Archives for June 2011

The Conflict over Jim Crow Censorship of Movie Scenes  in Greensboro, North Carolina, 1937-38 • Lorraine Ahearn, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In the Jim Crow South on December 7, 1937, an association of white North and South Carolina movie theater exhibitors met for  a silver jubilee convention in Pinehurst, N.C. and made an announcement: They resolved  that they would henceforth censor Hollywood movie scenes that violated racial taboos because they showed black performers on an equal footing with whites. The resolution, reported as front-page news in the white-owned Greensboro Daily News, prompted female students from a historically black private campus, Bennett College, to call for a community boycott of white downtown theaters in Greensboro to protest racial stereotypes in movies. This little-known incident may speak to the emerging power of media in the 1930s, particularly in the social construction of race, and may shed light on the history of student activism in a city that was a civil rights flashpoint.

Press Coverage of Indira Gandhi • Adrienne Atterberry • This paper examines how press coverage of Indira Gandhi changed during the 1977 election, as compared to the 1971 and 1980 election cycles.  The 1977 election occurred during the Emergency—a time of increased press censorship.  Thus, this paper hopes to explore what effect government censorship has on press coverage of Indira Gandhi during an election.  Newspaper articles from the Times of India, New York Times, and the Washington Post were selected for analysis.  The evidence indicates that press coverage of Indira Gandhi during the 1977 election focused primarily on topics of importance to her political agenda.  Meanwhile, coverage of Gandhi during the 1971 and 1980 elections focused on her competence as the leader of India and her significance in foreign relations.

A ‘Pestilent, Factional Quarrel’: Letters Reveal Lincoln’s Obsession with Censorship • Stephen Banning, Bradley University • Contrary to some beliefs, it appears Lincoln did not soften his approach to press suppression during the latter part of the Civil War. This research contrasts two times United State’s President Abraham Lincoln suppressed the American Civil War opposition press. Original letters from Lincoln and those involved in the suppressions are used to shed light on Lincoln’s involvement in tacitly supporting censorship, particularly in the Border States. The findings suggest Lincoln himself allowed press suppression to continue even when it would influence a local election.

Partisan Journalist: William D. Workman and the Rise of the Republican Party in South Carolina • Sid Bedingfield, University of South Carolina • William D. Workman was South Carolina’s best-known journalist when he decided to run for the U.S. Senate in 1962.  A segregationist, Workman said he entered the race reluctantly because he feared liberal forces were destroying the nation. He called newspaper work his “life’s calling,” and as both a news reporter and opinion columnist he had claimed allegiance to the norms of modern professional journalism – detachment, independence, and objectivity. But a review of the Workman personal papers tells a different story. Workman had been engaged in partisan political work behind the scenes since early 1960 to help build a conservative Republican Party in the South. Workman’s papers provide a richly detailed example of how press and politics often remained closely entwined in the post-war years, despite the rise of an ethical code that proudly claimed otherwise.

“If I’ve Lost Cronkite …”: Myth and Memory of Walter Cronkite, Lyndon Johnson, and the Vietnam War • Lisa Burns, Quinnipiac University • On February 27, 1968, CBS television broadcast a half-hour news documentary called Report from Vietnam featuring CBS Evening News anchor Walter Cronkite. He ended the program with a clearly labeled editorial where he declared the war “a stalemate.” After watching the special, President Lyndon Johnson reportedly said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America.” The so-called “Cronkite moment” has become part of the collective memory of President Johnson, Walter Cronkite, and the Vietnam War. But in his recent book Getting It Wrong, journalism historian W. Joseph Campbell claims that the “Cronkite moment” is a media-driven myth – a dubious or false story that promotes journalism’s significance. But, if the “Cronkite moment” is just a myth, why does it have such staying power?  This essay looks at the “Cronkite moment” from a different angle, that of collective memory. By examining the “Cronkite moment” from a collective memory perspective, a different picture develops that helps to why explain why Cronkite’s Tet editorial has become an important part of the collective memories of Johnson, Cronkite, and the Vietnam War. After reviewing references to the “Cronkite moment” in books by journalists, presidential biographers, and media historians, the analysis focuses on two key types of memory-shaping products: memoirs and museum exhibits related to Johnson and Cronkite. This essay will look at how the “story” is remembered in these various iterations, addressing some of Campbell’s concerns along the way.

From Outsider to Martyr: The Advocate’s Coverage of Harvey Milk from 1977 to 1979 • Robert Byrd, University of South Alabama • Harvey Milk’s short-lived political career in San Francisco is a milestone in the gay movement. Milk made waves among the established gay political hierarchy of San Francisco. One member of that hierarchy happened to own the nation’s most-widely circulated LGBT magazine. This paper explores the evolution of The Advocate’s depiction of Milk from a self-centered political outsider with potential to do serious damage to the gay movement to a martyr whose memory will inspire those that follow to continue to work toward the goals he gave his life to achieve.

Community Journalism in a Secret City: The Oak Ridge Journal, 1943-1948 • Michael Clay Carey, Ohio University • In 1943 the federal government approved publication of the Oak Ridge Journal, a weekly flyer sent to residents at one of three secret towns created to develop the Manhattan Project. This in-depth review of the Journal’s content reveals that early issues focused mainly on government propaganda aimed at workers, but over time the publication grew to look and read more like a traditional community newspaper. Even as it evolved, government censorship was still evident.

“Our TV show”: Legitimacy, Public Relations and J. Edgar Hoover’s “The F.B.I.” on ABC-TV • Matthew Cecil, South Dakota State University • “The F.B.I.,” television series allowed J. Edgar Hoover’s public relations team to reach millions of viewers with stories emphasizing the organization’s legitimacy by focusing on themes demonstrating utility and responsibility. A review of FBI control over the series provides a snapshot of state-of-the-art Bureau public relations and brand management at the end of Hoover’s 48-year tenure.

Made by TV: The American Football League and Broadcast Networks • Thomas Corrigan, Penn State; Melanie Formentin, Penn State • In the 1960s, the American Football League’s (AFL) creation ushered in direct competition for professional football’s incumbent circuit, the National Football League (NFL). Network television’s revenue and promotion proved crucial for the AFL’s stability and ascendancy. This paper examines the AFL’s relationship with network broadcasters. A crucial piece of sports broadcasting legislation, paired with NBC’s role as AFL financier, put upward pressure on player salaries, ultimately hastening the AFL and NFL merger of 1966.

A Pulitzer up North, a Libel Suit down South: Southern Editors’ Civil Rights Writings, 1954-1968 • Aimee Edmondson • This study focuses on libel suits filed against four Pulitzer Prize winners in the South. Just as the New York Times faced the wrath of police commissioner L.B. Sullivan in the most famous of libel cases, here are four southern editors who fought suits against public officials and public figures in the South in the 1950s and 1960s. In any study of reporters’ attempts to cover the civil rights movement and southern efforts to stop them, southern journalists should be included.

“Mexicans, Indians and the Worst Kind of White Men”: Bayard Taylor’s Construction of Mexican Identity • Michael Fuhlhage, Auburn University • This paper analyzes 39 first-person reports New York Tribune correspondent Bayard Taylor wrote in California and Mexico in 1849-50. His letters are packed with observations about Mexican people and relations with the Americans who flooded into the territory. His lectures on ethnicity and race and personal papers are also analyzed. Taylor provided a counterpoint to demonizing portrayals of Mexicans in the press but perpetuated stratification of Californio elites and Mexican farmers and laborers.

They Came to Toil:  U.S. News Coverage of Mexicans on the Eve of the Great Depression • Melita M. Garza, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • In the aftermath of the 1929 stock market crash as many as one million Mexican Americans and Mexicans were deported in what has been characterized as a racial exclusion program second only to the Native American removals along the Trail of Tears during the nineteenth century. This study assesses whether Depression era English and Spanish-language newspaper coverage at the incipient stage of this great Mexican diaspora reflected a U.S. economy divided by culture.

“Woman at the Wheel” Column Challenges Detroit’s Notion of the Female Car Buyer, 1965-1982 • Ellen Gerl, Ohio University; Craig Davis, Ohio University • This paper examines the representation of the woman car driver and themes present in the “Woman at the Wheel” column in Woman’s Day from 1965 to 1982. The automotive advice column was created to attract automobile advertising but never did. Textual analysis, interviews, and archival research show that Detroit automakers’ gendered notion of the female car buyer kept them from advertising in women’s periodicals such as Woman’s Day.

Trouble on the Right, Trouble on the Left: The Early History of the American Newspaper Guild • Philip Glende, North Central College • The early years of the American Newspaper Guild were filled with internal conflict as intense as the struggle with employers. Many reporters and editors resisted embracing a trade union model for their organization. For some, journalism was a profession made up of reporters who thrived on individual talent and hard work. For many who opposed the Guild, no issue appears to have been more alienating than leftist leadership in local and national offices.

Sic Juvat Transcendere Liberi: How Newspapers Built the Case for West Virginia Statehood • Matthew Haught, University of South Carolina • Long before their political separation, the people of West Virginia regarded themselves as unique, sharing few ties with the Virginians east of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Benedict Anderson’s concept of imagined communities helps explain the process by which the people of western Virginia united to create a state apart from the east. This paper examines western Virginia newspaper discussions about separation and statehood between 1860-1863 and employs Anderson’s framework as a guide.

“Race Conference Meets In Atlanta”: Public Relations for the NAACP’s First Conference in the South, 1920 • Denise Hill, UNC-Chapel Hill • Since its founding in 1909, the NAACP employed a number of public relations strategies and tactics to communicate its primary objective, which was: “to uplift the Negro men and women of this country by securing for them the complete enjoyment of their rights as citizens, justice in the courts, and equal opportunities in every economic, social, and political endeavor in the United States”  More specifically, the NAACP wanted to “”stamp out the evils of race prejudice practiced against the Negro in America in the form of lynching, disfranchisement, Jim-Crowism, unequal industrial and educational opportunities, and other such disabilities.”  In 1920, the NAACP decided to hold its first conference in the south. The NAACP believed its first conference in the South, to be held in Atlanta, would be a watershed moment, and its leaders wanted to ensure that it was effectively employing public relations for the conference to further its cause. This study explores how the NAACP used public relations for its eleventh annual conference, and how those public relations activities fit within previously linear models of public relations history.

Insults for Sale: The 1957 Memphis Newspaper Boycott • Thomas J. Hrach, University of Memphis • In the 1950s as African Americans around the country began using their economic clout to affect change in public policy, black citizens of Memphis effectively used a boycott to alter policies at that city’s largest circulation newspaper. The Citizens Improvement Committee, a group of black citizens organized a successful boycott of The Commercial Appeal in 1957. The citizens were seeking changes in the newspaper’s editorial policies including the use of courtesy titles for black women and more coverage of the black community. The 49-day boycott attracted national attention and gained the black community new respect from the white establishment. The boycott set the state for many other successful boycotts in Memphis. The Commercial Appeal had a history of supporting black citizens as evidenced by its receiving the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service in 1923 for its campaign opposing the Ku Klux Klan. But the newspaper also reflected many of the prejudices of white America as evidenced by its insensitivity to the black citizens of Memphis in the 1950s. The criticisms of the newspaper would continue through the 1960s, and the tensions were heightened in 1968. That was when the newspaper sided with the Memphis mayor in the sanitation strike that brought Martin Luther King to the city. On the 40th anniversary of King’s death, the newspaper examined its role in heightening tensions within the black community that were first brought to light in the 1957 newspaper boycott and then in the 1968 sanitation workers strike.

“The gathering mists of time:” American magazines and revolutionary memory, 1787-1860 • Janice Hume, University of Georgia • This study examines 231 American magazine articles published prior to the Civil War to see how they recalled the American Revolution and how that memory evolved during important nation-building years. Much like other histories published during the era, these articles homogenized the story of America’s origins into a “”cult of consensus,”” featuring heroic narratives told in many different formats. The study adds to our understanding of the relationship between the press and American public memory.

Framing White Hopes:  The Press, Social Drama, and the Era of Jack Johnson, 1908-1915 • Phillip Hutchison, University of Kentucky • The social presence of African-American boxing champion Jack Johnson reflects one of the most controversial social and media issues of the early 20th Century. Although many scholars have implicated America’s press in the Johnson controversy, the situation has yet to be examined through the lens of journalism history.  To provide some of this missing perspective, this critical-historical analysis illustrates how the white press constructed the entire Johnson situation as an overarching narrative, one that unfolded in real time for nearly seven years.  The study employs Victor Turner’s theory of Processual Social Drama to explain how the white press, with little variance, framed the open-ended events involving Jack Johnson in terms of a breach-to-redress narrative trajectory that comprised three palpable dramatic acts.  This finding contrasts with most Johnson histories, which portray the Johnson controversy as a two-act narrative.  The additional insights not only better inform the relationship between the press and the Johnson situation, it also provides insights into how the press of that era used temporal and affective narrative frames to construct news.  This orientation helps better explain how the press shaped the Johnson controversy and how it marginalized divergent views of the situation.  Additionally, by better understanding the dramatic structure of press coverage, historians gain both a more complex understanding of attitudes toward Johnson over time and a more nuanced etymology of the now-ubiquitous term “white hope.”

A Path Made of Words: The Journalistic Construction of the Appalachian Trail • James Kates, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater • The Appalachian Trail runs for more than two thousand miles from Maine to Georgia. The trail celebrates nature, but its making was a major achievement in the very human art of recreational politics. Conceived in 1921 and completed in 1937, the trail was, for many, simply a venue for hiking and camping. But journalists in many media — including newspapers, popular magazines, and journals of opinion — also cast multiple meanings on the project. The trail’s purposes would come to encompass regional planning, preservation of rural folkways, and the perpetuation of wilderness areas. This paper examines the work of two influential writers — forester and author Benton MacKaye, and New York newspaperman Raymond Torrey — in defining the trail’s place in American life.

Google Books Ngram Viewer and Text-Mining for Culture:  Corpora and Digital Data-Mining’s Place in Journalism History • Robert Krueger, George Mason University • The recently launched Google Books Ngram Viewer has been marketed as a user-friendly and accurate corpus for scholars who want to text-mind publications for cultural trends and patterns.  But how can corpora like this be of use to journalism and mass communication historians?   This paper includes a case study that tests the thesis of historian Sarah Igo’s The Averaged American in order to illustrate how corpora, text-mining, and digital visualization can benefit the historical field.

New Views of Investigative Reporting in the Twentieth Century • Gerry Lanosga • This paper examines a little-studied period in the history of investigative reporting.  An analysis of Pulitzer Prize nominations reveals the exposé as an enduring practice between the Muckrakers and the 1960s, not isolated to a few newspapers or iconoclastic journalists but published in newspapers of every size from nearly every state.  This examination provides new context for the development of journalism as a profession and of the complex relationship between journalists and official power.

The Tale of Two Legends and Philanthropy in Rock and Roll • Ji Hoon Lee • This phenomenology coupled with historical overview is the examination of the two key charity projects in rock and roll history—The Concert for Bangladesh (1971) and “We Are the World” (1985)—with an emphasis on George Harrison and Michael Jackson’s humanitarian idealism. The study is also a critical reminisce piece, comparing and contrasting their legacies, influences, and criticism. The study uses the context of the two charity projects as an attempt to analyze how they capitalized on the eras’ social and cultural factors.

Intellectual Heft: A.J. Liebling as an Opponent of Anti-Intellectualism in American Journalism • Kevin Lerner, Rutgers University/Marist College • A.J. Liebling essentially invented the role of the press critic in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, but his impact on the profession of journalism, and on subsequent press critics has barely been studied. This essay assesses Liebling’s 82 Wayward Press columns for The New Yorker through the lens of anti-intellectualism as defined by the historian Richard Hofstadter and sociologist Daniel Rigney, giving Liebling a prime place in the intellectual history of journalism.

Marshall “Major” Taylor and the Summer of 1910: Salt Lake City Newspapers Cover the Bicycle Racer’s Final Season • Kim Mangun, The University of Utah • This qualitative study examines articles, cartoons, and advertisements published in six white newspapers in Salt Lake City to see how Marshall “Major” Taylor and his final season of bicycle racing there were covered. The artifacts were examined using critical discourse analysis and narrative analysis. The study uses the interrelated concepts of myth and hero-crafting to critically analyze coverage of Taylor and his races.

Assessing the Dream: The March on Washington and American Collective Memory • Meagan Manning, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • Building off the large body of work on collective memory, this research examines the “warehouse” created by the Milwaukee Journal and the Chicago Tribune with respect to the March on Washington of 1963. By presenting a history of the march and assessing media representations of different eras in light of that history, this study aims to isolate potential sites of collective memory formation and trace the ways those memories may have changed over time.

Writer by Trade: Journalistic Identity in the Early Eighteenth Century • William Mari • This paper proposes that journalism’s ethos began developing a century before commonly assumed, with the journalists of eighteenth-century Great Britain. This ethos, and its accompanying proto-professional identity (formed in a process of legitimatization, commercialization, and politicization) was championed by its first practitioners, including James Ralph, an American expatriate and political writer, in his Case of Authors by Profession or Trade -writers were, indeed, among the first professional groups to debate their identity publicly.

What Journalism Textbooks Teach Us About Newsroom Ethos • Raymond McCaffrey, University of Maryland • Journalists avoiding treatment for work-related stress have blamed a newsroom ethos that discourages emotional expression. The ethos that guides organizations is often tied to professional codes, according to institutional theory. This study involved a review of textbooks from 1913-1978 to determine their role in mapping out journalism codes. The analysis revealed that textbooks not only taught principles like impartiality, but also that journalists were to remain emotionally detached, avoid introspection, display courage and take risks.

“A Keg of Dynamite and You’re Sitting On It”: An Analysis of the Ad Council’s Atomic Energy Campaign • Wendy Melillo, American University • Following the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, American scientists ran a public service advertising campaign from 1946 to 1947 through the Ad Council to establish an international authority to control atomic weapons. This historical analysis of why the Ad Council’s atomic energy campaign failed provides important insights about how scientists should conduct communication campaigns when dealing with more contemporary issues like climate change and intelligent design.

Kicking off the hype: Newspaper Coverage of Super Bowl I • Brian Moritz • On Jan. 15, 1967, the Green Bay Packers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10, in the first AFL-NFL World Championship game – also known as the first Super Bowl. Super Bowl I was the first meeting between teams from the National Football League and the American Football League, and the popular mythology is that the game was not a big story at the time. This paper studies how newspapers at the time covered the game examines the coverage in eight newspapers from across the country. The study shows that the game received wide-ranging and prominent coverage in newspapers at the time, contrary to the myth. The dominant storyline was the merger between the two leagues and the fact that the teams acted as stand-ins for their respective leagues.

The Precious Ingredient of War:  The WPB Used Cooking Fat Advertising Campaign of 1943 • Geah Pressgrove, University of South Carolina • In 1943, the U.S. War Production Board (WPB) initiated an advertising campaign instructing American women to collect their used cooking fat for reuse in the making of gunpowder to “exterminate the slant eyes” and sulfa to “ease the pain of a wounded American.”  This study examines the WPB cooking fat recycling propaganda using Benedict Anderson’s concept of “imagined communities.”  In Anderson’s conception of nationalism, cultural products expressing patriotic feeling are a means by which a common people—an “imagined community” or nation—create their community and imagine its future. The patriotic appeals in the cooking fat ads encouraged American women to imagine themselves as part of a heroic, just nation defeating evil in the world. Anderson’s metaphor is particularly helpful in understanding the social and political meanings, uses, and effects of war time propaganda, as well as the complex relationships among the U.S. government, industry, media, and citizens in constructing national identity in a time of crisis. In building bridges between propaganda studies and Anderson’s concept of imagined communities, this study not only breaks new scholarly ground but also adopts and revises Anderson’s thesis on nationalism in the context of World War II American propaganda activities.

Partisan Rhetoric and the Rise of the Nullification Party in 1831 South Carolina • Erika Pribanic-Smith, University of Texas at Arlington • Rhetoric in South Carolina’s partisan press had immense ramifications as the state’s voters decided whether to elect politicians who aimed to nullify offensive federal economic policy.  The year 1831 encompassed events crucial to determining the state’s political actions. This paper examines six South Carolina newspapers during those twelve months and concludes that Nullification partisans used their presses more effectively than the Unionists over the course of the year, tipping public opinion in their favor.

“The Problem Cuts a Dozen Different Ways”: Marquis W. Childs and Civil Rights, 1950s-60s • Robert Rabe, Marshall University School of Journalism • This paper is an analysis of columnist Mark Childs’ thinking and writing on one of the most significant domestic issues of his day, the postwar civil rights movement.  It briefly discusses the emergence of the civil rights issue during the 1940s and 1950s, and focuses more fully on the topic as it became more prominent through the early 1960s and the era of the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  The study concludes with a focus on the lingering complex politics of civil rights as they became even more volatile in the latter part of the decade.  It argues that Childs contributed a great deal of support for African-American civil rights programs and policies, but that in the end many of his most important objectives remained unfulfilled.

Gathering The “Inside Dope”: The Practice of Sports Journalism, 1900-1930 • Amber Roessner, University of Tennessee • Heeding Hanno Hardt and Bonnie Brennen’s call for studies that provide insight into the historical role of newsworkers, this study explores the practice of herocrafting in early twentieth century sports journalism. Using a historical case study approach, it examines the rapport-building and newsgathering strategies of Grantland Rice, F.C. Lane, and John N. Wheeler.  In doing so, it sheds light on the prevalence of ballyhoo and the emergence of detachment in sports journalism.

The Conflict and Balance of History and Drama in 20th Century-Fox’s The Longest Day • Peter Shooner • The film The Longest Day (1962) was largely the product of two men, Cornelius Ryan and Darryl Zanuck. Ryan, who researched and wrote the book that the movie was based on also wrote the screenplay for the film. Zanuck acted as producer/director on the project and saw the film as a chance to resurrect his failing career. The two men had very different ideas of how accurately the film should represent history, and as a result, they feuded during the entire movie-making process, with Zanuck usually winning. The Longest Day blends history and drama in its retelling of D-Day, at times misrepresenting and disregarding historical fact. This paper analyses Ryan’s and Zanuck’s relationship, how it affected the final product and in what ways the film strays from fact for the sake of drama.

