Archives for May 2019

Open Call

Shared Vulnerability as a Virtuous Frame for Poverty Journalism • Sandra L. Borden, Western Michigan University • This paper proposes a unified account of the ethics of poverty journalism that takes the sheer banality of poverty–its commonplaceness–as its moral starting point. The virtue ethics theory of Alasdair MacIntyre (1999) will be used to argue for a shared vulnerability news frame to cover poverty. After assessing the failures of mainstream journalism’s record on the shared vulnerability account, the paper closes with a discussion of the implications for poverty journalism.

Exploring the Ethical Dimensions of Organ and Tissue Donation Coverage in Mainstream U.S. Media • Christina DeWalt, Florida Atlantic University • This study used textual analysis to examine 75 organ and tissue donation-focused news stories published by mainstream U.S. media outlets over a one-year period. Framing theory was employed to explore deontological and consequentialist ethical perspectives forwarded in organ and tissue donation-related media content. Data was analyzed using the theoretical framework of Beauchamp and Childress’ (2008) four principles of bioethics.

Moral reasoning and development across industries of mass communication • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado-Boulder; Erin Schauster; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Marlene Neill, Baylor University • This study examines how professional journalists, public relations executives and advertising executives score in moral development. The data illustrates very different industries than the ones tested in decades prior. We theorize that media fragmentation, blurred professional boundaries and a changing workforce contribute to a mass communication ecosystem with three industries acting similarly in terms of ethical application.

The ethic of transparency: A review of corrections language in international journalistic codes of ethics • Alyssa Appelman, Northern Kentucky University; Kirstie Hettinga, California Lutheran University • Abstract: A thematic analysis of journalistic codes of ethics (N = 88) was conducted to assess discussions of correcting inaccuracies. The sample included codes from newspapers, broadcast outlets, digital outlets, press councils, and NGOs. Overall, discussions across codes revolve around four themes: correction process, normative values, impact, and superficiality. The codes represented 55 countries, and the press freedom designation of those countries influenced results, as well. Implications for journalists and media organizations are explored.

The Ethical Dimensions of President Trump’s Tweets: Acceptable Advocacy or Democratic Demise? • Wendy Melillo, American University • This study examined the ethical dimensions of President Trump’s tweets from June 2016 to December 2017 using the ten principles of the Edgett (2002) advocacy model for persuasion ethics, and the Gambrill (1992) list of indicators for propaganda. The analysis found a greater need for the executive branch of the U.S. government to engage in public discourse based on the use of public relations ethical advocacy theories to help protect and strengthen America’s democratic system.

Seeing is believing? Ethical implications for AR, VR, and 360º technologies in journalism • Margaret Duffy, Missouri School of Journalism; Janis Page • This study offers an exploratory and cautionary critique of normative and ethical challenges of VR, AR, and 360º video, impressive and immersive tools in the practice of journalism. We first review definitions of the tools in use as of this writing. Second, we review theoretical frameworks that may be applied to these questions including semiotics, anticipatory ethics, and normative journalistic theory. We seek to link these perspectives to offer a critique of technologies that may manipulate news stories, affect reactions to stories by news receivers and have larger social implications. Third, we conduct a semiotic analysis of a well-regarded story from the New York Times. We find the characteristics of the technology and its bricolage of semantics create semiotic ambiguity. The lack of a reliable narrator, the gaps in recognizable story sequence, the possibility of cross purposes within the production team, and the reliance on implicit trust from the viewer/user all raise ethical questions. A particularly potential danger in this immersive journalism is the prospect that users may experience damage from high impact content, thus breaching codes such as those of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) guidance to “minimize harm” (SPJ, 2019). In the spirit of anticipatory ethics, it is important that journalists and scholars consider the values and ethical challenges that these remarkable technologies bring to journalism, thus we conclude with some considerations and guidance for both journalists and news consumers.

It takes a village: Communitarianism and Spotlight • Chad Painter, University of Dayton; Alexandra Scherb, University of Dayton • Communitarians argue that social identity is formed through the connection between individuals and their communities. This textual analysis focused on the breakdown of four Boston institutions depicted in the film Spotlight that failed their community, allowing decades of sexual abuse to go unrecognized and unpunished. Through the lens of communitarian ethics, the researchers argue that stakeholders must recognize the need for a strong community from which the press can report, explain, correct, and connect.

Toward a Humanistic Turn for a More Ethical Journalism • Perry Parks, Michigan State University • This paper argues that the social-scientific epistemology that has dominated journalism for the past half-century has devalued the moral implications of public affairs news and deprived citizens of the ethical tools necessary to make humane political decisions. Reviewing the contingent history of the integration of journalistic and social scientific methods leading to journalism’s computational turn, the essay calls for a humanistic reconceptualization away from journalists’ role as political interpreters toward a comparable role as moral interpreters.

Rights, Rites and Rituals: An international comparison of crime coverage practices • Romayne Smith Fullerton, University of Western Ontario; Maggie Jones Patterson, Duquesne University • This paper offers an overview of the conclusions of a nine year international study considering how mainstream media covers serious crime in ten developed , westernized countries. Under consideration were Canada, the United States, England, Ireland, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Portugal and Spain. Using primary and secondary sources, and interviews with nearly 200 media professionals and academics, we used crime coverage decisions as a key to examine underlying cultural attitudes toward concepts like public, private, public right to know and justice. We group countries under three main media models and offer summaries of the differing ethical crime coverage practices, and suggest what these ethical choices might mean about larger social attitudes to crime and criminals.

Carol Burnett Award for Graduate Student Papers

Inside the Ivory Tower: How Student Reporters Reason about Ethics • Yayu Feng • This paper presents a preliminary study that investigates ethics orientation and moral reasoning of student reporters. It aims to understand how student reporters, an important indicator for the future of journalism yet an understudied group, perceive and practice ethics. Ten face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with student reporters in an independent university newspaper. The findings revealed that the student reporters have an instrumental understanding of ethics, perceiving ethics as rules to follow and what’s taught in the newspaper’s ethics training. When confronted with what they perceive to be ethical dilemmas, which sometimes are false ones, they tend to consult editors and follow their advice without asking for further explanation. For student reporters who have taken ethics courses, theories or templates learned in class are not applied or thought of. Their moral reasoning is largely based on intuition, trust of authority/expertise, and the need to follow rules to avoid punishment. Based on the results, the study raises concerns, points out challenges and advice for ethics education inside student newsrooms, and outlines further researches.

Why should we care about care: The potential for feminist moral, environmental, and political philosophy in journalism ethics • Joseph Jones • This paper thus seeks to “contaminate” an ethics of care with three different but interrelated theoretical interventions: the expansion of the care ethic beyond interpersonal relations, ecofeminism, and feminist political theory. This makes care theoretically resilient: durable enough to have grounded meaning but flexible enough for situational application. This furthermore makes care a primary concept capable of subsuming some aspects, without being reduced to, the traditional ethical theories of deontology, consequentialism, and virtue ethics.

Special Call for Media Ethics and Teaching

Looking at future and seeking alternatives: An exploratory study on the uses of Team-Based Learning (TBL) in media ethics pedagogy • Dr. M. Delwar Hossain; Julie Estis • This study examines the impact of Team-Based Learning (TBL) in teaching media ethics. TBL is a paradigm shift from course concepts conveyed by the instructor to the application of course concepts by students. This instructional strategy has revolutionized pedagogy in different fields by achieving high levels of cohesiveness in small groups in a classroom setting. An extensive literature review shows no prior studies on the impact of TBL in teaching media ethics. Therefore, the current project will extend the existing knowledge on the role of TBL in media ethics pedagogy. This is a mixed-method study using both TeamUSA Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) pre/post course surveys and in-depth interviews to conduct the study. The findings show TBL helped media ethics students in collaboration and critical thinking. Both collaboration and critical thinking are important methods journalism students use to deal with daily issues related to media. Hence, the findings of the study will help improve the pedagogical approach of media ethics in the future.

Constructing a Game Design Framework for Ethics Teaching • Yuan Yuan; KUN FU; Barend Pieter VENTER • Citizen morality reflects civilization and is significant to society. Ethics education for improving morality, especially in China, may fail because of its reliance on lecture-based teaching. Game-based learning presents an innovative approach to ethics education. This paper identifies problems in tertiary ethics education and reviews relevant game design principles before establishing a framework for designing educational games that may assist in ethics education. It then proposes a game design model for teaching ethics.

< 2019 Abstracts

Open Competition

Sharing Native Advertising on Twitter: Evidence of the Inoculating Influence of Disclosures • Michelle Amazeen, Boston University; Chris Vargo • Based upon a large data set of tweets linking to native advertising in leading U.S. news publications, this study explores whether the practice of native advertising disclosure in the field serves the inoculating function of resistance to persuasion. Leveraging the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright, 1994) and inoculation theory (McGuire, 1964), results show a) regular use of disclosures on publisher landing pages, b) the absence of disclosures in over half of publisher thumbnail images, and c) a negative moderating effect of disclosures on the valence of organic comments.

Effective Targeting of Youth through Online Social Networks in Diverse and Multicultural Marketplaces: New Developments and Perspectives. • Mian Asim, Zayed University • This study examines and compares the effectiveness of social networks to target youth for precision marketing under the conditions of cultural dispositions, innovative aptitude, and perceived medium credibility in emerging marketplaces. Under the premise of Social Identity framework, the results reveal external factors like recommendations, product offers, and appearance are more relevant than an individual’s traits and dispositions when evaluating products on social networks. The theoretical and managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

Ads for Forever Families: How Public Service Advertising Portrays Adoptive Children and Teenagers • Jackson Carter, University of South Carolina; Taylor Jing Wen, University of South Carolina • There is a dearth of research in mass communication regarding family adoption, which may hinder meaningful progress to help policymakers, academics, content creators, and families. The current study adopts a qualitative approach to identify the persuasive appeals, dominant frames and media representation of adoptive parents and children in the PSAs that promotes adoption. This research informs social work professionals about how media portrait family adoption, and allow them to strategize how to shape future communication.

Developing and Validating the Scale of Parental Social Media Mediation Across Child and Parent Samples • Liang Chen; Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University; May Lwin; Lunrui Fu • “This research aims to enhance the conceptualization and operationalization of parental social media mediation. First, we conducted focus groups with both children and parents in Singapore to categorize parental mediation strategies of social media. Then, a survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 1,424 child participants and 1,206 parent participants in Singapore to develop and test the scale. The results of focus groups identified four conceptually distinct parental mediation strategies of social media – labelled as active mediation, restrictive mediation, authoritarian surveillance, and monitoring as well as developed an initial scale of them. Based on the data from survey questionnaires, we investigated both inter-item and item-total correlations and performed confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), which developed and validated the scale of parental social media mediation.

