Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender & Queer Interest Group

Investigating Sexual Racism and Interactions of Grindr App Users • Ming Wei Ang; Justin Tan • This research explores racialized sexual desires of Grindr users in Singapore through 24 semi-structured interviews. Specific to this context, we found a strict racial hierarchy where Chinese users are preferred over Malays and Indians, sustained by the preoccupation with verifying other users’ races, primarily through photos. This adds a previously unexplored dimension of how technical features structure user interactions. We also extend sexual fields theory by showing how minorities challenge the hierarchy within the field.

* Extended Abstract * Amplifying and signal boosting: How transgender engage the politics of voice and listening • Erica Ciszek; Paxton Haven, University of Texas at Austin; Nneka Logan • This paper examines the concepts of amplification and signal boosting by transgender communicators. Through in-depth interviews, we explore the experiences of transgender communicators to elicit how their lives and narratives of the world are made visible to, and demand attention from, others. This study considers the implications of these communication strategies in contemporary representations across a range of organizational contexts.

“I could NOT relate more:” An in-depth analysis of #growingupgay on Twitter • Lyric Mandell, University of Houston; Alysson Romo, University of Houston • This study employs a mixed methodology, specifically thematic and content analysis to uncover how users utilize the hashtag #growingupgay to reference identities and impression management within the LGBTQ+ community; the degree to which users of the hashtag #growingupgay reference heteronormative stereotypes about the LGBTQ+ community; and uncover the most prevalent tones of voice within the hashtag. This study falls within the literature regarding impression management of stigmatized and stereotyped identities within the queer theory and social identity theory theoretical framework.

Impacts of the 2016 Presidential Elections on Transgender and Gender Diverse People • Sarah Price, University of Alabama; Jae Puckett, Michigan State University; Richard Mocarski, University of Nebraska at Kearney • Although some research has been done on the negative health impacts of the 2016 election on LGBTQ people (see Gonzalez et al,. 2018), to the authors’ knowledge little to no research has been done on the effects that the Trump’s election and anti-trans rhetoric has had specifically on TGD people. This study takes a qualitative approach, examining the daily ruminations of TGD people during the 2016 presidential election. From these ruminations, there are clear trends of anxiety and distress due to political events and rhetoric, specifically in relation to the cissexist actions of Trump and his (then upcoming) administration. Through the lens of marginalization stress, this study seeks to explore the manifestations of gender identity and stigmatization in relation to national political discourse.

No Fats, No Fems, No Asians • Andrew Kix Patterson, The University of Memphis • Self-discovery and identity are innate processes in the adolescence of LGBTQ+ youth. These youth depend on media such as television and social media to discover the culturally accepted norms of sexuality and gender identity. With this responsibility on media’s shoulders to provide an accurate and fair representation of minority groups such as the LGBTQ+, this study compares the casting, production and subsequent representation of queer characters in two MTV reality dating shows across two decades. This study investigates literature to find the possible misconceptions for queer and non-queer youth and adults and completes a qualitative content analysis of the shows in question to provide insight on the topic. Exploratory measures into the perpetuated stereotype of feminine, sexually promiscuous and conventionally attractive cis-gendered, gay men are used to understand the casting choices and the identity media are trying to portray.

Say their name: How the News Reports the Death of Transgender Individuals • Rachel Stark, The University of Memphis • Transgender individuals, especially transgender women of color, face the threat of violent death due to their gender identity. The misgendering of transgender individuals by news media and police may contribute to why the exact number of violent transgender death is unknown. This research used a qualitative content analysis of online news articles to explore how, if at all, journalists followed Associated Press Stylebook guidelines on reporting transgender individuals and the intersectionality of transnormative theory, misogynoir, bias, and structured reality in news media. Despite having clear guidelines by the Associated Press, nearly every news outlet misgendered or misrepresented transgender individuals. Journalists should consistently use the guidelines as outlined by the Associated Press to accurately describe transgender individuals, preform additional fact checking surrounding individuals’ deaths, and ensure that correct information about a person’s gender identity is published without connecting a person to their assigned name or gender at birth.

Mobilizing Social Capital Resources among Anti-Gay Marriage Civil Society Groups in Taiwan • Yowei Kang, National Taiwan Ocean University; Kenneth C. C. Yang, The University of Texas at El Paso • Homosexuality has long been a taboo in Taiwan where LGBTQ minority groups are often marginalized. Despite the landmark ruling by Taiwan’s Constitutional Court in 2017, the legalization of gay marriage has polarized its society and stirred strong objection of many anti-gay conservative and religious civil society groups. The strategic alliance of these pro-family religious groups to win a landslide majority in city and county representatives and three anti-LGBTQ referendums in the 2018 local election. Their victory has demonstrated how social capital resources can be mobilized through multi-platform technologies to accomplish the political agendas of civil society groups. This case study of four anti-LGBTQ groups attempts to provide a thorough discussion of how social capital resources can be mobilized through these media platforms to recruit supporters, change public opinions, accumulate financial resources, and obtain petitions for their anti-LGBTQ referendums before and during the 2018 elections. Discussions and implications are provided.

<2020 Abstracts

Law and Policy Division

Debut Faculty Paper Competition
Clinical Journalism Education: Legal and Ethical Implications of Faculty-Led Reporting Laboratories • Kathleen Culver, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Frank LoMonte • More U.S. journalism schools are launching, or becoming partners in, sophisticated news-gathering operations. Operating a news outlet within the confines of an educational institution presents unique challenges and unanswered questions. This research explores how journalism educators who lead courses that publish publicly conceptualize their roles with regard to legal and ethical issues. It covers the issues that most commonly confront these instructors and highlights concerns that educators may be overlooking.

A Public Good: Can Government Really Save the Press? • Patrick Walters, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania • This paper examines calls over the past decade for increased public investment in the floundering U.S. news industry (for example, McChesney & Nichols, 2010; Pickard, 2020). The paper uses both a First Amendment theoretical perspective and a political economy lens to examine the feasibility of such public solutions. It argues that, while the need for such investment is even more dire today, current political and economic realities make such a solution little more than fantasy.

Open Competition
Right to Know About the Right to Stay: Access to Information About American Immigration Courts • Jonathan Anderson, University of Minnesota • This paper reports the results of an analysis of FOIA logs from immigration courts in the United States. Two primary questions were asked: What are the characteristics of FOIA requests for immigration court records? To what extent do journalists use FOIA to gather information about immigration courts and cases? The study estimates that lawyers were the most active requesters, followed by journalists. The findings also shed light on how journalists use FOIA.

Policy Liberalism and Access to Information in the American States • Jonathan Anderson, University of Minnesota; David Pritchard, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee • In theory, access to information is neither liberal nor conservative. This study empirically tests that assumption and finds that in practice legal rights of access to public records tend to be greater in states with higher levels of policy liberalism. The findings are the latest evidence in a growing body of research that suggests more attention should be paid to understanding policy liberalism’s role in protecting the free flow of information.

A Prophet Without Honor: William Ernest Hocking and Freedom of the Press • Stephen Bates, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • Freedom of the Press: A Framework of Principle (1947), by Harvard philosopher William Ernest Hocking, is one of the books sponsored by the Commission on Freedom of the Press, also known as the Hutchins Commission. In First Amendment literature and case law, it has gotten scarcely any attention. The neglect is unsurprising in some respects. The book is abstract and theoretical, with little mention of case law. It is also meandering, discursive, repetitive, and self-contradictory. Hocking himself called it “long, schematic, and frequently tedious.” Yet for those who make the effort, the book is remarkably prescient. It prefigures Alexander Meiklejohn’s self-government theory and his town-meeting model of public deliberation, Amitai Etzioni’s communitarian political philosophy, Isaiah Berlin’s dual theories of liberty, Owen M. Fiss’s application of the positive First Amendment to regulate the news media, and the works of many media scholars. For all its flaws, Hocking’s Freedom of the Press is a classic.

When Is a First Amendment Case Not a First Amendment Case? • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper analyzes the United States Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Manhattan Community Access Corp. v. Halleck. Specifically, it concentrates on how the justices divided five-to-four along lines of perceived political ideologies in both: 1) selecting different rules to analyze the issues before them, and 2) reaching opposite conclusions about the outcome of the case. In brief, choosing different rules regarding the state-action doctrine issue led the conservative and liberal blocs to reach counterposed conclusions on the First Amendment speech question. The paper suggests, in turn, that the outcomes reached by both sides comport with broad-brush stereotypes about the intersection between free expression and the danger that big government purportedly poses to individual liberties.

The End of the Affair: Can the Relationship Between Journalists and Sources Survive? • Anthony Fargo, indiana University • Prosecutions for leaking classified information to the press have increased dramatically since the start of the Obama administration. Journalists are rarely subpoenaed to identify their sources now because investigators identify leakers through phone, e-mail, and messaging app records. Common sense and anecdotal evidence suggest sources will be less willing to come forward under current conditions. News organizations should adopt ethical and limited legal obligations to help accused leakers or face the loss of important sources.

Challenges to the Conventional Wisdom About Mergers and Consumer Welfare in a Converging Internet Marketplace • Rob Frieden, Penn State University, Bellisario College of Communications • This paper identifies substantial flaws in how U.S. government agencies and courts assess the impact of proposed mergers by firms operating using broadband networks to reach consumers. Using current market definitions, consumer impact assessments and economic doctrine, antitrust enforcement agencies may fail to identify the risk of harm to consumers and competition, a so-called false negative. In recent years, the Department of Justice, Federal Communications Commission and Federal Trade Commission, individually and collectively, have assessed the competitive consequences of numerous multi-billion dollar acquisitions and have conditionally approved almost all of them. These agencies appear predisposed to favor deals that involve vertical integration between market segments, based on an assumption that short term consumer welfare gains would exceed any potential competitive harms. The paper determines that reviewing government agencies appear too willing to extend current assumptions about how “bricks and mortar” markets work to transactions occurring via broadband networks. By “fighting the last war,” these agencies fail to identify new risks to consumer welfare, particularly by ventures operating in multiple markets that do not readily fit into the conventional assessment of mutually exclusive vertical and horizontal “food chains.” The paper concludes that recent and future Internet acquisitions have a much greater likelihood of generating legitimate concerns about competitive and consumer harms, particularly as markets become ever more concentrated and often dominated by a single firm.

There’s Probably a Blackout in Your Television Future: Tracking New Carriage Negotiation Strategies Between Video Content Programmers and Distributors • Rob Frieden, Penn State University, Bellisario College of Communications; Krishna Jayakar, Penn State Bellisario College of Communications; Eun-A Park, Western Colorado University • This paper explains how changes in the video marketplace have triggered changes in strategies used by pay television operators seeking permission to deliver broadcast television and pay television content to cable and satellite subscribers. When video programmers and so-called Multichannel Video Programming Distributors (“MVPDs”) fail to reach closure on a new contract for carriage, MVPDs must “blackout” the content thereby triggering immediate consumer anger. This paper refutes conclusions made by reviewing courts, which approved AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner, largely on grounds that AT&T would lack the ability and incentive to trigger blackouts even while controlling “must see” content such as HBO and CNN. MVPDs, do not operate as common carriers, such as public utilities, but nevertheless bear legal rights and responsibilities, predicated on marketplace conditions necessitating regulatory support for television broadcasters. Laws and regulations by the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) now appear to be based on contestable assumptions about the public interest value in promoting local programming by offering broadcasters the option of mandatory carriage by MVPDs (“must carry”) in exchange for relinquishing demands for financial compensation. The paper concludes that ventures, such as AT&T and Comcast, have enhanced negotiating power in light of their ability to trigger blackouts as both as content providers and MVPDs. Judicial assumptions that numerous and lengthy blackouts cannot occur do not appear viable when consumers can access video content from more suppliers, including new Over the Top sources like Netflix, and major MVPDs can offer wired and wireless broadband access options.

* Extended Abstract * Meiklejohn, Absolutism and Hate Speech • W. Wat Hopkins, Department of Communication, VIrginia Tech • Hate speech is generally thought to be protected by the First Amendment because it does not fall into one of the classic categories of unprotected speech identified by the Supreme Court. Alexander Meiklejohn advanced the proposition, however, that only speech of self-governing importance is worthy of such protection, and the Court has adopted that position. This paper examines the proposition that hate speech, by default, is not protected by the First Amendment.

Traditional but Open: Research Paradigms in Communications Law, 2010-2019 • Brett Johnson, University of Missouri; Leslie Klein; Jeremiah Fuzy, Missouri School of Journalism • Communications law scholarship is diverse, employing various theories and methods across distinct paradigms. This paper relies on multiple points of empirical data to examine trends in communications law research from 2010 to 2019. Findings suggest that communications law research remains very theoretically and methodologically traditional, with social scientific perspectives in the distinct minority. Nevertheless, communications law research remains open to perspectives from scholars “outside” of the field.

“What are anti-disinformation laws for? – Analyzing anti-disinformation laws from an “information disorder” perspective” • Wei-ping Li, University of Maryland • Over the past years, many countries have enacted laws to fight against disinformation. This paper examines the laws from the perspective of information production. By using the elements extracted from the “information disorder” framework developed by Claire Wardle and Hossein Derakhshan, this paper assesses recently enacted anti-disinformation regulations in Germany, France, and Singapore. It further discusses whether the laws could contribute to the battle against disinformation or would conversely suppress freedom of expression.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: Virtual assemblies: Exploring problems of private spaces and press protections • Jonathan Peters, University of Georgia • The U.N. Human Rights Committee is currently drafting an authoritative interpretation of a treaty provision guaranteeing the right of peaceful assembly. This paper explores how the provision might be interpreted to protect virtual assemblies, with a focus on two discrete issues raised by the Committee’s latest draft: (a) the nature of assembly and expressive rights in private spaces, and (b) the role of journalists in documenting and reporting on virtual assemblies.

Free Papers and Free Speech: Home Delivered Free Newspapers as Litter • Eric Robinson, University of South Carolina • As newspapers attempt to survive as viable businesses, many are purchasing or creating free community papers. Such papers are often delivered door-to-door, leading to resident complaints that have led municipalities to enact ordinances limiting such distribution. Most courts have held these ordinances unconstitutional, but a recent decision by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals reached a contrary result. This paper explores this issue and recommends solutions to balance the First Amendment and residents’ concerns.

* Extended Abstract * Restoring Access to Information – Can the U.S. Learn From Other Countries? • Amy Kristin Sanders, University of Texas at Austin; William Kosinski • The Supreme Court’s Food Marketing Institute v. Argus Leader Media decision – as well as decisions permitting third-party intervention – has opened the door for increasing opposition to public records requests. This fundamental shift has global implications for transparency as other governments may follow our lead. But approaches taken by other countries to constrain third-party intervention and limit the definition of confidential information – as well as possible legislative reform – offer a glimmer of hope for transparency advocates.

Freedom of speech and press in Muslim-majority countries • Shugofa Dastgeer; Daxton Stewart, Texas Christian University • This paper examines freedom of speech and press in the constitutions of 48 Muslim majority countries in relation to actual existence of these freedoms in these countries, using a scale based on rankings of Reporters Without Borders and Freedom House. First, the findings suggest that the inclusion of Islam as a state religion in a country’s constitution does not necessarily lead to exclusion of freedom of speech and press in the constitutions of Muslim-majority countries. Second, inclusion of Islam as a state religion in the constitutions does make a significant difference when it comes to actual freedom in Muslim majority countries, based on the ranking scaled developed by the authors. Third, constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and freedom of the press do not guarantee actual freedom for expression and press in Muslim-majority countries.

* Extended Abstract * Decisions & Justifications: Untangling the Supreme Court’s Low-Value Approach to Sexually Explicit Speech • Kyla Wagner, Syracuse University; P. Brooks Fuller • In First Amendment law, the notion that sexually explicit speech is less valuable than forms of expression like false political discourse is rarely disputed. This study revives that dispute with a focus on the Supreme Court’s justifications for axiomatically categorizing sexual expression as “low-value” in the first place. The analysis reveals that a shaky, sometimes, fallacious conceptual framework rooted in third-person perception guides the Supreme Court’s sexually explicit speech jurisprudence. The framework’s implications are discussed.

Pandering, Priority or Political Weapon: Presidencies, Political Parties & the Freedom of Information Act • A.Jay Wagner • The article explores the political nature of the FOIA by examining legislative history, party messaging, presidential actions and a quantitative analysis of FOIA administration from 1975 until present. The outcomes are both predictable—Reagan & Trump having deplorable records—and surprising—George W. Bush producing a relatively transparent record. The study’s findings suggest the failures of FOIA are likely less a consequence of presidencies and political parties than an indiscriminate symptom of contemporary U.S. governance.

Piercing the Veil: Examining the Demographics of State FOI Law Administration • A.Jay Wagner • Proactive disclosure is fashionable in the field of access to government transparency, yet FOI laws remain the keystone to government transparency. Statistical analysis of a 1,002-request FOI audit identifies demographic and political variables that significantly influence request outcomes, namely geography, race and Republican voting and representation. Pinpointing variables that affect FOI outcomes is necessary as the laws provide an individual, actionable right to government information that other mechanisms lack, making rehabilitating FOI invaluable.

Biometrics and Privacy: Regulating the Use of Facial Recognition Technology • Kearston Wesner, Quinnipiac University • Companies and government entities have increasingly used facial recognition technology (FRT) to protect the public from disease, apprehend criminals, ensure public safety, and provide seamless commercial experiences. However, FRT has been criticized for a variety of reasons. It is notoriously fallible, especially when called upon to identify women and people of color. And its use encourages significant privacy violations, with some scholars and advocates suggesting that it opens the door to a surveillance society. This paper analyzes FRT and argues against unrestrained deployment of this technology. It addresses four state statutes, as well as several local ordinances, that have been passed to regulate FRT. Drawing from these sources, particularly Illinois’ Biometric Privacy Act, as well as commentary from scholars and privacy advocates, the paper recommends a model federal biometric privacy statute. The statute incorporates notice, clarity, and testing elements. It also recommends provisions prohibiting employee retaliation and consumer discrimination.

<2020 Abstracts

Internships and Careers Interest Group

“Document Your Learning” Internships, student learning and program evaluation • Sharee Broussard, Belmont University • Directing students to “document your learning” in internships and establishing best practice-enabled internship program structure and tools yields thoughtful student reflection that demonstrates achievement of student learning outcomes. Through well-designed structure and tools, data collected in regular student and supervisor reporting can be used in program-level assessment as required by regional accrediting bodies and can inform program-level discussions and decision making.

