Law and Policy Divisions

Watchdog on a Leash: Reporter’s Privilege in Federal Criminal Circuit Court Cases • Kirsten Margrethe Beattie, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Since Branzburg v. Hayes (1972), courts at the state and federal level have struggled to interpret and apply the common law derived from the case’s 5-4 majority. While some states have enacted shield laws offering reporters varying levels of privilege, Rule 501 of the Federal Rules of Evidence and federal common law deny the existence of a reporter’s privilege. This paper examines how Federal Circuit Courts have interpreted Braznburg and what privilege reporters can claim.

Judicial Deference or Acquiescence?: The Use of FOIA Exemption 7(A) as a New National Security Exemption in Center for National Security Studies v. U.S. Department of Justice • Cheryl Bishop, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper examines the use of FOIA precedent on judicial deference as applied in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in Center for National Security Studies v. U.S. Dept. of Justice, as well as subsequent FOIA cases that cited the ruling. The court majority accorded a high level of deference to the executive in ruling that the information in question was exempt under Exemption 7(A) of the FOIA.

From PETA To Lamparello: The Chilling Effect Of Trademark Law On Political Parody • Kellie Cairns and Dale Herbeck, Boston College • Cybersquatters register domain names using protected trademarks for financial gain. Laws invoked to combat cybersquatting, most notably the Lanham Act and the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, have been erroneously extended by the courts to reach legitimate political expression in cases like PETA v. Doughney. Rather than privileging the economic interest of trademark holders, future decisions should follow the logic of Lamparello v. Falwell and focus on the viewpoint espoused by the web site.

The Press as Interest Group: Mainstream Media in the United States Supreme Court • Eric B. Easton, University of Baltimore • This study explores the influence that news media organizations exert on the United States Supreme Court as parties and amici curiae. The study found, inter alia, that the media succeed more often than not, although by a relatively small margin, with far greater success in content-related than in newsgathering cases. Media organizations have been more successful as parties than as amici, and more successful against state and local government entities than against the federal government.

Reese’s Pieces in My Birkin, Please: An Examination of Product Placement in TV and Calls for Reform • Emily Erickson and Anne C. Osborne, Louisiana State University • Abstract not available.

Libel Law and the Postmodern Dilemma: The Search for Truth • Kathy Roberts Forde, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • To consider the ways in which constitutional jurisprudence has grappled with postmodern language problems is to try to reconcile two systems of thought with radically different assumptions about knowledge. Yet, as this study’s case analysis will demonstrate, the language and truth issues implicated in New York Times v. Sullivan and its progeny require such a reckoning.

Commercial Speech in Public Schools: Evaluating the First Amendment Rights of Advertisers • Joshua H. Godwin, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • This paper examines the regulation of advertising in public schools and advertisers’ First Amendment rights to force a school to accept their advertisements. It outlines court rulings illustrating the confusion regarding the state versus local authority battle for control of in-school advertising.

The Chinese Conundrum: When Culture Is At Odds With The Adoption Of Copyright Law • Gary C. Guffey, University of Georgia • Prints, paintings, graphic art, books, music, movies, software and many other copyrighted works are illegally copied and account for as much as 90 percent of China’s art and literature market. An analysis using legal consciousness theory and property rights theory suggests the Chinese culture may be one of the biggest hurdles for the adoption of copyright as a legal concept.

International Criminal Tribunals: Does the Reporters Privilege Apply? • Elaine Hargrove-Simon, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities • This paper reports on the decision of the Appeals Chamber in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which ruled that war correspondents are entitled to reporter’s privilege. Because reporter’s privilege is seen as essential to democracy, this paper takes the position that future international cases involving reporters (in particular the newly-created International Criminal Court), should allow evidentiary guidelines giving all journalists reporter’s privilege.

From PETA to Lamparello: The Chilling Effect of Trademark Law on Political Parody • Dale Herbeck, Boston University • Abstract not available.

Accessing Records Six Feet Under: A 50-state Study of Statutory Autopsy Laws • Ana-Klara Hering, University of Florida • Public access to autopsy records is regulated at the state level, but no two states treat the issue in an identical manner. This study found that almost the same number of states that consider autopsy records presumptively open consider them closed. However, the majority of states are not absolute in their treatment of this issue. Most statutes contain exemptions, which allow for disclosure of otherwise sealed records, or vice versa.

Opening Bottlenecks: On Behalf of Mandated Network Neutrality • Bill Herman, University of Pennsylvania • Among the most contentious issues in communication policymaking in 2006 is the topic of “network neutrality,” the principle that internet service providers should generally treat all data and applications equally. This paper defends network neutrality regulation in the face of withering criticism by legal scholar Christopher Yoo. This paper rebuts Yoo’s claims of improved network management and economic welfare, and it presents the case for regulations requiring network neutrality on First Amendment and other grounds.

Two Competing Visions of the Fundamentals of Copyright • Minejeong Kim, Hawaii Pacific University • This paper is an attempt to provide a theoretical framework that can guide the focal inquiry of copyright jurisprudence. The author of this paper argues that there are two competing visions of the fundamentals of copyright and that the contrasting views help to explain what happens in copyright law.

The Facebook: Placing Universities Face-to-Face with First Amendment Concerns — How University Action Toward Hate Speech on Online Social Network Threatens College Students’ First Amendment Freedoms • Kimberly Lopez, University of Florida • The online social network Facebook has become one of the most popular Web sites with an estimated 64 percent of undergraduates listed in the network. As the new technology continues to grow, universities begin to monitor the site and hold students accountable for their posts’ content, especially for hate speech. This paper uses legal research methods to explore the body of law likely to apply to a Facebook hate speech case brought before a court.

State Guarantees of Freedom of the Press May Again Be Best, Just as They Were First • Joe Mathewson, Northwestern University • After more than a century and a half of disuse, the First Amendment has been since 1964 the strongest legal protection of a free press. But recent contempt citations suggest that that period of expanding reach is over. Therefore the press freedom guarantees of the state constitutions, which preceded the First Amendment and declare affirmatively the right to publish, may be the best hope for future protection of press freedom.

Is the Chill Gone? A Follow-Up Study of Newspaper Editors Regarding Libel • Roy L. Moore, Georgia College & State University, Elizabeth K. Hansen, Eastern Kentucky University, and Davide Girardelli, University of Kentucky • Replicating a 1992 study, this study uses a 2004 national sample of 180 editors to examine frequency of actual and threatened libel suits against daily newspapers, chilling effect, factors associated with chilling effect and changes over time. Given the decline in large libel suits and awards, predicted a reduced chilling effect.

Adjudicating Libels in Information Society • Nikhil Moro, Ohio State University • Personal jurisdiction is a vexing problem in adjudicating libel cases in the information society. The various traditions of freedom of expression scholarship are unable to reconcile the individualization condition enabled by emergent technologies to the need to resolve multiple personal jurisdictions. This paper uses a frame of freedom of expression to address the jurisdictional challenge posed to libel law by the information society.

Planting The Seeds Of Constitutional Conflict: A Look At The Legal Landscape Concerning Presidential Power and the NSAs Wiretapping Program • Brian Pafundi, University of Florida • Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush authorized the NSA to conduct “electronic surveillance of Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying.” Since the wiretapping involves both domestic and foreign communications, the surveillance program raises numerous legal questions.

The Politics of Censorship: A Curved Explanation for a Contentious Phenomenon • Jason B. Reineke, The Ohio State University • The social science literature has offered a variety of results and explanations regarding the relationship between political ideology and support for censorship. The present research asks whether the relationship might best be described nonlinearly in order to reconcile these inconsistencies. An examination of data from the General Social Survey suggests that individuals who are very liberal or very conservative both tend to be significantly more supportive of censorship than a linear description predicts.

Policy issue networks and the Freedom of Information Act: An examination of 50 years of Congressional Testimony • Jeannine E. Relly, University of Arizona • The U.S. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is the product of numerous political agreements and compromises. In many ways, it is no different from other legislation and policies with its cycles of testimony from elite private actors, including union members, business representatives, consumer advocates, and other groups, which have entered and exited the policy-making process in the 40 years since the original law was passed.

Market Definition, Merger Review and Media Monopolization: Congressional Approval of the Corporate Voice through the Newspaper Preservation Act • Amy Kristin Sanders, University of Florida • This paper will examine the effect of the Newspaper Preservation Act on competition in the daily newspaper market by analyzing legislative history, subsequent court interpretations and Justice Department implementation of the NPA. Part II of the paper discusses the legislative history of the NPA and the subsequent case law that has interpreted it. In addition, this section addresses the effects of the NPA on the Justice Department’s merger review process.

Invoking Privilege Since Branzburg: Are Bloggers Like Other Non-Traditional Journalists? • Jason Shepard, University of Wisconsin-Madison • In the 33 years since the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a First Amendment-based reporter’s privilege’ most federal and state courts have nonetheless carved out a privilege under certain circumstances. An analysis of cases in which non-traditional journalists have sought the privilege provides significant guidance in determining whether bloggers can invoke the privilege.

Policy, Practice, and Intent: Forum Analysis and the Uncertain Status of the Student Press at Public Colleges and Universities • Derigan A. Silver, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Until recently the First Amendment rights of student newspapers at public colleges and universities had been considered to be largely coextensive with the rights of other newspapers.

Inherited tensions: The semantic struggle of the public interest • Maria Simone, Rowan University • This paper reports results from observations and interviews conducted with media activists. The examination focused on inherited tensions from historical interpretations of the public interest standard. These tensions demonstrate concerns about: 1) vagueness; 2) self-interest; and 3) consensus. The researcher argues the public interest provides limited benefit for guiding policy. In order to achieve the spirit of the public interest, advocates should shift discourses to those of media rights and justice.

The Promise of Arbitration: Can it succeed in journalism as it has in other businesses? • Daxton R. Stewart, University of Missouri • Both courts and businesses favor arbitration as an alternative to litigation, and nearly every kind of commercial transaction in the United States is now subject to some kind of arbitration agreement. This paper examines whether arbitration could be used by news publishers to provide an efficient means to resolve disputes.

Inciting Jealousy and Discontent The Remains of Constitutional Media Access to the Battlefield after Flynt v. Rumsfeld • Thomas C. Terry, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • It is the purpose of this paper to determine if there any constitutional arguments remaining for press access to the battlefield in the wake of the D.C. Circuit’s unanimous rejection of any such claim and the Supreme Court’s denial of certiorari for Flynt v. Rumsfeld in October 2004. The Supreme Court has never accorded the press access rights outside the courtroom and post-September 11 would probably not be inclined to grant any.

Access Control, Circumventing Devices, and the DMCA: A legislative history and case analysis • John Thomson Jr., University of Wisconsin-Madison • While the Digital Millennium Copyright Act was needed to combat digital piracy, the effect of the legislation has been to allow content owners greater control over how consumers use a copyrighted work. This paper offers an analysis of the legislative history and court application of the DMCA as it relates to access control and circumventing devices. It will be argued that, white user rights in access control was considered, the application poorly reflected Congress’ intent.

Evaluating cross-border Internet Hate Speech Regulation: a Normative Framework • Bastiaan Vanacker, University of Minnesota • This paper tries to develop a normative framework for assessing regulations of Internet content originating from another country. This framework is rooted in a representative concept of sovereignty, the end-to-end principle and the more practical principle of effectiveness. The framework was designed to assess regulatory attempts of European countries to limit hate speech originating from the United States, but can also be applied to other instances of cross border Internet content regulation.

International and Comparative Law on the Journalist’s Privilege: A Case of Reverse U.S. “Exceptionalism” in Freedom of the Press? • Kyu Ho Youm, University of Oregon • This paper examines the journalist’s privilege from an international and comparative perspective. Its main part comprises a discussion of U.S. law on the journalist’s privilege, comparison of the “shield laws” of several foreign countries, and an analysis of the ICIY’s decision in the Randal case, which involved Washington Post reporter Jonathan Randal.

The Yahoo! Case on Global Cybercommunication: National Laws Still Setting the Internet Borders • Kyu Ho Youm, University of Oregon • Yahoo! v. LICRA (9th Cir. 2006) focused on whether U.S. courts should enforce foreign cyberlaw judgments without violating the First Amendment on freedom of expression. This paper examines: (1) How are American news media protected against enforcement of foreign court judgments?; (2) On what ground did the Ninth Circuit rule en banc on the French court judgment against Yahoo!?; and (3) What is the significance of the Yahoo! case for cybercommunication?

