While fact-checking has grown dramatically in the last decade, little is known about the relative effectiveness of different formats in correcting false beliefs or overcoming partisan resistance to new information. This article addresses that gap by using theories from communication and psychology to compare two prevailing approaches: An online experiment examined how the use of visual "truth scales" interacts with partisanship to shape the effectiveness of corrections. We find that truth scales make fact-checks more effective in some conditions. Contrary to theoretical predictions and the fears of some journalists, their use does not increase partisan backlash against the correction or the organization that produced it.
This study tested the influences of cultural and performance factors on trust in news media in Serbia by conducting a survey on a stratified random sample of the population (N = 544). The results show that both factors played a significant role, but that the performance explanation was slightly more powerful. The levels of trust in news media and generalized trust in Serbia remained low, while the perceptions of news media corruption reached extremely high levels. Before testing theories, the meanings of three main variables were explored by conducting 20 in-depth interviews with a separate sample of the Serbian population.
The current study sought to examine the impact of strengthening cigarette pack warnings on attention, message processing, and perceived effectiveness, through a systematic review of longitudinal observational studies. The review included 22 studies (N = 81,824 participants). Strengthened warnings increased attention to warnings, recall of warnings, and thinking about the health risks of smoking. Strengthened warnings also increased several perceived effectiveness outcomes, including perceptions that warnings reduce smoking and motivate quitting. Strengthened cigarette pack warnings achieve their goal of attracting attention and enhancing motivation to act. Strengthening warning policies should be a priority for tobacco control globally.
This study proposed and tested a social media peer communication model that links tie strength, social media dependency, and public–organization social media engagement to the peer communication process as well as organization–public relationship (OPR) outcomes. Through an online survey of 328 American and 304 Chinese social media users, results showed that tie strength and public–organization social engagement are positive predictors of peer communication about companies on social media, which further leads to quality OPRs.
This study refined the existing conceptualization and operationalization of organization–public relationship (OPR) quality and validated the finalized scale using data from two different samples. Specifically, the research proposed distrust as an additional dimension of OPR quality. Statistical tests not only demonstrated that distrust was an OPR quality dimension related to but distinct from trust, but also showed that the new five-dimensional framework was valid and reliable to assess OPR quality in two contexts—university–student relationships and organization–employee relationships.
Issue obtrusiveness has long been considered a condition in agenda-setting effect of mass media. Public’s perceived salience of news issues has been found to be more strongly influenced by mass media for unobtrusive issues than obtrusive issues. This study measures the issue obtrusiveness contingency in a developing country by comparing public perception of 10 different issues with varying levels of obtrusiveness. The findings support the original issue obtrusiveness contingency, and add that the public in developing countries report salience of obtrusive issues based on their own personal experience rather than from media exposure.
The parliamentary media adviser is commonly portrayed as a partisan "spin-doctor," with little distinction made between the inherent partisan nature of the role and the personal partisanship of the practitioner. Semistructured qualitative interviews with 21 journalists who became parliamentary media advisers highlight the difference between the two and offer practitioner perceptions of the advantages and disadvantages of partisanship in that role. At one extreme is the "true believer"; at the other is the "legal advocate," with the "committed expert" in between. In doing so, this article challenges the simple, dominant conception of the partisan "spin-doctor."
Despite extensive research in product placement, little research has examined how different consumer groups respond to product placement. The present study aims to fill this gap, employing cluster analysis to segment U.S. consumers according to cognitive and attitudinal responses they have developed to advertising in general. Analyzing a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults (N = 21,944), this study identified five clusters. The clusters reflect varying responses to product placement on television and in movies, as well as distinct demographic and media usage profiles. These findings are discussed from the perspective of consumer socialization and marketplace social intelligence.
The present study aims to reconcile conflicting evidence from previous research on the role of objectivity in journalists’ and citizens’ information behaviors. Drawing on news quality frameworks and confirmation bias research, the article proposes a model of "biased objectivity" that was tested by a quasi-experiment with 430 journalists and 432 citizens in Germany. Results show that both perceived objectivity value (news quality perspective) and attitude consistency of a message (confirmation bias perspective) enhanced the informational value of a message, with objectivity value mediating the effect of attitude consistency on informational value perceptions ("biased objectivity" perspective). Journalistic professionalism did not moderate this relationship.
