Archives for January 2012

Advertising Division

Research
Effectiveness of Negative Political Advertising • Won Ho Chang, Jaejin Park and Sung Wook Shim, Missouri-Columbia • Throughout history politicians have used various methods, such as whistle-stop speeches, political advertising and political rallies, to achieve their primary goal, the winning of votes. However, over the years, politicians have found that it is most advantageous to use political advertising to persuade voters. And a significant trend in today’s political advertising is the increasing use of negative political advertising. Why do political practitioners increasingly use negative political advertising? Do they think negative ads are the most effective way to persuade voters in a short period of time in order to win an election?

Information Processing of Web Advertising: Modified Elaboration Likelihood Model • Chang-Hoan Cho, Texas-Austin • This paper develops Modified Elaboration Likelihood Model to understand how people process advertising on the Internet. An empirical study verifies this model by examining several variables influencing voluntary exposure to banner ads; e.g., level of product involvement, the size of a banner ad, relevancy between the content of a vehicle and the product category of a banner ad, attitude toward the vehicle, and overall attitude toward Web advertising. The findings document significant relationships between these variables and voluntary exposure to banner ads and support the hypothesized model.

Comparing Cinema Versus In-Home Viewing Contexts in Audience Experiences and Interpretations of Brands in Movies • Denise E. DeLorme, Georgia • This qualitative study sought further phenomenological understanding of how brand placement is interpreted within the everyday lived experience of the movie audience. Specifically, this paper compares cinema versus in-home viewing contexts in audience experiences and interpretations of brands in movies. Data collection involved eight focus groups and thirty in-depth interviews with older, younger, frequent, and infrequent non-college moviegoers. Constant comparative analysis uncovered six differences and two similarities regarding viewing contexts.

The Birth of Adwatches: Political Advertising Becomes Front-page News • Jennifer Greer, Nevada-Reno • Political advertising, once virtually ignored by the newspapers, became the subject of journalists’ attention following a perceived rash of “dirty” campaign commercials in the 1988 presidential race. A brigade of “ad cops” was deputized to police false and misleading statements contained in ads. The development of adwatches is reviewed in a historical context of political advertising and journalistic coverage. Emerging research on adwatches is detailed to shed light on this new form of political coverage.

A New Taxonomy with Cultural Reflection for Comparative Advertising Styles • Kazumi Hasegawa, North Dakota • This paper proposes a new taxonomy for comparative advertising styles. The significant attribute is that the model can provide a framework for both intercultural and international analyses/evaluations of various comparative advertising communication styles. It is unique because the new model: (1) recognized the categories that have not been conceptualized previously, and (2) not only provides a basic function of taxonomy which is useful for categorization but also adds an intercultural approach to the form.

A Longitudinal Study of Characteristics and Use of Advertorials in Magazines and Newspapers • Kuen Hee Ju-Pak and Wei-Min Lai, California State University-Fullerton • For the years 1992 to 1995, a total of 447 advertorials were identified from nine magazines and three national newspapers and then content analyzed. The study was intended to build on previous work on advertorial advertising by assessing current trends in advertorial usage and analyzing executional characteristics of advertorials. Findings suggest a notable drop in advertorial use among magazines, with newspapers differing from magazine in usage as well as executional characteristics.

Political Parties and Changes in Taiwanese Electronic Media in the 1990s • Wei-Kuo Lin, Wisconsin-Madison • The study is to present an overall picture of changes in relationships between Taiwanese media and political parties during a pursuit of democracy in the 1990s. Three research questions regarding the long-term effects of the media on an emerging democracy at a macroscopic level have been answered. It applies a methodological combination of historical analysis, theoretical criticism, and in-depth interviewing. This study not only provides exploratory findings on the role of mass media interacting with democratic development, but also, more importantly, bridges these findings to essential theories which enable future researchers to follow.

Differential Effects of Self-assessed Consumer Knowledge and Objective Consumer Knowledge on Responses to Print Ads for Technical Products • Robert Meeds, Kansas State University • The roles of two constructs of consumer knowledge, self-assessed product knowledge and objective product knowledge, are examined in an experiment in which consumers read ads for high-tech products containing varying levels of technical language. Self-assessed knowledge was a better predictor of participants’ cognitive responses and general attitudinal evaluations. Objective knowledge, on the other hand, was a better predictor of ratings of specific product attributes. These differential results are considered with respect to the role of product advertising in consumer information search strategies.