Third-Person Effects of Fake News on Social Media • Yang Cheng, North Carolina State University; Zifei Chen, University of San Francisco • This study proposed and tested a model to understand the antecedents and consequences of third-person perceptions of fake news about a company on Facebook. Survey results (N = 661) showed impacts of self-efficacy, social undesirability, and consumer involvement on the perceived influence of fake news on self and others. The perceived influence on others served as a mediator in the model and positively predicted support for corporate corrective action, media literacy intervention, and governmental regulation.

Local civic information beyond the news: Computational identification of civic content on social media • Yingying Chen, College of Communication Arts and Sciences, Michigan State University; Kourtnie Rodgers, Michigan State University; Kjerstin Thorson; Kelley Cotter; Sevgi Baykaldi • This study proposes a conceptual definition of local civic information to guide computational analyses of the civic information health of communities. We define civic information by the functions it could serve in a community, rather than producer. To demonstrate utility, we use structural topic modeling and human coding to identify clusters of Facebook posts which may serve a diverse community functions and demonstrate that these posts were produced by a diverse set of community organizations.

Outside of Spiral of Silence?: Examining Partisans Outspokenness on Social Networking Sites • Stella Chia • This study discloses the direct and the indirect effects of issue involvement on partisans’ outspokenness on SNSs in the context of legalizing same-sex in Taiwan. The indirect effects appear to offset the direct effects. On one hand, partisans are motivated to speak out online by their strong involvement; on the other hand, their strong issue involvement leads to presumed media influence, which prohibits them from expressing opinions on SNSs. Their offline participation is also affected.

Uncertainty Management in Mass Shootings: Antecedents, Appraisals, and Communication Behavior • Surin Chung, Ohio University • This study investigates how situational antecedents affect perceived uncertainty and how uncertainty appraisals influence publics’ communication behavior about mass shootings. A total of 637 responses were collected through an online survey. The results revealed that situational antecedents were significantly associated with uncertainty. The results showed that uncertainty had a positive indirect effect on information seeking intention via anxiety and hope. Also, uncertainty had a positive indirect effect on information attending intention via anxiety and sadness.

Combatting science myths: The effects of fact-checking and platform congruency on hostile media bias and news credibility perceptions • Raluca Cozma, Kansas State University; Xiaochen Zhang, University of Oklahoma • An experiment was conducted to examine differences in story credibility and hostile media bias perceptions between readers assigned to attitude congruent vs. incongruent cable news platforms and between readers who read stories fact checked by a reporter, a scientist, or not corrected at all. The study advances understanding of the effects of fact checking in the realm of science news and found attitude congruency to be a predictor of news credibility perceptions.

Audience’s Emotion and Sense of Social Solidarity during a Media Event: Examining the Effects of Two Media Platforms • Xi Cui, College of Charleston; Qian Xu, Elon University • This study examines audiences’ emotional and social experiences of Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration through television and social media. A survey of a national sample (N = 420) was conducted following the inauguration ceremony. Drawing on media events, emotional appraisal and identity self-categorization theories, the study found that television was socially integrative while social media was socially disruptive. Media events’ influences on audiences’ social and emotional experiences depended on both their identities and media affordances.

How is CSR covered in news media? A cross-national study of comparative agenda setting of CSR news coverage using topic modeling • Chuqing Dong; Yafei Zhang • “This study explored multifaceted corporate social responsibility (CSR) covered in major news media in the UK, US, Mainland China, and Hong Kong (HK) from 2000 to 2016. Under the theoretical framework of agenda setting, 4,487 CSR-related news articles from both business and nonbusiness news sources were analyzed using computer-assisted content analysis (LDA) techniques. This study contributes to CSR communication research by adding a global media perspective regarding what CSR means and should focus on.

Identification with stereotyped social groups: Counter-stereotyped protagonists and stereotyped supporting casts influence on symbolic racism • Joshua Dunn, Texas Tech University; Bryan McLaughlin, Texas Tech University • While exposure to stereotyped minority characters reinforces prejudice, when viewers identify with counter-stereotyped characters prejudice tends to decrease. This study examines the juxtaposition of identifying with either a counter-stereotyped Black protagonist or a stereotyped supporting cast. Participants read a prompt (group vs. individual salience), watched a television episode, then reported their identification with the protagonist and the social group. Findings suggest that individual identification reduces prejudice, while social identification with a stereotyped group does not.

Making sense of Harvey: An exploration of how journalists find meaning in disaster • Gretchen Dworznik-Hoak • Thirty journalists who covered hurricane Harvey and who also lived in the areas affected were interviewed in order to explore how journalists make sense of and cope with their exposure to the trauma associated with a natural disaster. Baumeister’s (1991) four needs for meaning framework was used as a guide to uncover how journalists used justification, purpose, efficacy and self-worth to find meaning in their traumatic experiences. Implications for news managers and future research are discussed.

Engaging the Dark Side: Fictional Antagonists and Real World Attitudes toward Criminals • Rebecca Frazer, The Ohio State University; Emily Moyer-Gusé • This work investigates whether moral salience (vice salience vs. virtue salience) and the revelation timing of a character’s immoral behavior in a fictional narrative (late reveal vs. early reveal) impact identification with morally ambiguous antagonists. Further, real-world attitudinal outcomes of antagonist identification are examined. A two-part study (n = 173) demonstrated that identification with a fictional antagonist can significantly impact real-world attitudes. Additionally, gender differences emerged in the impact of revelation timing on identification.

The Hostile Media Effect in Coverage of International Relations: Testing the Relationship Between Source, Nationalism and Perceived Source Bias • Guy Golan, Center for Media and Public Opinion; T. Franklin Waddell, University of Florida; Matthew Barnidge, The University of Alabama • The significant expansion of government-sponsored news organizations across traditional and social media places mediated engagement of foreign audiences at the heart of the global news ecosystem and modern international relations. While governments compete to build and shape the desired foreign policy frames, there is some reason to believe that foreign audiences may view foreign media sources as biased. The current study aims to investigate this possibility. Drawing upon the rich body of scholarship on the hostile media phenomenon, the study experimentally compares perceived media bias in foreign versus domestic news sources.

A crisis in pictures: Visual framing of the opioid epidemic by the Cincinnati Enquirer • Matthew Haught, University of Memphis; Erin Willis, University of Colorado Boulder; Kathleen I. Alaimo, U of Colorado • Local newspapers often are on the front lines of reporting about drugs, particularly the current ongoing opioid epidemic. The present study builds on a case study of the Cincinnati Enquirer’s heroin and opioid reporting by considering the visuals used in the reporting. Thorough a visual framing analysis, this research finds that while the previous researchers’ case study found a dominance of thematic framing in reporting, its accompanying photojournalism tends to be more episodic in nature.

Spatial Dimensions of Latin American Journalists’ Role Perceptions: A Hierarchy of Influence Analysis • Vanessa Higgins Joyce, Texas State University; Summer Harlow, University of Houston; Amy Schmitz Weiss, SDSU; Rosental Alves • Local, national, regional, and global networks of power intersect in this digital era, raising questions of how re-conceived notions of space are transforming the hierarchy of influences model. This study surveyed (N=1,543) the journalism community from 20 Latin American countries examining how spatial influences are changing journalists’ role conceptions. Findings suggest that, at the organization-structure level, spatial dimensions are related to role perceptions, and regional-institutional forces remain strong influences over how journalists see their roles.

An Examination of Information Behaviors Surrounding Controversial Sociopolitical Issues: Roles of Moral Emotions and Gender • Cheng Hong, Virginia Commonwealth University; Weiting Tao, University of Miami; Wanhsiu Tsai, University of Miami; Bo Ra Yook, University of Miami • Given the emotion-laden nature and moral considerations of controversial sociopolitical issues, this study examines two key antecedents of information behaviors regarding controversial issues. We focus on the under-researched emotions by investigating the effects of moral emotions induced by controversial issues, and a key demographic factor, gender, on information behaviors toward such issues. Results of this study highlight the significant role of moral emotions and expand theoretical understanding of public advocacy on highly divisive sociopolitical issues.

Will Consumers Silence Themselves when Brands Speak Up about Sociopolitical Issues? Applying the Spiral of Silence Theory to Consumer Boycott and Buycott Behaviors • Cheng Hong, Virginia Commonwealth University; Cong Li, University of Miami • To investigate boycotting and buycotting as responses to brand activism, this study adopted a 2 (consumer stance: consistent vs. inconsistent with the focal company) × 2 (public support of consumer stance: majority vs. minority) between-subjects experiment, with a third factor (perceived credibility of public opinion survey) measured. Findings showed brand attitude mediated the effect of consumer stance on boycott and buycott intention, moderated by magnitude of public support and perceived credibility of public opinion survey.

The Safety Dance: Examining the Reasoned Action Approach in Severe Weather Preparedness • Jue Hou, University of Alabama; Cory Armstrong; Nathan Towery • In light of the recent national-scale severe weather hits from Hurricane Michael to wildfires on the West Coast and blizzards in the East, this study sought to investigate factors that may advance residents’ disaster preparedness behaviors. In particular, this paper examined the model of Reasoned Action Approach (RAA) under the context of severe weather preparedness. A number of natural disaster-related concepts, from prior experience to the perceived knowledge base, were examined regarding their predictive ability towards subjects’ behaviors against severe weather outbreaks. With data collected from 1,035 participants, findings indicated that people’s disaster preparedness behaviors generally fit the reasoned action approach model. In specific, background factors would predict behavioral beliefs, normative beliefs, as well as control beliefs. These factors consequentially influenced people’s preparatory intentions, which would eventually impact extreme weather preparedness behaviors. Academic insights regarding severe weather protection as well as practical implications on public disaster education were discussed.

They said it’s ‘fake’: Effect of ‘fake news’ online comments on information quality judgments and information authentication • Rosie Jahng, Wayne State University; Elizabeth Stoycheff, Wayne State University; Scott Burgess; Annisa Meirita Patimurani Rochadiat, Wayne State University; Kai Xu, Wayne State University • Using a mixed-design online experiment, this study examined how individuals determine the quality of information they encounter online and what factors motivate individuals to engage in information verification and authentication processes. The effect of a heuristic cue typically encountered when reading online news articles, i.e., online comments labeling presented contents as ‘fake news’ was tested. Results showed main effects of ‘fake news’ label in online comments on participants’ accuracy in identifying fake news, need to authenticate the information encountered, and their reliance on legacy news channels to authenticate the information.

