International Communication 2019 Abstracts

Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition

“Newsmaker-in-Chief”? Presidents’ Foreign Policy Priorities and International News Coverage from LBJ to Obama • Kirsten Adams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe, UNC-Chapel Hill; Meghan Sobel, Regis University; Seoyeon Kim, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Through a mixed-method analysis of country mentions across 50 years of U.S. presidents’ speech transcripts (N = 284) and New York Times’ international news coverage (N = 20,765) across nine presidencies, we find the phenomenon of an “echoing press” following the “presidential gaze” toward foreign-policy priorities steadily declining over time and within administrations. This study examines the complex roles of the “newsmaker-in-chief” and the press who cover – and sometimes “echo” – his administration’s foreign affairs agenda.

Investigating Empathic Concern, Reporting Efficacy & Journalistic Roles as Determinants of Adherence to Peace Journalism • Oluseyi Adegbola; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University • This study examines the influence of empathic concern, perceived journalistic roles, and reporting efficacy on journalists’ adherence to peace journalism. Quantitative surveys (N=324) and semi-structured interviews (N=10) of Nigerian journalists were conducted. Results suggest that Nigerian journalists adhere to peace journalism more than to war journalism and that empathic concern, perceived reporting efficacy, and subscription to the interventionist role are strong predictors of adherence to peace journalism.

Reporting Bias in Coverage of Iran Protests: An Analysis of Coverage by Global News Agencies • Oluseyi Adegbola; Janice Cho; Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University • This study examines reporting of intense Iranian protests by global news agencies located in the United States (Associated Press), United Kingdom (Reuters), France (Agence France-Presse), China (Xinhua), and Russia (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union). A census of reporting (N = 369) was content analyzed. Results show reporting remains influenced by political systems. News agencies also vary in their assessment of causal agents, moral evaluations, and treatment recommendations. Implications for reporting foreign conflict is discussed.

Intimate Partner Violence: What do Nollywood Movies Teach Us? • Ajeori agbese • Scholars have long criticized mass media for largely ignoring, negatively stereotyping and downplaying the seriousness of intimate partner violence (IPV). However, considering few studies have examined this issue in movies, this paper examined Nollywood movies to determine the messages audience get about IPV in Nigeria. The paper also wanted to find out if the movies challenged societal stereotypes about IPV and gender roles in intimate relationships. The contents of nine IPV-themed movies were interpretively analyzed, using social learning and cultivation theories as guides. The analysis showed that while Nollywood movies depicted the severity of the issue, the portrayals mostly mirrored the stereotypes and beliefs people already have about IPV and gender roles in intimate relationships. The movies largely blamed victims and other outside forces for abuse in intimate relationships. In addition, the portrayals barely challenged the perception and problem of IPV in Nigeria and did not provide realistic solutions.

The role of media for young Syrian Refugees at a time of uncertainty and changing living conditions • Miriam Berg • A considerable number of refuges that came to Germany in 2015 and 2016 were unaccompanied minors. This study examines the Syrian minor refugees among them, who now, as young adults, are using media as a whole in their everyday life and how their usage has changed since their arrival in Germany. There is a particular focus on correlations with the changing living conditions of the minors from mass emergency shelters to refugee accommodation and youth flats. The study also explores how media was used in their home country and during their flight to Germany. The research was carried out in the form of 30 semi-structured interviews with refugees between the ages of 18-21 who arrived in Hamburg, Germany in 2015 as unaccompanied minors. Findings of this study have shown that digital media and internet connectivity is seen as a necessity in contemporary living for young refugees and is considered as important as food and shelter to survive. However, despite internet access being seen as the most efficient way to stay informed and connected with families, friendships developed offline were found to be more important and helpful in terms of adjusting to a new environment, coping with loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted in their host country.

Journalists, Newsmakers and Social Media in East Africa • Steve Collins; Kelly Merrill; Chad Collins; Kioko Ireri; Raul Gamboa, University of Central Florida • This study involved an analysis of 1,784 Twitter accounts representing journalists, news organizations and newsmakers in East Africa. An analysis of social media influence metrics suggests that although news organizations are on even ground with the people and organizations they cover, individual journalists are not. The data suggest a digital divide, with Kenya and Uganda ahead of Rwanda and Tanzania. By one measure, female journalists have more social media influence than men.

Framing Syrian refugees: US Local News and the Politics of Immigration • Aziz Douai, Ontario Tech University; Mehmet Bastug • The article investigates news coverage and media framing of the Syrian refugee debate as a public opinion issue in US local news in 2015. Political response to the Syrian refugee crisis was divided, but public attitudes shifted after the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015 with calls for more restrictive immigration policies and smaller refugee quotas. In the US, GOP leaders demanded “extreme vetting” and “screening” of refugees and many opposed resettling them. The study analyzes local news coverage variation across the states that welcomed, not welcomed or did not commit to accepting Syrian refugees at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016. The findings of the study demonstrate that the editorial framing of the Syrian refugee crisis downplayed the global responsibility and international commitment of the US, highlighted the administrative costs, and framed them security threats. The implications of these frames are discussed.

India’s Mediated Public Diplomacy on Social Media: Building Agendas in South Asia • Nisha Garud Patkar • One tool in India’s mediated public diplomacy is the increasing use of social media platforms to build agendas among foreign audiences. In 2017, the Indian government ranked seventh in the world in its use of social media for diplomacy and had more than 1.2 million users following its diplomatic accounts on several social media platforms. Despite this high ranking and a sizable following on social media, little research has been done to understand India’s mediated public diplomacy through Twitter and Facebook. To address this literature gap, this study examined: (i) the agendas the Indian government builds on its social media accounts and (ii) the rank order of these agendas with the perceived agendas of the followers of these accounts. A quantitative content analysis of 6,000 tweets and status updates published on the 15 Indian diplomatic accounts along with a survey of 500 followers of these accounts were conducted. Results showed that politics, culture, economy/finance, and infrastructure were the top-ranked agendas of the Indian government on social media. These agendas rank ordered with a few top-ranked agendas for followers which were education, health and medicine, environment, economy/finance, and infrastructure.

Gatekeeping and the Panama Papers: an analysis of transnational journalism culture • Nana Naskidashvili, University of Missouri; Beverly Horvit, University of Missouri; Astrid Benoelken; Diana Fidarova • ICIJ’s Panama Papers transnational journalism project was analyzed on three levels suggested by Hellmueller (2017): the evaluative, the cognitive and the performative. The gatekeepers interviewed demonstrated a common understanding (evaluative) of what it means to be an investigative journalist. Regardless of a journalist’s location, prominent people were deemed newsworthy (cognitive), and the journalists created rules for searching and double-checking their data. At the performative level, the gatekeepers agreed when the stories would emerge.

Cognitive and Behavioral Factors of Online Discussion as Antecedents of Deliberation and Tolerance: Evidence from South Korea, United Kingdom and United States • Irkwon Jeong; Hyoungkoo Khang • The current study examined cognitive and behavioral factors of online discussion as antecedents of attitudes toward opposing views and two aspects of social norms, perceived importance of public deliberation and social tolerance. Employing surveys in South Korea, United Kingdom and United States, this study found that adjustment motive and discussion heterogeneity are positively associated with perceived importance of public deliberation and social tolerance in all three countries.

Framing Newsworthiness on Twitter: Analysis of Frames, News Values, and Tweet Popularity in Lebanese Media • Claudia Kozman, Lebanese American University • This content analysis of Lebanese newspapers and television stations’ accounts on Twitter revealed the media frame their tweets in terms of conflict and responsibility, while relying mostly on the news values of prominence and entertainment/human interest. Compared to newspapers, television stations were more likely to use impact instead of conflict as a news value. Judging tweet popularity, analysis revealed conflict and impact stories are the most attractive in terms of favorites, retweets, and comments.

Mainstream media, social media, and attitudes toward immigrants: A comparative study of Japan & South Korea • Heysung Lee, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Gaofei Li ; Yibing Sun; Hernando Rojas • The paper examines media effects on attitudes toward immigrants in Japan and South Korea, through an online survey with 500 respondents from each country. Analyses show mainstream media associates to positive attitudes in both countries. However, regarding social media, Kakaotalk use in South Korea elicits negative attitudes, while Line use in Japan is not related to attitudes. The interaction effects indicate that Kakaotalk dampens the positive effects of mainstream media, whereas Line amplifies them.

Will internal political efficacy predict news engagement equally across countries? A multilevel analysis of the relationship between internal political efficacy, media environment and news engagement • Shuning Lu, North Dakota State University; Rose Luwei Luqiu, Hong Kong Baptist University • This study serves as the first to document the current status of news engagement with regard to the three proposed dimensions (e.g., overall news engagement, user-user, and user-content news engagement) across 36 countries. We employ hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to test the individual, aggregate, and cross-level effects on news engagement based on the multi- national cross-sectional survey data (N=72,930). This study demonstrates how internal political efficacy, the media environment, both political and technical, together shape news engagement. The findings reveal that internal political efficacy is positively associated with news engagement. Internet penetration could negatively predict the three indicators of news engagement. Press freedom moderates the effect of internal political efficacy on news engagement. The study contributes to the existing literature on the formation of news engagement regarding both individual and contextual mechanisms.

Africa in the News: Is News Coverage by Chinese Media Any Different? • Dani Madrid-Morales, University of Houston • In recent years, Chinese media have been challenging European and North American dominance of African news. While Chinese journalists claim they Africa coverage is quantitatively and qualitatively different, previous research has challenged this claim. Based on a content analysis of 1.1 million news from two Chinese and two non-Chinese media (2015-2015), this paper shows that Chinese reporting is more abundant, positive and diverse. However, for most countries, coverage is rare, episodic and monothematic.

Portrait of an Azerbaijani Journalist: Unpaid, Dissatisfied, but nevertheless Passionate and Committed • Rashad Mammadov • This study seeks to partially fill a gap in knowledge about the practice of journalism in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic. The study proposed here represents the first time Azerbaijan has been studied in a systematic fashion consistent with the literature of comparative journalism as represented by The Global Journalist (Weaver & Willnat, 2012) and Worlds of Journalism (Hanitzsch, 2011), studies well recognized as the standards against which all such efforts should be measured. One of the primary goals of the project is to explore the roles these journalists believe they play in the controlled, post-Soviet environment. Data, collected through an online survey of journalists indicate that several identifiable, perceived professional roles existed along the dimensions of Hanitzsch’s (2007) journalistic milieus. In addition, three other dimensions were identified that did not fit the model, but proved to be specific to the Azerbaijani media environment: Political Activist, Citizens’ Helper, and Entertainer.

Press Freedom in Ghana • Jason Martin, DePaul University • This paper analyzes original survey data (N=241) to investigate Ghanaian journalists’ attitudes toward libel law protections, Right to Information legislation, and professional ethics. Journalists in Ghana perceive themselves as straddling normative press freedom roles of watchdog and social responsibility while incorporating unique elements of their culture in their work. The results provide context for the successes and challenges of Ghana’s journalists and contribute to the more precise theoretical explanations of international press freedom protections.

Diagnosing Newsjunkies: Fielding and Validating a Measure of Intrinsic Need for Orientation in Three Arab Countries • Justin Martin, Northwestern University in Qatar • This study introduces an intrinsic need-for-orientation scale, and assesses reliability and validity of the measure in nationally representative samples from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE (N=3,239). Since the 1970s, need for orientation has been called an intrinsic motivation to consume news, but in operationalization, relevant research has not measured an inherent motivation, but rather the strength of political party identification and interest in an upcoming political event—usually an election—as the markers of a strong need for orientation. As this approach is inappropriate in many countries, which may not have political parties or campaigns, and also given there is likely a broader, intrinsic need for orientation (INFO) that motivates people to regularly seek news about current events, this study tested a parsimonious, four-item scale. The scale demonstrated robust internal reliability in both Arabic and English, and among nationals and non-nationals in the three countries. In line with the hypothesis that news use and certain media-related attitudes, such as support for freedom of expression, should be positive correlates of an intrinsic need for orientation, regression models of media-use variables and media-related attitudes explained considerable amounts of INFO variance in Saudi Arabia (52%) and the UAE (30%), and a more modest share in Qatar (15%).

Journalism during global disasters: Healing, coping and recovery • Michael McCluskey, U. Tennessee-Chattanooga; Lacey Keefer • Journalists often apply themes of healing, coping and recovery in news following significant traumas. Eight natural disasters on five continents were analyzed for the presence of nine themes of healing, coping and recovery in both international and local news outlets. Analysis (n = 528) found evidence that contextual factors like centralization of the disaster, type of disaster and number of casualties, along with structural factors like political freedom, had significant influences on the nine themes

Explaining the Gap Between Journalist’s Role Conception and Media Role Performance. A Cross-National Comparison • Claudia Mellado; Cornelia Mothes; Daniel Hallin; Maria Luisa Humanes; Adriana Amado; María Lauber; Jacques Mick; Henry Silke; Colin Sparks; Haiyan Wang; Olga Logunova; Dasniel Olivera • This cross-national study combines survey (N=643) and content analysis data (N = 19,908) from nine countries to investigate gaps between journalists’ ideals and their media organizations’ performance of the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, civic and infotainment roles. The findings show significant gaps for all roles across all countries, with the ‘civic’ and the ‘watchdog’ role showing the largest gaps. Multilevel analyses also reveal that organizational and individual-level influences explained the gaps better than country differences. Implications are discussed with regards to journalism as a profession in times of increasing media skepticism.

Public Diplomacy for the Media: A Survey of Exchange Program Alumni • Emily Metzgar, Indiana University; Yusuf Kalyango, Ohio University • This research surveys alumni (N=66) of the American government’s Study of the U.S. Institute for Scholars (SUSI) on Journalism and Media. The program brings scholars and media professionals to the United States to study and build professional networks. Framing discussion in the international communication literature, we assess SUSI’s potential as a public diplomacy effort with implications for both the study and practice of journalism and promotion of improved attitudes toward the United States.

Esto no es un problema político, es moral: Examining news narratives of the 2018 border policy • Lisa Paulin, NC Central University • This study analyzes the news narratives of a controversial U.S. immigration policy that included the separation of children from their families when attempting to enter the United States along the border with Mexico during the spring and summer of 2018, under the Donald Trump administration by analyzing the stories in Spanish-language media and English-language media by two news services: EFE, in Spanish and the Associated Press (AP), to see how these stories fit into cultural ideologies. The AP told a story of a political battle while EFE told a story of immoral policy and community solidarity.

