Commission on the Status of Women 2018 Abstracts

The Women’s Convention: Reclaiming a Movement • Katie Blevins • “On January 21, 2017 an estimated 500,000 people joined the Women’s March on Washington D.C. Over 5 million people participated in over 550 other marches worldwide. It was the largest single-day protest in U.S. history and was organized almost entirely on social media. In the aftermath of this display of activism, people, pundits, and journalists speculated: “where will the movement go from here?” After all, the movement lacked clear leadership, money, and other noteworthy resources. Nine months later, in October, 2017, the Women’s March founders held a Women’s Convention in Detroit. The conference shared many themes with the Women’s March- addressing policies and politicians who impact women, both negatively and positively. Although this convention was also planned and promoted using social media, it signifies a shift in what kinds of activities the current Women’s Movement is capable of. Underpinning this study of the Women’s Convention is the attempt to understand social media’s role in fostering and maintaining feminist activism through sustained social movements. This paper examines two months of posts on the main Facebook page for the Women’s Movement leading up to the Women’s Convention (August 27-October 27, 2017). This study uses resource mobilization theory to explore: 1) the types of resources utilized by the Women’s Movement in organizing the Women’s Convention, 2) if theories like resource mobilization are a relevant theory for explaining how social movements use social media, 3) the special role social media takes in mobilizing and reducing the economic burdens of resource gathering.”

Women Journalists Face Danger and Death While Doing their Jobs • Carolyn Byerly, Howard University; Jasmin Goodman, Howard University • The goal in this paper is to begin to bring a more systematic examination of the violence that women journalists encounter in their reporting, as well as to the consequences of that violence. These journalists may experience threats, brutality and death while doing the work of news reporting. This paper presents a summary of what has been learned to date from an ongoing global study into both well-known and lesser-known cases of violence against women journalists. The goals of the research are to catalog and describe the kind of violence women are experiencing, as well as to explore what is (or not) happening in bringing the perpetrators to justice. The work is presented within a feminist analytical framework that seeks to tease out the gender relations that exist within the journalism profession and within governmental processes of individual nations, with respect to the problem. To the extent possible, we also try to show the structural causes of violence against women working in news reporting globally.

Women’s Responses to Online Harrassment • Kalyani Chadha, University of Maryland, College Park; Linda Steiner, University of Maryland; Jessica Vitak, University of Maryland; Zahra Ashktorab, University of Maryland • Given the ubiquity of social media platforms increasing attention is now being paid to the harassment of women when socializing through online platforms. Using data from in-depth interviews with 23 women university students who had been harassed/cyberbullied, this study explores how women respond to negative experiences online. We find that women deploy various defensive strategies while navigating online spaces, from normalizing harassment, and taking it for granted, to withdrawal and self-censorship.

What happens when they can find you?: Doxxing, privacy, and feminist theory • Stine Eckert; Jade Metzger, Wayne State University • In this study we expand definitions of doxxing, a phenomenon of abuse enmeshing online and offline spaces by exposing personal information. We applied feminist theory and conceptions of doxxing to 15 in-depth interviews with women and men who were doxxed. We asked about their experiences with doxxing; their tactics to handle the situation; and the consequences of the harassment to their online behavior. We found gendered aspects in content and suspected intent of doxxing; harassment following the doxxing; and long-lasting impacts of changed online behavior, sense of privacy and safety. Police, law, and social media operators only helped in few cases to pursue doxxers and/or remove unwanted personal information while targets experienced uncertainty, loss of control, and fear. We argue that a definition of doxxing must account for the ubiquitous nature of information already online and the desired and undesired specific contexts online leading to doxxing.

Hear Their Voices: A Qualitative Study of Women in Public Media • Laura Harbert, Ohio University • It isn’t news: women outnumber men in journalism school. But they do not climb the career ladder to top leadership positions, even in public media. A review of the literature showed that there has been little research on women in media leadership. No scholarly literature regarding women leaders in public media could be found. Schein’s theory of organizational culture was used as a frame through which to explore the underlying assumptions of public media’s culture. In-depth interviews were conducted with seven women holding leadership roles in public media. Nearly all of them spent the bulk of their careers in public media. While respondents felt there was an overall historical institutional inclusion of women in public media, they said gender discrimination remained a challenge. Respondents also expressed shock and dismay at the recent number of allegations of sexual harassment in public media. The conclusion pointed toward the need for gender parity and as well as skill diversity in public media.

Needle, not sword: How Nackey Scripps Loeb used editorials to build audiences and influence conservative presidential politics • Meg Heckman, Northeastern University • This project uses digital humanities techniques to reframe Nackey Scripps Loeb’s overlooked career as publisher of the Manchester (NH) Union Leader. An examination of her editorials related to the 1984 and 1992 presidential primaries shows she cultivated audiences to influence the conservative movement. This challenges conventional wisdom that she never emerged from the shadow of her late husband William Loeb’s infamous persona and begins to remedy Nackey Loeb’s symbolic annihilation from accounts of New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary.

Reaching a balance between crimes of passion & femicides: Influences on the Construction of News in Mexican journalists • Miriam Hernandez • Violence against women in Mexico has increased steadily in the last twenty five years (INEGI, 2017). For instance, in 2016 there were more than 8 female homicides per day in the country. Nuevo Leon – a northern state bordering the United States, with an educational mean above the nation and one of the main economic drivers of the country – has been one of the states with a significant escalation in violence against women (Espino, 2018; PGJ, 2018). Since many of these incidents are known through the news, the news media play a crucial part in shaping a society’s perception about what constitutes domestic violence, dating abuse, sexual violence, etc. Hence, investigating the mechanisms behind the construction of female fatalities news by Mexican journalists in this state is critical to understand how violence is presented and how to develop tools for reducing the pervasive problem of violence against women (VAW). Based on 20 interviews, findings demonstrate that journalists produce stories that adhere to the roles they see for themselves in society, as a detached observer or a social advocate. These roles have an impact on their notion of objectivity and the type of diverse sources they include in their stories. Implications for the Mexican context are considered.

Growing Old Gracefully? Gendered Depictions on Retirement Communities’ Websites • Anne Cooper; Hong Ji • The authors analyzed 407 senior citizen residents’ photos from 69 randomly selected, accredited U.S. Continuing Care Retiring Communities’ websites. Women were shown indoors more than men; and happier/ smiling more than men. While not invisible, the study found that CCRC websites somewhat underrepresented women. Marx et al (2011) found a CCRC female actual population of 68%, while the website “world” was only 62.7% female. Similarly, interactions underrepresented female friendships in the form of female-female dyads.

‘Boyfriending In’: Violence and Romance in News Narratives about Sex Trafficking • Anne Johnston, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Barbara Friedman, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In this narrative analysis of 203 news stories about sex trafficking, we analyze how women trafficked by a boyfriend are described in the stories and the similarities between these and other narratives of gender-based violence. The women are frequently described as hapless, passive victims of the relationship with the boyfriend/trafficker and have little to no power or agency. Additionally, these stories are similar to other gendered violence coverage, namely a tendency to blame the victim.

Gendered Visa: Korean dependent visa women’s media use and home-making in U.S. • Claire Shinhea Lee • Temporary migrants with dependent visa status–mostly women who accompany their professional husbands to keep their family together–are made invisible in the skilled labor migration. Although these dependent visa holders often may be highly educated, middle-class women compared to working class immigrant women, the lives of these so-called trailing spouses are often extremely restricted and oppressed due to both visa policies and domestic gender relations. This study questions the legacy and usefulness on these gendered assumptions of U.S. immigration policies by looking at the case of 11 Korean dependent visa status women (F-2, H-4, and L-2) through qualitative in-depth interviews: how these women’s everyday lives were textually mediated by those regulations. Then, the research examines how these women use homeland and host country media in their everyday lives and what these experiences mean to them in the broader socio-cultural context. Lastly, the paper explores, in the midst of dependency and inequality, how these women perform agency and reflexivity and dream independency through home making and deciding their future trajectories.

Social Media Activism in Bangladesh: Understanding the #JusticeForTonu Movement from a Feminist Standpoint Theoretical Framework • Umana Anjalin; Catherine Luther • This study examines the social media activism that took place in Bangladesh following the rape and murder of a 19-year-old female college student named Shohagi Jahan Tonu. With feminist standpoint theory serving as its framework, a thematic analysis of the tweets that appeared following Tonu’s death using the hashtag #JusticeForTonu was conducted to identify the main themes related to social justice that were embedded in the tweets.

Developing a Trauma-Informed Approach to Public Relations Education • Stephanie Madden, Pennsylvania State University; Teri Del Rosso, Bridgewater State University • Through interviews with female-identified public relations educators, this study sought to understand their lived experiences with emotion and student trauma as part of their teaching and service obligations. Additionally, it explored how aspects of their own identity influence their feelings of willingness or ability to handle this often less visible aspect of our work. The goal of this study is to begin developing a trauma-informed approach to public relations education rooted in feminist pedagogy practices that better prepares educators for the emotional aspects of their various roles in academia and how to help students navigate emotional experiences.

Beyond Swiping Left: Exploring How Dating App Use Affects College Students’ Abilities to Refuse Unwanted Dating and Sexual Activities • Stacey Hust; Stephanie Gibbons; Jiayu Li, Washington State University; Nicole O’Donnell, Virginia Commonwealth University • Dating applications provide users with easy ways to virtually reject a romantic suitor. However, these applications also perpetuate a hook-up culture in which individuals may feel pressure to adhere to a date’s sexual requests out of obligation if a date is accepted. As men and women increasingly find romantic partners online, there is a need to explore how this context may affect individuals’ abilities to refuse unwanted dating and sexual advances. A survey was conducted with 117 college men and 230 college women. For men, norm perceptions predict intentions to refuse unwanted dating activities and self-efficacy predicts intentions to refuse unwanted sex. For women, trait instrumentality, norm perceptions, and self-efficacy predict refusing unwanted dating activities and unwanted sex. Dating application use was negatively associated with refusal intentions for men, whereas it was not a significant predictor for women.