<< 2006 Abstracts

International Communication Division

After the declaration: In search of Africa in Time magazine, 1979-1986 • Emmanuel C. Alozie, Governors State University • Concentrating on coverage within a decade of the adoption of UNESCO’s media declaration, this qualitative content analysis of Time magazine, using World Systems Theory as its conceptual framework, found that as a “historian in a relative hurry”, Time’s news and related coverage of Africa produced a mixed result.

Using Copyright Law to Protect Folklore: Unintended Consequences in Ghana • Kwasi Boateng, University of Arkansas and Duncan H. Brown, Ohio University • The need to protect folklore from commercial exploitation by transnational media corporations is widely accepted. However, the best mechanisms to achieve this protection are less clear. In Ghana attempts to protect folklore have resulted in a copyright act that requires Ghanaian nationals to pay a user fee to perform or adapt their own cultural artifacts. This paper reviews the issues this interpretation of copyright law raises and suggests an alternative approach.

Blasphemy As Sacred Rite/Right: “The Mohammed Cartoons Affair” and Maintenance of Journalistic Ideology • Dan Berkowitz and Lyombe Eko, University of Iowa • On September 30, 2005, Denmark’s largest newspaper, Jyllands-Posten, published twelve satirical drawings depicting the Muslim prophet Mohammed. This sparked a short-lived controversy that flared anew from the embers several months later. This paper explores how two national flagship newspapers – The New York Times and Le Monde – undertook the rite of paradigm maintenance for the sacred right of free speech and the professional ideology of journalism in the French and U.S. cultures.

Bride burning: how newspapers framed Dowry in India, 1999-2005 • Porismita Borah, University of Wisconsin-Madison • In India, the number of dowry-related deaths has been increasing exponentially. This study explores how newspapers framed dowry over a period of six years. Using framing analysis, the study employs a content analysis of 3,874 newspaper articles. The findings show that the newspapers interpreted the dowry issue in physical terms, which means most of the coverage was about the physical torture of the victim. And the coverage mostly consisted of short reports.

One Region, Two Worlds? Comparing Cultural Values in Chinese and Indian Television Commercials • Hong Cheng, Ohio University and Padmini Patwardhan, Winthrop University • As a first comparative study on advertising in two most populous and fastest-growing markets in the world today, this paper focuses on the cultural values reflected in Chinese and Indian television commercials. Major findings include that both countries’ commercials tend to emphasize modernity over tradition as a dominant value, and Chinese commercials used traditional Eastern values more often than Indian ads, which resorted to more Western values.

Expanding critical reporting within the confines of party-state control: the case of Southern Weekend • Li-Fung Cho, University of Hong Kong • China’s nascent watchdog journalism, motivated by commercial pressures and mandated by the central government to control the lower echelons of power, allows horizontal criticism mostly across provincial boundaries. This paper looks at how one leading Chinese newsweekly, Southern Weekend, expanded its editorial autonomy mainly by capitalizing on the power struggles between the central and local governments, and between one local government and another in order to survive and become profitable.

Death in the Middle East: an analysis of how the New York Times and Chicago Tribune frame violence in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict • Mohamad Elmasry, University of Iowa • This paper analyzed New York Times and Chicago Tribune newspaper coverage of killings in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The purpose of the study was to analyze how the two newspapers framed the violent actions of Israelis and Palestinians to find out what framing devices the newspapers used to express their pro-Israeli positions. Findings suggest that the newspapers used frames that justified Israeli killings, assigned more prominence to the Israeli perspective, and condemned Palestinian killings.

Guidance·Supervision·Reform·Freedom: Plotting the direction of Chinese media through an analysis of the all-important buzzword • Qian Gang, University of Hong Kong • This study employs Chinese-language database research, Chinese Party periodicals and the author’s first-hand experience as a media professional in China to analyze the development of China’s so-called “media reform” since the onset of economic reforms in the 1980s. The author analyzes the media policy buzzwords coined by high-level Chinese officials in order to clarify the thinking behind the country’s media policy and demystify what outside observers often read as inconsistent trends of openness and suppression.

Journalism and the State: Taking Seriously a Collaborative Role for the Press • Theodore L. Glasser, Stanford University • Many conceptions of press freedom, especially Western views of an independent and autonomous press, leave little room for a serious consideration of a collaborative relationship between the press and the state. Still, collaboration not only describes certain relationships between the press and the state but at times prescribes them as well.

Where in the World is Africa?: Predicting coverage of Africa by U.S. television networks • Guy J Golan, Florida International University • The current study investigates coverage of African nations by four U.S. television newscasts. It focuses on the news period between the years 2002-2004 and reveals that despite presence of wide scale famine, civil conflict, disputed elections and an AIDS epidemic, the African continent received limited coverage. In the discussion, the study’s results are incorporated into the larger theoretical application of world system theory into research on the determinants of international news coverage.

How the World Looks to Us: International News in Award-Winning Photographs from the Pictures of the Year, 1943-2003 • Keith Greenwood and Zoe Smith, University of Missouri • An analysis of award-winning photographs of international events from the annual Pictures of the Year competition is compared to a similar study of Pulitzer Prize winning photographs. The analysis concludes the award-winning photographs, which represent the best of photojournalism, portray international events through a limited number of themes that reinforce a stereotype of developing nations as violent and conflict-torn places.

How German Gen Xers Define Their Generation: An Exploratory Collective Case Study • Frauke Hachtmann, University of Nebraska-Lincoln • This exploratory collective case study describes how members of Generation X, who were born and raised in Germany define their generation. Typological analysis
was used to analyze the interview data. Six qualitative themes emerged, including “the stable family,” “the pensive generation,” “finding common cultural ground after the reunification,” “letting go of the past,” “television is dead,” and “keeping it real – advertising should be believable.”

Introducing Utilitarian Journalism: An Alternative to Development Journalism in Africa • Kingsley O. Harbor, Jacksonville State University • Utilitarian Journalism (UJ) is a concept developed by this author as an alternative to development journalism (DJ). UJ is a derivative of the theory of Utilitarianism by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. This paper develops the research-based components of DJ compares them with those of UJ. The study establishes the failure of DJ to advance the cause of national development and demonstrates, by comparison, the potential efficacy of UJ for advancing national development.

Discursive Themes in the Chronicle of Current Events • Elaine Hargrove-Simon, University of Minnesota • The Chronicle of Current Events (the Chronicle) was an underground dissident newspaper produced in the former Soviet Union from April 1968 until June 1982. By adopting an objective and legalistic tone, the Chronicle has been credited with playing an important role in the democratic movement in the former Soviet Union. This paper will attempt to identify elements of discourse contained in the Chronicle that placed it in such an important role in the democratic movement.

9/11, the War on Terrorism and the U.S. Image in Latin America: Reinforcement Rather than Rupture • Sallie Hughes and Jesus Arroyave, University of Miami • Latin Americans turned to mass media on Sept. 11, 2001 like people everywhere, but for them the meaning of the attacks was colored by how they are tied economically and personally to the United States.

Engendering transition: A textual analysis of portrayals of female politicians in the Bulgarian press • Elza Ibroscheva, Southern Illinois University and Maria Raicheva-Stover, Washburn University • This paper examines how the changes after the fall of the Berlin Wall have affected the presentation of female politicians in Eastern Europe. Textual analysis of the highest circulation daily in Bulgaria was used to examine how female politicians were portrayed during the 2005 parliamentary elections.

“FOXifying” Bulgarian TV: A Critical Analysis of the First Private National Channel in Bulgaria • Elza Ibroscheva, Southern Illinois University and Maria Raicheva-Stover, Washburn University • This paper applies a critical analysis of the tension between global and local to examine the effects of foreign capital on the broadcasting system of post-communist Bulgaria. By exploring through a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods the creation of Bulgaria’s first private national channel, bTV, an affiliate of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, this paper shows how the initial strong resistance to bTV’s commercially-driven programming was successfully quenched by high ratings and advertising revenues.

New Windows, New Air: The Use of Online Political Bulletin Boards by Arabs • Ali Jamal, Edward Waters College and S. M. Mazharul Haque, University of Southern Mississippi • This study employs the uses and gratifications perspective to explore motivations leading Arabs to use the online political bulletin boards. A factor analysis of 456 questionnaires revealed the occurrence of four factors motivations: information/surveillance, anticensorship/freedom, excitement, and guidance. Correlations occurred between motivations and interest in politics, political efficacy, trust in government, and discussing issues with people. The study found that the guidance factor played a key role in predicting users’ discussions of issues and information.

Radio and the Making of a Nation: Slovak Radio in World War II and the Cold War (1938-1968) • Owen V. Johnson, Indiana University • This paper provides a historical examination of the role of radio in the process of the development of national identity during the three decades when radio was the primary mass medium. During these decades, governed respectively by semi-fascist, democratic and communist governments, radio helped create a distinctly Slovak – as opposed to Czechoslovak –public sphere, which helped lay the groundwork for the eventual division of the country at the end of 1992.

Media framing of Hurricane Katrina and foreign correspondents’ journalistic expectations from the US media coverage of the disaster • Yusuf Kalyango, Jr. and Petya Eckler, University of Missouri-Columbia • This study examines the foreign media framing of Hurricane Katrina and foreign correspondents’ journalistic expectations from the U.S. media coverage of the disaster. A content analysis of the foreign press and a survey of non-U.S. journalists were conducted. Overall journalistic expectations were not met in terms of public dialog, diversity and skepticism but were satisfied for investigative reporting and accuracy. Great differences in opinion were seen between foreign correspondents from Europe and other continents.

International Communication, Terrorism and Post-Colonial Theory • Anandam P. Kavooori, University of Georgia • Post-colonial analytical strategies are discussed and related to the subject matter of terrorism by (a) dis-articulating the semantic and political field behind traditional categorizations of International Communication (Culture, Nation, and Theory) and suggesting how these are re-worked in the semantic space of contemporary terrorism and (b) articulating issues of globality, identity and reflexivity and seeing how these are animated/disseminated in contemporary, pre and post 9/11 strategies of mediated terrorism.

Persisting patterns: a framing analysis of the New York Times’ coverage of Venezuelan politics, 2001-2005 • Sara Keever, University of Texas-Austin • This study examined the framing of recent Venezuelan politics in the New York Times. A content analysis of 386 articles revealed striking similarities between the frames presented in this prestige newspaper and those of the White House and the conservative partisan press. The author concludes that journalistic routines and ideologies, such as elite sourcing, ethnocentrism and altruistic democracy, influenced the exclusion of alternative frames in this case.

Collective memory and visuals of “the most romantic event of World War II” in Parisian newspapers • Susan Keith, State University of New Jersey • This paper analyses how images published in ten Parisian newspapers on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Paris reflect collective memories about a touchstone event in French history. It suggests that collective memory favored conceptions of France as its own liberator, celebrating its authority, and crowded out images of the enemy, collaborators, and Americans.

Axis of evil? News framing of North Korea before and after the 2002 U.S. State of the Union Address • Yeon Kyeong Kim, University of Iowa • This study examines the use of government sources and framing of North Korea in the New York Times before and after the 2002 U.S. State of the Union address. A content analysis of 132 news stories found that foreign government sources were used more frequently than U.S. government sources in both periods. Results showed that after North Korea was included in the “axis of evil,” crime, military, nuclear weapons, refugees, and cultural/human interest frames increased.

Fair or Unfair?: Comparative Press Coverage Analysis of Cigarette Trade Talks and Policy by Korean and U.S. Press • Kwangmi Ko Kim, Towson University and Heewon Cha, Ewha Woman’s University, Seoul, SOUTH KOREA • Based on a framing theory, this study provides a comparative analysis of news coverage of cigarette trade talks and polices between Korea and the U.S. The quantitative analysis reveals that each country’s newspapers similarly covered this issue as a trade issue, but the qualitative analysis indicates that this issue was differently framed in a way that reflects each country’s political, economic, and social circumstances.

Selective Exposure of Korean Internet Users to Framed Online News Media • Yung Soo Kim and Jyotika Ramaprasad, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale • This online survey explored the relationship between Internet users’ selection of (i.e., exposure to) online news media in Korea, which framed the issue of Korea’s joining the Iraq War differently. The regression models based on 213 participants’ answers showed that attitudes toward the Iraq War and awareness of the difference between two polarizing online news media, the progressive OhmyNews and the conservative Chosun.com, were significantly related to Korean Internet users’ selective exposure.

