Radio-TV Journalism 2006 Abstracts
Radio-TV Journalism Divisions
“Making” News: Historical and Theoretical Research in Journalism The stakeholder influence on the news: Exploring the rule that decides who wins the framing contest • Jianchuan “Henry” Zhou, University of Georgia • This study proposes a theory of stakeholder influence on news frames to explain what decides who wins the framing contest. NBC’s coverage of Athens Olympic preparations is compared with ABC’s and CBS’s coverage. This case reveals that the Olympic host city had a stakeholder influence on the Olympic TV right holder, and the influence is reflected in that Greek sources were more salient in NBC’s coverage and that the coverage is more favorable.
Uses and Gratifications of International Television News: A Two-Way Discourse Analysis • Yusuf Kalyango, Jr., University of Missouri-Columbia • The study examines whether the U&G sought and obtained from CNN International news coverage of crises mirror the gatekeepers’ global newsgathering agenda. Conclusions are drawn from a two-way discourse analysis between CNNI news gatekeepers’ agenda and the Ugandan viewers’ U&G of the network’s telecast. CNNI is the most watched news channel in Uganda but viewers consider its coverage biased and ill-motivated towards Africa. Analyses of this love-hate relationship are detailed and their implications discussed.
A Pathfinding Radio Documentary Series: Norman Corwin’s One World Flight • Matthew C. Ehrlich, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Norman Corwin was the most celebrated writer of American radio’s golden age. This paper examines his 1947 CBS series “One World Flight” based upon his global trip assessing the prospects for postwar peace. The series helped pioneer the actuality-based news documentary and end a ban on network broadcast recordings. It also signaled network radio’s decline and television’s ascendancy, as well as the transition from the “good” war against fascism to the Cold War and McCarthyism.
Shovelcasting, talk radio and the weather: A content analysis of news podcasts • Vincent F. Filak, Ball State University • A two-tier content analysis of a collection of news podcasts revealed that these casts can be primarily divided into several radio news subgenres: talk, all news/headlines, sports and weather. Furthermore, the majority of these casts contain repurposed material that has been placed in this new medium without considering the medium’s benefits or limitations. While both newspapers and television stations rely heavily on repurposing, television news is significantly more likely to shovelcast than is print.
A Centralcasting Postmortem and a News-Share Projection: Using Market Theory to Assess Alternative Local Television News Strategies • George L. Daniels, The University of Alabama • In the wake of decisions by two television station groups to end centralcasting experiments, this paper employed market theory to compare both the centralcasting and contracted newscast products with the traditional newscast products. A total of 22 newscasts were recorded and analyzed between 2004 and 2005 in three Southern markets. Results showed in the 2,583 stories analyzed more similarities than differences between the traditionally-staffed local news operations and the operations produced with alternative staffing.
Media Convergence: A Case Study of A Cable News Station • J. Sonia Huang and Don Heider, University of Texas at Austin • Media convergence is happening around the world. This study looks at the current operation of a cable news station which produces two media products in one newsroom. It also explores the theoretical foundations of value creation in online news by examining how online news is selected, packaged, processed, and distributed. Observational results showed that online news still has a long way to go in terms of content provision.
The Relationships among Audience Loyalty, Perceived Quality, and Media Credibility of Cable News Networks • Tayo Oyedeji and Felicity Duncan, University of Missouri-Columbia • This study explores the applicability of Meyer’s (2004) newspaper influence model to cable television news by investigating the relationships among the audience-based concepts (media credibility, news quality, and audience loyalty) in the model. We found significant correlations among the three concepts and also found significant effects of media credibility and perceived quality on audience loyalty. Audiences’ attitudes towards the three major cable news networks (CNN, MSNBC, and Fox News) were also explored.
Coverage of youth issues in 2004 election: Television v. online • Karon Reinboth Speckman, Truman State University • Evidence shows that youths are tuning out to news and to voting. This content analysis examined whether television and online news covered issues of importance to youth, covered youth as a voting unit, and used youths as sources in 2004 election coverage. Outlets examined were NBC evening news, ABC.com, CNN.com and Yahoo.com. The results showed all sources did not do a good job of covering youths and their issues and rarely used youths as sources.