Global media and human rights: Teaching the Holocaust across national fault-lines • stephen reese, university of texas; jad melki, Lebanese American University • Media literacy requires a ‘global outlook’ in dealing with issues across national and tribal affiliations. These challenges are explored here with a multi-national group of student, engaging with the Holocaust to better humanise global issues and understand how media are implicated in genocidal dynamics, using a survey of 165 previous participants in the programme over 11 years. We find that a historically-rooted but globally reflective approach is needed to understand genocide across national fault-lines.

Testing the Spiral of Silence Model: The Case of Government Criticism in India • Enakshi Roy, Western Kentucky University • This study extends the spiral of silence theory to India and examines self-censorship on Facebook and Twitter with regards to government criticism. Survey (N=141) results suggest while respondents with liberal attitudes were unwilling criticize the government on social media, respondents with pro-censorship attitudes, even if they deemed the opinion climate as hostile, were willing to support Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media. Findings from this study expand understandings of online opinion expression and self-censorship in India.

Everybody Loves a Winner: Legitimation of Occupational Roles among Award-winning Financial Journalists in Africa • Danford Zirugo, City, University London of London/University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Jane B. Singer, City, University of London • Through an examination of award-winning stories and the discourse around them, this study explores how the interpretive community of African financial journalists defines and legitimates preferred occupational roles. Contrary to research immediately following the global financial crisis, which suggested that financial journalists primarily serve elites in their everyday coverage, this study concludes that stories deemed exemplary by the community are instead public service-oriented and fulfill a watchdog role.

Naming names or no? How Germany fits in an international comparison of crime coverage • Romayne Smith Fullerton, University of Western Ontario; Maggie Jones Patterson, Duquesne University • “Naming names and ethnicity or no? How Germany fits in an international comparison of crime coverage” offers the final installment of a nine-year study examining mainstream media’s crime coverage choices in ten democracies, and how journalists’ voluntary ethical choices reflect underlying cultural attitudes. Previously, the authors have argued protectionist policies that do not identify accused persons are common in Northern and Central Europe and are part of established cultural attitudes that construct everyone as community members, but new German data, collected in 2018, suggest journalistic choices to protect an accused’s identity, and all that practice implied, is no longer the reporting default.

The Aftermath of 2019 Pulwama Terror Attack • Nihar Sreepada, Texas Tech University; Ioana Coman, Texas Tech University; Simranjit Singh, Texas Tech University • The study analyses the coverage of the 2019 Pulwama terror attack by two major newspapers of India and Pakistan – The Times of India and Dawn. The online news stories and the dialogue within the comment sections are compared and examined through a qualitative content analysis. The findings are explored from a social psychological perspective along with the ramifications of the conflict on the international community.

Automated framing analysis of news coverage of the Rohingya crisis by the elite press from three countries • Hong Vu; Nyan Lynn • Triangulating several methods including automated framing analysis and critical assessment of texts, this study examines how the press from three countries frames the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017. It finds that The Irrawaddy (Myanmar) tends to incorporate a nationalist narrative into news content. The New Nation (Bangladesh) frames the crisis according to the country’s priorities. The New York Times uses a Western hegemonic discourse. Findings are discussed using the lens of ideological and cultural influence.

Welcome to Canada: The challenge of information connections for resettled Syrian refugees • Melissa Wall, California State University – Northridge • Based on interviews with Syrian refugees resettled in Canada, as well as volunteers, NGO workers and government officials, this paper considers the ways the refugees interact with both formal (government, NGO) and informal (family, volunteers and shared heritage Canadians) in their communication practices. Refugees (“newcomers”) use a combination of digital tools such as social networks and interpersonal interactions to access information and work toward understanding and adapting to their new environment.

Distinguishing the Foreign from Domestic as Defensive Media Diplomacy: Media Accessibility to Credibility Perception and Media Dependency • Yicheng Zhu, Beijing Normal University • Given the fact that some foreign media (e.g. Twitter, The New York Times) have limited accessibility in China. This study conceptually distinguishes foreign media and domestic media, and examines the relationship between perceived media accessibility, media credibility and media dependency for both foreign and domestic media. It found that foreign media accessibility perception is an antecedent of foreign media credibility and foreign media dependency. In terms of foreign v.s. domestic media credibility competition, the final model showed that foreign media credibility positively relates with domestic media credibility. In sum, the model illustrated the role of accessibility perception in the media dependency formation process, the results imply that controlling foreign media accessibility may be an effective method to limit foreign media influence domestically.

James W. Markham Student Paper Competition

A devil’s dissection: Thematic analysis of the discussion of the Mexican documentary The Devil’s Freedom on Twitter • Gabriel Dominguez Partida • Mexican documentary films have tried to raise awareness among citizens against violence – for instance, The Devil’s Freedom, a story of violence’s testimonials of victims and victimizers. Three months of tweets related to the film’s discussion were analyzed to identify how people react to the message. The analysis suggests a group of citizens concern and sending signals to others about a social change; however, they urge the government to take actions instead of themselves.

Trollfare: Russia’s disinformation campaign during military conflict in Ukraine • Larisa Doroshenko, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Josephine Lukito, UW Madison • This study explores the strategies of information warfare of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) against Ukraine during the military conflict in Donbass. Using a 10% Twitter gardenhose archive, we investigated the type of information spread by the IRA accounts and analyzed how they increased followers. Our study shows that the IRA created news websites and spread links to these pages on social media, accumulating followers by including these links and @mentioning other IRA accounts.

Health information sharing for a social exchange on WeChat in China • Lu Fan • WeChat has become an important platform of high sociability and social exchange in China. This study conducted a survey (N = 329) in China to understand people’s health information sharing behavior with the purpose of social exchange. The results reveal that people are motivated by the goal of sharing useful information, showing care and maintaining the social relationship when they share health information on WeChat, and older people are more likely to do so.

For whom do we do this work and in whose voice? Examining the role of International Communication in Africa • Greg Gondwe, University of Colorado-Boulder; Rachel van-der-Merwe, University of Colorado-Boulder • This study offers an overview of the state of the field of international communication in Africa. It argues that despite the boom in international communication scholarship, a schism still exists between theory emphasizing the perpetuated colonial tendencies and those that seek to situate African scholarship at an interactive position with other continents. The study operates under some founded hypotheses that International Communication studies in Africa are peppered with tales of marginalization, poverty, wars, and tribal conflicts. Literature asserts that such labels have impeded the quest for African scholars to realize the true definition of the field, therefore, reproducing a systemic litany of what the other world expects of them. While some scholars call for a broader and mutual interaction of the global communications systems, others hanker on ostensible arguments that perpetuate the propagandist approaches, which emerged as a result of the cold war. The two approaches underscore the western values versus the ‘African’ communication and postcolonial debates that have characterized much of the postcolonial discourses.

Social media network heterogeneity and the moderating roles of social media political discussions and social trust: Analyzing attitude and tolerance towards Chinese immigrant women in Hong Kong • Macau K. F. Mak, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Lynette Jingyi Zhang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • The social and political antagonism between China and Hong Kong has led to the stigmatization of mainland Chinese in Hong Kong. In particular, the Chinese immigrant women, a minority group faced with social and economic plight, have been viewed as locusts who exploit social resources in Hong Kong without any contributions. This study examines how social media network heterogeneity influences the social tolerance and political tolerance of local citizens in Hong Kong towards the Chinese immigrant women through general attitude towards these women. It also addresses the moderating role of social media political discussions and social trust in the influencing process. The analysis of survey data (N = 728) illustrates the moderated mediation process in which a more heterogeneous network on social media is indirectly related to higher levels of both social and political tolerance towards Chinese immigrant women through a more positive attitude towards these women. This indirect effect is enhanced by more political discussions and greater social trust. Implications of the results are discussed.

Reporting (ethno)political conflict in former colonies: An exploration of British and French press coverage of the Cameroon Anglophone crisis • Pechulano Ngwe Ali, The Pennsylvania State University • This study explores how the press in Africa’s former colonial masters frame (ethno)political crisis in their former colonies. Using a qualitative textual analysis approach, the study investigates how British (the BBC) and French (Radio France Internationale; rfi) framed the ongoing Cameroon Anglophone crisis, using news stories published from October 1, 2016 to April 2018. The case of Cameroon is unique because what has been politicized is a nexus between ethnicity and linguistic identity where a minority ethnopolitical group that is seeking greater rights. Findings point evidence that suggest that the British press validates and legitimizes the ‘actions’ and ‘requests’ of Anglophone Cameroonians (the return of federalism or complete separation of the duo), while the French press outlet suggest alignment with the ideas of the Cameroon government (one and indivisible nation), casting doubt on marginalization claims of Anglophone Cameroonians. Considering that the current Cameroon Anglophone is historically rooted in European (British and French) colonialism, it is important study from a postcolonial perspective, how the press in these countries that and created what is now a bilingual and ‘bicultural’ Cameroon, would report political crisis half a century after independence. Findings have implications on the development a fresh perspective of postcolonial media theory.

East Asian man ideal types in contemporary Chinese society: fluidity and multiple parameters of masculinity • Janice Wong • Asian masculinity is always an important, but under study area. There are concrete ideas of masculinity in the Western society, but in the East Asian culture, masculinity is not well-defined. Moreover, the way man tackles the fluidity and multiple parameters of masculinity is always changing in modern East Asia. Male surely have some ideal types of male images in their mind that they will try to manage their appearance included face and body, impression and images to achieve an ideal type. This study tries to generalize those male ideal types in East Asia culture through the wen-wu dichotomy. This exploratory study found that there are about eight ideal types of masculinities in East Asia. These ideal types are models or categories that for man to achieve. During the process of achieving an ideal type, male disclosed their reasons: social “other’s” expectations, institution’s expectations and also constructed by the consumer market, and the strategies they used to modify and improve their face and body. For men, they will depend on the inherent they owned, which can influence their self-perception, then select an ideal type that they can associate with or the standard they can reach and go toward that type. Men will control and modify their appearance, both face and body, manage their impression (or their front stage) toward the ideal beauty image standard or improve their impression (through symbolic capital) to satisfy the criteria of an ideal type.

The Moderating Role of Media Freedom on the Relationship Between Internal Conflict and Diversionary External Conflict Initiation: 1948-2010 • Kai Xu, Wayne State University • Conflict-as-functional theorists argue that since a critical function of initiating international conflicts for a country is to divert public attention away from its domestic problems, there must be a significant relationship between a country’s internal conflict and the likelihood of creating external conflict. This study aims to further examine this relationship by introducing a new moderator – the effect of a country’s domestic conflict on external conflict initiation is moderated by its media freedom level.

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Political Communication 2018 Abstracts

Contesting the “bad hombres” narrative: How U.S. and Mexican presidents shape migrants’ media image • Vanessa Bravo, Elon University; Maria De Moya, DePaul University • During the candidacy and following the election of U.S. president Donald Trump, there was an emphasis on framing the Mexican immigrant as a criminal and on building a wall between the United States and Mexico. This narrative revived the debate on the treatment of immigrants and immigration in cross-national media. Within this context, this study analyzes the construction of the image of the Mexican migrant to the United States by both President Enrique Peña Nieto and President Donald Trump during the first 100 days of the latter’s presidency, through news stories published in two U.S newspapers and two Mexican newspapers. Findings show that news stories describe Mexican migrants in contrasting ways, ranging from criminals (in the U.S. framing) to good migrants (in the Mexican efforts), and both frames are picked up by the transnational media, hindering long-standing public diplomacy efforts in both countries.

Partisanship and the Reaction to Sexual Harassment Allegations: An Experimental Examination of Political Image Repair • Jonathan Graffeo, The University of Alabama; Ethan Stokes, University of Alabama; Kenon Brown, The University of Alabama; Stephen Rush, The University of Alabama • This study addresses how an individual’s partisanship impacts his or her opinions in cases of sexual harassment allegations specifically in the U.S. political context. Specifically, a between-subjects, double blind experiment was conducted among 292 participants to explore how partisanship, particularly in terms of ideology and preferred political media consumption, impacts the effectiveness of certain image repair strategies used by politicians facing sexual harassment allegations. Using Benoit’s (1995) typology, findings show that overall, participants accepted a politician’s response more when he uses the denial or mortification strategies rather than the attacking the accuser strategy. Also, findings show that while participants on both ends of the political spectrum viewed politicians with their same ideology more favorably than politicians with opposing ideologies, right-leaning participants overall viewed politicians facing sexual harassment allegations more favorably than left-leaning participants, regardless of political affiliation.

Manifestations of Authoritarianism in 2016 U.S. Primaries: Factors Triggering Innate and Latent Authoritarian Tendenceis • Nicholas Browning, Indiana University • While authoritarianism played a significant role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, it was more nuanced. Findings based on original survey research fielded during the Super Tuesday primaries indicate latent authoritarianism manifested as increased deference to institutional authority. Support for Republican candidates was closely aligned with deference to financial, corporate, and religious authorities. Support for Democratic candidates was strongest among those who deferred to the authority of government, science, and the press.

Where Independents are getting news? Beyond partisan media and polarization • Hyesun Choung; Ayellet Pelled, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Yin Wu; Song Wang; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although the number of Independents has steadily risen, there hasn’t been much effort to construct a systematic characterization of Independent voters and their media consumption patterns. This study attempts to create a typology of political Independents in the context of 2016 Presidential election and examines how different groups of Independents engage with different news sources in the fragmented media environment. Our result reports four types of Independent groups, two anti-establishment clusters and two moderate clusters. We also find considerable evidence that certain Independent cluster engage in partisan-like news viewership while others prefer centrist media outlets.

Identifying the Motivations of Political Donors using Social Media Data • Ross Dahlke, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The 2016 election showed that online, small-dollar donors can impact political campaigns. My research asks: What motivates political donors in Wisconsin state-legislative elections? My analysis finds a link between candidates discussing certain issues online and donations from specific donor communities. However, donor communities are found to be connected by geography more than to specific policy issues. More broadly, this research shows that geography should play a greater role in the study of political communications.

They’re Not ‘Just’ Words: The Verbal Style of U.S. Presidential Debates • David Painter; Juliana Fernandes • This longitudinal content analysis investigated the effects of election level, candidate partisanship, and decade on the 563 U.S. presidential candidates’ verbal style in 138 televised debates. Results indicate general election rhetoric contains more optimism, certainty, and realism than primary election rhetoric; Democratic’s rhetoric contains more commonality than Republican’s rhetoric; and there is less certainty in debate rhetoric from the 2000s and 2010s than from the 1960s and 1970s.  Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Social capital, civic engagement and identity: Exploring a model for political talk on Facebook • Toby Hopp, University of Colorado Boulder; Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder; Chris Vargo, U of Colorado Boulder • Using a method incorporating both survey and trace data measures and the framework of social identity theory, this study presents a model for understanding political talk on Facebook. It found substantial and statistically significant relationships between offline civic engagement, bonded social capital, and political attitude extremity. It also identifies a substantive relationship between civic engagement, social capital and political talk on Facebook. Specifically, online civic engagement was robustly associated with political content generation on Facebook.

