Commission on the Status of Women 2010 Abstracts

A Comparison of Gender Portrayals in News Content across Platforms and Coverage Areas • Cory Armstrong, University of Florida; Fangfang Gao, University of Florida • With the continuing disparity between male and female mentions in news content, this study seeks to compare how news organizations employ men and women in Twitter feeds and how that connects to portrayals in news stories. In particular, researchers examine how mentions in tweets of men and women may influence mentions in news stories that were linked from tweets. The study employed a content analysis of national, regional and local newspaper and television tweets, along with their accompanying news stories to compare media platforms and coverage areas. Results indicated a positive relationship between male and female portrayals in tweets and portrayals in news content. Further, male mentions were more likely to appear in national news stories than other regions and more frequently than female mentions in print media than in television. Implications were discussed.

More of the same old story?: Women, war and news in Time magazine • Dustin Harp, University of Texas at Austin; Jaime Loke, University of Texas at Austin; Ingrid Bachmann, University of Texas at Austin • Feminist media scholarship has long examined the role of women in journalism and criticized the gendered nature of news in general and war coverage in particular. This content analysis of 406 stories from Time magazine explores the intersection of war reporting and gender in the coverage of the war in Iraq. The results show than in war news, women are still scarce. Female reporters accounted for a fifth of the bylines, but tended to cite more diverse sources, including more women. Female sources were mostly private individuals without affiliation, and represented less than a tenth of the subjects cited. These findings indicate that when it comes to war, women are still symbolically annihilated through omission.

Mammy Revisited: How Media Portrayals Of Overweight Black Women Affect How Black Women Feel About Themselves • Gina Chen, Syracuse University; Sherri Williams, Syracuse University; Nicole Hendrickson, Syracuse University; Li Chen, Syracuse University • In-depth interviews with 36 black women, ages 18 to 59, reveal that exaggeratedly overweight depictions of black women in television and film had a strong effect on their identity. The women reported portrayals, such as Rasputia in Eddie Murphy’s Norbit, were mammy-like and made them feel conflicted over their own identity because of the disconnect between the dominant white ideal of thinness and media portrayals of black women. Social comparison theory is used for interpretation.

Plugging old-media values into ‘new media’: Social identity and the attitudes of sports bloggers toward issues of gender in sport • Marie Hardin, John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, Penn State University; Bu Zhong, Pennsylvania State University; Thomas Corrigan, College of Communications, Penn State University • This research suggests that individual-level, social identity factors in gatekeeping by sports bloggers present a critical dilemma for the exposure and promotion of women’s sports. Using a survey of independent bloggers linking their social identities to their attitudes toward women’s sports and Title IX, this research suggests that the sports blogosphere will not become an egalitarian space for sports commentary without more participation from female bloggers who cover female athletes and advocate for women’s sports.

Silent No More: Regan Hofmann and POZ Magazine • Robin Donovan, Ohio University • During the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, AIDS was largely seen as a problem faced by gay men and intravenous drug users. POZ magazine was founded to educate people with HIV and AIDS and provide a way to live positively despite these illnesses. With the addition of Regan Hofmann as editor-in-chief in 2006, that mission was well on its way. Hofmann was such an unlikely face of HIV in the 1990s that she hid her identity from all but her family and closest friends for a decade. This study examines the anonymous columns she wrote for the magazine from 2002 to 2006. In each column, she shared her status with someone, documenting both the reactions she received and the process of becoming more comfortable with disclosure. The columns exemplify her personal and professional transformation from hiding her HIV status with shame to publicly announcing her identity on POZ’s cover in April 2006.

Gender violence in the Twilight phenomenon: A feminist analysis of blood, lust and love • Meenakshi Durham, University of Iowa • This paper seeks to interrogate the tensions in the construction of masculinity in the Twilight books and films, vis-à-vis issues of implicit and overt gender violence. The analysis addresses the overarching research question, How is gender implicated in the vampire mythology of Twilight? A combination of feminist rhetorical analysis and semiology are used to examine the verbal and visual texts at work in the Twilight books and films. The analysis identifies four dominant themes in these texts: (1) the representation of violence as an inherent and presumptive characteristic of masculinity; (2) the portrayal of male violence as an acceptable and justifiable by-product of male-female relationships; (3) the continual imperilment of girls in situations from which they were rescued by boys; and (4) the definition of masculinity in terms of a dualism wherein good boys recognized and repudiated their own instinctive predilection for violence and bad boys allowed it to go unchecked. I conclude that Twilight works rhetorically and visually to coax audiences to expect boys to be violent and girls to be compliant in regard to that violence.

Framing Gender Amid Crisis: A Woman University President Faces the Press • Frank Durham, CCS • Women in positions of leadership are more likely than men to be framed according to dominant, gendered themes, in ways, which limit their access to power. This text analysis of the role of gender in the framing process that is evident in coverage by the Iowa City Press-Citizen takes the case of University of Iowa President Sally Mason as she faced two crises in 2007-08. In the first, she was confronted with an alleged rape by two football players of a woman athlete in the Hillcrest dormitory on campus. In the second, she was called to respond to the floods, which inundated the University campus, as well as much of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. As it finds that Mason was framed differently in each case, the study theoretically interrogates how dominant gender ideology played a role in the framing process.

Agency, Activism or Both? Feminism and Mothering in the Pubic Sphere • Katherine Eaves, University of Oklahoma • Until fairly recently mothers and issues relating to motherhood have been relegated to the private. In the late 1960s, however, the personal became political, giving women and mothers the freedom to talk about elements of their lives that were previously deemed inappropriate for public discourse. This new found freedom, coupled with the proliferation of electronic media, particularly niche media geared toward women and mothers, has led to a considerable amount of public political discourse about motherhood issues. This paper specifically examines the concepts of agency and activism as they relate to mothering in feminist public spheres, and examines the ways in which feminist Web sites about motherhood promote agency and activism.

Mother as Mother and Mother as Citizen: Mothers of Combat Soldiers on National Network News • Karen Slattery, Marquette University; Ana Garner, Marquette University • This study examines national television news images of mothers of U. S. combat soldiers during the first seven years of the Iraq War. News stories presented mothers as archetypal good mothers engaged in maternal work long after their childrens’ deployment. Mothers were depicted as vocal vis a vis their position on the Iraq war, a contrast to the historical depiction of archetypal patriotic mother who is stoic and silent. The resulting image is more complex suggesting the archetype may be shifting.

Building bias: Media portrayals of postpartum disorders and mental illness stereotypes • Lynette Holman, UNC-Chapel Hill • Postpartum depression (PPD) is a disorder that affects one in 10 new mothers. Symptoms include fatigue, anxiety, and excessive concerns about the baby or alternatively, feeling detached from the baby. Only about one in 1,000 new mothers develops postpartum psychosis. Only 4% of these women commit infanticide; however, they make the news. Through a content analysis of 11 years of print media coverage of postpartum disorders, this study illuminates the media’s misrepresentation of these disorders.

From Social Control to Post-Feminism: A Longitudinal Analysis of Reporting on Title IX by Journalist Gender • Kent Kaiser, Northwestern College, University of Minnesota Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport • This longitudinal study uses quantitative content analysis of frames to investigate differences in newspaper coverage, by journalist gender, on Title IX as it relates to women in sports. The investigation seeks to discern whether female journalists, when given an explicit opportunity to advocate for women’s rights and advancement in a traditionally male domain, a) succumb to social control and therefore conform to the male hegemonic dynamics of newsrooms, b) embrace a feminist predisposition to advocate for women and promote equality or c) distance themselves from the feminist view in post-feminist fashion. The study’s findings suggest that female journalists may have succumbed to social control in the earliest years of Title IX, as their use of frames was similar to that of their male colleagues. Later, female journalists asserted more advocacy frames than their male colleagues, consistent with a feminist style. Yet in the most recent years analyzed, female journalists returned to using frames more like their male colleagues. The findings suggest that, rather than the lack of a critical mass of female journalists, a transformation from social control, to a feminist style, to a post-feminist style is operative in the assertion of Title IX advocacy and opposition frames over time.

Sex & Glamour in the Hillbilly Field: The Objectification of Women in Country Music Videos • Ann McClane-Bunn, Middle Tennessee State University • Despite its rich history as an authentic American art form, country music remains a largely untapped area of scholarly research, especially where women in music videos are concerned. This has been particularly true since 2000, when Viacom, Inc., the parent company of MTV Networks, purchased Country Music Television (CMT). Applying framing theory, objectification theory and the male gaze theory, this thesis employs textual analysis to examine country music videos’ portrayal of women before and since the Viacom purchase. The findings indicate three prevalent frames: Focus on Women’s Bodies, Women’s Gratuitous Presence and Scantily Clad Women. This research identifies parallels between women in country music videos and women in advertisements, suggesting that a musical genre once called the heart of America has become an industry that uses women as sexual objects. Furthermore, this study briefly discusses the implications that such reckless and needless use of women may have on society.

Gender Framing in the 2008 Presidential Election • Erin O’Gara, University of Iowa • This study examines newspaper coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. election through the lens of framing theory. The study especially focused on the ways in which gender was framed in newspaper coverage of the election. A total of 225 newspaper articles randomly collected from The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today were content and textually analyzed. The results show that the media continued to cover male and female candidates in very different ways. The discussion of gender and the one female candidate was stereotypical and used harsher and more negative language than that used for the male candidates. This suggests that contrary to what some believed were improving conditions for female political candidates, the media still put a much greater emphasis on their gender. In doing so, the media are sending a message to potential voters that they are somehow less qualified than their male counterpart: women first, politicians second.

Examining Effects of Romance Consumption on Feminism and Social Media Use • Kristin Russell, Kansas State University; Ruochen Qiu, Kansas State University • Previous research has analyzed feminist themes in romance media mainly through content analysis. The present study attempts to examine the association among romance consumption, feminism and social media use through a cross-sectional survey method. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the more females consumed romance, the less feminist ideas they maintained and that the more females consumed romance, the more they participated in romance-based social media. However, no relationship between romance-oriented social media and feminist ideas was found.

Newspaper Coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the Presidential Election • Tiffany Shoop, Shenandoah University • This research project examined a sample of three prominent newspapers’ coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential election. One of the major findings of this research project was the common reference made in the newspaper articles to controversies related to McCain and Obama, raising the question of if increased coverage of controversies is one of the prices paid for having it all, both personally and professionally, as a presidential candidates’ spouse.

Navigating the Invisible Nets: Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Traditionally Male-Dominated South Asian Newsrooms • Elanie Steyn, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma; Kathryn Jenson White, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma • Invisible nets, labyrinths, glass ceilings and other obstacles create obstructions along women’s paths toward leadership positions, including those in media settings. Expanding on exploratory research, this paper investigates newsroom management expectations and experiences related to communication and teamwork as managerial competencies among a sample of female journalists in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Using a quantitative research design, the researchers outline opportunities and challenges for women in navigating these obstacles in traditionally male-dominated South Asian newsrooms.

Gender Framing on the Covers of Media Guides • Lacey Duffy, Ackerman McQueen; Natalie Tindall, Georgia State University • Past research on women, sports, and the media has produced two consistent themes: Female athletes are not given equal media attention compared to men, and when portrayed, women are more often framed in traditionally feminine and passive roles compared to men. This exploratory study explored gender framing of 2006-2007 Big 12 Conference intercollegiate athletic media guides through a content analysis of 97 athletic media guide covers from sports having both male and female versions. Overall, the majority of male and female athletes on all of the guides examined were portrayed on court, in uniforms, in action, and with sporting equipment. Male and female athletes were not portrayed in sexually suggestive poses. The majority of these athletes were also pictured from eye level and from close or medium range.

Examining New-technology-related Content in Women’s and Men’s Magazines: 2007- 2009 • Wei-Chun Wang, Ohio University • Women are often marginalized in discussions of new technology as portrayed in the media. To examine whether traditional gender biases exist in magazines, this study explored new-technology-related content in popular magazines intended for three groups: men, women and general interest readership. Different from previous research which analyzes the image and advertisements in magazines, this research analyzed the content of magazines, and thus, can be seen as an exploratory study in the field. Through the content analysis approach, this study examined a total of 216 issues of popular magazines from 2007 to 2009. Results indicate that from the 2,967 women’s magazines’ articles sampled, only one article (0.034%) was found that related to technology. Also, among all magazines, news magazines whose readership includes more men than women provided more content oriented to new technology. Results reveal that traditional social roles are reinforced, with males being considered to have more knowledge of IT and new technological subjects.

What is Sexy? How Young Women Ages 19-26 Define Sexiness in the Media and in Real Life • Meng Zhang, University of Florida • Women ages 19-26 participated in a qualitative research on the topic of what is sexy. The study revealed that these women defined sexy broadly as attractive for both men and women, yet their personal ideals of sexiness tended to diverge from what they believe represented in the media. The women in general considered sexy a compliment although there were mix feelings about being sexy. Media were both direct and indirect sources of their feelings and thoughts about sexiness.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk Interest Group 2010 Abstracts

The Differences That Matter: Identifying Predictors of Attitudes toward Binge Drinking and Anti-Binge Drinking Public Service Announcements among College Students • Hoyoung (Anthony) Ahn, University of Tennessee; Lei Wu, University of Tennessee; Stephanie Kelly, University of Tennessee • Bing drinking is a prevalent problem on college campuses which has been shown to affect students’ health, social life, and academic performance. Public Service Announcements (PSAs) are government funded social marketing campaigns whose purpose is to present specific audiences with unbiased information in hopes of inducing beneficial behavioral change. Despite almost three decades of initiative, PSAs targeting the college drinking issue have been largely ineffective at inducing behavioral change. This study sought to better understand the college drinking phenomenon by investigating how norms of drinking acceptability and perspectives of PSAs differ between sexes. A number of sex differences were identified. Findings and implications are discussed for both researchers and PSA practitioners.

Models: The Missing Piece in Climate Change Coverage • Karen Akerlof, George Mason University • As the sole tool for projecting future climate trends under conditions of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, climate models form the basis for global warming risk assessments and are inextricably linked to policy formation. In an analysis of media coverage across four U.S. national newspapers from 1998-2007 and 20 media sources frequented by high-knowledge U.S. audiences for the year 2007, there was little mention of climate models overall though comparatively high levels in political commentary outlets.

The shifting agenda: A scientific event and its print and online coverage • Ashley Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dominique Brossard, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin • While much is known about how science is covered in traditional media, including sources journalists tend to use (e.g. Tanner, 2004) and what news values inform how an issue is covered (e.g. Galtung & Ruge, 1965), scholars are still exploring how scientific issues end up in online media. Here, we analyze as a case study media coverage of a scientific study examining the deaths of Chinese factory workers due to lung damage from their repeated exposure to nanoparticles. We argue that the scientific study results embody the news values that would make them a prime candidate for news coverage. Nevertheless, mentions of the event in traditional print media were nearly non-existent. Online media, on the other hand, covered it widely. We offer an explanation for why the agenda for print and online media were different in this particular context and discuss why this case exemplifies the importance of the online media environment for science communication scholars.

Public Information Officers’ Perceived Control in Setting Local Public Health Agendas and the Impact of Community Size • Elizabeth Avery, University of Tennessee • Using an agenda-setting perspective, this research analyzes data collected from 281 local public health information officers (PIOs) serving various community sizes, from rural to urban, across the country to reveal how size of their communities as well as state and federal agencies affect public health promotion. Findings reveal low levels of perceived control in setting the local public health agenda among urban PIOs while rural practitioners reported surprisingly high levels of control.

Talking Green: Green Quad, Communication Behavior and Environmental Norms • Daphney Barr, University of South Carolina; Caroline Foster, University of South Carolina • The current study explores the role of Green Quad living on student residents’ attitudes and tendency to action, including talking, information seeking and conserving/recycling resources, on environmental issues. While residents are talking about the environment, their conversations are frequently inhibited by lack of knowledge, lack of interest within social groups and lack of prompts to talk about these issues. When they seek environmental information, they first turn to the internet and then to resources provided by the Green Quad Residence Hall. Residents indicated concern for reliability and credibility of environmental information. Residents note a lack of internalization of environmental actions and a lack of interest in environmental topics among peer groups. This research related residents’ lack of internalization of environmental actions to the lack of environment as a normal part of daily life.

Measuring Perceptions of Emerging Technologies: Errors in Survey Self-Reports and Their Potential Impact on Communication of Public Opinion Toward Science • Andrew Binder, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Michael Cacciatore, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin; Bret Shaw, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona State University • This study present an extensive comparison of two alternative measures of citizens’ perceptions of risks and benefits of emerging technologies. By focusing on two specific issues (nanotechnology and biofuels), we derive several important insights for the measurement of public views of science. Most importantly, our analyses reveals that relying on global, single-item measures may lead to invalid inferences regarding exogenous influences on public perceptions, particularly those related to cognitive schema and media use. Beyond these methodological implications, this analysis suggests several reasons why researchers in the area of public attitudes toward science must revisit notions of measurement in order to accurately inform the general public, policymakers, scientists, and journalists of trends in public opinion toward emerging technologies.

The low-down on low-fat and sugar free: Using media to improve children’s health literacy, knowledge of nutrition, and attitudes toward eating and exercise • Kim Bissell, University of Alabama; Scott Parrott, The University of Alabama • While a variety of factors may be related to a child’s likelihood to be overweight or obese, relatively little is known about the factors most relevant in the prevention of the disease. The overarching objective for this study was two-fold in that it provided broader understanding of children’s general level of knowledge, attitudes, and behavior as it relates to health, and it implemented an intervention program designed to increase children’s overall health literacy. The health literacy program developed and implemented here integrated critical thinking skills along with project-based and activity-based learning so that participants received more than a one-time lecture on health and physical activity. Results suggest that gains in health literacy are possible. Using experimental data to test the effectiveness of a health literacy program, post-test measures of cognition, attitudes, and behavior related to health, nutrition, and exercise demonstrated significant gains across demographic groups in all three areas. More importantly, the greater gains in all three key areas of health literacy were found in children at the greatest risk of becoming overweight or obese–younger children and non-White children. The present study summarizes the health literacy intervention program and presents results from a pre-test/post-test within-subjects experiment conducted during the fall of 2009. These and other findings are discussed.

Emergency Risk Communication in the University Community: Exploring Factors Affecting Use for SMS Emergency-Alert service • Jee Young Chung, University of Alabama; Doohwang Lee, University of Alabama • The present study aims to investigate determinants of college students’ use of emergency-alert service provided by their educational institution, especially the use of a Short Message Service (SMS), which has become one of effective communication tools among college students. The results suggested that social norm and individuals’ perceived intrusiveness toward the service were primary determinants of being SMS emergency-alert service subscriber.

Empowering the Patient to Maximize the HealthCare Exam Andrea Ciletti, Hawaii Pacific University; Penny Pence Smith, Hawaii Pacific University • Previous research has focused on improving health communication, mostly targeting healthcare providers or systems. Recent thinking suggests that patient’s health literacy and preparedness may be an important key to a successful outcome. This study considers more patient participation in doctor patient communication, exploring the PACE guide, to assist patients in exam preparation. A patient sample was willing to use the guide, but healthcare providers interviewed about the guide were less confident about its contribution.

Amplifying Risk to Activate Protection Motivation: Merck’s Gardasil Campaign • Susan Grantham, University of Hartford; Lee Ahern, Penn State; Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Penn State University • In 2006 Merck introduced Gardasil in the United States through its One Less campaign. The campaign highlighted how the three-shot series of vaccines protected against the transmission of HPV and minimized the risk of cervical cancer. The occurrence of cervical cancer has dropped dramatically in recent decades through the use of annual pap smears and no longer ranks in the top 10 of health issues affecting women today. The One Less campaign effectively used social amplification to heighten the perceived health risk associated with HPV. The issue was framed to create the impression that one could either forego the vaccine series, thereby increasing their risk of catching HPV, or undergo the vaccine series and minimize their risk The purpose of this study was to determine how young women (current age 18-25) learned about Gardasil, how the campaign dealt with various dimensions of risk from HPV and cervical cancer and how much of an impact the One Less campaign had on the patient’s decision to receive or decline the Gardasil vaccines. Overwhelming, the participants learned about Gardasil from television advertising. Additionally, the participants felt that the campaign addressed the control and empowerment dimensions of the risk associated with HPV and cervical cancer. While the campaign effectively raised awareness about these issues, participants reported that physicians remained the primary sources of influence when the young women chose to receive or decline the vaccine series.

Unrealistic optimism: A systematic review of perceptions of health risks. • Sherine El-Toukhy, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper is a systematic review of the literature on optimistic bias in perceptions of health risks. Out of 518 studies, the study included a total of 55 studies that met the inclusion criteria, from 2000 to 2008, to (a) examine the level of support for the optimistic bias phenomenon, (b) identify the most significant predictors or correlates with optimism, and finally (c) examine whether optimistic bias influences health behavior, and if so, in what way. The study found immense support for optimism in perceptions of health risks. People do underestimate their perceptions of health risks. This holds true even in the presence of objective risk factors that require a person to take proactive behaviors. However, other variables exercise an influence on optimistic bias, thus enhancing or diminishing it. These variables fall under one of three categories: individual-specific, target-specific, or situation-specific factors. For individual-specific factors, prior experience/ history with a disease, self-esteem, sense of uniqueness, perceived control and ability to protect oneself were consistently found to be associated with optimistic bias. Similarly, size of the target group and similarity with the target were two target-specific variables that have been found to correlate with optimism. Finally, for situation-specific factors, frequency or commonness of a health risk has been found to correlate with lower levels of optimism. Finally, the relationship between optimism and health behavior was found to be inconsistent. Implications for health communication theory and practice are discussed.

Employing Strategic Ambiguity in a Multimedia Message: The Case of Hurricane Charley • Gina Eosco, University of Kentucky; Shari Veil, University of Oklahoma; Kevin Kloesel, OU College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences/National Weather Center • This study examines how uncertainty is communicated during hurricane forecasts, specifically focusing on Hurricane Charley in 2004. In the case of Hurricane Charley, the audience’s interpretation of the visual representation of a hurricane track projection, called the cone of uncertainty, was that the situation was certain, causing some to forgo preparations that could have limited damage in the wake of the storm. This study explores the verbal and visual message objectives of hurricane forecasters to determine whether strategic ambiguity is employed in presenting the cone of uncertainty. Nineteen interviews with hurricane forecasters are analyzed to determine the objectives of the verbal and visual messages in hurricane forecasts. The study found that forecasters unconsciously use strategic ambiguity for their verbal messages and explores two explanations for why there was still public confusion: inconsistent multi-organizational use of strategic ambiguity, or the power of the visual to unravel the ambiguity

A Content Analysis of Prosocial Behavior on Sid the Science Kid • Caitlin Evans, Western Michigan University; Jocelyn Steinke, Western Michigan University • Sid the Science Kid is a science-based educational program aired on PBS. Using Social Cognitive Theory, this study focuses on the potential prosocial behavior displayed in Sid the Science Kid. In the 25 episodes analyzed, the most prevalent prosocial behavior was appreciation/appraisal behavior/giving a compliment followed by cooperation/sharing and close behind was rule adherence/compliance. The current study also found preschool-aged characters displayed more prosocial behavior than adult characters.
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The Role of Perceived Risk and Self-efficacy in Health Information Seeking, Preventive Behaviors and Choice of Media Channels • Eun Go, University of Florida • This study examined the ways in which the interaction of perceived risk and efficacy on information seeking and, preventive behavior. In addition, it explored how risk perception and self-efficacy guide people’s selection of health information channels in the context of cancer prevention. By identifying the media usage patterns of individuals with regard to their level of perceived risk and self-efficacy, this study aims to provide useful insights into the factors that the effectiveness of health-related messages.

Across the Great Divide: Boundaries and Boundary Objects in Art and Science • Megan Halpern, Cornell University • This paper explores collaboration between artists and scientists through participant observation. Four artist/scientist pairs worked together to create ten-minute performances for a festival held in January, 2009 in Ithaca, New York. Each pair created their piece over the course of three two-hour meetings, the first of which employed a cultural probe to open a discourse between the artist and scientist and to facilitate collaboration. My role as a participant observer allowed me to closely observe collaborative processes in which pairs engaged in boundary work and made use of boundary objects. The boundary work helped the pairs establish authority and autonomy within their respective subfields, while at the same time provoking discussions that led to the creation of their projects. The pairs used three types of boundary objects: existing, created, and appropriated. These established a common language by which they could create and present their performances to an audience.

Framing Health Disparity News: Effects on Journalists’ Perceptions of Newsworthiness • Amanda Hinnant, U. of Missouri; HyunJee Oh, University of Missouri; Charlene Caburnay, Washington University in St. Louis; Matthew Kreuter, Washington University in St. Louis • This study examines health journalist feedback on framing effects of disparity health news. It extends the research of Nicholson et al. (2008), which found that African Americans reacted more positively to colon cancer stories that emphasize the progress African Americans have made against the disease. More specifically, African Americans had positive affective responses and indicated a greater desire for CRC screening when exposed to the progress frame. Participants exposed to the disparity frame reported opposite reactions (negative emotional response/less desire for CRC screening). This study builds on these findings by exposing how health journalists react to disparity and progress frames in cancer communication stories. This double-blind randomized experiment (N = 179) gauged reactions to the progress and disparity frames on news value measures. This study also included a condition in which half of the participants were exposed to the findings from the Nicholson research. Results show that journalists respond more positively to the disparity-frame story than to the progress-frame story in variables across all news value categories. The journalists who saw the Nicholson findings still evaluated the disparity-frame story more positively, but it was across fewer variables. After seeing the Nicholson findings, they did respond more positively to the progress-frame story. Informing journalists of the benefits of using a progress frame could influence story framing on health disparity news.

The Cognitive Mediation Model: Factors Influencing Public Knowledge of the H1N1 Pandemic and Precautionary Behavior • Xianghong Peh, Nanyang Technological University; Veronica Soh, Nanyang Technological University; Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University • This study uses the Cognitive Mediation Model as the theoretical framework to examine the influence of motivations, communication, and elaborative processing on public knowledge of the H1N1 pandemic and behavioural intentions in Singapore. Generally, we found that knowledge levels among the public were high. However, the public were willing to engage in basic protective measures rather than H1N1-specific behaviours. Notably, motivations significantly influenced behavioural intentions, as partially mediated by communication, elaboration, and knowledge.

Swine Flu Shift: Effects of risk and concern on health information sources during a pandemic • Avery Holton, University of Texas at Austin • A multi-regional survey of United States respondents suggests that the public seeks health information largely from news and health websites, health professionals and newspapers. As a pandemic – the H1N1 virus – elevated risk levels, health concern increased, but health information sources remained relatively unchanged. Those at high risk during the H1N1 outbreak may ultimately have sought health information from two traditional health information sources – the newspaper and health professionals.

Testing The Effects of The Social Norms Approach to Correct Misperceptions Related to Sexual Consent • Zijing Li, Washington State University; Stacey Hust, Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University • Norm corrective messages may encourage individuals already practicing healthy behaviors to adopt unhealthy behaviors in an attempt to conform to the norm. Yet, exposure to both descriptive and injunctive norms may alleviate this boomerang effect. An experiment with 394 college students tests the effectiveness of social norms related to sexual consent seeking. Results indicate use of both types of norms has a stronger effect on perceptions and intentions than the use of only descriptive norms.

It’s Easy Being Green: The Effects of Argument and Imagery on Consumer Responses to Green Product Packaging • Virginia E. Board, Virginia Tech; Lindsay M. Crighton, Virginia Tech; Phillip K. Kostka, Virginia Tech; Justine A. Spack, Virginia Tech; James D. Ivory, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University • Although green product advertising is increasingly widespread, the quality and format of green product claims vary substantially. To assess how some elements of green advertising claims influence consumer responses, this study examines the effects of argument strength and imagery used in green product packaging on consumers’ perceptions of product packaging credibility, perceptions of product greenness, attitudes toward product, behavioral purchasing intent, and general attitudes toward green product advertising. A 3 (argument: strong, weak, or none) X 2 (image: present or absent) factorial experiment was conducting using different versions of green product packaging on a bottle of laundry detergent. Results indicated that while argument strength influenced perceptions of credibility, product greenness, and attitude, a weak argument was as effective as a strong argument in eliciting purchasing intent. Similarly, the presence of a green seal image influenced purchasing intent regardless of argument strength. These results suggest that though consumers are able to evaluate the quality of green arguments, the mere presence of any green argument or image serves as a cue that affects purchasing intent similarly regardless of format, modality, or quality.