This study explores the influence of hostile media perception (HMP) and other antecedents to mothers’ willingness to speak up regarding the issue of breastfeeding, particularly in online environments. An online survey of mothers (N = 455) revealed that mothers are more likely to express opinions about breastfeeding online, and also with friends and family, if they consider media coverage of the issue biased or hostile. In addition, as hypothesized, the personality trait of outspokenness influences mothers’ willingness to speak up and mediates the effect of HMP on communication, although there were conditional effects based on mothers’ past breastfeeding behaviors. Implications are discussed.
How do news coverage of a grassroot protest movement and perceived importance of the movement affect people’s participation in the movement? And does people’s inference of the effect of the news on themselves versus others make a difference in participation? Informed by the third-person effect hypothesis, we examine these questions in the context of the student-led Sunflower Movement in Taiwan that rose in opposition to a trade pact with China. In the study, we advanced three propositions: First, that the perceived effects of the protest news on oneself would be a better predictor of political participation than would perceived effects of such news on others. Second, that the perceived effect on oneself, not on others, would enhance the impact of issue importance on participation in the movement. And third, how people processed protest news would be another intermediate mechanism on subsequent participatory activities. We found support for these propositions in data collected from a probability sample of 1,137 respondents. The implications of the findings for the robust third-person effect research are discussed.
Using panel data, this article examines the democratic benefit of expressing political messages on social media, by looking into the sender effect of information processing. Results suggest people who post textual and visual content tend to elaborate upon information themselves. The effect is different depending upon types of discussion motivations for discussion. Civic intentions such as persuasive discussion motivation led to elaboration about the information, while social discussion motivation did not. The relationship was mediated by news-seeking behaviors. Combining findings, this study proposes a theoretical model that implies a virtuous cycle of information flow on the social media sphere.
The study identifies seven rhetorical strategies newspapers use to frame the acts of violence as terrorism or crime by comparatively analyzing the news coverage of the Ft. Hood and the Washington, D.C., Navy Yard shootings in three major newspapers. It examines the framing of the incidents, the strategies used to constitute the frames, the functions these strategies serve, and the media’s contribution to the discourse of terror.
This study surveyed sports editors about gender-related issues in hiring and coverage. Although many editors estimate reader interest to be low and do not believe coverage of women’s sports should be improved, results also suggest that sports editors’ values and beliefs have shifted over the past decade in ways that could lead to more opportunities for women journalists and to eventual improvements in coverage of female athletes and women’s sports. The research also suggests when sports editors commit to hiring women, they find women who can move up within organizations and become leaders.
With the increase of online journalism, embedded multimedia stories have become more popular. Yet, little is known about the cognitive and affective effects this journalistic format may have on the audience. This experimental study compares the effects of embedded multimedia, traditional multimedia, and text-only format on readers’ knowledge gain, emotional reactions, and narrative transportation. Overall, the effects are substantially less pronounced than expected. The audiences’ emotional reactions and narrative transportation do not depend on modality, whereas knowledge gain is slightly decreased by multimodality. The theoretical, practical, and methodological implications of these limited effects are discussed.
Citizens’ levels of mistrust toward the media, as well as their perception of media bias, have increased in past years in most Western democracies. This study explores how these negative observations on journalism may influence their use of traditional, citizen, and social media for news. Drawing on two-wave U.S. panel data, results suggest that media trust and perceived bias relate to media consumption differently. Trust in social and citizen media positively predicts use of news via social media, but has no effect on traditional or citizen news use. By contrast, perceived media bias is associated with decreased news use overall.
Our content analysis examines how American news media have framed the question of who is responsible for causing and solving the school bullying problem. We identified presence of considerable victim blaming in news coverage. Among potential causes examined, victims and their families were mentioned most often as being responsible. When talking about how to solve the problem, the media were focusing heavily on schools and teachers, while bullies and their families—the direct source of the problem—were mentioned least often. We also found that liberal newspapers were focusing more than conservative papers on social-level responsibilities, while conservative papers were more likely than liberal papers to attribute responsibility to individuals, suggesting that the political orientations of news organizations can affect which level of responsibility will be highlighted. Drawing upon the notion of frame building, we discuss in detail how several internal and external factors of news organizations can affect their selective uses of frames.
The accelerating news cycle means there is a risk that errors become more common, but digital media also allow for correcting errors continuously and being transparent about this. In this study, we investigate Swedish citizens’ attitudes toward errors and corrections. The results demonstrate that citizens have strong expectations that news media publish correct information and they have little tolerance for errors. People’s background and media use do not affect attitudes toward errors and corrections to any large extent, but media trust explains a small fraction of the results—It is only those who already trust the media that appreciate corrections.