The (non)Americans: Analyzing Russian Disinformation on Twitter • Deen Freelon, UNC-Chapel Hill; Michael Bossetta; Chris Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kirsten Adams; Yiping Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Disinformation has been wielded by state- and non-state actors for millennia, yet it has rarely been the object of political communication research. We analyze nearly 200,000 tweets by the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a disinformation operation funded by the Russian government. We find that 1) the IRA favored a small set of divergent political identities; 2) their tweets were not all political; and 3) Black activist and Trump-supporting messages spread farthest.

Sisters Are Doin’ It For Themselves: Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Hybrid Media Campaign • Katherine Haenschen, Virginia Tech University • Hillary Clinton ran a hybrid media campaign in her 2016 pursuit of the presidency, grounded in outreach to digital outlets influential with youth, women, communities of color, and LGBT Americans. Yet to date, this extensive effort by the campaign has been largely overlooked. Chadwick’s (2017) theoretical framework of the hybrid media system emphasizes the ways in which “old” and “new” media interact, how information flows in strategic ways, and how actors in this system are adaptive and interdependent. Interviews with campaign staff and an analysis of 16 outreach efforts by the campaign illustrate the way in which her efforts fit this theorization. This paper argues for the categorization of Clinton’s 2016 effort as a hybrid media campaign, based on its blurring of distinctions within the campaign structure, emphasis on reaching niche audiences online regardless of platform, and manner in which digital sharing enabled strategic information flows.

A Citizen-Based Profile of Fake News Dissemination on Facebook • Toby Hopp, University of Colorado Boulder; Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder; Chris Vargo, U of Colorado Boulder • This study explored the relationship between dissemination of fake news on Facebook and citizen behaviors, beliefs, and resources. A novel method that melded survey-based self-report data and trace data was employed. The results suggested that fake news sharing on Facebook was highest among those with low levels of bonded social capital, those with low levels of media trust, those with extreme political attitudes, and those who use the Internet for civic purposes.

Speaking in a woman’s name:  Gender difference of political expressive participation on Twitter • Lingshu Hu, Missouri School of Journalism; Mike Kearney • This study examined gender difference of expressive participation in 9 political topics on Twitter. Through analyzing over 3 million tweets data, this study found that, although the number of women in political discussion is not dramatically smaller than men, their behaviors in sending original tweets, retweeting, quoting and replying are different from men, indicating that women might lack political confidence or sense a higher level of hostility when participating in political discussions on Twitter.

Debatable sphere: major party hegemony, minor party marginalization in the UK Leaders’ debate • Ceri Hughes, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The United Kingdom political landscape has historically been dominated by the two main political parties; Labour and the Conservatives. For much of the twentieth century these parties would share 80+% of the vote in general elections. However, by the 2010 General Election their share had dropped to 65%. The 2010 election also saw a new development enter the UK political landscape – televised leaders’ debates, which featured the leaders of the three largest political parties. Discussions before the 2015 General Election resulted in a decision to repeat the debate experiment, but this time, partly due to changes in projected vote shares, seven leaders were invited to the main debate. Using content analysis of the debate and subsequent media coverage, this research questions the presentation of the debate as an equal platform for all participants. Analysis illustrates the dominance of major party leaders and questions the efficacy of multi-party debates in a limited-party political structure.

Campaign Strategies on Twitter in 2016 U.S. Presidential Election: Real-time Event, Negativity, and Online Engagement • Daud Isa; Qin Li, Washington State university; Meredith Wang, Washington State University; Porismita Borah; Itai Himelboim • This study examines Twitter posts of Republican and Democratic presidential candidates to understand their campaign strategies in 2016 election. All data – posts and engagement metrics – between September 5 and November 8, 2016 were collected. Results show Hillary Clinton focused mainly on mobilization while Donald Trump focused more on fundraising and real-time events. Furthermore, while Clinton posted more tweets, including more negative tweets than Trump, the latter was more successful eliciting engagement using negative content.

Discursively Empowered and Distrustful: The Impact of the Taxpayer Framing on Political Trust • Volha Kananovich • This study experimentally tests (N=207) if various ways to construct tax-related discourse, by portraying the taxpayer as either a subordinate to the state or an equal partner to whom the government is accountable, can influence the level of citizens’ political trust. The findings show that the “taxpayer-as-an-equal-partner” rhetoric can boost citizens’ trust, but this effect is limited to individuals with no direct taxpaying experience and those with lower perceptions of tax contribution to government revenues.

Press and U.S. Policy toward Iran: Studying The New York Times, Washington Post and Nuclear Negotiations • Mehdi Semati, Northern Illinois University; Bill Cassidy, Northern Illinois University; Mehrnaz Khanjani, University of Iowa • This research examines the press coverage of the nuclear negotiations between Iran and the West, applying “indexing” theory. Results present evidence of indexing, showing Iran deal coverage in coverage of The New York Times and Washington Post reflected official views within a framework of institutional debates among congressional leaders and the executive branch sources. The coverage indexed both consensus among the officials within the executive branch and the congressional opposition during different time periods studied.

From Information Reception to Political Learning on Social Media:  Advancing the Interaction Mediation Model • Dam Hee Kim, University of Michigan; Brian Weeks, University of Michigan; Daniel Lane, University of Michigan; Lauren B Potts, University of Michigan; Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan • Despite social media’s potential as a resource for political learning, exposure to political content on social media does not promote significant gains in political knowledge. By applying the communication mediation model on social media, we advance the interaction mediation model of political learning. Analyses of a two-wave national online survey prior to the 2016 Presidential election suggest that political interactions on Facebook, particularly sharing and commenting on content, following information reception, promote political knowledge gain.

Please Mind the Platform Gap: How Online News Source Impacts Civic and Political Engagement • Nuri Kim, NTU Singapore; Andrew Duffy, NTU; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Rich Ling; Alice Huang, NTU Singapore • Online news platforms have often been grouped together in scholarly thought. Yet each one delivers news in a distinctive way, which merits closer consideration as each will have a distinctive impact on civic and political engagement. This paper considers the use of different online news platforms, from legacy news organizations apps to instant messaging services, to Facebook and YouTube. Based on a survey of over 2,500 Singaporeans, it finds differential effects of news platforms on civic and political participation. We also report that the significant effects were largely mediated by expressive participation online and, to a lesser degree, further information search behaviors.

Peers versus Pros: Confirmation Bias in Selective Exposure  to User-Generated versus Mass Media Messages • Axel Westerwick; Daniel Sude, The Ohio State University; Melissa Robinson; Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick • News is now commonly consumed embedded in user-generated content and social media. This experiment tested competing hypotheses on whether selective exposure to attitude-consistent versus -discrepant political messages (confirmation bias) differs in such computer-mediated interpersonal (CMI) contexts from mass communication contexts, through observational data and multi-level modeling. An overarching confirmation bias was differentiated in that attitude importance fostered it only in the CMI condition. The more social media users care the more they prefer attitude-consistent content.

Correcting misinformation at the local level? Potential for local media’s fact-checking on local issues • Jianing Li • This paper examines the potential for local fact checkers, the “invisible half” of the U.S. fact-checking ecosystem. The findings suggest that local media attracts significantly more attention than national media when fact checking a local issue, while having a disadvantage when fact checking a national issue. The findings offer important implications for local journalists to play a distinct role in the fact-checking industry, and call for an expanded model of group-based processing of corrective information.

Zero Day Twitter: How Russian Propaganda Infiltrated the U.S. Hybrid Media System • Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jiyoun Suk, UW Madison; Yini Zhang, University of Wisconsin Madison; Larisa Doroshenko, University of Wisconsin Madison; Min-Hsin Su, University of Wisconsin Madison; Sang Jung Kim; Yiping Xia, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Chris Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Russia’s Internet Research Agency’s (IRA) use of social media to influence American political discussion has received considerable attention. Most observers’ focus on the social media space, however, overlooks the role that American news media played in distributing IRA content. In this article, we build on studies documenting the appearance of IRA messages in American news media, with three aims. First, we provide an expanded view of the journalistic context in which the infiltration occurred, taking into account the economic, temporal, political, and media ecological realities in which news organizations now operate. Second, we expand on existing analyses and provide a more rigorous assessment of the evidence, which offers an opportunity to explore the use of social media by news organizations, and the ways in which contemporary uses expose news media to potential manipulation. Our results reveal that certain types of practices by news organizations made them susceptible to disinformation, and that news organizations that engaged in those practices more were most affected by the IRA campaign.

Likeminded and Cross-Cutting Talk, Network Characteristics, and Political Participation Online- and Offline: A Panel Study • Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; Franziska Marquart, University of Amsterdam; Christian von Sikorski • This study tests the role of likeminded and cross-cutting political discussion as a facilitator of online and offline political participation and examines the role of strong versus weak network ties. Most prior research on the topic has employed cross-sectional designs that may lead to spurious relationships due to the lack of controlled variables, and therefore overestimate potential effects of cross-cutting and likeminded discussions. In order to address this concern, we conducted a two-wave panel survey controlling the autoregressive effects of participation. Our findings suggest that cross-cutting talk with weak ties significantly dampens online, but not offline political participation. However, no such effects were detectable for cross-cutting talk with strong network ties. In addition, we found no effect of discussions with likeminded individuals in either weak or strong network connections on online and offline forms of political engagement. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Examining How Moral Emotions Mediate the Effects of Partisan Media Consumption on Pro-Immigration Policy Support • Rachel Neo • The immigration debate has received considerable partisan media attention. However, little research has examined how partisan media influence support for pro-immigration policies. Using a representative online survey (N= 525), I examine whether partisan media elicit moral emotions prompting people to advance immigrant welfare. Findings show that regardless of partisan affiliation, liberal media indirectly increase support for pro-immigration policies via moral outrage toward the Trump administration and empathy toward immigrants, with conservative media having opposite effects.

“Fake News Effect?” False Beliefs and Vote Choice in the 2016 Presidential Election • erik nisbet; Kelly Garrett; Paul Beck; Richard Gunther • Electoral disinformation, or “fake news,” was widespread during the 2016 election, yet to date, no study has directly examined the impact that endorsement of disinformation had on voter behavior. Analyzing two surveys independently conducted during and after the election, we hypothesize that endorsement of electoral disinformation will significantly increase the likelihood of voting for Donald Trump independent of other predictors of the vote. Our analysis supports this hypothesis with endorsement of electoral disinformation almost doubling the odds in both surveys of voting for Trump above and beyond the impact of partisanship, issue preferences and candidate favorability. The findings of the second study are especially compelling as they can address the issue of causal direction based on a fixed-effects model analyzing three waves of survey panel data collected before and after the election campaign.  Our study highlights the vulnerability of our core democratic decision-making processes to disinformation spread by either domestic or foreign actors.

Young Adults, Passive and Active Forms of News Use on Social Media, and Political Engagement • Chang Sup Park, University at Albany, SUNY; Masahiro Yamamoto • Social media users not only access news but also evaluate, combine, and restructure news. This study conceptualizes such news use via social media as news curation. Drawing on a survey of 900 South Korean young adults, the present study finds that social media news curation is positively associated with political efficacy and offline and online political participation. Social media news curation moderates the relationship between social media news use and political efficacy and political participation.

Spoofing presidential hopefuls: The roles of affective disposition, emotions, and intertextuality in prompting the social transmission of debate parody • Jason Peifer; Kristen Landreville, University of Wyoming • This study explores factors that contribute to the diffusion of political humor, employing the conceptual lenses of affective disposition, discrete emotions, and intertextuality. Participants (N = 236) were exposed to an SNL debate parody featuring Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. Moderated mediation analyses indicate that both feelings of favorability toward Clinton and unfavorability toward Trump indirectly influenced a willingness to share the humor, as variously mediated by mirth and hope and moderated by political engagement.

“Lyin’ Ted,” “Crooked Hillary,” and the “Dishonest” Media: Trump’s Use of Twitter to Attack and Amplify his Press Coverage • Ayellet Pelled, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin-Madison; JUNGHWAN YANG; Fred Boehm; Dhavan Shah • “The use of Twitter by Donald Trump, and the amplification of his voice in the form of retweets, has been demonstrated to be one of the most consistent and powerful predictors of Trump’s news coverage, suggesting that he was able to leverage his interactions on social media into earned media attention worth billions of dollars (Patterson, 2016b; Wells et al., 2016).

In the present study, we analyze a unique dataset of 313,047 retweets of Trump’s original tweets during his presidential campaign (a 1% sample). We implement multiple linguistic analysis methods in two stages. First, we conduct natural language processing using Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA). This topic modeling is followed by computerized text analysis of selected topics using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC2015) system, to gauge the psychological meaning of word choice along multiple dimensions, and Diction 7.0, to assess the tonal qualities of word choice in terms of certainty, activity, optimism, realism, and commonality. We find that a main focus of Trump’s messages is to target “enemies,” employing terms of conflict and intergroup differentiation. Three main targets emerged in his followers’ retweets: Ted Cruz (“Lyin’ Ted”), Hillary Clinton (“Crooked Hillary”), and “”the media,”” which Trump refers to as biased and dishonest.

We examine the trends and linguistic characteristics of each topic, noting fluctuations in relation to campaign events and the psychological and tonal characteristics. We conclude by considering how this pattern of amplified attacks propelled Trump’s campaign and drove his attention in the press.”

The Will of the People? Effects of Subjective References to Public Opinion by Politicians • Christina Peter, University of Vienna • Subjective references to public opinion are the most common public opinion cue in the news media and are used especially by populist politicians as a communication strategy to appeal to voters. These subjective references are not based on polling data and may even be in contrast to those. Yet, there is little research on how effective this communication strategy actually is. In the present study, we looked at effects of subjective references to public opinion by politicians on their evaluation and on people’s perception of public opinion. In addition, we tested whether this communication strategy resonates especially well with people already holding populist attitudes. In a 2×4-experiment, we could show that the use of subjective references by a politician strongly shaped public opinion perceptions, but did not necessarily increase his evaluation. Effects occurred regardless of populist attitudes.

Banned: How Discriminatory Policy Heightens U.S. Muslims’ Identity Centrality and In-Group Preferences • Annisa Meirita Rochadiat, Wayne State University; Elizabeth Stoycheff, Wayne State University • Using identity process theory and a unique natural experiment, we investigate how anti-Muslim social media messages and nativist policy (Executive Order 13769 aka the ‘Travel Ban’) activates U.S. Muslims’ religious identities and in-group priorities. We find that nativist policy, but not anti-Muslim messaging, heightens religious identities, which produces a significant shift toward in-group preferences and away from national security priorities. Political implications are discussed.

