Visual Communication 2015 Abstracts

Appearance and Explanation: Advancements in the Evaluation of Information Graphics • Spencer Barnes, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Laura Ruel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • The research presented in this paper offers new approaches to evaluate the efficacy of information graphics by examining how appearance and explanation can be quantified and analyzed via three novel measures: aesthetic value, learning efficiency, and performance efficiency. Little research has been conducted to determine the implications of these qualities. Findings suggest that information processing predicates explanation and that explanation makes slightly more of a contribution to one’s interaction with an information graphic than appearance.

Images of Arab Spring Conflict: A Content Analysis of Five pan-Arab TV News Networks • Michael Bruce, University of Alabama • Guided by framing theory a quantitative content analysis was conducted on news programming from five transnational satellite news channels that broadcast to/from the Arab world—Al Jazeera, Al Jazeera English, Al Arabiya, Alhurra, and BBC Arabic—to determine if differences exist between the networks, and between two dimensions of a network taxonomy—western and liberal commercial—in how Arab Spring conflict and violence was visually framed. Results show that the liberal commercial networks utilized more conflict visuals than western networks. Among the individual networks, Al Jazeera aired the most violent Arab Spring images. However, the majority of Arab Spring visuals from all the networks were conflict free, suggesting that Arab media is not as violent as anecdotal evidence suggests.

Place, space, and time: Elite media as visual gatekeepers in the formation of iconic imagery • Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon; Daniel Morrison, University of Oregon • Media gatekeeping has been a critical component in the formation of iconic imagery. This research examines differences between identification of iconic imagery when comparing a prompt of commonly used elite media images to an unprompted response in effort to ascertain which images are, in fact, considered most iconic by audiences. Findings indicate that the democratization of the news via social media has had the unanticipated effect of rescinding the uniformity of collective visual consciousness and the traditional formation of iconic imagery.

Access Denied: Exploring the relationship between the Obama administration’s access policies and visual journalists’ ability to function as independent watchdogs • Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon; Erin Coyle, Louisiana State University • The Obama administration has continued to restrict media access, specifically for visual journalists, to presidential events, instead offering White House captured photos, best described as visual news releases, which undermines the ability of the press to gather information and to report news. Through surveys and in-depth interviews with WHNPA members, findings provide evidence that visuals journalists understand their watchdog role and that White House practices interfere with visual journalists’ ability to perform this critical function.

Image, Race, and Rhetoric: The Contention for Visual Space on Twitter • Michael DiBari, Hampton University; Edgar Simpson • This study examines photographs associated with the Twitter hashtag ifiweregunneddown through the lens of visual rhetoric, concluding that social media users engaged in a protest against mainstream media by using images of themselves to reassert their identity. Data was examined through the theory of the public sphere, suggesting that societal members use information available to them to debate and determine meaning. This study also borrows theory from geography and the concept of contested space.

Finding Photojournalism: The Search for Photojournalism’s Birth as a Term and Practice • Timothy Roy Gleason, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh • The history of photojournalism is wealthy in tales of glory but poor in the understanding of how photojournalism emerged as a term and set of practices. This paper tracks the language used to describe pre-photojournalism through the beginnings of photojournalism, roughly marked as during WWII. Pictorial journalism and press photography can be viewed as photojournalism’s predecessors. Photojournalism, as a term, appeared as late as 1938, but it wouldn’t come into popular usage for decades.

Visually framing press freedom and responsibility of a massacre: Photographic and graphic images in Charlie Hedbo’s newspaper front pages around the world • Kristin Gustafson, University of Washington Bothell; Linda Jean Kenix • This research examines 441 front-page images published in 367 newspapers on the day following the shooting in Paris of twelve people at or near the satirical magazine to understand how mainstream media visually frame responsibility for the Charlie Hedbo massacre and how visual framing coalesced to represent collective narratives about press freedom. Through a collaborative visual analysis, this study attempts to understand how the selected visual frames worked to communicate the causes, effects, and responses to the massacre and also to press freedom—an ideological construct that that news media had a vested interest in advancing.

The State of the Scholarship: 
Exploring the theories and methods used in visual communication journals • Matthew Haught, University of Memphis; David Morris II, University of Memphis • As the field of visual communication continues to grow in academic program, its scholarship also has developed. Once rooted in communication, psychology, anthropology, and sociology, visual communication itself has emerged as an independent academic discipline. Yet, its research tends to draw on theories and methods from its roots. Using a content analysis of two leading visual communication journals, Visual Communication Quarterly and Visual Communication, this study compares the theoretical perspectives, research topics, methodologies, data collection and visual data used in visual communication research. It concludes that, overwhelmingly, photography and graphic design research dominate the visual communication landscape.

On their Own: Freelance Photojournalists in Conflict Zones • Pinar Istek • The recession increased media organizations’ reliance on freelance photojournalists, while affecting the support they receive covering conflict zones. This study investigates freelance and staff photojournalists’ perception of support they receive and whether that affects content produced. Grounded theory was used to analyze nine in-depth interviews with freelance and staff photojournalists. The research found that freelance photojournalists receive less than sufficient support. Both believe that support systems improve their coverage in conflict zones.

Visual Expressions of Black Identity: African American & African Museum Web sites • Melissa Johnson, NC State University; Keon Pettiway, NC State University • This qualitative and quantitative content analysis examines 46 African American museum Web sites. Described are images, sound, and visual dynamism. Merelman’s Cultural Projection theory serves as a foundation to explain how the African- and African American-centric organizations express Black and organizational identities. The findings add to the literature on counter-stereotypes, provide suggestions regarding methodological challenges of digital content analysis, and offer ideas for Web designers and content providers.

What Does Moral Look Like? A Second-Level Agenda-Setting Study Linking Nonverbal Behavior to Character Traits in Politicians • Danielle Kilgo; Trent Boulter; Renita Coleman • The study explores which nonverbal behaviors – specific facial expressions, and gestures – lead viewers to attribute specific character traits to political figures, building on the substantive dimension of second-level agenda setting theory. Findings include direct eye contact, shaking hands, and smiling lead to inferences of caring, and crossed arms make people think the person is uncaring. Shaking hands and raised, open arms led to inferences of competence. Honesty was only linked to raised or open arms.

Child Survivors of Sandy Hook: An Analysis of Front-Page Photographs in U.S Newspapers • Eun Jeong Lee, The University of Texas at Austin • This study examined how U.S. newspapers visually framed images of child survivors on their newspaper front-page. A content analysis of 646 photographs from U.S newspapers suggests that human interest framing dominated the news coverage by emphasizing graphic images of human suffering of tragic incident. The results also showed that U.S. newspapers were more likely to feature negative emotional portrayals of child survivors during the news coverage.

Visual Frames of War Photojournalism, Empathy, and Information Seeking • Jennifer Midberry, Temple University • This between-subjects experiment examines how people respond affectively and behaviorally to images that depict the human cost of war compared to those of militarism. More specifically, this paper investigates whether photos with three types of human-cost-of-war visual frames and with one militarism visual frame evoke differing levels of empathy, distress, and information seeking behavior in participants. The findings help expand our understanding about the way audiences emotionally process and react to conflict photos and they have implications for how photojournalists and photo editors might present audiences with images of war that will engage individuals rather than overwhelm them.

Al-Sabeen Square suicide attack remediated: A visual analysis of propaganda of the deed in Yemeni Press • Natalia Mielczarek • This project engages iconographic tracking and visual rhetorical analysis to analyze the remediation and recontextualization of terrorist-produced images in Yemeni press to cover one of the deadliest suicide bombings in recent history. The study offers the concept of participatory jihad, which explores the use of terrorist-produced photographs as user-generated content in participatory culture and illuminates the ongoing symbiotic relationship between mainstream media and modern-day terrorists as communicators.

Citizen Framing of Ferguson in 2015: Visual Representations on Twitter and Tumblr • Ceeon Smith, Arizona State University; Mia Moody-Ramirez, Baylor University; LIllie Fears; Randle Brenda • This content analysis of the photos and text in Tumblr posts and tweets following Michael Brown’s death in 2014 indicates the most salient themes characterized Ferguson as a war zone, Middle East-like and out of control. Citizens on both Twitter and Tumblr used similar photos and text to frame both Brown and Ferguson in a certain manner. Framing of Michael Brown, on the other hand, was dichotomous in nature, depicting him either as a hero or a villain. The most telling visual frames that emerged were the photos that included protestors engulfed in pillars of smoke, holding signs containing various messages or holding their arms in the air as a symbol of surrender. Comparing these two types of platforms provided the means for characterizing citizen framing of the Michael Brown killing in Ferguson, Mo.

Visual framing of global sporting events in world newspapers: A comparison study • David Morris II, University of Memphis • Newspapers have long covered worldwide sporting events; however, their coverage can reflect multiple viewpoints on the events. Using a content analysis of photography and design elements, this study considers the nationalist and global coverage frames used by newspapers worldwide for the 2014 Winter Olympics and FIFA World Cup. It found that newspapers use different visual tools to cover the sporting events, with photographs being the most prominent. Countries also tended to cover the events through a national perspective. Only Brazilian newspapers in the coverage of the FIFA World Cup provided extensive non-national coverage of the events. This study advances the understanding of newspapers as a means of building national identity, as sports and coverage of sports help to show pride in one’s own nation.

Hashing out the normal and the deviant: A visual stereotyping study of the stigmatization of marijuana use before and after recreational legalization in Colorado • Tara Marie Mortensen; Aimei Yang, University of Southern California; Anan Wan, University of South Carolina • In a development that Goffman (1963) refers to as normification, marijuana use in the United States is becoming more mainstream. Despite moves toward normification, the lingering stereotype of the marijuana user in the United States for many is that of the lazy, often-minority, lethargic and unkempt unmotivated young person; the pleasure-seeking, rebellious and criminal bum (Haines-Saah, et al., 2014; Lee, 2012; Simmons, 1965). This study was interested in examining visual stereotypes of marijuana users in the news, and whether normification – as measured by legalization in Colorado – had an effect on the presence of stereotypes. A quantitative content analysis of 458 visuals in 10 different media outlets of different political persuasions both six months prior to and six months proceeding legalization in Colorado was undertaken. Results show that while normification had little effect on stereotyping, political disposition of the news outlets was associated with different levels of stereotyping.

How The New York Times Uses Infographics and Data Visualizations Across News Sections and to Foster Engagement • Yee Man (Margaret) Ng, The University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism • This study assessed the differences in the use of infographics and visualizations across news sections and examined what built-in features tend to use to foster audience engagement. Adopting Segel and Heer (2010) narrative visualization categories, a content analysis and two in-depth case studies were conducted to analyze common design components employed on infographics and visualizations across news sections at the New York Times’ websites in 2012. It was found that the largest portion of the graphics produced was found in business and the economy sections. Graphs, such as line charts and bar charts, were the most popular design component. Author-driven and random access were the main approaches of narrative across all new sections. Three NYT editors were interviewed to provide a journalistic perspective on how infographics and visualizations could help audience engagement. They revealed that it was harder for editors and reporters to come up with unique features for hard news due to tighter deadlines. In contrast, visualizations for feature news were usually planned ahead of time and allowed sufficient time to experiment with interactive features. The main design principles included clear content, unique presentation and engaging exploration to readers. Also, interactive visualizations that offered readers an opportunity to figure out data related to them personally could improve audience engagement.

Anti-Smoking Ads and College Students • Sung Eun Park • College students account for a considerable number of smokers in the United States, and their consumption of cigarettes remains at high levels. Consequently, testing important ad components (i.e., image and message) is worthwhile. While the prevalence of celebrity spokespersons is salient in commercial product ads, celebrities received relatively little attention in the field of health communication. The study attempts to identify their influence on advertising effects: ad image likeability, ad helpfulness, and ad overall likeability.

Using Infographics in Television News: Effects of TV Graphics on Information Recall about Sexually Transmitted Diseases among Young Americans • Ivanka Pjesivac, University of Georgia; Nicholas Geidner, University of Tennessee; Laura Miller, University of Tennessee • This experimental study (N=113) examined the effects of the visual presentations of data in television news on young Americans’ recall of information about sexually transmitted diseases, as well as the roles of individual characteristics in this process. The results show that individuals who saw either a tabular or graphical presentation of information about sexually transmitted diseases better remembered that information than those who only heard the anchor describe the numbers. Our study further found that participants high in quantitative media literacy recalled significantly more information than participants low in quantitative media literacy, but this individual characteristic did not moderate the relationship between style of information presentation and recall. Spatial thinking did not significantly predict information recall, although the effect went into the right direction. The results support the assumptions of Dual-Coding theory of information processing and Limited Capacity Model of mediated message processing. It also represents the first step in linking individual differences to the processing of information from infographics from television news.

Twitter Images in Middle Eastern Higher Education: A Visual Content Analysis Approach • Husain Ebrahim, University of Kansas; Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas • We conducted a content analysis of 537 Twitter images posted by Kuwait University, King Saud University of Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates University to examine how public universities in the Middle East use social media to promote their agenda. Specifically, we analyzed prominent topics and democracy frames featured in the Twitter images as well as structural characteristics of those images. In terms of image type, most Twitter images posted by the three universities were still photos. Our analysis shows significant differences between the three universities in terms of the most prominent topic category and democracy frame. A significantly higher proportion of the Twitter images posted by Kuwait University featured educational and political topic categories. In comparison, the social topic category was the most prominent in the Twitter images posted by King Saud University and United Arab Emirates University. Our analysis of democracy frames shows that these public universities often used their social media channels to promote the respective government’s political agenda. These and other findings are discussed in the context of the rising social media use in the Gulf Cooperation Council countries and the role of visuals in the society.

Feeling the disaster: An interpretive visual analysis of emotive television reportage following Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan • Chiaoning Su, Temple University • The televisual medium is particularly keyed into the emotional narratives of disaster. Using an interpretive visual analysis to examine the first week of broadcast news coverage of Typhoon Morakot—one of the worst natural disasters in Taiwanese history, this article found a series of television techniques, such as interruption of commercials, live broadcasting, dramatization, and cinematic vignettes, have been used to convey and elicit the feelings of horror, grief, anger, pride, and compassion from the audience. While many media critics reduce such media construction to evidence of weepy journalism and therapy news, which exploits public emotions to boost ratings, this article explores the cultural function of emotive disaster coverage. In fact, such coverage united a traumatized society and allowed journalists to establish their cultural authority through emotional storytelling .

Putting pictures in our heads: Second-level agenda setting of news stories and photos • Carolyn Yaschur, Augustana College • Using an experimental design, this research explores the second-level agenda-setting effects of news stories and photographs independent of each other. The tone of both stories and photos influences public opinion on an affective level. Negative stories and photographs elicited negative opinions and attitudes about the issues presented, while positive responses resulted from both positive stories and photographs. Additionally, need for orientation was not found to be a predictor of second-level agenda-setting effects.

2015 Abstracts

Public Relations 2015 Abstracts

Open Competition
Engaging the Public with CSR Activities Through Social Media • Alan Abitbol, Texas Tech University; Sun Young Lee, Texas Tech University • This study examines how communicating corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives via Facebook impact public engagement. Using the stakeholder and dialogic theories as frameworks, a content analysis of 533 Fortune 500 companies’ CSR-specific posts was conducted. After testing the effects of issue topic and three dialogic strategies on public engagement, results indicated that the use of multimedia content and interactive language in messages affected public engagement most. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed further.

Making social media work: Modeling the antecedents and outcomes of perceived relationship investment of nonprofit organizations • Giselle Auger, Duquesne University; Moonhee Cho, University of Tennessee • A lack of empirical studies prompted the development and testing of a model investigating the antecedents and outcomes of perceived relationship investment (PRI) in nonprofits. All parts of the model were supported including antecedent tactics of tangible rewards, interactivity, and information sharing, their effect on relationship quality, and positive behavioral intentions such as keeping the organization foremost in consideration of volunteer time or large gift allocation when time or financial resources allow.

Campaign and Corporate Goals in Conflict: Exploring Corporate Social Initiative Types and Company Issue Congruence • Lucinda Austin, Elon University; Barbara Miller, Elon University • Corporate social responsibility is increasingly important in boosting public acceptance for companies, and emerging research suggests corporate social marketing could be the most effective type of CSR. However, scholars caution that corporate social marketing is not a one-size-fits-all. Through a content analysis of Coca-Cola’s social media posts on its controversial topics related to sustainability, this study explores how corporate social initiative type and company-issue congruence influence public response to an organization’s social media CSR posts.

Communicating Sustainability: An Examination of Corporate, Nonprofit, and UniversityWebsites • Holly Ott, The Pennsylvania State University; Ruoxu Wang, Penn State University; Denise Bortree, Penn State University • This study analyzed the websites of top corporations, nonprofits, and colleges/universities for the types of sustainability content presented. Comparisons are made between organization types. Few nonprofits in the sample provided sustainability content; however, nearly all universities and over half of the corporations had a designated sustainability section on their websites. Findings suggest that organizations are promoting certain content, and fewer than 40% quantify their sustainability claims on any topic. Implications are discussed.

More than just a lack of uniformity: Exploring the evolution of public relations master’s programs • Rowena Briones, Virginia Commonwealth University; Hongmei Shen, San Diego State University; Candace Parrish, Virginia Commonwealth University; Elizabeth Toth, University of Maryland; Maria Russell, Syracuse University • PR is well known for its adaptability through continual change, and as a result PR master’s programs have been re-conceptualized to remain rigorous and competitive. Twenty in-depth interviews were conducted with administrators of PR master’s programs. Findings demonstrated that although many programs have moved away from traditional curricula, programs exist that still model CPRE recommendations. These findings could be used to better ground the discipline by ensuring a stronger cohesiveness within PR master’s education.

If organizations are people, they need to have the same values: Personal values and organizational values in stakeholder evaluations of organizational legitimacy • John Brummette, Radford University; Lynn Zoch, Radford University • In today’s Linked-in, friend heavy, tweeted about world, in which many organizations have constituents who follow, share and like them, the general public often places anthropomorphic expectations on organizations. This study found a positive relationship between individuals’ personal values and the values they deem as desirable for organizations. Findings from this study also support the assumption that human and organizational values are directly related with the concept of organizational legitimacy.

The effect of CSR expectancy violations on public attitudinal and behavioral responses to corporations: An application of expectancy violation theory • Moonhee Cho, University of Tennessee; Sun-Young Park, Rowan University; Soojin Kim, University of Florida • By applying expectancy violation theory (EVT) to corporate public relations, the study explored how publics respond to an organization’s CSR activities. A 2 (publics’ pre-predictive CSR expectancy) X 2 (CSR practice information) experimental study examined how both negative and positive expectancy violation and conformity influenced publics’ attitude toward an organization and their supportive behavior intention. Also, the study explained the moderating role of corporate likability in influencing the effect of expectancy violation.

Crisis communication and corporate apology: The effects of causal attributions and apology types on publics’ cognitive and affective responses • Surin Chung, University of Missouri Columbia; Suman Lee, Iowa State University • This study examined how corporate apologies influence cognitive and affective public responses during a crisis. A total of 200 participants were exposed to one of the two types of causal attributions (internal vs. external) and one of the two types of apology messages (responsibility-oriented vs. sympathy-oriented). The study found the main effects of causal attributions on public responses. The study also revealed the interaction effects between causal attributions and apology messages on public responses.

Reassessment of audience in public relations industry: How social media reshape public relations measurements • Surin Chung, University of Missouri Columbia; Harsh Taneja, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • The growing adoption of social media in PR practice has provided opportunities for newer audience measurements and contributed to cultivating newer conceptions of their audience. This study conducts a historical textual analysis of articles in PR Week to establish the conception. The analysis maps the structural transformation of the field that has guided the PR industry’s reconceptualization of their audiences from the quantity of media placements to the quantity and the quality of behavioral outcomes.

The Effects of Framing in Mainstream and Alternative Media on Government Public Relationships • Ganga Dhanesh; Tracy Loh • This study aimed to examine the effects of differential framing in alternative media and mainstream media on publics’ perceptions of government-public relationships; an attempt to integrate the rich bodies of work in framing and relationship management theorizing in public relations, in the context of government public relations and the challenges thrown up by the emergence of alternative media. The study employed an experimental design and found that reading alternative media negatively affected publics’ perceptions of trust, commitment, control mutuality and satisfaction, but not communal and exchange relationships. Reading mainstream media on the other hand had no significant relationship with publics’ perceptions of government-public relationship. The difference in effect is attributed to the framing devices employed in alternative and mainstream media. Implications for public relations theory and practice are discussed.

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right: Journalist perceptions of reputation and errors in corporate communication • Melanie Formentin, Towson University; Kirstie Hettinga, California Lutheran University; Alyssa Appelman, Northern Kentucky University • Exploring reputation and organizational communication, this study tests how journalists perceive press releases containing errors, and examines the legitimacy of using fictional organizations when testing reputation via experiments. Journalists (N = 118) read releases from reputable or fictional companies, with or without typos. Releases without errors and from an existing company were ranked more favorably based on press release judgments and reputation. Analysis showed no interaction effects, suggesting reputation cannot overcome negative error effects.

Care in Crisis: Proposing the Applied Model of Care Considerations for Public Relations • Julia Daisy Fraustino, West Virginia University; Amanda Kennedy, University of Maryland • This work builds global bridges from ethics theory to practice in crisis public relations. It forms foundations for ethical organizational communication throughout the crisis lifecycle and across contexts. The Applied Model of Care Considerations is proposed using the illustration of Nestle’s global baby-formula-promotion crisis. Rooted in feminist normative philosophies, this research addresses public relations literature gaps from lack of: (1) general crisis ethics theory; (2) applied crisis communication ethics for practice; (3) feminist-theory-oriented crisis communication.

Mascot Nations: Examining university-driven college football fan communities • Matthew Haught, University of Memphis • In the sport of college football, engagement with fans drives revenue for the sports teams and the athletic department; the more fans buy, the more money the school gets. This study examines the ways college football teams use Facebook to engage their publics, and how that engagement builds a sense of community. Specifically, it explores six teams that represent new college foot-ball teams, mid-major teams, and state flagship institution teams. Ultimately, it seeks to explain how social media can be a force in establishing and maintaining an online community.

Informing crisis communication preparation and response through network analysis: An elaboration of the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication model • Itai Himelboim, University of Georgia; Yan Jin, University of Georgia; Bryan Reber, University of Georgia; Patrick Grant, University of Georgia • To test and elaborate as necessary the Social-Mediated Crisis Communication (SMCC) model’s key publics classifications (Liu et al., 2012) and to provide practical insight to public identification for crisis communication planning and response, this study uses network analysis to identify social mediators (Himelboim et al., 2014) and clustered publics in airline Twitter networks. In our analysis, social mediators and network clusters are classified according to the publics taxonomy of the SMCC model. The characteristics of the social mediators and the network structure of the clusters are also identified in airline Twitter networks. Our findings suggest further elaborations and more in-depth identification of key publics in social-mediated crisis communication.

Minding the representation gap: Some pitfalls of linear crisis-response theory • Yi-Hui Huang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Hiu Ying Choy, The School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Fang Wu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Qing Huang, The School of Journalism and Communication, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Qijun He, the Chinese University of Hong Kong; Deya Xu, Department of Communication, CUHK • Scholars assume the direct influence of crisis communication strategies (CCSs) upon representations of CCSs in the media and online public posts. This study 1) introduces the concept of representation gap to address how media and netizen’s gatekeeping practices represent organizational CCSs differently; and 2) highlights how social context leads to an evaluation gap of communication effectiveness. Analysis validates the robust predictive power of this representation gap with regard to interpreting the effectiveness of CCSs.

Too much of a good thing: When does two-way symmetric communication become unhelpful? • Yi Grace Ji, University of Miami; Cong Li, Univ. of Miami • The current study proposes a moderated mediation model by revisiting the effects of two-way symmetric communication on relational outcomes in a social-mediated relationship management context. Through a 2 (interactivity: one-way vs. two way) × 2 (message valence: positive vs. negative) between-subjects experiment, it was demonstrated that two-way symmetric communication led to more favorable relational outcomes only when the communication was centered on a negative subject, and such effects were mediated by perceived source credibility.

Making a good life in professional and personal arenas: A SEM analysis of fair decision making, leadership, organizational support, and quality of Employee-Organization Relationships (EORs) • Hua Jiang, Syracuse University • Scholars and practitioners have well acknowledged the importance of studying influential factors leading to quality employee-organization relationships (EORs). A growing body of literature exist in developing theoretical models to explain the underlying mechanisms between EORs and organizational contextual variables that are closely related to EOR outcomes (trust, commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality). Based on a national sample of employees (n=795) working in diverse organizations in the US, the present study proposed and tested a model that examined how organizational procedural justice, transformational leadership behaviors of employees’ immediate supervisors, and supportive organizational environment, as three influential factors were associated with time-based and strain-based work-life conflict and employee-organization relationship outcomes. Results of the study supported the conceptual model, except for the direct effect of transformational leadership upon strain-based work-life conflict and that of strain-based work-life conflict upon quality of EORs. Theoretical contributions and managerial ramifications of the study were discussed.

Is there still a PR problem online? Exploring the effects of different sources and crisis response strategies in online crisis communication via social media • Young Kim, Louisiana State University; Hyojung Park, Louisiana State University • This study examined how organizational sources (vs. non-organizational sources) affect perceived source credibility in the context of social media and how the effect of source interplays with crisis response strategy in determining crisis communication outcomes, such as crisis responsibility, reputation, and supportive behavioral intentions. A 3 (source: organization, CEO, or customer) X 2 (crisis response strategy: accommodative or defensive) X 2 (crisis type: airline crash or bank hacking) mixed experimental design was used with 391 participants. The organizational sources, especially CEOs, were more likely to be perceived as more credible than the non-organizational source. The path analysis indicated that perceived source credibility mediated the effect of source on reputation and behavioral intentions; however, this mediation was moderated by the type of crisis response strategy being used. In addition, crisis response strategies had an indirect effect on crisis communication outcomes through perceived company credibility.

Understanding public and its communicative actions as antecedents of government-public relationships in crisis communication • Young Kim, Louisiana State University; Andrea Miller, Louisiana State University; Hyunji Lim, University of Miami • This study explored an effective government-public relationship by understanding its antecedents, public and its communicative actions, in crisis communication. The government-public relationship research has overlooked the importance of its antecedents and focused on the quality of relationship (outcome) in terms of long term relationship building. To fill the gap, the current study attempts to understand public and its communicative actions as antecedents of government-public relationships in a government crisis, problem-solving situation, by applying a Situational Theory of Problem Solving (STOPS) to relationship research. Using an online nationwide survey with 545 participants, this study tested a proposed model employing structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings indicate that active public’s communication behaviors are more likely to positively associate with attribution of responsibility on the organization and, at the same time, negatively associate with relationship outcomes and subsequent consequences, negative reputation and less behavioral intention to support. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The value of public relations: Different impacts of communal and exchange relationships on communicative behavior • Jarim Kim, Kookmin University; Minjung Sung, Chung-Ang University • The purpose of this paper was to investigate the impacts of relationship on organization-public relationships using the situational theory of publics and its extended model, specifically in a tuition issue context, and to test the different effects of a communal and exchange relationship on a public’s perception regarding the issue. The study employed a survey with 508 university students. The results indicated that the perceived student-university relationship had a positive influence on students’ constraint recognition regarding a university-related issue, whereas the relationship had a negative influence on problem recognition. Problem recognition, involvement recognition and constraint recognition positively predicted students’ motivation to take an action, which further predicted communicative action. The current study also found a different influence of communal and exchange relationships on the public’s perception regarding an issue. Communal relationships had a negative association with problem recognition and a positive one with constraint recognition. Exchange relationships had positive relationships with problem recognition and involvement recognition. As one of the few studies that has examined a relationship’s influence on the public’s perceptions of an issue and that empirically tested the differential effects of different types of relationships, this study advances the field of public relations by theoretically extending the public relations model and by providing solid empirical data to support the current conceptual model.

Examining the Role of CSR in Corporate Crises: Integration of Situational Crisis Communication Theory and the Persuasion Knowledge Model • Jeesun Kim, California State University, Fullerton; Chang-Dae Ham • The impact of corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities on consumer perceptions has widely been discussed. However, knowledge about the role of CSR communication in the corporate crisis context is still limited. In this study we aim to help fill this gap by conducting 2 (crisis type: accidental vs. intentional) x 2 (CSR motives: values-driven vs. strategic-driven) x 2 (CSR history: long vs. short) between-subjects design experiment. In particular, we integrate Situational Crisis Communication Theory (SCCT) with the Persuasion Knowledge Model (PKM) to better understand how and why consumers, as an active public, cope with rather than simply accept or resist corporate crisis strategies based on their knowledge structure. We found an interaction effect between consumers’ persuasion knowledge (CSR motive perception) and topic knowledge (crisis type perception) on word-of-mouth intention and purchase intention. In addition, persuasion knowledge (CSR motive perception) interacted with agent knowledge (CSR history perception) on purchase intention. We discuss theoretical as well as practical implications.

Relational Immunity? Examining Relationship as Crisis Shield in the case of Purdue’s On-Campus Shooting • Arunima Krishna, Purdue University; Brian Smith, Purdue University; Staci Smith • This study examined the influence of a crisis on relational perceptions by investigating students’ perceptions of their relationship with Purdue University following the on-campus shooting. Findings show that despite the generally positive relationship Purdue maintains with its students, the crisis had a negative impact on the students’ perceptions of their relationship with Purdue. Furthermore, results show how publics’ emotions, especially empathy, about the organization regarding the crisis influence their evaluations of organization-public relationships

Understanding an Angry Hot-Issue Public’s response to The Interview Cancellation Saga • Arunima Krishna, Purdue University; Kelly Vibber, University of Dayton • This study examines comments on online news articles about The Interview’s cancellation and eventual release. We examine these comments from the context of communication behaviors of hot-issue angry publics, and present a longitudinal analysis of themes present over the duration of the issue. Anti-corporate sentiment, conspiracy, and questioning the film content/premise were consistent throughout the timeline. Discussion on how monitoring these types of communication might lead to better engagement with key publics is provided.

Never Easy to Say Sorry: Exploring the Interplay of Crisis Involvement, Brand Image and Message Framing in Developing Effective Crisis Responses • Soyoung Lee, The University of Texas at Austin; Lucy Atkinson, University of Texas at Austin • This study examines how the interplay between crisis involvement, brand image, and message framing has an impact on the effectiveness of brand’s apology message in a crisis context. To determine the effectiveness of an apology, based on SCCT guidance and ELM, a 2 (Crisis involvement: high vs low) × 2 (Brand image: symbolic vs. functional) × 2 (Message types: emotional vs. informational) factorial design are employed. Theoretical and empirical implications are discussed.

The Role of Company–Cause Congruence and the Moderating Effects of Organization–Public Relationships on the Negative Spillover Effects of Partnerships • Sun Young Lee, Texas Tech University; Hyejoon Rim, University of Minnesota • The purpose of this study was to explore whether negative spillover effects occur in the corporate–nonprofit partnership context when a crisis strikes a partner organization, and to investigate two factors—company–cause congruence and organization–public relationships (OPRs)—that might affect the degree of negative impact. The results of an experiment proved negative spillover effects; when respondents were exposed to negative information about a partner organization, their attitude toward the principal organization became less favorable. Contrary to our hypotheses, however, the perceived congruence between the company and the cause of the nonprofit organization yielded buffering effects that minimized the negative spillover effects, and OPRs moderated the impacts. We discuss the practical and theoretical implications.

Understanding Consumer Resentment Before It’s too Late: Empirical Testing of A Service Failure Response Model • Zongchao Li; Don Stacks, University of Miami • This paper investigated consumer response mechanism in a service failure context. A Service Failure Response Model was introduced that incorporated emotive and cognitive antecedents, a mediation process and four behavioral outcomes. Data were collected via an online survey (N=371) and further analyzed using the structural equation modeling approach. Results confirmed the Service Failure Response Model: anger, dissatisfaction and perceived betrayal were emotive/cognitive antecedents that lead to consumers’ exit, voice, and revenge responses. This process was mediated by desire for avoidance and desire for revenge.

Crowd Endorsement on Social Media: Persuasive Effects of Organizations’ Retweeting and Role of Social Presence • Young-shin Lim; Roselyn J. Lee-Won, The Ohio State University • Despite the technological affordances of social media platforms allowing organizations to engage in two-way, many-to-many communication with their stakeholders, organizations tend to simply posts unilateral messages. Drawing on the concept of social presence and the theory of reasoned action, this research investigated the persuasive effects of organizations’ retweeting practices. An online experiment was conducted, featuring a Twitter page of a fictitious organization. Results showed that retweeted user messages, when compared with organization’s original tweets, induced higher levels of social presence, which in turn led to higher levels of social norm perception, more positive attitude toward the behavior advocated by the organization, and stronger intention to perform the advocated behavior. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Crucial Linkages in Successful Public Relations Practice: Organizational Culture, Leadership, Engagement, Trust and Job Satisfaction • Juan Meng, University of Georgia; Bruce Berger, University of Alabama • The study examines the effects of critical organizational factors (organizational culture and excellent leader performance) on public relations practitioners’ job engagement and trust in the organization that link to improved job satisfaction. A national online survey of 883 public relations professionals working in a variety of organizations was used as the empirical data to test the relationships in a proposed conceptual model. Results confirmed the strong impact organizational culture and leader performance can have on outcomes at the practitioner level (engagement, trust, and job satisfaction). In addition, results revealed the significant mediating effects of engagement and trust in the relationship between organizational factors and practitioners’ job satisfaction. The study concludes with research and practical implications.

Change Management Communication: Barriers, Strategies & Messaging • Marlene Neill, Baylor University • In a world characterized by constant change, there has been a neglect of scholarly research on change management communication in the context of public relations. Through 32 in-depth interviews with executives in marketing, public relations and human resources, this study provides new insights into the barriers, effective strategies and key messaging in change management communication. Change management was examined in 10 sectors representing 15 employers. Barriers for communicators included lack of a plan, changing plans, change fatigue and multiple cultures, missions and priorities. In addition, public relations tended to serve more of a tactical role rather than a strategic one being brought in after key decisions had already been made. Effective communication approaches internal communicators reported using included road trips by senior leaders to meet with employees, videos, testimonials, and recruiting employee ambassadors or influencers. Executives said messages should reinforce core values, communicate what the changes mean for employees, the benefits of the change and end goals.

Political Organization-Public Relations and Trust: Facebook vs. Campaign Websites • David Painter, Full Sail University • This experimental investigation (N = 649) parses the influence of online information source and interactivity on the effects of strategic campaign communications on gains in citizen-political organization-public relations and political trust. Although simple exposure exerted significant effects on all participants, the results indicate Facebook was differentially more effective than campaign websites at building overall citizen-political party relationships (POPRs) and trust in government. Specifically, Facebook was more effective at building relational trust, control mutuality, and political trust; while campaign websites were more effective at building satisfaction and commitment, particularly among those who engaged in dialogic, expressive behaviors on either platform. These findings verify the direction of the exposure effects in the political organization-public relations model and extend two-way communication theory by specifying the online platform on which expression exerts the greatest positive influence on citizen-political organization relationships and political trust.

Fashion Meets Twitter: Does the Source Matter? Perceived Message Credibility, Interactivity and Purchase Intention • Yijia Wang; Geah Pressgrove, West Virginia University • Through an online survey, this study explored the perceived source credibility of fashion industry Twitter messages with varying message sources (the brand itself, celebrity endorser, friend/acquaintance). Online interactivity and purchase intention of potential customers were also assessed to examine if a particular message source and its credibility increase the likelihood of online engagement with the message and customers’ intention to purchase.

How Negative Becomes Less Negative: The Interplay between Comment Variance and the Sidedness of Company Response • Hyejoon Rim, University of Minnesota; Doori Song, Youngstown State University • The study examined the influence of the public’s negative comments regarding the CSR campaign in the social media setting, and how best to respond to them. A 2 (variance of comments: positive vs. negative) x 2 (company’s responding strategy: 1-sided vs. 2-sided message) between-subjects experiments was employed. The results revealed that two-sided CSR messages, compared to one-sided responses, are more effective in enhancing altruistic motives of CSR, reducing perceived negativity in consumers’ comments, and eliciting favorable public’s attitudes, especially when the consumer’s comments were negative. The effects of message sidedness disappeared when the consumer’s comments were positive. The results also showed that perceived altruism and perceived negativity mediates the effects of message strategies on the public’s attitudes toward the company.

Taking the ice bucket plunge: Social and psychological motivations for participating in the ALS challenge • Soojin Roh, Syracuse University; Tamara Makana Chock • An online survey (N = 511) investigated the impact of narcissistic personality, selective self-presentation, and the need for interpersonal acceptance in people’s decision to take part in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. We also examined how and to what extent these factors differed in terms of the type of contribution (e.g. dumping water over head, donation, and doing both). Implications for social media campaign strategies for long-term engagement and directions for future research were discussed.

Time-lagged Analysis of Third-level Agenda-building: Florida’s Debate on Medical Marijuana • Tiffany Schweickart; Jordan Neil; Ji Young Kim; Josephine Lukito, Syracuse University; Tianduo Zhang; Guy Golan; Spiro Kiousis • This study aims to advance theoretical and practical understanding of political public relations in the context of Florida’s Amendment 2 about the legalization of medical marijuana. This unique context was used to explore the salience of stakeholders, issues, and related attributes between public relations messages and media coverage at all three-levels of agenda-building’s theoretical framework using a time-lagged analysis. Our results present strong support for shared influence between campaign and media agenda-building at three levels.

Biological Sex vs. Gender Identity: Nature vs. Nurture in Explicating Practitioner Roles and Salaries in Public Relations • Bey-Ling Sha, San Diego State University; Courtney White; Elpin Keshishzadeh; David Dozier • Using an online survey of members of the Public Relations Society of America (response rate = 14%), this study found that enactment of the manager and technician roles in public relations was unrelated to practitioners’ biological sex, but was related instead to their avowed, predominant gender identity. Both biological sex and predominant gender identity were found to contribute to the persistent, gendered pay gap in public relations. (67 words)

An Analysis of Tweets by Universities and Colleges: Public Engagement and Interactivity • jason Beverly; Jae-Hwa Shin, University of Southern Mississippi • The analysis of 1,550 individual tweets by colleges and universities suggest that institutions of higher learning are not necessarily using Twitter in a dialogic manner that promotes two-way communication. This supports findings from previous studies that have suggested that colleges and universities fail to incorporate the dialogic features of Twitter as part of their online public relations efforts.

Public Relations as Development Communication? Conceptual Overlaps and Prospects for a Societal Paradigm of Public Relations • Katie Brown, University of Maryland; Sylvia Guo, University of Maryland; Brooke Fowler, University of Maryland; Claire Tills, University of Maryland; Sifan Xu, University of Maryland; Erich Sommerfeldt, University of Maryland • A thorough discussion of the overlaps between development communication and public relations is missing from the literature. This paper provides a first step towards an integration of public relations and development by reviewing theories and concepts within development communication literature and public relations scholarship examining areas relevant to international development practice. The paper highlights theoretical and conceptual overlaps between the disciplines as well as similar challenges in practice, and offers suggestions for developing a societal paradigm of public relations.

The Importance of Authenticity in Corporate Social Responsibility • Mary Ann Ferguson; Baobao Song • This experimental research with 395 consumers explored the effects of prior corporate reputation, stated CSR motive (self vs. social), and CSR brand-cause fit on consumers’ attitude towards the company and behavioral intention. In addition, the study incorporated a new variable in CSR communication model – perceived CSR authenticity. Having a poor corporate reputation requires specific attention be paid to the fit and stated motive of the CSR program particularly when the authenticity of the communication is under suspicion. Corporate messages that are perceived as highly authentic will provide equally positive results for companies with good and bad prior reputations. Overall, this study suggested a holistic view on effective CSR communication.

Towards effective CSR in controversial industry sectors: Effect of industry sector, corporate reputation, and company-cause fit • Baobao Song; Jing (Taylor) Wen, University of Florida; Mary Ann Ferguson • Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been well recognized as a critical component for any company to maintain organizational legitimacy and increase consumers’ positive company evaluation. However, only a few CSR studies have focused on controversial industries. In fact, controversial industry sectors tend to be more committed to CSR, in order to defy their negative images and reputations. Given the conflicted nature of companies in controversial industries, this study is aimed to further unveil the differences between controversial industries and non-controversial industries in terms of CSR outcomes. Particularly, this study tries to dissect the concept of corporate reputation from industry controversy, and examine whether corporate reputation and CSR company-cause fit will affect controversial industries vs. non-controversial industries differently.

Do you see what I see? Perceptions between advertising and public relations professionals • Dustin Supa, Boston University • This study represents an initial step in the empirical understanding of integration as it relates to the advertising and public relations fields. Using a survey of practitioners (n=1076) it finds that while many practitioners are aware of integration efforts within organizations, they may be less than enthusiastic about the concept. The results offer suggestions both for the practice and education of professional communication.

