three theoretical mechanisms, modeling/observational learning, self-regulation, and social comparison/social support, are prevalent among fitness mobile apps with Chinese-language user interfaces. Moreover, based on the configurations of the behavior change techniques, three distinct clusters are identified: “instructional apps” (N = 75), “self-regulation apps” (N = 58), and “triathlon apps” (N = 44). Among them, “triathlon apps” equipped with technical features reflecting all three theoretical mechanisms are found to be the most popular among users. This suggests the usefulness of health behavior change theories in promoting physical activity via mobile apps in that the inclusion of more theoretical content in the app design enhances the app’s effectiveness. More theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.
“To Fly Under Borrowed Colours”: Mediated Communication and Scientific Ethos • Cheryl Jorgensen-Earp, Lynchburg College; Darwin Jorgensen, Roanoke College • Credit for insulin’s discovery played out through mediated communication to separate audiences: to scientific audiences through science journals and anniversary reminiscences and to the public through journalistic accounts. Claims by the four principal researchers clustered around punctuation of the sequence of events, bolstered by three aspects of discovery: primacy of scientific ideas, importance of place, and uses of power. These elements provide prescriptive advice for modern scientists conducting mediated outreach to a skeptical public.
Folk theorizing the quality and credibility of health apps • Shaheen Kanthawala, Michigan State University; Eunsin Joo; Anastasia Kononova; Wei Peng; Shelia Cotten, Michigan State University • Increasing popularity of health apps raises questions regarding how individuals assess their credibility and quality. Through semi-structured interviews and open coding thematic analysis, we found users determined credibility of health apps through cues based on app features, ‘borrowed’ credibility decisions, and equated quality to personal preferences. Non-quality or credibility cues leading to download were also noted. Findings are discussed as folk theories of quality and credibility of health apps using dual-processing models and media literacy.
Smart Device Proficiency and Use, Loneliness, and Ego Integrity: An examination of older adult smartphone users in South Korea • Kisun Kim, Bowling Green State University; Sung-Yeon Park, University of Nevada, Reno; Hyung-Cheol Kang, Sookmyung Women’s University • The relationship between smartphones and older adults’ ego integrity in South Korea was examined. Older adults who used a smartphone were recruited to investigate their smartphone proficiency/use, loneliness, and ego integrity. Smartphone use was directly related to higher ego integrity, but smartphone proficiency was not. Loneliness was negatively related to ego integrity. Path analysis revealed that the relationships between smartphone proficiency and ego integrity and smartphone use and ego integrity was each mediated by loneliness.
Environmental Framing on Twitter: Impact of Trump’s Paris Agreement Withdrawal Announcement on Climate Change and Ocean Acidification Dialogue • Sojung Kim, George Mason University; Sandra Cooke • Despite the popularity of social media, its role in communicating emerging environmental issues has not received much attention. One example is ocean acidification (OA), the process by which carbon dioxide dissolves into and acidifies the world’s oceans. Although scientists consider OA to be as dangerous a problem as climate change (CC), public awareness of OA is low. This study investigated how public discussions about CC and OA occurred on Twitter, with what content frames and by whom. Tweeting patterns before and after President Trump’s announcement of the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement were compared. The results showed that for CC tweets, Political/ Ideological Struggle/Activism and Disaster frames were the most prevalent, whereas a fair amount of Promotional or Piggybacking frames were found among OA tweets. Trump’s withdrawal decision sparked substantial debate on CC and facilitated open expressions of extreme and polarized opinions on Twitter.
Hope in the Depths of Despair: Theorizing about Hope in the Fear Appeal Context • Hanyoung Kim; Yen-I Lee, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia; Jeong-Yeob Han, University of Georgia Department of Advertising & Public Relations • Although various theories have postulated that fear as the central emotional construct in their suppositions, fear stems from only the half portion (i.e., threat component) of fear appeal messages. In addition, empirical evidence for the role fear in predicting persuasion outcomes is scarce. Addressing this issue, the current study sought to operationalize a qualitatively different emotion, hope, in the fear appeal context by taking the cognitive appraisal theory and functional theories of emotion as theoretical bases. Results from an experimental study (N = 223) revealed that perceived efficacy and perceived threat, which stem from efficacy and threat components, respectively, positively predicted hope in a multiplicative manner. That is to say, perceived threat positive moderated the impact of perceived efficacy on hope. In addition, hope positively affected the persuasion outcome (i.e., intention to obtain HPV vaccination). Theoretical and empirical implications for health communication are discussed.
Unveiling Psychological Mechanisms of Climate Change and Health Message Processing: A Mediation Approach • Sojung Kim, George Mason University; Di Pei; John Kotcher, George Mason University; Edward Maibach • The present study employed a longitudinal survey experiment with American adults to investigate whether cognitive and emotional responses to messages about climate change-related health risks would mediate the relationships between participants’ individual differences and their injunctive beliefs and behavioral intention of supporting climate change policies. Liberals or people with poorer health were more persuaded by the messages, and in turn reported stronger injunctive beliefs and policy support, compared to conservatives or people with better health.