Women Public Relations History Forgot to Discover: Community Building on and after the Oregon Trail • Donnalyn Pompper, University of Oregon; Tugce Ertem Eray, University of Oregon • Narrative analysis of diaries and reminiscences by pioneer women who traveled the Oregon Trail in the mid-to-late 1800s revealed their expanded roles performed along the 2,000+ -mile trek from the Missouri River to Willamette Valley. A new caretaking role was required of women in addition to and in conjunction with traditional female-gendered private sphere work of the 19th century (childbearing and raising, cooking, washing, cleaning). Once women settled in Oregon Territory/Country, their role evolved into one of charitable society project manager. Linking the two related roles of pioneer women are two themes: a) apothecary, medical, and emotional supporter, and b) civilizer. Both of these themes characterized community building functions that we frame as early public relations activities. This finding makes a substantive contribution to recorded public relations history in the U.S. which otherwise begins with the institutionalized achievements of White men in formal business organizations. Exclusion of women’s contributions heretofore has presented an exceptionally limited view of public relations history.

“A group that’s just women for women:” Feminist affordances of private Facebook groups for professionals • Urszula Pruchniewska, Temple University • Private Facebook groups for women professionals are becoming increasingly popular. In this study, interviews and focus groups with 26 women show how such groups provide affordances for creating 1) a women’s online version of the “old boys’ club,” empowering individual women in their careers, and 2) mediated consciousness-raising platforms, advancing collective change for women. These interactions between users and technology make private Facebook groups for professional women fundamentally, if not explicitly, digital feminist spaces.

A Woman at 300: Gendering news coverage in a historic mayoral election. • Shearon Roberts, Xavier University of Louisiana; Sheryl Kennedy Haydel, Dillard University • On November 18, 2017, New Orleans elected its first female mayor. A study of nine months of news coverage in four local news organizations showed that gender references were implicit as well as explicit in the treatment of female candidates in the race compared to male candidates in the race. The study examined traditional news articles, political analysis and election updates, editorials and columns in the city’s two mainstream newspapers and two of the city’s two African American newspapers. In 537 cases where the four leading candidates were named in news organization reports, the two leading female candidates were more often covered with regards to negative and personal campaign woes, while the leading male candidates were covered based on their prior experience in elections or policy-platforms. The news organizations differed in their coverage of the two leading female candidates as well. Mainstream news organizations more readily mentioned problems with the campaigns of the two leading female candidates, while African American news organizations focused on the two female candidates’ track records with residents and the community.

Framing Transgender Violence: Narratives within Mainstream News Coverage • Natalee Seely • Gender non-conforming individuals have been more visible in mainstream media, with the popularity of Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, starring Laverne Cox, who also hosts Glam Masters, a reality make-up competition show. Amazon’s Transparent, E! Network’s I am Cait (cancelled in 2016), and the much-talked about Vanity Fair cover of Caitlyn Jenner also made headlines in 2015. However, sobering statistics indicated that 2015 was a record-breaking year for reported homicides of transgender individuals. Portrayals of gender-nonconforming individuals in the news play an important part in how social issues, such as gendered violence and LBGTQ policies, are viewed and discussed by the public. This small-scale study examines news coverage of transgender homicides in 2015 using a mixed-method approach. Frames and other narrative devices are identified using content analysis, indicating that police narratives of the crimes dominated mainstream news coverage, and social context was discussed in less than half of the articles. A textual analysis revealed that news narratives often focus on suspects and their reasons for committing the violence.

Hashtag Feminism Around the World: A Comparative Analysis of #MeToo Tweets • Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas; Hong Vu; Shola Aromona, University of Kansas; Yuchen Liu, University of Kansas; Fatemeh Shayesteh, University of Kansas • This study examined how women’s issues are discussed via social media in different countries by analyzing #MeToo tweets focusing on Brazil, Egypt, India, Nigeria, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Word co-occurrence analysis and content analysis of feminist themes and prominent topic areas demonstrated interesting similarities and differences between the countries. Scholarly and practical implications of this research is discussed in the context of growing hashtag activism in the area of advocating for women’s rights and increasing availability of online social networking around the world.

Women Newspaper Editors in Collegial Wilderness: But Digital Environment Turning This Around • Catherine Strong, Massey Univerity • The shortage of women editor-in-chief of daily newspapers has been called a crisis, but more vexing is that women editors remain only a short time in the position, thereby continuing the male domination of newspaper editorships. This study found that a more gender balance makes it easier for women leaders to operate, and that the news industry’s new digital and online challenges may turn out to be the solution to retain more women into daily newspaper leadership roles.

#SELFIES at the 2016 Rio Olympics: Comparing Self-Representations of Male and Female Athletes from the U.S. and China • Qingru Xu; Cory Armstrong; Panfeng Yu • “Social media provides athletes an efficient platform on which to build and maintain their online image. Applying the self-representation theory of Goffman (1959), this study explored the gendered differences between the self-portrayals of U.S. and Chinese athletes. Findings suggest that hegemonic gender norms still had a strong hold on Chinese athletes’ self-disclosure, whereas minimal gender differences emerged between male and female U.S. athletes. Results suggested that cultural background had a substantial impact on self-representation for all participants. Although athletes might claim agency and autonomy when presenting themselves on social media, the practice of self-portrayal should be examined within specific cultural contexts.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Sports Communication 2018 Abstracts

Comparing age and nationality: NBC’s online portrayal of female Olympic figure skaters • Elise Anguizola Assaf • This paper explores 20 published profiles of 2014 and 2018 female Olympic figure skaters. Research was conducted on the biographies published on the NBC Olympic website, analyzing the framing of common themes, nationality, and age. Common themes of sacrifice and overcoming obstacles were found, as well as the importance of age and a focus on youth. Nationality was also deemed a factor with more or less detail, as well as skating-relevance of detail, provided based on the country the athlete was competing for. Coverage of female Olympic figure skaters should continue to be analyzed for specific frames used to understand how the athletes are discussed, and if the found frames are used by profile authors across additional Games.

Social Media for the Win: How Brands Integrated Social into their Advertising Strategy During Super Bowl LI • Clay Craig, Texas State University; Shannon Bichard, Texas Tech University; Mary Liz Brooks • There were 190.8 million social media interactions across Facebook and Twitter during Super Bowl 2017 (Nielsen, 2017). Advertisers during the game benefit from increased engagement on social media platforms as a way to maximize their investment. Social media use by brands provides rich content that encourages interactivity. This study examined integrated branding efforts during Super Bowl 2017 and results indicate a strong presence, with many brands attempting to leverage social media to strengthen promotional efforts.

Five Rings, Five Screens?: A Global Examination of Social TV Influence on Social Presence and National Identity During the 2018 Winter Olympic Games • Natalie Brown-Devlin, University of Texas at Austin; Michael B. Devlin, Texas State University; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama; Kenon Brown, The University of Alabama • In the week following the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, 2,296 people from six different nations (Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States) were surveyed to better understand social TV engagement during mega-sporting events. Using social presence theory as a theoretical framework, core insights are found regarding social TV engagement, device usage, and the potential for social TV engagement to predict different social outcomes and feelings of national pride/identification.

Why do you follow? A closer look at sport fan engagement with athletes on Twitter • David Cassilo; Zachary Humphries, Kent State University • Social media sites like Twitter have provided athletes the ability to communicate directly with their fans. Previous studies have analyzed the content of athlete tweets and how athletes use Twitter to connect with their followers. This research attempted to examine whether athlete’s tweets were aligning with the uses and motivations fans have for following athletes on Twitter. The data of an online survey that was distributed to 112 respondents revealed that fans follow athletes on Twitter mostly for information sharing purposes and least for interactive purposes. Furthermore, while male and female followers were generally similar on why they followed athletes on Twitter, women were significantly more likely to do so for diversion motives. The results of the study indicate that athletes would most effectively align their Twitter use to their followers by using it to distribute new information about themselves, their team, and their sport rather than using it to foster interactivity by fans.

“Elevator Eyes” in Sports Broadcasting: Differences in Attention Allocation to Male and Female Sports Reporters • Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University; Monica Ortiz; Andrea Rankine • Despite documented differences in how male versus female sports journalists are perceived, scholars have not explored differences in how they are actually watched. This experiment employs eye tracking to measure how much attention viewers allocated to male and female reporters’ bodies versus their faces.  Results revealed a greater ratio of time on female reporters’ bodies to their faces relative to male reporters. However, this effect was less robust among viewers with strong interest in sports.

Identification and Crisis: An Exploration into the Influence of Sports Identification on Perceptions of Sports Crises • Jennifer Harker, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill • Sports identification was examined in this research as a relational history with sports entities to test its predictive influence of stakeholders’ perceptions regarding sports-related crises. Sports identification was explored as a social identification with sports (fandom) and as an individual identification with a specific National Football League team (fanship). Findings indicate that sports identification is indeed a predictive element of stakeholders’ perceptions regarding sports crises; however, findings track in an interesting opposite direction than theory suggests.

Colin Kaepernick, Corporate Social Responsibility, and Diversion in Sports Crisis • Virginia Harrison; Sara Erlichman, Penn State • The 2018 Super Bowl presented an opportunity for the National Football League (NFL) to address its season-long controversy surrounding its players’ national anthem protests–yet the league ignored it. This study seeks to understand the effects of the NFL’s crisis management strategy of diversion on organizational reputation. Fans’ support for the NFL’s response and corporate social responsibility (CSR) messaging positively impacted reputation, while fans’ support for players and their cause negatively impacted reputation. Implications are discussed.