Individual Differences, Awareness/Knowledge, and Acceptance Attitude of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as a Health Risk on Willingness to Self-discipline Internet Use • Qiaolei JIANG, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • This exploratory study proposed that Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is a health risk and examined the effects of individual differences (such as flexibility/rigidity, stigma tolerance, and face-loss concern), awareness/knowledge, and acceptance of IAD as a new mental illness among urban Chinese Internet users on willingness to self-discipline the maladaptive Internet habit. Data were gathered from an online survey of 497 Internet users in urban China in 2009. Based on Young’s (1998) classic definition of Internet addiction and Tao’s (2010) Chinese diagnostic criteria, results showed that 12.3% can be classified into the high-risk group. The high risk group tended to be significantly more rigid in personality, more concerned with face-loss, and more aware of IAD as a mental illness. As expected, being flexible, tolerant to stigma, concerned about face-loss, and in the low risk group were found to be more willing to self-discipline their problematic Internet use. Being female, non-student, and with low income tended to be more determined to seek self-help to recover from IAD on their own as addiction clinic in China is still scarce and expensive. Practical health policy implications were discussed.

A Content Analysis of Health- and Nutrition-Related Claims in Food Advertisements in Popular Women’s and Men’s Magazines • Xiaoli Nan, University of Maryland, College Park; Rowena Briones, University of Maryland, College Park; Hongmei Shen, San Diego State University; Hua Jiang, Towson University; Ai Zhang, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey • This article reports a content analysis of health- and nutrition-related (HNR) claims used in food advertisements in popular women’s and men’s magazines published in the year 2008. A total of 734 food ads were analyzed. Our research shows that the nutrition content claim is the most predominantly used claim and that the health claim is the least used. The use of HNR claims also differ for different types of food and magazines.

Stressful university life: The relationship among academic self-efficacy, academic performance, goal characteristics, and psychological well-being of university students in Singapore Hannah Wen Ya Tay, Nanyang Technological University; Zhu Ian Juanita Toh, Nanyang Technological University; Suu Yue Lim, Nanyang Technological University; Elena Owyong, Nanyang Technological University; Younbo Jung, Nanyang Technological University • This study examines how academic concerns influence the well-being of university students by investigating the relationship among academic self-efficacy, academic performance, goal characteristics (i.e., ideal GPA, goal importance, goal motivation, and GPA difference), and psychological well-being (i.e., depression and satisfaction with life). Based on the two-stage stratified sampling method, a self-administered paper-and-pencil survey was conducted with 603 final-year undergraduate students from the two public autonomous universities in Singapore. The results showed that academic self-efficacy negatively predicted students’ levels of depressive symptoms and positively predicted their satisfaction with life. The relationship between students’ academic self-efficacy and their level of depressive symptoms as well as satisfaction with life was found to be mediated by goal importance and goal motivation. In addition, academic self-efficacy was a significant predictor of academic performance, ideal GPA, goal importance, goal motivation, and GPA difference. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

The Priming Effects of Entertainment-Education on Viewers’ Responses to PSAs: An Application to Binge Drinking among College Students • Kyongseok Kim, The University of Georgia; MINA LEE, University of Georgia • The purpose of this study was to examine the priming effects of an Entertainment-Education message on viewers’ responses to a PSA. An online experiment was conducted with 232 participants using a 2 (E-E: present vs. absence) _ 2 (issue involvement: high vs. low) between-subjects design. The results provided evidence of the priming effects of a health message (related to binge drinking) embedded in a primetime drama. The effects were also moderated by issue involvement.

Perceived or Real Knowledge? Comparing operationalizations of science knowledge. • Peter Ladwig, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kajsa Dalrymple, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin; Dominique Brossard, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona State University • This study compares two frequently used operationalizations of science knowledge: factual knowledge of an emerging technology, measured using true-false options, is the same as self-reported nanotechnology knowledge (perceived familiarity). We argue that these measurements – which have been used interchangeably in past research – are conceptually distinct and should be treated as such. Using hierarchal linear OLS regression, we provide evidence that these two measurements do in fact capture different concepts and should be treated differently in the future.

Defining obesity: Second-level Agenda Setting in Black Newspapers and General Audience Newspapers • Hyunmin Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia; Maria Len-Rios, U. of Missouri This paper examines how obesity is defined in Black newspapers and general audience newspapers applying the framework of second-level agenda setting theory. A content analysis (N = 391) of a national sample of Black newspapers and general audience newspapers showed that while both Black newspapers and general audience newspapers generally ascribed individual reasons for causing, Black newspapers were more likely than general audience newspapers to suggest both individual and societal solution methods to treat obesity. Additionally, regardless of the audience of the newspaper, negative stories of obesity appeared on front pages. Implications for theory and health communication research are discussed.

Influencing Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation Intentions in Singapore based on the Protection Motivation Theory • Shallyn Leow, Nanyang Technological University; May O. Lwin, Nanyang Technological University; Kaiyan Lin, National Chengchi University; Chrong Meng Ng, Nanyang Technological University; Kenneth Mu Mao Chia, Nanyang Technological University Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is crucial for survival during sudden cardiac arrest (Hopstock, 2007). Statistics have shown that the typically low survival rate of cardiac arrest victims can increase manifold when the public is CPR-trained. To date, only 20% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Singapore receive bystander CPR (Lateef & Anantharaman, 2001). This research aims to help develop CPR promotion campaigns by examining the CPR-learning intentions amongst youths in Singapore, utilizing the Protection Motivation Theory.

Comprehensive resource to enhance consumer health informatics evaluation research: A description of a pilot project • Glenn Leshner, University of Missouri; Rob Logan, National Library of Medicine; Glen Cameron, University of Missouri – Columbia • The purpose of this paper is to report on a pilot project that will prepare a master resource of outcome variables and suggested measures to guide comprehensive consumer health informatics evaluation. This pilot project is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Office of Communications and Public Liaison as well as NLM’s consumer health informatics working group. The resource is envisioned as an online tool kit NLM can use and also will be available as a professional development tool to other consumer health informatics researchers. The resource will be comprised of at least 25 outcome variables, with a specific suggested measure for each variable, and a citation of the source. The variables presented here, which represent a small sample, are health literacy, health orientation, spiritual health locus of control, and self-efficacy.

Analyzing Health Organizations’ Use of Twitter for Promoting Health Literacy • Hyojung Park, University of Missouri, School of Journalism; Shelly Rodgers, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Jon Stemmle, Health Communication Research Center, Missouri School of Journalism This study explored health-related organizations’ use of Twitter in delivering health literacy messages while promoting their images and brands. Content analysis of 571 tweets from health-related organizations revealed that the organizations’ tweets were often quoted or republished by other Twitter users. There were some differences among the various types of organizations in regard to addressing health literacy topics in tweets, although in general, most tweets focused on the use of short sentences and simple language.

A comparative analysis of Chinese and American newspapers’ coverage of the milk scandal in China • Lulu Rodriguez, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, Iowa State University; Jiajun Yao, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, Iowa State University Anger and panic spread across China in the wake of country’s latest food scare—melamine-tainted milk that sickened nearly 300,000 children and caused the death of at least six infants in 2008. This study analyzed the content of news, feature and editorial reports from the Economic Daily (China) and the Wall Street Journal (U.S.) to determine the risk information items present in the coverage. A discourse analysis was also conducted. The two papers differed in five information areas: the government’s plans of action; the definition, description and explanation of the cause of disorders and deaths; the extent of assurances made; the number of people harmed; and assignment of blame. The Daily referred to the issue as an event or incident while the Journal called it a disaster and a tragedy. Stories from the Daily contained fewer details about what led to the crisis and emphasized the revitalization of the dairy industry while the Journal expressed concern about the enforcement of food safety laws. The Chinese paper consistently showed a positive attitude toward its government while the Journal took a strong negative position toward Chinese authorities.

What Science Communication Scholars Think about Training Scientists to Communicate • Andrea Tanner, University of South Carolina; John Besley, University of South Carolina • This study assesses the volume and scope of the training taking place in the science communication field and explores the views about the skills of several different types of science communicators. Nearly 46% of scholars publishing in academic journals across the sub-fields of science, health, environment and risk communication report conducting formal training for bench scientists and engineers, science regulators, medical personnel or journalists. For most groups, the main focus of training was in the area of basic communication theories and models. There is near unanimity in the field that the science community would benefit from additional science communication training and that deficit model thinking remains prevalent.

Effect of ecological, proximal, and psychometric risk perception on reported self-protective behavior for West Nile virus. • Craig Trumbo, Colorado State University; Raquel Harper, Colorado State University; Emily Zielinski-Gutiérrez, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Cindy Kronauge, Weld County Department of Health and Environment.; Sara Evans, Weld County Department of Health and Environment • Little is known about the manner in which individuals perceive risk for West Nile virus and how risk perception may affect protective behavior against exposure. To investigate these questions data were collected using a mail survey. The questionnaire included measures of cognitive-affective risk perception, combined with ecological and proximity risk perception constructs, and the Health Belief Model. Results show that all three of the newer risk perception models provide some power to explain protective behavior.

The effect of proximity to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on subsequent optimistic bias and the perception of hurricane risk. • Craig Trumbo, Colorado State University; Michelle Lueck, Colorado State University; Holly Marlatt, Colorado State University; Lori Peek, Colorado State University • In this study we evaluated how individuals living in Gulf Coast counties perceived hurricane risk in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The analysis examined optimistic bias and perception of hurricane risk in January 2006, evaluating these concepts as functions of distance from the area of the Katrina-Rita impact. Data were collected by mail survey (n = 824). Results show hurricane risk perception has a number of significant associations, while optimistic bias does not.

News media and the social amplification of risk for seasonal influenza. • Craig Trumbo, Colorado State University • The effect news media may have had on patients visiting physicians for influenza was examined for 2002-2008. The basis for this investigation rests on theories of media effects applied to the Social Amplification of Risk. It was hypothesized that controlling for the rate of influenza, a positive relationship exists in which increases and decreases of news media attention to influenza precede increases and decreases in the percentage of patients visiting physicians for flu symptoms. The percentage of visits and the percentage of positive flu tests are taken from the Centers for Disease Control’s flu report. Media attention was located through the Lexis/Nexis database as words per week in stories having flu in the headline in 32 newspapers. Time series analysis shows that controlling for autoregressive and seasonal effects, and the actual rate of disease present, news attention in the previous week accounts for a statistically significant portion of the increase and decrease in the number of individuals who go to their physician reporting influenza-like symptoms. Reverse causality was examined and it was shown that controlling for autoregressive and seasonal effects, patient visits did not predict news coverage, while the actual rate of the flu in the previous three weeks did.

News Framing of Autism: Media Advocacy, Health Policy & the Combating Autism Act • Brooke Weberling, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Considering agenda setting, framing, and the concepts of media advocacy and mobilizing information, this study presents a content analysis of U.S. news coverage of autism from 1996 to 2006, the year the Combating Autism Act was passed. Findings revealed that science frames decreased over time, while policy frames increased. Medical and government sources were most common in news coverage. Solutions were more frequent than causes; however, mobilizing information was limited. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Exploring the role of online discussion in improving obesity-related health literacy: A content analysis of health literacy domains and eWOM of The Biggest Loser League • Ye Wang, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Erin Willis, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Shelly Rodgers, University of Missouri School of Journalism • The present study evaluated to what extent and at what levels online discussions about weight-management can improve health literacy, and whether and to what extent health-related eWOM in online discussions can counter-balance misleading information in food advertisements. This study found evidence of health literacy domains in discussions of weight-management, and identified self-efficacy as being influential in users’ performance of weight-loss behaviors. Evidence of eWOM provides a context for health communication to educate and promote healthy living.

Tracking Explanations In Health News. More Attention Is Not Always Needed For Understanding. • Ronald Yaros, University of Maryland • This study investigates the relationship of how readers view health news on a web page and whether certain viewing patterns are associated with different levels of comprehension. Does selective attention always mean comprehension and do explanatory graphics in health news aid comprehension? Participants (N = 20) in an eye-tracking experiment are exposed to two text structures of four health stories with or without explanatory graphics. Recorded eye movements were then associated with robust measures of situational understanding. Based on theory of text comprehension, this study predicted that longer viewing time can indicate little or no explanation in the news more than it indicates interest. Results suggest that longer eye fixations -presumed to indicate more attention in eye-tracking studies – do not always mean a better understanding of complex news.

Willing but Unwilling: Attitudinal Barriers to Adoption of Home-Based Health-Information Technologies Among Older Adults • Rachel Young, University of Missouri, Columbia; Erin Willis, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Mugur Geana, University of Kansas; Glen Cameron, University of Missouri – Columbia • The health needs of aging baby boomers will stress the medical system and family caregivers. Proposals for improving health outcomes include technological solutions, but user attitudes toward these solutions are unknown. This study used in-depth interviews to explore barriers to adoption of a home-based system for communicating with physicians, searching for health information, and receiving tailored messages. A thematic analysis revealed technological discomfort, privacy concerns, and perceived distance from the user representation imagined by participants.

WHAT PARENTAL FACTOR(S) INFLUENCES CHILDREN’S OBESITY? -Investigating the Possible Relationships between Children’s Body Mass Index and • Hyunjae (Jay) Yu, School of Communication, Sogang University; Tae Hyun Baek, University of Georgia • In addition to genetics and nutrition, the notion exists that environmental influences may also indirectly govern childhood obesity. Because children’s eating habits and lifestyles are largely determined by parental upbringing, it is worthwhile to examine and discuss the specific weight-determining variables connected to parenting style and the nature of child rearing. This exploratory study tests for connecting relationships between children’s obesity level (measured by Body Mass Index) and the parents’ television viewing behavior/attitudes. Some of the viewing aspects examined in this study include the parents’ average amount time spent watching TV per day, their attitude toward advertisements targeting children, and their opinions about the parents’ role in regards to their children’s viewing behaviors. Additionally, the researcher examined the parents’ BMI to test for a connection between their weight and their children’s obesity level. Results showed that, in addition to BMI, the parents’ opinions regarding responsibilities for children’s TV viewing behaviors significantly influenced the obesity levels of their offspring.

Communicating a health epidemic: A risk assessment of the swine flu coverage in U.S. newspapers Nan Yu, North Dakota State University; Dennis Frohlich, North Dakota State University; Jared Fougner, North Dakota State University; Lezhao Ren, North Dakota State University • Media can contribute to the public assessment of a health risk and provide general knowledge of basic preventive methods (Allen, 2002; Dudo, Dhlstrom, & Brossard, 2007). The current study content analyzed the coverage of the 2009 swine flu in major U.S. newspapers to uncover: the general pattern of swine flu coverage in 2009, the presentation of health risk, and the depictions of self-efficacy-related information. The results of this study revealed that the risk of swine flu was frequently depicted with qualitative risk and thematic frames. About one third of the stories compared swine flu to a previous known health risk. Swine flu was less frequently portrayed as a deadly disease or a global risk compared to the previous coverage of avian flu. Social disorders more often appeared as consequences beyond health than economic losses and political disturbances. The depictions of the symptoms of swine flu and general preventive efforts appeared less frequently than the mentions of the H1N1 vaccination. However, newspapers expressed uncertainty about the effectiveness of the vaccination.

The Psychophysiology of Viewing HIV/AIDS PSAs: The Effects of Fear Appeals and Sexual Appeals Jueman Zhang, New York Institute of Technology; Makana Chock, Syracuse University • This study investigated the effects of fear and sexual appeals on psychophysiological responses to online HIV/AIDS PSAs. An experiment with a 2 (low vs. high fear appeals) by 2 (low vs. high sexual appeals) within-subject design was conducted (N = 77). Physiological and self-reported data consistently demonstrated that high sexual appeals triggered more attention and greater arousal than low sexual appeals. Self-reported data revealed that high fear appeals elicited more attention and greater arousal than low fear appeals, but physiological data didn’t support it. High fear appeals and high sexual appeals were perceived as more effective but they were not recalled better.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Community Journalism Interest Group 2010 Abstracts

Video Expectations for Non-Television Producers of Community News: Two Newspapers’ Online Video Strategies • George Daniels, University of Alabama • Since 2008, dozens of community newspapers have started producing their own videos for the Web. Many have re-designed their Web sites to make them more videocentric. This comparative case study found the online videos at The Alabaster Reporter and The Tuscaloosa News, both in central Alabama, were similar in their focus on community leaders yet different in their approach. The Alabaster Reporter implemented a YouTube strategy while The Tuscaloosa News used a franchise strategy.

Heart disease in the rural South: A content analysis of the community newspaper coverage • Tracy Loope, University of Florida • Because community newspapers are critical information sources among rural residents, their coverage of heart disease in the rural South was analyzed. Heart disease remains a severe health problem in the South where people are far more likely to die from heart disease than in other areas of the country. Using the Health Belief Model (HBM) to develop the newspaper analysis, this study illustrates the importance of community newspapers’ presentation of heart disease information. Results show that newspapers located in areas with high heart disease mortality rates were more likely to present heart disease as a severe threat to readers, showing these newspapers’ strong tie to their communities. Further research is required to better evaluate this relationship and find ways to use mass media, specifically community newspapers, to improve heart health among people living in rural areas.

The Public Sphere and Web-First Independent News Sites • Mark Poepsel, Missouri School of Journalism • Journalists with varying levels of experience have never-before-seen opportunities to create their own news sites. This ability presents some with an opportunity to create entrepreneurial ventures that could contribute to rational-critical discourse in the 21st Century. This study takes an in-depth, qualitative look at a several successful, locally-focused news sites through the eyes of the people publishing them in order to examine publishers’ goals and expectations, economic and journalistic.

Experiment and adapt: The mantra of survival for one startup Latino newspaper • Arthur Santana, University of Oregon • Eugene, Ore. has a history of failed Latino newspapers, but a new one is trying something new: adopting a bilingual format and embracing uplifting news. Motivated by a sense of civic duty, three immigrants launched the community newspaper in September 2009. But it has been a rocky start. This case study sheds lights on the deliberations and difficulty that go into the creation of a different kind of community newspaper.

After the Storm: Greensburg Residents Discuss an Open Source Project As a Source of Community News • Steve Smethers, Kansas State University • Greensburg was destroyed by an EF5 tornado in May 2007. The famed green sustainable rebuilding effort includes a multimedia telecommunications center, which will produce an open-source community information portal featuring audio, video and textual information round the clock. Prototypes of the portal were shown to focus groups to determine respondents’ propensity to use and contribute to the site. Subjects showed willingness to learn the technology, but worry about the site’s impact on the local newspaper.

Imagining Tibet Online: Discursive Constructions of Nation on Tibetan Website • Nangyal Tsering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • The paper studies www.phayul.com, the leading online portal of the Tibetan diasporic community, based in India. By looking at the news published on the site, the paper looks at how the website discursively constructs representations of nation online. Even though Tibet is not a nation-state, digital media’s critical role in the formation of an imagined community comes across very strongly, particularly in the case of displaced and geographically dispersed people such as the exiled Tibetans.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group 2010 Abstracts

Citizen Journalism and Cognitive Processing: An experiment on the perceived intent of traditional versus citizen journalism sources • Heather E Akin, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Melissa Tully, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Gerald Stoecklein, UW Madison; Hernando Rojas, University of Wisconsin-Madison • “Using a three-wave longitudinal design with an embedded web-based experiment, this study considers whether manipulating the source of a news report (citizen journalism versus traditional journalism) affects perceived thought-provoking motivations. Results show that respondents perceive a citizen journalism source as intending to be more thought provoking about food issues than a traditional news source. Moreover, previous levels of engagement suggest that those who are less engaged with an issue are the ones who are more likely to see a citizen journalism source as intending to make them think. Findings and implications for future research are discussed.”

Paper bridges: a critical examination of the Daily Dispatch’s Community Dialogues • Rod Amner, Rhodes University • “A South African commercial newspaper, the Daily Dispatch, last year facilitated a series of town-hall-like meetings called the Community Dialogues at a number of townships and suburbs in the city of East London. Drawing on theories of social capital as well as critiques of Habermas’s notion of the public sphere, this article examines the first two Community Dialogues, which took place in neighbouring locations – the middle class suburb of Beacon Bay and the informal African settlement of Nompumelelo – on consecutive days. It is critical of claims made by the newspaper that, following the precepts of public journalism, these Dialogues are effective in forming horizontal ‘connecting bridges’ within and between different geographical zones and heterogeneous social groups in the city. It also critiques the idea that the Dialogues currently provide a forum for public deliberation – and possible consensus formation – between these zones and social groups. Very little journalism has so far been produced under the banner of public journalism in South Africa and there is consequently little research on this topic in this country. This paper hopes to fill a gap in the research literature around the applicability and usefulness of the theories and practices of public journalism in the South African context and also hopes to address the gap in the global civic journalism research literature around the use of community forums in civic journalism.”

Empowering citizen journalists. A South African case study • Guy Berger, Rhodes University • “Seldom unpacked in the notion of “citizen journalism” is the convergence of “citizenship” and “journalism”. This paper examines Grocott’s Mail newspaper in South Africa, which is integrating youth participation through cellphones. This initiative operates with the assumptions that media participation in the form of specifically mobile “citizen journalism”, as distinct from broad User-Generated Content, needs explicit focus on the meanings of citizenship and journalism, and on the mindsets and skills that go with these.”

Gatekeeping and Citizen Journalism A Qualitative Examination of Participatory Newsgathering • Amani Channel, Student • “For nearly sixty years, scholars have studied how information is selected, vetted, and shared by news organizations. The process, known as gatekeeping, is an enduring mass communications theory that describes the process by which news is gathered and filtered to audiences. It has been suggested, however, that in the wake of online communications the traditional function of media gatekeeping is changing. The infusion of citizen-gathered media into news programming is resulting in what some call a paradigm shift. As mainstream news outlets adopt and encourage public participation, it is important that researchers have a greater understanding of the theoretical implications related to participatory media and gatekeeping. This study will be among the first to examine the adoption of citizen journalism by a major cable news network. It will focus on CNN’s citizen journalism online news community called iReport, which allows the public to share and submit “unfiltered” content. Vetted submissions that are deemed newsworthy can then be broadcasted across CNN’s networks, and published on CNN.com. This journalism practice appears to follow the thoughts of Nguyen (2006), who states that, “future journalists will need to be trained to not only become critical gate-keepers but also act as listeners, discussion and forum leaders/mediators in an intimate interaction with their audiences.” The goal of the paper is to lay a foundation for understanding how participatory media is utilized by a news network to help researchers possibly develop new models and hypotheses related to gatekeeping theory.”

Perceived Role Conceptions of Citizen and Professional Journalists: Citizens’ Views • Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky; Seungahn Nah, University of Kentucky • “This study aims to identify citizen journalists’ role conceptions regarding their journalistic news contributing activities and their perceptions regarding professional journalists’ role conceptions. Based on a national survey of 130 citizen journalists, four factors emerged for both citizen and professional journalists’ role conceptions: interpreter, adversary, facilitator and mobilizer. Perceptions of civic journalism values were also examined. Analyses reveal that citizen journalists perceive their roles to be generally similar to professional journalistic roles. Furthermore, respondents rated certain roles to be more prominent functions for citizen journalists. In particular, the citizen journalist role of facilitator was rated as significantly more important than those of the traditional press.”

Incremental versus Impressionistic: Seeking Credibility Differences in Online Political News • Daniel Doyle, Ohio University; Chen Lou, Ohio University; Hans Meyer, Ohio University • This study uses the research technique of online survey to gauge credibility perceptions in Internet political news during the 2008 U.S. presidential campaigns. Researchers experiment for effects in perceptions of credibility in a style of short and incremental professional news stories — a style which a popular press writer has dubbed the scooplet — and the diary-like impressionist style of long-form and somewhat informal unpaid citizen journalism. The study contains a review of online credibility research which establishes that user-generated content forges a stronger social connection between content consumer and content creator. This study tests a hypothesis that consumers of online political news perceive user-generated blog entries to be more credible than professionally-produced political news stories.

Alternative and Citizen Journalism: Mapping the Conceptual Differences • Farooq Kperogi, Georgia State University • “Although it is customary for some scholars to conflate citizen media and alternative media, I argue in this paper that they are different. In the new media literature, citizen journalism is conceptualized as online “news content produced by ordinary citizens with no formal journalism training.” Alternative journalism, on the other hand, is not merely non-professionalized and non-institutionalized journalism produced by ordinary citizens; it is also purposively counter-hegemonic and “closely wedded to notions of social responsibility, replacing an ideology of ‘objectivity’ with overt advocacy and oppositional practices.””

Can This Marriage Be Saved? The Love-Hate Relationship Between Traditional Media and Citizen Journalism • Jan Leach, Kent State University; Jeremy Gilbert, Northwestern University • “This paper examines the interplay between traditional newsrooms and non-traditional media in three different markets. It looks at how Fourth Estate journalists interact with Fifth Estate media practitioners and explains similarities and differences in how information is collected and presented online. Several examples of traditional media and new media relationships are identified. The study evaluates whether Fourth and Fifth Estate entities can co-exist and asks: What is the outlook for marriage, or at least a lasting relationship, between traditional media and new media?”

Explicating Conversational Journalism: An Experimental Test of Wiki, Twittered and Collaborative News Models • Doreen Marchionni, Pacific Lutheran • “The concept of journalism as a conversation has been richly explored in descriptive studies for decades. Largely missing from the literature, though, are clear operational definitions and empirical data that allow theory building for purposes of explanation and prediction. This controlled experiment sought to help close that gap by first measuring the concept of conversation, then testing it on key outcome measures of perceived credibility and expertise in three online contexts: Wikinews, “Twittered” news and Thorson and Duffy’s (2006) “collaborative” style of news. Findings suggest that conversational journalism is a powerful, multi-dimensional news phenomenon, but also nuanced and fickle. The conversational features of perceived similarity to a journalist and online interactivity are key, not only in distinguishing this type of news but in predicting its perceived credibility and expertise. Somewhat problematic is the conversational feature of informality, or casualness, with an audience. There, results suggest journalists can easily cross a line with readers to the detriment of trust.”

Hungry for News: How Celiac sufferers learn from media, each other • Mitch McKenney, Kent State University • “Celiac Disease, an inherited autoimmune disorder that chronically disrupts the digestive system, leads to health problems unless the sufferer avoids gluten-containing foods. As awareness of the condition has grown, so have the options for Celiacs to connect. This paper examines the online interaction and sharing of news/information among members of the Celiac “community,” using interviews with those dealing in that information, to explore the resources they turn to for news and support.”

Bloggers’ Demographics, Blogging Activities, and Identity Disclosure • nohil park, Missouri University; JiYeon Jeong, Missouri School of Journalism; Clyde Bentley, Missouri School of Journalism • “Despite the critical role that the identity of blog authors plays in making blogs credible information sources, few studies have suggested empirical mechanisms that lead to bloggers’ identity self-disclosure. This study aims to examine whether bloggers’ demographics and blogging activities (blog use, interactivity, and popularity) have influence on identity disclosure. Results from the analysis of an online survey of 906 Korean bloggers reveal that male and older bloggers who have professional jobs (journalist, lawyer, professor, etc.) are more likely to identify themselves on their blogs rather than others. Moreover, bloggers who have high levels of blog interactivities (commenting, linking trackbacks) are more likely to reveal their identity. However, the time of general blog use and number of visitors to blogs are not any association with bloggers’ identity disclosure. This study suggests that bloggers do not hide nor express their identity according to the stay and popularity in the blogosphere, but they disclose their identity depending on their individual differences and interactivities with their blogging partners.”

What’s in a (Missing) Name? Newspaper Online Forum Participants Sound Off about Civility and Anonymity • Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College” • “A survey of participants in online comment forums associated with traditional newspapers indicated that while they dislike the rude nature of the commentary made there, and consider anonymity a proximate cause of that behavior, they still are supportive of keeping the forums anonymous. However, differences in support for anonymity were found on the basis of frequency of participation and on degree of aversion to the negativity. This reflects the same mixed results found in the general literature on anonymous computer-mediated communication, which documents how anonymity’s benefits to participation and open expression are balanced off against the lack of accountability that leads to flaming.”