We examine three under-studied factors in selective exposure research. Linking issue publics and motivated reasoning literatures, we argue that selectivity patterns depend on (a) whether an individual is an issue public member; (b) the availability of balanced, pro-, and counter-attitudinal content; and (c) the evidence for a message claim (numerical vs. narrative). Using an online experiment (N = 560), we track information selection about climate change and health care. Most notably, on both issues, issue publics selected more balanced content with numerical evidence, compared with non-issue publics. We discuss the implications of our findings for the selective exposure literature.
This study examines personality traits and motivations in association with individuals’ online news comment behavior. A survey of 517 participants indicated that those who were more agreeable and narcissistic were motivated for posting comments on online news. Motivations including informing, getting feedback, and exhibitionism predicted the frequency of posting on news comment sections, while social connection was a major predictor of commenting on the news shared in social media. Implications for using this online opinion-posting mechanism are discussed.
In accordance with self-categorization theory, this study predicts that because elite cues affect partisans’ perceptions of group norms, news coverage of political gridlock should influence partisans’ willingness to endorse compromise. Results of two experimental studies, where Republican and Democratic samples read a news story in which group leaders were either willing or unwilling to compromise, largely support our expectations. However, we also find evidence that willingness to compromise can depend on the specific issue context, as well as pre-existing attitudes. These results further our understanding of how media coverage affects the functioning of democracy in the United States.
People increasingly visit online news sites not directly, but by following links on social network sites. Drawing on news value theory and integrating theories about online identities and self-representation, we develop a concept of shareworthiness, with which we seek to understand how the number of shares an article receives on such sites can be predicted. Findings suggest that traditional criteria of newsworthiness indeed play a role in predicting the number of shares, and that further development of a theory of shareworthiness based on the foundations of newsworthiness can offer fruitful insights in news dissemination processes.
Scholars have emphasized the importance of an informed citizenry for a healthy democracy. As a result, research has examined whether campaign information fosters positive or negative democratic outcomes. This article examines the relationship between information seeking and skepticism. We also examine whether skepticism leads to democratically beneficial outcomes. We examine these relationships using survey data collected during the course of the 2012 Presidential Election. We found an over-time relationship between campaign information seeking and skepticism. We also found that skepticism leads to increased knowledge at the end of the election through information seeking.
Mail survey (N = 112) of lead city government reporters at randomly selected television stations in the 210 local designated market areas replicates a 1997 study. The 2014 reporters had a more pessimistic view of station commitment to and valuing of city government reporting than in 1997 study. Among 2014 respondents, older reporters were more pessimistic whereas smaller market reporters were more optimistic, and a majority believes media commitment to covering city government remains generally strong.
This study examines the potential for alternative and social media to stimulate the core antecedents of protest participation (identity, efficacy, and anger) in the context of Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. Findings from a representative sample supported the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA), such that all antecedents predicted intended protest participation. Identity and anger mediated the relationship between online alternative news and protest intention, while anger and efficacy mediated the relationship between social media news and protest intention. The findings demonstrate the benefits of theoretical integration from related disciplines to better understand the mobilizing potential of collective action through news media use.
Mental illness is a serious health risk in the United States. People suffering from mental illnesses are often subjective to gender-specific stigma and stereotypes. Based on theories of agenda setting, framing, and stigma communication, this study compares the portrayal of mental illnesses in women’s and men’s lifestyle and health magazines between 2009 and 2013 through a content analysis. It finds that women’s magazines tend to present a more positive coverage of mental illnesses by citing patients, adopting human interest discourse, and using challenge cues such as hope than men’s magazines. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.
This study examines reliability reporting in content analysis articles (N = 672) in three flagship communication journals. Data from 1985 to 2014 suggest improvements in reporting across time and also identify areas for additional improvement. Data show increased reporting of chance-corrected reliability coefficients and reporting reliability for all study variables, although increases were inconsistent among journals and the most recent time period showed slight declines. In general, the most often used coefficient was Scott’s Pi; however, Krippendorff’s Alpha was most used in the latest study period. Reporting of low reliability coefficients increased but then decreased most recently. Implications and areas for improvement are discussed.