The evolution of eSports in the eyes of mainstream media and public relations, 2000-2017. • Jue Hou, University of Alabama; Xiaoxu Yang, University of Alabama • This study examines the media and public relations coverage of eSports over a 17-year period, focusing on how the representations of eSports as a rising industry have changed in China during that time. From the perspective of media framing, the current study investigated both the tone of coverage and the topic emphasis of eSports related stories through quantitative content analysis. In general, findings indicated that both mainstream media and public relations gradually covered eSports issues in a more positive way. Similar to traditional sports reporting, the topic emphasis also shifted from real-life status to player and team performance in the contemporary climate. Implications for both the current trend of eSports industry and suggestions for future related study directions were discussed.

Examining the Growth of Sport Communication Programs in Higher Education through a Survey of Program Coordinators • Minhee Choi, University of South Carolina; Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina; Ted Kian, Oklahoma State University • As higher education institutions seek ways to attract, recruit, and retain students, some schools and colleges are creating sports communication programs. This study surveyed coordinators of those programs regarding their opinions of this quickly growing field. Results demonstrate that student interest, administrative and financial support, and having components already in place before designing curricula are keys to success. Results of this study can be used by schools looking to launch sport communication program.

Sports Media versus News Media: Perceptions of Media Bias in Coverage of the NFL National Anthem Protests in 2017 • Ken Kim, Xavier; Randall Patnode • This experimental study examines how the hostile media phenomenon arises in the context of general sports media relative to professional mainstream news media. Audience perceptions of bias can also be triggered by how particular messages are framed, so a second goal of this study is to clarify how news framing relates to the hostile media phenomenon. Participants (N = 124) read a news story, varying in news source (The Sporting News vs. Fox News vs. MSNBC) and news framing (outcome vs. value), on the NFL national anthem controversy. Results revealed that partisan individuals viewed a news story from the general sports media as neutral or more favorable toward their own position than the mainstream news media. Also, an outcome-framed news story evoked less hostile media perception than a value-framed news story.

Interplay of Second Screening for Sports, Attachment to School,  and Smartphone Use in Campus Life • Bumsoo Kim, The University of Alabama • Focusing on college students’ digital media use behaviors, this study verified (1) the logic of social identity by showing that college students’ using a second screen to share or search for content about the home team is positively related to attachment to one’s school and (2) the communication mediation model by presenting the positive mechanism between second screening, attachment, and different types of use of smartphone.

Female Hockey Players’ Strategic Use of Social Media: From the Perspective of Self-Presentation Theory • Halli Krzyzaniak, University of North Dakota; Soojung Kim, University of North Dakota • This study attempted to understand elite female hockey players’ current social media use and identify effective social media content and practices. Utilizing a mixed-method approach, the content analysis of Instagram and Twitter posts of this study showed that hockey-related social media content was more effective in generating likes and comments. Interestingly, however, online in-depth interviews demonstrated that athletes use social media more to consume daily news and for personal enjoyment than they do for self-promotion.

Public Perceptions of Transgressive Female Athletes: Roles of Racial Identity and Visual Framing • Lance Kinney, University of Alabama; Amanda Flamerich, University of Alabama • A 2 (white female/Black female) x 2 (threatening appearance/non-threatening appearance) experiment investigated perceptions of same-race and cross-race female athletes involved in transgressions while simultaneously accounting for the subject’s level of racial identity. Media-generated stereotypes involving African-Americans, crime and athletes are reviewed.  As suggested by social identity theory, strong in-group biases were observed.  Subjects reporting high levels of racial identity recommended longer punishments and reported lower image ratings for athletes of the opposite race. Visual framing theory is used to investigate the impact of threatening and non-threatening photos.  However, visual appearance did not affect punishment or image ratings. A significant interaction is observed for athlete image ratings based upon racial identity levels and the athlete’s appearance.

Uniting for a collaborative protest: How NFL in-house media covered athlete activism, a case study • Michael Mirer, Fairmont State • As sports become a site for social protest, league- and team-controlled media will shape how that activism is perceived. Using content and textual analysis this paper finds that writers for NFL team sites stressed the idea of unity and collaboration in coverage of player activism following comments by Donald Trump. This coverage suggests that in-house media may defend activist athletes but also recast their demands. The professional implications for in-house reporters are discussed.

Examining Public Perceptions of CSR in Sport: The Role of Attributions, Fit, and Information Source • Joon Kyoung Kim, University of South Carolina; Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina; Minhee Choi, University of South Carolina • Despite the proliferation of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in professional sports leagues, research has not widely examined public expectations and perceptions of CSR in sport. This study employed a between-subjects online experiment to investigate how sports spectators infer motives of a professional sports team’s CSR efforts and how attributions and perceptions of fit between CSR activities and the team impact patronage intentions. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Compliments vs. Criticisms: What Network Television Announcers Say About Major League Baseball Players During Nationally Televised Games • James Rada, Ithaca College; K. Tim Wulfemeyer, San Diego State University • This research sought to determine whether TV network announcers for Major League Baseball games offered more positive or negative comments during their coverage of nationally televised games and whether they were acting more as “cheerleaders” for or as “haters” of the players participating in the games.  Results showed that the announcers were overwhelmingly positive in their comments about players with few significant differences related to the position played, type of comment, or whether a player was on the home team or the visiting team. Significant differences were found related to comments about players of different races with Latino players receiving more than their fair share of negative comments.

Pardon My Critique: Using comedy to critique — and reinforce — masculine norms in sports in popular sports media • Colin Storm • Using Connell’s concept of masculinity (1995) and gender scripts (i.e., Mahalik, Good, & Englar-Carlson, 2003) as a framework, this paper examines how one of the most popular sports podcasts, Pardon My Take, articulates and satires masculinity in sports. Specifically, the author argues that through weekly segments, the co-hosts both make fun of—and uphold—traditional masculine values and standards in sports.

Animating women’s sports: Social media, gender, and evolving techniques for constructing the legitimate and authentic athlete • Erin Whiteside, University of Tennessee; Jason Stamm, The University of Tennessee – Knoxville • Women have historically been on the losing end when sports media professionals engage with new technology. Drawing from a content analysis of Southeastern Conference athletic department Twitter feeds, this study suggests that women, despite being constructed as credible and legitimate athletes using traditional measures of analysis, may be at risk once again of being left behind when it comes to the deployment of engaging and innovative social media techniques.

Controversy, Collisions, and Cries: Contrasting Chinese and U.S. Short Track Speed Skating Television Coverage in the 2018 Winter Olympics • Qingru Xu; Ryan Broussard, University of Alabama; Sitong Guo, University of Alabama; J.C. Abdallah, University of Alabama • This study content analyzes more than 17 hours of the Olympic short track speed skating coverage at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics from both China and the United States, exploring the potential differences in broadcasting frames regarding nationalism and biological sex. In contrast to the intense nationalistic notions uncovered in CCTV, NBC only devoted 5% of the media attention to domestic athletes, indicating that the network does not always favor home athletes in covering the Olympics. Instead of adopting a nation-oriented narrative as CCTV announcers did, NBC broadcasters framed the short track contests in a spectator perspective. Implications for the findings are offered.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Small Programs 2018 Abstracts

Cross-Country Collaboration: Student Evaluations of a Collaborative Journalism Project Between Two U.S. Universities • Stephanie Bluestein, California State University, Northridge; Karima Haynes, Bowie State University; yue zheng, California State University, Northridge • The purpose of this mixed-methods study was to compare the expectations and fulfillment of undergraduate students at two U.S. universities who participated in a semester-long collaborative reporting project. Pre- and post-surveys were administered to students at the beginning and end of the semester. A series of paired t-tests (n=57) showed that students received adequate instruction about the project, wanted more deadlines and additional class time to work on their stories, and valued the professor’s feedback over their peers’ feedback. Findings that were marginal showed they were not as overwhelmed at the end of the semester and had fewer unanswered questions as they had expected. The qualitative portion of the study resulted in three categories: learning/engagement, professional practices, and soft skills. This study suggests that a bi-coastal collaborative reporting project with beginning journalism students has the potential for improving hard and soft skills, in addition to providing students a glimpse of how professional journalists create their work.

Integrating Writing Processes: An Assignment Model • Sharlene Kenyon, Oklahoma State University • The assignment model presented in this article illustrates how and where JMC educators may integrate newswriting processes into their assignments and instruction.  A diagram of the model shows an overall view of assignment design and addresses stages of instruction.  Qualitative examples of process-oriented strategies are presented for each stage.  Recommendations for implementing process-oriented instruction are included. The assignment model offers a testable shape to guide JMC educators in designing their writing instruction.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Religion and Media 2018 Abstracts

Framing the death of Cardinal Law • Giselle A Auger, Rhode Island College • Antecedent conditions played a significant role in the framing of Cardinal Law’s death. Ninety-six percent of articles provided dominant meaning by association with the 2002 Spotlight scandal, Law’s resignation, or his controversial reappointment to a prestigious parish in Rome. Despite the inherent newsworthiness of his death 29 % of media limited publication of the news of his death to news briefs or obituary.

True Believers, Poseurs, and Becoming “Woke”: Portrayals of Religion in Netflix’s “Orange Is the New Black” • Erika Engstrom, UNLV; Joseph Valenzano • This paper examines the Netflix series “Orange Is the New Black” and how it portrays religious ideology. A textual analysis of the first four seasons show was conducted, resulting in the detection of four central themes: (1) the use of religion as part of character identity; (2) the divisive nature of religious identification; (3) fakery associated with the use of religion for personal gain; and (4) stories of redemption and personal growth.