* Extended Abstract * The Advertising & Public Relations Portfolio Imperative: Not Just for “Creative” Students Anymore • Margaret (Peg) Murphy, Columbia College Chicago • ““Creative” advertising and public relation students (art directors, designers, copywriters, etc.) are pushed to develop portfolios. However, an examination of 2020 coursework, websites, and career centers at 87 leading universities nationwide reveals “non-creative” ad and PR tracks seldom include portfolio work. Yet, academic and industry literature support portfolio development to highlight skills and differentiate candidates in competitive marketplaces. This author argues digital portfolios are a career preparation imperative for all advertising and public relations graduates.”

* Extended Abstract * Seeking ‘Skilled, Poised, Fluent’ Verbal Communicators: Aesthetic Labor and Signaling in Journalism Job Advertisements • Elia Powers, Assistant Professor, Towson University • Journalism job advertisements send important signals about skills and attributes that news organizations value. This study explores how advertisements convey expectations for how journalists should sound by conducting a thematic content analysis of U.S. journalism job listings (n = 510) for positions requiring substantial verbal communication (e.g., reporters and broadcast anchors). Requirements for exceptional verbal skills and explicit calls for vocal clarity create obstacles to occupational entry for journalists with speech disabilities or speech anxiety.

<2020 Abstracts

International Communication Division

James W. Markham Student Paper Competition
Twitter engagement and interactions with public agencies and citizens’ overall trust in the Nigerian government • Olushola Aromona, University of Kansas • Following the #OccupyNigeria protests in 2012, use of social media, particularly Twitter, for election monitoring, mobilization, and civic engagement has increased in Nigeria. The impact of social media on engagement and interactions between government agencies and their online citizens has been demonstrated. Research indicate that online interactions and engagement are relevant for citizens’ trust in the government. Using a content analysis and online survey, this pilot study examines the interactions between Nigerian government agencies and Nigerian Twitter users in fostering trust. Findings revealed negative patterns of engagement and interactions. While citizens engage and interact with government agencies, the discourses were largely negative; thus, the relationship between engagement, interactions, and trust is largely negative. However, this relationship is moderated by party affiliation, education, and age.

Peace, Harmony, and Coca-Cola: Decoding Coca-Cola’s Ramadan 2018 Advertisement • Reham Bohamad; Daleana Phillips • Coca-Cola’s 2018 Ramadan commercial was designed to foster unity and harmony through a multicultural marketing strategy for Dutch audiences. The Netherlands, as well as mainland Europe, is experiencing a wave of right-wing populism or nationalistic political ideologies since the terrorist attacks on Paris and Brussel’s in the mid-2000s. Dutch attitudes toward the steady influx of Muslim immigrants since World War II has shifted from acceptance toward hostility. Increasing nationalistic political rhetoric and xenophobia in The Netherlands reflects this growing hostility toward Muslims. This analysis of Coca-Cola’s Ramadan advertisement utilizes Stuart Hall’s Encoding and Decoding theoretical framework to examine readings from three different levels: dominant, negotiated, and oppositional. The dominant level reflects Coca-Cola’s encoded message that its product can generate racial/ethnic and religious harmony by providing a common platform of understanding through sharing a Coke. The negotiated level reflects Coca-Cola’s position as a major global corporation attempting to sell a product. The oppositional reading utilizes Critical Race Theory as an oppositional framework for interpreting Coca-Cola’s advertisement. This commercial utilizes an assimilationist strategy to build a sense of harmony and trust around a female Muslim representation that has been highly Westernized. Furthermore, Coca-Cola’s Ramadan commercial promotes the idea that the consumption of their product is the solution to ending discrimination toward Muslims in the Netherlands. Their advertising strategy results in contributing to post-racial ideologies that silence discussions about race/ethnicity and religion while allowing “law and order” rhetoric and policies to monitor Muslim immigrants’ movements through policing and surveillance.

Factors Influencing Nutrition News Reporting Among Ghanaian Journalits • Augustine Botwe • The media in Ghana can play a significant role in informing the public about health issues. But in Ghana coverage of nutrition is low. The results of a cross-sectional survey of Ghanaian journalists (n=105) show that reporting on nutrition is influenced by gender, media dynamics, journalists’ health orientation and the three constructs of the theory of planned behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Partisanship, News Uses, and Political Attitudes in Ghana: An Application of the Communication Mediation Model • Abdul Wahab Gibrilu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • “Past communication mediation studies have shown positive relationships between media uses and citizens political attitudes, but understanding the mechanisms underlying the relationship is limited because they often did not take into account the diverse affordances of the media uses and the environment it triggers effects. Using a national Afro-barometer survey (N = 2,400) in Ghana, the present study examined the relationship between media uses and a variety of citizens’ political attitudes and how such relationships are affected by partisanship. Based on series of regression analysis, findings showed that online news uses consistently predicted all levels of citizens political attitudes whilst traditional media use was only associated with citizens levels of presidential trust and confidence in government. When partisan differences were further examined, results showed that only online media uses by ruling party members exhibited direct effects on trust in president and democratic satisfaction. However, in all, traditional media uses based on ruling party support and no party members exhibited indirect effects on political attitudes. Oppositional members showed no effect.

Global Coverage of COVID-19: Examining CNN and CCTV news in guiding public sentiments • Gregory Gondwe, University of Colorado-Boulder • This study set out to examine how CNN and CCTV news covered the COVID-2019 pandemic from December 2019 to February 2020. The aim was to investigate the role that the global mainstream media play in guiding public sentiments during a global pandemic impacting everyone across race, color, social status, and geographical boundaries. Comparative analyses suggest that both CNN and CCTV news were only partial in their coverage when reporting about themselves. When talking about each other, the two countries seemed to employ a problem-centered approach where stories focused on blame and the economic ramifications of the COVID-19. As CNN was being blamed for focusing on the social cost of the pandemic, CCTV news was equally blamed for the lack of transparency. Further findings suggest that both media failed to mediate the general public concerns about the coronavirus at a global level. In other words, both CNN and CCTV news failed to adopt a stabilizing role towards the panicking audience in the sense that they did not implement strategies of reassurance to the public in their reporting.

* Extended Abstract * News framing in Bangladesh, India and British media: Bangladesh parliamentary election 2018 • Kazi Mehedi Hasan, University of Mississippi • After the abolition of the non-partisan caretaker government probation from the constitution, for the first time all opposition parties participated in the 2018 parliamentary election under a party government in Bangladesh. This study examines how the media of Bangladesh, India, and Britain framed the election and finds that election conspiracy, intimidation, and conflict frames are dominant in Bangladeshi and British media. Remarkably, Indian media abases intimidation and conflict but emphasizes on the game and economic frames.

First-generation immigrants’ and sojourners’ susceptibility to disinformation • Solyee Kim, University of Georgia; Hyoyeon Jun • News consumption enhances the contact experience for first-generation immigrants and sojourners in their acculturation to the host culture. Using acculturation theory, this study explores interdisciplinary concepts. The authors argue that first-generation immigrants and sojourners’ level of the English proficiency, length of stay in the host culture and their news consumption impact their susceptibility to disinformation. As foreign-born residents make up close to 14% of the U.S. population, this study will provide meaningful insights.

Cultural Identity of Post-Colonial South Koreans: Through the South Korean Boycott against Japan in 2019 • Jisoo Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison, School of Journalism and Mass Communication • The colonial history between South Korea and Japan as the once colonized and the once colonizing did not fade but continued to impact both nations. South Koreans nationwide boycott of 2019 against Japan engendered in this context. Through a critical discourse analysis on the news articles representation and online discussions concerning the boycott, the present study aimed at a better understanding of the cultural identities of post-colonial South Koreans that emerged amid the situation.

Journalism in continuous circulation: appropriations of language and knowledge through independent circuits of information on Whatsapp • Eloisa Klein • The paper analyzes how information circuits external to journalism appropriate journalistic characteristics of language and knowledge to build their own audience and operating logic. We carried out a study of a network of 50 Whatsapp groups, in the interior of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, gathered under the name of News Hunters. We note the emphasis on the microlocal, as well as the predominance of a notion of factuality related to the interruption of regularity, in addition to an independent system of information mediation.

Network Agenda Setting, Transnationalism and Territoriality: Chinese Diasporic Media in the United States • ZHI LIN, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University; Ziyuan LI, Shanghai Jiaotong University • This study employs network agenda setting to explore transnationalism and territoriality between Chinese diasporic media, Chinese media and American media. Although Chinese and American media significantly influence Chinese diasporic media, influence of American media becomes non-significant after controlling Chinese media. Chinese media is influenced by American media because China is proactively responding to international media, during which its own agenda is set. Chinese media mediates agenda setting effects between American and Chinese diasporic media.

China in Gilgit-Baltistan: A comparative analysis of Pakistani and Indian newspapers • Muhammad Masood, City University of Hong Kong • Gilgit-Baltistan is the only border region of Pakistan connected with China. India, however, claims Gilgit-Baltistan as an integral part of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute. Nonetheless, China is very active in Gilgit-Baltistan, such as in the form of various Chinese projects. Thus, Gilgit-Baltistan possesses both geographically essential and geopolitically controversial position in South Asia. This study analyzes news framing and discursive legitimation of two competing newspapers’ coverages on “China in Gilgit-Baltistan” – Dawn and The Hindu.

Framing Chinese Investment in Africa: Media Coverage in Africa, China, the United Kingdom, and United States of America • Frankline Matanji, University of Iowa • This study is grounded on framing theory to understand tones and frames adopted by media from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, China, the United States, and United Kingdom in the coverage of Chinese investment in Africa, relying on news articles collected between 2013 and 2018. Results of this quantitative content analysis study indicate that each tone and generic frame was adopted with varying levels of intensity across the countries under study.

Hashtag feminism and lifting the ban on Iranian female spectators. The case study of #BlueGirl • Fatemeh Shayesteh, University of Kansas • This study examined how Iranian women’s stadium ban is discussed by Twitter users with the hashtag #BlueGirl in Farsi and English. I used the feminist theory and the literature of hashtag feminism to analyze the tweets about the death of Sahar, a soccer fan who self-immolated to protest the stadium ban. Using the qualitative content analysis, I identified the emerging narratives and themes, including feminist themes from 600 analyzed tweets.

Moderated Conditional Effects of Social Media Use, Political Discussion and Trust in Politics on Three Types of Political Participation: Cross-National Evidence • Yan Su; Xizhu Xiao • Anchored by the theoretical framework of the differential gains model, this study analyzes nationwide surveys from three Asian societies: Japan, Taiwan, and China, in terms of the moderated conditional effects of social media use, political discussion and trust in politics on contact participation, civic engagement and electoral participation. Results suggested that trust in politics was a significant predictor of electoral participation in all three societies, whereas social media use and political discussion had varying effects on different types of participation in different countries. The conventional differential gains model was partially confirmed in Japan and Taiwan, while it did not hold true in China. However, a significant moderated conditional effect emerged in China. This study extends the differential gains model into a moderated moderation model. Implications are discussed.

Good Rohingyas, bad Rohingyas : How Rohingya narratives shifted in Bangladeshi media • Mushfique Wadud, University of Nevada, Reno • This study investigates how Rohingya refugees are framed in Bangladeshi media outlets. Rohingyas are ethnic and religious minorities in Myanmar’s Rakhine state facing persecution for the last few decades. Majority Rohingas fled to neighboring Bangladesh after a massive crackdown in Rakhine state in 2017. A total of 914,998 Rohingyas are now residing in refugee camps in Bangladesh (as of September 30, 2019). Built on framing theory and based on qualitative content analysis of 420 news stories and opinion pieces of five daily newspapers and two online news portals, the study first examines dominant frames used by Bangladeshi news outlets on Rohingya refugees. The study then goes on to investigate frame variation over time. It also investigates whether framings vary based on character of the news outlets and their ideologies. Findings show that frames vary over time and tabloid and online news outlets are more hostile towards refugees than quality newspapers. The study also finds that right wing news outlets are pro-refugees in Rohingya case. This might be due to Rohingya’s Muslim identity.

Depicting the mediated emotion flow: The super-spreaders of emotions during COVID-19 on Weibo • Jingjing Yi, School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Jiayu Qu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Wanjiang Zhang, School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • This study collected two million posts and reposts regarding COVID-19 on Weibo. Emotion analysis and social network analysis were used to examine mediated emotion flow by comparing it with information flow. Results indicated that both the emotion and information flow presents a multi-layer mode, while the emotion network has a higher transmission efficiency; Officially verified accounts are more likely to become super-spreaders of emotions; Good emotions were predominant but isolated from others in online discussions.

Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition
Saudi Women Take the Wheel: A Content Analysis of How Saudi Arabian Car Companies Reached Women on Social Media • Khalid Alharbi, University of South Carolina; Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina; Carol Pardun, University of South Carolina • This study explored how automobile companies in Saudi Arabia used Twitter to market to women after the government lifted the ban on women driving. The study examined these 184 tweets and the 92 advertisements embedded in them using both quantitative and qualitative methodology. The results suggest that auto companies were supportive of women and presented them as more independent and authoritative than has historically been considered typical for Saudi Arabia.

Women refugees’ media usage: Overcoming information precarity and housing precarity in Hamburg, Germany • Miriam Berg, Northwestern University in Qatar • This study examines how women refugees in Hamburg, Germany, of whom many arrived either as minors with their family members or as unaccompanied minors (now young adults), have managed to overcome information precarity experienced as a result of limited and/or restricted access to the internet and/or traditional media. This study also examines whether the forced migration and constantly changing living conditions these women have experienced, from mass emergency shelters to refugee accommodation and youth flats (and for some, a return back to refugee accommodation), have impacted their media usage. Findings from 32 semi-structured interviews with refugee women originating from various countries (Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Eritrea, Syria, and Turkey) have shown that their overall perception of precarity was amplified by limited internet access. Yet, refugee women were actively seeking to overcome this precarity and were extremely resilient and resourceful in finding ways to access the internet so as to utilize various digital media and information and communication technologies tools. Despite the fact that this study does not exclusively focus on mobile phone use, the findings indicate in particular that mobile phones represent a lifeline for refugee women and are seen as being as vital to their everyday lives as food or shelter.

Perpetual dependency syndrome: Journalism and mass communication education in Pakistan • David Bockino; Amir Ilyas, University of the Punjab • Utilizing the theoretical foundation of new institutionalism, this study explores journalism and mass communication education in Pakistan. Anchored by interviews across five programs in the city of Lahore, the study identifies key moments and people in the trajectory of these programs, explores the current connection between these programs and the larger journalism and mass communication organizational field, and examines why many educators within these Pakistani programs feel so constrained by the supranational institutional environment.

After the Revolution: Tunisian Journalism Students and a News Media in Transition • Brian J. Bowe, Western Washington University; Carolyn Nielsen, Western Washington University; Arwa Kooli, L’Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l’Information; Rafia Somai, L’Institut de Presse et des Sciences de l’Information; Joe Gosen, Western Washington University • A decade after the Jasmine Revolution ushered in the Arab Spring, Tunisia remains a bright spot for democratic reform and press freedom in the region. However, this transition is still tentative, and the reforms remain fragile. This study examines Tunisian journalism students (N=193) to understand their motivations for earning a degree in the field and how they conceptualize journalism’s role in society. By studying the extent to which future Tunisian journalists understand their professional roles as protectors of democratic values, we may gain a glimpse into how they are internalizing the lessons of the revolution. The results of this survey showed that students emphasized social responsibility motivations for studying journalism. Participants most strongly valued the role of journalists in promoting tolerance and cultural diversity, educating the audience, letting people express their views, reporting things as they are, and supporting national development. These results suggest that Tunisian students view their work as assuming monitorial and interventionist roles. Finally, they have mixed views about social media’s impact on journalism.

Survival in an Online-First Era: Exploring Social Media’s Effects on Indian Journalism & Resultant Challenges • Dhiman Chattopadhyay, Shippensburg University • With greater access to technology, countries in the so-called Global South are increasingly using social media platforms such as Twitter, WhatsApp and Facebook as a major source of breaking news. This study conducts a first-of-its-kind pan-Indian study of Indian journalists to examine how social media’s ability to break news first has affected journalistic practices in the world’s most populated democracy. In-depth interviews were conducted with 18 senior editors at some of the country’s largest newspapers, magazines, TV channels and websites to understand editors’ own perspectives about how social media have affected gatekeeping practices, resultant challenges, and the way forward. Findings indicate Indian journalists face unique challenges because of the multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-caste structure of the nation, and differences in politico-economic structure of the media industry also results in a different understanding of the Gatekeeping function and the Hierarchy of Influences Model. Implications are discussed.

How Public Deliberation Happens in an Unlikely Place:A Case Study on Ghana’s Deliberative Poll • Kaiping Chen, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Empowering ordinary citizens with the capacity to deliberate is a core issue in science communication. Despite growing deliberative practices in developed nations, it is significantly less understood how public deliberation can happen among impoverished populations who lack formal education in developing countries. This paper studied a case of a well-designed deliberation method, Deliberative Poll, in Tamale, Ghana. I examined how scientific expertise was used, the type of arguments raised, and the quality of people’s dialogues by analyzing thousands of speech acts from deliberation transcripts and the information material provided to participants. I found that in a well-designed deliberation environment, scientific expertise is well represented. Marginalized populations had thoughtful discussions on complex policy issues. Local policymakers even considered their opinions. This paper contributes to our understanding of how to effectively foster public deliberation among marginalized populations and systematically measure the nuances of scientific expertise and public reasoning on science

Cinema and the ethnic divide: Contemporary representations of Mexico and Mexicans in Hollywood Films • Gabriel Dominguez Partida, Texas Tech University; Hector Rendon, Texas Tech University • “Cinema produced in a country exhibits values and traits of the local culture. It also personifies members of out-groups seen as the other, portrayed with a series of particular characteristics easily distinguishable by the domestic audience. However, the preponderance of Hollywood’s products in the international film markets makes their representations more influential. The majority of its films depict the dominance of the white culture from a heroic and superior perspective about others.

In the case of Mexico and Mexicans, Hollywood films present the country and its inhabitants in a disadvantageous position. Nevertheless, previous studies indicate that the image of a lawless land plagued with bandits has gradually changed to a more positive one since NAFTA. This representation is vital as films contribute to developing an identity, and if these images present negative attributes, people tend to reject their own culture.

Hence, this study consists of a content analysis of 39 scripts from Hollywood films produced from 2000 to 2019 to analyze how they describe Mexico and Mexicans, the prevalence of negative and positive depictions, and how the incorporation of Mexican characters and Mexico as the central location influence these representations. Results suggest that a negative image of Mexico has been perpetuated in those films, relating the country and its inhabitants as dangerous, inferior, and primitive in comparison with the U.S. However, when productions include Mexican characters among the protagonists a tendency exists to reduce the negative image of the nation and its residents.”