This exploratory study surveyed 379 undergraduate students at a southeastern university to investigate the factors that contribute to the consumer ownership of tablets, iPads, and dual adoption of both a tablet and smartphone. It also examines the factors that may predict a consumer’s likelihood to own a tablet in the future, given their current status as a non-owner. The findings consistently demonstrate the importance of perceived tablet usefulness, microblogging social media usage, and computer commerce in affecting tablet, iPad, and dual mobile device ownership.
This article explored South Korean and Japanese newspaper reports on the "comfort women" who were forced into sexual slavery by the Imperial Japanese Army in the 1930s-1940s, to examine how print media have reproduced the reality of the issue. I conducted a quantitative frame analysis of the contents of news articles (N = 384) on the comfort women in four South Korean and Japanese newspapers. The frames of comfort women articles in all papers can be considered to be very stereotyped, because they have changed little according to the newspaper’s political position (conservative/liberal), attitude (anti-Japan/anti–South Korea), and nationality (South Korean/Japanese). When the relationship of South Korea and Japan has been combative, conflict and morality frames have been abundant. In contrast, when the relationship has been favorable, human interest frames have been ample.
Independently owned news websites are an emerging but understudied part of the changing news business. This study applied resource-based theory to an analysis of the longevity of these mostly small-scale entrepreneurial ventures. The results show that as an aggregate sample, the sites do not fit the theory’s expectations. Disaggregating the sample by the sites’ basic business model uncovered clear differences between for-profits and nonprofits in the effect of resources on their longevity. The sharpest difference was for "product reputation," which had inverse effects between the two groups.
Through a survey of nonprofit stakeholders, this research builds on previous studies that have explored the construct of stewardship and advances a new measurement model. Findings provide a new conceptualization of the construct with five dimensions, rather than the previously theorized four-dimension solution. Theoretical, measurement, and practical applications are discussed.
Prior research in the third-person effects domain has shown that people who believe in harmful media effects are more willing to engage in preventive or accommodative strategies, such as censorship. This research extends that supposition by testing a thus-far unstudied strategy: negative evaluations of media companies. Results show that an overall belief in harmful media effects is connected to negative evaluations of the media companies potentially responsible for those effects. The third-person perceptual gap is not related to these negative evaluations of media companies, suggesting important differences between third-person effects research and influence of presumed media influence research.
This article discusses how low-income Latino immigrant youth use the Internet for newsgathering. Contrary to previous assumptions about the digital divide, the youth almost universally owned cell phones and got most of their news online, although poverty affected the quality of their connectivity. However, a generational digital divide was evident, in which Internet-savvy youth had access to timelier and more diverse news than their parents. In a reversal of typical parent–child roles, the youth were "news translators" for their parents, explaining U.S. news stories and their implications. Moreover, in seeking, critiquing, creating, and posting content online, the youth gained participatory and deliberative skills useful for civic engagement in a democracy.
Transformations in media and society have forced journalists to reconsider their relation to the audience. In this article, we argue that due to these changes, a new conceptualization is needed of the way journalism addresses the audience, which goes beyond the traditional consumer–citizen dichotomy. Results of exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses with three samples of Chilean news (N = 1,988; N = 795; N = 812) support the hypothesis that audience approaches in journalism are best represented by a three-factor solution: the infotainment, the service, and the civic models. The data also show that approaching the audience as consumer or as citizen are not two poles of one continuum, and that approaching the audience under a consumer-orientation consists of two approaches: providing service and providing entertainment.
Exemplification studies usually examined the influence of media exemplars on people’s perceptions of fictional or controversial issues, but neglected the circumstances when people have prior beliefs. The present research tested the effects of media exemplars on people’s perceptions of Chengguan–vendor conflicts, a social issue with strong prior beliefs in China. The typical between-group exemplification effect was not evident; a relative, within-group exemplification effect was found; and a progressively decaying exemplification effect emerged. Yet, when evaluating belief/attitude formation and change beyond the media context, initial belief emerged as the most prominent and the only consistent predictor of subsequent perceptions.
This study used the situational theory of problem solving (STOPS) to investigate communication behaviors of publics formed around an intensively publicized policy issue. Results of surveying 748 participants online support the utility of STOPS to segment the hot-issue public with active communication from the general population in a Chinese context. However, problem recognition does not significantly correlate with situational motivation. Between the examined cross-situational variables, party identity serves as a better identifier of the hot-issue public’s subgroups than trust in the government. Theoretical implications for hot-issue publics and STOPS and practical implications for effective communication to the hot issue are discussed.