The National Association of Manufacturers’ Short Film “Your Town”: Parable, Propaganda, and Big Individualism • Burton St. John, Old Dominion University; Robert Arnett, Old Dominion University • In the aftermath of the Great Depression, the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) faced growing anti-business sentiment.  As part of a widespread propaganda campaign to assuage public concerns about industry, in 1940 NAM created and distributed the short film Your Town. The movie, pursuing an integration propaganda strategy, appealed to Americans’ individualistic values by portraying industry as a beneficent fellow traveler who was a Big Individual — a heroic, larger-than-life figure that brought blessings to all. Applying critical insights (Altman, Campbell, Gunning, Propp) concerning the parabolic narrative form, this work finds that, while NAM’s original concept of Big Individualism has faded, modern American commercial films inadvertently carry forward one conceptual aim of NAM’s Your Town: encourage individuals to continue to think of independent action – and not systemic reform – as a foundational worldview for life’s challenges.

Embed vs.Unilateral, 1904: Risks and Rewards in Coverage of the Russo-Japanese War • Michael Sweeney, Ohio University • This study examines the strengths and weaknesses of war reporting from the perspectives of embedded, accredited correspondents and “unilaterals,” who report without military assistance or protection. It uses a variety of primary sources to examine and analyze the work of three reporters from the Russo-Japanese War: Lionel James of The Times of London and New York Times, Stanley Washburn of the Chicago Daily News and Minneapolis Times, and Hector Fuller of the Indianapolis News. All three used boats on the Yellow Sea to gather news, including James, the first to report from a war zone via radio. James chose to report with the approval of the Japanese navy, in return for accepting a Japanese spy and censor aboard his boat. Washburn and Fuller reported independently, with the former gathering news from a dispatch boat and then filing reports from land-based telegraph lines, and the latter sailing into and out of the besieged garrison of Port Arthur to gather the only outsider’s view of conditions in the sealed city. The paper determines that each reporter obtained stories that the others could not, and concludes that both embeds and unilaterals have advantages that recommend the use of both in wartime.

From Clanking Chains to Clashing Arms: A Black Newspaper and its Coverage of  the Black Soldier in the Civil War • Thomas Terry, Idaho State University • This paper examines the coverage of the black soldier through the pages of a black newspaper, the Pacific Appeal, published in San Francisco, California during two years of the Civil War. Editor Philip Bell admonished the union for neglecting to make emancipation the principal war aim and embracing black recruits.

<< 2011 Abstracts

Reflections of culture in Nigerian video films • Emmanuel Alozie, Governors State University • For more than 25 years, Nigeria has emerged as one of the world’s leading video film producers. Since its inception, the cultural messages and values contained in these films have been a subject of interest. Several studies have been conducted to examine the contents. This study relies on a collection of these studies to extract the most common themes that have emerged. It uses the information and communication technologies as its conceptual framework.

An American in Paris, Rio & Morocco: A Transnational Analysis of The Price of Beauty • Emilia Bak, UGA • The Price of Beauty follows Jessica Simpson and two friends as they travel the world and talk to women about ideas of beauty. The show appears to be a benign exploration of women’s ideas about beauty, but complicated issues about diversity, the dominance of the West, and the genre of the travel show itself arise. Using a transnational feminist lens, this paper explores how diversity, in ideas about beauty, constructed the cultures explored as “”other.””

The Political Economy of Hip-Hop Culture in USA Today • Sean Baker, Central Michigan University; Johnny Mann, Towson University • A content analysis was conducted on hip hop articles in the USA Today to observe ways hip-hop culture has been portrayed. Several factors were analyzed including the amount of articles, story location, story type, and story length. The context in which hip-hop culture was presented was measured by the number of references to violence, race, crime, affiliations, success and observing the changes over time. Articles in the early years were more likely to discuss hip hop in short news briefs as violent and criminal. As references to sales and success increased, hip hop received positive and more prominent feature coverage.

When Ritual Media Events Fail to Unite: A Case Study on Holodomor Commemoration in Ukraine • Olga Baysha, University of Colorado at Boulder • During recent years, the problematic of social disenchantment, cynicism, and divide as manifestations of media effects has become one of the central areas of inquiry in social research. It has been acknowledges that, instead of enhancing social solidarity, late modern media events sharpen the forces of social disruption. This paper presents the case study of the commemoration of Ukrainian Holodomor (Great Famine) – a media event that has widened the split within the Ukrainian society.

Drawing Lines in the Journalistic Sand: Jon Stewart, Edward R. Murrow and Memory of News Gone Bye • Dan Berkowitz; Robert Gutsche Jr, The University of Iowa • In mid-December 2010, Daily Show host Jon Stewart asked Congress to address the healthcare needs of 9/11 rescue workers – which it did. Shortly after, The New York Times published an analysis piece comparing Stewart to the legendary broadcaster Edward R. Murrow. This paper explores how collective memory of Murrow was used by both mainstream media and the blogosphere to negotiate membership boundaries of journalism itself, with analysis conducted through textual analysis of online news texts.

“”To See Life as a Poem””: Toward a Mythology of Music • Phil Chidester, Illinois State University • Taking aim at the scholarly consensus that verbal language is the sole symbol system capable of conveying the complexities and nuances of myth, this paper seeks to establish music’s own ability to invoke a sense of mythic transcendence. Turning to Bob Dylan’s Biograph (1985) as a case study, I argue that Dylan’s performance as a mythic storyteller invites listeners to perceive and reconsider their relationships to society and their connections to the cosmos.

Haunted asylums? Stigma and mental illness in paranormal reality TV • Michelle Dangiuro-Baker, Penn State University • Stigma is a phenomenon that teaches individuals to discredit those who pose a threat to society. Persons with mental illness have long been stigmatized as abnormal, dangerous, and criminal. Paranormal reality TV, which features former mental institutions, provides the seedbed for such stigma communication. Through textual analysis, episodes of Ghost Hunters and Ghost Adventures featuring mental institutions were analyzed within Smith’s (2007) framework for stigma communication. Results suggest that both series perpetuate mental illness stigma.

The effects of normalizing forces on the development of an online radicalized public sphere • Rachel Davis, West Virginia University; Bob Britten • This study examines to what degree homosexual blogs are effective in forming online counter-publics as a form of ‘other’ discussion against mainstream and oppositional discourses. This work draws from Dahlberg’s conceptualization of a radicalized public sphere as well as other theories relating to public sphere and homosexual communication. The findings in this study illustrate the ability of blogs to facilitate radicalized public sphere formations through online discourse by enabling users to form discourses of contestation.

Power Evasive Diversity: How Journalism’s Focus on the Personal and Individual Leaves Racial Power Imbalances Intact • Kevin Dolan • This paper explores how white and journalistic identifications and journalistic conventions and practices perpetuate the racial status quo. If find mainstream U.S. journalism consistently serves white racial interests and the racial status quo despite its push for diversity and stated aims to improve coverage of nonwhite communities. This is based on an in-depth ethnographic study of two daily newspapers and extensive one-on-one interviews with more than 60 journalists.

Silence and Agony: A Comparison of Chronic Pain Depictions in Blogs and Newspapers • Robin Donovan • This critical discourse analysis compared blog and newspaper coverage of chronic pain. Framing, definition/self-definition of people with chronic pain, and otherization were examined in a study of 1,223 articles. Bloggers described pain specifically, focusing on its social impact and self-redefinition. In contrast, newspaper coverage highlighted debilitation, victimization, and addiction.  Newspapers medicalized and otherized ill people by portraying chronic pain as less impactful, less agonizing, and less real than bloggers’ descriptions.

“”Below The Yellow Line””: Competitor Discourse on NBC’s “”The Biggest Loser”” • Eric Dunning; Mary Katherine Alsip, University of Alabama; Kim Bissell, University of Alabama • This paper is unique in the sense that it will be an investigation into what has so far been ignored in both body image and reality TV scholarship: participant’s ideas about body image/weight loss in the media constructed, competitive “”reality”” of TV. In doing so, this paper utilizes the most robust method of evaluation, especially when looking at contestant attitudes, conceptualizations and responses to body image/weight issues, is a critical discourse analysis of their rhetoric.

Framing in the ‘New Media Environment’: Fox News Channel (FNC) Covers the Bristol Palin Pregnancy • Frank Durham • On 1 September 2008, the opening day of the Republican National Convention, Bristol Palin’s teen pregnancy was publicly announced. Fox News Channel (FNC) framed Bristol Palin’s pregnancy as a positive story, foreclosing critical debate on the issue of teen pregnancy. Based on Couldry’s critique of the use of media rituals to construct and consolidate ‘centered’ media power, this critical textual analysis examines framing as a media ritual operaating to make the media’s symbolic power legitimate.

Thinking about Journalism with Superman • Matthew Ehrlich, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • Superman is an icon of American popular culture. However, although Superman’s alter ego Clark Kent is a reporter who works for a daily newspaper, few have analyzed in any depth the role that journalism plays in the Superman mythology. This paper uses Superman in its various incarnations in comics, radio, movies, and television as a way of thinking critically about real-world journalism’s complex and contradictory relationship to truth, justice, and the American way.

Questioning the Kibera Discourse: Articulating Representations and Lived Experience in a Nairobi Slum • Brian Ekdale, University of Wisconsin – Madison • I argue the discourse surrounding the Nairobi slum Kibera exaggerates the community’s deplorable conditions and ignores features residents value. As a result, a disconnect exists between this discourse and the lived experiences of Kibera residents. I examine this disconnect by asking Kibera residents to articulate their life experiences and what they understand to be the Kibera discourse. In interviews, residents demonstrate an awareness of and dissatisfaction with the dominant discourse about their community.

Theorizing Cultural Development vis-à-vis Cultural Imperialism Theory: Lessons from Nigeria • Nnamdi Ekeanyanwu, Department of Mass Communication, Covenant University, Ota, Nigeria • Cultural Imperialism Theory is one of the loose theories that discuss media, society and cultural relations between nations. Scholars of media/cultural orientation have questioned the fundamental pillars of this theory while a few others have continued to support it. This paper re-evaluates the possible positions and concludes that the very foundation upon which this theory is built is no longer solid considering 21st century questions that the proponents have failed to answer satisfactorily.

The Copyright Wars, the Free Culture Movement, and Second Wave Critical Legal Studies • Victoria Ekstrand, Bowling Green State University; Cynthia Nicole Shipman; Andrew Famiglietti • This paper maintains that the free culture movement in intellectual property (IP) law, inspired by Critical Legal Studies (CLS), has generated a second wave of CLS critique and activism, in somewhat indirect and unintentional fashion. The practical effect is a new kind of dialogue about IP law that is inclusionary, participatory, and capable of effecting change.

The Next Cable Star: Critical industrial practice in HGTV’s reality competition format • Madeleine Esch, Salve Regina University • Unlike other better-known reality talent competition shows, HGTV’s Design Star offers as grand prize the chance for winning contestant to host his/her own series on the network. I argue that such a “”farm league”” format is not only a hyper-efficient commercialization of necessary processes but also a revealing self-reflexive act (what J. T. Caldwell calls “”critical industrial practice””) that affirms the value of on-camera television labor in an increasingly rationalized production environment.

Peace is War: Epistemological and Ethical Concerns in Peace Journalism’s Theory, Praxis, and Practice • Nicholas Gilewicz, Temple University • Peace journalism—journalistic practice attempting to critique and correct war journalism—arises from structuralist analysis, has culturalist aims, and emerges as an ethical media frame. 42 recent articles and books about peace journalism’s theory, praxis, and practice indicate both its failure to fully consider its own discursive structure and epistemological and professional problems paralleling those of war journalism. To support peace journalism’s admirable ethical aims, proponents should attend to refining and strengthening its theoretical bases.

A Watchdog to Reckon With: Delivering WikiLeaks in the Israeli and Australian Press • Robert Handley, University of Denver; Amani Ismail, American University in Cairo • By examining how Israeli and Australian news media treated the WikiLeaks phenomenon in the last few months, this study interrogates how news discourses on this so-called “”whistleblower”” inform us about how journalists handle professional versus national narratives, especially when the newsbreaker (WikiLeaks) is a non-national news entity. Analysis indicates that the WikiLeaks factor may well complicate the traditional “”their news”” and “”our news”” dichotomy, particularly because nation-states’ secrets are revealed on the global landscape.

Spaces for Feminist (Re)articulations: The Blogosphere and the Sexual Attack of Journalist Lara Logan • Dustin Harp, University of Texas School of Journalism; Jaime Loke, University of Oklahoma; Ingrid Bachmann, University of Texas at Austin • This discourse analysis explores traditional and feminist articulations of rape in online mediated discourse of the sexual attack of journalist Lara Logan in Egypt. Examination of 175 stories and links in the top ten news blogs showed that the blogosphere contested traditional rape narratives that blamed Logan for the attack. In doing so, bloggers engaged in a struggle for meaning and mainstreamed feminist understandings on sexual violence within the online public space.

I Tweet, You Tweet: Journalists’ Use of Twitter and the Individualization of Participation • Kristen Heflin, University of Alabama • This study analyzes journalistic use and evaluation of Twitter and the implications for addressing journalism’s present crisis in credibility.  It argues that Twitter serves as a conduit for individualized empiricism, which journalists comfortably accommodate as a supplement to traditional reporting, a move that preserves their professional status without critically reflecting on the practices that perpetuate the crisis of credibility. This study also discusses journalism’s crisis of credibility as a crisis of epistemology.

Television’s spectacle of autism: Metaphors of a popular network program • Avery Holton, University of Texas-Austin • This study explored the metaphor of autism as fear, oddity, and disease in the discourse of a popular American television program, arguing that the public was exposed to multiple metaphorical presentations of autism that are not necessarily representative of the culture of autism. While autism as a diagnosis is characterized largely by cognitive and behavioral characteristics, the discourse presented through the program may have inflated such characteristics for the viewing public.

Mediating identities: Taiwanese migrants’ readings of Chinese news • Shuling Huang • Using the case of Taiwanese migrants in China, this paper demonstrates that news reception involves three levels of readings: information evaluations, meaning construction and identity negotiation. These readings are cross-referred to each other and associated with migrants’ lived experiences. Three news events of China in 2008 invite various readings. Mostly, migrants distrust China’s official discourse and struggle over their Chineseness. Through the reception of Chinese news, paradoxically, a kind of Taiwanese consciousness is reinforced.

Selling the Post-Communist Female Body:  Portrayals of Women and Gender in Bulgarian Advertising • Elza Ibroscheva, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville • The study examines hypersexualization of the female body in Bulgarian advertising to explore how the trend of what media scholars call “”porno chic”” might normalize and glorify the process of turning the female body into a commodity. This paper examines images of women in the Vodka Flirt campaign to trace the construction of female sexuality and the role of ideology in controlling these images and their expressions in advertising as one form of cultural production.

Girlfriends & Sex and the City: an intersectional analysis of race, gender, & commodity feminism in two TV shows • Camille Kraeplin • In intersectional theory, gender and race have been referred to as super-ordinate groups.  People think about themselves in terms of membership in these groups and are likely to be categorized and stereotyped by others based on these affiliations. Discourse analysis was used to examine these group identifications in Sex and the City and Girlfriends.  Three discursive themes were found to connect the two shows: the Desperation Theme, the Networks of Care theme, and the Consumption and Class theme.

Double Burdens of Sexuality and Gender on Women: How Queer Texts Marginalize Female Queers • Jungmin Kwon, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This paper explores how gender translates into sexuality, or specifically, how lesbians are situated within queerness. To illuminate this blind spot, in which queer discourses contribute to the double-marginalization of lesbians, I examine prominent scholarly queer texts and the acclaimed queer media content, Queer as Folk. Through a critical approach to academic and queer cultural products, this study points out that women are constructed as minorities not only in gender, but in sexuality as well.

An Historical Overview of Philanthropy in Rock:1950s-2000s • Ji Hoon Lee • This study presents a brief historical overview of rock music’s philanthropic efforts in the latter half of the 20th century. A key contention in this study is that rock music has worked to educate and enlighten the public to raise awareness over the course of its history and to present similar possibilities in the new millennium.

Better at Life Stuff: Consumption, Identity, and Class in Apple’s “”Get a Mac”” Campaign • Randall Livingstone, University of Oregon • Apple’s “”Get a Mac”” advertising campaign highlights the differences between the casual, confident, creative Mac user and the formal, frustrated, fun-deprived PC user through a series of comical television spots. Utilizing close reading and ideological criticism, this study considers the campaign as a popular culture text with embedded implications about consumption, identity, and class, revealing thematic dichotomies that obscure these issues while promoting the spectacle of consumption and the myth of self-actualization through commodities.

The Wild West of 1911 (or 2010?): Red Dead Redemption’s Past/Present Conflation• Ryan Lizardi • With video games’ growing cultural legitimacy and the increasing reliance on visual histories as primary sources of collective knowledge, it is important to examine what information and ideologies are learned through experiencing video games’ histories. Analyzing Red Dead Redemption (2010), the default contemporary video game historical representation is shown to conflate the past/present and reduce “”history”” to individualistic, simple interpretations. Red Dead Redemption indexes present concerns and ideologies more than its setting, the Wild West.

Money as Speech: An Ideological Analysis of how Corporate Speech Rights Influence the Political Process • Nneka Logan, Georgia State University • This article explores the implications of corporate speech rights on the democratic political process. It draws upon critical, ideological and rhetorical approaches to analyze the key Supreme Court cases on corporate speech rights – Buckley v. Valeo (1976) and Citizens United (2010). I argue that corporate speech rights create conditions where corporate influence can overtake citizen participation.

A Critical Analysis of Facebook Hate Groups Targeting President Barack Obama • Mia Moody, Baylor University • This exploratory analysis of hate groups on Facebook looks at historical representations of black men, in general, and hate groups targeting President Barack Obama, specifically. Findings indicate most groups fall into one of four categories: race-based, political, humor and love-hate. Such analyses are important because media influence the construction of the racialized condition in which we live, and it is often through media images that people negotiate identities, ideas, and relationships.

Media Construction of Global Natural (or Not-so-natural) Disasters: A Critical Discourse Analysis • Siho Nam, University of North Florida • Through critical discourse analysis, this article uncovers the forces underlying the homogenous, sensational, and formulaic media coverage of global natural disasters. Focusing on the intersection between the political economy of global media institutions and the discursive formation of disaster discourses, the article unearths the recurring logics, themes, and patterns of the media discourses of global natural disasters, and it then analyzes the roles these hegemonic discourses play in reinforcing unequal, exploitative world system.

Remembering the Korean Past: Sandglass, the Kwangju Democratization Movement, and the 386 Generation • Sang Hwa Oh, University of South Carolina • A Korean television drama, Sandglass represented and explored tumultuous political and social events in Korea from the 1960s to 1980s. Using Benedict Anderson’s concept of “”imagined communities,”” this study of the role of the televised drama Sandglass in Korean social life provides valuable insight into how a media text can help a common people construct a usable history out of a hidden, traumatic past. This study also introduces the concept of “”generational imagined community.””

Media conduction: Festivals, networks, and boundaried spaces • Robert Peaslee, Texas Tech University • This paper is a report on extended qualitative fieldwork regarding the phenomenon of media festivals, including those related to both film and comic book culture. It is also an initial attempt at forming the trends and patterns suggested by this fieldwork into something like a theory of media conduction.  Media conduction brings with its semantic play a subtle exploration of power relationships often assumed to be transcended in the more emancipatory notions of consumer power.

Disrespecting the Doxa: The Daily Show Critique of CNN’s Struggle to Balance Detachment and Connectedness • Burton St. John, Old Dominion University • CNN operates with a deep connection to traditional journalistic values and their associated “”rules of the game,”” or doxa.  Not surprisingly, CNN attempts to balance established doxa against pressures brought about by changing news-media technologies, consumer patterns and operation business models.  This study examines how TDS’s points to major dysfunctions within such a journalistic doxa and what the show’s critiques reveal about the need for a more reflexive journalism.

“”It’s better than blaming a dead young man:”” Creating mythical archetypes in local coverage of the Mississippi River drownings • Erica Salkin, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Robert Gutsche Jr, The University of Iowa • This study provides a glimpse at myth within newswork (Lule, 2001) in smaller communities dealing with unexpected trauma. An analysis of news coverage of the drownings of 10 young men in Wisconsin over 15 years provides evidence that the values and needs of a given community drive both the creation and use of mythical news archetypes. The archetypes’ value appears to reflect the community’s assessment of the magnitude of its own loss.

Katrina’s power: A critical political economic communication analysis of the intersection of government and media institutions • Loren Saxton, University of Georgia; Elli Lester-Roushanzamir • Hurricane Katrina slammed the Gulf Coast on August 29, 2005, and news media flooded the Gulf Coast immediately after to report the disaster.  This analysis, through critical political economy, examines how structures of interconnection between news media and government institutions reorganized public discourse immediately after Katrina. Ultimately, this research suggests that economic structures mask the structural variables of race and class and therefore serve the interests of industrial and corporate blocs.

The sovereignty of the Republic of Korea shall reside in the people • Wooyeol Shin, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; Ji Yun Ryu, Yonsei University • This study explores strategic use of newspaper advertising by the 2008 Korean Candlelight Vigil. In the ads, the protestors’ collective identities functioned as vehicles to link the vigil’s issues to shared values, including the protection of democracy and the Korean way of life. The movement was also symbolically connected with the Constitution of South Korea. The underlying message was that the constitutional rights resided with the vigil, not with the opponents, including the Korean government.

What is free? Cooperation, collaboration, and the essential dilemma of the Fourth Estate • Edgar Simpson, Ohio University • This study examined the most recent federal Shield Law debate, state Shield Laws, and the statutes of all fifty states and the District of Columbia through a prism of press independence. Thirty-nine states provide a variety of exemptions, exclusions, and privileges for comment and news gathering by established media, in contradiction to longheld notions of independence embodied in First Amendment theory and industry ethical codes. Government has tightened its embrace with journalism and this presents the essential dilemma: Does journalism serve its sources or its audience?”