Press, Protests and The People: How Media Framing and Visual Communication Affects Support for Black Civil Rights Protests • Danielle Kilgo; Rachel Mourao, Michigan State University • This study tests the impact of news frames on audience support for a civil rights social movement. Using a 3 X 2 experimental design, we explore how frames and visuals affect audiences’ criticism of police and protesters, support, and identification with the movement. Findings show legitimizing narratives have limited impact on increasing support and identification with protesters, and police criticism. Delegitimizing frames increase criticism towards protesters, decrease support and identification, and decrease criticism of police.

Children’s Fear Responses to News: A Survey on Fear Evoked by Children’s Television News • Mariska Kleemans, Radboud University Nijmegen; Ming Ebbinkhuijsen, Radboud University Nijmegen; Serena Daalmans, Radboud University Nijmegen • To get up-to-date insights into children’s fear responses to children’s television news, a survey was conducted among 892 children (9-12 y/o). Results show that children’s television news is still an important source of information. However, a majority of children reports being frightened by this news, in particular girls and younger children. Thus, it is necessary –for both theoretical and practical reasons– to further investigate how news can be more adapted to children’s social-emotional needs.

Examining the Paths of Influence between Individual Motivators, Information Behaviors, and Outcomes in Disaster Risk Reduction • Chih-Hui Lai, National Chiao Tung U • Building on the integrative models of media effects and audience activity, this study conducts a cross-lagged analysis of two-wave data in Taiwan. The results show that the relationships between individual characteristics and disaster risk reduction (DRR) information behaviors are driven both by media effects and selection effects, depending on the type of information behavior. Different mediating mechanisms exist as personal factors influence DRR information seeking and sharing differently, which then predict outcomes of DRR.

Complementary and Competitive Framing: Framing Effects, Attitude Volatility or Attitude Resistance? • Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University; Yan Wah Leung, Nanyang Technological University • This study is designed to answer two big questions regarding framing theory. First, what happens when frames are challenged? Second, how resistant are the opinions that initial frames induce? 1,006 participants completed an online experiment where they were randomly assigned to first view a blog post with either complementary or competitive framing on driverless cars. Participants also viewed a blog post that challenged the stance of the first blog post. Participants indicated their attitudes and levels of support for driverless cars after viewing each blog post. Results revealed that complementary frames polarized opinions, while competitive frames neutralized opinions. Further, competitive frames induced more resistant opinions than complementary frames did. Overall, we found that attitude and support were exceptionally susceptible to new, antagonistic information. Taken together, this study found that framing effects are typically ephemeral and easily challenged by new information. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Power Exemplification of Minority Members in the News Can Influence Attribution of Responsibility for Social Issues, Intergroup Attitudes, dehumanization, and Aggression • Minjie Li • This study experimentally investigates how the power exemplification of minority members (i.e. High-Power vs. Low-Power Transgender Exemplar) in the news narrative interacts with the audience’s sex to redirect people’s responsibility attributions for transgender issues, intergroup attitudes, dehumanization, and aggression towards transgender people. The findings demonstrated that after reading the news article featuring a high-power transgender woman, cisgender women respondents reported significantly higher levels of transphobia, individual attribution of transgender issues, and dehumanization of transgender people’s human nature.

Exploring the Role of Perceptual and Affective Factors in Predicting K-Pop Gratifications and Transcultural Social Networking • Carolyn Lin; Suji Park; Xiaowen Xu; Yukyung Lee, University of Connecticut • This study examines how K-pop (Korean popular music) promotes social media use among non-Asian college students via testing a Transcultural Communication Networking Model. Findings indicate that perceived social distance, cultural familiarity and perceived cultural similarities (between K-pop and American pop music) have either an indirect or direct effect on attitudes toward K-pop. While attitudes are linked to K-pop gratifications, these two variables and perceived cultural dissimilarities contribute to transcultural networking frequency on social media.

The Effects of Framing and Advocacy Expectancy on Belief Importance and Issue Attitude • Jiawei Liu, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Min-Hsin Su; Douglas McLeod; Joseph Abisaid • Message frames have been found to influence relevant issue attitudes by influencing the weight of issue considerations emphasized in the message. This study investigates differences in the framing effects of advocacy groups, depending on whether the message fits readers’ expectations for the communicator’s issue position (expected advocacy) or not (unexpected advocacy). Findings suggest that frames with unexpected advocacy significantly influenced readers’ perceived belief importance, which in turn influenced issue attitudes.

25 Years of Thematic and Episodic Framing Research on News: A Disciplinary Self-Reflection through an Integrative Process Model of Framing • Lesa Hatley Major, Indiana University; Stacie Meihaus Jankowski • This current study analyzes over 25 years (1991 – 2018) of research in academic journals on thematic and episodic frames in news coverage of social issues. As Peters states at the onset of a lengthy piece on the struggle of the communication field to define its purpose and institutional focus,“self-reflection is a key part of healthy social science” (1986, p. 527). Our purpose in this paper is twofold: 1) an examination of the research conducted on thematic and episodic frames in news coverage of social issues (1991 – 2018) using Matthes’ coding concepts from a 2009 study on framing research, and 2) an exploratory exercise of systematically organizing and analyzing our research using deVreese’s integrative process of framing model (2005) to understand our findings about episodic and thematic frames in news coverage, while positing a path forward for research on these frames in news coverage. Without the first part of this study, we could not undertake the second part of our theoretical exploration. While we do not address the current debate on framing research, it’s fractured state or declared demise, we believe our work in this study sheds light on the value of framing as a theoretical and practical foundation and articulate one path for its continued use to conduct research in communication.

#Blocked: Engaging with Politicians on Social Media in the Age of Trump • Gina Masullo Chen, University of Texas at Austin • This study sought to understand the phenomenon of Americans being blocked on social media by politicians, including President Trump. Using qualitative interview data (N = 22), this analysis reveals that blocking constitutes a threat to democratic norms and damages American’s perceptions of political actors and the health of democracy. Findings also show that some Americans perceive blocking by Trump as a badge of honor, while blocking by other politicians is an unfair act of silencing.

Viewing media about President Trump’s dietary habits and fast food consumption: Partisan differences and implications for public health • Jessica Myrick, Pennsylvania State University • A nationally representative survey (N = 1,050) assessed connections between Americans’ attention to media about President Donald Trump’s preference for fast food and public perceptions and intentions regarding fast food. Results revealed a significant positive relationship between attention to media about Trump’s diet and perceptions that fast food is socially acceptable, as well as intentions to consume it. Additionally, some differences emerged for audiences who identified as Republicans versus Democrats.

Credibility Effects of Fact-Checking Labels on Social Media News Posts • Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, University of Connecticut; Mike Schmierbach, Pennsylvania State University; Alyssa Appelman, Northern Kentucky University; Michael Boyle, West Chester University • With most Internet users now getting news from social media, there is growing concern about how to verify the content that appears on these platforms. This study experimentally tests the effects of fact-checking labels on social media news posts on credibility, virality, and information seeking. Results indicate that fact-checking labels do not have a beneficial effect on credibility perceptions of individual news posts, but that their presence does increase judgments of the site’s quality overall.

Testing the Viability of Emotions and Issue Involvement as Predictors of CSA Response Behaviors • Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; Minhee Choi, University of South Carolina; Jane Weatherred, University of South Carolina; Nanlan Zhang, University of South Carolina • Corporate Social Advocacy (CSA) has become more prominent as companies continue taking stands on politically charged social-justice issues. This study examines emotions and issue involvement as antecedents of theory of planned behavior variables (attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control) to predict CSA response behaviors. A survey (N = 373) was conducted to examine the public’s response to a recent CSA example–Nike’s ad campaign featuring Colin Kaepernick. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The Representation of Stigma in U.S. Newspapers • Scott Parrott, The University of Alabama; Nicholas Eckhart, The University of Alabama • A content analysis examined the representation of stigma in 1,524 stories published by U.S. news outlets between 2000 and 2018. Stigma was discussed in relation to dehumanized conditions such as schizophrenia, drug addiction, and HIV/AIDS. However, journalists frequently trivialized stigma by referencing it in relation to football teams, food, and objects that do not experience the stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination inflicted upon certain social groups.

Something is better than nothing: How the presence of comments may decrease the sharing of fake news on social media • John Petit; Cong Li, University of Miami; Barbara Millet; Khudejah Ali; Ruoyu Sun, University of Miami • This study used a between-subjects experimental design to examine the effect of user comments on news readers’ perceived news credibility and sharing intention. It was found that, regardless of the type of news, participants who read news with no comments were most likely to share the news. This effect was mediated by perceived news credibility and news liking. These experimental results have important theoretical and practical implications for future research on fake news on social media.

Interlocking Among American News Media • Adam Saffer, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Deborah Dwyer, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jennifer Harker, West Virginia University; Chris Etheridge, University of Arkansas Little Rock; Mariam Turner; Daniel Riffe, UNC-Chapel Hill • In today’s media landscape, companies seem to be more intertwined than ever. But are they? Is interlocking affecting journalists and the content being produced? This examines the networks at play among today’s media organizations and corporate businesses by using a three-method design. The first phase network analyzed interlocks among news media companies’ board of directors. The second phase surveyed editors of newspapers owned by these companies to assess the influence on the newsroom from the board and parent company. In the third phase, news coverage of directors and their affiliated organizations was content analyzed for newspapers whose editors perceived pressure “from above.” The network analysis results suggest a monolithic structure that Han (1988) and Winter (1988) feared has emerged. Unlike previous studies, we took this investigation two steps further to examine whether interlocks were pressuring newsrooms and influencing the news content produced. For about one third of survey respondents, interlocks were seen by pressured editors as having influence on the newsroom. Pressured editors indicated significantly stronger perceptions of financial pressures emanating from the newspaper’s boardroom, board of directors, “ownership/upper management,” and business interests than editors who did not indicate pressure from interlocks or their corporate parent. So, what was the pressured newsrooms’ coverage of the interlocks? Routine coverage of interlocks and their affiliated organizations was lacking. Even the disclosure of a relationship between a director or affiliated organization and the newspaper was disclosed half of the time and traditional journalistic scrutiny was applied to less than half of the time.

Effects of Narrative Political Ads on Message and Candidate Attitudes • Fuyuan Shen, Pennsylvania State University; Guolan Yang, Pennsylvania State University; Jeff Conlin, Pennsylvania State University; Pratiti Diddi, Pennsylvania State University • This study examined the effects of narrative political ads on message attitudes and candidate evaluations. We conducted a 2 x 2 x 2 between-subjects online experiment whereby participants viewed political ads manipulated by message valence (positive vs. negative), message format (narrative vs. non-narrative) and message focus (issue vs. character). Results suggested that both message valence and message format had some significant main and interactions on message and candidate evaluations.