Circling the Paradigmatic Wagons: A Comparative Analysis of Journalistic Paradigm Defense. • Lyombe Eko; Cassandra Hayes • This article explores, describes, and explains, the concept of journalistic paradigm defense from a comparative, international perspective, using as case studies a number of “mediatized meta-events,” problematic situations, and crises that posed perceived existential threats to the journalistic paradigm– or the freedom of speech and of the press on which it is grounded–in a number of jurisdictions. This analysis was carried out within the framework of journalism as a paradigm, a way of seeing, organizing and representing reality. When this paradigm is threatened, journalists from different cultural geographies of freedom of expression rise to defend it.

Understanding Latin American Data Journalism: Open-Coding Culture, Transparency, and Investigative Reporting • Maria Isabel Magaña, Universidad de La Sabana; Víctor García-Perdomo, Universidad de La Sabana • This study analyzes how Latin American reporters understand data journalism according to their social contexts, how they make sense of digital technologies and how technical artifacts (tools, data, software) shape their journalistic values and practices. Results show that reporters understand data journalism as a hybrid between investigative journalism and open-source culture. They value transparency over other traditional journalistic values, which creates activism towards open data, access and freedom of information.

The vox-pop, the victim and the active citizen: A Content Analysis of Citizen Sources in Non-Western International Broadcasting in Spanish • Miriam Hernandez, CSUDH; Dani Madrid-Morales, University of Houston • This study examines the salience of citizen sources, its news functions and its relationship to foreign policy objectives in three international State broadcasters: Iran’s HispanTV, Russia’s RT and China’s CGTN Español. Through a content analysis of news stories broadcasted in 2014 and 2017 (N = 1,265), results indicate the representation of ordinary sources follows well-known news functions (vox-pop, exemplars and active agents), but they also strategically respond to foreign policy interests. Implications and differences among broadcasters are discussed.

Have a Seat! How Digital-native News Organization in Colombia Built Consensus on the Topic of Venezuela Through Social Media • Vanessa HIggins Joyce, Texas State University • Correlation of different segments of society is a major function of mass media. However, little is known about how consensus building works in the networked, digital environment and in Latin America. This study tested the premise on a social media page from a digital-native news organization in Colombia, on the salient issue of Venezuela. It found support for consensus building between men and women (rs=.76, n=10, p<.05) on substantive attributes of the issue of Venezuela.

* Extended Abstract * Extended abstract: Blaming Others: Stigmas Related to COVID-19 Pandemic in Indonesia and Malaysia • Ika Idris, Universitas Paramadina; Nuurrianti Jalli, Universiti Teknologi Mara • This study investigates the stigmas formed around the COVID-19 through Twitter conversations in Indonesia and Malaysia. We collected 450,000 tweets related to the COVID-19 and analyzed 6,932 using quantitative content analysis. We found that the central stigma in Indonesia was ‘labeling’ while in Malaysia, it was ‘responsibility’ of a religious group amid the pandemic. Although differing primary stigmas, conversations in both countries inclined to blame on other actors as the cause of the pandemic.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: The Marriage of Inconvenience: An Exploratory Analysis of Media Convergence in Pakistan • Muhammad Ittefaq, University of Kansas; Ammar Malik Sheikh, Mashable Pakistan; Waqas Ejaz; Muhammad Yousaf, University of Gujrat; Shahira S Fahmy, The American University in Cairo • Based on the hierarchy of influence model and the diffusion of innovation theory, we explore perceptions on media convergence in Pakistan’s media industry and its socio-economic impact on journalists’ work and routines. Our study of in-depth interviews with Pakistani journalists, contribute to the growing literature on media convergence. It, therefore, will allow for a deeper understanding of the various aspects of modern (converged) journalism, specifically the challenges and opportunities of multimedia in the developing world.

Sakazuki, Kodokushi: Website Depictions of Japanese Seniors in the World’s Grayest Society • Hong Ji; Anne Cooper-Chen, Ohio u; Tomoko Kanayama; Eiko Gilliford • This study analyzed 355 images, including 167 elders and 136 staffers, who appeared in photographs taken at Japanese senior living facilities. The marketing-oriented websites showed primarily healthy, joyful-looking elders, 64.7% female and 35.3% male; 93.4% are pictured with others, and 21.0% are in wheelchairs. Results supported the universalism and endurance of Maslow’s (1954) Hierarchy of Needs and Hofstede’s (2001) Dimensions of Cultural Variability. The study partly redresses the dearth of research in English on Japan.

Perceptions of refugees in their home countries and abroad: A content analysis of la caravana migrante/the migrant caravan in Central America and the United States • Linda Jean Kenix, University of Canterbury; Jorge Freddy Bolanos Lopez, University of Canterbury • In October 2018, a group of Honduran citizens announced that they would walk towards the American South border looking to be allowed entry into the United States. This research asks how media in five Central American countries and that of several states in The United States covered these refugees during what was called ‘the migrant caravan.’ Any mediated differences found can translate to very real consequences for how these refugees are viewed in their home countries and in the country that they are moving towards. Repeated media imagery can form ideology and culture within a nation state. This research is important as these mediated representations can then form how refugees are treated, both in policy and through interpersonal interactions.

Innocence Killed: Framing of Visual Propaganda in the Recruitment, Radicalization and Desensitization of the Children of ISIS • Flora Khoo; William Brown • Millions of children living in the Islamic State have witnessed senseless violence as part of their daily lives and are targeted by ISIS for recruitment. This study examines the appeals ISIS uses to recruit children. Based on a quantitative content analysis of 22 ISIS child propaganda videos, results illuminate how the narrative of the glorification of heaven attracts potential martyrs and how families form a key part of the narratives used to recruit children.

Lone Wolf or Islamic State: A Content Analysis of Global News Verbal Framing of Terrorist Acts • ASHLEY LARSON • Scholars have identified the mass media plays a crucial role in the dissemination of terror messages. Since the attacks of September 11th, 2001, much attention has been paid to terrorism in the global television landscape. More recently, the discourse surrounding acts of terror has changed, due in part to the people behind the attacks. This study seeks to understand how global television news broadcasts verbally frame acts of terror based on two current threats: the individual terrorist (the Lone Wolf) and the organized group (the Islamic State). Findings indicate global news has strong similarities of the verbal framing of terrorist attacks, regardless of the classification of the attacker.

Winning Hearts and Minds Through Cuisine: Public Diplomacy and Singapore’s Bid for UNESCO Intangible Heritage Recognition • Seow Ting Lee, University of Colorado Boulder; Hun Shik Kim, University of Colorado at Boulder • “Food represents a common ground for all, enabling nation states to use gastrodiplomacy to build tangible and emotional transnational connections with foreign publics through food.

This paper examines middle power Singapore’s national and international campaigns to inscribe its hawker culture through UNESCO’s List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Singapore’s UNESCO bid is motivated by a desire, in collaboration with non-state actors, to strengthen the value and standing of its nation brand through food.”

A Case Study of Foreign Correspondents’ Use of Twitter during the 2019 Hong Kong Protests • LUWEI ROSE LUQIU; Shuning Lu, North Dakota State University • Technological innovation has altered the power balance among journalists, news media outlets, and audiences. Twitter, for instance, has provided journalists with new opportunities to disseminate unedited content directly to the public, thus exercising freedom of press at the individual level. Informed by scholarship on journalistic normalization and news engagement, the research described here examined the sourcing, content, and engagement on Twitter among 20 foreign correspondents from Western legacy media during the 2019 anti-extradition bill protests in Hong Kong. The analysis of this case study shows that these journalists interacted more with other journalists than with members of the general public, and also that they were more engaged in sharing factual information than in self-branding. Further, while few of the journalists’ tweets contained their personal opinion, these non-factual tweets generated more likes, comments, and retweets than those factual ones. This finding is significant because the expression of personal opinions can increase the transparency of reporting as well as engagement between journalists and their audiences. A profound implication of the findings presented here is that news outlets and journalists should rethink the relationship between objectivity and transparency in the networked environment.

The Cross-Culture Selfie Study: Exploring the Difference between Chinese and American Motivations for Taking and Sharing Selfies on Social Media • Yuanwei Lyu, The University of Alabama; Steven Holiday, The University of Alabama • Based on the cultural dimension framework, this study explores the motives for taking and posting selfies on social media in different cultural contexts. While cultural dimensions have been widely applied to understanding communication practices, a question remains concerning whether Hofstede’s (1994) original cultural aspects are still applicable in undergoing societies. Using the data collected from the United States and China, this research seeks to examine the differences and commonalities in motivations for taking and sharing selfies between these two technologically-progressive countries. The findings will validate past scholarship on the uses and gratifications (U&G) of selfies, but also provide support for the global online culture.

Dialectics of Complexity: A Five-Country Examination of Perceptions of Social Media Platforms • Gina M. Masullo, School of Journalism, The University of Texas at Austin; Martin Riedl, University of Texas at Austin; Ori Tenenboim, School of Journalism, The University of Texas at Austin • This study examined people’s lived experiences with social media through 10 focus groups across five countries: Brazil, Germany, Malaysia, South Africa, and the United States. Findings demonstrate that social media make people’s lives less complex, but this belies heightened complexity as they negotiate four paradoxes when using social media. We describe these as dialectics between: convenience versus safety, helpful versus unreliable information, meaningful versus wasted time, and feeling better using platforms versus feeling worse.

Press Freedom in East Africa: Perceptions from journalists in Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya • Karen McIntyre, Virginia Commonwealth University; Meghan Sobel Cohen • This cross-national comparative survey sought to understand how journalists in three East African countries — Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya — perceive their press freedom, what factors influence that freedom, as well as how accurately they view international press freedom rankings. Among other findings, the data revealed that journalists in all three countries reported similar threats to press freedom, with fear of government retaliation and repressive national laws as the factors that most influence freedom in the region.

Negotiating a digital self: Journalists’ use of Twitter and Instagram • Claudia Mellado; Amaranta Alfaro • Based on face-to-face, in-depth interviews with 31 Chilean journalists from national TV, radio, print, and online media, this study explores how they negotiate their identities and media use on Twitter and Instagram. The results suggest that, overall, Chilean journalists use Twitter and Instagram to stay informed, report the news, engage in branding activities, and interact with their audiences, expanding the scope of their work to include new professional roles and allow for the emergence of different but not mutually exclusive digital selves. Nevertheless, important differences were found based on the platform used and the journalists’ own perception of which practices are valid and important. Specifically, three groups were identified. While we found strong patterns of a reinterpretation of journalistic practices by normalizing some traditional functions into social media, which is represented by the “adapted”; we also found clear elements of redefinition of the journalistic work, represented by the “redefiners.” They disrupt traditional norms merging their different selves in both platforms, and use their accounts differently to target specific audiences. We also identified a group of journalists who resist the idea of mixing their professional work with social media practices, remaining “skeptical” to changes.

Whose News to Trust? Presidential Approval and Media Trust in the U.S. and Russia • Kelsey Mesmer, Wayne State University; Elizabeth Stoycheff • Trust in journalism has declined around the world. This study employs a comparative survey of two divergent political systems – the United States and Russia – to better understand eroding faith in their media institutions. We hypothesize that these declines have occurred, in no small part, as a result of support for authoritative political leadership that seeks to control the national news narrative. Survey results indicated a negative relationship between American citizens’ trust of national news media and support for U.S. President Donald Trump, and a positive relationship between Russian citizens’ trust of national news media and Russian President Vladimir Putin. We situate these findings in the context of each country’s media system.

* Extended Abstract * Cross-media Use in Civic Engagement : The Hybridity of Collective, Connective, and Individual Actions in Politics • Hailey Hyun-kyung Oh; Yoon Jae Jang; So Eun Lee • This research aims to explore the impacts of cross-media use for news upon political participation in the context of South Korea. Studies have shown that, under new media environment, people use a group of media for news and political information (Pew Research, 2008; Kang, & Kim, 2010; Dubois, & Blank, 2018; Newman, Fletcher, Kalogeropoulos, & Nielsen, 2019). The constellation of news media individuals draw for their daily news consumption was also identified as media repertoire (Van Rees & Van Eijck, 2003; Ksiazek, 2011; Yuan, 2011; Kim, 2014). Cross-media audience is a heterogeneous group that can be fragmented depending on what kind of media they use as the major source for news. The increasing cross-media audience reflects people are more likely to blend traditional and new media for consuming news, and this hybridity in media repertoire is also relevant to various political activities, from individual to collective actions leading to transnational-level social movements (Chadwick, 2013; Chadwick, O’Loughlin, & Vaccari, 2017). Assuming that political actions, encouraged by news media, vary across platforms—that is, a certain type of media platform encourages individual actions while others motivate more collective actions, or connective ones—this study identifies the audience using more than two types of news media among five, i.e. newspapers, television, radio, magazine, and the Internet, and categorizes this cross-media audience based on their media repertoire. After categorizing each type of cross-media audience, its demographic characteristics is identified respectively. Lastly, how this hybridity of media use influence civic engagement is tested.

Blurring the lines between fiction and reality: Framing the Ukrainian presidency in the political situation comedy Servant of the People • Nataliya Roman; Berrin Beasley; John Parmelee • This study examines presidential framing in the Ukrainian sitcom Servant of the People, which helped Ukrainian comedian and political novice Volodymyr Zelenskyy win the presidency in 2019. Building upon research into fictional framing (Holbert et al., 2005; Mulligan & Habel, 2011) and political satire verite (Conway, 2016), this study analyzes the roles and character traits of Vasiliy Goloborodko, a fictional Ukrainian president played by Zelenskyy. The findings expand framing theory to include fictional political leaders in sitcoms and provide insight into the role the comedy played in Zelenskyy’s historic presidential victory.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: Networking (with Other) Crises: Translating the Refugee Crisis into Advocacy for the Roma • Adina Schneeweis, Oakland University • This article is a study of advocacy communication and the ideological translation of plight. It examines how activism for Europe’s largest minority group, the Roma (Gypsies), connects to, builds upon, borrows from, and distances itself from, the migrant refugee crisis that gripped Europe in the mid-2010s. Through discourse analysis of advocacy texts published by European NGOs between 2014 and 2018, the study concludes that advocacy discourses build a clear case that connects the plight of the Roma to the refugee crisis, through humanitarian appeals, highlighting the affinity of vulnerability, and by amplifying the crisis to shed light on the needs of Roma communities.

Competing Frames on Social Media: Analysis of English and Farsi Tweets on Iran Plane Crash • Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas; Fatemeh Shayesteh, University of Kansas • This study conducted content analysis and word co-occurrence network analysis of tweets about the Ukraine plane crash in Iran in 2020 to analyze differences between English tweets and Farsi tweets in framing and discussing the major international event. Results from our computational analysis and human coding of the tweets show important differences and similarities between English tweets and Farsi tweets in terms of prominent frames and frequently co-occurring word pairs.

News and the neoliberal order: How transnational discourse structures national identities and asymmetries of power • Saif Shahin, American University • Comparing 15 years of news coverage of international aid from two donor nations (United States and Britain) and two receiver nations (India and Pakistan), this study makes three arguments. The dynamic between nationalist identification and transnational discourse is dialectical. This dynamic reinforces asymmetries of power, privileging some nations as superior while making others complicit in their subordination. Finally, newsmaking and foreign policymaking are mutually constitutive social phenomena—both reproduce a shared conception of national identity.

* Extended Abstract * Influencer Engagement With Chinese Audiences: The Role of Language • Zihang E; Ziyuan Zhang, The Pennsylvania State University; Ryan Tan, Penn State University; Olivia Reed, The Pennsylvania State University; Heather Shoenberger, The Pennsylvania State University • With the rise of platforms such as YouTube and TikTok influencers are seeking to increase their view-counts and spheres of influence globally. This study examines the differences in perception by a Mandarin speaking audience of beauty vlogs created in English and Mandarin on parasocial interaction with the influencer, perceived homophily, perceived authenticity, self-truth of the influencer, and purchase intent variables. Results will add insights to the area of influencers looking to communicate to international audiences.

Global Economy, Regional Bloc, National Interests: ASEAN Coverage in Philippine Broadsheets • Nathaniel Melican, City, University of London; Jane B. Singer, City, University of London • Let’s face it: Regional economic blocs are not inherently compelling, leaving journalists who cover them to search for frames to attract the attention of editors and audiences. This study draws on a content analysis of stories about the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, plus interviews with Filipino journalists, to understand the nature of the information citizens receive – which focuses largely on national interests rather than broader ones — and the rationale for generating it.

* Extended Abstract * Health Misinformation in Kenya • Melissa Tully, University of Iowa; Kevin Mudavadi; David Biwott, USIU-Africa • The global spread of misinformation on social media and chat apps has led to increased interest of this phenomenon. Drawing on interviews with Kenyan adults, this study explores Kenyans’ exposure and response to health misinformation to provide much-needed data from the Global South. Findings suggest that health misinformation is prevalent and participants respond by looking for multiple sources of information. Although, when exposed to a misinformation exemplar, many were quick to accept it as “fact.”

* Extended Abstract * Syrian Armenian Refugees in Armenia: Social Cohesion and Information Practices • Melissa Wall, California State University – Northridge • This paper is based on interviews carried out in the spring of 2019 in Armenia with Syrian Armenian refugees who fled to their ancestral homeland due to the Syrian civil war. UNHCR officials and NGO personnel were also interviewed. The project examines the ways the refugees’ information practices – both via social media and interpersonally – can create opportunities to overcome information precarity and experience different forms of social cohesion in their new home.

Overseas Media, Homeland Audiences: Examining Determinants of News Making in Deutsche Welle’s Amharic Service • Tewodros Workneh, Kent State University • In the absence of credible news outlets, Germany’s public international broadcaster Deutsche Welle’s (DW) has been one of the few foreign-based radio stations that successfully withstood the Ethiopian government’s crackdown on non-state-owned media. This study examines determinants of journalism practice and newsroom culture in DW’s Amharic Service. By adopting an analytical framework of ideological, geographic, and audience-generated determinants of news making, it charts homeland and host challenges that constrain journalistic autonomy in DW Amharic’s newsroom.

Social media, protest, & outrage communication in Ethiopia: Toward fractured publics or pluralistic polity? • Tewodros Workneh, Kent State University • In 2018, Ethiopia experienced a tectonic political shift following the culmination of years of public outcry against the ruling party, Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). Protest groups, predominantly organized along ethnic identification, have used social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter to disseminate strategies, recruit members, and galvanize support. Anchored on theories of collective identity and moral outrage, this study investigates the role of social media platforms in mobilizing Ethiopians toward political reform during the protest and post-protest periods. Data generated from a mixed method approach consisting of an online survey and interviews indicate social media platforms played a crucial role by drawing Ethiopian youth to participate in political discourse, empowering formerly marginalized groups to influence policy, and fostering ingroup cultural/political cohesion. However, evidence indicates participation opportunities created by social media platforms also brought apprehension including the rise of outrage communication as manifested by hate speech, political extremism, incitement of violence, and misinformation. I argue, in the context of a polity embodying highly heterogeneous and contested nationalisms—ethnic or otherwise—such as Ethiopia, social media platforms increase ingroup political participation but chronically diminish outgroup engagement. I conclude by discussing the limitations of regulating social media content through legislation. Furthermore, I highlight the need to integrate media and information literacy into education curricula as a long-term, sustainable solution to Ethiopia’s digital dilemma.