In the world, not of it: Exploring Evangelical Christian women’s negotiation of meaning within a shared community • Jennifer Huemmer, Ithaca College • This study examines the meaning-making and communication processes that occur among Evangelical Christian women in a shared community. I conducted a participant-observation of a women-only Bible study in West Texas. The study revealed that important meanings were constructed about the “them” of the world and the “us” of the church and that these meanings informed the women’s strategies for interacting with “others” as well as their expectations that they would experience hostility from “others.”

The God card: Strategic employment of religious language in U.S. presidential discourse • Ceri Hughes, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The United States, despite official separation of church and state, is a country dominated politically by Christianity. This is evident in the almost unbroken ranks of Christians elected to the presidency. This research adds further data and metrics to the fallacy of Jefferson’s Wall, and finds further evidence of strategic employment of religious language. Content analysis of 106 “high-state” addresses plus 342 “minor-state” addresses from Roosevelt to Trump provides evidence to illustrate how use of both overt and covert religious language escalated following the Reagan presidency. Rather surprisingly, the final data point of this trend – Trump – has the highest rate of use of such language. Twitter evidence also illustrates a change in level of use of such language from citizen to candidate to President Trump.

Religion and the Media: A Study of Student Perception of Media Bias in Georgia • Elizabeth Johnson-Young, University of Mary Washington; Alexander Clegg, University of Washington; John Guidon, University of Mary Washington • Georgia is fighting to make the step from developing to developed and the influence of the Georgian Orthodox Church has been an identified barricade for European Union leadership to accept Georgia into the supranational organization. This research investigates the relationship between religiosity and the perception of media bias among college students in Tbilisi, Georgia. It was hypothesized that the relationship between religiosity and perception of media bias would be negative, as measured by survey administered to the students. This paper demonstrates that the more religious a student is, the less likely he or she will recognize a media bias towards the Georgian Orthodox Church. Similarly, students who are more religious both use and trust domestic news sources than those who are less religious. As scholars continue to work towards branching research in media and religion beyond Western countries, this research begins to fill an important gap in its study of Georgia, particularly at this important time in the country. Implications for the country and future research are discussed.

Effective Intercultural Workgroup Communication Theory: The Impact on Church Dynamics • Stephen Kabah, Regent University • The Church is no exemption to the rapid growth in diversity in almost all industries across the world. For the last two decades, there has been a swift increase in diversity due to globalization. Communication theorists have explored various dynamics in culturally diverse workgroups and its impact on effectiveness and creating a workable environment. In this study of 298 participants, it was found that church teams which are culturally diverse are more effective than those that are not. Additionally, the study indicated that culturally diverse churches have a strong sense of community and thus grow in membership. While this study is limited in scope at this time, it can be applied to a larger population. This paper suggests further research on this topic to support the Effective Intercultural Workgroup Communication Theory.

A Longitudinal Analysis of the Linguistic Tone of American Churches Online • Doug Mendenhall, Abilene Christian University; Lani Ford, Abilene Christian University • Messages from both the official websites of leading Christian denominations and from a random group of self-identified Christian sites are analyzed for significant differences in message tone between 2012 and 2016, the two most recent U.S. presidential election years. This quantitative analysis employs Diction 7.0, a common word-counting program that measures more than 40 variations of message tone. Eleven of the most relevant variables are utilized, as well as a scale developed by one of the authors in 2014 to combine Diction variables for a measurement of linguistic incivility. Findings include a lack of heightened Incivility over the four-year cycle, with an earlier trend continuing of lower Incivility for messages from official denominational sites than for self-identified Christian sites. Several other small, optimistic trends are identified. From a social identity perspective, the consistently low levels of incivility are consistent with strongly identified groups that project themselves as loving and positive.

Terrorism News Coverage and Attitude towards Islam: Does Following Terrorism News Cultivate Opinions about Muslims • Valentina Michael • This study explores the media effects of following news coverage about terrorism events in the United States and how it shapes attitude towards Islam and Muslims. A four-variable model was adopted to understand the relationships between the dependent variable, attitude towards Islam, and three independent variables, following terrorism news, knowing a Muslim, and political preference. The study conducted a secondary analysis of the CBS/ New York Times Poll conducted in 2013. Participants following news coverage of the Boston marathon bombing was as the primary news variable. The results of the study provide evidence of a negative relationship between following news about terrorism and favorable attitudes toward Islam. However, political preference has the highest influence on favorable or unfavorable attitudes towards Islam.

A multi-method approach to examining online sermons from religious organizations • Jordan Morehouse, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe • Social media platforms are challenging the ways in which religious organizations communicate with their publics. To understand how churches and congregants are adapting to new media, this study explored the motivations behind viewing online sermons and content analyzed sermons published on social networking sites. Results suggest that online sermon viewers turn to online sermons for information goals and spiritual goals, and the majority of online sermons inform viewers on personal improvement or salvation.

Media as Religion: Practices of Mediation in a Catholic Community in South India • Subin Paul, University of Iowa; Deepika Rose Alex • This article examines the relationship between media and religion through a case study of a Catholic newspaper based in the South Indian state of Kerala. Specifically, we “thickly describe” the practices of mediation and meaning-making processes of the readers and editors of the print newspaper, Deepika (“Light”). We argue that, for a devout Catholic, the newspaper and religion are inseparable from each other and they both concurrently mediate the communal and spiritual longings of the believers.

No Compassion for Muslims? How Terrorism News About Muslim Victims Influence Emotions and Policy Support • Desiree Schmuck; Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; Christian von Sikorski • A quota-based online experiment (N = 354) explored how terror news affect emotions and policy support depending on the victims’ religion and empathy-evoking news coverage style. News reports about terrorist attacks committed against Muslims rather than non-Muslims induce less anger and compassion, but more joy among non-Muslim news consumers irrespective of the news coverage style. Anger and joy predict subsequent support for restrictive counterterrorism policies, while compassion and anger predict support for victim compensation.

What would Jesus do in Cyberspace? • Ddavid Scott, UVU • A close-reading of two Mormon websites demonstrates that LDS.org (targeting believers) emphasizes hierarchical and structural forms of authority, while Mormon.org (aimed at non-Mormons) emphasizes shared values. These contradictory appeals may undermine the long term brand of the faith as new converts discover a different face of Mormonism in the pews.

An Analysis of the Rise and Fall of “The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven” • Jim Trammell, High Point University • Christian mass media merge religious faith with consumable products. Christian media-films, books, music, and other goods marketed primarily to evangelical consumers-are typically framed as serving ministerial roles. But how does the Christian mass media industry negotiate this role in a marketplace that demands media products sell units and turn a profit? And what does it mean when a profit-driven industry influences Christian beliefs and practices? This manuscript examines the rise and fall of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven to explore how the Christian media industry negotiates its perception of a ministerial tool with the profit-based demands of the marketplace. This manuscript advocates for an explicit and intentional framing of Christian media where its money-making role trumps its religious expectations, and that its content is based more on sales than Christian service.

2018 ABSTRACTS

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

Participatory Journalism 2018 Abstracts

Open-Source Media Project: Community Attitudes After Five-Year Organizational Evolution • Bonnie Bressers, Kansas State University; Samuel Mwangi, Kansas State University; David Bondy Valdovinos Kaye, Queensland University of Technology; Steven Smethers, Kansas State University • This paper examined the community attitudes toward a rural Midwest journalism initiative whose services evolved over the past five years beyond the original mission of citizen-produced news and information. Survey research found substantial support among residents for both the new services and the participatory-journalism mission, suggesting that organizational learning and adaptation that meets the needs of the organization and its customers is mutually beneficial and may offer a model for other community media organizations.

Citizen Journalism Scholarship Revisited: A Meta-Analytic Approach • Young Eun Moon, University of Oregon; Meredith Morgoch, University of Oregon; Seungahn Nah • This paper examines how the scholarship of citizen journalism has evolved over the last 15 years. Despite the prolific literature, few studies have taken a systematic approach to examine theories, conceptual definitions, and outcomes. Most of studies are limited to asking for journalists’ reactions, and value of citizen journalists focusing on specific cases. The present study calls for the necessity of a more theoretically solid and methodologically rigorous research beyond specific case studies.

Citizen Engagement with Live Blogs: Passive Consumption Rather than Participation • Mirjana Pantic, Pace University • This study investigated citizen participation in live blogs in the changing media ecosystem from the public sphere perspective. The live blog is an online, participatory-oriented journalistic genre, comprised of brief updates of an event in motion, designed to deliver real-time information from multiple sources about breaking news and scheduled events (Thurman & Newman, 2014; Thurman & Walters, 2013). To examine participation in this contemporary news format, the current, exploratory study, collected survey responses from 339 volunteers and found that participation was not a motivating factor for readers to engage in live blogging on a deeper level. Other study findings pertaining to participation were also pessimistic, showing that the majority of participants were not personally interested in participating in live blogging. This implies that the capacity of online platforms to accommodate participation does not necessarily translate into citizens’ willingness to participate.

“I Love Weather More Than Anybody”: A Digital Ethnography of The Weather Channel’s Online Fan Community • Jeremy Shermak, University of Texas at Austin; Kelsey Whipple, University of Texas at Austin • We Love Weather is the fan community of The Weather Channel. Launched in 2016, We Love Weather aims to serve so-called “weather geeks” by providing exclusive and specialized weather content, as well as participatory and communal elements. This study proposes that We Love Weather is an “affinity space” where participants create, procure and develop content and knowledge. It exemplifies the power and capability of a high-functioning, efficient online information hub.

