Minorities and Communication 2019 Abstracts

Faculty Research Competition

Doesn’t Beto Look Hispanic? Perceived Co-ethnicity and Voting in the 2018 Texas Senate Election • Oluseyi Adegbola; Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University • Existing research has shown that Hispanic voters are likely to support Democratic candidates as well as candidates with matching ethnicity. However, voters’ decisions are influenced by a host of other factors including, but not limited to, political advertising, agreement with candidates’ issue positions, and candidate evaluations. The current study examines how these factors collectively guide Hispanic voters using survey data (N = 424) collected during the 2018 Texas senate election featuring Anglo Democrat, Beto O’Rourke, and Hispanic Republican, Ted Cruz. Results suggest that different pathways led to support for Cruz and O’Rourke. Hispanics exposed to advertising supporting Cruz also perceived him to be Hispanic, leading to shared issue positions and support for him. Hispanics exposed to advertising supporting O’Rourke were more likely to share his issue positions, leading to positive evaluations and electoral support for the congressman. Implications for future research on Hispanic voting are discussed.

What do scientists look like? Race, Gender, and Occupation in Children’s STEM-Focused Educational Television • Fashina Alade, Michigan State University • This content analysis draws attention to race and gender representation amongst the characters in STEM-focused children’s television programs. Across 90 episodes, 1,086 unique speaking characters were coded on their demographics, physical attributes, centrality to the plot, and modeling of STEM behaviors and occupations. Findings align closely with prior character-focused content analyses, with female and minority characters being underrepresented compared to U.S. population statistics, but also present some areas in which the industry may be improving.

Perpetual foreigners: negotiating the framing of Puerto Rico and Puerto Ricans via Twitter after Hurricane Maria • Maria DeMoya, DePaul University; Vanessa Bravo, Elon University • In September of 2017, Puerto Rico was hit with Hurricane Maria, one of the costliest and deadliest storms in U.S. history. Its effects on the island’s infrastructure and socioeconomic situation are still felt more than a year later. The media attention that this crisis brought resulted in coverage not only about the hurricane but also about the island and its people, bringing renewed attention to the territory status of Puerto Rico and the different type of citizenship held by its residents. As with any modern natural disaster, people relied on traditional and digital media to obtain need-to-know information and make sense of the situation. In this process, Twitter users articulated a place for Puerto Ricans in the American imaginary. Through a critically-informed content analysis of Twitter conversations, this study explores the question of the treatment of Puerto Rico and its people, and how this treatment was shaped by Twitter discussions.

YouTube’s content influence on college-aged Black women’s decision to transition to natural hair • Cameron Jackson; Vanessa Bravo, Elon University • Not knowing how to care for their natural hair and not wanting to be judged by older generations, young Black women are turning to YouTube to gain information and support for their decision to go natural, and to become part of a larger online community. To understand their motivations, this study analyzed the narratives of 17 Black, college-aged women, from five universities(two private liberal arts universities, two large state universities and two historically Black universities), about their experiences of going natural and the role YouTube played in their journey. The different meanings of transitioning to wearing natural hair and the role that YouTube played in the process of making that decision, according to the participants’ narratives, are discussed in the study. Findings suggest that YouTube videos about natural hair have helped these women to overcome challenges encountered during their natural hair journeys, such as facing societal judgment and going against familial norms. However, the participants also revealed concerns surrounding the accuracy of YouTube depictions in regard to colorism, hair textures and branded content. Implications of how YouTube has influenced these Black women’s sense of identity and how it has given them a shared online community are discussed.

JMC Deans of Color Lead with a Purpose: A Qualitative Study • Keonte Coleman, Middle Tennessee State University School of Journalism and Strategic Media • This qualitative study contextualized the leadership experiences of journalism and mass communication (JMC) deans who self-identified as persons of color. These deans expressed bringing a higher purpose to leading their programs while anonymously participating in a virtual focus group. This study aims to elucidate the benefits of increasing the diversity of JMC leadership and to illuminate the need to improve the working environment to help recruit future JMC leaders of color.

Expanding the Theory of Planned behavior: Implications for Media Use, Race/Ethnicity, and Pro-Environmental Intentions • Troy Elias; Jay Hmielowski, Washington State University • Using a purposive sample of 302 Latinos, 305 African Americans, 310 non-Hispanic Whites, and 299 Asian Americans, we examine the relationship between media (e.g., liberal, conservative, and non-partisan) and pro-environmental intentions. Existing studies show the impact media’s ideological perspectives have on shaping orientations. We propose a mediated moderated model examining whether the conditional indirect relationship of various media outlets on behavioral intentions through key components of the Theory of Planned Behavior varies by race.

“I am Enough”: (Re)Constructions of Gendered and Racialized Subjectivities in Crazy Rich Asians • Marianne Fritz, California State University, Los Angeles • As the first film in 25 years to feature an all-Asian cast, Crazy Rich Asians has generated a lot of interest among profession film critics and, more importantly, film spectators. The present paper considers the film’s counter-hegemonic depictions of Asian Americans. In addition, I examine the film’s depiction of gender roles within heterosexual romantic relationships, and the way it normalizes Asian-Asian pairings, while at the same time sexualizing the image of the Asian male.

Latina Millennials in a Post-TV Network World: ‘Anti-stereotypes’ in the Web-TV Series East Los High • Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante, University of Arizona; Jessica Retis, Cal State University – Northridge • This paper analyzes the emergence of ‘anti-stereotypes,’ and attempts to locate Latina millennial latinidad in East Los High, by paying specific attention to the topic of teen pregnancy. In addition, we aim to identify attempts to create collective action through scale shifting strategies (Livingston and Asmolov, 2010; Author 2014). The chapter interrogates how Latinas are being represented and representing themselves in a historically political and transformative mediatic era, and what might be the prospects for social change. In addition, the chapter examines the potential for collective action among producers and actors of East Los High through the process of “scale-shifting”. In Tarrow’s (2005) definition, scale-shifting involves ‘‘a change in the number and level of coordinated contentious actions to a different focal point, involving a new range of actors, different objectives, and broadened claims. It can also generate a change in the meaning and scope of the object of the claim’’ (p. 121).” While, Tarrow, Livingston and Asmolov were concerned with the potential for activists to side-step bona-fide political actors and structures in nation-states, we focus our attention on the structural issues involving the entertainment industry, and the ability of Latina/o producers and actors to circumvent traditional power structures to contribute to collective-action to effect social change. They argue that “the growth of networked non-state actors and scale shifting sometimes bypasses both states and traditional news organizations” (Livingston and Asmolov, 2010, p. 751). We ask in this post TV-network era, whether approaches involving transmedia and edutainment (using entertainment outlets and content to entertain and educate) strategies (Ramasubramarian, 2016; Wang & Singhal, 2016), and/or the use of social media by entertainment actors as activists may contribute to create a sense of collective action. We suggest that there is room and need for more programming similar to ELH that incorporates the dual functions of entertaining Latina youth and education about relevant social issues.

News media apologies for racism • Robin Hoecker, DePaul University • Should news organizations apologize for racist coverage? What should such an apology look like? This study looks at three case studies of publications that apologized publicly for their contributions to slavery, racism and racially motivated violence: The Hartford Courant in 2000, National Geographic in 2018, and the Montgomery Advertiser in 2018. It reviews the elements of an effective apology and then evaluates each publication’s statement on those parameters. It compares and contrasts these efforts and discusses potential best practices for publications considering apologies in the future.

Factors Influencing the Effectiveness of Patriotic Advertising to Ethnic Minorities • Gawon Kim; Jun Heo, Louisiana State University • This research revisits the identity complexity, identification, and distinctiveness theories to understand how ethnic minorities in the U.S. respond to patriotism-themed advertising. The significance of acculturation was emphasized in evaluating patriotic ads, beyond the ethnicity itself. Online experiment revealed that Americans, regardless ethnic backgrounds, preferred patriotic advertising, and the preference improved with an ethnicity-matching appeal. The authors argue acculturation of new generations among ethnic minorities reduces the gap between ethnically dominant group and minority groups.

She’s not one of ours: Social identity, black sheep effects and transgressive female athletes • Lance Kinney, University of Alabama; Dylan Teal; Amanda Flamerich • She’s not one of ours: Social identity, black sheep effects and transgressive female athletes. This research reports the results of a 2 (female athlete race: Black or White) x 2 (female athlete appearance: threatening or non-threatening) experiment. Participants read a simulated media report and recommended punishment for an athlete accused of using performance-enhancing drugs. Participants with high levels of personal racial identity recommended significantly harsher punishments to athletes of other races. Sex effects were observed for White female participants and Black male participants.

Learning to be More or Less Prejudiced? How News Media Moderate the Effects of Ideologies and Partisanship on Attitudes toward Migrants • Tien-Tsung Lee, University of Kansas; Yuki Fujioka, Georgia State • Using a large national survey, this study investigated the predictors of Americans’ attitudes toward migrants. Younger, better educated, non-White, liberal, and Democrat-leaning individuals are more supportive of migrants. Political partisanship mediates the relationship between ideology and attitudes toward migrants. The number of television news programs watched, and the number of radio news and talk shows consumed, have a moderation effect on the connection between the support for migrants and one’s ideology as well as partisanship.

Does Professor’s Gender or Ethnicity Matter to College Students? A Case of Prejudice in Higher Education • Moon Lee, University of Florida; Povedano Shiselle • This study investigated how college students rated professors’ qualifications and their intention to take a course based on a professor’s race and gender after reviewing an identical syllabus of a communication course. The purpose was to investigate whether a professor’s ethnicity/gender influences college students’ perceptions of the professor and their evaluations of the class. Five hundred twenty-seven undergraduate students participated in this post-test only group experiment. We found an interaction effect between a professor’s gender and ethnicity on a student’s perception of the professor’ qualifications, likability, and student’s intent to enroll in a class.

Latino Trust in Journalists and the 2016 U.S. General Election: An Analysis of Voter Responses • Maria Len-Rios, The University of Georgia; Patricia Moy, University of Washington; Ivanka Pjesivac, The University of Georgia • This paper reports qualitative and quantitative data from a national online panel survey of Latinos (N=720) after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Participants reported in their closed-ended responses a level of distrust toward the news organizations that largely parallels national figures. In open-ended responses, Latinos cited cable news journalists most as trusted journalists, with additional differences by partisanship and whether individuals were U.S. or foreign born. Implications for political news consumption and identity are discussed.

Muhammad Ali in New York, 1967-1970: The Media and an Exiled Boxer Fight the Establishment • Raymond McCaffrey, University of Arkansas • This historical study explores the relationship between Muhammad Ali and the New York media from April 1967 to October 1970, when the boxing champion was exiled from fighting after refusing military induction. The study examines Ali’s relationship with powerful media personalities who stood by him when many journalists refused to even use his Muslim name. This examination reveals Ali’s skill and daring as he publicized his fight against the U.S. government and the boxing establishment.

The Supreme Court’s Plessy and Brown decisions, democratic rights, and journalism ethics in the battle over segregation in the South, 1960-1964 • Ali Mohamed, UAE University • We examine the role of the Southern press in the “massive resistance” to the High Court’s Brown v. Board of Education ruling of 1954 to integrate schools, and the extent to which newspaper editorial arguments relied on legal and social rationales for segregation from the High Court’s earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. Plessy’s three rationales for institutionalizing segregation — the “separate but equal” doctrine, state’s rights, and a tiered system of “social rights”, were widely adopted by the press. However, newspapers took the “equal” part of Plessy’s “separate but equal” doctrine much more seriously than did elected officials in the South. A content analysis of the Birmingham News from 1960 to 1964 found support for Thornton’s (2002) thesis that post-Brown electoral politics in Alabama produced staunch segregationist officials whose relations with the press became highly adversarial. While the News supported segregation and states’ rights, after George Wallace was elected governor in 1962, the paper opposed his policies and the editorial page became a platform focused more on advocacy of greater equality, voting rights, and the rule of law.”

Advertised Stereotypical and Masculine Images of Black and White Men: Where Are We Now? • ADRIENNE MULDROW, East Carolina University • To assess the portrayal of hegemonic masculinity from Black and White males in magazine advertising, an in-depth content analysis of advertised imagery appearing in two representative genres of two mainstream, male-directed magazines—men’s lifestyle magazines and sports magazines from 2015 to 2017–was completed. Drawing upon Mahalik and colleagues’ (2003) conformity to masculinity inventory and using social identity theory and cultivation theory, the primary aim of the study was to compare stereotypical images of Black men and stereotypical images of White to determine the frequency of these images and if there is a significant difference in these images by race. Overall results from 2,135 images from 72 magazines indicate that the image of Black men in contemporary magazines is improving and most images, favorable or unfavorable, are comparable to those of White men. Images of Black men were shown in equivalent percentages as White men with regard to primary roles, professional roles violent imagery, and with the most desirable body type. The study relates current findings to prior findings of stereotypical images to determine how advertisers in these magazine genres are choosing to display images of Black and White men and with what possible effects.

Thinking Black: an Analysis of the Impact of Black Racial Identity on the Discourse and Work Routines of Cable Media Practitioners • Gheni Platenburg, University of Montevallo • Black journalists working in the mainstream press face an “identity crisis: Am I Black first and a reporter second? Or do I owe my primary allegiance to the newspaper (or other media)?” The researcher explores this concept through semi-structured interviews with black, news practitioners from FNC, MSNBC and CNN. Findings revealed race further impacted black media practitioners’ discourse through employer-mandated limitations, on-air interactions with colleagues, considerations of audience reactions and more.

Preparing for the worst: Lessons for news media after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico • Bruno Takahashi, Michigan State University; Qucheng Zhang, Michigan State University; Manuel Chavez, Michigan State University School of Journalism • Hurricane Maria was the most devastating hurricane in Puerto Rico in the last 90 years. The entire communication system collapsed, including cellular networks and telephone system. Media organizations in Puerto Rico, with the exception of one radio station, were unable to transmit much needed information during and immediately after Maria made landfall. The present study examines changes in journalistic practices, organizational readiness and disaster coverage plans, and infrastructure preparedness almost 18 months after the event. This study extends the limited research examining long-term changes to news media preparedness plans in the context of disasters, and expands theoretical understandings of media practices in the context of the hierarchy of influences model. The results suggest that infrastructure damage severely hampered the ability of news organizations to perform their work, but solidarity among media was useful in the immediate aftermath of the disaster. Each media played a differentiated and important role in the aftermath of the disaster based on their resources and organizational structure. The study shows that preparedness plans were inadequate and that changes are slowly been implemented to deal with challenges related to infrastructure, electricity, and technology, but with limited focus on the long-term well-being of media workers. Recommendations to improve communication responses to future natural disasters are presented.

Exploring Psychosocial Comorbidity Messages and Illness Perception: A Focus Group Study With African American Survivors of Prostate Cancer • Sean Upshaw, University of Utah • Prostate cancer remains a health challenge in U.S. health care, especially among African American men, who experience elevated levels of prostate cancer diagnosis compared to other racial/ethnic groups. However, psychosocial comorbidity challenges often affect the perception of illness and engagement with prostate cancer. This qualitative focus group study explored the implications of illness perception (IP) and psychosocial comorbidity messages (PSCM) concerning prostate cancer among 12 African American survivors. Findings suggest that IP that can identify existing mental health barriers associated with prostate cancer as influenced by PSCM in African American survivors. The findings also indicate that PSCM can provide insight into how African American survivors developed an IP framework about prostate cancer through communication.

The Black Digital Syllabus Movement: The Fusion of Academia, Activism and Arts • Sherri Williams, American University • As Black America experienced some of the most profound shifts in politics and entertainment in recent history, from the Ferguson rebellion to the release of Beyonce’s Lemonade, Black academics worked to find ways to help Black people and the nation understand and contextualize these major events and connect them to history. Using social media Black scholars curated lists of texts, films and music that related to the Black American experience of the present and past and shared them on social networks giving birth to the Black digital syllabus movement. The Black digital syllabus movement taps into the amplifying power of Black Twitter and Black digital culture to bridge the gap between pop culture, politics and scholarly work and spread contextualized, curated lists of important Black works. The syllabi analyzed in this study, created between August 2014 and August 2017, are the Ferguson Syllabus, #BlkWomenSyllabus, Charleston Syllabus, Lemonade Syllabus, A Seat at the Table Syllabus and the 4:44 Syllabus. This study uses the historical method in qualitative research to examine the syllabi and the context in which they were created.

Meaning Co-creation and Social Influencers in Race-relevant Crisis: A Social Network Analysis Study of Starbucks’ Crisis in Philadelphia • Ying Xiong, University of Tennessee; Moonhee Cho • The purpose of the research was to explore how meaning co-creation by the publics during the Starbucks’ crisis in Philadelphia and examined who were the social influencers in Starbucks’ Crisis in Philadelphia. The research applied semantic network analysis and social network analysis. Research results found the co-created meanings addressed three issues: Starbucks’ racial training, racial identity, and other celebrities who have received racial critiques. Mainstream media, celebrities, and activists were social influencers in the crisis.

Beyond the Reversal: Imagining New Ethnicities in Self-Representation • Sherry Yu • The under- and mis-representation of minorities in the media comes as no surprise. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s sitcom, Kim’s Convenience, is an interesting case study in this regard, as it is not only about representation of a minority group, but also about self-representation by a minority. A Critical Discourse Analysis of Kim’s Convenience explores ethnicity at the intersection of various social characteristics, and suggests the potential to imagine Stuart Hall’s new ethnicities.

Student Paper

Politicking While Black: News and Social Media Representations of Three Black Female Political Candidates Running for the House of Representatives in the 2018 Midterm Election • Zeina Cabrera-Peterson • African American women have been the leading force in political campaigns long before they had the right to vote and hold office. Today, roughly 5% of African American woman hold political positions (CAWP, 2018). However, despite their political participation, there are few studies that examine representation of Black female political candidates in news media. This study employed a content analysis of news reports and three Black female candidates’ Twitter campaign accounts to examine how news media represented these three, first-time candidates and to analyze how these candidates represented themselves on Twitter. Based on the overall analysis of a census of newspaper articles and Twitter candidate accounts, the study found that race and gender was not a leading area of news coverage or self-representation in tweets. The research found that these candidates were mostly identified by their former occupations and were not questioned because of who they are, but because of what they do. These findings are significant because it challenges and reshapes gender and race identities.

Puerto Rican college students’ experience with Post-hurricane María media environment • Laura Canuelas-Torres; Naiya Brooks • Utilizing a Digital Diaspora framework, researchers explore the experiences of Puerto Rican college students during and after Hurricane Maria. We conducted and analyzed 13 interviews, examining media use, the impact of communication interruption, and opinions on media coverage. Results show that students used both mainstream and social media to learn about the hurricane’s impact and reported feeling uncertainty, anxiety, and anger related to the inability to reach family, and the American government’s response.

“Zero-Tolerance” Transnational Motherhood: Images of Mothers and Children at the U.S.-Mexico Border • Ana R Good • It all began during a law enforcement event in Scottsdale, Arizona, when then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new, “zero-tolerance” policy in the handling of illegal border crossings. Though at the time, Session’s announcement did not generate much buzz, the United States was soon faced with an onslaught of gut-wrenching images. Using the lens of “transnational motherhood,” this paper will argue that the images taken at the border of the United States employed humanizing effects.

Black bad men or bad niggers: Popular culture and hypermasculinity in Black Greek letter fraternities • Rafael Matos, Indiana University of Pennsylvania • Black Greek Letter Fraternities are influenced by popular culture to maintain hyper masculine beahviors. The study will explore the impact popular culture has on the way NPHC fraternity members reinforce constructs that encourage hyper-masculinity through new member presentations.

Buying Blackness: Black Audience Decoding of Nike Advertisements • Diamond Stacker • This study reviews representations of Blackness in media, specifically in sports media, to uncover the harmful, yet subtle stereotypes in sports advertising. Applying Hall’s (2001) encoding/decoding theory to analyze the impact of selling Blackness, the research used focus groups to examine how Black, college-young adult audiences engage with and identify racial constructions in Nike advertisements, and thus, how that influences their views on Nike as a brand.

Adapting to Change: Rethinking Advocacy in the 21st Century Black Press • Miya Williams Fayne • The black press is often conceptualized as an advocacy press but in the current digital environment this definition is malleable. Black press websites that primarily produce entertainment news create ambiguity about advocacy as a requirement. Informed by interviews with journalists and focus groups with readers this research finds that advocacy in the black press is fraught as entertainment advances it, by providing increased representation of African Americans, and threatens it, by decreasing hard news content.

< 2019 Abstracts

International Communication 2019 Abstracts

Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James W. Markham Student Paper Competition

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

< 2019 Abstracts

Advertising 2019 Abstracts

Open Research
Puffing on Instagram: Effects of Puffery Claim Types on Assessment of Persuasive Intentions and Knowledge • Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University; Olivia JuYoung Lee; Anastasia Kononova; Jef Richards; Na Rae Park; Tao Deng, Michigan State University; Jessica Hirsch • The current study examines the effects of puffery in persuasive posts on Instagram. Findings indicated that attribute puffery claims were rated higher on sincerity, understanding persuasive intent and tactics, and purchase intention, while they were rated lower on skepticism and deceptiveness, in comparison to comparative and negative puffery claims. There were significant two-way interaction effects between familiarity and puffery type. The results are discussed using theoretical framework of puffery advertising and persuasion knowledge.

Reconsider Media Multitasking and Counterarguing Inhibition: Empirical Evidence of Underlying Mechanism and Offline-to-Online Advertising Effects • Yuhmiin Chang • Two studies were conducted to elucidate the underlying mechanism and subsequent advertising effects of counterarguing inhibition while television-internet multitasking. The two studies involved different product categories and measures and did not support counterarguing inhibition hypothesis. The results consistently showed that media multitasking increased capacity interference and cognitive load, which did not lead to fewer counterarguments. Media multitasking directly produced fewer counterargument which lead to lower urge to search and buy the target products.

Comparing the Effectiveness of Help-Seeking and Product-Claim Direct-to-Consumer Advertising (DTCA): A Persuasion Knowledge Perspective • Ida Darmawan; Hao Xu; Jisu Huh, University of Minnesota • This study examined the effects of help-seeking direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) as a form of covert advertising and compared its effects with those of product-claim DTCA on consumers’ persuasion knowledge activation and its outcomes. An online experiment was conducted with adults experiencing symptoms mentioned in fictitious experimental ads. Help-seeking DTCA was less likely to activate persuasion knowledge than product-claim DTCA, resulting in lower skepticism, more positive attitude toward the ad, and higher behavioral intentions.

Context Matters! Effects of Contextual Information on Processing of Social Media Ads • Kristen Lynch, Michigan State University; Tao Deng, Michigan State University; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University; Ali Hussain, Arizona State University; Olivia JuYoung Lee • The individualized social media experience and the algorithmic approach to media buying highlight the importance of contextual effects in advertising. This study explicates the effects of sequential information processing as it pertain to ad processing through the lens of Zillman’s (1971) excitation transfer theory. The study focuses on the effects of emotional content preceding the ads, where ads were placed after pictures that varied in valence and arousal. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Privacy tradeoffs, localized deals, and consumer acceptance of mobile advertising • Lisa Farman, Ithaca College • This study explores consumer acceptance of mobile advertising, using a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults from the Simmons National Consumer Survey (N=19,657). Consistent with privacy calculus theory, willingness to make privacy trade-offs positively predicted acceptance of mobile advertising. However, desire for a specific trade-off (local deals) was a stronger predictor than a more general theoretical willingness to make privacy trade-offs. Privacy self-efficacy positively predicted mobile ad acceptance, while Internet use had a negative effect.

Does In-Stream Video Advertising Work? Effects of Position and Congruence on Ad and Brand-Related Responses • Jason Freeman, Pennsylvania State University; Lewen Wei, Pennsylvania State University; Hyun Yang; Fuyuan Shen • This study examined the effects of in-stream video advertising on consumer responses to the ad and brand. A 2 (ad position: pre versus mid-roll) x2 (congruence: low versus high) between-subjects experiment was conducted, whereby subjects viewed a short narrative video with embedded ads. We found that mid-roll advertisements led to higher levels of perceived intrusiveness and anger than pre-roll ads. Advertisements more congruent with the content elicited less anger, reduced perceived intrusiveness, but lowered brand attitudes.

Children and Unboxing Videos Online: Implications for Advertisers and Policy Makers • Deepti Khedekar; Harsha Gangadharbatla • Sponsored content, particularly content targeting young children, is on the rise on new media platforms. One such type of sponsored content is unboxing videos on YouTube that young children often watch on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets (Kabali et al., 2015). Using a sample of 421 parents with children between the ages of 4 and 10, our study investigates the role of parental mediation and the influence of selling and persuasive knowledge on such mediation when it comes to children’s consumption of unboxing videos. Results indicate that unboxing videos are highly effective in eliciting purchase demands and, in the absence of strict regulations online, parental mediation through higher levels of selling and persuasive knowledge might be the only line of defense in combating the persuasive effects of unboxing videos.

“Vioxx Provides Powerful 24-hour Relief of Arthritis” but “Vioxx Has Caused Number of Deaths from Strokes and Heart Attacks!” – Should I Continue to Take My Medicine? • Heewon Im; Jisu Huh, University of Minnesota • DTCA promoting the benefits of medications and drug injury ads emphasizing the most fatal side effects present consumers with extremely contradictory information about the same product. How would exposure to these types of ads influence consumers of prescription drugs? Addressing this question, we investigated relationships between exposure to DTCA and drug injury advertising and consumers’ beliefs about their illnesses and medications, and their medication adherence behavior. Findings offer important implications for advertising research and practice.

Antecedents of Ad Avoidance in Different Media Contexts • A-Reum Jung; Jun Heo, Louisiana State University • This study aims to a) identify a comprehensive list of the antecedents of ad avoidance and b) examine how strongly they relate to ad avoidance, and (c) to investigate how those relationships differ across media formats (traditional vs. new media). In order to fulfill these purposes, a meta-analysis was conducted. This study found 52 antecedents. Consumer perception of advertising was the main predictor of ad avoidance. The antecedents of new media ad avoidance were not much different from traditional ad avoidance although their degree of influence on ad avoidance differed across media formats.

Interaction Effects of Source Type and Message Valence in Instagram-Based Advertising Messages About Veganism • Joe Phua, University of Georgia; Seunga Venus Jin; Jihoon Kim • A between-subjects 2 (source type: celebrity versus non-celebrity) x 2 (message valence: positive versus negative) factorial experiment (N = 288) examined the effects of source type and message valence on various outcomes of Instagram-based advertising messages about veganism. Results of data analyses indicate significant main effects of message valence on perceived information value of pro-veganism posts on Instagram and significant interaction effects of the two manipulated factors on consumers’ intention to spread electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) about pro-veganism. Furthermore, perceived prosocial characteristics of the pro-vegan source and intention to build an online friendship with the source significantly moderated the effects of endorser type and message valence on perceived information value and eWOM intention. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed.