The Politics of Environmentalism and Resistance to Media Advocacy of Pro-Environmental Civic Engagement in South Korea • Hyunjung Kim • The purpose of the current study is to establish a basis for and propose a strategy to increase individuals’ participation in the environmental movements by reducing resistance to mediated communication advocating environmentalism in South Korea. Drawing on the theory of psychological reactance, we explored a possible explanation for the decrease in individuals’ participation in environmental movements despite media advocacy and increased public awareness of the need for an environmental movement. A web-based experiment was conducted with a 2 by 2 factorial design with media and political orientation as between-subjects factors. The results demonstrate that pro-environmental civic engagement intention after exposure to an online newspaper editorial advocating the environmental movement is greater for the progressives in the progressive media group than for those in the conservative media group. The effect of media congeniality was explained by perceived media credibility and psychological reactance to the message. Implications of the findings are discussed.
The Role of Risk, Efficacy, and Worry in College Students’ Health Insurance Information Seeking: Applying the Risk Perception Attitude (RPA) Framework • Hyeseung Koh, University of Texas Austin; Sara Champlin, The University of North Texas; Amanda Mabry-Flynn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • The purpose of this study is to identify what might motivate college students to engage in health insurance information seeking and to more effectively target health insurance communication by segmenting the audience based on differences in motivations. The risk perception attitude (RPA) framework was used as a theoretical foundation to guide the study. The results indicated that risk perceptions and efficacy beliefs influenced college students’ health insurance information seeking, which is mediated by feeling of worry. There findings emphasize that both cognition and emotion play an integral and often tandem role in influencing health information seeking behaviors. Based on our findings what can health communication scholars, health practitioners, message designers, policy makers, and university health staff do to encourage students to seek information or to improve their physical and psychological health.
A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Positive and Negative Vaccine Attitude Predictors in Singapore and the United States • Wei Yi Kong; Christopher Cummings; David Berube • Vaccines are some of the most effective disease prevention tools but there are growing concerns over vaccine safety and efficacy. With vaccine attitudes underpinning vaccine uptake, this study investigated the factors predicting vaccine attitudes and how those factors differ across cultures. Results found traditional media to impact on negative vaccine attitudes, and suggest health belief, science and technology belief, and vaccine governance trust to be influential in changing attitudes in Singapore and the United States.
How Perceived Similarity Moderates Sympathy and Pride Appeal Organ Donation Messages • Sining Kong, University of Florida; Yu Hao Lee • This study aims to examine how perceived similarity affects the effect of different emotional appeal organ donation messages. Through two factorial-design experiments (2×2: similarity vs dissimilarity, and sympathy vs pride), we examined how perceived similarity moderates emotional appeals in organ donation messages. Study 1 is an online experiment examining perceived similarity and physical similarity. Study 2 is a lab experiment with incidental similarity and demographic similarity. The results revealed that only perceived similarity has an impact on people’s emotional and behavioral intention. Furthermore, regardless of the emotional appeal message, perceived similarity induced both more sympathy and pride, which indicates a mixed altruistic and egoistic motivation in organ donation intention. These findings offer important theoretical and applied implications for future research.
Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness in Online Health Information Seeking • Seow Ting Lee, University of Colorado Boulder • This study explicates the relationship between intrinsic human motivation needs and extrinsic information gratification needs to understand why people go online for health information. Applying Self Determination Theory, the study adopts a relational approach to examine online health information seeking behaviors within the framework of patient-physician relations, consistent with a significant body of work that has implicitly or explicitly juxtaposed online health information seeking and the face-to-face doctor’s office visit experience. Based on a survey of 993 online health information seekers in India, our findings suggest that the three basic human motivation constructs of Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness differentially predict online health information seeking behaviors. Support for Autonomy in the online environment emerged as the most salient predictor of online health information seeking behaviors, but support for Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness in the office visit experience could not explain why people engage in online for health information seeking.
Revisiting the Effects of Threat Appraisal and Self-efficacy on Protection Motivation from a Terror Management Theory Perspective • Jiyoung Lee, Syracuse University; Yungwook Kim, Ewha Womans University • Although a wealth of studies has tested fear appeals, little has noted why fear appeals sometimes fail to result in health-promoting behaviors. By applying terror management theory (TMT), this study retested how severity, susceptibility, and self-efficacy affect fear control and danger control responses in the context of fear appeals on terrorism. Four hundred participants were randomly assigned to one of the two groups: mortality salience (200) and control (200). Results from multi-group analyses show the significant relationships between susceptibility-danger control, severity-danger control, and susceptibility-danger control in all groups. Importantly, self-efficacy was a contributor for leading fear control responses especially to death-primed individuals whose susceptibility is high. Danger control responses were shown to participants who had both high levels of severity and self-efficacy but only confined to those who are not death-primed. By investigating health-related influencers and behavioral outcomes from a TMT perspective, this study can expand the current fear appeals literature.