Press freedom in transitional regimes as a contributor to democratic processes • Svetlana Kulikova, Louisiana State University ? The paper explores the role of press freedom and media independence in transitional countries that became independent as a result of break-down of the socialist block. Using the data from three major Freedom House survey available for 27 nations in transition since 1994, regression analyses show a strong correlation: greater freedom of press and more independent press systems are indicative of greater overall democratization and shorter periods of transition.

The WMD coverage of blogs and mainstream media: a comparison of two media types • Jue Kook Lee and Jaekwan Jeong, University of Texas, Austin • This study analyzes coverage of Iranian and North Korean WMD by blogs and mainstream media, and examines how the two media types deal with international news, with theoretical framework of second-level intermedia agenda-setting. The blogs attribute agenda is found to have strong correlations with the mainstream attribute agenda with regards to the issue of WMD coverage. The results suggest that despite many distinct characteristics, blogs cover international news in very similar way to mainstream media.

Frames and agendas: a time series analysis of how the US President and the US media portray foreign leaders • Jeongsub Lim, University of Missouri-Columbia • This study examined how the U.S. president and The New York Times portrayed the policies and leaderships of foreign presidents. Presidents of South Korea and the Philippines were chosen. Using a bivariate ARIMA models, this study found that President George W. Bush influenced how the newspaper covered South Korean presidents. The newspaper also influenced how President Bush depicted South Korean presidents to some extent. There were bidirectional influences between the two for the Philippine presidents.

Reporting a Humanitarian Tragedy: A Framing Analysis of Chinese Newspaper Coverage of Darfur • Xun Liu and Seow Ting Lee, Michigan State University • This study examines the coverage of the Darfur crisis by the People’s Daily and the China Daily over 26 months. Based on a content analysis and a textual analysis, the comparative framing analysis found similarities in the coverage, which is motivated by national interest. However, there are significant differences in the portrayal of major actors, and the assignment of blame and responsibility. The findings can be explained by the papers’ ownership and China’s media environment.

Super Girl’s voice: exploring the effects of dynamic cross-media interaction and a generation of new Chinese TV genre • Shanshan Lu, People’s University of China and Tuen-yu Lau, University of Washington, Seattle • This paper seeks to explore the impact of a very popular television show, “Super Girl’s Voice,” as a new genre in Chinese television programming. Additionally, In China’s TV industry, the use of instant messaging is a very special phenomenon — that Short Messages Service (SMS) is used to encourage audience participation in TV programs.

A conceptual framework for analyzing the agenda-setting influence of the African media in a conflict context • Eronini R. Megwa, California State University, Bakersfield • This paper sketches out a new conceptual framework for examining the agenda-setting role of the media in a conflict context in a social system with a weak media system. Building on Megwa and Brenner’s (1988) agenda-setting paradigm, the paper argues that in such a system, influence flows from opinion leaders to the media, to the elite, and eventually to the general public.

Objectivity in News During a Time of Impending War: An Examination of Coverage in New York Times prior to 2003 Iraq War • Srinivas R. Melkote, Jacob Turner, and Michael Meredith, Bowling Green State University • In keeping with the theme of the 2006 AEJMC Conference, this paper is an empirical analysis that falls under the category of media criticism and accountability. Specifically, the study investigated the manner in which the New York Times covered the events, issues, and actors during the month prior to the start of the 2003 war with Iraq.

Un-Covering Darfur Sudan 2003-2005: Which News Organization Offered the Most Comprehensive Coverage? • Bella Mody, University of Colorado • Media coverage of developing countries and U.S. domestic realities continues to be sensational, episodic and stereotypical, in spite of years of scholarship and political protest. The consequences of the lack of an internationally informed citizenry are politically troubling at this unipolar juncture in world political history with the U.S. as sole superpower on the one hand, and private investors looking for faster increases in rates of return from their investment in media firms on the other.

The framing of SARS by Chinese Regional and mainland media • Mia Moody-Hall, University of Texas, Austin • This contextual analysis looked at how mainland and regional Chinese newspapers framed the coverage of the SARS epidemic. After a systematic assessment of the coverage of the disease and the extent to which its areas of concern were communicated to the public, the author found that there were key differences in how the genres framed their coverage of the disease.

Terrorist or freedom fighter: the effects of the United States’ and the United Kingdom’s ideological views and global policies in the coverage of the trial of Jomo Kenyatta by the New York Times and The Times of London • Tayo Oyedeiji, Missouri School of Journalism • This study analyzed the framing of Jomo Kenyatta in the New York Times and The Times of London to investigate the effects of a nation’s ideological stance/global policy on its media’s coverage of an international event/personality. The study found that the ideological stance/global policy of the United States affected the trial’s coverage by the New York Times while the United Kingdom’s global policy did not seem to affect the coverage by The Times of London.

Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Magic of Women’s Skin-Lightening in India • Radhika E. Parameswaran, Indiana University and Kavitha Cardoza, University of Illinois at Springfield • This paper takes a qualitative approach to examine magazine advertisements for cosmetic products that promise to lighten women’s skin color in post-liberalization India. Borrowing from the insights of semiotic and Marxist criticism and feminist cultural studies, the paper explores the range of visual and story-telling techniques that advertisements deploy to persuade Indian women to purchase skin-lightening cosmetic products.

Critical Citizens in Taiwan: A Social Capital Approach • Bonnie Peng, National Chengchi University, Taipei, TAIWAN • The purpose of this study is to examine voters’ media use, social capital, and civic knowledge in Taiwan and to try to find out the relationships between voters’ civic knowledge and their voting on election days. The result of the study found that watching television and the preference for hard-news materials were related to citizens’ life satisfaction. The hard-news preference was also related to respondents’ civic knowledge and actual voting.

Liberating the silenced: Iranian bloggers in the diaspora • Celine Petrossian, California State University, Northridge • This study examined how diaspora Iranians use blogs to engage in a dialogue about their Iranian identities, and the ways in which they maintain, challenge or create their identities through the use of blogs. Interviews were conducted with Iranian bloggers in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom. Findings suggest that blogs have liberated a traditionally silenced Iranian society by providing a transnational space for political, social and cultural self-expression.

Job satisfaction and professionalism among private radio station employees in Uganda • Gregory Pitts, Bradley University • This manuscript reviews the role of radio in Africa and focuses on the introduction of free-enterprise radio, with a specific look at radio in Uganda. A quantitative study of private radio station employees in Uganda found a young, highly educated and generally satisfied workforce. A desire to use their abilities and get ahead professionally characterizes the employees. But, job insecurity and low pay are limiting factors to career progress among most of the employees.

First Democracy in Chinese History: Media’s Role in the Democratization of Taiwan • Kuldip R. Rampal, Central Missouri State University • This research paper, based on a field study in Taiwan, explains the role of the dissident media during martial law years and free media in the post-martial law years to push for and consolidate democratic political institutions in Taiwan. The facilitative role played by an evolving interpretation of the Confucian ideology, communication revolution and Taiwan’s globalized economy is also discussed.

Uses of Mass Media for Adaptation Purposes: A Quantitative Study of Brazilian Immigrants in Los Angeles • Raul Reis, California State University, Long Beach • This research project used a quantitative instrument to assess how Brazilian immigrants in the Los Angeles area use English and Portuguese-language mass media for adaptation purposes. A survey instrument was developed to assess how the use of ethnic and host mass media contribute to the way Brazilian immigrants in a large and multicultural metropolitan area adapt to life in the United States.

Media framing of Indonesian government and GAM • Renuka Suryanarayan, Ohio University • The Indonesian media’s role in the one year of peace moves of the Indonesian National Armed forces (TNI) with the rebels of Banda Aceh was studied. The media framing of the Indonesian National Armed forces (TNI) and the Aceh Freedom Movement (GAM) was determined by a content analysis. Results indicated that the military government got overwhelming more attention, prominence and treatment. This was congruent with trade literature criticism of a biased Indonesian media.

Framing Sars in China • Feng Shen and Jiun-yi Tsai, University of Florida, Gainesville • A framing analysis examines the U.S. media coverage of SARS in China in 2003. The purpose is to investigate the use of an “anti-communism/Tiananmen Square demonstration” China frame and the relationship between the media coverage and the Chinese government’s policy change towards SARS. The results indicate that the media were more critical of the Chinese government and employed more frequent reference to the “anti-communism” frame when the Chinese government took more active measures against SARS.

Covering Terrorism Abroad: News and news values in the U.S. and China • Pamela J. Shoemaker, Gang Han and Jong-Hyuk Lee, Syracuse University and Yonghua Zhang, Shanghai University • This study compared U.S. and Chinese news coverage about five terrorist events that occurred in 2004 and 2005. The number of victims – large or small – and the location of the perpetrators – domestic separatists or foreign terrorists – were used to predict how prominently the events are covered in both countries’ newspapers. The number of victims is an indicator of how newsworthy an event.

The global village in a local context – Implementing global awareness as a managerial competency within South Africa’s multicultural mainstream media newsrooms • Elanie Steyn, Deon de Klerk and TFJ (Derik) Steyn, North-West University, South Africa • Globalization has become one of the most salient characteristics of business activity worldwide. Successful global media activity necessitates sound global awareness skills among media managers. These include cultural knowledge, understanding, openness and sensitivity. South Africa’s multilingual and multicultural media environment requires media managers to primarily apply these skills in a local context. This could contribute towards improved newsroom management and ultimately professional media output.

Juggling the blame: news framing of the Srebrenica crisis (1993-2005) • Marina Vujnovic, University of Iowa • This framing study is a content analysis of the news articles published on the Srebrenica crisis in New York Times and Washington Post from 1993, when Srebrenica was proclaimed a safe area by United Nations officials and the international community, through 1995, when the first genocide in Europe since WWII occurred in Srebrenica, and to 2005, when many articles appeared during the 10th anniversary of the Srebrenica crisis.

No press, no peace: media freedom and the onset of international conflict • Fred Vultee, University of Missouri • Recent studies have pointed to the importance of media freedom as a factor in the “democratic peace,” or the observation that democracies do not make war on other democracies. This study seeks to expand on that work by extending it into the post-Cold War era and by using press freedom as an ordinal variable rather than a dichotomous one.

The “Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation”: US conservatives take aim at the BBC • Melissa Wall, California State University, Northridge and Douglas Bicket, St. John Fisher College • This paper employs qualitative textual analysis to assess the US conservative attack on British media, particularly the BBC, during the post 911 terrorism wars, finding conservative blogs, print media and think tanks notably hostile. The processes of media criticism taking place within conservative circles are viewed through the analytical concepts of news repair and boundary maintenance.

The Principal-agent Problem in Chinese State-owned Press • Guozhen Wang, and Peng Hwa Ang, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore • The principal-agent problem refers to the conflicts of interests between an enterprise’s owner, the principal, and its manager, the agent. In the Chinese press, this problem is manifested in extravagance, corruption, and other misfeasance. While Chinese authorities attribute such mischief to some immoral managers and journalists, the authors argue that the problems are systemic and structural. The authors suggest that the role of the press has to be redefined and private ownership thereof legitimized.

The reception of local, regional and global television dramas in Hong Kong • Xie Wenjng, University of Maryland • Inspired by the concept of cultural proximity, which was used to explain the local and regional cultural booming by Latin American scholars, a study was conducted in Hong Kong to examine audiences’ preference for local, regional and global TV dramas. We detect a hybridized choices pattern of TV dramas in Hong Kong.

Explore the determinants of international news coverage in Australia’s online media • Wang Xiaopeng, Ohio University • This study expanded international news flow studies to the online media environment. The researcher examined the contextual determinants of online international news flow in Australia and discovered that if nations had strong economies and large numbers of Internet users, they would receive more coverage on Australia?s online media. Furthermore, after 9/11, foreign countries that traditional media usually do not cover could attract more attention from online media if they have a powerful, active military.

Cultural dimensions and framing the internet in China: a cross-cultural study of newspapers’ coverage in Hong Kong, Singapore, the U.S. and the UK • Xiang Zhou • University of Tennessee, Knoxville • The current study introduces Hofstede’s cultural dimensions into framing research by conducting a cross-cultural comparative analysis of news coverage of the Internet in China from 2000 to 2004 in Hong Kong, Singapore, the United States and the United Kingdom. Differences were found in terms of both the salience of Internet-related issues and the use of news frames across societies.