How Hateful Social Media Content Spills Over to the Adjacent Brand Ad: Implications for Brand Safety • Junga Kim; Chunsik Lee, University of North Florida; Joon Soo Lim, Syracuse University • This study proposes and tests negative spillover effect in the brand safety violation context. It created the two different experimental conditions that varied the levels of the offensive content-ad association and tested consumer responses to the advertised brands. The findings of the experimental study demonstrated that when the ad was highly associated with the offensive content, the negative emotion evoked by offensive content spilled over to the brand. The study also found that the negative spillover was amplified by ad intrusive perception and mediated by blame attribution to the brand. Lastly, negative emotions contributed to heightening negative word-of-mouth intentions.

How to Promote Health Products Online • Gawon Kim; Chun Yang, Louisiana State University; Yongick Jeong • This study examines the impacts of three critical factors on the effectiveness of online health product/service ads. Using a three-way mixed-repeated design, this study conducted online experiments with previously identified indicators of health advertising effectiveness, 2 (contextual similarity) × 2 (health threat orientation) × 2 (digital ad type). The results indicate a strong influence of contextual similarity on both Aad and PI, along with partial interaction effects of digital advertising type and health threat orientation.

Keeping up with influencers: Exploring the impact of social presence and parasocial interactions on brands • Hyosun Kim • A between-subject experiment was conducted to examine the mediating role of parasocial interaction in influencer marketing on Instagram. Drawing on the computer-mediated communication literature, the level of social presence was tested as a predictor of parasocial interaction. In a fitness blogger’s Instagram posts, social presence significantly predicts purchase intent of the brand featured in the posts as well as self-efficacy, working through parasocial interactions. Thus, parasocial interaction serves as a mediator and influencers act as role models to motivate people to exercise and benefit the brand featured in the post. Higher social presence in the posts led individuals to feel that the posts were less promotional. The effect of parasocial interaction, however, is moderated by advertising recognition, such that lower social present posts appeared to suggest promotional appeal and negatively affect purchase intent.

Can Visuals Mislead? A Test of the Visual Superiority Effect in Advertising • Kyongseok Kim, Towson University; Hyang-Sook Kim, Towson University • Based on the visual superiority effect and message framing, this study examined the role of an image in the processing of an advertising message. When the message content was ambiguous and difficult to grasp, participants tended to rely more on the image than its textual counterparts (e.g., a framed headline and/or body content) in forming attitudes toward a potential health-risk behavior (coffee drinking). Psychological mechanisms of the visual superiority effect and practical implications are discussed.

The effects of message framing and image valence on consumers’ responses to green advertising: Focus on issue involvement as a moderator • Jinhee Lee; Moonhee Cho • This study examines the effects of message framing, image valence, and issue involvement on consumers’ responses in the green advertising context. A 2 X 2 between-subjects experimental study was conducted. Significant main effects of message framing and image valence on consumers’ attitudes and purchase intentions were found. Regardless of message framing, positive images triggered stronger consumers’ responses than negative images. Lastly, this study revealed issue involvement’s moderation effects, and theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Going Native on Instagram: The Effects of Product Type and Endorser Congruity on Native Advertising Effectiveness • Susanna Lee; Huan Chen, University of Florida; Yu-Hao Lee, University of Florida • In recent years, brands have been actively using self-promoted individuals, also known as “micro-celebrities” or “influencers”, on native advertising to make the ad resemble a post uploaded by one’s online friend (Marwick & Boyd, 2011). This study explored how self-expressive product and perceived product-influencer congruence affect Instagram native advertising outcomes. Findings revealed that native ad with a high self-expressive product and product-influencer congruence positively influence attitude toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, source credibility, and eWOM intention. Furthermore, results showed that people’s persuasion knowledge moderate the effect of product-influencer congruence on the source credibility.

When Online Behavioral Advertising Mistargets: The Underlying Mechanism of its Negative Impact • DongJae (Jay) Lim, University of Georgia; Shuoya Sun, UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA; Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia • The present study sought to define and test the effects of “mistargeting” – that is, the phenomenon in which consumers are delivered online behavioral advertising (OBA) that has served them an irrelevant ad based on misinterpreted characteristics. Results of a 2 (ad mechanism disclosure: present/ absent) x 2 (targeted ad accuracy: high/low) between-subjects experiment (N = 109) show that mistargeting produces higher reactance than simple low ad relevance, and subsequent negative effects for brands.

Effects of Disclosing Ads on Instagram: The Moderating Impact of Similarity to the Influencer • Brigitte Naderer; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna; Stephanie Schäfer, U of Vienna • We investigated the effects of ad disclosures on Instagram and explored the moderating role of similarity to the influencer. We conducted a 2×3 experiment with N = 396 women, manipulating the presence of an ad disclosure and follower-influencer similarity. Findings suggest that ad disclosures can foster persuasion knowledge. However, disclosures can also lead to increased influencer trustworthiness when there is high similarity. Trustworthiness, in turn, impacts purchase intentions and future intentions to follow the influencer.

Fear of Missing Out: Components of the Experience and Experiential Variations In Different Contexts • Dominik Neumann, Michigan State University; Esther Thorson, Michigan State University • Fear of missing out (FOMO) has gained increased attention in recent years. However, dimensionality and context-dependency of the concept remain unclear. Using semi-structured interviews we examine three possible attributes of FOMO: social comparison, counterfactual thoughts, and negative affect. We examine whether these dimensions are context-dependent, that is, whether they vary in application to advertising versus social relationships. Findings suggest the importance of all three dimensions across contexts. Implications for theory and scale development are discussed.

“The Algorithm Follows Me:” Knowledge and Experience of Targeting and Re-Targeting in Online Advertising Across Age Cohorts • Olga Shabalina; Michelle Nelson • Personalized online advertising is becoming more common across online environments, especially the use of re-targeting across media devices. Research has shown that the practice can be relevant and creepy. In our exploratory study, we interviewed people of two age groups (ages 18-27; 55-67) to gauge their knowledge and experience. Both age groups developed tactics to avoid retargeted ads, but behaviors varied given differences in media experience, feelings towards OBA, and level of privacy concerns.

Chatbots as the Next Frontier for Brand Communication • Ching-Hua Chuan, University of Miami; Wanhsiu Tsai, University of Miami; Yu Liu, Florida International University • This study presents one of the earliest empirical studies on the use of chatbots for brand communication. Specifically, this study evaluates how chatbots’ anthropomorphic design and communication that projects social presence jointly influence perceptions of parasocial interaction and dialogue, which in turn improve consumer evaluation and overall brand-liking. The findings advance the emerging research on chatbots for brand communication, and provide strategic guidelines to help advertisers capitalize on the power of chatbots to engage consumers in interpersonal communication.

Exploring the effects of compliance/non-compliance framing, desirability of end states, and brand zealotry on consumers’ responses to wearables advertising • Ruoxu Wang; Yan Huang; George Anghelcev, Northwestern University in Qatar • This study examined the combinatory effects of compliance/non-compliance framing, desirability of end states, and brand zealotry on consumers’ responses to wearables advertising. Results showed compliance framing was more effective than no-compliance framing on ad attitude, purchase intention, and WOM intention. Desirable end-states was more effective than undesirable end-states on ad attitude, purchase intention, and WOM intention. Brand zealotry moderates the interaction between compliance/non-compliance framing and desirability of end- states on purchase intention and WOM intention.

Message Features Predict Engagement with #MeToo Tweets • Nathan Lemburg; Ming Wang • This paper examines how message features affected engagement with #MeToo posts on Twitter. This study analyzed a dataset of 393,135 tweets with the #MeToo hashtag dated between November 29 and December 25, 2017. Focusing on three message features – personal reference, time orientation and emotions – results show that these three features were associated with the liking and sharing behavior toward the #MeToo tweets in different ways.

Writing Style Matters: Comparing Narrative and Expository Native Advertisements with Different Disclosure Levels • Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Naa Amponsah Dodoo, Emerson College; Chris Noland, University of South Carolina • Previous native advertising research has reported inconsistent findings related to the impact of advertising disclosure, implying the existence of potential boundary conditions. This study compared the effectiveness of narrative and expository native advertisements with different disclosure levels and confirmed the moderating effects of the writing style. The results of an online experiment indicated that the negative impact of explicit disclosure on content liking and share intention was only significant for the expository native advertisement, but not for the narrative native advertisement. These findings are believed to be meaningful to theory building for native advertising and to advertising professionals who are running native advertisements.

Native CSR Advertising: How Does Advertising Recognition Influence Public’s Responses to Proactive and Reactive CSR? • Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina; Holly Overton, University of South Carolina • Corporate social responsibility (CSR) communication has started to take the format of native advertising. Noticing its growing popularity and the lack of research in this area, the present study was conducted to fill this gap. Through an online experiment, this study investigated how advertising recognition influences the public’s responses to a proactive and a reactive native CSR advertisement. The results indicated that participants expressed more favorable attitudes and greater WOM intention toward a proactive native CSR advertisement than a reactive one only when they did not recognize the persuasion purpose of the native ad. This study also confirmed the mediation of perceived manipulativeness for the effects of advertising recognition and the mediation of values-driven motivation for the effects of CSR type. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Exploring the Effects of Facebook-Use Fluidity, Flow and Motivations on User Interaction with Newsfeed Advertising • Xiaowen Xu; Carolyn Lin • This exploratory study tested the relations among technology fluidity, social media motivation, flow and consumer responses to newsfeed advertising. The path analysis results suggest that fluidity may impact social media motivation, social media motivation could help elicit flow and perceived ad usefulness. While flow may influence perceived ad usefulness, social media motivation and perceived ad usefulness could help shape product attitude. Perceived ad usefulness and product attitude in turn may help explain purchase intention.

Teaching and Pedagogy
The Ideal Advertising Professor • George Anghelcev, Northwestern University in Qatar; Shageea (Gia) Naqvi; Sela Sar; Jasmine Moultrie • Advertising faculty and program administrators would benefit from knowing what advertising students expect from the “ideal” advertising professor, yet no research has examined the topic. The present study constitutes a first step towards building knowledge in that specific domain. We explored the issue directly by attempting to answer the question, ‘how do students imagine the “ideal” advertising professor’?, in a manner that allowed the students to freely define their expectations without being constricted by the researchers’ views. The results were partly intuitive and partly surprising. They revealed a nuanced and rather sophisticated set of expectations from the ideal advertising professor, and have actionable pedagogical implications beyond the study’s contribution to literature and methodology in advertising education research.

Inter-Agency Collaboration: Account and Creative Teams Speak Out About Their Relationship • Robyn Blakeman, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Eric Haley, University of Tennessee; Maureen Taylor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville • The relationship between account management and creative is a complicated and ever-changing one. A common theme in the advertising literature is that account and creative teams sometimes struggle with inter-agency communication. This paper looks at why communication is still an issue today and what knowledge modern account and creative teams need to know about the others role in the agency to close the long-standing communication gap. We asked both account and creatives what they wished the other understood about their roles within the agency. From their answers, we identify pedagogical suggestions for advertising professors as they work to better prepare students for careers in the industry.

Professional Freedom & Responsibility (PF&R)
Gender Expression and Contribution Amounts in Social Responsibility Advertising for Pride Collections: Does Doing More Make a Difference? • Sara Champlin; Minjie Li • One social issue that has gained popularity in recent years is representation of LGBTQ models and messages. Using samples of heterosexual and LGBTQ participants, this study examines the impact of boundary-crossing model gender expression (masculine, feminine) and non-profit contribution amount (1%, 100% of sales) on consumer responses to advertisements that feature a social justice topic. Findings from this study suggest that complete (100%) donations may elicit skepticism among consumers, implications for practitioners are discussed.

Are Digital Natives Naive About Digital Influence? An Exploration of Generational Differences and Understanding of Social Media Influencer Marketing • Brandon Boatwright; COURTNEY CHILDERS, University of Tennessee • Influencer marketing has upended traditional notions of celebrity endorsement, as advertisers partner with social media users with smaller followings but higher levels of engagement among key audiences. Twenty-five (n=25) diverse participants between the ages of 18-51 years shared their experiences with and opinions of influencer marketing via personal interviews. Findings suggest that there are differences between generational groups’ perceptions of social media influencers and move us closer towards establishing a model of audience-influencer relationships (AIRs).

Gender Portrayals in Adverts in the Gulf: A Content Analysis of Gender Portrayals in Television Advertising • Ali Khalil, Zayed University; Ganga Dhanesh • The stereotyping of women in dependent and familial roles in advertising has traditionally prevailed according to numerous studies. This study examined the level of gender stereotyping in television advertising in the Arab Gulf region, where conservative traditions and patriarchal structures remain strong among native populations. There is very little research into gender portrayal in advertising in this region. Following the lead from previous studies, this research has found that traditional stereotyping patterns mostly hold ground in the Gulf region, but change is starting to appear in certain areas.

Special Topics in Advertising
An Eye-Tracking Approach to Evaluate Personalized Advertising Effectiveness on Social Media: From Attention to Click • A-Reum Jung; Jun Heo, Louisiana State University • The main purpose of this study was to (a) examine how personalization influences advertising effectiveness and (b) investigate the roles of ad types and privacy concern during the persuasion process by employing eye-tracking equipment. The results revealed that perceived personalization of Facebook ads is positively related to (a) ad attention (i.e., total visit duration) and (b) ad clicks (i.e., click count). However, the positive effectiveness was significant only when participants viewed native ads and when they reported low privacy concern. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Power Users’ Branded VR Experiences on Immersiveness and Sharing Behavior: Moderating Effect of Prior Company Schema • Yoon-Joo Lee, Washington State University; Mina Park; David Silva; Jinho Joo; Pritha Agarwal • Virtual reality advertising campaigns allow consumers to interact with a company offering the VR experiences in a novel way. This study examined how individuals’ differences in power usage (confidence levels in using technology in an innovative and a functional way) and the company schema (trustworthy-related perception of a company) interact in experiencing immersion and evaluating attitudinal and behavioral intentions (share and recommendation of the VR experiences). The findings revealed that power users are more likely to be immersed into the VR environment, have positive attitude toward the VR experiences, and sharing the experiences, but less likely to recommend the VR experiences than non-power users. These effects of power usage were moderated by the trustworthy-schema toward the company providing VR experiences. Power users were less sensitive to the company schema than non-power users. The implications of the findings and future studies were further discussed.

Will Location Privacy Concerns Influence Location-Based Advertising Effectiveness? • Yowei Kang, National Taiwan Ocean University; KENNETH C. C. YANG, The University of Texas at El Paso • An important, but less explored, question about location-based mobile advertising (LBA) is how location privacy concerns would affect its effectiveness. Empirical results from an online survey of 391 U.S. participants found that location privacy concerns negatively predict attitudes toward, intention to use, and actual use of LBA. Positive attitudes predict a higher intention to use LBA, but not actual use. Overall, location privacy concerns predict LBA effectiveness even after considering users’ demographics and previous LBA experience. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Graduate and Undergraduate Student Research
He Said, She Said: The Role of Gender in Influencer Marketing in Saudi Arabia • Khalid Alharbi, University of South Carolina • This study uses social learning theory and congruence between social media influencers (SMI) and consumers to evaluate the impact of gender in influencer marketing. The findings indicate that SMI-consumer congruence positively increases the attitude towards the brand and the endorsement, especially when the endorser is a male influencer and the consumer is female. Also, influencer marketing appears to be a useful tool to increase consumer purchase intention and generate positive eWOM.

Advertising and Ethics: Theme and Community Segregation on Chicago’s Rapid Transit System • Ava Francesca Battocchio, Loyola University Chicago • Home to the United States’ second largest public transportation system, Chicago has a long history with economic, educational, and racial disparities amongst its 77 neighborhoods. Through content analysis, this study examines and categorizes 1,048 advertisements by their community demographics such as education, income and race, to examine theme variance within the context of residential segregation on Chicago’s rapid transit rail system.

The Impacts of Consumer Personality Traits on Online Video Ads Sharing • Chang Won Choi, School of Journalism and Mass Communications, University of South Carolina • Despite the increasing importance of advertisement sharing, research on the characteristics of people sharing advertisements with others is limited. This study examines the impacts of personality traits on online video advertising sharing intention. Structural equation modeling test results show that neuroticism, openness to experience, and extraversion among big-five personality traits have positive impacts on the intention through the advertising message involvement. Implications of the findings as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.

Conflicting Messages: Eye Tracking Participant Outcomes of Empowerment and Objectification in Contemporary Advertising • Amelia Couture Bue, University of Michigan • Empowerment-themed advertising (ETA) is becoming a popular marketing strategy, and ETAs often pair ostensibly empowering messages with objectifying visuals. This study explores the independent and collective contributions of text and visual messages on women’s self-objectification and felt empowerment, including message processing. Results indicated that ETA visuals paired with empowerment-themed captions produced the lowest objectification scores, but the presence of the photo decreased feelings of empowerment. Limited differences in message processing differences were found across conditions.

Transparent Deception: Exploring the Relationship between Moral Ecology and Native Advertising • Jason Freeman, Pennsylvania State University; Michael Krieger • This study examined how the moral ecology of advertising and public relations agencies influence native advertising attitudes and practices. Six in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with advertising and public relations executives working at two New York based agencies. Participants discussed their views on native advertising using a dualistic perspective, at one moment speaking as a consumer, and then in the next as practitioners. Insights into the structural forces that shape a practitioners’ ability to negotiate their work are discussed.

The Effect of Verbal and Visual Product Information on Cognitive and Affective Responses • Xiaohan Hu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Chen Chen, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign • Visual and verbal are the two primary presentation formats in online information consumption. We conducted an experiment to investigate the effects of different presentation formats, as well as Internet use motivations, on the audience’s cognitive and affective responses respectively in the context of online product information search. Results revealed that verbal presentation led to better cognitive responses (i.e., the perceived amount of information). Utilitarian and hedonic motivations positively influence the audience’s attitudes and behavior intentions toward product information.

The Influence of Beauty-Related YouTube Content on Consumers’ Purchase Intentions • Kyungji Lee • Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) is considered an effective tool in appealing consumers. Previous studies primarily focus on text-based eWOM. This study builds on earlier studies by applying the Information Adoption Model to beauty-related videos on YouTube. It confirms that information quality and source credibility are important determinants of perceived information usefulness which positively influence information adoption and purchase intention. It also found expected relationships between dependent variables within the elaboration likelihood model (ELM).

Exploring Musical Characteristics in Public Service Announcement: A Content Analysis on PSA Videos • Bitt Moon, Indiana University Bloomington • This study analyzed the PSA advertisements to examine how music is associated with message framing and message appeals. A content analysis was conducted on a total of 362 PSA ads. The results showed that background music with positive music emotion was observed most often in PSA ads. The findings also revealed the significant relationships between musical characteristics and message components. Theoretical and strategic implications were discussed.

Listicles vs. Narratives: The Interplay Between Mood, Message Type and Disclosure on Native Advertising Effectiveness • Chris Noland, University of South Carolina • Two studies examine the interplay between mood and native advertising type (listicle and narrative) on attitudinal and behavioral response. Study 1 suggests that people in a negative mood find native ads presented in a listicle format more appealing while people in a positive mood prefer native ads presented as narratives. Study 2 added disclosure language as a potential moderator; however, the results showed consistent findings as Study 1 and suggested disclosure language did not influence the effectiveness of native advertising. Furthermore, Study 2 also identified manipulativeness as an underlying mechanism which explains the interaction between mood and native ad type.

Effects of celebrity, social media influencer, and peer endorsements on attitude and behavior towards a celebrity-owned brand: The role of source credibility and the concept of congruence • Shiyun Tian, University of Miami • Product endorsement is a widely used advertising technique. In addition to traditional celebrity endorsement, electronic Word of Mouth appears to be highly effective for brand promotion, either through online opinion leaders (i.e., social media influencers (SMIs)) or through consumers’ peer reviews. This study investigates the effectiveness of three types of product endorsement (i.e., celebrity, SMI, and peer endorsements) from the perspectives of source credibility and congruity theory. Results indicated that source credibility, especially perceived expertise, play an important role in consumers’ evaluation process of product endorsement messages. In addition, the endorser-consumer congruence and the endorser-product congruence can serve as a moderating role that reinforces the effectiveness of product endorsement. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Product Category Involvement Moderates Emotion Spillover Effect on Advertising Effectiveness • You Zhan, University of California, Davis • This study proposed and tested the idea that product category involvement could influence the elaborative level of advertising processing, and therefore moderate the effects of preceding emotional content on subsequent advertising effectiveness. Verbal and visual recognition, product attitude, and purchase intention data were collected to examine the predictions and research questions. The results demonstrated the interaction effects of preceding emotional content and product category involvement on advertising processing, product attitude, and purchase intention. The recognition data showed as the product category involvement level increased, more cognitive resources were directed from visual information to verbal information, improving the elaborative level of advertising processing. In addition, the preceding arousing content had greater influence on the elaborative level of advertising with moderate or high product category involvement compared with that of advertising with low product category involvement. Similar pattern was found on product attitude. And the effect of preceding arousing content on product attitude was smaller when the product category involvement was low compared with when the product category involvement was moderate or high. Furthermore, a three-way interaction of preceding valence, preceding arousing content, and product category involvement on purchase intention was observed. Particularly, the purchase intention for low-involvement product categories benefited most from the preceding positive arousing content while that for moderate- and high-involvement product categories was the highest when the preceding content was positive calm. Practical implications of the study and suggestions for future research have also been discussed.

< 2019 Abstracts

Visual Communication 2018 Abstracts

From Reel Life to Real Change: The Role of Social-Issue Documentary in U.S. Public Policy • Caty Borum Chattoo, American University School of Communication and Center for Media & Social Impact; Will Jenkins • This study examines three digital-era U.S. documentary films – Sin by Silence (2009), Playground (2009), and Semper Fi (2011) – to reveal cultural and narrative elements of influence that underscored their successful U.S. policy engagement on federal and state levels. Expanding the coalition model of documentary’s political impact (Whiteman, 2004) through case studies constructed by interviews with the collaborating policymakers, policy advocates and film directors, this study finds that social-issue documentaries may be influential for policy engagement because their narratives are perceived as emotional, factual, and nonpartisan. Documentary narrative is positioned as “situated knowledge” (Epstein, Farina & Heidt, 2014), narrative that presents human implications and lived experiences within the policymaking context. Ultimately, the policy impact of these three social-issue documentary films can be attributed to the dual defining characteristics of documentary as a visual mediated storytelling genre: both creative artistic expression and reflection of truth.

Giving Guidance to Graphs: Evaluating Direct and Indirect Annotations of Data Visualizations for the News • Russell Chun, Hofstra University • This study quantifies the effectiveness of information recall with direct and indirect labeling of the annotation layer in a news data visualization. Three variations of a New York Times graphic were presented to participants in a crowd-sourced experiment to measure their story comprehension. Our results demonstrate that direct labeling offers no advantage over indirect labeling. More significantly, annotations on visualizations do no better to enhance comprehension than visualizations without them, contradicting data visualization orthodoxy.

“This is still their lives:” Photojournalists’ ethical approach to capturing and publishing graphic/shocking images • Kaitlin Bane, University of Oregon; Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon • Graphic and gut-wrenching images of death, violence, and the aftermath of pain fill our news media. This paper uses in-depth interviews with photojournalists to explore fundamental ethical questions about the decision-making process and ethical considerations involved in photographing and publishing such images. Research found participants utilize an ethic of care and focus on subjects when taking pictures, and consider audience effects only tangentially. Additionally, they maintain that images can create positive change, but not always.

To tone or not to tone: A hierarchy of influences examination of photojournalistic image manipulation • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado Boulder; Ross Taylor, U of Colorado-Boulder • This study investigates how professional photojournalists apply toning ethics in their news routines and whether those ethics vary by organization. Utilizing data collected from in-depth interviews with professional photojournalists and a hierarchy of influences framework, we found that while some ethical decisions are embedded in photojournalists’ news routines, these do vary greatly by organization. These findings illustrate how journalistic norms could be potentially changing and that individual news organizations are applying ethics differently.

Recoding Language with Fatty Memes: How Chinese Netizens Avoid Censorship When Referring to North Korea • Bingbing Zhang, Texas Tech University; Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University; David Perlmutter, Texas Tech University • Memes are humorous images, often featuring captions with superimposed text, that are shared online. In an effort to avoid censorship, Chinese netizens strategically use memes to discuss political issues. This study content analyzes memes that feature an image or likeness of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un posted by Chinese social media users on the Weibo platform. Results highlight how politically astute, tech-savvy publics can express political dissent, even in a high-censorship online environment.

Capturing the Crisis: A Content Analysis of News Photographs of the Syrian Refugee Crisis • Tamar Gregorian, The University of Southern Mississippi; Elizabeth Radley • The Syrian refugee crisis, the largest migration of displaced persons in recent history, has been widely documented through photographs. In an attempt to understand the media frames and tones that the media used in covering the crisis through photographs of the refugees, the researchers conducted a content analysis of 629 photographs and captions from The New York Times and The Washington Post from May 2014 – May 2016. Results indicate that the majority of the photographs containing Syrian refugees had a negative tone, a main message of migration, and stereotyped the refugees as victims.

Mobile Augmented Reality through the Lens of Eye Tracking • Sheree Josephson, Weber State University; Melina Myers, Weber State University • This eye-tracking study compared the usability of Yelp’s Augmented Reality app with its familiar map-based app. Results showed AR users could successfully find a destination using the location-based technology that augments a display of the physical landscape with digital information. However, AR users took longer to find the location. They also spent more time looking at the mobile screen and looked back and forth between the screen and the environment more often than map users.

Effects of Playfulness on SNS Emoji Uses • Yeon Joo Kim; Jaehee Park; Jong Woo Jun, Dankook University • This research tries to verify, from a marketing strategy perspective, various purchasing motivations and factors affecting the purchase of special emoji graphics and explore the relationship between these purchase motivations and psychological factors, including playfulness that contribute to emoji purchases. For this study, Kakao which is the number one SNS service in Korea was selected as a research target and examined relationships among four latent constructs: Self-presentation, symbolic values, playfulness, and purchase intentions. The results illustrated that self-presentation influenced symbolic values, and self-presentation is positively related with playfulness. Symbolic values influenced playfulness, which in turn lead to purchase intentions of the characters. Direct relationships between symbolic values and purchase intentions were also found.

All About the Visuals: Image Framing, Emoticons and Sharing Intention for Health News Posts on Facebook • Yen-I Lee, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia; Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georiga; Katherine Keib, Oglethorpe University; Brittany Jefferson, University of Georgia; Jennifer Malson, University of Georgia; Hyoyeun Jun, University of Georgia • Responding to calls for research on effects of visual communication in the cognitive processing of health information, a 2 (visual framing: gain/loss) x 2 (personal relevance of topic: high/low) x 2 (emoticon valence: positive/negative) mixed-factorial eye-tracking experiment tested effects of photographic images (gain-or-loss framed) and visual sentiment displays (emoticons) on sharing of health news posts. Negative emoticons led to greater sharing intent, while image framing shaped perceptions of disease severity and susceptibility.

