Archives for April 2012

Building a Bridge Between the Knight News Challenge and JMC Programs:
Bringing the Ideas to Life in JMC Classrooms and Student Media

AEJMC is seeking proposals from its members to develop innovative and creative academic applications of projects already funded through the Knight News Challenge.  The goal is to implement these projects in ways that enhance the education of future journalists for the new media landscape. This program is funded by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

AEJMC will award up to 10 grants of up to $8,000 each. Proposals must create an academic application (or a use by college media) of the open source code or platform already created by one of the Knight News Challenge Grant recipients. Projects where code and platforms have been developed and are ready for use include DocumentCloud, SPS, Spot.Us, Ushahidi, NewsCloud, Selectricity, Politiwidgets, FeedBrewer and SnagFilms. To see these and other project products, visit <Knightapps.org>.

For a look at proposals funded for 2011-12 click here.

Proposal Guidelines:

• Projects would need to be fully implemented on campus within a year of receiving the grant.
• Full-time faculty members (either an individual or a group) would be eligible for a grant.  Faculty members must be current AEJMC members and can be from any country. If your proposal is selected for funding, you must remain a current AEJMC member for the duration of the grant.
• Proposals need to be specific, must show innovation and imagination, and must use a software/platform created through a Knight News Challenge grant in a classroom or lab setting or in college media. The grants should be for new ideas/uses, not to fund initiatives already under way.

Proposals should include:

• A three-to-four page proposal outlining the academic application being developed, the specific Challenge Fund software/platform being used, and how this will benefit students on your campus.
• A one-page letter from your unit chair, director or dean endorsing the proposal.
• A budget outlining cost of development and implementation. Funds may be used for course materials, nominal consultant fees for assistance in adapting software, relevant outside speakers to travel to campus, surveys, graduate student assistance, and website development. Funds may NOT be used for equipment, faculty release time or university administrative/overhead fees. All funds must be used solely for the project.
• A timeline for the project.
• A detailed outline of how the application will be assessed and evaluated.

Grant timetable:

• Proposals should be in ONE file (either a pdf or Word document) and are due to AEJMC by 5 p.m. (Eastern time) Monday, September 10, 2012, via email to AEJMCnews@aol.com.
• Grant awards will be announced by Friday, September 28, 2012.
• Grant recipients will be expected to report on their new applications during the 2013 AEJMC Conference in Washington, DC. (AEJMC will provide each selected project with an additional $500 in travel assistance to attend that conference.)
• Grants will be paid by October 15 with the final report and accounting of the grant funds due September 30, 2013. (Funds not used must be returned to AEJMC.)
• Questions? Contact Jennifer McGill, AEJMC at AEJMCHQ@aol.com or 803-798-0271.

<< AEJMC Calls

Faculty
Few Shades of Gray: Media Portrayal of German-American Relations During the Postwar Occupation of Germany • Marilyn Greenwald, Ohio University • This paper examines the portrayal in the U.S. media of the relationship between American GIs and German citizens during the post-World War II Occupation of Germany. Based on the personal and professional correspondence of Pauline Frederick, who covered post-World War II Central Europe, and the content of Life magazine and the New York Times, it appears that American news managers did not want to publish any stories – human interest or otherwise — that could be construed as sympathetic to German citizens, or ones that portrayed GIs in anything but a positive light.

“I Am Just an Ordinary Housewife:” Congressional Television and the Disruption of the Public Sphere in the Early Fifties • Bastiaan Vanacker, Loyola University Chicago • In March of 1951, live broadcasts of the Kefauver Crime Hearings from New York generated unprecedented public interest and put television on the map as a viable medium to report on political/public issues. The enthusiastic reactions of the massive viewership brought the debate on the role of television in democracy to the forefront and led to calls for more live broadcasts of political proceedings.

“A Girl Move”: Negotiating Gender and Technology in Chess Offline and Online • Undrahbuyan Baasanjav, Temple University • This research explores the real-life and online experience of women chess players. Based on the analysis of data collected in in-depth interviews, it explores how women integrate technology into their play/pleasure and how different cultural contexts influence the perception of gender and mastery in chess. The research suggests that an intellectual gap between men and women in chess has been discursively constructed without consideration of the historical asymmetry of power relations and other social and cultural factors.