<< 2006 Abstracts

History Division

Pete Rozelle: How The Commissioner Used Public Relations To Promote The NFL • William B. Anderson, University of Scranton • This study on former National Football League Commissioner Pete Rozelle presents a unique opportunity to examine how an organizational leader with PR work experience managed a business operation. Rozelle used his public relations background to help make the NFL America’s number one sport (in terms of revenue and in fan polling). Rozelle’s work was analyzed with a methodology developed by Irwin, Zwick & Sutton (1999), which offered a multidimensional approach to help measure organizational performance.

Postal System Development During the Civil War • John Anderson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • During the Civil War, postal system development in the United States and Confederate States of America took radically divergent paths. Whereas the U.S. subsidized its postal system, the Confederacy required self-sufficiency. While it remarkably achieved this goal, it did so at the cost of service and public access. To the contrary, the U.S. Post Office implemented several service innovations during wartime. Post-war the U.S. Post Office Department was an active participant in the reunification process.

A Sales Floor in the Sky: Department Store Radio Stations, 1920-1922 • Noah Arceneaux, University of Georgia • Following the creation of the first radio stations in 1920, the number of stations exploded in the following two years. Department stores operated 30 of these early stations and used them to stimulate the sale of receivers, to advertise the store, and to promote specific lines of merchandise. This research analyzes the overlooked phenomenon of department store radio stations as precursors to the commercial model of broadcasting that would eventually dominate the industry.

“Sorry, Cable Trouble”: Kenneth Cox, Lee Loevinger and FCC Reforms in the 1960s • John Armstrong, Furman University • The mid-1960s were a period of ferment and conflict on the Federal Communications Commission. Key issues for the FCC included economic protection for broadcasters against cable television, programming requirements for television licensees, and the fate of the racist television station WLBT. Kenneth Cox and Lee Loevinger were important figures in two conflicting factions of the FCC.

Mediocrity Under Pressure: Chicago Defender coverage of the integration professional baseball in Chicago • Brian Carroll, Berry College • This paper examines the Chicago Cubs’ integration as it was chronicled and contextualized by the Chicago Defender. The Cubs’ additions of Ernie Banks and Gene Baker late in 1953 are placed into the black community’s social and cultural contexts of the time. Examined are the loyalties of the city’s South Side, cleavages that were already divided among the White Sox, which integrated several seasons prior, and the Negro American League, which was struggling to survive.

You have the right to remain silent or you may choose to put your words in print: The Rikers Review and the prison press as advocacy journalism • Kalen M.A. Churcher, The Pennsylvania State University • Prison journalism has been a part of U.S. history since 1800, yet the subgenre has become nearly extinct. Through a close reading of three of the earliest years (1937-1939) of the Rikers Review, this research paper describes how prison reform advocacy was woven into prison journalism much like black, abolitionist and suffragist newspapers presented their own constituencies’ crusades. Though clearly understudied, prison journalism warrants the same scholarly recognition afforded to other advocacy media.

Personal journalism before blogs (anc! before ‘zines): The “amateur press” or “amateur journalism” since 1786 • Dane S. Claussen, Point Park University • After introducing blogging and the “amateur press” movement (primarily late 1860s onward), including listing “amateur journalists” who went on to become prominent newspaper editors and publishers, this paper compares and contrasts today’s blogging with yesteryear’s amateur press movement. Similarities include heavy preponderance of confident, even egotistical, youth; usually short durations; small audiences; financial investment but little or no return; inexpensive technological advances; society’s influences on content; formation of journalists’ community; and no quality control.

Gilles Caron’s coverage of the May 1968 rebellion • Claude Cookman, Indiana University • This article analyzes photojournalist Gilles Caron’s coverage of the May 1968 rebellion in Paris. It argues that Caron photographed the events with great thoroughness, covering both the student militants and the forces of order during the nightly skirmishes; documenting numerous demonstrations, rallies, political meetings and other major events, and portraying the major student leaders and politicians. It maintains Caron produced several images that went beyond daily news photographs to become lasting symbols of the rebellion.

Study Buddies, Matchmakers, and Career Advisors: Cigarette Promotion in the University of Tennessee Newspaper The Orange and White 1926-1963 • Elizabeth Crisp Crawford, University of Tennessee Knoxville • From the 1920s to the 1960s cigarette companies were lucrative campus newspaper advertising sponsors. Advertisements played an important role in creating and reinforcing a cigarette smoking culture. The goal of this research will be to show how cigarette advertisers refined their product’s image to appeal to college students. The campus newspaper of The University of Tennessee, The Orange and White, wil1 serve as a case history to demonstrate how this goal was achieved.

Extra! Chicago Defender Race Record Ads Show South From Afar • Mark K. Dolan, University of Mississippi • The present study examines the South in the narratives, illustrations and song titles of 148 blues and jazz record ads culled from the hundreds appearing in the Chicago Defender between 1920 and 1929. This new, emotionally-charged look at the South through its blues and jazz artists as reflected in the ads clashed with the paper’s prevailing cultural conservatism, the resulting tension is the focus of this study.

“A More Beautiful, More Perfect Lily.” Canadian Women’s Education and Work in the Christian Reform Journalism of Agnes Maule Machar, 1870’s-1890’s • Barbara M. Freeman, Carleton University • Agnes Maule Machar of Kingston, Ontario, was an ardent Canadian nationalist, a Christian social reformer and an early women’s movement activist who believed education was the key to challenging work for women. From the 1870’s to the 1890’s, Machar presented her ideas in several intellectual magazines. Her journalism was shaped by her maternal feminism and Christian social reform activism, the prevailing cultural discourse about women’s rights, and growing commercial pressures in the Canadian magazine industry.

Out of the Darkness, A Hero Emerges: Press Coverage of Coal Mining Disasters • Karen M. Hilyard, University of Georgia • Coal miners are among the most enduring of America’s proletarian heroes, evoking anachronistic imagery and sentimentality. This study seeks to add to the understanding of how heroes are created and covered by journalists, by analyzing media representations of the coal miner during a string of December 1907 mining disasters, as covered by The Philadelphia Inquirer, one of the era’s most prominent urban mass circulation newspapers and the major daily of the coal mining regions.

“Darling Jerry, Darling Mabel, Darling Moran: Ernie Pyle and the Women Behind Him” • Owen V. Johnson, Indiana University • This paper, based on much previously private correspondence, examines the relationship of journalistic icon Ernie Pyle with three women with whom he was intimate and their apparent impact on his journalistic performance. The first was his wife Jerry who nursed him through his days on the road across the United States. As she sank deeper and deeper into manic depression, alcoholism and drug addiction, he was attracted to other women who might take Jerry’s place.

The Lost World of Richard Rovere and Joe McCarthy • Julie B. Lane, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Richard Rovere, the longtime New Yorker correspondent, was an early critic of Senator Joe McCarthy. Reactions to Rovere’s biography of the senator overlook his grudging appreciation of McCarthy’s abilities and obscure his contribution to the journalistic response to McCarthy. Rovere saw McCarthy as a demagogue who dominated U.S. politics and America’s global reputation. This examination of Rovere’s writings adds to our understanding of journalism’s response to McCarthy and to the complexity of the senator’s legacy.

“As citizens of Portland we must protest: Beatrice Morrow Cannady and African American Response to D.W. Griffith’s “Masterpiece,” The Birth of a Nation • Kimberley Mangun, University of Utah • Although some have studied NAACP attempts to bar The Birth of a Nation, journalism historians have overlooked the challenges facing isolated editors. This original study depicts editor Beatrice Cannady’s advocacy on behalf of Black Oregonians. Using primary documents including articles and editorials in the Advocate—the newspaper she published until 1936—film reviews and news stories in the white press, and NAACP documents, this study re-creates a contentious period and illustrates the paper’s importance as a mouthpiece.

Deadly Inferno(s): MOVE as a category for analyzing crisis? • Nicole Maurantonio, University of Pennsylvania • This paper explores how news organizations across the United States chose to present the analogy between the crises in Philadelphia and Waco through an examination of print coverage of the Branch Davidian compound’s destruction. Drawing upon the 1985 bombing of the MOVE house as a similar incident within recent history, journalists attempted to situate the actions taken in Waco within a context accessible to the public.

Meet Pretty Kitty Kelly: Marion Keisker’s Negotiation of Gender in 1940s Memphis Radio • Melissa Meade, Colby-Sawyer College • This paper explores the career of Marion Keisker, a frequently overlooked figure in the history of radio. In the 1940s Keisker developed the “Kitty Kelly” persona on WRECAM, and became well-known in the Memphis community. This study analyzes one particularly illuminating interview, in which Keisker negotiates and challenges inherited gender roles, paving the way for a later career working in the second-wave U.S. women’s rights movement.

A Failed Crusade: Newsroom Integration and the Tokenization of John Sengstacke • Gwyneth Mellinger, Baker University • In 1972 a small group of editors urged the American Society of Newspaper Editors to take up the cause of newsroom integration, but to no avail. Through analysis of primary materials, this paper traces the ways in which the editors’ attempt to enact social justice was repeatedly subverted, often by their own actions. Central to this argument is a discussion of the ASNE’s tokenization of John Sengstacke, the organization’s first black member.

Isaac D. White, Yellow Journalism and the Birth of Media Accountability • Neil Nemeth, Purdue University • This paper examines the role of the New York World’s Isaac D. White (1864-1943) as a major crime reporter, legal expert and the first news ombudsman. After a reporting career of 25 years, White became an expert in media law and the first news ombudsman as head of the World’s Bureau of Accuracy and Fair Play from 1913 to 1931. The paper argues that White was a significant figure in the development of media accountability.

Forgotten and Ignored: Mississippi Newspaper Coverage of Clyde Kennard and his efforts to integrate Mississippi Southern College • Jason A. Peterson, University of Southern Mississippi • Clyde Kennard unsuccessfully tried to integrate Mississippi Southern College in 1959. For his efforts, he was charged with a number of questionable crimes, culminating in a seven-year burglary conviction. This paper argues that the majority of print media outlets in Mississippi failed in their journalistic duties of presenting an unbiased and accurate depiction of the Kennard story.

Tarred, Feathered, and Speaking to the Nation: Niles’ Register and Political Thought, 1829-1849 • Erika J. Pribanic-Smith, University of Alabama • The author conducted a Web-based content analysis to determine Niles’ Register’s position during the Nullification and Wilmot Proviso controversies, if there was a difference between the two, and how the Register compared with political sentiment. The Register reflected Niles’ support of the tariff and opposition to nullification, whereas his successors remained neutral on the Proviso. Other changes during the Proviso included different source materials, blander content, and fewer editorials. The Register reflected the political atmosphere.

Organizing Resistance: The Use of Public Relations by the Citizens’ Councils in Mississippi, 1954-1964 • Laura Richardson Walton, Mississippi State University • During the decade that followed the Brown decision, white Mississippians engaged in many activities to avoid and even nullify the Supreme Court’s edict to integrate the state’s public school systems. In coordinating efforts to protect the “Southern way of life,” the Citizens’ Councils engaged in public relations campaigns that became the key component of the state’s battle to preserve its lily-white school systems.

Hero building in Sporting Life, an early baseball journal • Lori Amber Roessner, University of Georgia • By the turn of the twentieth century, organized baseball had emerged as America’s national pastime with larger-than-life heroes enshrined in mythic lore. Early sportswriters engaged in a symbiotic relationship with organized baseball, promoting the sport, its leaders and players, yet all the while profiting from the game’s success. This paper examines how early sports journalists crafted sports heroes through primitive and advanced means by analyzing Sporting Life, one of the earliest sports journals, from 1912-17.

Hayes, Herr and Sack: Esquire Goes to Vietnam • Keith Saliba, University of Florida • This paper examines the work of Harold Hayes, Michael Herr and John Sack, and what their loose collaboration while serving as editor and writers respectively for Esquire magazine during the 1960s contributed to the journalistic coverage of America’s involvement in Vietnam. Using techniques generally ascribed to literary journalism – and with Hayes’ blessing – Herr and Sack went beyond traditional reporting to delve deeper and reveal a truer picture of the conflict and its human costs.

Rethinking Rights: Press Coverage of Orders Rescinding the World War II Evacuation of Japanese-Americans • Glenn W. Scott, Elon University • California newspapers supported the War Department’s order sending Japanese Americans into internment camps in the months following the attack on Pearl Harbor. When federal decrees were rescinded in late 1944, papers began to reconsider their coverage and depictions of Japanese-Americans returning to the West Coast. This study finds the San Francisco Chronicle, influenced by retired editor Chester H. Rowell, was more willing to revise its narrative than the other major paper, the Los Angeles Times.