Who Can Be Put at Risk by “Virtual Makeovers”?: Self-Photo Editing, Disordered Eating, and the Role of Mindset among Adult Female Instagram Users • Roselyn Lee-Won, The Ohio State University; Dingyu Hu, The Ohio State University; Yeon Kyoung Joo, Myongji University; Sung Gwan Park, Seoul National University • We investigated the relationship between self-photo editing on Instagram and disordered eating among adult females. A cross-sectional online survey was conducted with U.S. female Instagram users (N = 382). Results showed that more frequent self-photo editing was associated with greater rumination about eating, weight, and shape, which in turn was associated with disordered eating. Furthermore, a moderated mediation analysis revealed that the mediation was significant among those with moderate and high levels of fixed mindset.

Social beautifying: How personality traits and social comparison affect selfie-editing behavior • Yu Liu, Florida International University; Weirui Wang • Individual users worldwide purposefully and selectively edit their selfies and post their photos on social networking sites. Based on social comparison framework, this study examines how personality traits affect individuals’ selfie-editing behavior through social comparison process: downward identification, downward contrast, upward identification, and upward contrast. The findings suggest individuals with high public self-consciousness, low self-esteem, and high neuroticism tend to engage in different types of social comparison, which are associated with their selfie-editing behavior.

Two days, twenty outfits: Coachella attendees’ visual presentation of self and experience on Instagram • Kyser Lough, The University of Texas at Austin • This study uses visual discourse analysis to study how people utilize social media and photography at events such as a music festival, theoretically guided by how technological affordances allow for a new way of presentation of self. Analysis of 200 Instagram posts from attendees at the 2017 Coachella music festival reveals they care less about sharing photos of the concerts and more about curating a sense of taste, sense of embrace and sense of place.

Celebrating Life or Adversity? The Redefinition of Features in the Pictures of the Year International Contest • Jennifer Midberry; Ryan N. Comfort, Indiana University Bloomington; Joseph Roskos, Indiana University-Bloomington • “Photojournalism contests have been criticized for continually awarding top prizes in hard news categories to images that depict conflict, disaster, poverty, and other problems. Pictures like these, which have a social issues visual frame, usually focus on people from countries other than the United States and on minorities. Some photojournalism contests, like Pictures of the Year International (POYi), include a features category. Traditionally, feature photos capture

humorous, tender, or picturesque moments of everyday life, and their purpose is to celebrate the human condition. The feature photo category should theoretically be an area in photojournalism contests that breaks from the pattern of emphasizing social issues. However, in recent years of POYi the features category appears to also be dominated by images that stress hardship. To investigate whether this represents an increasing trend in POYi of awarding prizes to pictures that focus on social issues, a content analysis of the winning photographs from the past twenty years was conducted. Understanding whether the feature category in POYi has evolved is important because when it comes to shaping discourses about social issues, national identities, ethnicity and race, feature photos have the potential for emphasizing commonality. If the newsworthiness of feature photos starts to become tied to similar criteria as hard news photos, that potential will be diminished.”

Internet memes and copyright law: The transformativeness of memes as tools of visual communication in remix culture • Natalia Mielczarek; W. Wat Hopkins • Internet memes have become popular artifacts of visual communication in digital culture. They are, by definition, reiterative as they remix already existing content to produce new rhetorical statements. This interdisciplinary study explores the legal implications of such “produsage” vis-à-vis the U.S. copyright law. With the help of legal research and theoretical framework of remix culture and memetics, the study shows how and why memes deserve legal protection as transformative work.

Reinvestigating the Beauty Match Up in Food Ads • Juan Mundel, DePaul University; Patricia Huddleston, Michigan State University • In two studies, we explore how males evaluate models of different body sizes in snack and fast food ads, and the effects of the pairing of different models with products perceived to be healthy (vs. unhealthy) on participants’ evaluations of the the product, the ad, and purchase intentions. Overall, participants had better evaluations of the ads when presented with unhealthy foods and models with idealized bodies.

The Visual Framing of Immigrants and Refugees in U.S. News: Content and Effects • Scott Parrott, The University of Alabama; Jennifer Hoewe, Purdue University; Minghui Fan, The University of Alabama; Keith Huffman, The University of Alabama • This research examines the visual framing of immigrants and refugees by U.S. news outlets and its effects on news consumers. In Study 1, coders examined the photographs used in stories about immigrants and refugees that were shared on Twitter by regional news outlets in each of the 50 states. Stories most often contained one of two visual foci: a human interest frame, featuring immigrants and refugees as everyday people; or a political frame, showcasing politicians. In an experiment, Study 2 determined the equivalency framing effects of these visuals on participants’ emotions and, in turn, their attitudes toward immigrants and refugees. Exposure to a human interest visual frame predicted more positive emotional responses, leading to greater support for immigrants and refugees. Conversely, exposure to a political visual frame predicted more negative emotional responses and then less support for immigrants and refugees.

Profile Pictures Across Platforms: How identity visually manifests itself among social media communities • T.J. Thomson, Missouri School of Journalism; Keith Greenwood, University of Missouri • A profile picture is a ubiquitous and salient part of almost any online account and provides a window not only into the individual user but also to the larger online community’s culture. Profile pictures have been called “one of the most telling pieces of self-disclosure or image construction” in online communities and users face dizzying freedom when deciding on their selection. Such choices have been studied in discrete contexts, such as how personality type affects profile picture selection on Twitter, but they have not yet been studied across platforms to see whether the same photo is used across multiple sites or whether users select different photos for different communities and what such differences or similarities reveal both about the users and about the communities from which they originate. Informed by literature in social psychology and self-representation, this study offers a seminal look into how profile pictures differ across platforms and how user personality and perceived audience affect such decisions. It does so through a three-pronged approach of personality assessment, textual analysis, and in-depth interview. The findings reveal that the younger users sampled in this study overwhelmingly prefer polychromatic images and a majority preferred to have a unique picture on each platform. These same users are comfortable having their identifiable features in their profile pictures and those who are more extroverted preferred to share the frame with someone else. In many ways, the users in the sample rejected artifice for authenticity in terms of their profile pictures’ form, content, and the the way they were processed, if at all, in post-production.

Analysis of Photographic Representation of Refugees in France • Anna Warner, Biola University; Tamara Welter, Biola university; Jason Brunt, Biola University • This research investigates the photographic representation by the Agence France-Presse (AFP) of Middle Eastern refugees seeking asylum in France. The objective is to determine how refugees were represented to audiences and whether that depiction changed in the wake of the November 2015 Paris Suicide Attacks. Analysis shows that refugees were represented differently after the attacks, in a way that aligned more closely with French collectivism than before.

Feminine, Competent, Submissive: A Multimodal Analysis of Depictions of Women in U.S. Wartime Persuasive Messages • Easton Wollney, University of Florida; Miglena Sternadori, Texas Tech University College of Media and Communication • This analysis used Peirce’s triadic approach to interpret 58 public depictions of wartime women from 1914 to 1918 and from 1941 to 1946. The images appeared in government posters or as ads and illustrations in U.S. magazines and newspapers. Aligned in five thematic clusters, many invited polysemy through discrepant visual and verbal cues aimed at different audiences. Women as viewers and as objects of representation were addressed in the context of both citizenship and consumption.

It Costs a Lot to Look This Cheap: Preference for Low Quality Graphic Design • Shannon Zenner, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Some 1000 surveys were conducted on Amazon’s MTurk, asking respondents to rate a high and low-quality visual design, in this case, a billboard ad. While most respondents preferred the high-quality ad, over a third opted for the low-quality design. The qualities they described liking in the ad differed from those respondents who preferred the high-quality design. Age also played a role in preference. Implications for many different types of visual communication are discussed.

Effects of Visual Theme and View Perspective on Visual Attention and Brand Constructions: An Eye-Tracking Study on Instagram Posts • Lijie Zhou, Southern Utah University; Fei Xue, The University of Southern Miss • This eye-tracking study examined the effects of visual theme and view perspective on Instagram users’ visual attention. It also explored whether visual attention influenced brand attitude and recognition. Results showed that participants spent the longest time viewing and paid the most attention to customer-centric images with a first-person view perspective. When in a third-person view, product-centric images received the longest fixation duration and most fixation frequency. It was also found that brand recognition was positively influenced by fixation frequency but not by fixation duration.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Media Ethics 2018 Abstracts

Carol Burnett Award
Fake News and the Fourth Estate: The Role of Editorial Messaging in Repairing the Journalistic Paradigm • Deborah Dwyer, Student • The White House has weaponized the term “fake news” to brand mainstream media as unethical. Ironically, this presents an opportunity for the Fourth Estate to reestablish credibility at a time when trust in media is frighteningly low. This content analysis explores traditional media’s editorial discourse about fake news to determine if it has sparked efforts to repair the journalistic paradigm—the unwritten and fundamental behaviors and standards media assert to be intrinsic to the profession.

Carol Burnett Award
“This Corporation Cares”: Considering Ethics in Communicating Nonprofit CSR Relationships Online • Virginia Harrison • A qualitative content analysis of corporate social responsibility (CSR) webpages of top-ranked corporations was conducted to determine the ethical nature of online communications surrounding nonprofit partnerships. Evidence shows that website communications often engage in self-promotion rather than genuine support for nonprofit partners. Through corporate branding of CSR activities, advertising through philanthropy stories, and using employee volunteerism and donations as unpaid labor, the balance of CSR relationships tilts heavily in the corporation’s favor.

Open Competition
An Ethic of Advocacy: Metajournalistic discourse on the practice of leaks and whistleblowing 2004-2017 • Brett Johnson; Elizabeth Bent, University of Missouri; Caroline Dade, University of Missouri • Leaks are vital to journalism, especially since the early 2000s. This study analyzes the discourse surrounding leaks crafted by online journalism trade publications since 2004 to understand how journalism has shaped itself as an institution vis-à-vis the role of leaks in reporting and the meta-ethical norms surrounding the use of leaks. Findings suggest that journalism has embraced an advocacy role with leaks despite (or perhaps because of) ethical contradictions surrounding their use of leaks.

Facebook and the Virtue of Friendship • Jeffrey Maciejewski, Creighton University • Although social media are used by billions worldwide, they have not received commensurate attention by ethicists. This paper is an attempt to fill this vacancy in the literature by examining Facebook friendship using Aristotelian virtues as a normative lens. Given that Aristotle envisions the highest form of friendship––perfect friendship––as arising from quid pro quo friendships of utility and pleasure, and since self-love, addiction and compulsion are entwined with Facebook use, this paper examines the virtue of friendship as it relates to the nuanced nature of Facebook relationships. Requirements of virtue friendship are analyzed and applied to Facebook friendships, and the complicating influences of asynchronous “frictionless” interactions, sometimes fueled by narcissism, are discussed.

How “activist” ethics at the New York Times overcame the “chilling effects” of libel • Ali Mohamed, UAE University • The civil rights movement of the 1960s serves as context in exploring deployment of ethical principles associated with activist democracy by the New York Times. A content analysis shows that the Times maintained a vigorous challenge to the social order in Alabama even after a series of libel suits were brought by state officials. This suggests that when media cover a story in an activist spirit, the intimidating “chilling effects” of libel can lose effect.

“Ethically Listening” to Different Perspectives : News Fixers’ Thoughts on the Dangers They Face in the Field • Lindsay Palmer, UW-Madison • This paper attempts to answer Stephen J.A. Ward and Herman Wasserman’s call for more “ethical listening” in communications scholarship, most especially where cross-cultural dialogue is concerned (2015). Drawing upon qualitative interviews with 75 news “fixers” in 36 different countries, the paper argues that these locally-based media employees are vital in protecting correspondents in the field. Because news fixers guide correspondents through unfamiliar locations and give them advice on how to navigate dangerous cultural differences, international news organizations depend heavily on fixers to keep their journalists safe on assignment. Yet, these news organizations do not return the favor by protecting news fixers in any systematic way. Because of this, the paper ultimately argues that journalism practitioners and scholars need to engage in more “ethical listening,” actively considering and respecting news fixers’ perspectives on the risks they face in their work. Without news fixers, the work of international reporting simply would not be possible; therefore, international news outlets and the scholars who study them need to take news fixers’ perspectives seriously, relying on these particular perspectives as a guide for how to improve fixers’ safety.

Electoral Reckonings: Press Criticism of Presidential Campaign Coverage, 2000-2016 • Elizabeth Bent, University of Missouri; Kimberly Kelling; Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri • Elections offer the press a relatively predictable cycle to enact its democratic role. The cyclical nature of presidential elections allow a level of self-reflexivity as the press reflect on election coverage. Through a textual analysis of press criticism after presidential elections from 2000-2016, this study explores how themes around routines, norms and values remained relatively steady until the 2016 election creates a hyperactive response and discursive shift as the press moves from public-advocate to self-advocate.

Fair balance or false balance: Accuracy or impartiality in climate change reporting • Kristin Timm, George Mason University; Richard Craig, George Mason University • Despite the scientific consensus that human-caused climate change is occurring, it continues to be presented as a two-sided debate-creating a ‘false balance’ that can distort the audience’s perceptions of the issue. With 52 interviews and a survey of nearly 2000 news media professionals from the U.S., we reveal how frequently an opposing viewpoint is included in climate change stories, why it is included, and how journalists understand and practice objectivity in climate change reporting.

The Discursive (Re)Construction of the Objectivity Norm • Tim Vos, University of Missouri; Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri; Amanda Hinnant; Yong Volz, University of Missouri • While objectivity has long been an ethical anchor for the institution of journalism, it has seemingly been contested in the last two decades. This study examines two decades of journalists’ discourse – what has come to be called metajournalistic discourse – to examine the meaning, state, and legitimacy of objectivity. While we find that the meaning of objectivity has shifted and faces a steady stream of discursive contestation, the objectivity norm or ethic still finds purchase.

Ethics of Authenticity: Travel Influencers and the Production of Sponsored Content • Mariah Wellman, University of Iowa; Ryan Stoldt; Melissa Tully, University of Iowa; Brian Ekdale • This paper argues travel influencers rely on an ethics of authenticity to build credibility when deciding which commercial brands to work with, what content to produce, how to disclose brand relationships to audiences, and whether to omit experiences that might otherwise damage their personal brands. An ethics of authenticity puts the influencers’ brand identity and relationship with their audience at the forefront while also allowing them to profit from content designed to benefit brands and destinations.

Special Call for Advertising and Public Relations Ethics • Still no End to Gender Stereotypes in Advertising: A Content Analytical Comparison of Different Channels. • Kathrin Karsay, University of Vienna; Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; Valerie Fröhlich • Scholars repeatedly voiced ethical criticism with regards to stereotypical gender role portrayals in television advertisements. The present study analyzed gender stereotypes in a total of N = 1022 advertisements from four Austrian television channels: a public service channel, a commercial channel, and one commercial special interest channel for men and for women respectively. The results showed that well-known stereotypical gender portrayals are prevalent in all four channels. However, significant differences between channels exist.

2018 ABSTRACTS

International Communication 2018 Abstracts

Markham Student Paper Competition
Phillip Arceneaux, University of Florida • The West Africa we were shown: A visual content analysis of the 2014 Ebola epidemic • Via content analysis, this study investigated what themes of West Africa were visually publicized by U.S. newspapers, and if such themes mirrored coverage of African groups. Data were collected from the New York Times, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Dallas Morning News. Quantitative findings suggest coverage favored victim-based frames which became significantly less negative once Ebola patients were in the United States. Such results contribute to literature regarding public perception of foreign affairs covered in the media.

William Edwards; Kyle Saunders • Perceptions and Reality of Press Freedom Following the Arab Spring: An Analysis of Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia • This study examines the relationship between perception of press freedom and both frequency of political news consumption and perception of government corruption in Egypt, Iraq, and Tunisia in 2013. Results showed that frequency of political news consumption is positively correlated with a poor perception of press freedom in Egypt, and that poor perception of press freedom is positively correlated with perception of corruption levels in government in Egypt and Iraq.

James Gachau • Facebook Groups as Affective Counterpublics • Using counterpublic theory à la Nancy Fraser, Catherine Squires, Zizi Papacharissi, and Michael Warner, this article analyzes the media content shared on three Facebook groups’ walls. Based in Kenya, the first group identifies with freethought and atheism in a society that is predominantly Christian. The second group campaigns for a proud Black identity in a world increasingly perceived as hostile to Blacks. The third group espouses a feminist atheist identity against Judeo-Christian “white male supremacy.”

Chen Gan, 1990 • Influence of Cultural Distance on Female Body Image: Race, Beauty Type, and Image Processing • This experimental study aimed to investigate the role of cultural distance on beauty ideal, regarding different races and inclined beauty types, in women’s responses to idealized media images. A sample of 140 young Chinese women viewed advertisements containing East Asian models in Cute/Girl-next-door looks (CG), East Asian models in Sexual/Sensual looks (SS), Caucasian models in CG looks, Caucasian models in SS looks, or product-only images. Image processing variables (comparison, fantasy, and internalization) and body image outcomes (state mood and body satisfaction) were measured immediately after advertising viewing. It was found that exposure to CG-type models elicited higher comparison, fantasy, internalization, and improved positive emotions among participants than SS-type models. Model’s race only had effect on internalization, and participants exposed to Caucasian models reported higher internalization than those exposed to East Asian models. Moreover, regression analyses revealed significant relationships between image processing variables and body image outcomes. This study develops a framework for cross-cultural body image research and casts some implications on the influence of exposure to Western media on Chinese women’s beauty ideal and feminine values.

Gregory Gondwe, UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO • News believability, trustworthiness and information contagion in African online Social networks: An Experimental design • This experimental study seeks to find out what kind of news source is most believable in Africa between those generated by the West and those generated within the African continent. Second, it measures the levels of contagion within those news stories from two different continents. Using Zambian and Tanzanian online news sources, the study employs experiments to argue that NWICO and McBride’s debates are still relevant in today’s digital age.

Volha Kananovich • Thanks, Obama: Internet Memes as Contested Political Spaces in the United States and Russia • Drawing on the concept of a meme as a “nationwide inside joke” and a potential vehicle of anti-elite political expression, this study compares the evolution of Obama memes in America and Russia. The findings show that, despite the broad participatory appeal of the format, the reach of the meme remains contingent on the socio-political context. This may constrain the meme’s diffusion outside the tight community of liberally minded, politically savvy Internet users.

Liudmila Khalitova, University of Florida; Sofiya Tarasevich, University of Florida • Assessing the role of international broadcasters as information subsidies in the international agenda-building process • This paper explores the agenda-building potential of government-sponsored international broadcasting (GIB) by focusing on the relationships between congruence of political culture and journalists’ practices regarding the use of foreign government-sponsored news content. The findings suggest that value proximity between a broadcaster’s home country and the host country increases the likelihood that the host country’s media will use the GIB as an information source and will accept frames promoted by the government that funds the GIB.

Claire Shinhea Lee • Making Home through Cord-cutting: The Case of Korean Temporary Visa-status Migrants’ Post-Cable culture in U.S. • With the rapid development of new media technology, many people are “cutting the cords” and viewing television through Internet-based video services via streaming or downloading. This study aims to better understand and contextualize this phenomenon through investigating Korean temporary visa-status migrants’ television viewing practices. Through 40 qualitative interviews and employing the framework of the domestication theory perspective, this paper examines how these deterritorialized individuals who experience dislocation make home through cord-cutting practices. By making use of the Internet and delivery technologies/ interfaces legally and illegally, Korean tempv migrants go beyond territorial limitations and make home materially, feel home affectively, and connect home relationally in their diasporic space. Moreover, the study debunks some utopian ideas about online audiences and shows what remains fixed in terms of transnational post-cable culture. I argue that the paper provides many insights into investigating contemporary television audiences and suggest a novel approach to studying migrant media practices.

Nyan Lynn, University of Kansas • The danger of words: Major challenges facing Myanmar journalists on reporting the Rohingya conflict • When covering the Rohingya conflict, Myanmar journalists were criticized for failing to question the government and army. They were also criticized for their reports, most of them are one-sided and lack of multiple voices. This research studied why Myanmar journalists failed to report this conflict professionally and what major challenges they have faced. This research interviewed 17 reporters and editors from 10 media outlets, most of them based in Yangon.

Ruth Moon, University of Washington • “They only threaten you or cut off your job”: How Rwandan journalists learn self-censorship • This paper examines the communication and implementation of a self-censorship norm among journalists in Rwanda. Using observation and interview data from eight months of fieldwork, I show that self-censorship in this context is communicated in a two-step process that can be understood using the concept of isomorphism from institutional theory. Editors and publishers are directly pressured to produce particular kinds of news coverage and pass on the expectation to reporters through obliquely communicated expectations.

Subin Paul, University of Iowa • The Qatar-Gulf Crisis and Narratives of Emotionality in Nepal’s English-language Press • This study examines the media discourse on the 2017-18 Gulf diplomatic crisis and its effect on one of the most marginalized populations in Qatar: Nepali migrant workers. While the diplomatic crisis made news headlines across the Middle East, Nepal-based newspapers were the only ones to cover the vulnerable migrant worker population in some detail. In writing about this population, three prominent English-language publications in Nepal, the Kathmandu Post, Republica, and People’s Review employed emotional storytelling. Drawing on Wahl-Jorgensen’s notion of the “strategic ritual of emotionality,” this study specifically analyzes the use of emotion in the three publications’ news coverage. The study finds that the publications engaged in the ritual of emotionality not by assigning that function to external news sources, as common in Western newspapers, but mainly through their own journalists and opinion writers who narrated their subjective viewpoints and concerns. This unreserved embrace of emotions and subjectivity in newswriting illuminates a unique, cultural mode of producing journalism.

Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition
Kirsten Adams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe; Meghan Sobel; Seoyeon Kim • “Pivoting” With the President’s Gaze: Exploring New York Times Foreign-Policy Coverage Across Nine Administrations • Through an analysis of 50 years of New York Times’ international news coverage (N = 20,765) across nine presidencies, ranging from Lyndon B. Johnson in 1966 to Barack Obama in 2015, we apply an interpretive framework guided by presidential historians’ nonpartisan insights to an examination of the top-ten countries and topics covered during each administration in order to assess whether the Times’ gaze toward particular events or issues aligned with presidential “pivots” or priorities in foreign policy agendas. This study extends previous research on press nationalism and foreign policy coverage, updating this line of inquiry to examine whether or how an elite American newspaper covered international affairs throughout the past 50 years. We find limited evidence exists of an “echoing press” consistently following the “presidential gaze,” illustrating that events in the rest of the world can turn the press’ gaze away from policy goals; however, countries and topics covered during each administration do indicate some alignment with key presidential “pivots” or priorities over time. Further, some presidential and press priorities remained consistent across administrations, illustrating the linear way conflict and diplomacy carry over from one president to the next. This study documents and interprets changing patterns in foreign-policy coverage and contributes to a larger body of work discussing the complex roles of the president-as-newsmaker and of the press who cover – and sometimes “echo” – his administration’s efforts.

Aje-Ori Agbese • Thanks, Tonto and Mercy! Three Nigerian Newspapers’ Coverage of Domestic Violence in Nigeria, 2015-2017 • This study explored how Nigerian newspapers portrayed domestic violence and domestic violence cases in Nigeria. Through content and thematic frame analyses of three Nigerian newspapers from 2015 to 2017, the study found that Nigerian newspapers provided their audiences with a variety of information and failed to portray domestic violence cases as a social problem. Rather, they were portrayed as isolated incidents and blamed the victim for her death or beating.

Ali Al-Kandari, Gulf University for Science and Technology; Mariam Alkazemi, Virginia Commonwealth University; Deb Aikat, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Political and Cultural Forces on the Uses and Gratifications: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat in the U.S and Kuwait • Fundamentally disparate norms of politics, freedom and culture distinguish civil societies in U.S. and Kuwait and impact social media users. By integrating uses and gratifications theories, this study compares U.S. and Kuwaiti social media users’ motivations, time spent, and engagement with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat, the leading social media platforms. Based on an audience-oriented survey of U.S. and Kuwaiti social media users, this study concludes that while Kuwaiti users were more likely to use Snapchat and Twitter, U.S. users were more likely to use Facebook and Instagram. Different free speech norms differentiate U.S. and Kuwait. Freedom of speech is not absolute in Kuwait like most nations in the Arab region. The U.S. protects free speech through the First Amendment to its Constitution. This explicates why Kuwaiti social media users’ motivation of learning and information through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat constituted mean values higher than users in the U.S.

Mel Bunce • Foreign correspondents and the international news coverage of Africa • This paper contributes to our knowledge of the factors influencing international news coverage of Africa. It presents the results of 67 interviews with foreign correspondents in sub Saharan Africa that explore the daily practices, working conditions and news values of these journalists. The interviews show that foreign correspondents in Africa have significant autonomy to shape news content – but only when they work at more elite news outlets – those which Pierre Bourdieu would describe as seeking ‘symbolic capital’.

Li Chen, WTAMU • When Hippocrates encountered Confucius – A textual analysis of representations of medical professionalism on Chinese medical dramas • Using the theory of Social Representation, the current research project studies the representations of medical professionalism on Chinese medical dramas. The study has three goals: 1) to reveal the anchoring of medical professionalism on Chinese medical dramas; 2) to examine the objectification of medical professionalism; and 3) to analyze the consistency and inconsistency between the localized medical professionalism and the medical professionalism codes proposed by medical scholars and professional associations such as Charter on Medical Professionalism. The results of the textual analysis suggest that medical professionalism was anchored within a Confucian framework: medical dramas used two typical terms, benevolent skills and benevolent heart, to describe the meaning of medical professionalism. Chinese medical dramas were found to add two more components to medical professionalism, making it inconsistent with conventional medical professionalism.

Karin Assmann, University of Maryland; Stine Eckert • ProQuote: A German women journalists’ initiative to revolutionize newsroom leadership • Using standpoint epistemology and critical mass theory this study examines outcomes of the so-called ProQuote [Pro Quota] initiative in Germany to bring at least 30 percent of women journalists into leadership per newsroom. In-depth interviews with 25 journalists in 12 newsrooms find somewhat increased transparency in personnel decisions; improvements in work culture; and more representation of women and diversity on the editorial agenda in all newsrooms that have reached or came near ProQuote’s goal.

Katherine Grasso; William Edwards • A Different Story: Examining the Relationship between Exposure to Snapchat’s “LIVE” Story Feature and Perceptions of Muslims and Arabs • Using Intergroup Contact Theory, the relationship between viewing content depicting Muslims/Arabs on Snapchat and viewers’ attitudes toward Muslims/Arabs was tested. In an online survey, 397 participants reported the frequency and nature of portrayals of Muslims/Arabs in news media, entertainment media, and on Snapchat. Participants’ attitudes about Muslims/Arabs were also measured. Portrayals of Muslims/Arabs on Snapchat were positive, but attitudes toward Muslims/Arabs were not better among Snapchat viewers than non-viewers. These tests, however, lacked statistical power.

