Faculty

Friend or foe? Media advisory boards the norm at four-year schools; Most advisers give high marks for priorities, performance • Lei Xie, Fairfield University; James Simon • This exploratory study seeks to determine how often Media Advisory Boards exist and what factors correlate with a school having such a board. This study, based on a national survey of members of the College Media Advisers organization (N = 157), is designed to provide baseline data on such questions as how boards differ in title and size, what characteristics of a school help explain differences in the composition of a board, and what are the most common functions of a board.

Framing “BONG HiTS 4 JESUS”: A content analysis of local newspapers’ coverage of the Supreme Court’s decision in Morse v. Frederick • Karla Kennedy, University of Oregon • This study examines the effect of the Supreme Court’s decision in the student speech case, Morse v. Frederick (2007) also known as “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Newspaper articles were content analyzed utilizing framing theory. Results indicated that the media framed the case to be more about illegal drug usage than student free speech.

The State of Scholastic Journalism in South Dakota: A Microcosm of Changes Across the Country • Chuck Baldwin; Lyle Olson, South Dakota State University • For more than 35 years, problems facing the student press have been dissected so that the primary issues are clear: funding, curriculum pressures, teacher/adviser training, censorship, minority involvement. A 1996 survey found that scholastic journalism in South Dakota is no different from the rest of the country. But since then, financial pressures have increased, curriculum changes have been mandated, in part, by the No Child Left Behind Act, and technology has changed the journalism landscape.

Scholastic Journalism Teacher Use of Digital Devices and Social Networking Tools • Bruce Plopper, University of Arkansas at Little Rock; Anne Fleming Conaway • Given adolescents’ ever-increasing use of digital devices, and calls from governmental officials to incorporate more technology into classroom activities, a survey of scholastic journalism advisers in a poor, largely rural state was conducted to determine how they used digital communication devices in their teaching. Results showed lack of funding, lack of teacher experience, and lack of administrative permission suppressed use of several devices, while student-owned devices were used for a variety of journalism-related purposes.

High School Student Publications As Public Relations Tools: What Historical References Say About Such Use/Misuse • Bruce Konkle, University of South Caorlina • Today’s high school publication advisers and staffers primarily prefer to think of student newspapers and yearbooks as journalistic endeavors, not public relations tools covering only positive aspects of a school.

Creating Collegiate Media Opportunities in the Classroom Using Social Media: A Case Study of Experiential Learning • Cindy Royal, Texas State University • Classroom experiential learning projects can extend the benefits of student media to more participants. Social media tools offer efficient and cost effective ways to engage students that allow them to publish their work, promote events and to enhance their professional networks. A case study of one such project is performed to assess the ability to create engaging and productive experiences within journalism curricula.

Educating for Freedom & Responsibility: Lessons from the First Amendment Schools Project • Cynthia Mitchell, Central Washington University • This paper is a case study of the First Amendment Schools project, the most comprehensive and ambitious program ever undertaken to educate K-12 students in how to use and practice their First Amendment freedoms. The lessons learned include that school reform programs need to build in sustainability, provide ways to spread their lessons beyond the schools initially targeted for reform, and build in key measures of accountability.

Of Black Armbands and Pink Boobie Bracelets: Should Pink Be This Year’s Black? • Genelle Belmas, Cal State Fullerton • In 2011 and 2012, federal district courts handed down opposite decisions on the question of whether middle school students should be allowed to wear silicone bracelets emblazoned with “I ♥ Boobies!” One case is now on appeal to a federal appellate court. This paper examines the cases and the precedents and suggests that these bracelets, even though they contain a slang term that some may consider vulgar, should be protected as political or social discourse.

Student

Journalism’s Next Generation? How High School Journalists View the Future of Journalism • Joseph Dennis, University of Georgia; Amy Sindik, Univeristy of Georgia • This study of more than 150 high school journalists shows that they are a highly media literate group that has tremendous respect for traditional print media, but expresses concern over where the industry is heading. This concern is causing many students to avoid majoring in journalism. Even though many propose that journalism will be mostly consumed online and on mobile devices in five years, most students see the traditional print newspaper surviving the digital tide.

Negotiating Identity and High School Journalism: Race, Ethnicity, Gender, Class & Sexuality • Eddie Madison, University of Oregon • The United States is experiencing several dramatic shifts in culture and demography. Nearly 36% of the nation’s population self-identify as minorities; women are now the majority in the workforce; and an increasing number of states are acknowledging same-sex relationships –– yet inequities persist. Against a backdrop of contradictions, members of America’s increasingly diverse student population strive to assert their identities and chart their futures. This qualitative study focuses on Palo Alto High School, which is widely.

<< 2012 Abstracts

Open Papers

Trust me, trust me not: An experimental analysis of the effect of transparency on trust and behavioral intentions in organizations • Giselle A. Auger, Duquesne University • Since the early 1990s calls for increased transparency have risen in all sectors of society. Seen as a solution to lapses of organizational ethics and misdeeds, transparency can help to restore trust, curtail employee dissatisfaction, and diminish reputational risk or damage (Bandsuch et al., 2008; Rawlins, 2009).  Research has identified transparency as a two part construct highlighting either an organization’s reputation for transparency or its efforts to communicate transparently (Auger, 2010; Rawlins, 2009).

Political Public Relations and the Promotion of Participatory, Transparent Government through Social Media • Elizabeth Avery, & Melissa Graham, University of Tennessee • Using data collected from over 450 local government officials from municipalities across the United States, this study examines the impact that various community features have on local government social media use.  It specifically addresses citizen expectations and how social media are being used as a public relations function to promote participatory and transparent government.  Results indicated that citizen expectations and perceived social media effectiveness by government officials was a strong predictor of social media use.

Empowered & Engaged: A Phenomenological Study Exploring Social Media Best Practices for Nonprofit Organizations • Tessa Breneman, Alexis Abel, & Frauke Hachtmann, University of Nebraska-Lincoln • Although nonprofits see value and potential in social media, many have not yet mastered social media and harnessed its full potential. This phenomenological study sought to discover what the best social media strategies and tactics are for effectively engaging existing and potential donors, volunteers, and stakeholders, according to social media nonprofit professionals. Six themes emerged, including the following: listen to know and understand your audience; and focus on engagement and not fundraising.

Defining And Measuring Organization-Public Dialogue • Heewon Cha, Ewah Womans University, Sung-Un Yang, Indiana University at Bloomington; Minjeong Kang, Ball State University • The purpose of this research was to define and measure the quality of dialogue between an organization and its publics. Reviewing the literature from multiple disciplines, the researchers identified mutuality and openness in explicating dialogue in the context of organization-public relationships. To develop the scale of organization-public dialogue, this study used multiple methods, including in-depth interviews with experts, professional audit, and a survey. This research found the proposed two-factor model had tenable measurement reliability.

Speaking Out:  An Exploratory Analysis of Public Relations Professionals  And their Willingness to Self-Censor • Vincent Filak, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh & Melissa Dodd, University of Miami • Research using the Willingness to Self-Censor (WTSC) scale has shown the desire to withhold one’s opinion is an internal, as opposed to situational trait. This exploratory examination of public relations practitioners and educators (n=121) revealed that participants who scored higher on the WTSC scale were less likely to express their opinions on managing a crisis in a direct environment. These findings held even when controlling for key demographic variables and varying the opinion climate from hostile to friendly.

Navigating Anger in Happy Valley: Using Facebook for crisis response and image repair in the wake of the Sandusky scandal • Melanie Formentin, Denise Bortree, Julia Daisy Fraustino, Pennsylvania State University • Social media are important channels of communication during a crisis. This study examined the use of Facebook as a crisis management tool for Penn State University during the first month of the Sandusky scandal. A content analysis of all 129 posts made by the university during that time period and 2060 comments to the posts suggested that audience reaction to crisis information varies based on crisis response strategy, sources cited, and topics shared.

What Do Blog Readers Think? A Survey to Assess Ghost Blogging and Commenting • Tiffany Gallicano, Yoon Cho, & Thomas Bivins, University of Oregon • In a survey of practitioners, most respondents expressed approval of ghost blogging, provided that the stated author provides the content ideas and gives content approval (Doe, 2012). To investigate the ethics of ghost blogging and ghost commenting and the permissibility of these practices from readers’ perspectives, we conducted surveys with three groups. The groups included 507 readers of corporate blogs, 510 readers of politicians’ blogs, and 501 readers of nonprofit blogs.

Exploring Complex Organizational Communities: Identity as Emergent Perceptions, Boundaries, and Relationships • Dawn Gilpin, & Nina Miller, Arizona State University • Increasing numbers of scholars have been approaching organizations as complex systems. The present study extends this framework to view some organizations as complex communities, or multilevel aggregations of members with a relatively stable core and fluid boundaries, emergent through interactions between individuals, groups, and organizations.

Whistleblowing in public relations: Ethical dilemma or role responsibility • Cary Greenwood, Middle Tennessee State University • This paper responds to the call for a research agenda to address whistleblowing in public relations. Using resource dependence perspective, public relations role theory, and relationship management theory, this study surveys public relations executives in the Fortune 1000 corporations to identify their knowledge of wrongdoing, their reporting of wrongdoing, and their relationships with their employers.