Predicting the Relationships among Country Animosity, Attitudes toward, Product Judgment about, and Intention to Consume Foreign Cultural Products • KENNETH C. C. YANG, THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT EL PASO; YOWEI KANG, NATIONAL TAIWAN OCEAN UNIVERSITY • This study employs the marketing concept of country animosity to study Taiwanese audience’s consumption of foreign cultural products from China and South Korea. This study uses a survey to collect data from 763 participants living in Taiwan, a democratic island with cultural, historical, and political relationships with these two countries. Linear regression analyses find that country animosity is an important predictor of how Taiwanese viewers judge Chinese television dramas, but less useful in predicting their judgment of South Korean television dramas. Overall, country animosity also explains intention to watch Chinese television dramas and offer partial support to intention to watch South Korean television dramas. Results conclude that predictive power of country animosity and its sub-dimensions depends on existing geo-political and historical relationships between Taiwan and China, as well as Taiwan and South Korea. This study concludes with theoretical implications and managerial recommendations to promote cultural products to audiences with different cultural, historical, and political background.

Transcending Third-Person Effects of Foreign Media in the US: The Effect of Media Nationality and Message Context on TPE and Support for Restrictions • Yicheng Zhu, Beijing Normal University; Anan Wan, Kansas State University • This study examines how social identities can transcend given distinct message contexts of foreign persuasion, and lead to support for restriction of foreign media in the US through TPE. With a US voter quota sample (N = 856), our results indicate that when foreign persuasion happened in a US-identity-provoking context, partisan differences in TPE are remedied. Moreover, the study found foreign media creates more TPE than domestic media. Within the category of foreign media, a friendly ally is perceived to have more effect on both self and others.

<2020 Abstracts

History Division

Robert Capa: War Photographer as Performance and Revision of the Myth • Christopher T. Assaf, University of Texas At Austin • This paper will examine the mythos surrounding war photographer Robert Capa. New research challenges whether Capa’s D-Day invasion film was ruined, the number of negatives he made, and Capa himself. Through the lens of Barthes’ (2013) “ideological myth,” this study questions Capa’s self-mythologizing; the narrative of Falling Soldier (1936); his elite photojournalistic status; and his photographs of June 6, 1944. Further inspection will illuminate Capa the war photographer via the hegemonic masculinity fueling his persona.

Democracy on the Skids: The Hutchins Commission’s Fears for America’s Future • Stephen Bates, University of Nevada, Las Vegas • Scholars often remark on the timeless quality of A Free and Responsible Press, the 1947 report of the Hutchins Commission. Yet some of the Commission’s most striking parallels to today did not make it into the book. In closed-door deliberations, Commission members worried that the democratic system in the United States faced grave threats, including a fragmenting and polarized electorate, foreign and domestic propaganda, and what we now call echo chambers, trolls, and deplatforming.

“Libbers’ March”: Newspapers and the 50th Anniversary of U.S. Women’s Suffrage • Dana Dabek, Temple University • This paper explores newspaper coverage of the 50th anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment in the U.S. in 1970, including but not limited to the Women’s Strike for Equality, under the lens of memory studies. Situated within a larger conversation regarding how the U.S. suffrage movement is brought into collective memory by the media, this work contends that feminist message, preservation of memory, and media framing are often at odds.

Individual- and Role-Level Influences on Crisis Coverage: A Content Analysis of Columbine • Danielle Deavours, University of Alabama • Neutrality, to remove one’s emotions and beliefs from reports, is a norm of the journalism profession. A desire to be neutral is often fostered by an adherence to institutional and organizational norms enacted by individual journalists in their routine newsmaking decisions. Yet, when routines are less applicable, like during crisis event coverage, will journalists still adhere to the professional norm of neutrality or will they become more subjective as individual-level influences of emotions and personal beliefs take over? This study focuses on nonverbal expressions of broadcast journalists during crisis coverage, specifically during school shootings. Using a pivotal moment in American school shooting history, the shootings at Columbine High School in Columbine Colorado on April 20, 1999, this study seeks to understand a critical moment in journalistic history of individual and role influences of journalists during crisis. This work features the case study of the first 24-hours of national news coverage from Columbine and a content analysis methodology. As one of the first school shootings in the United States to receive 24 hour live coverage, the broadcasts of Columbine provide unique insight into a non-routinized event’s coverage. The findings in this study contribute to understanding of journalistic practices (specifically broadcast and visual journalism), nonverbal communication, journalism history, and school shootings.

‘Skeptics Make the Best Readers’: The Institute of Propaganda Analysis’ Pioneering Media Literacy Efforts and the Fight Against Misinformation (1937-1942) • Elisabeth Fondren, St. John’s University • This study examines the Institute for Propaganda Analysis’ efforts to build, manage, and expand American institutional media literacy programs before and during World War II. Most centrally, this paper explores the IPA’s visions and advocacy for propaganda literacy against the backdrop of rising nationalism during the period of 1937-1942. Through a historical and textual analysis of archival papers, notes, speeches, correspondence, newspaper articles and the Institute’s publication, the results of this study show how the Institute raised awareness and highlighted the need for information literacy during a time that precedes our modern attempts to promote critical thinking and engagement with political information. Supported by a network of elites, social scientists and editors, these efforts gained momentum. The Institute’s newsletter, Propaganda Analysis, and its educational programs, specialized leaflets and books were received favorably, however, the Institute could neither overcome its financial struggles nor thwart official pressures to cede its work, perceived as ‘un-American’ in light of the U.S. war mobilization. By examining how scholars of public opinion worked with the press, garnered publicity, and shared their expertise on propaganda publicly, the findings offer original insights into the pioneering efforts of the American anti-propaganda movement.

A Know-Nothing’s Portrayal of Mexicans in the 1850s Press: The Work of G. Douglas Brewerton • Michael Fuhlhage, Wayne State University • George Douglas Brewerton was among the first magazine correspondents to use first-person experience to describe the Spanish and Mexican people and culture in the U.S.–Mexico Borderlands in the 1850s. His lengthy travel narratives published in Harper’s New Monthly Magazine in 1853 and 1854 chronicled his journey with Kit Carson across the Mojave and Old Spanish trails to Taos, New Mexico. The link between the Baptist, Southern, white, Anglo-Saxon, and nativist facets of his social identity and his demeaning portrayal of Mexicans is examined.

“Gladwin Hill and “‘The Wetbacks'”: The New York Times and the Mexican Migrant Security Threat” • Melita Garza, Texas Christian University • This study examines Gladwin Hill’s 1951 Pulitzer Prize-nominated series, “’The Wetbacks,’” as well as the journalist’s personal papers to show how the first Los Angeles bureau chief for the New York Times catapulted illegal immigration to a national topic from a regional one. Reporting at the height of the “Red Scare,” Hill framed Mexican immigrants as a national security threat, a mediated representation that inspired network news coverage, congressional action, and an enduring immigrant stereotype.

Enemy Words on American Airwaves: Cold War Radio Moscow Broadcasts to the U.S. • Kevin Grieves, Whitworth University • Most attention to Cold War broadcasting has been on the European context, and on Western radio reaching across the Iron Curtain to Soviet Bloc audiences. This study examines Americans listening to Radio Moscow during the Cold War era, particularly as reflected in the U.S. popular press. The study investigates the tensions behind American journalists casting Radio Moscow as a propaganda threat, but also reacting derisively and dismissively to Soviet radio content. This paper highlights efforts of Radio Moscow to reach American audiences via U.S. radio stations and traces shifts in American attitudes towards Radio Moscow over time.

History of the Black Power Movement: Going Beyond Mediated Images • Adrianne Grubic, The University of Texas at Austin • The Black Power movement is best known for its iconic images. The movement was so much more than that, despite media in the 1960s promulgating that it had only one purpose, that of violence. This paper will analyze articles and books from historians and movement leaders looking at how their revolution was viewed by the media and themselves, along with how Black power was demonstrated in mediated spaces such as the arts and literature.

Film Censorship’s Last Stand: The Memphis Board of Review 1967 to 1976 • Thomas J. Hrach, University of Memphis • Memphis, Tennessee, was the last major American city to continue the practice of censoring films when its Board of Review was ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge in 1976. Memphis held on so long to the practice of censoring films because of the city’s legacy of censorship and its goal of retaining old world values in the changing era of the 1960s and ‘70s. A history of the Board of Review in Memphis shows how censorship was an attempt to hold onto old-school thinking in uncertain times.

Platform life, platform death: civilian counter-histories of military-made social media • Muira McCammon • The purpose of this article is to analyze the creation, use, and termination of TroopTube by the Department of Defense for the sharing of messages and videos by, between, and for U.S. servicemembers. Drawing on news coverage of the platform and an interview with a designer, this research uses the grounded theory approach to demonstrate that the public civilian response to this military-made social media platform was not a continuous narrative; rather, the press presented different platform narratives, which highlighted different imagined and actual affordances of the platform as imagined by the state. The research demonstrates that while newspapers, magazines, and blogs promoted and actively encouraged the use of TroopTube, it was, in fact, imperiled from the start. Drawing on press accounts and semi-structured interviews with those who imagined, contracted, and explained the platform to American civilian and military audiences, I offer up the concept of the platform counter-narrative—of which there are two types, the platform counter-narrative and the platform counter-memory. The first arises during the time of the platform’s life, and the second, follows its death.

* Extended Abstract * The Nation’s First Press Secretary: Ray Stannard Baker and the Lessons of Publicity • Meghan McCune, Louisiana State University; John Maxwell Hamilton • American journalist Ray Stannard Baker is primarily remembered by historians as a prominent muckraker. This paper argues that Baker had another important distinction that has been overlooked; he qualifies as the nation’s first presidential press secretary. In his role as chief spokesman for President Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference, which marked the end of the First World War, Baker set an exceptionally high standard for the position. At a time when governments around the world developed large-scale propaganda systems for war, Baker held a democratic view of his position as press secretary. A progressive with a strong faith in publicity, Baker believed he was not only as a spokesperson for the President, but also an advocate for the press.

From Prohibition’s Demon Drink to Acceptable Indulgence: Distillers and the Battle to Normalize Liquor in America • Wendy Melillo, American University • The liquor industry’s image enhancement strategies following the repeal of Prohibition were specifically designed to erase the negative legacy of America’s great social experiment. The distillers’ goal to normalize liquor products in the minds of Americans was about much more than just increasing market share against their beer and wine competitors. To achieve cultural acceptance, the liquor industry would have to dismantle the lesson Prohibition taught Americans, which was to treat liquor as “hard” and more dangerous when compared to other types of beverage alcohol. By establishing a self-regulatory advertising code, infusing its ads with drink responsibly messages, positing alcohol equivalency, and associating liquor with the nation’s heritage, the liquor industry has established the drinking of its products as part of a culturally acceptable American lifestyle.

Influence of the Supreme Court’s Plessy v. Ferguson decision on southern editorial arguments during the “massive resistance” to integration • Ali Mohamed • 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 on school integration, and the extent to which newspaper editorials relied on social and legal rationales for segregation based on the High Court’s earlier Plessy v. Ferguson decision of 1896. All three of Plessy’s rationales for institutionalizing segregation — states’ rights, a dual system of “social rights” based on race, and the doctrine of “separate but equal” — 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 – causing significant friction between the press and political leaders – especially in Alabama and Mississippi. A content analysis of the Birmingham News from 1960 to 1964 found that, although the News supported segregation through arguments of “states’ rights” and a dual system of “social rights” as laid out in the Plessy decision, the paper’s editors remained consistently committed to equality and the rule of law throughout the turmoil of the civil rights movement.

Shaping Billboard Magazine: Lee Zhito’s Rise From Part-time Writer to Vice President, 1945 to 1993 • Madeleine Liseblad, Middle Tennessee State University; Gregory Pitts, Middle Tennessee State University • The name Billboard is recognized in the music and entertainment industry, but the journalists behind the publication’s rise to prominence have not been recognized. Lee Zhito—with his red handlebar mustache and constantly present pipe—spent nearly fifty years with Billboard, starting as a writer and working his way up to become publisher and vice president. He was arguably one of the earliest music and entertainment journalists, covering the music industry but also keening aware of new technologies and distribution platforms that would impact the entertainment industry and consumers. He defended the publication’s integrity to advertising critics by maintaining a strong ethical center, while always advancing the prominence and influence of Billboard in the music and entertainment industries. Despite Zhito’s impressive career and impact at Billboard, academic studies about his reign have not been conducted. Surprisingly little has been written about Billboard, beyond encyclopedia entries or academic studies about its various music lists. Zhito helped grow Billboard, which in turn helped grow radio and the recording industry; a symbiotic relationship in many ways. This study is based on the newly acquired Lee Zhito collection at the Center for Popular Music at Middle Tennessee State University. The collection—donated by his daughter Lisa Zhito—contains ten linear feet of manuscript materials, including correspondence, periodicals, clippings, tapes and films. The collection technically covers the years 1956 to 1995, but there are some items dating back to the 1930s. The bulk of the collection is from 1975 to 1995.

Our Forgotten Mother: Daisy Bates and Her School Integration Campaign • Lori Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee; Monique Freemon, University of Tennessee • Answering calls of public relations historians, this study seeks to recover the role of Daisy Bates in the Little Rock school integration campaign and to serve as an intervention into the great men’s account of public relations history. Culling available archival sources and published news texts in White mainstream and Black Press, we examined the public relations tactics that Bates implemented in her campaign for school integration, analyzed the motivations behind her deployment of the public relations tactics, and evaluated the successes and failures of her strategies.

‘Complaining,’ Campaigning,’ and everything in between: media coverage of pay equity in women’s tennis in 1973 and 2007 • Shannon Scovel, University of Maryland • This paper analyzes the media coverage of pay equity in women’s tennis in three newspapers during the 1973 U.S. Open and 2007 Wimbledon tournaments, the first and last Grand Slams to offer equal pay. A content analysis of over 100 articles demonstrates that journalists portrayed the female athletes involved in the pay equity conversations in 2007 as empowered advocates, marking an important shift from the “emotional” and “demanding” descriptions reporters applied to women in 1973.

Framing women’s roles in 20th century farming: A content analysis of cover images • Catherine Staub, Drake University; Amy Vaughan; Alina Dorion • This content analysis examined how women are portrayed throughout the 20th century on the covers of two high-circulation farm magazines. Coders identified gender, age, activity, gendered stereotypes, and predominance of the figures in 801 farm magazine cover images. Findings suggest an under-representation and stereotypical portrayal of women on the covers throughout the 20th century. This research contributes to an understanding of the framing role of farm magazines in the representation of women’s contributions to agriculture.

Capturing “The Real Thing”: James Ricalton Brings the Russo-Japanese War to American Parlors • Natascha Toft Roelsgaard; Michael S. Sweeney • James Ricalton was one of a handful of photojournalists who covered the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05, which has been cited as “World War Zero” for its scale, weaponry, and use of press controls. The war also was the first covered with widespread use of halftones, marking a milestone in photographic history. Ricalton used a stereographic camera to produce twin images sold by Underwood & Underwood on cardboard cards for home viewing. This article aims to restore the work of a masterful photojournalist to its proper place in history. In addition it critically analyzes a selection of his photographs of the Japanese army using John Szarkowski’s typology of photograph as “window” and “mirror,” revealing, respectively, the subject and the mind of the photographer.

“A True Newspaper Woman”: The Career of Sadie Kneller Miller • Carolina Velloso, University of Maryland, College Park • This paper examines the life and career of Sadie Kneller Miller, a journalist working at the turn of the twentieth century. Miller earned a prominent contemporary reputation, but her career has been largely lost to posterity. This paper uses traditional historical research methods to reconstruct Miller’s career and show the ways Miller both challenged and conformed to norms and expectations of women journalists of the period. This is the first scholarly work on Miller.

“Don’t Waste The Reader’s Time”: The Journalistic Innovations and Influence of Willard M. Kiplinger • Rob Wells, Univ of Arkansas • The newsletter format has witnessed a popular resurgence in digital media but little is known about the origins of this multi-billion dollar industry for specialized information. This paper examines a newsletter industry pioneer Willard M. Kiplinger, whose Kiplinger Washington Letter claims to be the oldest continuously published newsletter in the U.S. This publication perfected a type of reporting that influenced publications ranging from Newsweek to U.S. News & World Report, Bloomberg, Axios and others. A 1967 Newsweek obituary of Kiplinger said at the time, “There are at least 1,000 newsletters in the country today. Many of them borrow heavily from the Kiplinger techniques.” ⁠ The Kiplinger Washington Letter once boasted being “the most widely read business letter in the world.” It was influential during the New Deal, with Kiplinger serving as a crucial bridge between conservative business leaders and New Deal regulators. His reporting and engagement with both camps embodied the “corporate commonwealth” ethos that promoted business stability through self-regulation and voluntary cooperation through trade associations. Kiplinger’s weekly newsletter nurtured a close reader engagement through a specialized research service and extensive correspondence with his subscribers, a type of early crowdsourcing that anticipated the active audience interaction in digital journalism.

How the 1910 Bombing of the Times Building Destroyed the Socialist Party and the Unions • Daniel Wolowicz • This paper examines how the 1910 bombing of the Los Angeles Times building, which killed 20 employees and was dubbed “the crime of the century,” led to the defeat of 1911 Socialist mayoral candidate Job Harriman and resulted in the federal prosecution of the leaders of the International Association of Bridge, Structural and Iron Workers union who were responsible for a nearly decadelong terrorist campaign to bomb non-union worksites across the United States. At the center of this sweeping story stands Gen. Harrison Gray Otis, the publisher and owner of the Los Angeles Times, a man whose iron will helped transform L.A. from a gritty frontier town into one of the fastest-growing cities in the world and home to Hollywood. The far-reaching investigation and ensuing trial included Detective William S. Burns, the man known as “America’s Sherlock Holmes,” as well Clarence Darrow, one of the most famous attorneys in U.S. history. It was an epic battle between organized labor and the cabal of Los Angeles powerbrokers who would do anything to keep unions and Socialists from gaining a foothold in the City of Angels at the turn of the century.

“The paper of record of the women’s movement”: The national identity of off our backs • Kate Yanchulis, University of Maryland • off our backs, subtitled “a women’s news journal,” built and maintained national coverage of the feminist movement and a national reputation within that movement from its first issue in 1970 until it folded in 2008, yet it remains largely neglected by scholars. Through interviews with staff members and archival material from the periodicals’ offices, this paper shows how off our backs forged its national identity and strived to be the front page for the feminist movement.