Understanding Shareholder Engagement: The Role of Corporate Social Responsibility • Nur Uysal, Marquette University • The rise of shareholder activism for corporate social responsibility (CSR) in recent years charters a new role for public relations professionals. This study analyzes social activism enacted by institutional shareholders through filing resolutions at publicly traded U.S. corporations between 1997 and 2011 (N = 14, 271). Building on the literature in public relations, management, and social movements, the study develops and tests a theory of shareholder engagement through a tripartite framework. The findings showed that corporate stakeholder commitment, issue type, and sponsor type affect the outcomes of shareholder activist-corporate engagement on CSR issues. We argue that CSR is both an antecedent to engagement and also an outcome and public relations professionals can facilitate the engagement process between corporations and shareholder activists groups on mutually acceptable social expectations.

PR Credibility as News Unfolds: How Perceptions Gauged in Real Time and Post Exposure Differ • Matthew S. VanDyke, Texas Tech University; Coy Callison, Texas Tech University • This study investigates how perceptions of news conference sources vary from measures taken in real-time to those taken retrospectively after exposure by having participants (N = 184) view four organizational spokespersons responding to environmental crises. Results suggest while PR practitioner credibility suffers in comparison to that of other sources when participants evaluate following exposure, practitioners see a real-time bump in trustworthiness following revelation of job title that is common across other source job affiliations.

Within-border foreign publics: Micro-diplomats and their impact on a nation’s soft power • Kelly Vibber, University of Dayton; Jeong-Nam Kim • This study tests the relationship between antecedents of the perceived relationship a within-border foreign public (e.g. international students) has with its host country (e.g. the United States) and how this relationship impacts their communicative action to their social networks living in their home country (e.g. positive or negative megaphoning). It also examines the role this megaphoning has on the communicative action of members of the home country, in order to understand the potential of micro-diplomacy.

Experimenting with dialogue on social media: An examination of the influence of the dialogic principles on engagement, interaction, and attitude • Brandi Watkins, Virginia Tech • Much of the public relations research on online relationship building has examined social media content for the use of the dialogic principles outlined by Kent and Taylor (1998). These studies, using content analysis as the primary methodology, have found that the dialogic capabilities of social media are under-utilized. However, there is limited research on the effectiveness of these methods. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine the influence of social media content utilizing these principles on engagement, interactivity, and attitude. Results of this study indicate that usefulness of information can have a significant influence on engagement and attitude.

Examining the Importance and Perceptions of Organizational Autonomy among Dominant Coalition Members • Christopher Wilson, Brigham Young University • Scholars have defined the value of public relations in terms of organizational autonomy. Nevertheless, only a few public relations studies have attempted to measure it. In addition, there is no empirical research to document whether or not dominant coalition members actually consider organizational autonomy important. This study seeks to advance theory by examining whether this fundamental concept is as important to public relations as current theories assume it to be.

Public Relations Role in the Global Media Ecology: Connecting the World as Network Managers • Aimei Yang, University of Southern California; Maureen Taylor; Wenlin Liu, University of Southern California • Media studies in public relations have predominantly focused on the dyadic relationship between public relations practitioners and journalists. This focus reduces public relations practitioners to information providers and obscures the broader functions of public relations. We argue that this narrow view of media relations as public relations is increasingly outdated. This paper advocates for a network ecology approach to public relations-media relationships, and identifies four roles that public relations organizations perform in a media network ecology: relationship initiator, relationship facilitator, relationship broker and fully functioning society facilitator.

Estimating the Weights of Media Tonalities in the Measurement of Media Coverage of Corporations • XIAOQUN ZHANG, University of North Texas • This study estimated the weights of media tonalities in the measurement of media coverage of corporations by using linear regression analysis. Two new measures were developed based on these estimations. These two new measures were found to have higher predictive power than most other linear function measures in predicting corporate reputation. The estimations were based on a content analysis of 2817 news articles from both elite newspapers and local newspapers.

A Case Study of the Chinese Government’s Crisis Communication on the 2015 Shanghai Stampede Incident • Lijie Zhou, University of Southern Mississippi; Jae-Hwa Shin, University of Southern Mississippi • This study analyzed the Chinese government’s crisis communication efforts during 2015 Shanghai Stampede incident and offered insight into difference between traditional and social media in relation to media frame, response strategy, government stance and role of emotions. Findings indicated traditional and social media followed similar dynamic pattern across lifespan of the incident, yet revealed different features in message frames and presence of emotions. The government has demonstrated changing stances differently in social and traditional media.

Teaching
Hootsuite University: Equipping Academics and Future PR Professionals for Social Media Success • Emily S. Kinsky, West Texas A&M University; Karen Freberg, University of Louisville; Carolyn Kim, Biola University; Matthew Kushin, Shepherd University; William Ward • Through survey and in-depth interviews, this research examines the social media education program Hootsuite University. Researchers assessed perceptions of Hootsuite University among students who completed the certification program as part of communication courses at five U.S. universities between 2012 and 2014. Researchers also assessed perceptions of professors and employers regarding the value of the program. Implications for public relations education in an age of social media are discussed.

Teaching, tweeting, and telecommuting: Experiential and cross-institutional learning through social media • Stephanie Madden, University of Maryland; Rowena Briones, Virginia Commonwealth University; Julia Daisy Fraustino, West Virginia University; Melissa Janoske, University of Memphis • This study explores how to improve student preparedness for a technological working world. Instructors at four institutions created and implemented a cross-institutional group project that required students to create and share an instructional video on a social media topic. Students then discussed the videos and teleworking experience through three subsequent cross-institutional Twitter chats. Results include suggestions for helping students learn through teaching, and a discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of teleworking.

Exploring diversity and client work in public relations education • Katie Place, Quinnipiac University; Antoaneta Vanc • This exploratory study examined public relations students’ meaning making of diversity and the role of diverse client work within the public relations curriculum. Findings are based on in-depth interviews with 19 students at two private universities who completed a public relations campaign course. Findings illustrate the evolution of students’ interpretation of diversity from passive exposure to active awareness to a new mindset. In addition, it offers insights regarding public relations and diversity pedagogy.

The Best of Both Worlds: Student Perspectives on Student-Run Advertising and Public Relations Agencies • Joyce Haley, Abilene Christian University; Margaret Ritsch, Texas Christian University; Jessica Smith, Abilene Christian University • Student-led advertising and/or public relations agencies have increasingly become an educational component of university ad/PR programs. Previous research has established the value that advisers see in the agencies, and this study reports student perceptions of agency involvement. The survey (N=210) found that participants rated the ability to work with real clients, the importance of their universities having agencies, and the increase in their own job marketability as the most positive aspects of the agency experience. Participants said that the most highly rated skills that agency participation built were working with clients, working in a team structure, and interpersonal skills.

Student
An Examination of Social TV & OPR Building: A Content Analysis of Tweets Surrounding The Walking Dead • Lauren Auverset, University of Alabama • This study investigated a growing second-screen media phenomenon, Social TV, and examined how entertainment media organizations utilize Social TV to communicate with their publics. A content analysis was conducted using publicly available conversations (via Twitter) surrounding a popular television program, AMC’s The Walking Dead. Through the analysis of these Social TV dialogic exchanges, this study highlights how one entertainment media organization uses Social TV and Twitter to respond to and interact with their online publics.

Attribution Error of Internal Stakeholders in Assessments of Organizational Crisis Responsibility • Jonathan Borden, Syracuse University; Xiaochen Zhang, University of Florida • This paper sheds further light on the mechanics of responsibility attribution for organizations in crisis. Utilizing a two-group experimental design, relationships of organizational identification, evaluation, collective self-esteem, in-group preference, attribution bias, and attitudes regarding norm violation were examined among stakeholders in the post-crisis phase. Findings show that identification with and assessment of the organization are linked and significant predictors of attribution bias and violation minimization. Theoretical and professional implications are discussed.

SeaWorld vs Blackfish A Case Study in Crisis Communication • Ken Cardell • This case study examines SeaWorld’s strategic response following from the release of Blackfish. An analysis of SeaWorld’s communicative response to various reputational threats can be understood through the application of corporate apologia theory, by explicating the message strategies used within the discourse. Elements of Grunig’s conception of activist publics are also used to provide perspective as to the factors that contributed to the level of opposition that followed from Blackfish.

To whom do they listen? The effects of communication strategy and eWOM on consumer responses • Zifei Chen, University of Miami; Cheng Hong, University of Miami • This study examined the effects of corporate communication strategy and electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) valence on responses from an important stakeholder group—consumers on social media. A 3 (communication strategy: corporate social responsibility/CSR, vs. corporate ability/CAb, vs. hybrid) x 2 (eWOM valence: positive vs. negative) between-subjects experiment was conducted. Results showed significant interaction effects on consumers’ CSR associations and significant main effects of both strategy and eWOM valence on CAb associations, perceived reputation, and purchase intention.

A New Look at Organization-Public Relationship: Testing Contingent Corporation-Activist Relationship (CCAR) in Conflicts • Yang Cheng, University of Missouri • Content analyses of 696 news information on the conflicts between corporations (Monsanto and McDonald’s) and their activists provide a natural history of the use of contingent organization-public relationship (COPR) in public relations. By tracking the changing stances of each corporation and its activists longitudinally, results generate the frequency and direction of six types of contingent corporation-activist relationship (CCAR) over time. Findings show that CCAR is dynamic and contingent upon stances of both parties on a specific issue. No matter the conflict is finally resolved or not, competing relationship occurs more frequently than cooperating relationship does in the conflict management process, which supports the argument that both parties in conflicts maintain a competitive relationship for self-interests, and when possible may adopt strategies to achieve mutual benefits. Theoretical and practical implications of findings are discussed.

Public Relations’ Role in Trust Building for Social Capital • Shugofa Dastgeer, University of Oklahoma • Social capital is a building block of social and political communities. At the same time, trust is the foundational prerequisite for the formation of social capital. Public relations plays a role in fostering social capital and trust in society. This paper proposes a model for public relations in building trust for social capital. The model illustrates that trust, communication, and engagement are vital for the development of social capital.

Stealing thunder and filling the silence: Twitter as a primary channel of police crisis communication • Brooke Fowler, University of Maryland • Twitter can be used successfully by police departments as a channel for stealing thunder and establishing the department as a credible news source. A case study on the Howard County Police Department’s use of Twitter during the Columbia Mall Shooting was conducted. Results reveal the potential benefits and limitations of using Twitter to steal thunder and a new technique, filling the silence, is proposed for maintaining an audience once an organization has stolen thunder.

Between Ignorance and Engagement: Exploring the Effects of Corporations’ Communicatory Engagement With Their Publics on Social Networking Sites • Eun Go • Two-way communication tools have expanded and magnified the range and scope of interactions between an organization and its publics. To understand the value of such communication tools, the present study identifies significant psychological factors as outcomes of using these tools. Employing a series of mediation analyses (N=148), this study particularly explores how the commenting function on social networking sites can be strategically used to promote online users’ favorable attitudes toward an organization. The findings show that active communication by an organization via the commenting function promotes favorable attitudes toward the organization by way of heightening the organization’s social presence and creating enhanced perceptions of the organization’s relational commitment. On the other hand, an organization’s dismissal of its users’ comments leaves a negative impression, suggesting to the public that the organization has exaggerated its social commitment. Further theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed.

Crisis Response Strategies of Sports Organizations and Its Fans: The Case of Ray Rice • Eunyoung Kim, University of Alabama • This study employs a content analysis to examine how a sports organization and its fans interactively used social media and how they utilized crisis response strategies in the Ray Rice case. The study compares crisis response strategies by the Baltimore Ravens team and its identified fans through social media. The results confirm (a) interactive use of Twitter with hyperlink, (b) utilization of separation strategy, and (c) sports fans’ communicating role with various strategies.

CSR without transparency is not good enough: Examining the effect of CSR fit and transparency efforts on skepticism and trust toward organizations • Hyosun Kim, Univeristy of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Tae Ho Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In order to tackle recent challenges surrounding CSR initiatives—stakeholder skepticism—this study aims to understand how CSR fit and transparency affect the enhancement of trust and encourage organization advocacy while lessening skepticism. In a 2 (CSR fit) X 2 (levels of transparency) between-subject experiment, this study discovered a significant main effect of transparency on skepticism, trust, and organization advocacy. A significant interaction on trust was also found, suggesting that low fit with high transparency increases trust.

Institutional Pressure and Transparency in CSR Disclosure: A Content Analysis of CSR Press Releases at CSRwire.com • Tae Ho Lee, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This content analysis examines CSR press releases from 2007 to 2014, finding that coercive institutional pressures as manifested in CSR press releases are significantly related to a low level of accountability—one of the three transparency dimensions. This confirms previous suggestions that coercive isomorphism would generate nominal compliance without substantive efforts. Additionally, the integration of global perspectives from institutional theory and the general representation of transparency in CSR press releases are investigated and discussed.

Reputation from the inside out: Examining how nonprofit employees perceive the top leader influencing reputation • Laura Lemon, University of Tennessee • In-depth interviews with nonprofit employees were conducted to examine how nonprofit employees perceive the top leader and the top leader’s influence on the organization’s reputation. Participant perceptions primarily focused on positive and negative personality attributes that contributed to or detracted from perceptions of leadership style. One emergent finding was that most participants considered the top leader responsible for employee engagement. Additionally, some employees perceived the organization’s reputation as starting with the top leader. The top leader’s ability to create an internal participatory environment was the primary influence on the organization’s internal reputation. Participants perceived the top leader as the face of the organization and being recognized as an expert influencing the organization’s external reputation. One significant contribution from this study was the role of supporting manager that emerged in the interviews. In the case of perceived poor leadership, a supporting manager stepped in to compensate for the top leader’s management weaknesses.

Another crisis for government after crisis: A case study of South Korean government’s crisis communication on the Sewol Ferry disaster • Se Na Lim, university of alabama; Eunyoung Kim, University of Alabama • The current study investigates the crisis response strategies of South Korean government organizations on social media after the Sewol Ferry disaster. By conducting content analysis of 288 posts on Facebook of 13 South Korean government organizations, this study assesses their communication response strategies based on framing and situational crisis communication theory. The findings indicate that South Korea government organizations perceive the crisis with various perspectives and accordingly use various crisis response strategies.

Enhancing OPR Management through SNSs: The Role of Organizations’ SNS Message Strategies and Message Interactivity • Xinyu Lu, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Hao Xu, University of Minnesota • Heeding the limited research on the effects of corporate SNS communication strategies on relationship building, this experimental study examined the effects of two corporate SNS communication strategies—message strategies and message interactivity—on relationship building. The results suggest that both message strategies and message interactivity have strong effects on publics’ perception of organization-public relationship outcomes. Moreover, people’s identification with a company to some extent moderates the effects of these two strategies.

I am One of Them: A Social Identity Approach to Crisis Communication • Liang Ma • This study focused on how an individual’s ethnic and organizational memberships influence his/her emotional and cognitive experiences in a crisis. College students (N = 638) from a mid-Atlantic university participated in an online quasi-experiment. SEM was used to test the mediation model. Organizational membership protects organizational reputation and increases guilt. Shared ethnicity with victims has no effects on either organizational reputation or anger. Guilt threatens organizational reputation indirectly via anger. Reputation then predicts NWOM intentions.

Government Relationship-Building Practices Online: An Analysis of Capital City Websites • Lindsay McCluskey, Louisiana State University • Government public relations professionals have many opportunities to communicate directly with their publics; however, some practitioners have expressed concern about their website efforts. Websites are one popular and consequential medium for engagement and the government organization-public relationship. This study examines the website homepages of 50 capital cities through qualitative content analysis. The researcher assesses what website features and characteristics promote and advance Hon and Grunig’s relationship outcomes and Kent and Taylor’s dialogic public relations principles.

If Anything Can Go Wrong, It Will: Murphy’s Law, and the Unintended Consequences of Deliberate Communication • Timothy Penn, University of Maryland • Murphy’s Law popularly describes the unpredictable and often capricious relationship between humans and the modern technological world. The global media environment, changing cultural landscapes and changing social norms amplify this phenomenon. This case study explores this phenomenon by examining the JWT India, Ford Figo advertising campaign scandal. Poster cartoons, submitted for an advertising competition, that featured popular sport, celebrity and political figures kidnapping other celebrities, caused a worldwide media sensation, and led to the resignation of JWT executives. Borrowing from sociological theory, this exploratory study uses Merton’s (1936) typology of the unanticipated consequences of social action as a lens to analyze factors that led to JWT’s releasing the ads, and the worldwide reaction to them. The study used qualitative textual analysis of traditional and social media, on-line interviews and web logs. Analysis found five themes of Merton’s typology, lack of foreknowledge, habit, myopia, values, and self-defeating prediction, could partially explain or describe both the campaign’s release and the subsequent worldwide media reaction. Future research could lead to developing a typology of unintended consequences of deliberate communication for public relations.

Mobile Technology and Public Engagement: Exploring the Effects of College Students’ Mobile Phone Use on Their Public Engagement • Yuan Wang, University of Alabama • Mobile communication technology has been exerting a substantial impact on our society and daily lives. This study examined the effects of college students’ mobile phone use on their public engagement and the impacts of public engagement on behavioral intentions. More specifically, it conducted a survey of 409 college students in the United States to investigate college students’ use of mobile phone for information seeking and social media applications. The current study could advance the literature on public relations and mobile communication technology. Furthermore, this study could make some practical implications for university management to utilize mobile technology effectively to engage their students and establish relationships with them.

Ethical Approaches to Crisis Communication in Chemical Crises: A Content Analysis of Media Coverage of Chemical Crises from 2010 to 2014 • Xiaochen Zhang, University of Florida; Jonathan Borden, Syracuse University • Through a content analysis of media coverage of chemical crises in the U.S. from 2010 to 2014, this study examined chemical companies’ crisis communication strategies. Results revealed that, compared with large Fortune 500 corporations, Small and Medium Sized Enterprises (SMEs) were more likely to delay their response and to use more legal strategies and less public relations strategies. SMEs were also less likely to use base response strategies in their crisis response.

2015 Abstracts

Newspaper and Online News 2015 Abstracts

Open Competition
Framing Oil on the Media Agenda: A Model of Agenda Building • Mariam Alkazemi; Wayne Wanta, University of Florida • A path analysis tested an agenda-building model in which three real-world indicators – price of crude oil, U.S. production and U.S. consumption of oil) would lead to discussions of oil in Congress and media coverage of oil. The model showed the level of U.S. oil production produced the strongest path coefficients. Congress and the media formed a reciprocal relationship. The model worked better when oil was framed as an economic issue than as an environmental issue.

Error message: Creation and validation of a revised codebook for analyses of newspaper corrections • Alyssa Appelman, Northern Kentucky University; Kirstie Hettinga, California Lutheran University • This project seeks to create and validate a corrections codebook that accounts for modern-day content and technology. In Study 1, we qualitatively analyze applications of previous corrections codebooks and identify areas for revision. In Study 2, we apply our revised codebook to a new set of corrections (N = 104) and analyze its effectiveness. Based on these analyses, this study recommends its new typology for future analytical studies of corrections.

Who’s Responsible for Our Children’s Education? Framing a Controversial Consolidation of School Systems • Morgan Arant, University of Memphis; Jin Yang, University of Memphis • This content analysis found that newspaper coverage of a controversial consolidation of Memphis City Schools into Shelby County Schools was dominated by official government sources while the voices of ordinary citizens, students and teachers were absent in the coverage. Pro-consolidation sources far exceeded anti-consolidation and neutral sources. In terms of news frames used, the responsibility frame was the most prevalent, followed by the conflict frame, the economic consequences frame and the human interest frame.

Personalization without fragmentation: The Role of Web Portal and Social News Recommendations on News Exposure • Michael Beam, Kent State University; R. Kelly Garrett, The Ohio State University • This study investigates the over-time impact of receiving personalized news recommendations through web portals and social media on online and offline selective exposure. Some scholars have worried that the increased control given to users of online algorithmic and social news recommendation technologies might lead to increased fragmentation of news exposure and political polarization, while others have argued that digital technologies provide people a path to accessible and personally relevant news, which fosters increased news consumption. Nationally representative survey panel data collected over three-waves during the 2012 US Presidential election show that using news recommenders from web portals and social media is related to greater news exposure across the board, including pro-attitudinal & counter-attitudinal partisan news sources, and non-partisan news. Using online news recommenders is positively related to offline news exposure. Furthermore, over-time analysis show that, while pro-attitudinal news exposure drives over-time engagement in news, people are not likely to turn away from news sources that challenge their perspectives. We discuss these findings and their implications for the ongoing debate about the democratic consequences of technological selective exposure.

Following the leader: An exploratory analysis of Twitter adoption and use among newspaper editors • Kris Boyle, Brigham Young University; Carol Zuegner, Creighton University • Some media critics say Twitter use by newsroom leaders sends a strong innovation message to the rest of the newsroom. This exploratory study examined Twitter use among 74 editors at top U.S. newspapers to evaluate their adoption and use of the social media tool. A content analysis of Twitter accounts revealed many of them were not frequent users. Those who do are primarily using it as a tool to promote content from their own publications.

Disrupted Lives, Disrupted Media: The Social Responsibility Role of Newsprint 10 Years after Hurricane Katrina • Jan Lauren Boyles, Iowa State University • This study profiles how The Times-Picayune has operated in the social responsibility tradition of newswork, after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina and the disruptions of the paper’s digital shift to less-than-daily print publication. Through in-depth interviewing, fieldwork, content analysis and network mapping, this multi-method approach illustrates the extent to which New Orleans residents depend upon the circulation of civic information necessary to navigate urban life.

The Third-Person Effect of News Story Comments • Gina Masullo Chen, The University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism; Yee Man (Margaret) Ng, The University of Texas at Austin School of Journalism • Results of an experiment (N = 301) showed that people thought civil disagreement comments posted on a news story about abortion were more persuasive than uncivil disagreement comments. In addition, results showed a third-person effect (TPE) of the comments, whereby people felt comments had greater persuasive power over others compared with themselves. Findings also supported the TPE social distance corollary such that subjects perceived comments as having the largest TPE perceptual gap between the self and those who disagreed with them. Results are discussed in relation to TPE and face and politeness theories.

Getting Their Stories Short: News Aggregation and the Evolution of Journalistic Narrative • Mark Coddington, Washington and Lee University • With its emphasis on stripping out key facts and quotes from stories, news aggregation might seem to represent a breakdown of the narrative conventions that have undergirded professional journalism. Using participant observation and interviews with aggregators, this study explores the use of narrative in aggregation, conceptualizing news narrative as a three-tiered phenomenon extending beyond individual texts. It finds that narrative is a crucial part of aggregation, shaping news’ trajectory more broadly than in traditional forms.

Who Makes (Front Page) News in Kenya? • Steve Collins • This content analysis of articles (n = 118) in Kenya’s three leading English language newspapers explored issues of balance and source diversity. Only slightly more than half of stories were balanced. About two-thirds of stories included a government source but those directly affected by government policies were seldom included. Front page articles were more balanced, more likely to include a government source and less likely to include an average citizen than were stories teased on the front page. Finally, stories from press conferences and other pre-planned events were ubiquitous. The results are considered in the context of Gatekeeping Theory.

How is online news curated? A cross-sectional content analysis • Xi Cui, Dixie State University; Yu Liu, Florida International University • This paper examines journalists’ curatorial practices on linked and embedded sources in various types of online news platforms. It aims to understand the curatorial practices in online journalism and explicate the continuity and changes in journalistic principles in the online environment. Differences in the prevalence of the curatorial treatments to linked sources as references, quotations or interpretations are found and can be attributed to the news platforms’ institutional history, journalistic orientations, and technological features.

Imaginary Travelers: What do travel journalists think their readers want? • Andrew Duffy, Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information • Travel journalists cannot know each traveler who they work for, so they must imagine what a reader wants. Starting from an agenda-setting perspective, this paper uses a modernist/post-modernist framework to identify how they imagine readers’ interests. It finds that the reader is more often imagined as modernist and adventurous than post-modernist and concerned with tourist sights. However, the latter were more common in Asia, which suggests that travel writers across the globe imagine readers differently.

Interactivity in Egyptian newspapers • Ahmed El Gody, Örebro University • The utilisation of information and communications technologies (ICTs) in Egypt has irrevocably changed the nature of the traditional Egyptian public sphere. One can see the Egyptian online society as a multiplicity of networks. These networks have developed, transformed and expanded over time, operating across all areas of life. Nonetheless, in essence they are sociopolitical and cultural in origin. This trend changed the way audiences consumed news, with traditional media –especially independent and opposition – started to utilise ICTs to access online information to develop their media content to escape government control. Several media organisations also started to expand their presence online so that, as well as providing news content, they also provided them with a space to interact amongst themselves and with media organisations. Audiences started to provide detailed descriptions of Egyptian street politics, posting multimedia material, generating public interest and reinforcing citizen power hence democratic capacity.

Strangers on a Theoretical Train: Inter-Media Agenda Setting, Community Structure, and Local News Coverage • Marcus Funk, Sam Houston State University; Maxwell McCombs, The University of Texas at Austin • Agenda setting and community structure theories are conceptual inverses of one another that are rarely considered in tandem. This study employs DICTION 6.0 and McCombs and Funk’s (2011, 2013) research design to compare news coverage of immigration and abortion over a 10-year period in national, high demographic interest, and low demographic interest newspapers. Although only modest support is found for inter-media agenda-setting, considerable support is found for community structure effects.

Tailoring the Arab Spring to American Values and Interests A Framing Analysis of U.S. Elite Newspapers’ Opinion Pieces • Jae Sik Ha, Univ Of Illinois-Springfield • This study investigated the portrayal of the Arab Spring by conducting a qualitative framing analysis of editorials and columns in two U.S. elite newspapers —The New York Times and The Washington Post. It found that the American papers filtered the unfolding events in the Middle East through a lens of national interest. Specifically, the democratic transformation of the Middle East was the most prominent ideological package in the American coverage. Overall, the American papers epitomized the viewpoints of American political elites, ex-officials, newspaper columnists and scholars. By contrast, they marginalized the viewpoints of guest columnists –such as activists and Arab scholars– who may be prone to highlight the faults and wrongdoings of successive U.S. administrations. Overall, the Arab Spring coverage in the American press strongly coincided with the worldviews of U.S. elites and government officials, with little mention of their country’s immense economic interests in the region.

Hubs for innovation: Examining the effects of consolidated news design on quality • Matthew Haught, University of Memphis; David Morris II, University of Memphis • In an effort to cut costs, newspaper chains nationwide have consolidated design operations at a few sites. These design hubs have changed the newspaper production process and removed designers from newsrooms; yet, top designers are able to work with their peers in a major city to produce all titles for a chain. This study uses a quantitative analysis of front pages collected from 435 newspapers throughout the United States to examine the quality of newspaper designs at hub and non-hub designed newspapers. It concludes that hub designed newspapers are generally better designed than non-hub newspapers.

Picturing the Scientists: A Content Analysis of the Photographs of Scientists in The Science Times • Hwalbin Kim, University of South Carolina; Sei-Hill Kim; Christopher Frear, University of South Carolina; Sang-Hwa Oh, Appalachian State University • Analyzing photographs of scientists in The Science Times, this study examines how scientists have been portrayed visually in the newspaper. The results showed that the actual gender distribution among U.S. scientists was quite accurately represented in the newspaper. However, a race gap still existed at least in newspaper photographs, with non-white scientists being significantly underrepresented. The analysis of visual framing indicated that The Science Times portrayed scientists as expert professionals.

Exploring the influence of normative social cues in online communication: From the news consumers’ perspective • Jiyoun Kim • This quantitative study investigates how the presented normative social cues influence people’s cognitive processing. Findings of this research indicate a positive effect of normative social cues on news processing in the online space. The online content with a high numbers of likes and shares (i.e., normative social cues) show significant direct and interactive effects on respondents’ news consumption intention, presumed different levels of others’ engagement with news content, and perceived importance of the news story.

Social Media as a Catalyst for News Seeking: Implications for Online Political Expression and Political Participation • Yonghwan Kim, University of Alabama; Joon Yea Lee, University of Alabama; Bumsoo Kim, University of Alabama • Employing 2-wave national panel survey data, this article investigates whether and how individuals’ general social media use is associated with their further news/information seeking behaviors. It further examines how such information seeking behaviors influence citizens’ online political expression and political participation. The results show that the more individuals use social media, the more they tend to seek news and information through social media platforms. The findings also demonstrate that such further information seeking behaviors have a significant implication for political expression and political participation. In other words, general social media use positively influences news/information seeking behaviors via social media, which, in turn, influences online political expression, which consequently increases individuals’ participation in politics.

Conceptualizing the Impact of Investigative Journalism: How a Prominent Journalistic Nonprofit Talks About Its Work • Magda Konieczna, Ursinus College; Elia Powers, Towson University • Journalists are typically wary of discussing the impact of their work, often articulating perspectives that suggest their responsibility for what they do ends at getting the story right. Not only can this be disingenuous, some commentators argue that it could be costing journalists an opportunity to regain respect from the public and to be more deeply involved in democracy. This article focuses on a project by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, a collaborative, journalistic nonprofit. We conduct a discourse analysis of the organization’s own language around one particularly high-profile project and discover that these journalists embrace discussing the impact of their own work, while stopping short of articulating particular goals. We posit that this could be a result of the consortium’s nonprofit funding, as well as its desire to push journalism to perform better. Given that news organizations in 120 countries made use of the reporting in this project, we argue that mainstream journalists are already engaging with impact-oriented work. We suggest that investigative journalists be more forthcoming about their impact orientation.

The Role of Twitter in Speed-driven Journalism: From Journalists’ Perspective • Angela Lee, University of Texas at Dallas • This study examines the effectiveness of Twitter as a social media tool connecting news workers and users. Through interviews with 11 journalists, this study revealed different ways in which Twitter is useful in journalists’ pursuit for speed. However, most interviewees used Twitter to interact with other journalists while paying little attention to audiences. They also believed Twitter promotes news use but does not contribute to news organizations’ bottom line. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

To the backburner during crisis reporting: Citizen journalists and their role during the Boston Marathon bombings • Josh Grimm; Jaime Loke, University of Oklahoma • This study examined the role of user-generated content during the coverage of the Boston marathon bombings. In-depth interviews were conducted with the interactive team at the Boston Globe who were in charge of the live blog during the week-long coverage. The study identified the perceptions journalists held of user-generated content during crisis reporting. The findings suggest that user-generated content is still perceived as fluff within the confines of a traditional newsroom.

Death Threats, Workplace Stress and the American Newspaper Journalist • Jenn B. Mackay, Virginia Tech • Workplace stress and journalistic death threats were studied using the Effort-Reward Imbalance Model. The model suggests that an imbalance of the efforts used on the job in comparison to the rewards is associated with poor health. A survey was administered to a random sample of American newspaper journalists (n=185). Women had higher effort-reward imbalances and overcommittment scores than men. Participants who had received a death threat (20.9%) described how the threat affected coverage.

The Affective Gap: Response to news of humanitarian crisis differs by gender and age • Scott Maier, University of Oregon; Marcus Mayorga, Decision Research; Paul Slovic, Decision Research • Using an online survey with embedded experimental conditions, the study examines gender and generational differences in reader reaction to news reports of mass violence in Africa. Affective response from women was found stronger than for men on 9 of 10 measures of emotion. Women also more strongly supported government intervention and charitable relief. Depending on story framing, older readers tended to express greater affective response than Millennials, and more strongly supported intervention and aid.

Likeable News: Three Experimental Tests of What Audiences Enjoy About Conversational Journalism • Doreen Marchionni, The Seattle Times • This exploratory study tested a new theoretical measurement model for online conversational journalism in terms of newspaper story likeability in a trio of controlled experiments. The conversation feature perceived similarity to a journalist, or coorientation, proved to be a powerful predictor of likeability across the studies. But a reader’s sheer interest in the story topic, along with a sense that the journalist is a real person who is open to citizen interaction, also was key.

Small Town, Big Message Strategy: Media Hybridity at the Hyper-local Level • Laura Meadows, Indiana University Bloomington • This ethnographic study transports Chadwick’s (2013) analytical approach of the hybrid media system into the study of social movements, viewing the movement activities of North Carolina’s LGBT activists through the lens of a system of interactions between older and newer media in order to reveal the complex media strategies deployed by contemporary movement actors at the hyper-local level.

Employing Transparency in Live-blogs • Mirjana Pantic, University of Tennessee; Erin Whiteside; Ivana Cvetkovic • As news outlets strive to adapt to the changing economic landscape, many have engaged in an ongoing process of innovative news reporting and delivery strategies. Among these evolving practices is the live-blog – an ongoing stream of updated information that is a pointed shift from the inverted pyramid format. As a fairly recent journalistic innovation, live-blogs not only provide a logical format for presenting breaking news, but also facilitate a sense of transparency among readers. Transparency may be especially important for the health of news organizations, as it enhances the news outlet’s credibility and trust among readers by drawing back the proverbial curtain that has traditionally masked the production of news (Karlsson, 2010). This research uses a content analysis to measure the quality of live-blogs incorporated by The (UK) Guardian, with a focus on examining how live-blog creators utilize various news elements that are available online. The researchers contextualize the findings within the broader concept of transparency, with a focus on the format’s utility for producing quality journalism.

Examining Interactivity Between Florida Political Reporters and the Public on Twitter • John Parmelee, University of North Florida; David Deeley, University of North Florida • A content analysis of Florida political reporters’ tweets examines the degree to which local and regional journalists interact with the public on Twitter. Interactivity was measured using a four-level model of cyber-interactivity (McMillan, 2002) that was adapted for this study. Findings indicate little of the most genuine form of interactivity between journalists and citizens but more of another type of engagement with fellow journalists.

Using time series to measure intermedia agenda setting in China • Kun Peng • This study sought to explore the intermedia agenda setting relationship between traditional newspapers and microblogs in China. Specifically, it aimed to examine a) whether intermedia agenda setting takes place between newspapers and Microblogs; b) who has the initiatives of the two media, the nature of the relationships; c) the time span needed to generate linkages between two media agendas. Four Chinese newspapers and two microblogs were content analyzed to test for the intermedia agenda-setting relationships. The MH370 event, a time-sensitive and event- driven news event, was used as a case study. This study worked within the traditional methodology of time series to conduct intermedia agenda-setting analysis. As a result, no significant correlation was found between the newspapers’ and microblogs’ agendas, however the intermedia agenda-setting effects vary depending on the type of the news stories. Overall, newspapers need more time to granger causes microblogs’ agendas.

Radically objective: The role of the alternative media in covering Ferguson, Missouri • Mark Poepsel, Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville; Chad Painter, Eastern New Mexico University • This paper, based on in depth interviews with journalists at alternative and advocacy papers in St. Louis as well as interviews with live streaming protestors, a new breed of citizen journalist, applies six characteristics commonly associated with the alternative press to coverage of the protests and police crackdown in Ferguson, Missouri between August 9, 2014 and March of 2015. Journalists from the alternative newspaper in St. Louis focused on progressive or radical values less than the literature predicted, but by treating radical actions objectively they still presented readers with viewpoints that differed from the onslaught of mainstream media coverage. The African American newspaper in St. Louis found itself influencing the national and global agenda regarding Ferguson and the ongoing oppression of blacks in the city and surrounding municipalities while at the same time helping to hold St. Louis together behind the scenes against the most radical elements. Mobile media savvy protestors broadcast police actions from the front lines of dissent in nearly constant live streams day after day from August to November, altering the scope of counternarrative and providing distilled, detailed dissent. In this study, researchers take on a major news event that in some ways is not yet finished and provide a snapshot of the alternative/advocacy press as it rose to fill in gaps in coverage and to find untold stories in one of the most widely broadcast events of 2014.

Social responsibility a casualty of 21st century newspaper newsroom demands • Scott Reinardy, University of Kansas • For newspaper journalists, social responsibility is protected by the First Amendment, outlined in newsroom mission statements, and enforced by a culture entrusted to produce truthful, comprehensive and fair information. The purpose of this study was to examine the social responsibility mission of newspaper journalists following extensive newsroom downsizing, and the incorporation of new and different work demands. Results from a survey of more than 1,600 news workers and depth interviews with 86 indicate that while newspaper journalists continue to embrace the notions of social responsibility, fulfilling the mission has become far more complex amid internal (burnout, job satisfaction) and external (workload, resources) pressures. Additionally, journalists indicate that despite their efforts, the quality of work suffers, particularly among journalists experiencing burnout.

The Buzz on BuzzFeed: Can readers learn the news from lists? • Tara Burton, University of Alabama; Chris Roberts, University of Alabama • Among the Internet’s new forms of news delivery is BuzzFeed.com, which mixes information with humor using text blocks and unrelated images. This storytelling technique raises questions about information retention and credibility compared to traditional news messages and messengers. An experimental study on college-age students, using Elaboration Likelihood Model and credibility theories, compared a BuzzFeed story treatment to a USA Today treatment. Most participants preferred BuzzFeed but retained less information than traditional treatment. Implications are discussed.

Assessing the Health of Local Journalism Ecosystems: Testing new metrics on three New Jersey communities • Sarah Stonbely, New York University; Philip M. Napoli, Rutgers University; Katie McCollough; Bryce Renninger • This research develops a set of scalable, reliable metrics for assessing the health of local journalism ecosystems. We first distinguish different levels of ecosystem analysis, allowing precision regarding the area of analytical focus. We then identify three layers of the journalism ecosystem by which its health may be assessed: infrastructure, output, and performance. We find marked differences in the journalism ecosystems studied here, suggesting further evidence for the digital divide and pathways for future research.

The Effects of Homepage Design on News Browsing and Knowledge Acquisition • Natalie Stroud; Alexander Curry; Cynthia Peacock; Arielle Cardona • Previous research shows that information seeking and knowledge acquisition differ depending on whether people use print or online news. Instead of contrasting online versus print news, we compare two different news homepage designs: a streamlined homepage design that resembles a tablet layout and a traditional homepage design that replicates a common layout for newspaper homepages. Scholarship on clutter and cognitive load suggested that the streamlined site would yield more page views and information recall compared to the traditional site. An experiment (n=874), fielded in February of 2015 using an online panel, found that the streamlined site did result in more page views and greater recall of the details from the articles compared to the traditional site. The results did not vary depending on the respondents’ education or history of using different news formats.

A Little Birdie Told Me: Factors that influence the diffusion of Twitter in newsrooms. • Alecia Swasy, University of Illinois • Twitter has become a global, social media platform that is reshaping the way journalists communicate, gather information and disseminate news. This study builds on the relatively young field of research by using diffusion of innovation theory to gauge what factors influence the spread and adoption of Twitter. Case- study and in-depth interview methods were used in collecting data from 50 journalists at four metropolitan newspapers. Results show that the adoption and implementation of Twitter relies on peer pressure and coaching to get reluctant journalists to try Twitter. Adoption is then immediate because journalists see how Twitter is a gateway to new sources of information and story tips. Ultimately, journalists embrace Twitter because it provides instant gratification because it allows them to build a following and share their stories with a broader, global audience.

Variation in the Media Agenda: How newspapers in different states covered the ‘Obamacare’ ruling • Brandon Szuminsky, Waynesburg University; Chad Sherman, Waynesburg University • This 485-newspaper study investigated the substantive differences in the media agenda of the 2012 Supreme Court ruling on the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), as represented by newspaper front page coverage, with emphasis on differences in coverage between red and blue states. This news event provided a rare opportunity to examine how newspapers from all over the country — representing readerships located in all parts of the red-blue spectrum — would present the media agenda on the topic. Attention was paid to framing decisions expressed through headline word choice and space allocation as examples of how the media agenda was portrayed in areas with differing political tendencies. While many agenda-setting studies treat the media agenda as a monolithic entity, the present study found that there were significant variation in the portrayal of a news event within the media agenda. The data showed statistically significant relationships between the political tendencies of a newspaper’s state and county and its framing of the news event. This suggests that agenda-setting studies that treat the media agenda as a singular entity may be missing important nuance in the amount of variance within the media agenda in various parts of the country.

Credibility of Black and White Journalists and their News Reports on a Race-Coded Issue • Alexis Tan, Washington State University; Francis Dalisay, University of Hawaii at Manoa; Zhang Yunying, Austin Peay University; Lincoln James, Washington State University; Han Eun-Jeong, John Carroll University; Marie Louis Radanielina-Hita, McGill University; Mariyah Merchant • Two experiments examined the effects of a newspaper reporter’s name on his perceived race and credibility. Results show that White readers of a newspaper article are able to identify a reporter’s race based on his name alone. A reporter perceived to be Black and his news story on racial profiling were rated as more biased than a reporter perceived to be White and his news story. The White reporter also was rated as more rational and friendly than the Black reporter. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

What’s the big deal with big data? Norms, values, and routines in big data journalism • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University; Soo-Kwang Oh, William Paterson University • Through a content analysis of data journalism stories from The Guardian (n=260), a pioneer in contemporary big data journalism, we sought to investigate how the practice of big data journalism compare with traditional news values, norms and routines. Findings suggest that big data journalism shows new trends in terms of how sources are used, but still generally adhere to traditional news values and formats such as objectivity and use of visuals.