A Content Analysis of Banner Advertisements: Potential Motivating Features • Blessie Miranda, California State University-Fullerton • This study examines, through content analysis, the common content, design, and context features of 200 Web banner advertisements among 50 top web sites ranked by ad revenues. The results indicated that most banner ad designs feature characteristics similar to ads designed for traditional media, as well as unique characteristics of advertising in the new Internet medium. The implications could help advertisers improve their banner design decisions. Knowing the common features could help facilitate future studies of what motivates user click-through behavior.

Adver-Thai-sing Standardization: Can a U.S. Study of Sex Role Portrayals Transcend Cultural Boundaries? • Chompunuch Punyapiroje, Mariea Grubbs Hoy, Margaret Morrison, Tennessee • We report the results of a study conducted among women in Thailand which investigated the influence of three female role portrayals (traditional, superwoman and egalitarian) and women’s gender ideology on advertising effectiveness. We examine two questions: (1) Are research methods and assumptions about consumer behavior that are widely accepted in the U.S. appropriate for other cultures?; (2) If a study yields certain findings in the U.S., are these findings transferable to a Pacific Rim nation?

Assessing Advertising Effectiveness: A Comparison of Two Real-time Measures of Ad Liking • Fuyuan Shen, South Dakota • This paper uses a quasi-experimental approach to examine two real-time measures of ad liking and their relationships with delayed consumer responses such as delayed ad liking, recall and recognition of brand names. The two real-time measures were mean liking and peak liking, which were collected on a moment-to-moment basis while subjects were viewing the television commercials. The delayed responses were collected more than 24 hours after respondents viewed the ads in natural environments.

Placing Alcohol Warnings Before, During, and After TV Beer Ads: Effects on Recall, Knowledge, and Responses to the Ads and the Warnings • Michael D. Slater, Donna Rouner, David Karan, Kevin Murphy and Frederick Beauvais, Colorado State University • This experiment compares the effects of warnings placed before, during or after television beer advertisement. Findings suggest that warnings can increase knowledge relative to the control condition, especially for viewers who consumer relatively more alcohol, and also decrease positive responses to beer advertisements. Warning placement also influences amount of responses to ads. Earlier findings regarding effects of warning topic and quantitative information in the warnings were replicated.

Hard Liquor Advertising on Television: What Do Americans Know About It and Do They Care? • Esther Thorson, Michael Antecol, Missouri and Charles Atkin, Michigan State University • In 1996, the distilled spirits industry discarded their long-held voluntary ban from television advertising. Although their commercials are not currently being accepted by the networks, they are advertising on local television and on cable. The primary purpose of the national telephone survey reported here was to determine whether Americans knew that liquor advertising was now appearing on television, and what, if anything, they thought the impact would be on themselves, on problem drinkers, and on teens and children.

A Cross-cultural Comparison of the Effects of Source Credibility on Attitudes and Behavioral Intentions • Kak Yoon, Washington State University; Choong Hyun Kim, Sogang University and Min-Sun Kim, Hawaii-Manoa • This paper investigated: 1) whether the dimensionality of source credibility is applicable to Koreans; 2) which dimension exerted more influence on dependent variables. Findings suggest that the dimensionality of source credibility was remarkably similar between the two samples. The influence of three source credibility dimensions varied by dependent variables. Attractiveness, expertise, and trustworthiness were equally important to purchase intentions. All three dimensions affected involvement with the ad message. Only trustworthiness had a significant impact on attitude toward the brand and brand beliefs.

Special Topics
The Impacts of Emotion Elicited by Political Advertising on Candidate Evaluation • Chingching Chang, National Chengchi University • Employing an experiment, this study showed that attacking or promoting itself did not contribute significantly to variation of candidate evaluation beyond what could be explained by ad-evoked emotional responses. This study also examines the role of ad attitude. Integrating all the findings, this study proposes a model that will help understand the process of how positive and negative political advertising may influence candidate evaluation. Emotion theory is applied to explain the process.