<2020 Abstracts

Entertainment Studies Interest Group

* Extended Abstract * Audience Expectations for Film Genre and Television Formats • Leo Jeffres; David Atkin; Kimberly Neuendorf • This paper reports findings from an online survey capturing viewers’ perceptions of film genre and television formats and their mass communication behaviors as audiences cope with the “media of abundance.” Relationships among those variables are examined in an attempt to develop content theory for audience selection and processing of contemporary “moving image” content. Centrally, audience definitions of 31 film genre and 11 television formats are compared qualitatively and quantitatively with those of scholars and critics.

13 Reasons Why Children and Adolescents Believe They are Not Influenced by Depictions of Bullying and Violence on Television • John Chapin, Penn State; Alexey Stern • Using third-person perception (TPP) as a framework, the purpose of the study was to explore children and adolescent perceptions of violent television shows. A survey of middle school and high school students (N = 1,138) was paired with a content analysis of the two shows most frequently identified by participants as being their most watched: 13 Reasons Why and SpongeBob. Results of the content analysis reveal that middle school students who watched SpongeBob were exposed to more incidents of violence than high school students who watched 13 Reasons Why. Although the middle school students reported experiencing less violence than their counterparts in high school, results of the survey found about half said they were physically abused over the past year, and 17% experienced cyber-bullying. Despite experiencing a range of abusive behaviors, few quit using social media apps and only one-third told a parent or teacher. Those who exhibited TPP took fewer precautions. Perceived media reality and experience with victimization emerged as the strongest predictors of TPP, with experience being the only predictor to decrease the perceptual bias.

G-Men Heroes and Deep-State Thugs: Analysis of Hollywood’s Historical Representation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. • Dean Cummings, Georgia Southern University; Jeffrey Riley, Georgia Southern University • This study uses cultivation theory to textually analyze the Hollywood depiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its agents throughout history. The study examines how the early relationship between the FBI’s Director J. Edgar Hoover and Hollywood led to the creation of the depiction in popular media of the FBI agent as a celebrated hero and patriot, the defender of law and justice. Agents were frequently used as main or supportive characters that solved crimes and dedicated their careers to seeking justice. However, Hoover’s death in 1972 is a dividing line, beyond which Hollywood depictions of the FBI begin to shift. The depiction of the post-Hoover FBI in popular film and TV loses its do-gooder polish. The FBI agent partially becomes symbol of oppressive, invasive government rather than protector of the people against ne’er-do-wells. The findings of this study contribute to a deeper understanding of knowledge in regards to the interactions between popular media and the society in which said media is produced.

* Extended Abstract * Small Town, Big Representation? A Representational Analysis of the Scientists in Eureka • Deborah J. Danuser, University of Pittsburgh • Eureka (2006-2012) entertained audiences with stories about Eureka, a small Northwestern town with a big secret. It is where the U.S. government keeps the best scientific minds and secretly funds their cutting-edge research to create futurist technologies. Eureka provides scholars with a unique opportunity to examine Western culture’s preconceptions about who qualifies as a scientist in a small town full of scientists. I analyze the demographics of the scientific characters appearing in Eureka via a customized coding scheme inspired by Mead and Métraux’s (1957) research and the “Draw A Scientist Test” studies (Chambers, 1983; Finson, 2002; Finson, Beaver, & Cramond, 1995). The resulting data looks the trends and patterns observed in the show, as well as supports an investigation into the issues of representation typically present in primetime television dramas. Preliminary results indicate that the demographics of Eureka’s scientific characters are more diverse than many of its television peers, i.e., The Big Bang Theory. Eureka may in fact reflect the demographics of America’s real science and engineer (S&E) labor force from the mid-2000s. However, the S&E labor forces of both Eureka and the U.S.A. underrepresent women and people of color when compared to the overall demographics of America’s population. As cultivation theory (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, & Signorielli, 1994) argues television fosters shared conceptions of reality among otherwise diverse publics, diversifying the representations of scientists on television could complement real-life efforts to diversify the STEM fields and combat stereotypes.

New framing of sexual health issues in Netflix’s Sex Education • Diane Ezeh Aruah • Television drama series can use sexual scripts to create awareness about sexual health problems and solutions. Relying on social cognitive theory and framing analysis, this study explored a Netflix teen TV show, Sex Education, to understand its framing of common sexual health concerns like the use of contraceptives, homosexuality, STDs, sexual violence, puberty, virginity loss, and masturbation. Findings indicate that contraceptive use was depicted in the context of teaching sexual responsibility and de-stigmatization of people seeking to prevent pregnancy. Homosexuality was framed as natural and as acceptable to God. The show portrayed STDs as non-shameful diseases and as a health issue that begs for deeper understanding by the younger generation. Sex Education portrayed the negative consequences of sexual violence and encouraged openness and help-seeking for people affected. Generally, the TV show appeared to offer a new framing of sexual health issues compared to those explored by previous researchers. However, this study recommends representation of realistic views about masturbation and not as an act that could be carried out anywhere. Future researchers could explore the show quantitatively to provide more detailed information about which issues were prominently covered and to identify issues the show has not addressed adequately.

“It’s one billionth our size and it’s beating us”: Crisis Narratives in the Epidemic Movies Contagion and Outbreak • Katie Foss, Middle TN State University • The fictional epidemic films Outbreak (1995) and Contagion (2011) surged in popularity during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. This research used a narrative analysis to examine the movies’ messages about epidemics. Findings indicate similarities in the stages of crisis and the common themes of public panic, conspiracy, and heroes/antiheroes. Media presence was surprisingly minimal. Such themes were used to shed light on why audiences are drawn to the epidemic genre in a real-life epidemiological crisis.

Help or Hindrance: Examining Disability Media Exposure, Stigmatization, and Support • Jasmine Gray, UNC Chapel Hill; Meredith Collins • Previous research argues that entertainment narratives can substantially influence the extent to which those with disabilities are stigmatized. However, findings are mixed. This study examines the extent to which exposure to entertainment narratives featuring main characters with disabilities impacts the support of those with disabilities. This study has implications for empowerment and resilience for people with disabilities in terms of media exposure, stigmatization, (mis) representation, and media participation.

Keeping up with Politics?: The Kardashians and the Armenian Genocide • Tamar Gregorian • The Kardashians are known for “being famous for being famous,” but aside from documenting their luxurious lives, they have also lent their name and fame to the fight for Armenian Genocide recognition. Using Hall’s (1973) theory of encoding/decoding, the researcher conducted a textual analysis of their two-part episode in Armenia. The researcher determined that their visit created unprecedented awareness of the Armenian Genocide, making it part of the popular culture conversation.

* Extended Abstract * Bring Back Dads: A qualitative content analysis of the role of Black fathers on television • Keisa Gunby, University of South Carolina • This study uses a convenience sampling of nine television episodes, employing qualitative content analysis to examine the portrayal of Black fathers in former and current broadcast television comedies and a drama in order to investigate how these depictions maintain negative stereotypes of Black males. Using social learning theory, this study uncovers Black fathers are more likely to be depicted are protectors, providers and partners while stereotypes of buffoon, Black brute, lech are reinforced.

Psychological Factors of Fandoms Engagement in the East Asian Pop Idol Group Culture • Yanru Jiang, University of Southern California • The “pop idol group” is a cultural phenomenon and popular business model in the 21st century. Teenagers who wish to become idols drop out of high school and are intensively trained in a set of skills that are essential for them to become idols. Entertainment companies fully cover the training and accommodation expenses of trainees with the expectation of branding them in groups for their performance to generate revenues. The existence of fandoms comes from the need of self-identity construction and social capital acquisition. The fandom psychology of pop idol groups can be explained by the engagement, belongingness, companionship, familiarity, and controllability fans perceived in the idolization. This research attempted to identify psychological factors that determine pop idol groups’ likability and popularity. The study conducted content analysis to analyze the audience’s engagement, the familiarity and controllability perceived by fans on social media platforms.

Sexual Objectification and Gender Display in Arabic Music Videos • Claudia Kozman, Lebanese American University; Amr Selim; Sally Farhat, LAU • A content analysis of the most popular Arabic music videos on YouTube found females are sexually objectified compared to males. Female artists acted in stereotypical manners, displaying both subordinate and sexual behavior. They posed and danced sexually, used facial expressions to seduce, and exposed their skin. The sexual tones that characterize women in Arabic music videos reinforce the existing notions of women as sexual objects to be gazed at for male pleasures.

* Extended Abstract * With Friends Like These…: The Real Housewives of Atlanta and Parsocial Relationships • Carmen Landy, University of South Carolina – Columbia • This study is a qualitative look how the parasocial relationships between viewers and the characters of the show, the Real Housewives of Atlanta, impacts their perspective on in-person friendships

Click it, Binge it, Get Hooked: Netflix and the Growing U.S. Audience for Foreign Content • Brad Limov, University of Texas at Austin • Analysis of survey results from U.S. residents (n = 288) watching foreign content on Netflix found that respondents watch foreign content more frequently than they did before and hold favorable attitudes toward foreign countries and subtitles. The data suggests a cyclical relationship between viewing frequency and use of the recommendations system for foreign content discovery. Results are discussed in terms of global media flows, the affordances of the platform, and indirect soft power accumulation.

From Parasocial Interaction to Multisocial Interaction: Examining Fan Labor Behavior and Its Antecedents • Fangcao Lu; Yanqing Sun; Stella Chia • Fan labor in support of celebrities is an increasing popular phenomenon in entertainment industries. This study initially investigate what sort of labor fans are willing to provide and what factors drive them to provide such free labor. We surveyed 307 young female fans. The findings revealed that parasocial interaction with celebrities and identification with fan communities are directly or indirectly associated with fan labor behaviors. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The nature of FoMO: Trait and state fear-of-missing-out and their relationships to entertainment television consumption • Lindsey Maxwell, Southern Mississippi; Alec Tefertiller, Baylor University; David Morris • This study set out to establish if FoMO can be a state that varies within an individual based on situational factors, and to adapt a scale which can be used to measure state FoMO. Within the context of the Game of Thrones finale, results demonstrated that trait and state FoMO are two different factors and identified some related concepts that both factors predict. A state FoMO scale for use in future research is proposed.

The Movement in the Message: Bob Dylan, Ideology and the Lived Experiences of African Americans During the Civil Rights Movement • Christina Myers • This study investigates how a white artist, Bob Dylan, can accurately convey the realities of African Americans during the Civil Rights Movement through his music. To explore these dynamics through the Ideology theory, a qualitative content analysis of Dylan’s song lyrics released during the 1960s were analyzed to determine the themes that arise from his music that reveal the lived experiences of African Americans. Results reveal themes of spirituality, unity and disdain for society.

Gaming disorder: News framing of video game addiction as a mental illness • Scott Parrott, The University of Alabama; Ryan Rogers; Nathan Towery, The University of Alabama; Samuel Hakim • In May 2019, the World Health Organization decided to identify “gaming disorder” as a mental illness in its diagnostic manual. The decision followed debate in which the video game industry, gamers, parents, and mental health professionals disagreed over whether sufficient research evidence existed to identify gaming disorder as a mental illness. Informed by framing theory, the present study employed a quantitative content analysis to examine news coverage of the decision in the year leading to and immediately following the controversial classification. The study sought to determine how journalists framed gaming disorder in terms of (a) defining the problem, (b) identifying causes, (c) advancing treatment recommendations, and (d) extending moral evaluations. More often than not, journalists focused on the health consequences of gaming disorder, arguably legitimizing the illness. Less apparent was conflict, or stories that highlighted debate among the gaming industry, mental health professionals, and others. Practical implications are discussed in light of framing theory and health communication.

The Social Identity of ‘Loot box’ Gamers: A Case Study of Final Fantasy Brave Exvius • Gregory Perreault; Emory Daniel; Samuel Tham • The present study seeks to understand the ‘loot box’ gamer–gamers who play games in which real money is spent in order to gamble for the chance at digital game content. This is conducted through a case study of players of the loot box game Final Fantasy Brave Exvius through a survey of participants on the game’s subreddit (n=592), and in-depth interviews with attendees at the game’s international convention (n=21).

(In)congruities between Political Messages and Popular Music: An Analysis of U.S. Presidential Campaign Songs • Lottie Peterson; Scott Church, Brigham Young University; Quint Randle, BYU • Music is not as prominent a feature in political campaigns as it was in the 19th and early 20th centuries. However, songs in modern campaigns still hold value by creating an additional layer of representation for political candidates. Using an adaptation of Sellnow and Sellnow’s “Illusion of Life” rhetorical perspective, this study analyzed the lyrics of the predominant campaign songs for both Republican and Democratic candidates for the 1972-2016 elections. This analysis sought to convey how the very process of selecting a campaign song is a profound rhetorical act, and that songs chosen even in modern elections have a specific meaning and purpose tied to the political contexts in which they are embedded. The primary findings of this research indicated that both Republican and Democratic candidates have largely made use of congruity in their campaign songs, with that congruity only increasing over time — a surprising result considering congruity can often diminish listener appeal. The analysis also indicated that in general, Republican candidates tend to utilize songs that are positive and patriotic in nature, while their Democratic opponents incorporate songs that offer a critique of the nation.

“They Can’t Stop All of Us”: A discussion about the internet’s reaction to the raid on Area 51 • Mariah Reneau • Through narrative analysis, this paper seeks to study themes seen in a series of Raid Area 51 memes and analyze how visual rhetoric was used to prompt the memes’ audiences to participate in a raid on Area 51. The research showed that the collection of memes illustrated a variety of plotlines that prompted action by tying in both an appeal to emotion and logic while also bringing in pop culture icons to craft a clear narrative that the raid on Area 51 was inherent.

A Whole ‘Nother Domain: Understanding Future’s Performance of the Authentic Black Male Identity In Hip-Hop • Jordan Sallis; Josephine Lukito, University of Wisconsin, Madison • Themes within hip-hop facilitate the adoption of worldviews. The hood, as tied to hip-hop culture, provides a space for subscribers to explore and adopt value systems that accentuate their authenticity. Our qualitative analysis of ten songs featuring Future, highlights his identity performance as “the boss” and lays out how Future’s lyrics operate as a playbook for other Black men to successfully operationalize criminal networks, violence and misogyny to be “a boss” in the hood.

* Extended Abstract * How ‘healthy’ are the children’s entertainment programs? An analysis of the health-related content in popular TV shows targeted at preschool-aged children • Neelam Sharma; Gayathri Sivakumar; Marilee Long, Colorado State University • SUMMARY: This paper analyzes the content of 11 popular TV shows (123 episodes) targeted at the preschool-aged children (3-5 years old) to examine the frequency and nature of health-related messages contained in children’s programs. Data analysis reveals that while only 37% of these episodes contained any health-related content, a majority of these health messages were positive messages on healthy eating and over 90% used modeling behavior strategy of compliance to promote health eating among children.

* Extended Abstract * Reconsidering Quality: Cosmopolitan Audiences as Markers of Quality for Transnational Internet-Distributed Television • Ryan Stoldt • American television industries have historically defined “quality” programs through the lens of advertisers. Quality programs reached advertisers’ most desired customers. Yet, Internet-distributed television services like Netflix are not funded by advertisers. Thus, the industry’s understanding of quality television has changed alongside these economics shifts. I argue that quality shows are still understood through audiences by these services, but their desired audiences are now those whose cultural tastes match the cosmopolitan programming of internet-distributed television services.

The dynamics of problematic gaming in FIFA 20 • Samuel Tham; Kimberly Kelling; Ellison Kelling • The association between loot box gaming and gambling has led to increased interest in problematic gaming research. One such loot box game that has garnered worldwide recognition is EA Sport’s FIFA franchise. The present study surveyed FIFA gamers to parse out the roles of gamers and explain the dynamic relationship between gamer roles and gaming addiction. In addition, attitudes, sunk cost, and flow were explored as mediators in this study. Findings of the online survey (n=200) of FIFA gamers were in line with past research that demonstrates the importance of attitudes and flow in predicting gaming addiction. Sunk cost was also found to be highly associated with gaming addiction. Importantly, two emergent gaming tendencies were explained and discussed in this study. These tendencies that gamers adopt in the game are defined by gamer motivations and also represent important implications for gaming addiction.

* Extended Abstract * Quibi’s quick bites: Technology acceptance and adoption • Casey Yetter, University of Oklahoma; Alex Eschbach • This research looks at the technology acceptance model and adoption of Quibi, a new mobile-only streaming service launched on April 6, 2020. For this purpose, a survey of 152 undergraduate students was conducted. This research found moderate correlations between content quality, convenience, and ease of use with perceived usefulness. Some conclusions are included with the intent that more analysis will be done on the data in the future.

<2020 Abstracts

Electronic News Division

Learning Without Seeking: Incidental Exposure to Science News on Social Media May Fill Knowledge Gaps • Joshua Anderson, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Emily Howell; Michael Xenos; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin at Madison; Dominique Brossard • Using a U.S. nationally representative survey, we find that incidental exposure to science-related news interacts with interpersonal discussion and network heterogeneity. Results indicate that the relationship between incidental exposure to news and knowledge is strongest among those who discuss the least. This suggests that incidental exposure could alleviate knowledge gaps between Facebook users who are the most and least involved in interpersonal discussions about science. Incidental exposure, then is potentially valuable feature of social media platforms for science news, discussion, and knowledge.

The Impact of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender on Perceived Objectivity of Broadcasters on Twitter • Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina; Denetra Walker • Using an online survey (N = 528), this study examines the impact of race/ethnicity and gender on perceived objectivity of broadcasters. Findings show that when the broadcaster is a woman of color, engagement on Twitter does not necessarily equal perceived objectivity. Most respondents following broadcasters on Twitter agreed (52.6%) that broadcast women of color were more biased than other broadcasters they follow on Twitter, with men and conservatives being more likely to agree than others.

A Matter of Tone and Sources: Toward A Black Men on TV News Analysis • George Daniels, The University of Alabama; Keonte Coleman; Danielle Deavours, University of Alabama; Gheni Platenburg • Much of the research on Blacks in television news has focused on criminal portrayals to demonstrate the over-representation of this minority group. Using data from a content analysis of newscasts in two Southern markets, the Black Men on TV News Analysis, accounts for topic, tone and sourcing in stories. Among the 1163 items analyzed, White males appeared more frequently in crime stories, but black males were most often associated with negative toned stories.

What to watch? Text-image relationship strategies and their use on framing the 2019 Hong Kong protests on YouTube • Brenna Davidson; Jeffry OKTAVIANUS • This study investigates YouTube thumbnails to understand how different content creators have utilized framing and text-image relationship strategies to shape and disseminate meaning online during the 2019 Hong Kong protest. Around 498 video titles and their corresponding thumbnails were examined. The results indicate that media organizations mostly employed frames focusing on protest violence and reinforced this frame through the illustration strategy for the title and thumbnail. Factors impacting the videos’ popularity metrics are also discussed.

