Graduate Student 2019 Abstracts

Consumers’ Response to Metaphoric Communication of Genetic Modification Technology • Ali Abbasi • Metaphoric communications have been at the heart of the anti-GMO movement for decades. But can they be used to promote GM technology? In this article, we explore different metaphoric messaging strategies that can improve consumers’ perceptions of genetic modification. We test the effectiveness of framing GM technology as either progress or protection, with manmade or natural metaphor sources and with different levels of verbal explanation to determine the best consumer response toward the advertisements.

The Commodification of the Presidency: The Role of Mass Media • Ahmad Alshehab, Arizona State University • Relying on the critical paradigm, the Frankfurt school of thought, and Guy Debord’s concept of media spectacle, this paper examines the consequences of transforming the U.S. presidential election into a commodity to be sold by the media and consumed by the public. The paper addresses several questions, including how the U.S. presidential election was transformed into a commodity for entertainment, what factors contribute to this transformation, and what are the possible consequences and suggested solutions.

Political personalization and gender: 2015 Nigerian presidential candidates on Twitter • Olushola Aromona, University of Kansas • Political personalization has become important to the study of political communication. Particularly, given the possibility of making individualized and personalized messages on Twitter, understanding how political players feature their personal stories in their political messages on Twitter is imperative. In this paper, the tweeting behaviors of presidential candidates in a developing non-western democracy was examined. A content analysis revealed that Nigerian presidential candidates in the 2015 general election highlighted personal stories in campaign message, and male and female candidates differ in the personal topics used, albeit not in stereotypic ways.

“A Woman’s View-point and a Man’s Pen-point”: The Continued Struggle for Gender Equity in Journalism • Bailey Dick, Ohio University • While women writers have indeed made strides in the journalism industry, there are still enormous barriers to equity. Although women are indeed assimilating into newsrooms, the standards by which equity is measured are still male-centric. Through a close reading of existing literature, this paper will explore how women have attempted to create “a room of their own,” showing that those spaces are either unavailable to many women due to economic constraints, or become exploited for profit through verticals or the “first person industrial complex.”

Grab your bags: Exploring destination branding through Instagram • Jaisalyn Santiago; America Edwards, University of Central Florida; Michelle Senter, University of Central Florida; Katherine Pursglove, University of Central Florida; My Bui, University of Centrall Florida • This study explores how destination branding on Instagram (advertising either France versus Japan location and solo versus group travel type) impacts the age cohort of 18 to 24, in terms of message attitude, travel intentions, and destination attractiveness. Authors examine destination branding focused on Japan versus France and solo versus group travel. First, authors discuss Instagram as a communication tool and its role in destination branding, how destination branding has a role in attitude conceptualization and the Theory of Planned Behavior, and finally how these concepts align to influence travel motivations and behaviors of the 18 to 24 aged cohort. Then, authors describe how they employed an experiment to test the dependent variables, following by a meaningful discussion of what the results mean.

Addressing Corporate Social Responsibility Efforts in Corporations: A Content Analysis of Amazon’s and Walmart’s Websites • Tugce Ertem-Eray, University of Oregon • This study analyzes how Amazon and Walmart, two of the largest global companies, present the balance among their economic, social, and environmental activities and communicate their CSR efforts via their corporate websites. Findings indicate that expectations and pressures from the public may help trigger companies to report their CSR efforts. In addition, this study also indicates that the TBL concept does not fully explain each companies’ global CSR efforts.

Imported Medical TV Dramas and the Chinese Practice of Constructing Medical Professionalism • Hua FAN • This study explores how the Chinese healthcare professionals’ viewing of imported medical TV dramas can be embedded in their construction of medical professionalism. Specifically, the consumption of imported medical TV drama can spiritually motivate people to pursue a medical career, help healthcare professionals construct, confirm and reinforce the ideal version of medical professionalism, offer them an escape from the heavy workload, and provide resistance to the breaches of the ideal professionalism in actual medical bureaucracies. Protection & Pornography:  A comparative content analysis of pornographic films for the presence of safe sex before and after the California Condom Law • Kyla Garrett Wagner • Legislation mandating pornography actors wear condoms during film production gave reason to believe condom use in pornography has increased. To empirically test this hypothesis and assess safe sex depiction in pornography, a content analysis of 24 adult films produced four years before and four years after the law was completed. A total of 137 sexual scenes were coded, and identified 452 sexual acts and 42 safe sex depictions; 27 depictions before the law and 15 depictions after the law. Unexpectedly, findings revealed more condom use before the law and no significant change in safe sex depictions over time. But additional analyses determined condom use was never rejected or endorsed by the actors; condoms were most common in scenes that depicted mixed-sex sex acts, recreational sex, and sex where there was no relationship between the actors; and that condom use was production company-dependent. Altogether, the hypotheses failed but novel findings of condom use in pornography emerged. The closing discussion offers insight on the condom law and its impact on pornography.

The Impacts of Social Media Use, Interest in News, and News Media Literacy on Detecting Fake News • Emily Gibbens • This study tested social media experience, interest in news, and media literacy to understand the characteristics needed to identify fake news. Participants were given examples of real, fabricated, and satire news to test if they could understand the difference and identify each one. The findings indicated that interest in news, media literacy, and education have a positive relationship with identifying fake news. Social media experience did not have an effect on the identification of fake news like hypothesized. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Media strategy analysis of the “new star” in 2019 Thai Election: linguistic perspective • Yuqi Guo • The parliamentary election of Thailand took place on March 24th 2019. The Future Forward Party, which was founded one year ago by the billionaire Thanathorn Juangroongruangkit, performed very competitive leaving many traditional parties behind. This paper analyzes the media strategy of this party based on a linguistic theory: stance. According the discourse analysis and media corpus data, the party’s strategy involves many stance-taking conditions. These strategies have contributed to the popularity of Future Forward Party.

Thinking about real-world friends: Attachment theory as a framework for explaining self-presentation on social media • Yu-Jin Heo, University of South Carolina; Michael Layer • This study used attachment theory to understand how social media users’ attachment styles influenced their behavior online on either their inner or other directed self-presentation behaviors. Our findings show high-anxiety individuals tend to be receptive to their real-world friends’ feedback on social media. These findings imply real-world friends may be the key factor to explain users’ behavioral patterns of social media use.

CSR Communication on Twitter: How Influential Are Socially Responsible Companies Communicating CSR Issues on Twitter • Yangzhi Jiang, Louisiana State University • Whether companies could reap benefits from their CSR activities are contingent on various stakeholders’ perceptions of corporate CSR performances. Thus, the effectiveness of corporate communication regarding CSR is significant. Grounded in the four models of public relations and literature in CSR communication strategies, this study analyzed ten socially responsible companies CSR communication on Twitter. Meanwhile, this study created new formulas to calculate the influential score of CSR communication on Twitter. The results showed that the broadcasting approach was the most applied communication strategy on Twitter overall. The findings may imply that previous studies and the four models of public relations underestimated the power of one-way communication. Surprisingly, generally talking about CSR such as sharing a company’s CSR ranking was the most influential CSR topic on Twitter, which effectively generated stakeholders’ emotional response, retweeting, and mentioning behaviors. However, the socially responsible ranking was not correlated with the effectiveness of corporate CSR communication on Twitter. The results of this study provided both theoretical and practical implications.

Who is Writing About What? A Content Analysis of Science News in The New York Times and the Washington Post • Joshua Jordan, University of Minnesota • To examine how science is communicated to the public via the press, this content analysis examined science news and journalists at The New York Times and the Washington Post. This study found that female science journalists outnumbered male journalists, and journalists with postsecondary degrees outnumbered those with postgraduate degrees. Regarding framing of science news, episodic occurred more often than thematic. The results offer insights into who is writing science news and how it is framed.

Cost-free at all Costs? – A Review of Drivers of Paying Intent and Willingness to Pay for Digital Journalism • Daniel Kunkel; Nicola Kleer • The advertising-based revenue model for journalism is severely challenged due to the effects of digitization. Providers of journalistic content have therefore put increasing emphasis on paid content strategies in recent years. This paper provides a literature review of factors that contribute to consumers’ willingness to pay (WTP) and paying intent (PI) for digital journalistic content. We identify 18 variables that influence WTP and PI. Due to inconsistent measurements in the literature, however, the results remain ambiguous.

The Role of Immersion and Involvement in Persuasive Games • Eugene Lee, University of Minnesota; Maral Abdollahi • This study seeks to improve the conceptualizations of involvement and immersion. We identified three distinct dimensions of involvement and immersion in the context of a persuasive game play and its playback. The study shows a significant difference between students playing the game and watching its playback for three dimensions of immersion. We also show the effect of different dimensions of involvement and immersion on attitude and behavioral intention.

Otherization in News: A Qualitative Analysis of Brussels and Lahore Terror Attacks • V. Michelle Michael • This study qualitatively compares how CNN approached the coverage of the terrorist attacks in Belgium and Pakistan. In order to understand any otherization messages in the initial coverage, this paper analyzes the first video story of each event’s coverage in depth. The analysis undertaken in this paper is two-fold: a visual analysis of the moving images used in the video stories and discourse analysis to excavate meaning from accompanying text and language. This mixed-method study uses both semiotics and syntax analysis to explore how similar terrorism events concerning two different social groups (in-group and out-group) are portrayed differently.

Opinion Leaders as Persuasion Agents: Integration of Persuasion Knowledge Into the Theory of Opinion Leadership • Alexander Mueller, University of Saskatchewan • In the healthcare industry, it is a common practice for manufacturers to attempt to persuade customers through opinion leaders (OL) in their specialty. This conceptual paper addresses this challenge by examining the combination and linkage of OL and persuasion agents (PA). OL and PA theories are re-conceptualized in a newly developed Persuasive Opinion Leadership Model. The model´s theoretical relevance is discussed and provides a new perspective on opinion leadership in marketing. Future research is proposed.

On Kichiku as Film and Television Subculture and Its Influences in China • Yu King NG • This paper focuses on the core issues of Kichiku, and refines them into the definition and style characteristics of Kichiku, relationship between the Kichiku as a subculture and China’s mainstream culture, and its influence, which are analyzed separately so as to connect them together. This paper also sorts out the process of meaning shift of the word Kichiku, and change is also a process in which the Kichiku culture gradually comes into being and develops.

A President, a sportsman and a rhetorical vision • Varaidzo Nyamandi, Regent University • The racial, political and social poles in a divided America require solutions towards unity. Presidents Nelson Mandela’s communication of a rhetorical vision to a divided South Africa in 1995 becomes relevant today, as a suggestion of how rhetoric may provide unity. This study explores Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory to explore the creation of a worldview shared by South Africans, once separated along racial lines. The symbolic convergence theory is used to explain the meaning of the rhetorical vision of President Mandela.  He communicates the vision through his recital of the Victorian era poem “Invictus”, as dramatized in the motion picture Invictus (Eastwood, 2009). The study contributes to the growing body of literature on the use of persuasion, from the perspective of the diverse audience, who chain out the vision, as dramatized in Invictus (Eastwood, 2009).   Scholars note that contemporary rhetoric understands the personal nature of creating, receiving and sharing messages and exploring meanings with others. In the pursuit of this general endeavor, this study specifically suggests a way of interpreting shared meaning connecting people of diverse cultures, backgrounds, political views into a new worldview.

An Economic Analysis of the New York Times 1970s Daily Sections • Samantha Peko, Ohio University • In the 1970s, The New York Times Company was in a state of financial decline. The paper instituted a series of changes. Most notably, inserting into the folds of each weekday’s paper a new consumer section (food, home décor, sports, the arts, and science). The sections created a trend that newspapers around the country followed. This paper examines how investors reacted to the idea by looking at changes in the stock price using archival stock market data.

TV Anchors and Reporters use of Emotional Labor: Professional Control Over Personal Health Disclosures Online • Kirstin Pellizzaro, Arizona State University • Using the theoretical lens of emotional labor, this study performs a qualitative content analysis of 24 TV broadcast journalists’ disclosures of personal health-related issues on their professional social media pages – Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Findings indicate that emotional labor was negotiated and learned journalistic skills were employed in various ways, indicating control over content. These findings raise concerns that these controlled narratives can influence an audience understanding of health-related issues.

Mental Health Satisfaction and Social Interactions • Jessica Roark, Ohio University • With online health activities becoming more popular, the opportunities to discuss mental health and share information have increased. A secondary analysis of data from the Pew Research Center examined the effects of social interaction on perceived help obtained from health information gathered online. This study looked specifically at respondents interested in mental health. Findings indicate that there are relationships between perceived help gained from online health information, participation in online health and social media activities.

Future Prospects of Female Journalists in Bangladesh • Md Nurus Safa, Shanghai Jiao Tong University • The study found that, female journalist facing many barriers like family pressure, Society problem, pay-allowances and gender discrimination, sexual harassment and even lack of workplace. Now days they are protecting and talking outside if face any discrimination with them.  It is possible to survive if the passion, professionalism, and love have on this profession. Day by day increasing the female participation in a significant change has come into the social attitude which represent by women’s advancement in journalism sector of Bangladesh.

Bullying in the Digital Age: Difficulties and Dilemmas Regarding Cyberbullying • Chun Shao, Arizona State University • Various media technologies have developed rapidly, which have fundamentally altered the traditional communication patterns. However, as portrayed in various media, an unfortunate aspect of the use of technologies is the increasing occurrence of cyberbullying. This paper aims to explore cyberbullying, focusing on its harm on teenagers and legislative responses to this problem. Through investigating emotional and physical harm of cyberbullying, this study illustrates how far John Stuart Mill’s Harm Principle has progressed not only since Mill’s era but also in the digital age.

The impact of Social Media on Tourism Marketing: Analyzing Young Consumers’ Travel Behavior • Farzana Sharmin, Shanghai Jiao Tong University; Mohammad Tipu Sultan, Shanghai Jiao Tong University • Tourism marketing and promotional strategies are changing from the last few decades. Consumers’ have a more dynamic relationship with social media technology, which is tapping into new tourism marketing dimensions. This study examines the role of social media technology as a utilization trait in shaping young consumers’ travel behavior based on the theory of Planned Behavior (TPB). This research has largely focused on social media acceptance and usage performance of consumers’ during the travel planning phase. The convenience random sample method used to collect data from prime tourist places of Shanghai (China) and instrument developed support on previous research to test hypotheses. The results of structural analyses revealed that respondents’ attitude towards the use of social media affected by technology self-efficiency. In addition, perceived behavioral control has a partial influence towards the attitude of respondents’. Thus the respondents’ mostly prefer social media in pre-travel phase and during travel. Finally, the managerial implications for tourism marketers are presented with a focus on how to improve the effectiveness of social media marketing in targeting groups.

Reacting Against Climate Change Denial: Role of Anger and Anxiety in the Backfire Effects of Censoring Climate Change • Ran Tao, UW-Madison • Since climate change became one of the national agenda in the 1980s, political divide and contention over climate change issues have been seen in the U.S. The reflexivity forces, particularly environmentalism, advocate for an active response to climate change, whereas the anti-reflexivity forces undermined efforts of environmentalism by delegitimizing climate change and preventing progress in climate change policies. Such anti-reflexivity is witnessed as the Trump administration censored and manipulated climate change information online. However, the public’s reaction toward the information control stayed unclear. Applying the psychological reactance theory, this study argues that citizens will react against information control on climate change issues by the government through negative emotions. When citizens receive a high volume of threat message that informed them of information control on climate change from the government, they will feel more anger, which leads to more intention to view the repressed information, learn more about climate change, share climate change information with friends, families, and the public, regardless of their political ideology and pre-exited climate change attitude. The results have implications for advancing reactance theory and understanding citizens’ reactance against governmental information control on climate change.

Participatory Journalism in China: An Extended Newsroom and Power, Network, State • Luxuan Wang, New York University • By analyzing different producers’ identities and posts, this paper explores how participatory journalism differs from traditional media and how organizational structure influences framings in China’s context. Generally, the elite community dominated the discourse of participatory journalism on social media, producing a different framing from that of Chinese traditional news agencies. This paper examined the “extended newsroom” of participatory journalism in Chinese context involving dispositions of capitals, heterogeneous network of human-nonhuman interactions, and the state’s manifestation.

Hacker groups and social movements: A systematic review of literature • Yiping Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Hackers are groups of people with a common concern with information technologies and a shared set of fundamental beliefs, such as the protection of privacy and freedom of information. While there are numerous studies about how social movements and technology intersect, there has been relatively less social movement scholarship devoted to hackers that push for social change via technological means, or make technology the central issue of their agenda. By systematically examining the extant literature using McAdam et al’s (1996) framework, this paper aims to map our current knowledge about hacking/hackers as social movement players, and to generate discussions about future research directions for scholars of interest.

Linkages among Individual Values, Attitudes, and Political Actions: A Cross-Cultural Study • Leping You, University of Florida • Communicating values is crucial to motivating people to be engaged in political/social actions globally. While many studies have examined how cultures influence individuals’ attitudes toward social issues and their intentions of participating in civic actions, research exploring civic engagement in comparison with individualistic and collectivistic cultures on the individual level is relatively scarce. Drawing on Schwartz’s theory of values, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature by analyzing the relationships among individual values, attitudes toward human rights such as equal pay, and political action behavior. The results of this study revealed that people in Asian cultures were found to value both personal-focus and social-focus values more highly than people in America. In addition, personal-focus values were negatively associated with favorable attitudes toward equal pay, while social-focus values such as universalism-nature and universalism-society were positively associated with favorable attitudes toward equal pay. The political environment is suggested as a potential moderator in predicting people’s political activism behavior from behavioral intentions.