Lyombe Eko; Natalia Mielczarek • Raping Europa Again?: Discursive Constructions of the European Refugee Crisis in Four German and Polish News Magazine Covers. • Newsmagazine covers are visual narratives that draw upon myths and archetypes to explain contemporary events. We analyzed how four German and Polish news magazine covers re-presented the European immigration crisis of 2015. The covers of Der Spiegel, Die Stern (Germany), WSieci and Polityka (Poland) couched critiques and concordance with government policy in ancient myths of difference between East and West. Despite discordance of form, the covers demonstrated concordance of substance with respect to the crisis.

BELLARMINE EZUMAH, Murray State University • De-Westernizing Journalism Curriculum in Africa through Glocalization and Hybridization. • The debate that dominant model of global journalism education is predominantly western has permeated the journalism education discourse for decades. Despite several attempts by scholars and international organizations, specifically, the UNESCO through the International Programme for Development of Communication (IPDC), to de-westernize journalism curriculum, remnants of the dominant paradigm debate still persists. This paper recognizes the existence of western concepts in journalism education worldwide at the same time, concedes that striking attempts have been made to de-westernize and glocalize journalism curriculum. Essentially, this paper hinges on the thesis that instead of resisting the UNESCO model, reformation and adaptation through glocalization and hybridization is encouraged. As such, we further provide a practical application whereby both sides of the above argument are accredited and a hybridization intervention was applied in a collaborative venture between a US-based Scholar and Ugandan Scholars in developing a locally-congruent curriculum for a brand new journalism program at a university in Uganda.

Alex Fattal, Penn State • Target Intimacy: Notes on the convergence of the militarization and marketization of love in Colombia • This article looks beneath the linguistic hinges of “campaigns” and “targets” that connect military and marketing expertise, two spheres that are experiencing a tactical and epistemological convergence in Colombia. The plain of that convergence, I argue, is intimacy and the shared objective is the instrumentalization of love—in the pursuit of victory and profit. I trace how both sets of experts—generals and executives—have come to valorize and appropriate, by any means possible, intimacy, a fleeting index of love, in the context of the Colombian military’s individual demobilization program. Through ethnographic analysis I trace the way in which consumer marketers working with the military try to persuade guerrilla fighters to abandon the insurgency, and the ways military intelligence officers do the same. In juxtaposing the two respective the processes, I show how targeting serves as a switch that connects the counterinsurgency state and the marketing nation in Colombia.

Victor García-Perdomo, Universidad de La Sabana; Summer Harlow, University of Houston; Danielle Kilgo, Indiana University • Framing the Colombian Peace Process: Between Peace and War Journalism • This bilingual, cross-national study analyzes stories about the Colombian peace process that were engaged with on social media to understand the use of peace and war framing in news reporting. Results show that, even during peace talks, media use war narratives more often than peace frames, and social media users amplify more war than peace-oriented content. Proximity also was shown to be an important factor, as Colombian media used more war frames than foreign media.

Vanessa Higgins Joyce, Texas State University; Summer Harlow, University of Houston • Seeking Transnational, Entrepreneurial News from Latin America: An Audience Analysis • Digital-native entrepreneurial news sites from Latin America are generating change in the region’s industry. These news organizations are being accessed nationally and across national boundaries. This study examined, through the theoretical lens of social capital, factors contributing to the creation of transnational audiences for these news organizations. A survey of audiences for these independent news sites in Peru, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Venezuela indicated that economic capital, youth, and being female predicted transnational entrepreneurial news use.

Lea Hellmueller; Valerie Hase • Giving Voice to Terrorists: A longitudinal model explaining how national political contexts influence media attention toward terrorist organizations • Few studies have examined how national political contexts shape news attention of terrorism beyond the coverage of terrorist attacks. Based on an automated content analysis between 2014 and 2016 (N = 18,531), this study examines media attention in the US and the UK toward international terrorist organizations in a longitudinal setting. Results reveal that mediated visibility of terrorists is based on media’s political and national embeddedness besides characteristics of terrorist groups.

Lea Hellmueller; Matthias Revers, University of Leeds • Populist Journalism Challenging Media and Political Fields: Transnational analysis of right-wing meta-journalistic discourses • Anti-institutional media discourses have become an integral part of digital right-wing media (e.g. Big Journalism on Breitbart.com). Drawing on automated text analysis, this study analyzes media criticism of right-wing digital websites (2015-2017) in Germany, Austria, and the US. Media outlets, while focusing on anti-globalization discourses, embrace transnational logics of concerns for the decline of Western democracies. Discourses are theorized as space between journalistic and political fields that transcend national boundaries and contribute to social destabilization.

Liefu Jiang, University of Kansas; Peter Bobkowski, University of Kansas • Reading, commenting, and posting: Social media engagements and Chinese students’ acculturation in the United States • Through an online survey with 209 participants, this paper employs acculturation theory to investigate the relationship between social media use and Chinese students’ acculturation in the United States. The findings suggest that the use of western social media platforms is positively related to Chinese students’ acculturation. Specifically, consuming and creating engagements on western social media are positively related to students’ psychological adaptation, while contributing engagements on western platforms are positively related to sociocultural adaptation.

Ralph Martins; Shageaa Naqvi, Northwestern University in Qatar; Justin Martin, Northwestern University in Qatar • Predictors of Cultural Conservatism in Six Arab Countries • This study examined predictors of self-reported cultural conservatism/progressivism among nationals in six Arab countries (n=4,529): Egypt, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and the UAE. Many variables found in prior research to be correlated with conservatism in Western countries—support for censorship, income, support for cultural preservation, and others—were not positively associated with conservatism in Arab countries. In fact, willingness to censor media was mostly negatively associated with conservatism in the Arab countries studied here. Some variables did correlate with conservatism in ways reflective of countries where conservatism has been studied extensively; age was positively associated with conservatism and education was negatively correlated, for example, but these relationships were not consistent across countries. Self-reported conservatism differed significantly across countries; Emiratis and Tunisians felt more conservative than people in their countries, while Lebanese and Egyptians were more evenly split among conservatives and progressives.

Mireya Máruqez-Ramírez; Claudia Mellado; María Luisa Humanes; Adriana Amado; Daniel Beck; Jacques Mick; Cornelia Mothes; Dasniel Olivera; Nikos Panagiotou; Svetlana Pasti; Henry Silke; Colin Sparks; Agnieszka Stepinska, Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan; Gabriella Szabo; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Moniza Waheed; Haiyan Wang • Detached watchdog versus adversarial reporting: a comparative study of journalistic role performance in 18 countries • This paper analyses the performance of the detached/passive and the adversarial/active orientations of the watchdog role (N= 33,640) from 18 countries, modelling the factors that better explain their presence in the news. The findings showed that the detached watchdog prevails around the world, although significant differences appear in the type of hybridization of journalistic cultures depending on the orientations – passive versus active – of the watchdog role. The data revealed that the adversarial/active type of watchdog prevails in advanced democracies with contexts of political and economic turmoil, and also in some transitional democracies from Eastern Europe; while the passive stance of this role peaks in liberal democracies such as the United States and Germany. Our results also indicate that societal variables are the strongest predictors of both types of orientations, but specially of adversarial reporting.

Rachel Mourao, Michigan State University; Weiyue Chen, Michigan State University • Covering protests on Twitter – The Influences on Brazilian Journalists’ Social Media Portrayals of the 2013 and 2015 Demonstrations • This paper uses a media sociology approach to untangle how multiple influences shaped the way Brazilian journalists tweet about left and right-leaning protests. Through a mixed methodology matching survey to social media data, we found that individual attitudes predict the way reporters tweeted about protestors, indicating that social media is a space for personal, not professional, expression. As a result, patterns of protest coverage were often challenged, suggesting that Twitter has not yet been normalized.

karlyga myssayeva, al-Farabi Kazakh National University; Saule Barlybayeva, al-Farabi Kazakh National University; Sayagul Alimbekova, al-Farabi Kazakh National University • Political News Use and Democratic Support: A study of Kazakhstan’s TV impact • This study examines the impact of television during the democratization process in Kazakhstan. Television plays a significant role as a public watchdog, with greater success than other media in disseminating a range of perspectives, information, and commentary in Kazakhstan. The analysis examines whether televised political news and information leads to support for democracy and increases public interest in the democratization process. The study discusses the utility and implications of the role of television in democratization.

Olga Kamenchuk, Ohio State University; erik nisbet • Liberation or Control? How do the attitudes of Russian Facebook users differ from those on Runet platforms Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki? • We examine the potential of social media to be a technology of liberation or control in Russia. We theorize that Facebook users, as opposed to users who only use co-opted Russian platforms will express more pro-democratic attitudes. Employing a nationwide household survey conducted in 2016 our analysis shows Facebook users are less trusting and more critical of the government and also express greater support for civil liberties than Russian’s who only use Vkontakte or Odnoklassniki.

BRETT LABBE, University of Indiana South Bend; SangHee Park, University of Wisconsin – Whitewater • U.S. News Media’s Framing of the ‘North Korean Crisis’ Under the Trump Administration: The New Ideological Foreign Affairs Paradigm • On 11 February 2017, North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test of the Trump Administration. Over the ensuing year the North Korean government continued to defy international pressures through the intensification of its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. During this timeframe, an escalation of adversarial rhetoric between the Trump Administration and the Kim Jong-un military government gained widespread media attention for its potential to escalate into military aggression. This study analyzes USA Today coverage of the ‘North Korean crisis’, and its subsequent de-escalation following the announcements of diplomatic talks in March 2018 in order to gain insight into the nature of mainstream U.S. media framing of the issue. Consistent with ‘Cold War’ and ‘War on Terror’ framing scholarship, this study found that the mainstream U.S. media facilitates the construction of dominant, ideological narratives that guide dominant interpretations of the international system and the United States’ position and actions within it.

Subin Paul, University of Iowa; David Dowling • Dalit Online Activism: The Digital Archive as a Site of Political Resistance in India • As digital news archives maintained by mainstream media outlets and libraries proliferate across the world, much less is discussed in academic literature about the efforts of socially marginalized groups to document their news stories. Our case study of Dalit Camera (DC), an online news archive based in Hyderabad, India, examines how historically disadvantaged groups such as Dalits, or “Untouchables,” are leveraging digital tools to narrate their oppressive past to the outside world parallel to the rise of political censorship in India. As part of its archiving process, DC is preserving footage of Dalit resistance against the hegemonic domination by caste Hindus and is thus becoming a useful resource for journalism history scholars. Through their grassroots network of citizen journalists, DC is also engaged in reporting caste-based discrimination and violence today, contributing to the Dalit social movement for equality and justice. Using Manuel Castells’s insights on social movements in the digital age and situating the work of DC within the field of Subaltern Studies, our essay explores the challenges and politics of news archiving in contemporary India, in the process explaining how various socio-political factors curate the content of news archives, and consequently, the construction of journalism history.

Victoria Knight, University of Georgia; Ivanka Pjesivac, University of Georgia; Michael Cacciatore, University of Georgia • Otherization of Africa: How American Media Framed People Living with HIV/AIDS in Africa from 1987 to 2007 • This study examined otherization framing of people living with HIV/AIDS in Africa in American media 1987-2007. The results of a content analysis of the representative sample of news articles from three outlets (N=421) show that American media overwhelmingly used otherization frames throughout the 20-year period, in relation to negative article tone. The study represents the first attempt to quantify otherization framing of Africa in HIV/AIDS context. The implications for international reporting and theory are discussed.

Jyotika Ramaprasad • Journalism Ethics and the BRICS Journalist • This paper presents results of a survey of journalists from BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) on their ethical orientations: absolutist, situationist, subjectivist, and exceptionist. These orientations are personal level generalized ethical beliefs based on a person’s relativism and idealism in the ethics arena. Individual, work related, and societal level factors are considered as correlates to assess how much they account for these beliefs.

Nataliya Roman, University of North Florida; Mariam Alkazemi, Virginia Commonwealth University; Margaret Stewart, University of North Florida • Tweeting about Terror: Using World Systems Theory to compare international newspaper coverage online • This study looks at news coverage of terrorist attacks on Twitter over a five-year period. It examines Twitter accounts of three American and three UK elite newspapers. This study found that World Systems Theory predicted terrorist attacks coverage in the American media, but not in the UK media. Terrorist attacks in core countries received significantly more attention than attacks in non-core countries in the American media. Also, this study revealed that just three terrorist attacks: January and November 2015 Paris attacks and Brussels 2016 bombings, accounted for nearly a half of the overall U.S. and UK tweets examined in this study.

Jane B. Singer, City, University of London; Marcel Broersma, Centre for Media and Journalism Studies, University of Groningen • Innovation and Entrepreneurship: International Journalism Students’ Interpretive Repertoires for a Changing Occupation • Amid ongoing media disruption worldwide, discourse about journalism has increasingly emphasized innovation within the newsroom and the rise of entrepreneurial initiatives outside it. This paper uses the concept of interpretive repertoires to understand how international students preparing for journalism careers understand innovation and entrepreneurialism in relation to changing industry circumstances and long-standing conceptualizations of occupational norms and behaviors. We find shared repertoires that embrace technological change, but generally within an acceptance of traditional normative practice.

Elizabeth Stoycheff, Wayne State University; Maria Clara Martucci; G. Scott Burgess, Wayne State Univesity • To censor and surveil: Cross-national effects of online suppression technologies on democractization • Using country- and multi-level analyses, we assess whether internet censorship and surveillance obstruct democratization, providing the first cross-national tests of online surveillance effects. Across 63 countries, online government monitoring is negatively associated with democratization, while internet censorship exhibits no additional effect. We theorize that suppression technologies erode democratic progress by thwarting collective action and examine how they affect individual-level disruptive political participation in a sub-sample of 21 countries. Together, these results suggest the need for greater scrutiny of surveillance and censorship technologies and the countries that use them. Political implications are discussed.

Linsen Su; Xigen Li • Perceived Agenda-Setting Effects in International Context: Media’s Impacts on Americans’ Perception toward China • The previous studies on agenda setting mainly address the effects on aggregate level without full consideration of individual differences. The current study puts forward a highly-related but different concept—the perceived agenda setting effects of media by the audience. The study confirms the existence of perceived agenda setting effects through a structured online survey (N=848) of American adults in April 2016. It finds that coverage on issue involving US interests has the strongest perceived agenda setting effect, while coverage on Chinese tourism has the least effect. The study finds that the media use, interest in China, and media trust are all positively related with perceived agenda setting effect, but direct experience of traveling to China has no significant effect. The study identifies the mediation effect of media use on perceived agenda setting effect through interest, but moderation effects of media trust and direct experience are not significant.

Miki Tanikawa • Is “Global Journalism” truly global? Conceptual and empirical examinations of the global, cosmopolitan and parochial conceptualization of journalism • An acute debate has arisen among some journalism scholars as to whether or not a brainchild of the age of globalization was born in the media world: global journalism. This study introduces the debate and conceptually clarifies the points of disagreement between the two camps including those who deny its existence. In a parallel quantitative study, measures developed to capture the concepts, “stereotypes” and “domestication” whose existence in the news journalism is viewed as inconsistent with the tenets of global journalism, were employed, and found that such content has increased in major international news media in the last 30 years.

Olesya Venger • Nation’s Media Usage and Immigration Attitudes in Europe: Exploring Contextual Effects Across Media Forms, Structures, and Messages • Drawing upon theories of social threat and media systems, the current study uses aggregate data on 20 European nations to examine the basic relationship between nation’s media usage, public attitudes about the general consequences of immigration, and their specific beliefs about immigrants worsening the nation’s crime problem. Nations with higher daily usage of newspapers and the internet were found to have more positive general attitudes toward immigrants, but television viewership was not significantly associated with these attitudes. Regardless of media source, national attitudes about immigrants causing crime were also unrelated to the density of media usage within these countries. Content analyses of several national newspapers (e.g., UK, Hungary, Sweden) were conducted to help understand the pattern of these aggregate relationships and other supplemental analysis revealed the moderating effects of nation’s media system on these results. The paper concludes with a discussion of the findings and their implications for future research on media’s role in shaping public attitudes about immigration and other social issues across different types of media forms, structures, and messages.

Anan Wan, University of South Carolina; Leigh Moscowitz, University of South Carolina; Linwan Wu, University of South Carolina • Online Social Viewing: Cross-Cultural Adoption and Uses of Bullet Screen Videos • Bullet screen technology, is an innovative way of presenting online videos, allowing viewers to contribute comments that simultaneously appear over the videos. Popular in East Asia, the technology is making its way to American audiences. This study employs a comparative qualitative focus group approach to explore how American and Chinese viewers respond to and interact with this new format of online videos. Three themes have emerged: 1) unique affordance, 2) barriers to adoption and usage, and 3) cultural differences pertaining to technology adoption and usage. Both theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Aimei yang, University of Southern California; Wenlin Liu, U of Houston; Rong Wang • Discourse of the Cross-Sectoral Alliances Network in the Global Refugee Crisis: Studying CSR through a Global Perspective • The scope and magnitude of the current global refugee crisis is unprecedented. This crisis has posed severe challenges to social stability and sustainable development around the world. Surprisingly, in an era when corporations are expected to take part in addressing social issues, our initial assessment showed that some of the largest corporations in the world have communicated their alliances with NGOs and IGOs on the refugee issue quite differently. We draw upon the National Business System Theory and the Media Repertoires Approach to understand what factors influence corporations’ CSR communication of strategic alliances with nonprofit and public-sector organizations on the refugee issue. Findings of this study showed that countries’ economic inequality, citizens’ education level, and philanthropic culture, as well as the nature of digital media platforms affected the communication of cross-sector strategic alliances. Implications for CSR theory and practices are discussed.

Li ZHI, Cityu University of Hong Kong; Limin Liang • Media Improvisations and Bureaucratic Tensions in China:Transcending media control & news routines in disasters • In the controlled media environment in China, marketized media go beyond their normal reporting mode when bureaucratic tensions arise in the propaganda system’s response to major disasters. This study builds on the framework of regulated marketization and the literature of fragmented authoritarianism in understanding Chinese media and the propaganda system. Through analyzing 36 significant disasters and conducting a case study on one typical disaster, it reveals how marketized media get the chance to strive for more autonomy and improvise new strategies to report disasters. Regulated by the Party-State, marketized media must follow the propaganda apparatus’s reporting guidelines in routines. The media’s journalistic roles, norms, obligations are confined to the limited realm delineated by the reporting guidelines. Even in the very unexpected and newsworthy disasters, the marketized media need to abide by the guidelines. They could not go beyond the routine practices and improvise strategies to accommodate the disasters, when the Party-State’s control are strict and consistent. However, sometimes, the propaganda agencies involved in disasters may lack good coordination or have conflicts of interests. Such tensions delay, suspend, and nullify some of the strict reporting guidelines, making disasters venues for improvisations.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk 2018 Abstracts

Encouraging Safe Wildlife Viewing in National Parks: Effects of a Risk Communication Campaign on Visitors’ Behavior • Katie Abrams, Colorado State University • Seeing wildlife in their natural habitat with little to no boundaries or protections can have some undesired consequences, especially as people get up close to animals. In four national parks, we tested the effects of a risk communication campaign designed using several elements from previous research and relevant theories on how close national parks’ visitors got to wildlife. Results showed, once the campaign was in place, fewer visitors were observed within unsafe distances to wildlife in three of the four parks.

Mapping perceived barriers to science communication: Inter-issue and inter-group comparisons • Lee Ahern, Penn State; Sushma Kumble, Towson; Jeff Conlin; Jinping Wang, Penn State University • The science of science communication has established that barriers to science communication are different for different science issues, for different audiences, and in different contexts. The research presented here takes a novel approach to measure and visualize the public’s—and scientists’—perceived barriers to effective science communication for specific issues. Results provide face validly for the approach, with known audience difference and issue differences mapping out significantly differently across perceived barriers to effective science communication.

Barriers in Communicating Science for Policy in Congress • Karen Akerlof, American Association for the Advancement of Science, George Mason University; Maria Carmen Lemos, University of Michigan; Emily T. Cloyd, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Erin Heath, American Association for the Advancement of Science; Selena Nelson, George Mason University; Julia Hathaway, George Mason University; Kristin Timm, George Mason University • How does Congress use science? And what are the barriers that staffers experience in finding, interpreting, and using scientific information in energy, environment, and science portfolios? This qualitative study of 16 interviews with Republican and Democratic staffers from the House and Senate applies a science usability model to the hyper-polarized legislative context, finding similarities, and some potential differences, between “strategic” use of science to support or defend policy positions and “substantive” use in policy decisions.

A Content Analysis of e-Cigarette Brand Messages on Social Media • Jordan Alpert, University of Florida; Huan Chen; Alyssa Jaisle, University of Florida • Although rates of cigarette smoking in the U.S. are declining, E-cigarettes (e-cigs) are rapidly expanding. While there is no definitive conclusion yet on the dangers of e-cigs, data indicates that e-cigs can be addictive and dangerous since they contain nicotine. The FDA permits e-cig brands to market their products, but imposed restrictions on messages that promote flavors and claims that e-cigs are healthier than cigarettes. However, these rules can be circumvented within social media platforms like Twitter. The objective of this study was to perform a content analysis of tweets posted by the top selling e-cig brands on Twitter to identify and categorize the most frequently utilized communication strategies. Using the hierarchy of effects framework, over 500 tweets were analyzed, which resulted in behavioral messaging as the most often used messaging strategy, followed by affective and cognitive. Findings indicate that brands are creating messages in Twitter to engage with followers, offer discounts, and advertise flavors. However, tweets about the positive health effects of using e-cigs were minimal. Implications of unregulated messages within social media include attracting young adults to become part of the e-cig community, which can lead to trial and frequent usage.

Exploring differences in crisis literacy and efficacy on behavioral responses during infectious disease outbreaks • Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Brooke Liu, University of Maryland; Seoyeon Kim; Yan Jin • This study examined the effects of efficacy and literacy on individuals’ information seeking and protective action taking during infectious disease outbreaks through a nationally representative survey of 1,164 U.S. adults. New measures of crisis efficacy and disaster literacy were tested. Results revealed that crisis efficacy, organizational efficacy, and disaster literacy drove information seeking and protective action taking, while health literacy did not. Interestingly, disaster literacy negatively predicted both information seeking and protective actions.

Shall we? Let’s Move! • Aqsa Bashir, University of Florida • Beyond her status as the wife of the first African American U.S. president, former First Lady Michelle Obama is famous for her commitment to health and fitness. In 2010, she launched the Let’s Move! Campaign, aimed at combating childhood obesity in order to achieve a healthier future for America. Little research has examined the media coverage this campaign received. Hence this paper describes a framing analysis of media coverage by two popular news sources, one conservative—FOX News, and one liberal—CNN. The analysis revealed three distinct frames: healthy future for American children, policy change, and exercise is trendy. Furthermore, the campaign received more positive coverage from the liberal news source as compared to more neutral coverage by the conservative news source.

Strategic Communication as Planned Behavior: What Shapes Scientists’ Willingness to Choose Specific Tactics • John Besley, Michigan State University; Kathryn O’Hara, Carleton University; Anthony Dudo, University of Texas, Austin • Truly strategic science communicators make careful choices about the goals and communication objectives they seek to achieve. They then select the tactics that have the most likelihood of allowing them to achieve their communication objectives ethically and efficiently. However, little previous research has sought to develop and test theory aimed at understanding these choices. The current study therefore aims to contribute to the development of a theory of strategic science communication as planned behavior based on the Integrated Behavioral Model. It does so in the context of exploring Canadian scientists’ reported willingness to choose six different tactics as a function of attitudes, normative beliefs and efficacy beliefs. The results suggest that beliefs about both response-efficacy and self-efficacy, and perceptions of ethicality and norms, are important predictors of willingness when considering a tactic. Differences between scientists in terms of demographics and related variables provide only limited benefit in predicting such willingness.

Bringing People Closer: The Pro-Social Effects of Immersive Media on Users’ Attitudes and Behavior • Priska Breves, University of Wuerzburg • This experimental study (N = 85) examined how varying the degree of immersiveness of a short documentary about a remote health issue influenced users’ reported spatial presence, feelings of empathy, perceived issue importance, and behavior. Participants watched the documentary using either a high-quality VR headset (HTC Vive), a low-quality cardboard VR headset or a regular computer screen. Technology’s immersiveness affected the dependent variables as predicted, increasing spatial presence and resultant attitudes and behavior.

Vulnerable live patients, powerful dead patients: a textual analysis of doctor-patient relationships in popular Chinese medical dramas • Li Chen, WTAMU • Using Framing Theory as a theoretical framework, this study examined depictions of patients and doctor-patient communication in Chinese medical dramas. Two major findings were revealed by the textual analysis. First, medical dramas extended the definition of “patient” to include family members, an outcome of the impact of Confucian ethics. Second, doctor-patient communication was found to be two-fold: conversations during interventions were typically paternalistic, while conversations about non-medical issues exhibited consumeristic features. Doctors’ unshakable dominance during interventions resulted from patients’ lack of awareness of their rights as independent individuals, while doctors’ vulnerable position in medical disputes resulted from systemic deficits in the current legal system. Both trends challenged the typical doctor-patient relationships described by previous literature. The study showed that media dramas defined and presented inherent problems in doctor-patient communication, identified and pointed out (either directly or indirectly) the causes of most of these problems, and made moral judgements about these issues using vivid individual stories, but they did not attempt to offer solutions to the problems. Theoretical and practical implications of the study were discussed.

The Effects of Format and Language on Information Retention of Climate Change News Narratives in Digital Presentations • Christina Childs DeWalt, Florida Atlantic University • Reporting on climate change has been a special challenge for journalists, but new approaches to storytelling may help curb some of the inherent confounds found in environmental discourse. Through experimental analysis, this study examines how anthropomorphic language (assigning human characteristics to non-human agents) and non-linear digital news story formatting can impact online media consumers retention of information presented in climate change news narratives.

Campus sustainability: An integrated model of college students’ recycling behavior on campus • Moonhee Cho, University of Tennessee • Proposing an integrated model based on multiple theoretical approaches, the study examined factors influencing college students’ campus recycling intention and actual recycling behavior. An online survey results with a total of 475 responses found that self-determined motivation, attitude toward recycling, perceived behavioral control, and negative anticipated emotion had direct effects on campus recycling intention while recycling intention, self-determined motivation, and household recycling influenced actual campus recycling. Both theoretical and practical implications are also provided.

Social Media and Concerns about Global Climate Change: News Use and Political Ideology in 20 Countries • Trevor Diehl, University of Vienna; Brigitte Huber; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; James H. Liu, Massey University • This study tests the relationships between political ideology and social media for news in forming public concerns about global climate change in 20 countries. Little is known about how dependency on social media shapes attitudes toward climate change, especially in non-Western contexts. Theories of risk perception are examined using multi-level comparative analysis with survey data (N=21,218). This study contributes to conversations about the ability of media technologies to create informed public opinion on science issues.