Blogging the Meltdown: Comparing the Coverage of the Economic Crisis in Journalistic Blogs vs. Non-Journalistic Blogs • Hong Ji, The Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism; Michael Sheehy, University of Cincinnati • “This content analysis examines coverage of the U.S. economic crisis of 2008-2009 by 25 economics blogs. The study sought to identify differences in the coverage by bloggers identified as journalists and non-journalists. The study found that journalist bloggers and non-journalist bloggers focused on different dominant topics in their blog posts, indicating different perspectives in the framing of coverage. The study also found differences in the way that journalist and non-journalist bloggers cited sources and hyperlinks.”

Reconsidering citizen journalism- An historical analysis • Justin Walden, Pennsylvania State University • “The rise of Web 2.0 publishing platforms has understandably had a dramatic impact on a number of different communication processes and fields in recent years. One area that has been profoundly influenced by the newfound ability for “regular” Internet users to self publish is citizen journalism. This theoretical paper examines current and historical perspectives on the citizen journalism movement, giving particular heed to a review of how recent Internet technologies have given amateur reporters far more reach and influence. This graduate-student produced article traces how today’s political bloggers and videographers are countering some centuries-old journalism practices and rechanneling the activism that guided Thomas Paine and other American Revolutionaries. This paper concludes that citizen journalism today is poised to follow a similar historical trajectory of legacy media from the 18th century. This article also argues that academic scholarship needs to shed further light on this trajectory and the seemingly inevitable standardization that will occur with citizen journalism newsgathering practices and presentation styles.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Magazine Division 2010 Abstracts

Esquire’s Man the Kitchenette: Representations of Men, Masculinity & Cooking • Elizabeth Fakazis, University Wisconsin Stevens Point • This paper examines representations of masculinity and domestic cooking in Esquire’s Man the Kitchenette, a cooking column for men published in the 1940s.  Using qualitative content analysis, I examine how these representations recoded an interest in food and domestic cooking  (as well as other traditionally feminine interests) as appropriately masculine, nurturing the development of the positive image of the male consumer, and paving the way for the emergence of future men’s lifestyle and culinary magazines.

Visual Framing of Patriotism and National Identity on the Covers of Der Spiegel • Andrea Pyka, San Jose State University; Scott Fosdick, San Jose State University • Patriotism in Germany has been a controversial issue since the Nazi era. A content analysis revealed that despite the fear and hesitations surrounding the idea of German pride, Der Spiegel, one of Germany’s national newsmagazines, showed an increasing visual presence of patriotic and national identity symbols on its covers following key historical events: the building of the Berlin Wall, the reunification of Germany, the adoption of the Euro, and the 2006 World Cup.

Photographic Images of Gender and Race Portrayed in Sports Illustrated Kids, 2000-2009 • Ashley Furrow, Ohio University • This study examines photographic images in a popular children’s sport magazine called Sports Illustrated Kids for gender and racial differences in the way the athletes are visually portrayed. Gender and/or racial messages in photographs may have a profound impact on children because children understand meanings in pictures before they understand meanings in text.  Since Sports Illustrated Kids caters to young, impressionable readers who are especially vulnerable to the power of photographs, it is important to study the photographic images of gender and race found in its pages.  Content analysis of editorial photographs during a 10-year period reveals that the gender inequality gap in the magazine is more skewed during its second 10 years than it was during the first 10 years of its publication.  As for a racial difference, African American and White athletes have equal coverage, but Asian and Hispanic athletes are still fighting for representation in the magazine. Overall, female athletes remain underrepresented in all editorial photographs and framed more often than men in inferior ways.

Hype Artists, Con Men, Pimps and Dopesters: The Personal Journalism of Harry Crews • Ted Geltner, Valdosta State University • During the 1970s and ’80s, novelist Harry Crews was a prolific contributor of non-fiction articles for Playboy, Esquire and a number of other publications. His work places him among the writers who defined the genre of literary journalism during this era. This study examines the content, style and innovations associated with Crews’ journalism and the author’s attitude and approach toward his craft.

Madame’s Most Excellent Adventures: US News Magazines Coverage of the 1943 and 1948 Visits to the United States by Madame Chiang Kai-shek • Daniel Haygood, Elon University • Henry Luce, a promoter of Chinese General Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist party during World War II, is accused of using Madame Chiang as part of his strategy to generate support among Americans for the Chinese. This paper reviews US news magazines’ coverage of Madame Chiang’s two trips to America in 1943 and 1948 to raise American support for China. The analysis demonstrates that Time had a more complex framing of Madame Chiang than other news magazines.

Psychological and sociological motives for fashion magazine use among Shanghai’s female college students • Zhengjia Liu, Iowa State University • This study investigates the impact of psychological and sociological motives on the use of fashion magazines among female college students in Shanghai. An online survey was conducted. Three psychological motives were found to be significant predictors of fashion magazine use. The sociological motives did not significantly influence fashion magazine use. The findings suggest that sociological motives may not directly affect media use, but are nonetheless related to psychological motivations that predict media consumption.

The Growth of International Women’s Magazine and Media Portrayal of Women in China • jingyi luo, southern illinois university • Along with the process of globalization is the growth of global media. With the wave of global economy and the spread of transnational companies, the world’s biggest global publishing groups have increasingly extended their reach into China, especially the Western publishing groups. Besides, Japanese publishing giants also enter China, including Shufunotom Publishing Group, Kodansha Publishing Group, and Shogakukan Publishing Group. Nowadays, the women’s magazine industry in China is mainly constructed of three styles of magazines: Western-style magazines, Japanese-style magazines and Chinese local magazines. Women’s magazines deliver media content through a face— the cover. Covers are advertisements of women’s magazines to attract readers. Covers are, at the same time, a media genre, which is subject to social changes and indicates social and cultural changes in a society. Through a content analysis on media portrayal of women on the covers of major magazines in China, it was found that the Western-style women’s magazine constructed its international image through characteristic global title, Caucasian models and a large proportion of celebrity stories; while the Japanese-style women’s magazine tended to portray women as young and fashion to attract readers and advertisers. Facing the competition from international media, it is found that the local women’s magazine chose to adjust their style and content but in a similar genre with the international women’s magazine. However, whether hybridity or mix was a wise strategy for their growth and how the Chinese local women’s magazine industry will prosper is pressing problem for the Chinese local women’s magazines.

Gourmet Magazine’s Depiction of the American Gourmet: A longitudinal content analysis, 1945-2008 • Lanier Norville, The University of Alabama; Jennifer Greer, University of Alabama • A longitudinal content analysis of Gourmet over its 68-year lifespan indicated that, both through topics covered and writing approaches used, the magazine largely defined the American gourmet experience as an elitist pursuit. However, the founding principle of Gourmet – making the gourmet lifestyle more accessible to the average American – was a strong sub-theme throughout the magazine’s history. Accessible topics were covered throughout, and articles were written with both elitist and accessible approaches.

The Magazine Industry 2000 to 2010 • David E. Sumner, Ball State University • Stories about the print media since 2000 have reported on closings of well-known newspapers and steadily declining circulations of others. The general public assumes that magazines have shared in the same fate. While magazines have struggled to remain profitable and some have folded, the general health of the industry remains greater than that of newspapers. The purpose of this paper is to provide a status report of the economic state of magazines between 2000 and 2010.  It reports data on magazine startups and closings, circulation trends, and revenue trends. This research uses latest available data from trade and proprietary sources not available online or to the general public.  The results note that the number of new magazines launched exceeded the number of magazines that closed or folded between 2007 and 2009. The circulation of 50 leading consumer magazines declined by six percent between 2000 and 2009.  However, 32 gained in circulation while 18 lost circulation during those years. Total magazine revenue grew 1.1 percent annually between 2000 and 2008, and then declined 5.4 percent between 2008 and 2009. The outlook for 2010 remains cautiously optimistic with some sectors and companies reporting revenue increases.  The report concludes that some magazines will have to adapt, restructure or downsize.  More may close. But print magazines will likely remain viable for generations to come. The portability, affordability and accessibility of print magazines cannot be replaced by digital mobile devices.

Seeing is Believing: Using Eye Tracking to Examine the Media’s Influence on Disordered Eating Risk • Steven Thomsen, Brigham Young University; Hannah Gibby, Brigham Young University; Joseph Eldridge, Brigham Young University • The goal of this study was to test the robustness of magazine affinity as both a direct and indirect causal antecedent to measures of eating disorder risk and empirically observable pupillary reactions (eye movement and fixation density patterns) to ultra-thin body images through a structural equation model. Data were collected from 109 college-age women whose eyes were tracked while they viewed images of ultra-thin body parts taken from popular women’s magazines. The women also completed a survey instrument to assess magazine reading habits, internalization of the thin ideal, eating disorder risk, and an inclination to make social comparisons. Findings indicate that magazine affinity, not reading frequency, is the best predictor (both directly and indirectly) of eating disorder risk and visual response to ultra-thin images.

What Black Women Need to Know? Breast Cancer Coverage in African-American Magazines • Kim Walsh-Childers, University of Florida; Heather Edwards, SAIC-Frederick • This paper describes an analysis of breast cancer articles from Essence, Ebony and O, the Oprah Magazine. Of 55 articles about breast cancer published during the 6-year period, only three mentioned age as the most important risk factor for breast cancer. The articles were four times as likely to mention family history of breast cancer as a risk factor, and only 40% of articles mentioning the need for regular mammograms were coded as fully accurate.

The Consumer-Citizen: Life Magazine’s Construction of the Ideal American • Sheila Webb, Western Washington University • This paper examines the first decade of Life and places it in the current debates on citizenship and consumption. As a new definition of citizen developed that related active consumption to participation in democracy, Life visualized this change by tying consumption to the American way of life. Selected photo-essays show how the editors shaped middle class culture through consumption scenarios that informed their audience of taste standards. Methodology: archival research, textual analysis, content analysis.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Law & Policy Division 2010 Abstracts

The Associated Press as Common Carrier? • Stephen Bates, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • From the late 1860s until Associated Press v. United States (1945), critics contended that the AP ought to be regulated as a common carrier or public utility. This paper analyzes the common-carrier concept as advocates (and sometimes legislators and judges) have applied it to the AP and other media, including Jerome Barron’s arguments for a right of access. It also discusses the doctrine that the government can sometimes regulate the press in order to advance First Amendment interests.

Disciplining the British Tabloids: Mosley v. News Group Newspapers • Stephen Bates, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • In 2008, Max Mosley, the head of Formula One racing, won an invasion-of-privacy suit against News of the World. The tabloid had published articles, including hidden-camera photos, charging that Mosley had participated in a Nazi-themed S&M orgy with five prostitutes. This paper criticizes the Mosley ruling. Among other flaws, the ruling reflects a crabbed and elitist view of the press, and it diminishes the role of the media in articulating and enforcing public morality.

Conceptualizing the Right to Environmental Information in Human Rights Law • Cheryl Ann Bishop, Quinnipiac University • During the last two decades, there has been increasing understanding that access to environmental information is a key to sustainable development and effective public participation in environmental governance.  This research identifies and explicates the human right to environmental information by analyzing documents and legal rulings from the Inter-American, European, African and UN human rights regimes. It finds that the right to environmental information has broad support; nonetheless, the articulations of this right are not always consistent.

The Constitutional Right-to-information on the Individual Level • Kathryn Blevins, The Pennsylvania State University • The constitutional right to government-held information is a muddled legal right, especially in light of government abuses of the Freedom of Information Act in the past decade. This paper provides an overview of the First Amendment jurisprudence regarding an individual’s right to government-held information before ultimately arguing that perhaps the right to information should be conceptualized as a constitutional rather than statutory right in light of strong Supreme Court support.

Every Picture Tells A Story, Don’t It? Wrestling With The Complex Relationship Among Photographs, Words & Newsworthiness In Journalistic Storytelling • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • Using the 2009 opinion by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Toffoloni v. LFP Publishing Group (and the Supreme Court’s March 2010 denial of a petition for a writ of certiorari) as an analytical springboard, this paper focuses on the complex relationship in journalistic storytelling among images, text and newsworthiness and the implications of it for press freedom.  The paper pivots on a key research question: If pictures are crucial to journalistic storytelling, from news to entertainment, then why should judges be able to usurp from the press the First Amendment-protected role of editor and place themselves in the position of arbiter of what counts more in storytelling – words or images – when ruling on a story’s newsworthiness?

Free Speech, Fleeting Expletives & the Causation Quagmire:  Was Justice Scalia Wrong In Fox Television Stations? • Clay Calvert, University of Florida; Matthew Bunker, University of Alabama • This paper analyzes the U.S. Supreme Court’s approach in 2009 in FCC v. Fox Television Stations to the issue of harm to minors allegedly caused by fleeting expletives.  Dissecting Justice Antonin Scalia’s language in the case on causation of harm, the paper examines the quantum of evidentiary proof needed by a federal agency to demonstrate causation sufficient to justify restricting the speech in question.  The paper suggests how Scalia’s analysis begs the law for an infusion of research from social science fields, including communication.  It also contextualizes the causation issue within a broader framework, illustrating how Scalia’s remarks demonstrate doctrinal inconsistency and judicial incoherence on speech-related questions of both causation and redress of harm in areas of law other than indecency, namely with laws targeting video games, commercial speech and trademark.

One Click to Suicide: First Amendment Case Law and its Applicability to Cyberspace • Christina Cerutti, Boston College • Websites counseling dangerous activity such as suicide represent uncharted legal territory.  To date, most legal scholarship regarding these sites considers whether they incite imminent lawless action.  As an alternative to incitement, this paper argues that these websites are more productively characterized as instruction manuals that aid and abet unlawful activity.  In support of this approach, this paper proposes a three-tiered legal test for distinguishing between protected and unprotected instruction manuals under the First Amendment.
Charting The Right to Publish and the Right to Privacy: Reconciling Conflicts Between Freedom of

Expression and the Disclosure of Private Facts • Erin Coyle, Louisiana State University • Legal scholars have suggested the Supreme Court’s narrow, fact-tied rulings have favored free expression and provided little clarity on privacy rights.  Little is known, however, about whether lower courts have discussed any free expression values or privacy values when ruling on disclosure of private facts claims since 1989. This paper examines if and how state high court and federal appellate court decisions filed after the U.S. Supreme Court’s Florida Star v. B.J.F. ruling have analyzed clashes between free expression and privacy arising in disclosure of private facts cases. During the past twenty years, four states’ high courts have clarified for the first time that the common law of their respective states does recognize invasion of privacy by the disclosure of private facts in the past twenty years.  On the other hand, during the 1990s, two states’ high courts suggested their states’ common law did not recognize the disclosure branch of invasion of privacy.  The courts in those six states reached different conclusions about the constitutionality of the tort.  Most state supreme and federal appellate courts that have considered disclosure cases since 1989, however, have not discussed the constitutionality of the tort.  Almost half the relevant rulings focused on the failure of disclosure of private facts plaintiffs to demonstrate that defendants gave widespread publicity to matters not of legitimate public concern. Few courts suggested that they attempted to reconcile conflicts between freedom of expression and privacy, or even acknowledged the tension between First Amendment interests and privacy interests that Justice Marshall mentioned in Florida Star. In one sense, courts followed the U.S. Supreme Court’s practice of relying on principles that sweep no more broadly than the appropriate context of the case. Most state high courts and federal courts of appeals did not balance free expression and privacy interests. Several rulings referred to at least one individual value undergirding privacy law—most commonly the liberty value— and the marketplace of ideas, self-governance, and checking values for freedom of expression.  Some suggested the free expression interests outweighed the privacy interests at issue, but only gave lip service to the traditional concept of balancing competing interests. Most of those rulings engaged in definitional balancing, suggesting that publishing information on a matter of public interest automatically outweighed any privacy interests at stake.

Avoiding the Prisoners’ Dilemma: Economic Development and State Sunshine Laws • Aimee Edmondson, Ohio University; Charles Davis, University of Missouri • This paper looks at the nexus of freedom of information and local and state governments’ economic development negotiations with private business, reviewing all 50 state codes to determine whether officials are free to negotiate and woo private business behind closed doors in the name of job growth for their communities. There has been a push to bring unprecedented secrecy to the process in a state-eat-state battle for jobs with private business insisting upon millions in tax breaks and other incentives. A tire factory or even a private prison could pop up next door and community members may not know about it until after the deal is signed. At least 15 states exempt such negotiations in their sunshine laws. Even more troubling, at least 11 states are hiding those exemptions outside the sunshine law, in the codes that govern economic development agencies themselves. Courts have responded to such secrecy in a mixed manner, ruling that quasi-governmental, nonprofit and private economic development agencies working on behalf of the government are often subject to state sunshine laws. However, in some states, courts have deferred to state statues mandating closure. This paper also offers recommendations for legislative and other types of public policy change to insure transparency in such negotiations.

Motivations for Anonymous Speech: A Legal Realist Perspective • Victoria Ekstrand, Bowling Green State University • This paper is interested in the role courts are playing in assisting plaintiffs who want to sue anonymous online speakers. Specifically, it is interested in how courts are interpreting and defining the cultural value of anonymous speech, particularly in online environments. Using a legal realist approach and an interdisciplinary study of the literature in literature studies, communication, history and political science, this paper looks to address why we seek the mask of anonymity in our speech and identify the beneficial and/or harmful motivations for speaking anonymously. It then looks at two recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions on anonymous speech to address whether the law reflects those cultures and traditions of anonymous speech. It concludes that while some motivations for anonymity have been addressed by the U.S Supreme Court, some of the key motivations for anonymous speech online – such as fun and spontaneity – are not central to the Court’s discussions.

Assessing the Need for More Incentives to Stimulate Next Generation Network Investment • Rob Frieden, Penn State University • Incumbent carriers often vilify the regulatory process as a drain on efficiency and an unnecessary burden in light of robust marketplace competition.  Some claim that regulation creates disincentives for investing in expensive next generation networks (NGNs), and even accepting subsidies for broadband development if the carrier must provide access to competitors. In the worst case scenario, incumbent carriers secure unwarranted and premature deregulation, despite an ongoing need for governments to guard against anticompetitive practices and to promote sustainable competition.   Once a subsidy mechanism is in place, government may not easily wean carriers off such artificial compensation.  In rare instances government may find some key carriers unwilling to accept subsidies and in turn disinclined to pursue expedited NGN development, as is currently occurring in the U.S., because incumbent carriers do not want to provide interconnection and access to competitors.This paper will examine how incumbent carriers in the United States have gamed the incentive creation process for maximum market distortion and competitive advantage.  The paper suggests that the U.S. government has rewarded incumbents with artificially lower risk, insulation from competition, and partial underwriting of technology projects that these carriers would have to undertake unilaterally.   The paper also examines the FCC’s recently released National Broadband Plan with an eye toward assessing whether the Commission has properly balanced incentive creation with competitive necessity.  The paper provides recommendations on how governments can calibrate the incentive creation process for maximum consumer benefit instead of individual carrier gain.

Network Neutrality and Over the Top Content Providers • Rob Frieden, Penn State University This paper considers whether the Federal Communications Commission has legal authority to impose so-called network neutrality rules on producers of content, applications and software delivered to users via the Internet.  The paper asserts that the FCC lacks jurisdiction and cannot generate compelling policy justifications to expand its regulatory wingspan to include content providers whose products ride on top of a bitstream offered by Internet Service Providers.  The paper provides insights on the line between lawful and reasonable Internet nondiscrimination and transparency requirements and unlawful intrusion of content providers’ First Amendment rights.  The paper also provides an assessment of whether governments must regulate or adjudicate network neutrality conflicts related to content as opposed to access via the Internet to content.

Fairey v. AP: Is the Obama Hope Poster a Fair Use or a Copyright Infringement? • Laura Hlavach, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • About Jan. 30, 2009, The Associated Press learned that a 2006 Barack Obama photo taken by an AP photographer was the visual reference artist Shepard Fairey used to develop his iconic Obama Hope posters. Fairey found the photo on Google and did not seek any license to use the image. Fairey considered his use fair under U.S. copyright law; The AP did not. Their legal battle continues. What would U.S. Supreme Court precedent hold?

When Does F*** Not Mean F***?:  FCC v. Fox Television Stations and Protecting Emotive Speech W. Wat Hopkins, Virginia Tech • The Supreme Court of the United States demonstrated in its current term that it doesn’t always deal cogently with non-traditional language.  In FCC v. Fox Television Stations, the justices became sidetracked into attempting to define the f-word and then to determine whether, when used as a fleeting expletive rather than repeatedly, the word is indecent for broadcast purposes.  The Court would do well to avoid definitions and heed Justice John Marshall Harlan’s advice in Cohen v. California to provide protection for the emotive, as well as the cognitive, element of speech.

The Attack Memorandum and the First Amendment: Adjudicating an Activist Role for Business in the Marketplace of Ideas • Robert Kerr, University of Oklahoma • Decades after leaving the Supreme Court, Justice Lewis F. Powell, Jr., remains as well known for a once secret memorandum as for many influential opinions. This analysis of his jurisprudence in relation to his memorandum on advancing business interests in the marketplace of ideas suggests that although he indisputably did so in First Amendment law, he also strove more than popularly believed to maintain limits on those protections in order to preserve other societal interests.

The impact of competition on universal service in Korea: A case study • Sung Wook Kim, Seoul Women’s University; Krishna Jayakar, Penn State University • A substantial body of theoretical and case study literature exists about the relationship between competition and universal service in developing countries. On the one hand, many scholars have argued that state-owned monopolies in developing countries are not able to mobilize the capital needed for network expansion: the resulting unmet demand for services becomes a motivator for liberalization. On the other hand, the introduction of competition jeopardizes the internal and external subsidies through which the state-owned monopoly kept subscription rates low: the heightened concern about loss of subscribership incentivizes the creation of explicit universal service statutes and funding mechanisms concurrently with or soon after competition is introduced. We show in this case study that universal service in Korea had a unique evolutionary path, which did not conform to either of these expectations. We argue that the outcomes predicted by theory and observed in the case study literature are not intrinsic to the monopoly condition per se, but derive from the strategic choices made by telecommunications managers, regulators and lawmakers in developing countries.

Show Me the Money: The Economics of Copyright in Online News • Minjeong Kim, Colorado State University This paper examines copyright in online news through an economic perspective of copyright law. The paper asks: To what extent are news publishers entitled to reap any economic benefits from the online distribution of news? In its analysis, this paper distinguishes between different types of news uses and relies upon the following three branches of law: (1) the fair use doctrine, (2) the hot news doctrine, and (3) laws related to the retransmission of copyrighted programs by cable television.

When Even the Truth Isn’t Good Enough: Confusion by the Courts Over the Controversial False Light Tort Threatens Free Speech • Sandra Chance, University of Florida; Christina Locke, University of Florida • Journalists are taught that truthful reporting is the best defense to a lawsuit.  However, Florida journalists who reported the truth lost an $18-million false light lawsuit.  The verdict was ultimately overturned by the Florida Supreme Court, but within two months, a Missouri court specifically recognized the tort in a case involving the Internet.  Using recent appellate cases, this paper examines the potential for false light to stifle the media, especially when truthful news is targeted.

Balancing Statutory Privacy and the Public interest: A Review of State Wiretap Laws as Applied to the Press • Jasmine McNealy, Louisiana State University • Press organizations have been accused of violating state wiretapping and eavesdropping laws most often in situations involving hidden cameras or microphones.  In these investigations, the news media have turned up truthful information regarding illegal or unethical activities that the press finds newsworthy and the public finds interesting.  Ethics aside, the courts have not always granted First Amendment protection to hidden camera and other surreptitious surveillance investigations by the press.  This article reviews state wiretap laws as they have been applied to the press.  Specifically, this article examines the application of state wiretap laws to the press in light of the Supreme Court’s decision in Bartnicki v. Vopper in which the Court found that the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of speech outweighed the privacy interests of those whose private conversation was intercepted without permission.

Plaintiff’s Status as a Consideration in Misrepresentation and Promissory Estoppel Cases against the Media • Jasmine McNealy, Louisiana State University • Both fraudulent misrepresentation and promissory estoppel require that the plaintiff have reasonably relied upon statements made by the defendant. But what of an additional inquiry into the status of the plaintiff in relation to the journalist in these cases, as a consideration for whether the plaintiff could have reasonably relied upon statements made by the journalist?   Such a consideration could significantly change the jurisprudence surrounding cases involving false statements made by journalists. This paper examines the influence that the status of the plaintiff in misrepresentation and promissory estoppel cases against journalist could have.

Obscenity is in the Eye of the Beholder:  Use of Demonstrative Evidence to Delineate Community Standards in Obscenity Cases • Rebecca Ortiz, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Courts have long struggled with the requirement that materials in obscenity cases must be measured against contemporary community standards from the perspective of an average person as determined in Miller v. California. The U.S. Supreme Court failed to provide a specific definition or geographic dimensions of community standards for fact finders to consider. Determining whether something is obscene based upon such a requirement is particularly difficult at the federal level where the community may be defined as the entire nation. Pornographers may, therefore, be uninformed about whether their materials are obscene, namely because the specific community in which a court may find their materials exist and relevant standards are left undefined. Use of demonstrative evidence in obscenity cases may be a crucial tactic for counsel to demonstrate the standards of a particular community, but courts are typically tentative about admitting such evidence. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the use of demonstrative evidence in recent obscenity cases for establishing contemporary community standards and examine court rationales for admission or exclusion of evidence. The paper reveals that courts’ acceptance or rejection of demonstrative evidence was unpredictable. Courts were more likely to exclude evidence than admit it for wavering rationales. Findings reveal that by disallowing admission of evidence, the courts may be shifting the burden of proof onto the defense and creating a chilling effect on sexual expression.

Public Access to Criminal Discovery Records: A Look Behind the Curtain of the Criminal Justice System • Brian Pafundi, University of Florida Levin College of Law • This research provides a survey of federal and state law regarding access to criminal discovery records. The public availability of criminal discovery records implicates three important pillars of American jurisprudence: public access to the judiciary, a defendant’s right to a fair trial and the protection of individual privacy. Florida’s public records law opens discovery records to public inspection once exchanged between the opposing parties. This paper determines whether any other jurisdiction grants similar access.

Internet Service Provider’s Liability for Defamation: South Korea’s Balancing of Free Speech with Reputation • Ahran Park, university of Oregon • ISPs in the United States have been totally immunized from publishers’ liability for online defamation under the Communications Decency Act § 230. But as the recent Google lawsuit in Italy illustrates, American ISPs are confronting the threat of defamation lawsuits abroad. Therefore, more understanding of ISP policy in foreign countries is necessary, and South Korea provides a noteworthy example of ISP jurisprudence exactly contrary to the U.S. immunity. Statutory laws and courts in South Korea have burdened ISPs with heavy liability for defamation by online users. For instance, the Communication Network Act in Korea punishes online defamation as a crime and compels ISPs to delete allegedly libelous postings promptly. The Korean Supreme Court also held that ISPs should be liable for defamation by third party even when ISPs did not receive any notification related to defamatory postings. This paper discusses ISP liability in the comparative law perspective and maintains that burdening ISPs with strict liability would chill freedom of speech in cyberspace.

Libelous Language Post-Lawrence: Accusations of Homosexuality as Defamation • Laurie Phillips, UNC • Just as imputations of race or political affiliation were once defamatory, judges – both within and between states – are returning competing rulings concerning imputations of homosexuality. Functioning as a post-Lawrence v. Texas update to Koehler’s (1999) The Variable Nature of Defamation, this paper examines cases between 2004 and 2009 involving imputations of homosexuality. Findings indicate that in 88% of the forty two cases analyzed, defamatory claims failed, yet most judges neglected to directly address the issue.

Gay Labeling and Defamation Law:  Have Attitudes Toward Homosexuality Changed Enough to Modify Reputational Torts? • Robert Richards, Penn State University • This paper analyzes the issue of whether labeling someone gay should still be considered defamatory per se.  It traces the history of, what one court called, this far more subtle and difficult question and examines societal attitudes towards homosexuality.  The paper concludes that society has not yet reached the point where homosexuality is no longer viewed, by significant populations, with some level of scorn or ridicule, given such recent events as individuals being physically attacked merely because they are perceived to be homosexual, organizations whose sole purpose is to defeat the rights of same-sex couples to marry, public schools where gay and lesbians can sense the scorn of their fellow students by reading messages on t-shirts, and religions whose members would rather defect than accept homosexual congregants.

