Research — AEJMC Hot Topics

Dimensions of News Media Brand Personality

A new research study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly examines general and robust constructs of news media brand personality that are applicable across multiple news media outlets, including broadcast and cable news networks, national and local newspaper, and news magazines.

Through a series of rigorous exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis procedures with the final set of 48 personality traits, the authors show that that news media brand personality is composed of five dimensions: Trustworthiness, Dynamism, Sincerity, Sophistication, and Toughness.

One of the significant contributions of this study is to provide news media companies a reliable and valid method to assess their brand personality. [Read more...]

No Evidence that Accredited Journalism Schools are Better than Unaccredited Ones

A 30-year review of research comparing and contrasting accredited journalism schools with unaccredited ones shows many more similarities than differences, and no conclusive evidence that accredited ones are significantly or consistently better than un-accredited ones in any important way.

The literature review, by Dr. Marc C. Seamon, assistant professor of communication at Robert Morris University, was printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, a refereed quarterly published by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Columbia, S.C. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator is the world’s largest and oldest scholarly journal devoted entirely to education and training in journalism, media, and other mass communication. [Read more...]

Users say participation in news sites’ online forums helps them understand their communities better

Joining in online newspapers’ message forums increases participants’ perception that they understand their local communities better, according to a new research study in the Spring 2010 edition of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. However, that participation and accompanying sense of community understanding is not related to their getting out and taking part in real-world community activities.

These findings are based on a survey of 538 participants in message forums at the online sites associated with 80 U.S. newspapers. Such forums generally consist of a portion of the website where visitors can post comments organized into common message “threads,” and can be found at about a third of all U.S. online newspapers. [Read more...]

Citizen Journalism Sites Complement Newspapers

A recent study in the Newspaper Research Journal found that citizen journalism sites differ significantly from Web site supported by newspapers. As a result, most citizen journalism sites serve as complements rather than substitutes for commercial news Web sites.

The content analysis of the sites by researchers at Michigan State University, the University of Missouri, and the University of North Carolina studied the content at 86 citizen blog sites, 53 citizen news sites, and 63 daily newspaper sites. Citizen news sites were those that produced news articles similar to those found on newspaper sites, and citizen blogs were opinion sites. [Read more...]

Study: Values, Ethics of Sports Reporters Vary by Beat

Sports reporters on the high school beat, often the youngest and most inexperienced in the newsroom, are also the most likely to believe they can operate by more relaxed ethical codes than their counterparts, according to a new survey.

The telephone survey, conducted by researchers in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State, asked 263 reporters who cover sports at the high school, college or professional level about their attitudes toward ethical codes and professional norms for reporters. [Read more...]

Political Conventions Draw a Bigger Audience than Beijing Opening Ceremonies

The 2008 Democratic and Republican Party conventions drew a bigger average nightly television audience than did the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games, according to recent research by University of Oklahoma scholars Jill A. Edy and Miglena Daradanova.

Most media pundits and journalists insist that the national nominating conventions are a dying institution that draws few viewers and produces no news. However, Edy and Daradanova found that over the last four decades, the average size of the nightly audience for the conventions was larger than the audience for the opening night of the Summer Olympic Games unless the Games were held in the United States. The lone exception was the 2000 Games in Sydney, which marginally outdrew the 2000 nominating conventions. [Read more...]

Climate Change and the Belief Gap Hypothesis

A recent study shows that ideology is a better predictor of beliefs about climate change than is educational attainment, and that the resulting “belief gaps” between liberals and conservatives grow over time.

This study marks a departure from previous work which showed that heavy media coverage of science news contributed to “knowledge gaps,” or growing disparities in knowledge between those with different levels of educational attainment. [Read more...]

Citizens’ Local Political Knowledge Threatened By New Media

As new digital media replace traditional sources of news, the public’s knowledge of local affairs may be undermined.

This result headlines a new study by Lee Shaker, a researcher at Princeton University, that examines the effect of increased media choice upon citizens’ local and national political knowledge. The article, “Citizens’ Local Political Knowledge and the Role of Media Access”, is available in the current issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (winter 2009). Based on data from a 2007 survey of 1000 Philadelphia residents, a clear, negative relationship between having access to cable TV or satellite radio and citizens’ local political knowledge is depicted in the piece. A similar relationship does not materialize between new media access and national political knowledge. These results reinforce the fears voiced by many regarding the decline of local media – especially newspapers. [Read more...]

Viewing Media Coverage of Terrorism Related to Posttraumatic Stress Reactions; Youth Particularly Susceptible

A meta-analysis of 23 existing terrorism studies found that exposure to media coverage of terrorism is related to posttraumatic stress reactions.

The meta-analysis also found that the relationship between exposure to media coverage of terrorism and posttraumatic stress was greater for studies involving youth and for studies including people who were farther away from the terrorist event.

These results mean that youth who are further away from the terrorism event are at increased risk for developing posttraumatic stress reactions resulting from exposure to media coverage of a terrorist event. [Read more...]

Partisanship Influences Perceptions of Communications from Government Agencies

Government agencies have long distributed prepackaged “video news releases,” or VNRs, to media outlets, as part of their mission to keep the public informed about their policies and activities. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that distributing VNRs without clearly identifying the government as their source, as was done on at least two occasions by the Bush Administration, violates laws against covert propaganda. However, to date little has been known about the effects of attribution – or lack of attribution – of government VNRs on audiences.

A study by a team of researchers from Penn State University and the University of Hartford published in the current issue of the Journal of Public Relations Research indicates that the effects of attribution on audiences seems to depend more on who’s watching the VNR than on what the government agency is saying in it. [Read more...]