Health Behavior Intention: A Concept Explication • Ciera Dockter, University of Missouri • Health behavior intention is considered one of the most effective ways to measure and predict an individual’s behavior, but research in health communication and related fields indicate the concept needs revision. Differing concepts are used interchangeably, and operationalization and measurement of health behavior intention do not take into account the many factors that can influence health behavior intention. This explication addresses these issues by providing a new conceptual definition and operationalization of the concept.

Examining the Effect of Climate Change Images on People’s Estimation of Egocentric Psychological Distance • Ran Duan, Michigan State University; BRUNO TAKAHASHI, Michigan State University; Adam Zwickle • Climate change has been widely perceived as a psychologically distant risk, that is, its uncertain impacts will affect other people, will happen in other places or sometime in the future. In this study, relying on construal level theory, we examined how the level of abstraction and concreteness of climate change imagery affects viewers’ perceived psychological distance of climate change, including spatial, temporal, social, and hypothetical (level of uncertainty) distances. Participants (n=402) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions, one that had abstract images and one with concrete images. Results showed that the abstract and concrete images successfully activated people’s abstract and concrete mindsets respectively, and people who viewed abstract images were more likely than those who viewed concrete images to perceive climate change as a spatially and temporally distant issue.

Understanding the role of gatekeeping in New England journalists’ priorities for reporting on aquaculture • Kevin Duffy; Laura Rickard, University of Maine; Paul Grosswiler, University of Maine • Print news media tend to equate aquaculture with risk – a surprising finding given journalists’ general aversion to risk reporting. By framing aquaculture as “risky”, news producers build an agenda, potentially influencing public opinion. To understand risk culture surrounding aquaculture, research must examine not only newspaper content, but also perceptions of public mediators disseminating such messages. Using Q-method, we examine New England journalists’ (N = 15) perceptions of aquaculture’s news value, suggesting theoretical implications for gatekeeping.

Seatbelts Don’t Save Lives: Discovering and Targeting the Attitudes and Behaviors of Young Arab Male Drivers • Susan Dun, Northwestern University in Qatar; Amal Ali • Our two-part, mixed methods study, first investigated the driving beliefs, attitudes and behaviors of young Arab men then created and evaluated a message targeting their seatbelt beliefs and attitudes. There was change in the desired direction. The results provide information necessary for communication campaigns to specifically tailor persuasive messages for this high-risk yet understudied group of young Arab men in a bid to save lives and decrease the injuries that result from traffic accidents.

Reaching an At-Risk Population: Visual Health Communication Campaigns for Migrant Workers • Susan Dun, Northwestern University in Qatar; Amal Ali; Bothayna Al-Mohammadi, Northwestern University; Sana Hussain; Muhammad Muneeb Ur Rehman; Muhammad Humam, Northwestern University in Qatar • The needs of a rapidly globalizing world have created a demand for construction and maintenance labor, much of which has been done by migrant workers from developing countries resulting in approximately 258 million migrant workers operating around the globe. Such laborers are often a vulnerable population because of low literacy levels and unsafe work conditions. Developing effective health message campaigns to assist migrant workers to understand how to navigate health systems and receive care is necessary to improve their quality of life. The purpose of our project is to test the effectiveness of primarily visual communication messages targeted at educating and motivating migrant workers to utilize available health resources. Following standard health communication campaign procedures, our project has three stages: Phase 1 formative research where we interviewed migrant workers to assess their health conditions, health facility utilization and preference of channel and media, results which we report here. In phase 2 we are currently developing visual communication messages targeting the issues we discovered in the formative research, a process we anticipate completing by mid-April. In phase 3 we will conduct the evaluation research, testing message comprehension and persuasiveness in May 2018. We are partnering with a labor supply company who will use the revised messages to communicate with their employees, resulting in, hopefully, an actual increase in the quality of life of the workers. As expected, we discovered a lack of understanding of and difficulties in navigating the health care system; problems which our visual communication messages should help alleviate.

Latitudes, Attitudes, And Climate Change Agency • Troy Elias, University of Oregon; Mark Blaine, University of Oregon; Deborah Morrison, University of Oregon; Brandon Harris, University of Oregon • This research uses international survey data from 1,211 Brazilians, Costa Ricans, Nigerians, and Americans to examine which media, psychological, and cognitive variables influence the tendencies of Brazilian, Costa Rican, Nigerian, and American consumers to participate in pro-environmental and green purchasing behaviors. Results of the study indicate that America lags behind Costa Rica, Brazil, and Nigeria in pro-environmental attitudes, pro-environmental identity, attitudes toward green purchasing, and pro-environmental behaviors.

Engagement in Cancer Screening: Theoretical Exploration Using A Meta-Analytical Structural Equation Modeling Approach • Guangchao Feng, Shenzhen University; Zhiliang Lin, Jinan University; Wanhua Ou, Shenzhen University; Xianglin Su, Shenzhen University • The present study aims to explore the theoretical underpinning of low participation in screening programs through a model-based meta-analysis. It was found that the health belief model is the most adopted theoretical framework. Moreover, the intended uptake of screening was only positively predicted by cues to action, health literacy, and perceived susceptibility, and behavior was negatively predicted by intention.

Examining the Impact of Motivational Salience and Involvement on Visual Attention to Scientific Information • Laura Fischer, University of Kentucky; Courtney Meyers, Texas Tech University; Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University; Courtney Gibson, Texas Tech University; Mathew Baker, Texas Tech University • Literature suggests scientists struggle to make information salient to consumers, and the value-oriented frame may be a way to connect with consumers through increased motivational salience. To evaluate the effects of competing message frames on visual attention, an eye-tracking experiment was conducted to understand participants’ attention to messages about two agricultural science issues. The results indicated the reader devoted more time to reading advertisements that were framed to be more motivationally salient.

In the Crosshairs: The Perils of Environmental Journalism • Eric Freedman, Michigan State University • Journalists covering environmental issues around the globe are at heightened risk of murder, arrest assault, threats, self-exile, lawsuits, and harassment because environmental controversies often involve influential business and economic interests, political power battles, criminal activities, and corruption, plus politically, culturally, and economically sensitive issues concerning indigenous rights to land and natural resources. This study uses in-depth interviews to explore such situations, including the psychological effects on these journalists’ sense of mission and professional practices.

Risk perception, efficacy belief, and safety climate: Use of risk perception attitude framework to examine information seeking for workplace health and safety among flight attendants • Timothy Fung • Using the risk perception attitude framework (RPA), this survey study examined the joint influence of risk perception, efficacy belief, and safety climate on flight attendants’ intent to seek workplace health and safety information. Findings showed that significant differences in information availability and negative attitude toward service protocols and work-related guidelines were observed among the four RPA groups. Safety climate moderated the effect of efficacy belief on the relationship between risk perception and information seeking intent.

The role of counterfactual thinking in narrative persuasion: Its impact on patients’ adherence to treatment regimen • Timothy Fung • The purpose of this study is to explicate the underlying process of how narratives, accompanied with counterfactual thinking, exert cognitive and affective influence on audiences. One hundred thirty-six patients undergoing peritoneal dialysis participated in a 2 (Goal failure) by 2 (Counterfactual thinking) between-subject factorial experiment. The analyses showed that promotion-/prevention-framed failure and additive/subtractive counterfactuals jointly influenced the patients’ anticipated regret and mental simulation, which, in turn, influenced their attitudes and intentions toward treatment adherence.

Journalists, Policy, and the Role of Evidence in the News • Nicole Gesualdo, Rutgers University; Matthew Weber, Rutgers University • Evaluating the presence of research evidence in the news can reveal how journalistic practices affect the ways in which audiences assess information, such as the credibility of policy proposals. This study uses content analysis to analyze the type and quantity of evidence in articles about regulations on food marketing to children, and the language choices made in the articles. Results indicate consistency in language use across time and news organizations, suggesting established norms and routines.

Tweeting in the Midst of Disaster: A Comparative Case Study of Journalists’ Practices Following Four Crises • Amber Hinsley, Saint Louis University; Hyunmin Lee, Drexel University • This comparative case study examines how local journalists used Twitter as a crisis communication tool during four emergency situations in the U.S. The public’s retweeting and liking patterns also identified messages that resonated with them. A content analysis found that while local journalists used objective reporting most frequently across all crises, there were variances in Twitter practices of journalists covering the two man-made crises. The two natural disasters showed more similarities. These findings can help develop best-practices strategies for journalists and benefit emergency management personnel as well.

Time to Work Out! Examining the Behavior Change Techniques and Relevant Theoretical Mechanisms that Predict the Popularity of Fitness Mobile Apps with Chinese-Language User Interfaces • Guanxiong Huang, City University of Hong Kong; Enze Zhou • Eyeing the huge potential mHealth market in China, developers both inside and outside of China have created an increasing number of fitness mobile applications with Chinese-language user interfaces. The present study analyzes the content of those fitness mobile apps (N = 177), with a particular focus on their behavior change techniques and relevant theoretical mechanisms. It finds that three theoretical mechanisms, modeling/observational learning, self-regulation, and social comparison/social support, are prevalent among fitness mobile apps with Chinese-language user interfaces. Moreover, based on the configurations of the behavior change techniques, three distinct clusters are identified: “instructional apps” (N = 75), “self-regulation apps” (N = 58), and “triathlon apps” (N = 44). Among them, “triathlon apps” equipped with technical features reflecting all three theoretical mechanisms are found to be the most popular among users. This suggests the usefulness of health behavior change theories in promoting physical activity via mobile apps in that the inclusion of more theoretical content in the app design enhances the app’s effectiveness. More theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

“To Fly Under Borrowed Colours”: Mediated Communication and Scientific Ethos • Cheryl Jorgensen-Earp, Lynchburg College; Darwin Jorgensen, Roanoke College • Credit for insulin’s discovery played out through mediated communication to separate audiences: to scientific audiences through science journals and anniversary reminiscences and to the public through journalistic accounts. Claims by the four principal researchers clustered around punctuation of the sequence of events, bolstered by three aspects of discovery: primacy of scientific ideas, importance of place, and uses of power. These elements provide prescriptive advice for modern scientists conducting mediated outreach to a skeptical public.

Folk theorizing the quality and credibility of health apps • Shaheen Kanthawala, Michigan State University; Eunsin Joo; Anastasia Kononova; Wei Peng; Shelia Cotten, Michigan State University • Increasing popularity of health apps raises questions regarding how individuals assess their credibility and quality. Through semi-structured interviews and open coding thematic analysis, we found users determined credibility of health apps through cues based on app features, ‘borrowed’ credibility decisions, and equated quality to personal preferences. Non-quality or credibility cues leading to download were also noted. Findings are discussed as folk theories of quality and credibility of health apps using dual-processing models and media literacy.

Smart Device Proficiency and Use, Loneliness, and Ego Integrity: An examination of older adult smartphone users in South Korea • Kisun Kim, Bowling Green State University; Sung-Yeon Park, University of Nevada, Reno; Hyung-Cheol Kang, Sookmyung Women’s University • The relationship between smartphones and older adults’ ego integrity in South Korea was examined. Older adults who used a smartphone were recruited to investigate their smartphone proficiency/use, loneliness, and ego integrity. Smartphone use was directly related to higher ego integrity, but smartphone proficiency was not. Loneliness was negatively related to ego integrity. Path analysis revealed that the relationships between smartphone proficiency and ego integrity and smartphone use and ego integrity was each mediated by loneliness.

Environmental Framing on Twitter: Impact of Trump’s Paris Agreement Withdrawal Announcement on Climate Change and Ocean Acidification Dialogue • Sojung Kim, George Mason University; Sandra Cooke • Despite the popularity of social media, its role in communicating emerging environmental issues has not received much attention. One example is ocean acidification (OA), the process by which carbon dioxide dissolves into and acidifies the world’s oceans. Although scientists consider OA to be as dangerous a problem as climate change (CC), public awareness of OA is low. This study investigated how public discussions about CC and OA occurred on Twitter, with what content frames and by whom. Tweeting patterns before and after President Trump’s announcement of the U.S.’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement were compared. The results showed that for CC tweets, Political/ Ideological Struggle/Activism and Disaster frames were the most prevalent, whereas a fair amount of Promotional or Piggybacking frames were found among OA tweets. Trump’s withdrawal decision sparked substantial debate on CC and facilitated open expressions of extreme and polarized opinions on Twitter.

Hope in the Depths of Despair: Theorizing about Hope in the Fear Appeal Context • Hanyoung Kim; Yen-I Lee, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia; Jeong-Yeob Han, University of Georgia Department of Advertising & Public Relations • Although various theories have postulated that fear as the central emotional construct in their suppositions, fear stems from only the half portion (i.e., threat component) of fear appeal messages. In addition, empirical evidence for the role fear in predicting persuasion outcomes is scarce. Addressing this issue, the current study sought to operationalize a qualitatively different emotion, hope, in the fear appeal context by taking the cognitive appraisal theory and functional theories of emotion as theoretical bases. Results from an experimental study (N = 223) revealed that perceived efficacy and perceived threat, which stem from efficacy and threat components, respectively, positively predicted hope in a multiplicative manner. That is to say, perceived threat positive moderated the impact of perceived efficacy on hope. In addition, hope positively affected the persuasion outcome (i.e., intention to obtain HPV vaccination). Theoretical and empirical implications for health communication are discussed.

Unveiling Psychological Mechanisms of Climate Change and Health Message Processing: A Mediation Approach • Sojung Kim, George Mason University; Di Pei; John Kotcher, George Mason University; Edward Maibach • The present study employed a longitudinal survey experiment with American adults to investigate whether cognitive and emotional responses to messages about climate change-related health risks would mediate the relationships between participants’ individual differences and their injunctive beliefs and behavioral intention of supporting climate change policies. Liberals or people with poorer health were more persuaded by the messages, and in turn reported stronger injunctive beliefs and policy support, compared to conservatives or people with better health.

The Politics of Environmentalism and Resistance to Media Advocacy of Pro-Environmental Civic Engagement in South Korea • Hyunjung Kim • The purpose of the current study is to establish a basis for and propose a strategy to increase individuals’ participation in the environmental movements by reducing resistance to mediated communication advocating environmentalism in South Korea. Drawing on the theory of psychological reactance, we explored a possible explanation for the decrease in individuals’ participation in environmental movements despite media advocacy and increased public awareness of the need for an environmental movement. A web-based experiment was conducted with a 2 by 2 factorial design with media and political orientation as between-subjects factors. The results demonstrate that pro-environmental civic engagement intention after exposure to an online newspaper editorial advocating the environmental movement is greater for the progressives in the progressive media group than for those in the conservative media group. The effect of media congeniality was explained by perceived media credibility and psychological reactance to the message. Implications of the findings are discussed.

The Role of Risk, Efficacy, and Worry in College Students’ Health Insurance Information Seeking: Applying the Risk Perception Attitude (RPA) Framework • Hyeseung Koh, University of Texas Austin; Sara Champlin, The University of North Texas; Amanda Mabry-Flynn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • The purpose of this study is to identify what might motivate college students to engage in health insurance information seeking and to more effectively target health insurance communication by segmenting the audience based on differences in motivations. The risk perception attitude (RPA) framework was used as a theoretical foundation to guide the study. The results indicated that risk perceptions and efficacy beliefs influenced college students’ health insurance information seeking, which is mediated by feeling of worry. There findings emphasize that both cognition and emotion play an integral and often tandem role in influencing health information seeking behaviors. Based on our findings what can health communication scholars, health practitioners, message designers, policy makers, and university health staff do to encourage students to seek information or to improve their physical and psychological health.

A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Positive and Negative Vaccine Attitude Predictors in Singapore and the United States • Wei Yi Kong; Christopher Cummings; David Berube • Vaccines are some of the most effective disease prevention tools but there are growing concerns over vaccine safety and efficacy. With vaccine attitudes underpinning vaccine uptake, this study investigated the factors predicting vaccine attitudes and how those factors differ across cultures. Results found traditional media to impact on negative vaccine attitudes, and suggest health belief, science and technology belief, and vaccine governance trust to be influential in changing attitudes in Singapore and the United States.

How Perceived Similarity Moderates Sympathy and Pride Appeal Organ Donation Messages • Sining Kong, University of Florida; Yu Hao Lee • This study aims to examine how perceived similarity affects the effect of different emotional appeal organ donation messages. Through two factorial-design experiments (2×2: similarity vs dissimilarity, and sympathy vs pride), we examined how perceived similarity moderates emotional appeals in organ donation messages. Study 1 is an online experiment examining perceived similarity and physical similarity. Study 2 is a lab experiment with incidental similarity and demographic similarity. The results revealed that only perceived similarity has an impact on people’s emotional and behavioral intention. Furthermore, regardless of the emotional appeal message, perceived similarity induced both more sympathy and pride, which indicates a mixed altruistic and egoistic motivation in organ donation intention. These findings offer important theoretical and applied implications for future research.

Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness in Online Health Information Seeking • Seow Ting Lee, University of Colorado Boulder • This study explicates the relationship between intrinsic human motivation needs and extrinsic information gratification needs to understand why people go online for health information. Applying Self Determination Theory, the study adopts a relational approach to examine online health information seeking behaviors within the framework of patient-physician relations, consistent with a significant body of work that has implicitly or explicitly juxtaposed online health information seeking and the face-to-face doctor’s office visit experience. Based on a survey of 993 online health information seekers in India, our findings suggest that the three basic human motivation constructs of Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness differentially predict online health information seeking behaviors. Support for Autonomy in the online environment emerged as the most salient predictor of online health information seeking behaviors, but support for Autonomy, Competence and Relatedness in the office visit experience could not explain why people engage in online for health information seeking.

Revisiting the Effects of Threat Appraisal and Self-efficacy on Protection Motivation from a Terror Management Theory Perspective • Jiyoung Lee, Syracuse University; Yungwook Kim, Ewha Womans University • Although a wealth of studies has tested fear appeals, little has noted why fear appeals sometimes fail to result in health-promoting behaviors. By applying terror management theory (TMT), this study retested how severity, susceptibility, and self-efficacy affect fear control and danger control responses in the context of fear appeals on terrorism. Four hundred participants were randomly assigned to one of the two groups: mortality salience (200) and control (200). Results from multi-group analyses show the significant relationships between susceptibility-danger control, severity-danger control, and susceptibility-danger control in all groups. Importantly, self-efficacy was a contributor for leading fear control responses especially to death-primed individuals whose susceptibility is high. Danger control responses were shown to participants who had both high levels of severity and self-efficacy but only confined to those who are not death-primed. By investigating health-related influencers and behavioral outcomes from a TMT perspective, this study can expand the current fear appeals literature.

Breaking the silence: Extending theory to address the underutilization of mental health services among Chinese immigrants in the United States • Jo-Yun Queenie Li, University of South Carolina • Using a nation wide survey of 445 Chinese immigrants in November 2017, this study investigates the effects of cognitive barriers (i.e., acculturation levels) and affective obstacles (i.e., mental illness stigma) on Chinese immigrants’ perceptual, attitudinal, and behavioral responses toward mental health services, by combing situational theory of problem solving and the theory of planned behavior. Findings provide empirical support for the combined model, showing that all the cognitive and affective factors can predict Chinese immigrants’ communicative action and behaviors regarding mental health services utilization. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Now or future? Motivating Chinese women to get the HPV vaccines for their children • Sixiao Liu; Janet Yang; Haoran Chu • This study examines the impacts of gain vs. loss-framed messages and narrative messages on Chinese women’s intentions to get the HPV vaccines for their children. No main effect was found for message types, but loss-framed message slightly increased vaccination intention. Time orientation moderates the relationship between message framing and vaccination intention. Narrative message works better among present-minded individuals, whereas gain-framed message was more persuasive for future-minded individuals.

Framing Obesity: Effects of Obesity Labeling and Prevalence Statistics on Public Perceptions • Jiawei Liu; ByungGu Lee; Douglas McLeod; Hyesun Choung • This study investigates the effects of obesity labeling (disease vs. body type) and prevalence statistics (prevalence rates of obesity, extreme obesity, or overweight-obesity combined). Our findings suggest that adults’ obesity perceptions deviate from reality and that they use framed cues as reference points when making estimates/judgments; audience perceptions of the nature and prevalence of obesity were significantly affected. In addition, perceiving obesity as a disease and as more widespread can produce positive real-world outcomes.

Spotlight on Suicide: A Content Analysis of Online News Coverage of Celebrity Suicide Death, 2012-2017 • Susan LoRusso, University of Minnesota, Hubbard School of Journalism & Mass Communication • Using the Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide, 311 media reports of 43 celebrity suicide deaths from 2012-2017 were analyzed. Good-reporting practices were largely absent in the census, and an average of three poor-reporting practices per media report were present. Additionally, a comparative analysis was conducted assessing adherence before and after the Associated Press included guidelines for reporting on suicide in the 2015 Stylebook. Differences in media outcomes between celebrities’ level of fame were also explored.

Processing Victim Portrayals: How Multiple Emotions and Victim Perceptions Influence Collective Action for Environmental Justice • Hang Lu, Cornell University • Social conflict situations, such as environmental injustice, racial discrimination and gun violence, have been drawing increasing public attention. To help resolve these conflicts, collective action from the general public is needed. Through two experiments, the current research examined one possible way to get the public involved with collective action, that is, via the portrayals of victims and the emotions and perceptions the portrayals convey. The first experiment (N=954) adopted a 2 (compassion: high vs. low) x 2 (moral outrage: high vs. low) between-subjects factorial design. The second experiment (N=990) utilized perspective taking instructions (empathic vs. objective) for manipulation. Together, the findings from the two experiments show that emotions, such as compassion, moral outrage, and distress, and cognitive factors, such as perceived victim’s suffering and identification with the victim, mediated the effects of victim portrayals on collective action intentions. These findings contribute to the literature by connecting victim portrayals with collective action, expanding the array of emotions in predicting collective action, and furthering the investigation of collective action in third-party contexts.

Green Dress Reactance: Examining the Identity Threat and Resistance to Persuasion • Yanni MA • Environment communicators often face challenges in campaigning for pro-environment strategies, in which messages cannot successfully promote sustainable behaviors such as recycling. Research has shown that resistance to persuasion by means of showing psychological reactance could be the reason the persuasive messages fail to work. However, what elicits the defensive mechanism to persuasion has not been fully studied. An experiment conducted to examine the underlying role of environmental identity in understanding identity threat after reading anti-/pro-recycling messages. Additionally, this article examines the role of perceived identity threat in relation with three major components of resistance (i.e, psychological reactance, counteraruging and negative emotion). Results find an anti-recycling message increases identity threat among high environment identifiers, which leads to high resistance. Moderated mediation analyses suggest that identity threat depends on people’s environment identity, and may also be an antecedent of reactance, counterarguing and negative emotion.

Perceived Barriers and Facilitators in Primary Care of Diagnosing Mental Illness in the Geriatric Population: A Systematic Review • Nia MASON, Louisiana State University; Stephanie Whitenack, Louisiana State University; Diane Francis, Louisiana State University • The aim of this systematic review is to determine the barriers and facilitators in primary care of diagnosing depression and anxiety in geriatric patients. The 15 studies offered five themes. Three were exclusive to barriers: education, stigma, and the negative attitudes of medical professionals. No themes were specific to facilitators. Two themes, communication and time, were considered barriers and facilitators. Findings show that doctors recognize barriers but suggest offering continued education to better understand effective ways of communicating with this population.

We drink so we are: Effects of perceived similarity with a drinker on observational learning • Mira Mayrhofer; Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna • Based on social cognitive theory, we conducted two experiments manipulating the presentation of a model’s alcohol-related behavior (rare drinker, experienced drinker, alcoholic) and the occurrence of alcohol consequences. Results suggest that model-observer similarity mediates effects of alcohol portrayals on expectancies, however, only for self-referencing participants. A direct path from consequence portrayal to expectancies and attitudes was also found. Participant’s alcohol-related behavior moderated effects, underlining the need of targeting mediated health-education efforts based on it.

Third-person Effects of Conflicting Information about Childhood Vaccinations.: Role of Health Locus of Control and Issue Importance in Predicting Individuals’ Support for Immunization Requirements • Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina; Joon Kyoung Kim, University of South Carolina; Jo-Yun Queenie Li, University of South Carolina; Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina • Researchers have well-documented individuals’ perceived gap in media influence between oneself and others, called third-person perceptions (TPPs). Building on this robust body of research, this study investigates how parents perceive impact of inconsistent conclusions about childhood vaccinations and its impact on support for immunization requirements. Individuals’ importance of childhood vaccinations was positively associated with TPPs and support for immunization requirements. Health locus of control was not associated with TPPs, but negatively associated with supporting required immunizations.

Creating Patient Self-Advocacy Workshops for Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Individuals: Process Description, Pilot Results, and Suggestions to Establish Evidence-Based • Richard Mocarski, University of Nebraska at Kearney; William (Sim) Butler, University of Alabama; Nathan Woodruff, Trans Collaborations; Robyn King, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Debra Hope, University of Nebraska Lincoln; Natalie Holt, UNL; Larisa Spencer; Brittany Hanzlik; Joshua Eyer, University of Alabama • Individuals who identify as transgender or gender non-conforming (TGNC) can face many barriers to health care ranging from lack of appropriately trained providers to overt discrimination and refusal of care. Many of these challenges are exacerbated in rural areas where health care can be sparse for everyone. Although more providers who are educated to provide TGNC-affirmative services is the ideal solution, in the short term TGNC individuals would benefit from being better able to self-advocate for appropriate care. This paper describes the pilot testing of a narrative-based self-advocacy training workshop developed in a community based participatory research partnership. The workshop was well-received in a small pilot test with six members of the TGNC communities. Specific strategies included in the workshop and details on measuring outcomes are described in the paper. The workshop protocol fits well in the context of narrative medicine and represents an application of forensics to help reduce health disparities for TGNC people that also can serve as a model for other evidence-based workshops.

Exploring the Antecedents of Online Information Seeking and Sharing in a Public Health Crisis • Bitt Beach Moon, Indiana University; Chang Won Choi, Innocean Worldwide; Sung-Un Yang, Indiana University • The purpose of this study is to explore the antecedents of information seeking and sharing during a public health crisis. Focusing on the 2016 Zika-virus outbreak in South Korea, the study conducted the online survey of 788 Korean participants to test the research hypotheses. The results showed publics’ online seeking and sharing behavior were influenced by cognitive, affective, and media trust factors. Theoretical and strategic implications were further discussed in the conclusion.