Unpacking Fake News: Understanding Partisan Consumption of Fake News During the 2016 US Presidential Election • Ken Rogerson; Christopher Hill • News bias and distortion is not new. Its most recent iteration, which we call “fake news,” coupled with social media distribution networks, became a prominent element during the 2016 presidential election. While it is valuable to understand what fake news is, it is more important to explore its impact. What differences exist between the ways that conservatives and liberals disseminated and consumed fake news during the 2016 presidential election? Analyzing a dataset of fake news articles, we categorize their level of deception and evaluate the extent to which partisans find salience in them. While we find that liberal and conservative fake news were equally false, the critical difference lies in the complexity, professionalism, and quantity with which conservative fake news was produced. These disparities suggest a more concerted and successful effort among conservatives or producers of pro-Trump fake news to effectively spread misinformation.

Social Media for Political Campaigns: An Examination of Donald Trump’s Frame Building and its Effect on Audience Engagement • Abdulsamad Sahly, Arizona State University; K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University; CHUN SHAO, Arizona State University • “Abstract

This study examined frame building and frame effects on Twitter and Facebook for the GOP 2016 presidential candidate, Donald J. Trump. From his official nomination leading up to Election Day, we analyzed the content of 1,281 tweets and 313 Facebook posts from Trump’s official social media accounts. We examined how messages were framed and how that framing affected audience engagement on Twitter and Facebook. The results showed that conflict, human interest, and morality were the dominant frames on both platforms. The study also found that the conflict, morality, and loss frames affected people’s retweeting and favoriting behaviors on Twitter and sharing behaviors on Facebook. The attribution of responsibility affected retweeting and favoriting behaviors on Twitter and commenting behaviors on Facebook. The human interest frame affected retweeting and favoriting behaviors on Twitter, but not on Facebook. This study expands the scholarship of political social media campaigns by applying framing theory to understand the presidential candidate’s social media strategies.”

“Nothing that I did was wrong:” Image repair and the Hillary Clinton email controversy • Miles Sari, Washington State University • Using image repair theory, this rhetorical criticism analyzes Hillary Clinton’s response to her email scandal during the 2016 election. This study finds that Clinton relied heavily on denial strategies, attempted to reduce the perceived offensiveness of her actions, and focused on hindsight corrective measures. This paper concludes that Clinton’s response to the email scandal was ineffective, because she refused to admit any wrongdoing and her attempts at mortification were largely qualified attempts to evade responsibility.

Should the Media Be More or Less Powerful in Politics? Individual and Contextual Explanations for Politicians and Journalists • Sebastian Scherr, University of Leuven; Philip Baugut, University of Munich (LMU) • The normative question regarding whether the media should have more or less impact on politics, as viewed by politicians and journalists, has gained only little attention, despite the large body of research on mediatization. The present study is the first that combines individual and structural factors that explain political actors’ and journalists’ normative views on the media’s influence on politics. Based on a conceptualization of political communication cultures, representative micro-level survey data from more than 600 political actors and journalists within 52 German cities were combined with macro-level indicators for the political and media competition in each city. Multilevel analyses show that interactions between the actors’ characteristics and their competitive working conditions help explain their normative evaluations of the media’s influence on politics. However, individual characteristics such as actors’ role conceptions influence normative views more so than media and political competition do.

Muslims’ Responses to Terrorism News: Perceived Journalistic Quality, Discrimination, and Attitudes toward the Majority Population • Desiree Schmuck; Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; Christian von Sikorski; Mona Rahmanian; Beril Bulat • Across two experimental studies, we explored Muslim news consumers’ responses to news coverage of terrorist attacks committed by members of the Islamic State (IS) depending on news differentiation (i.e., explicitly distinguishing between Muslims and IS terrorists) and the terrorist attack’s proximity. Results indicated that Muslims evaluated the journalistic quality of differentiated compared to undifferentiated news reports higher irrespective of the terrorist attack’s proximity, which decreased perceived discrimination and negative attitudes toward the non-Muslim majority population.

“In Spite Of” and “Alongside”: Disillusion and Success in Advocacy Communication for the Roma • Adina Schneeweis • This article examines advocacy communication as experienced by activists themselves.  Grounded in the case of Romanian activism for Roma rights, the study reveals discursive practices of disillusion (in connection typically to large-scale fissures in socio-cultural, politico-economic systems) and success (evident primarily at a micro-level, in the lives of individual people, and in hyper-localized action).  The findings suggest the vision of activism and the funding system need to be mindful of such reality, and adjust accordingly.

Media Quality and Democracy: Claims and Reality—a Cross-Media Study • Maren Beaufort, Austrian Academy of Sciences; Josef Seethaler, Austrian Academy of Sciences • The study explores new paths in media quality research by using the first representative, cross-media investigation of daily news in 36 Austrian media outlets as an example. Based on the assumption that the quality of media reporting is inseparably tied to the quality of a democracy, but has to be understood in relation to changing notions of what democracy means, the content analytical design operationalizes a liberal-representative, a deliberative, and a participatory understanding of democracy. Results reveal four clusters of media outlets, whose reporting can be linked to these different conceptions of democracy, sometimes in a mixed manner.

Evolution and Issue Ownership of the issue of digital privacy • Ashik Shafi, Wiley College • Ownership of political issues are used as a framing technique in political public relations. Political parties attach neutral issues with the issues the public perceives the parties to own. This project investigated ownership of the issue of digital privacy in US senator’s tweets since June 2013, when the news of NSA surveillance broke out. Findings reveal absence of issue ownership in the Tweets, and evidence of issue trespassing. Republican senators referred to nearly equal amount of self-owned and opposition owned issues, whereas Democrats referred more to opposition-owned issues than self-owned. The findings suggest senators are less likely to frame issues without moral dimensions as owned issue on Twitter. Rather, the senators tend to show attachment and involvement with those issues as a way to self-promote.

Donald Trump in Visual Dimension: Content Analysis of Cross-National Intermedia Agenda Setting • Tarasevich Sofiya, 1988; Liudmila Khalitova, University of Florida; OSAMA ALBISHRI, University of Florida; Spiro Kiousis, University of Florida; Barbara Myslik • This study analyzes the visual framing of Donald Trump’s image in the international media during the 2016 presidential campaign in the context of intermedia agenda setting. As emotion recognition software was used in the coding process, it expands the body of literature on computer evaluation of tonality in visual framing. The quantitative content analysis of 801 images from 16 media revealed differences among eight counties in tonality, Trump’s image reflection and display of social distance.

A Knight in sheep’s clothing:  Media framing of the Alt-Right • Burton Speakman, Kennesaw State University • The Alt-Right increased its national profile during the 2016 presidential election based on its support of Donald Trump. This study uses qualitative framing analysis to review the coverage of the Alt-Right as a manner examining if the group was successful in advancing its desired frames into mainstream media coverage. The results of this study suggest overall the Alt-Right was successful in reducing direct discussion about the racist beliefs of the group within press coverage.

Partisan Media, News Events, and Asymmetric Political Evaluations in the 2016 Election • Jiyoun Suk, UW Madison; Dhavan Shah; Leticia Bode; Stephanie Edgerly, Northwestern; Kjerstin Thorson, Michigan State University; Emily Vraga; Chris Wells, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jon Pevehouse • Using national rolling cross-sectional survey data collected daily over the last seven weeks of the election, we examine support for Trump and Clinton using daily-fixed effects regressions followed by temporal analyses of the unexplained variance from these models. Results reveal the influence of different media sources among partisan audiences, the asymmetric influence of conservative and liberal media on different partisan subgroups, and the impact of major events on candidate appraisals on any given day.

News and Entertainment Preferences, Political Knowledge and Attentiveness in Campaign 2016 • Matthew Thornton, Drake University • Scholars have argued the transition from a broadcast environment to a cable and internet landscape has significantly altered our political sphere. While some scholars have argued expanded media choice has brought about fragmentation and increasing partisan news consumption, other scholars have focused on the potential for more media options to encourage individuals to opt out of consuming public affairs programming in favor of entertainment-based content, thus leading to political knowledge declines for those transitioning away from news. The following study applies both theoretical approaches to the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign. A media environment whereby individuals may be leaving news in favor of entertainment content encourages non-traditional candidates with the ability to exploit celebrity status (i.e. Donald Trump) in courting more politically disinterested, entertainment-centric voters. At the same time, the divisive campaign style of Trump coupled with his disdain for news media may encourage more fervent partisan news consumption. Analyses of ANES data reveal, consistent with expectations, significantly different news and entertainment preferences among supporters of Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.  While supporters of both candidates engage in partisan news viewing, the entertainment preferences of Trump are shown to be associated with decreased public affairs knowledge and political attentiveness.

To Label or Not To Label?  Hostile Perceptions of Fact-Checks and Their Sources in the United States • Jianing Li; Jordan Foley, UW-Madison; Omar Dumdum, U of Wisconsin-Madison; MIchael Wagner, University of Wisconsin-Madison • A survey experiment of 510 American adults reveals that labeling a fact-check as a fact-check increases the likelihood of the hostile media perception. Post-hoc analyses also found that, when engaging in fact-checks, ideological sources were rated as more biased than the Associated Press. Finally, we found no major differences between Republican, Independent and Democratic responses to the fact-check – a story examining a claim from President Trump about gun laws in Chicago. Discovering how Americans react to this new form of accountability journalism will  help us understand how the public reacts to specific fact-checking content while also assisting news organizations in deciding whether they should label their fact-checks as a unique type of journalism or simply report them without the “fact-check” moniker.

Gender, Nonverbal Communication, and Televised Debates: Examining Clinton and Trump’s Nonverbal Language During the 2016 Town Hall Debate • Ben Wasike, university of texas rio grande valley • This study analyzed nonverbal cues during the 2016 town hall debate. Variables were facial expressions, posture, eye contact, and spatial distance. Clinton was friendlier, took more expansive postures, and maintained more eye contact. The candidates largely kept within social distance, except for an instance that created post-debate controversy. While some of Clinton’s nonverbal behavior conformed to established gendered cues, her nonverbal behavior largely transcends gender norms. Also addressed are the media’s shortcomings in contextualizing debates

Chinese Players’ Participation in Online Games and its Influence on Online Social Capital & Political Participation • Yue Wu, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences • Based on the theory of social capital, this paper discusses the relationship between online game participation and online social capital and political participation in China. In this study, 1050 valid questionnaires were collected through an online survey. We found that frequency of playing online games is positively correlated with online social capital, information acquisition, and online action. At the same time, online social capital has a significantly positive correlation with online opinion expression. As for online political participation, online information acquisition promotes both online opinion expression and online action, and online opinion expression also promotes online action. Finally, because users of the offline single-player game can only communicate with the non-player characters set by the program, the impact of the pure human-machine interaction on the users is not significant. These findings confirm the application of social capital theory in online game research.

The Agenda-Opinion Dynamics: Public Opinion and Government Attention in Post-Handover Hong Kong • Chuanli Xia; Fei Shen • The capacity of governments to respond to public opinion is essential to democratic theory and its practice. However, previous research examining the relationship between public opinion and government attention dominantly focuses on Western societies. Consequently, we know little about such relationship in non-western societies. Drawing upon time series data of public opinion polls and governmental press releases, this study examines the causal relationship between public opinion and government attention in post-handover Hong Kong. The findings demonstrate that public opinion drives government attention and such “democratic influence” varies across issue domains and is subject to the exercise of political sanctions such as mass demonstrations.

Winning through Words? A Computational Linguistic Study of Presidential Candidates’ Language Styles on Social Media in the Age of Populism • Weiai (Wayne) Xu, University of Massachusetts; Jayeon (Janey) Lee, Lehigh University • The present study examines language styles in presidential candidates’ social media posts in the waves of populism and perception politics. Using Facebook data from the 2016 Election, we show how language styles have different appeals and effectiveness for populist and establishment candidates. Donald Trump, the quintessential populist candidate, sounded less analytic and confident/certain, and more emotional, than the establishment candidate Hillary Clinton. The populist-leaning Bernie Sanders sounded more self-revealing than both Trump and Clinton. Clinton used the most analytic and confident/certain language, whereas she was the least self-revealing. Trump attracted more word-of-mouth when using self-revealing and confident/certain language styles. Clinton attracted more word-of-mouth when using more emotional style. For the three candidates, the analytic language style is universally unappealing whereas styles traditionally associated with presidency still hold appeal.

How Informed Are Messaging App Users About Politics?  A Linkage of Messaging App Use and Political Knowledge and Participation • Masahiro Yamamoto; Matthew Kushin, Shepherd University; Dalisay Francis • Mobile messaging apps, such as Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, and WhatsApp, were new and unique campaign and information platforms in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This study investigates how use of such apps for campaign information is related to political knowledge and participation.  Data from an online survey conducted prior to the election indicate that using messaging apps for news is positively related to miscalibration of knowledge, a discrepancy between subjective and factual political knowledge.  Knowledge miscalibration is positively related to offline and online political participation.  Findings are discussed in terms of the role of messaging apps in the political process.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer 2018 Abstracts

No Men in Women’s Bathrooms: Encoding/Decoding in Activist Strategic Communication • Erica Ciszek • In November 2015, Houston, Texas voters defeated an anti-discrimination referendum, the Houston Equal Rights Ordinance (HERO), which protected people from discrimination on the basis of 15 categories. Both proponents and opponents of the ordinance planned and executed strategic communication efforts, representing an instance where public relations intersects with activism, public opinion, and policy. This article presents Stuart Hall’s (1980) encoding/decoding model as one response that although it may be seen as a relic of cultural studies, it holds theoretical and empirical value in the examination of contemporary message creation and dissemination in public relations practice. Based on the perspectives of 27 proponents of the ordinance, this article analyzes strategic communication failure within the framework of encoding/decoding.

Who “Framed” Ramchandra Siras?: News Discourses of a Controversial Outing Case in India • Khadija Ejaz; Leigh Moscowitz • In 2010, a professor in India was forcibly outed as gay when he was filmed being intimate with another man. Analysis of Indian English-language newspapers revealed that journalists drew upon a law which criminalizes homosexuality and framed sexuality as essentialized with respect to the Indian constitution, consent, location, and morality. At the same time, findings reflected dominant Western notions of sexuality despite what initially appears to be supportive discourses of alternate indigenous sexualities in India.