Objective, opaque, and credible: The impact of objectivity and transparency on news credibility • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University; Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri-Columbia • This study compared the effects of objectivity, a dominant standard in journalism, and transparency, argued to be replacing objectivity, on perceived news credibility and newsworthiness. An online experiment (n=222) found that objective articles were rated more credible and more newsworthy than opinionated articles. Non-transparent stories were rated more credible than transparent stories. Objective articles were more credible when they appeared on blog sites while opinionated articles were more credible when they appeared on news sites.

Channel Characteristics and Issue Types in the Agenda-Building Process of Election Campaigns • Ramona Vonbun, University of Vienna; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna • This study investigates the agenda-building process between newswire, television news, newspapers, online news-sites, and political parties during the 2013 Austrian national election campaign. A special focus is on the stability of the agendas, the role of online news-sites as media and policy agenda-setters, the channel characteristics, and types of issues. The findings indicate an important agenda-setting role of newswire and online news-sites challenging the role of newspapers as agenda-setters.

Gatekeeping and unpublishing: Making publishing and unpublishing decisions • Nina Pantic, University of Missouri; Tim Vos, University of Missouri • This paper uses in-depth interviews to study decision-making within newspaper newsrooms regarding the handling of unpublishing requests as well as the influences on editors’ decision-making. The research addresses how editors deal with unpublishing and what factors, including the threat of legal action, influence decisions to publish or unpublish. The paper builds on gatekeeping theory, which catalogues multiple ways that editorial decisions are influenced by external factors.

Writing Ideology: Journalists’ Letters to Editors • Wendy Weinhold, Coastal Carolina University • The word journalist, and the domain of producers and texts that inhabit its boundaries, often lacks a clear and agreed definition. This analysis builds on and extends the depth of definitions afforded the American print journalist offered in literature that dominates journalism studies. This analysis utilizes critical textual analysis to study journalists’ letters to editors of journalism trade magazines published between 1998 and 2008. Deuze’s (2005, 2007) theory of the ideological definitions of journalists provides a framework for the qualitative analysis that identifies the patterned ways journalists define journalists when they write to journalism trade magazines, which perform a special role as watchdogs of the press. Drawing from the corpus of 2,050 letters published in American Journalism Review, Columbia Journalism Review, and Editor and Publisher, critical textual analysis identifies how discourses in the letters reflect or reshape traditional print journalists’ self definitions. The result is a catalog of information that shapes an understanding of the letters within the individual ideological framework of the community of people who volunteer their opinions for publication in these journals.

The Influence of Twitter Sources on Credibility in Online News • Taisik Hwang, University of Georgia; Camila Espina, University of Georgia; Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia • This experimental study explores to what extent the use of Twitter as a news source affects the way audiences perceive the credibility of online news information regarding mass emergency events. A 3 (source format: interviewed sources, paraphrased tweets, embedded tweets) × 2 (source type: official, nonofficial) × 2 (number of retweets: few, many) between-subjects design is designed with 244 participants to implement the test. The results include that source type and system-generated cues do not have significant effect on perceived credibility of a news story about a natural disaster. The interaction between source type and number of retweets, however, occurs at the message level. The practical implications of these findings for journalists are discussed.

Framing E-Cigarettes: News Media Coverage of the Popularity and Regulation of Vaping • Lu Wu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Rhonda Gibson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study used content analysis to explore how mainstream media frame e-cigarettes, a popular smoking device that has caused concern among public health advocates and raised questions for policy makers. The result showed that leading daily newspapers identified the most problematic issue with of e-cigarettes was underage smoking and their content is largely supportive of tobacco control policy initiatives on e-cigarettes.

Incivility, Source and Credibility: An Experimental Test of How University Students Process a News Story • Yanfang Wu; Esther Thorson, Missouri School of Journalism • Civility crisis has been a big concern of the Americans and transmitted worldwide since the 1990s. Uncivil attacks in political communication turned into a big threat to political trust. Administering a 3×2 mixed subjects experiment, the study seeks to find out whether source and uncivil commentary in a news story can predict the level of credibility of a news story. An online survey with a 3 (Source: newspaper, blog, student’s class writing) x 2 (Incivility: civil and uncivil) mixed subjects design experiment embedded in was conducted in a large Midwestern University. 447 undergraduate students took part in the experiment. Factor analysis shows that news credibility can be divided into two dimensions–message credibility and news organization credibility. The study found that the gauging of news credibility, both message credibility and news organization credibility, is influenced by both source and the perceived incivility of the story. Party ID is not a significant predictor of neither message credibility nor news organization credibility of a news story. A TPE was found on perceived incivility and news organization credibility but not message credibility.

Newspaper Editors’ Perceptions of Social Media as News Sources • Masahiro Yamamoto, University of Wisconsin-La crosse; Seungahn Nah; Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky • Social media platforms where billions of interlinked users post and share events and commentaries to the larger public can be a useful newsgathering tool for journalists. Based on data from a nationwide probability sample of newspaper editors in the United States, this study investigates the extent to which newspaper editors consider social media as an influential news source. Results indicate that variations in editors’ perceptions of social media as a news source were associated with multiple levels of influence including professional experience as a journalist, organization size, community structural pluralism, and citizen journalism credibility. Implications are discussed for the role of social media in news production.

On Click-Driven Homepages: An analysis of the effect of popularity on the prominence of news • Rodrigo Zamith, University of Massachusetts Amherst • The homepages of 14 news organizations were analyzed every 15 minutes over 61 days to assess the relationship between an item’s popularity and its prominence. The results indicated a large divergence between popular and prominent items, and limited effects of popularity on subsequent prominence. The findings give pause to fears of a shift toward a turn toward an agenda of the audience and underscore the importance of journalism’s occupational ideology and logic.

Student Papers
Inter-Media Agenda Setting Between Government and News Media: Directions and Issues MacDougall Student Paper Award • Abdullah Alriyami, Michigan State University • Intermedia agenda setting is the main focus of this study. This empirical study aimed at identifying the relationship between news media and institutional media through the method of content analysis. To determine how influential the US government’s foreign policy decisions on the reporting of traditional news media, fifty two variables were coded on over 600 items obtained from the White House press briefings, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today during the first seven months of 2011. Cross lag correlation was used to correlate both types of media over two time periods. Results indicate an influence of institutional media over news media bringing an attention to the need to have specific language by the institutions to maintain and enhance such influence. Theoretically, the study adds to the existing literature on intermedia agenda setting research while at the same time applying Rozelle-Campbell Baseline to establish direction of correlation.

Effect of Negative Online Reader Comments on News Perception: Role of Comment Type, Involvement and Comment Number • Manu Bhandari, University of Missouri; David Wolfgang, University of Missouri • Scholarly research on online reader comments (ORCs), a form of user-generated content on online news sites, is growing but still remains rudimentary. To contribute to this pool of literature, a two-part study was done using the Elaboration Likelihood Model as the main theoretical framework. Study 1 experimentally investigated subjects’ perception of online news in the presence of negative ORCs of different types –– testimonial or informational –– and the moderating effect of involvement with the issue or topic of the news story. Since the first study used three ORCs for each ORC type, to disentangle the role of ORC number from that of ORC type, Study 2 examined the possible moderating influence of ORC number on the effect of testimonial vs. informational ORC type. Although results showed some variation, they generally indicated that informational ORC could be more persuasive than testimonial ORC in an online textual health news context, involvement at high levels could moderate the effects of ORC type, higher ORC number has stronger effects than lower numbers of ORC, and the advantage of negative informational ORC in impacting news credibility appears to be more at low (single) rather than high (three) ORC numbers.

The New Norm: Publicness and Self-Disclosure Among U.S. Journalists on Social Media • Justin Blankenship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Traditionally, journalists demonstrate their credibility and objectivity by creating a distance between their personal opinions and their professional work. This article examined the potential conflict between the traditional distance norms of journalism and the more author-centric nature of social media communication through a survey (N= 201) of local journalists. Results indicate that age and how integrated social media is in one’s daily life lead to more favorable opinions of sharing personal information and reported sharing behavior.

An issue divided: How business and national news differ in Affordable Care Act coverage • Lauren Furey, University of Florida; Andrea Hall, University of Florida • This study seeks to understand how business news covers the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in comparison to national newspapers. Using second-level agenda setting and framing as a theoretical base, content analysis results revealed that business news coverage was highly critical of the ACA, as these publications often highlighted issues and frames related to the financial consequences of the law, while depicting ACA-opposing sources and a negative tone in a majority of their coverage.

The Adoption of Technology and Innovation Among Colombian Online News Entrepreneurs • Victor Garcia, University of Texas at Austin • Media researchers have been interested in investigating how digital technology has shaped journalistic practices and content in online newsrooms. The purpose of this study is to contribute to that discussion by analyzing how native online newsrooms in Colombia are implementing technologies and innovation in their workspaces. This article uses the constructivist approach of the Actor Network Theory and Journalism Practices to investigate four relevant cases of study. In-depth interviews were used as a method. Results show online news entrepreneurs are flexible and creative in the adoption of technologies. They value the quality of content and their journalistic standards more than tools. The integration of users into their editorial process is still limited. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Determinants of issue salience • Catherine Huh, UC Davis • The current study attempted to explore the agenda-setting effects using data mining of publicly available search query data and its determinants. Consistent with the previous studies, transfer of salience between the media and search agendas was confirmed for the prominence of a foreign country in the news. Economic factors were the key determinants of both news coverage and online issue salience.

Taking it from the team: Assessments of bias and credibility in team-operated sports media • Michael Mirer, University of Wisconsin; Megan Duncan, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Team- and league-operated media play a growing role in the sports media system. Few have looked at how audiences perceive the credibility of in-house content, which often mimics traditional sports journalism. Using experimental methods this paper finds that even among fans, independent media content still is rated more credible than that produced in-house. Fans view stories accusing their team of wrongdoing as biased even as they find them credible.

Is the Internet portal an alternative news channel or another gatekeeper? • KYUNG-GOOK PARK, University of Pittsburgh; Eunju Kang, University of Florida • This study explored visual framing effects of online newspapers on readers and how candidates in the 2012 Korean presidential election were covered by the Internet portal as a news aggregator and provider. Three major portal websites (Naver, Daum, and Nate) were utilized as they are currently the primary online news channels. Furthermore, each online newspaper was categorized as conservative, neutral, or liberal/progressive. The data sample (N = 1024) focused on the visual coverage of Park Geun-hye, the candidate for the conservative ruling Saenuri Party, and the opposition Moon Jae-in, the candidate for the liberal Democratic United Party. The findings demonstrated that the news media aimed to generate a balance in their visual coverage of the presidential candidates in the 2012 campaign, whereas some bias also existed among each portal and online newspaper. More specifically, Naver as well as conservative and liberal/progressive online newspapers was not trying to balance the visual images used. These findings provide evidence that the Internet portal and online newspapers might in fact play a significant role in media agenda setting and visual framing.

Real Significance of Breaking News: Examining the Perception of Online Breaking News • Joseph Yoo, The University of Texas at Austin • With a plethora of online breaking news, there is a concern that the increase in the amount of breaking news could impoverish the quality of journalism. This study ascertained the perception of online breaking news by conducting a 2 (news with/without breaking label) x 2 (high and low news value) experiment. Neither breaking labels nor newsworthiness altered the credibility rating scales. Journalists should keep in mind that calling something breaking news neither helps nor hurts.

2015 Abstracts

Media Management and Economics 2015 Abstracts

Impact of Market Competition and the Internet on Journalistic Performance in Developing and Transitional Countries • Adam Jacobsson, Stockholm university, department of Economics; Ann Hollifield, University of Georgia; Lee Becker, University of Georgia; Tudor Vlad, University of Georgia; Eva-Maria Jacobsson, Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) • This study uses a sample of national media markets to examine the relationship between increasing competition in the advertising market and overall journalistic performance. The findings suggest that as the news media’s share of the advertising market falls in a country, so, too, does the quality of the journalism produced by that country’s news media. It suggests that as Internet penetration increases in a country, it negatively affects the overall quality of journalism produced.

Disruptors versus Incubators: How journalists covered the organizational change at the New Republic under techonology entrepreneur Chris Hughes. • Monica Chadha, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Communication, Arizona State University • The impasse between the editorial and managerial sides of a news organization is at the center of the study proposed here. In particular, this paper, through the theoretical lens of organizational change and professional/work identity, looks at how the news media perceived and reported on the differences between the editorial and management staff at the New Republic. This magazine has at its helm, one of the Facebook founders, Chris Hughes, with no historic ties to the news industry. Differences with his high profile editorial staff led to last minute resignations by editors and reporters en masse at the New Republic, and this issue made the news several times. This examination of the news coverage of these differences is an attempt to understand how news media portrayed this event and created a narrative around a key event as an interpretive community. Analyzing the media texts surrounding this issue will help scholars and professionals understand how journalists think of and discuss such differences between the business and editorial sides. This understanding then may lead to management and editorial staff navigating through organizational change more effectively, rather than leading to group behavior that would be detrimental to the company.

Marketing Theatrical Films for the Mobile Platform: The Roles of Web Content/Social Media, Brand Extension, WOM, and Windowing Strategies • Sang-Hyun Nam; Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida; Byeng-Hee Chang • This study explored the effects of various marketing factors on the distribution of theatrical films on the mobile platform. Research questions related to certain marketing activities such as web content/social media, brand extension, eWOM, and windowing strategies were examined using the mobile movie industry data of South Korea. The result showed that certain web content activities, brand extension via star power and sequels, as well as movie length were significantly associated with mobile film performance.

An Economic Perspective on the Diffusion of Communication Media • John dimmick, School of Communication, Ohio State University • The diffusion curves representing media adoption have been repeatedly shown to fit the logistic growth equation. This paper gives an extended theoretical interpretation of r and K, the parameters of the equation in economic terms. The paper analyzes data representing one measure of K, the University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI). Analysis of the link between the CSI and computer and cellphone change scores shows a positive relationship, indicating that the perceived state of the US economy influences diffusion patterns.

Profitability in Newspapers: Industry Benchmarking Data Shows Newspaper Industry Makes Money and is Less Risky Following Layoffs and Restructuring • Keith Herndon, University of Georgia • This study of proprietary financial benchmarking data shows the newspaper industry is profitable and that financial risk has diminished following years of consolidation and employee downsizing. It expands on recent public newspaper company research and confirms the industry is profitable across multiple revenue ranges. The study provides a timely financial review for an industry poised for more unsettling consolidation given that newspapers shed more than 260,000 workers since reaching peak employment in 1991.

Developing New Organizational Identity: Merger of St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon • Amber Hinsley • Using St. Louis Public Radio and the St. Louis Beacon as a case study, this research applies social identity theory to examine the pre- and post-merger identities of the organizations and their workers. The merger experience is a guide for other institutions considering similar moves. By understanding the impact of a merger, news organizations can better manage the process by reinforcing how changes align with the pre-merger organizations’ identity and the new emerging identity.

Success factors of news parent brand: Focusing on parent brand equity, online brand extension and open branding • J. Sonia Huang; Jacie Yang • The study examines the success factors that influence news parent brands and tested the applicability of brand-related concepts such as brand equity, brand extension, and open branding in the context of 4 national newspapers and their online extensions in Taiwan. Using data from a national online survey (N = 907), results show that 4 factors, i.e., extended brand loyalty, parent brand awareness, perceived quality of parent brand, and brand portfolio quality variance, have direct effects on parent brand loyalty and 2 factors, i.e., open branding and brand awareness, have indirect effects through third variables. Generally, the study provides evidence that online brand extension is the driving force in the explanation of readers’ loyalty toward news parents.

Over-The-Top services on mobile networks: Lessons from an international comparison of regulatory regimes • Krishna Jayakar, Penn State University; EUN-A PARK, University of New Haven • This paper is an international comparative analysis of emerging frameworks for the regulation of Over-The-Top content providers on mobile networks, specifically with respect to the prices that access providers may charge to content providers to transport and terminate the traffic to the end user. Selected national regulations or proposals are compared to identify major issues and potential solutions to the problems of OTT regulation. Four benchmarking principles are identified. The Federal Communications Commission’s (2015) Net Neutrality Rules are then assessed in light of these benchmarking principles.

The Internet and Changes in Media Industry: A Cross-National Examination • Sung Wook Ji, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale • Most studies concerned with the effect of the Internet on media industries have focused on the current reduction of revenues in an individual medium, rather than on the ways in which the Internet is changing the media industry as a whole. The present study explores the economic effects of the Internet on structural change in traditional media industries. Based on country-level, dynamic panel data from 51 countries between 2009 and 2013, this paper finds that an increase in broadband Internet penetration leads to a shift in the balance of the revenues from advertising toward direct payments: a 1% increase in broadband penetration will cause a 0.1% shift in revenues from advertising toward direct payments. These findings correspond with the trends that previous studies have found in the U.S. media industry.

Brand Extension in the Film Industry: Performance of Film Adaptations and Sequels • Dam Hee Kim, University of Michigan • Focusing on film adaptations and sequels as brand extension, this paper analyzed 2,488 films released between 2010 and 2013 in the U.S. to examine what types of films were successful. Results suggested that sequels generated more domestic box office gross than non-sequels. Among sequels, film adaptations appeared to generate more gross than non-film adaptations. Among adaptation sequels, those with new names, with their dissimilarity to parent brands, generated more box office gross than numbered ones.

Toward a Tyranny of Tweeters? The Institutionalization of Social TV Analytics as Market Information Regime • Allie Kosterich, Rutgers University; Philip M. Napoli, Rutgers University • Changes in the ways that audiences use television, and the ways in which such usage can be measured, raise the possibility of a transformation of the currency that fuels the audience marketplace. Specifically, it appears at this point that social media analytics are beginning to play a role in how television program success is measured, and in how advertising dollars are allocated across programs (Shively, 2014; Wright, 2014). Essentially, then, the emergence of social TV analytics represents the possibility of a new market information regime taking hold in the audience marketplace. Utilizing industry trade documents as a window into industry dynamics and discourses, this paper provides an account of the recent emergence and usage of social TV analytics in the U.S. television industry as a means of exploring the process of institutionalization of a new market information regime. An institutional theory framework is applied to the ongoing dynamics between established and emergent market information regimes in the television audience marketplace in an effort to better understand if and how a new market information regime can become institutionalized. As the analysis shows, traditional audience exposure metrics are insufficient for all stakeholders. Moreover, new social media metrics do appear to have genuine economic value for those engaged in the process of buying and selling audiences. Current evidence suggests that the television industry is at a point in its evolution at which it can – even must – operate under multiple market regimes and embrace multiple value criteria.

Crossing the Interregnum: Group Cohesion among Adaptive Journalists • Mark Poepsel, Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville • What keeps a cohort of journalists together working in the field at a high level through shifts in management, ownership, technology and medium? Using group cohesion theory and concepts of task and social cohesion, group pride, and the cybernetic model of group cohesion, this study answers with concrete qualitative data what qualities of the group, cherished norms, values and best practices were most helpful for fostering cohesion in the interest of survival and growth. The findings of this draft essay should ultimately prove useful for future theorizing in the areas of change management in the journalism field and in journalism pedagogy. Key findings include that task cohesion dominates over social cohesion in this group of veteran journalists and that bridging the gap to build support for the next generation group pride is key.

Netflix versus Hulu: A Comparative Analysis • Ronen Shay, University of Florida • The purpose of this mixed-methods case study is to provide a comparative analysis of the Netflix and Hulu business models in order to assess whether both business models are sustainable over time. The theoretical framework draws from conceptual business model analysis, Porter’s (1985) value chain, and Anderson’s (2006) long-tail economics. Secondary data from SNL Kagan is used in combination with an original content analysis to test Netflix’s and Hulu’s October, 2013 libraries for competitive advantages, the presence of the long-tail phenomenon, and whether or not the ownership structure of either firm affects the viability of their business models.

So Who Needs a Terrestrial Signal? Internet Radio Entrepreneurs Compete in Two Kansas Markets • Steve Smethers, Kansas State University • This case study focuses on the primary experiences of two Kansas media entrepreneurs using audio streaming to establish simulated radio services in markets where new terrestrial signals are not available. Buoyed by current consumer interest in streaming, subjects profiled here have fashioned their Internet radio stations into bonafide competitors for listeners and advertising dollars. Interviews and business artifacts reveal two different monetization models for these stations that emphasize local information and market-specific music programming.

Sharing the Pain? An Examination of CEO and Executive Compensation of Publicly Traded Newspaper Companies • John Soloski, U of Georgia; Hugh J. Martin, Ohio University • This paper examines compensation of newspaper company CEOs and other top executives and compares compensation with key measures of their companies’ financial performance and employment levels. Fixed-effects regressions found only a small relationship between CEO pay and companies’ market value for 2000-2013. There was no relationship between pay and return-on-assets or return-on-equity. Unobserved characteristics of individual companies are associated with CEO pay. Implications for the financial health of newspaper companies are discussed in the study.

Can net neutrality coverage maintain value neutrality? • Joseph Yoo, The University of Texas at Austin • Comcast, a media conglomerate providing Internet service, owns NBC Universal News Group, while parent companies for other television news stations are not Internet Service Providers. ISPs have been opposed to net neutrality because it can hurt their profit. This study examines whether parental ownership for broadcasting news influences net neutrality coverage. The results indicate that rather than ownership status, the political ideology for each broadcasting news outlet led to different attitudes towards net neutrality coverage.

2015 Abstracts

Media Ethics 2015 Abstracts

Open Competition
How do ads mean? A mutualist theory of advertising ethics. • Margaret Duffy, Missouri School of Journalism; Esther Thorson, Missouri School of Journalism; Tatsiana Karaliova, Missouri School of Journalism; Heesook Choi • This gathered qualitative data about people’s responses to ads identified as ethically problematic based on guidelines and conventions established by advertising ethics critics and the FTC. It analyzed people’s responses to the ads using social constructionist, rhetorical, and dramatistic theoretical lenses. Applying Symbolic Convergence Theory, the study found significantly different communities of meaning as individuals interpreted video commercials. It suggests a new approach to studying advertising ethics.

The Press Complaints Commission is Dead; Long Live the IPSO? • Mark Harmon, University of Tennessee; Abhijit Mazumdar, University of Tennessee • The authors tally 57 monthly Press Complaint Commission complaint resolution reports, dating from January 2010 to September 2014. The sums from each category were expressed as a percentage of all 28,457 complaints. The data show that PCC was something of a paper tiger. This quantitive analysis led to a qualitative review of the ethical need for, potential best practices of, and opportunities facing the United Kingdom’s new Independent Press Standards Organization, the PCC successor organization.

Journalism Under Attack: The Charlie Hebdo Covers and Reconsiderations of Journalistic Norms • Joy Jenkins, University of Missouri; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University • The terrorist attack on the satirical French newspaper Charlie Hebdo created an ethical dilemma for U.S. news organizations. In reporting on the attacks, news organizations had to decide whether to republish examples of the magazine’s controversial cartoons. This decision highlighted an otherwise taken-for-granted assumption — that the journalistic field is governed by a set of norms, but these norms may, at times, be at odds. This study used qualitative textual analysis to shed light on the journalistic norms involved in American journalists’ own discourses explaining their respective editorial decisions to republish or not to republish the Charlie Hebdo cartoons. The resulting analysis demonstrates how a shock to the journalistic profession can challenge existing norms as well as bring new norms to light.

The Death of Corporal Miller: Omission, Transparency and the Ethics of Embedded Journalism • Miles Maguire, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh • The New York Times won acclaim for its coverage of the second battle of Falluja in November 2014. But its initial articles left out a crucial detail, that a Marine corporal was killed while aiding two of the paper’s journalists. Over four years the Times published four different versions of the death of the Marine without ever fully explaining the circumstances that surrounded the incident or attempting to reconcile the differences in its accounts. On the contrary the newspaper has refused to articulate what factors led to the withholding of information about Miller’s death, a position that is clearly at odds with its own code of conduct as well as with the growing emphasis on transparency as a cornerstone of journalism ethics. This study, based on a review of the written record and interviews with key participants, sheds new light on the ethical challenges of embedded journalism and shows how the embedding process can work to shape news accounts to support military objectives at the expense of traditional journalistic values. The paper includes an examination of the way that the military has adopted transparency as a key element of what it calls inform and influence activities, which are now identified as part of combat power. The conclusion suggests that a commitment to transparency on the part of news organizations would be a way to regain independence in battlefield reporting by embedded journalists.

Examining Intention of Illegal Downloading: An Integration of Social Norms and Ethical Ideologies • Namkee Park, Yonsei University, South Korea; Hyun Sook Oh, Pyeongtaek University, South Korea; Naewon Kang, Dankook University, South Korea; Seohee Sohn, Yonsei University, South Korea • This study investigated applicability of ethical ideologies reflected by moral idealism and relativism, together with social norms, to the context of illegal downloading. The study found that intention of illegal downloading was dissimilar among four groups of ethical ideologies; situationists, absolutists, subjectivists, and exceptionists. Injunctive norm was a critical factor that affected illegal downloading intention, yet only for situationists and absolutists. For subjectivists and exceptionists, ego-involvement played a critical role in explaining the intention.

Media Ethics Theorizing, Reoriented: A Shift in Focus for Individual-Level Analyses • Patrick Plaisance, Colorado State University • This project argues that multidisciplinary methods and work to reconsider key concepts are critical if media ethics scholarship is to continue to mature. It identifies three dimensions of a reoriented framework for media ethics theory: one that reconceptualizes inquiry at the individual level; another that situates media technology in assessments of autonomous agency and organizational affiliation; and a third that applies formalist virtue ethics as the best framework for normative claims arising from the first two.

NGOs as newsmakers: boon or bane? A normative evaluation • Matthew Powers, University of Washington – Seattle • In recent years, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have assumed a growing role in shaping – and in some cases directly producing – news. What are the normative implications of this development? Drawing on normative traditions of public communication, this paper identifies four roles NGOs are tasked with performing: expert, advocate, facilitator and critic. To date, research suggests NGOs align most closely with representative liberal and democratic participatory ideals of journalism, while marginalizing deliberative and radical traditions.

When White Reporters Cover Race: The news media, objectivity and community (dis-)trust • SUE ROBINSON, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kathleen Culver, University of Wisconsin-Madison • When white reporters cover issues involving race, they often fall back on traditional, passive practices of objectivity, such as deferring to official sources and remaining separate from communities. Using in-depth interviews combined with textual analysis in a case study of one mid-western city struggling with race, we explore the ethical tensions between the commitment to neutrality and the need for trust building. This essay argues for an active objectivity focused on loyalty to all citizens.

An update on advertising ethics: an organization’s perspectives • Erin Schauster, Bradley University • Ethical problems in advertising continue to exist but an update on these problems from an organizational approach is needed (Drumwright, 2007; Drumwright & Murphy, 2009). Forty-five one-on-one interviews were conducted regarding perceptions of advertising ethics. Findings suggest that ethical problems exist such as treating others fairly, behaving honestly, respecting consumers’ privacy and maintaining creative integrity. The implications of creative integrity and an organizational approach as ethical relativism are presented.

Carol Burnett Award
Ethics in Design: The Public Sphere and Value Considerations in Online Commenting Development • Kristen Bialik, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Drawing on the work of Habermas’ public sphere and discourse ethics, as well as user-interface design and Value Sensitive Design theory in technology, this paper examines whether improved online comment system policies and design can help foster a more robust form of the public sphere. The study raises larger questions of how values within traditional journalism, as well as values underpinning democratic societies, can be emphasized in the structural spaces of online public forums.

The many faces of television’s public moral discourse? Exploring genre differences in the representation of morality in prime time television • Serena Daalmans, Radboud University • This study is focused on differences between TV genres (news, entertainment & fiction) in the representation of morality on television. We conducted a quantitative content analysis, based on a sample of prime-time television programs (2012) (N = 485). The results reveal distinct differences between the genres concerning the representation of moral domains, moral themes, types of morality and moral complexity, and striking similarities regarding moral communities as beacons of moral accountability.

Moderating Marius: Ethical Language and Representation of Animal Advocacy in Mass Media Coverage of the Copenhagen Zoo Saga • Christina DeWalt, The University of Oklahoma • Ethical theory is used in this study to assess news coverage of the Copenhagen Zoo’s decision to euthanize a healthy giraffe and the subsequent public outcry regarding the animal’s death. This paper examines twenty-six print, broadcast, and radio news pieces utilizing ethical frameworks derived from the widely used philosophies of Kant and Bentham. The types of news frames deployed as well as the willingness of mainstream media outlets to expand public exposure to broader social issues related to animal captivity and welfare, and their willingness to include non-traditional sourcing in meaningful and balanced ways was examined through in-depth, textual analysis. Findings indicate that while the mass media did extend moral considerations to the nonhuman subject through implicit means, news production norms, practices, and routines continued to hinder advancement of alternative voices and expansion of social exposure to broader ethical issues inherent in the story.

Aggregation and Virtue Ethics • Stan Diel, University of Alabama • As consumers increasingly look to the Internet to find news and traditional news organizations shed jobs, the demand for original news content online has come to exceed supply. To fill the void, websites, both digital-native and those associated with legacy news media, have turned to aggregation so quickly that the practice has developed faster than both legal and ethical standards that might moderate it. While deontological systems of ethics often guide traditional media, such rule-based codes are not easily applied to digital news practices. A system of virtue-based ethics grounded in an arch-virtue of truthfulness and moderated by the virtues of fairness, non- malevolence and temperance, and a standardized definition of terms, are proposed to help guide aggregation practices.

Analysis of moral argumentation in newspaper editorial contents with Kohlberg’s moral development model • Yayu Feng, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This study evaluates moral reasoning stages addressed in editorial pieces regarding rape culture from two newspapers in Athens, Ohio, with Kohlberg’s Moral Development Model. An analytical system was developed based on Critical Discourse Analysis and Moral Development Theory, which contributes a new approach to investigating media moral messages. The study details the different patterns of moral reasoning stages represented in the newspapers and offers a case study of editorials’ performance as moral educators.

Peace Journalism and Radical Media Ethics • Marta Lukacovic, Wayne State University • The radical characteristics of peace journalism position it as a model that expands the current understandings of normative media theory. Hence, peace journalism echoes the most innovative calls of media ethicists such as Ward’s proposition of radical media ethics. Peace journalists and citizens have to face constraints that are posed by cultural and structural violence when attempting to reflect on international conflicts and crises in peace journalistic/conflict sensitive manner.

The point of debating ethics in journalism: consensus or compromise and the rehabilitation of common sense as a way toward solidarit • Laura Moorhead, Stanford University • Philosopher and media gadfly Habermas in the newsroom? This paper — through the frame of Habermas’s discourse ethics — highlights a path for debating ethics in journalism using rational-critical discussion, which can lead to consensus or compromise through a move from individual to collective community interests. The paper considers the rehabilitation of common sense, through emerging technology and an interdisciplinary approach. The point of debating ethics in journalism surfaces as the hope for solidarity despite increasing pluralism.

Weekly Newsmagazines’ Framing of Obesity, Responsibility Attribution, and Moral Discourses • Lok Pokhrel, Washington State University • This paper presents a study of how obesity-related health issues in the United States are represented in four American weekly magazines: Newsweek, Time, The Weekly Standard, and National Review. The paper particularly examined the media’s attribution of responsibility for the problem of obesity, that is, whether the issue constitutes an individual or collective responsibility. The paper also argues that the news media’s framing of obesity-related health issues, through the use of various discursive and framing tactics, raises ethical concerns. Through analysis of weekly news magazine discourses, the study finds two themes that raise ethical concern: the weekly publications (a) primarily discussed the problem of obesity in terms of either individual or societal responsibility; (b) highlighted the ethical concerns from appeals to both personal responsibility and a sense of obligation to promote the health of others and fulfill the duty to avoid becoming an unfair burden to others.

Toward an ethic of personal technologies: Moral implications found in the fruition of man-computer symbiosis • Rhema Zlaten, Colorado State University • The impending fruition of man-computer symbiosis suggests a shift towards society’s acceptance of human partnership with technology. Increased intimacy between humans and machines creates a need for understanding individual rights in modern society’s transmedia paradigm. This paper calls for the creation of an ethic of personal technologies; a partnership of understanding how society grew to accept the full integration of technology into daily life and the rights of each digital footprint in a computer-mediated society.

Special Call For New Horizons in Media Ethics
A Duty to Freedom: Conceptualizing Platform Ethics • Brett Johnson, University of Missouri • This paper makes two arguments. First, the field of media ethics should incorporate ethical analyses of the relationship between digital communication intermediaries (e.g. Facebook and Twitter) and their users. Second, these intermediaries should abide by a primary duty to protect the users’ freedom to speak via their platforms, followed by a secondary duty to mitigate potential harms caused by users’ speech. The paper synthesizes theories of intermediary liability and corporate media ethics to make this argument.

The Ethical Implications of Participatory Culture in a New Media Environment: A Critical Case Study of Veronica Mars • Murray Meetze, University of Colorado Boulder • In a fast-paced media landscape where producer and consumer relationships are constantly being renegotiated, the ethical implications of this participatory culture must be addressed. This article explores current literature on participatory culture through the lens of a case study of the Veronica Mars 2013 Kickstarted film. The Veronica Mars Kickstarter provides a unique view of the strengths of audience involvement in media content production. The Belmont Report social science principles for human subject research will be utilized in this case study examination along with the ethical framework of W.D. Ross’ duty-based ethics. This analysis aims to establish tangible ethical guidelines for media industry production in an unstable media environment.

What Constitutes Good Work in Journalism Education • Caryn Winters, University of Louisiana at Lafayette • What is the good work educators –especially journalism educators –are obliged to do in consideration of their simultaneous roles as members of a democratic community and members of professional communities?Rather than focus on specific professional practices, I have chosen to emphasize the necessity for professionals –and especially those professionals who play key roles in building the democratic capacity –to understand the core principles of their professional realms. When journalists and journalism educators engage in professional activity that is informed by these principles, they have the potential to transform their professional realms and democracy.

2015 Abstracts

Mass Communication and Society 2015 Abstracts

Open Competition
Building Social Capital. The Role of News and Political Discussion Tie Strength in Fostering Reciprocity • Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu, University of Vienna; Trevor Diehl, University of Vienna; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna • This study explores the role of news and discussion network tie strength in developing the social and civic norm of reciprocity. It argues that interactions of mutual benefit and exchange are an outcome of media use and political discussion, which in turn, directly leads to an increase in community connectedness and social capital. Informational uses of media directly predicted attitudes of reciprocity and social capital, though only conversation with weak ties led to reciprocity.

News Media Literacy and Political Engagement: What’s the Connection? • Seth Ashley, Boise State University; Adam Maksl, Indiana University Southeast; Stephanie Craft, University of Illinois • Scholars and educators have long hoped and assumed that media education is positively related to pro-social goals such as political and civic engagement. Others worry about the possibility of alienation and disengagement. With a focus on news, this study surveyed 537 college students and found positive relationships between news media literacy and current events knowledge, political activity and internal political efficacy. News media education should be deployed widely to mitigate a news media literacy gap that limits democratic citizenship.

Reducing stigmatization associated with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency • Michelle Baker, Juniata College • Differences in response to three written narratives designed to reduce stigmatization associated with the genetic condition alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency (AATD) were examined. Three protagonists were depicted: positive, transitional, and transformational. Positive protagonists, who did not stigmatize a person diagnosed with AATD, showed greater stigmatization reduction than transitional and transformational protagonists. Positive protagonists showed reduced advocacy for individuals to maintain secrecy about their diagnosis or withdraw from others and increased advocacy to educate others about AATD.

Beyond Empathy: The Role of Positive Character Appraisal in Narrative Messages Designed to Reduce Stigmatization • Michelle Baker, Juniata College • The psychological processes guiding the effect that protagonists in narrative health messages have on genetic stigmatization reduction has not been fully explored. This study (N = 170) empirically tests these processes in relation to positive, transitional, and transformational protagonists in messages designed to reduce stigmatization associated with alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency. Findings reveal that positive character appraisal rather than empathy with the protagonist led to greater self-efficacy, transportation, and decreased desire for social distance.

Let Go of My iPad: Testing the Effectiveness of New Media Technologies to Measure Children’s Food Intake and Health Behaviors • Kim Bissell, University of Alabama; Lindsey Conlin, The University of Southern Mississippi; Bijie Bie; Xueying Zhang; Scott Parrott • This field experiment with just under 100 children at a school in the Southeast examined children’s use of an iPad app as a means of improving the measurement of their food consumption. Secondarily, external factors related to children’s food preferences and food consumption were also examined to determine how the iPad app could be further developed to help them become more aware of the foods they ate and also how they could become more proactive in their health and well-being. Results indicate that the app has enabled children to have more precision in recording the foods they ate, and children, across the board, expressed great appeal for the app. The foods reported in the app were compared to attitudes toward eating and nutritional knowledge; in both cases, more positive attitudes toward eating and stronger nutritional knowledge meant that a child was more likely to report eating healthy foods. Findings from this exploratory study contribute to knowledge in several areas because the findings represent the first of its kind in the discipline. No study, to our knowledge, has examined the usefulness of iPad app in recording children’s food intake, and no study, to our knowledge, has compared the recording of food consumption using traditional measures and the newer measures found on the app. Additionally, we learned a good bit about external factors that could be related to low-income children’s consumption of healthy or unhealthy foods.

Looking for the Truth in the Noise: Epistemic Political Efficacy, Cynicism and Support for Super PACs • Justin Blankenship, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe; Martin Kifer, High Point University • Using a statewide cell and landline telephone survey (N=594) this study examines relationships among political efficacy, epistemic political efficacy (EPE), cynicism and North Carolina voter attitudes toward super PACS that have emerged as key players in political campaigns since the Citizens United decision. While older, higher-income, conservative voters support allowing super PACs to play a role in political campaigning, results also indicate that cynicism and EPE are related to support for super PACs.

Sensation Seeking, Motives, and Media Multitasking Behaviors • Yuhmiin Chang • This study examines the motives behind media multitasking, along with the relationships among sensation seeking, motives, onset timing behaviors, and frequency of media multitasking. An online survey recruited a total of 938 valid respondents across three regions and four universities. The results showed that the motives for media multitasking are different from other types of multitasking. The motives either perfectly or partially mediate the effect of sensation seeking on two types of media multitasking behaviors.

The effects of race cue and emotional content on processing news • Heesook Choi; Sungkyoung Lee, University of Missouri; Frank Michael Russell, University of Missouri School of Journalism • This experimental study with 2 (race cue) x 2 (emotional content) mixed design examined the effects of race and emotional content in news stories on discrete emotions, transportation, intention to share the story, and policy support. The results showed that stories with race cues elicited greater anger compared to those with no cues, and presence of emotional content led to greater anger and fear, and greater intention to share than those with no emotional content.

Underestimated Effect on Self but Overestimated Effect on Other: The Actual and Perceived Effects of Election Poll Coverage on Candidate Evaluations • Sungeun Chung, Sungkyunkwan University; Yu-Jin Heo, Sungkyunkwan University; Jung-Hyun Moon, Sungkyunkwan University • The present study investigated biases in the perceived effect of election polls by comparing it with the actual effect of election polls for those who experienced a bandwagon effect and those who experienced an underdog effect respectively. An online survey with a manipulated poll result (N = 308) showed that voters tended to underestimate the level of change in their evaluation and voters tended to overestimate the level of change in others’ evaluation.

The Effects of News Exposure, Amount of Knowledge, and Perceived Power of Large Corporations on Citizens’ Self-Censorship in SNS • Sangho Byeon, Dankook University; Sungeun Chung, Sungkyunkwan University • The present study investigated whether self-censorship regarding large corporations in SNS is affected by media exposure, the amount of knowledge, and perceived power of large corporations. A nationwide survey was conducted in South Korea (N = 455). As exposure to the news about large corporations increased, self-censorship regarding large corporations increased. The effect of media exposure was mediated by the amount of knowledge about large corporations and perceived power about large corporations.

There Goes the Weekend: Binge-Watching, Fear of Missing Out, Transportation, and Enjoyment of Television Content • Lindsey Conlin, The University of Southern Mississippi; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama • Binge-watching—the act of consuming multiple episodes of a TV show in a single sitting—has become increasingly popular among TV audiences. The current study sought to define and investigate binge-watching in terms of transportation theory and the outcomes associated with entertainment consumption (transportation and enjoyment). Additionally, the personality traits of transportability and fear-of-missing-out (FoMO) were analyzed. Results indicated that personality traits were strong predictors of the pace at which a person would choose to watch a TV show, while transportability and FoMO both predicted that a person would choose to binge-watch existing episodes of a TV show in order to catch up to live episodes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Romance and Sex on TV: A Content Analysis of Sexual and Romantic Cues on Television • Elise Stevens, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Lu Wu, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; NATALEE SEELY, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Francesca Dillman Dillman Carpentier, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Content analyses of sexualized content have been done with television shows, movies, and music videos. However, little research has analyzed content in ways that specifically differentiate between sex and romance. Therefore, using a content analysis with popular television programs, we examine sexual and romantic depictions, as well as whether or how sexual risk and responsibility depictions appear alongside other depictions of sex and romance. Twelve programs were analyzed by a total of three coders. The most prevalent sexual or romantic talk dealt with harming/ending a romantic relationships and liking/loving a person romantically. The most prevalent sexual or romantic behavior was light romantic kissing or touching. The dominant category in risk and responsibility was a show of an unwanted pregnancy; mentions of STIs or contraceptives were notably absent. Interesting, most scenes depicting risk and responsibility involved sexual talk or behavior, whereas risk/responsibility was hardly mentioned within the context of romance.