On Publicity: Ivy Lee’s 1924 Address to the American Association of Teachers of Journalism • Kirk Hallahan, and Stephen Cory Robinson, Colorado State University • The presentation at one of AEJMC’s earliest conventions was a historically important event where the pioneer public relations practitioner articulated most fully his views about publicity. Lee’s remarks and the lively Q&A that followed were AEJMC’s first major discussion of public relations. This review examines Lee’s views about the nature of publicity; objectivity, facticity and disclosure; publicity versus advertising; the market-driven nature of news; the deluge of publicity materials and editors’ responsibilities; and publicists’ professional ethics.

Company executive vs. customer testimonial:  Examining credibility of quoted spokespersons in business-to-business communication • Pauline Howes, Kennesaw State University, & Lynne Sallot, University of Georgia • Through the framework of source credibility, this study examines the impact of quoting a company executive versus a customer testimonial in a business communication context.  A 2 x 7 full factorial experiment (N= 514) showed partial support for enhanced perceived credibility of information conveyed by a customer testimonial compared to a company spokesperson in independent and controlled media formats online.

Analyzing the Relationships among Website Interactivity and Organization Impression, Trust and Purchase intention for a Product Recall Crisis • Jooyun Hwang & Spiro Kiousis, University of Florida • Though there has been an array of research on crisis communication, relatively little attention has been paid to the attitudinal and behavioral consequences of public perceptions of web site interactivity as a communication channel during a crisis. In order to fill the gap in scholarship, this study examined the effect of different levels of web site interactivity to address a crisis response on respondents’ organization impression, trust, and purchase intention.

Examining the Relationship between International Public Relations Efforts, Media Coverage, Country Reputation and Performance using Agenda Building & Agenda Setting • Rajul Jain & Lawrence Winner, University of Florida • Using first and second level agenda building and agenda setting as the theoretical framework, this study examines the bottom-line impact of public relations efforts by operationalizing and quantifying the relationship between international public relations efforts, U.S. news media coverage of countries, country reputation, and indicators of economic performance. The study analyzed public relations messages and media coverage of the top 30 countries ranked by Anholt’s Nations Brands Index in 2009.

Enacting Best Practices in Risk Communication: Analysis of an Expert Panel • Melissa Janoske, Brooke Liu, Stephanie Madden, University of Maryland • A two-day workshop and follow-up interviews with risk communication practitioners and researchers were conducted to expand understanding and enactment of risk communication best practices, the obstacles to enacting them, and the gaps in knowledge that could aid in improving upon these best practices. Key findings include the importance of avoiding the myth of preparedness messages instilling public fear, methods for identifying and building key community relationships and partnerships, and suggestions for translating academic research.

Social campaigns help our image, right?: Using the situational theory to explore  effects on attitudes toward a brand and its issues • Elizabeth Johnson-Young, North Carolina State University, & Robert Magee, Virginia Tech • Using the situational theory of publics as a guide, the effects of Dove’s online campaign videos on attitudes toward the campaign issues and Dove’s brand are examined. Participants viewed one of four campaign videos with a different regulatory frame and were asked to respond to several scales that measured their levels of involvement with the issues, collective efficacy, concern for the issues, and attitudes toward Dove as the brand.

Usage and Effectiveness of Facebook for Organizational Crisis Management • Eyun-Jung Ki & Elmie Nekmat, University of Alabama • Through the lens of situational crisis communication theory (SCCT) and interactivity, this study examined the Facebook usage of Fortune 500 companies and the effectiveness with which these companies employed this platform for crisis management. Findings indicated that ‘justification’ and ‘full apology’ were the most commonly used crisis response strategies. The results also show that companies inappropriately match their responses to crisis situations.

“Because the Subaltern Cannot Speak”: An Introduction to the Culture-Centered Approach to Public Relations • Induk Kim, Northern Illinois • This study begins with the contention that current public relations scholarship, including the literature on activist public relations, is not fully equipped with a theoretical foundation to study public relations efforts organized in subaltern spaces. The study introduces the culture-centered approach as a theoretical framework to address this gap in literature and presents a case study of South Korean peasants’ anti-FTA activism to illustrate how the culture-centered approach can be adopted in public relations research.

Relational expectancy, expectancy violations, and post-crisis communication: BP oil spill Crisis • Sora Kim, University of Florida • Adopting the 2010 BP oil spill crisis, this study empirically tests (a) expectancy violation theory’s applicability into the setting of organization-public relationships and explores (b) the effectiveness of post-crisis communication strategies in the post-crisis stage. The findings suggest consumers’ relational satisfaction and predictive and prescriptive expectancies are significant predictors determining their responses toward the organization in the post-crisis stage.

Predictors of organizations’ crisis communication approaches: Full versus limited disclosure • Sora Kim & Emma Wertz, University of Florida • This study investigates the public relations (full disclosure) versus legal (limited disclosure) approaches that may be used by organizations during a preventable crisis, including factors that may predict decisions related to information disclosure. Both tangible and intangible aspects of an organization were explored. The results revealed that degree of crisis preparation, public relations influences, and crisis perception as an opportunity were significant predictors that determine full versus limited disclosure.

Exploring the Role of Senate Majority Leader Political Public Relations Efforts: Comparing Agenda-Building Effectiveness across Information Subsidies • Spiro Kiousis, Ji Young Kim, Ashley Carnifax & Sarabdeep Kochhar, University of Florida • Grounded in first- and second-level agenda building, this study explored the role of the Senate Majority Leader in shaping the salience of issues and issue attributes in news media coverage and policymaking in 2011. A total of 358 public relations messages, 164 newspaper articles, and 83 policy making documents were analyzed. Significant correlations were found supporting agenda-building linkages at both levels among Senate Majority Leader communications, media coverage, and congressional policymaking activities.

Corporate social responsibility communication on the Internet: A content analysis of Fortune 100 companies • Seul Lee, Eunju Kang, Mary Ann Ferguson, University of Florida • The main goals of this quantitative content analysis were to better understand CSR message presentation on corporate websites and the current state of CSR subjects. This study investigated which CSR issues were prominently presented on The Fortune 100 companies’ websites according to ISO 26000 guidelines. The content of websites was also analyzed to see how it presented CSR information.

Uncertainty Reduction Strategies via Twitter: The 2011 Wildfire Threat to Los Alamos National Laboratory • Nicole Merrifield & Michael Palenchar, University of Tennessee • This study applies Berger and Calabrese’s (1975) uncertainty reduction theory as a theoretical framework to describe how participatory publics use Twitter to reduce uncertainty during a crisis. Using the 2011 Las Conchas Wildfire as the event of study, this study adapted Berger’s (1987) three information-seeking typologies—passive, active and interactive—and used a content analysis to examine messages posted to Twitter during the eight-day, mandatory evacuation of 12,000 Los Alamos residents in the summer of 2011.

Theorizing the Global-Local Paradox: Comparative Research on Information Subsidies’ Localization by U.S.-based Multinational Corporations • Juan-Carlos Molleda, Sarabdeep Kochhar & Christopher Wilson, University of Florida • Informed from a multidisciplinary perspective, this study theorizes localization by exploring the extent of local-focus of information subsidies by U.S.-based Multinational Corporations. A total of 150 MNC subsidiary online newsrooms in China, India, and United Kingdom were analyzed in the subsidiary location using quantitative content analysis. The sample was drawn from the 2011 Forbes 500 List.

A Study on Exploring Antecedents of Relationship Dissolution in Organization-Public Relationships • Bitt Moon, Syracuse University & Sung-Un Yang, Indiana University at Bloomington • The purpose of this study was to explore antecedents of relationship dissolution in the context of organization-public relationships. Particularly, the researchers focused on antecedents to lead the relationship termination. A survey with 1,111 respondents was conducted to test the proposed hypotheses. The results suggested that distrust and dissatisfaction had significant effects on relationships either directly or indirectly. Furthermore, our findings indicated that there were differential impact of dissatisfaction and distrust on the relationship termination.

Locating image management in public relations research: A content analysis of image-related studies published in the last two decades, 1991-2011 • Elmie Nekmat, Karla Gower & Lan Ye, University of Alabama • This study reviews the status of image management research in public relations and extrapolates important trends for future research and theory-building. A content analysis of research published in public relations (n=90), organization and business studies (n=122), and communication (n=49) from 1991 to 2011 was conducted. Findings reveal an increasing trend of image-related research in public relations. However, no specific image management public relations theories or concepts were utilized in the studies.

“We’re Not the Only One with the Crisis”: Exploring Situational Variables in an Extension of Situational Crisis Communication Theory • Hyun Jee Oh, Nanyang Technological University & Hyojung Park, San Diego State University • This study examined how crisis consistency and consensus in product-harm crises affect post-crisis outcomes, such as crisis responsibility attribution, corporate reputation, and behavioral intentions. An experiment revealed that lower crisis consensus led to more responsibility attribution to the organization, while higher crisis consistency increased anger, trust, perceived reputation, purchase intention, and negative word-of-mouth intention toward the organization. In this attribution process, anger was an effective mediator between consistency and other post-crisis outcomes.