With online news aggregators outperforming most traditional media sites, some news executives have accused Google News of stealing their content, even as they rely on Google for exposure. Through a content analysis, this study examines how leading traditional news providers and trade publications, during the 2007-2010 financial shock for U.S. newspapers, covered the newspaper industry’s delicate relationship with Google. Results indicate that such coverage de-emphasized the non-advertising nature of Google News, ignored readers’ views, and used emotion-laden language (e.g., sensational accusations against Google of "stealing" newspaper content or being a "parasite"). Although Google was often portrayed as the enemy, most coverage suggested that newspapers should work with Google, pointing to the challenge of assessing Google’s role in an unfolding era of news aggregation.
Explosive growth in the number of options prompts media researchers to consider how selection behavior changes under higher choice conditions. Two experiments demonstrate that choice environments offering options in smaller sets lead users to be more likely to select news content, in particular "hard news" content. A third study incorporates theories of information processing to explain the observed effects of choice environment. The study provides evidence that smaller sets of options lead users to compare the merits of each option, whereas larger sets of options prompt users to quickly scan the environment for an acceptable option.
Previous research shows that one-sided and uncivil reader comments posted below professionally edited online news articles may affect a recipient’s perception of the specific issue at hand. However, it remains largely unclear whether specific comments affect a reader’s perception of an individual actor depicted in an online news article. An online experiment showed substantial effects (e.g., attitudes, perceived responsibility, perceived opinion climate) of valenced reader comments on a recipient’s evaluation of a scandalized financial manager depicted in connection with a mediated financial scandal. Furthermore, recipients’ perceived journalistic quality of the article itself was affected by specific reader comments.
The present study sheds light on the changing patterns of news experiences by defining it as news sharing. The study attempted to explicate the concept of news sharing by identifying the subdimensions of it in the context of online social networking sites (SNSs). Findings showed that news sharing is comprised of two distinctive behaviors: news internalizing (by those who read news) and externalizing (by those who offer news to others). Furthermore, news internalizing and externalizing have two subdimensions, respectively: browsing and personalizing for internalizing, and recontextualizing and endorsing for externalizing. Data were collected through a national survey of adults in the United States.
In 2006, a video of a middle-aged man verbally assaulting a youth in a public bus thrust user-generated content (UGC) and YouTube into the public imagination in Hong Kong. Using the concept of legitimacy from institutional theory to qualitatively analyze newspaper commentaries about the incident, this study connects journalists’ narratives to the diffusion of UGC by showing how they inadvertently promote cultural support and normative acceptance of this new media category as a consequence of efforts at paradigm-repair and boundary maintenance. Those narratives construe UGC as a legitimate coin-of-exchange: something relevant, familiar, interesting, and appropriate to engage with.
Local sectors of vibrant civic community news sites are important for journalism to improve and communities to thrive. In this study, we examine the news ecologies of four metropolitan regions, Chicago, Seattle, Minneapolis, and New York City, to explain which structural features of the local news environment can make or break civic news websites. Based on a Qualitative Comparative Analysis of 137 cases, we conclude that the most significant contributors to sustainability are connection to a postsecondary institution and location within a news network. We suggest how foundations and others can direct their efforts for increasing sustainability.
Measures of TV exposure are crucial for many communication studies but possible flaws remain understudied. This study contributes to the discussion about the validity of survey measures of media use by assessing the extent to which people over- or underreport their viewing behavior by examining recency effects, and systematic variations in the accuracy of self-reports. Self-reported measures of TV exposure are directly compared with people-meter measures stemming from a single sample and the same time period. The findings reveal tendencies to overreport the frequency of watching and underreport the viewing duration. Response errors relate to sociodemographics and viewing-related characteristics.
Much research has looked at individual Fox News programs as a means to ascertain how the network operates in a variety of contexts, but nearly no attention has been paid to the role of individual program hosts. The host plays an important role in branding news programs and thus directly affects a network’s self-presentation and credibility. This host-based, meso-level study examines how the three Fox News prime time hosts employed differing approaches toward furthering the network’s themes opposing health care reform in August 2009.
Journalists have faced increasing challenges as the result of police forces in different regions switching to digital radio communications. Drawing on gatekeeping theory and the journalistic practices literature, interviews with non-routine news journalists and a content analysis of news stories in newspapers were conducted to illustrate non-routine news coverage and understand how reporters’ routines have changed. The results suggest that police forces’ ability to control information technologically reduces the amount of non-routine news coverage and changes the ways in which news sources are used. Journalists have had to alter their reporting routines to retain journalistic independence.