Audience Perceptions of LGBTQ Television Characters • Aryana Gooley, California State University, Sacramento • Much of the existing research surrounding television audience studies employs an empirical approach; however, there have been minimal efforts to examine television audiences’ perceptions more in-depth to move beyond existing generalizations. With an effort to contribute to the existing vein of literature on the LGBTQ community through qualitative television audience research, the purpose of this study is to examine how television audiences perceive the representation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) characters on television.

HIV and Anniversary Journalism: Susceptibility and Severity Messaging in News Coverage of World AIDS Day • Josh Grimm; Joseph Schwartz • The purpose of this study was to analyze the frequency of statements about population susceptibility and threat severity of HIV/AIDS. Using a coding scheme derived from the Extended Parallel Process Model, we analyzed 219 articles of World AIDS Day news coverage from 1988 through 2017. Our results show that while susceptibility did change over time, coverage minimized the impact the disease has had on men who have sex with men (MSM).

The Digital Couch: The Therapeutic Potential of a “Gay Hookup App” • Robert Huesca, Trinity U. • The geosocial networking mobile application Grindr has attracted a great deal of scholarly attention in the past decade because of its diverse uses and widespread adoption. Yet no study has identified Grindr as a platform whereby HIV positive users have provided support and guidance to people newly diagnosed as HIV positive. Findings from 33 in-depth interviews shed light on this potentially important use of Grindr to contribute to the well-being of people living with HIV.

Media Representation of Transgender Civil Rights Issues: A Quantitative Content Analysis on Media Coverage of the “Bathroom Bill” Controversy • Minjie Li • As the transgender media visibility increases exponentially, new patterns of journalistic reporting and framing of transgender issues immerge in the news media emerge. Taking a quantitative content analysis approach, the present study examines how national mainstream news outlets and LGBTQ news outlet represent a transgender civil right issue, the “bathroom bill” controversy. Theoretically, it focuses on how the news outlets apply power exemplification and issue attribution in their narratives. The content analysis findings suggested that the news media outlets as a whole were significantly more likely to mention societal causes (vs. individual causes) and suggest societal solutions. The mentions of societal consequences, however, did not significantly outnumber the mentions of individual consequences. Compared to the LGBTQ outlets, the mainstream outlets are more likely to mention individual causes, societal consequences, and individual solutions. Moreover, journalists tended to give less persuasive power to cisgender women and transwomen through using indirect quotation.

The rise of Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming representation in the media: Impacts on the population • Robyn King, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Richard Mocarski, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Natalie Holt, UNL; William (Sim) Butler, University of Alabama; Debra Hope, University of Nebraska Lincoln; Heather Meyer; Nathan Woodruff, Trans Collaborations • In recent years, the Transgender and Gender Nonconforming (TGNC) population has gained a stronger voice in the media. Although these voices are being heard, there are limits on the type of TGNC representation displayed in media. The current study interviewed 27 TGNC individuals. These interviews exposed how participants view the rise of TGNC media representation. The main themes that emerged were TGNC Awareness and TGNC Identity Discovery and Role-Modeling.

The LGBT activist on social media: Analyzing LGBT activism online in India and Taiwan • PAROMITA PAIN, The University of Texas at Austin; Victoria Chen • Through the lens of framing theory and qualitative interviews, this analysis examines how LGBT activists in India and Taiwan use social media to counter negative portrayals and mobilize audiences for social change. In 2017, same sex marriage was legalized in Taiwan making it the first Asian country to do so. In India, the Right to Privacy controversy shook the country in early 2017.  In-depth qualitative interviews with LGBT activists from various cities in India (30) and Taiwan (30), helped understand how they use SNS (social networking sites) in their activism, the decisions involved in the framing of messages and the advantages and disadvantages of SNS.

“Coming out and going home”: Communication action and regional mobility among the gay supportive families in Taiwan • Hong-Chi Shiau • Despite the historical centrality of western cities as sites of queer cultural settlement, larger global economic and political forces have vociferously shaped, dispersed, and altered dreams of mobility for Taiwanese queers in the age of globalization. Drawn upon five-year ethnographic studies in Taiwan, this study examines how counternarratives were used by families with gay sons to disrupt the dominant homonormative discourse in the Taiwanese society. The nuanced changes in communication action and increasingly common regional migration for the gay youth has made gay youth in Taiwan to “come out and go home quietly.” The transformation has been shaped by multiple economic and social forces at work involving (1) the optimal distance with the biological family, (2) the prospect in the seemingly lucrative “new” and gay-friendly employments and (3) the proper performances of consumption policed and imposed by the gay community in the neoliberal Taiwanese society.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Magazine 2018 Abstracts

Satiric magazines in Latin America as Hybrid Alternative Media • Paul Alonso, Georgia Tech • This article explores the cases of two satirical publications—The Clinic (Chile) and Barcelona (Argentina). Through critical humor, visual subversions, and parody, these independent magazines challenged mainstream journalism and official political discourse, offering alternative interpretations about the ruling class and society after traumatic periods—the Pinochet’s military dictatorship in Chile and the 2001 economic crisis in Argentina. This article examines how these satirical publications responded to their respective national contexts by questioning the functioning of power on several levels of society. Through interviews with the editors and content analysis, this study also analyzes the patterns of production and the evolution of the magazines after they became popular and examines how they negotiated their space within the national mediascape. Finally, it suggests the notion of “hybrid alternative media” to describe these publications, which had become part of a liberating process of collective healing. Initially perceived in opposition to mainstream media in contexts when the press’ credibility had decreased, they filled gaps in their society’s political communication.

Selling Yoga ‘Off the Mat’: A 10-year Analysis of Lifestyle Advertorials in Yoga Journal Magazine • nandini bhalla, University of South Carolina; Leigh Moscowitz, University of South Carolina; Jane O’Boyle, Elon University • This content analysis of advertorials from 10 years of Yoga Journal suggests that Health supplements, herbal remedies and lifestyle products such as clothes, shoes were most often featured between 2008 and 2017. The most common format was a regular feature, entitled “Off the Mat,” which promotes yoga lifestyle products identified by the magazine as “our partners.” Implications about the commodification of yoga and the role of advertorials in print magazines are discussed.

So they claim: A content analysis of magazine food advertising techniques and branding. • Clay Craig, Texas State University; Mark Flynn, Emmanuel College; Andrea Bergstrom, Coastal Carolina University • This study addressed a gap in the current literature on food advertising in U.S. magazines. A content analysis of food advertisements from fifteen magazine across five genres (men’s, women’s, health, fashion, and food) was conducted to determine the different tactics (product category, claims, endorsements, and product interaction) used by advertisers. Some key findings suggest: foods high in fat/sugar was the most frequently advertised food category; consumer-focused claims were most common; seals and/or celebrity endorsements were not used often; and more than 15% of ads featured individuals interacting with the food product being advertised. Also, magazine genre and season-based differences were present in the types of food products advertised. The paper concludes with managerial, theoretical, and ethical implications for advertisers when using magazines to promote food-oriented products.

Slam Dunk: An Examination of How Magazines Can Create Loyal Readers • Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina; Joon Kyoung Kim, University of South Carolina; Daniel Haun, University of South Carolina; Matthew Stilwell • As various sports magazines have eliminated print issues, the basketball magazine Slam continues to have a strong and loyal following. Using impression management and social identity theory as a guide, both visual and textual analyses was used to examine the magazine’s covers. Results demonstrate that Slam’s covers were designed for a demographic that is familiar with the players, interested in being on the cutting edge of information, and passionate about the sport of basketball.

Understanding the Process of Construction of Masculinity in Indian Editions of Global Men’s Lifestyle Magazines • Suman Mishra, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • This case study explores the process through which Indian editions of American and British men’s lifestyle magazines are produced. It shows connections between global strategies and local production of content. It highlights commercial logic, global strategies, formal and informal structures, and power dynamics within which local producers operate and negotiate to create local editions and construct assimilatory hybrid models of masculinity.

Traditional Journalists on Gaming Journalism: Metajournalistic discourse on the rise of lifestyle journalism • Gregory Perreault, Appalachian State University; Tim Vos, University of Missouri • Gaming journalism, which finds its origins in public relations-oriented gaming magazines, attached itself discursively to traditional journalism in the wake of the GamerGate controversy. Yet it is unclear where a journalistic niche like gaming journalism fits within the ecology of journalism. The present study examines metajournalistic discourse regarding gaming journalism from 2010-2018 and analyzes 53 discrete articles about gaming journalism from that period in order to understand how the broader journalistic field conceptualized gaming journalism’s place within it. This study argues that gaming journalism is consigned to a lower and marginal form of journalism due to differences in paradigmatic professional values and journalistic savviness.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Law and Policy 2018 Abstracts

Open Competition
Making @YourState “Friends” With #Privacy: Rights and Wrongs In State Social Media Privacy Password Statutes • Jacob Elberg, University of Kansas; Genelle Belmas, University of Kansas • Since 2012, over half the states have adopted social media privacy laws to protect students and employees from demands of schools and employers for their passwords or social media content as a requirement of admission or employment. This paper evaluates the legal landscape of social media privacy in terms of vintage communications laws and cases as well as new state statutes and makes some recommendations as to the best ways to craft new statutes.

Artificial Authors: Making a Case for Copyright in Computer-Generated Works • Nina Brown, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications • For years, computers have dominated humans at chess, poker, and even Jeopardy! Now, increasingly sophisticated artificial intelligence creates music, art, and even news stories. And though the purpose of copyright law is to encourage this exact type of artistic production, none of these works are protected because in the U.S., only humans can own copyrights. Instead of accepting the that law must lag behind technology, this paper explores whether copyright law can-and should-evolve.

First Amendment Envelope Pushers: Revisiting the Incitement-to-Violence Test with Messrs. Brandenburg, Trump & Spencer • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper examines weaknesses with the United States Supreme Court’s Brandenburg v. Ohio incitement test as its fiftieth anniversary approaches.  A lawsuit targeting Donald Trump, as well as multiple cases pitting white nationalist Richard Spencer against public universities, provide timely springboards for analysis.  Specifically, In re Trump: 1) illustrates difficulties in proving Brandenburg’s intent requirement via circumstantial evidence, and 2) exposes problems regarding the extent to which past violent responses to a person’s words satisfy Brandenburg’s likelihood element.  Additionally, the Spencer lawsuits raise concerns about: 1) whether Brandenburg should serve as a prior restraint mechanism for blocking potential speakers from campus before they utter a single word, and 2) the inverse correlation between government efforts to thwart a heckler’s veto via heightened security measures and Brandenburg’s imminence requirement.  Ultimately, the paper analyzes all three key elements of Brandenburg—intent, imminence and likelihood—as well as its relationship to both the heckler’s veto principle and the First Amendment presumption against prior restraints.

Report and Repeat: Investigating Facebook’s Hate Speech Removal Process • Caitlin Carlson, Seattle University; Hayley Rousselle, Seattle University • Facebook’s Community Standards ban hate speech. Users are tasked with reporting this content, but little is known about how Facebook responds to these reports. This study identified 144 (n=144) posts containing hate speech and reported them to Facebook. A qualitative content analysis was performed on the removed (n=64) and not removed (n=80) content. This revealed inconsistencies in the removal process that curtailed certain forms of expression and left users open to abuse.

Journalists’ Access to 911 Recordings: Balancing Privacy Interests and the Public’s Right to Know about Casualties • Erin Coyle, Louisiana State University; Stephanie Whitenack, Louisiana State University • Nine-one-one call recordings may capture unique distress from a person’s final moments of life. Journalists argue that publicly disclosing those recordings could shed light on matters of public interest, but publishing that content might emotionally devastate surviving family. This research explored whether and how state statutes, court opinions, and attorney general opinions address that potential conflict and determine whether journalists may access and publish content from 911 calls related to tragic death scenes. This research found a tendency for court rulings, statutes, and attorney general opinions to strike a balance between the public interest in learning about government actions and the likelihood for disclosure of 911 records to intrude upon privacy interests. Some struck that balance by allowing journalists to listen to tape recordings, releasing transcripts of calls, or redacting sensitive personal information prior to releasing records.

The Internet of Platforms and Two-Sided Markets: Implications for Competition and Consumers • Rob Frieden, Penn State University • This paper examines developments in the Internet marketplace that favor powerful intermediaries able to install a platform accessed by that both upstream sources of content and applications as well as downstream consumers.  Ventures such as Amazon, Facebook and Google have exploited, “winner take all” networking externalities resulting in the creation of seemingly impenetrable barriers to market entry even by innovative companies.  Courts and regulatory agencies recognize the substantial market shares these ventures have acquired, but refrain from imposing sanctions on grounds that consumers accrue ample benefits when platform operators use upstream revenues to subsidize downstream services. The paper examines digital broadband platform operators with an eye toward assessing the aggregate benefits and costs to both upstream firms and downstream consumers.  It concludes that governments have failed to revise and recalibrate tools that examine potential marketplace distortions and assess the potential for damage to competition and consumers.  The paper demonstrates how the Justice Department, Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission have relied on economic and legal doctrine ill-suited for digital broadband market assessments.  These agencies have generated false positives, resulting in market intervention where no major problem exists, and false negatives where undetected major problems cause harm without remedy.  Additionally these agencies appear to misallocate their resources and attention on insignificant matters when more compelling problems exist.

Sheppard v. Maxwell Revisited:  A “Roman Holiday,” a “Carnival” or “Decorum Comparable with the Best? • W. Wat Hopkins • Possibly the most common term used to characterize the trial of Sam Sheppard for the murder of his wife is “Roman holiday.”  The Supreme Court of the United States reported that “bedlam reigned in the courthouse during the trial.  Four months after the Supreme Court delivered its opinion, however, 10 journalists who covered the trial for respected media organization wrote the justices and told them they were wrong.  The trial, they told the justices, was conducted with “decorum comparable with the best.”  This paper explores the question of who was right – the Court or the reporters.

Anthem Protests & Public-College Athletes: Is There a Need for a Constitutional Audible? • Carmen Maye, Univ. of South Carolina • National-anthem protests reveal complexities associated with symbolic counter-speech tied to symbols of patriotism. For public-college officials and coaches, the complexity of game-time anthem protests extends beyond the court of public opinion. Uniformed collegiate student-athletes occupy a constitutional limbo-land in which the signals are mixed. Courts considering coach-imposed limits on anthem protests should eschew the traditional and school-specific options in favor of one that allows for a more direct balancing of interests.

“Walk” This Way, Talk This Way:  How Do We Know When the Government is Speaking After Walker v. Sons of the Confederacy? • Kristen Patrow, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • “One prong of the three-part government speech test developed in Walker required the Court to examine whether reasonable observers would understand the message as the government’s. Determining what a “reasonable observer” might consider government speech is nebulous at best. Analysis of six cases shows that paths to limiting this ambiguity of the doctrine include requiring a clear message, the government to self-identify as the speaker, and medium scarcity.”