Keeping It Real: Exploring the Roles of Conversational Human Voice and Source Credibility in Crisis Communication via Social Media • Hyojung Park, San Diego State University & Glen Cameron, University of Missouri • This study examined the effects of conversational human voice and source on crisis communication outcomes, using a 2 (tone of voice: human/organizational) _ 2 (source: public relations executive/private citizen) _ 2 (crisis response: defensive/accommodative) mixed experimental design. Results of path analysis and ANOVA indicate that first-person voice and personal narratives increased perceptions of social presence and interactivity in online communication. These perceptions subsequently resulted in positive post-crisis outcomes, such as reputation and behavioral intentions.

Hegemony, self-disciplining, and stigma among public relations professionals: Exploring Foucault’s concept of bio-power • Katie Place, Saint Louis University & Jennifer Vardeman-Winter, University of Houston • This qualitative study of 20 public relations practitioners examines power in public relations through the lens of bio-power – the control and management of human life through regulatory and discursive forces (Foucault, 1978; Macey, 2009; Vogelaar, 2007). Results suggest that bio-power exists as a) hegemonic knowledges of “brokering information,” “shaping public opinion,” “adding value,” and “pleasing people;” b) disciplining forces of a workaholic culture and self-censorship, and c) stigmas illustrating public relations as “spin” or “fluff.”

Developers’ Views about Public Meetings in the Context Public Relations Theory • Geah Pressgrove & John Besley, University of South Carolina • This study uses qualitative interviews (n = 25) to explore the mental models that real estate developers hold for public meetings, including their goals for such engagement and their views about participants. Developers were the focus because past research has failed to address views about engagement from the private-sector perspective and developers are often involved in public meetings.

Explicating and Investigating Stewardship Strategies on Nonprofit Website • Geah Pressgrove, Brooke Weberling & Erik Collins, University of South Carolina • Stewardship has been called the critical fifth step in the public relations process nonprofit organizations employ to develop relationships with various publics (Kelly, 2001). The purposes of this study are to explicate the meanings of the four stewardship strategies (responsibility, reporting, reciprocity and relationship nurturing) and, employing a quantitative content analysis of nonprofit websites, to further understand how top nonprofits deploy these strategies online. Findings indicate differences based on organization type and web page.

Beyond Reactive Public Relations:  How a Delphi Study of New Technology Informs Professional Practice • Adam Saffer, Michael Kent, Pop Rebeca, University of Oklahoma • This Delphi study assembled a panel of communication scholars and experts to identify trends and issues of online communication technologies. Since the current research has narrowly focused on specific tools, the broader issues of social media and technology have been overlooked. The findings from the study support the power of social media and suggest a mobile future for public relations practice. The essay provides recommendations for practitioners.

What Contributes to Public Relations Professionals’ Own Conflict: Life Affecting Work • Hongmei Shen, San Diego State University & Hua Jiang, Towson University • Based a national random sample (N = 820) of PRSA members, we studied three types of family responsibilities and salaries of professionals as stressors of their life-work conflict experiences. Results found the three types of life-work conflict subject to varied impact of family responsibilities while levels of behavior-based life-work conflict dependent on practitioners’ salary level. The story of life-work conflict is not as simple as a choice between “career vs. life.”

Seeking an Updated Understanding of the Public Relations – Journalist Relationship in the Age of Social Media • Dustin Supa, Boston University & Lynn Zoch, Radford University • Understanding how to effectively practice media relations is of utmost importance to public relations practitioners.  Part of that practice is an understanding of the relationship between journalists and public relations practitioners, and another part is deciding what to present to the media in terms of newsworthiness. Using survey research, this study found great agreement about newsworthiness, but a significant difference in how the two professions view each other.

Predicting Digital and Social Media Adoption Based on Organizational and Practitioner Characteristics • Kjerstin Thorson, Burghardt Tenderich, Jerry Swerling, Niku Ward & Brenna Clairr O’Tierney, University of Southern California • This paper draws on a survey of senior-level public relations and communications practitioners to provide a new empirical look at the adoption of digital and social practices across a diverse set of organizations and to model adoption as a function of practitioner attitudes and organizational variables. We also offer a test of the relationship between digital/social media use and perceived value of the PR function in the organization.

Motivations and Antecedents of Public Engagement on Corporate Social Networking Sites • Sunny Wan-Hsiu Tsai & Rita Linjuan Men, University of Miami • Corporate pages on social networking sites (SNSs) have become the key platform where online stakeholders interact with companies. This study explored the motivations and antecedents that drive publics’ engagement with corporate SNS pages. A conceptual model explicating the effects of social relationship factors on public-organization engagement on SNSs was tested through an on-line survey of 280 Facebook users across various age groups.

Public Relations and Public Diplomacy:  A Divided Past, a Shared Future • Antoaneta Vanc & Kathy Fitzpatrick, Quinnipiac University • This paper assesses the status and scope of public diplomacy research by public relations scholars, revealing substantial theoretical and practical links between the two fields. The results indicate growing interest among public relations scholars in public diplomacy and tremendous potential for public relations to contribute to the intellectual and practical development of public diplomacy as a critical resource for protecting and advancing national and global interests.

Considering familial, sociopolitical, technological, and other factors in a cultural approach to risk communication • Jennifer Vardeman-Winter, University of Houston • Culture is an essential but difficult context within which to situate risk campaigns. This study employed a cultural study with 39 teen girls to learn what personal, familial, education, sociopolitical, and technological/media factors influence their decision-making about the Gardasil vaccine. Findings suggest that girls largely make risk decisions based on their social identities as expressions of their culture. Propositions are made about how to re-consider risk communication using cultural studies.

From Awareness to Advocacy: Understanding Nonprofit Communication, Participation, and Support • Brooke Weberling, University of South Carolina • This paper explores public support for nonprofit organizations by studying a specific fundraising event, Relay For Life, benefiting the American Cancer Society. Using an online survey of undergraduates (N=514), this research employs the situational theory of publics and the theory of reasoned action to explore communication and participation behaviors related to the health issue and organization. Multiple analyses show how the variables combine to represent a continuum that might help explain nonprofit support.

The influence of Confucianism on the Legitimacy of Chinese Organizations • Shuo Yao & John Brummette, Radford University, & Luo Yi, Montclair State University • The literature on organizational legitimacy makes the argument that organizations must adhere to the value-driven standards inherent in the cultures in which they operate.  Using a quantitative content analysis of Chinese Fortune 500 companies’ websites, this study examines the strategic legitimation efforts of Chinese organizations.  Twenty-nine value clusters were identified in the analysis, some of which strongly demonstrate the influence of Confucianism on Chinese organizations (e.g., harmony, national-interests oriented, and self-regulation).

Student Papers

Crisis Attribution in News Articles: A Study of the Effect of Labeling on Corporate Reputation • Alyssa Appelman & Michelle Asmara, Pennsylvania State University • This experiment explores the relationship between labeling of a corporate crisis and corporate reputation. Participants read a news article about a corporate crisis and answered questions about perceived organizational responsibility, intent, locus, negative impression of the organization, degree of trust in the organization, and corporate reputation. The results do not show a relationship between labeling and corporate reputation. Explanations, directions for future research, and implications for public relations practitioners are explored.

Are Public Radio Stations Creating Opportunities for Dialogue on Their Web Sites? • Joshua Bentley, University of Oklahoma • Public radio stations serve their communities and rely on those communities for financial support. Both academic and practitioner literature has recognized the importance of relationship building in effective fundraising. One tool for building relationships is an organization’s Web site. This study applied Kent and Taylor’s (1998) five principles of dialogic Web design to the Web sites of 200 public radio stations. A content analysis revealed that public radio site score high on two of the five dialogic principles. However, there is room for radio stations to improve their sites. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Winning Hearts and Building Community:  An Analysis of Basic Rights Oregon’s “Love. Commitment. Marriage.” Campaign • Erica Ciszek, University of Oregon • This case study of Basic Rights Oregon, a state-based LGBT advocacy organization, considers the strategies and tactics employed by a local advocacy organization within the context of the national marriage debate. This research demonstrates how an advocacy organization, through political public relations, uses multiple media platforms to communicate particular emotionally and socially framed messages in hopes of gathering public support for political policies.

How to minimize corporate social responsibility (CSR) cynicism in younger generations: Exploring trickle effects of social partnerships • Daewook Kim, Texas Tech University • This study was primarily aimed at exploring trickle effects of social partnerships on CSR cynicism in younger generations. Overall, the results of this study indicated that CSR cynicism was differently associated with attitude toward CSR campaign and perceived CSR efficacy, according to types of social partnerships. In addition, attitude toward CSR campaign and perceived CSR efficacy was differently associated with either communal relationships or organizational identification, according to social partnership conditions.

Social Media as a Relationship Strategy: Twitter’s Impact on Enhancing Brand Loyalty • Zongchao Li, University of Miami • This study examined the relationship strategies on Twitter as represented by U.S. retail corporations. A content analysis was conducted comparing the tweets of two groups of retailers — a brand loyalty leader group and a Fortune 500 group. Findings indicate the brand loyalty retailers used Twitter more in a two-way communication manner, while the Fortune 500 group were more one-way oriented. Two relationship maintenance strategies, positivity and assurance, were found significantly different between the groups.