Carrying the Banner: The Portrayal of the American Newsboy Myth in the Disney Musical Newsies • Stephen Siff, Ohio University • The Disney musical Newsies depicts a previously forgotten moment in journalism history, when newsboys in New York shut down two of the largest newspapers in the country and sparked what nearly became a city-wide children’s general strike. This paper examines the musical’s fidelity to period accounts of newsboys and 1899 New York newsboy strike and assesses it as a work of history.

Exiled from Italy: The Golden Voice of Italy’s Propaganda Broadcasts (1932-1937) • Stacy Spaulding, Columbia Union College • This paper examines the Italian broadcasting career of Lisa Sergio, a propaganda broadcaster in Rome from 1932 to 1937. Did Sergio, as she claimed in her autobiographical writings, immigrate to the United States because she became an antifascist while working for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini? Or, as FBI informants believed, was Sergio forced into exile because she became too vocal about affairs with high fascist officials?

The Journalist and the Jurist: Twenty Years of Correspondence Between Two Political Adversaries • Kevin Stoker, Brigham Young University • In the early days of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, a progressive Harvard Law professor and a conservative New York editorial page editor began a correspondence that lasted twenty years. The Democratic jurist and future Supreme Court Justice, Felix Frankfurter, had helped found the American Civil Liberties Union and the New Republic. His Republican journalistic cohort, Geoffrey Parsons, wrote for the New Deal’s leading opponent, the New York Herald Tribune.

A Crucible For the First Amendment: The Hollywood Ten in the Autumn of 1947 • Wendy E. Swanberg, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper explores the First Amendment implications of the Hollywood blacklists. In November 1947, ten screenwriters were charged with contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. The “Hollywood Ten” fought the charges with a novel First Amendment argument, but ultimately lost when the movie industry refused to support them. The screenwriters’ constitutional right to silence ran headlong into the movie industry’s right to be free of government censorship.

A Cultural Explanation for Early Political Broadcast Policy: Values of Partisanship and Neutrality • Timothy P. Vos, Seton Hall University • This paper offers a brief description of the political broadcasting policy that emerged during the 1920s and early 1930s. The focus, however, is on constructing a cultural explanation for this particular historical outcome. What were the cultural values, attitudes, and ideas that emerged in debate surrounding political broadcasting policy? By theorizing culture as a toolkit, two specific cultural values, partisanship and neutrality, were explored for their role in bounding the agency of various historical actors.

<< 2006 Abstracts

Cultural and Critical Studies Division

Circling the Wagons: Containing the Impact of the Downing Street Memo Story in the United States • Douglas Bicket, St. John Fisher College and Melissa Wall, California State University, Northridge • The paper expands the concepts of boundary maintenance and news repair beyond the domestic news realm, and considers them as mechanisms by which the U.S. mainstream news media contain and limit the effectiveness of influences from UK and other foreign news sources in the U.S. public sphere. The focus is on the “Downing Street Memo” story, whose impact was clearly limited by U.S. mainstream media forces employing news repair strategies to downgrade its significance.

Media Criticism as Competitive and Collective Discourse: Defining Reportage of the Abu Ghraib Scandal • Matt Carlson, University of Pennsylvania ? Media criticism is best understood as a competitive dialogue occurring across different spheres. However, each sphere has its own norms and presuppositions as an interpretive community. As a site for inquiry, the paper tracks criticism surrounding reportage of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal in spring 2004 in four spheres: within the news, the journalism trade press, from the left, and from the right. Criticism either upholds journalistic norms or condemns underlying framework of news.

Counting from Ten Backwards: The New York Times Coverage of the Central American Free Trade Agreement as Anesthesia for a Critical Discussion of Globalization • Kristin Comeforo, Berkeley College • The current study analyzed NY Times framing of the Central American Free Trade Agreement. The goal was to understand how a corporate, profit-oriented media would cover an issue that promised great financial rewards to transnational corporations. Through the framing of CAFTA as a business issue, the privileging of politicians as key sources, and the lack of historical context, findings suggest that the NY Times performed an anesthetizing function that silenced the critical debate of globalization.

Darfur: International Neglect and News Media Silence in the Face of Genocide • Chinedu (Ocek) Eke, Elon University • This paper examines the conflict in Darfur described by many, including the President of the United States, as an ongoing genocide. To this end, I argue that the dearth of news media coverage, particularly of television news, on one of the most egregious human rights violations of our time has kept the public largely in the dark on the scope of the genocide while prolonging the plight of Darfurians.

A Postmodern Critique of Framing and Power: A Response to Durham • J. Collin English, Portland State University • The following paper offers a postmodern critique of the concept of framing using the theories of Jean François Lyotard. It is written in response to the postmodern critique published by Frank Durham (1998; 2003). It offers the discussion a concept of power as it relates to the legitimation of knowledge and the concept of framing.

Tracing the Blame Game: Constructions of Victimization in The New York Times, 1920-2003 • Katie Foss, University of Minnesota • This paper explores how media coverage has historically constructed the role of the crime victim using a discourse analysis of The New York Times. Findings indicate that shifts in discussions of innocence, culpability, restitution, credibility and criminal’s rights generally follow trends in victimization, reflecting early victimology theories and debates in the victim’s movement. Increasingly, though, recent discourse questions female victim credibility, depriving her of restitution, whilst reinforcing hegemonic structures by assisting the criminal’s liberation.

The Claims of Multiculturalism and Journalism’s Promise of Diversity • Theodore L. Glasser, Isabel Awad and John W. Kim, Stanford University • Claims for diversity in American journalism rest on a model of democracy, pluralism, that conserves existing arrangements and leaves many cultural groups at the margins of society. An alternative model of democracy, multiculturalism, posits a more inclusive society and proffers an entirely different conception of journalism diversity.

Overcoming Modernity: The Relevance of Gianni Vattimo to Mass Communication Research • Rochelle Green, University of Oregon and Bastiaan Vanacker, University of Minnesota • This interdisciplinary research paper seeks to ascertain the importance of Italian philosopher, Gianni Vattimo to the field of mass communication research by situating his work in The Transparent Society and “Democracy, Reality, and the Media: Educating the Ubermensche” with several other important scholars in the field. We argue that Vattimo’s work enables research to venture beyond the effects-centered orientation that has long dominated the field.

Wave goodbye to the smoke-filled bar: An analysis of the New York Times’ multiple roles in the struggle for and against cigarette smoke • Robert L. Handley, University of Texas at Austin • The New York Times has taken a stance against smoking by banning cigarette ads and editorializing in favor of “anti-smoking” bills. However, analysis of the paper’s coverage of New York City’s own legislation suggests that its journalists contradicted that stance. First, journalists ignored the public and bar employees while sourcing the City and bar owners. Second, journalists framed the bill as the end, rather than the beginning, of a way of life.

Free-Linking Indirect Speech: Its Practical & Ideological Use in Journalistic Discourse • Joseph C. Harry, Slippery Rock University • The concept of Free-Linking Indirect Speech [FLIS] is introduced to account for certain kinds of indirect quotation occurring in newspaper stories. FLIS is a hybrid concept mixing two concepts in existing communication and linguistic literatures – “linking discourse” and free-indirect speech. Instances of FLIS within newspaper stories are analyzed to show how this reported speech mode, within the rhetoric of objectivity, reveals varying levels of the reporter’s practical and ideological intervention in journalistic discourse.

The Daily Show: News or Something Like It? • Paul Myron Hillier, University of Georgia • Much of what is written about “The Daily Show” critiques the show itself. This paper, however, asks two interrelated questions. First, why do so many people regard TDS as “news,” or at least a forum for civic engagement? And, second, how does TDS speak to a larger social system? This paper situates TDS and the texts about it in a relationship to broader cultural and social forces.

Local News, National Story: Television’s Construction of Viewer Subject Positions during the Iraq War • Wendy Hilton-Morrow, Augustana College • This paper considers why local television news may appeal to viewers during times of national news events. Based on textual analysis of coverage of the Iraq War, it finds that subject positions constructed by local news provided viewers incentive to continue watching by responding to exigencies related the to national event. Specifically, subject positions may have soothed viewers’ feelings of helplessness related to the war.

Separate Audiences, Separate Stories, Same Product: A Qualitative Exploration of the Emergent Ideological Themes in General vs. African American Television Advertising • Karie Hollerbach, Southeast Missouri State University • Advertising intentionally gives meaning to both people and products. Its primary function is to increase product sales, but it communicates norms and evaluations about all types of other things. How would the ideological and cultural themes in advertising differ if a comparison were made between product advertising created and placed to reach two ethnically different market segments?

Habermas on Media Dualism: An Outline of the Empirical and Rational Dimensions of Mass Communication • Thomas Hove, University of Wisconsin, Madison • This discussion supplements previous commentaries on Habermas’s theories of rationality and their relevance to communication research. It explicates his accounts of the various media forms that are necessary for achieving social integration, and the institutional conditions that both support and work against the ideals of communicative rationality. Finally, it suggests that Habermas’s work can provide a more precise theoretical schema for associating specific types of motivation with specific media forms.

Laïcité, the Muslim Headscarf, and the French Public School: A News Analysis, • Shazia Iftkhar, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This paper analyzes press coverage of the 2003 debate over a law banning the Muslim headscarf in French public schools — a debate representing a cultural struggle over the nation. Using theories of the public sphere, universality and citizenship, it examines how the issue was represented and the concept of secularism (laïcité) invoked by social actors. Secularism appears as an incontestable first principle that limits critique, favors powerful actors and excludes minority voices.

A Discourse Analysis of Elite American Newspaper Editorials: The Case of Iran’s Nuclear Program • Foad Izadi, Louisiana State University and Hakimeh Saghaye-Biria, Louisiana State University • This study employs Said’s concept of Orientalism and van Dijk’s concept of ideological square to analyze three elite American newspapers’ editorial coverage of Iran’s nuclear program. A critical discourse analysis of The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal editorials from1984 to 2004 identified six Orientalist themes. The study finds that The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post more predominantly drew upon Orientalist arguments than did The New York Times.

Does Technology Manifest Social Sensibility in South Korea?: Focusing on Korean Advertisements of Mobile Phone • Hyejung Ju, University of Oklahoma • Technology has culturally specific meanings. Technology becomes closely associated with the mode of living and social sensibility. Technology is articulated in feelings like intimate, natural, and even romantic. Men’s happiness and success is equated with the technological progress. I define this tendency as “technological culture.” I specifically reveal this tendency in South Korean context by semiotic analysis of Korean mobile phone advertisements.

Marketizing National Identity After Communism: The Case of Branding Bulgaria • Nadia Kaneva, University of Colorado at Boulder • This paper examines the emerging phenomenon of nation branding as it relates to post-communist countries. Following materialist cultural studies, it offers a critique through an empirical investigation of a project titled, Branding Bulgaria. First, the study documents the main activities of the Branding Bulgaria project. Second, it analyzes the discursive strategies used by project participants to legitimize nation branding. Finally, it outlines several implications of nation branding in relation to post-communist transformations in Bulgarian society.

Not So Revolutionary After All: Reinforcing Frames in Magazine Discourse about Microcomputers • Jean P. Kelly, Otterbein College • This study investigates the hegemonic process by which the microcomputer became a common and trusted appliance in the U.S. Critical Discourse Analysis of four cases, two advertisements and two editorial feature stories, from consumer magazines published during the early years computer’s adoption revealed that a device heralded as “revolutionary” was in fact presented using frames that incorporated and legitimized traditional values, roles, and practices, such as capitalism

The News Media As Pollsters: How Media Polls Politicize Public Issues? • Sonho Kim, University of Pennsylvania • The objective of this paper is to explore the institutional contexts of producing the public opinion poll data from the perspective of social construction and political economy.

Mythical Themes in Iraq War Images, Time Magazine, 2003 • Sun-A Kim and C. Zoe Smith, University of Missouri-Columbia • Using cultural studies and ideological analysis, this study examines how photographs of the Iraq War published in Time from January 13 to December 29, 2003, portray American soldiers in non-combat situations and reflect the dominant ideologies of the U.S. government. Time’s picture packages rely on mythical themes, such as soldiers as good guys and heroes and America’s supremacy and humanitarian goals, potentially interfering with readers’ grasp of the grim, cold reality of war.

Mourning “Men Joined in Peril and Purpose”: Working-Class Heroism in News Repair of the Sago Miners’ Story • Carolyn Kitch, Temple University • This paper provides a narrative analysis of coverage of the Sago, WV coal mine accident in January 2006. Initially promising to replicate the 2002 Quecreek “miracle” rescue, the story went terribly wrong when the miners were found dead. This analysis of 235 newspaper, newsmagazine, and broadcast reports traces the news repair resulting in a new tale of a rural community with class pride, gender roles, and other “traditional” American values presumed lost.