Then and Now, Free Speech v. Free Elections • Shea Smock, Florida State University • This study provides a qualitative content analysis from the political economic perspective of Network and Public Broadcasting Discourse Surrounding McConnell v. Federal Election Commission and Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission . This paper is part of a larger study that serves as my Master’s thesis at Florida State University.  The thesis also includes a historical analysis of Supreme Court cases and legislation leading up to Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission.

Heroines under control: Unexpected news portrayals of women in the organ of the Bulgarian Communist Party • Miglena Sternadori, University of South Dakota • This is a rhetorical analysis of the news coverage of women’s issues in Rabotnichesko Delo, the organ of the Bulgarian Communist Party, over three non-consecutive years. The analysis illustrates an ideologically constructed reality, in which women’s  limited career fulfillment co-existed with oppressive expectations, such as the importance of having sons over daughters, maintaining physical attractiveness, and shouldering household chores.

The World Cares: What Fantasy Themes Appear on Facebook Status Updates? • Edson Jr. Tandoc, University of Missouri-Columbia; Heather Shoenberger • Studies on self-presentations on social networking sites have focused on biographical data, contact details and multi-media contents and comments that people share. But self-presentation, particularly on Facebook, transcends these pieces of information: Users can tell the online world their thoughts, feelings and opinions through their status updates. Guided by the symbolic convergence theory and the uses and gratifications approach, this study focused on the disclosure of these intimate details through a public and real-time feature.

Is it the Audience? A Comparison of Framing of Turkey’s EU Membership in the International Herald Tribune and in the New York Times • Nur Uysal, University of Oklahoma • This study examined news framing of Turkey’s accession to the European Union in the coverage of the International Herald Tribune and in the New York Times following the 2005 Luxembourg summit. As the first Muslim country seeking membership in the EU, Turkey represented a challenging test. A content analysis of news stories revealed that the IHT framed the issue as a conflict between Muslim Turkey and Christian Europe, a culturally congruent theme for European publics.

The Politics of Authenticity: A Dilemma for Campaign Consultants • James Wittebols, University of Windsor • Promotional culture techniques have permeated political campaigns for some time, bringing the techniques of advertising, marketing and PR into politics.  Recently, the promotional culture industry has begun to appropriate the human value of authenticity as a means to promote, sell or persuade.  This paper reports the results of interviews with political campaign consultants on the importance of having the public regard a candidate as authentic and how that authenticity is conveyed in an election campaign.

Discourses about Distant Suffering and Benefactors on the Fox-Affiliated Teen Kids News Show • Anne Golden Worsham, BYU • This critical discourse analysis examines stories about distant suffering and benefactor representations on the Fox-affiliated Teen Kids News show. This paper demonstrates how Chouliaraki’s (2006) theory on the mediation of distant suffering can be used when analyzing features about benefactors and distant suffering on a teen-oriented news program. Four discourses are identified concerning benefactor representations: militaristic, corporatized, technological, and development discourse. This paper explores the negative societal implications of these discourses.

<< 2011 Abstracts

Loss Aversion and Regulatory Focus Effects in the Absence of Numbers: Qualitatively Framing Equivalent Messages on Food Labels • Katie Abrams, University of Illinois • To frame messages as equivalent gains or nonlosses, studies have used quantitative descriptors, but are cognitive biases explained by loss aversion or regulatory focus still powerful using qualitative descriptors? The purpose of this study was to compare effects of qualitatively framed gain and nonloss messages on people’s attitude. Each subject was randomly assigned to view either gain- or nonloss-framed messages about environmental impact and animal welfare on chicken packaging. Results showed no difference between frames.

The Salience-Setting Function • Mohammed Al-Azdee, Indiana University School of Journalism • Agenda Setting Effect and Political Predisposition Effect are two latent constructs in a structural model. While Affect Salience conceptualizes their covariance, saliences in both of them compete to predict a third latent variable, Voting for President Obama. The analysis shows that in voting behavior, an individual significantly relies on Salience-Setting Function that primarily composes of political predisposition salience and affect salience. Need for Orientation explains condition when the function becomes consequences of media agenda setting.

Eye to (Un)Biased Eye? Effects of Visual and Source Attributes  on the Perceived Credibility of Identical Information • Andrew Binder, North Carolina State University; Michael Dahlstrom, Iowa State University; Dominique Brossard, LSC, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study reports an empirical test of the effects of both visual aspects of messages and the labels of a source on judgments of credibility of the exact same information. In addition, we revisit the notion of credibility—and the distinct dimensions that were introduced initially by Meyer and have become standard use in empirical communication research since that introduction—and if they remain equally relevant in the current media environment. We address these questions by systematically varying the type of source and the modality of an informative, visual stimulus about the dangers of global warming in an experimental setting. Our findings suggest that the dimensions of credibility may not always tap the same underlying construct. In addition, we found evidence for a causal influence of apparent reach of a media message—as opposed to perceived reach—in determining higher versus lower evaluations of the biasedness of the experimental stimulus. Implications for communication theory and methodology are discussed.

The Relationship Between Motivation Activation and Social Media • Paul Bolls, Missouri School of Journalism; Heather Shoenberger; Dawn Schillenger, Missouri School of Journalism; Anthony Almond, Missouri School of Jounralism; Jaime Williams, Missouri School of Journalism • This study explores relationships between biologically based motivational drives, perceived functions of social media use, and potentially problematic orientations towards social media among college students. A convenience sample of 90 college students was obtained. Respondents completed the motivation activation measure and scales perceived functions of social media use potentially problematic orientations towards social media adapted from previous research. Results indicated that biologically-based motivation predicted two important perceived functions of social media use and that these functions were significantly related to problematic orientations towards social media use among college students. Theoretical and practical implications of this pattern of results is discussed.

Beyond Uses and Gratifications: Towards A “Multiple Influences” Model of Media Use • Bryan Carr, The University of Oklahoma • This paper proposes a new user-focused theoretical model of media use motivation under the rationale that current theories are inadequate for researching contemporary digital media and communication. The model uses the theories of uses and gratifications, media systems dependency, and play theory as a starting point. The core assumptions and concepts of each of these theories, as well as their strengths and weaknesses, are explored. From the elements of these theories, concepts and structure for a “”multiple influences”” model of media use and motivation are developed.  The end result of the paper is a theoretical model that proposes three spheres of influence – internal needs, external demands, and medium/source characteristics – which act upon the individual and could predict their likelihood of media or source usage. The paper concludes with a hypothetical application of the model to explore how it could be used to study a media selection situation.

With Me or Against Me:  Hostile Media and Third Person Effect in Partisan Media • David Carr, UW-Madison; Matthew Barnidge, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Alexandra Rogers, University of Wisconsin-Madison; David Wise, University of Wisconsin Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication; Emily Vraga, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Scholars have noted that as the menu of available programming choices on cable television increases, so does selectivity of content along partisan or ideological lines. This study begins to explore the interaction between partisanship, program bias, and the distribution of opposing viewpoints in a political talk show. Our results indicate that host partisanship and guest argument distribution both influence ratings of media hostility and perceived impact, and that individuals distinguish the source of said bias.

Support for Emerging Technologies: Disentangling the Predispositional, Affective and Cognitive Pathways • Michael Cacciatore, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Doo-Hun Choi, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona St. University • Numerous studies have demonstrated the importance of value predispositions in influencing public attitudes toward science topics ranging from stem cell research to agricultural biotechnology. While this research has been helpful in explaining the relationships between particular values and overall evaluations of science topics, the exact process by which these predispositions work to impact larger attitudes remains less well understood. In this study we employ a structural equation modeling approach to garner a better understanding of how religiosity and deference to scientific authority operate to influence evaluations of nanotechnology. The results suggest that while religiosity and deference to scientific authority each influence support directly, these values also operate through risk perceptions and trust, respectively, in their impacts on support. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Connecting Interpersonal Discussion and the Internet: How Interpersonal Discussion Moderates the Effect of the Internet on Being Informed about Nanotechnology • Doo-Hun Choi, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Michael Cacciatore, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona St. University • The idea that interpersonal discussion moderates the effect of media use on one’s knowledge of political and/or social issues has been gaining considerable momentum in recent years. For example, the “”differential gains model”” suggests that interpersonal discussion among citizens facilitates an individual’s ability or willingness to acquire information from mass media. With the differential gains model in mind, this study examines the relationship between science media use and science-related interpersonal talk on public understanding of nanotechnology, using a nationally representative telephone survey. Our findings show that the relationships between Internet use and informed learning about nanotechnology are enhanced among those who talk about science with other people more frequently. Moreover, our findings suggest that Internet use enables people to search and process science information more carefully for subsequent interpersonal science discussions with others. Implications of these findings as they pertain to opinion formation and public understanding of science are discussed.

The Effects of Questionnaire Frames on Indicators of Data Quality • Jihyang Choi, Indiana University (Bloomington) • This study aims to empirically test how different kinds of frames of survey questions -“”informative”” and “”accepting consequences”” frames- affect the quality of the collected data. The study reveals “”informative”” frames did not increase the data quality significantly. “”Accepting consequences”” frames yielded contradictory results. When the questions contain frames that facilitate respondents to evaluate about personal-level consequences, the data quality significantly improved. However, the quality did not increase in the frames of national-level consequences.

Support for Message Control: A Multi-level Meta-Analysis of the Third-Person Effect • Charles Feng • However robust the perceptual component of the third-person effect is, the behavioral component of the third-person effect hypothesis, i.e., TPP will lead to support for restrictions on undesirable messages, got mixed support in empirical studies. Are there any methodological artifacts, which caused the variations of results? This paper found that TPE effect size was weak, and the locations where the studies were conducted as well as message types play the important role in moderating the TPE through a meta-analytical review. The implication for theory development was discussed.

Stages of Mobilization: An Influence and Rational Choice Model for Consensus, Action and Sustainability • Laleah Fernandez, Michigan State University • This paper proposes a series of network analysis terms to illustrate the stages of mobilization model. The stages of mobilization examined here are (1) consensus (2) action and (3) sustainability. The proposed model merges rational choice theory with a network model of influence recognizing mobilization as a process. As such, terms used in the stages of mobilization model are modified based on conceptual differences at the three stages of mobilization. First, this paper introduces a set of terms for the three stages of mobilization. Second, this paper offers a framework for model building to be used for empirical testing of the stages of mobilization.

Political Consumption and Needs of the Self: A Functional Attitudes Approach to Citizen Engagement • Melissa R. Gotlieb, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper applies functional attitudes theory to explore motivations for citizen engagement. Using data from the 2007-2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project, this paper examines the factors (predispositions, news use, political information sharing) that predict outcome expectancies for political consumption that relate to needs of the private and collective self, as well as how these outcome expectancies, in turn, predict frequency of engagement in political consumption. Implications for civic and political modes of engagement are discussed.

Toward the Third Level of Agenda Setting Theory: A Network Agenda Setting Model • Lei Guo, University of Texas at Austin; Maxwell McCombs, University of Texas at Austin • This paper presents a Network Agenda Setting Model, which proposes that the network relationships among objects and/or attributes can be transferred from the news media to the public’s mind. The empirically grounded model is based on a network analysis that compared the media and public network agendas regarding the political candidate attributes in the 2010 Texas gubernatorial election. In support of the Model, this analysis found a significant correlation between the two networks.

The Effect of Psychological Reactance and Framing on Attribution of Solution Responsibility for Health Problems • Lesa Hatley Major, Indiana University • This study applies the theory of psychological reactance to news stories presented in health coverage of obesity, depression, and lung cancer. It seems reasonable that individuals who demonstrate high levels of reactance and respond negatively to persuasive communication about health issues might have the same response to frames used in health new stories. It also combines news frames to determine the effects of those frames on how attribute responsibility for solving health problems. The findings suggest that high levels of trait reactance lead to decreased support of societal solutions to health problems. Findings also indicate that thematic and loss-framed stories increase support for health policies.

Examining How Social Norms Mediate Presumed Media Influence on Thai Adolescents’ Drinking Behavior • Shirley S. Ho, Nanyang Technological University; Thanomwong Poorisat, Nanyang Technological University; Rachel Neo, Nanyang Technological University; Benjamin H. Detenber, Nanyang Technological University • This study uses the influence of presumed media influence (IPMI) model as the theoretical framework to examine how perceived social norms (i.e., descriptive, subjective, and injunctive norms) will mediate the influence of pro- and anti-drinking media messages on adolescents’ intention to consume alcohol in Thailand. Using census data collected from 1,029 high school students in Thailand, our results suggest that the three types of perceived social norms could be integrated into the IPMI model.

Peer Influence in Adolescent Political Socialization: Deliberative Democracy Inside and Outside the Classroom • Mi Jahng, University of Missouri-Columbia; Mitchell McKinney, University of Missouri; Esther Thorson, University of Missouri • This study explores the role of peer interaction in adolescent political socialization by examining political conversation behaviors. The investigation incorporated different conceptual definitions of deliberative discourse, including more structured political talk as part of in-class political discussions and also informal political conversations found in one’s peer group interactions. Results showed that adolescents’ informal peer political conversations influenced their level of political tolerance, and likelihood to try out opinions in different settings, whereas political talk in school activity had a positive influence on various types of political participation. Political knowledge was not predicted by either peer group conversation or structured civic learning, but was mostly explained by political conversations with family members and parental political participation.

Modeling the Use of Medical Journals as News Sources in The New York Times • Vincent Kiernan, Georgetown University • This paper conceptualizes journalists’ reliance on scientific and medical journals as news sources as an example of diffusion of innovation. The paper applies a quantitative model of the diffusion process to the New York Times’ citations of five medical journals from 1851 through 2010. Data  for references to the journals as a whole and to the New England Journal of Medicine fit the model well.

Who Are Others in The Third-Person Effect? : A Selective Downward Comparison of Non-smokers and Smokers Toward Smoking Issues • Keun Yeong Kim, Pennsylvania State University; Hyun Seung Jin, University of Missouri-Kansas City • Concerning the third-person effect, the purpose of this paper is to answer the fundamental question ‘who are others?’ when assessing the perceived effects of cigarette and anti-tobacco advertising. The particular interest of this study is to investigate the underlying mechanism of the third-person effect between non-smokers and smokers by applying the social comparison theory and downward comparison theory. Findings indicated that, when downward comparison is not available, people are inclined to compare themselves with similar others in order to defend their self-esteem when assessing the effects of cigarette messages and anti-tobacco messages on themselves as well as on others. Conversely, once downward comparison is applicable, people prefer to compare themselves with dissimilar others for self-enhancement. Consequently, the different choices in reference group between non-smokers and smokers result in the changes in the sign or magnitude of the perceived effects toward both cigarette and anti-tobacco advertising.

Partisan Selective Exposure and Its Political Implications • Su Jung Kim, Northwestern University • The proliferation of information sources made a significant impact on the ways in which people consume news and information. One of the daunting pictures about a high-choice media environment is the deepening division of news media users into liberal and conservative news media outlets.  The current media landscape enables people to selectively choose news media outlet that voice opinions consistent with their political beliefs and prevents them from sharing a common social and political agenda, which could be a serious obstacle to the welfare of the democratic system.  This study examines whether selective exposure to partisan news media outlets takes place and whether partisan selective exposure promotes or dampens political participation in a South Korean media context.  By using a single-source data set which combines peoplemeter data and a telephone survey from the same respondents, this study attempted to see whether selective exposure mechanisms found in previous research in Western contexts are also found in a non-Western national context.  The results suggest that partisan selective exposure occurs especially when the political spectrum of the media outlets are pronounced.  The relationship between partisan selective exposure and political participation is not found.

Selective Exposure and Reinforcement of Attitudes and of the Political Self Before a Presidential Election • Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick, The Ohio State University; Steven Kleinman, The Ohio State University • A preference for attitude-consistent media messages has long been suggested, yet how such exposure actually reinforces political leanings has only rarely been studied.  Right before the 2008 presidential election, this two-session online quasi-experiment examined consequences of selective exposure to political messages on accessibility of attitudes and political self. In the first session, participants (n = 205) responded to a computerized questionnaire about 12 political issues attitudes and their partisanship, which allowed to measure accessibility of attitudes and political self. In the second session, participants browsed online articles. Four policy issues (target issues) chosen from the 12 issues were covered by eight articles, with two articles featuring opposing topic perspectives. Selective exposure to specific news reports was unobtrusively logged. After the browsing, participants completed measures for attitudes and political self again. Results show that attitude-consistent exposure increased accessibility of attitudes and subsequently accessibility of political self while counter-attitudinal exposure decreased them.

Read, Watch, Learn: The Effects of Media Multitasking on the Processing of Cognitively Demanding Information • Anastasia Kononova, American University of Kuwait • This study explored outcomes of media multitasking as cognitive process and media use habit. Two experiments indicated that when individuals processed online messages combining a textual element and an ad, the ad form (static banner/video) affected memory for textual information. Cognitive resources required to process text also affected memory for new information. The habit of media multitasking, which was linked to individuals’ cognitive control abilities, influenced the process of learning new, cognitively demanding information.

A Conceptualization and Operationalization of Receiver-Based Uncertainty Generated from Mass Media • Kristen Landreville, University of Wyoming • The goal of this study is to propose a framework for analyzing uncertainty that is aroused by mass-mediated messages. Uncertainty reduction theory (Berger & Calabrese, 1975), an interpersonal communication theory, is applied as a theoretical foundation from which to develop a conceptualization of uncertainty generated from mass media. After current research on receiver-based uncertainty is reviewed, a conceptualization of receiver-based uncertainty is offered. Moreover, an operationalization of receiver-based uncertainty is proposed after a critical examination of interpersonal-based uncertainty and prior operationalizations of receiver-based uncertainty. Finally, a future research agenda using receiver-based uncertainty generated from mass media is outlined.

Communication Mediation Model of Late-Night Comedy • Hoon Lee, University of Michigan • This study advances a communication mediation model of late-night comedy in an effort to understand the process through which consuming satirical humor works in concert with interpersonal discussion to stimulate political engagement.  The theoretical model was tested across two different research designs and findings from both survey and experiment provide a considerable support for the indirect effects of late-night comedy viewing on political participation via a conduit of interpersonal discussion.  In particular, results demonstrate that various structural features of interpersonal communication (e.g., casual conversation, formal discussion, online interaction, and network size) positively mediate the participatory influence of late-night comedy.  On the other hand, the investigation of the mediating role of heterogeneous discussion illustrates that late-night comedy programs can disproportionately mobilize a certain subset of the electorate in that consuming satirical humor tends to invite more liberals into the deliberation of discrepant views and that well-educated individuals are more likely to benefit from debates of heterogeneous opinions.  The present study urges to extend the scope of the communication mediation model to incorporate a wider range of media sources and diverse structural dimensions of interpersonal communication in the theoretical and empirical framework.

Nearly a Decade After September 11: Navigating Current and Future Counterterrorism Communication Research • Brooke Liu, University of Maryland; Abbey Levenshus, University of Maryland • Nearly a decade after September 11, 2001, much remains to be learned about the role of communication in countering violent extremism. Through an analysis of the extant research this paper maps the post-9/11 counterterrorism communication research landscape. The study identifies four groupings of paradigmatic research, which sometimes blurred and overlapped: constructivism, postpositivist, critical, and postmodern. The study concludes with proposing the Counterterrorism Communication Research Compass to understand the current landscape and the uncharted research needs.

The Affective Underpinning of Hostile Media Perceptions: Exploring the Distinct Effects of Affective and Cognitive Involvement • Joerg Matthes, University of Zurich • The hostile media effect (HME) refers to a process by which highly involved audiences tend to perceive media coverage as biased against their own views. In this process, issue involvement is usually treated as a cognitive construct, that is, the extent to which the attitudinal issue under consideration is of personal importance. Although Vallone, Ross, and Lepper (1985) raised the issue of affective involvement in their seminal study, hardly any research has tried to disentangle the effects of cognitive and affective involvement. Thus, the aim of this paper is to clarify whether the HME is triggered by cognitive and/or affective involvement. Data from three independent survey studies demonstrate that affective involvement—measured as emotional arousal or as the experience of concrete emotions—can explain the HME over and beyond cognitive involvement. Implications of these findings for future HME research are discussed.

News Exposure, Political Knowledge, Partisanship, and (Mis)Perceptions of Change in Conditions Under George W. Bush • Patrick Meirick, University of Oklahoma • This research uses 2008 ANES panel data to examine how partisanship, political knowledge, and news exposure contributed to citizens’ perceptions of how the economy, the federal deficit, poverty, and crime rates changed between 2001 and 2008 — and to how those judgments changed as economic conditions worsened throughout the year.  Partisanship was a robust predictor of perceptions: Democrats tended to see trends more negatively than did Republicans, regardless of the direction of the actual trends. Political knowledge and education tended to promote perceptions that were in the same direction as actual trends, but political knowledge interacted with party identification to promote partisan polarization in perceptions. Television news exposure unexpectedly emerged as the most important media variable, although its relationships with trend perceptions were not always in line with the facts.  This was especially the case with crime, as cultivation research has suggested.  As the year went on, partisans’ perceptions of economic trends appeared to be converging on a consensus that reflected reality. But this convergence may have been more the result of a floor effect among Democrats than anything else.

An Analytic Method for Computer-Mediated Communication (CMC): Distinguishing the Message Expression and Reception Effects in Online Social Networks • Kang Namkoong, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Dhavan Shah; Bryan McLaughlin, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Jeong Yeob Han, University of Georgia; Ming-Yuan Chih, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Rich Cleland; Shawnika Hull, University of Wisconsin; Eunkyung Kim; Sojung (Claire) Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper describes how computer-mediated communication (CMC) data collected from an eHealth system can be used for online social network analysis, which allows for complex understanding of the relationships between message expression and reception effects. The proposed methodology allows us to examine the multi-layered effects of online expression and reception, combining the following three data sets: 1) a more flexible and precise computer-aided content analysis; 2) action log data; and 3) longitudinal survey data.