Seeking out & avoiding the news media: Young adults’ strategies for finding current events information • Stephanie Edgerly • This study uses in-depth interview data from 21 young adults to identify their strategies for locating current events information in the high-choice media age. During the interviews, participants responded to six hypothetical vignettes by articulating the steps they would take to find current events information. The data revealed two strategy patterns—one set of strategies that directly involved the news media, and another set that avoided the news media in favor of functional information alternatives.

NGOs, hybrid connective action, and the People’s Climate March • Suzannah Evans; Daniel Riffe; Joe Bob Hester • Studies of civic engagement through social media have often focused on horizontal, leaderless, and spontaneous demonstrations. Formal NGOs, however, have also moved into this space and combined their knowledge of classic collective action with the affordances of digital media to create a hybrid approach to civic engagement. Using Twitter data from the 2014 People’s Climate March, this study examines how successful NGOs were in penetrating the digital public sphere with their chosen messages.

Are You Connected? Evaluating Information Cascades in Online Discussion about the #RaceTogether Campaign • Yang Feng, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise • In the context of online discussion about the recent Starbucks’ Race Together cup campaign, this study aims to explore the central users in the online discussion network on Twitter and the factors contributing to a user’s central status in the network. A social network analysis of 18,000 unique tweets comprising 26,539 edges and 14,343 Twitter users indicated five types of central users: conversation starter, influencer, active engager, network builder, and information bridge. Moreover, path analysis revealed that the number of people a Twitter user follows, the number of followers a user has, and the number of tweets a user generates within a time period helped a user increase his/her in-degree connections in the network, which, together with one’s out-degree connections in the network, propelled a user to become a central figure in the network.

Expanding the RISP Model to Politics: Skepticism, Information Sufficiency, and News Use • Jay Hmielowski, Washington State University; Michael Beam, Kent State University; Myiah Hutchens, Washington State University • This study extends the research on skepticism and information insufficiency in several ways. First, this study tests the assumption that skepticism correlates with needing additional information about an issue. Second, it examines the relationship between insufficiency and news use by looking at the relationships between insufficiency and use of four media variables. Third, it examines whether the relationship between information sufficiency and use of these four outlets varies by political ideology. Lastly, this study puts these variables into a mediated-moderated model to understand whether there is an indirect effect of skepticism through information sufficiency, and whether this indirect effect varies by political ideology. We test these models using survey data from a quota sample collected during the 2014 US midterm elections.

Ambivalence and Information Processing: Potential Ambivalence, Felt Ambivalence, and Information Sufficiency • Jay Hmielowski, Washington State University; Myiah Hutchens, Washington State University; Michael Beam, Kent State University • Using cross-sectional data from the 2014-midterm elections in the US, this paper proposes a serial mediation model looking at the relationship between ambivalence and information processing. Results show that ambivalence is associated with higher levels of systematic processing of information and lower levels of heuristic processing of information. However, the benefits of ambivalence only occur when people feel the psychological discomfort associated with ambivalence (i.e., felt ambivalence) and people perceiving that they do not have enough information to competently participate in the election. In essence, there is a positive relationship between potential ambivalence and systematic processing of information through felt ambivalence and information sufficiency. We found a negative relationship for potential ambivalence on heuristic processing through the same two intervening variables.

The Effect of Partisanship on Changes in Newspaper Consumption: A Longitudinal Study (2008 – 2012) • Toby Hopp; Chris Vargo, University of Alabama • This study used three waves of General Social Survey panel data and a latent change score modeling approach to explore the relationship between partisanship and newspaper consumption across time. The results suggested that prior levels of partisanship were negatively and significantly related to newspaper consumption. Further analyses failed to identify a relationship between changes in partisanship and changes in newspaper consumption.

Narratives and Exemplars: A Comparison of Their Effects in Health Promotions • Zhiyao Ye; Fuyuan Shen; Yan Huang, The Pennsylvania State University • The study aims to compare the effects of narrative and exemplars in health promotions. A between-subjects online experiment (N =253) showed that although narratives were perceived as more convincing than exemplars, both message types had significant effects on issue attitude and behavioral intentions. However, the mechanisms underlying their persuasive effects were distinct. While identification and transportation mediated narrative effects, they did not mediate the influence of the exemplar message.

Diverting media attention at a time of national crisis: Examining the zero-sum issue competition in the emerging media environment • S. Mo Jang, University of South Carolina; Yong Jin Park, Howard University • Although scholars theorized that news topics compete against one another and are subject to the zero-sum dynamics in the traditional media, little research tested this with social media content. Analyzing datasets of Twitter, blogs, and online news, we found that media attention to the government related negatively to attention to another target for blame. This zero-sum principle prevailed in mainstream and social media. Time-series analyses hinted at the intermedia influence from mainstream to social media.

Erasing the scarlet letter: How media messages about sex can lead to better sexual health • Erika Johnson, University of Missouri; Heather Shoenberger, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication • This study explores how positive media messages about sex could lead to better sexual health in young adults. Participants were students at a large university (N = 228). The research found that young women have higher stigma, lower sensation seeking, and higher condom embarrassment than young men and media exposure could lessen negative sexual behavior. The conclusion is that positive mediated messages could lead to better sexual health for young women in particular.

Life Satisfaction and Political Participation • Chang Won Jung; Hernando Rojas • This study examines people’s happiness and satisfaction both as an individual assessment of one’s own life and relates them to communication antecedents and political outcomes. Relying on a national representative sample of Colombia (N= 1031), our results suggest life satisfaction and quality of life are positively related to civic participation, but not to protest activities. Furthermore, only quality of life predicts voting and material satisfaction is negatively related to civic engagement.

Sexualizing Pop Music Videos, Self-Objectification, and Selective Exposure: A Moderated Mediation Model • Kathrin Karsay, University of Vienna, Department of Communication; Joerg Matthes, U of Vienna • This article presents an experimental study in which young women were either exposed to pop music videos high in sexualization or to pop music videos low in sexualization. Women’s self-objectification and their subsequent media selection behavior was measured. The results indicate that exposure to sexually objectifying media content increased self-objectification, which in turn increased the preference for sexually objectifying media content. Self-esteem, the internalization of appearance ideals, and BMI did not influence these relationships.

The State of Sustainability Communication Research: Analysis of Published Studies in the Mass Communication Disciplines • Eyun-Jung Ki, The University of Alabama; Sumin Shin, University of Alabama; Jeyoung Oh • This study examined the state of organization sustainability communication research in the mass communication disciplines between 1975 and 2014. Several main findings evolve from this analysis: (1) exponential growth of sustainability studies in recent years (2) contributions of a wide range of scholars and institutions (3) prevalence of environmental issues as a topic of research (4) under-development of definitions, conceptualization, and theoretical foundations (5) the growth of the methodological and statistical rigors.

A Reliable and Valid Measure of Strategic Decision • Eyun-Jung Ki, The University of Alabama; Hanna Park; Jwa Kim, Middle Tennessee State University • The goal of this investigation was to construct a comprehensive instrument for measuring strategic decision. Based on a literature review, eight dimensions—decision quality, decision routines, procedural rationality, understanding, decision commitment, procedural justice, affective conflict, and cognitive conflict—were developed to measure strategic decision by applying the development of multiple-item measurement procedures suggested by Churchill (1979) and Spector (1992) as a guideline and philosophy. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) validated the constructed measures.

Predicting Time Spent With News Via Legacy and Digital Media • Esther Thorson, Missouri School of Journalism; Eunjin (Anna) Kim, University of Missouri; Roger Fidler, University of Missouri • A model of is proposed to help explain how much time people will spend with legacy and digital media for news, and mobile media for non-news use. The model is tested with a national U.S. telephone sample of more than 1000 adults. News Affinity predicts news use across the media. Incumbent Media Habit Strength, instead of influencing digital media negatively, increases it. The more digital devices people own, the more they use smartphones and tablets for news, but not Web news. A new variable, Professional Journalist Importance is correlated with news use, but when demographics are controlled, its effect disappears.

The Impact of Political Identity Salience on the Third-Person Perception and Political Participation Intention • Hyunjung Kim, Sungkyunkwan University • This study investigates the influence of political identity salience on the third-person perception of polling reports and political participation intention. Results of two studies demonstrate that partisans in the political identity salience condition show greater third-person perception differentials between the in- and out-groups than those in the control group. Findings also show that political identity salience is indirectly linked to voting intention through the third-person perception particularly for the supporters of a losing candidate.

Factors and Consequences of Perceived Impacts of Polling News • Hyunjung Kim, Sungkyunkwan University • This study investigates how third-person perception of polling news is linked to behavioral intention change directly and indirectly through emotions by employing a survey experiment. Findings demonstrate that the third-person perception of polling news is associated with behavioral intention in two opposite directions depending on participants’ predisposition, and the association may be partially mediated by pride particularly for those who support the majority opinion. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Investigating Individuals’ Perceptions of Anti-Binge Drinking Message Effects on Self versus on Others: The Theoretical Implications for the Third-Person Perceptions • Nam Young Kim, Sam Houston State University (SHSU); Masudul Biswas, Loyola University Maryland; Kiwon Seo, SHSU • What makes people undervalue the impact of health campaign messages that promote positive behavioral changes? In the context of anti-binge drinking Public Service Announcement (PSAs), this study explores what happens if people’s prior alcohol consumption control beliefs and message attributes interactively cause dissonance, which make them feel uncomfortable and cognitively disagree with the PSAs. A 2 (Fear Appeal: High vs. Low) X 2 (Controlled-Drinking Belief: High vs. Low) experiment revealed that participants who experienced dissonance tended to estimate a greater PSA effect on others than on themselves (i.e., third-person effects) because of psychological defensiveness. The findings have partial and theoretical implications for future studies on third-person perceptions and persuasion.

Beauty or Business Queen– How Young Women Select Media to Reinforce Possible Future Selves • Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, The Ohio State University; Melissa Kaminski, Ohio State University; Laura E. Willis; Kate T. Luong, The Ohio State University • Young women (N = 181, 18-25 years) completed a baseline session, four sessions with selective magazine browsing (beauty, parenting, business, and current affairs magazines), and three days later a follow-up online. Their possible future selves as romantic partner, parent, and professional at baseline affected the extent to which beauty, parenting, and business pages were viewed. In turn, possible future selves as romantic partner and professional were reinforced through selective exposure to beauty and business magazines.

Memory Mobilization and Communication Effects on Collective Memory About Tiananmen in Hong Kong • Francis L. F. Lee, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Joseph Chan • People in a society share collective memories about numerous historical events simultaneously, but not every historical event is equally salient in the minds of individuals, and social processes may influence the salience of specific historical events over time. This study examines the implications of memory mobilization, defined as the organized efforts to bring the collective memory about the past or specific past events to the fore for the purposes of social mobilization, on recall of historical events. Memory mobilization is treated as a process involving communication activities via a wide range of platforms, creating an atmosphere of remembering for the historical event. Focusing on the case of Hong Kong people’s memory of the 1989 Tiananmen incident in Beijing, this study finds that more people indeed recall Tiananmen as an important historical event during the period of memory mobilization. Recall of Tiananmen is related to age cohorts and political attitudes. But during memory mobilization, communication activities, especially those involving interpersonal interactions, also significantly lead to recall of the event.

Predicting Tablet Use: A Study of Gratifications-sought, Leisure Boredom and Multitasking • Louis Leung, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Renwen Zhang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Using a probability sample of 348 tablet users, this study found that relaxation, information seeking, fashion/status, and work management were instrumental reasons for tablet use, while social connection anytime/anywhere, large screen, and ease-of-use were intrinsic motives. Contrary to what was hypothesized, leisure boredom was not significantly linked to tablet use. Relaxation was the strongest motivation to predict multitasking with the tablet; however, people tend not to engage in cognitively unproductive multitasking.

What’s in a Name? A Reexamination of Personalized Communication Effects • Cong Li, Univ. of Miami; Jiangmeng Liu, Univ. of Miami • Personalized information has become ubiquitous on the Internet. However, the conclusion on whether such information is more effective than standardized information looks somewhat confusing in the literature. Some prior studies showed that a personalized message could generate more favorable outcomes than a standardized one, but others did not (sometimes with an almost identical study design). To provide a possible explanation why there existed such conflicting findings and conclusions in the personalized communication literature, the current study tested the moderating effect of involvement on personalization in an advertising context. Through a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects experiment, it was found that the superiority of a personalized message over a standardized message was much more salient when the message recipient was highly involved with the focal subject of the message than lowly involved.

The Link Between Affect and Behavioral Intention: How Emotions Elicited by Social Marketing Messages of Anti-drunk Driving on Social media Influence Cognition and Conation • Chen Lou, Michigan State University; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University • This study used a 3 (emotional tone: positive vs. negative vs. coactive) x 3 (message repetition) within-subject experimental design to investigate how affect elicited from persuasive messages may influence cognitive processing and behavioral intention. This study explicated the mechanism underneath the affect-attitude-behavioral intention relationship, and identified the process of how and in what circumstance emotional responses to persuasive messages could affect behavioral intentions via its effect on people’s attitude. Specifically, this study showed that people’s emotional responses elicited by negative emotional anti-drunk driving social marketing messages was effective in persuading them to refrain from driving while tipsy or drunk via affecting their attitude toward drunk driving.

The information exchangers: Social media motivations and news • Timothy Macafee • Individuals visit social media for a variety of reasons, and one motivation involves information exchange. The current study explores the relationship between individuals’ demographics, their information exchange motivations on social media and the extent to which they attend to different news media. Using a United States representative survey sample, the results suggest a strong, positive relationship between information exchange motivations and attention to news.

Media and Policy Agenda Building in Investigative Reporting • Gerry Lanosga, Indiana University Media School; Jason Martin, DePaul University • This examination of American investigative journalism from 1979 to 2012 analyzes a random sample (N=757) of 22,163 questionnaires completed by journalists for annual investigative reporting contest entries. This novel data source uncovers aspects of journalistic process rather than static product, resulting in methodological and empirical advances that better explain journalist/source relationships, policy outcomes, and agenda-building interdependence. A model for predicting policy agenda-building results based on attributes of investigative reporting is proposed and tested.

News framing and moral panics: Blaming media for school shootings • Michael McCluskey, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga; Hayden Seay • School shootings have triggered moral panics responses that blame popular media for real-world violence. Analysis of news coverage following 11 school shootings identified five frames, of which four reflect a moral panics perspective identifying popular media as a threat to society. Frames of media affect society, media help us understand the shooter, media are full of odd material and media behaved irresponsibly fit a moral panics approach, while media behaved responsibly provided an alternative perspective.

Closing of the Journalism Mind: Anti-Intellectualism in the Professional Development of College Students • Michael McDevitt; Jesse Benn • This paper represents the first attempt to measure anti-intellectualism in journalistic attitudes, and the first to document developmental influences on student anti-intellectualism. We propose reflexivity as a conceptual foundation to anticipate how students evaluate intellect and intellectuals in relation to an imagined public. While transparency in public reflexivity appears to sanction anti-intellectualism, craft reflexivity offers a resistant orientation conducive to critical thinking.

Identifying with a Stereotype: The Divergent Effects of Exposure to Homosexual Television Characters • Bryan McLaughlin, Texas Tech University; Nathian Rodriguez, Texas Tech University • Scholars examining homosexual television characters have typically come to one of two conclusions, either exposure to homosexual characters leads to increased acceptance, or homosexual characters serve to reaffirm negative stereotypes. We resolve these differences by introducing the concept of stereotyped identification – the idea that cognitively identifying with fictional characters can increase acceptance of minorities, while reinforcing stereotypes about how they look, act, and talk. Results from our national survey provide support for this hypothesis.

Processing Entertainment vs. Hard News: Cognitive and Emotional Responses to Different News Formats • Sara Magee, Loyola University-Maryland; Jensen Moore, Manship School of Mass Communication, LSU • How millennials process news is crucial to determining the growth of future news audiences. This 2 (message content: entertainment news/hard news) X 12 (message replication) experimental study found millennials not only encode and store entertainment news better, it is also more arousing, credible, and positive than hard news. Results are interpreted using Lang’s Limited Capacity Model of Mediated Motivated Message Processing. Our results suggest new ways of thinking about the Hardwired for News Hypothesis.

Effects of Embedding Social Causes in Programming • Pamela Nevar, Central Washington University; Jacqueline Hitchon, University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign • Cause placement is a recent extension of the advertising strategy, product placement. This research examined the roles of cause involvement and message sidedness on the persuasiveness of cause placement in primetime entertainment programming. Two experiments found that high cause involvement (vs. low) tended to produce more favorable attitudinal responses and behavioral intentions. When cause involvement was high, one-sided messages triumphed over multi-sided messages; when cause involvement was low, multi-sided messages tended to be more persuasive.

The They in Cyberbullying: Examining Empathy and Third Person Effects in Cyberbullying of Young Adults • Cynthia Nichols, Oklahoma State University; Bobbi Kay Lewis, Oklahoma State University • The 21st century has seen rapid technological advances. Although these advances bring a multitude of benefits, there are also drawbacks from the technology that has become an integral part of daily life—such as cyberbullying. Although online bullying has becoming as common as in-person bullying, cyberbullying is not understood nearly as much as its counterpart. Due to its characteristics, it can be hard to recognize, prevent, or stop online bullying. Certain characteristics have emerged in cyberbullying research as indicators of bullies—lack of empathy toward cyberbullying, lack of parental mediation, high social media use, and third person effects toward the impact of media. The following paper looks to explore the relationships between these variables. Data (N=436) indicated that young adults believe other people are more susceptible to bullying than themselves, empathy influences attitudes toward cyberbullying, and athletes are more empathetic toward others being cyberbullied.

Commercialization of Medicine: An Analysis of Cosmetic Surgeons’ Websites • Sung-Yeon Park, School of Media and Communication, Bowling Green State University; SangHee Park, Bowling Green State University • This study examined the homepages of 250 cosmetic surgeons’ websites. Common elements on the webpages were pre-identified as indicators of medicalization or commercialization and their presence and salience were examined by focusing on the service provider, service recipients, and the practice. Overall, the providers were highly medicalized and moderately commercialized. The recipients were moderately medicalized and commercialized. The practice was moderately medicalized and highly commercialized. Implications for doctors, regulators, and consumer advocates were discussed.

Women with disability: Sex object and Supercrip stereotyping on reality television’s Push Girls • Krystan Lenhard; Donnalyn Pompper, Temple University • We respond to critical neglect of disability representation across mass media by evaluating characterizations of women who use wheelchairs on the U.S.-based reality show, Push Girls. Content analysis and a hermeneutic phenomenological theme analysis revealed findings which suggest that Sex object and Supercrip stereotypes enable producers to create programming for audiences otherwise repelled by images of women using wheelchairs. Implications of stereotype use for audiences and the disabilities community are offered.

Disclosure or Deception?: Social Media Literacy, Use, and Identification of Native Advertising • Lance Porter; Kasey Windels, Louisiana State University; Jun Heo, Louisiana State University; Rui Wang, Louisiana State University; YONGICK JEONG, Louisiana State University; A-Reum Jung • The rise of native advertising presents a number of ethical issues for today’s audiences. Do social media audiences recognize native advertising as paid messaging? Does media literacy make a difference in this ability to distinguish editorial and user generated from paid advertisements? An eye-tracking experiment found that while most can identify native advertising, certain types of native advertising are more difficult than others to identify and that Facebook is not fully disclosing paid content.

Impact of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood and active mediation on preschoolers’ social and emotional development • Eric Rasmussen, Texas Tech University; Autumn Shafer, Texas Tech University; Malinda Colwell, Texas Tech University; Narissra Punyanunt-Carter, Texas Tech University; Shawna White, Texas Tech University; Rebecca Densley, Texas Tech University; Holly Wright, Texas Tech University • 127 children ages 2-6 either watched or did not watch 10 episodes of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood over a two-week period. Those in the viewing condition exhibited higher levels of empathy, self-efficacy, and emotion recognition, under certain conditions. Without exception, children benefitted from watching the show only when their viewing experiences were frequently accompanied by active mediation. Preschoolers’ age, income, and home media environment also influenced children’s reactions to exposure to the show.

Probing the role of exemplars in third-person perceptions: Further evidence of a novel hypothesis • Mike Schmierbach, Pennsylvania State University; Michael Boyle • Despite strong evidence of its existence, the third-person perception remains incompletely understood. This paper expands previous research that added an important variable to models explaining perceived influence: availability of exemplars. Employing a 2 x 2 experiment and a diverse U.S. sample (N = 523), the study confirms that this variable is a robust predictor regardless of thought-listing procedures or primes shown to reduce the heuristic reliance on media examples.

Portable Social Networks: Interactive Mobile Facebook Use Explaining Perceived Social Support and Loneliness Using Crawled and Self-Reported Data • mihye seo; Jinhee Kim, Pohang University of Science and Technology; Hyeseung Yang • The present study examines if Facebooking using mobile devices could generate gratifying social relationships and contribute psychological well-being. Matching crawling data with self-reported data from mobile Facebook users, this study found that more social interactions mobile Facebook users had with their friends and faster friends’ reactions to users’ postings increased mobile Facebook users’ perceived social support and ultimately alleviate their loneliness. Implications of living in always on and connected mobile society are discussed.

Keeping up with the audiences: Journalistic role expectations in Singapore • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University; Andrew Duffy, Nanyang Technological University • Scholarly work on journalistic role conceptions is growing, but the assumption that what journalists conceive of as their roles depend in part on what they believe audiences expect from them remains underexplored. Through a nationally representative survey (N=1,200), this study sought to understand journalistic role expectations in Singapore. The study found that Singaporeans, in general, expect their journalists to serve the public, the nation, and the government—and in that order.

What did you expect? What roles audiences expect from their journalists in Singapore • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University; Zse Yin How • This study seeks to understand the role expectations Singaporeans have for their journalists. Ten categories of role expectations emerged from the analysis of open-ended responses from a nationally representative survey of Singaporeans (N= 1,200). Some role expectations, such as the disseminator and interpreter, were conceptually similar to earlier typologies of journalists’ own role conceptions. But two new roles emerged: protector of the people, and being a good citizen. The role of cultural context is discussed.

And they lived happily ever after: Associations between watching Disney movies and Romantic beliefs of children • Merel van Ommen; Madelon Willems; Nikki Duijkers; Serena Daalmans, Radboud University; Rebecca de leeuw • Disney movies are popular among children and depict a world that is very romantic. The question is what role popular Disney movies play, as a cultivating resource. This survey study (N=315) aimed to explore if Disney’s depictions of romance are related to children’s romantic beliefs, as assessed by the Romantic Beliefs Scale. Findings fromregression analyses are the first to show that the more children watched Disney movies the stronger they endorsed the ideology of romanticism.

Issue publics, need for orientation, and obtrusiveness: A model on contingent conditions in agenda-setting • Ramona Vonbun, University of Vienna; Katharina Kleinen-von Königslöw, University of Zurich; Hajo Boomgaarden, University of Vienna • This study investigates the role of contingent conditions in the agenda-setting process introducing issue public membership as a mediating factor in opinion formation. The model is tested on five issues, based on a content analysis of 28 media outlets and a panel study in the context of a national election. The findings hint to a stable public agenda, NFO as an important antecedent in the agenda-setting process, and a mediating role of issue public membership.

Turned off by Media Violence: The Effect of Sanitized Violence Portrayals on Selective Exposure to Violent Media • T. Franklin Waddell, Penn State University; Erica Bailey; James D. Ivory, Virginia Tech University; Morgan Tear; Kevin Lee; Winston Wu; Sarah Franis; Bradi Heaberlin • The current study examined whether prior exposure to non-sanitized media violence affects viewers’ subsequent preference for violent media. Exposure to traditional, sanitized media violence increased the likelihood of selecting a clip that featured the prevention of violence and decreased the likelihood of selecting a clip that featured retributive violence. Our study thus offers the novel finding that exposure to some forms of media violence can actually inhibit, rather than foster, additional exposure to violent media.

Minnie Mouse, Modern Women: Anthropomorphism and Gender in Children’s Animated Television • Stephen Warren, Syracuse University; YUXI ZHOU, YUXI ZHOU; Dan Brown; Casby Bias, Syracuse University • This study examines the extent to which anthropomorphism influences gender representation of characters in children’s television programs. Results revealed that anthropomorphic characters were presented more physically gender-neutral than humans, and observed female characters were underrepresented. No significant differences were found between anthropomorphic and human characters in terms of personalities and behavior. The researchers propose that because physical appearance is more ambiguous, anthropomorphic characters’ personalities and behaviors may be overcompensated to make their gender clearer.

Social Media, Social Integration and Subjective Well-being among Urban Migrants in China • Lu Wei; Fangfang Gao, Zhejiang Univesity • As Chinese urban migrants are increasingly dependent on new media, particularly social media for news, entertainment, and social interaction, it is important to know how social media use contributes to their social integration and subjective well-being. Based on an online survey, this study revealed that social media use can indeed contribute to urban migrants’ social integration, particularly their perceived social identity and weak social ties, but helps little with strong social support and real-world social participation. While social media use can indeed influence urban migrants’ subjective well-being, different types of use may have different effects. Finally, urban migrants’ social integration, particularly their level of social identity, is significantly associated with their subjective well-being.

Blogging the brand: Meaning transfer and the case of Weight Watchers • Erin Willis, University of Memphis; Ye Wang, University of Missouri – Kansas City • Brand communities are becoming increasingly more popular online. The current study examined the Weight Watchers online brand community to understand the role consumer engagement plays in shaping brand meaning and how brand meaning is transferred through consumer-generated content. Social and cultural meanings are discussed. Practical implications for online brand strategy are included and also how to engage consumers with content delivered through brand communities.

Exemplification in Online Slideshows: The Role of Visual Attention on Availability Effects • Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia; Camila Espina, University of Georgia; Temple Northup, University of Houston; Hyejin Bang, University of Georgia; YEN-I LEE, University of Georgia; Nandita Sridhar, University of Georgia • Although research has shown that human examples in news stories wield a high level of influence on the way users perceive story content, the role of attention in these effects has not been tested. Furthermore, it is not clear if exemplification effects identified in traditional linear story forms extend to newer news formats that are more list-based. An eye-tracking experiment (N=87) examined the effects of content type (human exemplar/ no exemplar) and exemplar distribution (early / late / evenly distributed) in online health news slideshow stories on visual attention, exemplar availability, issue perceptions, and behavioral intent. Results showed that the presence of exemplars early in a slideshow significantly increased visual attention throughout the slideshow. Furthermore, availability of slide topic was highly significantly correlated with perceived persuasiveness of slide topic. Implications of the findings for the extension of exemplification theory and the production of list-based informational content are discussed.

Credibility Judgments of Health Social Q&A: Effects of Reputation, External Source, and Social Rating • Qian Xu, Elon university • Social Q&A websites have gained increasing popularity for health information seeking and sharing. This study employs a 2×2×2 between-participants experiment to explore the effects of three interface cues in health social Q&A – reputation, external source, and social rating – on credibility judgments of the answerer and the answer. The study discovered that different cues contributed to different dimensions of perceived answerer credibility. The three cues also complemented each other in influencing perceived answer credibility.

A Multilevel Analysis of Individual- and Community-Level Sources of Local Newspaper Credibility in the United States • Masahiro Yamamoto, University of Wisconsin-La crosse; Seungahn Nah • Existing research has identified salient individual- and community-level factors that systematically account for variations in audience credibility of news media, including an audience’s political orientation, media use, social and political trust, community structural pluralism, and political heterogeneity. The purpose of this study is to test whether audiences’ perceptions of local newspaper credibility are explained by these theoretical variables, using a multilevel framework. Data from a community survey in the United States show that structural pluralism is negatively related to local newspaper credibility. Data also reveal that conservative ideology, social trust, and political trust significantly predict local newspaper credibility. Implications are discussed for the production of news content.

The Need for Surveillance: A Scale to Assess Individual Differences in Attention to the Information Environment • Chance York, Kent State University • Individuals vary with regard to their need to psychologically attend to the information environment, including the information provided by immediate surroundings, interpersonal relationships, and news media. After I outline theoretical explanations—both biological and cultural—for individual differences in environmental attention, I develop a unidimensional scale called Need for Surveillance (NSF) to measure this construct. I show that NSF predicts news use and adhering to the correct news agenda. Implications for media effects are discussed.

Student Competition
Social Pressure for Social Good? Motivations for Completing the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge • Jared Brickman, Washington State University • The incredibly successful ALS Ice Bucket Challenge dominated social media in summer 2014. This study, guided by the ideas of diffusion, peer pressure, and concertive control systems, explores the motivations for participating in the challenge using interviews and a survey of more than 300 undergraduates. Logistic regression revealed that peer pressure, charitable intent, and a lack of perceptions of negativity surrounding the event were all significant predictors of participation.

A New Look at Agenda-Setting Effects: Exploring the Second- and Third-level Agenda Setting in Contemporary China • Yang Cheng, University of Missouri • Through two separate studies in a Chinese context, this research tests and compares the second- and third-level agenda setting effects, examines the differences between the explicit and implicit public agendas. A total of 1,667 news media coverage and 680 effective public surveys are collected and analyzed. Evidence from both studies shows strong attribute agenda setting effects at the second- and third-level, no matter the focus of issue is obtrusive or unobtrusive. Results also demonstrates that the media agenda is positively associated at a higher level with the implicit public agenda than the explicit one.

The silencing of the watchdogs: newspaper decline in state politics • Juanita Clogston • This paper analyzes the pattern in newspaper closures in state capitals to help assess the impact on democracy from the declining watchdog role of the media over state politics. Findings reveal papers in state capitals are at 1.7 times greater risk of failure than papers not in state capitals from 1955 to 2010. Based on analysis of 46 failed papers, risk factors included PM circulation and being one of two papers in the capital.

Sourcing health care reform: Exploring network partisanship in coverage of Obamacare • Bethany Conway, University of Arizona; Jennifer Ervin • Social network analysis was used to examine source use in coverage of the health care reform by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. While 72% of sources were unique to a particular news organization, findings indicate that in the three months prior to the bill’s passage similarities existed across networks. Further, MSNBC was much more varied in their source use. Correlations amongst sources and networks change in magnitude and significance over time.

Above the Scroll: Visual Hierarchy in Online News • Holly Cowart, University of Florida • This study considered the usefulness of hierarchical presentation of news content. It compared the news content presented as the top story on five major news website homepages three times a day for one month. Results indicate some level of agreement on what to present as the top story as well the use of conventional visual cues to identify those stories.

Outpouring of success: How the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge engaged Millennials’ narcissism toward digital activism • Andrea Hall, University of Florida; Lauren Furey, University of Florida • Jumping off the popularity of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, a survey of 500 Milliennials explores how social media use could lead to narcissistically induced activism. Results revealed a strong correlation between social media use and narcissism, and motives for participating were supported by social comparison theory. Results also revealed that participating in the ALS campaign was perceived as activism, which suggests it behaved as a bridge between traditional and digital activism.

Visual gender stereotyping and political image perception • Tatsiana Karaliova, Missouri School of Journalism; Valerie Guglielmi; Sangeeta Shastry; Jennifer Travers; Nathan Hurst • This online experiment aimed to explore the impact of visual stereotypical and non-stereotypical representations of political candidates on young voters’ political image perception and voting intention. It confirmed the existence of predispositions about male and female political candidates in the evaluation of their practical and emotional traits. Gender had a significant effect on how the candidates were evaluated for practical traits and type of representation had a significant effect on how they were evaluated for emotional traits.

Selfies: True self or Better Self?: A qualitative exploration of selfie uses on social media • Joon Kyoung Kim, Syracuse University • Despite of increased popularity of selfies on social media, little is known about media users’ uses of selfies. Understanding social media users’ uses of selfies in terms of self-presentation is fundamental because use of individuals’ own pictures on social media can be an important mode of self-expression. Use of selfies on social media can be useful for examining individuals’ self-presentation because an individual’s picture on his or her profile is most frequently exposed to other users on social media, it can be used to examine how individual users express themselves. The purpose of this research is to explore how social media users use selfies and perceive them. In-depth interviews were conducted to collect data from social media users in a university in the Northeastern United States. A snowball sampling strategy was used to recruit eleven participants because this study aimed to research certain users who post or share their selfies on social media. In addition, because most social media users who frequently use selfies belong to younger generation such as teenagers, this study focused on young college students who aged 19 to 22 from different majors. Four themes emerged from analysis of in-depth interview data. Selective exposure, frequency, extraversion/introversion, and feedback management emerged under the major theme of impression management. These themes explain how social media users use their selfies to give favorable impression to others and to avoid conveying unfavorable impression to others.

Cultivating gender stereotypes: Pinterest and the user-generated housewife? • Nicole Lee, Texas Tech University; Shawna White, Texas Tech University • Through a survey of 315 women, this study explored the relationship between Pinterest use, gender stereotypes and self-perceptions. Results indicate a link between Pinterest use and stereotyped views of gender roles in a relational context. The same link was not found between Pinterest use and self-esteem or body image. Open-ended questions explored cognitive and emotional effects of Pinterest use. A mix of motivation, inspiration, guilt and jealousy were reported. Directions for further research are discussed.

HPV Vaccination in US Media: Gender and regional differences • Wan Chi Leung, University of South Carolina • This study examines newspaper articles and television news transcripts about the HPV vaccine in the U.S. from 2006 to 2014. Findings reveals that media presented HPV vaccine as more beneficial to women’s health instead of men. In the South of the U.S. where the vaccination rate was the lowest among all regions, newspapers tended to talk less about HPV vaccination, and presented less benefits of vaccination, and fewer positive direct quotes.

Putnam’s Clarion Call: An Examination of Civic Engagement and the Internet • Lindsay McCluskey, Louisiana State University; Young Kim, Louisiana State University • The purpose of this research is to develop and test models of civic engagement. We examined various dimensions of civic engagement for antecedents and determinant factors related to the Internet, controlling for effects of a wide range of other variables. Using 2010 national survey data, this study found that significant and different factors (e.g., trust, satisfaction, the location of Internet use, and perceived Internet impact) for dimensions of civic engagement in full multivariate logit models.

The Audience Brand: The Clash Between Public Dialogue and Brand Preservation in News Comment Sections • Meredith Metzler • The tensions between news organizations operating in the public interest and as a business operation have not changed online, and, in fact have become more complicated. In this paper, I examine how comment sections architecture is modified to encourage a particular type of dialogue from the now visible audience. The findings in this paper indicate that the news organizations shape conversational environments occurring within the boundaries of its site.

Let’s Keep This Quiet: Media Framing of Campus Sexual Assault, Its Causes, and Proposed Solutions • Jane O’Boyle, University of South Carolina; Jo-Yun Queenie Li • This study analyzes ten American newspapers across the country (N = 500) to examine how they present stories about sexual assault on college campuses. We explore attributions for causes and which entities are framed most responsible for creating solutions to the problem: individuals, universities, fraternities, sports teams, or society. Findings indicate media attribute causes to individuals such as victims and perpetrators, but solutions to universities. Liberal newspapers framed the victim as most responsible for causes, and were overall favorable toward universities.

The Discourse of Sacrifice in Natural Disaster: The Case Study of Thailand’s 2011 Floods • Penchan Phoborisut, University of Utah • This paper investigates how the discourse of a natural disaster such as a flood is formed and featured in the Thai media. The paper adopts a textual analysis of news about the floods in 2011, reported in two major Thai mainstream newspapers during the three- month long floods. The emerging theme is sacrifice and repeated coverage on being good citizens. Meanwhile, the issues of environment and social justice were absent. I argue that the articulation of sacrifice can perpetuate social injustice imposed on the vulnerable population.

#JeSuisCharlie: Examining the Power of Hashtags to Frame Civic Discourse in the Twitterverse • Miles Sari, Washington State University; Chan Chen, Washington State University • Using the Charlie Hebdo shooting as a case study for exploratory analysis, this paper bridges the link between framing theory and the power of hashtags to frame civic discourse in the Twitterverse. Through an inductive qualitative content analysis and a critical discourse analysis, we argue that the hashtag Je Suis Charlie constructed a dichotomy of opposition that symbolically placed the massacre in the context of a rhetorical war between free expression and global terrorism.

The Third-Person Perception and Priming: The Case of Ideal Female Body Image • Jiyoun Suk • This paper explores how priming affects the third-person perception in the case of ideal female body image. Through a posttest-only control group experiment, this study reveals that after reading an article about media’s effect on shaping women’s view about their body, the third-person perception was weakened among women. This is because the perceived media effect on self has increased after the priming. It implies how the third-person effect can be easily manipulated through priming.

Is Social Viewing the New Laugh Track? Examining the Effect of Traditional and Digital Forms of Audience Response on Comedy Enjoyment • T. Franklin Waddell, Penn State University • Participants watched a comedy program that randomly varied the presence of social media comments (positive vs. negative vs. no comment control) and the sound of a laugh track (present vs. absent) during programming. Results find that negative social media comments lead to lower levels of program enjoyment through the mediating pathways of lower bandwagon perceptions and lower humor. Surprisingly, canned laughter also had an inhibitory effect on enjoyment via the mechanism of lower narrative involvement.

Heaven, Hell, and Physical Viral Media: An Analysis of the Work of Jack T. Chick • Philip Williams, Regent University • This paper advances the concept of physical viral media: that virality is not limited to digital media, and that examples of media virality predate the digital era. The work under analysis is that of Jack T. Chick, the controversial tract publisher. The paper uses media characteristics and behavior analysis to establish the viral nature of Chick’s work and demonstrate the possibility of virality with the physical form.

The Effects of Media Consumption and Interpersonal Contacts on stereotypes towards Hong Kong people in China • Chuanli XIA, City University of Hong Kong • This study examines the effects of both media consumption and interpersonal contacts on Chinese mainlanders’ stereotypes towards Hong Kong people. The framework was tested with a survey data of 314 mainlanders. Results reveal that media consumption is negatively associated with mainlanders’ positive stereotypes about Hong Kong people, while interpersonal contacts with Hong Kong people result in positive stereotypes about Hong Kong people. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

2015 Abstracts

International Communication 2015 Abstracts

Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition
The Promise to the Arab World: Attribute Agenda Setting and Diversity of Attributes about U.S. President Obama in Arabic-Language Tweets • Mariam Alkazemi; Shahira Fahmy; Wayne Wanta, University of Florida; Ahmedabad Abdelzaheer Mahmoud Farghali, University of Arizona • In 2009 U.S. President Barak Obama travelled to Cairo promising a new beginning between the US government and the Arab world that has been angry about the two US led wars in two Muslim nations and its perceived favoritism toward Israel (Kuttab, 2013; Wilson, 2012). Five years later, we analyzed Arabic-language twitter messages involving President Obama to examine cognitive and affective attributes. Results show that tweets by members of the media differed greatly from tweets by members of the public. The public was much more negative towards the U.S. President. Members of the public also were more likely to link the President to a wider range of countries, suggesting a greater diversity of attributes. The location of the source of the tweets showed a wide range, though dominated by the Middle East.

The New York Times and Washington Post: Misleading the Public about U.S. Drone Strikes • Jeff Bachman, American University’s School of International Service • This paper examines The New York Times’ and Washington Post’s coverage of U.S. drone strikes in Yemen and Pakistan to determine whether they have accurately reported on the number of civilians killed in drone strikes and the overall civilian impact, as well as whether they have placed drone strikes within their proper legal context. The author concludes that both newspapers have failed to accurately report the number of civilian casualties and have underemphasized the civilian impact of drone strikes, while also excluding international legal issues from their coverage.

Experiencing sexism: Responses by Indian women journalists to sexism and sexual harassment • Kalyani Chadha; Pallavi Guha; Linda Steiner, University of Maryland, College Park • This paper examines the everyday sexism and workplace sex discrimination experienced by women journalists in India. Nearly all attention to Indian women focuses on high profile cases of sexual assault. Our interviews with Indian women journalists, however, indicate that the problem is everyday sexism and workplace discrimination. Moreover, women say laws designed to protect women are ineffective and largely unenforced. We highlight the impact of the casualization of journalists labor, resulting from global market forces.