The impact of Next Media Animation framing on university students’ attitudes towards, perception of, and participation in the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong • Runping Zhu, University of Western Australia; Chesca Ka Po Wong • The most significant social protest in Hong Kong since its return to China in 1997 was the 2014 Umbrella Movement seeking democratic processes for the appointment of the Region’s chief executive. This study examines how the framing of the police, government, and opponents of the protests in the Next Media Animation news videos prepared by Apple Daily, an important Hong Kong newspaper, influenced university students’ attitudes, perceptions, and political behavior in terms of the Umbrella Movement events. The findings from a qualitative content-analysis and a quantitative survey (N=212) showed that students viewing negative images of the police, government and anti-protestors framed by the Next Media Animation formed unfavorable attitudes towards the three parties and were consequently more likely than non-viewers to participate in the Movement. The study extends the previous work on audience responses to news framing by demonstrating how animated news frames may, by manipulation of the story facts and enhancing the presentation with emotive music and commentary, prompt stronger audience reactions than those created by other news frames. The finding raises the possibility of misuse of technology by animation practitioners and the risk of exploitation of animated media to promote the ideologies supported by media owners.

< 2019 Abstracts

Newspaper and Online News 2019 Abstracts

Open Competition

Embracing the visual, verbal and viral media: How post-millennial consumption habits are reshaping the news • Chris Gentilviso, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Deb Aikat, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The post-millennial or Generation Z constitutes people born in 1997 or after. This study theorizes how news consumption habits of the post-millennial generation are reshaping the news. Based on a 2019 meta-analytical research review of 16 key studies (published between 2017 and 2019) of media consumption habits of post-millennials, this research study delineates news consumption habits of post-millennials. It theorizes how this new generation of media users are embracing the visual, verbal and viral media and, in turn, reshaping news content. The propensity of the post-millennials to participate in the news cycle shapes their rapidly-changing preferences and usage patterns

Written in code: Exploring the negative effects of acronyms and abbreviations in news headlines • Alyssa Appelman, Northern Kentucky University • Through an experiment (N = 131), this study looks at whether the negative effects of acronyms and abbreviations in news articles are based on their presence or their difficulty. In all, it finds support for a presence/absence effect rather than a difficulty/ease effect. Rather than explaining acronyms and abbreviations in news articles, this suggests that journalists should strive to avoid such constructions altogether.

Journalistic compatibility: How social networking sites fit with users’ preferences for consuming hard, soft news • Steve Bien-Aime, Northern Kentucky University; Mu Wu, California State University, Los Angeles • Through a MTurk survey, this study explored whether users perceived Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as compatible with consuming hard and soft news on those platforms. Participants reported Twitter and Facebook as the most compatible social networking sites in terms of consuming hard and soft news. Additionally, heightened perceived compatibility was significantly positively associated with individuals’ future intentions to use a SNS for news consumption.

(MacDougall Student Paper Award) Newspaper editors’ interactions with journalistic serendipity • Matt Bird-Meyer, University of Missouri • This mixed-methods study explores the information behavior of newspaper reporters regarding their serendipitous encounters with information that lead to story ideas, and how newspaper editors affect their ability to pursue such encountered ideas. As an interdisciplinary examination in human information behavior and journalism studies, behaviors and routines emerged that encouraged and potentially limited certain behaviors and routines. The findings also identify behaviors wherein newspaper editors match reporters with certain traits to certain story assignments.

Misrepresentation of cosmetic and reconstructive surgery in the American and French press • Sandrine Boudana, Tel Aviv; David Boudana • Research on media representation of plastic surgery has focused on American television and magazines to conclude that these media give a distortedly positive image of plastic surgery. Our study tests the hypothesis that, due to a more critically-orientated tradition, the print press rather emphasizes the negative aspects of plastic surgery and raises concerns about the procedures. Extending our study to a comparison with the French press, we also test the hypothesis that, given its polemicist tradition, the French press might be more critical than the American press towards plastic surgery. Content and framing analyses of 500 American and French newspaper articles show that the press is equally – although in different ways – critical of plastic surgery in both countries. However the comparison of media representations with statistical realities reveals that the negative judgment is not based on accurate representations of the realities of the profession.

Conservative News Nonprofits: Claiming legitimacy without transparency • Michael Buozis, Temple University; Magda Konieczna, Temple University • This study is the first examining and categorizing conservative news nonprofits. Using discourse analysis to explore their missions and other public statements, we note that many of these organizations draw on the legitimacy of mainstream journalism outlets while critiquing them, at once associating with and dissociating from them. This enables them to justify their engagement in the kind of activism normally found outside of journalism, even as they obscure their ideological orientations and funding sources.

Understanding the Nonprofit News Landscape in the United States • Monica Chadha, Arizona State University; Jesse Lecy, Arizona State University • This paper attempts to create a landscape of digital nonprofit news sites by examining their categorization as provided by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) through the use of National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE). The study also used a content analysis to examine the sites’ mission statements and find out which ones emphasized public journalism, investigative journalism, or both, thus providing nuance to scholarship that until now, has highlighted both as nonprofit news offerings.

Framing of the 2016 Presidential Election of Donald Trump from the World Press • Yu-li Chang, Bethel University • The ascent of Trump as the president of the United States after the 2016 election offered an excellent opportunity to look into how the world press opined on this surprising outcome. This study examined the editorials and columns from the English-language world press on the moral judgment frame, that is, the lessons learned from Trump’s election and the future prospects of the Trump presidency. Mixed methods were chosen as the tool for data analysis – a quantitative content analysis followed by a qualitative narrative analysis to dig deeper into nuances in the thematic frames generated from the content analysis. The findings showed that the world opinion framed Trump’s election more unfavorably than favorably.  This study discovered a central narrative relating to the world’s concerns over Trump’s ability to lead the world to solve its pressing challenges and to do so on moral and cultural grounds.  World opinion framed Trump’s unpredictable personality and policy ignorance as the largest sources of uncertainty, horror, cataclysm facing the world.  Trump was viewed not only being incapable of leading the world to solve its problems; he was portrayed as being capable of bringing catastrophe to the already uncertain and dangerous situation.  World opinion also predicted a degradation of the United States as a beacon of freedom, liberty and democracy because of the resurgent racism, bigotry, xenophobia, and misogyny manifested in Trump and his followers.

Do Students Know the Code?  How Coding is (and isn’t) Taught in Accredited Journalism Programs • Jim Foust; Katherine Bradshaw • A census of ACEJMC-accredited journalism programs reveals that less than a quarter require students to learn code. Despite industry desires for journalists with coding skills nearly 40 percent of the units offer no coding classes. Among programs that require code, most rely on a course or courses taught by full-time faculty in the accredited unit. About one third of units that do not require code currently have plans to add it in the future.

Who perpetuates “fake new” in China? Rumor diffusion on mainstream news websites, Weibo, and WeChat • Lei Guo, Boston University; Yiyan Zhang, Boston University • This study examined the diffusion of online rumors on mainstream news websites, Weibo, and WeChat—the three major media platforms for online news consumption in China. The results show that Weibo was most likely to advance rumors, while WeChat performed the best in refuting rumors. Additionally, mainstream news websites set the agenda of Weibo and WeChat in both advancing and refuting rumors. Within social media, governmental accounts took the leading agenda-setting role in refuting rumors.

Examining the Narratives of Syria: A Longitudinal Frame Analysis of the Syrian Conflict • Emily Burns, Texas State University; Michel Haigh, Texas State University • This study examined news coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis from 2011-2018. Specifically, it investigated how various mainstream news publications framed the Syrian refugee story, the overall tone of coverage, and shifts in coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis over time. Refugees were depicted positively. Tone of coverage became more positive over time, and the most common frames employed were the foreign government response frame and the conflict frame.

Political Polarization and Digital Discourse: Cross-National Analysis of Negativity in Facebook News Comments • Edda Humprecht; Lea Hellmueller • Negativity in news comments arguably leads to a polarization of public debates. We examine how commercialization, but also market-orientation and political leaning of media organizations explain negativity. The study content-analyzed comments on Facebook of six news organizations (N = 1800) in the US and Germany. We find that negative sentiments are particulary prevalent in the polarized information environment of the US. Moreover, hyper-partisan outlets in both countries provoke significantly higher levels of negativity.

Does Newspaper Presence in Household Affect Subscribers’ and Non-Subscribers’ Perceptions of Their Buying Behavior? A Mixed-Method Study • Anastasia Kononova; Esther Thorson, Michigan State University; Jef Richards; Kristen Lynch, Michigan State University • With the ascendancy of digital advertising, there have been only a handful of studies of the newspaper free-standing inserts (FSIs), also known as preprint, as an advertising medium. Given the threatened health of America’s newspapers, the value of FSIs as the primary source of revenue is critical. This paper looks at the impact on newspaper presence in subscribers’ and non-subscribers’ households on their self-reported buying behavior. Individuals from two segments: 1) subscribers to a local daily newspaper (N = 60) and 2) non-subscribers (N = 58) participated in a field study, where the newspaper was delivered to their households for 14 days and was put on hold for another 14 days. Each day, participants reported if they used the newspaper and if they bought anything. Subscribers were found to be older, wealthier, more educated, more likely retired, longer-term community residents, and greater comparison shoppers than non-subscribers. They reported more instances of buying behavior than non-subscribers. Paradoxically, participants who received the newspaper during the study reported fewer instances of buying behavior. Newspaper delivery was associated with increased instances of shopping for health and beauty products. Focus groups were conducted to explain the findings, and the implications were discussed using consumer socialization approach.

Newspaper coverage of Colorado’s 2016 End of Life Options Act • Kimberly Lauffer, Ball State University, Department of Journalism; Sean Baker, Department of Journalism, Central Michigan University; Natalee Seely, Ball State University • Since 2014, several states have introduced and passed legislation permitting aid in dying. In Colorado, Proposition 106, the End of Life Options Act, passed Nov. 8, 2016, with 65 percent of Coloradans approving the law. How newspapers cover contentious issues is important because these representations influence public opinion. This study found a relationship between item type and overall stance, as well as a difference in the content produced by journalists and laypersons or columnists.

Approach or Avoid? Emotional Sentiments and Reactions in News of Sexual Assault • Yu-Hao Lee, University of Florida; Mo Chen, University of Florida • We conducted a sentiment analysis on the news headlines and the social media descriptions of 2340 news articles on sexual assault accusations and #MeToo from October 2017 to February 2018. Based on the emotions-as-frames perspective and theories of political ideologies. We examined whether news organizations with more conservative users used more words that signaled anger, anxiety, and sex. Furthermore, we examined to what extent do the news sentiments of anger, anxiety, and sexual-framed messages predict social media engagement behaviors (like, share, comments) among mostly conservative or liberal users. The results showed that news organizations with more conservative users used more emotional sentiments in their headlines and descriptions. Moreover, anxiety sentiments were associated with less engagement while sexual sentiments were associated with more engagement among most-conservative users.

Drowning out the message: How online comments on news stories about Nike’s ad campaign contributed to polarization and gatekeeping • Jinhee Lee; Zulfia Zaher; Ed Simpson; Elina Erzikova • This study examined audience commentary on Fox News, CNN, and MSNBC’s YouTube and Facebook platforms associated with news stories on Nike’s selection of controversial former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick as spokesman for its 2018 campaign. The study, using the theory of gatekeeping as a starting point, sought evidence for a drowning effect, in which the audience strayed from the primary message of the journalism presented to it. A significant drowning effect was found, across platforms and outlets.

Understanding the Typology of Native Advertising on News Websites • You LI, Eastern Michigan U; Ye Wang • This study explored how 57 U.S. news websites integrated native advertising through placement locations and yet differentiated it from editorial content through disclosure languages and designs. The websites placed native ads in more than two locations on average. While 79% of websites met FTC’s disclosure guideline, only a quarter used maximum disclosure tactics. The publishers with more cultural capital (i.e., the number of Pulitzer awards) differentiated native advertising from editorial content to a greater extent.

News Media Credibility Ratings and Perceptions of Fake News Exposure among Internet Users in Five Countries • Justin Martin, Northwestern University in Qatar; Fouad Hassan, Northwestern University • This study examined media credibility ratings and perceptions of fake news exposure online among internet users in five Arab countries: Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and UAE (N=4,616). Perceptions of fake news exposure were not consistently associated with either ratings of news media credibility or news consumption; rather, respondents who said governments and the public should stop the spread of fake news online were reported coming across fake news online more often.

The Story Behind the Story: How Transparency About the Journalistic Process  Boosts Perceptions of News Outlet Credibility • Gina Masullo Chen, University of Texas at Austin; Alex Curry, The University of Texas at Austin; Kelsey Whipple, The University of Texas at Austin • This two-study package (Study 1: N = 753; Study 2: N = 599) sought to understand whether adding a transparency box that explains how journalists did a news story could improve perceptions of the credibility of a news outlet. Our findings from Study 2 demonstrated this box was effective in boosting perceptions of news outlet credibility when used with real news sites among the audience members for those sites.

Responding to Online Disagreement Comments: It’s Not What You Say, But How You Say It • Gina Masullo Chen, University of Texas at Austin; Marc Ziegele, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf; Martin Johannes Riedl, The University of Texas at Austin & Alexander von Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society; Pablo Jost, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz; Teresa Naab, University of Augsburg • An experiment (N = 1,231) in Germany found that moderators responding to disagreement comments on a news site’s Facebook page should use high-person-centered (HPC) messages, which acknowledge people’s emotions, rather than low-person-centered (LPC) messages, which dismiss feelings. HPC messages improved attitudes toward the news site and loyalty to the site’s online community, regardless of whether the disagreement comments were civil, uncivil, or impolite. Improved attitudes toward the news site were heightened if journalists were moderating.

Mediating Transnational Movement: Indian News Media and the #MeToo Movement • Suman Mishra • This study explores the media coverage of the #MeToo movement in India. Using thematic analysis of news articles from six prominent Indian newspapers (The Hindustan Times, The Times of India, The Indian Express, The Telegraph, The Pioneer, and The Economic Times), the study reveals the unique way in which this transnational movement was discussed in the Indian context. Patriarchal conditioning, fear of retaliation and reputational harm, and lack of recourse through slow and unresponsive judiciary, were some prominent cultural themes in the coverage. In addition, there was a focus on the entertainment industry and its celebrities. This focus limits “Me Too” movement’s potential and resonance with the larger Indian public who are likely to see it as an elite Hollywood-Bollywood phenomenon. Further discussion is provided.

Guilt by association: How chum box advertising affects news readers’ perceptions • Logan Molyneux; Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia • As content referral widgets and other forms of native advertising continue to be lucrative means of subsidizing journalism, critics and industry observers have derided these “chum boxes” as damaging to the user experience and the journalism they’re adjacent to. This study theorizes mechanisms behind this proposition and tests it in two controlled experiments. Results suggest that chum box ads damage message and source credibility in circumstances where readers are motivated and attentive.

Journalism Practice in a Digital Age: Utilization of Social Media in Online News • Mirjana Pantic, Pace University; Ivana Cvetkovic, University of New Mexico • This study employed the gatekeeping perspective to examine what practices 10 prominent U.S.-based news websites embrace when deriving content and sources from social media. A thorough content analysis of 180 online news shows that journalists primarily rely on institutional, official sources when utilizing social media in the news production process. Furthermore, journalists are most likely to employ written information from Twitter in online news and publish such information in entertainment and politics sections.

“Why the h**l is there a White House Correspondents’ Dinner?” Field Theory in Political Journalism • Gregory Perreault; Kellie Stanfield, Missouri School of Journalism; Shelby Luttman • This study aimed to analyze the shifting role conceptions of journalists in the field, primarily in reference to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Researchers conducted 32 phone interviews with political journalists from news outlets ranging from the Los Angeles Times to VICE. This study argues that the present format of the dinner presents a challenge to the journalistic field, one that political journalists have difficulty managing within their journalistic role.

Media Literacy to Rebuild Trust in Journalism: A Typology for a Changing News Audience • Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kelly Nelson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Carlos Davalos, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Trust in all institutions has plummeted across the board, internationally – especially trust in the political institution that is the press. One popular solution to rebuilding trust calls on increased forms of media literacy. Using a series of 15 case studies involving initiatives around the globe to rebuild citizen trust in news media, this research explores the links between media literacy and relationships with information in a digital, populist age through both textual analysis of these projects’ materials as well as in-depth interviews with their founders and directors. It puts forth a more complex definition of media literacy, typologizes kinds of literacy (settling on civic consumption, amateur (co-)production (sharing), professional information production (newsrooms), and algorithms/technology), and reimagines who is responsible to become literate and to teach literacy. We find that the notion of “literacy” has application for not only schools, universities and adult citizens, but also for journalists and platforms themselves.

Border Patrol: The Rise and Role of Fact-Checkers and Their Challenge to Journalists’ Normative Boundaries • Jane B. Singer, City, University of London • Although most research to date has focused on leading U.S. fact-checkers, similar initiatives are springing up all over the world. This study draws on a globally disseminated questionnaire, plus interviews with fact-checkers on four continents, to examine how they describe their fundamental norms, understand their social role, and engage their audiences. A conceptual framework of journalistic boundary-setting helps guide exploration of the ways that fact-checkers see themselves in relation to legacy journalists.

Diffusion of Video Advertising on Community Newspaper Websites? • Burton Speakman, Kennesaw State University; Michael Clay Carey, Samford University • This study reviews diffusion of innovation at community media websites regarding the use of video and video advertising. Results suggest that video reached a point where a sizable number of community media outlets publish them online. Yet, video advertising lags behind in use. Furthermore, it appears that elements such as circulation and size of a media corporation have little influence in the development and use of video and video advertising on community media websites.

When do people share fake news online? The effect of social network size and homophily • Ruoyu Sun, University of Miami; Cong Li, University of Miami; Barbara Millet; Khudejah Ali; John Petit • “This study examined the impact of social network size and homophily on people’s intention to share news, especially fake news, on Facebook. Based on an experiment, it was found that perceived homophily with Facebook contacts was positively associated with news sharing intention. A significant three-way interaction effect between network size, homophily, and news type on news sharing intention was also discovered, and this effect was mediated by motivation to socialize with online contacts.