Hostile Media or Hostile Source?: Bias Perception of Weblog-embedded News • Sung-Yeon Park, Bowling Green State University; Gi Woong Yun, Bowling Green State University; Sooyoung Lee, Sogang University; Mark Flynn, Bowling Green State University • The effects of source and user comments on perceptions of Weblog-embedded news reports were examined in the framework of hostile media effect.  Source, one perceived by participants as agreeable and  the other perceived as disagreeable, affected perceived biasedness of the news story and its perceived influence on others, but not perceived reach of the news.  User comments attached to the embedded news story, one set agreeable and the other disagreeable to the issue position of participants, generated no effect on perceived biasedness, perceived influence on others, and perceived reach of the news.  There was no interaction between source and user comments.  A regression analysis revealed that source and perceived influence on others, but not perceived reach, were predictors of the bias perception.  Social and theoretical implications of these findings were discussed and suggestions were made for future research.

I Just Bought this Thing!  The Diffusion of Iterations – A Modification of DOI to Explain Incremental Changes in Existing Technology. • Severin Poirot, University of Oklahoma • Devices such as Apple’s iPad and the recently released iPad 2, while new to the marketplace, may not exhibit enough new qualities to be considered an innovation.  The existing model of diffusion of innovations (DOI) may not be adequate to explain devices that exhibit incremental and undetectable upgrades over existing versions.  This paper will use Apple’s line of products as an example of concepts that may not be considered innovative, yet differ from existing concepts.  It will explore existing research concerning DOI and its application toward technology such as the iPad or its predecessors such as the iPod.  This paper will also introduce the concept of iterations as a way of explaining the diffusion of these upgraded products.

Cultural Pluralism, Ethnic Identity and Media Language Choice • Thomas E Ruggiero, University of Texas El Paso; Kenneth C. C. Yang, University of Texas • This study argues that cultural pluralism theory is more robust than ethnic identity theory, specifically in predicting media language choice. Study results indicate that despite strong Mexican-American identity, respondents showed strikingly inconsistent patterns of media language choice, which fail to be fully accounted for in ethnic identity theory. While those who identified as Mexican overwhelmingly preferred Spanish language media content, respondents who strongly identified as Mexican Americans often chose English language content over Spanish language media content.

Exploring the Effects of Mood and Culture on Cognitive Thinking Styles • Sela Sar, Iowa State University; Brittany Duff, University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign • Two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of mood and culture on analytic and holistic thinking style on memory, product evaluation and purchase intention. Results of both experiments indicated that people in a negative mood predominantly utilize analytic thinking style, whereas people in a positive mood predominantly utilize holistic thinking style. The findings also showed that Westerners were more likely to use the analytic thinking style whereas Easterners were more likely to use the holistic thinking style. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Media Effects on Group-Related Stereotypes. Evidence from a Three-Wave Panel Survey in a Political Campaign • Christian Schemer, University of Zurich • The present study investigates media effects on the activation of group-related stereotypes in a political campaign. By combining a content analysis of the coverage of the asylum law restriction with a three-wave panel survey the study found that negative portrayals of asylum seekers in the news increase stereotypical beliefs in the public while positive portrayals decreased them. The findings also indicate that the effects are partially time-variant. Specifically, the impact of negative portrayals of asylum seekers on stereotypes was stronger at the beginning than at the end of campaign. A similar effect was obtained for positive portrayals of asylum seekers in the campaign news. However, at the end of the campaign the impact of positive portrayals of asylum seekers on stereotypical beliefs about that social group was indistinguishable from zero.

Appropriate Uses of Single-Item Measures • Vivian Sheer, Hong Kong Baptist University • Multi-item scales, due to their ability to produce robust reliability, often are preferred over single-item measures in empirical research. The reality of research practices, particularly in applied research, demands valid, efficient short measures that are more feasible, cost-effective, and adaptable for various populations. This article reviews advantages and disadvantages associated with multi-item and single item measures. Situations in which single items can be used appropriately are identified. Methods for constructing valid single-item measures are illustrated. The importance of measurement efficiency is underscored.

Five Antecedents of Media Effects: A Model for Comprehensive Conceptualization of Individual-level Media Effects • Mark Shevy, Northern Michigan University • This paper presents a model that organizes the antecedents of individual-level media effects into five categories based on the variables implicitly or explicitly considered in effects research: 1) Context and time, 2) audience attributes and processes, 3) interactivity, 4) content, and 5) form. The model facilitates scholars’ and students’ overall conceptualization of an effect by explicitly representing all of these variables and their relationships in a single place (rather than scattered across various studies).

Media Capabilities as a Comprehensive Construct for Research on Media Choice: Assessment of a Measurement Model • Kristy Shi, Bowling Green State University; Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University; Gi Woong Yun, Bowling Green State University • This study proposed a new comprehensive construct for understanding media choices in terms of news consumption in a multiplatform context for leisure use. Media capabilities is the new construct with three dimensions: 1) technology capabilities, 2) gratification capabilities, and 3) source capabilities. The proposed new model was tested and confirmed with a survey of general population and college students through structural equation modeling. Limitations and suggestions for further study were discussed.

Explication of Selective Credibility: Is Credibility Perceived or Manipulated? • KyuJin Shim, Syracuse University • Selective credibility is the persuasive communication framework that exhaustively includes the message selection and source selection process under the opinion-reinforcement motivation. With this framework the term de facto credibility is coined, which refers to specific attributes consisting of source credibility by which people, either intentionally or unintentionally, accredit a favorable message. This study also attempts the concrete and systematic modeling of source credibility to build an applicable theory that conceptualizes source credibility as an appendant to reinforcing-opinion selectivity.  Situational factors affecting perceived propagandistic motivation were explored under the cognitive dissonance framework that affects selective credibility.

Social Network Analysis: A Mixed-Methodological Approach • Cindy Vincent, University of Oklahoma • This paper proposes a mixed-methodological approach to social network analysis.  Based on Wasserman and Faust’s (1999) network analysis concept, Castells’ (2009) network society concept, and Wellman’s (2001) communities as networks concept, this paper outlines the theoretical foundations for the basis of a mixed-methodological social network analysis.  The paper contributes an alternative network analysis approach by combining new quantitative methods with traditional qualitative methods.  This paper provides implications for mixed-methodological social network analysis in future research.

A Case for Survey Based Case Studies: Considerations of Generalizability and Theory • Justin Walden, Penn State University • As a methodological approach, the case study remains a divisive topic. While some scholars tout the ability for cases to provide depth and richness to examinations of particular phenomena and populations, questions persist in the literature about the approach’s ability to provide highly generalizable findings and to test theory. This paper responds to both of these criticisms by highlighting examples of well-conducted cases and arguing for more use of survey-based case studies in communications research.

How Much is Enough?: Sample Size Guidelines for Content Analysis of Political Blogs • Brendan Watson, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, School of Journalism & Mass Communication; Xiaopeng Wang, University of South Florida, St Petersburg • This study based on comparing random samples to known population means derived from a year of posts on 12 “”A-List”” political blogs is the first to produce empirically-derived guidelines for sampling blogs for content analysis. The results suggest one draw”

Examining the Relationship between the Third-person Effect and the Hostile Media Effect of Polls in the 2010 U.S. Midterm Elections • Ran Wei, University of South Carolina; Ven-hwei Lo, Chinese University of Hong Kong • The third-person effect and the hostile media effect are two robust phenomena that interest scholars researching media perceptions. To ascertain the relationship between the two theories, this study focused on polls in the 2010 midterm elections. Using survey data of 562 respondents, a path model was built to test how the third-person effect was related to hostile media perception. Results show strong evidence of the hostile media effect in viewing the slant of the polls and the third-person effect in assessing the impact of the polls on others and oneself. Both Republican and Democratic supporters believed the polls favor candidates of the other party. They also perceived the polls to have a greater impact on others than on themselves. More importantly, results indicate that the relationship between the third-person effect and the hostile media effect was mediated by exposure. Perception of hostile polls was found to be negatively related to exposure to polls, which affects perceived effects of polls on oneself and others, which in turn influence support for restrictions of election polls.

Experimental Methodology in Journalism and Mass Communication Research • Rob Wicks, University of Arkansas; Esther Thorson, University of Missouri; Glenn Leshner, University of Missouri • Experiments are a powerful method for understanding causal relationships in journalism and mass communication research. In this essay, we examine seven indicators of experimental quality that reviewers should include as criteria in their evaluations. We note that there are complex interrelationships among these indicators. Because some of the standards are controversial, we attempt to summarize the conflicting arguments. Where different conclusions can be rationalized as appropriate, our bottom line suggestion is that the researcher make clear what standards were followed and why, so that readers can evaluate those decisions.

Crystallization Theory: Construction of Reality in the Age of Social Media • Donghee Yvette Wohn, Michigan State University; Brian J. Bowe, Michigan State University • Distribution of media has drastically shifted with the introduction of the Internet. Although personal relations, or networks, have always been influential in shaping what people perceive as being important, social media such as Facebook and Twitter are making these networks more accessible.  In this media environment, we suggest crystallization theory as a new framework for understanding the social construction of reality in the age of social media. Crystallization theory builds on social influence theory, which purports that people have a fundamental desire to tune their attitudes towards groups that they want to affiliate themselves with.   Amidst the sea of information, social media facilitates information produced by the members of our social networks, who become neo agenda setters. These neo agenda setters filter information from major media outlets and introduce information that one would otherwise not be familiar with. Since people are influenced by members of their social network, we will see patterns arise where people’s perception of reality will crystallize through their social networks and everyone will perceive that the information their social network produces reflects mainstream news, but there will be no true mainstream.

News and Multi-tasking Audiences:  Reading Text While Listening to an Audio Newscast • Ronald Yaros, University of Maryland; Jing Guo, University of Maryland • A within-subjects experiment (n = 56) tested participants’ ability to simultaneously comprehend news text on a screen while listening to an audio newscast.  Fifteen news stories were used in three conditions including: (1) audio unrelated to text, (2) audio related to text, and (3) audio narrating the text.  Post exposure tests, including thought listing from both audio and text suggest significant differences. Comprehension of both audio and text was best when the audio was identical to the news on screen. Surprisingly, however, comprehension was higher when news on screen was unrelated to the audio compared to related content.

When to Use Scott’s Pi; or Krippendorff’s Alpha;, If Ever? • XinShu Zhao, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University • Scott’s Pi; (1955) and Krippendorff’s alpha; (1980) have been among the most-often used or recommended general indicators of reliability. This article presents paradoxes showing that neither can be a general indicator. We show that Pi; or Alpha; should be used only when (a) coders enforce a predetermined quota as the first priority and (b) coders maximize chance coding as the second priority. Because the two conditions rarely hold, Pi; or Alpha; should rarely be used.

Does c’ Test Help, Anytime? — On Communication Fallacy of “”Effect to Mediate”” • XinShu Zhao, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University; Qimei Chen, Department of Marketing, Shidler College of Business, University of Hawaii at Manoa; Bing Tong, Journalism School, Fudan University • Baron and Kenny’s (1986) classic procedure for establishing mediation requires a “”c’ test,”” namely the simple correlation between independent variable and dependent must be significant. Many authors, including Kenny, later recommended suspending c’ test under some conditions. A couple recent articles recommended to completely repeal the test.  Most of the advocates and critics of the test focused on suppression, also known as competitive mediation. This article takes a more comprehensive view. Expanding a typology recently developed by others, we laid out all possible scenarios of three-variable non-recursive models. We grouped the 51 scenarios into three types of mediations and two types of non-mediations.  We then examined each type to see if c’ test helps or hinders.  We found that c’ test hinders for establishing two types of mediations; it does not help for establishing the third type; it also does not help for rejecting the two types of non-medications.  Further, we show that the goal of c’ test, namely “”to establish an effect to be mediated,”” is a communication fallacy resulted from an equivocation and a pseudo concept. We concluded by supporting the emerging view led by Hayes (2009) that c’ test should be completely repealed for establishing any type of mediations.

<< 2011 Abstracts

Open Competition

Exploring the Motivations of Online Social Network Use in Taiwan • Saleem Alhabash; Hyojung Park, University of Missouri, School of Journalism; Anastasia Kononova, American University of Kuwait; Yihsuan Chiang; Kevin Wise, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • The current study explores the motivations of online social network use among a sample of the general population in Taiwan (N = 4,105). The study investigated how seven different motivations to use Facebook predicted the intensity of Facebook use, specific content generation behaviors on Facebook, and other indicators of Facebook use. Results showed the motivation to use Facebook for updating one’s own status and viewing other peoples’ status updates was the strongest predictor of the intensity to use Facebook, followed by four other motivations as significant predictors. The motivation to view, share, tag and be tagged in photographs was the strongest predictor of content generation behavior on Facebook, followed by five other motivations as significant predictors. Results are discussed in terms of expanding motivations to use Facebook to the study of social networking sites and other new and social media.

Body by Xbox: The Effects of Video Game Character Body Type on Young Women’s Body Satisfaction and Video Game Enjoyment • Vincent Cicchirillo, University of Texas at Austin; Osei Appiah, The Ohio State University; Whitney Walther, The Ohio State University; Christopher Brown, The Ohio State University; Kristen Carter, The Ohio State University • Numerous studies have examined the relationship between women’s body satisfaction and their exposure to thin women in the media. However, few if any studies have examined women’s body satisfaction after exposure to female video game characters.  This study looks at the influence of different female body shapes (i.e., thin, average, and overweight) within a video game on outcomes related to identification, enjoyment, and body satisfaction among women video game players. Two-hundred twenty-two young women played a third-person shooter game on Xbox featuring female characters that consisted of one of three different body sizes (skinny, average, or overweight). The findings indicate female participants who played as either a skinny or average sized female character reported greater body dissatisfaction than participants who played as an overweight female character. Additionally, results show participants were more likely to identify with and perceive similarity to skinny and average female characters than they were the overweight female characters. These results support upward comparison of social comparison theory.

Motivational Influences of Linking: Factors guiding behaviors on Facebook • Kanghui Baek, University of Texas at Austin; Avery Holton, University of Texas-Austin; Dustin Harp, University of Texas School of Journalism; Carolyn Yaschur, University of Texas at Austin • More than 600 million people currently use the social network site Facebook, which allows for multiple forms of interaction. Noting the importance of sharing links to news and information − a key function of Facebook – this study determined user motivations for linking, the influence of those motivations on linking frequency, and the content of those links. Building upon uses and gratifications theory, this study found the need for sharing information, convenience and entertainment, to pass time, interpersonal utility, control, and promoting work contributed to the propensity to share links. Information sharing also predicted the frequency of linking. Further, this study found that motivations for linking influenced the types of links posted. Higher educated individuals who desire to share information were more likely to post news links. Those who did not seek to control others posted more entertainment links. Users interested in promoting their work posted job-related content. The findings of this study and their implications are discussed.

Does Negative News Have Positive Effects? The Influence of Blog Posts and Comments on Credibility • Elizabeth Bates, Baylor University • The blog poster, level of company guilt in blog post, and ratio of company-supportive to company-critical blog comments were varied to determine how each affected perceptions of company and source credibility. Data suggests public relations practitioners are less trustworthy than journalists. However, the company and its public relations practitioner are more credible when the dominant opinion in the blog, particularly in the blog comments, suggests the company is not guilty.

Examining the relationships of smartphone ownership to use of both legacy and new media outlets for news • Clyde Bentley, University of Missouri; Kenneth Fleming, University of Missouri-Columbia • The overriding research question of the study is to see if ownership of mobile phone would affect use of both traditional and new media outlets for news. Analyses of a national survey (n = 496) in early 2010 show that ownership of mobile phone was a significant factor in explaining use of mobile phone, online media, and newspaper’s website for news; it had no impact on readership of print daily or weekly newspaper and watching news on television, after age, gender, education, and income were statistically controlled. In addition, age was significantly and positively associated with use of traditional news media, and negatively associated with use of online media and mobile phone for news. On average, smartphone owners were significantly younger than those who had either simple cellphone or no cellphone at all.

The hyperlinked world: A look at how the interactions of news frames and hyperlinks influence news credibility and willingness to seek information • porismita borah, Maryville University • Prior research has already identified the influence of using hyperlinks in online information gathering. The present study attempts to understand first, how hyperlinks can influence individual’s perceptions of news credibility and willingness to seek information. Second, the paper extends previous research by examining the interaction of hyperlinks with the content of the story. And in doing so, the paper examines the influence of hyperlinks on communication concepts such as news frames. The data for the study were collected using an experiment embedded in a web-based survey of participants. Findings show that hyperlinks in news stories can increase perceptions of credibility as well as willingness to seek information. Results also reveal the interaction of news frames in the process, for example participants’ perception of news credibility increases in the value framed condition. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Great Expectations: Predicted iPad adoption by college students • Steven Collins; Tim Brown • While the iPad has been popular, newspaper and magazine publishers have not had the same fortune in drawing people to their applications for the device. A longitudinal study of college students, future news consumers, shows that interest in adopting the iPad has grown over two points in time. However, among potential adopters, interest in paying for digital newspaper and magazine iPad content has not grown. However, data do show that those with smartphones are much more likely to adopt the iPad and other tablets. In addition, the influence of change agents on adoption intent is confirmed and seems to indicate that the iPad has moved beyond the critical mass phase.

Mobile News Adoption among Young Adults: Examining the Roles of Perceptions, News Consumption, and Media Usage • Sylvia Chan-Olmsted; Hyejoon Rim, University of Florida; Amy Zerba • Using the frameworks of innovation diffusion and technology acceptance model, this study examines the predictors of mobile news consumption among young adults. Survey findings showed the perceived relative advantage of mobile news is positively related to its adoption and willingness to pay for mobile news services. Perceived utility and ease of use play significant roles in mobile news adoption. This study validates the importance of examining the adoption process from multiple perspectives.

Deciphering Blog Users: Personalities, Motivations, and Perceived Importance of Blog Features • Szu-Wei Chen, University of Missouri-Columbia; Elizabeth Behm-Morawitz • Different from many past studies that mainly focused on bloggers, this research aimed to explore how general blog users browse, read or comment on others’ blogs. More specifically, we employed the uses and gratifications framework to link blog users’ personality traits (the Big Five inventory), motivations to use blogs (entertainment, information seeking, social interaction, and personal identity) and perceived importance of various blog features (e.g., content and source credibility, hyperlinks, ease to use, interactivity, author anonymity, popularity and reputation). A pilot study was first conducted to clarify whether participants have a consistent understanding of what a blog is. Then, 341 participants were recruited to fill out a self-administered online survey. A two-step structural equation modeling approach was used to test the proposed model. The results not only helped clarify several inconsistent findings in the past, but also provided insightful directions for future research.

Determinants of Intention to Use Smartphones: Testing the Moderating Role of Need for Cognition                  • Hichang Cho; Byungho Park • By integrating the technology acceptance model (Davis, 1989) with the need for cognition (NFC; Cacioppo & Petty, 1982), we aimed to specify the conditions under which different internal beliefs (e.g., perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use) and social influence factors (e.g., subjective and descriptive norms) are important in determining behavioral intention to use smartphones. The results based on survey data (N =172) provided support for our hypotheses that NFC is an important motivational construct that moderates the linkages between cognitive instrumental beliefs, social influence factors, and behavioral intentions (BI). Specifically, perceived usefulness had a stronger effect on BI for high NFC people, whereas perceived ease of use and subjective norms had stronger effects on BI for low NFC people. The findings reveal possible important variations in technology acceptance and the role of NFC in governing these alternative processes.

Social Networking in Higher Education: A Collaboration Tool for Project-Based Learning • Amy DeVault, Wichita State University; Lisa Parcell, Wichita State University • This case study explores the use of social networking to enhance project-based service-learning. The researchers found that the student group used social networking, specifically Twitter and Facebook, for collaboration among group members to complete this project-based objective, to build a community of practice with local communication professionals, and ultimately to successfully promote their event.

Hiding or Priding? A Study of Gender, Race, and Gamer Status and Context on Avatar Selection • Robert Dunn, East Tennessee State University; Rosanna Guadagno, University of Alabama • We conducted an experiment to determine the effects of gender, race, online gamer status and game context had on avatar selection, based on eight metrics. As predicted, online gamers selected avatars that were taller, thinner, and more attractive than participants who did not play online games. Non-white participants selected avatars with lighter skin-tones, whereas white participants selected avatars with darker skin-tones. Contrary to predictions and previous research, male participants selected shorter avatars than female counterparts.

My Students will Facebook me but Won’t Keep up with my Online Course • Francine Edwards, Delaware State University • An examination of the current body of literature has found that despite the interest in transforming education to fit a growing body of technologically astute students, few studies have investigated the characteristics or competency of that population and their ability to meet with academic success in this digital era or an informational age.  However, what has been revealed in the research is that assumptions about digital natives (students from grade K through college who represent the first generation to grow up with this new technology) may not be correct and that a focus on digital immigrants (individuals that did not grow up in this generation) face a similar set of challenges.  While today’s college students are immersed and fluent in social media, consumer electronics and video games, they are not nearly as proficient when it comes to using digital tools in a classroom setting – thus countering the myth that academicians are dealing with a whole generation of digital natives.  Other studies that have investigated the extent and nature of college students’ use of digital technologies for learning have found that students use a limited range of mainly established technologies and that use of collaborative knowledge creation tools, virtual worlds, and social networking sites was low.  This study investigates the ability of digital natives to incorporate new technologies in the academic process and the challenge that digital immigrants as instructors face.

Live Tweeting At Work: The Use of Social Media in Public Diplomacy • Juyan Zhang, University of Texas at San Antonio; Shahira Fahmy, University of Arizona • This study used a survey to examine factors that affect adoption of social media in public diplomacy practice by foreign diplomatic practitioners in the United States. Results showed the key factors identified in the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT) framework: Effort expectancy, performance expectancy, social influence and attitudes, facilitating conditions, in addition to perceived credibility had positive influences on the adoption process. Findings also showed respondents most often used social networks (MySpace, Facebook, etc.) followed by video sharing sites, intranet, blogs, video conferencing, text messaging and Wiki. Further more women reported the use of social media than men, but on average, men used more different types of social media than their female counterparts. Finally gender, age and level of gross national income (GNI) appeared to have significant moderating effects on the adoption of social media in the context of public diplomacy.