Integrating Self-Construal in Theory of Reasoned Action: Examining How Self-Construal, Social Norms, and Attitude Relate to Healthy Lifestyle Intention in Singapore • Soo Fei Chuah, Nanyang Technological University; Xiaodong Yang, Nanyang Technological University; Liang Chen, Nanyang Technological University; Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University • This study would like to investigate Singaporeans’ intention to adopt healthy lifestyle by integrating the concept of self-construal into the Theory of Reasoned Action. The results revealed that attitudes toward healthy lifestyle and subjective norms are associated with healthy lifestyle behavioral intentions. Besides, interdependent self-construal is associated with individuals’ attitude and subjective norm. The study also found that there is an indirect relationship between subjective norms and behavioral intention through individuals’ attitude.

We Choose to Tweet: Twitter Users’ Take on Rwanda Day 2014 • Sally Ann Cruikshank, Auburn University; Jeremy Saks, Ohio University • This study centers on the usage of Twitter related to Rwanda Day 2014 in Atlanta, Georgia. The event allowed Rwandan diaspora to gather to celebrate Rwandan culture and included a speech by President Paul Kagame. A content analysis of two hashtags related to the event, #RwandaDay and #Twahisemo, was performed. Utilizing social identity theory, the researchers explored how various groups tweeted about Rwanda Day 2014 and President Kagame. Findings and implications are discussed at length.

Testing the effect of message framing and valence on national image • Ming Dai, Southeastern Oklahoma State University • Using the episodic and thematic framing concepts, the study was designed to understand the influence of message format and its interaction with message valence in influencing perceptions of foreign countries, policy attitudes and policy choice. The experimental study examined young Americans’ responses to news articles about the US’s policy toward China to change the human rights conditions in the country. The findings indicated that episodically framed message was more interesting to read. The episodically framed positive article improved perceptions of China’s human rights conditions, but it did not worsen the perceptions. The episodically framed negative article was not the most powerful influence on the perceptions, policy attitudes and policy choice. Thematic frame was more powerful than episodic frame on policy attitude in both positive and negative stories. Implications for national image promotion through media are discussed.

Fighting for recognition: online abuse of political women bloggers in Germany, Switzerland, the UK and US • Stine Eckert • This study finds that women in Germany, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States who blog about politics or are feminists face great risks of online abuse. In-depth interviews with 109 bloggers who write about women, family, and/or maternity politics revealed that 73.4 percent had negative experiences. Using theoretical approaches that emphasize how offline hierarchies migrate online, this study calls for more empirical work on and global recognition of online harassment as punishable crimes.

Ironic Encounters: Constructing Humanitarianism through Slum Tourist Media • Brian Ekdale, University of Iowa; David Tuwei, University of Iowa • Following Steeves (2008) and Chouliaraki (2013), we argue that slum tourist media signify an ironic encounter, one in which tourists construct a humanitarian Self in contrast to an impoverished Other. Our analysis focuses on three-high profile texts produced by tourists of Kibera, a densely populated low-income community in Nairobi, Kenya: the BBC’s reality television special Famous, Rich and in the Slums, the book Megaslumming: A Journey Through sub-Saharan Africa’s Largest Shantytown, and a White House slideshow about Jill Biden’s tour of Kibera. In these ironic encounters, slum tourism is justified as necessary for coveted experiential knowledge, as a platform for tourists to share their newfound expertise on global poverty, and as a source of encouragement and enlightenment for slum residents.

The Signs of Sisi Mania: A Semiotic and Discourse Analysis of Abdelfattah Al-Sisi’s Egyptian Presidential Campaign • Mohammed el-Nawawy; Mohamad Elmasry • This study employed semiotic analysis to examine the sign system in two of Abdelfattah Al-Sisi’s 2014 Egyptian presidential campaign posters, and discourse analysis to uncover dominant discourses in Al-Sisi’s most prominent campaign video. The semiotic analysis showed that the campaign presented Al-Sisi as a familiar, yet transcendent, figure, while the discourse analysis suggested that the video producers discursively constructed Al-Sisi as the ultimate patriot and a strongman with immense leadership abilities.

Exploring the relationship between Myanmar consumers’ social identity, attitudes towards globalization, and consumer preferences • Alana Rudkin, American University; Joseph Erba, University of Kansas • Myanmar is transitioning to an open market economy, but very little is known about Myanmar consumers and their attitudes towards globalization. Using Hofstede’s cultural dimensions and social identity theory, this exploratory study aimed to shed light on the role Myanmar consumers’ cultural values and social identity play in consumer preferences. Results from a cross-sectional survey of Myanmar consumers (N = 268) provide insights into Myanmar culture and how to effectively communicate with Myanmar consumers.

Food and Society: A Cross-Cultural Comparison of Food Advertising Claims in the U.S. and China • Yang Feng, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise; Lingda Li, Communication University of China • This study explored the socio-economic (food safety issues and regulations) and cultural factors affecting the use of advertising claims across two countries: the U.S. and China. Results from the content analyses of 324 U.S. and 81 Chinese food advertisements indicated that quality claims, health claims, nutrient content claims, and structure/function claims were more often used in Chinese food advertisements than in the U.S. food advertisements, whereas taste claims were more frequently adopted in the U.S. food advertisements than their Chinese counterparts. Moreover, while Chinese food advertisements tended to include more healthy foods than their U.S. counterparts, the U.S. food advertisements were inclined to contain more unhealthy foods than their Chinese counterparts. Overall, results suggested that the use of food advertising claims reflected the local market’s socio-economic situations and cultural values. Implications and limitations were discussed.

To Share or Not to Share: The Influence of News Values and Topics on Popular Social Media Content in the U.S., Brazil, and Argentina • Victor Garcia, University of Texas at Austin; Ramón Salaverría, School of Communication, University of Navarra; Danielle Kilgo; Summer Harlow, Florida State University • As news organizations strive to create news for the digital environment, audiences play an increasingly important role in evaluating content. This comparative study of the U.S., Argentina, and Brazil explores values and topics present in news content and the variances in audience interaction on social media. Findings suggest values of timeliness and conflict/controversy and government/politics topics trigger more audience responses. Articles in the Brazilian media prompted more interactivity than those in the U.S. or Argentina.

Journalists in peril: In-depth interviews with Iraqi journalists covering everyday violence • Goran Ghafour, The university of Kansas; Barbara Barnett, The University of Kansas • After the overthrow of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Iraqi journalists enjoyed an unprecedented free press—albeit short-lived. With the emergence of ISIS, Iraqi journalists have witnessed a harsher wave of violence. Based on in-depth interviews with nine Iraqi journalists, this study found that journalists not only covered violence but perceived violence as a government tool used to control them. In spite of threats to their lives, journalists said they were committed to their jobs.

Advocating Social Stability and Territorial Integrity: The China Daily’s Framing of the Arab Spring • Jae Sik Ha, Univ Of Illinois-Springfield; Dong-Hee Shin • This study examines how The China Daily, China’s authoritative English newspaper, framed the Arab Spring, a social movement in the Middle East. Specifically, it compares news stories appearing in The China Daily from Chinese reporters with those obtained from Western wire services. The study found that the Chinese journalists attempted to accuse the West, including the U.S. government, of being responsible for the chaos and violence occurring in the Arab world. The Chinese journalists also stressed China’s national interests and concerns (i.e. social stability, national unity, and territorial integrity) in their coverage. They relied on Chinese government officials and experts as news sources, whereas Western journalists quoted those involved in the protests more often. China’s national interests primarily shaped the news within The China Daily; the paper has served as a useful tool for the Chinese government in its public diplomacy efforts, which seek to present China as a harmonious, stable, and reliable nation.

Depiction of Chinese in New Zealand journalism • Grant Hannis • Media depictions of Chinese in Western countries often rely on the Yellow Peril and model minority stereotypes. This paper considers the nature of coverage of Chinese in New Zealand print journalism to determine whether it uses these stereotypes. Although the rampant Yellow Peril hysteria of early 20th-century coverage had largely disappeared 100 years later, there continued to be a significant amount of negatively toned coverage – primarily crime – rather than use of the model minority stereotype.

Liberation Technology? Understanding a Community Radio Station’s Social Media Use in El Salvador • Summer Harlow, Florida State University • This ethnographic study of the Salvadoran community station Radio Victoria explores how the radio used Facebook to encourage citizen participation and action, despite the digital divide. Analysis showed who participated and how they participated changed because of Facebook. This study contributes to scholarship by including technology as fundamental to the study of alternative media and by expanding our conceptualization of the digital divide to include whether social media are used in frivolous or liberating ways.

Predicting international news flow from Reuters: Money makes the world go round • Beverly Horvit, University of Missouri; Peter Gade, University of Oklahoma; Yulia Medvedeva, University of Missouri; Anthony Roth, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Michael Phinney, University of Missouri • This content analysis surveyed more than 13,000 news stories to identify the factors that predict the amount of business and non-business coverage allocated to world countries by Reuters newswire in 2006 and 2014. Findings revealed that country’s world-system status ratio suggested by Gunaratne serves as the most reliable predictor of the volume of coverage. U.S. firms’ investments in a country and the number of significant events serve as additional reliable predictors of country’s news visibility.

Learning how to do things right: Lessons from the digital transition in Bulgaria • Elza Ibroscheva, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville; Maria Raicheva-Stover, Washburn University • The paper examines the latest developments in the digital switchover in Bulgaria, focusing on the specific the challenges that this new EU member faces. Exploring the digitization efforts of a novice EU policy actor such as Bulgaria is critical as it demonstrates the complex processes that nations in transition undergo as they build a Western-type democracy and navigate the complexities of media policies attached to such transitional adjustments. By offering an in-depth media analysis of the current developments, the players in the process of digital conversion in Bulgaria and its political prominence, might reveal the obstacles and challenges that other transitional democracies might face when media developments are caught at a crossroad— at the international level, the EU call for a free market competition and transparency of capital, and at the local level, continuous attempts to obscure the source of capital and thus, protect powerful local players that wield enormous power and control over public opinion, thus, single-highhandedly steering the processes of democratization and media transformation they foster.

Determining the Factors Influencing the News Values of International Disasters in the U.S. News Media • YONGICK JEONG, Louisiana State University; Sun Young Lee, Texas Tech University • We explore various factors that influence the news value of international disasters in 10 representative U.S. news outlets over a four-week period. Our findings suggest that internal disaster factors are most consistent and significant in covering international disasters in the U.S. When disaster coverage is extended over a longer period, other external factors, such as trade relations with the U.S., distance from the U.S., GDP, military expenditure, and political rights, come into play as well.

Military Intervention or Not?: A Textual Analysis of the Coverage on Syria in Foreign Affairs and China Daily • Cristina Mislan; Haiyan Jia, The Pennsylvania State University • A growing public conversation about the United States’ pivot toward the Asian continent has highlighted the tense relations between the United States and China. While convergence of each country’s foreign policy interests has become of great concern for the United, US influence throughout the Middle East demonstrates the United States’ inability to disengage from the Middle East. This paper contributes to historical conversations about the lifespan of foreign policy by comparing US and Chinese foreign policy through an analysis of both countries’ national media coverage. The authors conducted a discourse analysis of the coverage on intervention in the Syrian civil war in Foreign Affairs and China Daily between April and September 2013. Findings illustrate three themes addressing the intervention strategies and underlying approaches adopted in each media source, their representations of the international structure, and the perceptions of each country regarding China’s international presence in the twenty-first century.

Social Network Discussion, Life Satisfaction and Quality of life • Chang Won Jung; Hernando Rojas • The study explores the relationship between the cross-cutting discussion and two aspects of satisfaction: life satisfaction (individual) and quality of life (societal). This research suggests how individuals’ media use, SNSs, social network discussion, heterogeneous discussion, and associational membership contribute to satisfaction based on a Colombia national sample, N=1031 (2012). The finding suggests that heterogeneous discussion negatively predicts life satisfaction, yet positively predicts quality of life. The use of SNSs only positively predicts quality of life.

Influence of Facebook on Body Image and Disordered Eating in Kazakhstan and USA • Karlyga N. Myssayeva, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University; Stephanie Smith, Ohio University; Yusuf Kalyango Jr., Ohio University; Ayupova Zaure Karimovna, Al-Farabi Kazakh National University • Women in the United States of America (USA) are ranked fourth heaviest in the world, while women in Kazakhstan are generally thin. This difference in average female weight leads to interesting questions regarding perceptions of beauty. Is there less negative body image in Kazakhstan given that, on average, Kazakh women are slimmer compared to American women? The thin ideal is pervasive in all genres of mass media and has been linked to negative body image, which in turn is a risk factor for eating disorders, and a significant predictor of low self-esteem, depression, and obesity. Young women spend an increasing amount of time with social media both in Kazakhstan and the USA, but the relationship between this growing exposure and body image is not fully understood. This study uses objectification to examine the relationship between time spent on Facebook and body image among Kazakh and American college women. Time on Facebook predicted BSQ and EAT-26© scores in Kazakhstan but did not in the USA, suggesting Facebook may have a more subtle effect in the USA. Time on Facebook predicted attention to appearance and negative feelings in both countries. Practical and theoretical implications are detailed.

Dirty Politics in New Zealand: How newspaper reporters and online bloggers constructed the professional values of journalism at a time of crisis • Linda Jean Kenix • This research explores how different facets of the New Zealand media system conceptualized journalism and their own perceived role within journalistic practice at a particular moment of crisis. This study found a recurrent reflexive protectionism displayed by journalists while bloggers readily explored the extent of journalism doxa, albeit through a politicized lens. If journalism is measured, in part, by the values on display in written text, then bloggers emerged from this controversy as professional journalists.

A Theoretical Approach to Understanding China’s Consumption of the Korean Wave • Sojung Kim, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Qijun He, the Chinese University of Hong Kong • This study investigates how globalism, proximity, and modernity influence China’s motivation to consume the Korean wave and its subsequent consumption of Korean TV programs. The findings suggest that the motivation to consume the Korean wave is positively related to globalism and proximity. Modernity, however, is found to have a negative influence on the motivation. The study also finds that the motivation to consume the Korean wave has a significant impact on the consumption of Korean TV programs. In the revised model, the study suggests that proximity, followed by globalism, has the strongest positive relationship with the motivation. Such a finding suggests that proximity approach could serve as a better theoretical perspective to explain the phenomenon of the Korean wave in China.

Soft Power and Development Efforts: An Analysis of Foreign Development Efforts As Covered in 28 Senegalese Dailies • Jeslyn Lemke, University of Oregon, School of Journalism and Communication • This study is a quantitative content analysis that explores the connection between foreign development initiatives in Senegal and the rate of coverage these foreign initiatives receive, using a sample of 28 editions of five major Senegalese daily newspapers. The purpose of this study is to explore the connection between J. Nye’s soft power, Western imperialism and the related influence of Western organizations intervening into the Senegalese economy and civilian life, as measured in these newspapers.

Migrant Worker of News vs. Superman: Why Local Journalists in China and the U.S. Perceive Different Self-Image • Zhaoxi Liu, Trinity University • Conversations with local journalists in China and the U.S. reveal quite different self-image as journalists. Whereas Chinese journalists label themselves migrant workers of news, American journalists generally hold the notion that journalists inform the public to maintain democracy and even act like superman to make a change. To better understand such differences, the article argues, one has to examine journalists as interpretive communities situated in specific social environment.

Beyond Cultural Imperialism to Postcolonial Global Discourses: Korean Wave (Hallyu) and its Fans in Qatar • Saadia Malik, Qarar University • This paper aims to understand K-pop culture and its fans in Qatar through asking the question: How audiences/fans of K-pop culture in Qatar interact, negotiate and define themselves as audiences/fans of Korean pop-culture. To answer this question, the papers adopts postcolonial discourses on globalization as a theoretical approach that advocates multi-flow of culture and globalization and places fans of K-pop culture in Qatar within the framework of transnational fandom of non-western hybrid popular culture. Moreover, the theoretical framework advocates audience’s (fans) agency in negotiating and consuming K-pop cultural products. Group interviews were conducted with some young Arab women who define themselves as fans of K-pop culture in order to bring their views and opinions as K-pop fans to the center of analysis in this paper. The Young Arab women I interacted with through this research have created their own non-institutionalized voluntary fan ‘community’ (subculture) as K-pop fans. This ‘community’ or cultural ‘ecumene’ stands as an ‘identity space’ through which they can express their cultural identity as fans of K-pop culture bonded by Korean language and by shared expressed cultural symbols from K-pop culture itself.

He is a Looker Not a Doer: New Masculinity in Men’s Magazine In India • Suman Mishra • After 2005, several transnational men’s magazines have been introduced in India because of changes in Indian government’s policy. However, little is known about how these magazines are shaping masculine ideals of urban Indian men. Through an examination of magazine advertising content, this study finds a focus on aesthetic metrosexuality. This form of masculinity sits comfortably at the global-local nexus and serves to assimilate upper class Indian men into a global consumer class.

Asian Crisis Communications: Perspectives from the MH370 Disappearance and Sewol Ferry Disaster • Jeremy Chan; Bohoon Choi; Adrian Seah; Wan Ling Tan; Fernando Paragas • This paper examines two national addresses by the leaders of South Korea and Malaysia in response to pivotal crises in their respective countries. Using Critical Discourse Analysis, our findings show both speeches employed crisis communication strategies aligned with the Situational Crisis Communications Theory. However, key differences in how these strategies have been used in either speech precludes a prescription of a uniform Asian crisis communication response given the diversity of national cultures in the continent.

Idiocentrism versus Allocentrism and Illegal Downloading Intention between the United States and South Korea • Namkee Park, Yonsei University, South Korea; Hyun Sook Oh, Pyeongtaek University, South Korea; Naewon Kang, Dankook University, South Korea; Seohee Sohn, Yonsei University, South Korea • This study employed the personality dimension of idiocentrism and allocentrism to examine the difference in illegal downloading intention between the U.S college students and South Korean ones. The study uncovered that South Korean students had a higher intention of illegal downloading than the U.S. counterparts. The study also found that, for the U.S. students, idiocentrics exhibited a higher intention of illegal downloading than allocentrics. For South Korean students, allocentrics showed a higher intention than idiocentrics.

Cultural Capital at its Best: Factors Influencing Consumption of American Television Programs among Young Croatians • Ivanka Pjesivac, University of Georgia; Iveta Imre, Western Carolina University • This study examined factors that influence the consumption of American television programs among young Croatians, by conducting a paper and pencil survey (N=487). The results indicate that young Croatians are avid consumers of American dramas and sitcoms, and that a set of cultural capital variables is a significant predictor of the consumption of American TV. Knowledge of English language, of U.S. lifestyle, consumption of American movies and American press all had a significant unique contribution to the model.

Do Demographics Matter? Individual Differences in Perceived News Media Corruption in Serbia • Ivanka Pjesivac, University of Georgia • This study examined individual differences in perceived news media corruption (PNMC), by conducting a face-to-face survey on a representative sample of the Serbian population (N=544). Extremely high levels of PNMC were found, as well as significant differences in PNMC scores for gender, education level, socioeconomic status, political affiliation, and membership in majority ethnic and religious groups. Corruption perception persona types are created and results are discussed in terms of importance of societal integration for PNMC.

Charities in Chile: Trust and Commitment in the Formation of Donor’s Behavioral Loyalty • Cristobal Barra; Geah Pressgrove, West Virginia University; Eduardo Torres-Moraga • This study explores the ways in which trust and commitment lead to loyalty in the Latin American organization-donor context. Findings support a multi-dimension sequentially ordered conceptualization of loyalty that starts with cognitive loyalty, followed by affective loyalty and with behavioral loyalty as the penultimate outcome. Further, findings indicate that neither trust nor commitment affects behavioral loyalty directly; rather, the effects of these variables are present in earlier stages of the formation of loyalty

Thatcherism and the Eurozone crisis: A social systems-level analysis of British, Greek, and German news coverage of Margaret Thatcher’s death • Sada Reed, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Yioryos Nardis, Unaffiliated; Emily Ogilvie; Daniel Riffe • The following study examines British, Greek, and German newspapers’ coverage of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s death in order to argue that proximity as a news value is not limited to media routines, but is part of nations’ social systems. Results suggest that journalists interpreted the meaning of Thatcher’s legacy and death more in proximity to their respective nation’s weathering of the European economic storm than through the lens of their newspaper’s political leaning.

An Exploratory Study on Journalistic Professionalism and Journalism Education in Contemporary China • Baohui Shao; qingwenn dong Dong, university of the pacific • Journalism education plays an important role to cultivate future professional journalists. Chinese journalism education has boomed up in recent decades, however, journalism graduates are not welcomed by media organizations. Through in-depth interviews with professional journalists and journalism educationalists, this paper finds that their perception of journalistic professionalism is focusing on journalistic expertise, commitment, and responsibility but eschewing journalistic autonomy deliberately and Chinese journalism education concentrates on rigid journalism knowledge without profession or practical ability.

Sex Trafficking in Thai Media: A content analysis of issue framing • Meghan Sobel, Regis University • Understanding how news media frame sex trafficking in Thailand, a country with high levels of trafficking and an understudied media landscape, has strong implications for how the public and policymakers understand and respond to the issue. This quantitative content analysis analyzed 15 years of trafficking coverage in five English-language Thai newspapers and found a focus on female victims, international aspects of trafficking and official sources with a lack of discussion of risk factors and solutions.

Reimagining Internet Geographies: A User-Centric Ethnological Mapping of the World Wide Web • Angela Xiao Wu, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Harsh Taneja, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • Existing imageries of the WWW prioritize media infrastructure and content dissemination. We propose a new imagery foregrounding local usage and it’s shaping by local cultural identity and political economy. We develop granular measures and construct ethnological maps of WWW usage through a network analysis of shared global traffic between top 1000 websites in 2009, 2011 and 2013. Our results reveal the significant growth and thickening of online regional cultures associated with the global South.

Producing Communities and Commodities: Safaricom and Commercial Nationalism in Kenya • David Tuwei, University of Iowa; Melissa Tully, University of Iowa • This research analyzes Safaricom, one of the most established mobile operators in Kenya. Alongside the provision of mobile services, Safaricom has closely engaged with the government of Kenya, even getting involved in the nation’s politics. This study specifically examines Safaricom’s marketing, which reflects a commitment to promoting the country and its products through discourses of commercial nationalism. These discourses link Kenyan identity, pride, and distinctiveness to commercial success, profit, upward mobility, and development.

The dependency gap: Story types and source selection in coverage of an international health crisis • Fred Vultee, Wayne State University; Fatima Barakji, Wayne State University; Lee Wilkins • The growing interactivity of news, and the growing number of ways in which it can get around traditional barriers of news practice or social/legal constraint, underscores the value of revisiting theory as a guide to analysis and practice. This paper adds to media systems dependency theory by reinterpreting its emphasis on the individual actor to incorporate both audience members and journalists themselves as well as the political context in which news accounts are created and recounted. It then tests these revised theoretical notions in a cross-national content analysis of coverage of an emerging disease in the Arabian Gulf. Results suggest that predictable patterns of sourcing and topic selection hold in some circumstances and are challenged in others.

Africa rising: An analysis of emergent mass communication scholarship in Africa from 2004 – 2014. • ben wasike • In the first comprehensive and longitudinal analysis of Africa-based mass communication research since David Edeani’s (1995) study of the same, this study analyzed a census of Africa-based mass communication research published worldwide between years 2004 – 2014. Results show that Africa-based scholarship uniquely differs from mainstream and other emergent research in terms of analyzing newspapers content over television and the heavy use of case studies. Confluence with other research spheres includes being atheoretical, qualitative and non-empirical.

Examining global journalism: how global news networks frame the ISIS threat • Xu Zhang, Texas Tech University; lea hellmueller, Texas Tech University • The results of a quantitative content analysis of 393 news reports on the ISIS threat from CNN and Al-Jazeera English suggests that in time of globalization different transnational news outlets share common features in their news coverage of global challenges, while important differences still co-exist. On the contrary to the concept of global journalism, reporting the global event from a global perspective is far from conclusion, even for those transnational news outlets.

Markham Student Paper Competition
Source Nationality, Authority and Credibility: A Multi-National Experiment using the Diaoyu/Senkaku Island Dispute • Krystin Anderson, University of Florida; Xiaochen Zhang, University of Florida; Shintaro Sato, University of Florida; Hideo Matsumoto, Tokai University • This study investigates the relationship between source authority type and source nationality on credibility and peace message reception in context of the Diaoyu/Senkaku Island dispute. Through three separate experiments conducted in the U.S., China and Japan, it finds a significant relationship between source nationality and credibility and an interaction between nationality and authority type. The study offers implications for peace journalism, suggesting that source choice is an important factor in reporting peace initiatives.

What’s in a name? The renewal of development journalism in the 21st century • Kendal Blust • Development journalism has been dismissed as a form of government controlled media but continues to interest scholars and practitioners alike. A new form of development journalism is being used in which international development issues are reported from the outside in. The Guardian’s Global Development site is explored through ethnographic content analysis as a model for development journalism from the outside and a comparison with previous definitions.

Young wife from Sikkim allegedly raped: Understanding the framing of rape reportage in Indian media • DHIMAN CHATTOPADHYAY, Bowling Green State University • This paper explores the framing of rape reportage in India’s English language media, conducting a mixed method content analysis of how 25 Indian newspapers, magazines and television channels reported the same incident of rape on their respective websites. The results showed that the victim’s credibility was often doubted and both victim and accused were otherized. Also attributes such as marital status, age, profession and ethnicity were considered vital information to be conveyed to audiences. This study hopes to contribute to the nascent but growing body of academic work that has started to look at the growing incidents of rape in India and how the media frames and communicates incidents of rapes and rape culture in general to its audiences

Permission to Narrate? Palestinian Perspectives in U.S. Media Coverage of Operation Cast Lead • Britain Eakin, University of Arizona • This study explores the presence of Palestinian narratives in U.S. media coverage in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times during Operation Cast Lead, the 22-day long Israeli military operation in Gaza, which lasted from late December 2008 through January 22, 2009. Utilizing a postcolonial framework this study examines the coverage as part of the Orientalist legacy that shapes American perceptions of Palestinians, and how those perceptions might manifest themselves in relation to the presence of or lack of Palestinian narratives in media coverage of Operation Cast Lead. This study finds that to a limited extent, Palestinian narratives are present in the reporting, however lack of context overshadowed their legitimacy.

MH17 Tragedy: An Analysis of Cold War and Post-Cold War Media Framing of Airline Disasters • Abu Daud Isa, West Virginia University • This paper builds on similar studies that examined newspaper coverage of airline disasters during the Cold War in the 1980s. It explores new Cold War frames in The New York Times and The Moscow Times coverage of Malaysian Airlines Flight MH17, which was shot down over Ukraine in 2014. The research reveals an absence of hostile Cold War assertions, but found frames were consistent with the respective U.S. and Russian diplomatic positions.

Journalists Jailed and Muzzled: Government and Government-inspired Censorship in Turkey during AKP Rule • Duygu Kanver, Michigan State University • During Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule, politics have been overly influential on news media in Turkey. The AKP government’s connections with highly politicized media owners have led to a politically-oriented, polarized media landscape where journalists cannot report freely and objectively. This study explores limitations on freedom of the press, which include ongoing censorship due to direct and indirect involvement of the government, and hundreds of journalist imprisonments between 2008 and 2013.

Burma/Myanmar’s Exile Media in Transition: Exploring the Relationship between Alternative Media, Market Forces & Public Sphere Formation • Brett Labbe, Bowling Green State University • This study examines the historical development of Myanmar/Burma’s independent exile media alongside their recent integration into the country and ongoing financial reconfigurations. Employing documentary research, observation of Burma/Myanmar’s current media landscape, and interviews with senior editors of the country’s former exile media, this investigation explores these organizations’ changing institutional practices and relationships to the nation’s political and public spheres in order to examine reigning conceptualizations of ‘alternative media’ and its relationship to market forces and public sphere formation. This study found that the country’s exile media’s transition into the country has provided new avenues of journalistic ‘space,’ yet not necessarily conductive to these organizations’ traditional alternative media values.

Spotlight on Qatar: A framing analysis of labor rights issues in the news blog Doha News • Elizabeth Lance, Northwestern University in Qatar; Ivana Vasic, Independent; Rhytha Zahid Hejaze • This study examines coverage of labor rights issues in the online-only news blog Doha News (Qatar) to identify the prominent frames used. Additionally, this study compares those prominent frames with those found in the English-language daily Gulf Times (Qatar), identifying several differences. This study is useful in understanding how an online-only news blog covers a controversial issue in a restrictive press environment.

Digitally enabled citizen empowerment in East and Southeast Asia • SHIN HAENG LEE, University of Washington • This study assessed the impact of new information technologies on citizen empowerment in Asian political communication systems as the emerging digital network market. The World Values Survey provided cross-national data, gathered during the two periods: 2005–2007 (Wave 5) and 2010–2013 (Wave 6). The results showed that online information seeking had mobilizing effects on political participation in both WVS waves. This relationship was nevertheless conditional on the existing information gap.

Linguistic Abstractness as a Discursive Microframe: LCM Framing in International Reporting by American News • Josephine Lukito, Syracuse University • This study examined whether American news coverage of a country would be framed differently based on the country’s proximity or interactions with the United States. The Linguistic Category Model was used to code for language abstractness. Seven proximity and interaction variables were studied. Results suggest that countries with little proximity or with weak ties to the U.S. were framed abstractly. Implications are discussed, and the LCM frame is identified as a discursive microframe (DMF).

Online networking and protest behaviors in Latin America • Rachel Mourao, The University of Texas at Austin; Shannon McGregor, University of Texas – Austin; Magdalena Saldana, The University of Texas at Austin • The relationship between online networking and protest participation is a focal point of scholarly attention, yet few studies address it in the context of Latin American democracies. Using data from the 2012 Americas-Barometer public opinion survey, we assess how online networking affects protest behavior in the region. Findings suggest that online networking leads to moderate protest behaviors. Results indicate protest participation has been normalized in the region, a sign of the strength of democratic states.

Twitter Diplomacy between India and the United States: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Tweets during Presidential State Visits • Jane O’Boyle, University of South Carolina • India’s economic and political influence is growing, and its expansion of Twitter users provides more opportunity for international agenda-building. This qualitative analysis studies Twitter comments from the U.S. and India (N=11,532) during reciprocal state visits by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama, when the most retweets in both countries were from the White House and Times of India, reflecting agenda-building effects. American comments were more negative about Obama than about Modi. Analysis addresses implications for agenda-building global public diplomacy.

Jokes in Public: The Ethical Implications of Radio Prank Calls • Subin Paul, University of Iowa; John C Carpenter • The use of prank calls is becoming increasingly common among radio hosts in the international arena. This study examines the ethics behind the practice of radio prank calls and their implications for mainstream journalism through Systematic Moral Analysis and Kantianism. It shows that while radio prank calls can contribute to the public sphere, they can also have unintended negative consequences that reflect badly not only on radio hosts, but also on mainstream journalists.

Reporting in Latin America: Issues and perspectives on investigative journalism in the region • Magdalena Saldana, The University of Texas at Austin; Rachel Mourao, The University of Texas at Austin • Despite its importance in fostering transparent democracies, watchdog journalism is not exempt from external influences. This study investigates the challenges faced by investigative journalism in Latin America. Guided by the Hierarchy of Influences model, we analyzed answers from 1,453 journalists in the region. Results reveal that more than two decades after the liberalization of media systems, journalists still face constraints related to clientelistic practices and personal security as the main challenges to investigative reporting.

Protesting the Paradigm: A Comparative Study of News Coverage of Protests in Brazil, China, and India • Saif Shahin, The University of Texas at Austin; Pei Zheng, The University of Texas at Austin; Heloisa Aruth Sturm, University of Texas at Austin; Deepa Fadnis • This study examines the coverage of Brazilian, Chinese, and Indian protests in their domestic news media to clarify the scope and applicability of the protest paradigm—a theory based primarily on U.S. media coverage of social movements. Using comparative analysis, it shows that the paradigm does not squarely apply in foreign contexts, but also identifies those aspects of it which are relevant for international research. Broader implications and ideas for future studies are discussed.

Trust in the media and its predictors in three Latin American countries • Vinicio Sinta, University of Texas at Austin; Victor Garcia, University of Texas at Austin; Ji won Kim • Declining public trust in the news media continues to be a matter of concern for scholars of mass communication and politics. In Latin America, the historically close links between media and political elites present an opportunity to obtain new insights about how trust in the news media relates to trust in other social institutions. In addition to these relationships, this study explores how demographic variables, media use and perceptions of public issues shape confidence in the news media in three Latin American countries: Chile, Colombia and Mexico. The results support previous findings about how the consumption of online news relates to a decline in trust in legacy news media. Additionally, favorable perceptions of economic performance and increased trust in other social institutions were also positive predictors of media trust in certain contexts.

Seeking Cultural Relevance : Use of Culture Peg and Culture Link in International Newsreporting • Miki Tanikawa, University of Texas • This study describes the prevalence of culturally oriented writing techniques found in international news coverage of major American newspapers, through a concept explication and content analysis. These techniques, which I call culture peg and culture link, are content choices that journalists make to enhance the material’s appeal to their home audience. A content analysis found that such cultural strategies were employed in 72 percent of international news articles in the New York Times.

Reporting War in 140 Characters: How Journalists Used Twitter during the 2014 Gaza-Israel Conflict • Ori Tenenboim, School of Journalism, the University of Texas at Austin • This study examines how journalists used Twitter during the 2014 Gaza war, while comparing Israeli journalists with reporters who work for international news outlets. The results show that the two groups differed in their choice of topics, the sources they cited, and the use of Twitter affordances – retweeting and replying. The study contributes to a better understanding of gatekeeping on social media in a time of war, which poses unique dilemmas and concerns for journalists.

How Do They Think Differently? A Social Media Advertising Attitude Survey on Chinese Students in China and Chinese Students in America • Anan Wan, University of South Carolina • This study explored whether Chinese students in both China and in America had different attitudes toward social media advertising, and how those attitudes were different, through a survey (N=300) of Chinese students in these two countries. The survey determined how they used social media, their attitudes and whether they trust social media advertising. It also tested the relationships between the students’ the Social Media Diets (amount, frequency, and duration) and attitude toward social media advertising.

Marketing of Separatist Groups: Classification on Separatist Movement Categories • Dwiyatna Widinugraha • Many articles and studies discussed ISIS as a separatist group from its home country. However when we looked at other separatist cases, such as the Scottish Independence (SI) case, problems occurred when we tried to classified ISIS and SI in the same groups of separatists. This study uses comparative analysis on separatist groups marketing activities to draw classifications on the 21st century separatist groups categories: the ethnic group, the political group and the terrorist group.

Riot Bias: A Textual Analysis of Pussy Riot’s Coverage in Russian and American Media • Kari Williams, SIUE/TH Media • This study uses framing theory and textual analysis to investigate how American and Russian media portrayed Russian punk band Pussy Riot’s 2012 protest act in a Moscow cathedral, the trial and sentencing and subsequent newsworthy events. Coverage from Russia’s Pravda and the United States’ The New York Times – beginning with this particular protest act (February 2012) and ending with the protest at the Sochi Olympics (February 2014) –shows how each country’s media portrayed the band.

Inter-media agenda-setting across borders: Examining newspaper coverage of MH370 incident by media in the U.S., China, and Hong Kong • Fang Wu, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Di Cui, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • Focusing on the media coverage of the mysterious disappearance of Flight MH370 by major newspapers in the U.S., China, and Hong Kong, this study explored the inter-media agenda-setting effect in transnational settings. A content analysis of related news articles revealed a two-step agenda-setting effect among the selected news media. The findings suggested the national power (under which news media operate) played an important role in shaping the agenda of the coverage of global media events.

2015 Abstracts

Cultural and Critical Studies 2015 Abstracts

Desiring Biracial Whites: Daniel Henney and Cosmopolitan Whiteness in Contemporary Korean Media • Ji-Hyun Ahn, University of Washington Tacoma • Contextualizing the rise of white mixed-race celebrities and foreign entertainers from the perspective of the globalization of Korean popular culture, this article aims to look at how Korean media appropriates whiteness as a marker of global Koreanness. Specifically, the article utilizes Daniel Henney, a white mixed-race actor and celebrity who was born to a Korean adoptee mother and an Irish-American father, as an anchoring text. Analyzing how Henney’s image as upper-class, intelligent, and cosmopolitan constructs what whiteness means to Koreans, the study asserts that Henney’s (cosmopolitan) whiteness is not a mere marker of race, but a neoliberal articulation of a particular mode of Koreanness. This study not only participates in a dialogue with the current scholarship of mixed-race studies in media/communication but also links the recent racial politics in contemporary Korean media to the much larger historical and ideological implications of racial globalization.

Academic Revanchism at Century’s End: Communication Studies at the Ohio State University, 1990 – 1996 • Vicente Berdayes, Barry University; Linda Berdayes, Barry University • This paper describes the dissolution of Ohio State University’s Department of Communication in the mid-1990s, which ended an ambitious attempt to define a distinctive presence for critical communication research at the end of the 20th century. This episode is analyzed in terms of the confluence of changes forced upon communication studies in light of the neoliberal reorganization of higher education and the episteme of empiricist social science, which redefined inquiry across the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences.

The Role of the Producer in Unboxing Videos • Christopher Bingham, University of Oklahoma • On YouTube exist thousands of unboxing videos (UBVs), in which a producer opens a product for the first time and critiques the package’s contents. Due to their prevalence, UBVs require more scholarly attention. This paper presents a multimodal content analysis of UBVs in order to define the role of the UBV producer. Data suggest that producers seek to emulate sensory experiences, provide helpful expertise, establish community with audience members, and share a sense of exploration.

Filmic Narrative and Authority in the Cop Watching Movement • Mary Angela Bock, University of Texas at Austin • Police accountability groups in the U.S are proliferating thanks to smartphone penetration and online social networks. This qualitative project theoretically situates cop-watching and its videos. Using the basic foundation of Foucault’s ideas about the negotiation of truth, it examines the discursive struggles over the evidentiary value of police accountability activism and its challenges to conventional narratives about police work. This exploration finds that police accountability activists employ the technical but not discursive routines of journalism.

Good Gay, Bad Queer: Heteronormtive Shaming and Homonormative Love in Network Television Situational Comedies • Robert Byrd, University of Memphis • This analysis of primetime situational comedies that feature LGBTQ characters argues that through heteronormative and homonormative constructions of sexuality many LGBTQ people are rendered invisible in the mainstream. Through discourse analysis, the study examines how these television programs work to normalize gay and lesbian identity, which then resembles the dominant heterosexuality, by shaming queer sexual practices and excluding all alternatives to the prescribed homonormative construct of love. This research is important in understanding the Americans’ most recent shifts in public opinion on issues of marriage equality and moral acceptance, but also in understanding what groups of LGBTQ people may be further marginalized from the mainstream. Further, it is important to examine the underlying ideology of these programs to extract meanings that have the potential to further subvert queer notions of sex and sexual politics, which only work to advance the marginalization of those who do not fit the dominant mold.

#IfTheyGunnedMeDown: Postmodern Media Criticism in a “Post-Racial” World • Christopher P. Campbell, The University of Southern Mississippi, School of Mass Communication and Journalism • Abstract: This paper examines social media postings that surfaced in the wake of the 2014 fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an African American, by a white Ferguson, Missouri police officer. It argues that the postings reflect keen insight into the notion of media representation; that is, the young African Americans who posted the photos perceptively and concisely identified the problems with journalistic representations of black people as pathological criminals, representations that have been identified as enormously problematic by cultural studies scholars. The paper asks if the social media postings and other elements of contemporary media could significantly advance the discussion about race in America.

Telling Us What We Already Know: Decoding the Absence of Poverty News in Appalachian Community Media • Michael Clay Carey, Samford University • This study examines the ways audiences in rural Appalachian communities can interpret a lack of local news coverage about local poverty and related issues. Community media in the communities under study provided little coverage of local poverty. Using Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model as a theoretical framework, this study examines readers’ notions about the motives for that lack of coverage, and how those ideas influenced their views of local news outlets as voices for the community.

Framing English: The reproduction of linguistic power in Korea’s locally-based English language press • John C Carpenter; Frank Durham • This study analyzes the framing process generated by Korea’s English language press about the implementation of an English-only instruction policy at the elite Korean science university, KAIST, in 2007. It focuses on Korean language ideology to conceptualize the adoption of English in Korea. In its textual analysis of related news coverage, the study shows that the English-language press employed frames of “necessitation”, “externalization”, and “self-deprecation” to variously position English as hegemonic in Korea.

“It’s Biology, Bitch!”: Hit Girl, the Kick-Ass Franchise, and the Hollywood Superheroine • Phil Chidester, Illinois State University • The general critical response to Kick-Ass (2010), the widely popular comic-book send-up, has been a condemnation of the film for its abusive representations of its core female protagonist, 11-year-old Hit Girl. Yet as I argue in this essay, the film and its sequel, 2013’s Kick-Ass 2, are better understood as a broader treatise on gender and difference in a contemporary America. Through their depictions of Hit Girl’s struggle to choose between an essential femininity and an essential heroism, the texts embody Americans’ blunt refusal to embrace what is perhaps the most radical and threatening of all depictions of the feminine: that of woman as true superhero. In doing so, the films also serve as touchstone moments in the culture’s ongoing politics of gender.