Enacted Journalism Takes the Stage: How Audiences  Respond to Reporting-Based Theater • Ori Tenenboim, The University of Texas at Austin; Natalie (Talia) Jomini Stroud, The University of Texas at Austin • From offering comment sections to hosting town hall meetings, news organizations have experimented with different ways of engaging audiences. This paper focuses on reporting-based live-theater performances followed by conversation. Drawing on surveys of audiences attending performances of three different plays (n=279) and in-depth interviews with 13 people involved in the plays, this paper shows that what we term “enacted journalism” can increase knowledge, boost efficacy, and influence what people think about the media’s role.

A New Kind of Journalistic Paradigm Repair: How U.S. News Outlets Rejected the Label “Enemy of the People” • Leslie-Jean Thornton, Arizona State University; Susan Keith, Rutgers University; Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • “In August 2018, more than 600 news organizations answered the Boston Globe’s call for a united editorial stand against more than two years of unprecedented attacks by the U.S. President. Qualitative analysis revealed movement beyond paradigm repair into paradigm justification through oppositional identity markers, affinity reminders, and validity claims. This represents a more substantial defense of the foundational idea that a press is necessary for a vibrant democracy.

Here’s what to know about clickbait: Effects of image, headline and editing on audience attitudes • Fred Vultee, Wayne State University; Scott Burgess; Darryl Frazier, Wayne State University; Kelsey Husnick, Wayne State University • “This quantitative study examines responses to three features of news practice: headline style, selection of illustrations and level of processing applied to the text. The strongest influence on perceptions of quality or credibility come from editing, and the presence of editing also influences whether traditional or clickbait headlines are associated with better memory for story details. News use, Internet use, news source and field of study also influence outcomes.

Whistleblowing, leaking, or both? A text-mining analysis of definitional discrepancies in major metro newspapers • Stephenson Waters • Using a framing-centered text-mining analysis, the purpose of this study was to examine the content of 2,100 news stories from major metro daily newspapers to uncover if and how the connotations surrounding whistleblowing and leaking acts may vary depending on a journalist’s word choice. Considering the risks whistleblowers take when disclosing information to the news media, the question of how they are defined by journalists is consequential. Crucial to the success of a whistleblower’s intention of actionable change or remedy of misdeeds is the public dissemination of their claims and evidence, so media coverage matters. Initial results found journalists overall tend to frame whistleblowers and leakers in objective language in the majority of their coverage of these subjects. More subjective terminology was infrequent, considering the vast number of stories in the overall data set; however, the occurrences of subjective language is still instructive, as it showed preliminary results that leakers and leaking are framed negatively and with more skepticism than whistleblowers and whistleblowing. Limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Report for America, report about communities: local news capacity and community trust • Andrea Wenzel, Temple University; Sam Ford, Tow Center for Digital Journalism; Efrat Nechushtai, Columbia University • This study looks at Report for America’s efforts to strengthen the capacity of local news and increase trust from the perspective of a neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, and a rural county in Eastern Kentucky. Using a communication infrastructure theory framework, it follows 28 residents through project-start and end focus groups. This is complemented by 15 interviews with journalists and RFA staff, and content analysis of local stories from the Chicago Sun-Times and Lexington Herald-Leader.

Look Around and Learn: Effects of 360-Degree Video in Online News • Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia; Ivanka Pjesivac, The University of Georgia; Jihoon Kim; Matt Binford, University of Georgia; Keith Herndon, University of Georgia • In a between-subjects eye-tracking experiment, adult readers of a large metropolitan daily newspaper (N=48) viewed and evaluated one of two versions of the same online news feature: one with an embedded 360-degree video alongside text and images, and the other using exclusively text and static images. Findings show that the presence of 360-degree video increased attitudes toward the article, article credibility, and visual attention to article content, but did not significantly affect recall of the story

Keepers of the comments: How comment moderators handle audience contributions • David Wolfgang, Colorado State University; Hayley Blackburn, Colorado State University; Stephen McConnell, Colorado State University • “As news commenting has evolved as a participatory tool and journalists have developed traditional practices for moderation, there are increasing questions about how to promote quality spaces for news discourse. Using gatekeeping theory, this study analyzes in-depth interviews with 13 news comment moderators to understand how these individuals establish moderation routines and define their professional role. This provides new insight into the journalist-audience relationship and the development of new media practices for online news production.

Commenters as a threat to journalism? How comment moderators perceive the role of the audience • David Wolfgang, Colorado State University; Stephen McConnell, Colorado State University; Hayley Blackburn, Colorado State University • “Journalists and commenters have struggled to negotiate the appropriate use of news forums. But research about perceptions of commenters has typically focused on journalists and not the comment moderators who specifically manage content. This study uses in-depth interviews with 13 U.S. news comment moderators to understand through a field theory analysis how moderators perceive commenters as possible threats to the profession and, potentially, help to develop quality commenting into a form of journalistic cultural capital.

Student Papers

Democracy’s gatekeepers? How editorial boards constructed moral equivalence between 2016 presidential candidates • Kirsten Adams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Through a mixed-method analysis of 75 major U.S. newspapers’ 2016 editorial endorsements, this study asks how editorial boards evaluated the two most controversial and unpopular major-party presidential candidates in U.S. history and the threats they posed to democratic norms and institutions. I find that while attempting to fill the seemingly vacated role of “democracy’s gatekeepers,” news organizations simultaneously undermined these efforts by actively constructing moral equivalence between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

Darker cloud or silver lining? News framing of the opioid crisis and organ donation • Alexis Bajalia, University of Florida; Amanda Bradshaw • America’s opioid crisis is doing more than taking lives. It is contributing to a substantial increase in organ donation, which some conclude is saving lives. A qualitative framing analysis of 59 U.S. news articles explored how journalists frame the relationship between the opioid crisis and organ donation. Four major themes emerged: silver lining and hope out of tragedy; shortcut to saving lives, times, and organs; medical acceptance, innovation, and evolution; and rewriting the narrative and changing the stigma. Because news articles tended to frame the relationship between the opioid crisis and organ donation as having a positive effect on society, this study provided practical and theoretical implications about how such framing may impact consumers’ knowledge, attitudes, and/or beliefs about the opioid crisis and/or organ donation.

Similarities and Differences in Western Media Portrayals of the Greek Economic Crisis • Tryfon Boukouvidis, Louisiana State University • This study examines newspaper coverage of the Greek economic crisis in the summer of 2015 through a qualitative content analysis on the attribution of responsibility to the actors involved. Prior literature indicates that American newspapers present economic crises from an elite perspective, possibly distorting public opinion to reflect elite views. Newspapers have become more rigorous in interpreting the underlying mechanisms of a crisis instead of superficially covering episodic events, but most analysis comes from editorials.

Biased Optimism: Online Fake News and Their Influence on Third-Person Perception and Corrective Action • Hyungjin Gill; Moonhoon Choi • This study examines the potential presence of 3PE in fake news and investigates at what third-person perception (“3PP”) may do to people’s willingness to engage in different forms of corrective action. Additionally, based on the root-idea embedded in 3PE (i.e., anticipation of media influence on self vs. others), the study delves into whether such perceptual distinction exists in presumed corrective action intention as well. And finally, the research aims to identify various kinds of corrective actions that may exist in different forms of reactions in response to online mis/disinformation to further previous communication research findings on undesirable media and attitudes toward censorship. Results shows presence of third-person effect (presuming greater effect of potentially harmful media content on others than self) in fake news exposure. Respondents also saw others as having more willingness to engage in corrective behaviors to counter fake news than themselves, serving as potential explanation for the spread of mis/disinformation during elections. Implications of corrective action items and the association between third-person perception and corrective action intention are discussed.

Framing Immigration:  Criminal Frames of Latinx Immigrants and Social Distancing • Elizabeth Hurst, University of Oklahoma; Juliana L. Barbati • This experiment sought to examine how manipulation of high-order social identities can impact the perception of different news frames at four different levels (i.e., the communicator, the receiver, the text, and the culture. The results indicate that political party identification had the most significant impact on social distance towards Latinx immigrants and national identity salience. Implications for single-exposure framing experiments, the level of culture within framing research, and social identity research are discussed at length.

Interpretation, participation and negotiation in China’s online news: A study of The Paper • RAN JU • This article selects The Paper (Pengpai), a Chinese online news media which incorporates the functionality of the party press into market-oriented journalism, to examine how online news embraces an interpretive journalism paradigm to collaborate with the party-state, to encourage the community involved in, and to find a place in the Chinese digital market. In addition to in-depth interviews with reporters and editors in The Paper, this study analyzes 2239 news articles posted on The Paper website and the comments underneath these articles over the period from 2015 to 2016. It is argued that the connection and disconnection between the journalistic role conception and performance are shaped by the negotiation between multiple groups and institutions that are constituted by interpretive communities. Journalistic interpretation in the online platform, on the one side, enlarges the boundaries of journalists’ collective authority, and on the other side, equips engaged readers with discursive resources in public debates.

Tweets, Statements, and Quotes: News Source Selection, Gatekeeping, and Bias coverage of Indian #Metoo movement • Shreenita Ghosh, University of Wisconsin Madison; Kruthika Kamath, University of Wisconsin–Madison • This study explores the source categorization, source prominence, gender representation, journalist gender, and the coverage of #metoo movements in India. A content analysis of nine major English-language daily newspapers coverage of the movement shows that the digital age has only made a marginal dent in norms of inclusion and credibility of ordinary and minority citizens as sources. Further, medium selection and journalistic gatekeeping are considerably different in the two phases of the Indian #metoo movement.

Battle of the Frames: Perspective Collision and Hyper-Mediation at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. • Chelsea Bonser; DI LAN; Stephen McConnell, Colorado State University • A collision of perspectives at the Lincoln Memorial revealed how one moment in today’s digital news environment can rapidly produce news frames that define and redefine “reality” along ideological lines. Through a content analysis of media outlets that vary on the political spectrum, the authors found significant associations regarding how each outlet distinctly portrayed and framed the main actors of the event, as well as how new frames rapidly formed as new information became known.

Addressing News Media Image in an Age of Skepticism • Soo Young Shin, MSU • This study explored news media image as perceived by the public by employing a concept used in marketing literature—image. Journalism stakeholders and scholars suggest the public’s perceptions of news media is not favorable, which consequently decreases readerships and makes the public lean towards alternative news (i.e., fake news). Considering this growing negative sentiment toward news media, it is crucial to understand the public’s perceptions of news media to address the public’s negative perception(s) and hopefully change them. Particularly, the news media industry has not yet possessed broad concepts, not to mention measures, to capture the public’s overall perceptions in terms of news organizations. The perceptions of 44 participants (over the course of nine sessions) living in the Midwestern U.S. were investigated using focus group methods. The results revealed eight dimensions of news media image: news quality, news usefulness, social responsibility, personality, usability, transparency, perspective-taking, and news selection bias. Participants believed that news media organizations are mostly biased in their selection of news stories, as news organizations are under pressure to make profit. Despite holding this view, certain ideals of news media, such as the potential role of the media as community watch-dogs and “protectors” of democracy, are highly valued. Participants particularly valued transparency, rather than objectivity, of news organizations and indicated that news is generally useful in acquiring information directly relevant to their lives.

The Emergence of Social Justice Journalism • Allison Steinke, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • Social justice journalism is an emerging style of newswork in for-profit and nonprofit newsrooms in the United States. This qualitative study provides in-depth analysis of interviews with journalists who cover social justice topics at mainstream legacy media and nonprofit newsrooms across the U.S. Some reporters have formal social justice beats while others are general assignment reporters, investigative reporters or columnists who occasionally cover social justice topics or beats including criminal justice, government corruption, marginalized populations, immigration, and homelessness. Through the conceptual lens of the sociology of newswork and imagined audiences, this study explores social justice journalists’ beats, identities, and constructions of their audiences. This study argues that journalists who cover social justice often identify as advocates within the public sphere while others oppose advocacy in their work and prefer to pursue traditional journalistic values of fairness, accuracy and objectivity.

< 2019 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology 2019 Abstracts

Open Call Competition
Social Networking for Interpersonal Life: Facebook Use and the Forms of Competence • Brandon Bouchillon • This study considered associations between Facebook use, computer-mediated communication competence, and interpersonal competence over time. Results indicate CMC competence contributed to interpersonal competence, and interpersonal competence related to CMC competence. Facebook use related to CMC competence as well, but not to interpersonal competence, at least not directly. Facebook use did contribute to interpersonal competence indirectly, through increasing CMC competence over time. Social networking can facilitate real-world interactional capability by first adding to its online counterpart.

Beyond the What to the Who: Advancing Archetype Theory to Improve Branded Communication • Katie Wiliams; Karissa Skerda; Jared Brickman, Carnegie Dartlet • Archetypal theories have been long studied to better define human personality. Concurrently, brands looking to separate from their peers have attempted communication strategies that take advantage of emotional storytelling through the voice of a personified protagonist. However, bringing consensus around this vision is difficult in organizations with varied stakeholders. This paper extends archetypal theory in communication specific to organizations while also proposing a method for consensus-driven research to uncover the “who” of higher education institutions.

Mediation analysis in communication science: Examining the study of indirect effects in communication journals between 1996-2017 • Michael Chan; Panfeng Hu; Macau K. F. Mak, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Mediation analysis is one of the most popular techniques in communication research. However, a systematic synthesis of the trends, tools and statistical methods used to conduct mediation analysis in the field is lacking. This content analysis examined 595 journal articles published in 14 communication journals from 1996 to 2017. Results showed an exponential increase in the number of studies employing mediation analyses in the past two decades using both regression and SEM-based approaches. The proportion of studies using regression-based approaches in particular has grown rapidly in the second decade, due to the popularity of user-friendly macros that simplifies necessary procedures to test indirect effects. Bootstrapping has become the most popular method for testing indirect effects while uses of the Baron & Kenny and Sobel approaches have declined over time. Many studies though claim mediating mechanisms without formally testing the indirect effects, and others report the indirect effects, but not how they were tested. Findings and implications for practice are discussed.

Climate frame dynamics over time: Computer-assisted detection and identification of news frames • Yingying Chen, College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University; Kjerstin Thorson; John Andrew Lavaccare • We analyze the evolution of news frames about climate change over the course of four years, between 2012-2015. We use a structural topic model combined with human coding to detect frames in news coverage of twelve climate-related events between 2012-2015. Findings suggest that frame usage strongly varies by event, and that some events seem to constrain the diversity of news media framings. Journalists also consistently rely on a small set of “default” frames about climate.

That’s not news: Audience perceptions of ‘news-ness’ and why it matters • Stephanie Edgerly; Emily Vraga • How do people identify news on social media sites? This study uses an experimental design to isolate two features of a headline shared on Twitter to determine the impact on audience ratings of ‘news-ness.’ We find that headline story type (breaking, exclusive, opinion, fact check) and source (AP, MSNBC, Fox News) separately impact news-ness, with partisanship conditioning the influence of source on news-ness. News-ness then mediates these effects on outcomes of tweet credibility and verification.

What makes gun violence a prominent issue? A computational analysis of compelling arguments and partisanship • Lei Guo, Boston University; Kate Mays; Yiyan Zhang, Boston University; Margrit Betke; Derry Wijaya • Drawing upon theories of compelling arguments and selective exposure, this study examines the impact of mainstream and partisan media on U.S. public opinion regarding a highly polarized issue: gun violence. Results demonstrate that episodic framing of gun violence in the mainstream media increases the issue prominence among conservatives than liberals, thus to some extent narrowing the opinion polarization. Exposure to conservative media, however, makes people believe gun violence is a less important issue.

Priming Postpartum Prejudice: Comparing Media Effects and Embodied Risk to Accessibility of Mental Illness Concepts • Lynette Holman, Appalachian State University; Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina • A between-subjects experimental replication (N = 581) was conducted to ascertain whether a media exemplar could prime a stereotype of mental illness among women who are pregnant or of child-bearing age and how that media effect compared to the effect of one’s health status. The findings suggest that the provocation of the exemplars alone was not significant predictor of participant perceptions of risk. Pregnancy prominently predicted mental illness stereotypes, increased risk perceptions, and treatment avoidance.

Foundations for the development of communication that works with, not against, stakeholders’ existing viewpoints • Sadie Hundemer, University of Florida; Martha Monroe, University of Florida • The scientific and social complexity of natural resources issues can yield perspectives that vary substantially among stakeholder groups. This diversity can make it difficult to structure communication that promotes outreach objectives and cross-group collaboration while also attending to existing viewpoints. This study uses cultural domain analysis to examine stakeholders’ mental models of regional water challenges and explore ways natural resources communicators can use this information to bridge cognitive divides.

Mapping the Corporate Social Responsibility Research in Communication: A Network and Bibliometric Analysis • Grace Ji, Virginia Commonwealth University; Weiting Tao, University of Miami; Hyejoon Rim • This study evaluates how scholarly research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) in communication has developed over the last four decades and discovers the pattern of knowledge diffusion during this process. Comprehensive bibliometric analyses were conducted with 290 peer-reviewed articles published between 1980 to 2018 by 490 authors in 61 communication journals. Taking a network perspective, invisible colleges of CSR research were unveiled via co-authorship and co-citation analyses. The study identifies the studies and publication sources that have the most significant influence over the construction of CSR scholarship in communication and uncovered the social networks of scholarly collaboration. Results empirically demonstrate the area of CSR research in communication is notably multidisciplinary, which is investigated by scholars from public relations, advertising, organizational communication, and environmental communication. In addition, results also show the joint impact from management and marketing literature to CSR scholarship and their transformation into the communication field via public relations and advertising research. Future paths of CSR research in communication are suggested.

