Graduate Education Interest Group

Cultivating Political Activism Online: A Case Study of Democratic Meetup Groups in the 2004 Presidential Election • Carole V. Bell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Political interest groups and candidates are increasingly turning to the Internet for a variety of political communication functions, from fundraising to volunteer mobilization. Much of this renewed attention results from the successes of the 2004 presidential primaries, most spectacularly the growth of Meetup.com, an online service that enables people with common interests to meet.

The Media’s Role in Declining Voter Turnout in Presidential Elections, 1960-2004 • Andrew Kaplan, University of Maryland • Voter turnout has declined precipitously in the past 45 years for presidential elections, from about 73% of the non-South in 1960 (the South is not counted due to discriminatory practices) to 54% in 2000 and 60% in 2004. In 1996, nearly half the country did not vote. For decades, scholars asserted that as education levels rose, voter participation would also increase. Yet, it has sharply declined.

Triple play competition in U.S. telecommunications industry: Exploring factors affecting cable operators’ adoption of triple-play services • Sangho Seo, Penn State University • The primary purpose of this study is to estimate empirically factors affecting adoption of triple-play bundled services of a cable operator in U.S. local telecommunications market and discovered what factors are important in order to lead to additional convergence in the future.

“Hidden cameras” in Bollywood: Indian responses to the journalistic ethics of undercover reporting of celebrities • Jaya Shroff and Mansi Tiwari, Ohio University • The paper discusses the serious and the ethical issues associated with the methods of investigation and news gathering namely the hidden cameras and changed identities. It looks at several cases from India and the United States with a focus on the IndiaTV controversy of March 2005 and analyses the responses from across the media to the newsgathering methods involved. The main concerns raised in the article deal with deception and invasion of privacy.

Supervision and Accuracy in an Online Newsroom: A Pilot Study • David Stanton, Diane Hickey and Keith Saliba, University of Florida • The current study examines supervision of a Web-driven news production and editing course at a large, southeastern university. The course, which has been taught for over a decade, recently transitioned from a static HTML Web site to a dynamic site driven by a relational database and XML. Content management systems (CMS) allow journalists to remotely input content, edit and deliver the final product to print and Web-based publications.

“I’m confident I’ll vote for you, but only if you go to church with me:” Motivated message processing, religious ideology and evaluation of political candidates • John Wirtz and Penelope Sheets, University of Minnesota • The current paper examines the relationship between commitment to religious beliefs, need for closure (Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 1993), and the level of confidence individuals place in the inferences they draw when given limited information about a political candidate. A statistically significant relationship (F(1, 74)=4.103, p<.O5) was found between participants’ commitment to Christian orthodox beliefs and the level of confidence they placed in their inferences about a political candidate.

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Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Interest Group

The Construction of Queer Memory: Media Coverage of Stonewall 25 • Guillermo Avila-Saavedra, Temple University • Through discourse analysis of the media coverage of the Stonewall 25 celebrations in 1994, this paper examines the role of memory in shaping a collective queer identity and constructing a founding mythology for the queer social movement. This paper examines media uses of memory and considers their cultural consequences. It argues that the media are complicit in shaping a memory of Stonewall that reflects the political goals of the American queer movement in the 1990s.

Structuring the Status Quo: The L-Word and Queer Female Acceptability • Rebecca Kern, Temple University • This paper argues that The L-Word sustains the dominant ideals of femininity and hetero-normativity in Western society. The L-Word makes queer females visible in the mass media; however, the structure of the episodes, themes, and characters encourage femininity and eroticize lesbian sexuality. This is significant in that the resistant possibilities for a text such as The L-Word may subsume under the need for audience appeal by the network and the media industry in general.

Person Perception in the U.S. Ban on Gays in the Military: A Content Analysis of News Photographs in The Advocate and Newsweek • Nicole Elise Smith, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • When considering media messages, a vital area of inquiry is media images, specifically news photographs. Based on the theory of person perception, this study compares images of gay men and lesbians within articles about the U.S. ban on gays in the military in the leading gay newsmagazine, The Advocate, with images in a leading mainstream newsmagazine, Newsweek. Findings indicate that Newsweek did not present images of gay men and lesbians as favorably as did The Advocate.

Soap — A Gay Man Comes to American Television • Rodger Streitmatter, American University • This paper examines and analyzes the groundbreaking television program Soap, which aired on ABC from 1977 to 1981, as a milestone in the increasing visibility of gay men and lesbians in the media. The study begins with a description of how the nation – first journalists and then social conservatives – responded to the news that a television network was creating a program that featured a gay character in a recurring role.