Perceptions of Japanese Advertising: A Q-Methodological Study of Advertising Practitioners in Japan • Fritz Cropp, Missouri • Q-methodology was used to isolate the perceptions of advertising professionals in Japan. Three distinct types of advertising professional emerged: The Establishment Types sees minor changes but not dramatic changes precipitated by difficult economic times. The Emigrant Type believes that cultural factors preclude major change in Japan’s advertising climate. The Change Agent Type foresees dramatic change in adverting in Japan, precipitated by difficult economic times and fierce competition. Conclusions and implications of these findings are discussed.

Does it Pay to Have a Web Site? Assessing the Value of URLs in Print Advertising for Non-Technology Products • Deborah A. Procopio, North Carolina • Many businesses today feel pressure to be online but see no real value in maintaining a web site. However, the presence of a URL in a traditional print advertisement may add value. This study found no evidence to support the hypothesis that a web site in a print advertisement for a non-technology product will directly increase brand value. However, large companies (regardless of technological level of product) without a web presence in future may be risking customer relationships. Those companies may also be perceived as being less current.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Advertising: It’s Time for a New Look • Don Umphrey, Southern Methodist University • New insights are still being gained from cognitive dissonance theory, introduced 41 years ago. In advertising, however, usage of the theory has been practically non-existent for the past two decades. This is despite research in the mod-1980s linking the theory with the concept of selective exposure. This paper reviews cognitive dissonance theory from pertinent fields and shows how it might be applied by advertising research in the future.

PF&R
Preparing Students for Real-world Ethical Dilemmas: A Stakeholder Approach • Anne Cunningham and Eric Haley, Tennessee • Advertising educators often ignore complaints that the advertising industry is devoid of all morals. Harrison (1990), for example, found that only 25% of colleges or universities offer a course devoted to communications ethics; those schools that offer a course generally teach it from a journalism perspective. Based on a review of the literature and additional preliminary research, this paper argues for a more business-oriented approach to teaching advertising ethics.

Codes of Conduct: Public Images and Silent Voices • Jean Grow vonDorn, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper looks at the evolution of codes of conducts as they relate to manufacturing policies, brand imaging and youthful consumer responses to these issues. I argue that young consumers are generally ignored by activists who tend to focus on regulation. Yet, these consumers could provide an additional avenue of activism. By consciously engaging young consumers, a vast potential for successful activism abides within the grasp of activists.

The American Way to Menstruate: Feminine Hygiene Advertising and Adolescent Girls • Debra Merskin, Oregon • In American life, menstruation has been socially constructed as a problem•something shameful and dirty. This study explores the content of feminine hygiene advertising that targets pre-adolescent girls in Seventeen and Teen magazines. The findings suggest that not only do the ads carry messages from the past about cleanliness based on societal taboos, but also contribute to girls’ feelings about their bodies in preparation for participation in American consumer culture.

Teaching
Advertising Educators’ Textbook Adoption Practices • Louisa Ha, The Gallup Organization • This article reports a national survey of advertising educators that examined their advertising textbook adoption practices as well as the importance of ancillary materials as desirable attributes of textbooks. Textbooks were used by most of the respondents. Although content is a very important adoption criterion in all courses, in courses that provided ancillary materials such as Introduction to Advertising, the availability of multimedia teaching aids becomes an important criterion and possibly the major source of high satisfaction among the adopters.

Integrating Hypermedia Instruction into an Advertising Communications Graphics Classroom • Stacy James and Sydney Brown, Nebraska-Lincoln • Students and faculty of advertising and mass communications programs are wanting to learn more about the mechanics, and teaching and learning opportunities offered by the World Wide Web. This paper explores some of the pedagogical and theoretical issues with the content and delivery of hypermedia instruction in an advertising communications graphics elective laboratory course, and examines some of the benefits of and problems with integrating hypermedia instruction into the class, from the perspectives of the students and the instructor.

Identifying Critical Teamwork Tools: One Way to Strike a Balance Between Team Training and Course Content • Brett Robbs and Larry Weisberg, Colorado-Boulder • Teamwork is playing an increasingly important role in business and the classroom. Educators need to find ways to include team training in courses without sacrificing other content. This paper addresses that issue. The literature on collaborative learning is reviewed to provide a pedagogical framework. The paper then describes teamwork tools presented to graduate students at a required weekend seminar. The journals kept during a subsequent team project were analyzed to identify the tools students found most essential.