How does Profanity Propagate Online? Measuring the Virality of Swearing on Social Media • Yunya Song, Hong Kong Baptist University; K. Hazel Kwon, Arizona State University; Jianliang Xu; Xin Huang; Shiying Li, Brown University • Swearing, also known as profanity, refers to the behavior of using foul language that is often linked to online incivility. In China, state government has been actively censoring profanity under the rationale of protecting civility in digital space. This study examines the diffusion of profanity in social media, based on the case of China’s microblogging service, Sina Weibo. The study utilizes computational methods to reconstruct the cascade networks of sampled swearing and non-swearing posts and compares various structural features of diffusion networks, including size, depth, width, and interlayer width ratios, between the propagation of swearing and non-swearing posts. The study contributes to the understanding of the diffusion process of profane speech online, and expands discussions about the impact of online incivility in shaping online discursive culture in China.

The Rise of Fact-Checking in Asia • Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Lim Darren, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Weng Wai Mak, Nanyang Technological University Singapore; Shawn Tan, Nanyang Technological University Singapore • This study seeks to understand the roles, ethics, and routines of fact-checking organisations in Asia through interviews with 11 fact-checkers in the region. Results showed most fact-checkers developed similar routines whether they have a journalistic background or not. Leveraging of social media and technology were common answers given in searching for issues to fact-check, with those single operator or smaller fact-checking operation being dependent on their audience to bring trending issues to their attention. When it comes to the ethical principles that guide them, our participants identified the values of impartiality, independence, and accuracy. Finally, our participants conceptualised their role in society as educators, disseminators, and watchdogs.

Serial Tweeters: The individuals and organizations that sustain attention to the climate issue on Twitter • Luping Wang, Cornell University; Aimei Yang; Kjerstin Thorson • The study examines a group of serial participants who consistently tweeted about the climate change issue over five years. The findings suggest a once loosely connected set of Twitter users have become more akin to a community of practice over time. Their network positions in serial participants’ network correlate with their positions in the broader network of Twitter users discussing the climate issue. Organizational actors continue to play a strong role as attention hubs.

Who speaks for the majority? Comparing exemplar indicators of public opinion in a social media setting • Jinping Wang, Pennsylvania State University; Mike Schmierbach, Pennsylvania State University • This study explores both the origins and consequences of perceived opinion climates in an online environment, combining exemplification theory and the spiral of silence. Using a 3 x 3 experimental design, we examine the effects of exemplars within news stories and subsequent social media comments. The results showed that the news exemplar shaped the majority opinion perception among one’s close friends, which predicted one’s willingness to express opinions, moderated by fear of isolation.

The Medium is (Indeed) the Message: The State of Social Media Research at the AEJMC National Convention • Amanda J. Weed, Kennesaw State University; Chris McCollough, Columbus State University; Karen Freberg, University of Louisville; Enakshi Roy, Western Kentucky University • A systematic review of AEJMC national convention abstracts (n = 1,345) examined the state of social media research from 2009 through 2018. Analysis of abstracts examined volume of social media research, what platforms were studied, which research methodologies were employed, and how research was practically applied in 10 unique content areas of journalism and mass communication. Findings revealed social media research has grown from 3.8% to 25.0% of total research presented at the national convention.

The Public and the News Media: How Americans Think About Journalists and the Media Before and After Trump • Lars Willnat, Syracuse University; David Weaver; Jian SHI, Syracuse University • Based on two national surveys conducted among U.S. citizens in 2014 and 2018, this study analyzes how political polarization and social media use might affect perceptions of the news media. While perceptions of the media improved from 2014 to 2018, Republicans have become significantly more negative in their views of the media. Traditional media use, social media interactivity, and perceived effects of social media on journalism were associated with more positive evaluations of the media.

A New Era of Para-social Relationship: Mapping the Value of Social Media Influencers • Shupei Yuan, Northern Illinois University; chen lou • The current study investigated the determinants of para-social relationship (PSR) between social media influencers and their followers and the effect of PSR in explaining the value of influencers via an online survey. Results showed that influencer traits and fairness of communication procedure significantly predicted the strength of PSR. PSR was a significant mediator that drove followers’ interests in influencer-mentioned products. The findings extended our understanding of PSR and provided practitioners insights in enhancing the relationship strategically.

Hostile Media Perception and Intention to Participate in Public Discussion of Mental Health: An Examination of the Role of Involvement • Xueying Zhang • The current study tested the “corrective action hypothesis” (see Rojas, 2000) by analyzing intentions to discuss mental health issues publicly after the exposure of news coverage of a mass shooting using a “dangerous people” vs. “dangerous gun” frame. 300 respondents were recruited through Qualtrics national research panels. The results of the survey suggested potential benefits of employing HMP (hostile media perception) in educating the public by appealing to empathy and value systems.

Keeping Up with the In-Crowd: The Extent and Type of Substance Use in Celebrity Gossip on Twitter • lara zwarun, UMSL • Following celebrity lifestyles via Twitter is a popular pastime. This study examines how often references to alcohol, tobacco, and drugs appear in tweets sent by celebrities and gossip media, and on webpages linked to in these tweets. It also considers whether the substances are portrayed in a positive or a negative light, using measures based on social cognitive theory. Substance references appeared occasionally but consistently in tweets, whether from celebrities or gossip organizations, and more frequently in content on the linked webpages. Portrayals were varied: some contain humor, slang, and appealing photographs that make substance use sound interesting and attractive, while others mentioned negative consequences. The findings suggest that people who follow celebrities and celebrity gossip via Twitter are likely to encounter substance use messages, and that some, but not all, of these messages may glamorize that substance use.

Student Competition

“Anyone in their right mind wouldn’t create it”: Online community formation through shitposting • Yi En Ho; Dion Loh; Tsi Ying Au; Celine Mok • This exploratory study provides a structured understanding of shitposting and examines its form and role in online community formation by conducting interviews and a content analysis on Facebook’s largest closed shitposting group, Spongebob Shitposting. Results revealed that members defined shitposting as posts with unfunny and nonsensical humour that require online cultural literacy to understand, having a recognisable form that are created with varying intentions. Findings also gave insight to shitposting’s role in forming a community.

Examining Media Modality and Social Media Engagement: A Content Analysis of Police Departments’ Facebook Posts • Rachel Italiano, Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University; Anthony Ciaramella, Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University; Jessica Wyers, Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University • This content analysis examined if modality (text, photo, video) used by police departments (PDs) in Facebook posts impacts post engagement. Poisson regression results show that modality impacts post engagement. Posts using photos and videos increased engagement. Significant differences were found between large city PDs and small city PDs. Small city PD posts have less engagement than large city PDs. Overall, these results suggest how PDs can use social media as a community engagement tool.

A serial mediation model of media exposure on body shame: The role of internalization of appearance ideals and self-objectification • Lin Li, Michigan State University • Building on objectification theory and media effects research, this study found that image-focused magazine and Instagram use was associated with higher levels of internalization of appearance ideals, which in turn was related to increased self-objectification; this greater self-objectification translated into greater body shame. Image-focused TV and Facebook use were directly related to greater body shame. Snapchat use was negatively related to body shame through reduced internalization of appearance ideals.

Where Local Meets Plethora: Patterns of Media Usage and Community Integration • Meredith Metzler • Communication scholarship is seeing a renewed interest in the question of the impact of declining local news media. Underlying much of this research is the assumption that local news media will be used if it exists. This qualitative study uses the case studies of two rural communities to understand which media connect and disconnect individuals from their geographic community. The findings reveal that media use often relied on affinity for outlets and were contextually dependent.

Disposition Theory and Protest: The Influence of Media Frames and Individual Disposition on Audience Response to Protest • Hailey Grace Steele, University of Alabama • This study examined the influence of news frames and individual disposition on audience response to protest. The study sought to determine whether the social group depicted as the main actor in news coverage of protest would influence audience support for protest. Informed by disposition theory and tested using experimental design, the study found that certain audience characteristics can significantly predict attitudes toward protest based on the types of media content to which audiences are exposed.

Beyond the Differential Gains Model: The Effects of Authoritarian Orientation, Social Media Use, and Political Discussion on Political Participation in Taiwan and South Korea • Yan Su, The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University; XIZHU XIAO • In an attempt to investigate the roles of authoritarian orientation, social media use, and political discussion in shaping political participation in transitional democracies, this study analyzes nationwide surveys from two third-wave democracies: Taiwan and South Korea. The regression results show that in both societies, the effects of social media use and political discussion are positively associated with political participation; authoritarian orientation was only negatively associated with political participation in Taiwan. This study does not find significant moderating effects of communication variables on their relationships with political participation, which expands extant research on the conventional differential gains model research that mainly focused on liberal democratic countries. A significant three-way interaction also emerged in South Korea.

#Ageism: Exploring aging issues on Twitter • Tammy Walkner, University of Iowa • Twitter is a microblogging site that many people use to share their opinions on various topics. It’s not just young people who tweet – 28% percent of Twitter users are 55 or older. People in this older age demographic are using Twitter to speak out about ageism and the discrimination they have faced. This research examined tweets using #ageism, #agism, and keywords ageism and agism to investigate if the tweets discuss stigma or activism.

Moeller Student Paper Competition

Does Internet Access Still Matter?: A Lesson from China – How VPN Usage Influences People’s Attitude towards China-US Trade War • yezi hu, Washington State University • Digital divide studies have shifted from access problem to use problem because of the high Internet penetration in the world. However, the case of China is challenging such an optimistic bias. China has the most Internet users in the world but also has strict censorship. Chinese people have to use a VPN account to access the uncensored information on blocked websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and Youtube. Using a survey, this research studied predictors of VPN usage in China and found that age and income play pivotal rules. Moreover, revolving around a case of China-US trade war, this study found that the more frequently people use VPN, the more they support American positions. This study alerted us of the threat from censorship to the Internet access and made us rethink the definition of access. Therefore, it extended our understanding of access studies of the digital divide.

Two Sides of the Bed: Does Mood Affect Consumer Response to Controversial Advertising? • Chris Noland, University of South Carolina • Mood management theory posits that people try to maintain intensity of good moods and diminish intensity of bad moods. This study uses mood management theory to examine the interplay between mood and controversial advertising. The results suggest people in positive moods have more positive attitudes toward non-controversial ads and less positive attitudes toward controversial ads. Conversely, people in negative moods have more favorable attitudes toward controversial ads and less favorable attitudes when evaluating non-controversial ads.