A Section of Their Own: Women Leaders in the Financial Times’ Women At the Top • Elanie Steyn, University of Oklahoma; Kathryn Jenson White, University of Oklahoma • Historically, women’s pages elevated to the status of news issues defined as important to women. These sections integrated women into mass-media worthiness while segregating their concerns to suggest they mattered only to women. Recently, business publications have begun to create similar women’s sections focusing on women as leaders, managers and entrepreneurs. This paper qualitatively analyzes how the Financial Times’ Women at the Top products are portraying women’s progress toward and process to achieve these positions.

Subverting the script: Strengthening young women’s sexual self-concept by exposure to televised counter sexual scripts • Rebecca Ortiz • Television is a major source of common sexual scripts for adolescents and young adults. The proliferation of the heterosexual script on television is of particular concern because constant exposure may lead to reinforcement of negative sexual stereotypes by young viewers and negatively affect their sexual well-being.

The Marginalization of Dagongmei: A Critical Discourse Analysis of News Coverage on Female Migrant Laborers in China. • Siyuan Yin • Dagongmei, referring to young and unmarried female migrant laborers in China, has become an emerging social group since the 1980s. Labeled as undereducated, impoverished and vulnerable, this group not only suffers political and economic exploitations but suffers cultural oppressions with bias and contempt from urban residents. By analyzing how news media represent dagongmei, the article accesses the role of media in the intersected oppressions the group suffer.

“Catfights” under the Male Gaze: Framing of the 2010 U.S. House Race between Kristi Noem and Stephanie Herseth Sandlin • Miglena Sternadori, University of South Dakota • Using theories of agency, benevolent and enlightened sexism, and the male gaze, this paper employs framing analysis to explore stereotypes in the media coverage of a political race with more than one female candidate. The focus is on the 2010 race for the U.S. Representative for South Dakota’s at-large congressional district, in which the Republican candidate Kristi Noem won by 1.2 percent of the vote over the Democratic incumbent, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin.

The Bounce of Title Nine • Aimee Edmondson, Ohio University • Utilizing the critical method of fantasy theme analysis, this study will examine the rhetorical strategies employed by the Bounce catalog in its quest to appeal to the female buyer, analyzing how the parent company, Title Nine, executes a feminist editorial agenda and advocates for women’s participation in sports. The analysis will employ symbolic convergence theory in the study of the text and photographs of the catalog through the context of third wave feminism.

Girlhoods in the Golden Age of U.S. Radio: Music, Shared Popular Culture, and Memory • Sharon Mazzarella, James Madison University; Rebecca Hains, Salem State University; Shayla Thiel-Stern, University of Minnesota • In this paper, we interview 30 U.S. women born between 1918-1948 in order to uncover their girlhood experiences with media and popular culture during their child and teen years. Their narratives reveal a lack of engagement with youth and/or girl-oriented media artifacts; the shared experience of radio listening; an emphasis on the “experience” of using media artifacts rather than on the content; and the appeal of music and dance as a girlhood pasttimes.

Media and Hillary Clinton’s Presidential Campaign: A Model for Understanding Construction of Collective Memory • Mary Tucker-McLaughlin, ECU; Kenneth Campbell • Using the public life and 2008 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton, we offer a model for understanding personal, historical and mass media memory in the construction of collective memory. We use results of our grounded theory study of television news representations of Clinton, which identified two themes — innovator and voiceless — to show implications of mass media portrayals on collective memory.

The performance of gender roles in creative writing: Why do women submit less than men? • Richard Mocarski • The 2011 VIDA report demonstrates the gender gap in creative publishing, finding only 30% of the work in the top thirteen literary magazines by women. This study of 200 creative writers confirms that women not only published less often than men, but also submit to journals less often than men. It is posited that these behaviors are based on gendered expectations imbued from the culturally accepted norms of hegemonic masculinity and femininity.

Performance of Gender Identity on Wedding Websites • Laura Beth Daws, Georgia Highlands College • For many women, having a wedding ceremony is part of an ideal adult identity (Mead, 2007). Their performative elements extend beyond the ceremony to wedsites, or websites created for an upcoming wedding. Performativity (Butler, 1999) provides a theoretical framework for understanding wedsites as virtual spaces that accommodate gender identity performance. Photo elicitation interviews and thematic analysis of wedsites reveals that women construct wedsites to be consistent with traditional notions of gender and sex roles.