Inferential statistical analysis with Inaccurate self-reports Comparing correlational outcomes with self reported and logged mobile data • Mo Jones-Jang; Yu-Jin Heo, University of South Carolina; Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina; Leigh Moscowitz; David Moscowitz, School of Journalism and Mass • Research on the social and psychological effects of mobile phone use primarily employs self-report measures. However, recent findings suggest that such data contain a significant amount of measurement errors. The key question of this study is not only to examine discrepancies between survey and logged data, but also to compare correlational outcomes resulting from two different measures. Two hundred ninety seven college students participated in this study by providing both self-reported and digital trace data of daily minutes of screen time and number of phone screen unlocks over seven days. We specifically examined correlations between smartphone use and four social variables, including bridging, bonding, well-being, and problematic use of smartphone. The results indicate that the effect sizes of correlations using self-reported data are in fact smaller compared to inferential statistical results with logged data. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Classifying Twitter Bots • Michael Kearney, School of Journalism | Informatics Institute | University of Missouri; Lingshu Hu, University of Missouri; Iuliia Alieva, University of Missouri – Columbia • The current study sought to leverage public Twitter lists in order to develop a machine learning classifier of “bot” accounts. In addition to developing a Twitter bot detecting-classifier, we have also exported this classifier in two ways. First, we have exported the classifier as an interactive Shiny web application. Second, we have exported the classifier as an R package, tweetbotornot. As a programatic tool, it is possible to leverage the classifier to get probability estimates of up to 90,000 Twitter accounts every fifteen minutes. Through our work to develop and share list-leveraging Twitter bot classifier tools, we threfore offer three major contributions. First, we provide a novel and flexible approach to the classification of Twitter accounts. While accounts were initially labelled using well-known “bot” accounts and lists published in previous research, additional labelling was achieved via a new snowballing method wherein additional accounts were identified if they appeared on similar Twitter lists. Second, we provide a transparent, user friendly (Shiny web application), and scalable tools (R packages) for classifying Twitter accounts. These tools can be used by members of the public and academics alike. Finally, we provide a template for a flexible and dynamic approach to the construction of Twitter classifiers. Twitter lists can similarly be leveraged for other types of accounts, allowing researchers to further maximize information gleaned from the large trove of Twitter data.

Culling on Social Media: Antecedents and Consequences of Unfriending and Unsubscribing • Dam Hee Kim; Kate Kenski; Mo Jones-Jang • This paper investigates whether selective avoidance actions on social media such as unfriending and unsubscribing in the context of elections are determined by motivated reasoning styles. Analyses of a two-wave national survey collected before and after the 2018 midterm election revealed that individuals with a high need for cognition and a high need to evaluate were most likely to selectively avoid over time, which then positively predicted political expression on social media.

Framing Effects of Numerical Information in Communicating Risk • ByungGu Lee; Jiawei Liu, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Hyesun Choung; Douglas McLeod • In messages that present information about risk, the same piece of information can be presented in alternative ways. This article investigates the interplay between risk statements (i.e., positive versus negative portrayal of risks) and number formats (i.e., raw frequency versus percentage) in influencing readers’ comprehension of numerical information and their subsequent emotional and cognitive evaluations. Experimental findings across two issue contexts (impaired driving and endangered species) showed that statistics in the form of percentages reduced the effects of positive versus negative risk statements and produced more accurate and reliable comprehension of risks as compared to statistics with raw frequency formats. Moreover, the comprehension of risk statistics determined the level of emotions readers experienced, which in turn affected their risk perceptions. Implications are discussed.

Highlights of Two U.S. Presidential Debates: Identifying Candidate Insults that Go Viral • Josephine Lukito, UW Madison; Prathusha Sarma, UW Madison; Jordan Foley, UW Madison; Jon Pevehouse, UW Madison; Aman Abhishek; Dhavan Shah, UW Madison; Erik Bucy, Texas Tech University; Chris Wells, Boston University • This study analyzes social media discourse and debate rhetoric during two U.S. Presidential debates: the first 2012 debate between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, and the first 2016 debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Using a combined strategy involving time series analysis to identify potential viral moments in social media and natural language processing to determine whether words shifted in use in the pre-viral and post-viral moment, we find and examine several viral moments in both debates. Notably, the majority of 2016 debate viral moments were insults or remarks about a scandal, rather than gaffs or mistakes. Overall, the results of both 2012 and 2016 suggest that candidates can induce viral moments on social media to temporarily increase attention towards themselves.

Processing News on Social Media. The Political Incidental News Exposure Model (PINE) • Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna; Andreas Nanz, U of Vienna; Raffael Heiss, Management Center Innsbruck; Marlis Stubenvoll • This paper outlines the Political Incidental News Exposure Model (PINE). The PINE model understands incidental news exposure (IE) as a dynamic process by distinguishing two levels of IE: the passive scanning of incidentally encountered political information (first level) and the intentional processing of incidentally encountered content (second level). The PINE model further differentiates intention-based and topic-based IE, and it conceptualizes IE with respect to political and non-political content. Theoretical and methodological implications are discussed.

Agenda Setting by News and by the Audience in a News Portal Experiment • Martina Santia; Raymond Pingree, Louisiana State University; Kirill Bryanov, Louisiana State University; Brian Watson • A 12-day experiment embedded in a purpose-built online news portal tested effects of the news agenda and the “user agenda.” Participants were randomly assigned to encounter more or fewer real, timely news stories on particular topics (the news agenda) and altered rankings of stories in a recommended or trending sidebar (the user agenda). News agenda setting effects were found only on education. A user agenda emphasizing racism increased perceived importance of immigration, particularly among Republicans.

Why Defining Automation in Journalism is not Automatic • Jia Yao Lim, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Ruoming Zheng, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Andrew Prahl, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Shangyuan Wu, Nanyang Technological University Singapore • This paper examined the ways automation has been defined in manufacturing, education, healthcare, and journalism, arguing that the journalism industry can learn from the experience of other industries when it comes to understanding the impact of automation. In the context of journalism, most definitions include references to an autonomous system that entails the replacement of humans, consistent with fears that algorithms might displace human journalists when it comes to writing stories. However, many of these definitions have focused on automated writing, when journalism is more than just writing articles.

Personality factors differentiating selective exposure, selective avoidance and the belief in the importance of silencing others: Further evidence for discriminant validity • Yariv Tsfati, University of Haifa • Recent research proposed self-report measures tapping three different strategies used by people to place themselves within an ideologically homogeneous information environment: selective exposure, selective avoidance and the belief in the importance of silencing others (BISO). However, demonstrating that people are able to answer survey questions about these strategies falls short of establishing that people are able to distinguish between them. Using online survey data collected in Israel (n = 749), the present investigation explores the discriminant validity of these constructs. Confirmatory factor models and model comparisons support their empirical differentiation. In addition, it is argued that the constructs are empirically different given the fact that they correlate differently with personality factors. BISO is more strongly and positively associated with authoritarianism. Selective avoidance is more strongly negatively associated with openness to experience. Selective exposure was positively associated with empathy, with which selective avoidance was negatively associated. Further differences in the correlates of these constructs are discussed.

Theorizing News Literacy: A Proposed Framework for Unifying a Fractured Field • Emily Vraga; Melissa Tully; Adam Maksl, Indiana University Southeast; Stephanie Craft, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; Seth Ashley, Boise State University • News literacy research has received increased attention as we consider the role of news in a chaotic public sphere. However, existing research lacks a consistent definition of news literacy or guiding theoretical framework. Therefore, building from the Theory of Planned Behavior, we propose a model for exploring critical news consumption in which we add news literacy – defined as knowledge and skills in five domains – to the model. We conclude by proposing a continued research agenda.

News About Victims’ Delayed Sexual Harassment Accusations and Effects on Victim Blaming: A Mediation Model • Christian von Sikorski; Melanie Saumer • We lack research on how news about delayed sexual harassment accusations affect victim blaming. Drawing from construal level theory and attribution theory, we experimentally tested how participants react to news about a victim’s delayed accusations (harassment occurred years ago), non-delayed accusations (harassment occurred days ago), or accusations with no time cue. Findings showed that delayed accusations resulted in the attribution of negative motives toward the victim. Negative motives, in turn, increased victim blaming.

Testing the Role of Positive News in the Empathy-Helping Relationship • Masahiro Yamamoto, University at Albany; Chun Yang, Louisiana State University • This study integrates two types of news consumption, positive and crime news, into the Empathy-Altruism Hypothesis. Data from an online survey of Japanese citizens reveal that positive news use at Time 1 has a positive effect on helping at Time 2. Data also indicate that positive news use does not have a significant effect on empathic concern and personal distress. Rather, empathic concern at Time 1 has a positive effect on both positive news use and crime news use at Time 2. Implications are discussed for the role of positive news in promoting prosocial, helping behaviors.

Exploring Genetic Contributions to Motives for News Use: A Study of Identical and Fraternal Twins • Chance York, Kent State University; Paul Haridakis, Kent State University • Prior research conducted within the Uses and Gratifications theoretical framework has considered the contribution of numerous social and psychological (e.g., personality) differences to media use and effects. In this study, we explore whether an additional fundamental source of individual differences—genes—also may explain motives to use media. Utilizing original data collected on identical and fraternal twins, we find differences in underlying genetic traits explained 35% of the variance in news consumption for surveillance purposes.

Understanding privacy concern in using social media: The extension of Marshall McLuhan • Bu Zhong, Pennsylvania State University; Tao Sun, University of Vermont; Yakun Huang, Jinan University; Yu Zhou, South China University of Technology • The advances of information and communication technologies (ICT) have reinvigorated a long tradition of searching for the links between the dominant communication technology of an age and the key features of society. Guided by Marshall McLuhan’s media ecology theory highlighting the ICT role in defining historical stages, this study analyzes the Internet privacy concern (IPC) among social media users (N = 1,340) from the United States and China. It has found a generation gap concerning IPC between people growing up with social media as a dominate media platform and those who did not. A significant correlation between the power use of social media and IPC was also identified, which was further moderated by respondents’ cultural background. The findings expand media ecology theory by providing empirical support to it in terms of the impact of dominant ICT on societal perceptions, thus contributing to the understanding of IPC in a cross-cultural setting.

Student Paper Competition
Realtime Distributed Cognition: A Conceptual Framework • Wes Hartley, Regent University • While the broad framework of distributed cognition has proven to be a versatile theoretical lens through which to view team problem-solving structures, this broad use of distributed cognition theory has, perhaps, allowed the theory to drift away from some of the root ideas that grounded the original concept. This paper seeks to advance the distributed cognition framework by narrowing the parameters of the theory and providing a new conceptual framework with clear boundaries for identifying distributed cognition units. Two real-world scenarios will be evaluated using this new conceptual framework in order to demonstrate its functionality.

An Approach for Measuring Partisan Segregation in Political Media Consumption • Jacob Long • Despite the amount of research on the topic, there are few direct measurements of partisan segregation in media use. Of those that do exist, none are easily transferable to multi-party systems. Using a network analytic approach, I use data from a nationally representative survey of the United States to describe the amount of partisan segregation in media consumption and discuss further applications for these measures.

Improving the Generalizability of Inferences in Quantitative Communication Research • Jacob Long • This paper discusses the quality of quantitative communication research in light of the so-called “replicability crisis” that has affected neighboring disciplines. I discuss some of the problems these fields have faced and suggest implementing some of their solutions in communication research. I then argue for greater consideration of generalizability and propose a theoretical framework for assessing the quality of studies suited to a variable field like communication.

A Territorial Dispute or An Agenda Battle? A Cross-National Examination of the Network and Intermedia Agenda-Setting Effects between Newspapers and Twitter on Diaoyu Islands Dispute • Yan Su, The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University; Jun Hu, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California • Within the theoretical frameworks of Network Agenda-Setting (NAS) model and intermedia agenda-setting, this study analyzed the media agendas in China, Japan, and the U.S. on the Diaoyu Islands dispute – a geopolitical issue involved multiple subjects, in terms of the theme, directionality, and valence of present relationships. Further, the study analyzed the discussions on Twitter and probed the intermedia power flow between Twitter and the selected media. The findings showed that the Chinese media’s depictions were more biased. Although reciprocities emerged, Twitter exhibited an overall stronger power in predicting traditional media’s agenda. Moreover, Chinese and the U.S. media had stronger transnational intermedia effects, whereas Japanese media is less likely to exert influence across the national boundaries.

< 2019 Abstracts

Communication Technology 2019 Abstracts

Faculty Paper Competition
Examining the Role of Individual Differences & Motivation in Predicting Social TV Viewing Behaviors among Young Adults in the U.S. • Alexandra Merceron; David Atkin • Social TV is the modern media multitasking behavior in which audiences engage in simultaneous social media use while watching linear or streaming television. An online survey (N = 276) tested uses and gratifications and social cognitive theory as a framework for examining motivations closely associated with television consumption and social media use. Results suggest that Personal Innovativeness, Internet Self-Efficacy and the Need for Control over media positively influence the likelihood of using Social TV.

Is video news better in virtual reality? An experimental examination of news processing outcomes between 2D and 360-degree formats on mobile platforms • Aaron Atkins, Graduate Student Interest Group; JAtin Srivastava, Ohio University; Eric Williams; John Bowditch; Benjamin Carpenter; Daniel Ryan • Considering 360-degree videos as a part of the news media fundamentally influences the way we think about the building blocks of journalistic practice, such as defining a story or defining the role of the journalist as a content creator. It also raises concerns about the audience’s ability to process the content effectively, which is vital to developing a critical understanding of that content. Unlike entertainment-based contexts, processing in 360-degree news environments involve assessment of the quality of the information and the source, among others, to make decisions about validity of the information being presented; immersive environments may hamper this evaluative process, which involves counter-argumentation and a deeper level of scrutiny. To address this, an experimental study was conducted to compare the nature of information processing between two-dimensional (2D) video news delivered through a mobile handset, 360-degree video news delivered through a mobile handset, and 360-degree video news delivered via head-mounted display. Findings indicated that across modes of delivery, 360-degree video news elicited a stronger experience of presence from its audience than the 2D format, which was expected. However, the 2D video format was associated with deeper processing of the messages than the 360-degree news. Implications of these findings for future research as well as professional journalism practice are discussed.

Countering Othering Through Digital Technology: How Online Semi-Structured Micro-Interventions across Difference Influence Belonging and Curiosity • Gina Baleria • This exploratory qualitative study sought to discover how a single, relational intervention in a digital space focused on civil, respectful conversation across difference might increase marginalized college students’ sense of belonging and privileged students’ level of curiosity. Findings involved how the digital intervention influenced student feelings of belonging, curiosity, and connection in other parts of their lives, including a desire and openness to foster rapport and build relationships where before they may have avoided engagement.

Hashtag Justice: Implications of Social Media Engagement on Social Movement Perceptions • Nadine Barnett Cosby, Iona College • In recent years social media platforms have emerged as integral and operative elements of activism social justice movements. Prior studies have focused primarily on quantifying the use of social media in political and social campaigns. The overall purpose of this qualitative study was to investigate the quality and types of engagement that occur on social media platforms related to social justice movements. The study used mixed qualitative methodologies to investigate how the use of social media to communicate and/or engage with protest movements – specifically Black Lives Matter and Take a Knee — impacts awareness and perceptions of the movement. The mixed-methods research design incorporated content analysis of approximately 1400 Facebook and Twitter posts that utilized prevalent hashtags for the movements, in-depth interviews with a select sample of 5 participants, and analysis of the social media discourse on the topic among the interview subjects’ social media timelines. Findings indicate that discourse via social media affords movements and activists the opportunity for organization, mobilization and free expression of a movement’s people, purpose and plans. As a result, social media has become a preferred medium giving voice to the marginalized. However, one of the pitfalls of social media used in this way is the potential to effectively drown out or subvert the narrative of a movement by those presenting counter-narratives, which presents a major issue of concern for many activists and movements.

Media Participation When Nothing and Everything Is at Stake: Creative, Consumptive Influences on Political Engagement • Erik Bucy, Texas Tech University; Jacob Groshek, Boston University; Li Zhang, Boston University • This study builds upon previous inquiries into the media participation hypothesis, originally advanced by Author (2005) and recently buttressed with longitudinal data (Author, 2018). In this analysis, we examine the extent to which previous theorizing based largely on the presidential campaign context holds when considering midterm elections in the United States. A series of hierarchical regression analyses using nationally representative data from 2014 and 2018 were modelled and compared across dimensions of campaign participation, crossover political talk, and political system efficacy. On the whole, support is found for increased use of creative media activity in comparison to more passive consumption of traditional media in positively predicting political engagement. One instance where this did not hold, however, was in augmenting political system efficacy. Findings are discussed in the context of midterm versus presidential elections as well as changes in the perceived consequence of the highly disparate midterm elections of 2014 and 2018. This study thereby introduces additional nuance to the media participation hypothesis while contextualizing the evolving nature of the uses made of increasingly interactive and participatory media.

Virtual Diffusion: Psychometric Predictors of Consumer-Level VR Device Adoption and Usage • James Cummings, Boston University; Tiernan Cahill, Boston University; Blake Wertz, Boston University; Qiankun Zhong, UC Davis • In recent years virtual reality (VR) technology has been mainstreamed for everyday media audiences, with various consumer-facing devices released by media firms such as Facebook, Google, Samsung, and HTC. In order to better understand who is most likely to adopt mainstream commercial VR technology for personal use, the current study seeks to produce a psychographic profile of VR users. The present research investigates the role of various psychological factors in predicting VR adoption rates and patterns of sustained use over time, examining psychographics relevant to the unique immersive affordances of the technology (e.g., immersion, mental absorption, sensory richness, and escape from external reality), as well as trait levels of individual innovativeness and user demographics. Separate analyses were conducted for fixed versus mobile VR platforms, in light of distinct technological affordances. In general, models accounting for psychometric factors – specifically, individual differences in immersive tendencies, openness to absorption, sensation-seeking, need for cognition, and social well-being – offered additional predictive insight into VR technology adoption, initial usage, and change in usage over time. The findings yielded here not only expand upon the limited work previously investigating theoretically-relevant individual differences predicting VR adoption, but also mark the promise of psychometrics for understanding the diffusion of consumer-facing VR devices. Areas for future study – including explanation of distinct predictors of adoption versus usage, as well as testing of additional psychological variables of possible relevance – are discussed.