Breaking the silence: Extending theory to address the underutilization of mental health services among Chinese immigrants in the United States • Jo-Yun Queenie Li, University of South Carolina • Using a nation wide survey of 445 Chinese immigrants in November 2017, this study investigates the effects of cognitive barriers (i.e., acculturation levels) and affective obstacles (i.e., mental illness stigma) on Chinese immigrants’ perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral responses toward mental health services, by combing situational theory of problem solving and the theory of planned behavior. Findings provide empirical support for the combined model, showing that all the cognitive and affective factors can predict Chinese immigrants’ communicative action and behaviors regarding mental health services utilization. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
Now or future? Motivating Chinese women to get the HPV vaccines for their children • Sixiao Liu; Janet Yang; Haoran Chu • This study examines the impacts of gain vs. loss-framed messages and narrative messages on Chinese women’s intentions to get the HPV vaccines for their children. No main effect was found for message types, but loss-framed message slightly increased vaccination intention. Time orientation moderates the relationship between message framing and vaccination intention. Narrative message works better among present-minded individuals, whereas gain-framed message was more persuasive for future-minded individuals.
Framing Obesity: Effects of Obesity Labeling and Prevalence Statistics on Public Perceptions • Jiawei Liu; ByungGu Lee; Douglas McLeod; Hyesun Choung • This study investigates the effects of obesity labeling (disease vs. body type) and prevalence statistics (prevalence rates of obesity, extreme obesity, or overweight-obesity combined). Our findings suggest that adults’ obesity perceptions deviate from reality and that they use framed cues as reference points when making estimates/judgments; audience perceptions of the nature and prevalence of obesity were significantly affected. In addition, perceiving obesity as a disease and as more widespread can produce positive real-world outcomes.
Spotlight on Suicide: A Content Analysis of Online News Coverage of Celebrity Suicide Death, 2012-2017 • Susan LoRusso, University of Minnesota, Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication • Using the Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide, 311 media reports of 43 celebrity suicide deaths from 2012-2017 were analyzed. Good-reporting practices were largely absent in the census, and an average of three poor-reporting practices per media report were present. Additionally, a comparative analysis was conducted assessing adherence before and after the Associated Press included guidelines for reporting on suicide in the 2015 Stylebook. Differences in media outcomes between celebrities’ level of fame were also explored.
Processing Victim Portrayals: How Multiple Emotions and Victim Perceptions Influence Collective Action for Environmental Justice • Hang Lu, Cornell University • Social conflict situations, such as environmental injustice, racial discrimination and gun violence, have been drawing increasing public attention. To help resolve these conflicts, collective action from the general public is needed. Through two experiments, the current research examined one possible way to get the public involved with collective action, that is, via the portrayals of victims and the emotions and perceptions the portrayals convey. The first experiment (N=954) adopted a 2 (compassion: high vs. low) x 2 (moral outrage: high vs. low) between-subjects factorial design. The second experiment (N=990) utilized perspective taking instructions (empathic vs. objective) for manipulation. Together, the findings from the two experiments show that emotions, such as compassion, moral outrage, and distress, and cognitive factors, such as perceived victim’s suffering and identification with the victim, mediated the effects of victim portrayals on collective action intentions. These findings contribute to the literature by connecting victim portrayals with collective action, expanding the array of emotions in predicting collective action, and furthering the investigation of collective action in third-party contexts.
Green Dress Reactance: Examining the Identity Threat and Resistance to Persuasion • Yanni MA • Environment communicators often face challenges in campaigning for pro-environment strategies, in which messages cannot successfully promote sustainable behaviors such as recycling. Research has shown that resistance to persuasion by means of showing psychological reactance could be the reason the persuasive messages fail to work. However, what elicits the defensive mechanism to persuasion has not been fully studied. An experiment conducted to examine the underlying role of environmental identity in understanding identity threat after reading anti-/pro-recycling messages. Additionally, this article examines the role of perceived identity threat in relation with three major components of resistance (i.e, psychological reactance, counteraruging and negative emotion). Results find an anti-recycling message increases identity threat among high environment identifiers, which leads to high resistance. Moderated mediation analyses suggest that identity threat depends on people’s environment identity, and may also be an antecedent of reactance, counterarguing and negative emotion.