Post Facto: Experimental Test of a Game-Based News Literacy Intervention • Tamar Wilner, University of Texas at Austin • “Online misinformation abounds, from the long debunked link between autism and the MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) vaccine, to doubts over climate change, to rumors that have stoked ethnic violence in Myanmar, India, and Sri Lanka. One way to address the misinformation problem may be news literacy, which aims to help people think more critically about the media they consume. But little is known about whether the current crop of news literacy interventions empower people to discern credible from non-credible information online, especially in the contexts of social media and news websites – a skill I call “digital news literacy.” In addition, most news literacy curricula do not take into account research findings related to selective exposure, which can substantially influence what media a person consumes and, therefore, what information they’re exposed to. This study sought to test, using a two-condition, single-level experiment (N = 228), whether a game-based news literacy intervention could improve the news literacy of adults outside a formal educational setting. Results showed that playing the game did not increase news literacy scores by a statistically significant amount compared with the control condition, in which participants played an unrelated game. However, people with more education were significantly more likely to score higher on news literacy, compared to those with less education. The results highlight the difficulty in affecting news literacy using short-term interventions, given that news literacy skills are likely built up over many years.

< 2019 Abstracts

From Puck to Charlie Hebdo: Magazines as Sites of Satire, Parody, and Political Resistance • Kevin Lerner, Marist College • While satire magazines often exist on the fringes of culture, they have a long tradition and illustrate the ways in which the magazine form allows for formal experimentation and a critique of power that would not be acceptable in the bounds of daily journalism. This chapter offers a historical and sociological overview of satirical magazines, arguing that their broader mission includes criticism not only of political power, but also of media power. Magazines provided a perfect vehicle for such discourse against discourse in that, unlike books, they were created originally as collections of materials. Readers of magazines are forced to become critical consumers as they turn from page to page, encountering modes of discourse often antithetical to each other, and some, such as cartoons, that are non-discursive. Satirical magazines and their critical take on institutions and authority also maintain a particularly strong place in the maintenance of freedom of expression—both in open and in repressive societies.

Breasts and bodies: A content analysis of women’s representation in contemporary images • Goodman J. Robyn, University of Florida; Lincoln Lu, University of Florida • Women continue to experience great normative pressures to conform their appearances to an impossible ideal. These pressures come from many sources, from popular media, to peer groups, and even romantic partners. What shapes and sizes of bodies are being normalized in popular contemporary media plays a pivotal role in these normative pressures. This content analysis examines body and breast size norms in the most popular magazines and social media images.

Uncover the magic of visual contrast in print advertisements • Sung Eun Park, The University of Southern Indiana • A common tactic used by advertisers in weight-loss product ads is to use before/after photos showing significant weight loss by a model. In this study, the impact of visual complexity and visual contrast on audience’s evaluation of an advertised weight-loss product has been examined. The result suggests that attitude toward the product, risk perception, and purchase intention are highly influenced by the interaction of visual complexity and visual contrast. More specifically, the impact of before/after photo is different on past users of dietary supplements in comparison to non-users. In particular, users’ body image perception and satisfaction with the dietary supplements they used before influence the way before/after photos work. Non-users of dietary supplements who are in the market for weight-loss products might find an ad featuring before/after photos more appealing and are more likely to buy the product.

Picturing the President: Visual analysis of the Donald Trump presidency on U.S. magazine covers between 2016 and 2018 • Newly Paul, University of North Texas; Gregory Perreault • This paper uses framing theory and visual discourse analysis to examine the representations of Donald Trump on three popular magazine covers, The New Yorker, TIME, and Newsweek, from 2016 to 2018. A total of 74 photographs and illustrations were examined for aspects such as facial expressions, background, use of color, lighting, and presence of symbols associated with the office of the president. Our findings indicate that the covers showed Trump as incompetent, destructive, corrupt, and unconcerned about the American people.

Women of Color, Delegitimization, and Exotic Sexualization on Rolling Stone Magazine Covers • Ashley Walter, Penn State University • Research has shown that women of color are featured significantly less on magazine covers in comparison to white men and women. This paper argues that women of color are also underrepresented on the covers of Rolling Stone magazine, and when shown, are sexualized differently in comparison to white women. Women of color early in Rolling Stone’s history were often un(der)credited, whereas in later issues they are often hypersexualized and exoticized. While also sexualized, white women’s sexuality is often portrayed as playful.

< 2019 Abstracts

Open Competition

Boycotts, Blacklists, and De-Platforming: The ACLU Wrestles with Private Censorship • Stephen Bates, UNLV • In the late 1940s and the 1950s, the ACLU wrestled with the concept of “private censorship”–protests against speech that have the effect of suppressing the speech. The issues arose over identity, such as the NAACP’s protest against the TV adaptation of “Amos ‘n’ Andy”; over morality, such as the Legion of Decency’s protest against the film “The Miracle”; and over ideology, such as the American Legion’s protest against films featuring Jose Ferrer and other purported communists and fellow travelers. The issues were difficult, and the ACLU tried various tests and formulations for distinguishing proper counter-speech from improper suppressive speech. This paper is based on internal documents from the ACLU, now in the Princeton University archives.

Lost in translation: The disturbing decision to limit access to audio court files for podcasters • Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina • In its October 2017 decision in Undisclosed LLC v. The State, the Georgia Supreme Court recognized that Georgia Rule 21 allows for public access to court files including both inspecting and copying records. However, the court held that a court reporter’s audio files from trial are not actually court records because only the official transcripts, not the audio tapes, are filed with the court. Therefore, audio tapes cannot be copied by the media for use in podcast production. This article explores the problems with this Supreme Court decision and argues that the courts need to revisit the right to access and produce a definitive answer to the current dilemma for emerging media in the wake of true crime podcast growth.

Troll Storms and Tort Liability for Speech Urging Action by Others • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper examines when speakers, consistent with First Amendment principles of free expression, can be held tortiously responsible for the actions of others with whom they have no contractual or employer-employee relationship. Recent lawsuits against Daily Stormer publisher Andrew Anglin for sparking “troll storms” provide timely analytical springboards. The issue is particularly problematic when a speaker’s message urging action does not fall into an unprotected category of expression such as incitement or true threats and thus, were it not for tort law, would be fully protected. The paper also reviews the U.S. Supreme Court’s “authorized, directed, or ratified” test for vicarious liability established more than thirty-five years ago in the pre-Internet era case of NAACP v. Claiborne Hardware Co. The paper concludes by proposing a framework for vicarious liability when speakers urge action that results in others’ tortious conduct.

Media Mea Culpas and Journalistic Transparency: When News Outlets Publicly Investigate Their Reportage • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper examines some important legal issues and implications surrounding reports commissioned by journalism organizations like Rolling Stone to investigative their own journalistic flaws and failures. Specifically, the paper explores how such reports carry the danger in cases such as Eramo v. Rolling Stone, LLC of blurring the crucial line separating journalism ethics from media law. Additionally, the paper examines the possible impact of third-party reports on the critical issue of truth and falsity in defamation lawsuits.

Wither Zauderer, Blossom Heightened Scrutiny? • Clay Calvert, University of Florida • This paper examines how the United States Supreme Court’s 2018 decisions in the First Amendment cases of National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra and Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees muddle an already disorderly compelled-speech doctrine. Specifically, dual five-to-four decisions in Becerra and Janus raise key questions about the level of scrutiny – either a heightened test or a deferential variant of rational basis review – against which statutes compelling expression should be measured. Critically, Becerra illustrates the willingness of the Court’s conservative justices to narrowly confine the aging compelled-speech test from Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel. Furthermore, the paper explores how Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurrence in a third 2018 decision – Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission – heightens problems with the compelled-speech doctrine. The paper concludes by proposing multiple criteria for the Court to consider when determining the level of scrutiny to use in compelled-speech cases.

Exploring Legal Solutions to Address the Problem of Hate Speech in the United States • Caitlin Carlson, Seattle University • This paper explores potential legal remedies for addressing the proliferation of hate speech in the United States. Solutions include an anti-hate speech law, a change in the federal threats statute, group defamation, and reconsidering intentional infliction of emotional distress as a viable response for victims of hate speech. The strengths and weaknesses of each approach are analyzed in light of existing jurisprudence and intentional infliction of emotional distress is identified as the best path forward.

‘Funding Secured:’ A Forty Million Dollar Tweet that Highlights First Amendment Issues Associated with Regulating Speech on Social Media • Samuel Cohn • The following article is written in the wake of a legal battle that began in Augusts 2018. The parties involved are Elon Musk and the Securities and Exchange Commission. To limit the discussion of Musk’s behavior on Twitter to Securities law, largely the way mass media has done to this point, ignores Constitutional realities with respect to the use of social media in 2019. It is true that the legal battle between the SEC and Musk has more significance for corporations and their executives than the average person posting online. This reality does not discount the gravity of Musk’s situation. It is also true that Elon Musk is not the average Twitter user – he is a billionaire with twenty-five million followers and stands at the helm of multiple corporations. And yet, Elon Musk is an American citizen with the same rights as any other American in the United States. As such, he deserves the same constitutional protections. We can look at his recent involvement with the SEC as a prime example of the issues associated with regulating individual speech online as well as the chilling effects that stand to follow if said regulation is executed without considering the potentially adverse effects to the exercise of protected speech. Federal agencies, such as the SEC, should act with extreme caution when regulating the communication of individuals on social media as the legal boundaries of this new mode of communication are not fully understood.

Privacy Exceptionalism Unless It’s Unexceptional: How the American Government Misuses the Spirit of Privacy in Two Different Ways to Justify both Nondisclosure and Surveillance • Benjamin W. Cramer, Bellisario College of Communications, Pennsylvania State University • This article explores the American government’s contradictory stances toward privacy, via an analysis of the jurisprudence surrounding the Freedom of Information Act and the Privacy Act, while comparing that to surveillance-oriented jurisprudence surrounding the actions of the national security and law enforcement establishments. The article argues that the government has displayed two contradictory stances toward privacy in these endeavors: it cites privacy concerns to withhold documents while ignoring privacy during its mass surveillance of citizens. This contradiction allows the government to violate the spirit of government transparency and the value of privacy in two different ways while becoming more secretive across the board. The article starts with an analysis of trends that have enabled agency rejections of FOIA requests for often facetious reasons of personal privacy – what researchers have dubbed “privacy exceptionalism.” This is followed by a similar analysis of the Privacy Act as another example of the American government’s professed concern for protecting personal privacy. The article then reviews how the national security and law enforcement establishments have largely ignored personal privacy as they conduct widespread electronic surveillance of citizens. The evidence will point to a new type of “privacy unexceptionalism” because privacy values have been unable to overcome the excesses of the surveillance state. The article concludes that the contradictions between these two views of privacy in the American government have enabled new patterns of secrecy and nondisclosure.