Name frame and celebrity endorsement effects of autonomous vehicle technology communications: Mechanisms and moderators • Jessica Myrick, Penn State University; Lee Ahern, Penn State; Ruosi Shao, Penn State University; Jeff Conlin • Autonomous or driverless vehicles (or cars) represent an emerging technology that has the potential to radically transform the everyday lives of people around the world. Despite the world-changing predictions hovering around the technology, there has been little research into how this automotive technology is being communicated, or theorizing about the most effective ways to increase public acceptance of it. As such, the purpose of the present investigation is to empirically test the effects of using different name frames (i.e., autonomous vehicles, self-driving cars, or driverless cars) and using celebrity endorsers on audience responses to promotional messages about autonomous vehicles. Furthermore, we want to examine how these promotional messages are interpreted in light of individual differences in audience members, such as a tendency to enjoy novel consumer products or to trust machines over humans. Finally, we seek to assess how attention to news coverage of autonomous vehicles may also influence audience responses to promotional messages about autonomous vehicles. A nationwide experiment (N=721) found strong evidence that attention to media, emotional responses (excitement, anxiety, curiosity), subjective knowledge, and some message factors impacted risk perceptions and behavioral intentions. Implications for theory and message design are discussed.

The Effects of Media-Induced Nostalgia After a Celebrity Death on Social Sharing and Prosocial Behavior • Jessica Myrick, Penn State University; Jessica Willoughby, Washington State University • When a well-known celebrity dies, mass media outlets cover the event and people talk about it. When the celebrity was also a famous media figure who lived a long life, chances are high that much of that media coverage and conversation relate to memories of the past. As such, this situation is ripe to evoke nostalgia, a mixed affective state that has previously not received much attention as a potential response to media about a celebrity’s death. Two studies, a survey immediately after Mary Tyler Moore’s death and a later experiment, investigated the role of nostalgia in shaping social sharing intentions as well as intentions to help the diabetes community through prosocial actions. The results revealed that nostalgia is an important drive of media effects in this context and it can be used in strategic messages to promote prosocial health-related actions after a celebrity death.

Man Shall Not Live by Bread Alone: Emotional Support and Health Outcomes of Low-Income Adults • Kang Namkoong, University of Maryland; Samantha Stanley; Jiyoun Kim • This study examines the effects of perceived emotional support networks on health outcomes of low-income populations. Secondary data was collected from the Health Information National Trends Survey (Cycle 4). Results reveal that lacking an emotional support network has greater detrimental effects on the physical health and psychological well-being of low-income persons compared to comparable higher income persons. These findings suggest the need for health programs that that enhance access to emotional support for underserved populations.

The Effects of Social Norms and Role Model Messages on College Women’s Intentions to Refuse Unwanted Alcohol • Nicole O’Donnell, Virginia Commonwealth University • This study analyzes the effects of exposure to electronic health messages on the likelihood of sorority women to refuse unwanted alcohol. One place to reach sorority women with targeted health messages is on social networking sites, and there is a need for research that explores the best theory-based message strategies for these platforms. A total of 822 sorority women participated in a randomized controlled trial pretest-posttest experiment with four conditions. Individuals viewed role model messages, norm corrective messages, a combination of these approaches, or a control condition with no health information. Individuals in the three treatment conditions had higher post-exposure intentions to refuse alcohol compared to individuals in the control condition. In addition, individuals in the norm corrective and combined conditions had higher post-exposure normative perceptions than individuals in the role model and control conditions. No between-group differences were observed for post-exposure self-efficacy. Regarding media effects, individuals in the norm corrective condition rated the messages as having a greater information quality than individuals in other conditions and participants perceived that norm corrective messages would have the greatest influence on their peers. Implications for health behavior theory and media effects research are discussed.

Adopting an affirmative consent definition in sexual assault prevention programming on college campuses • Rebecca Ortiz, Syracuse University • Sexual violence is a major concern on college campuses. Colleges and universities are encouraged to take a more comprehensive and active prevention approach to addressing sexual violence on college campuses. As a result, some colleges and universities have adopted and educate their students using an “affirmative consent” standard, such that for a sexual encounter to be considered consensual, it must include explicit, voluntary, and conscious agreement to engage in sexual activity by all parties involved. Whether adoption of an affirmative consent standard by college students actually leads to a greater likelihood to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication is, however, still largely unknown. The current study thus sought to examine the extent to which accurate knowledge and understanding of affirmative sexual consent could explain the likelihood that college students would intend to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication, alongside other influential predictors, as proposed by the Integrated Behavioral Model. Results indicated that while college students who were more likely to define sexual consent based upon an affirmative consent stand were also more likely to intend to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication in the future, it was ultimately the ability to apply that knowledge to a variety of situations that predicted behavioral intentions. Colleges and universities must therefore not only inform their students about the definition of affirmative sexual consent, they must also provide them with situational knowledge about how to engage in affirmative sexual consent communication.

From Sensation to Stigma: Changing Standards for Suicide Coverage in Journalism Textbooks, 1894-2016 • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • This paper is a historical and interpretive analysis of journalism textbooks published from 1894 to 2016 to show how instruction on suicide coverage shifted dramatically with professional practice and social attitudes over the 20th century. Suicide was a popular genre of sensational human interest story featured in early journalism textbooks, but contemporary texts barely acknowledge suicide, portraying it as a generally private matter requiring characteristics of prominence, impact or unusualness to make news.

Shifting Perceptions of Global Warming in 2011 and 2017 • Shaelyn Patzer; Selena Nelson, George Mason University; Marc Trotochaud • Research has shown that, despite the difficulties of distinguishing the influence of climate change from natural fluctuations in the weather, some individuals believe that they have personal experienced the effects of global warming. Correspondingly, evidence has indicated that specific experiences recounted by individuals are often reflections of actual trends in regional and local weather. Many of the papers exploring personal experience have focused on establishing the credibility of this link, with less attention placed on examining how perceptions have changed over time. Through a series of four studies, this paper employs nationally representative, qualitative survey data from 2011 and 2017 to explore the ways that individuals believe they have been impacted by climate change. Our study found that, while there is considerable influence of recent weather events in the content of responses, there is evidence to believe that awareness of long-term climate trends has increased.

A Communication Inequalities Approach to Disparities in Physical Activities: The Case of the VERB Campaign • Macarena Pena-y-Lillo, Universidad Diego Portales; Chul-joo Lee, Seoul National University • This study focuses on the VERB campaign and explores disparities in physical activity between children of more and less advantaged groups. Using a three-wave longitudinal survey dataset, this study found that the effects of exposure to the VERB campaign on behaviors were mediated by perceived behavioral control (PBC), and intentions. However, only children from advantaged backgrounds were able to turn their intentions into physical activity practice.

The crucial role of friends in health communication • Klaus Schoenbach; Marium Saeed • In this study, we investigate the role of friends as an important factor for the health behavior of teenagers primarily in two ways: as a source of health information, but also as encouraging health-related actions. For this purpose, we use data from a large-scale and representative survey of 13-20 year-old nationals in Qatar, an Arab country with severe health problems among its adolescent population. Our results show that, first, Qatari teenagers think that their friends care about health issues very similar to their own. But friends are also an important source of health information; they are consulted often, their information is trusted, and they provide health information that encourages their peers to attempt to change their own health behavior. Finally, peer orientation – i.e., perceptions of how much their friends care about health issues – is more relevant in steering adolescents’ health information seeking than their own personal concerns about health.

Why aren’t we talking about weight? Information underrepresented women receive about weight management during pregnancy • Summer Shelton, University of Florida; Matthew R. Cretul, College of Journalism & Communications, University of Florida; Amanda Kastrinos; Debbie Treise, University of Florida; Amanda Bradshaw, University of Florida; Easton Wollney, University of Florida; Alexis Bajalia; Kendra Auguste • Excessive gestational weight gain is associated with a number of adverse health outcomes for mother and baby. This research assessed the patient-provider conversation about nutrition, exercise, and weight management from the perspective of the prenatal patient. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18, low-income, underrepresented women, living in the rural South. Findings revealed the majority of women’s providers had never discussed their gestational weight gain, even when particularly excessive. Recommendations for improving this conversation are provided.

Parachuting into a hurricane: Twitter interactions between government entities and the public during Hurricane Irma • Jeremy Shermak, University of Texas at Austin • Twitter has become a communications mainstay during natural disasters. During 2017’s Hurricane Irma, Twitter was ablaze with information from citizens, media, and government agencies racing to provide urgent – perhaps lifesaving – information. However, Twitter, even in a crisis situation, is not immune to incivility and detrimental activity that often afflicts social media. This study analyzed Twitter communications between government entities and citizens throughout the storm to examine ways these messages often became uncivil.

Facebook use, emotions, and pro-environmental behaviors: The mediating role of hope and worry • Tsung-Jen Shih, National Chenghi University; Wen-wei Chen, National Chenghi University • This study examined the impact of Facebook use and how hope and worry mediated the effects of Facebook use on people’s pro-environmental behavior. This study also investigated how the mediation effects of emotions may condition one feature of the social networking sites, the social norms. Drawing upon survey data from college students in Taiwan (N = 778), the results indicated that hope negatively mediated the effect of Facebook use. Additional analysis showed that, after taking risk perception into account, the negative effect of hope on pro-environmental behavior disappeared. Worry also served as a significant mediator and this mediation effect was moderated by social norms. Specifically, the indirect relationship became stronger when people’s perceived social norm on Facebook was lower. Implications of the findings will be discussed.

Perceived scientific agreement as a gateway belief leading to pro-environmental behaviors: The role of balanced reporting and conflicting comments on Facebook • Tsung-Jen Shih, National Chenghi University • In the issue of climate change, there exists a gap between scientific consensus and public perception of scientific agreement. Whereas the occurrence of climate change and its association with human activities are generally accepted within the scientific community, the general public is found to have a misunderstanding about the level of consensus. To the extent that perceived scientific consensus is linked to public attitudes, this study examined its origination and consequences in an experimental context. Drawing upon a two factorial, between-subject experimental design, this study found that participants exposed to one-sided stories, either supporting or opposing climate change, perceived more scientific certainty than those exposed to the balanced story. Furthermore, the effect of the texts on attitudinal certainty was moderated by the type of comments left by the users. Finally, perceived agreement and attitudinal certainty were found to mediate the effect of texts on pro-environmental behaviors. Implications of these findings will be discussed.

Attribution and attributional processes of organizations’ environmental messages • Sumin Shin, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater; Eyun-Jung Ki, The University of Alabama • This experimental study, guided by attribution theory, investigated the impact of the substantiation and specificity of organizations’ environmental messages on perceived communication motivation and how this perception prompts audiences’ affective and cognitive responses. Findings showed that specific messages increased perceived intrinsic motivation, while vague messages increased perceived extrinsic motivation; in turn, the perceived intrinsic motive positively influenced audiences’ message attitude, organization attitude, message credibility, organization credibility, and organization’s green image, but the perceived extrinsic motive negatively influenced these aspects.

“You Can’t Drink Oil”: How the Water is Life Movement Employed Risk Communication Techniques to Garner Popular Support for Their Cause • Sarah Smith-Frigerio, University of Missouri • During the Mni Wiconi (Water is Life) movement, Facebook Live videos and curated Facebook videos became popular among groups within the larger assemblage of water protectors protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline. Videos used fear appeals, calls to action, and frames of mitigating loss to persuade popular opinion to support the cause. Case study analysis of the 25 most-viewed videos from four different Facebook pages found themes involving the battle between peaceful, prayerful water protectors and violent law enforcement officers. Additionally, the potential loss of life and violation of treaty rights were found in fear appeals. Calls to action included funding legal defense, petitioning political figures and governmental agencies, and most importantly, coming to Standing Rock to bear witness and to stand with water protectors. There was also narratives about women, children, and elders of many tribes, united together, on the front line to prevent the loss of our planet and lives.

Changing the Image of STEM: Challenging Adolescents’ STEM Stereotypes Using Diverse Media Role Models • Jocelyn Steinke, Western Michigan University; Brooks Applegate; Jay R. Penny; Sean Merlino • This study investigated the effects of viewing online videos featuring diverse STEM role models. Quantitative and qualitative analyses were used to assess the efficacy of the videos in challenging stereotypes and promoting identification. Findings indicated that adolescents favored female and Black/African American followed by White and Hispanic STEM role models. Additionally, adolescents reported a preference for STEM role models who challenged gender and racial/ethnic STEM stereotypes, pursued interesting hobbies, and worked in interesting STEM fields.

The Impact of Source Credibility and Risk Attitude on Individuals’ Risk Perception toward GM Foods: Comparing Young Millennials in the U.S. and China • Ruoyu Sun; Juan Meng, University of Georgia • This research investigates the effects of source credibility and risk attitude on young millennials’ risk and benefit perceptions and purchase intentions toward GM foods. Results from two samples (young millennials in the U.S. and China) confirmed individuals’ risk attitude significantly influences their purchase intentions toward GM foods. Results also revealed a significant interaction effect of source credibility and risk attitude on risk perception of GM foods among Chinese respondents. Practical and research implications are discussed.

A systematic review of research on news media coverage of the environment • BRUNO TAKAHASHI, Michigan State University; Anthony Van Witsen; Apoorva Joshi; Ran Duan, Michigan State University; Wenzhu Li • In this study, we examine the English language literature on news media coverage of environmental issues from 1975 to 2016 to describe the state of the field. The study uses the systematic review methodology to explore the geographic diversity of the studies, the environmental topics and media that have been analyzed, and the methodological and theoretical approaches that the studies followed. Particularly, these findings call attention to the disproportionality in the analysis of climate change, the focus from and on the U.S. and Europe, and the focus on newspapers over other forms of media. Given the expansion of environmental communication research in this decade itself, our study highlights the scope for scholars to examine, for example, issues such as sustainability or environmental justice, and assess media coverage from developing countries and growing economies where the news media present a largely different picture of environmental issues than they do in the developed world. We critically reflect on these trends to provide recommendations for future research.

Resisting Stigma and Evaluating Realism in Direct-to-Consumer Advertising for Psychiatric Drugs. • Tara Walker, University of Colorado Boulder • Classic labeling theory suggests that people diagnosed with mental illness internalize this label, but research has shown that individuals will sometimes actively resist stigma. This study analyzes responses to a survey about a DTC advertisement to look at how experience with mental illness influences perceptions of stigma and realism. The study concludes that perceiving stigma is a form of resistance, and people experienced with mental illness tend to see the ad as more stigmatizing and less realistic.

Does Truvada ‘Prevent’ HIV? Examining How News Can Alter FDA-Regulated Messages • Ryan Wallace, University of Texas, Austin • Examining how the HIV-1 Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis (PrEP) drug Truvada is represented in news media, this long-term study utilized mixed methods (content and textual analyses) to accurately identify how journalistic choices could impact the way in which this drug is portrayed—spreading misinformation about effectiveness and influencing audience’s perceptions. This study also identified how media routines, like finding sources and citing approved “indications for use,” may have serious public health implications by systematically altering FDA-regulated messages.

Applying the Planned Risk Information Seeking Model to Examine Public Engagement with Genetically Modified Foods in China • Nainan Wen • The Planned Risk Information Seeking Model (PRISM) has received consistent support in health and environmental contexts. However, it still remains a question whether it applies to other contexts, such as scientific controversies for which risks are perceived to have great impact on human beings’ collective wellbeing in the long run. Therefore, this study extended to test the PRISM in the context of genetically modified foods in China. Based on a stratified quota sample of 1,370 citizens collected in Jiangsu Province, this study found that the PRISM variables predicted GMO information seeking and subsequent behavior of engaging in GMO related activities through direct or indirect paths. However, information insufficiency had less significant impact compared with the other PRISM variables. Implications of these findings were discussed.

Counter Self-Objectification Induced Appearance Anxiety: Testing Persuasion Resistance Strategies on Objectifying Social Media Content • XIZHU XIAO • Despite the opportunities for health information seeking and health behavior modeling social media provides, it induces various negative effects such as self-objectification and body image concerns among young adults. Using a between-subject experiment, this study tests the effects of persuasion resistance strategies (persuasive intent warning vs. persuasive intent priming) on countering appearance anxiety caused by objectifying social media images. Results suggest that intent warning significantly reduces appearance anxiety compared to the control condition. However, intent priming worsens the adverse impacts of objectifying social media content. As opposed to previous research that argues intent priming is effortless, this study shows that intent priming is as demanding of cognition as intent warning in an objectifying social media environment. Implications and future directions are further discussed.

User Engagement in Public Discourse of Genetically Modified Organisms: The Role of Opinion Leaders on Social Media • Qian Xu, Elon University; Nan Yu, University of Central Florida; Yunya Song • This study examines how source attributes of opinion leaders and message frames adopted by them influence user engagement in the public discourse of genetically modified organism (GMO) on Chinese social media. Account type and account verification emerged as significant predictors for engagement in the GMO discourse. Users were more likely to engage in GMO opinion leaders’ posts when they adopted the fact, opportunity, pro-GMO, or international frames in their posts. The findings also revealed that different source attributes and message frames varied in their abilities to influence three dimensions of user engagement – numbers of reposts, comments, and likes, respectively.

How does Media Promote Pro-environmental Behaviors as Collective Action: An Examination of Illusion of Knowledge • Xiaodong Yang, Shandong University; Xiaoming Hao, Nanyang Technological University; Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University • This study revisits the mechanism underlying media effects in promoting pro-environmental behaviors via affecting individuals’ knowledge by including illusion of knowledge as an important factor that shapes attitude and behavioral change in addition to actual knowledge. Regarding illusion of knowledge, both illusion in self-evaluation of knowledge and illusion in perceived knowledge differential between self and others are taken into accounts. The results showed that individuals’ attention to media messages about climate change affected both actual knowledge and illusion of knowledge, which promoted their positive attitude toward pro-environmental behaviors, and in turn motivate pro-environmental behavioral intention. In particular, the more positive illusion people had in self-evaluation of knowledge and in perceived knowledge differential between self and others, the more positive attitude they would develop. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Engagement in Science: Exploring the View and Engagement Practice of Scientists from Different Organizations • Shupei Yuan, Northern Illinois University; John Besley, Michigan State University; Anthony Dudo, University of Texas, Austin • The current study investigated how scientists from different types of organizations (university, NGO, industry and government) view and practice public engagement. This project surveyed scientist members from seven scientific societies. The results suggest that scientists in different organizations shared some views regarding the factors that influence engagement activities and communication objectives, differences were also observed. Scientists from the industry consider themselves less involved in public engagement and have slightly less willingness to practice in the future, and scientists from NGO are more engaged and perceive more positive normative belief than others. The findings addressed the gaps in science communication research that overlooked engagement contributors outside of academia, and suggest area of potential emphasis for public engagement support from organizations.

Scientific Societies’ Support for Public Engagement: An Interview Study • Shupei Yuan, Northern Illinois University; Anthony Dudo, University of Texas, Austin • Scientific societies play an important role in scientists’ career development and have a great impact on the advancement of science. The current study explores scientific societies’ view of and support for public engagement. Interviews with 21 key actors of societies based in the U.S. suggest that societies recognize the value of public engagement and outreach, and the emphasis has been increasing over time. Depending on the size and the discipline of the society, various types of engagement activities and support are offered. We also explored the potential challenges and opportunities for societies to support science public engagement. The current project aimed at providing societies an overview of this issue and identifying ways societies can better allocate resources to support public engagement.

Exploring Public Perception of Depression: The Interplay between Attribution of Cause and Narrative Persuasion • Nanlan Zhang, University of South Carolina; Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina • Improving awareness and mitigating stigma related to depression have been a concern to both health communicators and practitioners. This study conducted a 2 (narrative vs. non- narrative) by 2 (high controllability vs. low controllability) experiment (N=242) to test the interaction effects of narrative persuasion and cause controllability of depression. The results show that narrative messages attributing depression to an uncontrollable cause increase identification, feeling of pity, and intention to help. However, the study finds that the positive effects of narrative messages are conditional, and they may be less effective than non-narrative messages when the cause of depression is controllable. Also, the findings suggest identification as the underlying mechanism of such interaction effects on emotional and behavioral responses. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed further.

2018 ABSTRACTS

Visual Communication 2017 Abstracts

Online Coverage of Brittany Maynard’s Death: Visual and Verbal Information • Kelsie Arnold; Kimberly Lauffer • This study examined textual and visual elements in web-based coverage of Brittany Maynard’s decision to exercise Oregon’s right to die in order to understand how the media framed their coverage using multimedia components. The authors used a qualitative perspective and a quantitative data collection instrument to synthesize data and key themes that emerged from the research. Culturally embedded frames, loaded language, and graphic elements were all deemed essential to telling the story of Brittany Maynard.

Attributes of Likable Organizational Logos: An Exploratory Study using Q Methodology • Angie Chung; Dennis Kinsey • Logos have a big impact on how people feel about an organization. The goal of this research is to identify the subjective perceptions when people evaluate logos and explore what elements affect the likability of organizational logos. This exploratory research used Q Methodology to quantitatively and qualitatively examine subjective preferences for different types of logos. Forty participants sorted 50 organizational logos (Q sample) from “most appealing” (+5) to “most unappealing” (-5). Three different factors emerged from the correlation and factor analysis—the first group expressed the importance of color, the second group thought logos with living creatures were appealing and the third group were attracted to logos suggesting dynamic movement. Findings are discussed in terms of practical implications for how organizations can choose logos that can be received more positively.

A reciprocal-networked model of the photojournalistic icon: From the print-television news era to the present • Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon; David Perlmutter, Texas Tech University; Natalia Mielczarek, Virginia Tech • Millions of news images have been created, but only a relative few have become the fabled “icons” of photojournalism that have been popularly ascribed with extraordinary powers to mobilize national opinion, start or stop wars, or at least capture “decisive moments” in history. Since most of the photoicon era occurred when news was a wholly industrial (via print and then broadcast and cable) enterprise, media gatekeeping has been a critical component of the process of icon creation, distribution, and maintenance. Traditionally, news photographs became iconic, in large part, through their purposive, industrially defined, and prominent placement on elite newspaper front pages and lead position in broadcast/cable news across the globe. But as we rapidly move away from print news and towards a digital/internet/social news environment, what is the effect on the formation of iconic imagery? We argue that it is both a changed reality of news delivery formats and the democratization of news production and dissemination via social media that predicates a theoretical shift in the formation of iconic imagery. Using the historical research method, we draw from current theoretical tenets of iconic image formation and leading research on iconic imagery to present propositions of a model of iconicity that we term the “reciprocal-networked model of iconicity,” which presents four central and related stages: creation, distribution, acceleration, and formation. We conclude this philosophy of images with some speculative predictions about the development of photoicons within the evolution of our reciprocal-networked model, arguing that several trends are predictable.

Fire, ice or drought? Picturing humanity in climate change imagery • Kim Sheehan; Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon; David Morris II, University of Oregon • Despite scientific evidence of climate change, Americans continue to minimize its importance. At the same time, research suggests that advocacy campaigns and news media coverage of climate change—both text and images—do not necessarily resonate with audiences. The current study brings together existing theory on the knowledge-deficit model and research findings on both climate change imagery and story personification to explore in a 3x3x2 experiment how photographs relating to climate change have the best potential to connect with people regarding emotion and engagement.

Resignifying Alan Kurdi: News photographs, memes, and the ethics of visual representation • Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Iowa • The Turkish photojournalist Nilufer Demir’s photograph of the drowned refugee child Alan Kurdi attained worldwide recognition as a media spectacle, initially prompting humanitarian responses and political action, but later morphing into online memes and inciting public backlash as “war porn.” I argue here that the ethical motivations of photojournalism and memes are oppositional with regard to their representations of embodied vulnerability. While photojournalistic depictions of vulnerable bodies are motivated by an ethics of care intended to generate empathy and progressive social change, memes disrupt those affective connotations through processes of mimicry and replication. By means of a comparative semiological analysis, this paper examines the way the sign system of Demir’s photograph was mutated into a meme, radically changing the ethical connotations of the former. The differing ethical affordances of news photos versus memes, and their relationship, may help to explain the reversal of the cosmopolitan humanitarianism initially sparked by the Alan Kurdi photograph and tell us more about the ethical frictions and contrapositions at work in the contemporary media environment.

Access, deconstructed: An analysis of metajournalistic discourse concerning photojournalism and access • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado; Ross Taylor, University of Colorado • This study examines metajournalistic discourse published surrounding the intersection of photojournalism and access. Researchers conducted a textual analysis of metajournalistic discourse published in articles by The Image, Deconstructed from 2011 to 2017 (N=70). Findings suggest that photojournalists define access differently than scholars. They obtain access through purposeful body language and verbal communication, clarity of intent and persistence. These findings are interpreted through the lens of the theory of metajournalistic discourse.

Using Angle of Sight to Confirm Media Bias of a Political Protest • Michael Friedman, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga • The study sought to understand if photographic media bias of political protest could be detected by applying the photographic principle of angle of sight to the pictures of the event. The investigation focused on the photographic news coverage of the Occupy Wall Street protests from two competing and politically opposite New York City tabloid newspapers. The purpose of the study was to determine if there were any differences in the selection of angle of sight photographs, which could act as a subtle cue to either glorify or condemn the protests. Results show strong statistical support that both papers chose the angled photograph that matched with their political opinion of the protest and is relevant to other researchers who seek to understand our legacy of media coverage of political protests.

Professional Photographers and Platforms and the Perceived Credibility of Photographs on the Internet • Gina Gayle; Andrew Wirzburger, Syracuse University; Jianan Hu; Honey Rao • As the use of amateur journalists in place of professionals to photograph current events has begun to shape news content (Pantti & Anden-Papadopoulos, 2011), and people assign varying levels of credibility to the sources of news content (Bracken, 2006), understanding the effects of “professional” labels is growing increasingly salient. This study sought to investigate differences in perceived credibility of photographs on the internet depending on whether or not a professional had taken the photograph and whether or not it had been published by a professional media outlet. Definitions for the dimensions of perceived photograph credibility were adapted from previous research into general internet credibility (Metzger, 2007). The researchers hypothesized that people provided with information that the photograph was somehow “professional” would perceive it to have higher credibility. The study was designed as an experiment with four groups that evaluated photographs using a self-administered online questionnaire; each group was provided with different information about the photograph to stimulate differences between groups. Results produced no significant differences between groups for the concept of credibility but did yield significance for “authority,” one dimension of credibility. These results may be due to the influx of citizen journalism as well as diminishing public trust in mainstream news media.

Chaos, Quest and Restitution Narratives of Depression on Tumblr • Ali Hussain, Michigan State University • This paper studies how visuals from Tumblr might be used to evoke narratives of depression. Fourteen patients with moderately severe depression were interviewed using photo-elicitation method. Findings encompass three types of narratives: chaos, quest and restitution. Chaos narrative describe experiencing illnesses with no cure or unreliable treatments. Quest narrative are about patients’ fighting back. Restitution narrative points toward the belief that health is restorable. Study offers implications to use images during depression counseling sessions.

