Archives for May 2013

May 23, 2013 | The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), which includes professors, deans and directors of journalism and mass communication programs, and the Association of Schools of Journalism and Mass Communication (ASJMC), which includes schools and colleges of journalism and mass communication, call for the U.S. government’s investigation of the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) egregious intrusion into privacy related to the April and May 2012 secret seizures of Associated Press telephone records. Only a year later has the DOJ informed the nation’s news media about subpoenas that had been served to gather phone records of major AP Bureaus, as well as records from the private phones of AP journalists.

Secret investigations of journalists’ news sources produce a chilling effect on news-gathering activities, jeopardizing the critical role of the press in a democracy and ultimately harming the American public. These seizures of phone records also demonstrate the urgency of a Shield Law that would provide journalists with more security in keeping their interactions and interviews with sources confidential.

This investigation must result in a full and clear explanation of the process from which these secret subpoenas had resulted, together with appropriate sanctions for those found to have exceeded their legal authority or to have been derelict in their judicial responsibilities.

AEJMC and ASJMC further call for assurances by the DOJ that other secret subpoenas related to news-gathering activities have not been served and will not be served in the future.

In our universities and programs, we seek to instill in our students an appreciation for the necessity of a free press that understands the need to balance the privacy and national security issues with the publics open access to information. In this case, we find it hard to understand how that balance was met.

<<PACS

Guidelines and Deadlines

Application materials must be electronically submitted on or before September 1, 2013.
Applicants will be notified of the selection committee’s decisions in October of 2013.

PROPOSAL COMPONENTS MUST BE COMBINED INTO ONE PDF FILE.
Please click below to let us know that you plan to submit a proposal>>

SPECIAL CALL ON
Ethical Stakeholder Engagement

Coversheet (1 page)
Please include the following:

1. Title of the proposed project
2. Name of applicant(s)
3. Job title, position or affiliation, name of institution organization, or business
4. Email address and phone number
5. Contact information for the Office of Sponsored Research at your institution,including the name and email address of a point of contact
6. Subject area that best describes the focus of the proposal

Abstract (1 page)
A one page abstract or summary of the proposed project that includes the applicant’s name, university/college affiliation, and project title. Please list the amount of funding requested, up to $5,000.

Narrative (up to 5 pages)
A description, not more than five pages, typed and double-spaced, of the proposed research and how it furthers the mission of the Page Center to foster ethics and responsibility in public communication. Appropriate Appendices that support the proposed project may be included and should be no more than 10 pages long. Applicants may wish to attach an optional selected bibliography, up to two pages, of scholarly or other works, other than the applicant’s own, that place the project in its intellectual framework. Appendices and bibliographies should be included following the project narrative, and should bring the total page count for the section to no more than 17 pages.

Budget (1 page)
Using a spreadsheet or table, please list the amount of the grant being requested – up to $5,000 – by line item. The grants may be used for legitimate scholarly purposes approved by the Center, such as field research, assistants, and the purchase of research materials. Awards may not be used to support any commercial purpose.

The Center does not allow the following costs:

Overhead, indirect or F&A costs
Release time or course buy-out
Any expenses to attend conferences
Publication costs
Equipment

Budgets should be realistic and commensurate with the project proposed. Applicants are strongly encouraged to list only real and necessary costs in the proposed budget.  The Page Center may offer funding at a different level than that requested. Applicants and awardees must disclose any other source of funding for the project.

Where applicable, proposals should be processed through the Office of Sponsored Research of the applicant’s institution to avoid lengthy delays in awarding funds.

Budget Notes (1 page)
Include a separate document that lists the budget by line item, followed by a description of each line item explaining how the funding will be spent. For example, a description of requested wages may read:

Wages: One graduate student to be paid $15/hour for 20 hours/week X 12 weeks of the summer semester. The graduate student will analyze data collected during the Fall and Spring semesters.

Curriculum Vitae or Professional Resume (10 page maximum)
Attach curriculum vitae or resume that describes scholarly work related to the proposed project and publication/presentation history of the applicant. This document will inform the review committee of the scholar or professional applicant’s potential for dissemination of findings.

ALL COMPONENTS OF THE CSR CALL MUST BE COMBINED INTO ONE
PDF FILE AND UPLOADED TO THE CORRECT FOLDER BELOW.

Ethical Stakeholder Engagement proposals click here.

<<Related Calls

Ethical Stakeholder Engagement

From inactive publics to brand ambassadors, organizations must consider how best to communicate with a variety of stakeholders. With the growth of social media, ethical engagement with stakeholders has become more challenging. Engagement implies a two-way exchange, if not necessarily a meeting of minds, then certainly a swapping of ideas and opinions, listening and talking, and stakeholders have expectations that require ethical standards.

The Arthur W. Page Center seeks grant proposals that address the issues of ethical stakeholder engagement. Research projects should deepen the field’s understanding of the issues with a focus on real-world solutions for practitioners. Submissions should clearly demonstrate how the research will benefit the practice of public relations and how the authors intend to disseminate findings to the field. Grants will range from $1,000 to $5,000.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to):

• Measuring the impact of stakeholder engagement
• Benefits or challenges of ethical stakeholder engagement
• Online stakeholder engagement
• Engagement with specific audiences such as:

– Activists
– Community
– Elderly
– Employees
– Influencers
– Investors
– International groups
– LGBT
– Youth

The research conducted from approved proposals will be evaluated for a special issue of the Public Relations Journal guest edited by Dr. Marcia W. DiStaso. Authors of successful submissions may also be asked to participate in a webinar or conference panel and/or make their work available for distribution through a website.