Can journalists make a difference? How journalists’ involvement in comment sections affects perceived journalistic quality • Nina Springer, LMU Munich; Ina Innermann • This experimental study contributes to our knowledge on the effects of active comment moderation and investigates whether (1) user commentary addressing journalistic quality criteria and (2) journalists’ engagement ‘below the line’ would affect the audience’s quality perceptions. We find that a journalist’s involvement can positively impact recipients’ quality assessments. Further, our findings suggest that newsrooms should engage especially with comments that address journalistic quality since such comments almost always lead to (significantly) lower quality assessments.

To share is to receive: News as social currency on social media • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Alice Huang, NTU Singapore; Andrew Duffy, NTU; Rich Ling; Nuri Kim, NTU Singapore • Guided by the framework of reciprocity on social media, this current study investigated antecedents to news sharing. Using a two-wave panel survey involving 868 respondents who took two surveys about a year apart, this study examined the effect of frequency of receiving news on social media on subsequent news sharing behavior, while controlling for demographics, news sharing motivations, and trust in social media news. The study found that motivation for self-presentation and trust in news shared by one’s social media network positively predicted news sharing on social media. Frequency of receiving news at Time 1 also predicted sharing news subsequently at Time 2. This points to news being valued as a form of social currency.

Co-Constructing Journalistic Knowledge with the Audience: A Case Study of Sustained Reciprocity • ‪Neta Kligler-Vilenchik‏; Ori Tenenboim, University of Texas at Austin • While audience members can engage in news-production processes, ongoing reciprocal relationships between them and a journalist are rare. Using a multi‐method qualitative approach, this study demonstrates such relationships on WhatsApp. It shows that a continuous conversation between a journalist/blogger and audience members in a non-public online space allows a continuous co-construction of journalistic knowledge. We identify this space as a meso-newspace, occurring between the private and public realms, and discuss the implications for journalist-audience relationships.

Engaged Journalism in Rural Communities • Andrea Wenzel; Sam Ford • With a growing interest in audience engagement and membership models in local journalism, engagement has been positioned as the one-stone that may address the two-birds of building trust and financial sustainability. However, little is known about how these practices play out in rural areas. This case study explores the efforts of one rural hyperlocal outlet as it attempts to adapt community traditions as engagement interventions—reimagining “society columns” as community contributors, and “liars tables” as listening circles. Using a communication infrastructure theory framework, it draws from 18 interviews with journalists, participating residents, and community stakeholders to examine how these efforts have and have not affected the local storytelling network and activated existing communication assets.

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

Internships and Careers 2018 Abstracts

Practice makes perfect? A longitudinal case study of experiential learning among intermediate-level sports journalism students • Experiential learning is “learning in which the learner is directly in touch with the realities being studied. It is contrasted with the learner who only reads about, hears about, talks about, or writes about these realities but never comes into contact with them as part of the learning process” (Keeton & Take, 1978). One of the challenges of experiential learning is how to teach students to create professional-quality content, while encouraging them to think innovatively. In the following longitudinal case study, sports journalism students enrolled in an intermediate-level undergraduate reporting class (N = 198) were surveyed over the course of seven semesters in order to examine how incorporating outside publications into class objectives (e.g., student publication requirements) has shifted overtime, and this shift’s resulting ramifications. Data suggest students who worked with legacy media have had significant decreases in satisfaction with newspaper editors and willingness to recommend legacy media publications to students the following semester. This has led to less collaboration with local media outlets: Fewer students are spread around area news organizations and more students are publishing on the same, online-only platforms. Results suggest the best predictors of publication requirements fulfillment are timely responses from sources, overall satisfaction with the relationship with the editor, and the semester during which the course was taken.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Graduate Student 2018 Abstracts

Insecure and Girls: Innovative or the Same? • Tessa Adams, The University of Iowa • This study analyzes the sexualized images and dialogue of black female characters in the show Insecure and white female characters in the show Girls, to find out how the representations differ. Feminist theory and critical race theory are theoretical framework. The literature review consists of information related to patriarchy, race, sexuality, and stereotypes. The methodology is a rhetorical analysis with an ideological criticism focus. Results suggest that hegemonic racist and gendered stereotypes prevail in media.

Enjoying Crime: Examining Disposition Theory in the True Crime Podcast Audience • Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina • This study explores disposition theory within the true crime podcast audience and potential impact on the criminal justice system. Using an online survey (n = 308), this study found that the true crime podcast audience listens for entertainment (92.47%) and enjoyment (84.58%), but they also see the potential for societal impact and they want to be part of the movement. Over 80% of respondents believe the podcasts are already having an impact on the cases covered.

Reddit’s Cops and Cop-Watchers: Context Reclamation in Online Interpretive Communities • Michael Buozis, Temple University • Among the many online message boards hosted by the platform Reddit—known as subReddits—two have emerged as spaces where two very different, often oppositional, communities produce discourses about law enforcement in the United States: r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut, a community critical of police conduct, and r/ProtectAndServe, a community representing police. These subReddits can be understood as online interpretive communities, who use the digital spaces provided by Reddit in order to develop and sustain an interpretive regime consisting of “the sharing, transfer, accumulation, transformation, and cocreation of knowledge” (Faraj, Jarvenpaa, & Majchrzak, 2011, p. 1224). In creating and fostering these communities, members express the importance of context reclamation, or a practice of unraveling the context collapse inherent in broader social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. With this reclaimed context, users of these subReddits engage in three discursive community practices: the creation of community-specific genres out of the raw material of media; making meaning through community rituals and practices; and the translation of that knowledge into community practices.

Stop Watching Me: Examining a Moderated Mediation Model of Privacy Concern and Information Control. • BIN CHEN, Tsinghua University; AN HU • Social media has experienced exponential growth in recent years. They offer attractive means for communication, but also raise privacy concerns. This study investigated the relationship between young adults’ privacy concern and their information control in social media. The result shows the relationship between privacy concern and information control is mediated by information control affordance and this indirect effect is moderated by individual’s extraversion personality. The implication of these findings was also discussed.

Score! How Female Hockey Players Around the World Score More Likes on Instagram • Tanja Eisenschmid • This study examined effective social media strategies for female hockey players from four nations, the U.S., Canada, Germany, and Switzerland, particularly focusing on their Instagram posts. The result from the content analysis of 1,011 Instagram posts showed that posts highlighting hockey careers (e.g., achievement in the athlete’s sport) and athlete endorser’s role (e.g., promotional posts) were more likely to generate higher likes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Ad-Brand Schema Incongruity Effects on Engagement with Facebook Posts • Drake Glatter • This study takes schema theory and schema incongruity and applies it to modern advertising on Facebook. Ad-brand schema incongruity’s effects are measured with a psychological social media engagement scale. This study finds success in applying this theory for the first time to social media and identifying three distinct levels of incongruity, proving schema theory can be applied to modern social media advertising efforts.

No Country for Selfies: Privacy Concerns on Facebook and Instagram • Daniel Haun, University of South Carolina • Members of social networking services reveal a great deal of personal information, and are not very aware of their privacy options (Acquisti and Gross, 2006). To further explore the privacy, authorship, and safety and security concerns presented by social networking sites (SNS), a textual analysis was conducted of six user agreements of social networking site Instagram and its parent company Facebook. Three themes emerged from Instagram and Facebook’s Terms of Use and Service: privacy concerns, questions of user generated content authorship, as well as safety and security concerns.

TMZ and Mass Media: A Love/Hate Relationship • Angelica Kalika, CU Boulder • Tabloid media can have a contentious relationship with mass media. TMZ in particular is now making headlines for its breaking news stories. When the popular celebrity news site breaks journalism norms, newspapers and other sites can jump on the chance to repair journalism’s image. The paper will analyze this form of paradigm repair to see how TMZ violated normative practices and use attribution theory to see why a paradigm was broken in the first place. A textual analysis demonstrates the media’s response to TMZ stories that break professional boundaries (Reinforcing the Broken Paradigm, Breaking News Paradigm, and Disrupter status).

Media Representation of Female Candidates in Ugandan Parliamentary Elections: A Content Analysis of three Newspapers • Juma Kasadha, City University of Hong Kong; Rehema Kantono, Islamic University in Uganda • A total of N=1704 newspaper articles were content analyzed from studied newspapers; the New Vision (State owned) and privately owned Daily Monitor and Red Pepper. Results show that newspapers represented more of male candidates in all analyzed topical issues compared to female candidates. All studied newspapers scored less than a minimum of 3 issues covered as representative of female candidates. Female candidates’ coverage in all newspapers’ on dominant topical issues on average was (2.70 ±3.74). Placement of a news article and page number; were statistically significant in giving male candidates prominence in news compared to female candidates. For Placement of News Article F(1, 1703)=7.909, p <0.005 and Page number F(1,1701)=5.593, p <0.018 statistical significance. Findings also show that State Media set the agenda on how private newspaper considered covering female candidates. This was evidenced in all private newspapers not covering female candidates on issues of foreign affairs and law since state owned newspaper did not cover them. Daily Monitor and New Vision did not cover male candidates on the issue of agriculture and yet gave prominence to agriculture when covering female candidates. This positions female candidates as those suitable for agriculture roles on average (3.00±.) compared to politics on average; Daily Monitor (2.80±.60); New Vision (2.94±.31) and Red Pepper (2.90±.32). Based on findings in this study, there is need for more and equitable representation of female candidates in media by state owned media as one that should set the agenda for private owned media to follow.