Show me a story: Narrative, image, and audience engagement on sports network Instagram accounts • Rich Johnson, Creighton University; Miles Romney, Brigham Young University • Social media is a growing space for interpersonal and masspersonal communication and the shared image that often accompanies these messages has become a factor in increasing audience engagement. This study seeks to understand what types of images generate more engagement from social media audiences. A group of communication scholars argue that narrative is the most basic form of human communication and therefore messages with strong narrative themes more easily connect the message from the communicator to the audience. This study performed a content analysis of nearly 2,000 images shared by Sports Networks on Instagram. Operating under Kress and Van Leeuwen’s (2006) methodology for determining narrative in image, the study found that images that contained narrative or metacommunicative messages (Bateson, 1951) resulted in greater interest and engagement by audiences through the manifestation of likes and comments. The study offers a methodology for organizations seeking greater engagement from social media audiences.

Cognitive Effects of Emotional Visuals and Company–Cause Congruence in Visual CSR Messages • Sun Young Lee, Texas Tech University; Sungwon Chung, Fort Hays State University • Using the limited capacity model of motivated mediated message processing (LC4MP), associative network theory, and expectancy violation theory as theoretical frameworks, this study seeks to explore the cognitive effects of two aspects of corporate social responsibility (CSR) messages: emotional visuals and company–cause congruence. We employed a 2 (emotional tone of visuals: positive vs. negative) × 2 (company–cause congruence: low vs. high) within-subjects experimental design. We tested these factors using three CSR issues: hunger in Africa, water shortage in Africa, and an environmental issue. The results showed interaction effects between the two factors for recognition sensitivity (d′) to company logos, ordered from being the highest when using a negative image and high company–cause congruence, to a negative image and low company–cause congruence, a positive image and low company–cause congruence, and a positive image and high company–cause congruence as the lowest. For cued recall of company names, we found that there were two main effects, with no interaction effects, and negative images were more effective than positive images: high company–cause congruence was more effective than low company–cause congruence. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our findings.

Sleight of Hand, Slight of Truth: Deceptive Editing of Documentary Footage in The Look of Silence • Thomas Mascaro, Bowling Green State University • Abstract: The documentary film The Look of Silence conceals editorial sleight of hand involving a 1967 NBC documentary The Battle for Asia, Part III: Indonesia: The Troubled Victory. The editing, which is not disclosed to audiences, misrepresents the original report and contravenes documentary practice. This case illuminates libel law, with regard to DVD and interview statements accompanying a film’s release, and worrisome trend of “poetic” films eclipsing empirical reporting in documentaries.

Solutions in the shadows: The effects of incongruent visual messaging in solutions journalism news stories • Karen McIntyre, Virginia Commonwealth University; Kyser Lough, The University of Texas at Austin; Keyris Manzanares • This experiment examined the impact of story-photo congruency regarding solutions journalism. We tested the effects of solution and conflict-oriented news stories when the photo paired with the story was congruent or incongruent with the narrative. Results revealed that a solution-oriented story with a congruent photo made readers feel the most positive, but surprisingly readers were most interested in the story and reported the strongest behavioral intentions when the story was paired with a neutral photo.

The dead Syrian refugee boy goes viral: Funerary Aylan Kurdi memes as tools for social justice in remix culture • Natalia Mielczarek, Virginia Tech • The picture of the 3-year-old Syrian refugee Aylan Kurdi, whose dead body washed up on a Turkish beach in September 2015, became iconic after it went viral on social media. Within hours, Aylan was a symbol, a hashtag and a meme. This project analyzes the most popular funerary Aylan memes to understand their meanings and functions as they proliferated cyberspace. Through visual rhetorical analysis, the project expands the functions of memes from the typically theorized visual jokes and social commentary to tools of social justice. The case study demonstrates how memes get deployed as rhetorical statements to subvert and re-negotiate reality, in this case to create a ‘better ending’ for the dead boy and to seek atonement for his death. The project also analyzes the paradoxical relationship between a news icon and its digital appropriations, suggesting a new metric for iconicity in digital participatory culture.

What Makes a Meme a Meme? Five Essential Characteristics • Maria Molina, Pennsylvania State University • During the 2016 presidential elections (December 2015-2016), the term “meme” had a higher search interest in the U.S. than the word “election” (Google Trends, 2016). But what makes an Internet meme a meme? And what attracts users to not only view memes, but also create and share them? This article reviews the existent literature, explicates this form of user-generated content, and provides a set of characteristics to differentiate Internet memes from other type of content also shared online. The goal of this exercise is to provide the study of Internet memes with an integrated definition, encompassing the mutually understood set of characteristics of memes. As Chaffee (1991) describes, a concept explication plays a vital role for the advancement of a field as it helps uncover the different components of the term, provides a description of the studies that have been done in the field, and postulates areas of future research and how to move in a cohesive direction. More specifically, it will provide a tool, or measure for the analysis of the uses, motivations, and effects of this new media trend.

The Graphicness of Renowned Imagery: A Content Analysis of Pulitzer Prize Winning Photography • David Morris II, University of Oregon; Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon • An ongoing journalistic debate centers on the extent of acceptability of graphic imagery in the news media. In order to provide a more complete understanding of this ongoing debate, it is essential to conduct research that provides insight into the content of such imagery, especially renowned imagery. The current research uses a content analysis to explore the visual themes and type of graphicness present in the census of 763 Pulitzer Prize winning photographs from 1942 to 2015.

Closing the Gap Between Photojournalist Research and Photojournalism Practice: Exploring the Motivations of the Subjects of Sensitive Photo Essays • Tara Mortensen; Brian McDermott; Daniel Haun, University of South Carolina • There have always been challenges to pursuing photo essays, including the wariness of potential photo subjects who are often in the midst of personal hardships themselves, as well as a commitment of months or years to a single story. But contemporarily, there is a shrinking number of photojournalists and resources in the newsroom, as many have been replaced with iPhone-armed reporters and the abundance of citizen-shot photography (Allan, 2013; Hartley, 2007; Örnebring, 2013; Stelter, 2013; White, 2012). Citizens are more willing than ever to share thousands of photos a second on Snapchat and millions of photos on instagram every day (Biale, 2016; Schlosser, 2016), but an irony to this phenomenon and additional blow to photojournalists who are struggling to maintain their professional status (Gade & Lowrey, 2011; Mortensen, 2014) is that these same people are often hesitant allow professional photojournalists to tell their story (McDermott, 2012). This study is the first to inquire about the factors that influence peoples’ willingness to allow professional photojournalists tell their story, including topics such as sexual assault in the military, a woman’s struggle with losing her legs, and a mother’s struggle with losing a child. Guided by uses and gratifications theory, ten in-depth interviews with subjects of peer-judged contest winners from 2014 – 2016 in the multiple picture story categories of the NPPA Monthly Clip Contest, the NPPA Best of Photojournalism Contest, and the World Press Photo Contest were conducted and analyzed using a constant comparative method (Lincoln & Guba, 1985).

Priming effects on Instagram: An analysis of how pictures on Instagram affect individuals’ risk perceptions and information seeking behaviors • NIcole O’Donnell • This research explored how images on Instagram affect individuals’ information processing and seeking. Participants viewed Instagram posts that discussed the natural flavors added to processed foods. Individuals in a science-image condition had higher risk perceptions than individuals in a health image condition; however, this effect was moderated by nutrition label usage. Additionally, 45% of participants choose to seek further information on the topic. Implications for the integration of priming effects and information processing theories are discussed.

Profile Pictures and Political Expression: The Perceived Effectiveness of Avatar Activism (an Austrian Case). • Judith Schossboeck, City University Hong Kong • This paper investigates the phenomenon of avatar activism (AA), understood as changing one’s profile picture in a social media (SM) or online social network (OSN) for political reasons or a good cause from a quantitative perspective. Specifically, the effectiveness of avatar activism as perceived by users engaging in this practice, as well as its relation to factors like age, participation in OSNs, online social capital and political engagement are investigated. An online questionnaire of n = 210 was distributed before the Austrian Presidential Elections in December 2016, and the topic AA was placed within the context of the elections, but also addressed other examples of AA. After increasing the variable perceived effectiveness of AA along several levels related to cognitive or actual impact, results show that most people do see this activity as a good form of self-expression, but doubt the actual political impact. Age, participation in OSNs and online social capital could not be identified as influencing factors of perceived effectiveness of AA. However, engagement in AA is related to other forms of political engagement. The limitations of the study and possible further directions are discussed.

Networked photographic repertoire and capital: Prosumption of selfies among Taiwanese gay men on Instagram • Hong-Chi Shiau, Shih-Hsin University • This study attempts to illustrate identity performance and consumption by Taiwanese gay men through their behavior of posting and commenting on selfies. This study selects a gay community on Instagram as a site for fieldwork because millennials are quitting Facebook, once Taiwan’s most popular social networking site, but now in a steep decline. The prosuming of selfies on Instagram is analyzed as a particular form of speech community, adjusted to the orientation of users towards initiating social bonding, corporal aesthetic regulation, or even sexual encounters. Through ethnographic interviews with 17 gay male college students from Taiwan and textual analysis of their correspondence though texting on Instagram, this study contextualizes how the rituals and social processes engaged in on Instagram help constitute a collective identity pertaining to Taiwanese gay men on Instagram. The prosuming of selfies is examined as an identity-making process involving three nuanced types of cultural capital. These uploaded representations of the self are referenced to the collective past. Three typological personae are identified to illuminate the notions of cultural, aesthetic and emotional labor. The conclusion offers an alternative sociological intervention that goes beyond the notion of digital narcissism to help understand how the labor of presenting selfies is invested and reproduced.

‘Sight Beyond My Sight’ (SBMS): Concept, Methodology, and a Tool For Seeing • Gabriel Tait, Arkansas State University • Sight Beyond My Sight (SBMS), a new visual research method, aims to empower individuals to participate in the photographic communication and social science research process. This introductory study examines local people taking pictures to share knowledge about topics. This SBMS case study of photos from eleven participants (eight men and three women) between the ages of 18-65 from Liberia, West Africa, explains the method, discusses the participants, highlights some photographs taken, and offers an encapsulated analysis of what was learned from Liberians about Liberia. Advancing the participatory research methods of “Photovoice” (Wang and Burris 1994) in public health communication education, “Shooting Back” (Hubbard 2009) in photojournalism, and “Autophotography” (Ziller 1990) social psychology, SBMS bridges a gap in communication and social science research practices.

The evolution of story: How time and modality affect visual and verbal narratives • T.J. Thomson, University of Missouri • A majority of Americans distrust the news media due to concerns over comprehensiveness, accuracy, and fairness. Since many interactions between journalists and their subjects last only minutes and can be published within minutes, if not live, research is needed to explore how journalists’ understandings of their subjects’ narratives evolve over time and how much time is necessary to avoid surface-level coverage. Also, since people are now exposed to more image-based rather than text-based messages, additional research is necessary to explore how the verbal narratives spoken by subjects compare to their nonverbal narratives as captured by news photographers in visual form. Through a longitudinal, interview-based approach, a photojournalist working on a 30-plus-day picture story was interviewed weekly for six weeks over the course of his project to track perceptions of how his subjects’ verbal narratives changed. At the conclusion of the projects, the photojournalist’s subjects were also interviewed to explore how their verbal and nonverbal narratives compared. Informed by literature in role theory, narrative, and visual journalism, the findings explore how news media narratives can be more nuanced and how people shape their visual and verbal narratives consciously and unconsciously.

Parsing photograph’s place in a privately public world • T.J. Thomson, University of Missouri; Keith Greenwood, University of Missouri • Billions of personal cameras exist globally that capture more than one trillion images each year. In contrast to studies that focus on cameras in a particular industry or field, such as body cameras in law enforcement or diagnostic imaging in medical settings, this study adopts a comparative and integrative approach using the public-private distinction to explore 1) how people in different social spheres perceive cameras and those who operate them, 2) what factors influence those perceptions, and 3) how technological convergence, camera access, and digital dissemination ease are impacting social life. Through in-depth interviews with individuals in the public and private spheres, an understanding of camera operators as primarily disruptive or primarily affirmative emerged and participants and factors that influenced their perceptions were gathered. Participants also said more cameras and converged technology are blurring the lines between public and private, that exposure in public seems to reduce inclination for private exposure, that cameras are shifting the nature of experience, and that cameras are becoming increasingly regulated.

Location, Location, Location: Visual Properties and Recognition of Video Game Advertising. • Russell Williams • Videogame placements are important for advertising and there is limited cognitive capacity available to players during a game to notice these ads. This is a quasi-experimental study using a commercial videogame and the Limited Capacity Model as an exploratory mechanism. It demonstrates that positioning in the focal visual block enhanced recognition, and that integrated ads and landmarks are better recognized than interruptive advertisements. Practical implications are discussed.

2017 ABSTRACTS

Public Relations 2017 Abstracts

OPEN COMPETITION
What’s the “Right” Thing to Do? How Ethical Expectations for CSR Influence Company Support • Lucinda Austin; Barbara Miller, Elon University; Seoyeon Kim, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study investigated a new concept in corporate social responsibility (CSR) research—publics’ perceived ethical obligation of companies to address CSR, comparing low- and high-fit CSR programs when companies contribute negatively to social issues through their products or processes. Through a mixed-design experiment, findings revealed that participants placed higher expectations for ethical obligation on corporations in high-fit CSR scenarios. Additionally, ethical expectations—when met—influenced participants’ attitudes about and supportive intentions towards the company.

Risky Business: Exploring Differences in Marketplace Advocacy and High-fit CSR on Public Perceptions of Companies • Barbara Miller, Elon University; Lucinda Austin • A between-subjects experiment explored differences in outcomes for high-fit corporate social responsibility (CSR) versus marketplace advocacy programs. Findings revealed that marketplace advocacy, as compared to high-fit CSR, led to increased skepticism and attributions of egoistic motives, and decreased attributions of values-driven motives, company attitudes, attitudes about the social initiative, and supportive intentions.

Testing Perceptions of Organizational Apologies after a Data Breach Crisis • Joshua Bentley, Texas Christian University; Liang Ma, Texas Christian University • This study used a 2x2x2x2x2 experimental design (1,630 participants) to test stakeholder reactions to four apology elements in two data breach scenarios. All four elements, expressing remorse, acknowledging responsibility, promising forbearance, and offering reparations contributed to participants’ perception that the organization had apologized. In a high blame scenario, remorse and forbearance were even more important. Acknowledging responsibility did not have a significant effect on organizational reputation, future purchase intention, or negative word of mouth intentions.

Giving from the heart: Exploring how ethics of care emerges in corporate social responsibility • Melanie Formentin, Towson University; Denise Bortree, Penn State University • Public relations-based corporate social responsibility (CSR) research largely focuses on organizational goals; scholars rarely examine CSR impacts. In this paper, nonprofit-organization relationships are explored, illustrating how ethics of care is an appropriate normative perspective for encouraging CSR that privileges the beneficiary’s needs (Held, 2006). Depth interviews with 29 nonprofit representatives addressed scholarly gaps. Inductive analysis revealed that nonprofit practitioners describe good CSR as being concerned with themes related to trust, mutual concern, promoting human flourishing, and responsiveness to needs.

Whose responsibility? Connecting Organizational Transgressors with Government Regulating Institution • ZHUO CHEN, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Yi-Hui Huang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • This study examines the underlying logic of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT), i.e., the concept that organizational transgressors are independent from the broader “institution” of their environment. Based on analysis of a case of false medical advertising (the Baidu-Wei Zexi case), our study contends that the responsibility attributed subject of a crisis should be extended from the corporate transgressor (Baidu and the hospital involved) to an institutional subject— the government regulating institution. Accordingly, we believe that the intensifying factors (consistency and distinctiveness) and consequential factors (affective and behavioral) should be modified. Using structural equation modeling (SEM) analysis, the empirical findings support this argument; for example, attributing responsibility to the government regulating institution rather than to a corporate transgressor can provide a more powerful predictor of activist action. Similarly, negative emotion about corporate transgressors can damage affective attitudes towards the government regulating institution. All in all, this study expands the theoretical scope of attributed subjects in SCCT—linking corporate wrongdoers to their government regulating institution. Thus, our study calls for revisiting the underlying logic of SCCT and contends that a corporate actor is indeed intertwined with the broader institution.

President Donald Trump Meets HBCU Presidents: A Public Relations Post-Mortem • George Daniels, The University of Alabama; Keonte Coleman • When President Donald Trump welcomed more than 60 presidents of the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) to the Oval Office for a photo opportunity in February 2017, he made history in the size of the crowd in his office. A textual analysis of 44 news articles and 22 statements of the HBCU presidents shows national media played up controversies while local media gave the HBCU leaders an opportunity to advocate for more resources.

Linking SNS and Government-Citizen Relationships: Interactivity, Personification, and Institutional Proximity • Chuqing Dong; Hyejoon Rim, University of Minnesota • Recent years have seen an increasing adoption of social network sites (SNS) in governments at all levels, but limited research examined the effectiveness of the government using SNS that may differ by institutional proximities (e.g., federal, state, and local). To fill the gap, the study explored the interactive and interpersonal approaches of relationship management in the context of government SNS communication. Specifically, two experiments were employed to examine the effects of interactivity, organizational characters, and institutional proximity in predicting the public’s perceived government transparency, engagement intention with government SNS, and trust in government. The study found that agencies at the state and local levels would benefit to different degrees in the government-citizen relationship quality based on the two communication strategies. Moreover, the results encouraged authorities to embrace SNS as a relationship-building tool by replying more to individual citizens’ comments, use a personal tone in conversations, and post more of citizen-oriented contents instead of organization-centered information. Theoretical and practical contributions are discussed in the context of the Organization-Public Relationships (OPR) in the public sector.

Using Real and Fictitious Companies to Examine Reputation and News Judgments in Press Release Usage • Kirstie Hettinga, California Lutheran University; Melanie Formentin, Towson University • This study uses an experimental design to explore working journalists’ (N = 253) willingness to use or reference press releases that contain typos. The authors explore whether company reputation can overcome errors. The use of both real and fictitious companies yielded interesting findings for future public relations research. The reputations of existing companies, Starbucks and Dunkin’ Donuts, were rated more favorably than a fake company, and press release judgments most strongly predicted potential usage.

CSR, Hybrid, or Ability Frames: Examining How Story Frames Impact Stakeholders’ Perceptions • Michel Haigh, Texas State University; Frank Dardis, Penn State University; Holly Ott, University of South Carolina; Erica Bailey, Penn State University • This study examines the impact of corporate social responsibility messaging strategies and messages frames on stakeholders’ perceptions of organizations through a 3 (ability/CSR/hybrid) x 2 (thematic/episodic) online experiment. Results indicated that corporate social responsibility and hybrid strategies perform significantly better than the ability strategy when thematic framing is employed, but that the ability strategy performs well in the episodic-framing condition. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Is social media worth of investment? Seeking relationship between social-mediated stakeholder engagement and nonprofit public donation–a big data approach • Grace Ji; Don Stacks • The majority of investigations in nonprofit public relations have been continuously studying how and whether nonprofit organizations (NPOs) can maximize the full potentials of social media to engage stakeholders online. Yet few have questioned if social media-based stakeholder engagement can impact organizational outcomes that happen both on and offline, such as public donation. Taking the stakeholders’ perceptive, this study attempts to examine the effect of Facebook-based stakeholder engagement with NPOs on organizations’ fundraising success. Using Ordinary Least Square estimation method with lagged variables, the authors modeled nine-year longitudinal social media and financial penal data from the largest 100 NPOs in the United States. Results suggest that not all stakeholder engagements are significant predicators for charitable donation. Only liking and commenting engagement behaviors are positively associated with public donation, but sharing behavior does not improve fundraising success. More interestingly, over posting could associate with a decrease in public donation. The findings bring new empirical insights to existing literature and also practical implications to non-profit public relations professionals.

An Examination of Social Media from an Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) Perspective in Global & Regional Organizations • Hua Jiang; Marlene Neill, Baylor University • Communication executives perceive internal social media as a channel that should be integrated and consistent with other communication messages, and also understand the necessity of coordinating with other communication disciplines. Through in-depth interviews with 28 internal and social media communication executives working in the United States, we found evidence of both true collaboration and functional silos. We also examined social media policies and resources provided to empower employees as social media ambassadors. Implications and recommendations were discussed.

The Rashomon Effect of an Air Crash: Examining the Narrative Battle over the Smolensk Disaster • Liudmila Khalitova, University of Florida; Barbara Myslik, University of Florida; Agnieszka Turska-Kawa, University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland; Sofiya Tarasevich, University of Florida; Spiro Kiousis, University of Florida • The study explores the agenda-building efforts by Russian and Polish governments in shaping international news coverage of the airplane crash near Smolensk, Russia, which killed the Polish President. Compared to the two governments’ public relations messages, Polish and Russian news outlets played a more significant role as their countries’ advocates in determining the international media agenda. Moreover, the Russian media seemed more influential than the Polish outlets in shaping the international narrative about the crash.

Growth of Public Relations Research Networks: A Bibliometric Analysis • Eyun-Jung Ki, University of Alabama; Yorgo Pasadeos, University of Alabama; Tugce Ertem Eray, University of Oregon • This research reports on a 6-year citation study of published scholarly research in public relations between 2010 and 2015 in comparison with Pasadeos, Berger, and Renfro (2010) and Pasadeos, Renfro and Hanily’s (1999) works, which examined the literature’s most-cited works in the 2000s and 1990s respectively and identified a research network. Like the two earlier studies, this study identifies current authors and their publication outlets, taxonomizes most-cited works, and draws a co-citation network. Comparing the current study’s findings with those of ten and twenty years earlier helps us understand how the field has evolved as a scholarly discipline and offers future directions for study.

Enhancing Employee Sensemaking and Sensegiving Communication Behaviors in Crisis Situations: Strategic Management Approach for Effective Internal Crisis Communication • Young Kim, Marquette University • Understanding employees and their communication behaviors is essential for effective crisis communication. Such an internal aspect of crisis communication, however, has been undervalued, and the need for research has been recently growing. To fill the research gap, the aim of this research is to explore effective internal crisis communication within the strategic management approach, considering employee communication behaviors for sensemaking and sensegiving and their antecedents. A nationwide survey in the U.S. was conducted among full-time employees (N =544). This study found that two-way symmetrical communication and transparent communication were positively strong antecedents of employee communication behaviors for sensemaking and sensegiving in crisis situations, controlling for other effects.

Bless or Curse: How Chinese Strategic Communication Practitioners Use Social Media in Crisis Communication • Sining Kong; Huan Chen, University of Florida • This paper aims to examine how Chinese strategic communication practitioners use social media in crisis communication. In-depth interview was used to collect data from twenty Chinese strategic communication practitioners, who have experience in dealing with crises and issues via social media. A model was advanced and depicted how to use social media to monitor and respond to crises, and how to use social media, especially the live broadcast, to mitigate publics’ negative emotions to rebuild positive relationship with publics.

Unpacking the Effects of Gender Discrimination in the Corporate Workplace on Consumers’ Affective Responses and Relational Perceptions • Arunima Krishna, Boston University; Soojin Kim, Singapore Management University • The purpose of this study was to investigate (a) how allegations of gender discrimination impact consumers’ relationship with the brand in question, and (b) individual-level factors that impact consumers’ negative affective response to the allegations and eventually, consumer-brand relationships. Findings from a survey conducted among U.S. Americans indicate that individuals’ relational perceptions with a corporate brand whose products/services they consume are negatively affected by allegations of misconduct, in this case, gender discrimination. Results revealed that individuals’ moral orientation and anti-corporate sentiment predicted their perceptions of moral inequity of corporate behavior, which in turn impacted their negative affective response to the allegations. Such negative affective response then impacted individuals’ consumer-corporate brand relationships. Theoretical and practical implications of this work are discussed (120 words).

Crisis Information Seeking and Sharing (CISS): Scale Development for Measuring Publics’ Communicative Behavior in Social-Mediated Public Health Crises • Yen-I Lee, University of Georgia; Yan Jin, University of Georgia • Although publics’ information seeking and sharing behaviors have gained increasing importance in crisis communication research, consistent conceptualization and reliable scales for measuring these two types of communicative behavior, especially in social-mediated crises, are lacking. With a focus on public health crisis situations, this study first refined the conceptual framework of publics’ communicative behavior in social-mediated health crises. Then two multiple-item scales for measuring publics’ crisis information seeking and sharing (CISS) in public health crises were developed and tested by employing online survey dataset from a random national sample of 559 adults in the United States. Results indicate that there are eight types of crisis information seeking behavior and 18 types of crisis information sharing behavior, online and offline, crossing over platforms, channels and information sources. The two CISS scales reveal underlying processes of publics’ communicative behavior and provide a valid and reliable psychometric tool for public relations researchers and crisis communication managers to measure publics’ information seeking and sharing activities in social-mediated public health crisis communication.

Enhancing Empowerment and Building Relationships via Social Media Engagement: A Study of Facebook Use in the U.S. Airline Industry • Zhiren Li, University of Florida; Rita Linjuan Men, University of Florida • Born in the Web 2.0 era, social media platforms have altered the way people communicate and collaborate with others and with organizations. This study uses Facebook to examine the U.S. airline companies’social media engagement with their consumers. By conducting a web-based quantitative survey, our findings suggest that social media engagement in the U.S. airline industry has a positive influence on airline-customer relationships. Social media empowerment also mediates the effect of social media engagement on overall organization-public relationships. However, the results of our findings differ somewhat from previous studies, hence, we call for further research on social media engagement and organization-public relationships.

Is Experience in Fact the Best Teacher? Learning in Crisis Communication • Clila Magen, Bar Ilan University • The following study deals with the crisis communication learning process of organizations in the private sector. It indicates that if there is any crisis communication improvement it is primarily on the exterior layer. In the cases analyzed in the study, very few profound changes were apparent when the organizations faced recurring crises. Despite the promising potential which lies within the Chaos Theory for crisis communication, the research demonstrates that a crisis will not necessarily lead to self-organizing processes which push the organization to improvement and advancement.

How Should Organizations Communicate with Mobile Publics on Social Messengers: An Empirical Study of WeChat • Rita Linjuan Men, University of Florida; sunny tsai, university of miami • Mobile-based social messengers are overtaking social networking sites as the new frontier for organizations to engage online stakeholders. This study provides one of the earliest empirical studies to understand how organizations should communicate with mobile publics to enhance public engagement and improve organization-public relationships. This study focuses on WeChat—one of the world’s most popular social messaging apps. Organizations’ information dissemination, interpersonal communication, and two-way symmetrical communication are found to effectively drive public engagement, which in turn enhances relation outcomes. Strategic guidelines based on the study findings are provided.