Past Imperfect: Packingham, Public Forums, and Tensions Between Media Law’s Present and Internet Regulation’s Future • Anthony Fargo, Indiana University • Justice Anthony Kennedy suggested in Packingham v. North Carolina that the internet had supplanted physical spaces as essential public forums for many users. The analogy is problematic because public forums are usually government-controlled spaces, while internet platforms are privately owned. Comparing the internet to other media generally is similarly problematic because the internet has no comparison. This paper argues that courts should view the internet as a unique medium with unique issues.

Forum Delegation: The Birth and Transposition of a New Approach to Public Forum Doctrine • Brett Johnson, University of Missouri; Shane Epping, University of Missouri • This paper explores the concept of forum delegation: the power of government officials to suggest which forums to allow speakers to use. The concept is born out of a recent legal battle between the University of Minnesota and conservative speaker Ben Shapiro, in which the UMN required Shapiro to speak in a venue away from the heart of campus due to concerns over the school’s ability to provide adequate security for the event. The paper first analyzes the UMN case to assess the constitutionality of forum delegation in the context of regulating speech and public universities. Next, it applies Robert Post’s theory of constitutional domains to transpose forum delegation from the public university context to situations in which cities must deal with controversial speakers. The goal in explicating the concept of forum delegation within this latter context to is give cities a tool in which to constitutionally balance the interests of speakers, audience members, public safety concerns, and efficient resource management. Such a tool can be especially helpful at a time when provocateurs have sought to weaponize the First Amendment through politicizing and polarizing free speech principles.

TL;DR and TC;DU: An Assessment of the Length and Complexity of Social Media Policies • Jonathan Obar, York University; Andrew Hatelt • A study of the length and complexity of terms of service (TOS) and privacy policies (PP) for 10 social media services. Average TOS is 26,320 words and PP 7,984 words, with most policies written at a grade 12 or college reading level. These findings may contribute to critiques of notice privacy policy, providing empirical evidence that policies continue to be “too long” and “too complicated”, contributing to users that “didn’t read” and “don’t understand”.

“I also consider myself a First Amendment lawyer” • Jonathan Peters • Charles Harder. Lin Wood. Tom Clare. They are among a small number of American lawyers who have significant experience bringing claims against news organizations for their editorial activities. They play important roles in the news ecosystem, and they are subjects worthy of scholarly attention. Their perspectives about their work, which is reshaping media law, can contribute to a better understanding of claims against the press. With that in mind, we interviewed eight such lawyers about their practices.

Deciding Fair Use • Amanda Reid, UNC Chapel Hill • The epic legal battle between Google and Oracle is knocking on the SCOTUS’s door – again. Viewing the jury verdict “as advisory only,” the Federal Circuit independently re-weighed the fair use factors and concluded that allowing Google to commercially exploit Oracle’s work would “not advance the purposes of copyright.” This case raises important and timely questions about how to conceptualize and operationalize fair use. The ontological nature of copyright fair use is often misunderstood. As a mixed question of law and fact, fair use does not fit neatly into the law/fact paradigm, which typically guides decision making authority. Is fair use a fact question for the jury or a legal question for the court? On appeal, are fair use decisions reviewed deferentially or de novo? In other words, is fair use a question of fact for the jury and off limits to appellate court second-guessing, or is fair use a question of law for which an appellate court can decide anew? Rather than hiding behind the “slippery” distinction between “fact” and “law,” this essay highlights the plainly political nature of allocating decision making authority. The policy question is whether we want speech-protective rights assessed by a judge or a jury. Who has the institutional capacity to do a better job? Who do we trust more?

The Trouble With “True Threats” • Eric Robinson, University of South Carolina; Morgan Hill, University of South Carolina • With abusive language endemic online, the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Elonis v. United States did not resolve many issues in determination whether a statement is a “true threat.” In the absence of guidance, courts have applied various factors to rule in these cases. This paper quantifies and analyzes how courts have applied these factors in various cases, showing the need for clear standards for what communication can be considered “true threats.”

The Tribal University: Factions, iGen and the Threat to Free Speech on Campus • Joseph Russomanno, Arizona State University • The American college campus was once the ultimate marketplace of ideas. Now, speakers are sometimes shouted down or disinvited. Fear of trauma abridges classroom discussion. As the nation tribalizes, so do college students – members of iGen and psychologically fragile. This paper examines the interconnectedness of these issues. It also invokes factions – the tribalism of America’s founding era – and illustrates how James Madison’s approach to control them can be applied to speech on the contemporary campus.

A Structural Imperative: Freedom of Information, the First Amendment and the Societal Function of Expression • A.Jay Wagner • In the United States, the ability to gain access to government information is predicated by statute, the 1966 FOIA. Despite influential First Amendment scholars asserting access to government information to be a necessary corollary, the Supreme Court has only partially recognized such a right. The manuscript tracks this legal trajectory and examines international constitutional rights of access and explores why access has been rhetorically identified as an imperative yet has not received legal priority.

The Understanding of Absolute Right to Freedom of Expression Concerning Hate Speech in the Case of the Charlottesville Incident • Qinqin Wang; Roxanne Watson, University of South Florida • The purpose of this paper is to explore whether there is an absolute right to freedom of expression with regard to hate speech, and more specifically, whether tolerance should be exercised toward speech even in circumstances where this speech presents a clear and present danger to the public. The paper will delve into the decision by the Virginia Court that allowed the rally in Charlottesville which resulted in the death of a 32-year old woman.

Algorithms, Machine Learning, and Speech: The Future of the First Amendment in a Digital World • Sarah Wiley • By mediating how information is produced, distributed, and consumed, algorithms have a vast impact on how individuals perceive the world and thanks to machine learning and big data, they do so more autonomously than ever. This article examines how First Amendment jurisprudence has struggled to keep up and recommends a way to realign the doctrine with its underlying values of democratic self-governance, the distribution of knowledge and ideas, and individual autonomy in light of machine learning.

Neutral Reportage “Missing In Action” In U.S. Law But Expanding In Foreing Law As A Libel Defense • Kyu Ho Youm • Few media law scholars and practitioners in the U.S. have paid close attention to neutral reportage in foreign law. To fill the glaring void in the study of neutral reportage as a fascinating export from American law, this paper examines neutral reportage as a case of “reverse perspective.” Three questions provide the main focus of this study: (1) Why was Anglo-American law on republication of defamatory statements problematic for news reporting?; (2) How has neutral reportage been recognized as a libel defense in foreign law?; (3) How is neutral reportage similar to, and different from, the “public interest” defense in England and other countries?

< 2019 Abstracts

Robert L. Stevenson Open Paper Competition

“Newsmaker-in-Chief”? Presidents’ Foreign Policy Priorities and International News Coverage from LBJ to Obama • Kirsten Adams, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Daniel Riffe, UNC-Chapel Hill; Meghan Sobel, Regis University; Seoyeon Kim, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Through a mixed-method analysis of country mentions across 50 years of U.S. presidents’ speech transcripts (N = 284) and New York Times’ international news coverage (N = 20,765) across nine presidencies, we find the phenomenon of an “echoing press” following the “presidential gaze” toward foreign-policy priorities steadily declining over time and within administrations. This study examines the complex roles of the “newsmaker-in-chief” and the press who cover – and sometimes “echo” – his administration’s foreign affairs agenda.

Investigating Empathic Concern, Reporting Efficacy & Journalistic Roles as Determinants of Adherence to Peace Journalism • Oluseyi Adegbola; Weiwu Zhang, Texas Tech University • This study examines the influence of empathic concern, perceived journalistic roles, and reporting efficacy on journalists’ adherence to peace journalism. Quantitative surveys (N=324) and semi-structured interviews (N=10) of Nigerian journalists were conducted. Results suggest that Nigerian journalists adhere to peace journalism more than to war journalism and that empathic concern, perceived reporting efficacy, and subscription to the interventionist role are strong predictors of adherence to peace journalism.

Reporting Bias in Coverage of Iran Protests: An Analysis of Coverage by Global News Agencies • Oluseyi Adegbola; Janice Cho; Sherice Gearhart, Texas Tech University • This study examines reporting of intense Iranian protests by global news agencies located in the United States (Associated Press), United Kingdom (Reuters), France (Agence France-Presse), China (Xinhua), and Russia (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union). A census of reporting (N = 369) was content analyzed. Results show reporting remains influenced by political systems. News agencies also vary in their assessment of causal agents, moral evaluations, and treatment recommendations. Implications for reporting foreign conflict is discussed.

Intimate Partner Violence: What do Nollywood Movies Teach Us? • Ajeori agbese • Scholars have long criticized mass media for largely ignoring, negatively stereotyping and downplaying the seriousness of intimate partner violence (IPV). However, considering few studies have examined this issue in movies, this paper examined Nollywood movies to determine the messages audience get about IPV in Nigeria. The paper also wanted to find out if the movies challenged societal stereotypes about IPV and gender roles in intimate relationships. The contents of nine IPV-themed movies were interpretively analyzed, using social learning and cultivation theories as guides. The analysis showed that while Nollywood movies depicted the severity of the issue, the portrayals mostly mirrored the stereotypes and beliefs people already have about IPV and gender roles in intimate relationships. The movies largely blamed victims and other outside forces for abuse in intimate relationships. In addition, the portrayals barely challenged the perception and problem of IPV in Nigeria and did not provide realistic solutions.

The role of media for young Syrian Refugees at a time of uncertainty and changing living conditions • Miriam Berg • A considerable number of refuges that came to Germany in 2015 and 2016 were unaccompanied minors. This study examines the Syrian minor refugees among them, who now, as young adults, are using media as a whole in their everyday life and how their usage has changed since their arrival in Germany. There is a particular focus on correlations with the changing living conditions of the minors from mass emergency shelters to refugee accommodation and youth flats. The study also explores how media was used in their home country and during their flight to Germany. The research was carried out in the form of 30 semi-structured interviews with refugees between the ages of 18-21 who arrived in Hamburg, Germany in 2015 as unaccompanied minors. Findings of this study have shown that digital media and internet connectivity is seen as a necessity in contemporary living for young refugees and is considered as important as food and shelter to survive. However, despite internet access being seen as the most efficient way to stay informed and connected with families, friendships developed offline were found to be more important and helpful in terms of adjusting to a new environment, coping with loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted in their host country.

Journalists, Newsmakers and Social Media in East Africa • Steve Collins; Kelly Merrill; Chad Collins; Kioko Ireri; Raul Gamboa, University of Central Florida • This study involved an analysis of 1,784 Twitter accounts representing journalists, news organizations and newsmakers in East Africa. An analysis of social media influence metrics suggests that although news organizations are on even ground with the people and organizations they cover, individual journalists are not. The data suggest a digital divide, with Kenya and Uganda ahead of Rwanda and Tanzania. By one measure, female journalists have more social media influence than men.