Tailoring genetic testing communication for mental health patients’ stability and controllability attributions • Amanda Kastrinos • The integration of genetic testing into the mental healthcare has the potential both alleviate and reinforce mental health stigma. Using the lens of attribution theory, this paper explores how patients’ stability and controllability attributions can predict their emotional response to genetic testing results. Communication strategies are recommended for each emotional response type based on extant literature. The typology presented here is intended to serve as a framework for both future research and mental health providers.

How Motives for Political Information Seeking Online Influence Political Discussion Offline • Sangwon Lee • The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between online political information seeking and offline political discussion. I examined how different motives for seeking political information online influence offline political discussion with heterogeneous others. The results showed that strong partisans with entertainment motivation are more likely to avoid cross-cutting political discussion, while weak partisans with the same motivation are more likely to engage in cross-cutting political discussion.

Love Triangles: Effects of Relationship Status, Reception Partners, and Interpersonal Communication on Romantic Parasocial Interactions • Nicole Liebers, University of Würzburg • Besides many insights into romantic parasocial attachments, the effect of relationship status and reception partner on romantic parasocial interactions (romantic PSIs) remains unclear. This study attempts to close that research gap with new findings on romantic PSIs in cinemas based on a 2×2 quasi-experiment (N = 103). The presence of a romantic partner decreased romantic PSIs, whereas singles had the most intensive romantic PSIs. Interpersonal communication concerning a media character enhanced romantic PSIs.

Using an expanded Theory of Planned Behavior to Predict WeRun Users’ Intention to Engage in Sports in China • Yingying MA • A study was conducted to test an expanded Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) in predicting sports intention among WeRun Sport users in mainland China. Two variables (perceived barriers and self-efficacy) were added in the TPB. A purposive sampling design was adopted to WeRun Sport. Altogether 635users were asked to complete a structured questionnaire about sports engagement. Results of confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modeling supported the structural validity of the proposed expanded model. Confirmatory factor analysis suggested that selected items of the perceived behavioral control and perceived barriers should be combined to form a new measure of perceived behavioral control. The new measure of perceived behavioral control and self efficacy were found to be more influential than attitude as well as subjective norm in predicting sports behavior . Past behavior and gender were found to be significant moderating variables.

Time Enough at Last: Pornography Viewership Motivations and Obstacles • Farnosh Mazandarani, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • This study explores obstacles, avoidance, and attitudes of pornographic access patterns. A survey through Amazon’s MTurk asked about usage, motivations, attitudes, discrete emotions, and stressors that may influence pornography use and change. The research found a decrease in usage in relation to increased age. Respondents with increased usage reported porn fulfills a need, is entertaining, and healthy. Decrease users reported no longer being interested, found pornography offensive, are bored by the content, and having new life stressors.

Habrá que callar la tragedia del Yasuní : A muted group theory perspective of media coverage of indigenous communities inhabiting the Ecuadorian Amazon • Maria D. Molina, Penn State University • Using a muted group theory framework, this study analyzes media coverage of the indigenous communities of the Yasuni National Park in Ecuador. A content and thematic analysis of newspaper articles from 2013-2014 reveal the communities were rarely given voice in coverage. Nevertheless, the coverage of these communities was counter-hegemonic and expressed the importance of understanding the cultural worldviews of indigenous people and developing the Ecuadorian system to encompass the multiculturality of the nation.

Understanding the influence of employee communication behavior: How job board reviews impact millennial perceptions of organizational reputation, relational trust & intent to apply • Katy Robinson; Patrick Thelen; Cen April Yue, University of Florida • Employees are seen as important contributors to an organization’s strategic communication efforts. Using experimental design, this study evaluates the impact of responsive leadership communication and rewards-based culture on corporate reputation, relational trust and overall intent to apply. Results indicate employees’ communication behaviors, specifically employee-generated job board reviews using responsive leadership communication and a rewards-based culture information, have separate effects on organizational reputation and relational trust, but collective effects on overall intent to apply.

Understanding User Behaviors Regarding Smart Speakers: A Multidisciplinary Perspective • CHUN SHAO, Arizona State University • As the use of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies became increasingly common in people’s daily lives, understanding the social and psychological factors behind individual’s usage of AIs remain a central concern of both media and information system’s research and practice. Through a multidisciplinary perspective, this study explored the underlying mechanism behind individuals’ usage of virtual personal assistant (e.g., Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant). The results showed that the usefulness of virtual assistant can be perceived due to not only its functional utility, playfulness and social presence also played important roles in shaping user’s satisfaction and usage intention. Individuals with strong feelings of social presence have more positive perceptions of virtual assistants, and they may treat virtual assistants as social actors rather than as mere machines.

The NCAA and Crisis Communication: Examining Controversial Issues in Collegiate Sports • Matthew Stilwell; Branden Birmingham • The goal of this study is to examine the perception of controversial issues involving the NCAA. Guided by the lens of a crisis communications perspective, this study surveyed sports fans to assess views on how the NCAA is ruling on controversial issues related to college sport, media consumption patterns, and demographic information. Results of the study found fans tend to view the NCAA in a negative light, but also put blame on its member insitutions for these issues.

Risky Business: A Case Study of a Leader’s Framing of News Coverage of Organizational Risk-Taking • Josh Watson, University of Oklahoma • Recently, one of the top energy companies in the world was the target of sustained, national media criticism. After each story, the company and its CEO sought to frame the critical story. Drawing on previous studies of organizational rhetoric, framing, and risk communication, this study proposes a unique model of apologia called social media intertextual responsiveness. The conditions of this model are explicated, as are the boundaries. Implications are offered for scholars and practitioners.

How Employees Perceive Organizational Change? An Investigation into Change Management from an Internal Communication Perspective • Cen April Yue, University of Florida • Organizations are experiencing constant changes in an unstable business environment. Organizational changes pose challenges to management and the success of change initiatives depend on employees’ support. A conceptual model is proposed to illustrate how perceived transparent communication can foster employee openness to change by decreasing change-related uncertainty. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the change management scholarship from the internal communication’s perspective. Implications on public relations scholarship and practice are discussed.

The Effects of Presence on Responses to Argument Quality in a Virtual Environment • Qiankun Zhong, Boston University; James Cummings • This study examines how presence may influence the cognitive resources available for persuasive message processing. Based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model, this research aims to connect the key concept of presence with the cognitive mechanisms underlying persuasion though a 2 x 2 mixed factorial experiment. The result indicates that weak messages have a better persuasive effect than strong messages in a low presence level. Weak messages also work better in a low presence level than that in a high presence level.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Entertainment Studies 2018 Abstracts

Textual and contextual analysis of Moana • Nafida Banu; Jocelyn Pedersen, Price College of Business • This study applied a theoretical explanation of “hegemony” to analyze the gender portrayal and outside culture representation in Disney’s animated movie Moana. The findings of the textual analysis suggest that similar to other Disney female characters from outside cultures, Moana also has warrior-like characteristics. Contextual analysis findings suggest that the movie transforms the original Polynesian mythical story into a new version. The transformation of the original story was criticized for “cultural misappropriation.”

When 18 Days of Television Coverage Is Not Enough: A Six-Nation Composite of Motivations for Mobile Media Use in 2018 Winter Olympic Games • Andrew Billings, University of Alabama; Natalie Brown-Devlin, University of Texas at Austin; Kenon Brown, The University of Alabama; Michael B. Devlin, Texas State University • A survey of 2,296 people from six nations (Canada, China, Germany, Japan, Sweden, and the United States) deciphered uses and gratifications for consuming content on a variety of media platforms during the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympic Games. Results indicate that media diets significantly differed by platform and device, all 16 uses and gratifications were significantly different by nation, and that that the two inverse predictors of Olympic media consumption relate to the desire to interact (companionship and relationship building), while none of the four direct predictors (entertainment, arousal, competition, and Schwabism) pertained to interpersonal aims. Findings bifurcated by media platform as well; both inverse predictors of smartphone use (passing time and escape) were direct predictors of television use. Implications for uses and gratifications and cross-nation media research are advanced.

Soundtracking Shondaland: Televisual Identity Mapped Through Music • Jennifer Billinson, Christopher Newport University; Michaela Meyer • This paper examines how Shonda Rhimes’ rise to fame is informed by her innovative approach to using popular music for bolstering her show’s identities, framing television narrative, and developing storylines through positioning background music alongside character, plot, and genre development. Throughout Shondaland, musical soundtracks are tantamount to narrative development and audience engagement. More broadly, they establish a key facet of Rhimes’ signature as a showrunner and Shondaland’s style as a production company. To examine the important relationship music plays in constructing the stylistic vision of Rhimes’ work, we examine the soundtracking of three Shondaland shows to reveal the distinct ways music is employed for affect and style. Collectively, Grey’s Anatomy (2005-), Scandal (2012-), and How to Get Away With Murder (HTGAWM) (2014-) span Rhimes’ primetime career and demonstrate her evolution as an auteur. Linking new media developments to Rhimes’ ascendance and popularity in the television industry, this paper unravels her use of music and narrative to create unique identities for her shows, evoke emotion, and make critical statements about contemporary cultural politics.

Recreational video games as a value-supporting activity for cancer survivors • Maria Leonora Comello, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Diane Francis, Louisiana State University; Laurie Hursting; Elizabeth Breaux; Laura Marshall • We examined two underexplored areas: the potential for recreational video gameplay to have positive effects, and the values and experiences of cancer survivors.  In a survey of survivors who reported regular gameplaying, we included an open-ended question asking what they value and the extent to which gameplaying supports the value.  We content-analyzed the responses (N=496) using Schwartz’s value typology.  Eighty-five percent mentioned a value, and among those, 84% said game-playing supported their values.