Two-Face, Man Hands and Mimbo: Feminized and Masculinized Portrayals of Single Women on Seinfeld • K. Maja Krakowiak, Pennsylvania State University • Some recent critiques of gendered discourse argue that such discourse may revert back to traditional stereotypes or masculine female characters, both of which are ideologically problematic. The portrayals of females on the show Seinfeld are particularly relevant and potentially problematic. This paper analyzes how Elaine, the only regular female character, is masculinized while the other female characters, namely Jerry’s girlfriends, are sexualized in particular ways. The ideological implications for televised gendered discourse are discussed.

The Real and the Right: Journalistic Authority and the Coverage of Judith Miller • Lise Marken, Stanford University • Journalists derive the authority to tell true stories from their adherence to the strategies associated with objectivity. At the same time, they derive authority from the moral force that underlies narrative. This paper uses the coverage of the jailing of Judith Miller as an opportunity to explore the relationship between objective and narrative authority and see how that relationship allows journalism to reify its portrayal of the real by conflating it with the right.

“Girls With a Passion for Fashion”: The Bratz Brand as Spectacular Consumption • Matthew P. McAllister, Pennsylvania State University • This paper examines different media featuring the “tween” girl brand Bratz, originally a group of four teen fashion dolls that quickly became heavily licensed. Although most critics of Bratz highlight its sexual nature, this paper argues that the explicit consumption ideology of the brand is more problematic, pervading Bratz movies, TV episodes, books, and games. The concept of “spectacular consumption,” in which commercial forms are celebrated as mainstream culture, will be applied to Bratz.

Private Property, Development Strategy and Information Policy: Establishing a Critical View of Copyright Law • Bingchun Meng, Pennsylvania State University • This paper presents theoretical analysis of the conceptualization of copyright. By critiquing both philosophical and pragmatic justifications of copyright, I highlight the constructedness of mainstream discourse on copyright and how that is related with the global political economy of intellectual products. I then propose that copyright should be construed as policy rather than property and copyright governance is not only a regulatory regime but also a constructed discourse contingent upon the dynamics of power.

For Better or Worse: News Discourse and the Same-Sex Marriage Debate • Leigh Moscowitz, Indiana University • This paper offers a critical analysis of the same-sex marriage debate across a variety of prominent mainstream broadcast and print news texts. Employing textual analysis, I examine these dominant news discourses as a gateway into contemporary understandings of the place of homosexuality and the meaning of marriage in our modern society. This analysis shows how representations of gay coupledom were constructed to appeal to a mainstream heteronormative audience.

The Politics of ‘Compressed Development’ in New Media: A History of Korean Cable Television, 1992-2005 • Siho Nam, University of North Florida • This paper seeks to construct an interpretive history of Korean cable television. By using two distinctive yet closely related modes of inquiry: news discourse analysis and political economic analysis, it makes the case that the history of Korean cable has been largely tamed by and locked within the discourse of the state-led compressed economic development model, while the issue of diversity and other important democratic values remain unquestioned.

Africa Remains Silent: A Look At The Coverage Of Live 8 Concerts By African Newspapers • Dorothy W. Njoroge, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale • This paper looks at how the Live 8 concerts campaigning for the cancellation of African debt during the G8 meeting in Scotland in the summer of 2005 was covered in African newspapers. Using narrative analysis, I explore themes such as the construction of the African problem and the portrayal of the West by these papers. While in some senses this coverage served as a counter hegemonic force, perspectives of dominant media are still used.

Communication Coursework and Advocacy: Service-Learning and Opposition to Torture in U.S. Prisons • Eleanor Novek, Monmouth University • As a result of media saturation coverage of abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, audiences now may be more responsive to the messages of advocacy groups that oppose torture and isolation in U.S. prisons. In the service-learning project described here, students in the author’s master’s-level communication research methods class studied the effectiveness of an advocacy group’s public awareness campaign.

Gender Roles and Femininity in the Personal TLC Series: A Qualitative Analysis of Audience Receptivity • Meghan O’Brien, Syracuse University • This study examined how women viewers perceive the portrayal of gender roles and femininity in the Personal TLC series (A Makeover Story, Perfect Proposal, A Wedding Story, and A Baby Story). The study employed three focus groups of women between the ages of 18-34, which represents the target demographic of Personal TLC. Results demonstrate that women viewers believed the shows in the Personal TLC series presented and, thereby, reinforced traditional definitions of gender roles and femininity.

“Mogul Mom vs. Mr. Mom”: Media, Myth, and Shifting Gender Roles in Hector v. Young ? Sarah Burke Odland, University of Colorado at Denver • This paper examines how the media, relying on mythical conceptions of femininity and masculinity, both reflect and shape cultural understandings about gendered labor roles within the family. Drawing on theories of relations of ruling, gender identity, and myth, the study employs critical textual analysis to explore the news discourse surrounding a high-profile custody case and the media’s struggle to make sense of shifting—and often contradictory notions about gender, marriage, family, and work.

Reading the Visual, Tracking the Global: Colonial Representations, Postcolonial Feminist Methodologies, and the Politics of Resistance • Radhika E. Parameswaran, Indiana University • This paper outlines the theoretical and historical contours of a postcolonial feminist methodology to unpack the fertile, historical symbolism of visual images, particularly the still photograph to, in order to advance our skills in the decoding the politics of resistance in our contemporary moment of globalization. The paper begins with a detailed historical genealogy of the visual’s positioning in colonial history and postcolonial nationalism.

More Than Meets the Ear: Radio, Reality, and the Portrayal of Broadcasting in New Yorker Cartoons, 1925-1954 • Randall Patnode, Xaiver University • This examination of more than 300 cartoons attempts to understand how the New Yorker presented the idea of radio broadcasting to its readers. The cartoons suggest that, in enthusiastically embracing radio, Americans demonstrated an acceptance of a new kind of intimacy, a preference for simulated experiences to authentic ones, and a tolerance for multiple and manufactured realities. All of these issues were central to the march of modernity in the first half of the 20th century.

Transcending Race? The Racial Politics of Oprah Winfrey’s Enterprise and Bill Clinton’s New Liberalism • Janice Peck, University of Colorado at Boulder • Oprah Winfrey and Bill Clinton are portrayed as unusually adept at bridging the black/white divide in America. Winfrey is routinely praised for her ability to cultivate a majority white following, while Clinton’s popularity among African Americans is legendary. This paper explores their reputed ability to “transcend race,” focusing on their treatment of welfare.

Myth and Narrative in Newsmagazines’ Photographic Coverage of Hurricanes, 1935-2005 • Richard K. Popp, Temple University • This study provides a narrative analysis of newsmagazines’ photographic coverage of hurricanes over the previous 70 years. Hurricane photos revealed a breakdown in narrative order. Key to this narrative collapse were tableaux that evoked stark binary oppositions. The incongruities revealed by these oppositions presented challenges to narratives about nature, technology, order, and disorder. This sense of cultural disorder may have sparked recourse to paternalistic narratives that signify the continuity of earthly and cosmic order.

Is There a Place for the Public in Media Theory? • Lana F. Rakow, Jim Abbott, Valica Boudry, Louella Lofranco and Diana Nastasia, University of North Dakota • We propose that the public remains elusive and inchoate in both media theory and practice because of the sway that models of communication hold over both academic and professional discourse. We argue that the reliance on a source-message-channel-receiver model precludes conceptualizing a role for the public as a source of conversation and deliberation. By analyzing a public event for media professionals, we uncover theoretical blocks to reconceiving the role of the public.

Activists as Interpretive Communities: Rituals of Consumption and Interaction in an Alternative Media Audience • Jennifer Rauch, Long Island University • This multiple-method study bridges a disturbing gulf between our knowledge of social-movement actors and theories about alternative media by considering the ritual uses of news in an activist audience. In interviews, activists downplayed their consumption of corporate media, but diaries confirmed that they used a wide range of both alternative and mainstream sources.

Advertising Sex and the City or Commodifying Identity? • Sara Roedl, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • This feminist rhetorical criticism examines the manner in which a series of four Sex and the City print advertisements invite viewers to identify with the show’s main characters. A contradiction exists between the independent, self-sufficient women purportedly portrayed on the show and the stereotypical images shown in the ads. Shared themes fostering these representations are identified.

Framing Difference in Transnational Perspective: Constructing Roma and Non-Roma in Film • Adina Schneeweis, University of Minnesota • This study explores the social construction of Roma as other in two films from Western and Eastern Europe. The findings of a framing analysis lend support to the literature on difference. Latcho Drom’s focus on victimization maintains Roma in a position of struggle, oppressed and discriminated against. Conversely, Black Cat, White Cat depicts a world with its own structure and reality, in which the Roma take on the construction of non-Roma as others.

Quarantined Discourses in the Genre Identification of Lifestyle Television • Madeleine E. Shufeldt, University of Colorado-Boulder • Rarely the subject of scholarly attention, the 1990s profusion of lifestyle –and specifically home and garden – television programs has aroused numerous evaluations in the popular press. Studying these accounts reveals certain privileged discourses and causal explanations for the trend. This paper explores what generic identification the privileged discourses support and argues that the neglect of industry economics, television history and class and gender politics serves to naturalize this television trend.

Black Widows: Gendered Representations of Chechen Women rebels in American News • Sara Struckman, University of Texas • This paper explores how The New York Times provides gendered representations of Chechen women rebels in its coverage of the Chechen’s struggle for independence. Because The Times questioned the “black widow” explanation (women avenging the death of a male family member), it found other reasons to explain violent women.

Art in Politics, Culture in Communication – The Billboard in Indian Elections • Shyam Tekwani, Nanyang Technological University • This paper will explore the tradition of billboard and poster campaigns in Indian elections as a political and propagandistic medium, analyze the social, cultural and artistic traditions of India that are reflected through them, and demonstrate the way in which their pre-eminence in Indian political life represents a unique tradition of mass communication that is grounded in the nation’s culture and its socio-political development.

A Critical Discourse Analysis of Chinese and US Newspapers’ Coverage of 2004 Taiwan Presidential Election • Lu Wei, Washington State University • In this article, I compare the discourse of Chinese and US newspapers’ coverage of 2004 Taiwan presidential election, a critical issue of Sino-US political interaction. Both macro-analysis of headlines and thematic organization and micro-analysis of lexical choices, news actors and quotations are conducted to demonstrate the contextual and textual elements of the discourse. The findings reveal that the two newspapers had very different discursive construction of the election so that different ideologies could be supported.

A Tale of “Good” and “Evil”: Ideograph “Evil” in the Presidential Rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush • Magdalena Wojcieszak, University of Pennsylvania • This paper scrutinizes the origin of the ideograph “evil” and elucidates its specific connotations within and across the rhetoric of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush. It locates “evil” in the founding myth of the American nation and suggests that ideas such as uniqueness, God’s alliance, and universal mission are associated with “evil.” Also, analysis of its applications in the rhetoric of Reagan and Bush demonstrates that its connotation is not stable.

Consumer Education and Middle-Class Identity Construction in Chinese Television • Janice Hua Xu, Western Connecticut State University • This paper studies the development of television formats catering to the emerging middle class by examining influential consumer guide and lifestyle programs of major television stations in China. The paper also analyzes factors contributing to the popularity of this genre and new trends affecting its outlook in the Chinese television industry. The author suggests that television plays an important role in the manifestation of social identities through mediated imagination and participation by selected audience groups.

“Scoop was King”: Media Competition, Markets and Masculinity • Mary Lynn Young, University of British Columbia • This paper examines how journalists develop an elaborate taxonomy of gendered news techniques to gain the upper hand in competitive media environments. Gendered working practices are an entrenched part of the professional knowledge system surrounding media competition in Canada, normalizing distinct and lesser roles for women journalists. These roles also change over time such that the gendered state of Canadian journalism is maintained, but in varying ways and forms depending on the historical context.

<< 2006 Abstracts

Communication Theory & Methodology Division

Assessing the Effect of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising: A Cultivation Perspective • Soontae An, Kansas State • This study examined the effect of antidepressant direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) on perceived prevalence of depression. A survey of Midwestern residents showed that those with high recall for antidepressant DTCA tended to estimate the prevalence of depression higher than those with low ad recall. However, with a source-priming cue before their estimation, the significant association was eliminated.