Deadline for proposal submission is September 1, 2013. Proposals should be submitted through the Page Center website (http://thepagecenter.comm.psu.edu/, click on Page Legacy Scholar Grants). Questions should be directed to Dr. Marcia W. DiStaso at mwd10@psu.edu or (814) 863-9874.

<<Related Calls

[January 26, 2010]

Playing violent video games can make young adults behave more violently, but the game features selected during play are responsible for the resulting aggression according to a new study published this month in Mass Communication and Society.

Modern video game systems often give the player options to choose to turn blood effects on or off and to change the color of the blood. They also allow players to change their own perspective from being a first person shooter to a third person observer of the character doing the shooting in violent video games like Hitman II, Silent Assassin, which was used in this study.

One might think that being the actual shooter or aggressor from a first person perspective would make the game player more aggressive in real life. But a study called Retaliatory Aggression and the Effects of Point of View Blood in Violent Video Games, conducted by Marina Krcmar from Wake Forest University and Kirstie Farrar from the University of Connecticut, found the opposite.

Players who see their avatar shooting and killing are more likely to express subsequent verbal or physical hostility than someone who sees the violence in the game from a first person perspective. This was especially true for people who leaned toward being more aggressive or hostile anyway. In this study, players expressed hostility in part by recommending against continued funding of an experimenter who initially insulted them.

Another variable that led to more aggression from players was the blood. When players had the blood on, they were more likely to act verbally and physically aggressive after playing the game. The reasons for this increase in aggression stem from the players’ active role in the storyline, which causes the player to act out the aggression. Players identify with the aggressors in the video games, because they want to be heroes.

Additionally, since violent behaviors are rewarded in violent video games, such as Hitman II, Silent Assassin, this can contribute to the belief that violent behavior is acceptable. In this study, Krcmar and Farrar explain a process through which aggression is evoked from video game usage.

According to these authors, “Players actively engage in game play, receive points for acting aggressively, attempt and learn various aggressive roles, actions and strategies, and through repeated play, may learn to play the game quite skillfully. Through this repeated exposure and interaction with violence through repeated game play, it is likely that players can establish similarly aggressive knowledge structures.”

Players can enhance these aggressive behaviors through practice, and activate them when faced with a real, aggressive situation as demonstrated in this study. The authors conclude that playing violent games, both in the short term and over time, can lead to aggressive behavior.

The presence of new game systems has led to the creation of more graphic, realistic, and violent video games that really draw users into the violent actions displayed in the game. But with all the commotion violent games, such as Mortal Kombat have caused in the media in the past, now many modern games allow the user to deactivate the blood and gore present in the game. These features are appealing to parents who are concerned with the level of gore in the games their kids play.

If this study’s findings on young adults hold true with younger players, parents who have their kids deactivate the blood are justified in such actions, this study shows. But more surprising is the advice that their kids should play the game from the first person perspective as the one who is committing the on-game violence. Parents who have perhaps thought the third-person perspective was better could be asking for trouble and leading their kids to become more aggressive.

CONTACT: Marina Krcmar, Department of Communication, Wake Forest University, krcmarm@wfu.edu, (336) 758-5405; Kirstie Farrar, Department of Communication Studies, University of Connecticut, kirstie.farrar@uconn.edu, (806) 486-2632.

<<RYCU

[January 26, 2010]

A study that was just published in the scholarly journal Mass Communication and Society, which is edited at Illinois State University, suggests that structural bias was apparent on many of the major television networks during the 2004 presidential election in a direction that may surprise many.

Frederick Fico, professor of journalism at Michigan State University, and his co-authors of the article Broadcast and Cable Network News Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election, compare news coverage of Presidential candidates John Kerry and George Bush on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. They find that Fox News showed more structural bias toward Democratic candidate John Kerry than any other network, and that its bias was stronger than that on other networks. This was true contrary to criticism cited by Fico in which former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite labels Fox News as a “far-rightwing organization.”

That means Kerry and his supporters received more air time on Fox and were more likely to receive primary placement in stories. The four determinants of structural bias were the number of supporters quoted or given a chance to speak, the candidate whose supporters spoke first, the time they spent speaking, and whether there were visuals of both candidates or only of one. Neither the tone of the quotes used nor talk and commentary were analyzed, but only packaged news stories and segments.

Bush, on the other hand, received favorable coverage from NBC and MSNBC.

CBS, which broke the story questioning Bush’s National Guard service attributed to a source that was later discredited, favored Kerry.

CNN’s structural bias leaned somewhat toward Kerry, while ABC’s bias is less clear, leaning toward Bush in some measures and Kerry in others.

Most journalists would emphasize the importance of remaining impartial, unbiased, and reporting only factual and accurate information when covering a story.  However, structural bias can show patterns of bias that are harder to measure objectively in areas like a reporter’s tone about a candidate.

According to Fico there is no question of the presence of bias in the newsroom. He describes it as something that is “inevitable and ever-present.” However, he feels the real question of news bias lies in how systematic or predictable networks are in presenting certain information.

In this research, Fico and his co-authors, Geri Alumit Zeldes from Michigan State, Serena Carpenter from Arizona State University, and Arvind Diddi from the State University of New York at Oswego, assess both the aggregate partisan structural balance of stories and of multi-story segments, determining whether they favored the Republican or the Democrat. The study examined stories aired from Labor Day to the November 2 Election Day of 2004. Both the National Guard stories and coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry were in the media during the period of analysis.

CONTACT: Frederick Fico, School of Journalism, Michigan State University,  fredfico@msu.edu, (517) 355-4489; Geri Alumit Zeldes, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona Sate University; Serena Carpenter, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University; Arvind Diddi, Department of Communication Studies, SUNY, Oswego.

<<RYCU