Seeking clarity: European press rights at peaceful assemblies • Jonathan Peters, University of Georgia • European intergovernmental organizations are developing guidelines to establish a baseline for press rights at peaceful assemblies. This paper contributes to those efforts in two ways. First, it reviews existing European press protections in the assembly context. Second, it discusses issues that should be addressed in the forthcoming guidelines. The scholarly value of this paper is to explore the procedural and substantive dimensions of European press rights at assemblies, while the practical value is to clarify key issues and suggest ways to address them.

Considering Fair Use: DMCA’s Takedown & Repeat Infringers Policies • Amanda Reid, UNC Chapel Hill • The 20th anniversary of the DMCA is an appropriate occasion to reflect on the First Amendment implications of this legislative compromise between copyright holders and online service providers.  DMCA safe harbors were intended to protect business interests and expressive interests. As digital media are woven into modern daily life, this safe harbor schema needs recalibration to protect fair uses.  To recalibrate, this paper explores how fair use considerations should be operationalized under the DMCA framework.

Transparency Reporting and Content Takedowns: Examining Internet Censorship in the United States and India. • Enakshi Roy, Western Kentucky University • Drawing on the literature on internet censorship this study investigates the practice of content takedowns carried out by the United States’ and Indian governments. To that end this research employs two studies. Study 1 examines the transparency reports of Google, Facebook, and Twitter from 2010- 2015 to find out what content is removed from these platforms. Study 2 through in-depth interviews with technology lawyers and authors of transparency reports finds out about the content removal process and its complexities. The findings show “defamation” is one of the most cited reasons for content removal in both the United States and India. “Privacy and Security” is another top reason for content removal in both countries. In India, “Religious Offense” was the most frequently cited reason for content removal. Findings reveal a disturbing trend where defamation notices were misused to request takedown of content that was critical of the governments, politicians, public figures, law enforcement officials, and police. The findings of this comparative study are important, they demonstrate several ways in which the internet is being censored even in democratic countries without the knowledge of the users. Such censorship maybe eroding the freedom of speech guaranteed by the Constitutions of both the United States and India.

Internet Memes and “Cultural Flourishing”: A Democratic Approach to Copyright • Yoonmo Sang, Howard University • This paper explores the socio-cultural implications of Internet memes in conjunction with legal and policy inquiry that involve copyright and freedom of expression. In doing so, the concept of cultural democracy is advanced to better understand Internet memes that are created and shared by ordinary people to express their emotions, ideas and opinions in order to better understand cultural and political events. This normative study unpacks implications of Internet memes and applies the concept of cultural democracy to Internet memes in the context of copyright law. This study ultimately argues that the concept of democratic culture provides an alternative understanding of copyright legislation as well as a viable theoretical justification for copyright reforms in support of users’ creative use of preexisting cultural works in the age of user-generated content.

The Artificial Marketplace: Examining Potential Changes to Marketplace Theory in the Era of AI Communicators • Jared Schroeder, Southern Methodist University • Artificially intelligent communicators, particularly since the 2016 U.S. presidential election, have occupied an increasing role in democratic discourse. Their natures, as non-human actors with fundamentally different capabilities and motivations than citizens, raise substantial questions about whether the marketplace of ideas theory, the Supreme Court’s dominant rational for freedom of expression, can persist in its current form. In other words, the growing presences of artificially intelligent communicators undermine some of the foundational assumptions of the marketplace approach. This paper contends that without some revisions to the fundamental building blocks of the theory, it will no longer be viable as a rationale for freedom of expression in the AI-infused discourse of the twenty-first century. To this end, this paper explores the increasing influence of artificially intelligent communicators, the traditional assumptions of the marketplace approach, the longstanding criticisms of the theory, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’s conceptualization of truth, and judicial opinions regarding the rights of other non-human communicators, such as animals and corporations. This paper ultimately proposes a process-focused, public-good-based revision to the theory’s foundational assumptions. Ideally, such a revision would allow the theory to remain functional in the growing artificial marketplaces of the twenty-first century.

Give Me a ©: Refashioning the Supreme Court’s Decision in Star v. Varsity • Jared Schroeder, Southern Methodist University; Camille Kraeplin, Southern Methodist University; Anna Grace Carey, Southern Methodist University; Lauren Hawkins, Southern Methodist University • Fashion designers have struggled to establish their works as expressions that qualify for copyright protection. The Supreme Court’s decision last spring in Star v. Varsity was less of a victory for fashion designers than it might appear. The Court’s effort to clarify and apply the “separability test,” stopped short of providing the clarity needed to protect the works of fashion designers. This article contends that this confusion can be resolved by conceptualizing fashion designs as forms of art that are often applied to useful objects, rather understanding them as useful items that, if their designs can be conceptually separated from the object, can receive protections.

Confronting Power, Defining Freedom and Awakening Participation: An Argument for Expanding Media Law Education • Erik Ugland • This article contends that some understanding of media law and policy is now indispensable for citizens in the Digital Age and proposes strategies for expanding knowledge of these subjects. This knowledge is essential to citizens’ self-preservation and individual agency, it equips them to engage in emerging First Amendment debates, and it enables their participation in settling media policy dilemmas (surveillance, net neutrality, big data) whose resolution will ultimately affect the broader balance of social power.

Defamation Per Se and Transgender Status: When Macro-Level Value Judgments About Equality Trump Micro-Level Reputational Injury • Austin Vining, University of Florida; Ashton Hampton; Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper uses the September 2017 defamation decision in Simmons v. American Media, Inc. as a springboard for examining defamatory meaning and reputational injury.  Specifically, it focuses on cases in which judges acknowledge plaintiffs have suffered reputational harm, yet rule for defendants because promoting the cultural value of equality weighs against redress.  In Simmons, a normative, axiological judgment – that the law should neither sanction nor ratify prejudicial views about transgender individuals – prevailed at the trial court level over a celebrity’s ability to recover for alleged reputational harm.  Simmons sits at a dangerous intersection – a crossroads where a noble judicial desire to reject prejudicial stereotypes and to embrace equality collides head-on with an ignoble reality in which a significant minority of the population finds a particular false allegation (in Simmons, transgender status) to be defamatory.  The paper concludes by proposing variables for courts to apply in future cases where a dispute exists over whether an allegation is defamatory per se, rather than leaving the decision to the discretion of judges untethered from formal criteria.

Requester’s Paradox: Acknowledging FOIA’s Defects, Moving toward Proactive Disclosure • A.Jay Wagner, Bradley University • “Hillary Clinton’s email fiasco exposed long-standing issues in the FOIA. Her deliberate circumvention of records management rules and the State Department’s intentionally misleading response to FOIA requests demonstrated deep and troubling flaws in the contemporary FOIA paradigm. In looking at the laws and judicial interpretation that undergird records management and adequate search elements, the study finds little in the way of legal obligations and a court system limited in combatting the problems. FOIA requesters already suffer from a paradox – never truly knowing what records exist – and these twin failures further undermine the access mechanism. The study explores the unsteady foundation on which the FOIA rests and uses these failures to campaign for more reliance on proactive disclosure mechanisms. In considering proactive disclosure, the study looks at both international and domestic efforts where no request for information is needed. The United States has already experimented with expanding proactive disclosure, including a Justice Department pilot study and amended small elements to the FOIA statute in 2016.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Communication Technology 2018 Abstracts

Faculty Paper Competition
No time to think: The impact of smartphone technology on mindfulness and reflection • Mary Beth Bradford, Florida Southern College • As smartphones have become more prevalent in society, so have become consequences. Using research from Carr (2010) and Turkle (2015), this study investigated the relationship between smartphones and reflection, mindfulness and hyperactivity. The results showed that smartphone addiction symptoms of withdrawal are significantly related to hyperactivity and negatively related to reflection. Phubbing, which is snubbing others with a smartphone, is negatively related to levels of mindfulness. Social media addiction was not a significant predictor.

Pro-Vaxxers Get Out: Anti-Vaccine Advocates Influence Questioning First-Time, Pregnant, and New Mothers  on Facebook • Amanda Bradshaw, University of Florida; Summer Shelton, University of Florida; Easton Wollney, University of Florida; Debbie Treise, University of Florida; Kendra Auguste • Facebook has revolutionized health information-seeking behavior with crowd-based medical advice. Decreased vaccination uptake and subsequent disease outbreaks have generally occurred in localized clusters based upon social norms; however, geographically unrestricted Facebook networks may promote parental refusal congruent with digital identity formation. Interactions within the largest closed Facebook group for vaccination choice were analyzed through the lens of Social Influence Theory. Anti-vaccination advocates impacted questioning mothers’ expressed vaccination intentions through both informational and normative influence processes.

Anyone Can Be a Troll: Predicting Behaviors and Perceptions of Uncivil Discourse Among Reddit Users • Daniel Montez, Brigham Young University; Pamela Brubaker, Brigham Young University; Scott Church, Brigham Young University; Ching (Jina) Shih, Brigham Young University; Spencer Christensen, Brigham Young University • Uncivil discourse is an increasingly pervasive problem on computer-mediated communication platforms. This study examined predictors of trolling behaviors as well as perceptions of trolling among 438 Reddit users. A path analysis indicated malicious motives mediated the relationship between personality traits (i.e., the Dark Triad) and online incivility. Outspokenness did not directly or indirectly predict incivility. Results also showed that both those with malicious motives who more or less serve as malicious online lurkers, as well as those who are uncivil online (i.e., trolls), view trolling as a functional approach to online discourse. This was further supported as both groups of individuals considered trolling as not being dysfunctional. Those who merely observed incivility on Reddit did not consider trolling to be a functional part of online discourse. Age, time spent on Reddit, and the Dark Triad did not predict functional/dysfunctional perceptions of trolling.

Risk Factors for Cyberbullying Victimization: A Survey of Adult Internet Users in 19 Countries • Tiernan Cahill, Boston University; Kate Mays, Boston University; John Donegan, Boston University; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James H. Liu, Massey University • Research on cyberbullying has historically focused primarily on the experiences of children and adolescents and been limited to cross-sectional associations between risk factors and outcomes. The present study expands the understanding of causal risk factors for cyberbullying victimization among adults through a longitudinal panel survey of Internet users in 19 countries. The risk factors investigated include demographic attributes, online behavior, and personality attributes.

Emotional expression and social media practices: A social identity-based perspective • Xi Cui, College of Charleston • This study explores general patterns of the relationship between emotional expressions and social media practices such as hashtags and post sharing with three datasets of two breaking events and one longitudinal collection. We assume a social identity perspective and attend to the identity meanings of various hashtags. Findings deepen our understanding of identity-driven social media uses in different topical contexts and possible influence of strategic self-presentation in moderating the expressions of emotions and identities.

Predicting Cellphone Use while Driving and Walking Among College Students • Tao Deng, Michigan State University; Juan Mundel, DePaul University; Kristen Lynch, Michigan State University; Anastasia Kononova; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University • Amidst growing concerns related to use of cellphones while driving and walking, we explored different predictors of risky cellphone use, including demographic factors, psychological individual differences, and problematic use of technology using a cross-sectional survey of college students at a large Midwestern university (N = 577). Results showed that problematic social media use had the strongest predictive power on cellphone use while driving and walking, with psychological individual differences predicting risky cellphone use while driving.

Facilitating Role of Opinion Climate in Speaking Out: Testing Spiral of Silence in Social Media • Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University • Through secondary analysis of data collected from a nationwide survey of adults (N = 956), this study uses the spiral of silence theory to examine the facilitating potential of the opinion climate cultivated on social media. Specifically, the role of individuals’ previous experience of online harassment via social media in speaking out is examined. Results identify potential positive effects of like-minded online opinion environment in facilitating speaking out behavior.

From the Margins to the Newsfeed: Social Media Audiences’ Disruption of the Protest Paradigm • Summer Harlow, University of Houston; Danielle Kilgo, Indiana University • This content analysis expands protest paradigm research, examining the relationship between social media audience engagement and newspaper articles about protests in 2017. Results showed stories that were not posted to social media housed more negative frames and devices that delegitimize protesters. For select protests, audiences engaged more with articles with legitimizing content, suggesting users, like journalists, follow a paradigm that legitimizes some protests and marginalizes others.

Instagramming Social Presence:  A Test of Social Presence Theory and Heuristic Cues on Instagram Sponsored Posts • Erika Johnson, East Carolina University; Seoyeon Hong, Rowan University • This study investigates Social Presence Theory, using sponsored posts on Instagram. By testing a 3 (social presence) x 2 (heuristic cues) x 2 (source of sponsorship) mixed subjects experiment (N = 378), the results showed significant main effects of social presence, heuristic cues, and source on social media engagement. Results show that higher social presence, higher likes (heuristic), and official sources lead to higher social media engagement. Our findings provide empirical evidence for how to effectively deliver sponsored contents on Instagram.

I DON’T USE FACEBOOK ANYMORE: An investigation into the relationship between the motivations to leave Facebook and the Big Five personality traits • Seoyeon Hong, Rowan University; Klive (Soo-Kwang) Oh, Pepperdine University • This study linked the Big Five personality traits with motivational factors to leave Facebook. The Big Five were expected to predict eight factors retrieved from existing literature. Results showed that neuroticism was positively related to addiction, banality, peer pressure, and privacy while conscientiousness was negatively related to peer pressure, addiction, annoyance, and emergence of new platforms. Openness was positively related with banality but negatively with addiction and peer pressure. Theoretical and practical interpretations are also discussed.

Who are the second screeners? Personality traits predicting dual screen use • Brigitte Huber; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James H. Liu, Massey University • This study investigates the relationship between personality traits and second screening for politics worldwide. Employing two-wave panel-data from 19 countries, this study tests how the Big Five personality traits relate to dual screening practices. Results show that extraversion positively predicts second screening. In contrast, agreeableness and openness to new experience are negatively related to second screening. Moreover, multilevel analysis is performed to test whether the between-country variation is related to cultural and technical indicators.

Pundits, Presenters and Promoters: Investigating Gaps in Digital Production among Social Media Users Using Self-Reported and Behavioral Measures • Ke Jiang; Rui Wang; Lance Porter; Martin Johnson • We investigate the relationship between the social characteristics of social media users and their production of digital content. Matching survey data with self-reported user profiles and a year’s worth of actual posts on Twitter, we found four dominant fields of discussion and three main types of actors participating in these discussions. Pundits, presenters and promoters tweeted about different combinations of lifecasting, politics, promotion and entertainment to gain digital capital in 2016.