Effects of Exemplification and Attribution of Blame on Perceived Influence of Self and Others • Julie Andsager, Choonghee Han, Katherine LaVail, Joseph Schwartz, Marina Vujnovic and Joshua Grimm, Iowa • This experiment examined whether exemplars and base-rate information differentially influenced individuals’ perceptions of message effects on self versus others, using two levels of attribution of blame. Subjects perceived themselves more influenced than others by a news story on a high-blame disease, but evinced third-person perceptions for a low-blame disease. Subjects expected themselves and others were more influenced by base-rate information than an exemplar for low-blame disease. Implications for third-person effects, exemplification, and attribution are discussed.

Social Desirability Effects in the Reporting of Online Shopping and Internet Usage • Brian Blake, Cleveland State, Jillian Valdiserri, Kimberly Neuendorf, Cleveland State and Jack Powers, Syracuse • Overwhelmingly, researchers and practitioners turn to self report surveys to understand the dynamics of online behavior. But are such surveys sensitive to distortions due to social desirability (SD) bias? This study examines whether the popularly recommended procedure of embedding a measure of SD in the survey can detect the presence of SD bias, and whether the oft recommended procedure for statistically correcting for SD bias is effective.

Perceived Authority and Communication Channel: Experiments with Instant Messaging • Xin Chen, Texas, J. Sonia Huang, Texas and Nilo Figur, Concordia and Mark Tremayne, Texas • The effects of diminished social context cues in computer-mediated communication between students and instructors are examined using instant-messaging (IM) technology. Two experiments verified such effects, students perceived informal surroundings in IM and, in one experiment, decreased presence of the instructor, but results of hypothesized effects on the perceived authority of the instructor were mixed. Students did show more self-centered behavior in IM but experienced increased feelings of regulation.

Hostile Media Perception: Exploring the Role of Involvement, Third-Person Perception, and Media Skepticism • Jounghwa Choi, Myeng Ja Yang and Jeong-Heon Chang, Michigan State • Hostile media perception is a phenomenon, which shows the significance of individual factors in evaluation of media content. Extending theoretical understanding of hostile media perception, this study is proposed to meet two ends: (1) to examine the roles of different types of involvement in the hostile media effect, i.e., value-relevant and outcome-relevant involvement, and (2) to explore the relationships between hostile media perception and other media-related perceptions, such as third person perception, media skepticism, and perceived opinion climate.

The Effectiveness of Electronic Communication on Employees’ Job Perceptions • Christina Chung, University of Southern Mississippi • This study focused on media selection in organizational communication to explore how new communication media influence employees’ job perceptions. The results indicated that three communication channels, bulletin board, supervisor, and e-mail, were mainly used for organizational communication. Among them, e-mail was the most powerful communication medium for internal communication and job empowerment.

Affective Priming of the 2004 Presidential Candidates: Exploring the second-level agenda-setting effect through visual information • Renita Coleman, Texas and H. Denis Wu, Louisiana State University • This study examines the second-level agenda-setting effect of visual portrayals of the 2004 presidential candidates and finds that visual displays in the news media have a small but significant effect on the public’s feelings toward the candidates and opinions of their character traits. Significant correlations between the media’s and the public’s affective agendas were found, but only for the candidate who was portrayed negatively.

Access attitudes: A measurement tool for gauging support for press access to government records • David Cuillier, Washington State University • This paper describes a new psychometrically valid measurement instrument that conceptualizes support for press access to public records. The 8-item self-report scale is tested over five datasets including college students and the U.S. population, by paper and telephone, demonstrating consistent internal reliability, construct validity, and test-retest reliability. Factor analysis and structural equation modeling identified several subdimensions that explain how people think about government transparency. Research implications for scholars, politicians, and the media are discussed.

The Benchwarmers Hit a Home Run: Non-Traditional Political Communication Effects in 2004 • William P. Eveland Jr., Ohio State • Expectations of important effects for non-traditional media since their rise in popularity beginning in 1992 have been met with mixed empirical results. Data from three surveys conducted in 2004 suggest that non-traditional political communication forms are finally producing consistent positive effects equivalent to traditional media such as television news and newspapers. Moreover, there is some evidence that these positive effects may be amplified among the less educated, helping to close the knowledge gap.

Assessing the role of information-processing strategies in learning from the news about sources of social capital • Kenneth Fleming and Esther Thorson, University of Missouri • This study examines the effects of local news media, informational use of the Internet on interpersonal trust, reciprocity, and associational membership. Analyses of a telephone survey data (n = 546) of American adults in a medium-sized city in Midwest show that local news media were influential in predicting sources of social capital, after controlling for demographic and structural anchoring variables.

Cognitive Dissonance: A Review of the Theory’s Evolution and Applications in Communication and Consumers • Ignatius Fosu, University of Arkansas • Cognitive dissonance theory has evolved over the years since its introduction in 1957. This paper is a review of the theory. This review examines the theory’s evolution as well as the various revisions to the theory since it was proposed by Festinger in 1957. Some applications of the theory in communications and consumer behavior are also noted, particularly the theory’s influence in selective exposure, information seeking, and post decision dissonance research.

Testing cultivation theory for media influences on suicidal thought • King-wa Fu, The University of Hong Kong • The short-term impact of media influence on suicide rate has been well studied but long term and cumulative media influence on individual’s suicidal thought or behavior remain unclear. Based on a population-based survey with 2,016 respondents aged between 20 and 59, this paper aims to test the cultivation theory in the context of media influences on suicidal thought. Cultivation effect, mainstreaming effect and resonance effect are examined.

Opinions as Norms: Applying a “Return Potential Model” to the Study of Communication Behaviors • Carrol Glynn, Michael Huge, Ohio State and Irkwon Jeong, Kwangwoon University, KOREA • This research investigates the impact of normative power on public opinion. By adapting the “return potential model,” set forth by Jay Jackson, we examine perceptions of communication behaviors as a normative opinion process. Telephone survey respondents were asked to offer their own personal opinions regarding several communicative behaviors. By calculating the normative power associated with each of these behaviors, predictions were made regarding the frequency of behavior.

Late Night Malaise? Late Night Talk Shows and Political Trust among Young Adults • Lauren Guggenheim, Michigan • Late night talk shows are becoming an increasingly important source for political information among young audiences. In this study, the negative tone of late night jokes is argued to lead to a less trustful and less politically motivated audience. Using a national survey of young adults 18-29 taken during the 2004 election, findings indicate that watching late night talk shows is associated with distrust in the candidates, though not with distrust in the political system.

Understanding Systems Theory: Transition from equilibrium to entropy • Shelton Gunaratne, Minnesota State University, Moorhead • What we call systems theory is more a metatheory than a monolithic theory. It has provided a set of common signposts for all systems theorists to follow. This essay, written from the perspective of communications scholarship, examines the transition of systems theory from the age of equilibrium to the age of entropy during the middle of the 20th century. It distinguishes between the old equilibrium-based systems theory and the “new” entropy-based systems theory.

Episodic and Thematic Frames Impact on Associative Networks • Michel Haigh, Oklahoma • How a story is framed influences how individuals process the information presented and how they add new information to their associative networks (Pan & Kosicki, 1993; Price & Tewksbury, 1997). Research indicates the media uses frames and these frames impact people in different ways depending on individuals’ associative networks and reveals the presence of different types of frames (i.e., episodic or thematic).

Bootstrapping Specific Indirect Effects in Multiple Mediator Models of Media Effects • Andrew Hayes, Ohio State and Kristopher Preacher, University of North Carolina • In a 2003 Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media article, Holbert & Stephenson (2003) did a great service to the media effects research community by advocating the importance of assessing and quantifying indirect effects in structural equation models of media effects. They also advocated the product of Zs test as a hypothesis test for specific indirect effects. A better and more convenient approach we advocate here is bootstrapping.

‘Real Talk’ for Real: Individual Differences in the Effect of the Climate of Opinion on Expression • Andrew Hayes, Brian Uldall and Carroll Glynn, Ohio State • Most research conducted on the spiral of silence has examined peoples’ responses to hypothetical discussion situations in nonexperimental designs to see if willingness to speak one’s opinion is related to perceptions of the distribution of opinion. Furthermore, researchers have rarely acknowledged that people likely differ in their use of information about the climate of opinion or their susceptibility to various social forces that would discourage open expression when choosing to speak their opinion publicly.

Dependency and Adolescents’ Perceived Usefulness of Information on Sexuality • Amir Hetsroni, Yezreel Valley College, ISRAEL • The study examines the usefulness of information sources on sexuality in the eyes of Israeli adolescents from three ethnic groups: Jews, Moslem-Arabs and Christian-Arabs. The sources are interpersonal (parents, siblings, peers), professional (school, health professionals) and the mass media (television, radio, internet, films, books and newspapers and magazines). In general, all of the sources are perceived as moderately useful at best.

The Effects of Self-Efficacy Statements in Anti-Tobacco Fear Appeal PSAs • Myiah Hively, Washington State University • Students participated in an experiment examining reactions to anti-tobacco messages with a self-efficacy statement. Results include that those who viewed the PSAs indicated greater intention to change their behavior when they perceived that characters were similar to themselves, and indicated higher levels of realism and fear than participants in the control condition. Results regarding differences in perceptions of fear, realism, intentions to change behavior and self-efficacy in the two conditions were in the predicted direction.

Perceptual Filters, Mass Media, and Knowledge: Understanding Attitudes Toward Stem Cell Research • Shirley Ho, Dietram Scheufele and Dominique Brossard, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study examines the influence of perceptual filters, news media use, and scientific knowledge on general support for stem cell research and on support for human embryonic stem cell research. We use data from a national three-wave panel survey conducted between 2002 and 2005.

Deliberative Reporting, Conflict Frame, and Civic Cognitions • Huiping Huang, National Taiwan Normal University, TAIWAN • Deliberative democracy and public journalism are two recent ideas emerged in political philosophy and journalism. Both originate from reflexive thoughts on elite-centered decision-making process and emphasize the subjectivity of citizens in political decisions. The practice of deliberative democracy requires publicity, equality, nontyranny, and reciprocity. News discourse needs to fulfill these principles to cultivate a deliberative culture. Public journalism offers opportunities to implement the principles of deliberative democracy.

The influence of post-debate commentary on candidate evaluations: Examining “hydraulic” media effect • Hyunseo Hwang, Sun-Young Lee, Douglas McLeod, and Dhavan Shah, University of Wisconsin-Madison • A vast body of post-debate analysis and criticism is practiced by all news media during presidential election years, saying that it affects viewers’ evaluations of candidates and voting decisions. Yet, relatively little has been known about whether and how such media practices affect citizens’ candidate evaluations.

Effects of Media Celebrity Endorsement on Blood Donation: Meaning Transfer and Celebrity Identification • Bumsub Jin, Florida • Grounded on two theoretical models for celebrity endorsements, this study investigated the effects of media celebrities on public blood donation. The empirical results revealed that individuals’ attitudes toward blood donation were predicted by identification with a celebrity who is perceived as altruistic. However, the intention of donating blood was not predicted by the celebrity. The study provides implications that theory-based media campaigns for blood donation can be effectively designed by the appropriate selection of celebrity endorsers.

“I feel therefore I enjoy” Affective Disposition, Presence and Para-Social Interaction In Video Games • Seung-A Jin, University of Southern California • This work aims to apply various psychological theories of entertainment to enjoyment in interactive video/computer game playing. Main foci will be on affective disposition theory (ADT), more recent theories and models of presence, and para-social interaction. The potentials of affective disposition theory and theories of presence to account for the enjoyment of users while playing video/computer games will be addressed.

Teenagers’ Exposure to Sexually Explicit Online Material and Their Attitudes Toward Virginity • Peter Jochen and Patti M. Valkenburg, University of Amsterdam, NETHERLANDS • To test the relationship between adolescents’ exposure to sexually explicit online material and their attitudes toward virginity, we developed an exposure-as-mediated-mediator model. Drawing on a survey among adolescents, this model was largely supported: Exposure to sexually explicit online material mediated the impact of adolescents’ gender and sensation seeking on their attitudes toward virginity. Concurrently, the effect of exposure to sexually explicit online material on attitudes was itself mediated by the perceived realism of such material.

Race, Social Distance, and the Third-Person Effects: The Case of Hurricane Katrina Donation Advertising • Hyo Jung Kim, Missouri • This study, an experiment, explored the reverse Third-person Effects in the context of Hurricane Katrina donation advertisements. As opposed to the expectations, original Third-person Effects were found. This study also revealed positive relationships between social distance, particularly race, and the Third-person gaps. A negative relationship between message desirability and Third-person effects was found. Psychological processes such as downward social comparisons were provided as an explanation for these findings.