Exploring Character Development as a Central Mechanism in Viewer Responses to Morally Ambiguous Characters • Serena Daalmans; Mariska Kleemans; Allison Eden; Addy Weijers • The current study explored if character development (as a narrative characteristic) plays a role in the liking, moral evaluation, and enjoyment of narratives featuring morally ambiguous characters [MACs]. Additionally, this study explored the potential role of identification as a moderator. The results of a quasi-experiment provided support for the claim that character development is a central mechanism to explain viewer responses to MACs. As such, the study provides new directions for affective disposition research.

When TV Spin-offs Fail Fans: Narrative Dissonance in AMC’s Fear the Walking Dead • Jennifer Fogel • AMC’s The Walking Dead series has earned critical praise and fan approval, but its spin-off, Fear the Walking Dead, has met a more indifferent response. With the lack of transportation into this burgeoning zombie-riddled world and absence of parasocial relationships with its cadre of characters, Fear the Walking Dead doesn’t breed the same thrilling appreciation as its predecessor and is hindered by the narrative dissonance of its shrewd built-in fan base.

“Mighty” Kacy: Gender Framing within American Ninja Warrior • Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina; Lauren Schwartz, University of South Carolina • While previous studies have demonstrated that sports and primetime television programming have traditionally treated women in a less flattering light compared to men, the show American Ninja Warrior has emerged to challenge that tradition. Using framing as a guide, an examination of episodes from season nine revealed that female and male competitors receive the same personality, performance, and physicality taxonomies when their athletic successes and failures are described by the announcers.

Examining a Prototype versus Exemplar Approach to Understanding Viewer Categorizations of Morally Ambiguous Characters • Serena Daalmans; Benjamin Johnson, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam; Allison Eden • This study extends understandings of morally ambiguous characters (MACs) by comparing prototypical and exemplar approaches to descriptions of MACs. Participants described characteristics of a prototypical MAC in an essay, then nominated an exemplar of MAC and described this character in an essay. Impressions of and responses to exemplars were rated quantitatively; scores were juxtaposed with open-ended responses coded both deductively and inductively. The mixed-methods results provide a more comprehensive picture of essential characteristics of MACs.

Teens’ Interpretation of the Controversial Show “13 Reasons Why” • Colleen Kappeler, 1975 • “A high school class observation, of students discussing the show, as well as one-on-one interviews with teens between the ages of 12 and 17 showed that those who were watching were not coming away with suicidal thoughts or concerns, as the adults were worried they would. They were interpreting the show as a statement on how we need to have a kinder, more accepting world as they saw bullying as the main theme.

This article qualitatively looks at teens’ reactions to the show and how their interpretation of this particular media matched up with the intentions of the producers and writers. A content analysis of Beyond the Reasons, a show that followed 13 Reasons Why, was done to learn of intent by writers and producers and their work with highly trained professional psychologists.”

Factors Affecting Millennials’ Intentions to Consume Local and Foreign Media in Singapore • Daphne Lee; Ee Jin Liaw; Xing Mun Jolene Lee • This study examines effects of local-global identity and consumer-cultural nationalism on Singaporean millennials’ local and foreign entertainment media use intentions. The theory of planned behavior served as a theoretical foundation explaining media use intentions. Regression analysis of Singaporean millennials (N = 1,020) indicated that local identity and consumer-cultural nationalism positively correlated with local media use intentions. Global identity positively correlated with foreign media use intentions. Findings suggested importance of individual-level variables in determining media preferences.

Videos Games as Mindfulness Training Partners • Travis Loof, University of South Dakota • A 2 (trainer type: artificial intelligence/human) by 2 (trainer helpfulness: helpful/not helpful) study tested if trainer type and prior cooperation increased perceived training effectiveness and intentions to use a mindfulness. Participants played a video game that encouraged the use of mindfulness practices. The participants were trained either by a human or presumed advanced artificial intelligence. This study evaluated if cooperation in a video game task would influence perceptions of training effectiveness and intentions to use mindfulness. The results indicated that trainer type and prior cooperative behavior did not independently increase intentions or increase perceived training effectiveness. However, there were marginally significant differences in the interaction of the two factors.

Chinese Films Abroad:  Balancing Soft Power and Orientalist Stereotypes in the “Big Three” Film Festivals • Bruno Lovric, City University of Hong Kong • “Through the past decade People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been making a progress in the international distribution of Chinese movies and the government has been adapting regulations in an attempt to strengthen the country’s film industry. At the same time, Chinese films have been winning prizes at some of the most prestigious international festivals and gaining broad international recognition. However, critics have argued that politicization is an important factor in film festivals and that film selections may favor controversial productions which are critical of the party. This article examines the contents of some of the internationally most successful Chinese movies and evaluates their soft power potential by identifying common thematic patterns and repeatedly enforced ideas. Results of the thematic analysis suggest that despite the government’s efforts to minimize negative messages abroad, the Orientalist film selections at big international film festivals are likely to enforce negative stereotypes of China. The article further gives practical suggestions in designing future soft power strategies in the PRC and highlights its most salient challenges.

Keywords: soft power, pop culture, Chinese film, orientalism, thematic analysis, self-orientalism, qualitative research, stereotypes, film tropes”

“But, he’s so serious”:  Framing of masculinity among western hemisphere Indigenous Disney animated characters • Tim Luisi, University of Missouri • To date there has been only limited research examining indigenous characters in children’s media. Stereotyping or omission of underrepresented groups contributes to symbolic annihilation of underrepresented groups. Through a qualitative textual design, the researcher explored how western hemisphere Indigenous masculinity was framed in five Disney animated films. Although the characters had several positive traits, the researcher found that previous Indigenous stereotypes were upheld and that the characters had limited character growth across the films.

The Role of Narratives on the Enjoyment and Appreciation of Popular Music • Nikki McClaran, Michigan State University; Joseph Steinhardt, Michigan State University • Narratives have been found to influence enjoyment and appreciation of entertainment media, yet little research has explored narrative’s influence on popular music. Two experiments were conducted to test whether narratives about recording artists influence subsequent enjoyment and appreciation of a song, and what the role affective disposition may play. This exploratory study provides evidence that narratives positively influence enjoyment and appreciation of a song, and that the effect is mediated by affective disposition.

Out in Play: Openly Gay Athletes Navigate Media, Celebrity and Fandom • Leigh Moscowitz, University of South Carolina; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama • Featuring in-depth interviews with collegiate out-athletes in American team sports along with high-profile former professional athletes from the NFL, MLB and NBA, this project builds on the narratives of young out athletes to interrogate how their coming out experiences are shaped, transmitted and received through pervasive, powerful, albeit imperfect commercial media forms. This project critically examines where the young openly gay athlete is situated once they step into the media spotlight, advancing scholarly understandings of youth, sport and celebrity.

The “Ellen” Agenda: How One Entertainer’s Twitter Account  Provides Content and Sources for Mainstream News • Jane O’Boyle, Elon University; Alex Luchsinger, Elon University • This qualitative content analysis examines news produced from Ellen DeGeneres’Twitter feed. Results show that, in 2016, network TV news shows at ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox aired 251 excerpts from DeGeneres’ Twitter stories, and Ellen’s posts were featured 1,291 times on local TV news and their websites, regardless of whether they carried her syndicated talk show, and in 298 print newspapers, including The New York Times and Wall Street Journal.  Implications are discussed.

College Women’s Alcohol Refusal Beliefs and Perceptions of Refusal Scripts in Popular Television • Nicole O’Donnell, Virginia Commonwealth University; Stacey Hust; Stephanie Gibbons; Soojung Kang, Washington State University • This paper explores college women’s outcome evaluations, normative beliefs, and efficacy beliefs associated with alcohol refusal and portrayals of alcohol refusal on popular television shows. Data from four focus groups (N=37) revealed that college women hold competing positive and negative alcohol refusal beliefs. Themes identified suggest that individuals use proactive strategies to facilitate alcohol refusal, such as pre-planning refusal and recognizing and adhering to previously established limits. However, individuals cited direct and indirect social pressure, gender dynamics, and friend-group dynamics as inhibitors of alcohol refusal. Participants expressed that mass media rarely depict alcohol refusal, and current representations portray refusal as negative social behavior. These findings imply that there is an opportunity for mass media to frame alcohol refusal as a healthy behavior, and health practitioners may consider using an entertainment-education approach to reinforce positive alcohol refusal beliefs.

Playing Doctor on TV: Physician Portrayals and Interactions on Medical Drama, Comedy, and Reality Shows • David Painter, Rollins College; Alison Kubala, Rollins College; Sarah Parsloe, Rollins College • This investigation compares physician portrayals, behaviors, and patient-centered communication on a medical drama, comedy, and reality show. Specifically, we analyzed 1,353 scenes from Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, and New York Med, and the results indicate television physician doctors’ demographic characteristics and interactions differed significantly across shows. Since this study is the first to consider a medical comedy and to analyze programs by scene, the results provide important implications for parsing television physician portrayals by genre

What does it mean to be a woman in “indie” game storytelling?  Narrative Framing in Independently-Developed Video Games • Mimi Perreault; Andrea Suarez, Appalachian State University; Gregory Perreault, Appalachian State University • Video games have long held a spotty history in their narratives regarding women. Most research has examined large budget games and identified issues of simplification, oversexualization and a general lack of agency among female characters. The present study looks at the gaming niche of “indie”–or independent game developer–video games in their representations of women, and in particular at Never Alone, Gone Home, and Her Story. This paper argues that these game narratives emphasized multilayered female characterizations, female-to-female interactions, and internal dramas as a way to potentially reach female gamers and present an alternative narrative on women.