Perceived Barriers and Facilitators in Primary Care of Diagnosing Mental Illness in the Geriatric Population: A Systematic Review • Nia MASON, Louisiana State University; Stephanie Whitenack, Louisiana State University; Diane Francis, Louisiana State University • The aim of this systematic review is to determine the barriers and facilitators in primary care of diagnosing depression and anxiety in geriatric patients. The 15 studies offered five themes. Three were exclusive to barriers: education, stigma, and the negative attitudes of medical professionals. No themes were specific to facilitators. Two themes, communication and time, were considered barriers and facilitators. Findings show that doctors recognize barriers but suggest offering continued education to better understand effective ways of communicating with this population.
We drink so we are: Effects of perceived similarity with a drinker on observational learning • Mira Mayrhofer; Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna • Based on social cognitive theory, we conducted two experiments manipulating the presentation of a model’s alcohol-related behavior (rare drinker, experienced drinker, alcoholic) and the occurrence of alcohol consequences. Results suggest that model-observer similarity mediates effects of alcohol portrayals on expectancies, however, only for self-referencing participants. A direct path from consequence portrayal to expectancies and attitudes was also found. Participant’s alcohol-related behavior moderated effects, underlining the need of targeting mediated health-education efforts based on it.
Third-person Effects of Conflicting Information about Childhood Vaccinations.: Role of Health Locus of Control and Issue Importance in Predicting Individuals’ Support for Immunization Requirements • Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina; Joon Kyoung Kim, University of South Carolina; Jo-Yun Queenie Li, University of South Carolina; Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina • Researchers have well-documented individuals’ perceived gap in media influence between oneself and others, called third-person perceptions (TPPs). Building on this robust body of research, this study investigates how parents perceive impact of inconsistent conclusions about childhood vaccinations and its impact on support for immunization requirements. Individuals’ importance of childhood vaccinations was positively associated with TPPs and support for immunization requirements. Health locus of control was not associated with TPPs, but negatively associated with supporting required immunizations.
Creating Patient Self-Advocacy Workshops for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Individuals: Process Description, Pilot Results, and Suggestions to Establish Evidence-Based • Richard Mocarski, University of Nebraska at Kearney; William (Sim) Butler, University of Alabama; Nathan Woodruff, Trans Collaborations; Robyn King, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Debra Hope, University of Nebraska Lincoln; Natalie Holt, UNL; Larisa Spencer; Brittany Hanzlik; Joshua Eyer, University of Alabama • Individuals who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming (TGNC) can face many barriers to health care ranging from lack of appropriately trained providers to overt discrimination and refusal of care. Many of these challenges are exacerbated in rural areas where health care can be sparse for everyone. Although more providers who are educated to provide TGNC-affirmative services is the ideal solution, in the short term TGNC individuals would benefit from being better able to self-advocate for appropriate care. This paper describes the pilot testing of a narrative-based self-advocacy training workshop developed in a community based participatory research partnership. The workshop was well-received in a small pilot test with six members of the TGNC communities. Specific strategies included in the workshop and details on measuring outcomes are described in the paper. The workshop protocol fits well in the context of narrative medicine and represents an application of forensics to help reduce health disparities for TGNC people that also can serve as a model for other evidence-based workshops.
Exploring the Antecedents of Online Information Seeking and Sharing in a Public Health Crisis • Bitt Beach Moon, Indiana University; Chang Won Choi, Innocean Worldwide; Sung-Un Yang, Indiana University • The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of information seeking and sharing during a public health crisis. Focusing on the 2016 Zika-virus outbreak in South Korea, the study conducted the online survey of 788 Korean participants to test the research hypotheses. The results showed publics’ online seeking and sharing behavior were influenced by cognitive, affective, and media trust factors. Theoretical and strategic implications were further discussed in the conclusion.
Name frame and celebrity endorsement effects of autonomous vehicle technology communications: Mechanisms and moderators • Jessica Myrick, Penn State University; Lee Ahern, Penn State; Ruosi Shao, Penn State University; Jeff Conlin • Autonomous or driverless vehicles (or cars) represent an emerging technology that has the potential to radically transform the everyday lives of people around the world. Despite the world-changing predictions hovering around the technology, there has been little research into how this automotive technology is being communicated, or theorizing about the most effective ways to increase public acceptance of it. As such, the purpose of the present investigation is to empirically test the effects of using different name frames (i.e., autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, or driverless cars) and using celebrity endorsers on audience responses to promotional messages about autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, we want to examine how these promotional messages are interpreted in light of individual differences in audience members, such as a tendency to enjoy novel consumer products or to trust machines over humans. Finally, we seek to assess how attention to news coverage of autonomous vehicles may also influence audience responses to promotional messages about autonomous vehicles. A nationwide experiment (N=721) found strong evidence that attention to media, emotional responses (excitement, anxiety, curiosity), subjective knowledge, and some message factors impacted risk perceptions and behavioral intentions. Implications for theory and message design are discussed.