Advertising Ethics and Pedagogy: Findings from the 1995 Advertising Division Membership Survey • Elizabeth M. Tucker, Texas-Austin and Daniel A. Stout, Brigham Young University • The moral development of advertising educators is an important component in understanding the nature of advertising ethics as the topic is conveyed in the classroom. This article describes the results of a survey that explored how advertising educators define and think about ethics. It examines the theoretical foundations of moral development in relation to teaching advertising ethics and provides a summary describing advertising educators’ ideas about the nature of ethics.

<< 1998 Abstracts

Commission on the Status of Women

Craft Traditions as Conveyors of Bias in Coverage of the Second Wave of Feminism • Patricia Bradley, Temple University • The author examines ten metropolitan papers in their coverage of two major events in August 1970 connected to the second wave of feminism, the passage by the U.S. House of Representative of the Equal Rights Amendment on August 10 and the national recognition on August 26 of the 50th anniversary of the Nineteenth Amendment. In both events, the author sought to determine the role of craft traditions in the selection of news angles.

Displaced Persons: Race, Sex And New Discourses Of Orientalism In U.S. Women’s Magazines • Meenakshi Gigi Durham, Texas at Austin • The popularity of nose-rings, mehndi, and bindis in U.S. fashion is the latest appropriation of Asian culture for Western amusement. This paper employs a critical analysis of magazine images of white women adorned in the symbols of Indian femininity to explore the new media discourses of Orientalism. The analysis reveals that such representation preserves power hierarchies by locating the white female as sexual object, and the Indian female as the disembodied fetish that supports white female sexuality.

“Virtual Feminists”? Women-based “Communities” On The Internet: A Pilot Study • Kathleen L. Endres, Akron • This pilot study looks at five woman-based listservs to determine what functions these groups serve, what exchanges they evoke, whether gendered interpersonal communication styles exist, and what types of communities they foster. Among the findings are: women-based listservs often do evolve into virtual communities-but not all do; gender-based communication styles are not necessarily transferred to on-line women-based communities; and the mobilizing potential of these groups has not been developed.

Gender and Cultural Hegemony in Reality-Based Television Programming: The World According to A Wedding Story • Erika Engstrom, Nevada • A Wedding Story, which airs on The Learning Channel, depicts the real-life weddings of ordinary American couples. In this exploratory content analysis of 50 episodes, the author investigates how televised weddings perpetuate a cultural hegemony that promotes traditional gender roles, rituals, and consumerism. Future research suggestions into the media portrayal of weddings include examining gender-related aspects of the production process, and analyzing contradictory media messages that both promote and challenge society’s expectations regarding women.

Liberal Feminist Theory and Women’s Images in Mass Media: Cycles of Favor and Furor • Sandra L. Ginsburg, Akron • Liberal feminist theory gained favor in the early 1970s during the second wave of feminism. Increased interest in research concerning women’s equality reflected this popularity. The popularity of liberal feminist theory waned by the 1980s under criticism within the feminist research community. This literature review illustrates the evolution of liberal feminist theory in mass media research of women’s images, and discusses the advances and future of liberal feminist theory in media research of the 1990s.

Getting a Sense of Humor: On Sex Scandal and Women Joking in Journalism • Kim Golombisky, South Florida • This essay hopes to initiate a discussion in mass communications scholarship on the subject of women’s humor. The author reviews theories of women’s humor before examining several female newspaper columnists’ use of humor during the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998-99. The author suggests that women can make sex jokes without vicitimizing women or bashing men and that the social uses of humor are not as trivial as their absence in the journalism literature would indicate.

The Women’s Suffrage Movement Through the Eyes of Lift Magazine Cartoons • J. Robyn Goodman, Texas at Austin • This article explored how cartoons in the humor magazine Life reflect suffragist and antisuffragist ideologies during the women’s suffrage movement and why certain suffragist and/or antisuffragist ideologies were reflected and others ignored. Finally, it looked at what the implications of the cartoons may be. In investigating these questions, this study incorporated the theoretical framework of cultural studies and used ideological criticism as its methodology. The analysis revealed that more than 80 percent of the cartoons reflected antisuffragist ideologies.