Developing and Testing Web-based Avatar Customization as a Self-Affirmation Manipulation Tool • Hyunjin Kang, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University; Hye Kyung Kim, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University • In two lab experiments, this study tested the potential of web-based avatar customization as a new self-affirmation manipulation method. Study 1 (N = 126) found that the process of avatar customization has a self-affirming effect equivalent to a widely used self-affirmation method. Study 2 (N = 139) further found that avatar customization reduces defensive processing of self-threatening health information among those who most likely to be defensive. We discuss practical implications and future research directions.

Effects of User versus Object Agency in Interaction with Smart Objects: A Moderated Mediation Model of Anthropomorphism and Perceived Connectedness • Hyunjin Kang, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University; Ki Joon Kim, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong • In human-IoT interaction, both users and smart objects can exercise own agency. The current study examines interplay of the locus of agency (user vs. object) and anthropomorphic cues on user responses to interactions with IoT mediated by sense of connectedness. Experiment results (N =71) indicated that users generally exhibit more positive responses to IoT interactions when they have own agency. Yet, anthropomorphism was shown to relieve agency tension among users when objects have own agency.

The effects of gratifications on the continuance intention to use a mobile instant messenger service • Hyunjung Kim • In this study, we examined the motivational factors associated with the intention to continue to use an MIM service and explored the relationship between the size of an MIM group chatroom and the respective effects of the motivational factors. The results demonstrate that the effect of the social interaction gratification on the intention to continue using the MIM was greatest among those who mainly use the service for small-group chatrooms with three to five members.

Checking in During Irma: Investigating Motivations, Emotions, and Narratives on Facebook’s Safety Check Feature • Seoyeon Kim; Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jeanine Guidry, Virginia Commonwealth University • This study investigated public discourse on social media during the recent natural disaster Hurricane Irma through a quantitative content analysis of 750 Facebook posts. Levels of public engagement across different motivations for use, emotions, and crisis narratives were examined. Posts elicited higher engagement when users were motivated by information sharing; expressing fear/anxiety; and using victim narratives. Emotions across different crisis narratives are also discussed.

Snapchat Usage from the International Perspective: Comparison between the United States and South Korea • Haseon Park, University of North Dakota; Soojung Kim, University of North Dakota; Joonghwa Lee, University of North Dakota • This study explored international differences in Snapchat usage between the United States and Korea by taking long-term orientation, separateness self-schema, and motivations into account. The results from online survey revealed that both long-term orientation and separateness had positive relationships with attitudes toward Snapchat and intention to use Snapchat. Motivations that significantly influence attitudes toward Snapchat and intention to use Snapchat were also found to be different between the two countries. Implications are discussed.

YouTube, show me “How-to”: exploring parasocial interaction and self-efficacy mechanism governing behavioral intent in YouTube tutorial videos • Hyosun Kim, University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point • A web survey was conducted to examine how “How-To” videos on YouTube affect purchase intent toward the products featured in the videos. Drawing on social cognitive theory, the findings suggest that perceived authenticity predicts parasocial interaction, which then affects self-efficacy to predict purchase intent. Thus, results revealed a significant mediating role of parasocial interaction and self-efficacy in the learning process that positively affects people towards buying the product they learned about from the YouTube tutorial videos.

Characteristics of Compensated Consumer Reviews and the Effect of Compensation Disclaimer on Attitude and Purchase Intention • Su Jung Kim, Iowa State University; Ewa Maslowska, University of Amsterdam; Ali Tamaddoni, Deakin Business School • This paper examines different characteristics and effects of compensated versus self-motivated reviews, and the mechanisms behind these effects, using mixed methods in two studies. The findings of text mining analyses suggest that, despite compensated reviews provide more elaborate and evaluative content, they are perceived less helpful than self-motivated reviews. The findings of a randomized experiment suggest that compensation disclosure negatively influence consumers’ attitude and purchase intention via increased suspicion of the reviewer’s ulterior motives.

Peer-To-Peer Connections: Perceptions of a Social Networking App Designed for Young Adults with Cancer • Allison Lazard; Adam Saffer; Lindsey Horrell; Catherine Benedict; Brad Love • Objective: Social support is a critical, yet frequently unmet, need among young adults (YAs) affected by cancer. YAs desire age-appropriate resources that will help them connect to members of the YA cancer community. Given the overwhelming adoption of smart phones among YAs, a peer-to-peer, social networking mobile app is a promising intervention to provide this desired social support if the design affords meaningful connections. Methods: We interviewed 27 members of the YA community to assess perceptions of the Stupid Cancer app. Findings: Most participants expressed interested in using the app to connect with other YA survivors/caregivers. Connection preferences varied by prevalence or rarity of one’s cancer diagnosis. Additional themes shared included: juxtaposition of the desire for profile anonymity versus profiles with more personal information such as pictures, the need for multiple matching algorithms and filter options to find connections that meet varying support needs, and desire for tailored messaging and chat room features (e.g., topic-specific, search capabilities). Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate the promise of using an app-based platform to fulfill YA cancer survivors’ unmet peer support needs. Practical Implications: Peer-to-peer networking apps should be designed so users can control their identify and customize connection features in this underserved cancer population.

Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and Social Capital: Examining the Impacts of Mobile, PC, and Tablet Uses on Bonding and Bridging Social Capital • Hoon Lee; Scott Campbell • This study aims to tease out the distinctive repercussion of a particular ICT use for the accrual of social capital.  Our results demonstrate mobile phone use is positively associated with bonding capital, whereas using desktop PC explains enhanced bridging capital. It is further shown that private-oriented use of mobile phone mainly contributes to the cultivation of bonding capital while using desktop PC for political ends is the key predictor of augmented bridging capital.

A Review of Media Addiction Research from 1991 to 2016 • Louis Leung, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Cheng Chen • In this review study, a descriptive analysis was conducted of the media addiction research published from 1991 to 2016. The search of all academic output published in 13 major academic databases within the 26-year period yielded 1,099 SSCI/SCI articles that were relevant to this study. The review was focused on the trends, developmental periods, study domains, themes, research methods, measurement instruments, and research purposes in the field of media addiction. The implications of these findings for future media addiction research are discussed.

Does being an expert make you more negative? An investigation of subjective expertise and electronic word-of-mouth communication • Jiangmen Liu; Cong Li, School of Communication, University of Miami • This study aims examines how communicator’s subjective expertise impacts generation of eWOM and through what mechanisms. A 2 (subjective expertise: high vs low)  2 (anonymity: anonymous vs real identity)  2 (audience size: large vs small) between-subjects experiment conducted online. Results revealed a two-way interaction between subjective expertise and anonymity on eWOM valence. Findings provide theoretical contributions to eWOM research by exploring the influences of communicator characteristics and platform characteristics on eWOM generation.

Issue-Based Micromobilization via Call-to-Action Message: Path analysis model linking issue involvement to expressive action in social media • Elmie Nekmat, National University of Singapore; Ismaharif Ismail, National University of Singapore • This study investigates identity- and perceptual-based factors determining individual expressive support for issue-driven collective action on social media. A mediated pathway model positing influence of personal issue involvement via individual-group identification, perceived individual-network issue opinion congruity, and perceived participative efficacy on likelihood to engage in expressive support (commenting, ‘liking,’ ‘sharing’ of message and information) was evaluated. Results reveal group identification as robust mediator of issue involvement, predicting expressive support irrespective of user issue attitudes. Perceived participative efficacy is the strongest predictor of likelihood to express support but, like perceived individual-network opinion congruity, demonstrate variances between users with different levels of issue involvement and attitude. Results suggest a more intricate micromobilization process that needs to consider contextual issue-group positions and status quo in society, as well as counter-groups dynamics on social media.

The Emotional Consequences of Social Exclusion through Social Media • Dominik Neumann, Michigan State University; Nancy Rhodes, Michigan State University • Using social media affords an unfiltered window into the lives of friends. Although this can facilitate positive relationships, it also affords awareness of social activities friends are enjoying, that the user has not been included in. We report an initial, qualitative investigation into perceptions of self-exclusion and ostracism and emotional consequences of these types of exclusion. Thinking about an ostracism situation led to higher anger, and lower regret and happiness than thinking about self-exclusion.

News Finds Them, and Then What? How Post-Millennials Engage with Social and Mobile Media News • Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, University of Connecticut; Preeti Srinivasan, University of Connecticut • The reliance on social and mobile media for news is changing how young adults engage with and learn from news. Focus groups with current college students (N = 60) explore how they experience news via different media formats and how the content influences them. Results reveal social and mobile media as imperfect but unavoidable convenience, a general hesitation to engage publicly with news content, and a sense of awareness of but not learning from news.

Twitter versus Facebook: Discussing Controversial Issues on Social Media • Mustafa Oz, Southern Indiana University • Abstract: This study compares how do people express their opinions on the Facebook versus on Twitter. It was sought to understand whether people were more willing to express their opinions on some social media channels than others. It was assumed that fear of isolation and affordances may influence users’ opinion expression behaviors on social media websites. Overall, the results suggested that people were more likely to express their opinion on Twitter than Facebook when they think the majority does not support their opinion.

Smartphone and Self-Extension: Functionally, Anthropomorphically, and Ontologically Extending Self via the Smartphone • Chang Sup Park, University at Albany, SUNY; Barbara Kaye • This paper focuses on the blurring boundary between the smartphone and humans and aims to identify types of self-extension people experience through smartphone use. Based on in-depth interviews with 60 smartphone users, the findings support three types of self-extension via the smartphone – functional extension, anthropomorphic extension, and ontological extension. The findings suggest that smartphone users perceive that the smartphone has become an important part of their self and influences their identity.

Big data and crowdfunding for startups: An application of social capital theory • Sun-Young Park, University of Massachusetts Boston; Boon Thau Loo • Crowdfunding is a recent financing phenomenon as a tool for startups to raise seed funding for them. Utilizing big data analytics for crowdfunding platforms, such as AngelList (N = 744,036) and Crunchbase (N = 10,156), and social media sites, such as Facebook (N = 37,761) and Twitter (N = 70,563), our research investigates the impact of social engagement on startup fundraising success through the lens of social capital theory. The results show cognitive, structural, and relational dimensions of social capital sources served as important predictors of fundraising for startups.

Predicting Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chatbot Use in South Korea: The Roles of Socio-Demographic Characteristics, Innovativeness, Sense of Belonging, and Computer Self-Efficacy • Kyungeun Jang, Yonsei University; Jinyoung Choi, Yonsei University; Seonggyeol Cho, Yonsei University; Namkee Park, Yonsei University • This study explored the factors that affect individuals’ adoption and use of AI chatbots, focusing on socio-demographic characteristics, innovativeness, sense of belonging, and computer self-efficacy. The study fills the gap between the current use of AI chatbots and the lack of empirical studies that examined the predictors of adoption and use of the technology. The study is also expected to stimulate future research, calling for attention to individual and psychological factors for AI chatbot use.

Take them there: From narrative engagement to behavioral intention in cause-related immersive storytelling • Geah Pressgrove; Nicholas Bowman, West Virginia University; Jennifer Knight • This study explores the role of immersive storytelling in a prosocial context. Across three stories, using immersive storytelling technologies (such as head-mounted displays) led to the highest levels of presence, but there was no association between presence and increased attitudes towards the story content. Only narrative engagement impacted attitudes. Data suggests that telling engaging narratives that increase the viewer’s self-efficacy, independent of immersive technologies, are key to behavioral intentions. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

How Many Will Read It on Reddit? A Model That Predicts Rankings of Reddit News • Aditya Ravindra Bhat; Ronald Yaros, University of Maryland • Research investigated social media sites in the context of user engagement and sharing of news, but few studies have focused on how user interactions could predict the ranking of news sources. 8,300 postings were collected from Reddit – the fourth largest news aggregator in the U.S. – to develop a new formula that can predict rankings of news sources. Initial results indicated the formula can successfully predict Reddit rankings with at least 70 percent reliability.

Predictors of Multiscreen Use: A Comparative Study of the United States and the Netherlands • Claire Segijn, Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities; Anastasia Kononova • Previous cross-country studies found that media multitasking was most prevalent in the US and the least prevalent in the Netherlands. The current study seeks explanations for these differences by comparing survey data from the US (n = 314) and the Netherlands (n = 328) and examining audience, media, and cultural factors as predictors of multiscreening, a specific form of media multitasking. The results showed that media factors are the most important predictor of multiscreen use.

Hey Alexa! Tell us Why People Adopt and Trust Voice Activated Digital Assistants • Claire Sauter, St. John Fisher College; Morgan van der Horst; Mary Wilson, St. John Fisher College; Sophia Germano, St. John Fisher College; Ronen Shay, St. John Fisher College • This study employed a survey (n=235) content analysis, and pseudo-experiment to examine the factors that contribute towards the adoption of Alexa, Google Home, and Siri devices. The findings demonstrated perceived companionship with the virtual assistant was the strongest predictor of adoption; statements before wake words are not found in device transcriptions; emotions towards assistants are positive, but neutral towards the degree of privacy; and perceived usefulness is a predictor of trust for all brands studied.

Who Will Reply to A Troll? A Network Approach to Understanding Trolls in Online Communities • Qiusi Sun; Cuihua Shen • This study investigated trolls’ influence in online communities by examining how individual members react toward trolls. Trolls are antisocial individuals provoking emotional responses and disrupt discussions. Using social identity theory and a dataset from YouTube, the study found out that individual members’ centrality, discussion network’s density, other members’ previous response to trolls, and the community’s cumulative response to trolls and the negativity of troll posts are associated with individual members’ likelihood of responding to trolls.

Social media and the classroom: Reversing the knowledge gap through tweets • Jason Turcotte • Knowledge gap theory demonstrated mass media’s role in facilitating learning disparities between the haves and have nots. The knowledge gap is also conditioned by the medium, yet the role of digital platforms is less clear. As social media plays an increasingly routine role as an information source and as a pedagogical tool, this study examines the effectiveness of incorporating social media in mass communication instruction.

Who leads the conversation on climate change?: A study of the global network of NGOs on Twitter • Hong Vu; Hung Do; Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas; Yuchen Liu, University of Kansas • Using a big data approach, this study investigates how climate change NGOs across the world communicate and interact on Twitter. It found that the Global North/South hierarchy is perpetuated in the network of these NGOs, with those from the Global North and Oceania dominating the conversations on climate change. Our social network analyses identified several types of centralities, conceptualized as connectivity, as predictors of an organization’s interactivity and posting. Implications for interorganizational communication and online opinion leadership were discussed.