Framing Syrian refugees: US Local News and the Politics of Immigration • Aziz Douai, Ontario Tech University; Mehmet Bastug • The article investigates news coverage and media framing of the Syrian refugee debate as a public opinion issue in US local news in 2015. Political response to the Syrian refugee crisis was divided, but public attitudes shifted after the terrorist attacks on Paris in November 2015 with calls for more restrictive immigration policies and smaller refugee quotas. In the US, GOP leaders demanded “extreme vetting” and “screening” of refugees and many opposed resettling them. The study analyzes local news coverage variation across the states that welcomed, not welcomed or did not commit to accepting Syrian refugees at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015 and 2016. The findings of the study demonstrate that the editorial framing of the Syrian refugee crisis downplayed the global responsibility and international commitment of the US, highlighted the administrative costs, and framed them security threats. The implications of these frames are discussed.

India’s Mediated Public Diplomacy on Social Media: Building Agendas in South Asia • Nisha Garud Patkar • One tool in India’s mediated public diplomacy is the increasing use of social media platforms to build agendas among foreign audiences. In 2017, the Indian government ranked seventh in the world in its use of social media for diplomacy and had more than 1.2 million users following its diplomatic accounts on several social media platforms. Despite this high ranking and a sizable following on social media, little research has been done to understand India’s mediated public diplomacy through Twitter and Facebook. To address this literature gap, this study examined: (i) the agendas the Indian government builds on its social media accounts and (ii) the rank order of these agendas with the perceived agendas of the followers of these accounts. A quantitative content analysis of 6,000 tweets and status updates published on the 15 Indian diplomatic accounts along with a survey of 500 followers of these accounts were conducted. Results showed that politics, culture, economy/finance, and infrastructure were the top-ranked agendas of the Indian government on social media. These agendas rank ordered with a few top-ranked agendas for followers which were education, health and medicine, environment, economy/finance, and infrastructure.

Gatekeeping and the Panama Papers: an analysis of transnational journalism culture • Nana Naskidashvili, University of Missouri; Beverly Horvit, University of Missouri; Astrid Benoelken; Diana Fidarova • ICIJ’s Panama Papers transnational journalism project was analyzed on three levels suggested by Hellmueller (2017): the evaluative, the cognitive and the performative. The gatekeepers interviewed demonstrated a common understanding (evaluative) of what it means to be an investigative journalist. Regardless of a journalist’s location, prominent people were deemed newsworthy (cognitive), and the journalists created rules for searching and double-checking their data. At the performative level, the gatekeepers agreed when the stories would emerge.

Cognitive and Behavioral Factors of Online Discussion as Antecedents of Deliberation and Tolerance: Evidence from South Korea, United Kingdom and United States • Irkwon Jeong; Hyoungkoo Khang • The current study examined cognitive and behavioral factors of online discussion as antecedents of attitudes toward opposing views and two aspects of social norms, perceived importance of public deliberation and social tolerance. Employing surveys in South Korea, United Kingdom and United States, this study found that adjustment motive and discussion heterogeneity are positively associated with perceived importance of public deliberation and social tolerance in all three countries.

Framing Newsworthiness on Twitter: Analysis of Frames, News Values, and Tweet Popularity in Lebanese Media • Claudia Kozman, Lebanese American University • This content analysis of Lebanese newspapers and television stations’ accounts on Twitter revealed the media frame their tweets in terms of conflict and responsibility, while relying mostly on the news values of prominence and entertainment/human interest. Compared to newspapers, television stations were more likely to use impact instead of conflict as a news value. Judging tweet popularity, analysis revealed conflict and impact stories are the most attractive in terms of favorites, retweets, and comments.

Mainstream media, social media, and attitudes toward immigrants: A comparative study of Japan & South Korea • Heysung Lee, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Gaofei Li ; Yibing Sun; Hernando Rojas • The paper examines media effects on attitudes toward immigrants in Japan and South Korea, through an online survey with 500 respondents from each country. Analyses show mainstream media associates to positive attitudes in both countries. However, regarding social media, Kakaotalk use in South Korea elicits negative attitudes, while Line use in Japan is not related to attitudes. The interaction effects indicate that Kakaotalk dampens the positive effects of mainstream media, whereas Line amplifies them.

Will internal political efficacy predict news engagement equally across countries? A multilevel analysis of the relationship between internal political efficacy, media environment and news engagement • Shuning Lu, North Dakota State University; Rose Luwei Luqiu, Hong Kong Baptist University • This study serves as the first to document the current status of news engagement with regard to the three proposed dimensions (e.g., overall news engagement, user-user, and user-content news engagement) across 36 countries. We employ hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) to test the individual, aggregate, and cross-level effects on news engagement based on the multi- national cross-sectional survey data (N=72,930). This study demonstrates how internal political efficacy, the media environment, both political and technical, together shape news engagement. The findings reveal that internal political efficacy is positively associated with news engagement. Internet penetration could negatively predict the three indicators of news engagement. Press freedom moderates the effect of internal political efficacy on news engagement. The study contributes to the existing literature on the formation of news engagement regarding both individual and contextual mechanisms.

Africa in the News: Is News Coverage by Chinese Media Any Different? • Dani Madrid-Morales, University of Houston • In recent years, Chinese media have been challenging European and North American dominance of African news. While Chinese journalists claim they Africa coverage is quantitatively and qualitatively different, previous research has challenged this claim. Based on a content analysis of 1.1 million news from two Chinese and two non-Chinese media (2015-2015), this paper shows that Chinese reporting is more abundant, positive and diverse. However, for most countries, coverage is rare, episodic and monothematic.

Portrait of an Azerbaijani Journalist: Unpaid, Dissatisfied, but nevertheless Passionate and Committed • Rashad Mammadov • This study seeks to partially fill a gap in knowledge about the practice of journalism in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic. The study proposed here represents the first time Azerbaijan has been studied in a systematic fashion consistent with the literature of comparative journalism as represented by The Global Journalist (Weaver & Willnat, 2012) and Worlds of Journalism (Hanitzsch, 2011), studies well recognized as the standards against which all such efforts should be measured. One of the primary goals of the project is to explore the roles these journalists believe they play in the controlled, post-Soviet environment. Data, collected through an online survey of journalists indicate that several identifiable, perceived professional roles existed along the dimensions of Hanitzsch’s (2007) journalistic milieus. In addition, three other dimensions were identified that did not fit the model, but proved to be specific to the Azerbaijani media environment: Political Activist, Citizens’ Helper, and Entertainer.

Press Freedom in Ghana • Jason Martin, DePaul University • This paper analyzes original survey data (N=241) to investigate Ghanaian journalists’ attitudes toward libel law protections, Right to Information legislation, and professional ethics. Journalists in Ghana perceive themselves as straddling normative press freedom roles of watchdog and social responsibility while incorporating unique elements of their culture in their work. The results provide context for the successes and challenges of Ghana’s journalists and contribute to the more precise theoretical explanations of international press freedom protections.

Diagnosing Newsjunkies: Fielding and Validating a Measure of Intrinsic Need for Orientation in Three Arab Countries • Justin Martin, Northwestern University in Qatar • This study introduces an intrinsic need-for-orientation scale, and assesses reliability and validity of the measure in nationally representative samples from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE (N=3,239). Since the 1970s, need for orientation has been called an intrinsic motivation to consume news, but in operationalization, relevant research has not measured an inherent motivation, but rather the strength of political party identification and interest in an upcoming political event—usually an election—as the markers of a strong need for orientation. As this approach is inappropriate in many countries, which may not have political parties or campaigns, and also given there is likely a broader, intrinsic need for orientation (INFO) that motivates people to regularly seek news about current events, this study tested a parsimonious, four-item scale. The scale demonstrated robust internal reliability in both Arabic and English, and among nationals and non-nationals in the three countries. In line with the hypothesis that news use and certain media-related attitudes, such as support for freedom of expression, should be positive correlates of an intrinsic need for orientation, regression models of media-use variables and media-related attitudes explained considerable amounts of INFO variance in Saudi Arabia (52%) and the UAE (30%), and a more modest share in Qatar (15%).

Journalism during global disasters: Healing, coping and recovery • Michael McCluskey, U. Tennessee-Chattanooga; Lacey Keefer • Journalists often apply themes of healing, coping and recovery in news following significant traumas. Eight natural disasters on five continents were analyzed for the presence of nine themes of healing, coping and recovery in both international and local news outlets. Analysis (n = 528) found evidence that contextual factors like centralization of the disaster, type of disaster and number of casualties, along with structural factors like political freedom, had significant influences on the nine themes

Explaining the Gap Between Journalist’s Role Conception and Media Role Performance. A Cross-National Comparison • Claudia Mellado; Cornelia Mothes; Daniel Hallin; Maria Luisa Humanes; Adriana Amado; María Lauber; Jacques Mick; Henry Silke; Colin Sparks; Haiyan Wang; Olga Logunova; Dasniel Olivera • This cross-national study combines survey (N=643) and content analysis data (N = 19,908) from nine countries to investigate gaps between journalists’ ideals and their media organizations’ performance of the interventionist, watchdog, loyal, service, civic and infotainment roles. The findings show significant gaps for all roles across all countries, with the ‘civic’ and the ‘watchdog’ role showing the largest gaps. Multilevel analyses also reveal that organizational and individual-level influences explained the gaps better than country differences. Implications are discussed with regards to journalism as a profession in times of increasing media skepticism.

Public Diplomacy for the Media: A Survey of Exchange Program Alumni • Emily Metzgar, Indiana University; Yusuf Kalyango, Ohio University • This research surveys alumni (N=66) of the American government’s Study of the U.S. Institute for Scholars (SUSI) on Journalism and Media. The program brings scholars and media professionals to the United States to study and build professional networks. Framing discussion in the international communication literature, we assess SUSI’s potential as a public diplomacy effort with implications for both the study and practice of journalism and promotion of improved attitudes toward the United States.

Esto no es un problema político, es moral: Examining news narratives of the 2018 border policy • Lisa Paulin, NC Central University • This study analyzes the news narratives of a controversial U.S. immigration policy that included the separation of children from their families when attempting to enter the United States along the border with Mexico during the spring and summer of 2018, under the Donald Trump administration by analyzing the stories in Spanish-language media and English-language media by two news services: EFE, in Spanish and the Associated Press (AP), to see how these stories fit into cultural ideologies. The AP told a story of a political battle while EFE told a story of immoral policy and community solidarity.