Social Media Engagement Tactics in Community Policing: Potential Privacy and Security Concerns • Alexander Carter, University of Tennessee; Mariea Hoy; Betsy DeSimone, University of Tennessee • Despite law enforcement’s best efforts to use social media as a means of community policing, some engagement tactics may lead citizens to disclose personally identifiable information (PII). Through Salesforce Marketing CloudRadian6 software, researchers coded 100 tweets with the popular #9PMRoutine that tagged @PascoSheriff for participant PII. Implications for law enforcement to protect their communities are discussed as well as opportunities to continue to cultivate their online relationships in a more secure forum.

Technology Power Usage and Health Portal Acceptance among Chinese Cancer Patients and Their Families • Chan Chen; Yujun Nam; Hang Guo • The advancement of mobile technology provided a unique opportunity for health communication research in China. Internet-based healthcare portals allowed users to remotely make appointments, consult with doctors and keep updated on current health news. Results showed that individual difference in technology power usage is associated with intention to adopt health portal to enhance health communication independently and via its prior influence on perceived control of health portal. Implications to healthcare practices are discussed.

Determinants of Technology Acceptance: Two Model-Based Meta-Analytic Reviews • Charles Feng, Shenzhen University; Xianglin Su, Shenzhen University; Zhiliang Lin, Jinan University; Yiru He, Shenzhen University; Nan Luo, Shenzhen University; Yuting Zhang, Jinan University • The technology acceptance model (TAM) and its variants and extensions are the most popular theoretical framework in examining the adoption of technologies. Two model-based meta-analytical approaches, i.e., the meta-meta-analysis and the conventional meta-analysis, were used to pool the correlations and to test the path relationships among the variables of the TAM. It was found that the extended TAM which we term the TAM Plus, prevails in the model fit testing and that the results of the pooled correlations and path coefficients estimated using the meta-meta-analysis and meta-analysis were generally consistent.

The effects of internet use, bystander experiences, and moral disengagement on children’s online privacy violation. • Yi-Hsing Han, Fu Jen Catholic University; Shih-Hsien Hsu, National Taiwan University • Based on national survey data, this study proposes new advances by examining the relationship among problematic internet use, online observation of cyberbullying, moral disengagement, and online privacy invasion among three age groups. Results show that the social cognitive development of self-efficacy, use of euphemistic labeling, and moral disengagement vary between children and adolescents. Children’s age, problematic internet use, and bystander experiences all predict their moral disengagement, causing their sharing and liking others’ privacy violation incidents.

Mobile Users and Power Users: Digital newspaper readers’ device preference, familiarity with technology, and engagement • Jackie Incollingo, Rider University • Mixed-methods research examines uses and gratifications sought by a newspaper’s mobile users, and correlations with technological familiarity and engagement. Survey results (n=1,252) demonstrate mobile-first participants had statistically significant higher levels of engagement. Participants most at ease with technology preferred mobile devices, and reported higher engagement. In semistructured interviews (n=25), convenience and affinity for mobile devices was salient. Correlations between mobile news preference and ease with technology suggest a process gratification derived from using mobile devices.

Interdependent Self-Construal and System-Generated Cues: Causal Attribution in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) Campaigns • Jinho Joo; Yoon-Joo Lee, Washington State University; Hye Jin Yoon, Southern Methodist University • This article examined the interactions between interdependent self-construal and system-generated cues in evaluating casual attribution in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) campaigns. Under a high number of Twitter followers on a CSR campaign page, individuals with a high level of interdependent self-construal tend to perceive a CSR campaign more genuine and therefore have higher purchase intentions. However, under a low number of Twitter followers, the conditional indirect effect was not found.

Walk Me Through my Social World: The Uses and Gratifications of News Values on Social Media • Jack Karlis, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire • This study examined the uses and gratifications of news values on social media by 18-29 year-olds, the largest demographic of social media users through an electronic survey (N=613). Using Bednarek’s (2016) news values on social media and Sundar and Limperos’ (2013) gratifications of social media, a new gratification, Aided Exploration, and it was also found to be a predictor of news value consumption on social media.

Cognitive and Affective Processing of Interactive Infographics on the web • Narae Kim; Adam Pitluk; Glenn Leshner, University of Oklahoma • Effects of interactive infographics along with multiple modalities on online websites users’ cognitive and affective information processing outcomes were tested. A 2 (low/high interactive infographics) × 2 (low/high modalities) between-subjects factorial experiment was conducted in an online setting. Significant main effects and interaction effects were found on participants’ information comprehension, recall, recognition, and disorientation. Such outcomes were addressed in the context of theoretical frameworks guided this study. Implications and limitations were also discussed.

Facebook Birthday Fundraising as an impression management tool: The mediating role of altruistic motive on prosocial behavior • Hyosun Kim • An online experiment was conducted to understand how Facebook Birthday Fundraising helps enhance donation intent. Results revealed that social distance (proximal vs. distant) with friends does not directly affect willingness to donate to the Facebook Birthday Fundraising; however, the relationship between social distance and donation intent is mediated by altruistic motive and issue involvement. That is, individuals attribute the fundraising to altruistic motives when the fundraising is run by a socially close friend. Perceived altruistic motives then increase issue involvement to positively affect donation intent.

Understanding Public Engagement with #Refugee on Twitter: A Digital Movement of Opinion Framework • Ammina Kothari, Rochester Institute of Technology; Emily Ehmer • This study applies the digital movement of opinion framework to analyze how the Twitter hashtag #refugees was used to foster digital citizen participation. While the peak of the refugee crisis has plateaued, there is still political engagement around the issue of the refugees on social media which in turn shapes public opinion. Using a combination of computational and interpretive methods we examine public tweets in English (n=7,908) posted between October 2016 and March 2019. Results indicate that the digital movement of opinions around the refugees was driven by a combination of private citizens and officials accounts of NGOs which was then amplified by individual users.

How Age-Morphed Images Make Me Feel: The Role of Emotional Responses in Building Support for the Elderly Among Millennials and Generation Xers • Ah-Ram Lee, University of Florida; Eunice Kim, Ehwa Women’s University; Linda Hon, University of Florida; Yoo Jin Chung • This study explores the potential of age-morphing technology as a communication tool for promoting public engagement in elderly-related issues. Drawing on the perspective-taking theory, this research examines emotional responses as an underlying mechanism. Two experiments (laboratory and online) were executed to test the effects of subjects of images and temporal status manipulated by age-morphing technology on individuals’ attitudes toward the elderly and behavioral intentions to support elderly-related issues on the samples of different generations.

Parents, Peers, And Pot: Adolescents’ Social Media Sharing of Marijuana-Related Content • Jessica Willoughby; Stacey Hust; Jiayu Li; Leticia Couto; Soojung Kang; Shawn Domgaard • Adolescents often post content related to risk behaviors online, but it is unclear what types of content related to marijuana are being posted on social media and what may influence such sharing. We conducted an online survey in Washington state (n=350) to examine adolescents’ social media sharing of marijuana-related content. Peer marijuana use and perceived approval of marijuana were positively associated with the likelihood of posting marijuana-related content, and parental monitoring was negatively associated.

The Interplay of Self-Awareness and Self-Esteem Influencing Selective Exposure to Downward and Upward Social Comparisons on Social Media • Wenbo Li, The Ohio State University; Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick • The study investigates the effects of self-awareness and self-esteem on selective exposure to online blog posts that portrayed upward and downward social comparison targets. A novel self- awareness induction was developed and shown to be effective in inducing private and public self-awareness. State self-esteem, on the other hand, was captured as a moderator. Participants then browsed the blog posts for five minutes. Their selective exposure to upward and downward social comparisons (portrayals of successful vs. unsuccessful others) was unobtrusively recorded. The results show that, for people with low state self-esteem, public self-awareness made them spend more time on upward social comparisons whereas private self-awareness made them spent more time on downward social comparisons. High state self-esteem individuals, on the other hand, preferred upward comparisons in the private self-awareness condition.

Effects of Bandwagon Cues and Automated Journalism on Reading, Commenting and Sharing of Real vs. False Information Online • Maria Molina, The Pennsylvania State University; Jinping Wang, Pennsylvania State University; Thai Le; Carlina DiRusso; S. Shyam Sundar • Do social media users read, comment and share false news more than real news? Does their engagement with news depend on whether the source of the story is a staff writer or a bot, and whether the story is endorsed by many or only a few others in the network? We conducted a 2 (real vs. false news story) x 2 (staff writer vs. bot) x 2 (high vs. low bandwagon) experiment to find out.

Nudge Effect of Fact-Check Alerts: Conditional Moderation Analysis of News Source and Media Skepticism • Elmie Nekmat • This study investigates the effectiveness of fact-check alerts to deter news sharing on social media, moderated by news source, and whether this moderation is conditional upon users’ skepticism of mainstream media. Experiment results (N = 929) revealed significant main and interaction effects from fact-check alerts and news source. The decrease in news sharing was, however, greater for mainstream news when nudged. No moderated moderation was found. Instead, media skepticism amplified nudge effect only for mainstream news.

#BeTheMatch: Assessing How Testimonial Narratives on Reddit Promote the Importance of Donating Bone Marrow • Nicole O’Donnell, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jeanine Guidry, Virginia Commonwealth University • This study explores how testimonials on Reddit encourage bone marrow donation. The integrative model of behavior prediction guided a content analysis of 1,024 Reddit comments about donation. Comments addressed more positive than negative outcome and efficacy beliefs related to donation. Additionally, exposure to testimonials successfully encouraged individuals to sign-up for national and international bone marrow registries. This research reveals how organic conversations on Reddit can positively lead to health information seeking and advocacy behavior adoption.

Effects of Cultural, Social, and Technological Influences on Snapchat Usage: A Cross-Cultural Study Comparing United States, Germany, and South Korea • Haseon Park; Joonghwa Lee, University of North Dakota; Soojung Kim, University of North Dakota • This study addressed unbalanced popularity of Snapchat worldwide and explored cultural, social, and technological influences associated with Snapchat usage by comparing United States, Germany, and Korea. The results from an online survey showed that separateness self-schema, personal-level norms, and perceived usefulness and ease of use had significant positive effects on attitudes toward Snapchat and behavioral intention to use Snapchat. National differences among United States, Germany, and Korea were discussed. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Tweeting the Screen: Investigating Types of Second Screeners and Their Social Media Behaviors • Ke Jiang; Ruobing Li; Lance Porter; Rui Wang • This paper extends the previous research on second screening as a hybrid media practice by taking a broad look at second screening activities. Matching survey data on second screening with a year’s worth of Twitter data from survey respondents, we identified four types of second screeners, and found different Twitter behaviors among them. Twitter users who second screen at high levels are more active content producers and users are consequently more influential.

Mobile Phones and a Capability Approach to Those Experiencing Homelessness in Southern California • Nathian Rodriguez, San Diego State University; Peggy Peattie, San Diego State University • The study examines how individuals experiencing homelessness in San Diego County in Southern California use mobile phones in their daily routines to enable their capabilities – a concept of what a good and valued life is for themselves; what individuals are actually able to do and be, rather than what society says individuals should do and be. Employing the capability approach, the study found mobile phones contributed to nine out of the ten capabilities on the Central Human Capabilities List. It also found that capabilities are not mutually exclusive, but rather overlap in particular circumstances.

Social Bots as Threat for Digital Democracy? How News Coverage Can Empower Media Users • Desiree Schmuck, University of Vienna; Christian von Sikorski • We conducted two experimental studies to investigate how exposure to news coverage about social bots influences perceived threats from bots. Across both studies, we found that individuals perceived higher threats for their online political information behavior when the news media report about social bots in election campaigns without conveying literacy about bots. In contrast, when the news media include literacy, these threats were reduced, which could be explained by an increase of perceived behavioral control.

Community Social Media and Civic Life: Exploring Relationships among Social Media, Trust, and Participation in U.S. Local Communities • K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University; Chun Shao, Arizona State University; Seungahn Nah • Drawing upon social capital theory and a communication mediation model, this study investigates relationships among community social media use, trust, and civic participation across the US communities. Findings suggest that interpersonal trust is predicted by the uses of community social media. However, organizational and institutional trust played a more important role as mediators between community social media use and participatory behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications for civic technology and civic community building are also discussed.

Predicting Parasocial Relationships, Binge Watching and Social Media Engagement from Favorite TV Character Perceived Personality Attributes • Heather Shoenberger, Penn State University; Freya Sukalla; Ryan Tan, Penn State University • Contemporary television viewing exists in stark contrast to the days when people tuned in to their favorite show once a week. People have a plethora of choices in the entertainment content they consume and how they consume it. Television show creators encourage their audiences to interact with the episodes they are watching via social media to capture some of the attention diverted to multiscreen viewing (e.g., watching TV while also on a cell phone, tablet or laptop device). Some entertainment programs are marketed as “binge worthy,” a suggestion that several episodes of the program can be painlessly watched in one sitting. Media executives seek to engage consumers across all mediums or devices; enticing eyeballs from their programs on the television screen, the laptop or on the smartphone. This paper examines whether underlying character attributes may predict parasocial relationships with favorite characters, increased engagement with the program on social media as well as the proclivity of a television show to be binged.

Social media literacy: A hierarchy of competencies • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Jeremy Ong, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Ysa Marie Cayabyab, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Duan Xu, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Han Zheng, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Matthew Chew, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Janelle Ng, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Cui Min Lim, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Lydia Rui Jun Cheng • This study sought to understand the problems that social media users encounter on social media and the competencies they think they need to address these problems. Guided by the social theory of literacy, this study refers to these as literacy events and literacy practices respectively. Through a focus group discussion involving 62 social media users in Singapore, this study finds correspondence between literacy events and practices: technical, privacy-related, social, and informational. Based on the results, which are grounded in social media users’ actual experiences, this study conceptualizes social media literacy as a hierarchy of competencies.

Fewer Ads or More Technology? Advertising Avoidance, Technology Acceptance, and Motivations for Cable Cord-Cutting • Alec Tefertiller, Kansas State University • Cable cord-cutting occurs when users cancel their cable subscriptions to adopt web-streaming as their primary means of watching television. This study sought to better understand the influence of advertising avoidance alongside perceived technological advantages on television users’ cord-cutting intentions. Using a survey (N = 599) analyzed via structural equation modeling, it was determined that advertising avoidance does not influence cord-cutting intentions. However, the perceived technological advantages of streaming are an important predictor of cable cord-cutting.

Digital Inclusion and the Third-level Digital Divide: A Social Cognitive Perspective • Hsin-yi Sandy Tsai • Bridging the digital divides has been an important issue. This study examines factors affecting how Internet users take use of the Internet and develops a theory of digital inclusion by using a mixed-method approach. An online survey and 17 in-depth interviews were conducted by applying social cognitive theory for Internet adoption. The results show that social cognitive factors (expected outcomes, observational learning, enactive learning, and self-efficacy) are important for shortening the third-level digital divide and facilitate digital inclusion.

Social TV and Audience Engagement • Hsin-yi Sandy Tsai; Mina Tsay-Vogel; Hui-Fei Lin, National Chiao Tung University • This study examined how social media engagement relates to the performance of entertainment TV programs. Investigating social TV engagement in the context of a popular reality talent program, The Voice, this case study considers how messages on the Facebook fan page of the program relate to program ratings. Specifically, three seasons (82 episodes) of social TV usage data were collected. Findings revealed a positive relationship between social TV use and TV ratings.

User Experience (UX) Matters: What are the Most Desired Skills in the UX Designer and UX Researcher Job Ads? • Ruoxu Wang; Jin Yang; Louis Asser, University of Memphis • A content analysis study (N = 200) was conducted to examine the most desired skills in UX designer and UX researcher job ads. Results showed the visual interface design skill is the most needed design skill for UX designers. Behavioral mixed and behavioral qualitative are the two most needed research skills for UX researchers. Information Technology & Service and Computer & Network Security are industries that have the highest need in UX designers and researchers.

Regulating Mood and Arousal: The Benefits of Interactivity as Information Control • Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina; Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Sela Sar • The present study explores the relationship between mood, arousal, and interactivity. The results demonstrated that when individuals are in positive moods and moderate arousal or negative moods and high arousal, they displayed more positive attitude toward the website and more favorable brand attitude to the high-interactivity website than the low-interactivity website. In contrast, the level of interactivity doesn’t seem matter much for people in positive moods and high arousal or negative moods and moderate arousal.

American and Chinese Subjects’ Explicit and Implicit Perceptions of AI-Generated Content: A Mixed-Methods Approach • Yi Mou; Yuheng Wu; Zhipeng Li; Kun Xu • Prior literature has accumulated mixed findings regarding subjects’ perceptions of content generated by algorithm. To resolve this inconsistency, an online experiment and follow-up content analysis have been conducted to investigate the explicit and implicit perceptions of AI-generated poetry and painting on two samples from the U.S. and China. The American subjects were more critical of the AI- than the human-generated content, both explicitly and implicitly; yet the Chinese subjects represented explicit approval but implicit underappreciation.