The Effects of Media-Induced Nostalgia After a Celebrity Death on Social Sharing and Prosocial Behavior • Jessica Myrick, Penn State University; Jessica Willoughby, Washington State University • When a well-known celebrity dies, mass media outlets cover the event and people talk about it. When the celebrity was also a famous media figure who lived a long life, chances are high that much of that media coverage and conversation relate to memories of the past. As such, this situation is ripe to evoke nostalgia, a mixed affective state that has previously not received much attention as a potential response to media about a celebrity’s death. Two studies, a survey immediately after Mary Tyler Moore’s death and a later experiment, investigated the role of nostalgia in shaping social sharing intentions as well as intentions to help the diabetes community through prosocial actions. The results revealed that nostalgia is an important drive of media effects in this context and it can be used in strategic messages to promote prosocial health-related actions after a celebrity death.
Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone: Emotional Support and Health Outcomes of Low-Income Adults • Kang Namkoong, University of Maryland; Samantha Stanley; Jiyoun Kim • This study examines the effects of perceived emotional support networks on health outcomes of low-income populations. Secondary data was collected from the Health Information National Trends Survey (Cycle 4). Results reveal that lacking an emotional support network has greater detrimental effects on the physical health and psychological well-being of low-income persons compared to comparable higher income persons. These findings suggest the need for health programs that that enhance access to emotional support for underserved populations.
The Effects of Social Norms and Role Model Messages on College Women’s Intentions to Refuse Unwanted Alcohol • Nicole O’Donnell, Virginia Commonwealth University • This study analyzes the effects of exposure to electronic health messages on the likelihood of sorority women to refuse unwanted alcohol. One place to reach sorority women with targeted health messages is on social networking sites, and there is a need for research that explores the best theory-based message strategies for these platforms. A total of 822 sorority women participated in a randomized controlled trial pretest-posttest experiment with four conditions. Individuals viewed role model messages, norm corrective messages, a combination of these approaches, or a control condition with no health information. Individuals in the three treatment conditions had higher post-exposure intentions to refuse alcohol compared to individuals in the control condition. In addition, individuals in the norm corrective and combined conditions had higher post-exposure normative perceptions than individuals in the role model and control conditions. No between-group differences were observed for post-exposure self-efficacy. Regarding media effects, individuals in the norm corrective condition rated the messages as having a greater information quality than individuals in other conditions and participants perceived that norm corrective messages would have the greatest influence on their peers. Implications for health behavior theory and media effects research are discussed.
Adopting an affirmative consent definition in sexual assault prevention programming on college campuses • Rebecca Ortiz, Syracuse University • Sexual violence is a major concern on college campuses. Colleges and universities are encouraged to take a more comprehensive and active prevention approach to addressing sexual violence on college campuses. As a result, some colleges and universities have adopted and educate their students using an “affirmative consent” standard, such that for a sexual encounter to be considered consensual, it must include explicit, voluntary, and conscious agreement to engage in sexual activity by all parties involved. Whether adoption of an affirmative consent standard by college students actually leads to a greater likelihood to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication is, however, still largely unknown. The current study thus sought to examine the extent to which accurate knowledge and understanding of affirmative sexual consent could explain the likelihood that college students would intend to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication, alongside other influential predictors, as proposed by the Integrated Behavioral Model. Results indicated that while college students who were more likely to define sexual consent based upon an affirmative consent stand were also more likely to intend to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication in the future, it was ultimately the ability to apply that knowledge to a variety of situations that predicted behavioral intentions. Colleges and universities must therefore not only inform their students about the definition of affirmative sexual consent, they must also provide them with situational knowledge about how to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication.
From Sensation to Stigma: Changing Standards for Suicide Coverage in Journalism Textbooks, 1894-2016 • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • This paper is a historical and interpretive analysis of journalism textbooks published from 1894 to 2016 to show how instruction on suicide coverage shifted dramatically with professional practice and social attitudes over the 20th century. Suicide was a popular genre of sensational human interest story featured in early journalism textbooks, but contemporary texts barely acknowledge suicide, portraying it as a generally private matter requiring characteristics of prominence, impact or unusualness to make news.
Shifting Perceptions of Global Warming in 2011 and 2017 • Shaelyn Patzer; Selena Nelson, George Mason University; Marc Trotochaud • Research has shown that, despite the difficulties of distinguishing the influence of climate change from natural fluctuations in the weather, some individuals believe that they have personal experienced the effects of global warming. Correspondingly, evidence has indicated that specific experiences recounted by individuals are often reflections of actual trends in regional and local weather. Many of the papers exploring personal experience have focused on establishing the credibility of this link, with less attention placed on examining how perceptions have changed over time. Through a series of four studies, this paper employs nationally representative, qualitative survey data from 2011 and 2017 to explore the ways that individuals believe they have been impacted by climate change. Our study found that, while there is considerable influence of recent weather events in the content of responses, there is evidence to believe that awareness of long-term climate trends has increased.