Televisuality, Movement, and the Market on CNBC’s The Closing Bell • Diane Cormany, University of Minnesota • The Closing Bell communicates affect through cable news’ endemic graphic style and television’s characteristic motion and liveness. Real-time graphic updates show the second by second change in stock prices, usually accompanied by line graphs that are designed to indicate movement over time. Likewise a digital clock displayed in the lower right of the screen counts down the seconds until the market close and calls viewers to action. Movement is both literal, through the changing second count, and figurative by communicating that action is required. This article demonstrates how The Closing Bell goes beyond representation to actually embody market movement through the affective impact of its aesthetics. The ups and downs of the securities market are actually tied to perceptions of its movement, which are communicated through financial news media. The Closing Bell therefore participates in market movement by mobilizing affect through its use of televisuality–the graphics and movement-intensive style that characterizes cable news.

The New Columbia Heights: How Gentrification Has Transformed a Local Washington, D.C. Community • Christian Dotson-Pierson; Ashley Lewis • “In 2012, the Fordham Institute cited Columbia Heights, a historic neighborhood in Ward 1 of Washington, D.C., as 14 out of 25 of the fastest gentrifying neighborhoods in the United States. Gentrification or “revitalization” is a phenomenon in urban planning which often displaces poorer residents while also transforming neighborhoods demographically and socially. This study includes interviews from 15 Columbia Heights residents about their preferred news sources for obtaining information about gentrification in their neighborhood.”

The “Public” and the Press: Lippmann, the Interchurch World Movement, and the 1919-20 Steel Strike • Frank Durham • This historically situated rhetorical analysis examines Walter Lippmann’s understanding of the Interchurch World Movement (hereafter, “Interchurch”), which was a short-lived, but prominent, Progressive ecumenical organization that investigated the Great Steel Strike from 1919-1920. The Interchurch’s Progressive, social science-based study of anti-labor coverage by the Pittsburgh press informed Lippmann’s concept of such organizations, because he felt they could monitor journalistic practices from their positions outside of the field.

Citizens of the Margin: Youth and resistance in a Moroccan YouTube web-series • Mohamed El Marzouki, Indiana University • This paper examines a user-generated YouTube web-series, Tales of Bouzebal, as a performance of marginality and a social critique of state hegemonic institutions in the post-Arab Spring Morocco. Using a combined method of textual and discourse analyses, the paper argues that the new media practices of producing and consuming user-generated content among North African youth are best understood as practices of cultural citizenship that facilitate change through the production counter-discursive political subjectivities among youth in MENA.

Print vs. digital: How medium matters on House of Cards • Patrick Ferrucci, University of Colorado-Boulder; Chad Painter, Eastern New Mexico University • This study utilizes textual analysis to analyze how journalists are depicted on the Netflix drama House of Cards. Through the lens of orientalism and cultivation, researchers examine how depictions of print and digital journalism would lead viewers to see digital journalists as less ethical and driven by self gain, while also viewing technology as an impediment to quality journalism. These findings are then discussed as a means for understanding how these depictions could affect society.

Pornography, Feminist Questions, and New Conceptualizations of “Serious Value” in Sexual Media • Brooks Fuller, UNC-Chapel Hill • During the 1980s, anti-pornography advocates waged a litigious, regulatory war against perceived social ills caused by pornography. A cultural dialogue persisted, questioning the social value of pornography. Proposed criminal regulations of pornography ultimately stalled in American Booksellers v. Hudnut (1985). This paper analyzes post-Hudnut cases under legal and qualitative methodological frameworks and finds that although courts generally assume pornography’s direct media effects, several recent cases reflect pro-pornography feminist conceptualizations of social value.

Image Control: The Visual Rhetoric of President Obama • Timothy Roy Gleason, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh; Sara Hansen, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh • President Barack Obama was elected upon a wave of change he described as “hope.” Journalists have found the Obama administration offers little hope in providing greater access to information than that offered by the previous administration, exemplified by the exclusion of photojournalists from a number of events. Using Althusser’s Ideological State Apparatus and branding, this critical analysis examines the process of image control and interprets the resulting photographs to argue against current White House practices.

Digital Exclusion in an Information Society: How ISP Competition Affects the American (information) Consumer • Jenna Grzeslo, Penn State University • Using political economy, this paper explores competition amongst the largest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the United States. Specifically, this analysis asks how do the conditions created by ISP competition affect digital exclusion? The goal of this paper is to illustrate the state of digital exclusion in the United States providing evidence of a racial, cultural, and class divide between those who have home Internet access and those who do not.

Behold the Monster: Mythical explanations of deviance and evil in news of the Amish school shooting • Erica Salkin, Whitworth University; Robert Gutsche, Jr, Florida International University • In October 2006, Charles Carl Roberts IV walked into an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania and killed five female students. Through an analysis of 215 news articles published in 10 local, regional, and national newspapers in 2006 and 2007, this paper examines news characterizations of Roberts that cast him as a ‘Monster,’ an archetype missing in studies on ‘news myth.’ This paper expands how to examine the nature of evil in loss in news myth scholarship.

How the American News Media Address the n-Word • Frank Harris, Southern Connecticut State University • This study surveyed American newspapers, television and radio stations on how they address the word “nigger” or “nigga” in today’s news stories. It found the overwhelming majority have encountered the words in some part of the news process. While most do not have a formal policy for addressing the words, they nearly all apply euphemistic words, phrases and editorial approaches to keep the explicit words from being seen, read or heard by the public.

Digital Mobilities as Dispersed Agencies: An Analysis of Google Glass, Microsoft Kinect and Siri • Matthew Corn; Kristen Heflin, Kennesaw State University • This study proposes a conception of digital mobility as a contemporary assemblage of forms and practices that pose contradictions for ideas about agency. By doing so, the focus of scholarly inquiry moves from individuals, particular devices or institutions, to the assemblages through which they are constituted and practiced. This study presents analyses of digital mobility exerted across three discernible assemblages enabled by Google Glass, Microsoft Kinect and Siri as part of various Apple products.

Speaking Out: Networked Authoritarianism and the Virtual Testimonios of Chinese Cyberpetitioners • Vincent Guangsheng Huang • In this study, the online narratives created by Chinese cyberpetitioners were identified as “virtual testimonios.” Critical narrative analysis was used to explore the ways in which virtual testimonios both challenge and are shaped by networked authoritarianism. The cyberpetitioners were found to construct “local testimonios” to expose the institutional root causes of social injustice and mobilize the public against injustice. To evade censorship, they structured their plots and characters according to a central-local binary opposition that allowed them to criticize local government authority without compromising their expression of loyalty to the central government. The cyberpetitioners were also shown to use the narrative strategy of “central intertextuality” to construct and occupy the collective subject positions of “citizens” and “the people,” thereby justifying their cyberpetitioning activities.

The Gendered Frames of the Sexy Revolutionary: U.S. Media Coverage of Camila Vallejo • Bimbisar Irom, Edward R. Murrow College of Communication • The paper analyzes news stories pertaining to Camila Vallejo, the Chilean student leader famously dubbed as “the world’s most glamorous revolutionary”, to examine the kind of frames used to represent female activists. What role does cultural distance play in media frames? How are female activists outside of the electoral process framed differently than female politicians who practice a more ‘legitimate’ form of politics? What media frames for representing female radicals persist over historical time?

The 90s, the Most Stunning Days of Our Lives: Cultural Politics of Retro Music in Contemporary Neoliberal Korea • Gooyong Kim, Temple University • This paper critically interrogates socio-cultural implications of the recent resurgence of 90s popular music in Korea, which was epitomized by the unprecedented success of MBC’s Infinite Challenge: “Saturday, Saturday is Singers.” The program staged special reunion performances of the decade’s most iconic popular musicians. Focusing on how the program re-constitutes a cultural memory of the decade, this paper examines the cultural politics of retro music in contemporary neoliberal Korea.

Dialectics of book burning: Technological reproducibility, aura and rebirth in Fahrenheit 451. • Shannon Mish; Jin Kim • Ray Bradbury’s novel Fahrenheit 451 provides productive debating points in media studies, such as memory, information and technological reproduction. This paper aims to examine such repetitive motifs as library, book and phoenix from Bradbury’s book through Benjamin’s theoretical lenses of aura, technological reproducibility and collection. We found dialectics of media in the Bradbury’s book: technologies threaten but embrace aura, which is unique but historical, and phoenix symbolizes death as well as birth of knowledge.

Authorship, Performance and Narrative: A Framework for Studying Cultural Production on YouTube • Mark Lashley, La Salle University • This paper presents a framework for textual analysis of YouTube videos. First, it conceptualizes the collective output of video bloggers (“vloggers”) as forms of cultural production. Second, it breaks these cultural productions/cultural practices into three component parts that can be used for analysis: the role of authorship in the YouTube space, the nature of the performances that can be read as textual analysis, and the narrative that is presented through an individual’s YouTube creations.

Friday Night Disability: The Portrayal of Parent-Child Interactions on Television’s Friday Night Lights • Ewa McGrail, Georgia State University; J. Patrick McGrail, Jacksonville State University; Alicja Rieger, Valdosta State University; Amy Fraser, Georgia State University • Studies of television portrayals of parent/child relationships where the child has a disability are rare. Using the social relational theory perspective, this study examines interactions between parents and a young man with a disability as portrayed in the acclaimed contemporary television series, Friday Night Lights. We found a nuanced relationship between the portrayed teen and his parents and a powerful influence of the community on the parent-child relations and family life.

Journosplaining: A case of “Linsanity” • Carolyn Nielsen, Western Washington University • This study explores the idea of “journosplaining” using the case of news coverage about pro-basketball star Jeremy Lin’s meteoric rise to fame. Journosplaining is the way in which journalists use their privilege as mass communicators to report the issues of the day by relying on stereotypes as shorthand explanations, thus perpetuating them. News coverage of Lin focused on his Asian-Americaness as primary to his identity as an athlete. “Linsanity” coverage drew on Asian-related puns and “jokes” about Asian Americans, conveying that this type of humor was acceptable. This essay connects Asian American studies scholarship with mass media scholarship to show how journosplaining perpetuates racialized stereotypes.

Transnational and domestic networks and institutional change: A study investigating the collective action response to violence against journalists in Mexico • Jeannine Relly, The University of Arizona; Celeste Gonzalez de Bustamante, The University of Arizona • As the number of journalists killed and disappeared in Mexico has climbed past 125 lives lost and the culture of impunity has persisted in a period anticipated as the country’s democratic transition, a host of organizations have worked together to press the Mexican government toward institutional change. Utilizing the framework of collective action in its broadest sense, we applied Risse and Sikkink’s spiral model of institutional change in this exploratory qualitative study. Our interviews with 33 organization representatives examined the activity related to organizational mobilization, funding, transnational and domestic engagement, normative appeals, information dissemination, coordination, lobbying, and institutional change in governmental response to violence against journalists in Mexico.

David Foster Wallace: Testing the Commencement Speech Genre • Nathan Rodriguez, University of Kansas • David Foster Wallace delivered the commencement address at Kenyon College in 2005, in what would be his only public speech. The writer’s 23-minute speech, which went through nine distinct drafts, eschewed the standard offering of vague platitudes. Rather, Wallace discusses the “boredom, routine, and petty frustration” that await the graduates, and in doing so, tests and reaffirms both the value of a liberal arts education and the commencement speech genre itself.

“The Best Minute and a Half of Audio”: Boundary Disputes and the Palin Family Brawl • David Schwartz, University of Iowa; Dan Berkowitz, University of Iowa • In an introduction to an audio recording of Bristol Palin describing her family’s involvement in an Alaska house-party brawl, CNN anchor Carol Costello commented: “This is quite possibly the best minute and a half of audio we’ve ever come across.” Through textual analysis of news items and blogs, this situation illustrates the challenge of conducting media boundary work—and the role strain that results—when the subject occupies space within both entertainment and news.

Buyer Beware: Stigma and the online murderabilia market • Karen Sichler • When eBay issues value-laden judgment on what may or may not be sold on the site, it sends a very definite and definitive message as to what is and what is not a culturally acceptable product for the site. Using Erving Goffman’s theory of stigma, this work traces the virtual migration of murderabilia, collectables which have their value due to their connection with violent criminals, from eBay to stand alone, specialized virtual storefronts

Public Relations and Sense-Making; the Standard Oiler and the Affirmation of Self-Government, 1950-52 • Burton St. John, Old Dominion University • Corporations may attempt to co-create meaning by pursuing what Heath (2006, p. 87) calls a “courtship of identification.” However, exploring the Standard Oiler through the lens of the concept of self-government, this work offers that public relations sense-making may strike a more nuanced mode by offering a courtship of affirmation—an approach that attempts to leverage apparent existing areas of consonance between a public relations client and particular audiences.

Knowledge Workers, Identities, and Communication Practices: Understanding Code Farmers in China • Ping Sun, School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Michelangelo Magasic, Curtin University • Extending the concept of “knowledge workers”, this paper studies the identity dynamics of IT programmers in China. Through the discursive analysis of programmer’s personal memoirs (collected via personal interview and online ethnography), four themes of identity dynamics emerge: IT programmers demonstrate identification to professionalism and technology; they naturalize the high mobility and internal precarity of their work via discourses of self, and social, improvement; the term “manong” (“coding monkeys” or “code farmers” in English) is used to support a sense of selfhood amidst high pressure schedules and “panopticon control”; the disparaging term “diaosi” (“loser” in English) is appropriated in order to activate a sense of self expression and collective resistance regarding the programmers’ working and living conditions. These four themes are integrated into: 1) hegemonic discourses of economic development and technical innovation in modern China; and 2) the processes of individualization among IT programmers on a global scale. Our findings suggest that being a knowledge worker means not only providing professional expertise like communication, creativity and knowledge, it also interrogates questions of survival, struggle, and solidarity.

A Critical Legal Study of Minors’ Sex and Violence Media Access Rights Five Decades After Ginsberg v. New York • Margot Susca, American University • In the United States, it would be illegal for a merchant to sell “girlie” magazines to a minor, according to the landmark 1968 Supreme Court Ginsberg v. New York case that ruled laws limiting minors’ access to sexual media do nothing to impact adult access to the same material. Although California lawmakers in 2005 applied that legal philosophy—known as “variable obscenity” as a framework for controlling minors’ access to violent video game content, the law never took effect. The Supreme Court in the 2011 Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association ruled that California law unconstitutional, stating the government overstepped its authority in trying to control minors’ access to violent games. This paper hopes to add to the literature on violent video game law through a critical legal studies analysis of the Ginsberg and Brown cases. Conclusions address the continued power of industry over parents in media decision making and access, and societal concerns about sex outweighing those about violence despite medical warnings.

The Misinterpreted Grin: The Development of Discursive Knowledge About Race Through Public Memory of Louis Armstrong • Carrie Teresa • This project explores how expressions of public memory that engage with Louis Armstrong reflect the “tensions and contestations” (Zelizer, 1995, p. 217) in the study of memory generally and consideration of his legacy specifically. Expressions of public memory as they relate to Armstrong reflect a lack of understanding of the black community’s struggle for freedom. Armstrong has been posited as a “racial figure” and as such race itself has been diluted to understanding only binary conceptions of “Tomming” and militant activism. Where public memory has missed the mark in properly commemorating Armstrong’s legacy has been its reticence to engage with the dynamic nature of Armstrong’s life as reflective of the plurality of the black community itself over the course of the 20th century.

Pleasantly Deceptive: The Myth of Main Street and Reverse Mortgage Lending • Willie Tubbs, University of Southern Mississippi • Reverse mortgage commercials appear throughout local and cable television programming. Multiple companies use various commercial appeals in an attempt to convince citizens aged 62 and older who own their homes to accept a loan based on the equity in their homes. Among the more common appeals, both verbal and visual, is a connection between accepting this type of often-costly debt and the sanctity of small-town or suburban living. Yet, the Main Street of the American psyche exists primarily in myth, making this advertising tactic particularly troubling. In this paper, an American Advisors Group (AAG) commercial is unpacked and examined via a critical cultural lens of lifespan studies. Using Hall’s three levels of reading, the author suggests multiple interpretations of this commercial, which is titled “Too Good to Be True.” This commercial, indeed many of the shows during which it has been broadcast, bolsters the myth of Main Street and suggests unrealistic and potentially damaging misrepresentations of reality.

Media Representations in Travel Programming: Satire, Self, and Other in An Idiot Abroad • Zachary Vaughn, Indiana University • This paper focuses on two episodes from the first season of An Idiot Abroad to explore media representations of the self and the other. The principal focus of An Idiot Abroad is between the host’s conceptions and interactions of other cultures and people with his own British cultural framework. Deploying humor, Ricky Gervais, Stephen Merchant, and Karl Pilkington satirize traditional English and Western concepts of often exoticized cultures in order to critique dominant Western ideology.

The Discursive Construction of Journalistic Transparency • Tim Vos, University of Missouri; Stephanie Craft, University of Illinois • This study culls references to journalistic transparency from a broad range of journalism trade publications from more than a decade in order to examine the discursive construction of transparency within the journalistic field, paying. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, the study explores how journalistic doxa and cultural capital come to be discursively formed. The analysis focuses on how transparency is defined by members of the journalistic field and how transparency is or is not legitimized.

Neo-Nazi Celebration and Fascist Critique in the Mainstream Music of the Former Yugoslavia • Christian Vukasovich, Oregon Tech • Following the Balkan civil wars ethno-nationalism continues to impact identity both in the former Yugoslav republics and abroad among the diaspora. In this paper the author examines how two popular rock groups (Thompson and Laibach) rearticulate fascist symbolism through their polarizing concert events. More specifically, the author conducts a rhetorical analysis of both groups’ music, images, pageantry and lyrics in order to interrogate the celebrations of fascism in their performances. The author examines the tensions reproduction and representation, as well as how the concerts discursively construct history, culture, nationhood, religion and belonging in two radically divergent ways – on the one hand endorsing and reproducing a violence-endorsing neo Nazi fascist identity, and on the other hand undermining contemporary ideologies of fascism through extreme performance and deconstruction.

Sabotage in Palestine, terrorists busy: Historical roots of securitization framing in the press • Fred Vultee, Wayne State University • The role of mass media in securitization – broadly, the public construction of a state of existential threat to a cherished political or cultural institution, requiring the imposition of extraordinary measures for an indefinite time – has drawn increasing attention in security studies from both normative and empirical perspectives. Little attention has yet been paid, though, to security discourse earlier in the era of mass media. This paper tries to close that gap by looking at press accounts of the anti-British revolt in the late days of the Palestine mandate. In the light of the heavily securitized political response to the rise of the Islamic State organization in 2014, this paper addresses how and whether anti-British political violence was cast as an existential threat or as a political challenge to be addressed by existing political and security institutions.

The Naked Truth: Post-Feminism in Media Discourse in Response to the Kardashians’ Nude Magazine Images • Joy Jenkins, University of Missouri; David Wolfgang, University of Missouri • In November 2014, Kim Kardashian appeared nude on the cover of Paper magazine. The next month, a pregnant Kourtney Kardashian posed for a partially nude photo shoot in online magazine DuJour. Media outlets quickly responded to both, publishing articles critiquing the photos and Kim and Kourtney’s motivations. This study assessed the presence of typical media gender representations in these articles as well as facets of post-feminism, including more nuanced representations of power and feminist solutions.

2015 Abstracts

Communicating Science, Health, Environment, and Risk 2015 Abstracts

Embodying Nature’s Experiences: Taking the Perspective of Nature with Immersive Virtual Environments to Promote Connectedness With Nature • Sun Joo (Grace) Ahn, University of Georgia; Jeremy Bailenson, Stanford University; Elise Ogle, Stanford University; Joshua Bostick, Stanford University • Immersive virtual environments (IVEs) use digital devices to simulate experiential sensory information, producing simulations that closely mimic real-life. Two experiments tested the efficacy of IVEs in promoting feelings of connectedness with nature by virtually taking the perspective of animals threatened by climate change. Experiment 1 found that embodying the sensory rich experiences of a cow in IVE led to greater spatial presence, body transfer, and ultimately more connectedness with nature than watching the experience on video. Experiment 2 extended these findings and confirmed that embodying the experiences of coral in an acidifying virtual ocean led to greater spatial presence than watching it on video, increasing the perceived imminence of the risk immediately following experimental treatments. The heightened imminence of risk resulted in greater connectedness with nature one week following experimental treatments. Theoretical implications on extending the concept of perspective taking from interpersonal to human-animal relationships with IVEs are discussed.

How Advertising Taught Us How to Consume Fruits and Vegetables in the Early Twentieth Century • Michelle Nelson, UIUC; Susmita Das, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Regina Ahn, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Fruit and vegetable consumption helps prevent diseases, and the World Health Organization recommends increased daily intakes; 100+ years ago advertisers begin selling these healthier foods. Analysis of print advertisements from the early twentieth century reveals the ways that advertisers informed the public about how and why to consume fruits and vegetables. National advertisers presented them as ‘tonics’ while prescribing daily doses. Competition among fruits and vegetables resulted in mixed messages for consumers about fresh produce.

Public Attitudes on Synthetic Biology: Mapping Landscapes and Processes • Heather Akin; Kathleen M. Rose; Dietram Scheufele; Molly J. Simis; Dominique Brossard; Michael A. Xenos; Elizabeth A. Corley • This research provides one of the first representative overviews to date of U.S. public attitudes towards synthetic biology. We first outline descriptive results from a 2014 survey of U.S. adults to contextualize individuals’ awareness, personal importance, and knowledge of synthetic biology and compare these to responses about other science issues. We assess respondents’ attitudes toward relevant policies, risk-benefit perceptions, and overall support for synthetic biology. We then analyze how these characteristics impact individuals’ support for the use of this emerging science and assess how values and predispositions, including religiosity, deference to scientific authority, and trust in scientists, might interact to influence support. Our descriptive results suggest that many respondents do not feel informed about synthetic biology or believe it is personally important, which is comparable to responses about nanotechnology. However, on average, individuals express more reservations and more concern for the moral downside of synthetic biology than other issues. Our multivariate analyses show that education, religiosity, deference to science, knowledge, net risk-benefit perceptions, and trust in scientists affect support for synthetic biology. We also find significant interactions between deference to science and trust in scientists and deference to science and religiosity. We argue that deference may be more instrumental in influencing attitudes about scientific issues than other dispositions, so we should be less concerned with the impacts of short-term political or event-based influences, and more concerned with building longer-term deference and belief in the scientific enterprise.

Biological Imperatives and Food Marketing: Food Cues Alter Trajectories of Processing, Behavior and Choice • Rachel Bailey, Washington State University • This study examines how food presentation and packaging alters the time course of information processing, response and food choice. Participants were asked to categorize images of food that varied in the directness of their food cues (information about taste in terms of color, glossiness, texture, etc) before and after being exposed to a set of advertisements that also varied in the directness of their available food cues. Heart rate data also were used to access the motivational value of food cues. In general, direct food cue products enhanced motivational processes, especially if they were also advertised with direct food cues. Food products that had the least direct food cues did the opposite. Individuals also chose to eat products that were packaged with more direct food cues available compared to opaque packages. Implications and future research are discussed.

‘We just can’t talk about mental health:’ Analysis of African American urban community leader interviews • Jeannette Porter; Tim Bajkiewicz, Virginia Commonwealth University • This study conducts in-depth interviews with eleven female African American community leaders in a low-income area of a medium-sized US southeastern city asked about their perceptions of African American patterns of communication on mental health issues in their community. Findings include terms like crazy and hustle, when rarely discussed. Participants say more training is needed for professionals (including law enforcement) and children, as well as a reduction in medication use to treat mental illness.

Framing climate change: Understanding behavior intention using a moderated-mediation model • porismita borah, Washington State University • The study conducted an experiment of a national sample of adults to understand the influence of four frames on environmental behavior intention. The study uses a moderated mediated model to test the moderating role of political ideology and mediating role of self-efficacy. Findings show that positive frames such as progress and problem-solving frames increase individuals’ environmental behavior intention. The positive frames increase individuals’ self-efficacy, which leads to increased environmental behavior intention, moderated by political ideology.

The Changing Opinion Dynamics Around Global Climate Change: Exploring Shifts in Framing Effects on Public Attitudes • Michael Cacciatore and LaShonda Eaddy, ADPR • In light of recent shifts in attitudes concerning global climate change, we assess several key predictors of American attitudes toward the subject. We begin by exploring the demographic characteristics that predict attitudes toward the causes and timing of the phenomenon before investigating the role that subtle terminology differences have on perceptions of the phenomenon. While this is not the first paper to explore how question wording impacts public response to global warming/climate change, the results that we report here represent a substantial departure from previous investigations of the topic and suggest large-scale shifts in how the American public makes sense of this politically contentious issue. Most notably, we found that terminology impacts differed based on a respondent’s political party affiliation, although in a manner that was somewhat unexpected given previous work on this issue. Unlike previous work, we found there was no statistically significant difference in how Republicans responded to the terms global warming and climate change. Rather, it was the Democrats who varied in their perceptions based on the wording manipulation with use of the term global warming prompting Democrats to respond much more strongly that the phenomenon was being caused by human activity and use of the term climate change resulting in an overall lower probability of believing that to be the case.

Third-person effect, message framing and drunken driving: Examining the causes and preventions of drunken-driving behavior • Kuang-Kuo Chang, Shih Hsin University • This study applies the third-person effect hypothesis and messages framing to examine the drunken-driving issue that has plagued Taiwan society. Statistical analyses support all (12) but three hypotheses. News attentiveness and campaign messages lead to a first-person effect at both perceptual and behavioral levels; drinking capacity and risk create a perceptual third-person effect. Gain-framed messages are more appealing than loss-framed messages. Findings provide valuable strategies for policymaking, coverage and campaigns in preventing this anti-social behavior.

Examining the impact of a health literacy and media literacy intervention on adults’ sugar-sweetened beverage media literacy skills • Yvonnes Chen; Kathleen Porter; Jamie Zoellner; Paul Estabrooks • Overconsumption of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSB) has led to a number of adverse health consequences. Interventions for adults, however, rarely incorporate media and health literacy education. We evaluated a single, SSB-focused media literacy (ML) lesson embedded in a large randomized-controlled trial in rural Southwest Virginia. We found that low and high health literacy participants benefited differently from the intervention. Also, adults’ overall SSB ML skills and understanding of the representation nature of SSB messages were improved.

A Smoking Cessation Campaign on Twitter: Understanding the Use of Twitter and Identifying Major Players in a Health Campaign • Jae Eun Chung, Communication • The current study examined the usage of online social media for a health campaign. Collecting tweets (N = 1,790) about the most recent Former Smoker’s Campaign, a smoking cessation promotion by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the current study investigated the dissemination of health campaign messages on Twitter, paying particular attention to answering questions from the process evaluation of health campaigns: who tweets about the campaign, who plays central roles in disseminating health campaign messages, and how various features of Twitter are used for sharing of campaign messages. Results show that individuals and nonprofit organizations posted frequently about the campaign: Individuals and nonprofit organizations posted about 40% and 30% of campaign-related tweets, respectively. The culture of retweeting demonstrated its particular usefulness for the dissemination of campaign messages. Despite the expectation that the use of social media would expand opportunities for engagement, actual two-way interactions were few or minimal. In the current study the data analysis tool NodeXL showed its utility in collecting data and identifying major influencers in health campaigns. Drawn from the results, practical suggestions on how to strategize the use of Twitter for future health campaigns are discussed.

Weight-of-Evidence Risk Messages about Genetically Modified (GM) Foods: Persuasive Effects and Motivated Reasoning • Beatriz Vianna; Chris Clarke, George Mason University • This article extends research on conveying weight-of-evidence in risk contexts. We focus on a contentious risk topic; novel persuasive outcomes; and political ideology as a moderator of message effects. A news message experiment revealed that weight-of-evidence information emphasizing the safety of genetically modified foods for human consumption heightened participants’ perceptions of safety and affected strength of conviction, depending on prior safety beliefs. Political ideology did not moderate these effects. We discuss risk communication implications.

Environmental documentaries: How Gasland and Fracknation shape risk perceptions and policy preferences about hydraulic fracturing • Kathryn Cooper, The Ohio State University • Mass media messages are a powerful means by which to influence risk perceptions and policy preferences about controversial environmental issues. This paper presents the results of a study designed to test how the impact of the documentaries Gasland and Fracknation (which present anti- and pro-hydraulic fracturing viewpoints, respectively) varies by viewer ideology. Results indicate that Fracknation was effective across ideological groups while Gasland had limited effectiveness and only influence risk perceptions for liberals and moderates.

Compulsive Creativity: Virtual Worlds, Disability, and New Selfhoods Online • Donna Davis, University of Oregon; Tom Boellstorff • This study examines the intersection of disability and the digital through an ethnographic exploration of compulsive creativity experienced by persons living with Parkinson’s (PD) disease engaged in the virtual world, Second Life. Among this community of individuals with PD, a number of them report experiencing new forms of identity, place and making, simultaneous to alleviating symptoms of the disease. This raises questions central to current debates in media studies, health communication, anthropology and beyond.

How Caregivers Cope: The Effect of Media Appraisals and Information Behaviors on Coping Efficacy • Jae Seon Jeong; Lindsey DiTirro; Jeong-Nam Kim • This article contributes to the study of communication and coping in health contexts by exploring information appraisal and information behaviors. Drawing on theoretical perspectives, we argue that information behaviors are communicative responses that can serve as a means to increase, decrease, or maintain the efficiency of coping. Therefore, the current study examines the appraisals of health information found in the media and how they relate to caregivers’ information behaviors and coping efficacy.

The Twitter Network of the Top 50 Scientists • Elliot Fenech, University of Utah • As main stream media moves away from traditional outlets, such as television and newspaper, online social media outlets are growing in popularity. Twitter is one social media outlet where users post messages for others to read and review. This paper examines the top 50 scientists on Twitter in order to gain an understanding of how the community of scientists are using Twitter to communicate with each other beyond geographical and disciplinary divides. We examine the structure of the mention network among these scientists in terms of whether they form a Twitter community, how connected they are, and what subgroups, if any, there may be. Our data showed that a majority of these scientists formed a conversational community, in which there were a few more cohesive clusters but these clusters were not due to homophily based on areas of expertise. Future research should expand on our findings and establish a clearer understanding of how the scientific community is using Twitter to collaborate with each other and communicate with the public.

Framing News Coverage of National Parks: The Environment, Social Issues, and Recreation • Bruce Garrison, University of Miami; Zongchao Li, University of Miami • This study investigated coverage of America’s national parks, based on an analysis of 1,456 stories in 15 daily newspapers during 2000-12. Amusements, such as recreation, were the leading news frame, but social issues and environment were also commonly used. While there were no significant differences in framing approaches over time, the study found differences in how stories were framed by region and stories using amusements frames were longer, more positive, and used images more often.

Exploring the Mediating Roles of Fatalistic Beliefs and Self-Efficacy on the Relation Between Cancer Information-seeking on the Internet and Cancer-Preventative Behaviors • Eun Go; Kyung Han You, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies • This study explores the relationship between cancer-related information seeking on the Internet and cancer-preventative behaviors, with a focus on the mediating effects of fatalistic beliefs and self-efficacy. Using the structural equation modeling method (N=2,896), the present study demonstrates that while information seeking about cancer on the Internet does not exert a decrease of users’ levels of fatalistic beliefs, it does elevate users’ levels of self-efficacy. Moreover, the findings show that although information seeking about cancer on the Internet does not directly enhance users’ engagement in cancer-preventative behaviors, it has indirect effect on cancer-preventive behaviors via health-related self-efficacy. The findings also indicate that individuals’ levels of self-efficacy significantly mediate the association between fatalistic beliefs and cancer-preventative behaviors. This result demonstrates the need for consideration of such cognitive mediators in explaining the influence of cancer-related information-seeking on the Internet on cancer-preventative behaviors. Further implications of the study are also discussed.

The Framing of Marcellus Shale Drilling in Pennsylvania Newspapers • Elise Brown; Michel Haigh, Penn State; John Ewing, Penn State • This study examined how print media in Pennsylvania framed the discussion about Marcellus Shale gas drilling and development from 2008 – 2012. A content analysis (N = 783) found the most common frame employed was the environmental concerns frame, followed by the political strategy frame, scientific background frame, and public engagement frame. The scientific background frame was included more often in articles published by the agricultural media. The political strategies frame was used more often in mainstream media articles. Frames also varied over the four-year period, as well as the topics discussed.

Public Attention to Science and Political News and Support for Climate Change Mitigation • P. Sol Hart, University of Michigan; Erik Nisbet, The Ohio State University; Teresa Myers, George Mason University • We examine how attention to science and political news may influence public knowledge, perceived harm, and support for climate mitigation policies. Previous research examining these relationships has not fully accounted for how political ideology shapes the mental processes through which the public interprets media discourses about climate change. We incorporate political ideology and the concept of motivated cognition into our analysis to compare and contrast two prominent models of opinion formation, the scientific literacy model, which posits that disseminating scientific information will move public opinion towards the scientific consensus, and the motivated reasoning model, which posits that individuals will interpret information in a biased manner. Our analysis finds support for both models of opinion formation with key differences across ideological groups. Attention to science news was associated with greater perceptions of harm and knowledge for conservatives, but only additional knowledge for liberals. Supporting the literacy model, greater knowledge was associated with more support for climate mitigation for liberals. In contrast, consistent with motivated reasoning, more knowledgeable conservatives were less supportive of mitigation policy. In addition, attention to political news had a negative association with perceived harm for conservatives but not for liberals.

Consent is Sexy: An evaluation of a campus mass media campaign to increase sexual communication • Nathan Silver, The Ohio State University; Shelly Hovick, The Ohio State University; Michelle Bangen, The Ohio State University • Increased national focus on campus sexual violence has intensified the need for applied interventions. This study employed a cross-sectional online survey to evaluate a mass-mediated campus sexual violence campaign using provocative messages and images to persuade students that consent is sexy. Results show those exposed to the campaign had more positive attitudes towards consent, greater consent-related perceived behavioral control (PBC) and decreased rape myth acceptance (p<.05). PBC was also associated with increased dyadic sexual communication.

Emotional Appeals and the Environment: A Content Analysis of Greenpeace China’s Weibo Posts and Audience Responses • Qihao Ji, Florida State University; Summer Harlow, Florida State University; Di Cui, Florida State University; Zihan Wang, Florida State University • Previous studies show emotional reactions to be a precursor to behavioral change. Thus, drawing on environmental psychology and framing scholarship, this content analysis of a year’s worth of Greenpeace China’s Weibo posts and user comments explores how a post’s topic and frame influenced users’ likes, reposts, and emotional reactions via the creation of a social media emotional reaction index. Consequence, conflict, and morality frames generated the strongest emotional reactions for posts about food and agriculture.

The Effects of Framing and Attribution on Individuals’ Responses to Depression Coverage • Yan Jin, University of Georgia; Yuan Zhang; YEN-I LEE, University of Georgia; Ernest Martin; Joshua Smith • Through a 2 (episodic vs. thematic framing) x 2 (individual vs. societal attribution) between-subjects experiment of 125 college students, this study provides insights that can inform future depression news coverage aimed at addressing barriers in communicating with young adults about the risk of depression and the importance of providing social support to depressed individuals: 1) Significant main effects of news framing and attribution were detected, with episodic framing and societal responsibility attribution evoking more sympathy among participants; 2) Regardless of the type of framing and attribution, participants’ sympathy toward depressed individuals were found to be significantly associated with health issue involvement and self-efficacy in detecting depression symptoms; and 3) Male participants reported higher expectations of the social support outcomes. These findings also call for further health news framing theories by integrating the key role supportive public sentiment and positive emotions play in mediating the effects of framing and attribution on cognitive and behavior outcomes.

The National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Survey Module and Support for Science, 2006-2012 • Besley John • The current study investigates how well the main science and technology-focused variables included in the General Social Survey (2006-2012) by the National Science Foundation do in predicting support for science funding. These questions form the primary basis of part of a biannual report to federal lawmakers and it is therefore important to consider whether the appropriate variables are included in the survey. The results suggest that, while there are some bivariate relationships between funding support and demographics, use of science communication channels, science knowledge, and attitudes about science and scientists, the overall predictive ability of the available variables appear to be relatively small. Suggestions for a potential path forward are made.

I am Willing to Pay More for Green Products: An Application of Extended Norm Activation Model • Ilwoo Ju, Saint Louis University; Jinhee Lee • With the ever-increasing attention to the environment, the current study examines the influences of consumers’ perceived environmental norms regarding major social agents (individuals, companies, and governments) on their willingness to pay more for green products. The analysis of the Simmons National Consumer Study data provides insight by revealing the path in which such effects are shaped through consumers’ general green purchase intention. Theoretical, managerial, and social implications are discussed.

The impact of message framing and evidence type in anti-binge drinking messages • Hannah Kang, University of Kansas; Moon Lee • We examined the impacts of message framing and evidence type in anti-binge drinking messages, based on Prospect Theory and Exemplification Theory. The experiment was a 2 (message framing: loss-framed message/gain-framed message) X 2 (evidence type: statistical/narrative) between-subjects factorial design with a control group. A total of 156 undergraduates participated. We found the participants in the loss-framed message condition exhibited a higher level of intention to avoid binge drinking in the near future than those who did not see any persuasive messages in the control group. We also found, regardless of evidence type, those who were exposed to the messages exhibited a higher level of intention to avoid binge drinking than those in the control group. In addition, the main effects of message framing and evidence type on attitude toward the message and the main effect of message framing on attitude toward drinking were found.

Cognitive Motivations and the Evaluation of Risk: The Role of Need for Affect and Cognition in How Individuals Act on Electronic Cigarettes • Se-Jin Kim, Colorado State University • This paper introduces a hybrid theoretical model of risk-based behavioral attitudes and intentions using the Theory of Reasoned Action, Dual Processing Risk Perception, the Heuristic Systematic Model, and Need for Affect and Need for Cognition. The model proposes that personality attributes, such as need for affect and need for cognition, information processing styles, and affective and cognitive risk perceptions are antecedents to attitudes and intentions. This study examines this model in the context of electronic cigarette consumption, and finds support for the overall model. Specifically, need for cognition, the need for thinking deeply, positively predicts systematic processing – a more effortful cognitive processing style, attitudes toward consuming electronic cigarettes, and behavioral intention toward consuming electronic cigarettes. Need for affect, the need for either adopting or avoiding strong emotions, negatively predicts heuristic processing – a more peripheral cognitive processing style, and subsequently social norms, attitudes about consuming and behavioral intentions toward electronic cigarettes.

Ties to the Local Community and South Carolinian Newspapers’ Coverage of Smoke-Free Policies • Sei-Hill Kim; James Thrasher, University of South Carolina; India Rose, ICF International – Public Health and Survey Research Division; Mary-Kathryn Craft, SC Tobacco-Free Collaborative Board of Directors; Hwalbin Kim, University of South Carolina • In this quantitative content analysis, we assess how smoke-free policies are presented in the South Carolinian newspapers. In particular, this study examines the extent to which newspapers’ coverage of smoke free-policies has represented the interests of their local communities. We compare newspapers in the communities whose economy relies heavily on the tourism and hospitality industry (The Post & Courier in Charleston and The Sun News in Myrtle Beach) and newspapers elsewhere (The State in Columbia and The Greenville News in Greenville), and see if there are meaningful differences between the newspapers in the way they portray smoke-free policies, particularly in terms of their selective uses of news sources and key arguments. Our findings indicated that South Carolinian newspapers portrayed smoke-free policies largely as a political issue. Many political reasons to either support or oppose the policies were found in almost two out of three articles. We also found that The Post & Courier and The Sun News were more likely than The State and The Greenville News to make arguments against smoke-free policies, and this was particularly so when they were talking about economic impacts of the policies. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail.

Does Stigma against Smokers Really Motivate Cessation? A Moderated Mediation Effect of Anti-smoking Campaign • Jinyoung Kim, Pennsylvania State University; Xiaoxia Cao, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; Eric Meczkowski • Anti-smoking campaigns frequently use stigmatizing messages to promote cessation. Qualitative researchers have raised concerns over the unintended consequences of broadcasting stigmatizing messages to low socioeconomic status populations. Our study seeks to empirically test this concern through an experiment that examines socioeconomic and emotional determinants of stigmatizing message effectiveness. Results indicate that stigmatizing messages are less effective for low SES populations and SES moderates the relationship between exposure to stigmatizing messages, shame, and cessation intention.

Segmenting Exergame Users Based on Perceptions on Playing Exergames Among College Students • Youjeong Kim, new york institute of technology; Hyang-Sook Kim, Towson University • To promote physical fitness by means of exergames and maintain adherence of exergame effects, it is imperative to understand when and why exergame users (dis)continue to play. Given two separate conceptualizations tied to exergames—as a type of video game or an exercise tool—a self-instructed online survey with 158 college students showed that non-regular exercisers perceived exergames as an exercise tool more strongly and showed more positive attitudes toward exergames as an exercise tool and intention to play than regular exercisers. No difference was found among any of the group specifications (regular vs. non-regular exercisers and exergame players vs. non-players) for the perception of exergames as a type of video game. However, the exergame player group showed a more positive attitude toward exergames as video games and greater intention to play than the non-player group. Implications for exergame business and health professionals were further discussed.