Who are the heavy users of Social Network Sites among College Students? A Study of Social Network Sites and College Students • Ling Fang, Bowling Green State University; Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University • The indulgence in social networking sites (SNS) among college students has drawn scholars’ attention and research interest.  But who the heavy users of SNS among college students are and how SNS use in relation to cellular phone text messaging use, another popular medium, has not been studied.  Based on a survey on 476 college students from 24 classes in a public university, this study focused on sociability gratifications and information searching gratifications with behavioral indicators as predictors of SNS use and examined their relationship between SNS usage and with text messaging use. Specifically, this study examined (1) the demographic predictors of college students’ SNS usage, (2) how sociability gratifications and information seeking gratification contribute to college students’ SNS usage, and (3) the relationship between college students’ cell phone usage and SNS usage. Results show a complementary relationship between SNS use and text-messaging use.  Heavy users of SNS are most likely to be females and minority students and those who relied on SNS as a news medium.

Measuring, Classifying and Predicting Prosumption Behavior in Social Media • Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University; Gi Woong Yun, Bowling Green State University • This paper compares college students’ and general population’s prosumption behavior in social media and proposes a set of measures of prosumption in online media settings with special emphasis on social media including a prosumption index which can be used in future studies on prosumption. We classify prosumption behavior in a quadrant of four main types along the two dimensions of production and consumption. A polarized trend of prosumption was observed.

How the Smartphone Is Changing College Student Mobile Usage and Advertising Acceptance: A Seven-Year Analysis • Michael Hanley, Ball State University • This study employs online surveys conducted between 2005-2011 to investigate college student smartphone versus feature phone content usage, and acceptance of mobile advertising. Ad acceptance is measured using six mobile advertising acceptance factors from the Wireless Advertising Acceptance Scale (Saran, Cruthirds & Minor, 2004). Results show that incentives are a key motivating factor for advertising acceptance, but the perceived risk associated with receiving mobile ads could become a significant barrier to ad acceptance.

Play global, cover local: News media, political actors and other Twitter users in the 2010 US Elections • Itai Himelboim, University of Georgia, Telecommunications; Hansen Derek, College of Information Studies/University of Maryland; Anne Bowser • In times these challenging times for traditional media, news organizations join social media platforms such as Twitter to attract new and existing audiences.  On this field, they compete for attention against millions of users.  This study examines the use of Twitter in four gubernatorial races by news media, political candidates and the general public of Twitter users.  Examining patterns of follow relationships indicate two types of clusters.  The local clusters include a subgroup of more densely interconnected users, in which local news media on Twitter and political candidates became hubs. The national clusters include a subgroup of more sparsely interconnected users, in which national media and online-only news sources play as hubs.  Theoretical and practical implications for news media and political candidates are discussed.

The Real You?: Visual Cues and Comment Congruence on Facebook Profiles • Seoyeon Hong, University of Missouri; Edson Jr. Tandoc, University of Missouri-Columbia; Eunjin (Anna) Kim, University of Missouri; Bo Kyung Kim, University of Missouri, Missouri Journalism School; Kevin Wise, University of Missouri, School of Journalism • Despite current extensive interdisciplinary research, the impact of Facebook profiles has been the subject of little systematic study, though investigators have explored with other forms of social networking sites. The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of social cues in self-presentations and the congruence of other-generated comments with the self-presentation in people’s evaluations of a profile owner. A 2 (level of social cues; high vs. Low) X 2 (congruent vs. incongruent) X 2 (order) X 2 (messages) mixed-subject design was conducted with 106 college students as participants. The results showed that a profile owner was perceived less socially attractive when other-generated comments were incongruent with the profile owner’s self-presentation. Also, the profile owner was perceived to be more popular when there were more social cues available than when there were fewer social cues. Interestingly, an interaction effect between congruence and level of social cues suggested that perceived popularity was low in the incongruent condition regardless of level of social cue. This is consistent with the warranting theory that emphasized the significant role of information from the others in people’s judgment of self-presentations online. That is, no matter how people package themselves with extravagant self-presentations, it cannot be very successful without validation from others. Theoretical and practical implications were also discussed.

Red-Hot and Ice-Cold Web Ads: The Influence of Warm and Cool Colors in Web Advertising on Click-Through Rates • Kimberly Sokolik, Virginia Tech; James D. Ivory, Virginia Tech • Previous research has examined responses to advertisements featuring warm and cool colors, but such research with web advertisements is limited and consists of laboratory experiments rather than studies using natural data and actual consumer activity.  This study compared the click-through rates of “”box”” and “”banner”” web ads with red and blue color schemes using data from more than 1.5 million ad impressions from 12 months of traffic on a popular news web site.  Ads with red color schemes generated substantially higher click-through rates, particulary for box ads, though the effect of color was reduced in the case of banner ads.

Having a Blog in this Fight:  Testing Competing Models of Selective Exposure to Political Blogs • Tom Johnson, University of Texas; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University • This study tested two competing theories of selective exposure, the “”anticipated agreement hypothesis”” that suggests people will seek information about candidates they agree with and avoid contact with ones they disagree with and the “”issue publics hypothesis”” that asserts that voters consume information on issues they consider personally important. The study found indirect support for the anticipated agreement hypothesis as partisans relied heavily on candidate/party sites for information and reliance was linked to selective exposure.

A Winner Takes All? Examining Relative Importance of Motives and Network Effects in Social Networking Site Use • Mijung Kim; Jiyoung Cha, University of North Texas • Over the past several years, social networking sites (SNSs) have increasingly become an essential part of life for many U.S. Internet users. The present study explores the motives for using the three most-visited SNSs, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, and whether differences exist between the SNSs with respect to the motives for using each SNS. Furthermore, this study examines how motives and network size relevant variables affect SNS usage. Although the motives sought for the three SNSs were similar across the SNSs, the result demonstrated that the primary motives for using SNSs differed. The result also demonstrated that the motives behind the use of an SNS have a much stronger association with SNS usage than the perceived network externality and perceived personal network size of the SNS.

When Ordinary Citizens Produce Media Content: A Comparative Analysis of Most Popular and Random YouTube Videos • Eunseong Kim, Eastern Illinois University; Liz Viall, Eastern Illinois University • As the online video-sharing site, YouTube’s motto, “”Broadcast Yourself”” indicates, YouTube has taken a leading role as the platform that invites everyone to create and share video content with others. YouTube has also enjoyed unprecedented popularity among Internet users and become a representative example of user-generated content in the Web 2.0 era. When everyone is invited to participate in content creation, what do ordinary citizens create? The current body of research provides little information about what typical videos on YouTube look like and how they may be similar to or different from those videos that garner an extraordinary level of popularity (i.e., viral videos). To fill this void, 195 top favorited and most viewed videos on YouTube were analyzed and compared to 203 randomly selected YouTube videos. Findings indicate that typical (random) videos on YouTube exhibit different characteristics from most popular (top favorited and most viewed) videos on YouTube. The paper discusses differences and similarities between typical videos and most popular videos on YouTube.

The Effects of LCD Panel Type on Psychology of Video Game Players and Movie Viewers                  Ki Joon Kim; S. Shyam Sundar • As computer-based devices become the primary media via which users view movies and play interactive games, display technologies (e.g., LCD monitors) have focused increasingly on quality of video fidelity, with much debate surrounding the relative efficacy of different panel types of LCD monitors. A 3 (TN panel vs. S-IPS panel vs. S-PVA panel) x 2 (game vs. movie) between-subjects experiment was conducted to examine the effects of LCD panel type in facilitating regular viewing as well as enhanced interactive TV experiences. Preliminary data from the experiment showed that LCD panel and stimulus type as well as computer literacy were important factors affecting monitor users’ viewing and interaction experience. Limitations and implications for theory and ongoing research are discussed.

Multitasking across borders: Media multitasking behaviors in the U.S., Russia, and Kuwait • Anastasia Kononova, American University of Kuwait; Saleem Alhabash; Zasorina Tatyana; Diveeva Natalia; Kokoeva Anastasia; Anastasia Chelokyan • A cross-national study has been conducted to explore media multitasking behaviors among the young people in three countries: the U.S., Russia, and Kuwait (N=532). A theoretical model that was proposed in this research included factors predicting media multitasking (media ownership, socio-economic status, sensation seeking, and media use), two media multitasking variables (multitasking with media and multitasking with media and non-media activities), and media multitasking outcomes (perceived attention to media contents and perceived ease of media technology use). While some of the paths among the different variables were not statistically significant, the fact that model fit indices were in line with the acceptable rules of thumb qualified the data for analyzing the parameter estimates. The model was run with three samples, American, Russian, and Kuwaiti. Among others, the findings suggest to consider cultural and structural context to be taken into consideration in the analysis of media multitasking behaviors in foreign countries.

Hostile Media Perceptions: Coloring the (New) Media Red or Blue • Ammina Kothari, School of Journalism – Indiana University; Seong Choul Hong, Indiana University; Shuo Tang; Lars Willnat • Past research on the hostile media effect mainly focused on how people perceive media bias of traditional media, while in the current dynamic media environment mobile technology is changing how people consume media. This study expands the scope of current research and tests the interplay of bi-partisan media consumption, selective media exposure and the hostile media effect within the realm of both traditional and online mediascape. An analysis based on a national survey of 3,000 American adults detects a variance in the hostile media effect depending on demographic factors, media selection and media platform. Age, gender, and political affiliation contribute to the perception of media bias. Selective exposure to traditional bi-partisan media like newspapers, television and especially political talk shows also generate the hostile media effect. Online media consumption is a weak predictor of the hostile media effect: On the one hand, consumers of news websites, news aggregators or email news perceive a low level of media bias; on the other, news sources like blogs, social network sites or mobile phones are not indicators of the hostile media effect.

When Do Online Shoppers Appreciate Security Enhancement Efforts? Effects of Financial Risk and Security Level on Evaluations of Customer Authentication • Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee, Hope College; Shailandra Rao, CafeBots; Clifford Nass • As the popularity of online shopping grows, concerns about identity theft and fraud are increasing. While stronger customer authentication procedures may provide greater protection and hence benefit customers and retailers, security tends to be traded off against convenience. To provide insight into this security-convenience trade-off in customer authentication, we experimentally investigated how levels of authentication security and financial risk factors affect perception and evaluation of authentication systems. In two experiments, participants performed simulated purchasing tasks in the context of online shopping. The findings show that financial risk factors moderate the effects of security levels on consumers’ evaluation of authentication systems. In Experiment 1, participants rated the high-level security system as less convenient and more frustrating when the amount involved in the transactions was higher. On the other hand, Experiment 2, which introduced a more explicit risk for consumers (liability for fraudulent activities), showed that participants gave more positive ratings of the high-level security system under full liability than under zero liability. Taken together, the present research suggests that consumers’ perception and appreciation of authentication technologies may vary depending on the characteristics of the financial risk involved in the transaction process.

Understanding the “”Friend-Rich””:  The Effects of Self-Esteem and Self-Consciousness on Number of Facebook Friends • Jong-Eun Roselyn Lee, Hope College; Eun-A (Mickey) Park, University of New Haven; Sung Gwan Park • The present research examined whether and how self-esteem and self-consciousness (private vs. public) predict number of social network friends, particularly in the context of Facebook use. It was predicted that self-esteem and private self-consciousness would have a negative association with number of Facebook friends while public self-consciousness and number of Facebook friends would show a positive association. In addition, it was hypothesized that self-esteem and public self-consciousness would have an interaction effect on number of Facebook friends. Data were collected from a cross-sectional survey data conducted with a college student sample in the U.S. (N=234). While private self-consciousness did not yield a significant association with number of Facebook friends, self-esteem had a negative association and public self-consciousness had a positive association with number of Facebook friends, which suggested that lower self-esteem and higher public self-consciousness would likely lead to more active friending, thereby resulting in a greater number of friends listed on their Facebook profile. Furthermore, the data supported the hypothesized interaction between self-esteem and public self-consciousness. Implications for number of Facebook friends as a social “”commodity”” are discussed.

Are You Following Me? A Content Analysis of TV Networks’ Corporate Messages on Twitter • Jhih-Syuan Lin, The University of Texas at Austin; Jorge Peña • This study analyzed the content of TV corporations’ messages in social networking sites by employing Bales’s IPA method. This study also explored the diffusion of information in social networking sites by examining users’ “”retweeting”” behavior. The findings showed that TV networks tended to employ more task than socioemotional communication across program genres. Also, giving suggestions was the most frequently used message strategy in the current sample. Additionally, socioemotional messages got retweeted more often than task-oriented messages. The findings suggest managerial implications for corporate message management and relationship-building efforts in social networking sites.

With a Little Help from My Friends: Motivations and Patterns in Social Media Use and Their Influence on Perceptions of Teaching Possibilities • Miglena Sternadori, University of South Dakota; Jeremy Littau, Lehigh University • This study explores what journalism and mass communication educators believe to be appropriate uses of social media as teaching and communication tools with students and alumni, including the motivations that drive these beliefs and the decisions that follow them. There was a negative relationship between age and gratifications from using Twitter and Facebook, and a positive relationship between educators’ use of these tools in the classroom and their perceptions of usefulness. The hypothesis that use of social media would lead to higher evaluation scores was only partially supported. A qualitative analysis of answers to open-ended questions identified five themes: (1) recognition of the importance of Twitter and Facebook to the study of mass communication; (2) ethical concerns about boundaries; (3) perceived negative judgment or praise from administrators or students for using social media; (4) digital divide concerns; (5) perceived disutility of Twitter and Facebook in comparison to platforms such as Blackboard as well as blogs and wikis. The results are discussed in the context of their theoretical implications for the Media Choice Model (MCM: Thorson & Duffy, 2006) as well as practical implications for educators considering ways to implement social networking in their teaching.

A Little World in My Hand —The Use of Smartphones Among Low Income Minority Women • xun Liu, california State University, Stanislaus; Ying Zhang • Under the guide of social cognitive theory, the current study investigated the use of smartphones among low-income minority women. Twenty-eight low income minority women were interviewed about their smartphone use patterns and their beliefs pertaining to self-efficacy, and outcome expectations. As the first study that explores smartphone use among this demographic group, the current research makes a unique and original contribution.

New TV Resistance: Barriers to Implementation of IPTV in the Living Room • Duen Ruey Liu, Shih Hsin University; Yihsuan Chiang, Shih Hsin University; Niann Chung Tsai, Shih Hsin University • Families relax in living rooms and watching TV should be carefree. Researchers care about interaction between human and machines of IPTV, the study are interpreted with theory of affordance by James Jerome Gibson (1979) and technology acceptance model (TAM) by Davis (1989). We add marketing strategies, program contents, interface operation, use experience and fear of technology of five external variables in attempt to propose IPTV TAM of future promotion and development of digital TV.

Color and cognition: The influence of Web page colors on cognitive inputs • Robert Magee, Virginia Tech • A Web page’s red color scheme seemed to lead participants to engage in rule-based processing, while a blue color scheme lead them to engage in associative processing. In an experiment (N = 211) with physical temperature and Web page color as between-subjects manipulated factors and Attitudes Toward Charities and Need For Cognition as a measured independent variables, participants were asked to view a Web page for a trade-based development organization. When participants experienced the sensation of physical cold, those who were cognitive misers tended to report less favorable attitudes toward the Web page. This interaction disappeared, however, when participants viewed a Web page that featured a red color scheme, as red seemed to have stimulated arousal and an increase in analytic rule-based cognitive processing. In addition, an accessible knowledge structure, participants’ general attitude toward charitable organizations, was a predictor of their impressions of that organization only when they viewed a red Web page. The implications of color and cognition for communication technology are discussed.

A Lesson Before Dying: Embracing Innovations for Community Engagement as a Survival Strategy for Media in Crisis. • Samuel Mwangi, Kansas State University • As media organizations confront an uncertain future unleashed by disruptive technologies, they are searching for ways to successfully navigate the changing information landscape. This paper argues that one way out of the present crises is for media to embrace a culture of innovation and use engaging communication technologies that are mutually beneficial to the media and to the communities they serve. The paper maps trends in media innovations and then reports on a unique innovation project that designed a new digital tool to help media re- engage their communities in new ways. The success of the project suggests that innovative tools and services that are specifically geared towards community engagement can provide a lifeline for media in crises as well as transform community news, information distribution and visualization, and impact community conversations, making new media technology a valued ally to media organizations and communities rather than a disruptive threat.

Coproduction or Cohabitation?  Gatekeeping, Workplace, and Mutual Shaping Effects of Anonymous Online Comment Technology in the Newsroom • Carolyn Nielsen, Western Washington University • This study explored whether the technology that enables readers to post anonymous comments on the same platforms with newspaper journalists’ articles has transformed journalists’ workplaces or work practices. Data from a nationwide survey examined through the lens of mutual shaping found that journalists are mostly ignoring the technology, continuing to assert their territoriality, and seeing little impact of comments as artifacts mediating between editors and reporters. Mutual shaping is constrained by journalistic norms and practices.

Affect, Cognition and Reward: Predictors of Privacy Protection Online • Yong Jin Park, Howard University; scott campbell; Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan Ann Arbor • In recent years emotion and cognition have emerged as new dimensions for understanding media uses. This article examined the interplay between cognition and affect in Internet uses for privacy control as this is conditioned by reward-seeking rationale. A survey of a national sample was conducted to empirically test the relationship between affective concern and cognitive knowledge. We also tested for three-way interactions that consider reward-seeking as a third moderator. Findings revealed that concern did not directly play a meaningful role in guiding users’ protective behavior, whereas knowledge was found significant in moderating the role of concern. The interactive role of reward-seeking seems particularly salient in shaping the structure of the relationships. These findings suggest that the intersections between knowledge, reward, and concern can play out differently, depending on the levels of each. Policy implication in relation to users’ cognitive, affective, and reward-seeking rationalities are offered, and future research considerations are discussed.

Factors Influencing Intention to Upload Content on Wikipedia in South Korea: The Effects of Social Norms and Individual Differences • Naewon Kang, Dankook University, Korea; Namkee Park, University of Oklahoma; Hyun Sook Oh, Pyeongtaek University • This study examined the roles of social norms and individual differences in influencing Internet users’ intention to upload content on Wikipedia in South Korea. Using data from a survey of college students with users and non-users of Wikipedia (N = 185 and 158), the study found that the effect of social norms was minimal, while that of individual differences—self-efficacy, issue involvement, and ego involvement—was more important to account for the uploading intention.

Seeking Environmental Risk Information Online: Examining North Carolina’s Urban-Rural Divide • Laurie Phillips; Robert McKeever, UNC Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; Kelly Davis, UNC School of Journalism and Mass Communication • Using statewide telephone survey data (N=406), this “”digital divide”” study oversampled rural households to explore urban-rural differences in Internet access, time online, and information-seeking about environmental risk. Although the access divide has closed, parallel regression analyses revealed urban-rural differences in demographic predictors of time online and information seeking. No urban-rural differences emerged in preference for Internet as an environmental risk source, though Internet use was a strong predictor of rural respondents’ sense of “”environmental confidence.””

News Feed Indeed:  Social media, Journalism and the Mass Self-Communicator • Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This research takes up the Castells’ (2009) notion of the mass self-communicator, referring to the ability of citizens to employ digital technology to produce and disseminate information via vast networks. A hundred Madison, WI, residents were interviewed about their attitudes as potential mass self-communicators on blogs and social networking sites. Some reported posting content on their Facebook pages and other SNS material that helped them converse, understand new perspectives, prove their knowledge, document their presence on an issue, and mobilize others. Their acts of “”information witnessing”” – particularly during the Winter 2011 Madison protests – transformed them into news networkers in a way that altered the established information flows in this Midwestern city. Others rejected the opportunity as too public.

Country Reputation in the Age of Networks: An Empirical Analysis of Online Social Relations and Information Use • Hyunjin Seo, University of Kansas • This study identifies and examines effects of individuals’ online social relations and information use regarding other countries on their ratings of the reputation of those countries. Theoretical and operational definitions of the two variables are developed and used to establish and test a theoretical model accounting for how people form perceptions of other countries in the age of information technology and online social networking. A survey of South Korean Internet users provides the empirical data for this paper.     The survey shows that negative information South Koreans get about the United States through their online social networks can have significant influence on their perceptions of the United States. In comparison, information they get through U.S.-based websites did not significantly influence their views of the United States. This study also shows that first-hand experience of visiting the United States remains the most significant positive predictor of South Koreans’ favorability toward the United States in this networked age. These results reinforce the importance of relationship-based networked public diplomacy. It is important that countries lay out digital media-based strategies that help build relationships with their foreign constituents rather than simply delivering information to them.

Explicating Use of ICTs in Health Contexts: Entry, Exposure, and Engagement • Dhavan Shah; Kang Namkoong, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Tae Joon Moon; Ming-Yuan Chih, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Jeong Yeob Han, University of Georgia • We explicate ‘use’ of eHealth systems, or more generally ‘use’ of a wide variety of information and communication systems (ITCs).  A review of the literature makes clear that ‘use’ has been applied to a number of different operational measurements, each implying differences in meaning.  To address this multiplicity of meanings, we propose and discuss three central meanings of eHealth ‘use,’ introduce likely applications of each, and consider potential submeanings and operationalizations: Entry into the system, Exposure to its content, and Engagement with the system.  We argue that this three part distinction is critical to both conceptualizing and operationalizing ‘Use’ in meaningful and analytically useful way. Measurement and analysis strategies are discussed in relation to this concept explication.

Why Do People Play Social Network Games? • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University; Tae-Yang Kim • Recently, Social Network Games (SNGs) over social network services have become popular and have spawned a whole new subculture. This study examines the perceived factors which contribute to an SNG user’s behaviors. It proposes an SNG acceptance model based on integrating cognitive as well as affective attitudes as primary influencing factors. Results from a survey of SNG players validate that the proposed theoretical model explains and predicts user acceptance of SNG very well. The model shows fine measurement properties and establishes the perceived playfulness and security of SNGs as distinct constructs. The findings also reveal that flow plays a moderation role that affects various paths in the model. Based on the results of this study, both the appropriate practical implications for SNG marketing strategies and the theoretical implications are provided.