Gender politics in interscholastic sports: A framing analysis of Title IX • Erin Whiteside, University of Tennessee; Marie Hardin, Penn State University; Drew Shade; Julia Daisy Fraustino, The Pennsylvania State University; Erin Ash, Pennsylvania State University • This research explores the way Title IX is framed in interscholastic sports by using a content analysis to examine coverage stemming from lawsuits filed against the Florida and Michigan High School Athletic Associations (FHSAA and MHSAA).

Student

Women bloggers: Identity and the Concept of Sports • Dunja Antunovic, Pennsylvania State University; Marie Hardin, Penn State University • The emergence of the blogosphere has offered a unique opportunity for women to share their experiences. While research on women bloggers has pointed to the ways in which women generate knowledge and challenge social structures, little work has been done about women who blog about sports; a sphere deeply embedded in hegemonic masculine ideology. This study explored the formation of self and the conceptualization of sports in the “Sports Blog” directory of BlogHer, a women’s blog network.

He Said, She Said: The Effects of Gender on Political Attack Ads • Bryan McLaughlin, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Catasha Davis, UW-Madison; Sandra Knisely, University of Wisconsin-Madison; David Coppini, University of Wisconsin Madison; Young Mie Kim, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Contrary to conventional expectations, empirical research suggests female politicians can successfully attack male opponents. Using an experimental design, this study examines the interaction between the gender of an attack ad sponsor and participant’s gender in the context of a political sex scandal. Results show that among male participants, an attack is more successful at lowering evaluations of the opposing politician when the sponsor is female, while no significant results were found among female participants.

How Female and Male J/MC Authors Perceive the Journal Peer Review Process: Differently • Brendan Watson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe, University of North Carolina • Web-based survey (N=377) of J/MC scholars’ perceptions of peer-review for Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly and “other mass communication journals.” JMCQ rated generally positive on measures of satisfaction, particularly for time of review, editorial correspondence, and reviewer professionalism and clarity. Other journals rated more positively on review usefulness for improving scholarship. No major JMCQ-others difference in perceived openness to ideologies, methods or topics. Manuscript rejection negatively predicts satisfaction, though women were less affected by rejection.

A Correlation Study on Chinese Young Female Audiences’ Exposure to American TV Drama, Perceived Realism, and Sex-related effects • Qi Ling, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Xin Zhang • Correlation between exposure to American TV drama, social cognitive element – perceived realism, and sex-related effects were investigated among 302 young female audiences in China. More exposure to American TV drama and higher perceived realism on it was associated with more permissive sexual attitude, while exerting weaker effect on female audiences’ beliefs of sexual double standard and sexual agency. Perceived utility of sexual content in American TV turned out to significantly predict the effects.

Sweetness and Strength: Codes of Femininity and Body Image in Branded Social-Networking Messages • Anne Holcomb, Western Michigan University • This study is a semiological textual analysis of Facebook Page updates by the Victoria’s Secret PINK and Nike Women apparel brands. This research carries the tradition of critical feminist media analysis into the 21st Century. The research uncovers six semiotic codes of femininity marketed to Facebook users: “cheekiness,” “sweetness,” and “spirit” were the three main codes found in PINK posts. “Role-model athleticism,” “globalism” and “discipline” were the three main codes found in Nike Women content.

Western media attitudes toward an immigrant of color sex crime victim: Case study: The DSK case • Jenny Mumah, University of North Texas • This qualitative content analysis examined the coverage of the DSK case by three international newspapers: the New York Times, The Guardian and Le Monde within a feminist framework. Findings suggest that the accuser, an immigrant woman, received less favorable coverage than the defendant. Frames identified in the coverage include the importance of status/prominence, race and male privilege.

“Try to Lift Someone Else as We Climb”: Building Bridges From Press Clubs to Women’s Liberation • Candi Carter Olson, University of Pittsburgh • This paper maps the business-minded Women’s Press Club of Pittsburgh onto the history of the radical women’s liberation movement. Through oral history interviews and archival research, this paper examines how the club’s efforts at racial integration and individual member’s successes in conquering barriers in other areas of the newsroom strengthened the broader women’s movement. Battles won by women in the 1960s and 1970s established a foundation for the next generation of women journalists.