Who is Responsible for Climate Change? • Sei-Hill Kim; Jeong-Heon Chang, Korea University; Jea Chul Shim, Korea University; Hwalbin Kim, University of South Carolina • Analyzing data from a survey of South Koreans’ perceptions of climate change, this study examines whether the way people attribute responsibility can affect their perceived risks. We hypothesize that those who believe that the government or large corporations – as opposed to average citizens like themselves – are highly responsible for the negative consequences of climate change will perceive a greater risk because the risk is perceived to be beyond their own control and determined largely by another entity (i.e., the government or corporations). This study then examines the role of the media in shaping the audiences’ perceptions of who is responsible. More specifically, we investigate whether individuals’ use of news media for science information is associated with the extent to which they attribute responsibility for climate change. Attributing greater responsibility to the government was positively and significantly associated with perceptions of greater risks to self, to others, and to the next generation. Attributing responsibility to large corporations also had positive associations with perceived risks. Television news viewing was negatively and significantly associated with attributing responsibility to the government and to large corporations. On the contrary, uses of online bulletin boards and blogs were positively associated with blaming the government and corporations. Implications of the findings are discussed in detail.

Cultural Effects on Cancer Prevention Behaviors: Fatalistic Cancer Beliefs and Optimism Among East Asians • HyeKyung Kay Kim; May Lwin • Culture has been recognized as an important factor that influences health beliefs and health-related behaviors. This study examines culturally influenced beliefs about cancer risk and prevention, and their impact on the performance of four cancer prevention behaviors including regular exercise, avoid smoking, fruit and vegetable intake, and sunscreen use. To make cross-cultural comparisons, we used data from national surveys of European American (HINTS 4, Cycle3; N = 1,139) and East Asians in Singapore (N = 1,200). Compared to European Americans, East Asians were significantly less likely to engage in prevention behaviors, except avoiding smoking. East Asians appear to be more optimistic about their cancer risk and to hold stronger fatalistic beliefs about cancer prevention, which in turn partially explained cultural disparities in adherence to cancer prevention behaviors. Our findings underscore the need for developing culturally tailored interventions in communicating cancer causes and prevention. We discuss practical and theoretical implications of our findings.

Crowdfunding: Engaging the public in scientific research • Eun Jeong Koh, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Linda Pfeiffer, UW-Madison • Recent studies increasingly find that the medialization phenomenon is at work among scientists. We explore scientists’ medialization behaviors that attempt to increase public visibility in new media environments. Through content analysis of an online platform for crowdfunding, we observed medialization behaviors among the scientists who seek research funding through crowdfunding. Some of their strategies were positively associated with the amount of funding they received as pledges and the number of donors who supported their projects.

Healthy Concern for the Environment: How health framing can better engage audiences with news coverage of environmental issues. • Patrice Kohl • Social scientists suggest framing environmental stories to emphasize human health consequences could help build support for addressing environmental issues by eliciting attitudes and emotions favorable toward addressing environmental issues. Early empirical evidence supports this conclusion. This study contributes to this research with the finding that health framing can also increase reader interest in environmental stories. It also extends this body of research, which has so far focused on climate change, to an alternative environmental issue.

The Effects of Message Framing and Anthropomorphism on Empathy, Implicit and Explicit Green Attitudes • Sushma Kumble; Lee Ahern; Jose Aviles; Minhee Lee • Anthropomorphizing nature is common in many cultures–Earth is often and fondly referred to as ‘Mother Earth’ and nature as ‘Mother nature’. But does making nature more ‘human’ change perceptions and attitudes toward it? The current work examined the extent to which anthropomorphism and message framing help in formation of pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors by employing a 2×2 between subject factorial design. One novel aspect of the study was that it measures impacts on implicit, automatic green attitudes, as well as on explicit attitudes. Results indicated that while anthropomorphism did not have a significant main effect, gain-framed messages led to more positive green implicit and explicit attitude. Along with that, it was also seen that empathy mediated this relationship.

Window Dressing or Public Education? How Oil Companies’ Websites Address Public Concerns About Hydraulic Fracturing • Sun Young Lee, Texas Tech University; Hyo Jin Kim; Kristi Gilmore, Texas Tech University • We examined the petroleum industry’s communication efforts in regard to water issues surrounding the controversial process of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Using textual analysis, we examined the websites of the top 10 U.S. oil and gas companies to see whether and how the corporations addressed the issues that the public are concerned about. Results showed that all eight companies that have adopted fracking addressed water issues relating to fracking, but the way they presented the information was not friendly to the public. We discuss the implications of the findings and suggest directions for future study.

Communal Risk Information Sharing: Motivations Behind Voluntary Information Sharing of Late Blight Infection in U.S. Agricultural Communities • Wang Liao, Cornell University; Connie Yuan, Cornell University; Katherine McComas, Cornell University • The paper presents a study of a national sample of tomato and potato growers in the United States (N = 452). This study focused on motivations behind voluntary information sharing of late blight, a devastating communal risk for agricultural economics. We examined three categories of motivations, ranging from personal concerns for immediate, extrinsic payoffs (i.e., economic costs and spending time/effort), to concerns for long-term or intrinsic benefits (i.e., reciprocity and altruistic enjoyment), and to community-based concerns (i.e., shared responsibility and community cohesiveness). The trustworthiness of risk information receiver was also examined. We found growers were motivated to share or not share information of late blight infection in their own farms by (a) economic concerns for business loss, (b) cooperative concerns for reciprocation and information receiver’s trustworthiness, and (c) normative concerns derived from a sense of shared responsibility, reciprocity, and community cohesiveness. We argued that more attention should be paid to risk information sharing, especially for communal risks, in addition to risk information seeking and processing.

Frame and Seek? Do Media Frame Combinations of Celebrity Health Disclosures Effect Health Information Seeking? • Susan LoRusso, University of Minnesota; Weijia Shi, University of Minnesota • This framing effects experimental study tests whether news stories reporting on a celebrity public health disclosure using disparate media frame combinations impact online health information seeking behavior and participant’s queried search terms. Nearly half of all participants participated in online information seeking, but there were no differences between conditions. Further results show a large effect size between media frame conditions and participants’ queried search terms when seeking online information.

The Effectiveness of Anti-drug Public Service Announcements on Cognitive Processing and Behavioral Intention: A Systematic Review of Current Research • Chen Lou, Michigan State University • This systematic review examined anti-drug public service announcements (PSAs)’ effectiveness among target audience. Six databases (PsychInfo, Pubmed, EMBASE, Cochrane Library, Communication and Mass Media Complete, and Web of Science) and forward citation lists were used to locate peer-reviewed published journal articles in English through September 2014. Studies that used randomized controlled trials (RCT) to examine anti-drug PSAs persuasive effects or mediators/moderators of their effects were included. Fifteen studies were identified after two rounds of search. Included studies’ characteristics (such as, sample size, sample age, gender, intervention type, intensity of intervention, mediator/moderators), key measures, and main results were extracted. All of the included studies were appraised based on the risk of bias criteria. Only three studies claimed PSAs’ effectiveness compared to the control messages. Four studies provided evidence that some anti-drug PSAs presented in certain contexts may have deleterious effects on their target populations. There were no conclusive arguments made on the mediators/moderators’ (e.g., gender, ethnicity, prior drug use, sensation seeking, message sensation value) effects on PSAs’ effectiveness.

Moms and media: Exploring the effects of online communication on infant feeding practices • Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina; Brooke McKeever, University of South Carolina • Using a survey of mothers with young children (N = 455), this study applies Fishbein and Ajzen’s (2011) Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) to examine the relationship between online communication and infant feeding practices. Contrary to expectations, attitudes, perceived normative pressure, and perceived behavioral control did not fully mediate the relationship between time spent online and behavioral intentions. Our findings indicate a significant, direct, negative association between time online and breastfeeding intentions.

The silent majority: Childhood vaccinations and antecedents for communicative action • Brooke McKeever, University of South Carolina; Robert McKeever, University of South Carolina; Avery Holton, University of Utah; Jo-Yun Queenie Li • The topic of childhood vaccinations has received much media attention recently, prompting scholars to examine how the public has responded. This study examines why individuals may involve themselves in communication about vaccinations. Drawing on several communication theories and using a survey of mothers (N = 455) this study finds that while affective and cognitive involvement may help drive communicative action, individuals who personally support vaccinations may be less likely to voice their opinions. Implications are discussed.

The Mediating Role of Media Use in an Elementary School Health Intervention Program • Dylan McLemore, Univ of Alabama; Lindsey Conlin, The University of Southern Mississippi; Xueying Zhang; Bijie Bie; Kim Bissell, University of Alabama; Scott Parrott • Media use – television in particular – has long been considered a risk factor for obesity in children. This study considered whether children’s media use mediated the success of an elementary school obesity intervention program. The intervention significantly increased children’s nutritional knowledge. Existing media use had no effect on the intervention, nor did it correlate with BMI or pre-existing knowledge or attitudes about exercise and nutrition. Findings are discussed within the context of media effects theory and health intervention practice.

Disease outbreaks on Twitter: An analysis of tweets during the #Ebola and #measles crises • Jeanine Guidry, Virginia Commonwealth University; Shana Meganck; Marcus Messner, Virginia Commonwealth University; EunHae (Grace) Park, Virginia Commonwealth University; Kellie Carlyle, Virginia Commonwealth University; Osita Iroegbu, Virginia Commonwealth University; Jerome Niyirora, SUNY Polytechnic Institute • Recent Ebola and measles outbreaks have brought both diseases to the forefront of public debate, and social media is one of the main places people are turning to learn more about the diseases, find like-minded individuals, and express opinions. Yet little is known about these conversations, and what can be learned from them. The goal of this study was to analyze the public’s engagement on social media as the two disease outbreaks turned into online crises. This study analyzed 2,000 tweets – 1,000 Ebola-focused tweets and 1,000 measles-focused tweets – with each sample collected at the height of each disease outbreak. Tweets were analyzed using the Risk Perception Model and the Health Belief Model. The results indicate that while Ebola-focused tweets elicited significantly more engagement than measles-focused tweets, both conversations displayed a high level of perceived severity of the diseases as well as a significant presence of risk perception variables. While Ebola tweets more often refer to identifiable victims, measles tweets, and especially those that already mention a fear of the MMR vaccine, more often speak of concern and fear and of peceived deception by medical authorities.

Physician Use and Policy Awareness of Open Access to Research and Their Views on Journalists’ Reporting of Research • Laura Moorhead, Stanford University • Through funding agency and publisher policies, an increasing proportion of the health sciences literature is being made open access. Such access raises questions about the awareness and utilization of this literature by physicians, as well as the role journalists may play in physicians’ need of journal articles. A sample of physicians (N=336) was provided with access to the research for one year; a subset of physicians (n=38) was interviewed about research use and perceived impact of journalists in creating a need for immediate access to embargoed research. The physicians in this study reported mixed feelings about the work of journalists. On one hand, they relied on journalists for publicly shared information, as they often had access to press releases from academic publishers. On the other hand, physicians were regularly frustrated by what they perceived as journalists’ inadequate or flawed coverage of health and medical matters through the misreporting of research. An opportunity exists for a partnership between physicians and journalists, particularly on the local level. Additionally, physicians and journalists face a similar need for immediate access to research as a way to better inform the public about issues of health care.

College Students’ Beverage Consumption Behaviors and the Path to Obesity • Cynthia Morton, University of Floridq; Naa Amponsah Dodoo, University of Florida • Research has established that high soft drink consumption, including carbonated beverages, fruit juices, and other sugar-based beverages are correlated with increased risk of obesity. College students are an urgent priority to curbing the path toward obesity since research suggests the college stage of life is where habits are solidified and weight gain occurs most quickly. The purpose of this research is to build on previous studies that have also explored college students’ food consumption habits by providing a closer examination of college students’ knowledge, beliefs, and behaviors. Survey research examined three the relationship between knowledge, beliefs, and beverage consumption behaviors. The findings and implications for health communication practitioners present an opportunity to identify message directions that speak to the college student segment in terms important to them.

No Pain, Lotta Gain: Risk-benefit information on cosmetic surgeons’ websites • SangHee Park, Bowling Green State University; Sung-Yeon Park, School of Media and Communication, Bowling Green State University • This study analyzed the website homepages of 250 cosmetic surgeons to investigate how cosmetic surgeons’ websites provide information about the risks and benefits of cosmetic surgery. This study found that although cosmetic surgeons’ website homages emphasized psychological benefits of having the cosmetic surgery, they minimized psychological and physical risks of the surgery. They also addresses time and cost to increase perceived control over cosmetic surgery. Implications of these findings are discussed.

What Health Risk?   Constructions of Definitional Power and Complex Science in Policy News • Linda Pfeiffer, UW-Madison • This research explores whether news constructions of complex science meet the critical information needs of the public when powerful actors work vigorously to define the dominant policy narrative. A mixed-methods frame analysis reveals that NGOs appear to be emergent as key health communicators. NGOs and citizen journalists prioritize issues of health, sustainability, and procedural justice. Comparatively, traditional media constructions predominantly reflect diversionary economic and deregulatory frames, with public-relations science confusion counter-framing overshadowing health risk narratives.

Gender and Race Representations of Scientists in Highlights for Children: A Content Analysis • Kathy Previs, Eastern Kentucky University • Researchers have found that girls lose interest in science by age nine (Steinke 2005; Rosser and Potter 1990) and have attributed this finding to misrepresentations of female scientists in the media (McIntosh 2014). While television, film, the Internet and textbooks have been analyzed for such representations, this study examines the extent to which females and minorities are portrayed over time in areas of science in a popular children’s magazine, Highlights for Children. The results indicate that, while males and whites have outnumbered females and minorities in depictions of science, Highlights has consistently exceeded the number of females and minorities actually employed in scientific fields.

The Effectiveness of Entertainment Education in Obesity Prevention • Weina Ran • The purpose of the study is to investigate the effectiveness of entertainment education (EE) and explicate its underlying persuasive mechanisms. Data from a longitudinal experiment show that compared to an explicit persuasive appeal, EE is more effective in preventing junk food consumption. Results also show that identification with media characters predicts less junk food consumption indirectly through self-efficacy. Implications are discussed for EE-oriented health interventions.

Message Frames on How Individuals Contract HIV and How Individuals Live with HIV in Combination Have Different Impacts on HIV Stigma • Chunbo Ren, Central Michigan University; Ming Lei, Cameron University • HIV stigma has become one of the most pressing concerns in global HIV response, and media are a key factor in HIV stigmatization. Given the salience of media framing of how individuals contract HIV and the framing of how individuals live with HIV, the current study explored the effects of the two media frames in tandem on HIV stigma to help inform the practice of reducing stigma toward people living with HIV (PLHIV). The study was a two (pretest-posttest) by two (HIV onset controllability framing) by two (living with HIV framing) mixed model experiment with a control group. The results of the current study suggest that HIV onset controllability remains a significant factor in HIV stigma. Media framing on how individuals live with HIV can influence people’s stigmatizing attitudes toward PLHIV, intentions of social distancing from PLHIV, and intentions to support coercive measures against PLHIV. The influence, however, must be interpreted with media framing on the onset controllability of HIV. Positive portrayals of living with HIV can reduce people’s intentions of social distancing from PLHIV but only when the positive portrayals are in combination with portrayals that PLHIV have contracted HIV due to less controllable behaviors. When the negative portrayals of living with HIV are combined with the portrayals that PLHIV have contracted HIV via controllable behaviors, the results can be drastic, as they increase people’s intentions to support coercive measures against PLHIV.

Vaccine-hesitant Justifications: From Narrative Transportation to the Conflation of Expertise • Nathan Rodriguez, University of Kansas • Vaccine-preventable diseases have re-emerged as more individuals have strayed from the recommended inoculation schedule. Previous work on vaccine hesitancy is generally limited to content analyses. Using grounded theory, this project examines vaccine debates on a prominent discussion board over a period of five years. Individuals tended to justify opposition or hesitancy toward vaccines through personal experience and/or research, and narrative transportation and the conflation of expertise help describe the most prominent characteristics of such discourse.

Framing the problem of childhood obesity in White House press releases: 2010 to 2014 • Jennifer Schwartz • This article outlines how the White House framed childhood obesity as a problem in White House press releases and official documents after First Lady Michelle Obama launched Feb. 9, 2010, the Let’s Move campaign, which was a federal campaign to define childhood obesity as a public health problem and offer solutions for reducing childhood obesity. This study found a decrease in attention to childhood obesity over time and an emphasis on defining childhood obesity as a problem and suggesting system-level solutions, such as changes to the food served in schools and improving the information environment in communities.

Seeking Treatment, Helping Others: Thematic Differences in Media Narratives between Traditional and New Media Content • Sarah Smith-Frigerio, University of Missouri; Cynthia Frisby, University of Missouri; Joseph Moore, University of Missouri; Abigail Gray; Miranda Craig, University of Missouri • One in five Americans deal with mental illness (NIMH, 2010), yet misrepresentation and stigma prevail in traditional media narratives. While scholars have called for changes in media narratives concerning mental illness, traditional media have been slow to adapt, and research of narratives in new media is limited. This study demonstrates thematic differences in narratives of mental illness in new media, and discusses how future research may further understanding about the construction of mental illness narratives.

Escapism in Exergames: Presence, enjoyment, and mood experience in predicting children’s attitudes towards Exergames • Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University; Jeremy Sng, Nanyang Technological University; Andrew Z. H. Yee; Woan Shin Tan; Ai Sian Ng; Victor Y. C. Yen; May Lwin • Obesity is a problem faced by countries all over the world today. Unhealthy eating habits and sedentary lifestyles have contributed to the growth in obesity among children in particular. Exergaming has been discussed as a possible way to encourage children to engage in physical activity. In this paper, we report on a survey which explores presence as a mechanism through which exergames may be associated with positive mood experiences and game enjoyment. The results (n = 345) revealed that presence was positively associated with mood experience and game enjoyment, game enjoyment and mood experience were positively correlated with attitudes towards exergaming, and attitudes towards exergaming were positively correlated with preference for future gameplay. In addition, mood experience was found to be a partial mediator of the relationship between presence and game enjoyment. Conclusions regarding the impact of exergames on adolescents, and practical implications for digital health interventions and exergame design are discussed.

Information and engagement: How scientific organizations are using social media in science public relations • Leona Yi-Fan Su; Dietram Scheufele; Dominique Brossard; Michael A. Xenos • This study examines the public relations practice of 250 scientific organizations through looking into their social media uses between 2010 and 2014. We found that they have increased the use of Twitter but decreased the use of Facebook. In particular, a majority of the messages comprises public information was shared in a one-way manner. A closer examination reveals that 92% of the discussions originated from the scientific organizations, suggesting a low level of public engagement.

Revisiting environmental citizenship: The role of information capital and media use • Bruno Takahashi, Michigan State University School of Journalism; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University; Anthony Van Witsen, Michigan State University; Ran Duan, Michigan State University • We propose, from an across-national perspective, a model of environmental citizenship that includes predictors at the individual and contextual levels. The model is based on multiple theoretical considerations from environmental sociology, media studies and economics. The study found that at the individual level, media use, environmental concern, and post-materialism positively predict environmental citizenship. However, the data also allowed us to test whether the effects of these variables vary depending on social and environmental contexts.

Aware, yet ignorant: The influences of funding and conflicts of interests in research among early career researchers • Meghnaa Tallapragada, Cornell University; Gina Eosco, Eastern Research Group; Katherine McComas, Cornell University • This study investigates the level of awareness about funding influences and potential conflicts of interests (COI) in research among early career researchers. The sample for this study included early career researchers who used one or more of the 14 U.S. laboratories associated with the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network. Results indicate that while early career researchers are aware of potential funding and COI influences, they remain ignorant on their role in addressing or managing these issues.

Toward a nuanced typology of media discourse of climate change, impact, and adaptation: An analysis of West African online news and social media • Jiun-Yi (Jenny) Tsai, Arizona State University • This study develops a nuanced typology to investigate how online news and social media (twitter) in West Africa frame climate change as a collective action problem, its impacts, and adaption efforts. Specifically, we distinguish four classes of framing discourse – cause, threat, solution and motivation. Content analysis of 1,344 English news articles shows dominance of threat frame and solution frame. Threats of climate change to food security, human health conditions, and environmental systems are prevalent. Within the solution frame, discourse largely emphasizes creation and implementation of policy and programs proposed by international governments or NGOs to tackle climate challenge, build local farmers’ capacity, and thereby enhance resilience. In stark contrast to discourse in the West, few articles debate its causes, focusing more on blaming human activity than on scientific uncertainty. Motivational frames are very uncommon. Theoretical contribution and implication are discussed.

The Entanglement of Sex, Culture, and Media in Genderizing Disease • Irene van Driel; Jessica Myrick, Indiana University; Rachelle Pavelko, Indiana University; Maria Grabe; Paul Hendriks Vettehen; Mariska Kleemans; Gabi Schaap • This cross-national survey tested how biological sex, culture, and media factors cultivate gender-based susceptibility to diseases. Data were collected from 1,299 Millennials in two countries (US and the Netherlands), shown to differ in gender role socialization. Sex, national and individual gender role perceptions, and media use variables were entered into hierarchical regression models to predict genderization of 48 diseases. Results indicate that aside from sex and culture, medical media contribute to genderization of diseases.

How to Promote Green Social Capital?: Investigating Communication Influences on Environmental Issue Participation • Matthew S. VanDyke, Texas Tech University; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University • The study proposes issue-specific measures of participation, which have been lacking from previous social capital scholarship. It examines how reliance on various communication channels influences environmental issue participation. Findings from an Internet survey suggest that perceived importance of environmental issues, reliance on print media, websites, and weblogs positively predict environmental civic and political participation. Reliance on social networking sites predicts civic but not political participation.

A Missed Opportunity?: NOAA’s Use of Social Media to Communicate Climate Science • Nicole Lee, Texas Tech University; Matthew S. VanDyke, Texas Tech University; R. Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University • The current study examined how the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) utilizes social media to engage publics. Results suggest NOAA doesn’t fully utilize the dialogic potential of social media and seems to be missing an opportunity to enhance science literacy and trust in science regarding climate change specifically. This study informs how public relations theory may complement science communication theory and practice as deficit model-thinking transitions to contemporary approaches for public engagement with science.

The porn effect (?): Links between college men’s exposure to sexually explicit online materials and risky sexual health behaviors & attitudes • Ashley McLain; Kim Walsh-Childers, residential • A sample of 85 undergraduate males completed an online survey to determine if their use of sexually explicit Internet material (SEIM) was associated with sexual health behaviors and attitudes toward pornography and condom use. The study, based on Social Cognitive Theory, investigated whether frequency of exposure to SEIM was associated with more negative attitudes toward condom use, decreased condom use, less partner communication about sex and greater likelihood of engaging in sexual risk behaviors. SEIM exposure was a statistically significant predictor of risky sexual health behaviors for men of all racial groups and of condom use among men who listed their race as other. SEIM was not a predictor of partner communication. For black males, a positive attitude toward pornography was a predictor of less positive condom use attitudes. Post-hoc analyses revealed that, controlling for race, sexual risk behavior increased as positive attitudes toward pornography increased. Further research is needed to determine if the associations exist among other populations and to further investigate the role that race and sensation seeking may have on these associations.

Health narratives effectiveness: Examining the moderating role of persuasive intention • Weirui Wang, Florida International University; Fuyuan Shen • Prior research has indicated that narratives are more effective than non-narrative messages. One of the reasons is that narratives’ intention to persuade is often not explicit, and as a result, stories are less likely to be disputed. The goal of the present research is to examine the moderating role of persuasive intention in narrative persuasion. To do so, a 2 (Message format: narrative vs. non-narrative message) X 2 (Persuasive intention: intention vs. no intention) experiment with a factorial design was conducted among a total of 205 participants on the effects of health narrative messages. Results indicated that persuasive intention undermined the effects of narratives on persuasion through reducing believability and increasing reactance. Both believability and reactance were found to partially mediate the effects of narrative messages on attitudes and behavioral intention.

Motivated Processing of Fear Appeal Messages in Obesity Prevention Videos • Tianjiao Wang, Washington State University; Rachel Bailey, Washington State University • This study examined young adults’ physiological and cognitive responses to fear appeal obesity prevention messages that vary in emotional valence and intensity. Results suggested that valence of these messages impacted individuals’ attention and memory as a function of intensity. Coactive high intensity messages received the most attention, though visual recognition suggests these messages were more difficult to encode.

Zombie Fiction as Narrative Persuasion: Comparing Narrative Engagement in Text-Only and Visual Entertainment Education • Amanda J. Weed, Ohio University • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched a multimedia awareness campaign in 2011 to promote emergency preparedness to young audiences. At the heart of the campaign was Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, an example of narrative persuasion implemented as a comic book. The core persuasive message of the campaign was preparation for a zombie apocalypse through development of a personal emergency plan and creation of an emergency preparedness kit. As a form of narrative persuasion, comic books possibly go a step further than text-only stories by providing rich storytelling combined with vivid visual images. The purpose of this research was to examine the effect of presentation mode (text-only or comic book) on key outcomes of narrative persuasion and engagement including: a) strength of belief for the persuasive messages embedded in Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, b) participant’s perceived relevance of the story, c) character identification and experience taking, and d) counter-arguments to the persuasive messages.

Communicating to Young Chinese about HPV Vaccination: Examining the Impact of Message Framing and Temporal Distance • Nainan Wen; Fuyuan Shen • This research investigated the influence of message framing (gain or loss) and temporal distance (present or future) on the intention of HPV vaccination. A total of 156 Chinese undergraduates participated in a controlled experiment in Macau, a Special Administrative Region of China. Results showed that message framing and temporal distance interacted to impact the intention of HPV vaccination. Particularly, among participants who had no prior knowledge of HPV vaccine, the gain-present and loss-future framed messages resulted in more positive attitudes toward the message, higher degree of perceived severity of HPV infection, and more likelihood to get HPV vaccination. Implications of the findings were discussed.

Up in vapor: Exploring the health messages of e-cigarette advertisements • Erin Willis, University of Memphis; Matthew Haught, University of Memphis; David Morris II, University of Memphis • Electronic cigarettes have gained popularity in the United States, and marketers are using advertising to recruit new users to their products. Despite outright bans on traditional cigarette advertisements, electronic cigarettes have no specific regulations. This study uses framing theory to explore the themes in e-cigarette advertisements. Practical implications are discussed for both public health practitioners and health communicators.

The case of Ebola: Risk information communicated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention using Twitter • Erin Willis, University of Memphis; Rosie Jahng, Hope College • The outbreak of Ebola in West Africa last year caused the U.S. to be on high alert. Tweets disseminated by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during this time are examined with a focus on health literacy and health frames used to inform publics about the spread of Ebola. While the CDC has social media guidelines specifically for Twitter, the current research discusses practical implications when communicating risk information about a public health issue.

Climate Change in the Changing Climate of News Media: How Newspapers and Blogs Portray Climate Change in the United States • Lei Xie, Fairfield University • This study examines how major U.S. newspapers and grass-root blogs portrayed climate change by analyzing a combination of issue-independent and issue-specific frames: skepticism toward climate change, micro-issue salience, audience-based frames, and attribution of responsibility. Results from 372 stories show contrasting cross-media representation in terms of skepticism and other frames that inform public perception of the issue. Moreover, they provide important clues to understanding the discrepancy between the less skeptical news media and the indifferent American public and offer insights into the intricate relationship between mainstream media and grass-root blogs. Theoretical and methodological implications of this study call for a more systematic approach to frame analysis of climate change communication.

Mapping Science Communication Scholarship in China: Content Analysis on Breadth, Depth and Agenda of Published Research • Linjia Xu; Biaowen Huang; YUANYUAN DONG • This study presents data from a content analysis of published research with the keyword science communication (科学传播) in title or in key words, including academic paper published on journals and dissertations from the database China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI). 572 articles were coded using categories that identified science topics, theory, authorship and methods used in each study to examine the breadth and depth that Science Communication has achieved since its inception in China. We could see the history and scope of science communication, and juxtapose this historical overview in the backdrop of the current scholarship that appears. The depth and width of Chinese Science Communication researches are developing rapidly in the past 30 years. The focus of research topics are changing from the concepts and theories to sources and contents of communication. HPS (History and Philosophy of Science) scholars are the originator and dominance of this field rather than communication scholars. We also identified some notable trends and issues in research for the future development.

Chipping away the Stigma toward People Living with HIV: New Insights from Matching Frames of HIV Onset Controllability with Attitudinal Ambivalence • Changmin Yan, West Virginia University; Chunbo Ren, Central Michigan University • In a pre-post 2 (controllability framing: high or low) by 2 (attitudinal ambivalence: high or low) experimental design, this study investigated if stigma toward people living with HIV (PLHIV) can be reduced by matching HIV onset controllability framed stories with people’s levels of attitudinal ambivalence toward PLHIV. First, a controllability framing main effect was reported in a just-world attribution bias such that individuals in the low HIV onset controllability framing condition expressed less stigma toward PLHIV than those in the high HIV onset controllability condition. Second, an attitudinal ambivalence main effect was also observed such that people with a high level of ambivalence toward PLHIV reported less stigma toward PLHIV than the low-ambivalence individuals. Third, results also supported controllability framing by attitudinal ambivalence interaction effects. Specifically, a significant reduction in stigma toward PLHIV was recorded among people with a high level of ambivalence toward PLHIV when they read high HIV onset controllability-framed stories. Moreover, among the two high HIV onset controllability framing conditions, high-ambivalence individuals reported a significantly smaller increase of stigma than their low-ambivalence counterparts. In sum, the current study has demonstrated that stigma toward PLHIV could be temporarily reduced by matching low onset controllability stories with individuals who feel highly ambivalent toward PLHIV and that even the hard-to-change bias toward high onset controllability PLHIV can be situationally softened among the high-ambivalence individuals.

The Framing of GMOs in China’s Online Media After Golden Rice Scandal • Jinjie Yang • This study examines the framing of GMOs in Chinese news reports after the golden rice scandal using quantitative and qualitative approaches. Ninety news reports selected from related news articles published in 2013 showed five major frames: GMOs as a market issue, as a mature and reliable technology, as scientific progress, as technology that should be regulated, and as a disastrous invention. Analysis of the social factors behind each frame revealed gaps that pose challenges to risk communication.

Altruism during Ebola: Risk perception, issue salience, cultural cognition, and information processing • Zheng Yang, University at Buffalo • This study investigates how risk perception, issue salience, cultural cognition, and dual-process information processing influence individuals’ altruistic behavioral intentions. Data were collected through a nationally representative sample of 1,046 U.S. adults, who were randomly assigned to two experimental conditions that triggered different degrees of risk perception related to the Ebola outbreak. Results indicate that only in the high-risk condition, issue salience and deliberate processing increased individuals’ intentions to support families and friends to go to West Africa as Ebola responders. However, cultural cognition worldview and negative emotions such as sadness and anger were significantly related to altruistic behavioral intentions regardless of the experimental conditions. These findings suggest that affective responses diverge from cognitive processes in influencing risk-related decisions. Practically, as the U.S. continues to send experts to the affected countries in West Africa, results from this study suggest meaningful pathways to improve risk communication intended to encourage more altruistic and pro-social behaviors.

Motives and Underlying Desires of Hookup Apps Use and Risky Sexual Behaviors among Young Men who have Sex with Men in Hong Kong • Tien Ee Dominic Yeo, Department of Communication Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University; Yu Leung Ng, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University • This study examines the role of motivation in the association between gay hookup apps use and risky sexual behaviors among young men who have sex with men (YMSM) in Hong Kong. Results indicate five motives for using gay hookup apps: surveillance, relationship, diversion, sex, and identity. Sexual sensation seeking moderated the relationship between sex motive and sexual encounters via apps. Romantic motivations moderated the relationship between surveillance motive and sexual encounters via apps.

Predicting Changes in Giving and Receiving Emotional Support within a Smartphone-Based Alcoholism Support Group • Woohyun Yoo, Dongguk University; Ming-Yuan Chih; Dhavan Shah; David Gustafson • This study explores how giving and receiving emotional support in a smartphone-based alcoholism support group change over time, and what factors predict the changing patterns. Data were collected as part of a randomized clinical trial of testing a smartphone-based relapse prevention system for people with alcohol use disorder. Giving and receiving emotional support were assessed by tracking and coding the 2,746 messages that 153 patients either wrote or read in a smartphone-based alcoholism support group during the 12-month study period. The final data used in the analysis were created by merging (1) computer-aided content analysis of emotional support messages, (2) action log data analysis of group usage, and (3) multiple waves of survey data. Findings suggest that giving and receiving emotional support in a smartphone-based alcoholism support group tend to decline over time. In addition, the initial value and growth rate of giving and receiving emotional support vary depending on the group participants’ characteristics. These features should be considered in building strategies for the design and implementation of smartphone-based support groups for people with alcohol use disorder.

Using Humor to Increase Persuasion of Shameful Health Issue Advertising: Testing the Effects of Individual’s Health Worry Levels • Hye Jin Yoon • Some health issues are strongly associated with shame, prompting individuals to withdraw from and avoid the issue. Using humor to communicate such issues can help buffer negative emotions and help reframe negative assessments. In testing the humor effects in shameful health issue advertising, an audience factor, a person’s general health worry level, is considered as a potential moderating variable. Three experiments found humor to benefit low health worry individuals in low shame conditions and high health worry individuals in high shame conditions. Theoretical and practical implications are given.

Social Representation of Cyberbullying and Adolescent Suicide: A Mixed-Method Analysis of News Stories • Rachel Young; Roma Subramanian; Stephanie Miles; Amanda Hinnant, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Julie Andsager, University of Tennessee • Cyberbullying has provoked public concern after well-publicized suicides of adolescents. This mixed-methods study investigates the social representation of these suicides. A content analysis of 189 U.S. newspaper articles found that nearly all articles suggest that bullying led to suicide. Few adhere to guidelines shown to protect against behavioral contagion. Thematic analysis found that individual suicides were used as cautionary tales to prompt attention to cyberbullying.

Facts, Not Fear: Negotiating Uncertainty on Social Media During the 2014 Ebola Crisis • Rachel Young; Melissa Tully, University of Iowa; Kajsa Dalrymple, University of Iowa • The recent Ebola outbreak posed communication challenges for the CDC. In a thematic analysis of more than 1,000 tweets as well as engagement with the public in Twitter chats, we found that the CDC emphasized organizational competence, extant protocol, and facts about transmission to manage public fear. An emphasis on certainty in a situation defined by uncertainty left the CDC vulnerable to charges of unpreparedness or obfuscation. Implications for future research are discussed.

Attitudes toward Antismoking Public Service Announcements: • Jay Hyunjae Yu; Changhyun Han, Sogang University • The smoking rate of younger adults (aged 18–24 years) has not changed much since 1997, even though much effort has been made by a range of organizations to encourage this group either to not initiate or to quit smoking. Among such efforts, public service announcements have been one of the major tools used to accomplish this goal. This experimental study (3 × 3 design) investigated the possible effects of using different types of endorsers (celebrities, professionals, peer groups) and different message framing styles (gain framing, loss framing, and neutral) to create better content for antismoking public service announcements. The results showed that there were not only main effects of different message framing styles, but also interaction effects of different endorsers and different message framing styles. More specifically, an antismoking public service announcement using celebrities and positively framed messages (i.e., talking about the positive consequences of quitting smoking) caused participants to show a better attitude toward the advertisement. The implications are provided for communication researchers and practitioners responsible for planning specific content for antismoking public service announcements.

The Effects of Self-Efficacy and Message Framing on Flu Vaccination Message Persuasiveness among College Students • Xuan Zhu; Jiyoon Lee; Lauren Duffy • In the present study, the authors investigated the potential interaction between self-efficacy and gain and loss message framing on the effectiveness of flu vaccination health messages in the college setting. Results from an experiment with 149 college student subjects showed that individuals with high self-efficacy exhibited greater intention to receive flu vaccination regardless of framing condition. In addition, an interaction between self-efficacy and perceived threat was evident on attitude. Implications for health intervention were discussed.

The Role of Efficacy Appraisal and Emotions on the Health Message Framing Effects • Xuan Zhu; Heewon Im, University of Minnesota • This study investigated the moderating role of efficacy appraisal (i.e., self-efficacy and response efficacy) on the message framing effects. Emotions were proposed to mediate message framing effects and the interaction between message framing and efficacy appraisal. Results from an experiment showed that efficacy appraisal moderated the message framing effects on attitude toward performing disease prevention behaviors. Happy and anger mediated message framing effects, but no supporting evidence was found for the mediated moderation effects.

2015 Abstracts

Advertising 2015 Abstracts

Research Papers
On Facebook, sex does not sell! Effects of sex appeal and model gender on effectiveness of Facebook ads for healthy and unhealthy food products • Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University; Mengyan Ma, Michigan State University; Wan Wang, Michigan State University • The current study uses a 2 (sex appeal) x 2 (model gender) x 2 (product healthfulness) x 3 (message repetition) mixed factorial design to investigate the effects of sex appeal and model gender on attitudes toward the ads, attitudes toward the brand, viral behavioral intentions, and purchase intentions for healthy and unhealthy food products. Participants (N = 316) were randomly assigned to see Facebook ads for healthy and unhealthy products featuring male or female models with low or high sex appeal. Findings showed that ads and brands in ads with low sex appeal were rated more favorably than those with high sex appeal. Results also showed that the effects of two-way interaction between sex appeal and model gender on attitudes toward the ad and the brand were significant. Additionally, the study used Hayes (2013) PROCESS to test for a series of serial mediation models with regard to the effect of sex appeal on purchase intention through the serial ordering of attitudes toward the ad, attitude toward the brand, and viral behavioral intentions. Findings are discussed in relation to health-related policy, advertising effectiveness models, and persuasion models.

Opening the Advertising Crayon Box: Applying Kobayashi’s Color Theory to Advertising Effectiveness • Nasser Almutairi, Michigan State University; Carie Cunningham, Michigan State University; Kirstyn Shiner, Michigan State University; Saleem Alhabash, Michigan State University • While advertising creativity remains largely a subjective practice of art directors and graphic designers, the current study systematically tested the effectiveness of different color combinations as they pertain to ad and brand evaluations, as well as online and offline behavioral intentions. Using a 13 (color combinations) x 3 (message repetition) mixed factorial design, participants (N = 322) were exposed to three ads that varied in the color combinations used in the ad design in accordance with Kobayashi’s (1990) color theory. Findings showed that the effect of color combinations was significant only for attitudes toward the ads and brands, yet did not affect viral behavioral intentions and purchase intentions. The study’s findings are discussed within the context of extending traditional advertising models to bring about a systematic understanding of the psychological effects of color in relation to attitude and behavior change.

Children’s Understanding of Social Media Advergames • Soontae An, Ewha Womans University • This study examined children’s understanding of social media advergames and the effects of cognitive and attitudinal advertising literacy on children’s susceptibility to advertising. Results of a survey of 556 children aged 7 to 11 showed that half of the children could correctly identify the social media advergame as a type of advertising, while the other half could not. Comparisons revealed that older students were more capable of identifying advertising. Regression results showed that grade, gender, and Internet usage were factors positively associated with children’s intention of visiting the site featured in the advergame. Students that were of a lower grade, female, or had high Internet usage were more likely to want to visit the store advertised. After controlling for demographics and media usage, children’s cognitive and attitudinal advertising literacy and the interaction term were all statistically significant. The significant interaction effect demonstrated that those who were able to identify advertising and possessed positive views towards ads showed the highest inclination of visiting the featured site, while those who identified advertising with negative views toward ads displayed the lowest intention. The moderating role of attitudinal literacy indicates the importance of combining both cognitive and attitudinal advertising literacy.

Effects of Various Cause-Related Marketing (CRM) Campaign Types on Consumers’ Visual Attention, Perceptions, and Purchase Intentions • Mikyeung Bae, Michigan State University; Patricia Huddleston, Michigan State University • The goal of this study was to identify whether types of cause-related marketing (CRM) campaign appeal (functional/ emotional/ a combination of the two) influenced consumer visual attention and perceptions of the campaign, thus leading to purchase intention. Guided by the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), this study investigated which components of CRM campaign appeals contributed most to effectiveness in capturing consumers’ visual attention under high versus low involvement with a social cause. The results showed that participants who were more involved with social causes paid more attention to the body text that provided an overview of the company’s socially responsible behavior as demonstrated through total visit duration (TVD). The results of the partial least squares structural modeling analysis revealed that perceived corporate credibility played an important role in influencing attitude toward a CRM campaign regardless of the type of appeal. The findings demonstrated here allow marketers to evaluate which type of appeal is more appropriate for a given CRM campaign and product.