Who loves the Biblical Epic? A mixed-method analysis of online community perception of epic Biblical movies • Gregory Perreault, Appalachian State University; Thomas Mueller, Appalachian State University • “In recent years, high profile Biblically-oriented movies have sought to find an audience in America. This approach is reasonable in that 70.6 percent of Americans identify with some denomination of Christianity (America’s Changing, 2015). Yet, how Christianity motivates those Americans, and more specifically, whether it motivates them to watch a Biblical epic movie remains a question.

This research reports on a survey of active participants on religiously-oriented Reddit threads. Prior research has shown that participants in online communities tend to be more enthusiastic and more invested on a given topic than non-participants (Duggan & Smith, 2013). We would like to assess the degree to which different religious groups feel motivated to attend Biblical epics and how religiosity predicts attendance at Biblical epic movies. Survey questions will be largely quantitative but some qualitative questions will be asked in order to provide context for the findings as per Creswell’s (2013) explanatory model.

Such research theoretically contributes to the understanding of the audience for Biblical epics and more broadly contributes to our understanding of the religious motivations for media consumption. More practically, understanding the audience for Biblical epics could help media producers understand the boundaries of their audience and the preferences of their audience.”

Reading between the lines:  A content analysis of vinyl records’ run-out groove etchings • Waleed Rashidi, California State University, Fullerton • The “Easter egg” phenomenon exists in various formats of digital entertainment media, including DVDs, computer applications and video games. However, such “Easter egg” content can also be attributed to analog formats, including vinyl records. This study examines messages etched into run-out grooves of rock music vinyl records. The author argues that music media often provides multi-layered messaging, including album artwork, photography, artist statements and lyrics, and that the run-out groove message is an additional layer of messaging not commonly examined, largely due to difficulty in being noticed. Of the 616 7-inch vinyl records by 1990s independent and alternative rock artists examined, 136 featured custom message etchings. Seven categories emerged, including artist reference, release reference, song reference, label reference, listener reference, and media reference. Messages referenced the artists’ themselves, the record itself, the record’s songs, the label releasing the record, the record’s audience, and other media (e.g., books, television, film). A majority of messages reviewed (52.9%) were unable to be placed into the aforementioned categories, and were instead categorized as unknown references. Ways in which messages were presented, coupled with types of messages etched, echoed characteristics of “Easter eggs.” With recent upticks of analog music media sales, musicians may have opportunities for additional messaging via such etchings, providing a novel, idiosyncratic view of mediated communications that many audiences may not know even exists, and offering additional consideration to how media producers—artists and record companies—deliver messages to their publics.

Learning politics from political films: Exploring the effects of fictional political entertainment • Azmat Rasul, Valdosta State University • This study examined the effects of entertainment narratives on political knowledge gain and attitude change in audiences of fictionalized accounts of female politicians. Data from 310 participants indicated that political knowledge significantly increased and general attitudes about female politicians became more positive after exposure to biographical political movies. A proposed model of the political entertainment effects process indicated that initial political knowledge transported the audience into the biographical narrative. Increased transportation was associated with greater enjoyment, as well as political knowledge gain and more positive attitudes towards female politicians. The study also highlights implications of results and directions for future research.

Binge-watching: Social and Psychological Factors Behind Audience’s Binging Behavior • CHUN SHAO, Arizona State University; Paisley M. Benaza, Arizona State University • Various streaming media platforms and Internet entertainment services have dramatically changed the way audiences consume media content. Interactive media technologies also provide individuals with more control over their media consumption. Although binge-watching is now considered “the new normal”, the underlying motives behind it deserve more scholarly attention. By integrating constructs from various theoretical bases into a single framework, the study introduces a structural model that explained the underlying factors behind audience binge-watching behaviors. The results from an online survey (N = 208) demonstrated that enjoyment, easy accessibility to content, and social recommendation were the most salient factors for audiences to binge-watch. Moreover, the results revealed that perceived control has indirect effects on behavioral intention, mediated by enjoyment and perceived easy accessibility to content. This study provides an empirical overview of why individuals are motivated to binge-watch streaming media content, and explores how demographic variables are related to audiences binge-watching behavior.

In the Dark but Not Alone: The Fear of Missing Out, Social Capital, and Social Gratifications of Moviegoing • Alec Tefertiller, Kansas State University; Lindsey Maxwell, University of Southern Mississippi; David Morris II, University of Oregon • The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of participation in social media networks on cinematic movie attendance decision-making, with particular attention paid to the fear-of-missing-out (FoMO) and social capital. Using a national survey (N = 472), it was determined that the social utility of a movie was a better predictor of movie attendance than FoMO or social capital. However, both bridging social capital and FoMo are predictors of social sharing.

Certified Fresh: Rotten Tomatoes, Gratifications, and Motivations for Cinema Attendance • Alec Tefertiller, Kansas State University; Lindsey Maxwell, University of Southern Mississippi • Critic aggregate scores from the popular website Rotten Tomatoes have been blamed for the success and failure of recent Hollywood blockbusters. Using an online experiment (N = 469) examining four different films released within a two-week period, this study found that the presence of Rotten Tomatoes scores did not influence consumer decisions to see a film during its theatrical release. However, expectations of meaningful experiences and their communication utility best predicted theatrical attendance.

Pervasive Pokémon: Location-Based Augmented Reality Game Enjoyment and  Place Attachment • Shaojung Sharon Wang, National Sun Yat-sen University; Chih-Ting Hsieh • This study explores the complexity of the connection between Pokémon Go play experience and players’ affection towards their physical surroundings from the environmental psychology and the media entertainment perspectives. A stratified sampling method was conducted and a total of 1172 respondents participated to take the online survey. The results showed that simulational realism, freedom of choice, integrated presence, and perceptual pervasiveness all positively influenced game enjoyment. It also found that co-presence positively predicted game enjoyment while perceived crowding was negatively related to game enjoyment. Game involvement partially mediated the relationship between co-presence and game enjoyment and game involvement also mediated the relationship between game enjoyment and place attachment. Theoretical implications on linking physical places to virtual world are also discussed.

Binge-Watching as a Predictor of Narrative Transportation • Stephen Warren, UMass Amherst • This study explores the changing state of television by measuring binge-watching and its association with narrative transportation using longitudinal data.  Hierarchical Linear Modeling found that binge-watching had a positive logarithmic association with transportation – the power lessens as binge-watching rate increases.  Further, one’s typical binge frequency weakened the relationship between viewing session length and transportation.  Overall, more frequent binge-watching reduces its effect power on transportation.  Implications for theory and industry are also discussed.

Forever foolish? A content analysis of depictions of fathers in U.S. sitcoms • Stephen Warren, UMass Amherst; Eean Grimshaw; Gichuhi Kamau, UMass Amherst; Menno H. Reijven, University of Massachusetts Amherst; congcong zhang • This study examines the depictions of fathers in U.S. family-oriented television sitcoms, in relation to the father character being the teller or target of disparagement humor. In “real world” families over the last few decades, the roles and values assigned to fathers as well as the composition of how families are constituted have shifted in response to changing gender and family dynamics. This content analysis explores if and how these changes are reflected in media by looking at a sample of 578 scenes within 35 of the top-rated sitcoms featuring families from 1980 through 2017. Our findings suggest that sitcom fathers have largely remained foolish over time, with a slight decrease in foolish portrayals since the 1990’s. Yet, fathers have increased in being the butt of the joke as told by other characters. It seems that the most recent U.S. sitcom fathers continue to tell their fair share of disparaging jokes at the expense of other characters while simultaneously slightly appearing less foolish than they had in the past, overall. Dynamics of class, gender, and race among sitcom families as well as variables pertaining to how often sitcom fathers are shown engaging in parenting interactions are also discussed.

Down With the Clown: Taste, Class and Protest in American Journalistic Coverage of Juggalos • Kelsey Whipple, University of Texas at Austin • This research examines depictions of poor taste and low class in journalistic portrayals of juggalos through the lens of two 2017 events: the Juggalo March on Washington and the Gathering of the Juggalos. Through a multimodal analysis of text, images and their synergistic connections, this research analyzes the main themes and the differences between American music and news coverage to understand how the fan community is situated on a social hierarchy within American media coverage.

Gossip at one’s fingertips: Influential factors of celebrity news on Twitter • Yan Yan; Wanjiang Zhang • The present study collected 2223 tweets of news by the Twitter account of People Magazine about the Top 100 celebrities during the year 2016. The content analysis method was used to collect data on celebrity attributes and news features, and the social network analysis method was used to collect and analyze data on the relationships between celebrities and news topics. Results indicated that news agendas and audiences’ responses were highly different. News coverage was primarily determined by news features, yet audiences care about only about big stars. Regular topics centered the themes of celebrity news. The celebrity-by-topic network was theme-driven rather than human-driven, demonstrating the nature of the celebrity industry as embodiment of the capitalist society.

Measuring Virtual Reality Engagement: Survey and Electroencephalography (EEG) • Gi Woong Yun, University of Nevada, Reno; Claire Youngnyo Joa, Louisiana State University Shreveport; Daiwon Hyun; Sooyoung Lee; Hongsuk Kim; Sanghee Park; Sasha Allgayer, Bowling Green State University • This research tapped into the area of research connecting Virtual Reality (VR) and mobile EEG measurement tool.  A two by two experimental design using both repeated measures (exciting VR content vs. experiential VR content) and between subject stimulus (social vs. no social) was implemented and the effects were measured with a mobile EEG tool, Emotiv EPOC, and post-test surveys.  The mobile EEG tool was able to detect stimulus content showing increased brain activities in T7 temporal cortex and two frontal lobe, F7 and FC5, areas. However, social interaction stimulus did not make a difference in EEG measurements and showed no interaction effect. The research framework developed in this research can be adopted in the areas of research on contemporary VR production, audience research, content regulation, game development, and many other areas.

2018 ABSTRACTS