Global media and human rights: Teaching the Holocaust across national fault-lines • stephen reese, university of texas; jad melki, Lebanese American University • Media literacy requires a ‘global outlook’ in dealing with issues across national and tribal affiliations. These challenges are explored here with a multi-national group of student, engaging with the Holocaust to better humanise global issues and understand how media are implicated in genocidal dynamics, using a survey of 165 previous participants in the programme over 11 years. We find that a historically-rooted but globally reflective approach is needed to understand genocide across national fault-lines.

Testing the Spiral of Silence Model: The Case of Government Criticism in India • Enakshi Roy, Western Kentucky University • This study extends the spiral of silence theory to India and examines self-censorship on Facebook and Twitter with regards to government criticism. Survey (N=141) results suggest while respondents with liberal attitudes were unwilling criticize the government on social media, respondents with pro-censorship attitudes, even if they deemed the opinion climate as hostile, were willing to support Prime Minister Narendra Modi on social media. Findings from this study expand understandings of online opinion expression and self-censorship in India.

Everybody Loves a Winner: Legitimation of Occupational Roles among Award-winning Financial Journalists in Africa • Danford Zirugo, City, University London of London/University of Minnesota Twin Cities; Jane B. Singer, City, University of London • Through an examination of award-winning stories and the discourse around them, this study explores how the interpretive community of African financial journalists defines and legitimates preferred occupational roles. Contrary to research immediately following the global financial crisis, which suggested that financial journalists primarily serve elites in their everyday coverage, this study concludes that stories deemed exemplary by the community are instead public service-oriented and fulfill a watchdog role.

Naming names or no? How Germany fits in an international comparison of crime coverage • Romayne Smith Fullerton, University of Western Ontario; Maggie Jones Patterson, Duquesne University • “Naming names and ethnicity or no? How Germany fits in an international comparison of crime coverage” offers the final installment of a nine-year study examining mainstream media’s crime coverage choices in ten democracies, and how journalists’ voluntary ethical choices reflect underlying cultural attitudes. Previously, the authors have argued protectionist policies that do not identify accused persons are common in Northern and Central Europe and are part of established cultural attitudes that construct everyone as community members, but new German data, collected in 2018, suggest journalistic choices to protect an accused’s identity, and all that practice implied, is no longer the reporting default.

The Aftermath of 2019 Pulwama Terror Attack • Nihar Sreepada, Texas Tech University; Ioana Coman, Texas Tech University; Simranjit Singh, Texas Tech University • The study analyses the coverage of the 2019 Pulwama terror attack by two major newspapers of India and Pakistan – The Times of India and Dawn. The online news stories and the dialogue within the comment sections are compared and examined through a qualitative content analysis. The findings are explored from a social psychological perspective along with the ramifications of the conflict on the international community.

Automated framing analysis of news coverage of the Rohingya crisis by the elite press from three countries • Hong Vu; Nyan Lynn • Triangulating several methods including automated framing analysis and critical assessment of texts, this study examines how the press from three countries frames the Rohingya refugee crisis in 2017. It finds that The Irrawaddy (Myanmar) tends to incorporate a nationalist narrative into news content. The New Nation (Bangladesh) frames the crisis according to the country’s priorities. The New York Times uses a Western hegemonic discourse. Findings are discussed using the lens of ideological and cultural influence.

Welcome to Canada: The challenge of information connections for resettled Syrian refugees • Melissa Wall, California State University – Northridge • Based on interviews with Syrian refugees resettled in Canada, as well as volunteers, NGO workers and government officials, this paper considers the ways the refugees interact with both formal (government, NGO) and informal (family, volunteers and shared heritage Canadians) in their communication practices. Refugees (“newcomers”) use a combination of digital tools such as social networks and interpersonal interactions to access information and work toward understanding and adapting to their new environment.

Distinguishing the Foreign from Domestic as Defensive Media Diplomacy: Media Accessibility to Credibility Perception and Media Dependency • Yicheng Zhu, Beijing Normal University • Given the fact that some foreign media (e.g. Twitter, The New York Times) have limited accessibility in China. This study conceptually distinguishes foreign media and domestic media, and examines the relationship between perceived media accessibility, media credibility and media dependency for both foreign and domestic media. It found that foreign media accessibility perception is an antecedent of foreign media credibility and foreign media dependency. In terms of foreign v.s. domestic media credibility competition, the final model showed that foreign media credibility positively relates with domestic media credibility. In sum, the model illustrated the role of accessibility perception in the media dependency formation process, the results imply that controlling foreign media accessibility may be an effective method to limit foreign media influence domestically.

James W. Markham Student Paper Competition

A devil’s dissection: Thematic analysis of the discussion of the Mexican documentary The Devil’s Freedom on Twitter • Gabriel Dominguez Partida • Mexican documentary films have tried to raise awareness among citizens against violence – for instance, The Devil’s Freedom, a story of violence’s testimonials of victims and victimizers. Three months of tweets related to the film’s discussion were analyzed to identify how people react to the message. The analysis suggests a group of citizens concern and sending signals to others about a social change; however, they urge the government to take actions instead of themselves.

Trollfare: Russia’s disinformation campaign during military conflict in Ukraine • Larisa Doroshenko, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Josephine Lukito, UW Madison • This study explores the strategies of information warfare of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) against Ukraine during the military conflict in Donbass. Using a 10% Twitter gardenhose archive, we investigated the type of information spread by the IRA accounts and analyzed how they increased followers. Our study shows that the IRA created news websites and spread links to these pages on social media, accumulating followers by including these links and @mentioning other IRA accounts.

Health information sharing for a social exchange on WeChat in China • Lu Fan • WeChat has become an important platform of high sociability and social exchange in China. This study conducted a survey (N = 329) in China to understand people’s health information sharing behavior with the purpose of social exchange. The results reveal that people are motivated by the goal of sharing useful information, showing care and maintaining the social relationship when they share health information on WeChat, and older people are more likely to do so.

For whom do we do this work and in whose voice? Examining the role of International Communication in Africa • Greg Gondwe, University of Colorado-Boulder; Rachel van-der-Merwe, University of Colorado-Boulder • This study offers an overview of the state of the field of international communication in Africa. It argues that despite the boom in international communication scholarship, a schism still exists between theory emphasizing the perpetuated colonial tendencies and those that seek to situate African scholarship at an interactive position with other continents. The study operates under some founded hypotheses that International Communication studies in Africa are peppered with tales of marginalization, poverty, wars, and tribal conflicts. Literature asserts that such labels have impeded the quest for African scholars to realize the true definition of the field, therefore, reproducing a systemic litany of what the other world expects of them. While some scholars call for a broader and mutual interaction of the global communications systems, others hanker on ostensible arguments that perpetuate the propagandist approaches, which emerged as a result of the cold war. The two approaches underscore the western values versus the ‘African’ communication and postcolonial debates that have characterized much of the postcolonial discourses.

Social media network heterogeneity and the moderating roles of social media political discussions and social trust: Analyzing attitude and tolerance towards Chinese immigrant women in Hong Kong • Macau K. F. Mak, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Lynette Jingyi Zhang, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • The social and political antagonism between China and Hong Kong has led to the stigmatization of mainland Chinese in Hong Kong. In particular, the Chinese immigrant women, a minority group faced with social and economic plight, have been viewed as locusts who exploit social resources in Hong Kong without any contributions. This study examines how social media network heterogeneity influences the social tolerance and political tolerance of local citizens in Hong Kong towards the Chinese immigrant women through general attitude towards these women. It also addresses the moderating role of social media political discussions and social trust in the influencing process. The analysis of survey data (N = 728) illustrates the moderated mediation process in which a more heterogeneous network on social media is indirectly related to higher levels of both social and political tolerance towards Chinese immigrant women through a more positive attitude towards these women. This indirect effect is enhanced by more political discussions and greater social trust. Implications of the results are discussed.

Reporting (ethno)political conflict in former colonies: An exploration of British and French press coverage of the Cameroon Anglophone crisis • Pechulano Ngwe Ali, The Pennsylvania State University • This study explores how the press in Africa’s former colonial masters frame (ethno)political crisis in their former colonies. Using a qualitative textual analysis approach, the study investigates how British (the BBC) and French (Radio France Internationale; rfi) framed the ongoing Cameroon Anglophone crisis, using news stories published from October 1, 2016 to April 2018. The case of Cameroon is unique because what has been politicized is a nexus between ethnicity and linguistic identity where a minority ethnopolitical group that is seeking greater rights. Findings point evidence that suggest that the British press validates and legitimizes the ‘actions’ and ‘requests’ of Anglophone Cameroonians (the return of federalism or complete separation of the duo), while the French press outlet suggest alignment with the ideas of the Cameroon government (one and indivisible nation), casting doubt on marginalization claims of Anglophone Cameroonians. Considering that the current Cameroon Anglophone is historically rooted in European (British and French) colonialism, it is important study from a postcolonial perspective, how the press in these countries that and created what is now a bilingual and ‘bicultural’ Cameroon, would report political crisis half a century after independence. Findings have implications on the development a fresh perspective of postcolonial media theory.

East Asian man ideal types in contemporary Chinese society: fluidity and multiple parameters of masculinity • Janice Wong • Asian masculinity is always an important, but under study area. There are concrete ideas of masculinity in the Western society, but in the East Asian culture, masculinity is not well-defined. Moreover, the way man tackles the fluidity and multiple parameters of masculinity is always changing in modern East Asia. Male surely have some ideal types of male images in their mind that they will try to manage their appearance included face and body, impression and images to achieve an ideal type. This study tries to generalize those male ideal types in East Asia culture through the wen-wu dichotomy. This exploratory study found that there are about eight ideal types of masculinities in East Asia. These ideal types are models or categories that for man to achieve. During the process of achieving an ideal type, male disclosed their reasons: social “other’s” expectations, institution’s expectations and also constructed by the consumer market, and the strategies they used to modify and improve their face and body. For men, they will depend on the inherent they owned, which can influence their self-perception, then select an ideal type that they can associate with or the standard they can reach and go toward that type. Men will control and modify their appearance, both face and body, manage their impression (or their front stage) toward the ideal beauty image standard or improve their impression (through symbolic capital) to satisfy the criteria of an ideal type.

The Moderating Role of Media Freedom on the Relationship Between Internal Conflict and Diversionary External Conflict Initiation: 1948-2010 • Kai Xu, Wayne State University • Conflict-as-functional theorists argue that since a critical function of initiating international conflicts for a country is to divert public attention away from its domestic problems, there must be a significant relationship between a country’s internal conflict and the likelihood of creating external conflict. This study aims to further examine this relationship by introducing a new moderator – the effect of a country’s domestic conflict on external conflict initiation is moderated by its media freedom level.

< 2019 Abstracts