The convergence policymaking process in South Korea • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University • In 2009, South Korean government reformed its communications sector through legislation that addresses convergence services. This study traces the policy-making process of the convergence in terms of politics and regulation, and it also examines how the stakeholders’ interests are aligned and coordinated in the policymaking process of convergence in Korea. This study investigates the socio-political construction of Korea’s strategy for convergence reform with two research questions: (1) what social and political factors influence strategy formulation and (2) how do different interests stabilize ideologies in which actors formulate their strategies based on their interests. Despite the dynamic interactions, the actor-network around convergence has yet not been effectively stabilized, as the politics of convergence is complex and marked by paradoxical features. This study provides a theoretical basis for understanding why the convergence debate in Korea has so far been problematic.

A Web of Stakeholders and Strategies in the Digital TV Transition: • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University • This study investigates the development of Korean digital TV transition by tracing the interaction between social and technological entities from various perspectives at different developmental stages. A socio-technical analysis examines the dynamic interactions among the stakeholders in the switchover to digital broadcasting, showing how the various actions taken by leading stakeholders affect diverse groups of stakeholders. In addition to the qualitative analysis, a structural-equation model examines the perceptions and expectations of digital TV consumers in Korea. Consumers’ perspectives and expectations suggest the factors that will lead them to adopt DTV, as well as the barriers to adoption. The overall findings show that Korean digital TV transition is the outcome of a proactive strategy by industry players and the Korean government’s top-down policy of supporting such a transition. It is argued that the policy of a top-down transition, which overlooks coordination among stakeholders, harms consumers and hinders effective and sustainable development. The case of Korea has implications for other countries that are pursuing digital transition strategies.

The Framers’ First Amendment: Originalist Citations in U.S. Supreme Court Freedom of Expression Opinions • Derigan Silver, University of Denver • As a mode of constitutional interpretation, originalism holds judges should construe the U.S. Constitution according to framers’ intent.  Focusing on rational choice theory, this paper examines the strategic use of originalist citations by Supreme Court justices in First Amendment freedom of expression opinions.  The paper quantitatively examines when justices use originalist citations to strategically advance their policy preferences, insulate their decisions from criticism or persuade other justices to join their opinions.  In addition, it qualitatively explores the content of the justices’ originalist citations to determine how the justices are describing the original meaning of the First Amendment.  Thus, the paper adds to the strategic citation literature, advances understanding of how the justices have interpreted the original meaning of the First Amendment and illuminates how originalist arguments have shaped current free expression jurisprudence.

Evaluating Public Access Ombuds Programs:  An analysis of the experiences of Virginia, Iowa and Arizona • Daxton Stewart, Texas Christian University • The author conducted case studies of ombuds programs monitoring open government laws in Virginia, Iowa and Arizona.  The offices largely comported with the major tenets of ombuds programs – independence, impartiality, and providing a credible review process – but weaknesses in perceptions of impartiality hurt the development of the Iowa and Arizona programs.  The program with the most perceived success, Virginia’s FOI Advisory Council, appeared to embrace the tenets of Dispute Systems Design the most.

Mother knows best: Can lessons from the Ma Bell breakup apply to net neutrality policy? • Tom Vizcarrondo, Louisiana State University • The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on October 22, 2009 seeking input from the public regarding network management policy commonly known as net neutrality. The request is the latest step in an ongoing and protracted debate among lawmakers, regulators, Internet industry leaders, and consumers over whether additional regulation is required to ensure that the Internet remains free and open. The different views are almost always defended as being in the best interest of the consumer, although individual motives and benefits often belie such statements. This paper examines many of these arguments, but also focuses on the network management debate within the context of an existing legal framework of court opinions. This paper examines many of these arguments, but also focuses on the network management debate within the context of an existing legal framework of court opinions. In particular, the court-ordered divestiture of AT&T shares many of the issues which are being considered today as part of the net neutrality debate. This paper examines whether lessons learned from this divestiture can be applied to the current debate in order to reach the best possible outcome. This paper finds such lessons, and concludes that these lessons argue for an incremental approach to any new network management policy; further, policies that encourage competition and private sector solutions is desirable over sweeping government regulations.

Implications of Copyright in the Context of User-Generated Content and Social Media • Amber Westcott-Baker, University of California Santa Barbara; Rebekah Pure, University of California Santa Barbara • Business models for generating revenue from user-generated content (UGC) are still developing.  In the meantime, many tensions exist between the business interests of companies providing the platforms for user-generated content and the interests of content producers (users). This paper will outline the conflicting interests—users want to create and share content in a way that they control, while companies want to make money and be protected from liability—and the resulting copyright and ownership issues that arise from these tensions.

Obama Administration Lifts the Dover Ban: Is the New Policy on Press Access Constitutional? Jason Zenor, University of South Dakota • A corollary of the right to publish must be a right to gather news.  However, in times of war, one of the first rights to be abrogated is the freedom of the press. One of the wartime restrictions has been the Dover Ban, a policy which has restricted press access to arrival ceremonies for fallen soldiers of war. The Dover Ban has been criticized by the press and by veterans, and challenged in court-but was never overturned. In February 2009, the Obama Administration changed the policy so that the press could have access if they received permission from the family of the fallen soldier. Though this change is progress for the free flow of information and is clearly less violative of the Constitution than was the prior outright ban, this article argues that it is still unconstitutional. First, the Dover arrival ceremonies have been traditionally open to public and the press and the history of Dover Ban’s creation and enforcement illustrate that it is a content-based regulation. Therefore, the restriction must survive the strict scrutiny test. Accordingly, neither the government’s public relations interest nor the privacy interest of the family of a volunteer soldier, are compelling.  Furthermore, the new policy is a de facto license where the family acting as a surrogate for the government decides the whether the press has access based upon whether the family perceives the content of the coverage will be acceptable. Finally, the policy is not permanent and an outright could be reinstated.

<< 2010 Abstracts

International Communication Division 2010 Abstracts

Bob Stevenson Open Paper Competition
Presidential Candidate Preference Based on Issue Salience and Homophily: A Cross-Cultural Analysis • Iti Agnihotri, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; William Davie, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Lucian Dinu, University of Louisiana at Lafayette; Philip Auter, University of Louisiana at Lafayette • The 2008 U.S. presidential election was significant to the extent in which international issues came to the fore and two major candidates contrasted culturally with each other. An international survey of 249 students from the Middle East and the United States compared the effects of issue competency and homophily toward the two candidates. Findings showed Middle Eastern students preferred Sen. Barack Obama on both dimensions, while American students favored Sen. John McCain for different reasons.

From the Periphery to the Center: a Historical Account of ideas Crossing Structural Distance. • Marco Briziarelli, University of Colorado at Boulder • This paper intends to re-assert the value of history in approaching international communication matters. This historical approach will serve here two main objectives: -to give more visibility to a very meaningful historical case, exemplary of what I consider a more ideal model of communication in development compared to the existing one; -as a hermeneutic tool, to make a meta critique of development and communication theory and, at the same time, recuperate the original value of two great thinkers: Gramsci and Freire.

From Heritage to Horror: Five newspapers’ crisis coverage of the 26/11 Mumbai terrorist attacks • BRIDGETTE COLACO, TROY UNIVERSITY • This study examines media coverage of the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks that left 188 civilians killed and 308 fatally wounded. It analyzes 2,119 stories published in 10 daily editions of five English newspapers, examining variables of media frames, content orientation, and 3,794 reporters’ sources. India has a booming print media and this study of newspapers in the world’s largest democracy makes significant contribution to literature on framing theory and media functions during a crisis.

Transnational News Media Role in Building Consensus about Muslim Communities in the EU • Vanessa de Macedo Higgins Joyce, Southern Methodist University • This study explores the influences of transnational media’s reporting about 9-11 on European population’s feelings about the Muslim population, with a second level agenda-setting analysis. It focuses on how transnational media reduced differences on how demographic subgroups perceived this community. It found support for increased consensus for those using transnational television, weaker support for those using transnational press. Differences arise within the comparison of the 15 EU countries and the specific demographic analyzed.

Framing the Sichuan Earthquake on U.S. Television • Daniela Dimitrova, Iowa State University; kejun chu, Iowa State University • This study content analyzed coverage of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake on the top three nightly television news programs, ABC World News, CBS Evening News and NBC Nightly News. Specifically, we looked at how the U.S. media portrayed this international disaster by examining the tone, frames and sources used. The findings indicate that the human interest frame dominated the coverage, which was mostly neutral and often relied on eyewitness accounts.

The Art of Criticism: How African Cartoons Discursively Constructed African Media Realities in the Post-Cold War Era. • Lyombe Eko, University of Iowa • African newspaper cartoons are critical journalistic texts that have spearheaded the struggle for democracy and freedom of expression on the continent. Actually, the African satirical press in general, and cartoons in particular, are the most visible manifestations of the post-Cold War political liberalization of the African continent. This article is concerned with African editorial cartoon narratives of the realities of the African media in the post-Cold War era. It was found that African cartoons are irreverent counter discourses that use African mythic idioms to portray a somber picture of media realities on the African continent, deterritorialize authoritarian leaders for purposes of criticism, and boldly resist abuses of power. It was also found that the Mohammad cartoons affair had an impact on African cartoons.

One Profession—Multiple Identities: Russian Regional Reporters’ Perceptions of the Professional Community • Wilson Lowrey, University of Alabama; Elina Erzikova, Central Michigan university • This study examines perceptions of the journalism professional community by reporters, who work for state and private newspapers in a Russian province. The study found that newspapers with powerful government and oligarchical owners had clear missions, while the paper that struggles to survive as independent lacked clearly articulated goals. Regardless of the type of paper ownership, reporters believed that the journalistic community is disjointed because of the different journalistic values deriving from the professional competition.

Analyzing the Spell of War: A War/Peace Framing Analysis of the 2009 visual coverage of the Sri Lankan Civil Conflict in Newswires • Rico Neumann, University of Arizona; Shahira Fahmy, University of Arizona • The goal of this study was to analyze the extent to which the visual coverage of the final stages of the long-lasting Sri Lankan Civil War relied on war and peace frames. Based on the conceptual work of Norwegian scholar Johan Galtung, who viewed war and peace journalism as two competing frames in covering conflicts and wars, we tested his concept empirically by content analyzing news photographs of the conflict in the three leading newswires.

Dimming Lights and Deepening Shadows over Press Rights in Kyrgyzstan • Eric Freedman, Michigan State University • In March 2005, a relatively nonviolent uprising ousted an authoritarian president in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan. In the aftermath of that Tulip Revolution, press rights advocates and journalists welcomed the promise of greatly enhanced freedoms. However, the new regime proved to be as authoritarian and corrupt as its predecessor, and little liberalisation of the press system is evident five years later. The record shows continued physical assaults including murders, of journalists, harassment and libel suits, impediments to access to information, license denials, self-censorship, and only slow movement toward privatising state-owned media. Independent and oppositional media area also remains at financial risk due to the country’s weak economy and high poverty level. Thus twenty years after independence and a half-decade after the Tulip Revolution, Soviet propaganda model for a press system is dead in name but many of its major attributes survive, with significant implications for the continuum of authoritarianism in other post-communist nations.

Adapting Business Communication to A Culturally Diverse Online Marketplace: Exploring the Effectiveness of Cultural Appeals in Internet Advertising • Gennadi Gevorgyan, Xavier University • With communication accommodation theory and Hofstede’s model of cultural dimensions as its main conceptual framework, this study experimentally investigates the role of culture in online marketing communications. By exploring the attitudinal effects of culturally congruent online advertisements, we aim to develop and test a model for bridging the cultural gap in today’s online marketplace. Our study builds on previous cross-cultural business research by going beyond traditional channels of communication and by focusing on the effects of culturally congruent marketing messages in online environments. To have a particularly rigorous test of the cultural congruence effect, we manipulated cultural appeals in two distinct samples: American and Chinese. A randomized block experiment with 240 American and 235 Chinese participants revealed significant attitudinal patterns underlying individual reactions toward culturally oriented marketing messages. Our results showed that culturally congruent advertising, while producing favorable ad and brand attitudes, enhances Web-based communication. Cultural appeals are particularly persuasive when targeting consumers with strong ethnic identities.

Transborder Journalism: Bypassing the Nation to Engage Europe • Kevin Grieves, Ohio University • Previous research indicates the absence of European journalism, hampering the development of a European public sphere. This empirical study examines regional journalism, largely neglected by earlier research, for signs of European journalism that engages directly with neighbors across the border. Qualitative analysis of transborder broadcast content from the Saar-Lor-Lux region reveals that journalists bypass national centers to cover Europe regionally. This paper addresses what has been described as a blind spot in European journalism research.

The Structural Embeddedness of Global News Flow: A Social Network Analysis Approach to International News • Seung Joon Jun, Korea University; Ju-Yong Ha, Inha Univ., Incheon, Korea • This study examined the network of international news flow based on World-Systems theory. Using social network methods, this study attempted to identify the structure of international news and its embeddedness in socio-economic environments of the world-system. It confirmed that the structure pattern of international news flow is similar to what World-Systems theorists have argued. As many communication scholars have argued, the pattern of international news flow is still strongly centered on a few Western countries. Using QAP multiple regression technique this study also found that the structure of the world news is strongly embedded in international economic, political, and cultural contexts. Especially, the economic, diplomatic and interpersonal connections among countries are significant predictor of international news flow.

Journalism in a Complicated Place: The Role of Community Journalism in South Africa • john hatcher, University of Minnesota Duluth • One of the great challenges in a world that is becoming more culturally complex is how media can build community between groups with strong cultural cleavages. In no country are these challenges more pronounced than in South Africa, where a new democracy is making concerted efforts to foster media that will help to overcome a history of oppression based on difference. A qualitative analysis that includes interviews with more than 60 journalists and experts in community media found that journalists in South Africa see themselves as community educators whose role transcends simply reporting the news. The results suggest the greatest obstacle in this country is to find a way to encourage media that serve historically marginalized communities.

Predicting international news coverage: How much influence do gatekeepers have? • Beverly Horvit, University of Missouri; Peter Gade, University of Oklahoma; Elizabeth A. Lance, University of Missouri • Regression models using a content analysis of 2,500 news stories produced by The New York Times, Associated Press and four other newspapers, paired with a dataset for 191 countries, show U.S. coverage of other countries is highly predictable. Logistics factors (e.g., U.S. economic and military relations) predict coverage much more than gatekeeping variables. Together, the variables explain more than 90 percent of the wires’ coverage and 96 percent of the variance in the newspapers’ coverage.

Rural Use of Internet Technology and Economic Development in Nigeria • Primus Igboaka, Bowling Green State University; Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University • This study identifies the characteristics of Internet users in a rural population of southeastern Nigeria.
Results revealed that among the three innovation attributes (relative advantage, compatibility and complexity), compatibility scored the highest, indicating these users’ acceptance of the technology for individual and community use. An analysis of the activities and the users’ impetus shows that Internet is used primarily for activities related to economic development, although many began with just communicating by e-mails with friends and family.

Agenda Building and the Politics of Regime Legitimacy in East Africa • Yusuf Kalyango, Ohio University • This study examined how the governments of Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania influence public attitudes to legitimize their regimes through the media. It is based on a survey of 1,395 citizens in 15 provinces of East Africa who were selected using a stratified multistage cluster sampling. We examined whether public attitudes towards regime legitimacy vary between users of the state-owned and the privately-owned media, accounting for education levels. Government influence on public attitudes towards regime legitimacy had a negative influence within provinces and had no significant positive influence across provinces when education levels were high. We find that the EAC governments build their political influence by taking advantage of citizens who are less educated, and who lack the basic understanding of their political rights. The utility of this research and its implications are detailed.

The Korean Netizens’ Online & Offline Collective Activism • HyunMee Kang, Louisiana State Universtiy; Daekyung Kim Kim, Idaho State University • The main concern of the study is the role of internet’s mobilization in collective activism and factors to motivate the internet users to partake in collective activities through the candlelight movement in South Korea. As predictors of the Korean netizens’ participation in collective activities, the study examined social identity and collectivist orientation as well as reliance on news media, use of the internet, political attitude, and issue involvement. A total of 241 Internet users participated in online survey and the linear regression was employed. The results showed that social identity, collectivist orientation, and reliance on news media are significant predictors of the participation in collective activism.

Competition and the Decline of Foreign Television Program Popularity in Indonesia during the 1990s • Tuenyu Lau, self; David Atkin, University of Connecticut • This paper seeks to examine the impact of competition on the popularity of foreign programs in Indonesia during the mid-1990s. Analyzing 1995-1997 ratings data from a television ratings service, the paper suggests that competition has given rise to the popularity of local programs, while foreign program popularity has declined during the same time period. The findings also suggest that cultural proximity is a factor of the popularity of programs. Between 1995 and 1997, Asian programs outnumbered Western programs on the top 100 highest rated program list in Indonesia. Despite the country’s population base of 240 million, Indonesian television broadcasting has not been explored in academic and professional venues. The paper explores implications of study findings for filling this void in the literature.

Reinforcing Functions of Attention to Affective Coverage and Partisans for Attitudes toward the U.S. Policy of Iraq • Jeongsub Lim, Sogang University • Attention to affective coverage and partisans could reinforce the public’s attitudes toward international issues. The present study examines this question by combining a public opinion poll and major media’s affective coverage of Iraq. Results show that people who pay attention to affective coverage hold more positive attitudes or more negative attitudes toward the U.S. policy of Iraq, compared to those who do not pay attention to the coverage. Partisans in combination with attention to the Iraq coverage reinforce these nonneutral attitudes toward the policy. Theoretical implications are discussed.

Sustainability of Organizational Change in the Newsroom: A Case Study from Australia • Brian Massey, East Carolina University; Jacqui Ewart, Griffith University • Organizational-change concepts were applied in a three-year survey study of the sustainability of an ambitious, ongoing newsroom-change program at a group of corporate-owned regional newspapers in Australia. The results suggest a sustained level of change-based momentum for the program in terms of journalists’ openness to change, and their judgments of the goals of change and its effect on their newsrooms. The implication of attitudinal ambivalence toward change as a contributor to momentum for change is discussed.

Culture and Metaphors in Advertisements: France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and the United States • Pamela Morris, Loyola University Chicago • Culture and language are intertwined. Metaphors, based on culture, are ubiquitous in thinking and language. As social artifacts reflecting culture, advertising messages provide the opportunity to compare metaphors in different nations. The goal of this paper is to understand how and why metaphors are used and how they differ across countries, as well as how cultural characteristics are used to create compelling ad messages. Using a content analysis of 87 French, German, Italian, Dutch, and American magazine advertisements, variations in metaphor usage and cultural attributes were examined from four culture-bound product groups: food and beverages, automobiles, insurance and finance, and personal care. Findings provide examples for how culture is reflected in language and symbols. The study shows metaphors are exploited in headlines to capture attention throughout all five countries. However, metaphors and cultural attributes are used differently within nations and employed strategically to capture attention, gain interest, and deliver a persuasive message. The study is important in the context of globalization and the debate for whether or not culture is important in advertising. The exploratory project provides theory in culture, language, metaphor, and advertising, and offers a guide for further research about culture.

From Heavy-Handed to a Light-Touch: Protecting Children through Media Regulation in Singapore • Temple Northup, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill • Singapore, the small city-state in the hub of Southeast Asia, is one of the most diverse and connected countries in the world. It also has a reputation, in Western media, as having strict laws coming from a government that rules with an iron fist. In light of this, it would seem likely that the Singapore government would try to heavily regulate all media in order to control what messages are seen and heard by its people. However, this is not actually the case. Through an analysis of government codes and reports about television and the Internet, two very contrasting styles of regulation are used by the Singapore government. With television, strict legislative restraints exist that control exactly what can and cannot be broadcast. In contrast, for the Internet, very few guidelines exist and the government relies more on self-regulation through indirect measures like educational programs. These findings are discussed in light of the government’s continued use of children as a justification for any regulations and programs that exist. Through the analysis of the regulations, it becomes clear that the government is interested in passing along the values of social order and social decorum to children.

Effect of a Public Service Announcement for Couple Testing for HIV on Beliefs, Understanding, and Intent to Act • Jyotika Ramaprasad, University of Miami • This paper presents results of an effectiveness test for a PSA to encourage HIV couple testing. Participatory formative research in Uganda identified disclosure of HIV positive status between partners as the major issue and couple testing as the solution. A largely text-based with voiceover PSA was created and tested in Uganda, using a pre-post design. Results indicate effectiveness of the PSA, which will be distributed for use in Uganda.

International Attitudes Toward America: Relationship Status – It’s Complicated • Olga Randolph, Oklahoma State University; Jami Fullerton, Oklahoma State University; alice kendrick, Southern Methodist University • A survey of 67 international students regarding their attitudes toward America, U.S. brands and consumption of U.S. media suggests that their relationship with matters U.S. is, in the words of Facebook syntax, complicated. Respondents felt slightly more favorably toward the U.S. people than the U.S. government, and their region of origin was related to their attitudes. On average, respondents reported that more than one-third of their time with media is spent with U.S. media. Respondents spent the greatest amount of media time with Internet, music, television, books and video. Consumption of U.S. media, and specifically U.S. music and books, was related to attitudes toward Americans. U.S. brands most liked were Apple and Coca Cola; McDonald’s was the most disliked brand; and Nike was named as both a most liked and a least liked brand. Four out of five respondents said, however, that they buy branded products and services that they like, irrespective of country of origin.

Do journalists have information access? Exploring news media freedom and colonial heritage in 42 nations • Jeannine Relly, University of Arizona, School of Journalism • This cross-national exploratory study examined the environment for journalists in a census of developing nations with access-to-information laws (N = 42). At the end of the 12 years studied, less than one-third of all of the countries (29%) had a news media that was free and independent. The greatest proportion of nations with freedom of the news media were common law heritage countries and these nations had the greatest proportion of positive change in the enabling environment for journalists to work and access information under the access-to-information law. By the end of the study, one in five developing nations with access laws had a context that was not free for the news media to practice journalism; and nearly a third of the nations had negative change in this environment, making it clear that adopting an access-to-information law did not necessarily parallel the diffusion of other democratic norms.

A Cross-National Study of Social-Networking Services between the U.S. and Korea • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University • This study investigated users’ underlying motivations for engaging in social networking through social-networking sites and their relationships with behavior. It examined cross-national differences in motivations for participating in social networking between American and Korean users. The design methods were based on the modified Technology Acceptance Model and structural equation modeling was applied to the data gathered. The TAM factors of social-networking services were analyzed cross-nationally, in a comparative fashion, focusing on the differences in the composition of motives in the two countries. While the results illustrate the importance of both extrinsic and intrinsic motivation, the two countries show different sets of motivations. Based on the results of this study, practical applications for marketing strategies in social-networking service markets and theoretical applications for cross-country studies are recommended accordingly.

A comparative analysis of earthquake-relief public service announcements in China and the United States • Xiaopeng Wang, University of South Florida St. Petersburg • This content analysis examined Chinese PSAs for Wenchuan, China, earthquake relief in 2008 and U.S. PSAs for Haiti earthquake relief in 2010. China is a high-context culture and the United States is a low-context culture. The U.S. PSAs contained more information than the Chinese PSAs. U.S. PSAs were more likely to feature celebrities and explicitly command the viewers to perform an action, while Chinese PSAs used more symbolic associations and emotional appeals.

Market-Driven Sensationalism in Global TV News: A Comparative Study of 14 Countries • Tai-Li Wang, National Taiwan University • A recent theme in discussions about the quality of television news is its pursuit of commercial interests, which cause broadcasters to attract viewer attention by sensationalizing news. Previous sensationalism studies have focused on the formal presentation of TV news in a single country. The impact of packing TV news in sensational ways was also investigated. However, in terms of a more global picture, how prevalent are sensational topics and presentation formats? Can the relationship between news competition and news professionalism be established? Currently, very limited empirical research exists, in terms of global perspectives, to study how and why TV news has grown to be so sensationalized in recent years. This study conducted a global TV news content analysis of 14 countries. Additionally, a survey was conducted of TV news researchers for those countries, which gauged the news competition levels and professionalism. The results of this study intend to portray a more global picture of sensationalism in TV news, and to disentangle the long-time speculated relationship between news competition and professionalism.

A Comparison of Consumers’ Reactions to Cause-Related Marketing in the US and China • Ye Wang, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Weiping Hu, University of Shanghai • A survey was conducted to investigate the influence of cultural orientations, perception of charitable giving as a social norm, and local culture on CRM-related attitudes and behaviors, under the theory of individualism and collectivism by Triandis and Gelfand (1998). The results indicated that the collectivism orientation and local culture were significant predictors, while the influence of charitable giving as a social norm was often through the influence of cultural orientations.

Procedural Justice Matters More than Distributive Justice: How the Saddam Hussein Trial Became a Show Trial • Jin Yang, University of Memphis • This study analyzed the New York Times and the Washington Post’s coverage of the Saddam Hussein Trial from the justice frame perspective. It found that procedural justice frame was the dominant frame in the trial stories over distributive, interpersonal and informational frames. The identified two negative relationships (between defense sources and procedural justice, between human interest and procedural justice) demonstrated how the procedural justice frame was developed and constructed and pointed to the future research potential.

Al Jazeera: Walking a Fine Line Between a Pro-Western Government and Terrorists • khalaf tahat, Arkansas State University; Lily Zeng, Arkansas State University • Al Jazeera, the pan-regional Arab-based network, has been mired in controversy since it was launched by the government of Qatar in 1996. It gains its reputation in the West mostly because of its airing of videos from the militant terrorist group Al Qaeda. Although Al Jazeera attempted to become self-sufficient through advertising during the first few years, the advertising revenue it generated proved insufficient for its operation. The addition of Al Jazeera English (AJE) in 2006 only worsens the financial situation of the network, since Western cable carriers refuse to include it and it thus remains a marginal voice in the Western media market. Till today, Al Jazeera relies heavily on the financial support of the Qatari government, which maintains an excellent relationship with the U.S. This study asks the question: Why does the pro-Western Qatari government support a network that provide coverage that the Western audience sees negative about or even threatens the West? Through an analysis of the relationships involving Al Jazeera, terrorist groups, the Qatari government, and the West, this study seeks to provide an understanding of how Al Jazeera operates amongst a complicated series of relationship.

Markham Student Paper Competition
Proud, sexy, and highly intoxicated – An expatriate blogger’s conceptions about Finns and Americans • Sanna Ala-Kortesmaa, University of Oregon • The primary purpose of this study was to examine how Finns and Americans were represented in a blog written by an expatriate blogger, what kind of discursive practices were used to create these representations, and if the representations differed based on which nationality he was describing. The results of critical discourse analysis suggest that the representations were mostly negative and focused on Finns. Stereotyping, generalization, and over-lexicalization were used in representations, but the use of interdiscursive superstructures steered the interpretation of them from a negative to a humorous level.

Making the Case for War: CNN and BBC coverage of Colin Powell’s 2003 presentation to the United Nations • Seth Ashley, University of Missouri-Columbia • This paper offers a comparative analysis of news coverage by CNN.com and BBC.com of Colin Powell’s speech to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003. Ethnographic content analysis examines the coverage, and an institutional analysis examines the news outlets in broader cultural and economic contexts. The paper concludes that the BBC is better situated to enhance rational-critical dialogue and democratic self-governance through inclusion of a greater diversity of sources and a wider array of opinion.

Understanding Orientalism: The construction of the ‘other’ • Adrienne Atterberry, Syracuse University • Because of the changing relations between the East and West, and the fact that formerly unrepresented people now have to ability to represent themselves, this necessitates revisiting the concept of Orientalism. This paper examines the term Orientalism as it has been used since Edward Said’s initial definition. This paper includes discussion of the subaltern, globalization, and new media as it concerns the importance of continuing to examine instances of Orientalism and the concept of representation of the Other in general. This paper specifically engages with concepts of self, internalized, Aesthetic, commodified, and techno Orientalism as a way to understand the different instances of Orientalism.