Mastering Metrics: Analyzing the Effectiveness of Broadcast Journalists’ Self-Presentation Strategies on Social Media • Stefanie Davis Kempton, Penn State Altoona; Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Penn State University • Access to social media has given journalists more opportunities than ever to connect with audiences and disseminate important information. Broadcast journalists are using social media as a self-branding tool to gather an audience following and audience trust. However, the popularity of social media has also prompted unique challenges for traditional journalism norms.  Through a mixed-method approach of qualitative interviews and social media discourse analysis, this paper investigates how broadcast journalists are negotiating through these new evolving media structures. The goal of this paper is to provide practical insight into the social media strategies top broadcast journalists are using and to analyze their effectiveness with audiences.

Readable Expressions – Nonverbal Neutrality in Crisis Coverage: A Content Analysis of the Parkland School Shooting • Danielle Deavours, University of Alabama • “Journalists go to great lengths to keep their reports neutral and unbiased. Entire classes in journalism school are taught on this very subject, and yet very few, if any, journalists are trained in a critical aspect of communication – nonverbal expression. Despite making up nearly 90% of all communication, broadcasters very rarely consider their nonverbal communication patterns in reporting practices, even when it comes to adhering to professional norms like neutrality. This study examines this issue in the context of crises coverage. Because crisis reports show broadcasters unedited and reacting in real time, they serve as an observational field that can help scholars better understand newsmaking practices. This focus on nonverbal communication adds to previous research in neutrality, expanding the various ways broadcasters can communicate partiality or bias in their reports. This study looks specifically at school shootings, utilizing a content analysis method to study nonverbal expressions of network broadcasters during the Parkland school shooting coverage.”

Visual Framing Effects of Nonverbal Communication in Crisis • Danielle Deavours, University of Alabama • During a national crisis, journalists have tremendous influence over audiences. Viewers who turn to the news for the latest breaking news during a disaster are particularly vulnerable to the influence of the media (Graber, 1990). While journalists strive to remain neutral in their verbal presentations of news and are extensively trained to do so (Coleman & Wu, 2006), most journalists do not consider the potential impact of their nonverbal communication (e.g., hand gestures, facial expressions) on crisis coverage. In addition, journalists do not receive the same training to control and conceal nonverbal communication patterns as they receive in their written or verbal communication (Coleman & Wu, 2006). Recent studies on broadcaster nonverbal neutrality during a crisis show that broadcasters communicate significantly more nonneutral nonverbal expressions than neutral nonverbal expressions in their coverage (Coleman & Wu, 2006; [author], 2018; [author], 2019a; [author], 2019b). Yet, little to no research has been done to understand the implications of these nonneutral nonverbal expressions on audiences’ impression of the communicator and message being communication. This study seeks to understand the potential effects of nonneutral nonverbal expressions of broadcasters on audiences during crisis coverage events. Specifically, it explores how exposure to a broadcaster’s nonverbal communication during a news segment on a mass shooting affects audience beliefs about the broadcaster’s credibility, their support for gun control and mental health regulation, their belief that the government can prevent mass shootings, and their perception of risk to be involved in a mass shooting.

Like, Comment, or Share? Exploring the Effects of Local Television News Facebook Posts on User Engagement • Miao Guo, Ball State University; Fu-Shing Sun • This study examines the effects of local television news Facebook posts on user engagement. By scraping 4,151 Facebook posts from a local television station’s Facebook page, this investigation performs a content analysis on different features of Facebook news posts, including news topics, message vividness and interactivity, post time, and length of post. This study further examines how different news post features to affect three levels of user engagement behaviors indicated by reactions, comments, and shares.

Second Level Agenda Setting in CNN News Coverage of the Columbine and Parkland Mass Shootings • Hannah Hume • Through discourse analysis, this article seeks to compare the cable news coverage of the Columbine High School school shooting and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School school shooting using second-level agenda setting theory, with CNN broadcast transcripts as the unit of analysis. The research showed that the shooter was the dominant shaping force in the creation of the agenda for cable news coverage in both school shooting events.

TV News and the Military: Exploring Media Frames of an American Institution • Alex Luchsinger, Elon University; Jane O’Boyle, Elon University • This exploratory study analyzes television news transcripts (N = 300) to examine how broadcast news networks (ABC, CBS, NBC) and cable news networks (CNN, Fox, MSNBC) cover military veterans and service members in news programming. Findings show that broadcast news networks’ stories and sources focused on veterans and service members themselves or their families, while cable news networks relied on legislative issues, politicians and other elite sources. Other findings and recommendations are discussed.

Widening News-Seeking Gap? Moderating Roles of Perceived News Importance and News Efficacy in the Effects of News Aggregator Use on News Seeking • Chang Sup Park, University at Albany, SUNY; Qian Liu, Jinan University • This study examines how using news aggregators influences news consumption, based on an online survey of 1,340 adults of South Korea. The analysis shows that news aggregator use is positively associated with news seeking from both offline and online news media. Further, individual-level characteristics such as perceived news importance and news efficacy moderate the relationship between news aggregator use and news seeking. This result suggests that news aggregator use may widen news seeking gap between those who are highly interested in news and those who are not.

What is Digital Journalism? Defining the Practice and Role of the Digital Journalist • Gregory Perreault; Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado-Boulder; Anna Dollar, Appalachian State University • Through the lens of theories of field and normalization process, this research seeks to understand technology’s current role in how self-identifying digital journalists define the field. Built on long-form interviews with 68 self-identifying digital journalists, this manuscript will argue that the digital turn in the industry has emboldened new entrants to the field and required traditional, dominantly-placed journalists to reconsider their definition of journalism as well as their practices

Media Credibility in the Fake News Era: Assessing the Influence of Sourcing and Political Affiliation • Sean R Sadri, University of Alabama; John P Kelsey, University of Alabama • Misinformation and “fake news” remain ubiquitous throughout online platforms, and perceptions of news credibility have declined as a result. Using a sample population of U.S. adults (N = 324), the present study sought to analyze news consumption habits nationwide and examine variables that influence media credibility and online share likelihood. An experiment determined that political affiliation, among other factors, can significantly influence perceived credibility and the likelihood of an article being shared on social media.

All The News That’s Fit to Watch: How The New York Times Uses Video on Facebook • Jeremy Saks, Old Dominion University; Pamela Walck • The New York Times has a long history as the purveyor of all the news that’s fit to print. In a multi-layered journalistic world, this study examined how the Times utilized Facebook video and found the Gray Lady highlighted its strong news values, while expanding into videos. The legacy newspaper used Facebook to drive traffic to its website through hyperlinks while abiding by algorithms that controlled what information rises into users’ consciousness.

Beyond Social Media News Use Algorithms: How Political Discussion and Heterogeneity Networks Clarify INE • Rebecca Scheffauer; Manuel Goyanes, Carlos III University; Homero Gil de Zúñiga • In recent years, the popularization of social media platforms has enabled new opportunities for citizens to be incidentally informed. Relying on UK and USA survey data, the paper shows how socio-political conversation attributes (i.e., political discussion and discussion network heterogeneity) may explain incidental exposure to information. Heterogeneous networks and sheer level of political discussion are positively related to incidental news exposure. The paper also highlights the positive role of social media news use as moderator.

The Voice of America and Ethiopia: Examining the Contours of Public Diplomacy and Journalistic Autonomy • Tewodros Workneh, Kent State University • Established in 1982, the Voice of America (VOA) Amharic Service became one of the most popular news outlets for Ethiopians in Ethiopia and Ethiopian diaspora communities across the world. Angered by the Service’s coverage of human rights abuses, bad governance, and other issues of public interest, Ethiopia’s ruling party made the discontinuation of the Service one of the top priorities of its diplomatic ties with the United States. This study examines the major pressure points of the Service’s newsroom autonomy permeating from Ethio-American shared public diplomacy interests through the optics of newsroom staff. Findings from document analysis and interviews reveal VOA Amharic journalists experience primary pressure sources (host political factors and homeland political factors) and secondary pressure sources (personal/relational factors, diasporic political factors, and audience factors) challenging their journalistic autonomy. Despite these pressures, journalists highlight the significance of the organization’s legislative “firewall” and evidence-based external review process in upholding the newsroom’s autonomy.

Fake News or Alternative Facts? Veracity Assessment of the Content and Comments of Unfamiliar News • Huai-Kuan Zeng, National Chiao Tung University; Tai-Yee Wu, National Chiao Tung University; David Atkin • Given growing concerns regarding the spread of medical misinformation, the current research set out to assess the message effects of social media news on reader veracity assessments. Results from an experiment indicate that news balance is more predictive of perceived credibility, news sharing, and fact-checking tendencies than is comment incivility. These findings indicate that when readers encounter an unfamiliar news issue, central-route processing plays a more important role in veracity assessment than peripheral-route processing.

Examining the influence of Facebook comments on news stories: Can anonymous comments induce spiral of silence? • Sherice Gearhart; Bingbing Zhang, Pennsylvania State University • Previous research has demonstrated that the spiral of silence theory is applicable to behaviors among social media users, especially Facebook users who interact among their peers. However, existent work has limitedly tested whether the theory remains applicable to social media contexts during a non-peer interaction. Using a 2 x 2 between subjects factorial design (N = 744) of adult Facebook users across the United States, participants were asked about their opinions on two controversial issues (i.e., either abortion or the potential ban of assault-style rifles). After exposure to comments on a news story advertisement posted by a reputable news outlet that either agreed or disagreed with their opinion, users were asked how they would respond to the circumstance. Results generally support the spiral of silence theory in a non-peer environment. Further, evidence shows that selective exposure on social media may influence the perception of opinion environments.

<2020 Abstracts

Cultural and Critical Studies Division

Mental Health as a Burden: Journalistic Representations of Mental Illness on Family, Society, and the Individual • Elise Assaf, California State University, Fullerton • This research study explores representations of mental illness in three mainstream, national, online publications. Individuals with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the U.S., and the language used to construct representations of these individuals have the ability to perpetuate or diminish stereotypes about these individuals. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was used to analyze 197 articles. Of the six themes that emerged, mental illness as a burden will be the focus of this paper.

* Extended Abstract * Journalistic Power: Constructing the ‘Truth’ and the Economics of Objectivity • Gino Canella, Emerson College • Through 30 in-depth interviews with journalists, this article explores how journalists construct ‘the truth.’ Relying on theories of journalistic cultures, media power, and objectivity, I examine how some journalists seek to uphold long-standing professional norms, while others eschew these norms and position their work as adversarial. This article has implications for defining the journalistic field, understanding how grassroots media-makers challenge journalistic practices, and why a power-structure analysis is essential at all stages of news production.

Capital and legitimacy: Trans* communicators as cultural intermediaries • Erica Ciszek; Richard Mocarski, University of Nebraska at Kearney; Elaine Almeida • Through in-depth interviews with trans* communication communicators, this paper represents a turning point in communication toward a more intentional and reflexive orientation to gender identity and transgender lives. Findings demonstrate trans* communicators construct and disseminate discourses designed to counter the historical narratives surrounding gender minorities to reshape these stories for themselves (as part of their own identity work), for trans* communities, and for mainstream audiences. This article employs the Bourdieuian concept of cultural intermediation to explicate the lived experiences of trans* individuals working in fields of communication. Drawing on Bourdieu’s notions of habitus, capital, and fields, this manuscript sheds light on strategic communication to understand how trans* individuals leverage cultural and social capital to construct legitimacy. This study contributes to a broader sociological understanding of strategic communication and opens new avenues for research in considering how publicity might translate into broader socio-political impacts. It specifically asks how trans* communicators create and maintain cultural intelligibility and negotiate social meaning of transgender representations, considering transgender communicators as cultural intermediaries at the center of the struggle for symbolic and material power.

A “Gentlemen’s Agreement:” How news discourse helps to perpetuate segregation • Lourdes Mirian Cueva Chacón, University of Texas at Austin • The media are a place where influential ideas about race and its hierarchies are presented. This study focused on the analysis of news coverage of an alleged agreement that limited minority representation in Austin’s city council seeking to answer the question of how journalistic discourse reproduces inequality. CDA suggests that the agreement was a racial project perpetuated in the journalistic discourse through the use of linguistic constructions of narratives and relationships with race and power structures.

* Extended Abstract * Promotional prosumers: Advertorial labor process on mommy social media • Wan-Wen Day, National Chung-Cheng University • An Apple consumer shares his authentic experience of using the new iPhone with his friends on Facebook. Some of them do purchase the same product he promotes later on. Does it mean that the digital labor of this consumer is exploited due to creating exchange value for Apple? Now, millions of micro-influencers partner with advertisers to sell branded products to their followers by demonstrating products’ use-values. This marketing phenomenon indicates the new mode of labor exploitation in prosumer capitalism. This study unveils how mom-influencers promote parenting commodities to their followers and analyzes the political economy of the advertising industry under the new realities of social media. In his 2015 article, George Ritzer predicts the rise of a new class, prosumers. He further argues that unpaid prosumers have a higher chance of replacing paid workers partially. This study presents the stories of the mommy prosumers and their followers to address the issue of prosumer capitalism. This study investigated the triangle relation among the MCNs, the brands, and micro-influencers through the advertorial campaigns. Fifteen semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted from September 2019 to March 2020. Each interview lasted more than an hour. The interviewees included six micro-influencers of the online mommy communities, four brand managers, and five executives from the MCNs.

Mexicanidad on the screen: perceptions about the national identity portrayed in contemporary Mexican cinema • Gabriel Dominguez Partida, Texas Tech University • Defining the individual’s identity in times of globalization requires acknowledging the contextual factors that surround them. One of the many positionalities that converge to build that identity is the national one. Although borders are fading away in the current global context, in the case of the Mexican one, people continue relying on specific traits that help them to define Mexicanidad. Cinema plays a vital role as the audience tends to select and support particular representations over others. This study focuses on the analysis of how the audience perceives the traits that define Mexicanidad and their relationship with contemporary Mexican cinema. Participants of various focus groups relate particular reminiscences of the Golden Age period, as traditions and history, but also recognize that Mexican characters from that period serve as stereotypes that currently are not true. Finally, participants do not identify with current Mexican narratives because these films do not appeal to their real-life problems. Hence, even with the increase in Mexican cinema consumption, there is a lack of representation of what Mexicans identify as ordinary people.

EULAs as Unbalanced Contractual Power Between an Organization and its (Unannounced and Underage) Users: A Mobile Game Textual Analysis • Jeffrey Duncan; Taylor Voges, University of Georgia • This study explores how End-User License Agreements found in mobile game applications (e.g., Apple) put the player or user at a contractual power disadvantage. A thematic textual analysis was conducted of the top five film studio organizations’ mobile game applications: Disney; Warner Brothers; Universal; Sony; and Paramount. Three themes were found: producer domination, producer ownership, and the parental consent loophole. The implications of each theme as related to legal and ethical principles are discussed.

* Extended Abstract * Extended abstract: Diverging data in a Canadian media bailout • Marc Edge, University of Malta • Sharply contrasting portrayals of news media fortunes in Canada preceded a Cdn$595 million (US$450 million) government bailout announced in late 2018. Critical scholars claimed reform was required to reduce levels of ownership concentration and foreign ownership. Data offered by others, however, portrayed media as unprofitable and near collapse, with hundreds of newspapers closed and thousands of journalism jobs lost. This paper examines secondary sources of data to test the latter contentions and finds them unsupported.

Women on Fire: YouTuber Burnout and Renegotiation with the Platform • Alyssa Fisher, Miami University • This project uses a critical cultural methodology and qualitative visual analysis to examine two creators who took a hiatus from the YouTube platform in the fall of 2018. Included in the analysis are videos announcing their hiatus, chronicling previously queued videos that uploaded during the hiatus, and videos announcing their return and eventual changes to their channels’ content. Findings include themes of reflexivity, creative fulfillment, and the pressure to appeal to the mysterious YouTube algorithm.

* Extended Abstract * Assessing the Critical Political Economic Implications of Environmental NGO Funding on Meat Reduction Messaging • Christopher Garcia, Florida State University • This study expands on prior research conducted on food-based suggestions and meat reduction messages on environmental NGO websites. Utilizing a critical political economic lens, two in- depth case studies of the meat-related dietary messaging and policy suggestions of The Nature Conservancy and Greenpeace International are featured as illustrative examples of organizational contrasts – one which finds itself heavily indebted to corporate stakeholders and the other rooted in civil society as opposed to business.

“Female Empowerment Sells” or Does It? Always’ #LIKEAGIRL Campaigns’ Contribution to Feminism and “Culture-change” • Tamar Gregorian • When did doing something “like a girl” become an insult? That’s the question that Always, a Proctor & Gamble company, one of the largest makers of feminine care products, in partnership with its advertising agency Leo Burnett proposed and answered in their 360-degree take on feminine hygiene advertising spots “Like A Girl,” “Unstoppable” and “Emojis.” This textual analysis of the three campaigns “Like A Girl,” “Unstoppable” and “Emojis” was conducted to determine the value the campaigns provide in adding to the conversation about the misrepresentation of females in society, not just advertising. The three campaigns were analyzed using Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model and the commercials were evaluated based on their preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings (Hall, 1980). To aid in the analysis of the campaigns, an interview was conducted with Shaina Holtz, an account executive at Leo Burnett who worked on the Always team during two of the three campaigns. On the preferred level or the denotative level, Always’ goal was to break down the barriers young girls faced in society. The spots featured questions and copy that suggested that these stereotypes existed among young girls and boys, as well as adult men and, most surprisingly, women. Ultimately, the textual analysis concluded that Always was able to position itself as a company that cares about more than “hawking” its products, and more about contributing to the conversation about the misrepresentation of females in society and even taking it a step further – offering a solution.

The Sacking of Kaeplanta: Who’s Voice is Valued in the Built Environment • Adrianne Grubic, The University of Texas at Austin • As former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick dominated the headlines before Super Bowl LIII in Atlanta, a mural bearing his image was demolished near Morehouse College. The artist who painted it soon became a story but how the local media covered it also told a story about who is given a voice in a community. Using a multimodal discourse analysis, this qualitative study analyzed how the news media online reported on the demolition of the mural.

Ethical Consumption as Fetishism • Nah Ray Han, University of Georgia • Although consumers live in an era of consumer sovereignty, people often consume without being aware of how products are produced and sold. This paper criticized that emphasizing consumer sovereignty and morality, ethical consumption fetishizes the act of consuming by falsely suggesting that individual consumers can solve the environmental problems of the earth. The current papers concluded that the ethical consumption movement needs to become more self-aware so that it can truly help society develop.