Crisis Management Expert: Elements and Principles for Measuring Expert Performance • Tham Nguyen, University of Oklahoma; Jocelyn Pedersen, University of Oklahoma • Crisis management or crisis communication has become an important research area and recommended course for college students studying public relations and communication. Yet, it takes time for students or average professionals to transfer knowledge into practice in order to be considered an expert in the field. In a study of twenty-five in-depth interviews with Belgian crisis communication practitioners, Claeys and Opgenhaffen (2016) found that practitioners relied mainly on experience, scientific research, gut feelings and intuition rather than theories to respond to a crisis. This study also noted that decision-making about crisis communication depends on the circumstances, particularly, when the crisis involves potential legal issues or when it threatens to damage an organization’s reputation and its many important relationships. Organizational decision makers sometimes call on experts to help them reduce the uncertainty and ambiguity of the situation they face. Yet, when is it appropriate to call an expert in a crisis situation? And how can decision makers gain the most from what a crisis management expert can offer? By reviewing literature in crisis management and expert performance, this conceptual paper discusses what experts and decision makers are, the relationship between crisis experts and decision makers, and it outlines elements and principles to consider in developing a measurement system for expert performance. In addition, the paper proposes a general model for crisis management expert performance. Concluding thoughts will provide suggestions about what to consider before calling a crisis management expert and what decision makers should expect from crisis experts.

A Qualitative Analysis of How People Assess the Credibility of Sources Used by Public Relations Practitioners • Julie O’Neil, Texas Christian University; Marianne Eisenmann, inVentiv Health; Maggie Holman, Texas Christian University • This study examined how people assess the credibility of sources used commonly by public relations practitioners—earned news stories, traditional advertisements, native advertisements, independent blogs and corporate blogs. Researchers conducted five groups with 46 participants and implemented a survey with 1,500 participants recruited from a consumer panel. Participants view earned media stories as the most credible. Regardless of source utilized, people value strong writing, copious facts and balanced perspectives when processing public relations messaging.

Examining the role of Culture in Shaping Public Expectations of CSR Communication in the United States and China • Holly Ott, University of South Carolina; Anli Xiao, the Pennsylvania State University • This study examines the role of culture in shaping publics’ expectations for CSR communication through survey research in the United States (N = 316) and China (N = 315). Results highlight differences in each public’s expectations of what and how companies should communicate CSR. Among Hofstede’s cultural dimensions, uncertainty avoidance and masculinity are identified as the strongest predictors for CSR variables. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Where are the women? An examination of the status of research on women and leadership in public relations • Katie Place, Quinnipiac University; Jennifer Vardeman-Winter, Univ. of Houston • Despite evidence that there are no significant differences in leadership ability among women and men in public relations, women are still largely absent from leadership and senior management positions. Furthermore, very few studies about leadership in public relations have considered the affect gender has on leadership enactment and success. Therefore, this secondary analysis examined the state of women and gender scholarship about leadership in public relations as part of a larger study about the state of women in the communication discipline. Specifically, our research found that the majority of the research about leadership and gender highlights women’s lackluster leadership presence, factors contributing to women’s lack of presence, leadership styles and preferences, and leadership and management roles of women. This manuscript provides recommendations for improving women’s presence in leadership roles, particularly in providing a roadmap for future research opportunities. These include considerations for methodological approaches, leadership approaches and roles research, types of leadership, cultural change, and education.

Changing the Story: Implications of Narrative on Teacher Identity • Geah Pressgrove; Melissa Janoske, University of Memphis; Stephanie Madden, University of Memphis • This study takes a qualitative approach to understanding the connections between narrative, professional identity and reputation management in public education. Central to the findings are the factors that have led to a reputation crisis for the profession of teaching and thus contribute to the national teacher shortage. Ultimately, this study points to the notion that increasing retention and recruitment can be effected when narratives are understood and the principles of reputation management are applied.

Spokesperson is a four-letter word: Public relations, regulation, and power in Occupy New York • Camille Reyes, Trinity University • “This case study analyzes interviews with members of the press relations working group of Occupy Wall Street in New York. Using critical cultural theory as well as history, the group’s media relations tactics are discussed with an emphasis on the role of spokesperson, revealing contested meanings about public relations work in the context of a social movement. The moments of regulation and production in the circuit of culture explain the constraints experienced by many of these activist practitioners as they navigate the horizontal structure/ideal of their movement with hierarchical norms of more institutional public relations practices—creating a paradox of sorts. How does one defy the status quo when seeking to engage with a mainstream media system that—to their eyes—is co-opted by the wealthy elite, while using tactics that are seen as equally problematic? Historical analysis lends a comparative frame through which to view a critical cultural interpretation of public relations in an understudied context.

Distal Antecedents of Organization-Public Relationships: The Influence of Motives and Perceived Issue and Value Congruence • Trent Seltzer, Texas Tech University College of Media & Communication; Nicole Lee • Using an online survey of 514 US adults, this study identified which relational antecedents motivated individuals to enter organization-public relationships (OPRs) across a variety of organization types. Additionally, we examined the relative influence of motives, perceived issue congruence, and perceive value congruence on OPR perceptions. Findings suggest social/cultural expectations and risk reduction are the primary motives influencing perceptions of OPRs; however, perceived issue and value congruence with the organization are more influential antecedents than motives.

Does an Organization’s CSR Association affect the Perception of Communication Efforts? • Kang Hoon Sung, Cal Poly Pomona • Organizations often utilize interpersonal communications tactics on social media such as responding to customer comments or adopting a human conversational voice for better evaluations. Past studies have shown that these interpersonal communication tactics could indeed lead to positive outcomes and give the organization a more human and sincere face. The study examined whether the organization’s perceived CSR associations could have an influence in this process. Grounded in prior research on suspicion and organization’s personality dimensions, the current study investigated the influence of organization’s prior CSR associations on the organization’s interpersonal communication efforts that are associated with increasing the sincerity personality dimension (e.g., increased interaction, enhanced conversational tone). The results of the online experiment revealed that CSR activities significantly increased the organization’s perceived sincerity personality dimension and decreased suspicions about motives of the organization’s communication efforts. The mediation analysis suggests that less suspicion leads to more perceived sincerity toward organization, eventually leading to increased relationship quality.

The ‘New York World,’ Byron C. Utecht, and Pancho Villa’s Public Relations Campaign • Michael Sweeney, Ohio University; Young Joon Lim, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley • This paper attempts to assess Francisco “Pancho” Villa not as a general or quasi-politician, but rather as a practitioner of public relations. It investigates, by close observation of his actions and words, his strategy and tactics to build support among three specifically targeted audiences: the people of Mexico, American war correspondents, and the people of the United States. This paper examines secondary literature about public relations and about Pancho Villa’s life for evidence of his practicing public relations as we understand it today. Supplementing this literature review are primary documents from the archives of Byron C. Utecht at the University of Texas at Arlington. Utecht’s collection consists of his original photographs of his travels in Mexico on behalf of the New York World; telegrams to and from the World; typewritten notes and stories; clippings of his articles in the World and the clients of its wire service; and published interviews with Utecht about his trips into Mexico both as a lone journalist and as an accredited correspondent. It seeks to answer the key question: How did Villa practice public relations?

Ten years after The Professional Bond: Has the academy answered the call in pedagogical research? • Amanda Weed, Ashland University • CPRE is scheduled to release its next report of the status of public relations education in September of 2017. In anticipation of the report, this research seeks to determine if the academy has answered the call of The Professional Bond through an examination of pedagogical research published from 2007 to 2016 in four academic journals including the Journal of Advertising Education, the Journalism & Mass Communication Education, the Journal of Public Relations Education, and Public Relations Review. By conducting a meta-analysis of published research through a content analysis of article types, themes, and topics, this research determined that pedagogical research in public relations is lacking, especially among the topics specifically addressed in The Professional Bond.

The Role of Dissatisfaction in the Relationship Between Consumer Empowerment and Their Complaining Behavioral Intentions • Hao Xu, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities; Jennifer Ball, Temple University • This experimental study examined the mechanism of how consumer complaining behavioral intentions are driven by social media empowerment, and the role of dissatisfaction in this mechanism. The results revealed that dissatisfaction has both mediating and moderating effects in the relationship between consumer empowerment and some of the specific complaining behavioral intentions. Both theoretical and practical implications in terms of the dynamics of consumer dissatisfaction and power-induced complaining intentions were discussed.

Partisan News Media and China’s Country Image: An Online Experiment based on Heuristic-Systematic Model • Chen Yang, University of Houston – Victoria; Gi Woong Yun, University of Nevada, Reno • Based on Heuristic-Systematic Model, this research used a 2×2 pretest-posttest experimental design to measure China’s image after participants’ exposure to the news stimuli about China from a partisan media website. Two manipulated factors were media partisanship (congruent or incongruent partisan media) and news slant (positive or negative coverage of China). The results did not demonstrate any priming effect of news coverage. However, media partisanship had a significant influence on country beliefs. Significant interaction effects on country beliefs and desired interaction were also found.

NGOs’ humanitarian advocacy in the 2015 refugee crisis: A study of agenda building in the digital age • Aimei Yang, University of Southern California; Adam Saffer • In the 2015 European refugee crisis, humanitarian NGOs offered help and actively advocated for millions of refugees. The current study aims to understand what communication strategies are most effective for humanitarian NGOs to influence media coverage and publics’ social media conversations about the crisis. Our findings reveal that agenda building on traditional media and in social media conversations require different strategies. Specifically, although providing information subsidies could powerfully influence traditional media coverage, its effect waned in the context of social media conversations. In contrast, NGOs’ hyperlink network positions emerged as the one of the most influential predictor for NGOs’ prominence in social media conversations. Moreover, stakeholder engagement could influence agenda-building both in traditional media coverage and social media conversations. Finally, organizational resources and characteristics are important factors as well. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Using Facebook efficiently: Assessing the impact of organizational Facebook activities on organizational reputation • Lan Ye, State University of New York at Cortland; Yunjae Cheong, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies • This study analyzed 22 companies’ efficiency of using Facebook in reputation management by using data envelopment analysis (DEA). Results reveal that overall, the efficient companies (n =8) posted less frequently than did the inefficient companies (n = 14); companies receiving more engagements were more efficient than those receiving fewer engagements; and companies adopting one main Facebook Page were more efficient than those adopting multiple Facebook Pages. Size and length of history of an organization were not found to affect efficiency outcomes significantly.

The Effects of Behavioral Recommendations in Crisis Response and Crisis Threat on Stakeholders’ Behavioral Intention Outcomes • Xiaochen Zhang, Kansas State University; Jonathan Borden, Syracuse University • This experiment investigates the intersection between crisis threat, self-efficacy, affect and organizational messaging strategies on stakeholder behavioral outcomes in crises. Behavioral recommendations in crisis messages affected stakeholders’ behavioral outcomes through self-efficacy. Negative emotions also mediated behavioral recommendation and threat’s influence on stakeholders’ behavioral outcomes. Results imply that the extended parallel process model has significant implications for crisis management, however increases in stakeholder self-protective behaviors come at the expense of organizational reputation.

Issues Management as a Proactive Approach to Crisis Communication: Publics’ Cognitive Dissonance in Times of Issue-Related Crisis • Xiaochen Zhang, Kansas State University • Through an experiment, this study examines effects of issues management (issues attribution framing) on publics’ response to issue-related crisis. In Coca-Cola and obesity crisis’s case, public-organization identification and issues involvement were identified as predictors of blame, corporate evaluation, and purchase intentions. Results indicated that high identification and high issue involvement publics may experience cognitive dissonance and are more likely to support the organization under the external attribution frame (framing the obesity issue as personal responsibility).

STUDENT
The First Generation: Lessons from the public relations industry’s first university-trained social media practitioners • Luke Capizzo, University of Maryland • Public relations educators are grappling with the best methods to prepare undergraduates for the constantly shifting world of social media practice. The recent graduates (2011-2016) interviewed for this study constitute the first generation of practitioners with robust, formal social media training. Their experiences in school and in the workforce reinforce some current best practices—such as the value of internship experiences, the resonance of case studies, and the importance of excellent writing skills—but also point toward the need for increased emphasis on strategic social media, brand writing, visual communication, and the continued importance of a deeply integrated curriculum. Using social cognitive theory as a guiding framework, this study examines the salience of observational learning, behavior modeling, and self efficacy for building pedagogical theory for the social media classroom.

Unearthing the Facets of Crisis History in Crisis Communication: Testing A Conceptual Framework • LaShonda Eaddy, The University of Georgia • Coombs’s (2004) Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) identifies performance history, which includes crisis history and relationship history, as an intensifier of attribution of responsibility during crises. The proposed model examines crisis history and its possible roles among various stakeholder groups as well as possible impact on organizational control, crisis emotion and crisis responsibility. The study also offers a crisis history salience scale that was developed based on a thorough literature review as well as in-depth interviews with public relations practitioners, public relations scholars, journalists, and the general public. The crisis history salience scale can assist crisis communicators consider the multiple facets of crisis history during their crisis communication planning and implementation.

Dominant coalition perceptions in health-oriented, non-profit public relations • Torie Fowler, University of Southern Mississippi • Unlike many departments within an organization, public relations is often faced with the task of proving their importance to the dominant coalition. In health-oriented, non-profit organizations, leaders may find it hard to prove their value when patients, research, or life-saving technology takes precedent. This study examined the perceptions of public relations leaders in this specific field regarding their inclusion in the dominant coalition, how they are able to influence decision-making in their organization, and what barriers could keep leaders from obtaining membership into the coalition. This qualitative study included nine in-depth interviews, where four of the nine participants, perceived they were included in the dominant coalition of their organization. Several themes were identified when participants were asked how they were able to influence decision-making, such as: being included early, having credibility, practicing proactive public relations, and devising a strategic plan. Although less than half of the participants believed they were included in the dominant coalition, all of them thought they could influence the decisions made by the dominant coalition in some capacity. There were two consistent barriers to inclusion: a misunderstanding of public relations and an uneducated or inexperienced practitioner. This study contributes to the body of knowledge about public relations by bringing additional insight into how health-oriented, non-profit public relations leaders perceive that they are able to influence decision-making of the dominant coalition. The study also shows how current literature about public relations inclusion in the dominant coalition does not align with actuality for this group of leaders.

Constructing Trust and Confidence amid Crisis in the Digital Era • Jiankun Guo • Using a hypothetical food-poisoning crisis on campus, this qualitative research explored college students’ construction of trust and confidence online/offline via in-depth interviews. It applied the Trust, Confidence, and Cooperation (TCC) Model as a conceptual lens, but added new insights pertaining to the altering media landscape. Results showed that students constructed trust/confidence online according to a variety of factors (message features, sources, sites, and targets), but virtually all of them valued offline “facetime” due to its ability to convey emotional cues. Multimedia, therefore, offered an advantage in offering emotional reassurances via online channels. Participants also viewed trust-/confidence-building from the authority as a fluid process accumulated slowly overtime, regardless of channels. This study contributes to crisis communication scholarship in the digital era, particularly with an aim to facilitate community resilience.

Understanding the Donor Experience: Applying Stewardship Theory to Higher Education Donors • Virginia Harrison, The Pennsylvania State University • This study examines how stewardship strategies and involvement impact organization-public relationship outcomes for higher education donors at three different levels of giving. Findings suggest that stewardship strategies positively predict OPR outcomes, and that donors at different giving levels experience stewardship strategies and OPR outcomes differently. Also, findings reveal that stewardship may include only three strategies. Involvement only slightly moderates the relationship between stewardship and OPR outcomes. Implications for fundraising practice and theory are made.

Stakeholder relationship building in response to corporate ethical crisis : A semantic network analysis of sustainability reports • Keonyoung Park; Hyejin Kim, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • This study explored how a corporation’s ethical crisis affects the way of sustainability reporting as a crisis communication tool. Especially, this study sheds light on the relationship building with stakeholders after the ethical crisis. To do so, we examined the Korean Air’s sustainability annual reports (SAR) before and after the ‘Nut Rage’ incident using a series of semantic networking analyses. Asiana Airline’s SARs before and after the crash at the San Francisco International Airport were also analyzed to find distinctive characteristics of the ethical crisis. The result suggested that the Korean Air’s SAR seemed to show the importance of relationship with stakeholders after the ethical crisis, while there was no meaningful change after the non-ethical crisis of Asiana Airlines. The results were discussed in relation to the situational crisis communication theory.

What Did You Expect? How Brand Personality Types and Transgression Types Shape Consumers’ Response in a Brand Crisis • Soyoung Lee, The University of Texas at Austin; Ji Mi Hong; Hyunsang Son • The current research examined how different types of brand personality play a role to develop a specific consumers’ expectation toward a brand, and how this expectation works in various ways in different types of brand transgressions. Based on expectancy violation theory and brand transgression research, a 2 (brand personality types: sincerity vs. competence) × 2 (brand transgression types: morality-related vs. competence-related transgression) factorial design was employed. Corporate evaluations and purchase intention toward the brand were considered as dependent variables. The results revealed that a brand having a sincerity personality is more vulnerable to a morality-related transgression. However, there is no difference in consumers’ responses by transgression type for a brand with a competence personality. Findings showed that brand personality types and transgression types can be critical factors to influence consumers’ responses in times of crisis. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.

What Makes Employees Stay Silent? The Role of Perceptions of Problem and Organization-Employee Relationship • Yeunjae Lee • This study aims to examine the impacts of individuals’ perceptions of problems and organization-employee relationship on employees’ silence intention during periods of an organizational issue. Using the situational theory of problem-solving (STOPS) and relational theory, this study intends to explore conceptual convergences by building linkages among issue-specific perceptions, relationship, and employee silence. An online survey was conducted for 412 full-time employees working in companies with more than 300 employees in the U.S. Results suggest that individuals’ perceived relationship is negatively related to their problem, constraint recognition, and silence intention, while it is positively related to involvement recognition. Perceptions of constraint recognition and less involvement to an organizational issue are associated with employee silence. Different impacts of individuals’ issue-specific perceptions and relationship were also examined for different types of silence—acquiescent, prosocial, and defensive silence. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

“Breaking the Silence”: Segmenting Asian Americans in the United States to Address Mental Health Problems in the Community • Jo-Yun Queenie Li • This article describes an exploratory study designed to investigate the applicability of cultural identity in public segmentation within a racial/ethnic population in order to address mental health issues in Asian community in the United States. Using a pilot survey of 58 Asian Americans, this research employs the acculturation theory and the situational theory of publics to explore individuals’ communication behavior related to mental health issues. By doing so, this study contributes to the (re)conceptualization and operationalization of cultural identity in intercultural public relations discipline and provides practical implications to organizations that target specific racial/ethnic groups. The findings show that Asian Americans who are more highly acculturated in the United States could be considered as the active publics. They may be helpful in spreading out information, reaching out potential publics, encouraging themselves and other members in the community who have suffered from mental health issues to utilize mental health services.

Pouring Water on Conservative Fire: Discourse of Renewal in Facebook’s Response to Allegations of Bias • Tyler G Page, University of Maryland • Using Facebook’s 2016 trending topics crisis, this study applies the message convergence framework and discourse of renewal to analyze an organizational crisis response. The study reports a qualitative analysis of Facebook’s crisis response statements and a quantitative content analysis of 140 blog, magazine, and newspaper articles covering the crisis. Tone of news coverage improved when discourse of renewal strategy was covered and when media coverage included at least one quote from the organization.

Understanding Public Engagement in Sustainability Initiatives: The Situational Theory of Publics and the Theory of Reasoned Action Approaches • Soojin Roh, Syracuse University • In an attempt to extend the situational theory of publics, this study tested a public engagement model to explain how situational factors, subjective norm, and attitudes toward a sustainability initiative influence public’s communication action as well as different types of behavioral engagement intention. An online survey (N=502) was administered to test predictors of participation intent for recycling clothes campaigns and continuous public engagement with the sustainability cause. Structural equation modeling results indicate that problem recognition and constraint recognition are key predictors of information gaining (information seeking, sharing, and processing) and campaign participation intent. Subjective norms and positive attitude toward the campaign lead to the greater likelihood of participating in the campaign. The analysis also yielded a significant association between information gaining and public’s behavioral engagement including civic engagement, suggesting the mediating role of information gaining. Furthermore, the analysis showed a significant direct effect of involvement on civic engagement. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Understanding Public Engagement on Digital Media: Exploring Its Effects on Employee-Organization Relationships • Yuan Wang, The University of Alabama • This study examined the effects of employees’ organizational identification and engagement with mobile phones and social media on their relationships with the organization and positive word-of-mouth (WOM) communication through a web-based survey of employees via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Findings suggested that employees’ organizational identification significantly influenced their digital media engagement. This study also identified employees’ organizational identification and digital media engagement as new predictors of employee-organization relationships, which, furthermore, led to positive WOM communication.

Defining and Communicating Diversity: A Content Analysis of the Websites of the Top PR Agencies • Anli Xiao, the Pennsylvania State University; Jinyoung Kim; Wunpini Mohammed; Hilton Erica; Colleen Pease • “This paper examines how top PR agencies define diversity, how they express diversity identities and communicate diversity values to prospective employees and clients. Through a content analysis of top PR agencies’ websites, this study finds PR agencies’ defined diversity narrowly and they showed limited efforts in communicating diversity values to future employees and clients. Agency ranking significantly correlated with some diversity efforts communicated. Implications are discussed.

TEACHING
Experiential Learning and Crisis Simulations: Leadership, Decision Making, and Communication Competencies • Hilary Fussell Sisco, Quinnipiac University; John Brummette; Laura Willis, Quinnipiac University; Michael Palenchar, University of Tennesseee • Students benefit from simulation exercises that require them to apply public relations research and theories. Using an experimental learning approach (N=16), this present paper assesses the effectiveness of a crisis simulation exercise using a pre-test/post-test evaluation. Findings suggest that crisis simulation exercises can prepare future practitioners by providing them practices in discipline-centric experiences that also bolster their personal professional development in the areas of leadership, decision making and communication competency.

One Liners and Catchy Hashtags: Building a Graduate Student Community Through Twitter Chats • Melissa Janoske, University of Memphis; Robert Byrd, University of Memphis; Stephanie Madden, University of Memphis • This study takes a mixed-methods approach to understanding how graduate student education and engagement are intertwined, and the ability of an ongoing Twitter chat to increase both. Analysis includes the chats themselves, a mixed-methods survey to chat participants, and memoing completed by the researchers (also faculty chat participants and the chat moderator). Key findings include the importance of building both online and offline connections, the ability of Twitter chats to increase fun and reduce stress, and to gain both tacit and explicit knowledge. Finally, the project offers practical suggestions for those looking to start their own chat series.

Millennial Learners and Faculty Credibility: Exploring the Mediating Role of Out-Of-Class Communication • Carolyn Kim • Every generation experiences distinct events and develops unique values. The Millennial generation is no exception. As Millennial Learners enter classrooms, they bring with them new views about education, learning and faculty/student communication. All of this blends together to influence their perspectives of faculty credibility. This study explores the mediating role of out-of-class communication (OCC) in relation to the historical dimensions known to compose faculty credibility.

Examination of Continuous Response Assessment of Communication Course Presentation Competency • Geoffrey Graybeal, Texas Tech University; Jobi Martinez, Texas Tech University • This study examined the use of continuous response (dial test) technology as a means of providing feedback to improve formal presentations required to meet learning objectives in college communication courses and a variety of assessment strategies utilized in the assignment. Findings suggest that use of video assessment and a student self-assessment have the greatest impact on final presentation performance and that the first dial test pitch should not be graded.

Competition and Public Relations Campaigns: Assessing the Impact of Competition on Projects, Partners, and Students • Chris McCollough, Columbus State University • Scholars in public relations pedagogy have provided a strong body of research on the impact of service learning, community partnerships (Daugherty, 2003), and applied learning in general on campaigns, writing, and production courses common to the public relations curriculum (Wandel, 2005). Rarely explored, however, is the impact of competition among student groups within a public relations course on the quality of campaigns, student experience, client satisfaction, and achievement of learning outcomes (Rentner, 2012). The paper will present a comparative analysis of campaign courses that employed competitive and non-competitive campaign course models to demonstrate the impact of incorporating competition within public relations courses.

Integrating Web and Social Analytics into Public Relations Research Course Design: A Longitudinal Pedagogical Research on Google Analytics Certification • Juan Meng, University of Georgia; Yan Jin; Yen-I Lee, University of Georgia; Solyee Kim, University of Georgia • This longitudinal pedagogical research contributes with integrating web and social analytics-based activities into the Public Relations Research course design. Results from the pre- and post-tests confirmed that students’ knowledge on web and social analytics is low but desire to learn is high. Consistent patterns on learning outcomes suggest more experience-based learning activities are needed to leverage the practical implications of web and social analytics in public relations research and practice. More pedagogical recommendations are discussed.

Media Relations Instruction and Theory Development: Relational Dialectical Approach • Justin Pettigrew, Kennesaw State University • There has been almost no research in the area of media relations or media relations instruction in the public relations literature. This study seeks to fill a gap in theory-building in the area of media relations and examines the state of media relations instruction in today’s public relations curriculum through a survey of public relations professors. The author suggests relational dialectical theory as a way to better understand the relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists, and proposes a relational dialectical approach to theory building and in teaching media relations in today’s changing landscape.

Developing a Blueprint for Social Media Pedagogy: Trials, Tribulations, and Best Practices • ai zhang, Stockton University; Karen Freberg, University of Louisville • Social media research, and particularly social media pedagogy, has increased substantially as a domain in public relations research. Yet, along with this increased focus on social media pedagogy, educators and other higher education professionals are under pressure from industry, professional communities, and university administrations to keeping their classes updated and relevant for their students. To better understand the current state and rising expectations facing educators teaching social media, this study interviewed 31 social media professors to explore the trials and tribulations of their journey and to identify best practices of social media as a pedagogical tool. The study also suggested a blueprint for implementing social media pedagogy in the classroom. Future implications for both research and practice are also discussed.

DOUG NEWSOM AWARD FOR GLOBAL ETHICS GLOBAL DIVERSITY
An Exploratory Study of Transformed Media Relations Dimensions After the Implementation of an Anti-graft Law • Soo-Yeon Kim, Sogang University; JOOHYUN HEO • The Improper Solicitation and Graft Act, which went into effect on September 28, 2016, strictly prohibits gift-giving to journalists, thereby making a traditional media relations practice in Korea illegal. A survey of 342 public relations practitioners revealed that providing monetary gifts, performing formal responsibility, building informal relationships, getting paid media coverage, and taking informal support were found to be significant subdimensions of media relations. After implementation of the anti-graft law, public relations practitioners expressed a belief that the practice of providing monetary gifts will shrink the most and performing formal responsibility would experience the most growth. The formal responsibility factor was significantly positively related to support for the new law and public relations ethics, while taking informal support was negatively linked to public relations ethics. Getting paid media coverage showed the most significant positive relationship with difficulties of effective media relations.

MUSEUM OF PUBLIC RELATIONS PR HISTORY AWARD
Raymond Simon: PR Educational Pioneer • Patricia Swann, Utica College • Raymond Simon, professor emeritus of public relations at Utica College, whose teaching career spanned nearly four decades, was among PRWeek’s 100 most influential 20th century people in public relations. Simon’s contributions to education include developing one of the first full-fledged public relations undergraduate curriculums; authoring the first public relations-specific classroom textbooks for writing and case studies, in addition to a textbook for the principles course; and developing student potential through national student organizations and mentoring.

2017 ABSTRACTS