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Entertainment Studies Interest Group

Black and White on the Silver Screen: Representations of Interracial Romance in American Film of the Post-Civil Rights Era • Carole V. Bell, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Although socially taboo, interracial sexual involvement has been a source of recurring fascination since the silent era. With an eye towards tracking evolving social norms and conceptions of race, this paper investigates how interracial relationships have been depicted in popular American film in the post-segregation era, exploring how these representations have changed over time and how they remain the same.

Ancient Rome and Las Vegas: Communicating Entertainment as Diversion • Gregory Borchard and Anthony Ferri, University of Nevada-Las Vegas • This study analyzes the entertainment productions of ancient Rome and contemporary Las Vegas relative to media employed by both cultural centers to communicate a sense of presence, interpreting the roles of theatre and architecture as constructs for projecting participation in events on artistic and experiential levels. The study is significant for media and communications scholars because it illustrates the roots of contemporary themes and trends relative to historic institutions, juxtaposing modern entertainment with ancient institutions.

Network News Coverage of Celebrity Trials during 2004:A Study of Source Use and Reporter Context • Serena Carpenter, Stephen Lacy and Frederick Fico, Michigan State University • A study of network news in 2004 found the reporting of celebrity trials (Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Scott Peterson, and Martha Stewart) differed from other big stories. Morning network news carried the bulk (83 percent) of celebrity trial stories when compared to evening news. The morning celebrity trial stories had more transparent and female sources compared to other big stories, while celebrity stories were more likely to have only one viewpoint and contain anonymous sources.

Master of This Domain: Audience and the Reality of Dis-identification in Seinfeld • Phil Chidester, Illinois State University • The enduring popularity of Seinfeld as a media text, coupled with the patent inability of any of the program’s core actors to carry that popularity over to more recent television products, presents an intriguing critical problem: To what inherent quality – or set of qualities – might we assign the show’s historic appeal? Further, how does Seinfeld’s rise to prominence relate to a contemporary explosion of interest in reality TV fare?

Women Wrestling Fans: Claiming Feminine Power in the 1950s • Chad Dell, Monmouth University • This study demonstrates how women in the 1950s used professional wrestling to maintain their gendered identity in the face of societal attempts to renegotiate the meaning of femininity in conservative, domestic terms. The fan club bulletins these women produced stand as evidence of their challenge to changing definitions of feminine roles, representing an important step women took in the direction of the second wave of feminism that would emerge in the decades to come.

Playing Online: Motivations for Fantasy Sports Use • Lee Farquhar, University of Iowa and Bob Meeds, Kansas State University • Approximately 15 million people participate in online fantasy sports. Using Q-Methodology, we apply a Uses and Gratifications framework to examine types of online fantasy sports users and their motivations. Five types of players emerged, with casual players, statisticians, and isolationist thrill-seekers being the three most common types. Differences among types were primarily associated with two motivations– arousal and surveillance, while entertainment, escape and social interaction motivations were judged to be less important motivations.

Reality Trek: The Colonialist and Xenophobic Ideologies of International (and Intergalactic) Relations Portrayed in Star Trek • Howard D. Fisher, Ohio University • Star Trek portrayed the Federation as the United States and the Klingons as the Soviet Union in a galaxy-wide Cold War. Recent incarnations of Star Trek portray a different ideology of human interaction with aliens – analogous to United States’ international relations. Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987) continued the colonialist attitudes that marked the first series, while Enterprise (2001) showed a Star Fleet skittish of alien encounters and more afraid of any “other.”

A Historical Examination of the Representation of Media Messages and Social Issues in ABC Afterschool Specials, 1972-1981 • Amanda Hall Gallagher, Texas Tech University • Theoretically grounded in cultural studies and supported by a historical framework, this paper explores media messages and social issues as represented in ABC Afterschool Specials from 1972-1981. Through textual analysis, thirteen specials were analyzed. Some key themes which emerged from this analysis include the lack of diversity in individual characters and family structures, the presence of young characters in traditional, patriarchal gender roles, and the non-controversial treatment of important, key social issues.

Motive Differentiation Among Viewers of Reality Television Subgenres: A Uses and Gratifications Approach • Jill Griffith and Vincent F. Filak, Ball State University • This study examined the gratification-seeking behavior of reality television viewers (n=327) based on the subgenre of their favorite reality show. Survey results demonstrated that viewers of certain subgenres reported higher levels of specific gratification satisfaction when compared to viewers of other subgenres. The outcomes of the study codifies previous work that argued reality television should not be viewed as a homogenous genre and provides support for the individualism postulates of uses and gratifications theory.