A Content Analysis of the New York Times and CNN Coverage of the 2009 Iranian Presidential Election • Kanghui Baek, University of Texas at Austin • This study examines how the New York Times and CNN covered the 2009 Iranian presidential election.This study, in particular, content analyzes the type of events reported and the sources used by the two news entities during the event’s time span. This study contributes to an understanding of how the negative and deviant nature of the international event that was covered by the U.S. media that played a leading role in setting agenda in the international context.

Festival de Viña del Mar: Articulating Chilean Identity Through a National Media Event • Claudia Bucciferro, University of Colorado at Boulder • This study is an analysis of the Festival Internacional de la Canción de Viña del Mar (Viña del Mar’s International Song Festival), which recently celebrated its 50th anniversary in Chile. Within a Cultural Studies framework, it argues that the Festival can be understood as a secular tradition, a media event, and a media ritual conveying meanings that are legitimized by its social and media significance. Using a qualitative approach to review the last three editions of the Festival, this paper explores how issues such as national identity, gender, class, and commodification are presented onstage. It also considers how the Festival constitutes a place for the articulation of a meta-narrative that is relevant for understanding Chilean identity today.

Media freedom and corruption: Media effects on governmental accountability in 133 countries • Lindita Camaj, Indiana University • Relying on Transparency International surveys on corruption perceptions and Freedom House surveys of media freedom, this study measures the relationship between media freedom and corruption, accounting for elements of vertical accountability [electoral competitiveness, civil society and voter turnout] and horizontal accountability [judicial independence and political system]. Hierarchical multiple regression results suggests a strong association between media freedom and corruption that runs from more media freedom to less corruption. The significance of the media freedom coefficient is robust even after controlling for vertical and horizontal accountability, confirming previous studies that regard mass media among the most important determinants of political accountability. Further, this study implies that media freedom might have a greater indirect effect on corruption when coupled with strong institutions of horizontal accountability. The data suggest that media freedom have a greater impact on corruption in countries with a parliamentary political system than in those with a presidential system, and that this impact increases as the judiciary independence increases.

Understanding media frames that cover an ethnic minority group in a homogeneous country: Expanding a generic frame in minority studies • Moonhee Cho, University of Florida; Jaejin Lee, University of Florida; JIN SOOK IM, University of Florida • The purpose of this study was twofold: 1) to examine how the media portray the minority group of international married migrant women in Korea, an ethnically homogeneous country, and 2) to reveal whether the proximity characteristic in news value criteria influences the media coverage in terms of volume, frame selection, and tones. By employing both qualitative and quantitative analysis, the study expanded Semetko and Valkenbug’s (2000) generic frames by adding new frames such as the integration and victim frames. Among seven media frames, the integration frame was the most frequently used in news articles covering an ethnic minority group in a homogeneous country.

How Two Irish Newspapers Framed the 2007 British Military Withdrawal From Northern Ireland • Dave Ferman, University of Oklahoma • Frame analysis has often been used to study how the media has described and interpreted conflicts, displays of cultural affinity with audiences, and uses elite sources, as well as the relationship between news coverage and editorial stance on an issue. This paper examines these aspects of framing by studying how two Irish newspapers, the Belfast Telegraph and the Dublin-based Irish Independent, covered the withdrawal of British military forces from Northern Ireland in the summer of 2007 The end of the 38-year Operation Banner was a watershed moment in the Troubles and provides an excellent opportunity for framing analysis, given the two newspapers’ divergent histories, audiences, and long-standing editorial stances on the conflict and the relationship between Ireland and England. Content analysis of both news and opinion stories printed in a four-month period before and after the withdrawal reveal significant differences in coverage.

Pandemic as a Global and Local Health Emergency?: H1N1 News Frames and Its Determinants • Hyejoon Rim, University of Florida; Jinhong Ha, University of Florida • This study examined the message frames and information sources used in H1N1 news coverage between April 1, 2009 and February 28, 2010. Quantitative content analysis of 940 newspaper articles was conducted to examine how message frames and information sources appear differently in H1N1 news media coverage in cross-cultural (i.e., United States and South Korea) and cross-medium contexts (i.e. liberal, conservative and business newspaper). The results show that severity and human interest were the two most prominent frames, and government and health authority sources were most frequently used in the pandemic coverage. We found a positive relationship between frames and sources, which suggests journalists routinely approach certain sources depending on the story frame. U.S. newspapers were more likely to present an attribution of responsibility frame than Korea newspapers, whereas Korea newspapers were more likely to present an action frame. The prominence of frames varied with news institutions. Liberal newspapers were more likely to present the attribution of responsibility frame than conservative newspapers and economic newspapers, while economic newspapers presented the economic consequences frame more frequently than others. Implications of the study are discussed in terms of determinants of news values and their influences on news frames.

Social Media and Social Movements: Facebook and an Online Guatemalan Justice Movement that Moved Offline • Summer Harlow, University of Texas-Austin • In 2009, the Guatemalan president was accused of murder, prompting the creation of Facebook pages calling for his resignation. Using interviews and a content analysis of Facebook comments, this study found that the social network site was used to mobilize an online movement that moved offline. Users’ protest-related and motivational comments, in addition to their use of links and other interactive elements of Facebook, helped organize massive protests demanding justice and an end to violence.

A Political Boss and the Press: The Impact on Democracy of Two Brazilian Newspapers • Summer Harlow, University of Texas-Austin • When Brazil’s president was implicated in a bribery scandal in 2005, Antônio Carlos Magalhães, a long-time senator in Brazil’s Northeast state of Bahia, emerged as one of the president’s most vocal critics. A content analysis of scandal coverage in two Bahia newspapers – one of which Magalhães owned – showed that Magalhães’ newspaper succumbed to owner influence, excluding citizens’ voices as it covered the senator more extensively and favorably than did the competing newspaper.

Thailand’s Internet Policies: The Search for a Balance between National Security and Rights to Information • Chalisa Magpanthong, Ohio University • This research reviews communication policy and its application to Thailand’s management of Internet resources—a contentious battle between national security ideology and a rationale for communication freedoms in the public interest. It investigates the movement of government policy toward increasing control over the public’s use of Internet resources by means of the Computer Crime Act and lese majeste laws, and this research examines public reaction to the government’s unbalanced policies.

Intellectual Games: International Intellectual Property Rights and the Middle Eastern Video Game Industry • Adrienne Shaw, University of Pennsylvania • This paper analyzes the rhetoric rather than the policy of international Intellectual Property Rights (IPRs) as they relate to the Middle Eastern video game industry. It draws on textual analysis, economics literature, and a small number of interviews with gamers and game designers from the region. Monroe Price’s Market for Loyalties framework is used to analyze how a dominant discourse in which IPR protections are viewed as a universal good has limited discussions of this nascent industry.

Framing Barack Obama’s first visit to Africa as president: A comparative analysis of African and non-African news coverage • Etse Sikanku, University of Iowa • This study examined how African (The Daily Graphic, The Daily Nation, AllAfrica.com) and non-African news media (The Times, The New York Times, Associated Press) covered Barack Obama’s first visit to sub-Saharan Africa (Ghana). A content analysis of 163 stories found five major themes embedded in media reportage of America’s first black president’s visit to the continent of his father. This includes: globalization, democracy, responsibility, historical and soft news narratives. Even though coverage was neutral across board, the African newspapers concentrated more on the historical and soft news frames while non-African newspapers reported heavily on the democracy and responsibility frame.

The Daily Dance: Agenda-setting, framing, and communication for development at daily State Department briefings • Ed Simpson, Ohio University • In February 2009, the Pew Center’s Project on Journalism Excellence released a special report on U.S. foreign press coverage, noting that while the foreign press corps increased dramatically in the last forty years (from 160 to more than 1,490), the coverage merely has been broadened rather than offering increased diversity or depth. In other words, more outlets are carrying essentially the same stories. This study, guided by framing and agenda-setting theory within a context of communication for development, sought to help explain this phenomenon by examining 242 exchanges during a constructed week sampling of daily U.S. State Department briefings. As suggested by framing and agenda-setting theory, this study found that the State Department tended to reinforce U.S. policies regardless of questions asked; that questions tended to come from a U.S. perspective, and that the U.S. development agenda was a minor part of the discourse. The results of this study suggest that the agendas of neither the State Department nor the mainstream press corps have changed significantly from previous research, despite a shift in stated policy and rhetoric. In addition, the results suggest a need for a deeper examination of how the foreign press is incorporated into the flow of information from the State Department.

More Troops, More War: A Framing Analysis of International News Coverage of the Troop Surge in Afghanistan • James Ian Tennant, University of Texas at Austin • This content analysis examines coverage of the process leading up to President Barack Obama’s decision to send 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan. The focus is on sources used by The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, The Guardian and the Al-Jazeera English website, and the presence of two kinds of frames. The analysis showed that the four media outlets relied heavily on official sources while coverage reflected a similar use of frames.

Beyond soap opera for social change: An analysis of Kenya’s The Team Melissa Tully, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Brian Ekdale, University of Wisconsin-Madison • We explore how the TV series The Team, Kenya, adapts the entertainment-education model to include morally ambiguous characters and more participation through social networking and mobile screenings. We analyze how The Team uses the metaphor of sport, while online discussions take the metaphor to its more literal meaning about national unity. This research is based on qualitative methods including interviews, textual analysis of the series, and review of internal documents and the show’s Facebook accounts.

Modernity and Tradition:Technology in Chinese Television Commercials • Ying Xi, School of Journalism and Communication, Tsinghua University, China • This article explored China’s mediation between tradition and modernity in the television commercials about technology. A double-level framework was developed on the basis of literature review and was empirically tested by analyzing Chinese television commercials about technology-intensity products on two levels: cultural value themes and the way in which cultural themes are presented. The results indicated coexistence of two levels in a single commercial, and found that general cultural patterns (i.e., cultural value themes expressed in commercials) can be changed and adapted into modernization process while specific cultural patterns (i.e., the way of themes presentation) can remain constant. The study also explained the relations between two levels that specific cultural patterns serve as an ideological goal or as a legitimating principle for people’s present actions while general cultural patterns serve as criteria or as guidance to direct people’s specific actions in their daily life. In addition, the level of modernity was identified as an important factor to influence cultural expression across different product origins.

Sensationalism in News: NBC’s Coverage of The U.S. Presidents’ Visits to China, 1989-2009 • Boya Xu, West Virginia University • This study analyzes NBC’s coverage of the U.S. President’s visits to China from 1989 through 2009, and investigates the evolving characteristics of media framing over time while exploring the impact of sensationalism on the actual content of media reporting. By examining the reporting techniques, types of layperson speaking, and tone in news reporting in different time periods, using quantitative content analysis, it is concluded that the amount of sensationalist features applied in news making continues to rise over the years, while the media interpretation of international communication is applied within the context of foreign policies and bilateral relations.

<< 2010 Abstracts

History 2010 Abstracts

Press Freedoms in the American Colonies, 1755-1765: The Public and the Printers Gigi Alford, University of Alabama • During the decade leading up to the Stamp Act of 1765, printers in the American Colonies faced a growing demand for press freedoms. The right to a free press, colonists believed, belonged to the people rather than the printers. In fact, the people often pushed the printers toward greater liberties, creating a dynamic negotiation of the limitations of press freedoms. This discourse, however, was cut short by the revolt against England.

Negotiating the Transition from True Woman to New Woman in the Lydia Pinkham Animated Ads of 1890 • Elizabeth Burt, University of Hartford • Negotiating the Transition from ‘True Woman’ to ‘New Woman’ in the Lydia Pinkham Animated Ads of 1890 This paper analyzes five illustrated advertisements designed by the Lydia E. Pinkham Medicine Company in 1890. These animated ads all make statements about woman’s place in late Victorian society, a time when the traditional True Woman was being challenged by the emerging paradigm of the New Woman. These advertisements reveal aspects of both models and suggest to the modern reader how women in 1890 reading these ads could negotiate the transition between the two.

Considering Contempt by Publication, 1800-1830 • Butler Cain, West Texas A&M University • Contempt by publication was one of the earliest methods the American judicial branch used to control media coverage of state and federal court systems. Editors, publishers, and reporters could be fined and jailed if their publications raised the ire of a judge. During this period, American courts began considering under what circumstances this authority should be used to protect the integrity of the judicial process. Meanwhile, free press advocates began arguing against the power.

‘Severe in invective’: Franc Wilkie, Wilbur Storey, and the improbable ‘send rumors’ quotation W. Joseph Campbell, American University • This paper scrutinizes the evidentiary record behind the famous anecdote about Wilbur F. Storey’s instructing a Civil War correspondent to send rumors if no news was to be found. The paper offers a compelling case that the anecdote about Storey, the editor of the Chicago Times, is quite likely apocryphal. Reasons for doubting whether Storey ever sent such instructions are many, and are discussed in detail. Among the reasons is that the anecdote is thinly documented and uncorroborated, except for a passage in a memoir by Franc B. Wilkie that was published in 1891, twenty-seven years after the instructions would have been sent. The paper draws on a variety of primary and secondary sources, including the literature of false memories and the work of psychologists who have described the difficulties in recovering long-ago memories with any precision.

Late to the Game: William Randolph Hearst, the New York Journal, and the Modern Sports Section John Carvalho, Auburn University • William Randolph Hearst has been credited with creating the modern sports section in the New York Journal soon after he purchased it in 1895. Several of Hearst’s biographers, however, do not mention this strategy. Is it reflected in the earliest editions of the New York Journal? This article looks at the sports page for the first two months of the Journal to find evidence of the assumed emphasis on developments to the sports section: an increase in pages devoted to sports, bylined articles by popular athletes and writers, banner section flags, extended coverage of high-profile sports events, and use of illustrations. Most developments credited to Hearst were not, in fact, frequently used.

Friends of the Bureau: Personal correspondence, and the cultivation of journalist-adjuncts by Hoover’s FBI • Matthew Cecil, South Dakota State University • Beginning in the mid-1930s with Director J. Edgar Hoover’s initial steps into the public consciousness, the FBI developed an expansive public relations division that maintained advantageous relationships with dozens of reporters, broadcasters and editors. Through mountains of personal letters produced by his staff, Hoover fostered the illusion of interpersonal relationships with journalists like The American Magazine’s Courtney Ryley Cooper, Fulton Oursler of Reader’s Digest, and Jack Carley of the Memphis Commercial Appeal. In return for Hoover’s favor, these friends of the Bureau became reliable supporters, passionate defenders, and even quasi-agents of the FBI.

All Things Are As They Were Then: Radio’s You Are There • Matthew Ehrlich, University of Illinois • This paper analyzes the 1940s radio series You Are There, originally titled CBS Is There. The series expressed the optimistic liberalism of its producer-director at the same time it reproduced consensual, patriotic interpretations of America’s past. Its creative blend of fact and fiction challenged conventional definitions of journalism and documentary while momentous changes were sweeping American broadcasting, underscoring the power and authority of radio news even as television was eclipsing radio as a national medium.

Cold War Culture, Broadcast News Documentaries and the Approach of War in Vietnam • James Ettema, Northwestern University • Broadcast documentaries are the medium’s most coherent attempt to make sense of the run-up to war in Vietnam. Sounding such themes as France’s fiasco and America’s exceptionalism they capture both hopes and fears of the cultural moment. As journalism they are not naïve but they are more fretful than probing, more anxious than prescient thus highlighting the role of history and culture in imposing limits on journalism in the performance of its duty to democracy.

A Light out of This World: Awe, Anxiety, and Routinization in Early Nuclear Test Coverage, 1951-1953 • Glen Feighery, University of Utah • Above-ground nuclear testing in the early 1950s commanded attention in the news. This study contributes to understanding atomic test coverage as an environmental issue. It examines how national, state, and local newspapers described the blasts, addressed the issue of fallout, and reacted on their editorial pages. Although some scholars have portrayed certain news organizations as propagandistically uncritical of nuclear testing, this study suggests another explanation: that news routines influenced coverage more than disregard for public safety.

The president’s private life: A new explanation for ‘the right to privacy’ • PATRICIA FERRIER, AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY • On December 15, 1890, in the Harvard Law Review, Samuel D. Warren and Louis D. Brandeis criticized the press for overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Many scholars who have written about the first, major step in recognizing personal privacy say the article was a reaction to press reports of Warren’s social life. Perhaps scholars have not looked in the correct places for the explanation of why Warren and Brandeis called for common-law protection of personal privacy. The weekly press in Boston and the daily press in New York provide evidence that a seemingly tenuous link with a former president of the United States may be the key to explaining the genesis of the Warren/Brandeis article.

United States v. Shriver and the Rise of the Public Policy Rationale for the Journalist’s Privilege: 1894-1897 • Patrick File, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • This paper explores the historical context surrounding U.S. v. Shriver, a journalist’s privilege case in the 1890s. Employing an examination of the case record as well as the professional discourse surrounding it, I argue that U.S. v. Shriver arose at an historical moment that, for the first time, allowed the newspaper industry to employ discursive themes that highlighted the modern newspaper’s value as a public service and justified adoption of a journalist’s privilege as good public policy.

The Communications Circuit of John Hersey’s Hiroshima • Kathy Forde, University of South Carolina • In August of 1946, one year after the U.S. bombing of Hiroshima and the end of World War II, the New Yorker published John Hersey’s Hiroshima, an account of what happened in the Japanese city from the moment the atomic bomb dropped through the following year, told through the perspectives of six civilians who survived. In this publication and reading history of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, I adopt book historian Robert Darnton’s well-known conceptual model of the communications circuit—the life cycle of a printed book that includes the roles of author, publisher, bookseller, reader, and, in the case of John Hersey’s Hiroshima, other media institutions, such as book clubs, newspapers, magazines, and radio. I attend not only to the institutions and production processes of journalism, which are the usual preoccupations of journalism history, but also to book history’s emphasis on the content of journalism and the uses readers made of this content in a given historical moment.

An Incitement to Riot: Television’s role in the civil disorders in the summer of ’67 • Thomas Hrach, University of Memphis • In the summer of 1967 America’s cities exploded in violence with riots in poor, black neighborhoods. Many people, including members of Congress, blamed televised news coverage of rioting for spreading violence around the nation. It was that issue that sent the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, better known as the Kerner Commission, to investigate whether the mass media played a role in causing the riots. When the Kerner Commission issued its report on March 1, 1968, television was exonerated. The report said there was no direct connection between television and the rioting. Television’s critics had been defused, and Congress took no action against television executives. Yet there was data that was never revealed as part of the report that could have been used to come to a different conclusion. The commission hired a research firm named Simulmatics to produce a content analysis of news media coverage of the riots. Data from the analysis, which is now available in the National Archives, was mentioned only briefly in the report. A full examination of that data lends credence to the criticism that there was a connection between television and the riots. This paper examines how the data fits into criticism of television violence in the 1960s and concludes that there was a more direct connection than the commission reported.

Building an American story: How early American historians used press sources to remember the Revolution • Janice Hume, University of Georgia • This study examines histories of the American Revolution published before 1899 to see how they used newspapers and magazines as sources. It seeks to determine how the press helped build America’s first real story as an independent nation, distinct from native and colonial origins. These histories did use press sources in myriad ways, and their permanence helped assure that these iconic narratives endured. Findings add to our understanding of the press and American collective memory.

Alchemy and Finesse: Transforming Corporate Political Media Spending into Freedom of Speech, 1977-78 • Robert Kerr, University of Oklahoma • This paper documents the late seventies behind-the-scenes battle that forged a five-justice majority for a narrow Supreme Court holding that first brought corporate political media spending within the protections of the First Amendment. It shows that justices on the Court then recognized the holding as a greater alteration of established law than another five-justice majority would maintain in 2010 when it expanded the influence of corporate money on democratic processes far beyond that seventies precedent.

Often Caregivers?  Sometimes Wild Women? An Archetypal Study of Sea Captains’ Wives in the New York Times, 1851-1900 • Paulette D. Kilmer, University of Toledo • Although conventional wisdom tells us that women were considered bad luck if they appeared anywhere onboard ships other than in the wooden figure carved out of the bow, examination of 500 articles in the New York Times and 100 in the New York Tribune indicates women went to sea with their husbands, brothers, fathers, uncles, and cousins. Moreover, at least from the early 1850s, captains hired stewardesses whose duties might include housekeeping, bookkeeping, medical care, and kitchen supervision to reduce scurvy. The news items reflect Carol S. Pearson’s Caregiver archetype, C.G. Jung’s Mother archetype, and Clarissa Pinkola Estes’ Wild Woman archetype.

Science in Advertising: The Role of Research for Richardson-Vicks during the Scientific Advertising Movement • Yeuseung Kim, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study examines how advertisers and advertising agencies conducted and incorporated research in their work during the time when scientific advertising started to receive attention. Drawing largely on the Richardson-Vicks, Inc. archival materials, this study aims to add to the history of advertising by exploring how over-the-counter (OTC) medication was marketed and specifically, how research was used to support, create, and evaluate Vicks’ marketing and advertising efforts.

Jessica Mitford’s Experiments Behind Bars and the Moral Craft of Investigative Journalism • Amy Snow Landa, University of Minnesota • This paper examines the moral craft and public impact of Jessica Mitford’s 1973 exposé titled Experiments Behind Bars: Doctors, Drug Companies, and Prisoners, which was first published as an article in Atlantic Monthly and later as a chapter in Mitford’s book Kind and Usual Punishment: The Prison Business.

Frontier Fears: The Clash of Indians and Whites in the Newspapers of Mankato, Minnesota, 1863-1865 • Charles Lewis, Minnesota State University,Mankato • This research explores how two Minnesota frontier newspapers contributed to a climate of fear and hatred through their coverage of Indian-related events in the state during the three years following the horrific 1862 Dakota War. Such news did not create the conditions of brutality that persisted in Minnesota after the conflict, but the reporting helped perpetuate a white perspective of cruelty and callousness as well as promote notions of manifest destiny.

Piloting Entertainment News: Entertainment Tonight and its Lasting Impact on Television News Programs • Sara Magee, West Virginia University • For more than 25 years Entertainment Tonight has reflected the debate over news and entertainment. Decisions made early on by its creators are forerunners to how television news and entertainment programs are produced today. This paper takes a historical look at the little known period during 1981 when ET was created. Through personal interviews it showcases the struggles faced in bringing this program to life and its impact on media for generations to come.

Legacy of the Covenant: Media, Riots, and Racialized Space in Chicago, April 1968 Meagan Manning, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • By fusing the notion of racialized space, Chicago’s storied spatial history, and the content of the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Defender through the month following the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., I argue that the content of each paper assumes new meaning for the study of race in American history and illustrates a historical moment when the struggles of America’s marginalized populations were thrust to the forefront of American society writ large.

Creating a Photographic Record of the First World War: Real History and Recuperative Memory in Stereography • Andrew Mendelson, Temple University; Carolyn Kitch, Temple University • While largely forgotten today, stereograph photography was a 19th-century mass medium that survived well into the 20th century. These photographs produced three-dimensional images for viewers. The purpose of this paper is to examine the visual and verbal discourses of one set of stereographs – the Keystone View Company’s 1923 300-card history of the World War I. Since Americans saw few battle images during WWI, this set had a special opportunity to tell a definitive historical story of the war after its close. The Keystone stereograph set, a work of popular history for a lay audience, provided reassuring memory in keepsake form. As such, it is a predecessor to better-known (and more often studied) commemorative media of the later 20th century.

A Half Crazy Fellow: Newspapers and the Insanity Plea of the Assassin Charles Guiteau • Justin Murphy, Syracuse University • Charles Guiteau assassinated President James Garfield on July 3, 1881. At his murder trial, he unsuccessfully pleaded insanity. This paper examines media coverage of Guiteau’s case, and his insanity defense in particular. It is illustrated that the media coverage of this trial reflected popular frustration with the insanity defense in the late 19th century. Even before Guiteau’s trial, Americans had been angered by acquittals based on the insanity dodge. This paper further shows that newspapers took advantage of a major schism in the medical community, seizing upon the uncertainty generated by conflicting ‘expert’ testimonies to advocate for a politically popular outcome.

The Shibboleth of ‘Freedom of the Press’: The 1940s Newspaper Crisis, Media Criticism, and the Move Toward Regulating the Press • Victor Pickard, New york University • Given the current problems facing journalism, there is reason to pay close attention to previous eras when news industries faced structural crises. These crises often precipitated normative discussions about the role of the press in a democratic society, and the function of government to regulate that role. The following discussion draws on archival materials and press accounts to recover a moment in the 1940s marked by pronounced dissatisfaction towards the press—a moment when structural reform of major media institutions was seriously considered, but ultimately defeated.

Narratives of progress in times of faith and optimism in industrial development: Press coverage of Operation Bootstrap in Puerto Rico (1947-1963) • Ilia Rodriguez, University of New Mexico • This research builds upon the definition of development as an ideological field to examine the historical role of the Puerto Rican elite press during the period of industrial development known as Operation Bootstrap (1947-1963). It centers on the how the press became a site where universalist notions of progress and modernity met locally grounded interpretations to produce particular understandings at a time of profound historical change. The investigation is based on the assumption that while actively promoted by the discursive practices of U.S. government agencies and other international policy-making institutions, the central premises of a global ideology of development disseminated during the Cold War were reinterpreted or resignified in the local press to legitimize particular visions of progress as well as particular political agendas and class interests.

Herodotus As An Ancient Journalist: Reimagining Antiquity’s Historians as Journalists Joe Saltzman, USC Annenberg • The ancient historian is accused of not worrying much about what was true or false, making up quotes, frequently relying on legend rather than fact, often accepting idle rumor, malicious gossip and hearsay as fact. That sounds more like a tabloid journalist than a historian. In this paper, we reimagine Herodotus as the father of journalism rather than Cicero’s appellation, the father of history, as we examine how he reported, researched, and wrote his Histories.

The Role of the Business Press in the Commercial Life of Cincinnati, 1831-1912 • Brad Scharlott, Northern Kentucky University • In the 1830s two different price currents, which reported market-related news, appeared in Cincinnati but soon failed. In 1844, after the city’s economy had matured, the Cincinnati Price Current began and thrived. In 1846, its publisher concurrently became superintendent of the new Cincinnati Merchants’ Exchange, and for decades the current and exchange reinforced each other – and as they prospered, the city benefited. However, technological and market changes ultimately led to the decline of both.

As if the Sixties never happened: A singing cop, Baltimore’s last minstrel show, and the white media narratives • Stacy Spaulding, Towson University • This paper explores a 1982 episode of blackface minstrelsy by a white performer—a Baltimore cop who fought and won a First Amendment battle with the police department over his right to perform in blackface—to decode the surrounding media narratives in a white working class neighborhood on Baltimore’s east side. This paper uses historical methodology, rhetorical analysis and a whiteness studies framework to understand minstrelsy and the media as a site of racial and cultural negotiation.

Freedom’s Vanguard:  Horace Greeley’s thoughts about press freedom and ethics in the Penny Press era • Daxton Stewart, Texas Christian University • Horace Greeley, founder of The New-Yorker and The New York Tribune, became one of the most important American journalists during the Penny Press revolution. This historical study examines Greeley’s writings about freedom of the press and journalism ethics in pre-Civil War era, focusing on four main themes: legal restrictions such as libel, threats of mob violence against the press, the role of neutrality, and moral duties of the press to the public.

Politics as Patriotism: Advertising, Activists and the Press during World War II • Inger Stole, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This paper traces the battle over advertising regulation in the early 1940s. It outlines the activist critique of WWII advertising and explores the advertising industry’s creation of the Advertising Council as public relations tool. It discusses the crucial role that commercial news media played in shaping journalism to promote their commercial interests at the expense of the public interest and explores how the outcome helped shape postwar discussions about the role of advertising.

A Celebrated Illustrator and the Man Behind the Man: J. C. Leyendecker and Charles Beach Rodger Streitmatter, American University This paper focuses on J. C. Leyendecker, the most successful American magazine illustrator during the early 1900s. Hundreds of his hand-painted images appeared on the covers of such leading magazines as the Saturday Evening Post and Vanity Fair. Adding to Leyendecker’s fame were the high-profile advertisements he created for a long list of companies. The manuscript breaks new ground by illuminating the role that Leyendecker’s same-sex partner Charles Beach played in the illustrator’s career.