Documentary Maker as Worker: Precarity in the Chinese Television Documentary Industry • Jiachun Hong • Documentary filmmakers have been considered artists, authors, or intellectuals, but rarely laborers. This study investigates the changing nature of documentary work in the expanding area of TV documentary in China, in the midst of China’s shift towards a market-based economy. Based on data gathered through the interviews with 40 practitioners from January 2014 to August 2017, this paper outlines the particularity and complexity of the creative work in China. It finds that short-time contracts, moonlighting, low payments and long working hours, freelancing, internship, and obligatory networking have become normal working conditions for Chinese TV documentary workers. Without copyright over their intellectual creations, the cultural workers are constrained to make a living as waged labor and compelled to sell their physical and mental labor in hours or in pieces. The Chinese television documentary workers struggled to resist the pressures of neoliberalism to survive in increasingly competitive local and global markets.

* Extended Abstract * Virtual Reality and Celebrity Humanitarianism • Bimbisar Irom, WSU, Pullman • The paper analyzes the interactions between the emergent technology of virtual reality (VR) and celebrity humanitarianism. Marketed as “the ultimate empathy machine”, VR has been enthusiastically appropriated by humanitarian communicators. Through the textual analysis of a VR experience featuring Rashida Jones, the project seeks to understand VR’s role in the production of celebrity performances of authenticity. How does VR balance the demands of stardom, highlighting distant suffering, and endorsing the work of humanitarian agencies?

Globalization, social media and cultural change: Instagram and family traditions in Russia • Regina Marchi, Rutgers University; Maria Zhigalina, Rutgers University • This paper examines how Russian traditions around marriage and pregnancy are being transformed by Instagram. Through a visual semiotic analysis of representations of US-style wedding ceremonies and gender reveal parties on Russian Instagram accounts, it notes that these rituals, formerly not part of Russian marriage or pregnancy traditions, are fast becoming the norm. Economic and social implications of the adoption of these practices, related to spending and debt, social class and gender ideologies are discussed.

Dangerous Professors: How Public Scholars Pioneer Practices that Reconcile Intellect with Journalism • Michael McDevitt, University of Colorado • The academic-media nexus can seem like a kaleidoscopic space for public intellectuals. Rules of engagement are, at best, implicit and contingent. Interviews with faculty targeted by vigilante watchlists probe how they pioneer practices that allow them to navigate uncertainty and populist blowback. A multiplicity of epistemic communities interacting with journalism implies a faint centrifugal coherence, but the disorientation of a hybrid field induces a productive reflexivity in efforts to reconcile intellect with journalism.

“Barbie is Not Muslim”: Consumer Racism in Hijab Wearing Barbie Doll on Twitter • Suman Mishra; Amal Bakry • This paper explores consumer reaction on Twitter surrounding the launch of the first hijab wearing Barbie doll of Olympic fencer Ibtihaj Muhammed in the United States. Using the theoretical framework of consumer racism and qualitative content analysis, the study reveals four major aspects of consumer racism: 1) Antipathy towards the ethnic group’s culture and religion, which in this case is Muslims and Islam 2) (Negative) product evaluation, 3) Skepticism towards the dominant corporation producing multiethnic goods, and 4) Consumer (un)willingness to buy the product. The study highlights that multicultural products produced by a dominant corporation associated with ethnic majority can be subject to similar consumer racism as products produced and sold by ethnic minorities. Theoretical and other implications with regards to consumer racism are discussed.

Public (Re)construction of War Memory in Japan: Examining Audience Reception of the Documentary Film Shusenjo • Junki Nakahara, American University • This paper explores how general publics participate in war memory construction through their consumption of a documentary film. Documentary film Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of The Comfort Women Issue (2019), created by Japanese-American producer Miki Dezaki, deals with one of the most contentious historical controversies in Japan—wartime sexual exploitation of women in Asian countries under the control of the Empire of Japan. In recent decades, Japan’s effort to whitewash the memory about war crimes has often caused frequent diplomatic conflicts with its neighboring countries such as South Korea. The film juxtaposes conflicting historical views to show the process of domestic and international campaigns led by right-wing/conservative leaders and various counter-arguments against their campaigns. Diverse audience comments on the documentary film can be found on online film review websites. Those comments indicate that the audience actively interpreted the film text and discussed their thoughts online. By applying the approach of critical discourse analysis, this research examines if audience evaluation of the film reflects their political opinions regarding its subject and what prospective views of Japanese national identity shape the retrospective war memory about the “comfort women.” The film offers a space for the Japanese audience to reconstruct their prospective and retrospective idea concerning the war memory of their country by questioning the widely accepted consensus.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of The Washington Post’s DACA Coverage: An American Dream Mythology • Daleana Phillips • The Trump Administration’s rhetoric on immigration reflects a shift toward nationalistic and xenophobic political discourses, which has negative consequences for legal and illegal immigrants. News coverage on illegal immigration and undocumented immigrants has overwhelmingly been portrayed using threat narratives and metaphors. This study employs a Critical Discourse Analysis using Barthes Mythology to analyze fifty-two articles from the newspaper, The Washington Post, on the Trump Administration’s decision to rescind the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrival (DACA) Program. The findings reveal that the American Dream ideology prevails in the U.S. national imaginary. Journalists covered DACA participants much differently than traditional threat frames used for covering undocumented immigrants in the media. Journalists portrayed Dreamers as industrious adherents to the American Dream and productive members of society brought into the country illegally as children, through no fault of their own. While this narrative supports DACA participants, it reinforces white middle-class assimilation and contrasts them against undocumented immigrants who are “to blame” for being in the U.S. illegally. The consequences of this rhetoric are important because it leaves white privilege unchallenged and justifies racialized “law and order” discourses that criminalize people who appear “foreign” or carry a “figurative border” with them.

Decoding Versus Discovering: The Social Roots of Two Visions of Journalistic Excellence • Matthew Powers, University of Washington • Drawing on Bourdieu, this paper explores how one’s social position—i.e., their social origins and trajectories—shapes definitions of journalistic excellence. Through interviews, it shows that journalists from lower positions (e.g., working class families, less education) generally articulate a “decoding” view of excellence, while those from higher positions (e.g., professional families, prestigious education) describe a “discovery” view. These two socially-rooted visions differ in their assumptions of a power struggle between journalists and other power holders.

We’ll never let the past die: Five years of Disney Star Wars and the struggle to sustain a creative franchise in the digital era • Abigail Reed • This article examines and critiques the five Disney-produced Star Wars films from a critical political economic perspective. There are three primary themes that help untangle the story of the production of the first five Disney Star Wars films: diversity, production disturbances, and audience feedback. Disney’s intrinsic profit motive and the diversity it claims to value have conflicted with each other, resulting in troubled productions, upset audiences, and confusing film narratives.

This Was America: The Limitations of an Enduring Vision of American Photography • Alex Scott, University of Texas at Austin • This study explores the political implications of a reliance on the approved canon of American photographers by examining the 2018 photo exhibition, “A New Vision: American Photography After the War.” Employing a historiographic examination, the study illuminates how institutions and market obfuscate the historical reality of images. A process of de-politicization is then explicated using a multi-modal analysis of the exhibition images. The images contribute to an American myth drawn upon by contemporary political practices.

Critical Embellishment: Rolling Stone and Pitchfork Pans as Journalistic Signaling • John Vilanova • This research explores the idea of criticism—and specifically the negative review—as a useful and important means of signaling journalistic impartiality for fledgling journalistic enterprises. It historicizes negativity in criticism in relation to the foundations of journalistic practice and analyzes reviews written in the early years of two music publications, Rolling Stone magazine and the website Pitchfork. It theorizes their negativity as performances of what it calls critical expertise and critical authority.

Modern Mourning: The Violence and Potentialities of Public Grief Online • Alyvia Walters, Rutgers University • After nineteen-year-old Mollie Tibbetts was allegedly murdered by an undocumented immigrant in her Iowan hometown in July 2018, her family faced two violent mourning processes: not only were they processing their undue loss, but they were also compelled to enter the public spotlight in order to counter hostile ideologies concerning her undocumented alleged murderer. As this study shows, from the moment his citizenship status was released, the story of importance was no longer that of the loss of Mollie, it was rather the “illegality” of her alleged killer. This article thus investigates the unique mechanisms of modern media which both provide and force space for public expressions of grief: outlets which can both damage and heal. In a mixed methods approach, I performed a Twitter-based events-sequence analysis paired with content and ideological analyses to identify how the local, tragic story of Mollie became a national story of immigration policy—one with such force that the President of the United States commented on it—which led to the Tibbetts’ difficult positionality in the media spotlight. Though social media and its rapid information sharing had caused their daughter’s erasure, the Tibbetts family was also able to use social media to re-center Mollie’s life and values: a violent necessity with empowering ends.

Food, exoticism, and spectacle: Commodifying African otherness in Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern • Tewodros Workneh, Kent State University • The marked reluctance to incorporate African agency in African image-making in the West quite predictably brought about flat and simplistic caricatures of the continent and its peoples. With the aim of interrogating continuity and change in the representation of Africa, this paper explores African exoticism in Travel Channel’s Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern. Framed within a critical cultural/postcolonial perspective that anchors discourses of exoticism in Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern, the study identifies the spectacular representational modes of the “crude” native, poverty, and primitivism as evidences of African otherness. Key findings of the study indicate that food in many African destinations is portrayed as mere materiality, and that African foodways are unsophisticated and lack any perceptible aesthetics or influence. Furthermore, the show stubbornly insists on Africa’s “primitiveness” as a binary condition to be contrasted with Western modernity, which, like the spectacle of poverty, marks the salience of African alterity.

“So F***ing Glad We Got Osuna!”: Feminist world building in sports journalism • Kate Yanchulis, University of Maryland • Sports Illustrated reporter Stephanie Apstein turned a Houston Astros executive’s “offensive and frightening” outburst toward women reporters from a closed-door act of aggression into a public discussion of Major League Baseball’s dismissive attitude toward women. This paper takes coverage of that same incident as an opportunity to consider sports journalism as a potential space for feminist world building, drawing particularly on the work of black feminists.

Post-feminism in China: a discourse analytic examination of the sell of successful intimated relationships advice in Ayawawa’s book • hanlei YANG, Chongqing University • The intimate relationship advice industry in modern China reveals insights about neoliberalism, self-surveillance, emphasis on choice and empowerment, individualism, market-oriented principles, the science of successful sex and relationship, and the revitalization of Confucian conservatism and patriarchy. But it has long been neglected by previous scholars conducting studies on reconceptualization and reconstruction of emotional experiences and subjectivities in China context. Ayawawa is regarded as one of the renowned writers of bestsellers in mainland China for the intimate relationship advice industry. This paper will use her anthology “The cultivation of Love” as the research object by adopting Fairclough’s Critical discourse analysis method and regard postfeminism as a sensibility or a critical subject instead of as an analytic viewpoint. Specifically, this research aims to answer: (1) how she mobilized rhetorical devices and cultural resources to present a seemingly scientific method of managing intimate relationships; (2) what kind of intimate relationship and sexual subjectivity are established. By way of conclusion, females could take advantage of their sexy bodies, seeking financial and emotional support from others in an intimate relationship. successful intimacy is embodied in dramatically increasing the intensity of self-surveillance as a form of regulation for women. The extensiveness of surveillance over an entirely new life and intimacies includes the focus on psychology, and the requirements to transform oneself and reshape one’s deeper inner life. Women are constantly monitoring their looks and reproduction capability when they encounter unequal treatment in the intimate relationship, they first think of monitoring themselves and self-adjustment, instead of paying attention to the fact that men and women are unequal in the intimate relationship.

<2020 Abstracts

Community Journalism Interest Group

Virtual or tangible?: An experimental investigation into motivation and memory in place-based, community-oriented virtual reality news • Aaron Atkins • Parts of this research appear in a dissertation. 360-degree virtual reality video content is beginning to spread beyond niche international and national news organizations and into community-oriented news publications. One of the unique aspects inherent to the medium is the relinquishing of journalist control over the perspective, framing, and attention allocation of its audience, which this experiment addresses. This research investigates via controlled lab experiment the motivational effects of experiencing and processing via LC4MP a community-oriented 360VR news story shot in a prominent community location known to the research population sample. The experiment uses the presence or absence of an on-screen reporter to serve as a guide through the news story and measures motivation via sense of community, attention allocation and memory processing via post-treatment assessment. Findings shed light on one of the prominent ongoing discussions among journalists about how best to utilize the medium for nonfiction narrative news purposes, and makes recommendations for best practice based on its findings.

Community public safety information seeking and the news • Chris Etheridge, University of Arkansas at Little Rock • One by-product of the digital age has been the expansion how individuals get information, yet the news has remained both a primary source for information and one that individuals increasingly view as untrustworthy. This study examines the information needs related to crime and public safety as well as how and why they seek this information through the news. These findings are discussed in terms of the theoretical framework of community information-seeking. This study then provides three recommendations for possible ways for news organizations to serve a greater community information role.

Calm During the Storm: Hype-Averse and Thematic Framing of Hurricane Harvey on a Local Independent Weather Blog • Marcus Funk, Sam Houston State University • Abstract: During Hurricane Harvey, a local weather blog heavily emphasized risk and meteorological data without defaulting to disaster or human interest frames common in mainstream news coverage of severe weather. Journalists routinely articulated uncertainty, delineating what was likely and what was possible, while cultivating internal and external community through personal expression and recognition of common experience. Audience members demonstrated clear parasocial interaction and parasocial relationships with authors despite the lack of human interest and disaster frames.

Community through dialogue and its impact on support for NPR member stations • Joseph Kasko • This research examines the role of community in generating support for public radio stations. Building on previous research, which concluded NPR stations were engaged in continuous, two-way dialogue with their listeners, this present study surveyed listeners to gauge how those community building efforts may be influencing support. The results indicate there is a positive, but small, relationship between dialogic communication and levels of support. As a result, this work provides evidence that station efforts to build community, through the use of dialogic communication, are effective in increasing levels of support.

The Role of Community Caretaker: How Weekly Newspapers Defended Their Communities While Reporting on the Mississippi ICE Raids • Nick Mathews • This research presents how weekly newspapers came to the defense of their communities in a time of need. This role, which goes beyond the normative newspaper functions, is identified as “community caretaker.” A qualitative textual analysis examines the coverage of the historic 2019 Mississippi ICE raids. The findings demonstrate that, most notably, the weekly newspapers attempted to heal any reputational damage to the communities by criticizing the national media that painted a grim post-raid future.

* Extended Abstract * Journalism Beyond the Command Post • Mildred Perreault, East Tennessee State University • On Memorial Day weekend 2015, journalists flocked to Wimberley to report the destruction, but only a few local journalists remained to tell the story of the town’s struggle for recovery. Using case study methods and narrative theory this study evaluated how local journalists contribute to long-term recovery and resilience. Through the development of the journalist as citizen model, this study addressed how local journalists are strategic in the narratives they adopted.

Reinforcing Islamophobic Rhetoric through the use of Facebook comments: A study of imagined community • Burton Speakman, Kennesaw State University; Caitlyn Blanchard; Anisah Bagasra, Kennesaw State University • Social media sites such as Facebook allow for the easy creation of imagined community within the online space. This study seeks to examine the role of imagined community and framing in portrayals of Islam and Muslims within the comments of public media pages on Facebook. A comparative analysis of comments on news articles from conservative, mainstream, and liberal media sources was conducted to understand the quantity and content of Islamophobic comments on these pages. Additionally, comments on eight of the most popular conservative Facebook pages were analyzed. Both the qualitative and quantitative data suggest imagined community exists within commenters on conservative media Facebook pages, reinforcing the use of Islamophobic rhetoric.

<2020 Abstracts

Communication Theory and Methodology Division

Uses and Gratifications of Mobile Gaming: When Is Playing No Longer Just Fun and Games? • Karin Haberlin; David Atkin • The present study explores problematic ritualized uses of mobile videogames—available through smartphones and tablets — using Uses and Gratifications (U&G) theory as a guide. Online survey results uncover a positive relationship between materialism and Internet addiction and a negative relationship between social support and Internet addiction. Social support mediated the relationship between materialism and Internet addiction. Fantasy, coping, and escape motivations were moderately correlated with Internet Addiction Test scores.

The evolution of research in Journalism and Communication: An analysis of scholarly CIOS-indexed journals from 1915-present • David Atkin; Carolyn Lagoe; Tim Stephen; Archana Krishnan • Assessments of programmatic research remain important in the current higher education landscape, as the field of Journalism/Mass Communication (JMC) enters its 2nd century. This study profiles scholarly productivity across the larger discipline’s first century, focusing on scholarly output for institutions in referred journals indexed by the CIOS database since 1915. All but four of the 30 most prolific units grant doctoral degrees. The 30 most prolific scholars all have at least a decade of experience and typically publish with a coauthor. Implications of converging research areas wrought by emerging digital media—and their erasure of the field’s sub-domains–are discussed.

Leveraging intermedia agenda setting for forecasting coverage: A case study of the Mueller investigation • Matthew Brockman, University of Arizona • While a lot of progress has been made in modeling factors influencing news production, there is a dearth of research for providing ways to compare the accuracy and persistence of models used in current journalism research. This quantitative study provides evidence that news coverage can be forecast with better-than-chance accuracy when evaluating models mean absolute scaled error by modeling news coverage of the case of a government investigation and presidential tweeting concerning collusion or interference in the aftermath of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Furthermore, the study examines how the estimated relative influence of different factors changes depending on the time frame to which the computational models were fit. The author theorizes that further including additional theory in models and re-evaluating the resulting change in error can provide insight to how much predictive value those theoretical contributions account for media production.

Mediation analysis and warranted inferences in media and communication research. Examining research design in the field’s prominent journals • Michael Chan, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Macau K. F. Mak, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Panfeng Hu • The number of communication studies employing mediation analysis has increased exponentially in in the past two decades. Focusing on the aspect of research design, this study examines 333 articles published in the Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Communication Research, and Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly between 1996-2007. Findings show that while the majority of studies report statistically significant indirect effects, they are inadequate to make causal inferences about the mediating mechanisms. Authors also often infer that the significant mediators they uncovered are the ‘true’ mediators while plausible alternative models and mediators are rarely acknowledged or discussed. Future studies should pay more attention to the role of research design and its implications for making causal inferences. More rigorous research designs for strengthening causal claims in communication research are suggested.

The COVID-19 pandemic and heightened hostility toward China: Expanding the theoretical underpinning and scope of the third-person perception • Kuang-Kuo Chang, Shih Hsin University; Tien-Tsung Lee, University of Macau • This timely study examined the widely documented third-person perception in the context of the raging COVID-19 pandemic. It included a new variable, information transparency, normatively treated as a given in past research. Constructs of social distance, news exposure, news attentiveness, and self-efficacy were included for testing. Additionally, this study is among the first in media effects literature to treat TPP as a moderation variable. The implications, contributions, and limitations of this study are discussed in detail.