<< 2012 Abstracts

Faculty

Digital Touchdown?: An Examination of Audience’s Multiplatform Experience during the 2012 Super Bowl • Tang Tang, University of Akron; Roger Cooper, Ohio University • The 2012 Super Bowl was the most watched television program in U.S. television history, and represented a wide-scale expansion to online and digital environments. This study examined audience’s multiplatform experience with the 2012 Super Bowl. Results indicate that traditional television was still the dominant medium for Super Bowl viewing.

Say It Ain’t So, Joe: Prestige Newspaper Coverage of Joe Paterno and the Penn State Scandal • Paul Husselbee, Southern Utah University • This paper analyzes newspaper coverage of Joe Paterno’s actions after Jerry Sandusky’s arrest for alleged sex crimes against children at Penn State University. It also analyzes antapologia and valence in response to Paterno’s apologetic statement just hours before he was fired as Penn State’s football coach. Findings are consistent with previous studies on newspaper coverage and antapologia, with one shocking difference: Journalists portrayed Paterno’s actions and statement significantly more unfavorably than neutral or favorably.

The Vancouver “Big Six” Gender-Framed: NBC’s Primetime Coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics • James Angelini, University of Delaware; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama; Paul MacArthur, Utica College • This study represents the first attempt to content-analyze on-air commentary surrounding the six “major” Winter Olympic sports, operationalized as any event receiving at least three hours of aggregate primetime coverage. Analysis of all 64 hours of NBC’s primetime coverage of the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Winter Games revealed 26 significantly-different dialogue trends between men and women athletes. Interestingly, events such as figure skating featured many gender differences, while bobsled, freestyle skiing, and snowboarding had none.

New Playing Grounds: How Sport Was Reconceptualized for U.S. Television in the 1960s • Tara Kachgal, University of Wisconsin-Superior • The 1960s have been called the “Golden Age” of U.S. sports television. Sports anthology series (i.e., magazine programs) such as CBS Sports Spectacular, ABC’s Wide World of Sport, and NBC Sports in Action served to codify many of the aesthetic, narrative, and technical conventions that would later exemplify the presentation of TV sport.

Money Changes Everything: Sports Journalists and England’s Barclays Premier League • Danielle Sarver Coombs, Kent State University; Anne Osborne, Louisiana State University • This paper seeks to understand the perceptions and experiences sports reporters tasked with covering Premier League sides. These football journalists describe limited access brought on by the clubs’ decisions to emphasize global brands and manage their own content through club-run websites and material. Respondents also perceive this limited access is exacerbated by a growing culture of suspicion that widens the gulfs between teams and the reporters who cover them.

College Athletes’ Perception of Social Media Use • Mary Sheffer, University of Southern Mississippi; Brad Schultz; Lyndie Bishop • In an age where more athletes are using the social media, more schools struggle to control or monitor those media messages. Social media gives athletes a unique and unfiltered platform to present their image to a vast audience of sports fans and consumers. Although some universities have begun to implement social media policies, in many instances athletes’ awareness or comprehension of the use of social media remains opaque. A university’s image can be quickly tarnished by student athletes’ inappropriate social media use and can lead to serious sanctions by the NCAA.

Beyond Getting Your Bell Rung: Framing of Sport-Related Concussion Coverage Between 2007 and 2012. • Lesa Major; Matthew Zimmerman; Lauren Burch • This study gauges how the issue of sport-related concussion is being discussed in the public arena by examining five years of news coverage about the National Football League and the National Hockey League from The New York Times, USA Today, and ESPN.com. This research records the presence of the frames – problem definition, cause, moral evaluation, and treatment recommendation, and determines whether these frames are presented as thematic or episodic.

Closing the gender gap?: A framing analysis of high school basketball coverage • Erin Whiteside, University of Tennessee; Jodi Rightler-McDaniels, University of Tennessee, Knoxville • This research uses a content analysis to explore how high school male and female athletes are framed in newspapers. In analyzing basketball coverage from 141 unique newspapers, results show that although boys received the bulk of the coverage, the gap in parity may be closing when it comes to preps sports coverage. Furthermore, girls were generally not framed as feminine. Still, there were key differences in coverage, most notably in references to the athletic body.