The Right Stuff – or the Wrong Stuff? The Struggle Over News Media Portrayal of Female Combat Aviators • Christopher Hanson, North Carolina • This study analyzes media coverage of a controversy over the first group of women to qualify as U.S. Navy combat aviators – from two standpoints. First is the effort of the conservative Center for Military Readiness to frame the story from its anti-feminist perspective, and its considerable success in doing so. Second is the way in which Dateline and 60 Minutes covered the controversy in the face of CMR’s spin campaign.

The Case of President Clinton and the Feminists: Discourses of Feminism in the News • Dustin Harp, Wisconsin-Madison • Feminism is best understood as a complicated political movement, full of the complexities present in everyday life Using textual analysis, this research examines media discourses in news texts joining constructions of feminism to President Clinton and his extra-marital relationships. The study finds mainstream newspapers and magazines present feminism in a monolithic fashion-represented by white women. The texts offer a simplistic construction that envisions women as feminist or not and presents feminists as hypocrites for supporting Clinton.

Minds in the Mills: The Encouragement of Girls’ Expression as an Unintended Consequence of Economic Policies • Louise W. Hermanson and Kristen Kitchen, South Alabama • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Symbolic Devaluation of Women in New York Times Photograph Cutlines • John Mark King, East Tennessee State University • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Reporting the Birth and Death of Feminism: Three Decades of Mixed Messages in Time Magazine • Carolyn Kitch, Northwestern University • This paper offers a rhetorical analysis of Time magazine’s coverage of the second wave of the American women’s movement, not just of feminism’s “birth” and “death,” but everything in between A close examination of 35 cover stories (1969-1998) reveals that the magazine’s ambivalence, expressed through a mix of contradictory messages packaged as recurring “lessons,” was in place from the start-and that its treatment of feminism has been more complicated than the backlash theory suggests.

The Strategist: Positioning Women as “Outsiders Within” the Public Relations Profession • Julie Ward O’Neil • A review of women’s twenty-year presence in the public relations profession suggests that social and cultural factors may be situating women within “a ghetto within a ghetto.” Through a feminist rhetorical analysis of a leading public relations trade journal, this study seeks to connect the journal’s messages with women’s relegated position in the public relations profession. Although women constitute more than half of the public relations workforce, this study argues that the journal emphasizes the masculine values of individualism, competition, and objectivity.

Are Women Getting a Bad Rap? A Photo Analysis of Age, Ethnicity and Overall Favorability • Shelly Rodgers, Missouri-Columbia • This study examines the portrayal of females in photographs of f/me since the 1970s. Age, ethnicity, favorability and five “characterization” frames were coded. Findings suggest that white adult females were characterized more favorably in terms of social status, physical strength, tenderness, attractiveness and independence. Implications suggest that if the news industry is to improve its credibility with the public, there must be a higher level of accountability to portray all females in an accurate and equally favorable manner.

Setting a Revolutionary Agenda for Women’s Rights • Rodger Streitmatter, American University • The Revolution was a women’s rights newspaper founded in New York City in 1868 by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan Brownell Anthony. Although the weekly survived only a few years, this paper argues that The Revolution created an agenda that is, in many ways, still being followed today-more than a century later. More specifically, this paper identifies and documents what the 19th century radical weekly had to say about job discrimination, equal pay for equal work, sexual harassment, inadequate political representation, domestic violence, and abortion.

“We Got Next”: Images of Women in TV Commercials During the Inaugural WNBA Season • Stanley T. Wearden and Pamela J. Creedon, Kent State University • One of the biggest changes in mediated sport for women in the United States is the Women’s National Basketball Association. The WNBA began its first season in 1997 with more television coverage than ever before in the history of women’s sports. This study focused on commercials in WNBA television coverage using the assumption that if television coverage could approach the sport in a non-stereotypical way it held the potential for dramatically shifting the landscape of gender-role socialization.

Portrayal Of Women Using Computers In Television Commercials: A Content Analysis • Candace White and Kadesha Washington, Tennessee-Knoxville and Katherine N. Kinnick, Kennesaw State University • This content analysis examines the representation of male and female characters shown using computers in prime-time television commercials. An analysis of one week’s commercials drawn from network and cable programming reveals both positive and negative portrayals of female computer users. While women are shown as computer users almost as frequently as men, they are significantly more likely to be depicted as clerical workers and less likely to be portrayed as business professionals.