Exploring the Immersion Effect of 3DTV in a Learning Context • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University; Tae-Yang Kim • With the conceptual model of flow and immersion, this study investigates immersion/flow effects in an educational context. This study focuses on users’ experiences with 3DTV in order to investigate the areas of development as a learning application. For the investigation, the modified technology acceptance model (TAM) is used with constructs from expectation-confirmation theory (ECT). Users’ responses to questions about cognitive perceptions and continuous use were collected and analyzed with factors that were modified from TAM and ECT. While the findings confirm the significant roles by users’ cognitive perceptions, the findings also shed light on the possibility of 3DTV serving as an enabler of learning tools. In the extended model, the moderating effects of confirmation/satisfaction and demographics of the relationships among the variables were found to be significant.

The Factors Affecting the Adoption of Smart TV • Dong-Hee Shin, Sungkyunkwan University; Tae-Yang Kim • Smart TV, a new digital television service, has been rapidly developing. With the conceptual model of interactivity, this study empirically investigates the effects of perceived interactivity on the motivations and attitudes toward Smart TV. A model is created to validate the relationship of perceived interactivity to performance, attitude, and intention. Further, the model examines the mediating roles of perceived interactivity in the effect of performance on attitude toward Smart TV. Empirical evidence supports the mediating role of perceived interactivity. Implications of the findings are discussed in terms of building a theory of interactivity and providing practical insights into developing a user-centered Smart TV interface.

The Anonymous Chatter: Testing the Effects of Social Anonymity and the Spiral of Silence • Madeleine Sim; Jamie Lee; Kristle Kwok; Ee Ling Cha; Shirley S. Ho • Using the spiral of silence as the theoretical framework, this study examines the relationship between social anonymity in computer-mediated communication settings and opinion expression in Singapore; we conducted an experiment to assess participants’ use of avoidance and engagement strategies. Results indicate that social anonymity and future opinion congruency were significantly associated with opinion expression. Findings suggest that the lack of visual and status cues, rather than perceived anonymity, were more likely to elicit opinion expression.

The Differing Effects of Communication Mediation on Social-Network Site and Online Political Participation • Timothy Macafee; Matthew Barnidge, Hernando Rojas, University of Wisconsin – Madison • This study uses a national survey of 10 cities in Colombia to explore how communication mediation influences social-network site and other online political participation. We argue these two type of participation should be distinct and illustrate how attention to information and information dissemination affects them differently. Specifically, both offline and online information sharing lead to social-network site participation, while online information seeking and sharing predict other online political participation.

Social Media Policies for Professional Communicators • Daxton Stewart, Texas Christian University • As social media tools such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube have become increasingly prevalent ways for people to share and connect, professional communicators have increasingly incorporated these tools into their daily practice.  However, journalism, advertising and public relations practitioners have little formal guidance to help them navigate the benefits and risks of using these tools professionally.  The codes of ethics of their professional fields have not been updated, and to date, social media policies have not been examined from an academic perspective.  This study reviews 26 social media policies of journalism and strategic communication companies to find common themes and concerns and to suggest best practices for professional communicators using social media tools.  These themes include transparency, balancing the personal and the professional, maintaining confidentiality, rules for “”friending,”” and other matters central to developing an effective social media policy.

An Exploration of Motives in Mobile Gaming: A Uses and Gratifications Approach. • Lakshmi N Tirumala, Texas Tech University; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University; Anthony Galvez • Global sales of video games have increased to $54.9 billion in 2009 and are expected to earn $68.3 billion by 2012. Although video games are mostly being played on devices like PlayStation, recent advances in mobile phone technologies has created a new platform for video game play. Given the unique nature of the gaming experience this study proposes to examine motivational dimensions of mobile gaming from a uses and gratifications approach.

The role of third-person effects in the context of Facebook: Examining differences in perceived consumption and impact between self and others • Mina Tsay, Boston University • The immense popularity and adoption of Facebook in the lives of more than 500 million users has sparked the attention of new media scholars. While much is known about Facebook members’ motivations, use, and gratifications of this social networking site, minimal attention has been given to examining the perceived consumption and impact of Facebook on users themselves versus others. Applying the third-person effect (TPE) hypothesis to the context of social media, this study (N = 375) investigates: 1) differences between estimated Facebook effects on self versus others, 2) relationship between perceptions of Facebook use and estimated impact of Facebook on self versus others, and 3) association between perceived desirability of Facebook as a social medium and estimated Facebook influence on self versus others. The aforementioned relationships are also moderated by gender and age. Implications for the relevance of TPE on users of social networking sites are discussed.

Will Communication Journals Go Online? An Analysis of Journal Publishing Formats and Impact Factors • Nur Uysal, University of Oklahoma; Joe Foote, University of Oklahoma; Jody Bales Foote • Academic journals are regarded as a platform on which scholarly communication takes place to validate and disseminate academic knowledge.  They provide a means to examine the question whether online/electronic publishing improves the dissemination of quality information.  The primary focus of this study is the migration of academic journals from print to hybrid (print and electronic) to electronic format.  It focuses on journals in six disciplines, including communication/journalism.  The study addresses three research questions:  a) To what extent have communication journals embraced electronic publishing? b) How do online journals in communication compare to those in business, psychology, geology, meteorology, and physiology? c) What is the relationship between journal publishing format and impact factor in the journal sample and in communication journals? Content analysis of all journals listed in the ISI database (n=716) was conducted regarding publishing format, publihsing start date, publisher etc. In order to understand the relationship between impact factor and publishing format a multiple regression analysis was deployed. The results showed that on the contrary to forecasts journals experience a slow migration to e-only publihsing format. They stick to hybrid publishing on whihc this study showed that there is a positive relationship.

Use of Social Networking Sites: An Exploratory Study of Indian Teenagers • Peddiboyina vijaya lakshmi, Sri  Padmavati Women’s University • Social Networking Sites have   become popular and have become a vital part of social life in India, especially among teenagers.  .   There is no in-depth study as to how and why Indian teenagers engage with social networking sites.  This study, using focus groups, explored the experiences of teenagers with social networking sites. Information from the groups was analyzed in terms of their usage of social networking sites, profile construction, online vs offline friendships, and extending friendships beyond cyberspace.  The gender variations and social norms in how teens are using these sites are other possible areas that require attention.

Technological Constructions of Reality: An Ontological Perspective • Cindy Vincent, University of Oklahoma • This paper seeks to address how ontological constructions are shaped through technological dependency.  Depending on the exposure and usage of hypermediated technology, individuals will have different constructs of reality to coincide with the styles of technology they use.  Currently, there is a gap in research in addressing the impact of technological dependency on individual constructs of reality.  This paper seeks to make progress in identifying a hypermediated technological ontological perspective and recommendations for future research.

Followers, Friends, and Fame: Political Structural Influence on Candidate Twitter Networks • Ming Wang, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Alexander Hanna; Ben Sayre; JungHwan Yang, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Michael Mirer; Young Mie Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dhavan Shah • To understand the antecedents and consequences of political candidates’ online social networks, we captured egocentric Twitter networks of candidates who ran for the 2010 midterm elections. To be more specific, our data include information on a sample of political candidates running for the 2010 congressional and gubernatorial elections as well as their connections to their followers and friends on Twitter. Adopting a social network analysis approach and focusing on political structural determinants, we find that Senate and gubernatorial candidates had both larger follower networks and friend networks. Furthermore, Republican candidates had larger follower networks and incumbent candidates had smaller friend networks on Twitter. But neither network size measures affected whether the candidates were likely to win the elections or not. Our results showed strong political structural influence on how candidates managed their online social networks.

Social Network Sites Use, Mobile Personal Talk and Social Capital • wenjing xie, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • Using data collected from a nationally representative survey, this study explores social network site use and mobile communication among teenagers as well as their influences on social capital. We found that, older teenagers tend to be more likely to use social network site. Among social network site users, older teenagers and teen girls use SNS more intensively. Hierarchical regression analysis shows that adoption of social network site and mobile personal talks not only have main effects on teenagers’ network capital, but also interact with each other. Intensity of SNS use also significantly predicts teenager’s civic and political participation among SNS users. Moreover, join groups on SNS or not interacts with mobile personal talks to predict civic participation.

Incidental Exposure to Online News: An Insight from the Pew Internet Project Introduction • Borchuluun Yadamsuren; Sanda Erdelez; Joonghwa Lee, University of Missouri; Esther Thorson, University of Missouri • Incidental exposure to online news (IEON) is becoming more prominent as people spend more time on the Internet. However, little research on this behavior has been done in the field of mass communication. Through a secondary data analysis of the Pew Internet & American Life Project study (2010), this study aimed to explore association of the IEON in two contexts (news reading and non-news reading) using various demographic, technology usage, and news exposure variables. Findings of the present study suggest that both types of IEON are positively associated with higher education, home access to the Internet, strong interest in news, and online news use. However, there is no correlation between either types of IEON and legacy media use. This study extends the research on online news consumption and incidental exposure to online news. The findings have important implications for online media business.

Walled Gardens?: Social Media and Political Disaffection among College Students in the 2008 Election • Masahiro Yamamoto, Washington State University; Matthew Kushin, Utah Valley University • This study evaluates the ways in which social media influenced political disaffection among young adults during the 2008 presidential election campaign. The effects of social media, online expression, and traditional Internet sources on political cynicism, skepticism, and apathy were examined using data from an online survey of college students. Results show that attention to social media for campaign information is positively related to cynicism and apathy. Online expression has a positive effect on skepticism. Implications are discussed for the role of social media in bringing a historically disengaged demographic group into the political process.

Motivations for and Consequences of Participating in Online Research Communities • Juyoung Bang, Samsung Electronics; Seounmi Youn, Emerson College; James Rowean, Emerson College; Michael Jennings, Communispace Corporation; Manila Austin, Communispace Corporation • Utilizing the functional approach of attitudes, this study identified the motivations that consumers have for attitudes toward participation in online research communities: knowledge, utilitarian, value-expressive, ego-defensive, social, and helping the company. Further, this study explored the influences of respective motivations on consumers’ sense of identification with communities, which subsequently affects consumers’ feeling heard by companies, community loyalty, and brand trust. Online survey data (n=1,461) supported the hypothesized relationships and offered theoretical and managerial implications.

Student Papers

Opting Into Information Flows: Partial Information Control on Facebook • Leticia Bode • While we know a great deal about purposive information seeking online, and we have some understanding of incidental exposure to information online, Web 2.0 challenges this dichotomy. Social media represent a new type of information environment, in which users have partial control over the information to which they are exposed. While users opt into information flows, they are then exposed to information they might not have sought out themselves. This study is a first step in understanding the dissemination of information in this environment, as well as the effects of exposure to such information. Utilizing survey data relating to the specific case of the popular online social network, Facebook, the study tests for likelihood of exposure to information in this environment, as well as the relationship between exposure and opinion change. Results indicate that users do recognize exposure to information in this new environment, and exposure to information in that medium significantly increases the likelihood of opinion change as a result.

Building Frames Link by Link: The Linking Practices of Blogs and News Sites • Mark Coddington, University of Texas-Austin • This study uses content analysis and depth interviews to examine the use and conceptions of hyperlinks among news web sites, independent bloggers, and blogging journalists, particularly the way that they contributed to episodic, thematic, and conflict news frames. News sites’ links functioned thematically to provide context through background information produced by a limited body of traditional, non-opinionated sources. Bloggers’ links, however, served as a more social connection while pointing toward immediate, episodic news issues.

For Love or Money?: The Role of Non-Profits in Preserving Serious Journalism • Emily Donahue Brown, University of Texas • This study employed elite, in-depth interviews with executives of online non-profit journalism organizations to ascertain their sense of mission, audience and the model’s potential for long-term relevance. They see their organizations assuming investigative, in-depth reporting roles vacated by mass media. The online non-profit model enables deeper interactive engagement with local audiences.  Securing stable funding and broader audiences are critical concerns. Cross-platform collaboration is crucial to establishing brand; engaging younger audiences is not a major priority.

Linked World: Applying Network Theory to Micro-Blogging in China • Fangfang Gao • Micro-blogging is one of the latest Web 2.0 technologies with great impact in the world. Drawing on network theory, this study focused on the recent micro-blogging phenomenon in China, analyzing the characteristics of micro-blogs. Content analyzing the secondary data from Sina micro-blogs, this study found that lifestyle and entertainment/celebrity were the most popular and the most reposted topics in Chinese micro-blogs. Features of micro-blogs such as topic, authorship, and multimedia usage can predict their emergence as hubs in the Chinese micro-blogging network. Implications of results were discussed.

Will the Revolution be Tweeted or Facebooked? Using Digital Communication Tools in Immigrant Activism • Summer Harlow, University of Texas-Austin; Lei Guo, University of Texas at Austin • Considering the debate over U.S. immigration reform and the way digital communication technologies increasingly are being used to spark protests, this study examines focus group discourse of immigration activists to explore how digital media are transforming the definitions of “”activism”” and “”activist.” Analysis suggests technologies are perhaps pacifying would-be activists, convincing them they are contributing more than they actually are. Thus, “”armchair activism”” that takes just a mouse click is potentially diluting “”real”” activism.

Go to the People: A Historical Case Study & Policy Analysis Of Massachusetts and Open Standard Document Formats • Andrew Kennis • In 2004, Massachusetts announced it would switch the format of its electronic documents for its public records from a proprietary, to an ostensibly open standard.  My case study examines the struggles, controversies, and successes of the monumental Massachusetts policy.  It is an epic tale and one that is casually known to most internet policy scholars, if not the general public.  This case study not only closely details the development of what was a monumental policy initiative, but also undertakes a critical analysis of the history observed in Massachusetts. A policy argument is posited which calls for the organization of democratic, grassroots-based support for the furtherance of an open standard document format not developed or maintained by a corporation which currently monopolizes the office suite market. An “”open coalition”” is called upon to undertake a public awareness and grassroots lobbying campaign, which would connect the open source community to the cause of adopting a genuinely open standard document format by tying open source and standard initiatives together.

The effect of emotional attachment to mobile phone on usage behavior:  Meditation effect of deficient self-regulation and habit • Mijung Kim • Considering pervasiveness of mobile phones, the literature of media use has focused on a wide range of predictors of mobile phone usage behaviors such as motivations, gratifications, self-efficacy, personality traits, media dependency, and demographic characteristics. Nonetheless, the existing theoretical models focusing on rational or utilitarian media usage cannot reflect the emotional and relational aspect of usage behaviors. In other words, what past studies of media use has not paid attention is the possibility that users develop relationship with media and emotional attachment to media including both cognitive and affective based media-self connections. Thus, focusing on psychological connections between users and media, this study demonstrates users’ emotional attachment to mobile phones, influence their mobile phone usage behavior. Specifically, this study focuses on the mediation effects of deficient self-regulation and habits.

Crude comments and concern: Online incivility’s effect on risk perceptions of emerging technologies • Peter Ladwig; Ashley Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Uncivil rhetoric has become a growing aspect of American political discussion and deliberation.  This trend is not only confined to traditional media representations of deliberation, but also online media such as blog comments.  This study examines online incivility’s effect on risk perception of an emerging technology, nanotechnology.  We found that reading can polarize audiences’ attitudes of risk perception of nanotechnology along the lines of religiosity, efficacy, and support for the technology.

Motivations and Usage Patterns of Online News: Use of Digital Media Technologies and Its Political Implications • Shin Haeng Lee, University of Washington – Seattle; ChangHee Choi, School of Journalism, Indiana University at Bloomington • With an interest in contextualized use of new communication technologies and its implications, this study examines the relationship of individuals’ motivations for news consumption to their frequencies and patterns of online news use and attempts to explain the role of online features in the news consumption by dividing online activities into active and passive usage patterns. Based on a secondary analysis of data collected by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project that conducted a national survey on the media and technology consumption of individuals in 2010, this study aims to identify online users’ motivations for using online news and to examine relationships between user motivations for news consumption and usage patterns of online news services. The findings of this study demonstrate associations of individuals’ different motivations with not only their usage frequencies but also patterns of online news services. The results also suggest that the examination of various activities engaged with different functions the Internet provides should be considered in studies of what motivates people to experience new practices in using web-based media. Given different modes of Internet usage in getting news, this study shed light on the important role of new tools or functions web-based media provide in online practices its users perform as well as the examination of what contents or services they consume or engage with. Finally, the study suggests that scholars should consider for future research the investigation of individuals’ different practices online in using news, contingent on their motivations for media use.

Online users’ news consumption practices and technological tools • Shin Haeng Lee, University of Washington – Seattle • Online users’ different motivations with respect to news consumption lead to different practices in using news media and related ICTs. However, media institutional actors endeavor to hold their power as a traditional gatekeeper even on the Web. In this sense, online users’ activities can be explained with not only traditional mass communication models but also individual motivations for social networking. This paper allows for an explanation in which the application of new ICTs to web-based media reflects institutional actors’ attempts to get access to arenas that draw larger audiences online. Likewise, individual actors who use shared digital network technologies with a motivation for human interactivity play a much more dynamic role in reconfiguring a distinctive flow and patterns of news and information on the Web from traditional communication models. Thus, digital network technological tools can be considered to not only provide online users with more opportunities to access alternative sources of news and information but also allow news media institutions to appropriate technologies for new opportunities to maintain control over users and their participations through technologies in order to reinforce their communicative power. In an effort to examine the consequences of the use of new technologies in news consumption, future research should therefore take into account institutional as well as individual actors’ practices in a process of interaction between their motives and tools for satisfying their needs in the historical and cultural context.

Issue Information and Technological Choice in a Senate Election Campaign: News, Social Media, Candidate Communications, and Voter Learning • Jason A. Martin, Indiana University School of Journalism • As candidates, the news media, and much of the public increasingly focus on digital and mobile media, it is important to understand the impact of these communication technologies in a variety of election contexts. This paper addressed that research problem by asking citizens about their use of various election information resources and their knowledge about key issues in a U.S. Senate campaign. A representative survey of randomly selected voters (n = 220, 50.9% response rate) in one of the nation’s 20 most populous cities was conducted immediately following the November 2010 Senate midterm election. Respondents were asked how frequently they used traditional and digital news media, social media, and campaign communications, including both advertising and candidate websites.  A hierarchical regression model including media use, alternate information sources, motivation measures, and demographics revealed that newspaper use and online news use were the most important independent predictors of issue knowledge, followed by voting status and general civics knowledge. Also, newspaper use and news website use were not correlated, indicating that they were similarly but separately effective in influencing voter issue learning. On the other hand, blog use, social media use, and campaign website use did not have significant effects on issue learning after controls. These findings indicate that although citizens had a greater range of information available to them than ever before, they preferred traditional campaign content and learned the most from the news media’s printed word even as they diversified the platforms on which they received that election news.

Perceived Credibility of Mainstream Newspapers and Facebook • Andrew Nynka, University of Maryland; Raymond McCaffrey, University of Maryland • This study examines whether consumers perceived differences in the credibility of news from a mainstream newspaper compared to a social media web site where a friend provides a link to a story. Measures indicated significant differences across four indices, with a New York Times story rated higher in terms of professionalism, authority, and information, while participants indicated they were more likely to provide a link to the friend’s Facebook story on their own Facebook page.

The Roles of Descriptive Norms and Communication Frequency in Forming Information Communication Technology Adoption Intention • Yi Mou, University of Connecticut; Hanlong Fu • Previous studies have not examined the roles of descriptive norms and communication frequency in the process of information communication technology adoption.  This study aims to fill the gap using podcast as an example.  Results show that descriptive norm is an additional significant predictor of adoption intention.  Injunctive norms play a moderating role in the relationship between communication frequency and descriptive norms.  However, frequent communication in one’s social networks does not necessarily reduce the discrepancy between an individual’s beliefs and perceived others’ beliefs related to podcast using.  Implications for future studies are also discussed.

Look At Me Now: The Need To Belong And Facebook Use • Stephen Prince, Brigham Young University; Adam Anderson; Sarah Connors • The objective of this study was to examine if an individual’s need to belong was associated with specific types of participatory Facebook activities, particularly those that might provide functional substitutes for more traditional interpersonal interaction and involvement with others. A secondary objective was to determine if gender mediated the relationship between need and activity frequency. Data were collected via an online survey (N = 398) administered to Facebook users ranging in age from 14 to 73 (M = 25.93). Our results indicate that those individuals with the greatest need to belong were more likely than those with the lowest need to update their Facebook status on a regular basis, tag photographs, and to use Facebook Chat with a larger number of their friends. Our findings also suggest gender impacts usage patterns based on need to belong. Men with high need are more likely to use Facebook for more interactively immediate forms of communication, such as chatting, than women.  Women with high need were more likely than those with low need to engage in activities that were more designed to draw attention to the individual rather than to create an immediate means of two-way interaction.

Consumer Motivations and the Use of QR Codes • Jennifer Seefeld, University of Nebraska – Lincoln; Meghan Collins, University of Nebraska – Lincoln • The development of QR codes and the increase of mobile phones among college students has developed a new media outlet. Many companies are investing in mobile marketing campaigns but there is little academic research on QR codes. This pilot study attempts to bridge this gap in literature. It analyzes the view of advertising agencies as well as the motivations and knowledge of QR codes in the target market of college students.

New Media in Social Relations: The Cell Phone Use among College Students in Building and Maintaining Friendships • Ivy Shen, University of Oklahoma • This study explores the role of cell phone in maintaining and establishing friendships among college students. A comparison between the cell phone use and face-to-face communication was drawn to see which communication approach is preferred by those young people in terms of supporting friendships. Gender’s affect on college students’ attitudes toward the cell phone use in friendship maintenance and establishment was also examined. The results demonstrate that the cell phone does help in maintaining friendships. College students prefer using the cell phone to having face-to-face conversations to maintain the relationships. Yet, face-to-face interaction turns out to be more preferable in initiating friendships. The findings also suggest that gender is not an influential factor in college students’ cell phone use in the connections with friends.