Space-body Relationship: Visualizing Geolocation on Instagram and the Implications on Psychological Well-being • Shaojung Sharon Wang, National Sun Yat-sen University • This study investigated how location-based image sharing on Instagram might provide meaning for socio-spatial interaction processes by connecting bodies with locations. The results of an online survey showed that the use of Instagram features and visual appeal of an Instagram profile can both significantly predicted the users’ sense of space. Users’ sense of space had a positive impact on inner space and online social support and both inner space and online social support positively predicted three aspects of perceived interpersonal attraction: physical attraction, sexual attraction, and group attraction. The three aspects of perceived interpersonal attraction can further positively predict psychological well-being (PWB). Theoretical implications on how Instagram users might shorten the inner distance and trigger social perceptions by exhibiting external spatial beauty on a visual-oriented social platform to achieve PWB are discussed.

Information Control as a Mood Enhancer: Mood Management through Website Interactivity • Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina; Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Reece Funderburk, University of South Carolina • This paper examines the interplay between mood (positive, negative, and neutral) and website interactivity (high and low) on responses to brand websites. Participants in a negative mood reported greater mood change and more positive attitudes toward a high-interactivity website whereas people in a positive mood exhibited non-significant mood change and comparable evaluations of the websites with different levels of interactivity. Participants in a neutral mood reported non-significant mood change but more favorable attitudes toward a high-interactivity website.

‘This Message Will Self-Destruct’: Brand Use of Ephemeral Content on Snapchat for Strategic Communication • Brooke Smith, Brigham Young University; Christopher Wilson, BYU; Pamela Brubaker, Brigham Young University • This study seeks to understand why and how brands use ephemeral content on platforms like Snapchat. The authors conducted in-depth interviews with 23 brand social media managers who were involved in with brands’ Snapchat account. The results show that the ephemerality of the content shared on Snapchat was a key driver in platform adoption. Also, brand representatives wanted to reach younger audiences by telling them authentic visual stories. However, brands must balance the desire for carefully crafted brand stories the rawness characteristic of ephemeral content.

The Alternatives to Being Silent: Exploring the Opinion Expression Avoidance Strategies for Discussing Politics on Facebook • Tai-Yee Wu, National Chiao Tung University; Xiaowen Xu; David Atkin • This study integrates the theories of planned behavior and spiral of silence to examine one’s opinion expression avoidance on Facebook political discussions. Survey results suggest that self-efficacy and subjective norms promote the intention to adopt both tacit and “hassle” avoidance strategies. The latter could even benefit individuals with higher fear of isolation to less explicitly reveal disagreements if normative influence decreases. Findings from this comprehensive framework expand present understandings of online opinion expression and withdrawal.

When Journalism and Automation Intersect: Assessing the Influence of the Technological Field on Contemporary Newsrooms • Shangyuan Wu, Nanyang Technological University; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Charles Salmon • In this era of “big data,” where information circulates in unprecedented amounts, this paper examines the use of automation in newsrooms to manage the data deluge – not from the perspective of news workers, but from the technologists driving these digital innovations instead. Using field theory and in-depth interviews with technological firms, this study maps out the principles and practices of the technological field and the pressures and powers it exerts on the journalistic field today.

How Does Customization Influence Conspicuous Consumption among Socially Excluded versus Included Consumers? • Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Nanlan Zhang, University of South Carolina; nandini bhalla, University of South Carolina; Anan Wan, University of South Carolina • A lab experiment was conducted to analyze how the interplay between social exclusion and customization influenced consumers’ tendency of conspicuous consumption. The results indicated that compared to socially included participants, socially excluded participants expressed a significantly stronger tendency of conspicuous consumption after customizing a website. However, such a difference between social exclusion and social inclusion was not observed among participants who just read the information on the website without customizing it. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed and future research suggestions also provided.

Relationships between Gameplay Motives, Gaming Activities, and Quality-of-Life Perceptions among Older Game Players • YOWEI KANG, KAINAN UNIVERSITY, REPUBLIC OF TAIWAN; KENNETH C.C YANG, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO, USA • Older adults have increasingly become an important and profitable segment. This empirical research analyzed data from 127 older game players (>55 years old) in Taiwan and examined how their gaming activities were influenced by their use motives and whether playing digital games could subsequently influence their quality-of-life (QOL) perceptions. The linear regression analyses found that the motive to seek social connectedness positively predicted their gameplay duration (β=0.36, t=2.76**). Participants’ motive to obtain relaxation also positively predicted their gameplay frequency (β=0.93, t=12.00***). In terms of their quality-of-life perceptions, our study found that gameplay frequency positively predicted participants’ satisfaction with their own material living conditions (β=0.13, t=2.87**) and social relationship with family members (β=0.34, t=4.03***). Commitment to playing digital games, on the contrary, negatively predicted participants’ satisfaction to take part in productive and main activities (β=-0.29, t=-3.28***).

Beyond the “Good or Bad” Typology: A Meta-Analytic Review of the Association between Social Media Use and Psychological Well-Being • Fan Yang, University at Albany, SUNY; Ruoxu Wang, The University of Memphis • A meta-analysis of 54 studies was conducted to examine the association between social media use and psychological well-being. Using social media does not necessarily link to users’ psychological well-being because the relationship between the two is contingent upon different types of social media use (active versus passive), motivations for social media use (instrumental versus relational), and age of social media users. However, the association does not vary by social media platforms (Facebook versus others).

Student Paper Competition
Repurposed Geo-data and the Counterpublic: Folk Theories of Remote Check-ins to Standing Rock on Facebook • Jeeyun Baik, University of Southern California • This study defines social media users’ remotely checking in to political locations as an evolving form of counterpublic. It conducted a case study on Facebook check-in posts to Standing Rock Indian Reservation in 2016 where the users virtually stood with protesters who were fighting against the Dakota Access oil pipeline construction. Analyzing the discourse across the public remote check-in posts, five folk theories were identified regarding solidarity, counter-surveillance, privacy, education on geo-data and debunking rumors.

Whenever, Wherever:  The Persuasive Effects of Commercials Experienced with Mobile Virtual Reality • Priska Breves, University of Wuerzburg; Nicola Dodel, University of Wuerzburg • With the rise of mobile VR, advertisers started producing immersive commercials in order to engage and persuade consumers. A 2×1-between-subjects-experiment (N=62) was conducted in participants’ living rooms under natural conditions, where they either experiencing the immersive commercial with a cardboard HMD or on a laptop. Serial moderated mediation analyses indicated positive effects of mobile VR due to elevated feelings of spatial presence; however, persuasive effectiveness was only increased if reported cybersickness was low or moderate.

The Effects of Modality, Device, and Task Differences on Human-likeness in Virtual Assistant Interaction • Eugene Cho, Penn State University; Maria D. Molina, Penn State University; Jinping Wang, Penn State University • This study attempts to explore the effects of modality, device, and task differences on attitudes toward virtual assistants (VAs), and the mediating roles of perceived human-likeness. A 2 (modality: voice vs. text) X 2 (device: mobile vs. laptop) X 2 (task type: hedonic vs. utilitarian) mixed factorial experimental design was employed. Findings suggest that voice (vs. text) interaction was mediated by higher level of perceived human-likeness to evoke more positive attitudes toward the VA system, but only with utilitarian (vs. hedonic) tasks. Interestingly, interaction using laptops (vs. mobile phones) also enhanced perceived human-likeness of the virtual agent. This study offers theoretical and practical implications for VA research by exploring the combinational effects of modality, device, and task differences on user perceptions through human-like interactions.

Playing the Visibility Game: How Digital Influencers and Algorithms Negotiate Influence on Instagram • Kelley Cotter • Algorithms regulate who and what gains visibility on social media. Yet, discussions of algorithmic power often neglect the ways knowledge of algorithms might constrain their power. Through a thematic analysis of online discussions among Instagram digital influencers, I observe that influencers actively learn about the platform’s algorithms and pursue influence as if playing a game. Influencers’ discursive interpretations of algorithms—and the “game” more broadly—intervene between the algorithms and influencers to shape influencers’ behaviors.

Moving with presence: A 4-week virtual reality-based exergame training with cognitive challenges on executive functions in people aged 50 and over • Tim Huang, Michigan State University • The older population, which has grown dramatically, is at a considerably higher risk for having problems related to the aging of the brain. Exergames show the potential to combine the cognitive benefits of physical activity and attractiveness of videogames and been found to be more effective as a tool for cognitive improvement in older adults. However, the mechanism by which exergames led to cognitive improvement has not been fully explored. The current research investigated the impacts of immersion (i.e., VR) and types of task-load on cognitive benefits in the context of exergaming and hypothesized the feeling of presence as a mediator between immersion and cognitive benefits. A 4-week exergame training, which consisted of eight 20-minute exergame sessions, was designed to test the hypotheses and answer the research question of the current research. The experiment was a 2 (high immersion vs. low immersion) x2 (task-relevant vs. task-irrelevant loads) between-subject factorial design. The results (N=41) showed that task-irrelevant load led to cognitive improvement immediately after a single-bout training, and immersion had an impact on cognitive impact after the 4-week training. However, the results after the 2-week training showed that both factors played an important role. Furthermore, spatial presence mediates the impacts of immersion on cognitive benefits. The significance of this study includes both theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.

Predictors of Peer-to-Peer Communication among Elder Adults within an Online Interactive Communication System • Juwon Hwang, UW-Madison; Junhan Chen • Despite the benefits and growing interests in online communication using technology among elder adults, little is known about the factors that predict engagement in a computer-mediated social support (CMSS) communication among elder adults. Based on an interactive communication system for elder adults, we explore how psychosocial and physical well-being characteristics predict engagement in peer-to-peer communication. Of eligible participants who were 65 and older, and have experienced one or more of clinical criteria of this study, we analyzed 174 of participants who were assigned to the intervention and used the interactive communication system during the 6-month study period. Results indicated that participants who have better emotional well-being but more physical symptoms were more likely to engage in online peer-to-peer communication. Specifically, elder adults with higher social support and a bigger size of the social network, and those with less depression were more likely to engage in peer-to-peer communication, whereas those with more physical symptoms and worse physical quality of lives were more likely to interact with peers.

How should an embodied conversational agent carry out small talks? The effect of the agent’s passivity in small talks on user psychology • Jin Kang, The Pennsylvania State University; Lewen Wei, Pennsylvania State University • We examined how an embodied conversational agent (ECA) should carry out small talks with human users. In a 3 (agent type: active vs. passive vs. control) x 2 (topic: selfie vs. etiquette) between-subjects online study, participants interacted with a fictitious ECA who engaged in small talk as an active participant or a passive observant of human culture. We found that the passive agent elicited higher threat to uniqueness and perceived interactivity than the active agent.

Snapping Up Legacy Media: Using Theory of Affordances to Explain How News Outlets Behave on Snapchat • Eun Jeong Lee, Texas State University • This study uses an affordances approach to explore how U.S. media outlets utilize Snapchat to reach young people, the audience least engaged with traditional media. Using content analysis and interviews, this study found that publishers on Discover adopt Snapchat’s affordances and adapt their story topic and presentation of content with an emphasis on the visual. Yet, differences emerge between traditional “legacy” and “new” media outlets, especially in news judgment.

International Student’s Social Networking Sites Use,  Perceived Social Support, and Acculturative Stress • Lin Li • This study examined the mechanisms through which ethnic and host social networking site (SNS) use influenced international students’ acculturative stress. By surveying international students in an American university (N = 263), the study found that host SNS use was associated with less acculturative stress through the increased level of social support from the host country, while ethnic SNS use was associated with more acculturative stress through the decreased level of social support from the home country.

Intermittent Discontinuance: The case of Twitter • Margaret Yee Man Ng • Early studies tend to view innovation discontinuance as a one-time complete abandonment of an innovation in use. However, this study argued that post-adoption behavior is not simply a binary distinction between use and non-use, but is a wide array of practices enacting varied degrees of engagement with and disengagement from an innovation. Using a national Twitter user survey (N = 419), this study identified differences (i.e., demographic, psychographic, and behavioral characteristics) among continuing adopters, intermittent discontinuers, and permanent discontinuers.

Normalized Incivility: Two Studies of Social Cues in Online Discussion Environments • David Silva, Washington State University • Civility is required for democratic political communication, but the frequency of incivility online presents a vexing problem. This study approaches incivility from a social psychological framework and tests the efficacy of social cues on discussion intention. Findings from two experiments show group norms predict group identification, which affects communication intentions. Some social cues reduce perceptions of normative incivility, but others have adverse effects. Best practices and future research are discussed considering these results.

The Effects of Expectation Fulfilment of Likes on Anxiety and Depression: The Role of Perceived • Lipei Tang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Using a cluster sampling method, this study (N = 475) proposed and tested a moderated mediation model to examine the effect of expectation fulfilment of Likes on social media on anxiety and depression. Results found both conditional direct effect and conditional indirect effect of expectation fulfilment on people who Liked on anxiety and depression through perceived social support (importance of social media post as moderator). Theoretical implications are discussed.

“NextDoor People Are Nuts”: Analyzing Twitter Perspectives About the People and Purpose of NextDoor • Kelsey Whipple, University of Texas at Austin • This qualitative textual analysis examines how social media users characterize NextDoor, the private, geo-specific social platform dedicated to fostering neighborhood communities online, on another social platform: Twitter. By exploring the major themes of Twitter public discourse about NextDoor, this study seeks to analyze NextDoor’s role within a larger network of virtual online communities, as well as understand what type of people are assumed to use it and how users share and prioritize information.

Self-control and Media Multitasking:  The Role of Conflict Identification and Intrinsic Motivation • Shan Xu, Ohio State University; Guanjin Zhang, Ohio State University • Based on the preventive interventive (PI) model of self-control, the current study investigates how trait self-control influences multitasking while studying and pinpoints two mediators: intrinsic motivation and conflict identification. Results from a survey study suggested that students who scored high on trait self-control were more likely to identify a conflict between media multitasking and schoolwork, and had a stronger intrinsic motivation toward study, which in turn decreased media multitasking during educational activities.

Human-like vs. Robot-like Voices: The Impact of Voice Cues of a Virtual Health Assistant and Health Information Sensitivity on Users’ Perception and Behavioral Intentions • Hyun Yang, The Pennsylvania State University; Ruosi Shao, Penn State University • This study shows (1) the relationship between voice cues of a virtual health assistant and perceived social presence; (2) the relationship between perceived social presence and credibility; (3) the moderating effect of trustworthiness beliefs in machine/human on the relationship between voice cues and perceived credibility; (4) the effects of perceived credibility on self-disclosure and behavioral learning intentions; and (5) the effect of health information sensitivity on self-disclosure intention. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

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