<< 1999 Abstracts

Small Programs Interest Group

Integrating Active Learning, Critical Thinking and Multicultural Education in Teaching Media Ethics Across the Curriculum • Tom Brislin, University of Hawaii • This paper presents four teaching strategies, grounded in pedagogical theory, to encourage an active, challenging, creative and meaningful experience for journalism and mass communication students grappling with moral issues, and developing higher order thinking in ethical decision-making processes. Strategies emphasizing critical thinking and diversity awareness have shown success in lower-division media and society classes. Strategies emphasizing active and collaborative learning have been effective in an upper-division journalism ethics class as well as in professional journalism groups.

Codes of Ethics: Shaping the Classroom Environment and Building Moral Decision-making Skills • Carroll Ferguson Nardone, El Paso Community College • A recent study concluded that codes of ethics are not typically used in media outlets to guide journalistic behavior. This is problematic for teachers of media ethics who often point to professional codes as doctrine for students to follow in defining conventional journalistic standards. This case study suggests the creation and use of classroom codes of ethics within media writing classrooms to train future media practitioners and to guide ethical behavior in the workplace.

Teaching Media Ethics to Superman instead of Underdog: A Content Analysis of Three Textbooks’ Cases • Virginia Whitehouse, Whitworth College • Media ethics textbooks may be teaching to Superman (the news manager) rather than Underdog (the undergraduate looking for a first job). Content analysis of case studies from three media ethics textbooks revealed that students were asked most often to take on the role of media managers in making ethical decisions. This pedagogical approach may not help students reach course objectives because the cases do not allow students to exercise critical thinking skills necessary to articulate ethical opinions from low positions of power.

Science Communication Interest Group

Did the Press Blow the A-Bomb Story of the Century? Reflections on the Coverage of Rocky Flats • Len Ackland, Colorado at Boulder • A group of leading U.S. journalists and historians recently picked the Atomic Bomb as the top news story of the 20th century. The public story began with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, continued through the Cold War, and persists today in terms of existing arsenals, nuclear proliferation, and the cleanup of contaminated weapons sites. How well did the media cover this big story? An examination of press coverage of the key Rocky Flats nuclear weapons plant near Denver, Colorado provides some clues. Over more than four decades, press performance went through different phases.

Framing an Environmental Controversy in India’s English-language Press: A Study of Text in Context • Elizabeth Burch, Sonoma State University • This contextual analysis adapts Shoemaker and Reeses theoretical framework of the hierarchy of intra- and extra-organizational influences to investigate whether the framing of the environmental sustainability and development debate in India was affected by constraints upon reporters from two of India’s leading English-language newspapers reputed to follow opposing political ideologies: pro-government and anti-government. It was found that the papers’ political ideologies did not necessarily affect their support for environmental sustainability or economic development paradigms, thus the notion of hegemony did not prevail in this case.

Exploring Direct To Consumer Advertising And Generation • Cynthia-Lou Coleman and Kathy Brittain McKee, Berry College • Researchers know little about how consumers respond to a fast-growing trend in advertising, the advertising of prescription drugs. This study used focus groups to better understand how young, female consumers make sense of such ads. The consumers were somewhat passive. They were hesitant to approach their physicians about drugs and were comfortable letting their doctors make decisions for them about medicines. In general, subjects avoided risk information and preferred television ads to magazine ads.

Media And Medical News: New York Times And London Times Coverage Of Breast Cancer, 1960-1995 • Julia B. Corbett and Motomi Mori, Utah-Salt Lake City • This research compared the relationship between medical community activities and newspaper coverage of breast cancer in the U.S. and Great Britain from 1960-1995. In a time series analysis, New York Times coverage was strongly influenced by U.S. and British medical journals’ attention to breast cancer and by public announcements of prominent U.S. women. In Great Britain, where health care is largely a government undertaking and holds a less powerful position in the social structure, the London Times paid far less attention to breast cancer.