The Effect of Message Valence on Recall and Recognition of Prescription Drug Ad Information • Jennifer Ball, University of Minnesota; Taemin Kim, University of Minnesota • Consumer-directed prescription drug ads (DTCA) are required to present drug benefits and risks in a balanced manner. There is concern, though, that benefits are often conveyed through emotional appeals that interfere with comprehension of risk information in the message. However, there remains a lack of empirical work investigating this claim. Applying limited capacity theory, results of an experiment indicated recall and recognition of ad information was best for an ad with a neutral tone and weakest for a negative tone while the positive tone results differed between recognition and recall.

Advertising LGBT-themed films to mainstream and niche audiences: variations in portrayal of intimacy and stereotypes • Joseph Cabosky, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Research of LGBT-content in advertisements remains limited. While most products are not inherently queer in nature, this content analysis analyzed advertisements for LGBT-themed films to explore whether there was variation in the portrayal of LGBT-content in ads depending on the distribution width of the product and its date of release. Findings indicated that ad content varied greatly based on the width of release but not when measuring time, countering findings from other media forms.

Adolescents’ responses to food and beverage advertising in China • Kara Chan, Hong Kong Baptist University; Tommy Tse, University of Hong Kong; Daisy Tam, Hong Kong Baptist University; Anqi Huang, Hong Kong Baptist University • Both global and local food marketers have been marketing actively with children and youths in China. Adolescents are important targets for healthy eating as they are being more independent in making food decisions. Social marketers and health educators need to learn from food marketers effective strategies that can communicate creatively with this target segment. Four focus-group interviews were conducted with twenty-four grade 7 students aged 12 to 13 in Changsha, a second-tier city in China. Participants were asked to report their favorite food and beverage commercials, and explain why they liked the advertisements. Altogether 21 commercials were reported as favorite commercials. Results indicated that entertainment value, presenting food as tasty, adopting celebrities as endorsers, memorable jingles/slogans, as well as aesthetically pleasing were main attributes of the advertisements that won the participants’ hearts. Comparison of the results with attributes of likable commercials among Hong Kong adolescents was made.

Taste and Nutrition: The Uses and Effectiveness of Different Advertising Claims in Women’s Magazine Food Advertisements • Yang Feng, The University of Virginia’s College at Wise; Jiwoo Park, Northwood University • A multi-method study was conducted to examine the use of different advertising claims in current food advertising and then determine the effectiveness of different advertising claims on females’ evaluative judgments of food advertisement. Content analysis results of 678 women’s magazine food ads indicated a substantial use of taste and nutrient content claims paired with specific nutrition appeals. Functional food ads appeared to adopt nutrition appeals or a combined use of nutrition appeals and taste claims, whereas hedonic food ads tended to use taste claims without nutrition appeals. Nevertheless, these current practices of food advertising were called into question by the results of two experiments and one focus group, which showed the combined use of nutrition appeals and taste claims was the most effective strategy for both hedonic and functional foods. However, for hedonic foods, each single nutrition appeal should neither be extremely incongruent to the nature of hedonic food product nor extremely contradictory to the taste claims in the same ad.

A Content Analysis of Green Advertising: What Has Changed in Twenty Years • Sigal Segev, Florida International University; Juliana Fernandes, University of Miami; Cheng Hong, University of Miami • This paper reassesses the changes in green advertising since the first content analysis on the topic was conducted. A total of 433 unique ads from 18 magazines published in 2009 and 2010 was employed. Results show that greenwashing is still prevalent 20 years later compared to Carlson et al.’s (1993) study. However, the change lies on the type of claims: product-oriented claims were more misleading while image-enhancing claims were deemed more acceptable, opposite to previous findings.

Still funny? The effect of humor in ethically violating advertising • Kati Foerster, U of Vienna; Cornelia Brantner, U of Vienna • This study aims to better understand the masking effect of humor in advertising. The paper focuses on the question: Are ethically violating advertisements perceived as less unethically by advertising councilors if they contain humor? Our results indicate that humor and decision are only spuriously associated and that the masking effect disappears when depicted sexism is included. Moreover, gender affects the decisions, but does not moderate the effects of humor and sexism.

Factors Influencing Intention to Use Location-Based Mobile Advertising among Young Mobile User Segments • Jun Heo, Louisiana State University; Chen-Wei Chang, University of Southern Mississippi • The purpose of this study is twofold: 1) to examine determinants of intention to use location-based advertising (LBA) and 2) to explore possible mobile user segments among college students. The results suggest that the determinants may differently influence two mobile user segments: innovative believers and conventional skeptics and that marketers need to approach them differently in order to increase the opt-in intention of LBA. Implications and suggestions for future studies are discussed.

The activation of social identities through advertising: How brand loyalty is influenced by out-group perceptions related to political identity • Jennifer Hoewe, University of Alabama; Peter K. Hatemi, Penn State University • This study merges literatures utilizing social identity theory in reference to brand loyalty and political identity to determine how advertisements can activate these identities and influence product selection. Using an experimental design, it tests the inclusion of a perceived out-group in an advertisement for a well-established brand to determine if political identity interacts with the advertisement’s content to predict consumption of that product. The results indicate that an advertisement’s activation of one’s political identity can either change or reinforce brand loyalty. Specifically, more conservative individuals responded to the presence of Muslim and Arab individuals in a Coca-Cola advertisement by selecting Pepsi products; whereas, more liberal individuals responded to this advertisement by maintaining their initial brand loyalty for Coca-Cola products.

Skepticism toward Over-the-Counter Drug Advertising (OTCA): A Comparison of Older and Younger Consumers • Jisu Huh, University of Minnesota; Denise DeLorme, University of Central Florida; Leonard Reid, University of Georgia / Virginia Commonwealth University • This study examined age-related differences in consumers’ skepticism toward over-the-counter drug advertising (OTCA) as a type of consumer persuasion knowledge. The results from a U.S. nationally-representative survey indicate that older consumers are less skeptical of OTCA than are younger consumers. This study also shows some interesting differences between the two age groups in terms of predictors of ad skepticism and the relationship between ad skepticism and ad outcomes.

The Effects of Mixed Emotional Appeals: Construal Level Theory Perspective • Wonseok (Eric) Jang, University of Florida; Jon D. Morris, University of Florida; Yong Jae Ko, University of Florida; Robyn J Goodman, University of Florida • By using construal level theory as a theoretical framework, the current study proposes that the psychological distance that people create toward advertised products would determine the effectiveness of mixed emotional appeal. The results of experiment 1 indicated that, when people formed a close psychological distance toward an advertised product, the mixed emotion appeal decreased the effectiveness of the advertisements. Meanwhile, when people formed a far psychological distance toward an advertised product, the effect of mixed emotional appeal was significantly enhanced compared to a close psychological distance condition. Furthermore, the results of experiment 2 indicated that the effects of different sequences of mixed emotion appeals (improving vs. declining view) are also moderated by the psychological distance people formed with the advertised object. When people formed a close psychological distance, an improving sequence was more effective in creating overall perceptions than a declining sequence. In contrast, when people formed a far psychological distance, both improving and declining sequences were equally effective in creating overall positive perceptions of mixed emotional appeals and advertised events.

The Effectiveness of Warning Labels and Ecolabels in Different Contexts • YONGICK JEONG, Louisiana State University • This research conducted two studies to investigate the effectiveness of different label messages in different context formats (Ad/PSA, study 1) and in different context-induced moods (Positive/Negative, Study 2). The findings indicate that attitude toward labels and behavioral change intention are higher in PSAs than ads, and health warning labels are generally more effective than ecolabels. The interactions between label types and context formats as well as label types and context-induced moods are also discussed.

Factors Influencing OOH Advertising Effects: A Prediction Model for Billboard Advertising • Yong Seok CHEON; Jong Woo JUN, Dankook University; Hyun PARK, Dankook University • This study was conducted to develop indicators for out-of-home (OOH) fundraising advertising and establish a prediction model accordingly. Fundraising OOH advertising has a special purpose and is run by the government to support international events. These advertisements are installed around expressways in Korea in spots not legally available to other advertisements. The fact these are the only advertisements that can be legally installed and managed in these locations makes this advertising distinct. Moreover, this advertising has standardized specifications, format, installation spots, and methods, and thus the advertising effects are easier to measure compared to other OOH advertising. Variables that influenced these advertising effects included form, design, and text size among the visual characteristics, and driving speed, visual clutter, visibility range, separation distance, installation height, and installation position among physical characteristics. These results were used to present the attention rate prediction model. Moreover, this study verified variables that influenced the attention rate according to individuals in the vehicle. For drivers, the influential variables were the same as those affecting total attention rate, whereas for passengers, the influence of driving speed was not statistically significant; however, the amount of text turned out to influence the attention rate of passengers.

Differential Responses of Loyal versus Habitual Consumers Towards Mobile Site Personalization on Privacy Management • Hyunjin Kang, George Washington University; Wonsun Shin, Nanyang Technological University; Leona Tam, University of Wollongong • We examine how two different underlying mechanisms of behavioral loyalty to a brand—attitudinal loyalty and habit—impact smartphone users’ privacy management when they browse personalized vs. non-personalized mobile websites. The study finds different responses of attitudinal loyalty and habit towards personalization in significant three-way interactions between personalization, attitudinal loyalty, and habit on privacy disclosure and protection behaviors. When interacting with a personalized website, highly habitual consumers without high level of attitudinal loyalty disclosed the most personal information on a personalized mobile site, and displayed the least intention of protecting their privacy on their smartphones, whereas consumers with high levels of both habit and attitudinal loyalty reported the highest tendency of privacy protection behavior. However, habit and personalization do not have a significant effect on disclosure behaviors when users have high attitudinal loyalty to a brand. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

A Mutualist Theory of Processing PSAs and Ethically Problematic Commercials • Esther Thorson, Missouri School of Journalism; Margaret Duffy, Missouri School of Journalism; Eunjin (Anna) Kim, Southern Methodist University; Heesook Choi; Tatsiana Karaliova, Missouri School of Journalism; Eunseon (Penny) Kwon • The paper combines qualitative descriptions of people’s response to PSAs and ethically problematic commercials (dangerous and sexual appeals), with their quantitative scoring of attitudes toward the commercials, and their experience affect and arousal while watching. The qualitative responses are coded into five categories of dominant meaning: Descriptive/Neutral, Deconstructing/Rejecting, Positive/Connect, Positive/Aspiration/Identify, and Persuasion Identification. The dominant meanings predict the quantitative responses well. The perceived meanings demonstrate that some respondents are sensitive to the ethical problems in dangerous and sexual appeals.

Effects of Online Video Advertising Message and Placement Strategies on Ad Avoidance and Attitudinal Outcomes • Soojung Kim, University of Minnesota; Jisu Huh, University of Minnesota • This study examined effects of ad-video similarity and ad location on online video ad avoidance and attitudinal outcomes, and tested the mediating roles of perceived relevance and psychological reactance. Experimental results showed a similar (vs. dissimilar) ad was perceived more relevant and generated more positive attitudes and lower ad avoidance, while the effect of ad-location was more limited. Perceived relevance mediated the effects of ad-video similarity on attitudinal outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Effect of Time Restriction and Explicit Deadline on Purchase Intention: Moderating Role of Construal Level • Hyuksoo Kim, Ball State University; Jee Young Chung; Michael Lee • Applying construal level theory as a theoretical framework, this study investigated how consumers process the time restricted promotional offer. Also, the study employed the type of deadline of the promotional offer (explicit vs. implicit). The conditions include time restriction (Yes vs. No), construal level (high vs. low), and types of deadline (implicit vs. explicit). Online experimental data from 217 college students revealed that time restriction and explicit deadline influenced purchase intention positively. The findings also found the moderating effects of individual differences in construal level in explaining the effect of time restriction and types of deadline on purchase intention. Theoretical and managerial implications were discussed for researchers and practitioners.

The Effect of Advertisement Customization on Internet Users’ Perceptions of Forced Exposure and Persuasion • Nam Young Kim, Sam Houston State University (SHSU); S. Shyam Sundar, Penn State University • In the context of forced ad interruption during Internet use, this research tested how ad customization influences users’ perceptions of the ad as well as attitudes toward the ad and the website in different advertising loading sequences. A 2 (ad customization vs. non-ad customization) X 3 (pre-rolls vs. middle-rolls vs. post-rolls) factorial experiment revealed that offering ad self-selection through customization tends to induce users’ positive attitudes toward forced exposure to the ad as well as toward the website that hosts the ad. Moreover, users’ perceived control plays an important underlying mechanism in this relationship, particularly in regard to the impact of ad customization on persuasion. The findings have theoretical and practical implications on the use of online advertising interruptions.

Examining Gender Stereotypes in Advertisements Broadcast During the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games • Lance Kinney, University of Alabama; Brittany Galloway; Sara Lavender; Se Na Lim, University of Alabama • Olympics telecasts are scrutinized for stereotypical portrayals of male and female competitors, but ads broadcast during the Olympics are seldom analyzed. This research details content analysis of 270 ads from NBC’s coverage of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics. The ads were less stereotypical than ads in other types of programming. Primary characters are likely to be male or female, most of the advertised products are for suitable for use by males or females, and female athletes are frequently observed in the ads. Some stereotypes, including male voiceovers and males dominance of electronic/communication categories were observed.

Creating Brand Personality through Brand Placement and Media Characters –The Role of Parasocial Interaction and Brand Familiarity • Johannes Knoll; Holger Schramm; Christiana Schallhorn • Brand placements seem to be an especially effective way of communicating brand personality as they are frequently associated with media characters encouraging consumers to make direct connections between a brand and a character’s personality. Following theoretical developments in research on parasocial interactions (PSI), consumers are assumed to derive brand personalities from their PSI with associated media characters and not directly from the characters’ personalities themselves. In addition, brand familiarity is assumed to moderate this mediating influence of PSI since information pertaining to media characters can be connected more easily to preexisting brand schemas following schema theory. Testing this assumptions a 1 x 2 between-subject experiment was conducted. Results confirmed the mediating role of PSI and the moderating role of brand familiarity. Theoretical as well as practical implications for creating brand personality through brand placements are discussed.

Advertising in Social Media: A Review of Empirical Evidence • Johannes Knoll • This article presents an up-to-date review of academic and empirical research on advertising in social media. Two international databases from business and communication studies were searched, identifying 43 relevant studies. The findings of the identified studies were organized by seven emerging themes: advertising occurrence, attitudes about and exposure to advertising, targeting, user-generated content in advertising, electronic word-of-mouth in advertising, consumer-generated advertising, and further advertising effects. Although many studies have investigated attitudes toward advertising in social media and consumer-generated advertising, few have explored targeting and advertising effects in general. In addition, advertisers and researchers are missing a general overview of what is advertised in social media and how advertising is done in this context. Seven avenues for future research are discussed.

Do Ethnicity of Consumers and Featured Models Matter in CSR Messages? A Comparison of Asian and White Americans • Yoon-Joo Lee, Washington State University; Sora Kim • This study explains, based on motivated reasoning and self-referencing information processing mechanisms, why a mismatch between target consumers and featured model race might work better among some ethnic groups, especially Asian Americans, in the context of corporate social responsibility (CSR) ads. Through an experiment design, the study revealed that for both Asian and white Americans, perception toward money as status can have a significant effect on consumers’ perceptions toward an advertiser’s motive as genuine, purchase intention, and attitude toward the CSR ads through a moderated mediator, self-referencing. Further, Asian Americans who have a high level of perception toward money as status were more likely to evaluate corporate social responsibility ad messages featuring a white model positively than the ads with an Asian model. However, white Americans did not vary their perception of CSR ads based on model’s race. The managerial implications are discussed further.

The Effectiveness of Consumer Characteristics in Cause-related Marketing: The Role of Involvement in a Extended Theory of Planned Behavior Model • Jaejin Lee, Florida State University • The purpose of this study is to explore the effectiveness of consumer characteristics (attitudes, social norms, perceived consumer characteristics, and cause involvement) in cause-related marketing by employing a Revised Theory of Planned Behavior Model. The results shows a statistically significant effect of attitude toward the cause-related product consumption, social norms (injunctive, descriptive, and moral norms), perceived consumer effectiveness on purchase intentions. Especially, moral norms shows a strongest effect among these variables while injunctive and descriptive norms were negatively affect. Also, there is an effectiveness of level of cause involvement in the extended TPB model. Implications and limitations are discussed.

The Effects of Message Framing and Reference Points of PSAs on Bystander Intervention in Binge-Drinking • Kang Li; Nora Rifon • This study investigates the effectiveness of anti-binge-drinking PSAs from the angle of encouraging bystander intervention behaviors among college students through an online experiment. The results indicate that loss framing is more effective than gain framing in leading to a stronger intervention intention in binge drinking; and self-other referencing is more effective than other referencing. Moreover, involvement with ads mediates the interaction effects between message framing and reference points on ad attitudes, which in turn influences intervention intentions. In addition, women have higher involvement with ads and stronger intention to intervene in binge drinking situations than men.

Following Brands on Social Media Apps: The Effect of Intent to Continue Receiving Branded Posts on Attitudes toward Brands that Post • Kelty Logan, University of Colorado Boulder • This study proposes a direct, causal relationship among beliefs, attitudes and satisfaction regarding receiving branded posts on mobile social media. Furthermore, in accordance with the expectation-confirmation theoretical framework, satisfaction with the experience of receiving branded posts is causally related to the decision to continue following brands on mobile social media. This study extends the ECT model to explain how continuance generates positive brand attitudes, providing a theoretically based rationale to support the notion that branded posts on mobile social media can, in fact, build brand equity.

How Product Type and Sexual Orientation Schema Affect Consumer Response to Gay and Lesbian Imagery • Kathrynn Pounders, The University of Texas at Austin; Amanda Mabry, The University of Texas at Austin • Gay and lesbian consumers are increasingly recognized as a lucrative target market. Advertisements more frequently incorporate images of people who are gay and lesbian; however, more research is needed to understand mainstream (heterosexual) consumer response to these ads. Two studies were conducted to explore how sexual orientation, product type, and model-product fit influence consumer reactions to ads with gay and lesbian imagery. Findings suggest product type moderates the effect of sexual orientation on attitude toward the ad and word-of-mouth and that positive evaluations of an ad may occur when gay and lesbian imagery “fits” within a consumers’ existing schemas. This work offers implications for advertisers and brand managers.

Tablets and TV advertising: Understanding the viewing experience • Stephen McCreery, Appalachian State University; Dean Krugman, University of Georgia, The Grady College • A paucity of work exists regarding how advertising fares on the growing technology of tablets. This study examines the processes and attitudes toward advertising while streaming TV and movie content on tablets, using the predictors of advertising avoidance, irritation, and skepticism. A survey of adult iPad users in the U.S. reveals that while ad avoidance did not differ between the iPad and television, ad irritation was significantly higher on the iPad. Further, whereas both ad skepticism and irritation were correlated with avoidance, it was irritation that was the predictor, not skepticism. Implications for the future of TV advertising on the iPad are discussed.

Personalized Advertising on Smartphones • Saraphine Pang, SK Planet; Sejung Marina Choi • Smartphones have changed our lifestyles in many ways, allowing us to live ‘smarter’ lives. Smart devices lead to smart content, through which, smart advertising – personalized ads that are tailored to the consumer – have also found their place in the ‘smart’ world. The main idea of smart ads is the ability to personalize advertising content to the consumer. In other words, smart ads are personalized ads on smartphones. Personalized ads make use of consumer data to target ads according to individual preferences. However, while personalization could lead to favorable responses due to its relevancy to the consumer, privacy issues may lead to avoidance as personal information is used to target specific ads to the consumer. Past studies on personalized ads have mostly been conducted in non-mobile environments and focused only on one type of personalization. The increasing reliance on smartphones calls for research on this highly personalized medium. Therefore, the aim of this study was to look at the three facets of personalization – time, location and identity – and their combined effects on perceived personalization. Implications and future studies are discussed.

Effects of Platform Credibility in Political Advertising • Chang Sup Park, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania • This research examined how partisan media as a campaign ad platform affect voters, focusing on the presence of partisanship and perceived platform credibility. In a 3 (conservative party supporters, liberal party supporters, nonpartisans) x 2 (contrasting platforms) x 2 (platform credibility) factorial design, participants saw a campaign ad surrounded by either a conserva-tive medium or a liberal medium. The results illustrate the contrasting ad platforms exerted different influence depending on the presence of partisanship. An additional analysis finds that nonpartisan voters’ perceived credibility for an ad platform makes a measurable differ-ence in the evaluation of the ad and the recall of the ad messages. The findings suggest that nonpartisans process political ad messages along the central route when they perceive the ad platform to be credible.

The Impact of Distraction on Spotting Deceptive Reviews • Sann Ryu, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Patrick Vargas, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • We investigated how individual differences, such as personality traits and media multitasking habits, interact with distraction to affect people’s ability to detect deceptive product (hotel) reviews. The results showed no main effect of musical distraction on people’s deception detection ability. However, we found interactive effects of musical distraction with personality traits on, and positive correlations of media multitasking level with the ability to spot fake reviews.

Gender and the effectiveness of using sexual appeals in advertising • Lelia Samson • This study empirically investigates the effectiveness of using sexual appeals in advertising on men and women. It examines memory for the commercials activated by sexual versus nonsexual appeals. A mixed-factorial experiment was conducted. Recognition and free recall measures were recorded in 151 participants. The results indicate that sexual appeals enhance memory for the ads themselves. But they distract from processing brand-related information. Male participants encoded and recalled less brand-related information from ads with sexual appeals.

#AirbrushingREJECTED: Testing millennials’ perceptions of retouched and unretouched images in advertising campaigns • Heather Shoenberger, University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication; Nicole Dahmen, University of Oregon • While digital retouching of images has become the relative norm in the context of advertising, we are beginning to see a shift in that trend. The millennial generation is calling for “truth” in images, and brands are taking note. This study uses a between subjects quasi experimental design with two levels of the manipulated independent variable to provide empirical evidence regarding the perceptions of image manipulation on perceptions of truth in advertising, the alignment with peer and self-ethical values, and social media and peer-to-peer engagement.

Narratives in Political Advertising: An Analysis of the Ads in the 2014 Midterm Elections • Michail Vafeiadis; Ruobing Li; Fuyuan Shen • This study examined the use of narratives in the political advertisements during the 2014 midterm American elections. A content analysis of 243 ads indicates that generally issue-related narratives are preferred to character ones. However, differences exist in relation to their use by party affiliation since Democrats prefer character testimonials, whereas Republicans issue testimonials. The results reveal that attack ads are mostly used by candidates who lost the election. Our findings also shed light on the nonverbal cues contained in narrative ads as winners more frequently employed autobiographical spots and had family members as primary speakers as opposed to losers who mostly relied on anonymous announcers. Overall, these findings suggest that narratives in political ads are playing an increasingly important role during elections. Implications for the effective use of narratives in political campaigns are discussed.

Information Source Evaluation Strategies that Individuals use in eWOM on Social Media • Veranika Varabyova; Michelle Nelson, UIUC • The abundance of information sources in the online environment forces individuals to choose sources they trust. Previously, researchers mostly examined sources of information separately in experimental settings. Using in-depth interviews, we examine how individuals gauge trustworthiness of electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) information sources in social media. Findings show that individuals use five distinct strategies (popularity, source expertise on the subject, opinion multiplicity, likable group influence and unbiased opinion) to evaluate sources. Consequences for advertising are discussed.

Empowerment: The Overlooked Dimension of Emotional Response • Jing (Taylor) Wen, University of Florida; Jon D. Morris, University of Florida • Emotional responses toward advertising have substantial effects on consumers’ attitudinal evaluation and behavioral intentions. These responses were organized in three distinctive dimensions, Appeal, Engagement, and Empowerment. Previous research either failed to find the independent effect of Empowerment or only focused on the other two dimensions. This study manipulated the level of Empowerment (high vs. low) and controlled for Appeal and Engagement to examine the effects of Empowerment on behavioral intentions. Results showed that subjects perceived a significantly higher level Empowerment when exposed to anger appeals verses to fear appeals. Further, high Empowerment triggers stronger behavioral intentions to approach the issues than low Empowerment. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

Emotional responses to cause-related advertisements • Jay Hyunjae Yu; Gapyeon Jeong • Purpose – This study aims to investigate consumers’ multi-level information processing of cause-related advertisements that are representative of corporate cause-related marketing. In particular, this study considers consumers’ information processing as a unidirectional linear process. It examines the course of the effects of consumers’ empathy and sympathy generated during the process on each step of the process, ranging from advertisement attitudes, corporate social responsibility activity, and corporate image, to brand attitude. Design/methodology/approach – The main survey was conducted with consumers who resided in Seoul between November 1 and 14, 2013. A total of 250 questionnaires were distributed and 246 were collected. Following the exclusion of six incomplete or unanswered questionnaires, a total of 240 questionnaires were used in the final analysis. Data processing was performed using the SPSS ver. 15.0 and AMOS 7.0 programs. Findings – The results showed that there were positive relationships between all of the variables involved in the processing. Consumers’ emotional response to cause-related advertisement is the best starting point for consumers’ information processing regarding brand attitude. Research limitations/implications – The results of this study confirm that a positive relationship exists among every variable in consumers’ information processing. Originality/value – This study informs researchers and companies that caused-related advertisements can improve the consumer’s emotional response and can be an effective alternative to high cost, but low efficiency, brand advertisements.

Forget the brand mentioned by actor: The attention and memory effect of product placement in TV episodes. • Wan-Yun Yu, Department of Psychology, National Chengchi University; Jie-Li Tsai, Department of Psychology, National Chengchi University; Chen-Chao Tao, Department of Communication and Technology, National Chiao Tung University • There is no consensus regarding the effectiveness of product placement in TV episodes. Our study aims to reconcile this discrepancy by examining the audio utterance with the view of situated comprehension. An experiment was conducted to investigate the influence of utterance and plot on attention and memory. Results showed that mentioning the object of product placement within the scene attracted more attention while had worse memory after exposure. Theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.

Trumping Mood: Transportation and its Effects on Brand Outcomes • Lu Zheng, University of Florida; Shuhua Zhou, University of Alabama • This study examines narrative transportation effects in an adverting context by also considering mood and modality. A 2 (mood) X 2 (modality) experiment was conducted to isolate the effects of transportation on brand outcomes. Results indicate that transportation trumped mood to affect all outcome variables, regardless of modality, further confirming that transported individuals may not follow the scripted path of central/peripheral in ELM or the systematic/heuristic routes in HSM in persuasion. Implications are discussed.

Teaching Papers
The Effects of Integrating Advertising Ethics into Course Instruction • Michelle Amazeen, Rider University • Ambivalence toward incorporating ethics instruction into advertising curricula has been linked to concerns that ethical discussions will discourage student entry into the profession (Drumwright & Murphy, 2009). Contrary to this assertion, this study offers experimental evidence that students who received systematic ethics instruction were more likely to want to work in advertising than those who only received limited ethics instruction. Thus, failure to educate students in the ethical practice of advertising is not only a disservice to students, but a disservice to the profession overall.

An examination of the impact of faculty mentorship in a student-run advertising agency • Dustin Supa, Boston University; Tobe Berkovitz, Boston University • This study examines the impact of faculty adviser mentoring in a student-run advertising agency, and the long-term implications for that mentoring on student leaders as they enter the professional field. It finds that a high level of mentoring at the undergraduate level did lead to an increased likelihood of mentoring early in the alumni careers. The implications for faculty advisers of student agencies are discussed, as well as ideas for future research.

A systematic analysis of peer-reviewed research about advertising teaching effectiveness and pedagogy • John Wirtz, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Thais Menezes Zimbres, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Eun Kyoung Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This paper presents a systematic analysis of articles (N = 147) published in the Journal of Advertising Education between 2004 and 2014. Findings include that the most common study design was case study (39%). More than half of research articles (59%) did not provide a research question or hypothesis, and only 10% tested a hypothesis. The results indicate a range of topics were researched but also an over-reliance on small samples and case studies.

Professional Freedom & Responsibility (PF&R) Papers
Seeing Unwanted Appetizers: The Impact of Long-term and Short-term Physiological States on Webpage Ads Processing • Shili Xiong, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Jiachen Yao; Zongyuan Wang, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; Brittany Duff, University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign • Many nutrition researchers believe that the flooding of food-related cues (e.g. food ads) in today’s food-rich environment is one of the origins of obesity issue. There have been calls for reducing the food ad exposure in the hope that it will help lower obesity rates. While it seems unlikely to completely stop food ad exposure, it is also in question whether the decrease of food ad exposure would truly work to successfully reduce obesity. The current study examines how physiological factors influenced affective and cognitive processing of food and nonfood webpage ads. In particular, we were interested in assessing how body weight (BMI) and hunger level interacts with motivational relevance (food vs. nonfood) and medium task-orientation (webpage task vs. browse). An experiment was conducted online via Amazon M-Turk. We found that individual body mass index (BMI) was negatively associated with food ad evaluation and positively associated with food ad recognition. Hunger level was positively associated with food ad recognition, and indirectly influenced non-food ad evaluation. Implications for researchers are also discussed.

Female Representation In The Communication Arts Advertising Annual • Karen Mallia, University of South Carolina; Kasey Windels, Louisiana State University • Females are underrepresented in advertising agencies by a ratio of 2.3 to 1. This study examined issues of the Communication Arts Advertising Annual in 1984, 1994, 2004 and 2014 to determine whether women have made increases in representation among the upper echelons of the field, award winners. Findings showed that while women have made some gains as creative directors since 1984, women represent only 9 percent of those credited for creative work, and their presence has declined since 1994. Overall, the results suggest women have not made much progress toward equity in the past 40 years. This has implications for the types of advertisements that get made, the culture of the agency creative department, and the career prospects of advertising students.

Advertising’s Responsibility to the Future: A proposal to address our role in climate change • Deborah Morrison, University of Oregon • This essay proposes that the advertising industry helped cause the tragedy of climate change, while also recognizing the industry’s creative leadership and ability to solve problems. Connections are suggested between increased advertising expenditures over the last fifty years and increased scientific findings that human behaviors such as consumption directly affect the rate of climate change the planet is experiencing. Six strategies to leverage the creative and innovative talents of the advertising industry and its ecosystem of educational programs, professional organizations, and trade publications are offered with the purpose of suggesting a professional movement to address and mitigate climate change realities.

Special Topics Papers
Would I go? US citizens react to a Cuban tourism campaign • Alice Kendrick, Southern Methodist University; Sheri Broyles, University of North Texas; Jami Fullerton, Oklahoma State University • Before the announcement of the easing of a decades-long US embargo, this study captured US citizen interest in traveling to Cuba before and after exposure to a Cuban tourism television commercial. Online measures of attitudes toward travel to Cuba and toward the Cuban government and people were taken. Results showed Americans’ travel interest improved significantly and also showed improved attitudes toward both the Cuban government and its people, demonstrating the “bleedover effect” of tourism advertising.

The Effect of Ad Self-Selection on Different Levels of Forced Exposure to Advertising • Nam Young Kim, Sam Houston State University (SHSU) • What aspects of online advertising induce Internet users ad avoidance tendency? Is it because of a degree of forced exposure or because of users’ limited power to filter personally irrelevant content? With advances in new technology, various formats of online advertising (e.g., in-stream video advertising) often force Internet users to watch the advertisement before their choice of media content plays, and this often makes them feel intruded upon and irritated. To reduce such negative reactions toward involuntary advertising exposures, this study examines whether offering users the ability to select advertising content can influence their attitudes toward the ad as well as the website in the different degrees of forced exposure circumstance. A 2 (advertising–customization: customization option vs. non-customization option) X 2 (level of forced exposure–a pre-roll vs. a rich media banner) factorial experiment reveals that advertising choice features tend to induce users’ positive attitudes toward the advertising regardless of the degree of forced advertising exposure. Particularly, the findings show that the function of customization tends to generate a greater sense of relevance and increased advertising memory, which in turn lead to more positive attitudes toward the ads.

Fierce Competition While Playing Nice in the Sandbox: Trends in Advertising & Public Relations Agencies • Marlene Neill, Baylor University; Erin Schauster, University of Colorado Boulder • Advertising and public relations agencies have never been more in direct competition as public relations agencies begin offering paid media strategies and advertising agencies begin assuming roles in online community management and social listening. Through in-depth interviews with 28 advertising and public relations agency executives, this study provides new insights on the trends impacting both professions. Executives defined paid, earned, owned and social media strategies and discussed how these areas are blurring, how responsibilities are being mandated by clients, and how the associated financial challenges affect an agency’s ability to retain employees. Finally, the executives discussed how clients and agencies are pursuing collaborative work that draws from the strengths of both professions.

“Wow! I want to share this with my twitter followers”: Influencing Factors on Intention to Retweet of Branded Tweet • Nazmul Rony, University of Oklahoma; Doyle Yoon, University of Oklahoma; Seunghyun Kim, University of Oklahoma; Rahnuma Ahmed, University of Oklahoma • Currently, marketers are using Twitter as a strong advertising platform. Retweeting is a powerful method of spreading the brand message to a large group of potential customers with a minimum effort. However, brand followers’ underlying motivation for retweeting a brand message is still unclear to the advertisers. An experimental study revealed that brand familiarity has strong influence on users’ retweet motivation. It has been also found that intrinsic motivation has mediating effect on retweet intention.

Corporate advertising and crises: Understanding the effects of advertisements before and after crises on stakeholders’ perceptions of the organization • Benjamin Ho, Nanyang Technological University; Wonsun Shin, Nanyang Technological University; Augustine Pang • While corporate advertising has been widely studied as a promotional tool, few studies examine its effects in a corporate crisis. By integrating insights from both advertising and crisis management literature, this study develops a crisis corporate advertising (CCA) framework examining the comprehensive use of corporate advertising in crises. The CCA framework discusses inoculation, reactance, and halo effects of pre-crisis advertising and how post-crisis advertising can be evaluated based on the image repair theory.

A Large Scale Analysis of Primetime Diets in USA, China and Singapore • Su Lin Yeo, Singapore Management University; Wonsun Shin, Nanyang Technological University; May Lwin; Jerome Williams, Rutgers Business School – Newark and New Brunswick • Given the prevalence of obesity and chronic diseases in developed and developing countries, this study examined the types of food advertised on primetime television in the US, China and Singapore and their congruence with dietary guidelines offered by health authorities. Three popular television channels in each country were selected and four hours of primetime television per channel were recorded daily over 28 days, resulting in the collection of 1008 television hours. Findings from content analyses found that food promoted across the three countries do not correspond to the types recommended for a healthy diet. The majority of the food belonged to the unhealthy categories. The study also found that national development seems to negatively parallel the exposure to healthy food advertisements on television. Implications on government regulations and recommendations for communication initiatives to better balance the interests of commercial advertisers and at the same time, safeguard the health of the public are discussed.

Student Papers
Examining Receptiveness to Personalized Advertising Through Perceived Utility and Privacy Concerns • Nancy Brinson, University of Texas at Austin • As advertisers increasingly rely on “big data” to target their promotional messages to consumers, perceptions regarding the collection and use of such data becomes of great interest to scholars and practitioners. Consumers choosing to ignore or avoid messages intended to inform or persuade them could have potentially negative implications not only for marketers, but also for public policy, education, health care, and public safety advocates. Rooted in a cross-disciplinary theoretical approach of uses & gratifications and communication privacy management, the present study utilized a qualitative survey to examine the circumstances by which personalized advertising is perceived to be “helpful” or “uncomfortable” in a variety of contexts. Findings indicate that concerns about trust, perceived control and unauthorized access to personal information have a negative influence on consumers’ attitudes about personalized advertising. As such, the present study broadens understanding of the gratifications sought by today’s online media consumers as well as accounts for interpersonal considerations that drive users’ attitudes about information sharing and processing.

What’s in the Ad? A Content Analysis of Holistic-Analytic Cognitive Processes Found in Television Commercials • Christina Jimenez Najera • Culture has been studied to discover how its presence influences the realm of communications in countries around the world. This study focuses on exploring manifestations of cultural values and tendencies in the domain of advertising. Using Nisbett’s and Hall and Hall’s research as benchmark, the study hypothesized that advertisements would reflect Western and Eastern cultural manifestations respectively. The results showed evidence that point to manifestations of holistic-analytic cognitive orientation in television commercial advertisements.

Do Sex Appeals Matter on News Website? Effect of Sexual Web Advertisements on News Perception • Jinyoung Kim, Pennsylvania State University • We observe an increasing number of sexual web advertising on various web sites, including online news pages. However, little is known about how sexually suggestive web advertisements influence readers’ perception of serious social issues, such as sexual assault. This study examined whether sexual advertisements on news web site exerted any negative effects on perception of and attitudes toward rape. Results showed that sexual web advertising significantly perverted readers’ attitudes toward the sexual assault that excuses the actions of rapists and justify the plight upon victim.

Social Motives to Interact with a Brand on Social Networking sites: Focus on Social Identify and Network Externality • Okhyun Kim, University of Minnesota; Taemin Kim, University of Minnesota • This study investigated the effects of social motivations on brand engagement on social networking sites. Social motivations are based on social identity theory and network externality perspective. The method included two hierarchical levels: social identity as individual traits and perceived network externality as channel characteristics. The result showed the powerful impact of network externality. Social identity has explanatory power to predict behaviors following brand fan-pages on social media.

Friend’s Tagging You on Facebook: Examining How Individual Traits Affect Consumers’ Reaction to Electronic-Word-of-Mouth and Social Media Metrics • Wonkyung Kim; Chen Lou, Michigan State University • This paper investigates how consumers’ individual characteristics affect their evaluation of product reviews on social media. In particular, this experimental study explored the effects of the consumer’s ‘need for cognition’ and ‘need for belonging’ on their responses (i.e., attitude toward the review, attitude toward the product, and purchase intention) to product review posts on a Facebook review page. Results of two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that: 1) Subjects with low need for cognition showed more favorable attitude and purchase intention to a Facebook review post with high number of likes/comments than subject with high need for cognition and 2) Subjects with low need for belonging showed less favorable attitude and purchase intention to a Facebook review post which had commenters’ referral to their friends via tagging. On the managerial front, findings of this study explicated the mechanism of how consumer characteristics could play a role in electronic-Word-Of-Mouth (eWOM) contents’ effect on social media, which provided useful strategic insights to both marketers and researchers.

The Moderating Role of Sport Involvement between Sponsor-event Congruence and Consumer Responses • Jakeun Koo, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; Soyoung Joo, University of Massachusetts, Amherst • The current study examines the moderating effect of sport involvement between sponsor-event congruence and consumer responses. The experiment results indicate sport involvement moderates the effectiveness of sponsor-event congruence on sponsor credibility, subsequently influencing sponsor attitudes and purchase intention. The moderating effects were supported in both functional- and image-based congruence settings. The research findings imply sponsor-event congruence may improve sponsorship campaigns’ abilities to deliver product-relevant messages to consumers highly involved in sports via a central cue.

Do you see what I see? Exploring the effects of sponsorship of a sporting event on the image of the sponsoring brand. • Eunseon (Penny) Kwon; Eunjin (Anna) Kim, Southern Methodist University • Does brand sponsorship of sporting events lead to congruence in consumers’ images of sponsoring brands and sponsored sporting events? If so, what factors affect the degree of image congruence? Statistics show that sponsorship of sporting events is one of the fastest growing business around the globe. However, the importance of this marketing strategy is not reflected in the amount attention it has received in the advertising literature. This study focuses on the effects of sponsorship of a sporting event on the image of the sponsoring brand. Specially, drawing on the literature on the match-up effects of celebrity endorsement, the results from a non-student population confirm that brand sponsorship leads to image congruence.

Advertising message strategies on automobile brands’ Facebook fan page • Joong Suk Lee, University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa; Tie Nie • Recognizing the rising value that social media provides for consumer engagement on brand, this study specifically explored the advertising strategies employed among four car brands’ (i.e., Ford, Chevrolet, Toyota and Honda) Facebook fan pages to persuade consumers on social media networks. By applying Taylor’s (1999) six-segment message strategy wheel and combining the eWOM engagement of these advertisements, this study demonstrated that those ads with both informational and emotional appealing elements attracted the most attention, providing further evidence to better understand the marketing effectiveness adopted by these respective companies. Implications and future research suggestions are also offered, considering the wide range of content (e.g., photos, videos, anecdotes) produced on brand groups, which sheds light on the marketers’ efforts to heighten involvement between brands and customers.

Communicating ALS to the Public: The Message Effectiveness of Social-Media-Based Health Campaign • Jing (Taylor) Wen, University of Florida; Linwan Wu, University of Florida • Celebrity endorsement has been proved to be a very powerful tool in health campaigns. This study examined how celebrity-issue matchup presented in utilitarian and hedonic appeals influences evaluation of video, issue attitude and behavioral intentions in the context of ALS communication. The findings showed that celebrity-issue matchup condition outperformed non-matchup condition in generating positive issue attitude and behavioral intentions. The results also indicated that utilitarian appeal with matchup condition triggered significantly greater information sharing intention than that with non-matchup condition. However, no difference was found in hedonic appeal between matchup and non-matchup conditions. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed.

2015 Abstracts