Thirty Years Locked in Pandora’s Box: Weirum v. RKO • Mark D. Harmon, University of Tennessee • Weirum v. RKO (15 Cal. 3d 40, 1975; 539 P.2d 36, 1975) is an exceptional entertainment law case. A radio station was held liable for a promotional campaign that encouraged young listeners to be the first to locate a traveling disc jockey. One such motorist forced another driver off the road, leading to that driver’s death. The author tracks efforts to expand the Weirum media precedent, and demonstrates how those cases have both clarified and limited the Weirum precedent.

The Images: A Content Analysis of Celebrity Photographs in Three Celebrity Magazines • Elizabeth M. Hendrickson, University of Missouri-Columbia • The American publishing industry has recently witnessed a proliferation of celebrity weekly magazines. This paper is a content analysis of the photographic images in three celebrity weekly magazines during three months in 2005. This research examines the photos in terms of age, race and sex. Attention is given to both the cultural significance of celebrity and the magazine readership experience.

Tour de Lance: An Investigation of Lance Armstrong as a Celebrity Endorser of the ‘LiveStrong’ Campaign • Andrea M. Holt, University of Alabama • Very little research in the mass communication field has been done on athletes and health campaigns; therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the power and influence of celebrities endorsed campaigns. Specifically, the study will examine such characteristics using the “Live Strong” campaign. Additionally, this study will look at parasocial interaction and celebrity worship of Lance Armstrong, in terms of his effectiveness as a spokesman for the campaign and connection with the public.

Parental-Peer Mediation and Children’s Perceptions of the Television World: Influence of Mediation and Exposure on Perceived Reality of Family • Seok Kang, Arkansas Tech University • This study considers multiple features of parental-peer mediation in examining their influences on children’s perceived reality about family. This study also examines children’s viewing of family programs on their perceived reality. The data were collected from 184 families (184 parents and 184 children) by asking their mediation styles, television viewing behaviors, and perceived reality. Results show that peer mediation is a compelling contributor to children’s construction of social reality about family.

Can Shows Be on Top When Mom’s Not?: The Portrayal of the Sitcom Mothers from the 1950s to the 1990s • Kyun Soo Kim, Jon Mills and Brett Morris, University of Alabama • This study content analyzed the comedic events that include mothers to explore a typology of humor and representation of women in family sitcoms over the last decades. The study found that slapstick has been the most prevalent humor type over time. The study also found that romantic and sexual topics were common themes in family situation comedies over the last decades.

Chief Executive Officers: An Examination of Mediated Portrayals of Male and Female American Presidents in West Wing and Command in Chief • Christine A. Kleck, Penn State • West Wing and Commander in Chief are both award-winning situational dramas that showcase the office of the President of the United States. A content analysis of several episodes of both series was conducted to study portrayals of gender in the media. The data yielded four interactions of statistical significance (p<.05). These answered questions concerning representation of gender and presents an update of the perceptions of women in the media.

The Entertainment Experiences of Iron Chef • Shu-Yueh Lee and Naeemah Clark, University of Tennessee • This paper attempts to examine why a Japanese cooking show, Iron Chef, successfully attracts American audiences. A questionnaire containing 45 items was designed to investigate viewers’ motivations and pleasures. First, the most successful feature is the competitive nature of the program. Second, respondents noted the most enjoyable aspect of the program is the creativity of the chefs.

A Social Cognitive Approach Towards Understanding the Effects of Popular Poker Television Shows on College Students • Marc Londo, University of Central Florida • Tournament poker shows have become a leading ratings draw on American television. Since ESPN and the Travel Channel began airing their innovative poker shows in 2003, the game has reached a new following, particularly among college students. There are unique and psychologically significant factors that characterize the college population that make students particularly receptive to popular characterizations in media.

Maintaining Friendships: A Content Analysis of Rituals in Friends • Lisa Marshall, Bowling Green State University • The purpose of this study is to examine how the characters in Friends use friendship rituals to maintain their relationships with one another and suggest a relationship between the series and changing social patterns in society. This research adapts Bruess and Pearson’s (1997) ritual types and found that the cast both exhibit the six friendship rituals defined in literature and that they don’t increase, but are shared and maintained over the course of the series.

Twirty Is as Twirty Does: The Consumer Community of Shesheme.com • Rachel Davis Mersey, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Running under the tagline “happiest girls are the prettiest girls,” shesheme.com, a NC-based Web site offers a weekly newsletter-meets-diary targeted at twirties—women in their twenties and thirties who are perplexed by work, love, and life. Shesheme.com’s positioning as a self-help tool meets consumer guide offers an interesting forum for study.