It’s Not Easy Being Green: Building the News Media Agenda on the Environment • Patricia A. Curtin and Eric Rhodenbaugh, North Carolina • Media critics have charged public relations practitioners with fueling the environmental backlash or “wise use” movement by providing information subsidies to the media which propose that claims of environmental damage have been exaggerated. This content analysis study examines external and internal information subsidies supplied to members of the Society of Environmental Journalists to examine the validity of such charges and to determine the characteristics of and differences between the two sources of environmental information.

The Relationship Of Risk Information Processing To Consideration Of Behavioral Beliefs • Robert J. Griffin and James Giese, Marquette University and Kurt Neuwirth, Cincinnati and Sharon Dunwoody, Wisconsin-Madison • A model proposes that the form of information processing individuals apply to risk information from the media and other sources affects the number of behavioral beliefs they consider to be important to their judgments about performing risk-reducing behaviors and eventually influences the stability or maintenance of those behaviors. This study found that deeper, more systematic processing of risk information is positively related to behavioral belief accession and consideration across two communities and three risks (two health risks and one ecological risk).

The Sources Iowans Trust: The Impact Of Involvement On Credibility Perceptions And Channels Used For Environmental Issues • Sunae Jo and Lulu Rodriguez, Iowa State University • Audience’s perceptions of credibility in this study was treated not as an attribute of sources but as a relational concept, dependent upon a receiver’s involvement with the message. The results show that receivers’ self reported involvement with environmental issues could predict their perceptions of source credibility and the extent of their information-seeking behavior. However, involvement did not predict the choice of interpersonal channels as the preferred source of environmental information.

Embargoed Press Releases and the Construction of Science News • Vincent Kiernan, Maryland, College Park • Data from a content analysis of embargoed press releases issued by the journal Science and of wire-service and newspaper coverage of Science were used to test a model of influences on news judgement of science journalists. Newspaper coverage was influenced largely by wire-service coverage of journal articles; the newsworthiness of the journal articles, as depicted by the press releases, and the geographic proximity of the authors of a paper in Science explained little of the coverage by the newspapers that were studied.

Smoke Got in Our Eyes: Biodiversity Concern and Media Framing of the 1998 Mexican Fires • Michael Maher, Southwestern Louisiana • In May 1998 fires from Mexico and Central America-some of them burning in highly biodiverse rain forests-created clouds of smoke that blanketed the United States for almost a month. This paper analyzes 349 news articles to determine how journalists framed the causes of the fires. It concludes that reporters framed the event chiefly in terms of human health, safety and convenience. Only three percent of the news framed the fires in terms of global biodiversity loss.

“A Chain Of All Things Good”: Online Breast Cancer Support And Institutional Change • Patricia Radin, Washington • When the diagnosis is breast cancer, the medical establishment in North America falls far short in providing urgently needed information and support. This study of a Halifax-based breast cancer web site finds that, for a limited number of women and their loved ones, online communication can help to empower, inform, and comfort. This is helping to promote change in the structure of North American medicine, where medical communication is already being influenced by self-help and consumerism.

Microbes, Outbreaks And The Media: Are U.S. News Magazines Suffering From Sleeping Sickness When It Comes To Covering Tropical Disease? • Gary D. Snyder, Ohio University • Tropical diseases are emerging as a threat to developed countries. This study examines how Time and Newsweek have covered tropical disease from 1975 to 1998. Coverage was minimal until 1994, when it tripled, and Ebola received a disproportionate amount of attention. A high percentage of stories have a link to the United States. The lack of communication research in the area of international health and tropical disease indicates a pressing need for further study.

An Index of Generalized Cancer Anxiety for Use in Health and Risk Communication Surveys • Craig W. Trumbo and Prathannna Kannaovakun, Wisconsin-Madison • This article describes the development and validation of an index measuring the construct of Generalized Cancer Anxiety for application in health and risk communication research. Various literatures are searched for the concept of cancer anxiety. The resulting set of 18 questions are evaluated using a survey of university employees (pre-test) and four surveys of communities involved in cancer rate investigations. A subset of 4-6 question items are identified with good reliability, test-retest stability, and validity.