This study examines the association between high school journalism and civic engagement in early adulthood, independent of other civic activities. Nationally representative data show that taking high school journalism classes is related positively to voting in the years following high school, to a similar degree that taking debate classes or participating in student government is related to voting. High school journalism also moderates the association between family socioeconomics and civic engagement. Underprivileged student journalists tend to vote and volunteer more than their non-journalism peers. The study theorizes journalism education’s unique contributions to civic development and civic communication competence.
This study examines the agenda setting of candidates’ attributes and its relationship with polarized candidate evaluation among TV news viewers. Content analyses of candidates’ affective attributes during the 2012 presidential election indicate partisan imbalance from CNN’s Anderson Cooper and Fox’s Special Report. NBC Nightly News was relatively balanced. Watching a particular program was positively associated with attribute agenda setting by each program. Also, agenda setting by the Fox program was positively related to viewers’ polarized candidate evaluations, whereas agenda setting by the NBC program was negatively associated. Implications of the partisan TV news context for agenda-setting theory are discussed.
This study analyzes letters to the editor in two Oklahoma newspapers during the debate over a constitutional amendment banning judicial use of the Islamic moral code called "Shariah Law." Using Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to operationalize the moral evaluations in media framing, three morality-based frames were identified: a Patriot frame emphasizing Shariah’s harms, a Heritage frame advocating loyalty to the American Way, and a Golden Rule frame promoting equal treatment of Muslims. Each frame was related to moral foundations that align with particular political ideologies, and amendment supporters were more likely to frame their arguments in moral terms.
In a news environment that falls short in covering public priorities, debates play an important role in bringing electoral politics closer to constituents. Given that political elites routinely influence campaign news through the gatekeeping process of source selection and that journalists facilitate debates, it is worth examining the indexing of elite sources in these campaign events. This study uniquely explores the routines of news professionals in debates by examining source selection. This study finds that debate questions citing exogenous sources tap political elites far more frequently than members of the public and identifies media characteristics predictive of elite indexing.
This study tested the construct validity and predictive power of seven measures of media reputation, which is the overall evaluation of the media coverage of a firm. The test was based on a content analysis of 2,817 news articles about nine large U.S. food companies from 2007 to 2011. The measures of media reputation had a high convergent validity, but only a few of them had significant correlations with corporate reputation. Various measures had different predictive powers for corporate reputation, and a measure combining media favorability and media visibility had a higher predictive power than other measures only focusing on media favorability.
The right of publicity—the right to control commercial uses of one’s identity—stands in an ambiguous relationship to First Amendment free speech interests. This article explores the origins of the publicity tort, including its recent expansion into domains formerly thought to be protected by the First Amendment. The article then analyzes two questionable rulings from federal appellate courts in 2013. Both cases held that the First Amendment did not protect a video game maker using the personae of college athletes. These rulings carry serious implications not only for video game creators but also for a variety of media entities.
This study addresses the potential connection between media regulation and public interests. While investigating two Israeli media regulatory authorities, the study’s findings indicate that there is a difference between an Independent Regulatory Agency (IRA) and a governmental agency regarding the place of public interests and that both institutional and substantive consideration affect the extent to which public interests are the core of media regulatory policy. The study’s design and findings enhance the trend of bringing back the public interest theory to the center of media regulatory agenda on the expense of the competitive theory, the private interest theory.
To examine how communication scholars have incorporated the concept of social capital originating from other disciplines, we first analyzed citation patterns among social capital–related journal articles, book chapters, and books extracted from Communication Abstracts. Moreover, we investigated whether and how communication scholars have cited three pioneering scholars in this area, that is, Robert Putnam, Pierre Bourdieu, and James Coleman, to identify aspects of social capital that have either been emphasized or overlooked. Based on the analyses of 171 journal articles, books, and book chapters, we found that the translation of the concept of social capital into communication research has been driven and dominated by a small group of political communication scholars. The results of our content analysis demonstrate that the prominent players in social capital research in the communication field distinctly favored the work of Putnam over those of Bourdieu and Coleman. The implications of these findings for communication research are discussed.