A Communication Inequalities Approach to Disparities in Physical Activities: The Case of the VERB Campaign • Macarena Pena-y-Lillo, Universidad Diego Portales; Chul-joo Lee, Seoul National University • This study focuses on the VERB campaign and explores disparities in physical activity between children of more and less advantaged groups. Using a three-wave longitudinal survey dataset, this study found that the effects of exposure to the VERB campaign on behaviors were mediated by perceived behavioral control (PBC), and intentions. However, only children from advantaged backgrounds were able to turn their intentions into physical activity practice.
The crucial role of friends in health communication • Klaus Schoenbach; Marium Saeed • In this study, we investigate the role of friends as an important factor for the health behavior of teenagers primarily in two ways: as a source of health information, but also as encouraging health-related actions. For this purpose, we use data from a large-scale and representative survey of 13-20 year-old nationals in Qatar, an Arab country with severe health problems among its adolescent population. Our results show that, first, Qatari teenagers think that their friends care about health issues very similar to their own. But friends are also an important source of health information; they are consulted often, their information is trusted, and they provide health information that encourages their peers to attempt to change their own health behavior. Finally, peer orientation – i.e., perceptions of how much their friends care about health issues – is more relevant in steering adolescents’ health information seeking than their own personal concerns about health.
Why aren’t we talking about weight? Information underrepresented women receive about weight management during pregnancy • Summer Shelton, University of Florida; Matthew R. Cretul, College of Journalism & Communications, University of Florida; Amanda Kastrinos; Debbie Treise, University of Florida; Amanda Bradshaw, University of Florida; Easton Wollney, University of Florida; Alexis Bajalia; Kendra Auguste • Excessive gestational weight gain is associated with a number of adverse health outcomes for mother and baby. This research assessed the patient-provider conversation about nutrition, exercise, and weight management from the perspective of the prenatal patient. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18, low-income, underrepresented women, living in the rural South. Findings revealed the majority of women’s providers had never discussed their gestational weight gain, even when particularly excessive. Recommendations for improving this conversation are provided.
Parachuting into a hurricane: Twitter interactions between government entities and the public during Hurricane Irma • Jeremy Shermak, University of Texas at Austin • Twitter has become a communications mainstay during natural disasters. During 2017’s Hurricane Irma, Twitter was ablaze with information from citizens, media, and government agencies racing to provide urgent – perhaps lifesaving – information. However, Twitter, even in a crisis situation, is not immune to incivility and detrimental activity that often afflicts social media. This study analyzed Twitter communications between government entities and citizens throughout the storm to examine ways these messages often became uncivil.
Facebook use, emotions, and pro-environmental behaviors: The mediating role of hope and worry • Tsung-Jen Shih, National Chenghi University; Wen-wei Chen, National Chenghi University • This study examined the impact of Facebook use and how hope and worry mediated the effects of Facebook use on people’s pro-environmental behavior. This study also investigated how the mediation effects of emotions may condition one feature of the social networking sites, the social norms. Drawing upon survey data from college students in Taiwan (N = 778), the results indicated that hope negatively mediated the effect of Facebook use. Additional analysis showed that, after taking risk perception into account, the negative effect of hope on pro-environmental behavior disappeared. Worry also served as a significant mediator and this mediation effect was moderated by social norms. Specifically, the indirect relationship became stronger when people’s perceived social norm on Facebook was lower. Implications of the findings will be discussed.
Perceived scientific agreement as a gateway belief leading to pro-environmental behaviors: The role of balanced reporting and conflicting comments on Facebook • Tsung-Jen Shih, National Chenghi University • In the issue of climate change, there exists a gap between scientific consensus and public perception of scientific agreement. Whereas the occurrence of climate change and its association with human activities are generally accepted within the scientific community, the general public is found to have a misunderstanding about the level of consensus. To the extent that perceived scientific consensus is linked to public attitudes, this study examined its origination and consequences in an experimental context. Drawing upon a two factorial, between-subject experimental design, this study found that participants exposed to one-sided stories, either supporting or opposing climate change, perceived more scientific certainty than those exposed to the balanced story. Furthermore, the effect of the texts on attitudinal certainty was moderated by the type of comments left by the users. Finally, perceived agreement and attitudinal certainty were found to mediate the effect of texts on pro-environmental behaviors. Implications of these findings will be discussed.
Attribution and attributional processes of organizations’ environmental messages • Sumin Shin, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Eyun-Jung Ki, The University of Alabama • This experimental study, guided by attribution theory, investigated the impact of the substantiation and specificity of organizations’ environmental messages on perceived communication motivation and how this perception prompts audiences’ affective and cognitive responses. Findings showed that specific messages increased perceived intrinsic motivation, while vague messages increased perceived extrinsic motivation; in turn, the perceived intrinsic motive positively influenced audiences’ message attitude, organization attitude, message credibility, organization credibility, and organization’s green image, but the perceived extrinsic motive negatively influenced these aspects.