A Fight for Legitimacy:  A Case Study of the 2011 Education Union Crisis • Paquette, Michael, University of Maryland • This case study furthers the understanding of the post-crisis/learning phase of a crisis by examining the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s response to a legitimacy crisis in February 2011.  Using the theoretical frameworks of reflective management and the discourse of renewal, the study found that the education union demonstrated organizational learning through: increased engagement with stakeholders, an organic response to the crisis, and rearticulating its core values.

CSR-crisis relevance on the public’s blame attributions • Hanna Park • This study examined the main effects and interaction effects of type of crisis (victim or preventable crisis), severity of damage (minor or severe crisis), and CSR-crisis relevance (relevant CSR, irrelevant CSR, or no CSR) on the public’s blame attributions and its perceptions of attitude, trust, reputation, and supportive behavior intention toward a company. A total of 360 general consumers were recruited for an online experiment based on a fictitious company brand.

Strategic Partnership with Nonprofits in Practicing CSR: The Mediating Role of Perceived Altruism and Organizational Identification on Supportive CSR Outcomes • Hyejoon Rim & Jaejin Lee, University of Florida • To provide insight for a company determining ideal nonprofit partners, this study investigates how prior company reputation, nonprofit brand familiarity, and fit between the company and nonprofit influence supportive CSR outcomes. The study also examines the critical mediation role of perceived altruism and public-organizational identification in such associations. The results show the significant direct effects of company reputation, nonprofit familiarity, and cause-brand fit on supportive CSR outcomes.

The Role of the Organization in Networked Social Capital: A Political Public Relations Model of Social Capital Building • Adam Saffer, University of Oklahoma • Social capital is an emerging buzzword in many social science disciplines and the field of public relations (Ihlen, 2005) that explains the significance of social relations in our communication. The emerging literature of political public relations has yet to consider the concept of social capital. This essay introduces social capital to political public relations scholarship and builds a theoretical model that explains how organizations use their relationships with publics to achieve political objectives through mediated channels.

E-mobilization and empowered health activism: How social media changes the mutuality between Korean health activism and its external counterparts • KyuJin Shim, Syracuse University • This case study explores how the Korea Leukemia Patient Group (KLPG) uses social media in its internal communication strategy and how that empowers its relationship with external counterparts. The findings of this study indicate that the local health NGO’s communication strategy is changing in response to the increased effectiveness and impact of social media. With the use of social media like Twitter, the KLPG can construct an issue-based advocacy group quickly and effectively.

Identifying Social Media Influencers: Using Network Mapping to Track Information Flows in Online Interest-Based Publics • Kathleen Stansberry, University of Oregon • This research examines the use of online network analysis methods to identify and map the communication patterns of influencers in interest-based publics. Using the network analysis program IssueCrawler, this paper maps the link pattern among members of the online young adult cancer community. The results of this study show that online network analysis can be a highly effective tool to identify influencers and provide valuable information for public relations practitioners working with online publics.

Examining the Effect of Organizations’ Interpersonal Approach in Social Networking Sites • Kang Hoon Sung, University of Florida • People use social networking sites mainly for interpersonal communication. Thus, corporate communication focusing on promotional activities might create negative sentiments toward the company on those platforms. This experimental study examined the effect of organizations’ interpersonal approaches (e.g., non-promotional messages, interaction) in social networking sites using real and fictitious companies. The results revealed that people evaluated a company more positively when the company was highly interactive with customers.

A Comparative Content Analysis of Fortune 1000 Corporate Communication Strategy on Facebook and Twitter • Weiting Tao & Christopher Wilson, University of Florida • This quantitative content analysis of corporate Facebook and Twitter sites examined: 1) the extent to which Fortune 1000 corporations used Facebook and Twitter to communicate with stakeholders; 2) the communication strategies these corporations adopted for Facebook and Twitter; and 3) the consistency of communication strategies used on both social media sites. The results have practical application for leveraging multiple social media platforms and theoretical implications for the use of social media for public relations.

Corporate Web Site Communication with Investors: The Relationship among Employee Size, Profitability, and Web Site Communication • Nur Uysal, University of Oklahoma • This study examined S&P 500 petro-chemical corporations’ use of Web sites to communicate with investors—shareholders, potential investors, and analysts. The findings of a Web site content analysis suggested that Web site public relations efforts facilitate dialogic communication with investors. Using data from Compustat and CRSP datasets, a pair-wise correlation analysis and a multiple regression analysis revealed that companies with more employees and larger profits tended to provide more dialogic features on their Web sites.

Measuring BP Media Relations Outcomes Post Spill: An Illustration of How Public Relations’ Effects May Be Overestimated • Brendan Watson, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • A survey examined whether journalists’ (N=126) assessments of BP media relations predict public relations outcomes following the BP oil spill. The study found that the BP-journalist relationship predicted journalists’ attitudes toward the industry’s degree of corporate responsibility. Current research methods advanced in the professional and scholarly public relations literature, however, overestimated this relationship. The importance in public relations research of using multivariate models to control for variables outside of the organization-public relationship is discussed.

<< 2012 Abstracts

Faculty

Social Media Editors in The Newsroom: A Survey of Roles and Functions • Tim Currie, U. of King’s College • Social media editors are now common in large news organizations. Different from website editors, these journalists focus on creating conversations with the audience. Their place in the newsroom, however, is developing. This paper surveyed 13 social media editors at Canadian news organizations to determine their roles and functions. It concludes that social media editors were challenging the traditional gate-keeping function of news editors by representing audience interests in the newsroom.

Gatekeeping in East Africa: Organizational Structure and Reporter Gender as Potential Influences on Newspaper Content • Steve Collins, University of Central Florida; Tim Brown, University of Central Florida • This content analysis examined two Ugandan newspapers, one owned by the government and the other seen as “the opposition paper.” The results suggest that the independent newspaper includes more voices while the government paper offers more mobilizing information. However, both are thinly sourced and under represent women. The paper also considers the potential influence of reporter gender on content.

Argument quality in Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting • David Herrera, University of Missouri • Journalists strive to inform citizens about the way the world is, was, and will be. A test of whether journalists inform citizens is whether the journalists’ reasons and evidence support their conclusions. This paper applies tools from argumentation, informal logic, and critical thinking to conduct such a test on Pulitzer Prize-winning reporting. It finds that the stories frequently presented insufficient evidence for their conclusions, while struggling to justify important assumptions and appeals to authority.

The State of the Weekly Newspaper Industry • Stephen Lacy, Michigan State University; Daniel Riffe, University of North Carolina; David Coulson; Robin Blom, Michigan State University • This study found that the community weekly newspaper industry has changed during the past dozen years. Between 1997 and 2009, the weekly industry became dramatically more suburban and urban as the percentage of weeklies in rural areas declined. The proportion of weeklies that were group owned increased by about half. Roughly two-thirds of the weeklies had websites in 2009, but only about 6% allowed visitors to directly upload articles, and about 6% had paywalls.

Journalists, Technologists, and the Normalization Hypothesis: A Two-Part Case Study of News Innovation Contest Submissions • Seth Lewis, University of Minnesota–Twin Cities; Rodrigo Zamith, University of Minnesota; Nikki Usher; Todd Kominak, George Washington University • This paper examines how journalists and technologists are re-imagining the intersection of news and technology through a qualitative study of 234 idea submissions to a popular news innovation contest. We consider these submissions in light of three distinct concepts: interactivity, the public sphere, and normalization. We find in these submissions a break from the normalization hypothesis—a vision of journalism adapting to technology, rather than technology being configured to suit the legacy patterns of journalism.

Old Dogs, New Tricks: Online News Uses New Tools but Attracts the Same Eyeballs • Kelly Kaufhold, Texas Tech University • Longitudinal analysis of Pew data found that most migration of news consumers online was actually due to existing, older news consumers. Young adults are the most likely to be online; their elders, the most likely to consume news online. The oldest Americans, those over 50, are still the most likely to still follow news in print newspapers and on TV – but are also half-again more likely to follow news online as are adults under 30.

The Online Innovations of Legacy News Media: A Content Analysis of Large-Market Newspaper and Broadcast Station Websites • Amy Schmitz Weiss, San Diego State University; Tim Wulfemeyer, San Diego State University • The state of the digital news media landscape is in a moment of transition as well as opportunity. According to the State of the News Media Report (2012), digital news consumption is rising and the ways news consumers are getting news and information ranges across various media types (broadcast, print, web) and platforms (mobile, web, print). Despite the new players entering the market ranging from Huffington Post to Patch, legacy media (newspapers, local television stations and news radio stations) still have opportunities to innovate and capture new audiences through their digital platform, the website.

Courting Coverage: A Content Analysis of the News Reporting of Supreme Court of Texas Cases • Kenneth Pybus, Abilene Christian University • Although the Supreme Court of Texas is the state’s highest civil judicial body and the final arbiter of Texas law, average Texans may know little about this governmental body. This study researches the reporting of four major Texas newspapers. An analysis of these news stories yields data on political references, topic popularity and subject matter. Texas newspapers generally cover a Supreme Court of Texas decision only if that decision has a significant impact on their broader audiences. It devotes ample resources to those stories, but scant resources and provides limited coverage to the vast number of cases, most of which derive interest from niche audiences.