Will Location Privacy Concerns Influence Mobile Users’ Communication Privacy Management Strategies? • KENNETH C. C. YANG, The University of Texas at El Paso; Yowei Kang, National Taiwan Ocean University • Mobile services and apps rely heavily on users’ location information to deliver highly-targeted and -personalized contents. An important, but less studied, question is how consumer location privacy concerns may influence their privacy management strategies in the age of pervasive computing. A survey was used to collect data from conveniently recruited 391 participants from the United States. Empirical results from four hierarchical regression models found that mobile users’ location privacy concerns motivate them to employ different communication privacy management strategies to protect their own location information. After taking into consideration users’ previous experience with location-sensitive services/apps and demographics, location privacy concerns continue to be a powerful predictor of privacy management strategies. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Student Paper Competition
Problematic Instagram Use: Are Certain Affordances and Gratifications Responsible for Addictive Behavior? • Cheng Chen, The Pennsylvania State University; Olivia Cohen, Pennsylvania State University; S. Shyam Sundar • This study examined risk factors of problematic Instagram use from a uses and gratifications perspective. Data were collected from 493 Instagram users. Findings showed that 25.1% of the participants had PIU. The level of PIU was positively related to the lurking, broadcasting, and community-building affordances, as well as modality- and interactivity-based gratifications, but it was negatively related to navigability-based gratifications. Additionally, the mediating role of gratifications was examined in the relationship between affordances and PIU.

I am a Doctoral Student: A Content Analysis of Doctoral Students’ Online Self-Disclosure and Support-Seeking on Weibo • Haoyang Chen, Hong Kong Baptist University; Qiushi Jia; Jiawei Du, Hong Kong Baptist University • Various factors are influencing doctoral students’ well-being and their doctoral education experience. This study offers one of the first to examine Chinese doctoral students’ use of Weibo for in-group communication, through a content analysis of 930 anonymous posts in a Weibo super-hashtag page. The results elucidate the emotional states in the posts, nine topics of contents of the posts and the prevalence of supportive communication among doctoral students online.

Alexa, Netflix and Siri: User Perceptions of AI-Driven Technologies • Cheng Chen, The Pennsylvania State University; Carlina DiRusso; Hyun Yang; Ruosi Shao; Michael Krieger; S. Shyam Sundar • With the arrival and diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) in media platforms, it is important to understand user perceptions of AI-driven technologies. Two focus groups identified five gratifications (i.e., efficiency, outsourcing, being served, information accuracy, and communicating without social pressure), two disappointments (i.e., lack of human warmth and intimacy and fears of malfunctioning), and two expectations (i.e., need for transparency and error-free performance). The findings provide significant implications for uses and gratifications of AI-based media.

Retailers in an Age of E-commerce: How Instagram User-Generated Content Frames the Target In-Store Experience • Teresa Daniel, University of Memphis • While consumers increasingly fill shopping carts online, this study employs a social listening tool to conduct a content analysis of Instagram posts containing the physical Target shopping cart. Findings show that through their user-generated content (UGC), customers frame Target as an experience, one in which adults can act like children and no shopping list is required. Target also encourages these frames through their re-posts of UGC on Instagram, a tool they use for digital communication.

The Relationship Between Influencers’ Self-Presentation Strategies and User Engagement on Instagram • Andrea Gudmundsdottir • This study investigated what self-presentation strategies of influencers affect user engagement. Influencers’ commercial viability is largely dependent on self-branding, where they capitalize on number of followers and user engagements for commercial gains. Thus, self-branding involves appealing to followers through self-presentation. This study employed content analysis of top influencers on Instagram based on three overarching self-presentation strategies: Authentic, real person; opinion leader; and micro-celebrity. The results show that micro-celebrity strategies are the main driver of engagement.

Real-world relationships matter: Attachment theory as a framework for explaining loneliness on social media • Yu-Jin Heo, University of South Carolina • This study employed attachment theory to explore how social media users’ attachment styles influence related psychological outcomes. Unlike other attachment theory studies, this study focused on real-world friends online. Findings show high-anxiety individuals tend to be sensitive to their real-world friends’ feedback on their activity on social media. Feedback sensitivity, in turn, increased loneliness. These findings imply real-world friends may be the key factor to explain psychological outcomes of social media use.

Chinese Automated Journalism: A Comparison Between Prior Expectations and Actual Perceptions • Chenyan Jia, The University of Texas at Austin • Chinese automated journalism started relatively late but developed rapidly due to the large market. This work adopts expectation-confirmation theory. Two experimental studies (Study 1: n = 125; Study 2: n = 308) were conducted to investigate the difference between the prior expectations and actual perceptions of Chinese automated news and human-written news. Participants in study 1 were randomly assigned to read either human-written or automated news. Participants in study 2 were asked to read both human-written and automated news. Results show that readers’ actual perceptions of human-written news do not meet up their expectations while readers’ actual perceptions of automated news are higher than expectations. When participants read both human-written and automated news, actual perceptions of human-written news are significantly higher for readability and expertise. When participants read either human-written or automated news, significant differences only exist for expertise.

The Untapped Potential of Big Data to Assess Organization-Stakeholder Relationship Type on Social Media • Devin Knighton, Purdue University • Big data has the potential to change the way public relations identifies and assesses the quality of its relationship with its stakeholders. Computational approaches, including text mining and semantic network analysis, represent untapped potential for public relations go beyond traditional social media analytics that measures audience reactions to stakeholder relationships. The study explores themes from analyzing more than 80,000 tweets from two major technology conferences – Adobe Creative Max and Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce. The results show map stakeholder-stakeholder communication to relationship type and demonstrate the power of CEO Communication at live events.

Motivations, Interaction, Knowledge, and Participation: An O-S-R-O-R Model of Second Screening’s Political Effects in China • Yiben Liu, University of Alabama; Shuhua Zhou, University of Missouri; Hongzhong Zhang • Second screening refers to a bundle of media practices in which individuals simultaneously use an additional media device while watching TV to further engage with the television content. Applying an O-S-R-O-R model, this study demonstrates a integrated procedure of second screening’s political effects among Chinese citizens — from motivations to second screening practices to mediating activity (online interaction) and psychological post-orientation (political interest), and finally to the cognitive and behavioral outcomes (political knowledge and participation).

Support Seekers on Instagram: Discrepancy between Given and Received Attention and Psychological Well-Being • Lihong Quan, Sungkyunkwan University • This study examines the relationship among the discrepancy between given and received attention on Instagram, support seeking behavior, perceived social support and loneliness. The results of the online survey (N = 300) showed that support seeking behavior increased perceived social support. However, it widened the discrepancy between given and received attention, which further undermined perceived social support. In addition, we found that support seeking behavior on Instagram intensifies loneliness.

Majority or Success: How Other’s Online Behaviors Shape Perceptions of Descriptive Incivility Norms • David Silva • Perceptions of descriptive norms are used to determine appropriate behaviors in online discussions. These norms can be formed by observing the majority’s actions, but online forums also provide additional social information through social endorsements. An experiment compared the effects of majority influence and social endorsements on perceptions of descriptive incivility norms. Findings show the effect of social endorsements on group norms is sometimes stronger than majority influence, but only when viewing a person’s ingroup.

Snap at me! Self-disclosure, Maintenance Expectations, Entrapment and Relationship Satisfaction on Snapchat: Experience Sampling Method • Preeti Srinivasan, University of Connecticut • This study applies the mobile maintenance expectations paradigm to the context of Snapchat, and looks at how self-disclosure, expectations, entrapment impact relationship satisfaction, and whether entrapment and satisfaction change over eight days. N=68 college students completed the study. Results indicate that maintenance behaviors positively predicted relationship satisfaction. Entrapment negatively affected relationship satisfaction, albeit contemporaneously. Entrapment decreased over a period of eight days. Practical implications for Snapchat’s design and theoretical implications for interpersonal relationships are provided.

Conspicuous Donation and Strategic Self-Presentation on Social Media: Prosocial Fitness App as a Double-Edged Sword • Lewen Wei, Pennsylvania State University; Wanying Zhao, Indiana University Bloomington • We conducted two studies to explore prosocial fitness apps users’ conspicuous donation behaviors on social media, and how networked audiences might respond to those users’ strategic self-presentation. Study 1 examined context collapse among users and found they tended to engage in positive self-presentation on Twitter. Study 2 indicated employing both self-oriented and other-oriented frames in posting donation messages would increase audiences’ self-presentation-related attributions to the message sender, which led to undesirable interpersonal and motivational outcomes.

Predicting Intentions to Use Mobile Fitness Apps: The Integration of TPB and TNSB • Ryna Yeoh; Yujun, Amanda Lin; Alvin Daniel Ho; Kai Feng Ho • This study integrates the theory of planned behaviour and the theory of normative social behaviour to study mobile fitness app use intentions. By comparing users and non-users, this study explores group difference by adoption phases. A sample of 277 university students participated in an online survey. Results highlighted the need to strengthen measurement of social influence in behavioural models, and revealed the effect of perceived behavioural control as the key difference between users and non-users.

Excitation Transfer Effect in Journalism Consumption in Mixed Immersive Environments • Li Zhang, Boston University; Xinyue Liu, Boston University; Di Mu; Bochao Sun; James Cummings, Boston University • With the mainstreaming of virtual reality and 360° video, media consumption will increasingly include engaging highly immersive messages alongside more traditional media formats. That means users will need to potentially switch back and forth between highly immersive and relatively non-immersive media messages. However, little is yet known about how transitioning between drastically different immersion levels may impact the cognitive and emotional processing of those messages. This paper presents the first study to examine the impact of immersion on excitation transfer during such transitions and the corresponding impact on message recall. We find strong support for the existence of excitation transfer of arousal elicited by an initial immersive message (T1 stimulus) to arousal response to subsequent non-immersive media experiences (T2 stimulus). Curiously, we also find that physiological arousal at T2 does not linearly increase with higher levels of message immersion at T1. However, in contrast to recent empirical work, higher subsequent arousal levels were not associated with greater memory of high-priority media content (e.g. messages that are more goal-related). Additionally, the non-specificity of valence in excitation transfer, a key feature of the original theory, was also confirmed. Theoretical implications and future research directions related to the psychological processing of sequences of messages of varied immersion level are then discussed.

< 2019 Abstracts

Public Relations 2018 Abstracts

Doug Newsom Award for Global Ethics Global Diversity
Julia Daisy Fraustino, West Virginia University; Sang (Sammy) Lee, West Virginia University; Ji Young Lee, WVU Public Interest Communication Research Lab • Being Bad Abroad: Effects of Stealing Thunder by Self-Disclosing Corporate FCPA Violations • Tensions between legal counsel and pubic relations counsel, especially during crises, are well established. For example, legal and PR professionals might find themselves at odds when an organization learns of its officials’ possible global ethics violations. Publics relations crisis best practices urge for quick, accurate, and full disclosure with publics; and the US government may require reporting; but legal and business teams may hesitate and request organizational silence, fearing image and financial concerns. Thus, this study seeks to investigate the public relations outcomes of voluntary disclosure to publics and the US government regarding corporate Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations. Primarily using the situational crisis communication theory and stealing thunder frameworks, this work offers a moderated serial mediation model of the effects of stealing thunder (i.e., self-disclosing crisis information first before a third party breaks the news). A 2 (stealing/thunder: organization vs. media) x 2 (corporate social responsibility history: CSR vs. no CSR) experiment probes participants’ responses. Results indicate a significant mediation effect of stealing thunder x CSR history on (a) attitudes toward the company, (b) perceived company ethics, and (c) investment intentions serially through perceived crisis severity and level of anger. Ultimately, results practically provide evidence to support legal teams joining PR teams for a transparent and perhaps more ethical approach to communicating about FCPA violations—while theoretically adding to SCCT and crisis communication literature by advancing knowledge about the mechanisms driving the scarcely researched but meaningful effects of stealing thunder in a global ethics context.

Open Competition
Alan Abitbol, University of Dayton; Miglena Sternadori, Texas Tech University College of Media and Communication • Championing Women’s Empowerment as a Catalyst for Purchase Intentions: Testing the Mediating Roles of OPRs and Brand Loyalty in the Context of Femvertising • This survey of U.S. adults (N = 419) examines company–cause fit, CSR association, purchase intention, organization-public relationships, and loyalty for four Fortune 500 companies in the context of messages that portray girls and women positively through empowering words and imagery. Results show consumers believe the women-empowerment messages fit with the tested companies. Company loyalty, by itself, or combined with OPRs, mediates the CSR association–purchase intention relationship. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Tien-Tsung Lee, University of Kansas; Peter Bobkowski, University of Kansas; George Diepenbrock, University of Kansas; Patrick Miller • Research exposure: Associations between university news release features, news coverage, and page views • This study identified the features of a university’s news releases about faculty research and expertise that were related to news coverage of the university, and to unique page views on the university’s website. More than 800 news releases generated by one university’s news affairs office over nearly two years were examined. News release subjects (i.e., social sciences, arts and humanities), and the use of adverbs and distribution tools, were related consistently to news release effectiveness. Labeling the news release as an advisory, headline length, and the use of a video were not related to news release effectiveness.

Jonathan Borden, Syracuse University; Xiaochen Zhang, Kansas State University • Ultimate Crisis? An Examination of Linguistics and Ultimate Attribution Error in International Organizational Crisis • Through an experiment, this paper examines linguistics and ultimate attribution error in international organizational crisis. Findings suggest that attribution error exists when additional attribution information is minimal (e.g., low attribution victim crisis). Crisis attribution (crisis clusters) directly affects publics’ use of abstract language in describing and commenting on the social media crisis news. Results empirically test and apply two attribution-based theories, Linguistic Categorization Model and Ultimate Attribution Error, in international organizational crisis contexts.

Nicholas Browning, Indiana University; Sung-Un Yang, Indiana University; Young Eun Park, Indiana University; Ejae Lee, Indiana University; Taeyoung Kim, Indiana University • Do Ethics Matter? Investigating Donor Responses to Primary and Tertiary Ethical Violations • Using 2 x 2 experimental survey, the researchers examined how frequently committed (single vs. repeated occurrence) ethical misconduct regarding values closely aligned to an organizational mission (primary vs. tertiary values) affect stakeholders’ attitudes toward, support of, and relationship with an offending nonprofit. Findings showed negative main effects on attitudes toward the organization and donation intention. Additionally, perceived organizational responsibility for ethical misconduct and deteriorating organizational-public relationships (OPRs) significantly mediated the effects of primary ethical violations.

Zifei Chen, University of San Francisco • Examining the Impact of Electronic Word-of-Mouth on Consumer Responses toward Company: An Alignment-Social Influence Model • An Alignment-Social Influence Model is proposed to examine the impact of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) by addressing its alignment with prior corporate associations and anticipated interaction on social media. Through a 2 (associations) x 2 (valence) x 2 (interaction: lurker vs. poster) experiment, three-way interactions showed lurkers who saw aligned negative eWOM had greater attitude shift than lurkers who saw nonaligned negative eWOM; no such difference was found for posters. Positive eWOM helped maintain positive attitude.

Ying Xiong, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Moonhee Cho, University of Tennessee; Brandon Boatwright • Hashtag Activism and Message Frames Among Social Movement Organizations:  Semantic Network Analysis and Thematic Analysis of Twitter During the #MeToo Movement • In the recent #MeToo movement, social movement organizations (SMOs) establish an emotional bridge between the target public and the appeal for feminism. Applying both semantic network analysis method and thematic analysis, this study explored how SMOs address feminist activism and they use hashtags to participate in the #MeToo movement. Findings of the study enhance literature of social movement organizations and activism as well as provide practical implications for effective social movement.

Minhee Choi, University of South Carolina; Soo-Yeon Kim, Sogang University • Strategic Value of Conflict, Activism, and Two-way Communication: Examination of Activists’ Public Relations • This study investigated the relationships between activists’ perceptions of conflict, activism, and two-way symmetrical communication, and their use of public relations tactics, by surveying activists in Korea. Two conflict subdimensions, conflict and mediation approach, had significantly positive relationships with activism perception. Conflict approach had a positive relationship with a few legal and informational public relations tactics. This study found that activists are more likely to focus on informational activities through two-way symmetrical communication.

Angie Chung; Kang Bok Lee • Dealing with Negative Publicity: A Dual Process Model of CSR Fit and CSR History on Purchase Intention and Negative Word-of-Mouth • This paper proposes and tests a dual process model of CSR communication. Building upon the framing theory and associative network theory, the authors examine how including statements about a company’s CSR fit and CSR history in apology statements can impact purchase intention and negative word-of-mouth. Perceived integrity, attitude towards the apology statement and attitude towards the company are the sequential mediators that will subsequently affect purchase intention and negative word-of-mouth. The results show that CSR fit will positively affect purchase intention and negatively affect negative word-of-mouth through increased perceived integrity and attitude towards the apology statement, which will positively affect their attitude towards the company. The findings also show that CSR history will positively affect purchase intention and negatively affect negative word-of-mouth through increased perceived integrity and attitude towards the apology statement, which will positively affect their attitude towards the company. For managers, the results of this study suggest that communicating a company’s CSR activities after bad publicity can help increase purchase intention and reduce negative word-of-mouth but two factors—CSR fit and CSR history—should be taken into account.

Hue Duong, University of Georgia; Hong Vu; Nhung Nguyen • Grassroots Social Movements in Authoritarian Settings: Examining Activists’ Strategic Communication and Issues Management • Triangulating 16 in-depth interviews with activists and campaign participants, news coverage, and social media content related to the campaign “6,700 people for 6,700 trees”, this study identifies activists’ strategic communication and its influence on a public protest in Vietnam. Results indicate that activists strategically used social media and interpersonal communication to advance an issue to the public arena. Activists’ unique strategies were key to the protest’s success. This study offers meaningful theoretical implications on issues management and practical lessons for activists on how to apply these strategies to foster social change.

Savannah Coco, Wayne State University; Stine Eckert • #sponsored: Consumer Insights on Social Media Influencer Marketing • Through in-depth interviews with 15 women, this study begins to fill the gap in scholarship on consumer perceptions of sponsored content posted by social influencers online. Findings show women follow social influencers because of prior topic interests, when they can relate to them, and find them authentic. But social exchange and relationship management theories cannot account for purchasing decisions despite negative views of consumers. We argue for a new theory called Influencer Relationship Management Theory.