Network and Cable News Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election: So Just Who’s Biased • Frederick Fico, Geri Alumit Zeldes, Arvind Diddi and Serena Carpenter Michigan State University • Network and cable evening news stations gave more prominence, time and attention to Democrat John Kerry than to President George Bush in their 2004 election coverage. Network stations were more balanced in their aggregate attention to the candidates than were the cable stations. Individual network stories and segments were also more balanced than were individual cable stories and segments, regardless of the candidate more favored in stories and segments.
The effect of screen size and audio delivery system on memory for television news • Mark Kelley, The University of Maine • This experiment randomly assigned 63 undergraduate students to one of three conditions: large screen television with cabinet mounted speakers, conventional size television screen with cabinet mounted speakers, and small screen (2 inch diagonal) television with audio delivered via earbud headphones, to test the efficacy of screen size and audio delivery system in learning the facts from television news.
A Time Series Analysis of Network News Editing Strategies from 1969 through 2005 • Richard J. Schaefer, University of New Mexico • Four editing variables were tracked through a content analysis that spanned a 36-year period. The analysis revealed that synthetic-montage increased and continuity-realism decreased across both periods, as network news editors embraced shorter sound bites, more special effects, and an increasing use of montage-edited footage. Quicker overall cutting rates and the use of more asynchronous sound increased from 1969 through 1983, but appeared to level in recent years.
Selling News: Behind the Content of Cable and Broadcast News Morning Shows • Johanna Cleary and Terry Adams, University of Miami • Through content analysis of the three broadcast networks and two leading cable news channels, this study: (1) examines how entertainment fits into the overall content of the morning news shows, (2) evaluates ownership patterns as it relates to this content, and (3) examines the policy implications of these news decisions for the long-standing social responsibility theory of the press.
Breaking in your in-box: An exploratory content analysis of online network breaking news e-mails • Tim Bajkiewicz, University of South Florida and Jessica Smith, Christian University • Electronic mail is still considered the Internet’s “killer app,” and online network news organizations take advantage of this by regularly sending out breaking news e-mails. However, to date there has been no scholarly research into this phenomenon affecting more than 11 million people with e-mailed news alerts. Within a media gatekeeping perspective, this study analyzed 875 such e-mails gathered over 26 continuous weeks from five online network news organizations: ABCNews.com, CBSNews.com, CNN.com, FoxNews.com, and MSNBC.com.
Preparing for the Worst: Making a Case for Trauma Training in the Journalism Classroom • Gretchen Dworznik and Max Grubb, Kent State University • This study is an exploratory look into the merits of including trauma training in the journalism classroom. Qualitative interviews with students who covered a death-penalty murder trial and results from a quantitative survey of journalism students are combined to show that preparing students for the emotional reactions they may experience while covering the news is not only needed by wanted by the students themselves. Implications and directions for future research are also discussed.
Network News Coverage of Lung Cancer, 1968-2005 • Sooyoung Cho, University of South Carolina • This study content analyzed the 298 news story abstracts on lung cancer from the three major TV networks over the past four decades (1968-2005). This study examined types of issues, story formats and frames, and source use pattern. TV news has focused on issues like celebrity, smoking as a cause of lung cancer, and women and lung cancer.
Health, Homeland Security and Self Efficacy: Does contextual story placement in a television newscast affect perceptions of helplessness? • Andrea Miller, and Lesa Hatley-Major, Louisiana State University • This experimental study expands self-efficacy theory by exploring how positive or negative context of a television news story may make a difference in self-efficacy and risk perceptions of that story. Homeland security and health stories, which often advocate behavior change and placed in a positive context, resulted in higher self-efficacy ratings by viewers. These results also suggest that the content of the target story plays a role in perceptions of risk.
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