Newspaper Journalists Evaluate the State of the Watchdog Function • Marsha Ducey, The College at Brockport (SUNY) • This study examined the state of the watchdog function at daily newspapers in the United States following the elimination of thousands of journalism jobs and massive changes in the industry. The watchdog function is the ideal that the press should hold those in power, particularly government officials, accountable for their actions. Five hundred journalists from the Top 100 circulation daily newspapers were invited to take an internet survey.

The Impact of Local Newspaper’s Community Capital Perception on Subscription/Readership and Advertising Effects • Gi Woong Yun; David Morin, Bowling Green State University; Louisa Ha, Bowling Green State University; Mark Flynn, Bowling Green State University; SangHee Park; Xiao Hu, Bowling Green State University • With the advent of the Internet, once prosperous local papers are now faced with closure as the number of subscriptions decreases and advertising revenue continues to wane. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how the perception of a newspaper’s role in the community, conceptualized as community capital, influences subscription and readership of the newspaper and willingness to visit local retailers putting their ads in the newspaper. Results suggested that the higher community capital a newspaper has, the higher its subscription/readership.

Media Credibility and Journalistic Role Consumptions: Views on Citizen and Professional Journalists among Citizen Contributors • Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky; Seungahn Nah • This study identifies citizen journalists’ role conceptions regarding their news contributing activities and their perceptions of professional journalists’ roles. Specifically, media credibility (mainstream and citizen) was assessed to identify predictors of roles. Analyses reveal citizen journalists perceive their roles to be somewhat distinct from professionals. Citizen media credibility predicted all citizen journalists’ roles. Mainstream media credibility predicted the disseminator and interpreter roles for professional journalists but negatively predicted certain citizen journalistic roles (i.e., interpreter, mobilizer).

Social Responsibility Theory and the Digital Nonprofits: Should the Government Aid Online News Startups? • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University • As the size and scope of metropolitan daily newspapers shrink in the digital age, some veteran journalists are picking up the mantle of socially responsible journalism by establishing nonprofit news sites. Their economic sustainability is tenuous, however. The purpose of this study is to determine how leaders of these civic journalism startups view the government’s role in their survival. Findings show they are not open to direct government subsidies, but are attempting to diversify their revenue sources.

Newspaper Clubs Emerge From Bohemia: Nineteenth Century Press Clubs in Chicago Stop Short of an Interest in Professionalization • Stephen Banning, Bradley University • It has been suggested that professionalization was being attempted in the nineteenth century by newspaper clubs and associations. For instance, the Missouri Press Association has been shown to have had a strong interest in the professionalization of journalism. However, the extent of this interest throughout the breadth of newspaper groups in the nineteenth century has not been previously investigated. There is evidence of a strong bohemian influence in nineteenth century Chicago newspaper clubs.

Sequence of Internet News Browsing: Platform, Content, Presentation and Interface Usage • Lingzi Zhang, National University of Singapore • Discussions on Internet news use have centered on whether the medium allows audiences to have more control in news consumption. This study explores the evolution of platform attendance, content exposure, presentation elements and interface usage over the time of an Internet news browsing session. Responding to the criticism of self-report method, screen video is utilized to extract direct and detailed information about what a user encounters in real-time news browsing.

What Is News? Audiences may have their own ideas • Cory Armstrong, University of Florida; Melinda McAdams, University of Florida; Jason Cain, University of Florida • This study examines what young adults consider to be news, comparing that with traditional news values as espoused by journalists and taught in journalism schools. Employing an online survey, we compared those views with the participants’ assessment of whether 42 headlines are “news.” Findings indicated that traditional values of prominence, impact and controversy were important to participants, but that timeliness and proximity were less so. Opinion also emerged as a value.

Anatomy of a Train Accident: Case Study of News Diffusion Via the Weibo Micro-blogging Service in China • Narayanan Iyer; Yanfang Wu • Micro-blogging applications such as Twitter and Weibo (extensively used in China) have become a key social media tool for information dissemination and networking within the context of social movements. Researchers have examined the role and use of micro-blogging during times of crises arising out of political conflict as well as natural disasters. This paper uses the case study approach to analyze the most retweeted messages sent immediately after the July 23 railway accident in Wenzhou, China.

Newspaper-Owning Corporate Cultures and the Industry-Wide News Slant • Frederick Schiff, University of Houston; David Llanos, University of Houston • This study compares eight theories of news content, using a random stratified sample of 114 newspapers and 6,090 stories. The paper describes 12 newspaper-owning groups as having distinctive ways of treating stories, giving them more or less prominence depending on content characteristics embedded in the stories. The existence of exceptional or distinctive coverage by a few newspaper groups demonstrates the patterns in the rest of the newspaper industry, which we describe an industry-wide “news slant.”

A comparison of news media avoidances among young adults across media • Amy Zerba, University of Florida; Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida; Hyejoon Rim, University of Florida • The study explores a pivotal step in the Uses and Gratifications process — news media avoidances. News media avoidances are the active choice of choosing not to use a medium. The survey findings showed how print newspaper avoidances are similar to nonuses of traditional media (TV, magazines, radio), but differ for news sites. The findings show avoidance of a medium can impact use of another medium. The study describes nonusers of a medium compared to users.

When Journalism Met the Internet: Old Media and New Media Greet the Online Public • Mike Dillon, Duquesne University • American news organizations have long been criticized for not more effectively anticipating, appreciating and exploiting the Internet as it became a fact of daily life in the mid-1990s. Conventional wisdom holds that a lack of planning stymied the development of journalism on the Web and cast doubt on the viability of traditional public service journalism and its enduring values of accuracy, fairness, advocacy, etc. The diminishment of these values, in turn, endangered democracy itself.

A Wave of Sources: An Examination of Sources used in U. S. and Japanese Newspaper Coverage of the Tsunami in Japan • Maria Fontenot, University of Tennessee-Knoxville; Catherine Luther, University of Tennessee-Knoxville; Ioana Coman • This paper examined the use of sources in two major U. S. newspapers and two major Japanese newspapers in their coverage of the March 11, 2011 tsunami that struck Japan. Results revealed that both the U.S. and Japanese newspapers did not use social media outlets as sources of information. Furthermore, the combined papers from both nations tended to rely equally on non-official and official sources. Differences, however, were observed between newspapers within each nation.

Online News Coverage and Political Knowledge: The Case of the 2010 Health Care Reform Legislation • Kevin Wang, Butler University • This study explores the relationship between online news coverage and political knowledge in the contemporary media environment. Using the health care reform legislation as the backdrop, content analysis was performed on 1,268 stories from 10 online news outlets over a one-month period in 2010, and a survey was conducted with 330 participants to investigate the audience members’ media consumption pattern and their perception of the health care reform issue. Theoretical contribution and implications for future research are discussed.

The press versus the public: What is “good journalism?” • Homero Gil de Zuniga, University of Texas – Austin; Amber Hinsley, Saint Louis University • For several decades, citizens have reported that they trust some news outlets over others largely because they perceive the industry to be biased in its coverage. Research on journalists and their audience has long indicated journalists have a more positive perception of their work than does the public. Even in today’s hyper-digital media landscape, public perception on credibility and believability continue to decline and journalists don’t know how the public rates some of their core professional tasks.

Today’s Main Feature: Disappearing Feature Sections in the Age of Feature Writing • Bret Schulte, University of Arkansas • Research has shown that feature-style writing has gained ground on the inverted pyramid. Through content analysis of feature pages and feature sections in seven major newspapers, this research shows that the state of play for feature writing is far more complicated, with newspapers engaging in increasingly divergent strategies for their back pages.

Framing of the Egyptian Revolution in the Op-Ed sections of the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal • Guy J Golan, Syracuse University • The Op-Ed section of the newspaper is unique in that it allows experts to articulate their opinions regarding salient issues without editorial interference. The current study builds upon previous research on the Op-Ed through the analysis of the Op-Ed articles that were published in two European newspapers during the Egyptian revolution of 2011. The content analysis focused on the identity of the Op-Ed contributors, their use of sources and their selection of frames as highlighted in their opinion articles.

Conversational Journalism in Practice: A Case Study of The Seattle Times’ 2010 Pulitzer Prize Winner for Breaking News Reporting • Doreen Marchionni, Pacific Lutheran University • This case study built on recent experimental research that sought to measure journalism-as-a-conversation, or co-created news between citizens and journalists, by overlaying it on The Seattle Times’ 2010 Pulitzer-Prize-winning coverage of the slayings of four sheriff’s deputies. Findings suggest the growing power of Web tools that engage online audiences in breaking news and beyond, but also the need for more humanizing efforts, including short, personalized videos of journalists discussing their craft.

Hostility toward Sport Commentators in the Online Arena: A Reexamination of Disposition Effects Hypothesis • Po-Lin Pan, Arkansas State University • Very few studies examined the effects of sport commentary on readers’ attitudes toward sport commentators. Approaching disposition effects hypothesis in the context of online readership, the study aimed at examining the effects of the positive/negative sport commentaries and the win/loss of readers’ favorite team on online readers’ hostility toward online sport commentators. A two (the win of the favorite team versus the loss of the favorite team) by two (the positive commentaries versus the negative commentaries) within-subjects repeated measures experiment with emotional responses as one covariate was designed to examine readers’ hostility toward online sport commentators.