Which team do you play for? A social identity study of sports and news journalists and the coverage of athletes who commit crimes. • Vincent Filak; Scott Reinardy, University of Kansas • Using the lens of social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner, 1986), we examined the attitudes of sports and news journalists in regard to the coverage of athletes who have committed crimes. This study of 275 journalists revealed patterns of intergroup bias. News journalists were more likely to agree that crime was an important part of the paper’s overall coverage. In addition, both sports journalists and news journalists felt reporters within their social group were better equipped to cover stories involving athletes and crime.

Do Celebrity Endorsements Work? Exploring Effective Strategies of Banner Advertisement in Sport Websites • Woo-Young Lee, University of Central Missouri; Minjung Sung, Chung-Ang University • Sport is a fixture of American culture. The fusion of sport, media, and advertising lend growing importance to managing the attitudes of consumers. Scholars have made a tremendous devotion to researching effective advertising strategies for online sport marketing. However, a limited number of studies have focused exclusively on sport celebrity endorsement and related congruity in online advertising. The current study applied MANCOVA testing to produce definitive results.

Television Sports and Social TV: The Courtship Continues • John Shrader, California State University, Long Beach • Television is challenged by the digital revolution in a number of ways. Live television sports is no exception. Consumers expect the product in a number of platforms, and the producers of live sports television provide it in a number of platforms. One of the latest and greatest challenges – and opportunities – for the announcers of live sports television is social media. It wasn’t long ago that the announcers were the viewers’ primary source for in-game information.

Contrasting Desired Sports Journalism Skills in a Convergent Media Environment • Stan Ketterer, Oklahoma State University; John McGuire, Oklahoma State University; Ray Murray, Oklahoma State University • This research study considered how desired job skills for future newspaper sports reporters and television sports reporters are merging in the convergence journalism era. Using open-ended responses given by newspaper sports editors and television sports directors around the country, the researchers employed Spearman’s Rho to contrast results. While no significant correlation could be found between top individual top skills listed by newspaper sports editors and television sports directors, significant correlation was found contrasting the top 10 desired skills.

Performing the “Good Negro Athlete” in Mid-Century America: Three Case Studies • Phillip Hutchison, University of Kentucky • This historical-critical analysis employs Raymond Williams’ theories of hegemony to examine the performative aspects of the Good Negro Athlete stereotype from 1947-1962. The study examines how white interests used the stereotype to define the social personas of three African American heavyweight champion boxers during this period. These cases illustrate how white promoters and journalists used the persona to synchronize America’s commercial leisure industry with postwar America’s racial hierarchies.

Student

When Fan Identification Levels Go Extreme: An Exploratory Study of the Highly Identified Fans of the Ultimate Fighting Championship • Natalie Brown, University of Alabama; Michael Devlin, University of Alabama; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama • The current study examined the implications of fan identity as it related to Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), more specifically, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC). The authors examined differences in levels of fan identification towards individual athletes compared to the UFC organization. An online survey yielded 911 respondents who were representative of the UFC’s current audience demographics. Results showed significant differences in fan identify between gender, age, and sensation-seeking behaviors.

The Paradox of Player Safety: Media Constructions of Violence in the NFL • Jacob Dittmer, University of Oregon • The NFL’s concussion crisis and pending litigation has revealed a paradox in the promotion of football. The popularity of the NFL derives from media myth constructions of warrior players and dominant narratives focusing on violence. Yet the official response to the concussion crisis, epitomized in the NFL Evolution campaign, promotes a narrative of a league dedicated to a safe working environment for its players. This paper examines the dynamics of the paradox of player safety.

Exploring Situational Crisis Communication Theory: Using the 2011 NBA lockout to investigate crisis response strategies • Melanie Formentin, The Pennsylvania State University • Using the National Basketball Association (NBA) lockout as an example, this study reports the results of a 3×2 experiment examining whether accommodative or defensive strategies are more successful at changing perceptions of blame and preserving reputation during a crisis. The study was grounded in situational crisis communication theory, and results suggest that crisis response strategies may impact perceptions of fault during a crisis but perceptions of fault did not significantly impact the NBA’s reputation.