Use Of E-Mail And The Web By Science Writers. A Longitudinal Study, 1994-1999 • Craig W. Trumbo, Kim J. Sprecker, Gi-Woon Yun, Wisconsin-Madison and Rebecca J. Dumlao Shearlean Duke, East Carolina • This paper investigates e-mail and Web use by science writers through a survey of the National Association of Science Writers executed in 1994 and 1999. The 1994 data shows that e-mail was expanding rapidly, and was more task-oriented than social. The 1994 survey sought to determine if a Web site could be an acceptable tool for science reporting. Respondents were favorable of the concept (those with early adopter profiles most favorable).

<< 1999 Abstracts

Religion and Media Interest Group

Mother Teresa’s Death As Mystical Narrative In National Newspaper Dailes • Dennis D. Cali, East Carolina University • Newspaper coverage of the death of Mother Teresa of Calcutta, overshadowed in part by the extravagant media attention to Princess Diana’s death, was arguably abbreviated. However, articles on the Teresa story captured the symbolic significance and mythic character of the diminutive nun. This essay explains how, isolating rhetorical qualities that render the articles, collectively, a “mystical narrative.”

Communication In Religious Lobbying: Making Meaning Through Journalism • Kyle Huckins, Northwest Oklahoma State University • “Communication in Religious Lobbying: Making Meaning through Journalism” examines influence-building strategies used by religious groups in their discourse on issues. Taking Hofrenning’s list of three such strategies (symbolic, language, and coalition-building), the study applies the trio to an organizational publication. The study of Christian Coalition’s Christian American concludes that the group of religious conservatives used varying issue emphases, contexts and alliances to mobilize followers, and gravitated toward a political rather than religious agenda.

Not Alone In A Crowd: Religion, Media and Community Connected-ness At The Dawn Of A New Century • Michael A. Longinow, Asbury College • Religion and media in America have intertwined each other in a variety of ways from the earliest decades of this country’s democratic experiment. Moreover, religious organizations and those interested in religion have adapted themselves in innovative ways to the changing formats of popular media through this century, in many cases bringing cohesion and community to American religion. The end of the Twentieth Century and the dawn of the Twenty-First bring hope that this intermingling of media and religion will not diminish and could grow and flourish.

The Press And The “Greening Of Religion”: Themes, Sources, And Conflict In Newspaper Coverage Of Faith-based Environmentalism • Rick Clifton Moore, Boise State University • This paper investigates news coverage of environmental activity among American religious groups in the 1990s. The press, in reporting this phenomenon, presented a facade of religious inclusiveness while consistently reporting the story in ways that focused on traditional American religious institutions. In addition, official sources were called upon much more frequently than unofficial sources. Finally, reporters tended to downplay conflict in stories, using novelty as the key news value and attempting to extend that novelty over several years of reporting.

The Effect of Digitalization on Religious Television Stations • Brad Schultz, Southern Illinois University • This study sought to investigate the effect of the government-mandated transfer from analog to digital broadcasting, as it pertains to religious television stations. The study measured attitudes of religious broadcasting executives through a mail survey and had three hypotheses: digitalization would result in more consolidation, syndication and the emergence of a new economic model. Support was shown for consolidation and a new model, but not for syndication.

Hollywood’s God: The Problem of Divine Providence • Jeffery A. Smith, Iowa • ABSTRACT NOT AVAILABLE.

Secularists or Modern Day Prophets: A Study Of The Ethical And Moral Values Of Today’s Journalists And Their Connection To The Judeo-Christian Tradition • Doug Underwood, Washington • This nationwide study a strong religious orientation in their lives, and that their professional values are rooted solidly in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Respondents reported strong levels of religious belief by a variety of measurements. Even journalists who weren’t religiously oriented responded positively to a series of professional exhortations by famous journalists that contain strong religious overtones, as long as the maxims didn’t use language that is overtly religious in nature.

Watching The Religious Audience: The Complex Relationship Between The Christian Media, The Mainstream Media And The Conservative Protestant Audience • Hillary Warren, Wisconsin-Stevens Point • This paper considers the problematic relationship between the conservative Protestant audience and the Christian media. Using a combination of interviews and market data, the author finds that the Christian media is limited as an indicator of rank and file opinion. The paper concludes with several suggestions for research into this relationship, primarily focusing on the importance of small groups and interpersonal connections in the formation of media-related opinion in the conservative Protestant community.

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