Virginia Harrison; Michail Vafeiadis, Auburn University; Pratiti Diddi; Jeff Conlin • What about Our Cause? The Influence of Corporate Social Responsibility on Nonprofit Reputation • While research has shown that corporate social responsibility (CSR) can boost a corporation’s reputation, little is known about how CSR impacts the nonprofit partner’s reputation. An online experiment tested how corporate reputation (high vs. low) and CSR message credibility influenced a high-reputation environmental nonprofit. While credibility and corporate reputation increased the nonprofit’s reputation, only the partnership with a low-reputation corporation increased supportive intention toward the CSR initiative. Implications for nonprofit CSR messaging are discussed.

Seoyeon Hong, Rowan University; Kyujin Shim, University of Melbourne • ETHICAL PUBLIC TYPOLOGY: How Does Moral Foundation Theory and Anti-Corporatism Predict Public Differences in Crisis? • This study proposes a new public typology utilizing Moral Foundation Theory and anti-corporatism. Based on a survey using population representative data (N = 1124), four ethical public types are classified as moralists, antagonists, optimists, and pragmatists. In testing the applicability of the new typology, our results suggest that ethical public types react differently in attributing crisis responsibility, expressing their emotional responses, and showing boycott intentions in evaluating a corporate crisis.

Hyun Ju Jeong, University of Kentucky • The roles of self-identity cues and public self-consciousness in supporting stigmatized causes on social media • The current study examines whether and when socially stigmatized cause (e.g., prochoice) campaigns can fuel the volunteering intention of young people through effective communication on social media. A 2 (self-identify cues: group vs individual) x 2 (public self-consciousness: high vs low) online experiment study found that the group-cues were more effective in generating the intention to volunteer than the individual-cues, in particular for those low in public self-consciousness. For those high in public self-consciousness, however, the intention to volunteer was not differently shaped by the type of self-identity cues soliciting the causes. Public self-consciousness negatively influenced the intention to volunteer. Theoretical and practical implications were further discussed.

Jeesun Kim, Incheon National University; Hyun Jee Oh, Hong Kong Baptist University; Chang-Dae Ham, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Leadership Matters: The Role of Values Congruence between Leadership Styles and CSR Practice in Corporate Crises • Studies have examined the role of CSR in the crisis context; but no studies examined the role of values congruence between leadership styles and CSR practice. We aim to fill this gap by conducting a 2 (crisis type) x 2 (leadership style) x 2 (CSR motive) between-subjects experiment. We found that insulating effects of CSR practice were maximized when leadership styles and CSR motives were congruent, but only when a victim crisis occurred. Implications are discussed.

Arunima Krishna, Boston University • Climate Change Lacuna Publics: Advancing a Typology of Climate Change Disinformation Susceptibility • The purpose of this study is to (a) identify lacuna publics about climate change, and (b) reconceptualize Maibach et al.’s (2009) Global Warming’s Six Americas segmentation into a typology of disinformation susceptibility by integrating it with Krishna’s (2017a) operationalization of lacuna publics. Surveys were conducted among American adults to understand lacuna publics’ information behaviors compared to non-lacuna publics, and to identify individuals falling within four zones of disinformation susceptibility conceptualized in this study.

Seow Ting Lee, University of Colorado Boulder • H1N1 News Releases: How Two Media Systems  Responded to a Global Health Pandemic • Pandemics, as non-linear, atypical health communication contexts characterized by high uncertainty and information scarcity, present a valuable opportunity for explicating the relationships between health authorities’ information subsidies and news coverage. This study is based on a two-country comparative analysis to examine the intersections of public relations and journalism in the U.S. and Singapore with respect to the use and influence of information subsidies in shaping news coverage of the H1N1 Influenza A pandemic. It examines framing characteristics related to episodic-thematic frames, gain- and loss-frames, and tonality and traces the development of framing devices in two public health agencies’ news releases to subsequent news stories about the 2009 H1N1 A influenza. Findings reveal parallels and differences, and salient patterns that are contextualized to assess the relationships of variants between the two distinct media systems.

Sun Young Lee, Texas Tech University; Young Kim, Marquette University; Yeuseung Kim • The Co-Creation of Shared Value: What Motivates the Public to Engage with Participatory Corporate Social Responsibility Activities • The purpose of the study is to explore contextual factors—an organizational factor and four issue-related factors—that might influence the public’s intention to engage with a participatory CSR activity, based on the scholarship on organization–public relationships (OPRs) and the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS). We conducted a survey with 698 respondents living in the U.S., and we tested the model across two issues (girls’ empowerment and deforestation). The results showed that constraint recognition, involvement recognition, and a referent criterion, and OPRs were significant factors, and that OPRs and involvement recognition were the strongest predictors. Problem recognition, however, did not have significant relationships with CSR participation intention. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications.

Zongchao Cathy Li, San Jose State University; Weiting Tao, University of Miami; Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina • The Love-Hate Dilemma: Interaction of Relationship Norms and Service Failure Severity on Consumer Responses • This study aims to investigate consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral outcomes after service failure encounters with companies they previously established good relationships with. The study argues that consumers’ decision making is guided by the conformity or violation of relationship norms, and that their subsequent attitudinal and behavioral outcomes are further dependent on the severity of the service failure. Through a 2 (relationship norm types: exchange vs. communal) ✕2 (service failure severity: minor vs. major) between-subjects experiment, the study shows well-maintained relationships can help companies mitigate the negative impact of service failure under the minor failure condition. Such a buffering effect holds true for both communal and exchange relationships. However, the study also evidences a counterintuitive situation where communal relationships backfire and induce more negative consumer responses than exchange relationships when the severity of the service failure becomes extreme. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Wenlin Liu, U of Houston; Weiai (Wayne) Xu, University of Massachusetts • Tweeting to (Selectively) Engage: A Network Analysis of Government Organizations’ Stakeholder Management on Twitter during Hurricane Harvey • The ability to manage a multitude of stakeholder relationships has long been viewed important for effective crisis management. With stakeholder communication increasingly taking place on social media like Twitter, however, it remains less explored how organizations may selectively engage with multiple stakeholders (e.g., citizens, NGOs, media, businesses) on this networked platform, and how engagement priorities may shift dynamically across different stages of a crisis. Using stakeholder theory for crisis management, the current study examines the stakeholder engagement network on Twitter by 42 government and emergency management (EM) organizations across three stages of Hurricane Harvey. Organizational actors’ reply and mention networks were analyzed, suggesting that government and EM organizations prioritize engaging with primary stakeholders including citizen groups and peer governmental agencies during crisis, whereas secondary stakeholders like media and nonprofit organizations are more prioritized only at post-crisis stage.

Hua Jiang; Yi Luo, Montclair State University • Driving Employee Organization Engagement through CSR Communication and Employee Perceived Motives: CSR-Related Social Media Engagement and Job Engagement • Employee engagement and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been two important issues attracting an increasing amount of attention from both public relations and CSR researchers. A theory-driven model that conceptualizes employee social media engagement, job engagement, and organization engagement and explicates how they are related to CSR communication strategies and motives is still lacking. To place our study in the context of employee/internal communication and CSR communication, we proposed a strategies-motives-employee engagement model. Results from an online Qualtrics survey (n = 836) supported all our hypotheses except for the direct link between interacting CSR communication strategies and employee organization engagement. Interacting CSR communication strategies significantly predicted employees’ CSR social media engagement and job engagement. Employee perceived intrinsic CSR motives were significantly associated with all three engagement variables in our model. We conducted a two-step Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis to test all our hypotheses. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are discussed.

Liang (Lindsay) Ma, Texas Christian University; Joshua Bentley, Texas Christian University • Understanding the Effects of CSR Message Frames and NWOM Sources on Customers’ Responses on Social Networking Sites • Negative word-of-mouth (NWOM) communication on social networking sites (SNSs) is influential to customers’ responses to corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication. This study examined how strategic framing of CSR communication can better counter the effects of online NWOM, depending on the NWOM information source. Four hundred Starbucks’ customers recruited from a Qualtrics panel participated in this 2 (strategic framing: company-centered vs. engagement-centered)  2 (NWOM source: stranger vs. friend) online experiment. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Angela Mak; Song Ao, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University • Revisiting social-mediated crisis communication model: The Lancôme regenerative crisis after Hong Kong Umbrella Movement • This paper intends to 1) identify how this case follows the regenerative crisis model, 2) explore the trends of emotions and engagement of different publics and Lancôme in the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication model, and 3) identify the roles and strategies used by social media influencers. An online content analysis revealed the interlocking connection among the involved publics. Followers’ emotional responses were not only attached to Lancôme, but also the re-framing strategies adopted by the influencers.

Menqi Liao; Angela Mak • “Comments are disabled for this video”: A heuristic approach to understanding perceived credibility of CSR messages on YouTube • Scarce research has focused on the technological aspects of social media in CSR communication. This study explored how bandwagon heuristics (more likes/dislikes) and identity heuristics (enable/disable commenting) influence the perceived source credibility assessment (trustworthiness, goodwill, and competence) on YouTube through a 2 x 2 experiment (N=108). No main effects were found separately, but an interaction effect existed towards perceived competence of the company. Implications of CSR communication research and effectiveness of using YouTube are discussed.

Brooke McKeever; Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina; Geah Pressgrove; Holly Overton, University of South Carolina • Predicting Public Support: Applying the Situational Theory of Problem Solving to Prosocial Behaviors • This study explores the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) through a survey of people (N=1,275) who supported issues they care(d) about in 2017, a year filled with social movements, natural disasters, and other important issues. Beyond finding support for the STOPS model in terms of predicting communicative action, this study found support for situational motivation influencing other behaviors, including volunteering, donating, and other forms of advocacy. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Rita Men, University of Florida; Cen April Yue, University of Florida • Creating a Positive Emotional Culture: Effect of Strategic Internal Communication and its Impact on Employee Supportive Behaviors • The study surveyed 506 employees in the United States to test the effect of strategic internal communication (i.e., corporate-level symmetrical and leadership-level responsive communications) on fostering a positive emotional culture characterized by companionate love, joy, pride, and gratitude. In addition, we tested the interplay between corporate internal communication and a positive emotional culture and its influence on positive employee behaviors, specifically, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and employee advocacy. Results indicated that symmetrical communication and responsive leadership communication cultivated a positive emotional culture in organizations. Such culture also fostered employee OCB and advocacy. Moreover, corporate symmetrical communication directly and positively influenced employee OCB. Finally, this study found that employee OCB positively affected employee advocacy. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings for public relations scholars and practitioners were discussed.

Tham Nguyen, University of Oklahoma; Robert Pritchard, U of Oklahoma • Enhancing Student Learning Outcomes from the Business Side of Student-run Public Relations and Communication Firms • Existing studies found pedagogical benefits of public relations and communication student-run firms. Yet, very little research has been done in this area. In a recent study, Bush, Haygood, and Vincent (2017) found that although interviewees placed the highest value on real-world experiences, developing soft skills, securing first jobs as well as career successes, student-run firms fell short in providing a better understanding of the business process and protocols of public relations and communication firms. This study examines the student learning outcomes from the business and financial side of student-run firms. Specifically, four research questions are proposed, including (1) To what extent are the students involved in determining services being offered?, (2) How do student-run firms approach potential clients?, (3) How do student-run firms formulate fee structure?, and (4) What business process and protocols do student-run firms teach their members? The study included an online survey, followed by interviews with firm advisors at different universities in the U.S. A preliminary report from the online survey data revealed that students mostly suggested offering multimedia/digital media services, or expanding their scope of services beyond their traditional services. Word-of-mouth and referrals were the most popular ways to recruit new clients, while sales pitches were undertaken only occasionally. Fee structures were formed depending on the firm’s business objectives and learning opportunities for students. Teaching business processes and protocols was also discussed. Theoretical implications for experiential learning theory as well as practical implications to enhance learning outcomes from the business side of student-run firms are offered.

Chuka Onwumechili • The Sun (UK) Newspaper: Strategic Audience Choice in Crisis and Reputation Repair • Organizations and individuals depend on the mass media to transmit a transgressor’s apologia to the public. However, agenda setting scholars point out that such a transgressing party (Organization or individual) is forced to depend not only in its ability to choose effective apologia strategies but also on the media to frame the apologia in ways that the party may be successful. Unfortunately, with most studies focused on transgressors who rely on media as third party, little is known of what happens when that third party (media) is the transgressor. This study on the Sun newspaper explores media as transgressor. It investigates the following: (1) how do other media react when a competing medium transgresses? and (2) how is audience reaction shaped, considering that the transgressing mass medium has direct communication line to that audience?

Jo-Yun Queenie Li, University of South Carolina; Joon Kyoung Kim, University of South Carolina; Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; nandini bhalla, University of South Carolina; Won-ki Moon, University of South Carolina; Minhee Choi, University of South Carolina; Nanlan Zhang, University of South Carolina • What Shapes Environmental Responsibility Perceptions? Measuring Collectivistic Orientations as a Predictor of Situational Motivations and Communicative Action • “This study investigates individuals’ cognitive, motivational, and communication responses regarding an environmental CSR issue using arguments from the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) with a cross-situational factor as an antecedent. Survey results provide empirical support for the application of the STOPS in a CSR communication context and suggest that a collectivistic orientation predicts individuals’ situational perceptions and cognitive reactions toward organizations’ environmental CSR efforts. Theoretical and practical implications for strategic communicators are discussed.”

Yufan Qin, University of Florida; Rita Men, University of Florida • Exploring Negative Peer Communication of Companies on Social Media and Its Impact on Organization-Public Relationships • This study examined whether and how the publics’ negative peer communication (NPC) about companies on social media could influence the quality of organization-public relationships through the theoretical lens of social learning theory. It also explored the sundry individual (i.e., social media dependency, tie strength) and corporate-level factors (i.e., perceived corporate reputation, public interactions with companies on social media) that could affect the publics’ engagement in NPC behavior about companies on social media. Through an online survey of 356 social media users in the U.S. who have discussed negatively about companies and brands on social media and a structural equation modeling analysis, results showed that NPC about companies on social media negatively influenced the quality of organization-public relationships. Publics who were more dependent on social media and who had stronger ties with their peers on social media tended to engage more in NPC about companies. Publics who perceived a favorable reputation of the company were less likely to engage in NPC about companies on social media. Further, perceived corporate reputation and public interactions with companies on social media positively predicted the quality of organization-public relationships.

Hyejoon Rim; Jisu Kim, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Chuqing Dong • A Cross-National Comparison of Transparency Signaling in CSR Reporting • This study examines the level of transparency signaling in CSR reports in three countries: the U.S., South Korea, and China. By analyzing 181 CSR reports from 2014 to 2017 with a computer-aided content analysis program, Diction 7.0, this study found that the three dimensions of transparency signaling – participation, substantial information, and accountability in CSR reports were varied across different countries. In CSR reports, companies in the U.S. and South Korea showed higher scores in the participation and accountability dimensions than China, while companies in China showed high scores in the substantial information dimension. In CEO letters, we discovered that the U.S. companies emphasized the participation aspects, while South Korea and China companies underscored the accountability aspect of transparency signaling. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Erin Schauster; Marlene Neill, Baylor University; Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore • Public relations primed: An update on practitioners’ moral reasoning, from moral development to moral maintenance • To understand how professional identity influences moral reasoning and guided by theories of moral psychology and social identity, 153 public relations practitioners working in the United States participated in an online experiment. According to the results, moral reasoning scores have remained steady since the last time they were measured in 2009. Professional associations appear to be a valuable resource for socialization as members of PRSA who, in addition to engaging in higher levels of moral reasoning than the average adult, report they have access to regular ethics training, ethics resources and mentors, and are familiar with their industry’s code of ethics. In addition, socialization in later career stages appears to incorporate aspects of maintenance rather than development, helping to sustain levels of moral reasoning. Other communication disciplines should take note of public relations’ strong commitment to ethics education and implement similar professional development opportunities.

Hongmei Shen, San Diego State University; Yang Cheng, North Carolina State University • The Relationship Exchange Theory: Organization-Public Relationship (OPR) in the Big Data Age • With the expressive behavior on social media in the big data era, public relations researchers can easily track the information flows among organizations and their publics on common issues over time. Instead of examining organization-public relationships at a static point by using experiments or surveys, this study posited the relationship exchange theory, including an issue-stance-relationship phase framework and the operational six relationship modes aiming to provide a longitudinal approach to examining the relationship dynamics among two or multiple parties. Empirically, this study presents a case study on the conflicts between McDonald’s and its activist publics. By tracking the changing stances of the organization and its publics longitudinally, results show how the relationship exchange theory can help examine the intensity and direction of OPR over time.

Hongmei Shen, San Diego State University; Hua Jiang • Dedicated to Our Work? An Employee Engagement Model in Public Relations • Engagement has emerged as an important concept in public relations scholarship. Yet a theoretically-informed model with a clear and coherent explication of the construct is still lacking. By situating our study in the internal context, we provided an updated conceptualization and operationalization of employee engagement and proposed a strategy-engagement-behavior three-step employee engagement model. Results from an employee survey (n = 568) supported our conceptual model, showing that organizational engagement strategies positively predicted employee engagement, which in turn accounted for employees’ positive and negative messaging behavior as well as their contextual performance behavior. After controlling for significant demographics variables of gender, age, organizational size, number of subordinates, and level of management position, we identified a complete mediation effect of employee engagement in our two-step structural equation modeling analysis. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Melissa Dodd; Hilary Sisco, Quinnipiac University; John Brummette, Radford University; William Kennan • Developing a Measure of Social Capital for Public Relations • This research synthesizes literature in order to propose a comprehensive conceptualization of social capital as a resource- and exchange- based function of public relations that provides an ontological argument for the discipline as a whole. More than conceptualization, this research proposes and empirically tests a disciplinary-specific measure of social capital among a random sample of public relations professionals. Findings suggest some relational factors of social capital shared a significant predictive relationship with public relations outcomes.