More than Just a Pretty Face? Examining the Influence of Attractiveness and Reporter/Athlete Congruity on Perceived Credibility • Dustin Hahn, Texas Tech University, College of Mass Communication; Glenn Cummins, Texas Tech University College of Mass Communications • Research examining source credibility in mass communication has demonstrated how source’s gender and attractiveness can impact perceived credibility and, subsequently, how well messages are received. This experiment extends these findings to the context of mediated sports by examining them in conjunction with athlete gender. Although source attractiveness and gender appear to have no influence, data gleaned from this experiment demonstrate that these relationships are actually dependent upon incongruity with athlete gender.

The Effects of Fantasy Football Participation on Team Identification, Team Loyalty and NFL Fandom • Jeremy Lee, Florida State University; Brody Ruihley; Natalie Brown, University of Alabama; Andrew Billings, University of Alabama • An estimated 35 million people in North America participated in fantasy sport in 2011. This study examines how participation levels in fantasy football affect team identification, team loyalty, fandom of the National Football League (NFL), and consumer behavior. Survey results indicate higher fantasy participation levels leading to higher team identification, higher team loyalty, and higher fandom, where fandom of the NFL is higher than team identification.

Ain’t it so? “Shoeless” Joe Jackson, collective memory, and the shaping of an American hero • Brett Borton, University of South Carolina • Joe Jackson has long been regarded as one of the greatest hitters in the history of Major League Baseball with an average of .356 during his career with the Chicago White Sox .Yet Jackson will forever be remembered for his alleged participation in the fix of the 1919 World Series – in which the highly favored White Sox lost to the Cincinnati Reds – and subsequent lifetime ban from baseball by commissioner Kennesaw Mountain Landis.

Defense! Or you will Lose Your Fans! NFL and MLB Team’s Fan Relationship Management on Facebook • Dong Hoo Kim; Eun Sook Kwon; Young-A Song • The sports business is one of the largest industries in the world and its economic value continues to grow. Due to the important role of fans in the sports industry, building strong relationships with fans is vital for the industry, league, and team. A total of 37 official Facebook fan pages of NFL and MLB teams are investigated by employing Stafford and Canary’s relationship maintenance strategies (RMS).

Local or National?: An examination of fans’ perceptions of college football scandal coverage • Molly Yanity, Ohio University; Ashley Furrow, Ohio University • Two and a half years ago, we researchers surveyed college football fans to learn where they go for college sports scandal coverage and what factors they consider in making the decision to turn to local or national sources. Given the onslaught of college football scandals that have shaken the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and its fans in the last two and a half years, we redistributed the survey.

<< 2012 Abstracts

Assessing assessment: Evaluating outcomes and reliabilities of grammar, math and writing measures in media writing • Tricia Farwell; Leon Alligood; Sharon Fitzgerald, Middle Tennessee State University; Ken Blake, Middle Tennessee State University • This paper introduces an objective, grammar and math assessment and evaluates the assessment’s outcome and reliability when fielded among 81 students in media writing courses. Additionally, the paper applies the Krippendorff’s alpha reliability measure to four media writing professors’ A-F ratings of end-of-semester writing samples from the same students. The study found evidence for the assessment’s reliability along with significant, although modest, improvement on the assessment. The A-F ratings produced a substandard reliability alpha.

Mastery and modeling in the teaching of news writing: A social cognitive approach • William Nevin, University of Alabama; Wilson Lowrey • Collegiate mass communication students continue to struggle in newswriting courses. In social cognitive theory, self-efficacy is one of the primary motivating factors in achievement. According to findings from a survey of students in an introductory news writing course, self-efficacy is most influenced by previous media experience, whereas peer tutors serve to reinforce course material. This suggests jobs and extra-curricular activities should be examined as a means to support college courses.

The Divided Classroom: Definitions of News and Consumption Habits of Journalism Educators and their Students • Soo-Kwang Oh, University of Maryland; Stanton Paddock, College of Journalism, University of Maryland; Jacqueline Incollingo, University of Maryland • This study compared and integrated perspectives of educators and students in journalism programs by conducting interviews and focus groups. Findings indicated that there was a salient difference in news definitions and consumption habits between the two groups, and respondents also acknowledged a usage gulf. We suggest pedagogical and practical solutions to this divide, which they may be more applicable for smaller programs due to their nature of high levels of interaction between educators and students.

<< 2012 Abstracts