Age, Ethnicity, and the Exemplification of Hunger • William Kinnally, University of Central Florida; Ryan Burkett, University of Central Florida; Curry Chandler; Brenton Burkett • This study applies exemplification theory to examine the ways in which editorial intentions behind the design of a news article about hunger in the Orlando Sentinel corresponded to readers’ judgments about the ages and ethnicities of the people receiving emergency hunger services. A sample of 335 college students was randomly assigned to read one of three news articles.

Analyzing Online Coverage of a Possible Cancer Risk From Cell Phones • Ronald Yaros, University of Maryland; Elia Powers, University of Maryland-College Park • This content analysis considers articles from newspapers and online news outlets reporting the World Health Organization’s change in the risk category of brain cancer associated with cell phone use to “possible.” Articles were coded for their portrayed risk assessment, use of sources, and explanation of complex information. Results indicated that nearly 20% of the stories used incorrect terms to describe the risk category.

 

Student

Social media and the evolution of journalists’ routines • Brian Moritz • With social media platforms growing in popularity, it’s important to look at how they are being used by journalists. This qualitative study examines how social media is becoming a part of journalists’ work routines. Seventeen reporters working at newspapers were during the winter of 2010-2011. This data suggest that reporters are using social media to break news, keep tabs on their beats, share links to their stories and communicate with sources and readers.

How student journalists seek information and evaluate online sources during the newsgathering process • Julia Tylor, Arizona State University • A thorough understanding of how to evaluate website credibility is a crucial tool for journalists. This study examines how journalism students conduct the online newsgathering process and seeks to understand the decisions they make involving credibility assessment. The findings that resulted from a content analysis and interviews suggest that while journalism students exhibit some level of understanding about the importance of verification, they rely strongly on search engines and trust the credibility of search-engine results.

The adoption of smartphones and tablet computers among American journalists: A national survey • Logan Molyneux, University of Texas at Austin • This national survey of working journalists examined the extent to which they have adopted smartphones and tablet computers in their work and how that adoption has changed their routines and practices. Results show that most journalists have smartphones and feel they have improved the quality of their work. Journalists with smartphones are freed from their desks and gather more multimedia information than those without smartphones. Tablets have been adopted to a lesser extent.

Justice and journalism at the Supreme Court: Newspaper coverage of ideology within the Roberts Court • Elizabeth Woolery, UNC-Chapel Hill • This study examined how five newspapers discussed judicial ideologies in their coverage of First Amendment decisions handed down by the Supreme Court in its 2006, ’07, and ’08 terms. Findings indicate that journalists did cover the Supreme Court as an ideologically fueled institution cases with 5-4 decisions. This study builds on previous research and provides a more up-to-date, comprehensive and qualitative look at the issue of news coverage of the Supreme Court.

A Newspaper Strategy for Challenging Access Barriers at Shopping Malls • Jim DeBrosse, Ohio University • In recent years, the growing shift toward private control of the public sphere – from downtowns to malls, from neighborhoods to gated communities, from public records to private contracts — has occupied media and legal scholars who are rightly worried about the eroding foundations of the country’s democratic institutions. This paper will focus more narrowly on how the shift to privately-owned gathering spaces in malls and shopping centers has impacted working reporters.

Herding Reader Comments Into Print: Gatekeeping Across Media Platforms • Kathleen McElroy, University of Texas at Austin • This study examined newspaper features that highlight online reader comments and found that through selection, organization, and editing of comments, journalists juggle the spontaneity of online conversation with such print standards as logic, civility, and readability. A content analysis of printed comments, as well as interviews with journalists who choose them, reveals a gatekeeping process shaping this hybrid site of public discourse, which is similar to but distinct from letters to the editor.

A study of college students’ attitudes toward a paid news content system • Yoonmo Sang, University of Texas at Austin • This study investigated college students’ attitudes toward a paid news content system. It sought to identify factors that may predict such attitudes. To deepen our understanding of news copyright issues, I also analyzed responses to open-ended questions and identified patterns in such responses. Among the predictor variables, perceiving news as a commodity was the only significant predictor of college students’ attitudes toward a paid news model.

Multimedia journalism fever: An examination of the spread of adoption of digital reporting techniques • Matthew Haught, University of South Carolina; Jack Karlis, University of South Carolina • Since the rise of the Internet age, newspapers and television news operations have migrated their content from their traditional platforms to online distribution. Convergence spread through the newsroom starting with a small group and then spreading to others, as explained by the diffusion of innovation theory. Using network analysis research methods, this paper explores how multimedia practices diffuse through a social network in a newspaper newsroom.

The Viewing Room: How Journalists Prepare for and Respond to Witnessing Executions • Kenna Griffin, University of Oklahoma • This series of interviews with journalists who witnessed executions in 2010 explains how they emotionally prepared for and responded to the traumatic events. Findings show that newsroom managers do not offer journalists emotional assistance. However, the journalists were aware formal counseling services existed and chose not to use them. Instead, journalists relied on their professionalism as a barrier, denying trauma symptoms. The research supports the need for training within news organizations about job-related trauma.

Will Social Media “Save” Newspapers? Examining the Effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as News Platforms • Alice Ju, University of Texas at Austin; Sun Ho Jeong, University of Texas at Austin; H. Iris Chyi, University of Texas at Austin • In response to the popularity of social media, most newspapers are distributing content through Facebook and Twitter. Yet, the role of social media in these newspapers’ overall business models remains unclear. Analyzing the top 66 U.S. newspapers’ social media presence, this study empirically examines the effectiveness of Facebook and Twitter as news platforms.

Creating Frames, Contextualizing Frames: Elite versus Non-Elite Press Coverage of the 2008 Recession • Josephine Lukito, State University of New York at Geneseo; Atsushi Tajima, State University of New York at Geneseo • This paper analyzes newspapers coverage of the 2008 recession in the United States, through the New York Times as an elite press and USA Today as a non-elite press. Economics is a technically complex social-science. Thus, the press must present economic stories comprehensively. While the elite press maintains complexity, the non-elite press simplifies stories. In addition, the former consistently covers events prior to the latter. This time lag considerably characterizes how each constructs its stories.

The Natural Framing of Military Conflict News: The 2008 Russian Invasion of Georgia in Resonance, Izvestia and The New York Times • Robert McKeever, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Ekaterina Basilaia, Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University; Donald Shaw, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Historically, news organizations located in the heart of conflict zones have been an important player in informing the public and shaping its understanding on particular issues. This study utilized quantitative content analysis to examine how Georgian, Russian, and American media framed the 2008 war in Georgia. By examining coverage in Izvestia and Resonance as well as The New York Times – this paper elucidates cross-national differences in the frames emphasized by media during conflict coverage.

When the War on Drugs is Fought on the Field: Exploring Newspaper Coverage of Drug and Alcohol Deviance of College Athletes from 1970 to 2010 • Natalie Brown, University of Alabama; Shuhua Zhou, University of Alabama • This study is the first to use deviance theory to examine newspaper coverage of drug and alcohol arrests of college athletes and how that coverage has changed over time. This paper analyzed 121 newspaper articles published from 1970 to 2010. This “War on Drugs” that dominated headlines over the past forty years represent the perfect combination of characteristics that maximized newsworthiness: deviance, social issues, and sport.

The Sporting News: A Study on Sports Teams and the News that Writes about Them • Ben Miller • This study examined the relationships between source credibility, reputation, athletic identity and self-efficacy. One hundred and thirty-five participants read an article about the Louisiana State University (LSU) football’s 2010 victory over the University of Alabama from one of four different online news sources. The sources represented perspectives of national (ESPN.com), local (2theadvocate.com), school-produced (LSUsports.net), and opponent (BamaOnLine.com) sources. The participants were then asked questions about their LSU athletic identity and self-efficacy after viewing one of the four conditions.

New media, old sources: An examination of source diversity of online news in China • Na Liu, City University of Hong Kong; Fen Lin • This study develops a two-dimensional source diversity of online news, containing both typological diversity and geographical diversity. Typological source can indicate the influence of new media technologies on the types of media; while geographical diversity can further offer deep economic and media power relationship behind news production on the Internet. A content analysis of most user-searched news on Baidu.com during 112 days shows that new media technologies didn’t bring substantial changes to the old news sources production in China.

<< 2012 Abstracts

Faculty

The DC Snipers and Shifting Signifiers of Otherness: Newspaper Coverage of John Allan Muhammad and John Lee Malvo • Angie Chuang, American University School of Communication; Robin Chin Roemer • Studies of news coverage of Other identity in the form of blacks, Muslims, and immigrants have found that such signifiers are often overemphasized and represented as motive of crime or terrorism. A mixed method data analysis of newspaper coverage of the DC Snipers, arrested for a 2002 shooting spree that killed ten people, shows that the suspects’ layered identities and unusual crime challenged historic representational patterns.

Newspaper Coverage of the 25th Anniversary of the King Holiday • Carla Kimbrough, University of Nebraska-Lincoln • Anniversaries hold special meaning; they give us a time to reflect, to celebrate, to mourn, to remember. Holidays often offer the public a chance to do all of that. This paper analyzes qualitatively how newspapers covered the 25th anniversary of the national holiday named in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. King has become one of the country’s most celebrated citizens and the only one to be honored with a national holiday who was not a U.S. president (Haines).