“You Can’t Drink Oil”: How the Water is Life Movement Employed Risk Communication Techniques to Garner Popular Support for Their Cause • Sarah Smith-Frigerio, University of Missouri • During the Mni Wiconi (Water is Life) movement, Facebook Live videos and curated Facebook videos became popular among groups within the larger assemblage of water protectors protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Videos used fear appeals, calls to action, and frames of mitigating loss to persuade popular opinion to support the cause. Case study analysis of the 25 most-viewed videos from four different Facebook pages found themes involving the battle between peaceful, prayerful water protectors and violent law enforcement officers. Additionally, the potential loss of life and violation of treaty rights were found in fear appeals. Calls to action included funding legal defense, petitioning political figures and governmental agencies, and most importantly, coming to Standing Rock to bear witness and to stand with water protectors. There was also narratives about women, children, and elders of many tribes, united together, on the front line to prevent the loss of our planet and lives.
Changing the Image of STEM: Challenging Adolescents’ STEM Stereotypes Using Diverse Media Role Models • Jocelyn Steinke, Western Michigan University; Brooks Applegate; Jay R. Penny; Sean Merlino • This study investigated the effects of viewing online videos featuring diverse STEM role models. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to assess the efficacy of the videos in challenging stereotypes and promoting identification. Findings indicated that adolescents favored female and Black/African American followed by White and Hispanic STEM role models. Additionally, adolescents reported a preference for STEM role models who challenged gender and racial/ethnic STEM stereotypes, pursued interesting hobbies, and worked in interesting STEM fields.
The Impact of Source Credibility and Risk Attitude on Individuals’ Risk Perception toward GM Foods: Comparing Young Millennials in the U.S. and China • Ruoyu Sun; Juan Meng, University of Georgia • This research investigates the effects of source credibility and risk attitude on young millennials’ risk and benefit perceptions and purchase intentions toward GM foods. Results from two samples (young millennials in the U.S. and China) confirmed individuals’ risk attitude significantly influences their purchase intentions toward GM foods. Results also revealed a significant interaction effect of source credibility and risk attitude on risk perception of GM foods among Chinese respondents. Practical and research implications are discussed.
A systematic review of research on news media coverage of the environment • BRUNO TAKAHASHI, Michigan State University; Anthony Van Witsen; Apoorva Joshi; Ran Duan, Michigan State University; Wenzhu Li • In this study, we examine the English language literature on news media coverage of environmental issues from 1975 to 2016 to describe the state of the field. The study uses the systematic review methodology to explore the geographic diversity of the studies, the environmental topics and media that have been analyzed, and the methodological and theoretical approaches that the studies followed. Particularly, these findings call attention to the disproportionality in the analysis of climate change, the focus from and on the U.S. and Europe, and the focus on newspapers over other forms of media. Given the expansion of environmental communication research in this decade itself, our study highlights the scope for scholars to examine, for example, issues such as sustainability or environmental justice, and assess media coverage from developing countries and growing economies where the news media present a largely different picture of environmental issues than they do in the developed world. We critically reflect on these trends to provide recommendations for future research.
Resisting Stigma and Evaluating Realism in Direct-to-Consumer Advertising for Psychiatric Drugs. • Tara Walker, University of Colorado Boulder • Classic labeling theory suggests that people diagnosed with mental illness internalize this label, but research has shown that individuals will sometimes actively resist stigma. This study analyzes responses to a survey about a DTC advertisement to look at how experience with mental illness influences perceptions of stigma and realism. The study concludes that perceiving stigma is a form of resistance, and people experienced with mental illness tend to see the ad as more stigmatizing and less realistic.
Does Truvada ‘Prevent’ HIV? Examining How News Can Alter FDA-Regulated Messages • Ryan Wallace, University of Texas, Austin • Examining how the HIV-1 Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) drug Truvada is represented in news media, this long-term study utilized mixed methods (content and textual analyses) to accurately identify how journalistic choices could impact the way in which this drug is portrayed—spreading misinformation about effectiveness and influencing audience’s perceptions. This study also identified how media routines, like finding sources and citing approved “indications for use,” may have serious public health implications by systematically altering FDA-regulated messages.
Applying the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model to Examine Public Engagement with Genetically Modified Foods in China • Nainan Wen • The Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM) has received consistent support in health and environmental contexts. However, it still remains a question whether it applies to other contexts, such as scientific controversies for which risks are perceived to have great impact on human beings’ collective wellbeing in the long run. Therefore, this study extended to test the PRISM in the context of genetically modified foods in China. Based on a stratified quota sample of 1,370 citizens collected in Jiangsu Province, this study found that the PRISM variables predicted GMO information seeking and subsequent behavior of engaging in GMO related activities through direct or indirect paths. However, information insufficiency had less significant impact compared with the other PRISM variables. Implications of these findings were discussed.