A Comparison of the Logical and Emotional Impacts of the Citizens’ of Houston and Dallas Toward Their City’s NFL Teams • Jennifer Miller, Texas Tech University • This study applies Aristotle’s theories of logos and pathos to the connections citizens have with the sports team in their city. Focus groups and in-depth interviews are used to determine the differences between the logical and emotional impact the Dallas Cowboys and the Houston Texans have on their fans and the cities they are a part of.

This Is Next Year: Myth and Ritual in Four Films about the Boston Red Sox • Heather Muse, Temple University • This paper will examine the narratives created in four recent films about the Boston Red Sox. It draws upon theories of structuralism, collective memory and cultural studies to determine how these films portray the Red Sox, the team’s fans and the city of Boston. The films had several mythological qualities that illustrated that the narrative of sport victory transcends filmic genre and that identification with the team is stronger than with any specific player.

The Brand Appearance Typology: Going Beyond Product Placement to a Broader Understanding of Brands in Primetime • Anne C. Osborne, Louisiana State University • This paper presents a qualitative analysis of one night of primetime programming across six networks. The result is a new typology of brand appearances. Unlike other efforts to categorize product placement, this typology outlines how brands appear within television rather than how the brands get on television.

Active Mediation, Rule Making, and Cosurfing: Can Traditional Parental Mediation Strategies be Applied to the Internet? • Erin L. Ryan, University of Georgia • This paper examines and defines the three well-established parental mediation strategies (active mediation, rule making, and coviewing), outlines the effects of such strategies when used with traditional media, and applies these strategies to one of the most popular new forms of child-focused entertainment: the Internet. It is the goal of this research to contribute to the emerging body of research about parental mediation of the Internet in the new media environment.

Attitudes Toward Will and Grace: A Comparison of Heterosexual and Gay/Lesbian Viewers • Tracy Tuten Ryan, Virginia Commonwealth University and David W. Glascoff, Western State College • Using Rusbult’s Investment model as a theoretical base, this study compared the attitudes of heterosexual viewers of the television program, Will & Grace, with those of gay/lesbian viewers. Sexual orientation was relevant for understanding differences in viewer attitudes, but viewer satisfaction, entertainment alternative quality, and investment size was predictive of program commitment regardless of sexual orientation. Thus, application of the Investment model is an appropriate framework for understanding commitment to television programming.

A Test of Flow and its Potential Moderators as Predictors of Video Game Enjoyment • Barry P. Smith, University of Alabama • Flow has been proposed as a theoretical framework for explaining enjoyment obtained from playing video games. This paper describes the results of a study designed to test this proposition. Flow was found to significantly predict the level of enjoyment of video game. Additionally, self-consciousness, video-game self-efficacy, and need for cognition were shown to moderate the occurrence of flow and resultant enjoyment in a statistically significant manner.

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Community Journalism Interest Group

Weekly Dilemmas: A Study of Community Journalism, Connections, and Ethics in Small Towns • Lisa Coble-Krings, Kansas • Small-town journalists are able to connect with their communities by practicing community journalism. This form of journalism is explained by examining community ties and the potential problems close connections can cause for small-town journalists. The data used in this study was gathered during visits to five weekly newspapers and from interviews with journalists and non-journalists. Conclusions developed from this study show how small-town journalists answer ethical questions and how community members feel about their newspapers.

The Historical Mission and Evolution of the Capital Outlook Newspaper • Yanela Gordon, Florida A&M • This study explores the history and mission of the Capital Outlook, Tallahassee’s only African-American owned newspaper. Established in 1975, the Capital Outlook has existed under five-periods of ownership. For thirty years, the newspaper has been a voice of victory and vision for African Americans living in Florida, especially within the North Florida region. The Capital Outlook has distinguished itself having been awarded, three times, the A. Philip Randolph Messenger Award, known as the Black Pulitzer.

No Union in Humboldt, Kansas: Readers’ Perceptions of Loss When a Community Loses Its Newspaper • J. Steven Smethers, Bonnie Bressers, Amber Willard, Linda Harvey and Gloria Freeland, Kansas State • This study seeks to gauge perception of loss among newspaper readers in Humboldt, Kansas, in the aftermath of losing their community newspaper, the Humboldt Union. Variables relating to newspaper use and the degree to which readers miss certain features in the Union are examined, along with perceptions about the role of the newspaper in the community and the effectiveness of other area media outlets in filling the communications void left by the Union’s demise.