From Stereoscopy to 3D HD Image:A Review of 3D HDTV Diffusion from the Perspective of Technology Adoption • Xu Song • 3D HDTV is in its early days. 3D technology still needs to be improved to be ready for mass promotion in the market. This study reviews the 3D HDTV technology development and its diffusion in society. Based on the review of the current 3D HDTV adoption situation, individual and social factors which may influence the adoption of 3D HDTV are identified. Some factors such as media technology use and attitude are oriented from the individual difference; some factors such as cost and health risks focus on social aspects. This study analyzes the challenges faced by 3D HDTV diffusion and provides some recommendations for the success of 3D HDTV diffusion.

The Bottom Line: The Negative Influences of Technology on the Good Work and Ethics of Journalism • Ian Storey, Colorado State University • New communication technologies have some positive influences on journalism, but overall have added to the decline of “”good work”” by journalists who are pressured to publish sooner in a culture of immediacy. This immediacy has serious consequences on the profession of journalism and the practitioners of it. In the pursuit to be first, news agencies are creating ethical problems that include providing the public with unverified information and failing to adequately deliberate about their actions.

Gift Economy: Contributors of Functional Online Collaborations • Yoshikazu Suzuki, University of Minnesota Twin Cities • As the Internet transformed into a social platform following Web 2.0, active audience participation and commons-based peer production has been argued as an alternative arena of production for socially and culturally meaningful artifacts. Past literatures have mainly focused on the societal and cultural implications of such change in the landscape of contemporary Internet. However, despite the significant economic implications of peer production, existing literatures remain silent to investigating the phenomenon through the theoretical scope of economic systems. The present study is a qualitative investigation of user contributions and collaborations aimed provide an alternative understanding of the phenomenon of online collaboration through the scope of gift economy.

Reciprocity in social network games and generation of social capital • Donghee Yvette Wohn, Michigan State University • Social network games—games that incorporate network data from social network sites—use exchange between players as a main mechanism of play. However, the type of exchange facilitated by the game is both social and economical. Players get an immediate reward by the system by initiating an exchange with another player, but they can also anticipate an unspecified return from that player. In this dual-exchange environment where reciprocity is triggered by two different stimuli, does reciprocity generate social capital?  This paper describes a longitudinal experiment using a Facebook game (N=89) to examine the effect of behavior and affect on social capital development among zero-sum acquaintances. Reciprocity indicated a significant but small main effect. Affective measures—trust and copresence, but not intimacy—were positive indicators of social capital.

Consumer’s purchase power and ICT diffusion: Theoretical framework and cross-national empirical study • Xiaoqun Zhang • Combining the theories of Diffusion of Innovations Theory and Consumer Theory, this paper constructs a three dimensional framework for the diffusion process of ICTs. This framework shows how the s-shape curve changes when the average purchase power of a nation increases. Hence, it explains the digital divide between different nations due to the economic gaps. The hypotheses based on this framework are proposed and justified by the cross-national empirical studies.

Narcissism, Communication Anxiety, Gratifications-sought on SNS Use and Social Capital among College Students in China • pei zheng; Hongzhe wang • This study investigates whether and how gratifications, narcissism and communication anxiety impact people’s social network sites (SNS) use and perceived social capital. Firstly, a factor analysis of a survey data of SNS users (N=581) outlined a set of specific gratifications obtained from Renren, the most popular Chinese social network site. Four aspects of gratifications-sought (self-expression and presentation, peer pressure, social networking maintenance, and information seeking) have been identified. Then Pearson correlation showed narcissism significantly related to identified gratifications and SNS use, while communication anxiety was partially related to them; Intensity of SNS use was positively related to social capital. After that, hierarchical regression revealed that gratifications were the most powerful predictors for SNS use, while narcissism and intensity predicted social capital powerfully. Moreover, the initial significant relationship of narcissism to intensity of SNS use became insignificant when gratifications were entered in subsequent step into the regression, suggesting a mediation effect occurred.

The emerging network paradigm in computer-mediated communication: A structure analysis of scholarly collaboration network • Aimei Yang • As the important influence of social networks on communication increasingly being recognized by scholars, a growing number of studies have applied the network perspective to study online communication. This article extensively reviewed the major research topics, patterns of publications, and the structure of scholarly collaboration of an emerging sub-field of online communication research: research into online networks. Findings of this study provide not only an overview of a growing new sub-field but also a baseline that will enable future scholars to see where the sub-field began and trace its shift over time.

<< 2011 Abstracts

Research Papers

The Clearer, the Better?: The Effect of Sufficient Clarification and Specificity of Risk Disclosure in Broadcast  Direct-To-Consumer Advertising • Ho-Young (Anthony) Ahn, U of Tennessee; Lei Wu, University of Tennessee; Eric Haley, U of Tennessee • This study examined the effectiveness of clarifying the limitation of broadcast DTCA and the disclosure specificity.  Results of a randomized 2 x 2 online experiment (n=235) indicated that the ad featuring numerical disclosure without the ad-limitation statement produced more favorable attitude and trustfulness than (1) the ad featuring numerical disclosure with the ad-limitation statement, and (2) the ad featuring general disclosure without the ad-limitation statement. The ad presenting general disclosure with the ad-limitation statement earned more trust than that presenting general disclosure without the ad-limitation statement. Perceived trustfulness did not guarantee favorable attitude toward the ad. The implications for researchers and DTCA advertisers are discussed.

Practitioner Views of Comparative Advertising: A Twenty-Year Update • Fred Beard, University o Oklahoma • A replication of a survey of senior advertising creative practitioners revealed there has likely been neither a significant increase or decrease in the use of comparative advertising since the late-1980s, although the findings also show their beliefs remain quite favorable toward the tactic. In addition, respondents rated both comparative and noncomparative advertising effective for achieving almost all the same objectives and outcomes and under almost all the same conditions that the original study’s respondents did. Differences between the original survey and its replication suggest valuable directions for future research.

Science, Restraint, and J. Edgar Hoover:  Building and Maintaining the FBI Brand, 1933 to 1972 • Matthew Cecil, South Dakota State University; Jennifer Tiernan, South Dakota State University; Didem Koroglu, South Dakota State University • This study argues that J. Edgar Hoover’s disciplined focus on the FBI brand and on accruing brand equity and social capital was a key factor in the Bureau’s dramatic growth from a bureaucratic backwater into an iconic giant in American society. The success of FBI branding during the Hoover era offers an early, normative model of how to generate brand equity on a nationwide scale.

Children’s Prime-Time Food Commercials in China:  A Content Analysis of National and Provincial TV Channels • Xiaoduo Wang, Ohio University; Hong Cheng, Ohio University • In this content analysis of children’s prime-time TV commercials (N = 761) in China, two national channels (CCTV-1 and CCTV-Children) were compared with two channels (SXTV and HNTV) at the provincial level. Particular attention was paid to food product categories, promotional claims, eating occasions and locales, and characters’ body sizes. It was found that while China’s national channels were more likely to promote healthier food products and eating locales, its provincial channels tended to advertise more high-calorie food products, away-from-home eating locales, and underweight characters. Possible reasons and managerial implications of these disparities in the national and provincial TV commercials—a new and important finding about advertising in this booming market—were discussed.

Brand Placement in the Mosaic Screen: How Placement, Animation, and Onset Timing Impact Viewer Attention • Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University College of Mass Communications; Jillian Lellis; Robert Meeds • Concerns over ad avoidance have led advertisers and content producers to explore novel forms of co-presentation of commercial and television content.  We report on two studies that used eye tracking to examine one possible vehicle for co-presentation, a mosaic-style presentation of televised sports.  Evidence demonstrated the effectiveness of this technique, as viewers did attend to the inserted brands. Moreover, attention varied dependent upon spatial location of the insertion, use of animation, and timing of onset.

Seeing the Big Picture: Multitasking and Memory for the Ad • Brittany Duff, University of Illinois- Urbana Champaign; Sela Sar, Iowa State University; Sangdo Oh, UIUC; Yulia Lutchyn, U of Tennessee; Sydney Chinchanachokchai, U of Illinois • While media multitasking is said to be an increasing behavior for consumers, little work has been done looking at ads exposed during multitasking.  Multitasking is largely thought to have detrimental effects for consumer memory, particularly toward ads encountered during these times.  However, there may be situations and individuals for which multitasking does not cause a detriment to performance.  Two studies explore how holistic and systematic processing (either primed, state or mood induced) may affect both individual propensities toward multitasking as well as memory for the ads exposed during multitasking.

Responses to User-Generated Brand Videos: The Persuasion Inference Model • Chang-Dae Ham, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Esther Thorson, University of Missouri • User-generated brand videos are online video contents created and shared by ordinary people, collectively describing a brand. Based on the concept of the Marketplace Metacognition (Wright 2002), this study proposes a simultaneous process of the Persuasion Inference Model in which two different metacognitions i.e., persuasion knowledge (PK) and persuasion acceptance (PA) interact with each other in response to user-generated vs. advertiser-produced brand videos. In particular, the impact of persuasion knowledge (PK), evoked from recognizing message source’s motives of persuasion intention, was significantly mitigated when persuasion acceptance (PA) was aroused by the brand video’s strong emotional appeal.

Consumer Attitude Toward Product Placement in the Movies: The Hierarchical Model of Individual Differences • Ilwoo Ju, University of Tennessee; Spencer Tinkham, University of Georgia • This study examines the influence of six individual differences (self-concept clarity, need for emotion, consumer susceptibility to interpersonal influence, attention to social comparison information, need for cognition, and transportability) on consumer attitude toward product placement in the movies. The results show statistically significant relationships between three hierarchical levels of individual differences and attitude toward product placement in the movies. Two dimensions of attitude toward product placement in the movies exhibited substantially different patterns of relationships to these individual differences. The theoretical and practical implications will be discussed.

Think Smart: Smartphone User’s Intention to Accept Mobile Advertising • Jong-Hyuok Jung, Syracuse University; Yongjun Sung; Wei-Na Lee • This study explores motivations that influence smartphone users’ intention to accept mobile advertising. In order to accomplish this research objective, the relationships among various factors identified from past literature were tested via online survey. The empirical findings from the current study suggest that consumer’s attitude toward mobile advertising from his or her previous experience is the most powerful predictor of intention to accept mobile advertising on smartphone. In addition, consumer perception of the smartphone as a compatible device that fits with individual life style and the social benefits of using a smartphone predict intention to accept mobile advertising among smartphone users.

Direct-to-consumer prescription drug websites for stigmatized illnesses • Hannah Kang, University of Florida; Soontae An, Ewha Womans University • Given the growing importance of Internet as a source of health information, this study evaluated whether DTC prescription drug websites for stigmatized illnesses contained stigma-reducing components. We examined the content of first-level and second-level web pages in 88 stand-alone websites for 15 different stigmatized conditions. Results showed that on the homepages, textual cues and visual cues were rarely offered, especially for onset controllability. On the second layer, 22.7 percent of websites offered the three components together. Onset controllability (52.3 percent) and recategorization (54.5 percent) were the more prevalent, while offset controllability (38.6 percent) was relatively less frequent. Implications of the finding were discussed from health theory perspectives.

Assessing Circumplex Model as an Alternative Approach for Measuring Brand Personality • Chang Won Choi, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies; Hyoungkoo Khang, University of Alabama; Yoo-Kyung Kim, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies • In responding to the limitations of the factor approach to brand personality, this study aims to suggest Circumplex model that demonstrates the correlations among the brand personality attributes. The results show that brand personality traits are related to each other in a highly systematic mode. Two dominant factors, activity and potency, were extracted and most brand personality attributes were evenly distributed around the circumference of these two dimensions. To some extents, thus, brand personality attributes are considered to be combinations of these two dimensions. In addition, the finding showed that brand personality items were identified into eight facets, youth, cheerfulness, warmheartedness, tradition, faithfulness, ascendancy, leadership and innovation. This study is expected to provide a theoretical foundation of brand personality studies, complement limitations of the five-factor model, and serve as a practical implication for creating varied brand related strategies in marketing and advertising.  Applicability and implication of the findings as well as suggestions for further research are discussed.

When Does Green Advertising Work? — The Modertating Role of Product Type • Ying Kong, Towson University; Lingling Zhang • Using environmental appeals to promote products is a popular marketing technique. However, little is known about how the effectiveness of green appeals varies across different product categories. The purpose of this study is to examine whether and to what extent green appeals in advertising are effective and how that effectiveness differs between products with more vs. less environmental impact. Using the theoretical frameworks of ad-product fit hypothesis, our two product types (more harmful vs. less harmful) x two appeal types (green appeal vs. non-green appeal) experiment shows that ads with a green appeal are more effective for more-harmful products, whereas for less-harmful products, there is no significant difference between a green and a non-green appeal. Furthermore, cognitive response was found to mediate the interaction effect of green appeal and product type on ad persuasiveness. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Country-of-Origin Cues in Cross-Border Strategic Brand Alliance: How Do Advertisers Do it? • Jin Kyun Lee, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh; Wei-Na Lee • This study explores the effects of cross-border strategic brand alliance (SBA) through two studies. A content analysis of magazines ad found that cross-border SBA was a dominant communication strategy. Follow-up experimental study confirmed that subjects in the low COO fit condition were more likely to recall partner brand’s product category and brand name than those in the high COO fit condition. Discussions and suggestions for future research in this area are provided.

Learning from the competition: Analysis of advertising appeals for healthy foods and unhealthy foods • Jung-Sook Lee, Towson University • Food advertising appeals are analyzed from 173 food advertisements found in 12 issues of People magazine from January through December 2008. Findings indicate that both taste appeals (30%) and emotional appeals (31%) are more common than nutritional appeals (22%). The other common appeals are new product appeals and convenience appeals. Taste appeals are dominant in food advertising for both healthy foods and unhealthy foods. Nutritional appeals are also found to a similar extent in ads for unhealthy foods as in ads for healthy foods. However, emotional appeals, are used more frequently in ads for unhealthy foods than in ads for healthy foods.

Combining Product Placements and Spot Advertising: Forward Encoding, Backward Encoding, and Image Activation Effects • Joerg Matthes, University of Zurich; Florence Horisberger • Although brand placements are frequently accompanied by traditional advertising in marketing campaigns, prior academic research has focused primarily on the distinct stand-alone effects of placements. In an experiment working with realistic audiovisual stimuli, the combined effects of product placements and TV spot advertising were examined. Three conditions involving the same target brand were created (placement-only, commercial-only, commercial-placement). Results revealed higher brand awareness for the placement-only and the placement-commercial condition compared to the commercial-only condition. It was also shown that exposure to a subsequent placement can enhance memory for the preceding commercial (backward encoding). However, exposure to a preceding commercial did not facilitate placement recall (forward encoding). Results also revealed that placements can strengthen brand images that were established by a preceding TV commercial (image activation). However, this effect was conditional on individuals’ persuasion knowledge. Implications of these findings for advertising campaigns are discussed.

Practitioner and Audience Attitudes toward Product Placement in Reality Television • Alex Walton, Cartoon Network; Barbara Miller, Elon University • As product placement continues to become a part of the television advertising landscape, television audiences are becoming more exposed to product placements and more aware of product placement as a persuasion tactic. Reality television, which represents a large percentage of the primetime television programming, provides an opportunity to present brand information in a context involving real events with real persona, perhaps limiting the activation of persuasion knowledge. Further, while including a brand name in a scripted show requires planning, capturing reality inevitably provides opportunities to place brand names into programming. This study examined product placements in reality television from multiple perspectives, including (1) in-depth interviews with network entertainment executives; and (2) a series of focus groups with audiences. The Persuasion Knowledge Model was applied as an analytic induction tool to analyze the findings for synthesis with existing literature. Implications for practitioners are discussed and a model of audience response to product placements and integrations is presented.

PKM: Changes in Millennials’ Experience with Media & Attitudes, Attention, and Coping Behaviors Regarding Advertisements Since 2004 • Jensen Moore-Copple, West Virginia University; Blair Dowler, West Virginia University; Kelley Crowley, West Virginia University • This study examines changing attitudes, attention, and avoidance of advertising as well as experience with different media for early (born between 1979 and 1987) vs. late (born between 1985 and 1993) millennials. The Persuasion Knowledge Model is used as a basis for understanding how audiences develop attitudes about persuasive attempts (e.g., advertising messages) and use this information to “”cope”” with future advertising interactions. This investigation extends work done by Speck & Elliot (1997) and Moore (2004) by comparing both traditional media (newspapers, magazines, radio, television) and the Internet.  Using survey methodology, this research examines “”coping”” behaviors associated with exposure to today’s abundant advertising messages. Results suggest that between the five media, early vs. late millennials report very different attitudes toward advertising, attention to advertising, avoidance of advertising, and media usage. Implications for advertisers wishing to target millennials are discussed.

Direct-to-Consumer Antidepressant Advertising, Skepticism toward Advertising, and Consumers’ Optimistic Bias about the Future Risk of Depression • Jin Seong Park, University of Tennessee; Ilwoo Ju, University of Tennessee; kenneth eunhan kim, oklahoma state university • Although exposure to direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising is reported to influence the public’s beliefs about diseases, no research has investigated how DTC advertising may affect the extent of consumers’ optimistic bias about the future risk of diseases. Based on a survey with members of an online consumer panel (N = 699), the current study revealed that: (a) consumers exhibited a tendency to believe they were at less risk of developing clinical depression in the future than their peers, demonstrating an optimistic bias; (b) exposure to DTC antidepressant advertising acted to reduce the extent of such bias, especially when consumers were less skeptical towards prescription drug advertising. When consumers were highly skeptical, DTC exposure did not significantly relate to the extent of optimistic bias; and (c) once formed, the extent of optimistic bias negatively related to consumers’ intention to seek information about depression. Implications of the research for the theory and practice of DTC advertising were discussed.

Can You Say What You Feel? A Matter of “”Wearin”” for (Musical) Codes in Advertising • Caroline Johnson; Carson Wagner, Ohio University • Research has shown that viewers may have more negative explicit attitudes toward brands using advertising codes perceived as “”worn out,”” the presence of the code led to more positive implicit attitudes. This suggests the possibility of detecting wearin—wherein viewers engage the codes—using implicit measures.  While viewers may express more positive explicit attitudes toward a brand that has replaced the codes with new ones, implicit attitudes may be more negative in response to the new code.

Effects of Emotion and Interface Design on Mobile Advertising Effectiveness among Chinese College Students • wenjing xie, Southern Illinois University Carbondale; Yunze Zhao, Renmin University of China; Wenya Xie • This study examines the effect of emotional appeals and the interface design of mobile devices on people’s emotional reaction to attitude towards mobile ads as well as their purchase intention of the advertised products. A survey with 442 college students in Beijing shows that emotional appeal as a whole predicts all three dependent variables. Interface design factors of hand-held device, especially screen size, also predict attitude and purchase intention. Moreover, the ubiquitous feature, interface friendliness and advertisement size influence attention to mobile Internet ads. People’s emotional reaction to mobile ads can also predict their attitude and purchase behavior.

Young American Consumers’ Social Media Use, Online Privacy  Concerns, Trust, Risk, and Support for Advertising Regulation • Hongwei Yang, Appalachian State University • A web survey study of 422 American college students was conducted in October, 2010 to test a conceptual model of consumers’ regulatory support for social media advertising, built upon previous studies. It shows that consumers’ prior negative experience of online disclosure significantly increased their online privacy concerns that in turn elevated their perceived risks and undermined their trust of online companies, marketers and laws. Consumers’ heightened risks built up their support for government regulation of social media advertising while their trust enhanced their support for industry self-regulation. Interestingly, young consumers’ trust and perceived risk of online disclosure did not negatively influence their time spent on social networking and blogging websites. Implications for digital interactive marketers, government and self-regulatory agencies are discussed.

Predicting Reactions to Sex in Advertising: The Interplay of Emotional Arousal, Ethical Judgment, and Sexual Self-Schema on Responses to Sexual Content • Kyunga Yoo, University of Georgia; Hojoon Choi, University of Georgia; Tom Reichert, University of Georgia; Michael S. LaTour, University of Nevada Las Vegas; John B. Ford, Old Dominion University • Employing a large national sample, the current research examined how consumer’s emotional arousal and ethical judgment mediate between their sexual ad perception and ad response processes. Simultaneously, the influence of Sexual Self-Schema (SSS) on this mediating mechanism was also assessed. Findings show that consumers experience a conflict between their emotional arousal and ethical morality on processing sexual content in advertising, and SSS plays an important role in manipulating the extent of this conflict.

Effects of Purchasing Experience and Repeated Exposure to the Website on Online Customers’ Brand Relationship • Doyle Yoon, University of Oklahoma • This study examines the effects of prior purchase experience, Internet efficacy, and repeated exposure on consumers’ relationship with retailers, using data collected from an online survey of 802 respondents (465 for a web-based e-retailer version and 337 for a click-and-mortar retailer version). Three relationship quality constructs – trust, satisfaction, and commitment  are higher in respondents with prior purchasing experience and higher Internet efficacy. However, decreasing trends are found in all three constructs over repeated exposure to the Website. Belyne’s (1970) Two-Factor Theory is used to explain the decrease of relationship quality over repeated exposure. More implications are discussed.

To Help You or To Serve Myself? Exploring the Two Psychological Tendencies that Motivate Online Influentials to Communicate • Jie Zhang, University of Evansville; Wei-Na Lee • This paper describes a study in the psychology of eMavenism, the consumer tendency to acquire general marketplace information from the Internet and become especially involved in electronic word-of-mouth communication. The purpose of the study was to investigate empirically the associations between eMavenism and two important psychological tendencies, altruism and status seeking. The findings support the notion that eMavenism is driven by both other-regarding concern and self-serving interest. Furthermore, the relationship between altruism and eMavenism was found to be negatively moderated by revealing true identity online. Revealing true identity online did not significantly impact the relationship between status seeking and eMavenism. These findings enrich the knowledge of the psychology of eMavenism, improve the concept of eMavenism, and suggest some motivations for engaging in eMavenism. Practically, advertising strategies can be fine-tuned to appeal more effectively to eMavens by satisfying their psychological tendencies.