The Broadcast Journalism Credibility Scale: A Robust Measure for Examining Ethos, Logos, and Pathos • Danielle Deavours, University of Alabama; Chris Roberts, University of Alabama • Credibility is an ancient, well-studied, and complicated construct. Most credibility measurements consider either messenger (ethos), message (logos), or both. Aristotle’s definition also included pathos—the speaker’s emotion, which now comes into play with broadcast journalists. This study analyzed 45 variables representing ethos, logos, and pathos, characteristics; results showed high correlations among Aristotle’s three concepts. Factor analysis yielded a new three-pronged credibility measure for broadcasters, with 21 variables that distinguish among the three concepts.

Still a man’s world? Framing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the 2016 presidential election • Eliana DuBosar, Univeristy of Florida • This study compared coverage of Clinton and Trump in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal during the 2016 presidential election. Specifically, it looked at quantity of coverage as well as personal, issue, and strategic game framed coverage. For the difference between quantity of coverage for the two candidates and attribution of feminine issues to Clinton were significant. However, personal and strategic game framed coverage differences between Clinton and Trump were not statistically significant.

* Extended Abstract * The geolocation gap: The effect of being a political minority in communities on news media trust • Megan Duncan, Virginia Tech; David Coppini, University of Denver • Whether exposure to political disagreement will increase participation in democracy and media trust is up for debate. This study uses U.S. survey data to compare the effects that holding political opinions in the minority or majority within discussion networks and place-based communities have on political engagement and trust in news media. This study finds supportive discussion networks increase participation in democracy, but dissimilarity with community opinions decrease trust in news media.

Dismantling the hierarchy: An organization-centric model of influence for media sociology research • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado-Boulder; Timothy Kuhn, U of Colorado-Boulder • This theoretical paper proposes a new model for understanding influence on journalistic practice. Studying influence in the 21st century requires a model that does not include a hierarchy and therefore does not implicitly validate a universal journalism culture. The paper first explains the hierarchy of influences model, argues for its extinction and then resituates that model’s levels of analysis into a new model that more appropriately accounts for the growing agency of individual organizations. Finally, the paper envisions avenues for future research utilizing the new model.

Response Quality Comparison Between Computers and Smartphones in Different Web Survey Modes and Question Formats • Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University; Chenjie Zhang, Jiangsu Normal University; Weiwei Jiang • Low response rates in Web surveys and the use of different devices in entering Web survey responses are the two main challenges to response quality of Web surveys. This study compared the effects of using interviewers to recruit participants in computer-assisted self-administered interviews (CASI) vs. computer assisted personal interviews (CAPI) and smartphones vs. computers on participation rate and Web survey response quality. Two field experiments using two similar media use studies on U.S. college students were conducted to compare response quality in different survey modes and response devices. Response quality of computer entry was better than smartphone entry in both studies in open-ended and closed-ended question format only. But device effect was only significant on overall completion rate when interviewers were present.

Thinking, feeling, and reporting: An exploration into emotionality in U.S. political journalism • Kimberly Kelling • Many Western cultures privilege rationality in the workplace and perceive emotionality as reason’s lesser counterpart. Within the U.S. journalism landscape, the perpetuation of this dichotomy is prevalent, yet it is a relatively under-explored area in social scientific research. Although journalism in the U.S. has a strong tradition of objectivity, the realities of journalistic work expose journalists to emotional situations almost daily. Therefore, this study uses a mixed methods approach to understand how often political journalists employ emotional labor at work and to describe the emotion regulation strategies of those journalists. Findings suggest journalists practice both proactive and reactive emotion regulation strategies, yet still prioritize rationality in their work.

Defining media environment: An introduction to a communication infrastructure-structure-action (CISA) model • Yong-Chan Kim, Yonsei University • The purpose of this work is twofold: (1) to review how empirical media research has addressed the issue of context; and (2) to propose theoretical definitions of media environment as part of communication environment. In defining media (and communication) environment, this study introduces a communication infrastructure-structure-action (CISA) framework as a way to understand and explain how media (and communication) environments work for communicative action. The CISA framework is proposed as a theoretical framework upon which to develop empirical research on media and communication environments. With such goals in mind, I discuss some potential variables of media (and communication) environment and communicative action as well.

Seeing Oneself in Online Sources: Self-Esteem and Self-Construal Impact Information Exposure in the Filter Bubble • Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick; Axel Westerwick • An experiment mimicked the filter bubble: Participants browsed all attitude-aligned political content. It varied source cues, with two out of eight bylines displaying individual participants’ name initials as author initials. Selective exposure spent on messages from same-initials authors was logged in seconds to capture egotism (based on name-letter effect). Pre-exposure state self-esteem influenced this egotism indicator, contingent on personal-self and social-self importance. Perceived source similarity affected state self-esteem change, contingent on same moderators.

Does watching animals in real life and on the screen have the same effects on stress reduction? • Anastasia Kononova, Michigan State University; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University; Patricia Huddleston, Michigan State University; Tao Deng, DePaul University; Duygu Kanver, Michigan State University; Narae Park, Michigan State University; Luis Graciano Velazquez, Michigan State University; Alan Smith, Michigan State University; Noah Hirsch, Michigan State University; Anish Nimmagadda, Michigan State University; Yao Dong, Michigan State University; Kristen Lynch, Michigan State University • A set of two studies provided empirical evidence that visiting a zoo and watching online videos of zoo animals reduces stress. In order to showcase the stress-reduction effects, we designed a procedure that was implemented at a local zoo and at a U.S. Midwestern university’s psychophysiological laboratory, where we experimentally induced stress using a widely-accepted psychological task and then provided participants with the experience of proximally physical or mediated exposure to zoo animals. In addition to measuring stress levels using self-report measures, we recorded participants’ psychophysiological responses, such as heart rate, pulse, and skin conductance. We detected changes in stress levels and attitude toward zoo animals as a function of exposure to zoo animals and observed field study participants’ (N = 8) psychophysiological responses that indicate parasympathetic activation of the central nervous system. Our lab study results (N = 87) showed that the stress-reducing effects of watching zoo animals in a video were more evident among Generation Z participants (those between the ages of 18 and 24 years old). We also found that watching the video of zoo animals elicited moderately arousing and the least unpleasant emotional responses from participants when compared with other types of videos.

Perceived message desirability is not good enough to explain first-person effect: Testing multiple moderating variables of first-person effect • Sangki Lee, Arkansas Tech University; Virginia Jones, Arkansas Tech University • This study attempted to explain inconsistent research findings of previous first-person effect studies by testing its moderating variables. A 2 X 2 X 2 mixed design was employed with a between-subject variable of message relevance and within-subject variables of reference group and message dimension (knowledge and attitude). Significant main and interaction effects of message attributions were found. Locus of control was not a significant moderator. A measurement issue of first-person effect was discussed.

* Extended Abstract * Database discrepancies: News stories and child separation at the border • Carol Liebler, Syracuse University; Noah Buntain, Syracuse University; Kyle Webster • The purpose of the current study is to compare and contrast four news databases to explore how exhaustive each appears to be, and to further examine the degree of convergence among them. Using a month’s worth of news on child separation at the border, we examine search results from Google News, Newsbank, NexisUni and Proquest. Our data reveal considerable differences across all of the dimensions studied: number of stories, geographic reach and media outlets.

From Theory to Profession: Mapping Global Knowledge Networks in Communication Studies • Yi-Hui Huang, City University of Hong Kong; Hai Liang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Yuanhang LU, Hong Kong Baptist University • “This study collects and analyzes the titles and descriptions of 200 top communication programs worldwide. Results indicate that the field is moving towards divergence rather than convergence. Communication programs tend to highlight their own unique features (i.e., social sciences, humanities/culture, practical application, media studies) and programs examined within different continents (i.e., Europe, North American, Asia, Australia, Africa) of the world also demonstrate similar patterns.

‘Instagram versus Reality’: Psychological Effects of Viewing Realistic and Thin-Idealized Body Presentations on Instagram • Alice Binder; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna • Two experimental studies examined the effects of presenting ‘ideal vs. reality’ body pictures on Instagram on women and men. Whereas in Study 1, young women in the ‘ideal vs. reality’ condition showed a more realistic perception of an ideal body, Study 2 revealed that adult women in the ‘ideal vs. reality’ condition showed a thinner ideal self compared to the thin-idealized condition. This effect was most prominent in adult women with a higher BMI. No effects on men were observed.

Modeling attitude reinforcement within the elaboration likelihood model • Nikki McClaran, Michigan State University; Nancy Rhodes • The present study examines the importance of reinforcing favorable attitudes to strengthen the attitude-behavior relationship. In accordance with the elaboration likelihood model, this study attempted to determine how the way in which pro-attitudinal messages are processed influences behavioral intention via attitude reinforcement. More so, message features of argument strength and emotional tone were examined for their role in impacting this relationship. Participants (N = 315) were randomly exposed to a PSA video regarding donating to animal shelters. Results found that while the impact on attitude reinforcement was conditional on the message’s emotional tone, the influence of processing type on behavioral intention was contingent on message strength. However, no relationship was found between attitude reinforcement and behavioral intention. These findings reiterate the need for more research on pro-attitudinal processing and point to the potential role of peripheral cues in encouraging attitude-behavior consistency.

* Extended Abstract * Deliberating Alone: Immigration and “Rational” Arguments against Political Talk • Bryan McLaughlin, Texas Tech University; Kenton Wilkinson, Texas Tech Univ.; Hector Rendon, Texas Tech University; TJ Martinez, Texas Tech University • While interviewing people about the topic of immigration, one constant theme kept coming up—participants wanted to talk politics, but they believed it was not possible because other people were too irrational. Using a symbolic interactionism framework, we explore the reflexive process through which deliberation is considered, then ultimately decided against. We argue that these are normative performances used to demonstrate a commitment to the value of rationality, allowing individuals to reaffirm an ideal self.

Uses-and-gratification for parasocial grief and grief policing in the 21st century • Ajia Meux, University of Oklahoma • The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between parasocial grief and parasocial grief policing from a uses-and-gratifications framework. Uses-and-gratification theory suggests that people use media to meet a number of different needs. Celebrities use social media to create authentic and credible online personalities to cultivate niche audiences looking for connectedness and identification. Rapid advancements in social media technologies facilitate communications that allow for feelings of “being there.” This enables new ways to engage and develop parasocial relations, friend-like relationships with mediated personae and audiences. When these mediated personae die, fans experience parasocial grief and use social media to both grieve and participate in others’ grieving acts. This grief is met with policing efforts from individuals who perceive parasocial relationships as an illegitimate loss of the person grieving. Broader cultural implications (i.e., family, ethnicity, gender, culture, social media) are present when considering the importation of norms to online spaces which create a conflict between those who believe it be a space for grieving behavior and those who do not.

How theoretical are media social science theories? It’s difficult to tell. • Serena Miller; Stephen Lacy; Jen Lovejoy • Theories discipline our thinking by holding it to intellectual standards, yet standards are not standards if minimal agreement exists regarding what constitutes social science theory. During a pilot test of a content analysis aimed at assessing media scholars’ use of formal social science theory, we could not meaningfully record how theory guided scholars. This essay discusses previous such efforts, what the pilot test taught us about the use of formal social science theory in media journals, and what can be done to improve theory building in media scholarship.

A World of Two Agendas: Agenda Setting Sampling • Milad Minooie, Kennesaw State University • This article studies the efficiency of different samples for content analysis of news in media effects studies by comparing the agenda-setting effect of a sample drawn by the researcher with the effect of a sample drawn based on audiences’ self-reported media habits. Contrary to the belief that exposure to sampled media content is necessary for observation of media effects, samples drawn based on overall readership/viewership of the media are more efficient than samples based on audience’s actual consumption habits. A traditional media sample yields a stronger agenda-setting effect compared to a sample drawn based on self-reported media habits. But correlations between the two media samples are also strong. The findings suggest that a broad intermedia agenda-setting process makes it possible for researchers to draw a traditional sample that is representative of the issues salient to audiences regardless of their level of exposure to the sampled media. In other words, even in a demassified media environment, traditional samples are still the best option for media effects researchers.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: How global is the World Wide Web? Identifying user-defined geographies from websites, YouTube and Twitter Trends in over 100 countries • Yee Man Margaret Ng, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Harsh Taneja, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign • Do web users really transcend national boundaries? This study examines the extent of similarities between countries’ web use patterns simultaneously accounting for different modes of online consumption: country’s most popular websites and trends from YouTube and Twitter. Utilizing platforms’ API and scraping, we collected two months of usage data and analyzed usage pattern similarities between a hundred countries. Unlike prior studies, we find social media usage to be even more heterogeneous than global website usage.

* Extended Abstract * Explaining the Process: How Journalistic Transparency and Perceptions of Importance Can Promote Credibility and Engagement • Jason Peifer, Indiana University – Bloomington • Faced with declining public trust in news media, numerous proposals have been presented to combat the problems of journalistic credibility. Increased transparency is one commonly identified approach as a key for addressing these challenges—aspects of which could include disclosing how and why a story was selected, how it was reported, and how it was funded. This research employs an experimental design to investigate the efficacy of such transparency for fostering newspaper credibility and engagement.

Media Agenda-Setting versus Political Agenda-Setting: Towards a Needed Convergence of Research across Two Related Literatures • Alexander Rochefort, Boston University • Despite longstanding agenda-setting research within the communication and political science literatures, few scholars have attempted to synthesize these fields in a comprehensive and systematic way. This research fills this gap by explicating the interaction between the media agenda and the political agenda for a salient public issue—the oversight of social media platforms. Examining editorials in the New York Times, this project finds that editorial pages play a key role in linking these agendas together.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: Methodological Implications of Between-Coder Variance in Content Analysis • Iago S. Muraro, Michigan State University • This short paper investigates a topic that has been ignored in the content analysis literature: the effect of non-zero correlations within coders on critical statistical assumptions. By employing a data simulation approach, we generated three distinct content analysis scenarios to examine the relationship between non-perfect intercoder reliability and between-coder variance. Our findings demonstrate that non-perfect reliability indices may indicate that content analysis data can be clustered around coders. Statistical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.

Media Effects on Beliefs in Conspiracy Theories • Christian Schemer; Marc Ziegele; Tanjev Schultz; Oliver Quiring; Nikolaus Jackob; Ilka Jakobs • The present research examines how exposure to various news sources affects beliefs in conspiracy theories in Germany. Three surveys demonstrate that frequency of exposure to news on alternative news sites, video-sharing platforms, commercial television, and in tabloids increase beliefs in conspiracies. Conversely, frequent exposure to quality newspapers, public broadcasting television news, news aggregators, and legacy news sites reduce beliefs in conspiracy theories. Reading news on social media or user comments is unrelated to conspiratorial beliefs.

Delineating the Transnational Network Agenda Setting of Hong Kong’s Anti-Extradition Movement: A Machine Learning Approach • Yan Su; Danielle Ka Lai Lee, Washington State University • Grounded in the network agenda setting (NAS) model, this study applied both supervised and unsupervised machine-learning approaches to analyze the newspaper coverage in Hong Kong, Mainland China, the U.S. and the U.K. (N = 2,118), and discussions in Twitter (N = 152,509), about the Hong Kong protest. Network analyses indicated that all media used distinct approaches in setting and bundling issue and attribute agendas. Time-series analyses revealed a reciprocal while asymmetrical relationship in which Twitter exhibited a stronger power in transferring bundled issues and attributes to the media. Contributions and implications are discussed.

* Extended Abstract * Developing a Perceived Social Media Literacy Scale • Edson Tandoc; Andrew Yee, Singapore University of Technology and Design • This paper seeks to contribute to the growing discussion about the need for social media literacy by developing and testing a perceived social media literacy (PSML) scale. It draws from data and analyses involving three national surveys. A pilot study developed 32 items that described different forms of literacies associated with social media. Four domains of literacies emerged from the qualitative analysis: technological, social, informational, and privacy related. Items were developed within each of these domains. Following the qualitative study, three separate nationally representative surveys were conducted to (1) explore the factor structure of those items, (2) confirm the factor structure found in (1), and (3) examine the validity of the PSML scale. At least 3,146 participants took part in the entire process from item pool development to examining scale validity.

Critical Reflection in Narrative Persuasion: Thinking beyond Transportation • RAN TAO, UW-Madison • Because of its effectiveness in communication, narrative-based persuasion is deemed as a potent tool to reduce health disparities and promote better health outcomes, especially for people from disadvantaged groups and people with high resistance. However, the mechanism of this communication strategy is still under debate. The dominant explanation suggests transportation results in receptivity to persuasion. Another line of research incorporates the transportation experience with the message-receivers’ cognitive needs to interpret and extrapolating from narrative. Following the logic of cognition-based narrative processing, this theoretical paper adds critical reflection to the model of narrative persuasion. This paper argues, after returning from narrative world to the real world, narrative receivers use logic and reasoning to reflect upon their experience and make assessments on the narrative’s soundness and value. And this meta-level assessments is important to understand the narrative persuasion outcomes. Acknowledging the strengths of narrative persuasion, this paper also makes a case that narrative strategy should be promoted with caution, in that the effectiveness of narratives could be utilized for wrong causes. Some individual-level factors are proposed to identify people who are more receptive to narrative persuasion, and more vulnerable to the pitfalls of narrative-based strategies.

The Journalism-Public Relations Role Continuum • Leigh Anne Tiffany, Michigan State University • In the current new media era, journalists and public relations practitioners are taking on new responsibilities in their respective professions. In meeting these new demands, the demarcated barrier between these distinct vocations has faded. This blurring of lines has led to definitional uncertainty for these roles. This paper proposes three models to provide clarity for the boundaries—or lack thereof—for these role holders. Two of the models—the Archetypal Model and the Continuum Model—provide the historical and foundational context for the third model. The Role Snapshot Model is presented as the best representation for roles in the constantly changing media realm. Additionally, this model provides a scholarly channel for increased interdisciplinarity between journalism and public relations.

A two-study qualitative exploration of ecological momentary assessment as a tool for media, behavior measurement • Jessica Willoughby, Washington State University; Stephanie Gibbons; Shuang Liu • Ecological momentary assessment, a method of collecting data in real-time on mobile devices, may offer certain benefits for communication research. We were interested in participants’ experiences with EMA for addressing communication-based research questions. We conducted two EMA studies on different topics in 2017 and 2018 and followed them up with in-depth interviews (N=19 and N=16). Participants described potential changes in behavior associated with the EMA, which could contribute to changes in data collected.

<2020 Abstracts