The Rumble in the Dark: Regional Newspaper Coverage of the West Virginia Buffalo Creek Mine Disaster of 1972 • Rita Colistra, North Carolina-Chapel Hill • The flood caused by the Buffalo Creek coal mine disaster was one of the worst on record in West Virginia history. This paper examines news coverage of the disaster by two regional newspapers with historically different stances on the coal industry and unions.

Toward a measure of community journalism • Wilson Lowrey, Amanda Brozana and Jean Mackay, Alabama • This paper represents a first step toward an index measure of community journalism. Academic literature over the last 10 years that focuses on the relationship between news media and community were systematically explored. Definitions of “community” and of “community journalism” from the literature were organized, and models of community and community journalism are proposed.

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Civic and Citizen Journalism Interest Group

Sense of Community as a Driver for Citizen Journalism • Clyde H. Bentley, Brian Hamman, Hans Ibold, Jeremy Littau and Hans Meyer, University of Missouri-Columbia • Persons who registered with a Midwestern citizen journalism site in order to gain the ability to author on it were surveyed on their motivations. Using the registration rolls of MyMissourian.com, the authors conducted a Web-based survey that tracked media usage, interest in politics and attitudes toward community information. The study showed that the sample of citizen journalists was highly interested in community building and local information.

The Next Generation 60 Years Later: How Civic Journalism is the Offspring of the Hutchins Commission of 1947 • Judy Buller, Notre Dame de Namur University • The Hutchins Commission released its historic reports in 1947. With the 60th anniversary upon us, it is an appropriate time to revisit the roots of social responsibility – and to examine the forms the next generation has taken. This paper illustrates how civic journalism became that next generation of social responsibility.

CivicMinded Crises: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Government Communications and News Coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita • Maria Fontenot, Kris Boyle and Amanda Hall Gallagher, Texas Tech University • This study examined coverage of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in five newspapers based on themes introduced through government press releases. Specifically, it compared the coverage to the press releases and investigated the role of civic journalism in the coverage. The findings suggested there was no connection between the press releases and newspaper coverage. Additionally, civic journalism was influential in the way the newspapers reported the disasters.

Surveying Citizen Journalism: Describing emerging phenomena that posit a renovation of the public sphere • Lewis A. Friedland, Hernando Rojas, Christopher Long, Eulalia Puig Abril, Victoria Hildebrandt, Nak Ho Kim, Eunsun Lee, SeungHyun Lee and Yong Jun Shin, University of Wisconsin • This paper presents work being pursued by a network of researchers interested in systematically describing, documenting and understanding citizen journalism efforts. To do so, we combine qualitative and quantitative techniques, and develop a three tier research strategy that includes: a) a case narrative; b) surveys of citizen reporters; and, c) analysis of content.

Freedom of Expression and Information Society • Nikhil Moro, The Ohio State University • Civic journalists of the information society, many of whom are bloggers, represent varied theoretical traditions of freedom of expression. They also represent an individualization condition that has been discussed as one of the important social effects of the Internet. This paper uses these arguments to develop a normative theory of freedom of expression for the information society.

Citizen Journalism, Technological Convergence and Development: Transforming Villages through Cable Audio • Veena V. Raman, Pennsylvania State University • This case study examines how a cluster of villages in South India have been transformed by a community managed cable audio service that delivers radio to local households, linked to a computer training centre. Citizens act as journalists, operate the audio center, produce all the programming and have influenced politics and local development. This is significant given that India has resisted allowing community radio arguing that local broadcasting would foment political unrest.

“The Newspaper With a Conscience”: Discourse on Journalism’s Responsibility to Society and Civic Life in the Late 19th and Early 20th Century • Ronald R. Rodgers, The University of Florida • This paper examines late nineteenth and early twentieth century discussions by the magazines and trade press about the newspaper’s responsibility to society that foreshadowed by many years the Hutchins Commission’s landmark call for a socially responsible press in 1947. Newspapers were viewed, as one speaker put it in 1910, as the “chief educator of the masses.”

Participatory journalism opportunities on major newspapers’ online sites • Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College • In 2005, ordinary observers of major news events such as the London transit system bombings and U.S. hurricanes became part of the news coverage by supplying firsthand accounts and selfproduced images. An investigation into the opportunities audience members have to engage in participatory news coverage aside from such big events determined that online news operations of major U.S. newspapers are beginning to use devices that open the gates for participatory journalists with some regularity.

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