Am I Really Doing It For Your Benefit? Exploring Social and Personal Motivations for Providing Positive versus Negative Electronic Word-of-Mouth • Jie Zhang, University of Evansville; Wei-Na Lee • This paper describes a study examining whether social and personal motivations affect presenting positive versus negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) similarly or differently. Altruism, consumer self-confidence—social outcome decision making, and personal innovativeness for Web were selected to represent social, social-personal, and personal motivations for eWOM giving. The findings support that all three motivations are important driving forces for eWOM provision in general. In particular, the social-personal motivation, consumer self-confidence—social outcome decision making, was significantly more associated with positive than negative eWOM giving. Advertisers need to incorporate themes linked to this motivation in their campaigns in order to get more “”good”” word from consumers. Both altruism and personal innovativeness for Web affected providing pleasant versus unpleasant product information similarly. Advertisers need to monitor these two motivations when consumers form negative impressions concerning a product. The findings expand the knowledge of social and personal motivations for providing eWOM and improve the theoretical understanding of the relationship between motivations and the type of eWOM presented.

Risk, Realism, and Responsibility in Beer Commercials • Lara Zwarun • When exposed to beer commercials that creatively circumvent the spirit of self-regulatory advertising guidelines by juxtaposing drinking with risky physical activities, participants who drink alcohol perceived them as more realistic than non-drinkers did. The Message Information Processing (MIP) model is applied to illustrate how this perceived realism is part of logical mental processing that reinforces drinking beliefs and behaviors. Drinkers also found the commercials more responsible than non-drinkers, despite some participants believing they had seen people engaging in risky activities while under the influence. A commercial featuring designated driving was viewed as less realistic by drinkers; open-ended comments reveal this may be because in their experience, the use of designated drivers is rare.

Teaching Papers

Consumer Insights, Clients, and Capstone Campaigns Courses: Teaching Research in Advertising Curricula • Danielle Coombs, Kent State University • Evidence suggests that teaching research to undergraduate advertising students can be one of the most challenging roles an advertising faculty member will undertake. Unlike classes in copywriting, media planning, or account management, students often fail to see the connection between the course content and their eventual careers. This disconnect is exacerbated by fears and anxiety surrounding the topics of statistics (and its often equally disliked sibling, mathematics in general). Evidence indicates that some students chose advertising over marketing majors in part because of the reduced math requirements, and—for many—research classes are explicitly linked to these dreaded areas. Despite these challenges, research remains core component for most advertising curricula. This research is designed to understand how research currently is taught and the perceived value of teaching research in a contemporary advertising program, both in terms of individual, specific research-centered classes and as a component of strategy- or campaigns-driven courses. Within that context, we also explore how experiential learning (operationalized for our purposes as client-based projects) can be utilized to better support objectives associated with teaching research to undergraduate advertising students.

Is diversity “”non-existent”” or a “”non-issue?””: Preliminary results from a thematic  analysis ascertaining how educators define diversity in advertising • Laurie Phillips • In the past four decades, diversity has been the subject of heated debate on Madison Avenue and within the halls of the academy alike. Within the ad industry, diversity has been the catalyst for lawsuits concerning employment discrimination, vitriol about monocultural representations within ad messaging, and frequent trade press coverage of America’s changing demographics. Building upon this information, this study reports on qualitative data from an on-going nationwide survey assessing educators’ attitudes toward teaching about diversity in advertising. Reviewing nearly 300 responses to the query “”how do you define diversity in advertising?”” from educators at both accredited and unaccredited institutions, the study includes feedback from those who are rarely surveyed: educators in ad programs housed both inside and outside of schools of journalism and mass communication.

Why Students Major in Advertising • Ron Taylor, University of Tennessee, Knoxville • A total of 145 essays written by students seeking admission to an advertising degree program at a major Southeastern university were examined for student motivation for pursuing an advertising major.  All essays for three academic years, each five years apart, were selected to maximize the opportunity to find differences.  The essays were submitted in the academic years 1997-98 (46 essays), 2002-03 (38 essays), and 2007-08 (61 essays). The opportunity to express one’s creativity ability is the primary reason students are attracted to advertising.

Professional Freedom & Responsibility (PF&R) Papers

Job Satisfaction Among Minority Advertising Professionals: An Update • Jami Fullerton, Oklahoma State University; Alice Kendrick, Southern Methodist University • This paper partially replicated and updated a study of job satisfaction among  minority advertising graduates honored through a national program.  In the current study, responses from alumni of the American Advertising Federation’s Most Promising Minority Students in Advertising from the years 2006-2010 were compared with results from a similar study of alumni from 1997-2005. In the current study, overall job satisfaction for those working in advertising was on the positive side of neutral but significantly lower than alumni who did not work in advertising.  Minority advertising professionals were most satisfied with their co-workers and least satisfied with their compensation.  Salary was positively correlated with job satisfaction, as was the presence of a professional mentor. Verbatim responses about employment challenges described a steep learning curve for recent graduates who joined the workforce. Implications for industry and academic programs are discussed.

Special Topics Papers

Dealing with Conflicting Health Messages:  A Qualitative Study of College Students’ Understandings of Tanning and Skin Cancer Prevention Advertising Messages • Ho-Young (Anthony) Ahn, U of Tennessee; Stephanie Kelly, University of Tennessee; Lei Wu, University of Tennessee; Eric Haley, U of Tennessee • The aim of the current study was to explore how college students make sense of conflicting health messages in relation to tanning in an advertising context. In-depth interviews with 30 college students revealed a certain degree of conflict between advertising message claims, their beliefs and feelings toward the messages. Self-resolution strategies such as problem-solving, compromising and avoiding emerged. Suggestions and implications for health promotion practitioners were provided in terms of advertising skepticism, advertising moderation, credible message sources in advertising and a gap between attitude and behavior.

Maximizing Optimization:  A Small Business Owner Confronts SEM (A Case Study In Search Engine Marketing) • Martine Beachboard, Idaho State University • A New England auto mechanic launches an online specialty auto parts shop and considers how best to market it:  through pay-per-click advertising, search engine optimization, or a combination.  He seeks advice from a professional web consulting firm and examines their proposal for three levels of analysis and support.  This teaching case offers a relevant and detailed example to supplement textbook coverage of search engine marketing.  It is designed to promote class discussion and critical problem solving.

Connecting Virtual World Perception to Real World Consumption: Chinese Female White-Collar Professionals’ Interpretation of Product Placement in SNSs • Huan Chen; Eric Haley, U of Tennessee • A phenomenology study reveals the lived meanings of product placement in social network sites (SNSs) among Chinese female white-collar professional users through an investigation of a newly launched SNS, Happy Network. In total, 15 face-to-face, in-depth interviews were conducted to collect data. Findings indicated that participants’ interpretations of product placement were interrelated with the socially constructed meanings of the SNS, participants’ social role of white-collar professionals, and consumer culture of contemporary Chinese society. In particular,  the socially constructed meanings of product placement in the context of SNS are jutisfying the existence, connecting to the real world, noticing the familiar, insinuating brand image, and linking to consumption.

“The Other Hangover””: A Case Study in Implementing and Evaluating an Anti-Binge Drinking Advertising Campaign • Nathan Gilkerson, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities; Michelle Gross; Andrea Ahneman • The Other Hangover is an award-winning anti-binge drinking advertising campaign created by students and launched on the University of Minnesota campus in the fall of 2010.  Undergraduates led development and implementation of the campaign, and multiple surveys were designed to evaluate the impact and success of the project.  Following an overview of the research and creative strategy behind the campaign, a summary of the evaluation results — including both quantitative and qualitative data — is presented.

Exploring the Effects of External Brand Placement on Game Players’ Processing of In-Game Brand • Eunice Kim, The University of Texas at Austin; Matthew Eastin, The University of Texas at Austin • There are many branded game-related products, which we call as external brands. This study explores the effects of external brand experience during game play on players’ processing of in-game brand. Results reveal that the in-game brand is better recalled by players experiencing an identical external brand to the in-game brand than players experiencing no external brand or a competing brand. Brand memory was greater for the competing external brand than the in-game brand.

The Cat Herder: The Role and Function of the Agency Creative Director • Karen Mallia, University of South Carolina; Kasey Windels, DePaul University; Sheri Broyles, University of North Texas • While creativity is the lifeblood of the advertising agency, little is known about the role of the creative director in guiding the creative process. This exploratory research aims to uncover the role of the creative director as perceived by agency creatives. Utilizing quasi-ethnographic methods, this research is based on data from six agencies. Findings suggest successful creative directors are transformational leaders with many roles, including brand steward, culture builder, and champion of creative teams.

Channeling the Spirit of IMC: Analysis of the Context and Conditions that Underscore Integrated Marketing Communication • Brian Smith • Integrated marketing communication (IMC) has been discussed as both a process and a concept. On the one hand it is mechanical, through message and image matching, channel management, and measurement. On the other hand, it is also conceptual, based on a unique organizing philosophy that underscores communication mechanics. The latter, which can be termed “”the spirit”” of integration, has received little attention in the literature in spite of its influence on communication. This study outlines the organizational variables that underscore integration, including informal processes and social interactions, which facilitate the mechanics of integration. Results provide theoretical insight and progress integrated communication theory beyond the current emphasis on mechanics to co-creational and socially-constructed considerations in communication integration.

Extending TPB and TAM to Mobile Viral Marketing: A Cross-cultural Study  of Young American and Chinese Consumers’ Attitude, Intent and Behavior • Hongwei Yang, Appalachian State University; Liuning Zhou, Center for the Digital Future, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California • A web survey of 440 American college students was conducted in April, 2010 and a paper survey of 835 Chinese college students was administered in May, June and October, 2010 to validate the Theory of Planned Behavior and the Technology Acceptance Model in predicting young American and Chinese young consumers’ mobile viral marketing attitude, intention and behavior. Structural model testing results confirmed the chain of mobile viral marketing attitude to intent to actual behavior. Subjective norm, behavioral control, perceived utility, and perceived cost predicted their attitude toward viral marketing. Their attitude and perceived utility predicted their viral marketing intent while their intent and attitude predicted the actual behavior. The implications for the industry and academia were discussed.

Student Papers

Advertising Images of Gender and Race Portrayed in Sports Illustrated Kids, 2000-2009 • Ashley Furrow, Ohio University • Gender and racial discrimination in sport remains rampant, and sports media continue as a leading arena for the reproduction of dominant, traditional images of gender and race and of inequality between the sexes and races (Sage, 1990; Smith, 2007). This study conducted a content analysis of advertising images (N=1,490) in Sports Illustrated Kids to determine whether these visual images reflect actual participation rates in athletic competition based on gender and race and whether the number of images of women in the magazine has increased during the magazine’s second decade of publication, 2000 to 2009.  This study found that women and racial minorities continue to be vastly underrepresented within the magazine’s advertising pages. Photographs featuring men were found to vastly outnumber those featuring women in SIK advertising photographs by a ratio of nearly 4 to 1 (79.7% to 20.3%).  As far as a racial difference, African, Asian, and Hispanic models are still fighting for representation in the magazine with only 27.8% depicted in advertising images.

Examining the Influences of Online Comments on Viewers’ Perceptions of  Corporate Advertising on YouTube • Jiran Hou, The University of Georgia; Hojoon Choi, University of Georgia • This study examines the impact of the co-appearance of online peer comments and corporate advertising on online viewers’ attitudes toward the ad, claim believability and attitudes toward the brand. The findings show that the impacts of online peer comments on ad processing and attitudes varied depending on the comment valences and individuals’ previous attitude toward the brand. Negative comments were more influential than positive comments in affecting viewers’ claim believability, attitude toward the ad and attitude toward the brand. Viewers with negative prior brand attitudes were hardly influenced by any types of peer comments, and viewers with positive prior brand attitudes were more easily influenced by negative comments.

The influence of fear appeal on persuasion effects for skin cancer public service announcements (PSAs) according to fear message framing and fear type • Hannah Kang, University of Florida • This study examined the impact of fear message framing and fear type in fear appeal on the persuasion effect of skin cancer public service announcement (PSA). To examine persuasion effects, this study used attitude toward advertising, attitude toward using tanning beds and sunbathing, and behavioral intention as the dependent variable. The experiment was designed by a 2 (message framing: positive message/negative message) X 2 (fear type: health risk/ social risk) factorial design between-subjects experimental design. Results indicated that the main effect of fear type was found on the attitude toward advertising. Moreover, there was significant interaction between fear message framing and fear type not only on the attitude toward using tanning beds or sunbathing, but also on behavioral intention. Implications and limitations of the findings were discussed.

Goal Theories and Attention to Online Banner Advertisements • Dae-Hee Kim, University of Florida • Drawing upon several findings from goal theories in cognitive psychology, the present study investigates a potential mechanism about how consumers process online banner advertising. Two online experiments with simulated web pages revealed that consumer’s goals could determine the attention to online banner advertising. More specifically, the first study showed that subjects paid more attention to the banner stimuli that was relevant to their primed goal. In the second study, subjects attended more to banner advertising on the webpage where they completed the goal-directed tasks rather than on a webpage where their tasks were ongoing. Implications and directions for future research are extensively discussed.

Boys will be Boys: An Analysis of the Male Image in Advertising over the Past 60 Years • Katherine Krauss, Manhattan College • This paper examines conceptions of masculinity, commercialization of personal hygiene, and the formation of the American male identity in order to create a general foundation of understanding as to why masculinity is perceived in the way that it is and why advertisers sell the way that they do to men. Focusing on the advertising efforts of Proctor & Gamble’s beauty and grooming product, Old Spice, this paper analyzes the commonalities and differences of theme and content in advertisements of the 1950s and 2000s.  This paper discusses the advertised messages being conveyed to the 18- to 36-year old age demographic in both decades, where each ad is examined for the cultural values it represents and markets to men.  Using a textural analysis approach, each advertisement is examined in its wording and image to highlight the representation of hegemonic ideals, namely, sex, pleasure-seeking, and reputation.  This in-depth analysis of the Old Spice campaigns allows this paper to identify that the image of the young macho-man lifestyle has been strongly static throughout American history, mirroring and perpetuating the hegemonic male ideal.

The influence of relevance and emotional appeals in public service ads on attitudes and behavioral intentions toward global climate change • Supathida Kulpavaropas • This study examines the main and interactive effects of two emotional appeals (happy and fear) in public service advertisements and the degree to which this topic is assessed as relevant on people’s attitudes and behavioral intention toward global climate change. The results of an experiment showed that participants with high issue relevance reported more positive attitude toward global climate change and more positive behavioral intention when they viewed an ad with a happy vs. fearful appeal.

Effects of Message Involvement and the Tone of Reviews on Facebook:Perceived Credibility, Attitude toward the Ad and Brand • Jinhyon Kwon, University of Florida; Ji Young Kim • This study examines how the Facebook brand page environment, where advertisements and consumer reviews coexist, affects consumers’ attitudes toward the advertisement and the brand. A 2 x 3 experiment manipulated the level of ad message involvement and the tone of online reviews. Results suggest that the tone of online reviews affects consumers’ perceptions of review credibility. Furthermore, an ad message involvement and the review tone interaction emerged for attitude toward the brand.

Effects of Fair Trade Label, Consumers’ Social Responsibility, and Message Framing on Attitudes and Behavior • Seul Lee • This study explored the effectiveness of a Fair Trade certified label, differences of personal social responsibility, and the message framing through an online experiment. The findings indicated that more socially concerned group manifested more positive attitudes and purchase intention than less socially concerned group and that gain-framed messages had a more positive impact than did loss-framed messages. However, this study failed to present that a Fair Trade certified label generated more positive impact.

Effectiveness of blog advertising: Impact of message sidedness, communicator expertise, and advertising intent • Hyun-Ji Lim; Jin Sook Im; Yoo Jin Chung, University of Florida • This study attempts to examine how three factors — message sidedness, communicator expertise, and advertising intent of blog messages — can affect the perception of the message recipients regarding the credibility of the message, improve their attitudes toward the product or the brand reviewed, and provoke changes in their intended behavior. A 2 x 2 x 2 factorial experiment was designed. The experiment involved stimulus material in the form of a blog post, which was modified according to the treatment factors of message sidedness (one-sided vs. refutational two-sided), communicator expertise (high vs. low), and advertising intent (explicit vs. implicit). 388 data sets were collected. This study concluded that a one-sided message was found to be more effective than a refutational two-sided message for blog advertising. Communicator expertise is an important factor while advertising intent was not. This study suggested additional findings related to gender difference.

What Path, Advertising Framing? Tracing the Travels of Framing Through the Advertising Journals, 1996-2010. • Carmen Maye, University of South Carolina • Frame analysis in advertising journals is examined between 1996 and 2010. Included are Advertising & Society Review, International Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising, Journal of Advertising Research, Journal of Current Issues & Research in Advertising and Journal of Interactive Advertising. Frame  analysis appears to be gaining traction in the advertising literature. That advertising journals have more slowly embraced framing research than their communications counterparts may owe to inherent differences between news content and advertising.

From Unspeakable to Homosexual to Gay to LGBT: The Evolution of Research on Marketing’s Most Controversial Market Segment • Laurie Phillips • For nearly two decades, collectively the trade press, LGBT marketing firms, tremendous ad expenditure growth in LGBT publications, the explosion of LGBT-targeted, ad-supported media outlets, and strong buying power figures have justified the existence of an LGBT market. Through an in-depth literature review of over 75 five pieces of peer-reviewed advertising and marketing scholarship, this study addresses how scholars have studied the market. In addition to providing one of the most extensive literature reviews on the topic to date, this study provides researchers with a roadmap for future research.

The Effects of Using “”Real Women”” In Advertising • Amber Remke, Oklahoma State University • Are advertisements that use more realistic models as effective as those that use “”ideal”” models? This study seeks to answer that question using an experimental design to determine whether there is a difference in how females will respond to ads featuring an “”ideal”” model or a more realistic model and whether body-esteem or self-esteem are moderating variables. Results show that regardless of high or low body- or self-esteem, the women surveyed preferred the ad featuring the more realistic model. This study has important implications for providing a greater understanding of how media affects self-image, as well as the implications of these unrealistic standards and how they impact a consumer’s attitudes toward advertising.  This study also has important implications for American women with an unrealistic image of true beauty. If advertisements focused on portraying more realistic models, American females’ perception of beauty could possibly shift away from an unattainable ideal to a more realistic vision of beauty.

Trappist or Tropist? The Monastic Brewing Heritage and Its Effect on Perceptions of Product Authenticity and Intentions to Purchase • Susan Sarapin, Purdue University; Christine Spinetta, Purdue University • This study explored perceived authenticity of a beer brewed by monks in a monastery and four inauthentic beers, measured on respondents’ awareness of the “”real”” beer’s heritage, and what influence that knowledge has on intentions to buy it. The heritage narrative had a significant effect on authenticity ratings and purchase intentions. Respondents’ religious preferences had no effect on the dependent variable. The study has implications for the marketing of Trappist and inauthentic, abbey-style beers.

Signaling Theory and Its Role in Branding University Contract Training Programs • Shelley Stephens, University of South Alabama • Academic outreach divisions (AOD) within institutions provide open enrollment and contract training. Often surrounding businesses are unaware of this resource, despite holding the institution’s name in high regard through association sets and frequency. The unawareness creates information asymmetry for AODs according to the Signaling Theory.  Larger association sets and frequency of encounters with the institution’s brand name deepens implicit memory encoding. This quantitative study found that feelings for the institution transfers to other divisions AODs are cobranded.

Verbal Claims and Graphical Features on Toddler Food Packaging:  Advertising “”Healthy”” Products • Chan Le Thai, University of California, Santa Barbara • Advertising features, verbal and graphic, on food packages and labels can convey a wealth of information to consumers, including whether the product is healthy.  A content analysis was conducted to investigate how often certain health-implying front-of-package features appear on packages of toddler snack foods. Five undergraduate coders coded 68 products for health claims, nutrient claims, ingredient claims, and graphics.  Ingredient claims and graphics of potential ingredients were identified and cross-referenced with the ingredient list on the back of the package. The data revealed that almost all of the packages used the coded features: 82% of the sample featured nutrient claims; 52% featured health claims; 97% included graphical depictions and 66% of those graphics were possible ingredients in the product; and 86% featured ingredient claims. Of all the products that contained an ingredient claim or graphics of a potential ingredient, the ingredient used in the claim or graphical feature was present in the ingredient list, but the ingredient was rarely the first ingredient on the list and was often in a non-conventional form, such as a puree, a powder, flavor, or color.  The findings from this study provide a foundation of knowledge that may guide future research and policies related to package  advertising and labeling.

Use of Culturally Meaningful Symbols or Iconographies in Gay-Themed Ads • Nam-Hyun Um • This study examines the characteristics of gay-themed ads, focusing on culturally meaningful symbols and iconographies, in gay magazines (specifically The Advocate, Out, and Curve). In recent years, advertising scholars and practitioners have grown more interested in how gay-themed ads influence gay consumers and non-gay consumers. In gay-themed ads, advertisers employ culturally meaningful symbols or iconographies as part of an effort to not alienate non-gay consumers. Gay-themed advertising, however, has yet to be deeply analyzed in terms of creativity or consumer reactions. Hence, Study 1 examines the characteristics of gay-themed ads using content analysis of gay-targeted magazines (The Advocate, Out, and Curve). As a follow up study, Study 2 assesses consumers’ responses to gay-themed ads. The study, using implicit and explicit gay-themed ads, gathers reactions from straight and gay participants. We go on to clarify the findings’ implications, discuss some concerns raised over gay-themed ads, and suggest directions for future research.

What should I eat today?  An exploration of how college-aged females use different media platforms to influence food decisions • Mari Luz Zapata Ramos, University of Florida • This study sought to assess if and how college-aged females use smart phones and other informational sources to make or influence food related decisions.  A survey administered to 365 female college students revealed that respondents use smart phones to influence food decisions.  Four focus groups were conducted using survey participants with the required characteristics.  Dominant reasons for using a range of informational sources to influence food decisions were identified.

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