Diana Sisson, Auburn University • Control Mutuality and Social Media Revisited: A Study of National Animal Welfare Donors • Guided by OPR, relationship management, and social media literature, this study employs an online survey panel to examine national animal welfare donors’ (n = 1,033) perceptions of control mutuality and its role in social media engagement. Findings suggest that heightened perceptions of control mutuality may have positive implications for social media engagement on a national level. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed for strategy development.

Weiting Tao, University of Miami; Cheng Hong; Wanhsiu Sunny Tsai, University of Miami; Bora Yook, University of Miami • Publics’ Communication on Controversial Sociopolitical Issues: Extending the Situational Theory of Problem Solving • Capturing a unique moment within a particularly volatile political climate where various issues such as climate change, immigration, and healthcare are increasingly polarized, this survey examines the factors driving publics’s engagement and disengagement in communications on controversial sociopolitical issues. It applies and expands Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS) by integrating the theoretical insights from the literature of information omission and avoidance. Results not only support the applicability of the STOPS model in explaining publics’ communication on controversial sociopolitical problems but also the viability of integrating two new behavioral outcomes of information omission and avoidance into the STOPS framework. Theoretical and strategic implications on social issue advocacy are provided.

Jiun-Yi Tsai, Northern Arizona University; Janice Sweeter, Northern Arizona University; Elizabeth Candello, Washington State University; Kirsten Bagshaw, Northern Arizona University • Examining Efficiency and Effectiveness in Online Interactions Between United States Government Agencies and Their Publics • Text-based computer-mediated communication (e.g., email) has become indispensable for U.S. state agencies to respond to requests and engage with citizens, thereby contributing to build public trust in local governments. Despite the essential role of digital communication in enhancing public engagement, there is limited understanding of how government agencies manage generic queries to maintain relationships with publics. By synthesizing chronemics research and organization-public relationship (OPR) scholarship, we introduce an original Response Engagement Index (REI) consisting of response speed, communicated commitment, and conversational voice to measure various levels of communication engagement. We conduct a field experiment encompassing emailing a request for information to 438 state agencies based in New York, Texas, Florida, Illinois and Rhode Island. A total of 293 organizational responses were manually analyzed to reveal the usages of engagement strategies. Results show the interactive potential of e-government communication is largely underutilized as the average scores of response engagement remain low. Human responses are less engaging than auto-reply messages, and require one-day waiting period, if not longer. Response types and gender significantly differ in response time and engagement strategies. Findings advance the OPR literature and identify best practices for government communicators to promote citizen engagement.

Michail Vafeiadis, Auburn University; Denise Bortree, Penn State University; Christen Buckley, Penn State University; Pratiti Diddi, PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY; Anli Xiao • Combatting fake news: Examining the role of crisis response strategies and issue involvement in refuting misinformation on social media • The dissemination of fake news has accelerated with social media and this has important implications for both nonprofit organizations and their stakeholders alike. Hence, the current study attempts to shed light on the effectiveness of the crisis response strategies of denial and attack in addressing rumors on social media. Through an online experiment, users were first exposed to a fake news Facebook post accusing the American Red Cross of failing to protect its donors’ privacy because of an alleged data breach, and then participants were exposed to a version of the nonprofits’ rebuttal. Results show that highly involved individuals are more likely to centrally process information and develop positive supportive intentions toward the affected organization. In addition, low involvement individuals who were exposed to a denial response rather than an attack response rated fake news as less credible. Finally, the attack response was more effective for high involvement individuals (for whom privacy was important) than those with low involvement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Rachel Deems, Moroch Partners; Jan Wicks, University of Arkansas School of Journalism & Strategic Media • Exploring Tweeting at the Top: Do Goods-Producing and Service-Producing Firms Appear to Set Different CSR Agendas on Twitter? • This exploratory content analysis examined how 33 Global 2000 companies portray corporate social responsibility (CSR) on Twitter, and whether the agenda firms appear to present varies by industry category. Goods-producing firms appear to set an environmentally-friendly agenda, tweeting about sustainable development and using interactivity to promote their agenda widely. Service-producing firms appear to set a customer-friendly agenda, tweeting about philanthropy topics affecting many people, perhaps to transfer salience to the largest number of stakeholders.

Chelsea Woods, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech) • Responding to Product (Mis)Placement: Analyzing Crock-Pot’s Paracrisis Management • Social media can breed publicly visible threats, known as paracrises. In 2018, an emotional television episode sparked online chatter surrounding Crock-Pot, which effectively managed the threat, turning the event into a public relations opportunity for the brand. This case extends our knowledge of effective paracrisis management by describing how humor can be used alone or with denial, altering our perception of ‘credible’ sources during these unique threats, and introducing two new paracrisis management strategies.

Xiaohan Xu; Maria Leonora Comello, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Suman Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Richard Clancy • Exploring Country-of-Origin Perceptions and Ethnocentrism: Implications for PR Efforts to Introduce U.S. Dairy Products to China • American dairy producers face an unprecedented opportunity to export products to China. This study examines the influence of country-of-origin effect and ethnocentrism (COO) in purchase intentions of U.S. dairy products by conducting an online survey of 505 Chinese urban consumers.  Results suggest that purchase intentions of U.S. dairy products are positively associated with higher levels of affective and cognitive COO, as well as lower ethnocentrism.  Implications for PR efforts are discussed.

Aimei yang, University of Southern California; Yi (Grace) Ji, Virginian Commonwealth University • The Quest for Legitimacy and the Communication of Strategic Cross-Sectoral Partnership on Facebook: A Big Data, Social Network Study • Nowadays, many wicked problems such as environmental issues require organizations from multiple sectors to form cross-sectoral alliances. Cross-sectoral alliance networks can transfer resources and they can also signal affiliations and value alignment between strategic partners. The communication of cross-sectoral alliances is a form of CSR communication that serves organizations’ strategic goals and objectives. Drawing on the literature on digital CSR communication and legitimacy theory, this article examines what legitimacy needs shape the formation of cross-sectoral ties on Facebook in addressing environmental issue and sustainable development issues in the United States. Combining data-mining, text-mining, social network analysis, and exponential graph modeling, this research investigates the structure of a network among 3071 organizations across multiple sectors. Findings show that organizations’ cross-sectoral tie formation is mainly driven by social legitimacy and alliance legitimacy needs. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Su Lin Yeo, Singapore Management University; Augustine Pang, Singapore Management University; Michelle Cheong, Singapore Management University; Jerome Yeo, Singapore Management University • Emotions in Social Media: An Analysis of Tweet Responses to MH370 Search Suspension Announcement • Considered one of the deadliest incidents in the history of aviation crises and labeled a “continuing mystery”, the ongoing search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 offers no closure. With endless media attention given to the crisis and negative reactions of stakeholders to every decision made by the Airlines, this study investigates the types of emotions found in social media posted by publics to the MH370 search suspension announcement. It content analyzed 5.062 real-time tweet messages guided by the revised Integrated Crisis Mapping Model. Our findings indicated that, in addition to the four original emotions posited, there was a fifth emotion because of the long-drawn crisis and only two dominant emotions were similar to the Model. A redrawn version to better encapsulate all the emotions is offered for one quadrant in the Model. Implications for both crisis communication scholarship and the importance of social listening for organizations are discussed.

Xiaochen Zhang, Kansas State University; Jonathan Borden, Syracuse University • Linguistic Crisis Prediction: An Integration of Linguistic Categorization Model in Crisis Communication • Through two experiments, this study examines the relationship between linguistic choice and attribution perception in organizational crises. Results showed that abstract (vs. concrete) language in crisis news elicited higher attribution and lower purchase intentions. High (vs. low) attribution crisis led to higher usage of abstract language and that language mediates crisis types’ effect on purchase intentions. The findings empirically connect two Attribution Theory-rooted theories: Linguistic Categorization Model and the Situational Crisis Communication Theory.

Ziyuan Zhou; Xueying Zhang; Eyun-Jung Ki, The University of Alabama • Were These Studies Properly Designed?: An Examination of 22 Years of SCCT Experimental Research • This study examines the current state of the application of experiment method to studies investigating SCCT published between 1995 and 2017. Through a content analysis of 55 experiments in 50 articles published in 16 journals, the results revealed that the use of manipulation checks is questionable in the field. One-fourth of the published experiments failed to provide any information about manipulation checks, which poses a serious challenge to the validity of the experiments. The generalizability can be significantly improved if researchers set up crisis scenarios in diverse situations, such as a different way of presenting the stimuli, a different medium of the stimuli, a different industry the organization belongs to, etc.

Student
Sarah Aghazadeh, University of Maryland • “Recovery warriors”: The National Eating Disorder Association’s online public and rhetorical vision • This paper explores how organizations facilitate shared meaning with publics in an online context. I used Bormann’s symbolic convergence theory to identify rhetorical vision on the National Eating Disorder Association’s (NEDA) Facebook page. The results suggest that NEDA facilitated rhetorical vision of eating disorder “recovery warriors” by extending its rhetorical community and encouraging the “chaining” process. Lastly, I argue for theoretical and practical implications of NEDA’s efforts.

Brooke Fowler, University of Maryland, College Park • The internal angle of police-worn body cameras:  A hommo narrans approach to understanding patrol officer perceptions of body cameras • Relatively little research is available on how patrol officers perceive body cameras.  This paper conceptualizes patrol officers as an internal public and utilizes the homo narrans approach known as the theory-behavior complex, which combines symbolic convergence theory and situational theory of publics (Vasquez, 1993, 1994).  Twenty six semi-structured interviews were conducted.  This study adds to the limited number of homo narrans pieces in PR and proposes a new type of covert internal activism, under-the-table activism.

Virginia Harrison • “I Don’t Consider Myself a Corporate Fundraiser”: Understanding the Nonprofit Perspective in CSR Relationships • Taking an often-neglected viewpoint, this study examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) partnerships from the perspective of nonprofit beneficiaries. In-depth interviews with corporate relations officers at public research universities across the U.S. revealed three main factors have contributed to a rapidly evolving climate for corporate partnerships: CSR partnerships help universities build their reputations rather than endowments; feature new preferences in communication-based stewardship practices; and raise questions about university autonomy and authority. These findings contribute new understandings to how CSR-related communication creates mutually beneficial relationships.

Yingru Ji, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Exploring Publics’ Expectations for Crisis Outcomes: A Communication Mediated Psychological Mechanism in Social Media Era • The study conceptualizes consumer publics’ expectations for outcomes, in times of a preventable crisis, as a construct with three dimensions—organizational accommodation responses, punishment of the organization, and societal level regulations. The study also develops a reliable and valid scale to measure the construct. Using an online survey in Beijing China, this work empirically investigates the degree to which publics’ crisis blame and varied communication behaviors (i.e., information seeking and online expression) serially mediates the relationships between publics’ causal attribution and various publics’ expectations. The simple mediation results of crisis blame indicate that the largest mediation effects were on the psychological mechanism leading to publics’ expecting the organization to be punished. Moreover, the findings regarding serial mediation—crisis blame and communication behaviors as two mediators—suggest that active information seekers expect organizational accommodations and societal level interventions. Active online expressers, in contrast, expect to see the organization punished.

Yingru Ji, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Moderating Effects of Perceived Government Controllability over Crisis Outcomes and Consumer Collective Efficacy on Responsibility Attribution and Demands for Regulatory Interventions • Through an online survey of Beijing consumer publics, the study empirically examined a moderated mediation model of public demands for regulatory interventions. The findings revealed that as issue involvement improved, publics—who perceived both high levels of government controllability over crisis outcomes and consumer collective efficacy—attributed less responsibility to the in-crisis company and were less likely to demand regulatory intervention. The study also found that perceived government controllability had larger impacts on public demands for regulatory interventions than responsibility attribution did in China. By delineating the relationships among issue involvement, responsibility attribution, perceived government controllability over crisis outcomes, and consumer collective efficacy, the study outlines a comprehensive psychological mechanism of public demands for regulatory interventions in times of crisis.

Keqing Kuang; Sitong Guo, University of Alabama • Being honest to the public: Lessons from Haidilao’s crisis responses in China • On August 25th, 2017, the news was reported by Legal Evening News in terms of a restaurant in China named Haidilao Hot Pot’s irresponsibility to its kitchen hygiene and it went viral on social media and online news websites. Facing the scandal, Haidilao uses several crisis-response strategies to win back public support as well as to save its reputation and image. The purposes of this study are twofold: (1) understanding publics’ responses regarding Haidilao’s crisis communication, and (2) examine whether publics think the organization being honest or not. A content analysis is conducted through collecting publics’ comments and reposts on Weibo, a popular social media platform in China. The results indicate that publics respond to Haidilao and its crisis communication strategies positively and favorably in general, and results of perceived organizational performance of Haidilao are mixed.

Ejae Lee, Indiana University • Authenticity in Public Relations: The Effects on Organization-Public Relationships • This study aimed to explicate an organization’s authenticity, develop the authenticity measurement, and investigate the effects of perceived authenticity on OPR outcomes to address the implication of perceived authenticity of an organization in public relations. The study examined the validity and reliability of the proposed authenticity measurement with two constructs, awareness and consistency. The results of SEM found the direct and indirect effects of authenticity on transparency, trust, distrust, commitment, and switching intention.

Jungkyu Rhys Lim, University of Maryland • How Public Relations Builds Mutually Beneficial Relationships: Public Relations’ Role in Creating Shared Value (CSV) • Public relations strives to build mutually beneficial relationships. However, public relations scholarship has not clearly developed strategies for mutually beneficial relationships. Creating Shared Value (CSV) is one answer, as CSV strengthens the company’s competitiveness and improves the communities simultaneously. While public relations scholars have studied Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), CSV is understudied. This paper examines how public relations contributes to CSV and mutually beneficial relationships, through a case study on a multinational company’s CSV program.

Keonyoung Park, Syracuse University • Sharing the Problem-Solving Experience with Corporations: How Brand Activism Creates Brand Loyalty • Brand activism is a corporations’ advocacy on social issues. Although corporations’ social engagements have been already popularized phenomena, there are only limited academic attention on brand activism. Building on social identity theory, this study investigated brand activism as a shared problem-solving experience between publics and a corporation. The current study tried to suggest a comprehensive social media brand activism model showing the relationships between individuals’ activism engagement triggered by a corporation, brand trust, and brand loyalty. In doing so, this study conducted an online survey adopting the case of #AerieREAL campaign. Results showed that brand activism has impacts on mobilizing public engagements, which increase brand trust and loyalty. Practical implications of the study were discussed, considering both activism- and business-perspectives.

Patrick Thelen • Supervisor Humor Styles and Employee Advocacy: A Serial Mediation Model • This study examines how supervisor humor styles influence employee advocacy by building the linkage between affiliative humor, aggressive humor, supervisor authenticity, employee-organization relationships, and employee advocacy. Through a quantitative survey with 350 employees who work for a variety of organizations, this study’s results indicated that the relationship between supervisor humor style and employee advocacy is fully mediated by supervisor authenticity and employee-organization relationships. Significant theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Teaching
Gee Ekachai, Marquette University; Young Kim, Marquette University; Lauren Olson, Marquette University • Does your PR course syllabus excite, intrigue, and motivate students to learn? • The purpose of this study is to examine how a format of a syllabus influences student motivation and engagement in a public relations course and impression on the course and course instructor.  The course syllabus functions as a pivotal role in evaluating initial course perceptions by students that could lead to student motivation to engage in classroom activities.  However, there has been a lack of research that examines how a format—design or length—of a course syllabus can affect or promote student engagement in PR courses. To fill the research gap, two studies, focus group interviews (Study I, N = 10) and a lab experiment (Study II, N = 84), were conducted with undergraduate students. Results from the two focus group interviews revealed that students preferred the long version of the visually appealing syllabus. However, findings in the experimental study indicate the importance of a visually-appealing and short syllabus as an initial point of positive impressions on the course and instructor in a public relations classroom.

Hong Ji; Parul Jain; Catherine Axinn • Perceptions of Guest Speakers in Strategic Communications Courses:  An Exploratory Investigation • Using linkage beliefs theory and focus group methodology, we conducted a systematic investigation to understand students’ perceptions of having guest speakers in strategic communications courses. Our findings suggest that students prefer speakers from a variety of backgrounds and experiences with whom they could relate and prefer to hear about tips related to networking, job search, and career advancements. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

Carolyn Kim, Biola University; Karen Freberg, University of Louisville • Online Pedagogy: Navigating Perceptions and Practices to Develop Learning Communities • With the maturation of online education, there has been increased attention given to standards, motivations and best-practices within online education. This study is designed to explore the intersections between perceptions and practices that educators who teach online hold in relation perceptions and practices of students who are taking online courses. Implications from the findings on online education and ties to the recommendations from the Commission of Public Relations Education Report are noted.

Christopher J. McCollough, Columbus State University • Visionary Public Relations Coursework: Assessing Economic Impact of Service Learning in Public Relations Courses • Literature in public relations education on service learning offers strong examples of a wide variety of benefits, yet little is said about the potential long-term benefits for economic development. Given the obvious connection between public relations functions and successful businesses, this paper dis-cuss the course development, execution, and subsequent early indicators of economic impact of a collaborative project to promote a visionary arts venue and the community that neighbors it.

Amanda Weed, Ashland University • Is advertising and public relations pedagogy on the “write” track?: Comparing industry needs and educational objectives • Writing skills are paramount to the success of entry-level employees in the fields of strategic communication, yet sparse pedagogical research has been published in the past decade that specifically address methods to teach unique writing skills in the strategic communication curriculums. This study examines three unique categories of written communication—business writing, creative writing, and writing pedagogy—to provide a set of pedagogical recommendations that address the needs of the advertising and public relations industries.

2018 ABSTRACTS

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.

2018 ABSTRACTS

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.

2018 ABSTRACTS