Reporters and Willing Propagandists: AEF Correspondents Define Their Roles • Michael Sweeney, Ohio University The early twentieth century witnessed greater journalistic emphasis on professionalism and allegiance to audience. At the same time, war reporting was evolving from open-access, patriotic coverage to greater military control. This study draws on documents in the National Archives to examine how accredited American reporters on the Western Front in World War I defined their roles. It found reporters seeking partnerships with the AEF to shape what they acknowledged as propagandistic, pro-American news stories.

Courage and Composure: The framing of the 1916 Easter Rising rebels as heroes in The Irish Times Carrie Teresa, Temple University • This study examines The Irish Times newspaper’s coverage of the rebel leaders of the 1916 Easter Rising by utilizing 26 articles published in the newspaper from the beginning of the Rising to the establishment of the Dail Eireann. This study argues that coverage of the Rising framed the rebels as national heroes, despite the political agenda and ownership influence of the newspaper itself, which questions traditional beliefs about ownership influence during political and social unrest.

Managing China’s Image Abroad: Justification and Institutionalization of International Propaganda in Republican China • Yong Volz, University of Missouri School of Journalism • China’s international propaganda was born in the aftermath of the anti-imperialist May Fourth Movement of 1919, and fed by an acute awareness of China’s weak position in the world. This study focuses on how Western-trained Chinese intellectuals justified international propaganda within the grand narratives of national crisis, world peace and truth. Their discourses provided legitimacy and means for the Guomindang government to institute a propaganda system to garner international support during its anti-Japanese war.

Explaining the Origins of the Advertising Agency • Tim Vos, University of Missouri School of Journalism • This study reopens the investigation into the origins of the advertising agency. By approaching the inquiry from the perspective of sociological institutionalism, new sites of historical exploration are identified. Volney B. Palmer began the first agency in Philadelphia in 1842, but little is known about the events that precipitated the agency. The study concludes that Palmer’s work in the canal business played a direct role in launching his ad business.

In the Name of the South: Fear-Based Rhetoric, the Southern Media and Massive Resistance David Wallace, University of Colorado at Boulder • During the civil rights movement, Southern editors and journalists capitalized on the values, beliefs, and fears of the South, serving as a propagandistic asset in the successful call for massive resistance. This paper argues that fear-based rhetoric in the Southern press was used to foster and establish an insider-outsider mentality, encouraging both vigilant protection of the Southern way of life as well as suspicion and hostility toward all those who were believed to challenge it.

We have no newspapers -dull, dull!  American Civil War Media Dependency • Betty Winfield, University of Missouri; Chad Painter, University of MIssouri School of Journalism • This historical study of Civil War media dependency examines soldiers’ letter references to newspapers and magazines. Through a textual analysis, we sought repeated patterns of media dependency. While we found evidence of DeFleur and Rokeach’s three major dependency themes of understanding, orientation and entertainment, we also found new media dependencies: validation of experiences, proxy correspondence, personal journalistic acknowledgements, checking mechanisms for accuracy, newspapers as exchange barters, and emotional longings for home. These findings should be useful for future media dependency studies, especially during war when there is a need to reduce ambiguity and have some semblance of normalcy.

When the Computer Became Personal: Print Ads for Early Home Computers • Bartosz Wojdynski, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Contemporary research in the psychology of communication technology suggests that many users form parasocial relationships with computers and other devices. Might this phenomenon be rooted in how computers were marketed to a mass audience? This study analyzes magazine advertisements for IBM and Apple home computers from 1981-1984 and analyzes techniques used to make computers seem similar to humans, similar to existing technologies, and necessary for success in modern life.

The Failed Attempts to Merge the Scripps and Hearst Wire Services During World War I • Dale Zacher, University of Arkansas at Little Rock • This historical study uses original manuscript materials to trace discussions the Scripps-owned United Press had with William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service about a possible merger during World War I. This study breaks new ground in showing that the two for-profit wire services, had trouble competing during the war period. The study argues the merger ultimately did not take place, primarily because of Hearst’s concerns he was surrendering too much control to the United Press.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology 2010 Abstracts

Sex Differences in Health Information Processing Strategies:  The Effect of Sex and Message Appeals (cognitive vs. affective) on College Students’ Attitude towards Binge drinking and Intention to Binge Drink • Hoyoung (Anthony) Ahn, University of Tennessee; Lei Wu, Univerisity of Tennessee • Guided by a selectivity model and Fishbein’s structural model, this research examines the direct and interaction effects of message appeals and sex differences in anti-binge drinking PSAs on college students’ binge drinking attitudes and behavioral intention. A sample of college students (N=250) participated in a 2 (Sex: male vs. female) x 3 (appeals: cognitive vs. affective vs. cognitive and affective) factorial online experiment. Results indicated that combined message appeals (affective and cognitive) shown to females yielded stronger effects by producing lower attitudes toward binge drinking and less intention to binge drinking than did affective appeals shown to female. Also, both affective and cognitive appeals shown to female were significantly more persuasive than either affective or cognitive appeals exposed to male. Affective appeal exposed to male was the least effective. The Fishbein’s structural model was used to assess attitudinal changes and is discussed with respect to its usefulness and application to the assessment of health-related campaigns.

Sex-Based Differences in Message Processing as a Result of Media Literacy Effects on Perceived Desirability of Sexual Media Messages • Erica Austin, Washington State University, Murrow Center for Media and Health Promotion; Bruce Pinkleton, Washington State University; Yvonnes Chen, Virginia Tech • Secondary analysis of two quasi-experimental evaluations with pretest and posttest groups (N=922, N=1,098) tested the hypothesis that media literacy changed qualitative assessments of desirability among adolescents such that among those who had the media literacy intervention, high desirability perceptions had lessened effects on outcomes of expectancies, efficacy, and attitudes.  Effects differed somewhat for girls and boys.  The results showed media literacy education strengthens logical processing and can diminish the influence of affect on decision making.

Modeling Time in Multilevel Models • Michael Beam, The Ohio State University • Linear spline regression and interrupted time-series modeling allows regression slopes to vary between specific events. Combining these techniques with multilevel modeling, researchers can test changes in processes that occur over-time, such as theoretically dynamic models. This paper reviews the literature on linear splines, interrupted time-series and multilevel modeling and provides example analyses for using these tools.

Explicating Media Use 2.0: A Theoretical and Empirical Examination of a Key Communication Concept • Andrew Binder, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study offers an exhaustive concept explication of media use by examining three key dimensions: cognitive engagement, medium type, and content domain. In order to explore how these dimensions are inter-related, I analyze survey data that tapped respondents’ media use through eighteen indicators. After determining latent factors that yield high internal consistency and construct validity, I conclude by introducing a hierarchy of media use dimensions that reflects the overall relationships among the dimensions.

Not Another Materialist Rhetoric Marco Briziarelli, University of Colorado at Boulder In this paper I will attempt to provide an approach to materialist rhetoric by taking a step backward, prior to what Cloud (1994, p.142) considers the ideological turn in critical rhetoric. This project, as the title shows, implies engaging with Greene (1998, 2004, 2006) as I regard his thought as emblematic of a post-structuralist Marxist tendency more and more present in the political left of rhetoric and communication departments. I will also try to go beyond Cloud-s (1994, 2001, 2002) and Aune-s (1994, 2001) reactions to such trend by engaging more directly with what I consider the core concepts of Marxist post-structuralism: a specific understanding of determination and signification.

In agreement with Cloud, Macek and Aune (2006, p.74), I maintain that Greene’s framework is incapable to provide rational and normative parameters of evaluation of the present conditions. However, I will add to their arguments the consideration that if one wants to pushback against post-structuralist Marxism then one must engage with the main contradiction between a call to praxis and an understanding of determination and signification that seems to inhibit it. In fact, the deficiencies pointed out in Greene’s materialist rhetoric originate from a perspective that stops linking societal elements in causal terms and replaces this with a Hall-Althusser informed theory of articulation and with a non substantial and relational understanding power.

A New (Methodological) Look at Science Knowledge Gaps: Merging Trend-data to Examine Widening Nanotechnology Knowledge Gaps • Michael Cacciatore, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona State University • The growing consensus among scholars, scientists, and outreach specialists working in the nanotechnology industry is that the public is largely uninformed about the science behind nanotechnology. Despite major efforts aimed at communicating with the U.S. public about nanotechnology, recent studies have shown that there has been little change in the overall level of nanotechnology knowledge reported by public opinion surveys. Moreover, research has found knowledge gaps forming between the most and least educated (Corley & Scheufele, 2010). However, most of the research on public nanotechnology knowledge levels has examined changes in knowledge for the public as a whole or in simple cross-sectional studies as opposed to examining differences across diverse sets of publics and across multiple data collections. In this study we take a more granular approach by examining U.S. public knowledge levels across different levels of education and media use. We explore changes in knowledge levels and knowledge gaps among nationally-representative samples in 2004 and 2007 for different groups based on education levels and media use using data from two nationally representative telephone surveys. Our results show that increased science Internet use among low education groups can help narrow knowledge gaps that are likely to occur based on education. Interestingly, neither science newspaper use, nor science television use had significant impacts on the formation or leveling of these knowledge gaps based on education. Thus, it appears as though the Internet is uniquely positioned to play a key role in the reduction of nanotechnology knowledge gaps.

The influence of mood and information processing on recall: Exploring item-specific, relational and narrative processing • Michael Dahlstrom, Iowa State University; Sela Sar, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication • While both individual mood states and information processing strategies are present during all forms of communication, their potential interaction remains poorly understood. The purpose of this study was two-fold: 1) to investigate if item-specific and relational processing exhibit a mood congruency effect and 2) to explore if narrative processing behaves as an extension of relational processing. Results support the hypothesis that recall of item-specific and relational processing tasks are moderated by mood in the direction of congruency. Results also suggest that while narrative processing does interact with mood, it does not mirror relational processing but instead behaves more similarly to item-specific processing.

Group Involvement and the Spiral of Silence: Using Agent-Based Modeling to Understand Opinion Expression • Nick Geidner, The Ohio State University • The spiral of silence is one of the primary social explanations of public opinion formation currently employed in social science research. In short, Noelle-Neumann (1974; 1993) argues that individual-level opinion expression is a function of the opinion climate of the society. This paper adds a macro-level boundary condition to by the theory by examining how group involvement can affect the spiraling process. Using agent-based modeling, a simulation, replicating the assumptions in the spiral of silence, was created. Two other models, which added groups to the simulated society, were also created. Through running and comparing the results of these simulations, it was found that the addition of groups allowed for the survival of the societal-level minority opinions in certain cases. Further research should enhance the models used in this paper and should use agent-based modeling to examine other social communication theories.

Learning through Friending: Informational uses of online network sites and individuals’ social capital and participation • Homero Gil de Zuniga, University of Texas – Austin; Sebastian Valenzuela, University of Texas at Austin; Nakwon Jung, The University of Texas at Austin Citizens’ consumption of media and its effects on the realm of political and civic participation as well as the foundation of social capital have long been scrutinized. Research points out that traditional news consumption  activates people’s engagement civically and politically, as well as it facilitates the proliferation of social capital. A recent growing body of research has also tested how digital media use for informational purposes also positively contributes to the democratic process and the creation of social capital. Nevertheless, in the context of today’s socially networked society with the rise of Social Network Sites, new perspectives need to be considered. Based on US national data, results show that after controlling not only for demographic variables but also for traditional media use, the use of traditional sources of information online and individuals network size, seeking information via SNS was not statistically significant when it came to predict social capital; however, it does have a positive effect in predicting peoples’ civic and political – online and offline – participatory behaviors.

Anti-Americanism in the American Mind: National Identity, News Content and Attributions of Blame • Jason Gilmore, University of Washington; Lindsey Meeks, University of Washington. This study theorizes that distinct messages about the causes of anti-American sentiment in the world influence how people arrive at their sense of national identification. We conducted an experiment to examine the impact of these messages on assignments of blame for anti-American sentiment, the cognitive link between these attributions of blame and people’s sense of identification with America, and the broader associative network of political and news factors that contribute to formations of national identification.

Effects of Political Talk Show Discussion on Mobilizing Citizens: Applying an Approach-Avoidance Motivation Framework • Melissa R. Gotlieb, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Sojung Claire Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Itay Gabay, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Xuan Liang, University of Wisconsin-Madiosn; Chia-I Hou, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Douglas McLeod, School of Journalism and Mass Communication • We use approach-avoidance motivation as a framework for examining the conditions under which exposure to political talk show discussion mobilizes citizens. Results show that debate between uncivil guests produces negative emotions and interacts with style of the host to affect likelihood of participation. When the host is deliberative, incivility facilitates participation, but when the host is aggressive, incivility breeds apathy. Additional analysis reveals adverse effects of the aggressive host on cognitive engagement with the show.

The Effects of Random Error in Content Analysis: What Does Intercoder Reliability Really Mean? Joe Bob Hester, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper explores random error in content analysis. After discussing current beliefs about percent agreement, chance-corrected agreement measures, and reliability standards, the author presents a technique for estimating the effects of random error. Preliminary guidelines suggest that a minimum 94% percent agreement is necessary to be 95% confident that coding results are within ±5% of the results that would be obtained if random error were eliminated.

From Network Society to Social Networks in Mass Communication: Toward a Theoretical and Methodological Integration in the Digital Age • Itai Himelboim, University of Georgia, Telecommunications; Tsan-Kuo Chang, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong • This paper proposes approaching networks as organizational mechanisms that dictate specific patterns of interaction and communication among social actors.  It formulates an integrated theoretical framework for communication research in the context of Manuel Castells’ work on the network society and the interdisciplinary perspectives on network structure.  This paper identifies points of theoretical convergence related to the mapping of these two distinct bodies of literature—the conceptualization of networks as self-organized systems, the dynamics of growing inequalities in networks, and the short distances within networks.  It draws theoretical and methodological implications and future research suggestions to the study of technology and society, and computer-mediated communication.

Cultural Predispositions, Mass Media, and Opinion Expression: Examining the Spiral of Silence in Singapore • Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University; Vivian Chen, Nanyang Technological University; Clarice Sim, Nanyang Technological University • This study examines the influence of cultural predispositions and mass media on public outspokenness in Singapore, using the spiral of silence theory as a theoretical framework. A nationally representative telephone survey of 979 adults in Singapore was conducted. Respondents were asked to indicate how likely they would be to publicly express their own opinion and offer a rationale for their own opinion on the issue of legalization of same-sex marriage. Results indicate that fear of isolation and saving face were negatively, while news media use and issue salience were positively associated with individuals’ willingness to express their opinion on the issue. Fear of isolation was negatively, while uncertainty avoidance, news media use, and issue salience were positively associated with willingness to offer a rationale. Notably, news media use moderated the influence of fear of isolation and saving face on outspokenness. Our findings partially supported the spiral of silence theory.

Putting out Fire with Gasoline: Gamson Hypothesis, Political Information and Political Activity Tom Johnson, Texas Tech University; Barbara Kaye, John Hopkins • This study examined the Gamson hypothesis within the context of the Internet as well as alternative sources of political information. This study found that Dissidents (those high in trust and low in internal efficacy) outnumbered the Assureds (high trust, high internal efficacy) by more than 2-1. In line with the Gamson Hypothesis, Dissidents, are more likely to protest the government than Assureds who confine their political activities to supporting an issue or a candidate.

Investigating the process and effect of the reception and provision of emotional social support on breast cancer patients’ health outcomes in online cancer support groups • Eunkyung Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Jeong Yeob Han, University of Georgia; Tae Joon Moon, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Bret Shaw, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dhavan Shah, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Fiona McTavish, University of Wisconsin-Madison; David Gustafson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • In order to better understand the process and effect of the social support exchanges within computer-mediated social support (CMSS) groups for breast cancer patients, this study examines 1) the dynamic interplay between emotional support giving and receiving and 2) the relative effects of support giving and receiving on patients’ psychosocial health outcomes. Data collected from 177 patients who participated in online cancer support groups within the Comprehensive Health Enhancement Support System (CHESS) revealed that those who receive higher levels of support from others have fewer breast cancer-related concerns, while those who give higher levels of support to others reframe their own problems in a positive light and adopt more positive strategies for coping. In addition to these positive effects, we also found that emotional support giving and receiving tend to reinforce each other. The theoretical and practical implications for effective health campaigns for women with breast cancer are discussed.

Talking about Poverty: News Framing of Responsibility and the Public’s Support for Government Aid to the Poor • Sei-Hill Kim, University of South Carolina; James Shanahan, Boston University; Doo-Hun Choi, University of Wisconsin • Analyzing news articles and transcripts, we examine how the American media have framed the question of who is responsible for poverty. Linking the media content to survey data, we also explore what effects responsibility framing has on the audience. We found that news coverage of poverty focused largely on societal-level causes and solutions. A consequence of the media focusing predominantly on social responsibilities was to elicit more societal attributions of responsibility among the audience. The amount of television news viewing was significantly associated with perceived government responsibility to deal with poverty. The survey respondents also indicated that the greater the amount of news viewing, the more favorable attitudes toward the poor and the greater support for government aid programs.

Ambivalence Reduction and Polarization in the Campaign Information Environment:  The Interaction between Individual-Level and Contextual-Level Influences • Young Mie Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Ming Wang, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Melissa R. Gotlieb, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Itay Gabay, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Stephanie Edgerly, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study examines how the campaign information environment influences ambivalence reduction, and consequently, attitude extremity or polarization. The study utilized a hierarchical modeling to explore the interaction between the effect of individual-level predispositions and that of contextual-level campaign information environment. The findings suggest that the volume of campaign advertising exerts influences in ambivalence reduction and polarization, presumably functioning as a motivator for communication. The patterns amplified among partisans. The implications are discussed.

Why and How Consumers Use the Internet:  Online Uses and Gratifications Revisited Tien-Tsung Lee, University of Kansas; Susan Novak, University of Kansas • Using a national survey of more than 7,000 U.S. consumers, the present study examines the relationships among a wide variety of Internet uses, consumption of traditional media, various personality and demographic characteristics, and several types of civic engagement. It groups 19 different Internet uses into three categories and identifies their predictors. It can be argued that this study has made both a theoretical and methodological contribution to U & G research.

Learning from incidental exposure: An investigation of the causal relationship between unintended news encounters online and awareness of public affairs information • Jae Kook Lee, Indiana University • Employing a laboratory experiment, this study investigates the causal relationship between incidental exposure to news online and awareness of public affairs information. Manipulations of incidental exposure to news online were found to influence subjects’ recognition and recall of information in the news stories. Subjects in treatment groups recognized and recalled more information about news stories used as stimuli, compared to those in control group. Findings of this study indicate that people can learn about public affairs information via the route of incidental exposure on the Internet. Implications are discussed.

H1N1-Pandemic Risk Perception: The Influence of Media Dependency, • Carolyn Lin, University of Connecticut; Carolyn Lagoe, University of Connecticut • When the H1N1 pandemic was first reported last April, young healthy adults, for the first time, were identified as one of the high-risk groups for contracting the virus.  The current study was the first to explore the impact of influenza communication on college students’ risk perceptions.  Study results suggest that college students’ beliefs and attitudes regarding the threat posed by the H1N1 virus were only moderately influenced by either the media or interpersonal communication channels.

Virtually Ethnographic: Considering Method and Methodologies in Virutal Worlds • Rosa Mikeal Martey, Colorado State University; Kevin Shiflett, Colorado State University • In order to explore what ethnographic approaches offer the study of virtual spaces, we discuss a study of communication and behavior in Second Life. Through an examination of two key factors in ethnographic research, defining the site and the role of the researcher, we use our project as a sounding board to suggest how the benefits of ethnographic approaches can be extended past traditional boundaries. We examine the implications of using ethnographic methodologies with what are arguably not ethnographic methods at all. We concludes with implications for performing observational research of different kinds in virtual worlds.

Exposure to Counter-Attitudinal News Coverage and the Timing of Voting Decisions Jörg Matthes, University of Zurich • This paper investigates the effects of counter-attitudinal news coverage on the timing of voting decisions. We present two studies that combine representative panel data with an extensive content analysis of news media. Both studies find that mass-mediated cross-pressures delay voting decisions when people hold uncertain prior attitudes. There are some hints that counter-attitudinal coverage accelerates voting decisions when people hold their campaign attitudes with high attitude certainty.

Do Hostile Opinion Environments Harm Political Participation? The Moderating Role of Generalized Social Trust • Jörg Matthes, University of Zurich • This paper attempts to reevaluate the democratic implications of opinion diversity by showing that politically hostile opinion environments do not necessarily discourage political participation. Based on representative survey data, we find that a demobilizing effect of hostile opinion environments decreases with rising levels of generalized social trust. For individuals with a low level of social trust, exposure to a hostile social network can dampen participation. The opposite is true for people high in social trust.

Spiral of Speaking Out: Conflict Seeking of Democratic Youth in Republican Counties • Mike McDevitt, University of Colorado • A panel study of high school seniors during the 2006-midterm elections shows a striking pattern of Democratic youth thriving when exposed to hostile ideological climates. Democratic adolescents were more likely to disagree in conversations, test opinions, and listen to opponents if they lived in conservative counties compared with Democratic youth living in liberal counties. The results suggest that youth Democratic identity is distinguished from Republican identity as an overtly constructivist, deliberative, and conflict-seeking orientation.

Political ad tone, reactance, affect, perceived effects, and political participation • Patrick Meirick, Oklahoma; Gwendelyn Nisbett, OU; Hyunjung Kim, Oklahoma • This study begins with a replication of third-person work on political advertising that takes account of the message desirability of ads from different sides as well as target groups across the political spectrum.  It then extends this approach into the recent examinations of the consequences of perceived media effects for political behavior.  One new wrinkle added in this study was the inclusion of both negative and positive ads.  Negative ads tended to yield lower candidate attitude effects scores across the board, but they also increased third-person perception, mostly through perceived effects on self.  Affect and reactance also are considered as correlates of perceived media effects, TPP, and political participation.

The Effects of Comedic Media Criticism on Media Producers Lindsay Newport, Louisiana State University The study analyzed comedic media criticism and the effect it has on the practices of media producers using The Daily Show host Jon Stewart’s early 2009 criticism of the work of Mad Money with Jim Cramer host Jim Cramer.   A quantitative content analysis of claims (N=510) pulled from Mad Money transcripts revealed little to no evidence that Stewart’s criticism impacted Cramer’s work.  Discussion of the results’ implication on viewers, their attitudes, the news media, and democracy followed.

Anti-Americanism as a media effect? Arab Media, Prior Cognitions, and Public Opinion in the Middle East Erik Nisbet, Ohio State University; Teresa Myers, Ohio State University • Many have attributed anti-American sentiment within Arab countries to a highly negative information environment propagated by regional Arab satellite news channels such as al-Jazeera and al-Arabia. However, empirical evidence evaluating the linkages between media exposure and opinion about the United States remains scant due to data availability and simplistic understanding of media effects. Drawing upon media effects, public opinion, and social identity theory and employing five years of survey data collected across six Arab countries that includes measures of media use behaviors and opinions of nearly 20,000 Arab respondents, this paper examines the relationship between media exposure to Arab satellite TV and opinion about the United States. We also demonstrate how political schemas among Arab audiences play an important role in moderating the relationship between Arab media use and public opinion. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.

Michael Jordan, Michael Vick, or just some guy named Michael: Exploring Priming Effectiveness based on Valence, Mode, and Familiarity Temple Northup, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Francesca Dillman Carpentier, UNC-Chapel Hill • In today’s society, it is nearly impossible to escape the influence of the media.  Because of that, there has been no shortage of research exploring the possible effects media messages have on media consumers.  In particular, numerous studies have examined the way the media can act as primes that affect our judgments – often without our explicit awareness.  This study builds on prior research by exploring the effectiveness of a prime based on its modality, valence, and familiarity.  Results suggest that primes are most effective when image and text are redundant in valence, provided the image is concrete in nature.  There is also some support for a negativity bias. Findings are discussed in light of second-generation priming questions regarding when primes will yield effects.

Another Condition for Successful Deliberation: A Mathematical Approach • Poong Oh, University of Southern California • This study investigated the conditions under which democratic decision-making processes – majority rule and democratic deliberation – produce better outcomes, which must be distinguished from those that simply satisfy more people. The logical extension of Condorcet’s Jury Theorem showed that only when individual voters are informed of at least more than one alternative, the majority rule produces right decisions with a probability higher than 50%, and that as the number of the voters increases, the reliability of the majority’s decision accordingly increases. Democratic deliberation, in particular, Fishkin’s (1991) Deliberative Polling experiments, possibly increases the likelihood of cross-cutting exposure and thereby produces significant changes in opinions. However, a computational model based on the balance theory (Heider, 1946; 1958) suggested that the opinion changes resulted from deliberative polling experiments were nothing other than those resulted from random fluctuation. Specifically, the deliberation among those who have different views but no preexisting relations with each other does not necessarily produce a better decision; but rather a different one. Furthermore, the computational model suggested that the strong and positive relations between people with different viewpoints, in addition to cross-cutting exposure, were required for successful deliberation. On the other hand, the strong and positive relations only among like-minded people led to group polarization. The study discussed the implications for the new media environment and suggested the direction of future research.

The Effect of Narrative News Format on Empathy For Stigmatized Groups • Mary Beth Oliver, The Pennsylvania State University; James P. Dillard, Pennsylvania State University; Keunmin Bae, Pennsylvania State University; Daniel J. Tamul, Pennsylvania State University • The primary aim of this study was to empirically evaluate the extent to which news story format (narrative vs. non-narrative) can initiate empathic processes that might produce more favorable evaluations of stigmatized groups. Participants (N = 399) read one of two versions of a story that described health-care related dilemmas for either immigrants, prisoners, or the elderly. The data showed that the narrative formatted produce more compassion toward the individuals in the story, more favorable attitudes toward the group, more beneficial behavioral intentions, and more information seeking behavior. Although the process could be modeled so as to include a reduced version of the transportation scale (i.e., story involvement), narrative engagement, when measured in this fashion, was not a defining feature of the empathic process. No significant effects of story type were observed on counter-compassionate emotions (i.e., fear, anger, and disgust). The results speak to the potential for narrative news formats to create more egalitarian attitudes toward members of stigmatized groups.

Mechanisms of Media Campaign Effectiveness in Children’s Physical Activity Contexts:  Expanding Normative Influence in the Theory of Planned Behavior • Hye-Jin Paek, Michigan State University; Hyun Jung Oh, Michigan State University; Thomas Hove, Michigan State University This study explicates mechanisms of media campaign effectiveness in the context of children’s physical activity. Our model expands the Theory of Planned Behavior by integrating injunctive and descriptive norms into its normative mechanism. Analysis of a nationally representative evaluation survey among 2,071 tweens indicates that campaign exposure is significantly related to behavioral intention only indirectly. Perceived behavioral control and descriptive norms are more strongly related to behavioral intention than attitudes and subjective and injunctive norms.

Effects of Rationality and Discounting Cues on Attitude Changes toward Soft Drinks over Time CHIA-HSIN PAN, CHINESE CULTURE UNIVERSITY, TAIPEI, TAIWAN • This study attempts to investigate the effects of information processing styles and discounting cues on participants’ immediate and delayed attitude changes. A 2 (high/low rationality) _ 2 (with/without discounting cue) factorial design was employed to examine the extent to which the persuasiveness of a brand name soft drink’s campaign messages to college students. Results revealed the interaction effect between factors on attitude changes over time. Applications on health promotions were suggested.

Transportation into Vivid Media Violence and Viewer Fright Reactions • Karyn Riddle, University of Wisconsin, Madison • Prior research exploring transportation into violent narratives suggests that the transportation experience can lead to story-consistent attitudes and beliefs (Green & Brock, 2000). The present study will extend this research by focusing on transportation processes and discrete emotions as outcomes. In an experiment, 76 participants were exposed to vivid and non-vivid versions of a violent television program. Findings suggest that participants were more transported into the vivid version. Furthermore, transported viewers were more likely to experience the discrete emotion of fear than less transported viewers. Finally, transported viewers reported higher excitation levels, perceived the media content as more realistic, and gave the media violence higher ratings of graphicness. Implications for transportation and media violence research are discussed.