Opposite but Equal: Examining the Protest Paradigm through the Hegemonic Lens • Josh Grimm, Texas Tech University • This study explores how Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr., were in the New York Times and Washington Post. Drawing on concepts of hegemony and racism, a textual analysis was conducted to examine coverage of each man. Through this framing, Malcolm X was labeled as a deviant while Martin Luther King, Jr., was embraced as a righteous leader. These characterizations reinforced hegemonic power structures while challenging the established “protest paradigm.”

Natives in the News: How the Rapid City Journal Covered Native Americans on Page 1A • Savannah Tranchell; Mary Arnold, South Dakota State University • A content analysis of the 2010 Rapid City Journal’s front page, the paper examines how often the Journal runs stories about Native American and tribal issues and which topics are covered. The findings offer a snapshot of the Journal’s reporting on Native issues and highlights patterns in coverage. The study concludes that, in the name of quality journalism, media outlets like the Journal must maximize coverage of the community rather than doing what is easy and readily accessible.

Hispanics’ uses and gratifications in the three-screen media environment • Kenton Wilkinson, Texas Tech University; Anthony Galvez, Rhode Island College; Todd Chambers, Texas Tech University • This paper applies uses and gratifications theory to assess how Hispanics residing in and around a midsized southwestern U.S. city utilize “three screens:” television, Internet and mobile phones. Focus groups and a survey (n=204) were used to compare younger and older users and those with differing levels of acculturation. The results indicate that mobile phones are a crucial contemporary technology, and that academic researchers should be paying close attention to promotion and use of the three screens.

Illegal or Undocumented? Alien or Immigrant? An Examination of Terms used by the News Media, 2000-2010 • Thomas J. Hrach, University of Memphis • This study examined the terms news organizations used to describe people living in the United States illegally for the period from 2000 to 2010 and whether the Hispanic or Latino population of a region was a determining factor. It utilized a database that searched 3,863 titles from news organizations during the 11-year period for nine regions of the country and a statistical analysis. It found that “illegal immigrant” was the dominant term, and its use increased despite pressure from immigrant advocates to discontinue its use.

On-Air Diversity: Comparing Television Network Affiliates’ Ethnic Representation • Amy Jo Coffey • A national sample of the on-air talent (N=1513 reporters, N=2094 anchors) at television network affiliates (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) was content analyzed to compare the ethnic diversity of their on-air personnel. Grounded in representation and strategic competition theory, results indicated that the network affiliates had highly similar representation levels between them, however Hispanics were the most underrepresented group overall. Representation levels were also found to be highly similar to national population levels, offering some encouraging news for diverse hiring.

“Where Do I Belong, from Laguna Beach to Jersey Shore?”: Portrayal of Minority Youths on MTV Reality Shows • Sung-Yeon Park, School of Media & Communication, Bowling Green State University; Korea University, Seoul, ROK (Visiting professor); Mark Flynn, Bowling Green State University; Alexandru Stana; David Morin, Bowling Green State University; Gi Woong Yun • MTV Reality shows popular among young audiences were analyzed. All minority groups, except mixed-race women and gay men, were underrepresented. No ethnic/racial difference was found in plot centrality, popularity, and being hated. In romantic involvement, however, intergroup differences emerged: mixed-race women were more likely to be in a committed relationship, in an interracial relationship, and a target of romantic desire whereas Latinos and Blacks were less likely to be represented in all three aspects of the romantic involvement.

Does Language Matter? The Effects of News in Spanish vs. English on Voting by U.S. Latinos • Barry Hollander, University of Georgia • As the Latino population in the U.S. continues to grow, along with this population’s political impact, it is important to understand how the news media are used in terms of integration into the nation’s social and political culture. This study uses national survey data to examine the role the language of the news – in Spanish or English – may play in political participation.

Latino Online Newspapers vs. Mainstream Online Newspapers: A Comparative Analysis of News Coverage of the 2010 Health Care Reform • Masudul Biswas, Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania • This study analyzes the news coverage of the 2010 Health Care Reform in a comparative context between Latino online newspapers and mainstream online newspapers by using the theoretical framework of media framing.

Choctaw and Cherokee Nations: How Freedom of Expression Isn’t “Just a White Man’s Idea” • Kevin Kemper, University of Arizona School of Journalism • Freedom of expression isn’t “just a white man’s idea.” This theoretical essay engages with laws by and affecting the Choctaw and Cherokee Nations in Oklahoma to see whether individual liberties like free expression and its subsets of free press and speech can be reconciled with the sovereignty of those tribes. Karl Popper, in The Open Society and Its Enemies, argues that those who put the needs of society over the rights of the individual are promoting totalitarianism.

Writing the Wrong: Can Counter-Stereotypes Offset Negative Media Messages about African-Americans • Lanier Holt, Indiana University • A plethora of studies show media messages activate or exacerbate racial stereotypes. This analysis, however, may be the first to examine which types of information – those that directly contradict media messages (i.e., crime-related) or general news (i.e., non-crime-related) are most effective in abating racial stereotypes. This study’s findings suggest fear of crime is becoming more a human, fear, not just a racial one. Recommendations for media are also briefly discussed.

 

Student Papers

“What if Michael Vick Were White?”: Analyzing Framing, Narrative, and Race In Media Coverage of Michael Vick • Bryan Carr, University of Oklahoma • Literature shows that athletics and the media that cover them have long been intertwined with issues pertaining to race and ethnicity. This relationship was particularly prevalent in media coverage of the Michael Vick dogfighting case, with many authors questioning whether Vick would have received different treatment if he had not been African-American.

User-Generated Racism: An Analysis of Stereotypes of African Americans, Latinos, and Asians in YouTube Videos • Lei Guo, University of Texas at Austin; Summer Harlow, University of Texas at Austin • This study examines representations of African Americans, Latinos and Asians in YouTube videos, exploring whether YouTube serves as a type of alternative media where the status quo is contested. Results show most videos analyzed perpetuated racial stereotypes. Further, videos that included stereotypes, most of which contained user-produced content, were more popular. We argue citizens use YouTube to perpetuate the same stereotypes found in mainstream media, rather than use it as an alternative counter-public sphere.

Ghost in the House: Remembering Champion Jack Johnson • Carrie Isard, Temple University • Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight champion of the world, lived a life full of public triumph and private tribulations, and in the time since his death, his memory has emerged as a complex and contradictory story.  Using a collective memory theoretical framework, this paper conducts a narrative analysis of four Jack Johnson memory texts: Hollywood film The Great White Hope (1970); Big Fights, Inc. documentary Jack Johnson (1970); Ken Burns’ documentary Unforgivable Blackness (2005) and Trevor Von Eeden’s The Original Johnson two-part graphic novel (2009, 2011) to examine how Johnson has been remembered in shifting historical, political and social contexts.

Perception and Use of Ethnic Online Communities as a Health Information Source among Recent Immigrants in the United States • Junga Kim, University of Florida • This study investigated the role of ethnic online communities as a health information source for Korean Americans, applying the uses and dependency model as a theoretical framework. A survey was conducted to examine use and evaluation of online communities and physicians as diabetes-related information source among Korean Americans with different levels of acculturation.

Celebrated Images of Blackness: A Content Analysis of Oscar Award Winning Films of the 20th Century • Roslyn Satchel, Louisiana State University Manship School of Mass Communication • Religious liberty is essential to democracy.  Democracy, and civility between religious groups, however, are in jeopardy due to the ways in which media conglomerates use religion—Christianity, in particular—as a political force for creating xenophobia against cultural minorities.  This paper examines 10 films with the highest viewership of all time for framing bias and system justification in use of “the native” stereotype as described by Stuart Hall (1981).

Stereotypes in Blockbusters: An examination of Asian Characters in Top Box Office American Films (2000-2009) • Jia-Wei Tu, Department of Media and Communication, City University of Hong Kong; Xing Liu • This study is an up-to-date investigation on how Asians are portrayed in American films. Top 10 American gross income films of each year from 2000 to 2009 were analyzed. Asian characters in the 100 films were examined from four dimensions: images, romantic relationships, costumes and accents. The findings have demonstrated that Asians are not completely annihilated but symbolic trivialized; the Asian stereotypes still exist in the top box office films.

Fine and Punishment:  James Harrison, NFL fines and USA Today’s construction of black masculinity • Molly Yanity, Ohio University • Research points to a structural problem of overt and inferential racism that is prevalent in American society and finds its way en masse to the sports pages. While violence in sports draws larger audiences to arenas and stadiums, the “Bad Black Man” seems to be the scapegoat when that institutionally-promoted violence results serious health risks. During the 2010 National Football League season, Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison was represented as the “Bad Black Men.”

Framing Immigration: An Analysis of Newswire and Regional Newspaper Coverage of Immigration in the U.S. • Rodrigo Zamith, University of Minnesota • This study seeks to analyze and compare the coverage of the issue of immigration in the United States by newswire services and regional newspapers in cities near the southern border. Drawing from framing theory, the author adopts a mixed-method approach consisting of an interpretive analysis and a computer-aided analysis. The findings reveal important similarities and differences in the framing of the issue and in the depiction of immigrants, with serious social and political implications.