Counter Self-Objectification Induced Appearance Anxiety: Testing Persuasion Resistance Strategies on Objectifying Social Media Content • XIZHU XIAO • Despite the opportunities for health information seeking and health behavior modeling social media provides, it induces various negative effects such as self-objectification and body image concerns among young adults. Using a between-subject experiment, this study tests the effects of persuasion resistance strategies (persuasive intent warning vs. persuasive intent priming) on countering appearance anxiety caused by objectifying social media images. Results suggest that intent warning significantly reduces appearance anxiety compared to the control condition. However, intent priming worsens the adverse impacts of objectifying social media content. As opposed to previous research that argues intent priming is effortless, this study shows that intent priming is as demanding of cognition as intent warning in an objectifying social media environment. Implications and future directions are further discussed.
User Engagement in Public Discourse of Genetically Modified Organisms: The Role of Opinion Leaders on Social Media • Qian Xu, Elon University; Nan Yu, University of Central Florida; Yunya Song • This study examines how source attributes of opinion leaders and message frames adopted by them influence user engagement in the public discourse of genetically modified organism (GMO) on Chinese social media. Account type and account verification emerged as significant predictors for engagement in the GMO discourse. Users were more likely to engage in GMO opinion leaders’ posts when they adopted the fact, opportunity, pro-GMO, or international frames in their posts. The findings also revealed that different source attributes and message frames varied in their abilities to influence three dimensions of user engagement – numbers of reposts, comments, and likes, respectively.
How does Media Promote Pro-environmental Behaviors as Collective Action: An Examination of Illusion of Knowledge • Xiaodong Yang, Shandong University; Xiaoming Hao, Nanyang Technological University; Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University • This study revisits the mechanism underlying media effects in promoting pro-environmental behaviors via affecting individuals’ knowledge by including illusion of knowledge as an important factor that shapes attitude and behavioral change in addition to actual knowledge. Regarding illusion of knowledge, both illusion in self-evaluation of knowledge and illusion in perceived knowledge differential between self and others are taken into accounts. The results showed that individuals’ attention to media messages about climate change affected both actual knowledge and illusion of knowledge, which promoted their positive attitude toward pro-environmental behaviors, and in turn motivate pro-environmental behavioral intention. In particular, the more positive illusion people had in self-evaluation of knowledge and in perceived knowledge differential between self and others, the more positive attitude they would develop. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.
Engagement in Science: Exploring the View and Engagement Practice of Scientists from Different Organizations • Shupei Yuan, Northern Illinois University; John Besley, Michigan State University; Anthony Dudo, University of Texas, Austin • The current study investigated how scientists from different types of organizations (university, NGO, industry and government) view and practice public engagement. This project surveyed scientist members from seven scientific societies. The results suggest that scientists in different organizations shared some views regarding the factors that influence engagement activities and communication objectives, differences were also observed. Scientists from the industry consider themselves less involved in public engagement and have slightly less willingness to practice in the future, and scientists from NGO are more engaged and perceive more positive normative belief than others. The findings addressed the gaps in science communication research that overlooked engagement contributors outside of academia, and suggest area of potential emphasis for public engagement support from organizations.
Scientific Societies’ Support for Public Engagement: An Interview Study • Shupei Yuan, Northern Illinois University; Anthony Dudo, University of Texas, Austin • Scientific societies play an important role in scientists’ career development and have a great impact on the advancement of science. The current study explores scientific societies’ view of and support for public engagement. Interviews with 21 key actors of societies based in the U.S. suggest that societies recognize the value of public engagement and outreach, and the emphasis has been increasing over time. Depending on the size and the discipline of the society, various types of engagement activities and support are offered. We also explored the potential challenges and opportunities for societies to support science public engagement. The current project aimed at providing societies an overview of this issue and identifying ways societies can better allocate resources to support public engagement.
Exploring Public Perception of Depression: The Interplay between Attribution of Cause and Narrative Persuasion • Nanlan Zhang, University of South Carolina; Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina • Improving awareness and mitigating stigma related to depression have been a concern to both health communicators and practitioners. This study conducted a 2 (narrative vs. non- narrative) by 2 (high controllability vs. low controllability) experiment (N=242) to test the interaction effects of narrative persuasion and cause controllability of depression. The results show that narrative messages attributing depression to an uncontrollable cause increase identification, feeling of pity, and intention to help. However, the study finds that the positive effects of narrative messages are conditional, and they may be less effective than non-narrative messages when the cause of depression is controllable. Also, the findings suggest identification as the underlying mechanism of such interaction effects on emotional and behavioral responses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed further.
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