A Comparative Grouping Method: Studying Meaning Construction Using a Hybrid Approach Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Andrew Mendelson, Temple University • This article maps a hybrid methodology by fusing elements of experimental design with qualitative techniques. Called a comparative grouping method, this method utilizes focus groups and in-depth interviews and employs experimental-stimulus conditions typically associated with quantitative research within two qualitative studies. This mixed-method research draws on advantages of quantitative measures to better understand meaning construction and gain a more holistic reading of response differences between medium formats.

Perceived risk as a mediator of mood effects on the effectiveness of health PSAs: differential effects for high vs. low relevance messages • Sela Sar, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication; George Anghelcev, Penn State University • Affect, and especially pre-existing affect, is a neglected variable in health communication research. However, the emotional state of an audience right before they encounter a persuasive health message is likely to influence the effectiveness of that message. The present study finds that the effect of pre-existing mood on health message effectiveness is mediated by the perceived risk of contracting the disease mentioned by the message. We examine the underlying psychological mechanisms and reveal how this mediation effect is shaped by the perceived relevance of the message. Results support the hypotheses and have significant theoretical and practical consequences.

The Media and Identity Scale: Some Evidence of Construct Validity • John Dimmick, The Ohio State University; Melanie Sarge, The Ohio State University • The current paper presents evidence of the construct validity of the Media and Identity scale, which suggests that a major reason people utilize media is that they find ways to connect the media and its content with their personal and social identities. The first and second sections of this paper review the domain of and scale for the media and identity construct. The third section provides evidence of construct validity of the Media and Identity scale by demonstrating that the measure is empirically related to theoretically relevant variables – media and identity outcomes – which are presented, defined, and tested with a confirmatory factor analysis. Practical utility of the scale is addressed in the discussion section of the paper.

Reinforcing Spirals of Negative Affects and Selective Attention to Advertising in a Political Campaign • Christian Schemer, University of Zurich • The present study investigates self-reinforcing spiral processes between negative affect toward ethnic minorities and the attention to political advertising in a direct-democratic campaign dealing with the issue of the asylum law restriction in Switzerland. Based on data from a three-wave panel survey the study found evidence for self-reinforcing spiral processes. Specifically, the initial attention to political advertising elicited negative affects toward asylum seekers in the course of the political campaign. At the same time, these affective reactions enhanced people’s attention to political advertising. These findings do not only indicate the presence of self-reinforcing spiral processes. They also suggest that this spiral process is mainly fueled by cues emanating from the political campaign.

Value Resonance and Value Framing Effects on Voting Intentions in Direct-Democratic Campaigns Christian Schemer, University of Zurich; Werner Wirth, University of Zurich; Jörg Matthes, University of Zurich • This study offers insights into how news media frames interact with existing value orientations in shaping voter preferences. It is assumed that the news framing of an issue in terms of cherished sociopolitical values influences policy preferences of audience members. This framing effect should be more pronounced when news frames resonate with people’s existing value predispositions. These assumptions were tested in a real-world setting of a political campaign in Switzerland dealing with the issue of naturalizations of immigrants. Based on a data set in which the data of a two-wave panel survey were matched with content analytic data, the present research demonstrated frame-resonance effects for news reporting about the pro campaign. That is, framing the issue in terms of the notion that the Swiss people should have the final say in naturalization procedures shaped voting preferences only for voters whose basic values of social order, tradition, and security (high authoritarians) were touched. In contrast, a main effect of the opponents’ framing in the news on voting preferences was found. Thus, the majority followed the pragmatic and material framing of the opponents who put emphasis on a fair and pragmatic solution of the naturalization issue.

The role of exemplification in shaping third-person perceptions and support for restrictions on video games • Mike Schmierbach, Penn State University; Qian Xu, Penn State University; Michael Boyle, West Chester University • The origins of third-person perceptions remain uncertain. We investigate whether media content might play a role, demonstrating that news content presenting exemplars can increase third-person perceptions and potentially influence support for restrictions on games. Data from an experiment also show that media content explicitly describing content as harmful does not exert a similar effect.

Identity salience and policy support: Barack Obama, group identity cues, and message effects Penelope Sheets, University of Washington • On a national stage, a politician’s emphasis upon national identity should elicit positive attitudes among voters toward their fellow group-member, the candidate. However, the nation is not the only collective to which American citizens belong; instead, racial, religious, regional, partisan, and other social groups are often salient to individuals, providing a source of positive self-definition and self-esteem that can not be entirely ignored in the face of the national group. These differing, perhaps competing, identities present a navigational challenge for politicians communicating with differing slices of the public. Studies have shown that when white participants are asked directly to think about their racial group (versus their national group), they are less likely to support certain policies. But what happens when racial or national cues are embedded in the policy message itself, which is a more accurate approximation of the real-world political environment? This study reports results of a survey-experiment that examined how policy messages that cue race or nation, attributed to Barack Obama, affect voters’ attitudes toward the policy as well as their interpretations of the policy’s scope and impact. Respondents had more positive attitudes toward the policy when couched in national (versus racial) cues, although these effects are moderated by respondents’ levels of national identification.

Game Theory and Mass Communication: Applications and Insights for Future Use • Amy Sindik, University of Georgia • This study examines the contributions game theory has made to the field of mass communication, and offers suggestions for the increased use of game theory in the field.  Previous studies have analyzed game theory in the areas of auctions, competition, online reputation, participant behavior, programming, public relations and strategic management.  However, a gap in the literature exists for an overall examination of game theory’s place—and future potential—in mass communication research.  While studies have examined game theory’s role in specific areas of mass communication, no one has systematically analyzed the overarching implications of these separate studies.  This paper adds to the theoretical literature by compiling the central findings and analyzing the ways game theory can contribute to future mass communication research.  This study analyzed the body of game theory research by reviewing previous studies that used game theory, provided an overview of game theory’s fit in the field, and offered suggestions for future use of game theory in mass communications.  The study found that game theory is most useful in areas of mass communication where rational behavior is valued and recommends that game theory be applied to mass communication research with greater frequency.

Emails from the 2008 U.S. Presidential Campaigns: Communication and Mobilization Melissa Smith, Mississippi State University; Barry Smith, Mississippi University for Women The 2008 presidential campaign marked the first time that more than half of all Americans went online to participate in or learn more about the campaigns. Because of this shift toward online and social media, political campaigns are working hard to find ways of reaching potential voters in cyberspace. The Obama-Biden and McCain-Palin campaigns in 2008 attempted to reach and mobilize voters in cyberspace using a variety of methods. The campaigns employed direct-marketing industry tactics in creating effective email messages, which include keeping messages short, offering multiple links within each email message, and encouraging subscribers to forward messages to a friend. This paper analyzes the content and formatting of these campaign email messages to determine their effectiveness.  Email messages sent by the campaigns were coded for a number of different categories. These included seven primary areas: overall multimedia content, political issues, parasocial interaction, mobilization, discussion of the candidate, discussion of the opponent, and campaign news.  A number of differences were noted, including frequency of emails sent, and the McCain campaign’s use of issues in the messages, versus the Obama-Biden campaign’s attempt to connect more personally with supporters. The Obama campaign seems to have done a better job overall of using email to mobilize supporters.

Selecting Daily Newspapers in China for Content Analysis: A Comparison of Sampling Methods and Sample Sizes • Yunya Song, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong; Tsan-Kuo Chang, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong • Following similar studies in the United States, this study compares different sampling methods and sample sizes in the selection of daily newspapers in China for content analysis of the news. Consistent with previous research focusing on U.S. daily newspapers, the results show that the method of constructed week sampling is more efficient than simple random sampling or consecutive day sampling, and a single constructed week allows reliable estimates of content in a population of six months of newspaper editions even for highly volatile content variables. The weekday-plus-Saturday constructed week sampling, an oft-used sampling stratification approach in content analyses of Chinese daily newspapers, however, did not perform as efficiently as the full constructed week samples. As many as 12-day weekday-plus-Saturday constructed week samples may be needed for the estimation of the news content, depending on the type of variables being analyzed.

Mapping the Intellectual Structure of Framing Research Through Citation and Cocitation Analysis: A Social Network Perspective • Zixue Tai, International Communication Division • Framing has been the most productive line of communication research in the past decade. With the explosive growth of academic literature comes the need for a reflexive study of the nature of knowledge production and patterns of scholarly communication among active researchers in the field. This study combines citation/cocitation analysis with social network analysis (SNA) in examining the intellectual maps and structural relations of the knowledge-sharing networks of framing research by analyzing data from a sample of 125 journal articles published from 2000 to 2008. The results reveal key sets and clusters of citations that point to a number of emerging research fronts and growth areas; it also offers insight on intellectual linkages among key literature.

What’s a good citizen to do?  Exploring the emergence of civic norms among young citizens Kjerstin Thorson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study investigates the endorsement of civic norms within a cohort of our youngest citizens, Americans who were 12-17 years old during the 2008 presidential election. It explores the variables that predict endorsement of informed citizen and value-expressive citizenship norms. A typology of citizenship models based on norm endorsement is presented as the precursor to an analysis diagnosing factors that help to build bridges across distinct citizenship models.

Materialism, Postmaterialism and Agenda-Setting Effects: The Values-Issues Consistency Hypothesis • Sebastian Valenzuela, University of Texas at Austin • Previous research has found that agenda-setting effects vary according to individuals’ need for orientation (NFO). This study posits that values also determine what issues people think are important. Based on content analysis and survey panel data from a representative sample, the study shows that—in addition to NFO—materialist and postmaterialist values moderate agenda-setting effects. The results provide support for a theoretical link between agenda setting and value change theory.

Reconceptualizing Political Blogs as Part of Elite Political Media • Aaron Veenstra, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • Despite a literature on blogs that dates back nearly a decade, scholars have yet to reach a consensus conceptual definition for the blog as an object or as a medium. Most research on blogs relies on a broad, shallow structural definition of blogs as sites that display frequently updated posts in reverse-chronological order. However, when blogs or blogging is operationalized, this definition is often disregarded in favor of a third-party tool such as the use of blog index sites (e.g., Technorati, BlogPulse) or reliance on survey respondents to decide what they think blog refers to. The very feature modularity of blogs that makes them so difficult to define has also made it easy for traditional media organizations to adopt many features typically associated with blogs, such as user commenting. Newspapers and magazines have also begun featuring their own blogs, and new publications such as The Huffington Post and Politico blur the boundaries with stylistic diversion from journalistic norms and their pursuit of links from the blogosphere. This paper outlines an approach to online news and political media based not on asserted medium distinctions, but on an analysis of the attributes of news and political sites based on the mix of attributes approach (Eveland, 2003). This approach allows for a more complex understanding of how political media operate and interact online, and a more fine-grained understanding of the effects of social media occur.

The Correspondent, the Combatant, and the Comic: How Moderator Style and Guest Civility Shape News Credibility • Emily Vraga, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Mitchell Bard, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Leticia Bode, University of Wisconsin – Madison; D. Jasun Carr, UW-Madison; Stephanie Edgerly, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Courtney Johnson, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Young Mie Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dhavan Shah, University of Wisconsin-Madison • An increasingly competitive media landscape has caused stylistic changes in news programming. This experiment employs a 3×2 design to examine how moderator style and guest tone influence media perceptions. Results illustrate that among the three moderator styles — correspondent, combatant, and comic — the correspondent moderator produced the highest ratings of media credibility and program evaluations without limiting entertainment value. However, guest tone does not directly or indirectly affect perceptions of the program or the media.

Internet buzzword or theory-grounded concept?  User-generated content explicated • Justin Walden, Pennsylvania State University • User-generated content has emerged recently as a significant discussion topic in popular and technology-trade publications. Scholars have likewise considered this Web 2.0 phenomenon in research studies. However, a literature review suggests that the concept’s key theoretical dimensions and mechanisms are often overlooked in studies. Relying on Chaffee’s (1991) guide for concept explication, this article reviews studies in which UGC has appeared, considers current UGC definitions, and proposes modified theoretical and operational definitions that better encapsulate the concept’s true essence. Specifically, this paper argues that UGC is: principally tied to Web 2.0 and the Internet; found at websites and available through applications that enable feedback and that foster interactivity; amateur content that is created within a redefined media marketplace in which the user/consumer is activated; and produced by people with a wide range of motivations and who most likely feel a strong sense of agency. This article also discusses concept-specific avenues for future research.

Modeling Political Consumerism among Youths: An Ecological Systems Approach • Rob Wicks, University of Arkansas Communication Department; Ron Warren, University of Arkansas Communication Department • Studies of political consumerism (i.e., political- or value-oriented consumerism) are a relatively recent development in the literature on political and civic engagement. This study employs Bronfenbrenner’s Ecological Theory of child development as a first attempt to build an explanatory model of teens’ socialization into political consumption behaviors. Structural equation modeling indicates that certain cultural factors (e.g., church attendance, parent education) influence micro-level systems within which children might acquire political consumer behaviors (including parent-child interaction and online media use).

State of Ontological Practice Theory • Yaping XU, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University • Since its birth in 1980s, Gilles Deleuze’s Ontological Practice Theory (OPT) triggered a group of studies which applied and testified his redefined cinematic typology and subversive notions that image making as subjective (re-)construction of reality, especially in terms of intercultural bred image makers, to analyze respectively specific transformations appeared amid the formal properties of film. This paper gives a brief explanation to OPT and reviews a group of rigorous research deploying Deleuze’s perspectives, finally with a evaluation this theory’s powers and limitations, so as to give recommendations to the future research against contemporary pluralistic cultural environment, for a better understanding of the image meaning making process from a bottom-up viewpoint.

Motivational Systems and Health Message Framing: Testing Two Competing Accounts Changmin Yan, Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University • This study examines two competing accounts of health message framing. While one camp conceptualizes message frames based on the end state’s desirability (the desirability account), the other posits to construe frames according to their outcome probability (the probability account). Through two sets of 2×2 mixed design, motivational systems (behavioral inhibition system and behavioral approach system) by end-state desirability frames (undesirability and desirability) and motivational systems (behavioral inhibition system and behavioral approach system) by outcome probability frames (sure and uncertain), the two models were tested. While message recipients were able to perceive both frame conceptualizations, the outcome probability account was found to offer a better prediction on framing’s interaction with motivational systems. Theoretical implications were discussed at the end.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Communication Technology (CTEC) 2010 Abstracts

PeaceMaker: Changing Students’ Attitudes Toward Palestinians and Israelis Through Video Game Play • Saleem Alhabash, University of Missouri, School of Journalism; Kevin Wise, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • An experiment investigated the effects of video game role-play on change of students’ explicit and implicit attitudes toward Palestinians and Israelis. Sixty-nine participants played the Peacemaker, a video game in which people play the role of either the Palestinian President or the Israeli Prime Minister and respond to various scenarios through diplomatic, economic, and military decision-making. Results showed that participants playing as the Palestinian President reported positive change in explicit attitudes toward Palestinians and negative change in explicit attitudes toward Israelis. Participants playing as the Israeli Prime Minister reported no meaningful attitude changes toward both national groups over time. Implicit attitudes were more positive toward Palestinians but did not change significantly over time. Results are discussed in relation to self-persuasion, persuasive games, and attitude change.

Facebook and the Self: How Self-esteem, Satisfaction with Life, Self-Consciousness, and General Affect Inform Motivation and Intensity of Facebook Use • Saleem Alhabash, University of Missouri, School of Journalism; Hyojung Park, University of Missouri, School of Journalism; YoungAh Lee, Missouri School of Journalism • A cross-sectional survey of U.S. college students (N=201) examined the relationship between four different psychological measures, and the motivations to use Facebook and the site’s usage patterns. Results of a structural equation model analysis showed that different psychological indicators of personality and the self were associated with Facebook usage patterns through specific indirect effects of seven motivations to use the site. Self-esteem positively affected Facebook use intensity and time spent on the site through the need for social connection, while satisfaction with life affected these two variables indirectly through the motivation to use Facebook for status updates. Even the three sub-constructs of self-consciousness (private self-consciousness, public self-consciousness, and social anxiety) took different indirect paths to influencing the dependent variables. Results are discussed within the framework of the Media Choice Model and the uses and gratifications theory.

Discussing Politics in the Newly Emerging Venues – Do You Talk Offline, on Mobile or Online? • Soo Young Bae, University of Michigan • This study examines the relationship between citizens’ political discussion and political engagement, with a specific interest in the implications of the new mobile and online communication contexts for political discussion. With an analysis of a representative sample of adults in the U.S., this study attempts to explicate the links between traditional and newly emerged forms of political discussions, by focusing on two pertinent characteristics of the political discussants – age and opinion leadership.

Screen name interpretation strategy as a corollary of social media experience: Toward a hierarchy of virtual needs • Jaime Banks, Colorado State University • The present study leverages a web-based card sorting task to simulate how social media users stereotype cyberothers based on screen names. Findings indicate the nature stereotyping behaviors depend on users’ experience and comfort with social media; a loose continuum suggests that greater social media sophistication associates with less stringent stereotyping and greater likelihood to engage in conversation with a cyberother while less sophisticated users are more stringent and less likely to engage.

Pandemic Situation and Health Organizations’ Use of Social Media Tools: A H1N1 Flu Context • Masudul Biswas, Louisiana State University • Grounded in outbreak communication strategies, this study explores the use of social media tools by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and World Health Organization (WHO) in the context of H1N1 flu outbreak in 2009. This study content-analyzed H1N1 flu-related messages including 243 Twitter updates, 251 Facebook messages and comments, and 222 web site posts disseminated by the CDC and the WHO in six actual weeks between April – July, 2009. The findings suggest that Twitter and Facebook facilitated quick and constant dissemination of H1N1 flu-related messages on case investigation/diagnosis, safety/prevention, treatment and flu situation posted on the official web sites of the CDC and the WHO.

Showing off MySpace: Examining the effects of sociability on self-presentation of MySpace users • Kris Boyle, Creighton University; Tom Johnson, Texas Tech University • This study examined the effects that sociability has on a user’s self-presentation on MySpace, including the amount and type of information users provide on their pages. An analysis of 502 pages revealed that the number of friends and friend photos did predict the number of personal identity items on the user’s page. The number of friends negatively predicted the amount of information one was willing to reveal, while the number of friend videos did not predict self-presentation.

iWant my iPad! Characteristics of potential adopters of Apple’s tablet device • Tim Brown, University of Central Florida; Steven Collins, University of Central Florida; Kim Bissell, University of Alabama • The introduction of the iPad – Apple’s tablet device – affords scholars the opportunity to examine the potential reasons for adoption before the device is even released. Using concepts from diffusion research, the technology acceptance model and uses and gratifications, this study sought to determine the characteristics of potential adopters of the iPad among college students, one of the device’s target audiences. Results show that students are likely to adopt the device within three years, and that there is a moderate to strong correlation between the perceived usefulness (PU) of the iPad and the intention to adopt. Current iPhone users were more likely than non-smartphone users to predict they would adopt the device and that it would be useful. Interestingly, Hispanic students scored significantly higher on adoption and perceived usefulness measures than other demographic groups.

Motivations for student use of social media in education • Tim Brown, University of Central Florida; Amanda Groff, University of Central Florida • This study of 788 college students provides evidence that students compartmentalize their communication tools – social tools for social time, work tools for work time. In addition, students seem to be saying that they have limits as to what kind of academic information they want to receive through personal media channels. The recognition that personal SNS pages would mean that faculty would be able to view students’ personal information in addition to academic information does not sit well with the students in this survey. They seem to prefer to stay with formal, professional channels for school work in most cases. There are, however, exceptions. Students are willing to receive information on their personal media (SNS, text, mobile phones) in certain situations, such as emergency information or a change in course schedule; or, in the case of mobile phones, email and CMS information, most likely because of their professional nature. There are also a few students who view potential benefits in social networking in the classroom, specifically Twitter.

Old Enough to Surf, Old Enough to Buy: Spokescharacters and Product Pitches on Popular Children’s Websites • Erik Bucy, Indiana University; Sojung Claire Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study examines the extent to which product spokescharacters are used for advertising purposes on children’s websites, and assess whether commercial sites geared towards young users are complying with industry guidelines calling for a clear separation between advertising and content. A longitudinal content analysis of 101 of the most popular children’s sites over a six-year period (2003, 2006, and 2009) found content and advertising integration to be common. The study found that a majority of sites employed characters in their online advertising and most did not identify advertising with an explicit label when characters were featured on their homepages. A similar pattern was found for product-based games that incorporated characters. Branded sites with a recognizable product were much more likely to employ characters in product-based games than non-branded sites, and to use popular characters in their advertising. Moreover, based on the patterns observed from 2003 to 2009, companies seemed to push characters inside their websites rather than on the front pages as well as in product-related games rather than in advertising. Implications for future research and industry regulation are discussed.

Perceived Substitutability and Actual Viewership Overlap between Traditional and New Video Platforms • Jiyoung Cha, University of North Texas • This study addresses television firms’ fear of rising online video platforms by investigating age variations in 1) the perceived substitutability between online video platforms and television, and 2) actual usage of those video platforms. The findings from this study indicate that an age difference exists in how people perceive online video platforms and television in satisfying their needs to watch video content. Different age groups also differ in their actual use of the video platforms.

The impact of social identity gratifications of Facebook use on collective action • Michael Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong • Drawing from uses and gratifications and social identity theory, this study explores the role of group identification, Facebook use gratifications, and intensity of Facebook use on willingness to engage in collective actions. Respondents from a Facebook group completed an online survey (N=406). Factor analyses revealed that group-driven motivations explained the most variance for Facebook Group use. Further regression analyses showed that the factors explained over 40% of the variance in willingness to engage in collective actions.

Factors Affecting e-Book Reader Awareness, Interest, and Intention to Use • Jong-Gu Park, School of Communications, Sogang University; Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida; Young-Ju Kim, Korea Press Foundation; Jaemin Jung, Graduate School of Information & Media Management, KAIST • This study examines the relationship between consumer adoption of e-book readers and demographic, media usage/ownership, and perception variables. It was found that e-book reader awareness, interest, and intention to use were positively related to age, education, income, needs for print media, digital media ownership, consumer innovativeness, and perceived innovation attributes of e-book readers. Overall, demographics were the most influential factors in awareness, consumer innovativeness in interest, and perceived innovation attributes in intention to use.

Factors Affecting the Use of Web Portals in the Mobile Internet • Sun-Hee Lee, Media & Culture Contents Research Institute, Sungkyunkwan University; Byeng-Hee Chang, Sungkyunkwan University • As the development of mobile Internet technology and devices advances, Internet use and access are becoming more popular among users of mobile devices. However, to date, researches on the use of portals through mobile Internet devices remains insufficient. This study suggested a research model that explains general use of portals in the context of mobile Internet. Specifically, this study proposed that use of the portals on mobile Internet devices would be affected by perceived ubiquitous effects (from previous mobile Internet studies), perceived ease of use (from TAM), Perceived consequences, habit, social factors (from Triandi’s mode), attitude, and intention. In addition, this study suggested service-platform fit that can be defined as the suitability of use between the portal service and the mobile Internet device as a new variable. The results of the structural equation modeling analysis showed that perceived consequences, perceived ease of use, and social factors except for perceived ubiquitous effect had significant effects on attitude. Also, habit, perceived consequences, social factors, and intention were found to have effects on use of the portal on a mobile device.

Who do you Trust? Source Effects in Online Product Reviews • Xue Dou, Pennsylvania State University; Justin Walden, Pennsylvania State University; Seoyeon Lee, Pennsylvania State University; Ji Young Lee, Pennsylvania State University • Drawing on source credibility literature and theoretical conceptualizations about electronic word of mouth, this study examines how visible sources of product reviews influence people’s product judgments. This study finds that reviews made by third party websites and regular Internet users (visible sources) lead to greater trust toward the reviewer (the original source), compared to descriptions from product makers. Findings suggest that the intentions of online reviewers are critical for evaluating opinions about online reviews/products.

iPedagogy: Using Multimedia Learning Theory to iDentify Best Practices for MP3 Player Use in Higher Education. • Edward Downs, University of Minnesota Duluth; Aaron Boyson, University of Minnesota Duluth; Hannah Alley, University of Minnesota Duluth; Nikki Kotosky, University of Minnesota Duluth • Some institutions of higher learning have invested considerable resources to diffuse iPods and MP3 devices while knowing very little about learning outcomes tied to their use. An experiment was conducted to examine how systematic variations in the capability of commonly used MP3 technologies facilitate learning. Dual-coding and multimedia learning theories guided the development and editing of a typical college lecture so that it could be presented in a combination of audio and visual forms across small-screen and large-screen displays. Scores on a cued-recall assessment test indicated that dual-coded presentations were substantially more potent learning aids. Depending on the presentation, group mean scores ranged from 56% to 71%. Results are discussed in terms of developing best-practice strategies for those who wish to implement iPod technology into course curricula.

How should I reach you? A Quantitative Analysis of Interpersonal Relationship Dialectics in Computer Mediated Communication • David Fry, Colorado State University – Journalism and Technical Communication • The purpose of this research was to examine Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) use to maintain pre-existing intermittent face-to-face contact (IFFC)(months or years in between face-to-face communication) in friend and family relationships. Sustained lifelong communication with both friends and family is important to a happier, longer, and more social life, but both require at least intermittent contact. Using the Dialectical Theory of Relationships as a scope to examine both the human-human and human-computer interaction, when utilizing different CMC methods, gave a better understanding of why communicators choose one method over another. Six media were surveyed including postal mail, telephone, email, instant messaging, cellular messaging, and social networking, using six dialectical contradictions to evaluate strengths and weaknesses in using each particular medium to maintain relationships. The most used medium for IFFC communication was telephone, while the most used CMC method was Email. Telephone proved to be the least difficult, easiest to understand, gave the highest feeling of connection, the most privacy, and provided the best means for supporting a stable relationship. Social networking tools were rated the most fun to use.

The quest for national standards in digitizing television: A comparative policy analysis • Hanlong Fu, University of Connecticut; David Atkin, University of Connecticut • China recently has emerged as a serious player in setting ICT standards, evidenced by its presence in major conferences on standardization with the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). While the ATSC standard contributes to the successful completion of the DTV transition in the U.S., China’s home-grown DTV standard bears little, to date, on China’s relative success in converting one third of her cable households to digital service. In light of these differing outcomes, this paper attempts to identify and compare the strategies behind the quest for national standards of DTV by retracing the key policy initiatives in China and the U.S. This paper found evidence supporting the importance of maintaining a state of equipoise-particularly between industry and governmental policy–is critical to maintain technological innovation and a competitive marketplace.

Media, Instability, and Democracy: Examining the Granger-Causal Relationships of 122 Countries from 1946 to 2003 • Jacob Groshek, ISU • Using cross-national time-series data in sequences of Granger causality tests, this study analyzed the democratic effects of media technologies with a sample of 122 countries. This process revealed that communication technologies are vital, but not exclusive or universal prerequisites of democratic growth. As expected by media system dependency theory, media diffusion was shown to have Granger-caused democracy only in countries where media served more information functions and where sociopolitical instability levels were higher. This study further indicated that media diffusion is central to the development of sociopolitical instability, which suggested certain direct as well as indirect macro-level democratic effects of mass media diffusion. The conditions of media system dependency theory also demonstrated an integrative relationship with the economic development thesis.

The Role of Provider-Patient Communication and Trust in Online Sources in Online Health Activities • Jiran Hou, The University of Georgia; Minsun Shim, University of Georgia • Provider-patient communication is an important factor influencing patients’ satisfaction and their health outcomes. In this study, we examined the association between the perceived patient-centeredness of provider-patient communication and patients’ online health-related activities. Using the data on more than 4,000 adults from the 2007 Health Information National Trend Survey (HINTS), we found that as individuals perceived their communication with healthcare providers to be less open and patient-centered, they were more likely to participate in various types of online health-related activities, such as using websites for healthy lifestyles and searching for healthcare providers. In addition, trust in online health information was also found to be a significant predictor of individuals’ online information seeking. The results of this study emphasized the important role of provider-patient communication in affecting individuals’ health information seeking behaviors.