<< 2012 Abstracts

Faculty

Not dead yet: Newspaper company annual reports show chains still profitable • Marc Edge, University of the South Pacific • The death of newspapers was widely predicted at the height of the 2008-09 economic crisis. An examination of financial reports for the fourteen major publicly-traded newspaper companies in North America from 2006 through 2011, however, shows that all were profitable. While advertising revenue dropped 55 percent from 2006 to 2011 in the U.S., only one company posted less than the Fortune 500 average of 4.7 percent profits in any of the six years under study.

Patterns of European Inter-Media Competition for Advertising Before and After Online Advertising • Dan Shaver, Jonkoping International Business School; Mary Alice Shaver, Jonkoping International Business School • This study examines the distribution of advertising revenues across media in 21 European countries before the advent of online advertising (1993-1997) and after the introduction of online advertising (2003-2007). It identifies competition levels between media outlets in the pre-Internet period and the post-Internet period. It finds that, broadly, the pre-Internet European media markets could be classified into three categories based on inter-media competition and that, due to a variety of factors, the markets had converged.

Organization ecology and emerging media: A case study • Wilson Lowrey • This study adopts an ecological approach adapted from the sociology of organizations to help explain news media change, as well as media decision-makers’ tendency to stay the course. According to this approach, once securing a financial foothold, media tend toward the similar, the safe and the routine. Burgeoning collectives of look-alike media – “populations” – signal legitimacy, grow stable relationships with other institutions, and reduce uncertainty.

Collapse of the Newspaper Industry: Goodwill, Leverage and Bankruptcy • John Soloski, University of Georgia • The paper examines financial factors that magnified the collapse of the newspaper industry in the mid-2000s when advertising revenues plummeted. The paper shows how goodwill and leverage magnified the collapse and hastened the bankruptcy of a number of newspaper companies. The paper also tests a model for predicting bankruptcy of newspaper companies.

Interactive Audiences on Internet Video Websites: Audience Valuation in the New Media Era • Yan Yang • This project investigates people’s use of interactive features on Internet video websites. It compares interactive and non-interactive audiences in terms of traditional audience valuation criteria (demographics, media consumption) and new criteria (online engagement level, Internet word of mouth value). Based on results from a national consumer panel survey (N=200) among broadband users, interactive audiences are younger, more male-skewing, have higher income levels, are more likely to be in the 18-49 age group.

Mobile OS Competition and Early Diffusion of Smartphones in Global Mobile Telecommunication Markets • Sangwon Lee, Central Michigan University; Seonmi Lee, KT; Justin Brown • Value creation through convergence between different media technologies is key driver of growth in the telecommunications industry. Within the wireless domain, successful diffusion of converged broadband devices like smartphones are essential, with such devices accounting for an increase in new revenues as well as consumer dependence to regularly multitask and communicate throughout the day. Despite a growing body of literature on mobile deployment, there are nevertheless very few empirical studies about the influential factors of smartphone diffusion.

Winning the Popularity Contest: Assessing Independent Record Company Performance in the Digital Download Market • Heather Polinsky, Central Michigan University • Digital distribution has been lauded as the panacea for independent musicians and independent record companies by allowing direct competition with the major record companies. By examining iTunes and Amazon digital download charts, this study finds major record company recordings continue to be more popular with digital download consumers. Consumers favor older recordings from major record companies. There is moderate evidence that independent recording company albums are just as popular with Amazon digital download consumers.

The Potential Effect of VOD on the Windowing Process of Theatrical Movies • Byeng-Hee Chang, Sungkyunkwan University; Sang-Hyun Nam, Sungkyunkwan University; Joo-Youn Park, Hankook University of Foreign Studies • The present study analyzed the potential effect of VODs as new distribution channels on the windowing process by including both IPTV and Internet VOD into the hypothetical windowing process. Using attributions of holdback period, sequential order and movie price for distribution channels, the present study was able to combine a total of 48 hypothetical windowing scenarios and used them in order to answer the two research questions posed.

Creative Destruction: An Exploratory Study of How Digitally Native News Nonprofits Are Innovating Journalism Practices Online • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University • As traditional media struggle to adapt their practices to the new media environment, a digitally native nonprofit news model has emerged. Framed by management theories of creative destruction and disruptive innovation, this study identifies how leaders of these sites view technology as an opportunity to reshape journalism practices online.

Linking Economics to Communication Research: Exploring the Third-Person Effect on News Consumers’ Intention to Pay • H. Iris Chyi, University of Texas at Austin; Angela M. Lee, University of Texas at Austin; Avery Holton, University of Texas – Austin • Tracing third-person effect research to its psychological origins, this study explores whether the self-other perspective affects consumer behavior in a critical area currently facing the news industry—paying intent of news consumers. A survey of 767 Internet users indicated people perceive others as more likely to pay for news in print, Web, and app formats. The results provide a linkage between communication and economics research and offer a better understanding of the way consumers evaluate multiplatform news products.

Student

Creating lobbying strategies in a competitive environment: An insider’s perspective • Amy Sindik, University of Georgia • This study examines the way organizations in the broadcast and wireless industries formulate lobbying strategies, and if the formulation of lobbying strategies is impacted by the competition between the industries on policy issues.

Smartphone: Utilitarian Product or Hedonic Product? Different Dimension of Adoption Factor and Purchasing Intention • Hyunsang Son; Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida • By employing real U.S. consumer, this study develops structural model to investigate consumers’ different motivations for adopting smart phone. The results of this study indicated that consumers’ purchasing intention or actual purchasing behavior related to smartphones were positively predicted by communication facilitation and perceived utility of mobile phone and negatively linked with perceived expense and reassuring dimensions.

An Empirical Study of National Self-sufficiency in Broadcast Television Programming • Xuexin Xu; Wayne Fu; Joseph Straubhaar • This study investigates individual countries’ self-sufficiency in broadcast television programming, a universal and overarching policy aim entrusted in national or domestic broadcast service. It traces and predicts the airtime shares of domestic and American programs, using longitudinal data taken at decade-long intervals during 1962-2001 for 20 countries or territories worldwide.

Too Much, Too Little, or Just About Right? Measuring Concentration of Media Ownership, 1976-2009 • Tom Vizcarrondo, Louisiana State University • Researchers have recently begun approaching media ownership concentration studies by viewing the entire media industry holistically, as opposed to measuring concentration within a specific medium. I expand on this approach by measuring concentration over 34 years. I conclude that the industry has consistently been “unconcentrated” and that the period studied is characterized by three distinct trends—an initial period of declining concentration, a period of relatively stable levels, and a current period of rising concentration.

What’s on (Digital) TV? Multicast Programming, the Public Interest Standard, and the Scarcity Rationale • David Kordus • With the transition to digital broadcast television and the ability to multicast, the space for free television content has expanded manyfold, offering new possibilities for diversity in voices and content and for serving the public interest. With a content analysis of multicast substreams in a random sample of television markets across the country, I take a unique look at just what this new broadcasting space contains and find few hours of local or news programming.

Privacy Capital: Social Media Users Perceptions and Exchange of Their Privacy Online • Jason Cain, University of Florida • This study surveyed a sample of college students at a large university to examine perceptions of privacy, control and vulnerability of personal information shared social networking sites, and any positive outcomes received for sharing this information. Previous models that operationalize how privacy concern is constructed and expectancy-value theory were used as a basis for this research. The data supported that respondents exchanged information to obtain positive. Results for control were mixed and contradictory for vulnerability.

Building a Relationship on Twitter: A Content Analysis of University Twitter Accounts • Brandi Watkins, The University of Alabama; Regina Lewis, The University of Alabama • The current study examines how universities use social media to communicate with external audiences using a relationship marketing approach. A content analysis of university Twitter accounts was conducted to determine the level of interaction among universities and their followers. Using the five levels of relationship building, this analysis revealed that universities tend to engage in more reactive level relationship building than any other level.

The New Non-Profits: A Financial Examination • Magda Konieczna, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Sue Robinson, University of Wisconsin-Madison • As traditional news organizations suffer, many people have suggested alternative business models to supplement a shrinking mainstream journalism. This study presents a first, largely descriptive picture of the financial state of the burgeoning field of non-profit journalism. Many journalistic non-profits operate on a shoestring, hoping to strike upon the magical revenue formula that leads to sustainability.

Media fragmentation and coexistence of market information regimes: Simultaneous use of two television ratings systems in India • Harsh Taneja • Competition between two audience measurement systems is common in media markets. Yet we know little about how market participants utilize information from competing systems. This study examines the Indian television market where executives use information available from two competing ratings services.

Free Culture, Human Capital and Economic Growth • Xiaoqun Zhang, Bowling Green State University • This paper proposes an endogenous growth model which emphasizes the role of free access to the knowledge in the economic growth. The solution of the model indicates that the production efficiency of knowledge, the converting efficiency from knowledge products into human capital, and the externality of knowledge products, have impacts on the economic growth rate. Thus, the government intervention, such as the subsidy to the knowledge producers, will have positive effects on the economic growth.

Corporations as indispensable entities to the media: how interlocking board of directors influence media coverage • Jun Ho Lee, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign; Michael Bednar, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign • In this paper, we question the objectivity of media reports on corporations intertwined with the media. Specifically, we examined how interlocking directorates may influence media coverage of corporations and then explored how the effect of firm performance on the media coverage of the performance can be moderated by the interlocking boards.

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