This study tests the normative assumptions on the empowerment effects of freedom of information (FOI) legislation on the press–government relationship in the context of new democracies. In-depth interviews with journalists in Albania, Kosovo, and Montenegro imply that FOI laws can facilitate access to some previously unavailable official information. But, contrary to expectations, FOI laws are proving counterproductive for journalists who report stories beyond the official storyline, as government relies on this tool to control information access and the news agenda. The implication of these results for media freedom, agenda-building theory, and future transparency initiatives is discussed.
This article analyzes quantitatively and qualitatively 1,583 comments by national newspapers’ online readers in Bulgaria. It investigates readers’ reactions to articles discussing the media war between the biggest press groups—one owned by a Member of Parliament known as "the Murdoch of the East." The study explores how these stories influence the relationship between newspapers and their readers, and whether they enhance the democratic potential of online discussion. The results show a higher level of reader engagement than in established democracies or nondemocracies. The online space provides an arena for democratic conversations and it is also used as an engine for conspiracy theories.
This study examined how Republican and Democratic candidates utilized Twitter to manage their impressions during the 2012 U.S. Senate elections, and examined their discussion of political issues and character traits across three types of tweets: campaign tweets, campaign-selected retweets, and tweets that mentioned their respective opponent. Candidates aligned with and trespassed party-based ownership of issues and traits across the tweet types. In the aggregate, Republicans discussed Republican-owned issues and traits more than Democrats, and Democrats emphasized Democrat-owned issues more than Republicans. This party alignment broke down when examined across winning and losing candidates, yielding varying routes to electoral success.
We examined the impact of media messages about mass shootings on participants’ attitudes toward people with mental illness. In a randomized experiment, 293 college students were randomly assigned to read one of five news articles (i.e., one control article, four articles about mass shootings) and answer questions about attitudes toward people with mental illness. Groups significantly differed on attitudes related to perceived dangerousness/social distance and perceived discrimination/belief in recovery, but not insurance/treatment beliefs. The majority of news about mass shootings, even if the article does not mention mental illness or contains expert information, may contribute to negative attitudes.
Recently, several studies suggested that the amount of online search queries can be used as an indicator of the public agenda. Based on former research by the authors, this article discusses the role of public uncertainty as another factor influencing search queries. Therefore, the influence of media coverage on Wikipedia searches concerning two issues is compared: one issue with uncertainty (the Enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli [EHEC] epidemic), and one without uncertainty (unemployment). Analyses show much stronger correlations in the case of EHEC, which suggests that online search behavior may especially be used as an indicator of the public agenda in case public uncertainty exists.
Media scholars have primarily assessed journalistic role perceptions through the survey method. We propose conceptual and operational definitions for four role enactments observable through content analysis: dissemination, interpretative, adversarial, and mobilization. We also examined how journalistic role enactments in stories related to organization type (nonprofit and for-profit) and reporter workload. Results show that nonprofit journalists were more likely to include interpretation in stories, whereas for-profit journalists were more likely to enact the dissemination and mobilization roles. In addition, as reporter story number increases, it significantly predicted enacting the dissemination role, while suppressing the interpretative role, and especially the adversarial role enactment.
This historical discourse analysis examines how various social actors legitimated print advertising from 1800 to 1870. The analysis shows how supporters of advertising overcame ambivalence and hostility toward advertising. Prior to the early 1840s, advertising was promoted by publishers, geared largely to general newspaper readers, and restrained via subtle discursive strategies. Later, promoters of advertising—including publishers and ad agents—tapped into socially and institutionally located legitimating discourse to sell advertising to a wide range of American businesspersons. The findings invite a reconsideration of conclusions made in previous advertising histories.
This study identifies patterns of second-level intermedia agenda setting in the framing of the 2008 race for the Democratic U.S. presidential nomination through a content analysis of four major news sources, nine prominent political blogs across the partisan spectrum, and the press releases of the three leading candidates. A comparison of cross-lagged correlations in the four weeks prior to the Iowa caucuses reveals that the news media and the Hillary Clinton campaign had an intermedia agenda-setting effect. Rather than controlling the campaign narrative, political bloggers mostly followed the lead set by the journalists.
Based on measurements across the past decade, this paper challenges common wisdom about new technologies’ transformative impact on news reporting. The telephone still reigns as queen of the news production battlefield, while use of the Internet and social media as news sources remains marginal. In face-to-face reconstruction interviews, news reporters at three leading national Israeli dailies detailed reporting of recently published items. Findings conform to the Compulsion to Proximity theory, in which technological impact on professional and lay actors is restrained by the need to maintain richer interactions based on copresence.