The Influence of Prior Issue Attitudes on Perception Bias and Perceived Message Credibility: Opposing Online Messages about Smoking Bans • Jehoon Jeon, Wayne State University; Hye-Jin Paek, Michigan State University; Thomas Hove, Michigan State University • Using a simulated online discussion board focused on the smoking ban issue, this online survey study investigates whether individuals perceive similar messages differently and how their prior issue attitudes relate to perception bias and perceived message credibility. Findings indicate biased assimilation of media content. Participants perceived the entire online discussion to be congruent with their prior issue attitudes, and they showed a higher perceived message credibility for specific posts supporting their own point of view.

The Effects of High-Context and Low-Context Profile and Subjective norm on Attitudes and Behavioral intentions toward Social Network Sites • Bokyung Kim, MU; Hyunmin Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia • Guided by Hall’s (1976) cultural context and Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), this study explored the impact of high and low cultural context elements and perceived subjective norm (invitation from a friend vs. invitation from the Social Networking Site [SNS]) on users’ attitudes and behavioral intentions toward SNS. This study found the main effect of cultural contexts of profile page and the interaction effect between contexts and subjective norm on outcome variables. The results theoretically confirmed to the constructs of TPB and expanded the theory to the context of SNS. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

How Does Depression Interact with Different e-Health Systems to Improve Psychosocial Outcomes of Cancer Patients? • Sojung Claire Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Bret Shaw, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dhavan Shah, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Robert Hawkins, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Susan Pingree, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Fiona McTavish, University of Wisconsin-Madison; David Gustafson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study investigated potential interaction effects of depression and the use of Interactive Cancer Communication Systems (ICCSs) on breast cancer patients’ psychosocial health outcomes. Specifically, main and interactive effects of depression and three different ICCS use – Full CHESS, CHESS plus Mentor, and Internet only as control — with varying degrees of interactivity and presence, on healthcare competency and quality of social life, were examined. Consistent with previous research, this investigation found the main effects of depression on healthcare competency for the first three-month intervention period. That is, breast cancer patients with high levels of depression had lower levels of healthcare competency than those who with low levels of depression. For the interaction effects, both healthcare competency and quality of social life of cancer patients were greatly influenced by the use of different configurations of ICCS services and feeling of depression for the total six months and the second three months of the intervention period. Those who reported high levels of depression as opposed to those who experienced low levels of depression benefited the most when they used the CHESS plus Mentor intervention system for both psychosocial health outcomes. Suggestions for future research and practical implications of what types of e-health services were beneficial to cancer patients were discussed.

Why Do College Students Use Twitter? • Mijung Kim, Michigan State University; Mira Lee, Michigan State University • Tweeting is becoming a new social phenomenon. The present research explores why and how college students use Twitter, from the Uses and Gratifications perspective. An online survey of college students identified six motivations of using Twitter: entertainment, passing time, information providing, information seeking, social interaction, and professional advancement. The findings of this study also demonstrated that college students’ motivations of using Twitter influenced their Twitter usage behaviors.

Sticky News: Online Newspaper Use of Multimedia and Interactivity to Engage Audiences • Lewis Knight, The University of Texas at Austin • This study examines three large online newspapers to see if user experience and/or user engagement play a role in their use of media technology innovation to attract and keep audiences on their Web sites. Findings in this study indicate that consumer preferences of emerging media are now playing a role in how news organizations deliver online content. The we write – you read relationship model of the past is becoming less applicable for digital news delivery.

The New News: Orienting to Structural Features and Information Introduced in Online News • Anastasia Kononova, University of Missouri; Kevin Wise, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • Two psychophysiological experiments explored orienting responses (OR) to different interfaces (EmPrint vs. Web) of online news stories. To examine online navigation, the study took a human information processing perspective suggesting that heart rate change is a valid measure of cognitive resource allocation to media message encoding. Experiment 1 showed that the change of static banners from one EmPrint page to another was not drastic enough to elicit OR: people’s heart rate did not decelerate more when novel information was presented. For the second experiment, a measure of information introduced (I-squared) was adjusted to the Web to calculate how many novel items are presented on each following Web page during online navigation. This experiment indicated that people immediately allocate cognitive resources to encoding Web pages with low levels of information density and this process takes them less time. On the contrary, individuals tend to spend more time on information-intense Web pages and their heart rates accelerate while navigating such pages. The results are discussed using a cognitive psychological perspective.

Gender Differences in Perceptions of Online Intimacy • Linlin Ku, National Taiwan University • This study examines the dimensions of online intimacy, attitudes toward online intimacy, the impacts of online intimacy on the self-reflexive process, and gender differences in perceptions of online intimacy. In-depth interviews and an online survey were conducted. The research findings suggest that intimacy, trust, and respect are still valuable qualities of online relationships. Even so, online relationships are still unique in terms of the virtual nature of the environment where such relationships are developed and nurtured. Online lovers tend to be more satisfying when they are able to master text-based electronic systems and take control of their relationships by taking advantage of the nature of computer-mediated communication. It appears that online relationships allow people to grow; they become more considerate of their partners’ feelings. When a relationship terminates, people are willing to accept the outcome, believing a new one will come along soon. Women’s attitudes toward online intimacy are in line with expectations of a traditional society. Men tend to pursue romantic love, turn more sentimental when an affair ends, and expect more in the future. Self-disclosure is a multifaceted concept, which deserves further examination. The self-reflexive process also requires more systematic study.

Mobile Communication and the Personalization of Public Life: Implications for Open Political Dialogue • Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan; Scott Campbell, University of Michigan; Hoon Lee, University of Michigan; Katie Brown, University of Michigan; Yu Rebecca, University of Michigan; Soo Young Bae, University of Michigan • This study tested theoretical propositions that intensive mobile-mediated discourse in small networks of like-minded close ties contributes to the disruption of dialogue with others in the public sphere. Using two-wave panel data from a representative sample of adults in the US, the study found that attitudes about open political dialogue became more negative with increased mobile-mediated discussion in strong-tie networks that were large and like-minded, rather than small and like-minded as expected. In fact, attitudes toward open dialogue became more positive in the case of the latter. Although attitudes changed significantly over time for these individuals, reported levels of dialogue outside of the network did not. Interpretation of the findings and directions for future research are offered in the discussion.

Presence in 3DTV: A Study on the Perceptive Characteristics of the Presence in Three Dimensional Imaging Programs • sang hee kweon, skku; Kyung Ho Whang, Mr • This study tried to research user cognitive about three dimensional imaging through using a concept of presence. presence could occur through a personalize connection if viewers have the connection when they experience new media. At the result of this study, animation shows higher presence than movie in standard imaging program.

The Influence of Interdependent Self-Construal on Consumers’ eWOM Behaviors in Social Networking Web sites • Doohwang Lee, University of Alabama; Hyuk Soo Kim, The University of Alabama; Jung Kim, University of Alabama • The current study reconceptualized interdependent self-construal as a social cognitive indicator of self-observation that individuals employ for developing and maintaining social relationship. From the social cognitive perspective this study investigated the effects of the relational view on consumers’ eWOM behavior for online brand communities and demonstrated that consumers’ community engagement self-efficacy had a significant influence on their eWOM behavior intentions directly and indirectly through their cognitive assessment of the potential social outcomes associated with the particular behaviors. Further, this study also found that such social cognitive process of eWOM behavior was strongly instigated when consumers’ self-construal were primed to be interdependent rather than independent.

Effect of Online Brand Community on Brand Loyalty: A Uses and Gratifications Perspective • Jaejin Lee, University of Florida • This study examined how online brand community characteristics affect online brand community loyalty and brand loyalty by employing a uses and gratifications perspective. The research found that interactivity and reward for activity significantly influenced online brand community loyalty. Moreover, emotive needs and contextual needs in using an online brand community moderate the relationship between online brand community characteristics and online brand community loyalty. Other interpretations and implications of the findings are also discussed.

Virtual Experience in Navigation: 2D Versus 3D From the Perspective of Telepresence and Flow • Joonghwa Lee, University of Missouri; Hyunmin Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia; Kevin Wise, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • This study explored the influence of visual dimension (2D/3D) on telepresence and flow in popular virtual navigation interfaces. In a 2 (visual dimension: 2D vs. 3D) _ 2 (message repetition) within-subjects experiment, seventy-one participants navigated four different travel destinations using Google Earth (3D) and Google Map (2D). While participants reported greater telepresence while navigating a 3D environment, there was no significant effect of dimension on flow. Furthermore, ease of use was found to be an important variable in using Google Earth. These results are discussed in terms of practical and theoretical implications for virtual navigation and telepresence.

The digital divide exists among cancer patients • Chul-joo Lee, The Ohio State University; Susana Ramirez, University of Pennsylvania; Nehama Lewis, University of Pennsylvania • The digital divide among cancer patients deserves more attention considering the importance of information and knowledge in cancer control. We thus explore the effects of education on cancer patients’ cancer information seeking from the Internet, mass media, and interpersonal sources. The sample includes breast, prostate and colon cancer patients diagnosed in 2005 (n=1,971) who were randomly drawn from the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry, and returned mail surveys in fall of 2006 (response rate was 68% for breast, 61% for colon, and 64% for prostate cancer patients). The association between education and cancer-related information seeking is described according to two categories of cancer-related information: cancer-treatment options, and quality-of-life issues. Education is positively related to cancer information seeking from mediated sources and the Internet. Education was also a significant predictor of cancer patients’ information seeking about treatments from medical professional sources and other people. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Who Gets Their News Online and Why? Exploring the Role of Selective Exposure in the Consumption of Internet News • Shin Haeng Lee, Indiana University – Bloomington Background: Despite substantial evidence that people want access to Internet-based communication with news providers, few studies have examined individual attitudes toward news consumption and the demographic factors associated with the use of Internet news. Objective: The aim of the study is to use nationally representative data to describe what factors (individual attitudes toward news consumption and demographics) are involved in the use of online news communication. Methods: The data for this study are taken from a survey of the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (Pew, 2008). The Pew Biennial Media Survey measured the public’s use of and attitudes toward the news media and news consumption. Adult Internet news users in 2008 (n=918) were included in the present study. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify predictors for Internet news consumption. Results: In multiple logistic regression analyses, gender, age, and education variables were significantly associated with the usage of Internet news as a main news source. Also, gender and education were significantly correlated with the frequency of Internet news use. Among the individual attitudes factors, individuals’ degree of enjoyment of keeping up with the news is only significantly related to Internet news use as a main effect. When it comes to individual predispositions toward selective news exposure, predispositions toward selective reliance on news sources, interacting with age or education, were negatively associated with Internet news use.

Why Hong Kong Youth Blog? : Exploring the Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations for Blogging by Hong Kong Students • Ying LI, City University of Hong Kong • Blogging stickiness and motivations have become a frequently studied topic in blogging research for several years. Yet few research paid attention to the difference between the initial motivation and current motivations. This study proposes to investigate and understand bloggers behaviors through specifying the intrinsic and extrinsic components of their motivations. Two major questions were raised and explored in this study: 1. what the reasons that promote students to initiate blogs are; 2. how the blogging motivations and behavior patterns interact in blog maintaining. Based on a survey of 186 bloggers among City University of Hong Kong, it is found that: three major motivations (practicing a new type of diary, curiosity and thoughts on following the crowd) are the most important motivations in initiating blogging. In maintaining a blog, the hypothesis that social connection motivation is positively related to interaction-oriented behavior while emotion pouring motivation is positively related to self-restriction behavior in expression is supported.

On the Global Regularity and Local Uniformity of Human Online Behavior: Exploring the Trajectory of Friendship Formation Behavior on Social Network Sites • ZHANG Lun, City University of Hong Kong • With anthropological data mining, this study firstly examined the time path and the saturation time of friendship formation within individuals, and then explored the relationship of trajectory of friendship formation process between individual and the global level, which extended the diffusion model from single level to multilevel perspective. Specifically, encountered the approach of polynomial logistic regression to fit the time path of friendship formation for each node, interestingly, we found the increase of number of friends within each user typically follows a logistic function with time, indicating that the growth rate of number of friends for each user might slowly increase and then decrease. More importantly, the trajectories appear uniformly, if not identically, across individuals. Our findings contrast with the two existing results claiming that (1) users create a first edge, and never comeback; (2) the level of number of friend addition seems to be uniform over time. Regarding the saturation day of the friendship growth, we have found that it takes on average 290 days for individuals to build up their personal connections online. More surprisingly, we found a self-similar trajectory of growth of friendship between individual and global level.

Reconceptualizing Media Dependence: The Impact of ICTs on Social Systems and MSD Theory • Wendy Maxian, Xavier University • This paper reexamines the construct of media dependence proposed within media systems dependency (MSD) theory (Ball-Rokeach, 1985, 1998; Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976) by redefining dependency within the context of current social and media systems. The rapid diffusion of information communication technologies (ICTs) has allowed individuals unprecedented interaction with media content, and their dependency upon media has changed from one of perceived helpfulness (Ball-Rokeach, 1998) to, as it will be argued, one of perceived necessity. That is, media are necessary for individuals to function in modern social systems. Motivation to access media is inherent in modern, networked societies and MSD is uniquely able to explain individuals’ media use. An overview of MSD and the dependency concept is provided, the impact technology has had on both is addressed, alternative conceptualizations of dependency are assessed, and a new conceptual definition of dependency that will strengthen and refine MSD is proposed.

Reaching Constituents Online: A Content Analysis of Frames and Design on Obama’s Official Blog • Lori McKinnon, Oklahoma State University • To better understand the online communication of Barack Obama, researchers examined the content of his official blog posts during the general election period and during his first 100 days in office. Researchers conducted a quantitative analysis, examining 1,427 official posts. Overall, researchers found Obama’s messages to be consistent and carefully constructed. By understanding successful framing elements, candidates can maximize the impact of blog content.

Redefining News Through Crowdsourcing the News Gatekeeping Function in Social Media News Aggregators • Sharon Meraz, University of Illinois, Chicago • This study examines the news stories and news sources contained in the top news pages and new news pages of four social media news aggregators against that of traditional media and portal news outlets, three times a day, for an approximate one-week period in June 2008. Examining 2388 unique stories across all outlets, results reveal that social media news outlets are significantly more likely to cite citizen media, with no evidence of traditional media having an A-list, superstar effect in the short head of their long tail media citations. Social media entities were also more likely to stress different news genres and to expose audiences to more unique stories when compared to traditional media. There were also significant differences in the types of news stories that were emphasized on a day-to day-basis in social media news outlets in their top news pages when compared to other media. Further examination reveals that these social sites selectively utilize traditional media’s agenda, and often highlight political news items that fail to gain the attention of traditional and portal news outlets on their home pages.

The Influence of Cultural Differences on Intention to Upload Content on Wikipedia • Namkee Park, University of Oklahoma; Naewon Kang, Dankook University; Hyun Sook Oh, Pyeongtaek University • This study investigated the factors that influence intention to upload content on Wikipedia within the theory of planned behavior framework. Further, the study compared the associations between the factors in two different cultures, the U.S. and South Korea, focusing on the role of subjective norm. Unlike previous studies’ findings, the role of subjective norm was rather minimal even in the collectivist society, South Korea, although it presented a significant indirect effect on the uploading intention.

Expanding the List of Social and Psychological Factors that Influence the Gathering of Political Information Online • John H. Parmelee, University of North Florida; Stephynie Chapman Perkins, University of North Florida • This study qualitatively explores what social and psychological factors are associated with motives and patterns of media use when gathering political information online. An analysis of in-depth interviews with 47 college students who searched for political information online during the 2008 U.S. presidential election adds to uses and gratifications research by identifying new social and psychological antecedents that trigger motivations and patterns of media exposure. The findings contribute to past research that has linked social and psychological factors to communication motivations, media use, and media effects.

Defending Against Defriending: Understanding Self-censorship of Online Social Network Profiles • Jason Reineke, Middle Tennessee State University; Heather Burchfield, Middle Tennessee State University • Classic theories of public opinion and other mass communication phenomena discuss how perceptions influence communication and vice versa. The purpose of this study is to test whether variables theorized to influence public opinion expression decisions relate to similar decisions about communication on the online social network (OSN) Facebook. A unique snowball sampling technique was used to collect responses from over 600 Facebook users. We found that greater previous experience with defriending, or the termination of a connection on the OSN, was associated with greater OSN self-censorship. Greater fear of social isolation and willingness to self-censor, concepts developed and operationalized in public opinion expression contexts, were also associated with greater OSN self-censorship. Implications and opportunities for future research are discussed.

To Blog, or Not to Blog: The Theory of Planned Behavior in the Blogosphere • Amy Reitz, Colorado State University • The paper applies the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) to blogging and suggests how the main concepts of the theory can transcend to the blogosphere. In addition, the paper identifies key characteristics of blogging that demonstrate that the extended version of the TPB, that includes identity expressiveness, is an excellent theoretical model to adopt to study intentions to blog. The characteristics include that blogs are public, blogs communicate under a one-to-many communication approach and blogs need to be maintained. With blogging showing no sign of slowing down its growing prominence in popular culture and society, the author argues that it is imperative for researchers to study how and why people create blogs so researchers have an in-depth understanding of the current media landscape.

Developing a Content Analysis Approach to Measuring Student Engagement in Constructionist Game Making Learning Environments • Rebecca Reynolds, Rutgers University; Michael Scialdone, Syracuse University School of Information Studies • Globaloria is a technology education program of the World Wide Workshop Foundation that empowers young people in economically disadvantaged and technologically underserved communities to experience a valuable new way of learning through the creation of web and wiki content, including interactive web-games. The program is currently being implemented as a statewide pilot project throughout the state of West Virginia, and offers a comprehensive game-design curriculum via an online social learning network to educators and students. This paper discusses the development of a coding scheme to content analyze and evaluate students’ proficiencies in Globaloria, analyzing finished game projects and related wiki postings to infer about valuable learning that resulted from making the game. The coding scheme presents a robust set of game design attributes that map to a theoretical framework of learning objectives the program has prioritized. Students’ inclusion of specified attributes in a game indicates that they have gained knowledge in the related learning objective dimension, because to program the game with a given attribute required learning certain skills. The scheme provides both researchers and educational practitioners with a common metric of comparison for student game-design and programming performance.

Realistic Mapping vs. Symbolic Mapping: Effects of Controllers on Video Game Experience • Young June Sah, Sungkyunkwan University; Byungyul Ahn, Sungkyunkwan University; S. Shyam Sundar, Pennsylvania State University • Compared to symbolic input devices that require manipulation of a keyboard or joystick, realistic input devices for video games, such as the motion-detecting Wii Remote, provide players with greater freedom of movements. An experiment (N = 98) was conducted with a symbolic (i.e. a keyboard) and a realistic (i.e. steering wheel) controller in a racing game context in order to investigate the difference in players’ experience in terms of embodiment, presence, memory recognition, and enjoyment. The moderating effects of players’ prior driving experience were also examined. The results of the present study indicated that the realistic controller elicited higher sense of embodiment, presence, and overall enjoyment. Prior driving experience was related to memory recognition. These findings suggest that input devices play a significant role in shaping/forming players’ experience in video games. Theoretical and practical implications of the present study were discussed.

Are You What You Tweet? Warranting Trustworthiness on Twitter • Andrew Schrock, University of Southern California • The warranting principle dictates that, when forming an impression, information provided by third parties about a person is valued more than information they themselves provide. The current study applies warranting theory to the popular micro-blogging site Twitter, where people connect with others and share bursts of information. In light of the low signal-to-noise ratio on the site and the recent shift towards citizen journalism, evaluating trustworthiness trustworthiness was here considered to be an important consideration when considering if users will follow someone (read their updates and interact with them in the future). In a survey of Twitter users, support for the warranting paradigm with trustworthiness was not found on the site. However, individuals still followed those they found trustworthy, lending support to the idea that the warranting principle is confined to specific conditions. More generally, site-external and site-external resources were more frequently used for evaluating self-provided than other-provided information. Implications are discussed for future new media and CMC research.

Sports Journalism and Twitter: A Follow-up Study • Mary Lou Sheffer, University of Southern Mississippi; Brad Schultz, University of Mississippi • This was a follow-up study to survey research (Schultz & Sheffer, 2010) conducted to see how sports journalists were using Twitter as part of their professional journalistic duties. This study took the same approach, but used content analysis of sports journalists’ tweets (N = 1,008). Analysis showed a discrepancy between journalist responses and measured content. While journalists said they were using Twitter for breaking news and promotion, the dominant feature of the content analysis was commentary and opinion. There were also differences related to print and smaller media outlets. The implications of such differences were discussed, including a possible paradigmatic shift in journalist approaches.

Effect of trust and privacy concerns on social networking: A trust-based acceptance model for social networking systems • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University • Social network services (SNS) focus on building online communities of people who share interests and/or activities, or who are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. This study examines security, trust, and privacy concerns with regard to social networking Web sites among 323 consumers using both reliable scales and behavior. It proposes an SNS acceptance model by integrating cognitive as well as affective attitudes as primary influencing factors, which are driven by underlying beliefs, perceived security, perceived privacy, trust, attitude, and intention. Results from a Web-based survey of SNS users validate that the proposed theoretical model can explain and predict user acceptance of SNS substantially well. The model shows excellent measurement properties and establishes perceived privacy and perceived security of SNS use as distinct constructs. The finding also reveals that perceived security mediates the effect of perceived privacy on trust. Based on the results of this study, practical implications for marketing strategies in SNS markets and theoretical implications are recommended accordingly.

Stepping out of the magic circle: Regulation of play/life boundary in MMORPG-mediated intimacy Kim Phong Huynh, WKW School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University; Si Wei Lim, WKW School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University; Marko Skoric, WKW School of Communication and Information, Nanyang Technological University • This qualitative study explores the perspectives of players regarding their romantic relationships initiated in massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs). Twenty six in-depth interviews were conducted via instant messaging (IM) with players of an MMORPG called MapleStory. A three-category typology of players emerged: splitters, migrators and blenders. We also found that players managed the stigma associated with their game-originated romantic relationship via concealment and mainstreaming strategies. The theoretical and design implications of the findings are discussed.

Measuring Expected Interactivity: Scale Development and Validation • Dongyoung Sohn, The Ohio State University; Sejung Marina Choi, The University of Texas at Austin • Most previous interactivity literature has implicitly assumed that people perceive the interactivity of a medium from scratch by evaluating it trait-by-trait. As psychologists have long shown, however, we perceive and evaluate an object/person not in a psychological vacuum, but instead based on our expectations toward its category. This study attempts to develop the measures of individuals’ category-level expectation toward interactivity, called expected interactivity (Sohn, Ci, & Lee, 2007). Upon specifying three conceptual dimensions underlying expected interactivity – sensory, semantic, and behavioral dimensions, scales for measuring expected interactivity are developed, refined, and validated through multiple studies. Implications for future interactivity research are discussed.

Hands Off My TV/Internet!: The Use of Agnotology to Discourage Technological Innovation • Cara Owen, University of Colorado- Boulder; Richard Stevens, University of Colorado • Scholars have begun to study the industry use of Astroturf faux grassroots efforts to sway public opinion. This paper examines the pay-TV controversy of the mid-1960s, analyzing news stories, editorials, letters to the editor, and advertisements. By plotting argument frames against poll data, the researchers found similar Astroturf tactics and frames to those utilized by the telecommunications industry against contemporary network neutrality regulation efforts, suggesting the Astroturf technique possesses a longer history than previously understood.

Boosting Their Street Cred: The Establishment of Authority in Podcasting • Bethany Poller, Baylor University; Kristine Davis, Baylor University; Amanda Sturgill, Baylor University • Like other new media applications, podcasting offers those with something to say a chance to build an audience and produce messages for that audience without being vetted by media organizations. While much has been written about the issue of credibility for bloggers, much less has been studied for how podcasters go about establishing credibility and authority. This study represents an early step in this effort. Twenty-one episodes of seven podcasts were content analyzed to determine what techniques the podcasters used to establish authority. The podcasts studied were all talk format, not affiliated with any larger media conglomerate, and were found on iTunes on the main categories page under Top Podcasts. Several podcasts meeting this description were emergently coded to generate a codesheet for consistent content analysis. The final seven podcasts were those that had at least 20 episodes of 30 minutes minutes or more. Two coders examined the podcasts for references to celebrities or experts (prestige references), references to the podcaster’s training or experience (self references) and references to standards of podcasting practice such as being responsive to listener feedback and investing money in the podcast. For the podcasts studied, it was found that all three strategies of establishing authority were used, but references to standards of podcasting practice were the most prevalent.

An Analysis of public relations and dialogic communication efforts of 501(C)(6) organizations • Dustin Supa, Ball State University; Adriane Russell, Ball State University • The primary purpose of this research is to examine how 501(C)(6) organizations, also known as membership associations, utilize the Web through principles of dialogic communication and how they define their unique public relations efforts. The results of the content analysis and interviews indicate that while many membership associations are using varying aspects of dialogic communication, the majority have room for improvement.

Towards a Comprehensive Model of Internet Use: The Influence of Motivations, Gratifications, and Structures • Tang Tang, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh; Emil Bakke, Ohio University • This study sought to empirically test the structure of a theoretical model that instrumental and ritualistic motivations, gratifications, and structures that predict Internet use. Results from the structural equation model indicated that both gratifications and structures were significant positive predictors of Internet use. All together, they explained 87% of the variance in Internet use. Thus, the study advances the theory which conceptualized today’s media users as active within structures, and encourages future inquiry.

Speaking Up in the 21st Century: The Effects of Communication Apprehension and Internet Self-Efficacy on Use of Social Networking Websites • Brendan Watson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Communication apprehension research has traditionally focused on two forms: written and oral communication apprehension. Both affect the amount an individual is likely to communicate. But to reflect online communication, researchers have recently developed a measure of Computer mediated communication (CMC) apprehension. It attempts to combine the traditional forms of communication apprehension and computer apprehension into a single measure. CMC apprehension has been shown to predict how frequently individuals use email, text messaging and online chat. It has not previously been studied in regards to online social networking. This paper tests the CMC apprehension measure — and Internet self-efficacy — against the traditional communication apprehension measures to see which best predicts use of social networking websites.

The Pros and Cons of Teaching a Wholly Online Unit: An Australian Case Study • Niranjala Weerakkody, Deakin University • This exploratory case study examines the teaching of a theory and analysis-based, undergraduate media effects unit offered wholly online at an Australian university. Using autoethnography and content analysis of specific student posts, it found most posts on subject matter were insightful while some submitted none. Technological problems were common and students expected academic staff to solve all problems increasing time spent teaching. The problems of the early stages of online teaching have remained in 2007.

Immersive Tendency and Motion as Indicators of Video Game Involvement and Presence • Kevin Williams, Mississippi State University • Seventy-two male undergraduates played one of four video game conditions to determine how personal immersive tendency and motion controls influenced feelings of involvement and presence with the video game. Results indicate that high immersive tendency as compared to low immersive tendency increase both involvement and presence. Motion controls, as compared to traditional thumb controls, increase involvement but not presence. Practical implications for the recruitment of remote operators, such as combat drone pilots, are discussed.

Hey BikerGal: Using ALL CAPS=EPIC FAIL!: Identifying message factors that influence the persuasiveness of online comments • John Wirtz, Texas Tech University; Austin Sims, Texas Tech University; Betsy Anderson, University of St. Thomas • This paper presents the results of two studies about the persuasiveness of online comments left in response to online news articles. Three variables – language intensity, message strength, and message discrepancy – were used to predict comment persuasiveness (Studies 1 and 2), credibility, and attitude toward the comment (Study 2). Findings demonstrated a consistent effect of message discrepancy, such that comments were less persuasive when they were discrepant from participants’ initial viewpoints (and vice-versa). A message discrepancy x message strength interaction also emerged, where by participants in the high discrepancy condition actually displayed more positive attitudes toward strongly negative messages. The paper discusses theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

Silence in Cyberspace: Testing the Spiral of Silence in Computer-Mediated and Face-to-Face Contexts • Robert Zuercher, University of Kentucky • The purpose of this investigation is to further spiral of silence research by examining both face-to-face and computer-mediated contexts. Despite using an experimental design, no differences in fear of isolation were found. Similarly, no relationship was found between attention paid to news and fear of isolation. No differences in perceptions of opinions expressed in either condition were found. Reasons for such unexpected findings, as well as strengths, limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.

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