Communicant Activeness in Problem Solving (CAPS) • Jeong-Nam Kim, Xavier • The present paper starts from one theoretical question: What are the unique features in communication behavior during a problematic situation? Any life, even that of amoeba, consists of a seamless experience of problem finding and problem solving (Popper, 1999). Nevertheless, only humans have the sophistication in using information to solve problems. Hence, understanding better about communicative features in problem solving should lead to a better problem-solving capability in our lives.

Community storytelling network, neighborhood context, and civic engagement: A multilevel approach • Yong-Chan Kim, Alabama and Sandra Ball-Rokeach, University of Southern California • From a communication infrastructure theory perspective, the current study examined individuals’ civic engagement (neighborhood belonging, collective efficacy, and civic participation) as influenced by two multilevel components of the communication infrastructure–an integrated connection to a storytelling network (ICSN) and the residential contexts—focusing on ethnic heterogeneity and residential stability.

Abu Ghraib follow-up stories: A legitimate controversy frame • Anup Kimar, Iowa • The elite print media failed to report on prison abuse stories even though the news was out there. The elite print media was absent from the action. Eventually the story was broken on in the news features section of TV and a fortnightly magazine. This paper undertakes conceptual and normative analysis of the follow-up news on Abu Ghraib in the print media from the perspectives of Hallin’s news typology of war reporting and journalistic paradigm.

Agenda-Setting and Voter Turnout among Youth: Implications for Political Socialization • Spiro Kiousis, Florida and Michael McDevitt, Colorado • The current study examines the role of agenda-setting in impacting voter turnout using panel data of adolescents in Arizona, Florida, and Colorado from 2002 (T1) and 2004 (T2). Specifically, a model is developed probing the multiple influences of interactive civics instruction, media attention, and discussion on the following sequence of outcomes: perceived salience, opinion strength, political ideology, and finally voter turnout.

News Selection Patterns as a Function of Race: The Discerning Minority and the Indiscriminating Majority • Silvia Knobloch-Westerwick and Osei Appiah, Ohio State and Scott Alter, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Robert Wood Johnson Medical School • This study examines whether majority and minority members differ in selections of news that either featured individuals of their own group or dissimilar others. Hypotheses derived from distinctiveness theory were tested utilizing unobtrusive observations of news selections. The sample consisted of 112 blacks and 93 whites, who browsed ten online news stories while exposure was recorded. The news displayed equal numbers of black and white characters.

Effects of the Subjective Experience of Knowledge Difficulty on Self-Judgment of Political Interest • Dominic Lasorsa, Texas • In a survey experiment, political interest self-judgments declined when preceded by political knowledge questions. The effect was lessened when buffering knowledge from interest were two items evaluating how well officials and media keep one informed, which could serve as excuses for knowledge difficulty. Placed before the knowledge items, however, the evaluation items worked less like an excuse for, and more like additional evidence of, knowledge difficulty. Sources of these question context effects are explored.

Effects of Sensation Seeking on processing messages with Slow Motion • Seungjo Lee, Indiana • This study investigates how the personality trait, Sensation Seeking, influences information processing of slow motion edited into various television messages with moderately intensive emotional tone. The results demonstrate that the high sensation seeker processes slow motion more thoroughly compared to the low. The low sensation seeker shows tendency to reject slow motion.

Effects of Endorser Credibility and Message Typicality on Delayed Attitude Change • Joo Soon Lim, University of Florida • In an assumption that a source memory decays over time faster than a persuasive message, this study attempted to test the sleeper effect. Unlike previous studies, the persuasive message in this experimental study was varied with argument typicality.

The Content Analysis of Media Frames: Towards Improving Reliability and Validity • Joerg Matthes, University of Zürich, SWITZERLAND and Matthias Kohring, Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, GERMANY • The main purpose of this study is to shed light on methodological problems in operationalizing media frames. After a review of five common methods for the measurement of media frames, we will present an alternative procedure that aims at improving reliability and validity. The proposed method is then demonstrated with data on the coverage of the issue biotechnology in the New York Times.

Beyond Accessibility? Towards an On-line and Memory-Based Model of Framing Effects • Joerg Matthes, University of Zürich, SWITZERLAND • This theoretical paper investigates the effects of media frames on individuals’ judgments. In contrast to previous theorizing, we suggest that framing scholars should embrace both, on-line and memory-based judgment formation processes. Based on that premise, we propose a theoretical model that distinguishes between two levels of framing effects. Along the first level, the media’s framing contributes to the formation of an on-line or a memory-based judgment. The second level describes six hypothetical routes for the stability or change of these judgments.

Everybody Wants to Make a Mark on the World: A Narrative Analysis of an American Culture • Kimberly McCormick, University of North Florida • People have used narrative art to communicate, to educate, and to pass down values verbally and nonverbally between generations. This study analyzed narratives of one graffiti artist (Draw) to determine his self-perception in the graffiti culture. In written reactions to several photographs of his friends and himself, Draw discussed authority as an entity of the past, his life in the present, and graffiti in terms of the future.

The Targeted Audiences of Anti-drug Ads: Message Cues, Perceived Exposure and Perceived Effects • Patrick Meirick, Oklahoma • This study (N = 160) shows demographic cues in anti-drug messages may communicate who the intended targets are, thus influencing perceived exposure and perceived effects for different age, gender and racial groups. In turn, perceived combined effects on self and others (especially the self) predict support for funding anti-drug message campaigns, but not drug enforcement. The possible impact of perceived similarity between a group and the “implied audience” on perceived effects is discussed.

AAPOR Guidelines Are Not Enough – Misreporting Surveys: A Case Study • Bruce Merrill and Tara Blanc, Arizona State • Because surveys published in the media have the ability to create as well as measure public opinion, it is important that professionals who publish and report public opinion surveys report them accurately. While the American Association of Public Opinion Researchers and The National Council on Public Opinion Research have suggested voluntary guidelines for reporting surveys, research has shown spotty compliance with their suggestions.

The Influence of Source Credibility on Attitude Certainty • Xiaoli Nan, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This research investigates the influence of source credibility on attitude certainty, referring to an individual’s subjective confidence in his/her attitude. Results of a laboratory experiment (N = 220) show that low source credibility, compared with high source credibility, leads to greater attitude certainty. This source credibility-attitude certainty relationship only emerged when the source was identified before rather than after message exposure and for participants who were low in need for cognition.

The Relative Persuasive Effect of Gain versus Loss-Framed Messages • Xiaoli Nan, University of Wisconsin-Madison • A persuasive message can focus on either the advantages of compliance (i.e., gain-framed) or the disadvantages of non-compliance (i.e., loss-framed). Previous findings regarding the relative persuasive effect of gain- versus loss-framed messages have been largely inconsistent. This research suggests that there exist two distinct operationalizations of message framing, with one involving desirable end-states and the other involving undesirable end-states.

Social Distance, Framing, and Judgment: A Construal Level Perspective • Xiaoli Nan, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This research investigates the influence of social distance on responses to persuasive messages from the perspective of construal level theory, which contends that as psychological distance increases the salience of high-level construals (i.e., abstract mental representations of information) increases while the salience of low-level construals (i.e., concrete mental representations of information) decreases.

Adolescent Pre- and Post-Orientations that Determine Antismoking Campaign Effectiveness • Hye-Jin Paek, Georgia • Based on Markus and Zajonc’s (1985) O-S-O-R model, this study explores how adolescent pre- and post-orientations determine antismoking campaign effectiveness. Analyzing nationally representative survey data, this study finds that sensation seeking as an internal orientation and antismoking education as a learned orientation play critical roles in adolescent receptivity to both antismoking and cigarette ads. In turn, exposure to both kinds of smoking-related media messages influences adolescent smoking intention.

Interaction of Ideology, News Source and Story Bias: An Experimental Study on Hostile Media Effect • Zengjun Peng, St. Cloud State • This experimental study went beyond the original promises of the hostile media effect theory to test the interaction effects of ideological partisanship, news source and story bias on perceived news bias. Results indicated significant main effects consistent with previous studies and three-way interactions that generally suggest that ideological partisanship, news source and story biases, when congruous with each other, tend to prompt and enhance significant hostile media effect.

Participants’ Perceived Effectiveness of a Peer-Led Media Literacy Curriculum for Adolescent Sex Education • Bruce Pinkleton, Erica Austin, Marilyn Cohen, Yi-Chun “Yvonnes” Chen and Erin Fitzgerald, Washington State • The purpose of this study was to determine if a teen-led media literacy curriculum focused on sexual portrayals would be help increase adolescents’ awareness of media myths, decrease the allure of sexualized portrayals, decrease positive expectancies for sexual activity, and increase students’ intentions to delay sexual activity. A posttest-only with control groups was conducted at 22 school and community sites in Washington state (N=532).

Quantifying Accuracy in Measures of Public Opinion Perception • Jason Reineke and Lindsay Hoffman, Ohio State University • Despite its importance and prominence in the social sciences, researchers have encountered difficulties measuring accuracy. Using a case study in public opinion research, this analysis applies 12 different quantifications of accuracy. Equations yield either difference or accuracy. Three criteria are used to judge accuracy: an objective external criterion, an aggregation of survey responses to a relevant item, and an average estimate of individuals’ responses to the item of interest. Implications for future research are discussed.

Television and the cultivation of gender role attitudes in Japan • Shinichi Saito, Tokyo Women’s Christian University, JAPAN • This study uses cultivation theory as a critical, social scientific theory to determine whether television viewing cultivates traditional attitudes in relation to gender roles. Data from a sampling survey conducted in Tokyo revealed that among politically neutral and liberal females and politically neutral males, television viewing was related to more traditional attitudes regarding gender roles.

Framed Video Processing and the Spread of Activation: Implications for Deliberative Reasoning • Rosanne Scholl, Raymond Pingree, Melissa R. Gotlieb, Aaron S. Veenstra and Dhavan V. Shah, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Research on framed video processing has been neglected in this age of mixed media news. Using manipulations of a value-based frame and a video news report, we tested effects on two unique measures of spreading activation: number of reasons for a position on a controversial issue and the speed with which respondents generated reasons. Results show significant main, and more importantly, interaction effects, which we contend have implications for deliberative processing and discussion.

Community Integration as the Contextual Moderator: Another Look at Time Displacement Hypothesis • Fei Shen, Ohio State • The current study discovered that time displacement and cultivation effects were constrained by psychological elements of community integration such as localism and psychological attachment. Data for analysis were obtained from a telephone survey of a random sample of 593 Hong Kong residents in 2004. Pervasive interaction effects were identified by the data, meaning that localism and psychological attachment play important roles as psychological contexts to influence the relationship between media use and civic/political participation.

Examining the Moderating and Mediating Roles of News Exposure • Michael Slater and Andrew Hayes, Ohio State • Ample evidence exists that adolescent risk judgments predict use of substances such as alcohol. The present study (a nationally-representative telephone survey, n = 406) examines how attention to accident and crime stories among adolescents predicts such judgments regarding alcohol related risks, and how effects of two key individual difference variables—sensation seeking and negative first- or second-hand personal experiences with alcohol risks—are mediated by attention.

Internet and Uses and Gratifications Research: Opportunities, Challenges and New Research Agendas • Youngju Sohn, The University of Georgia • In examining the trend of emerging Internet research, this paper seeks to explore issues such as how the uses and gratifications (U&G) perspective works on Internet research and, conversely, how Internet studies have contributed to U&G research, as well as what challenges Internet research has brought to the U&G perspective. Based on these discussions, this paper proposes new research agendas that will further enrich U&G research.

Is it Tailoring or is it Agency? Unpacking the Psychological Appeal of Customized News • S. Shyam Sundar and Sampada Marathe, Penn State • What makes customization so appealing? Is it the tailoring of content to meet one’s individual needs and preferences? Or the sense of agency and ownership created by acting as one’s own gatekeeper? Or is it simply a novelty effect? This paper tests these competing theoretical propositions by way of a between-subjects experiment (N = 85) which exposed Power users as well as regular users to a news-aggregator Website that was either personalized, customized, or neither.

Other-Person Perceptions of Media Effects: Methodological Questions Pointing Toward Theory’s Demise • Don Umphrey, Southern Methodist University • Since the introduction of the theory dealing with perceived media effects on self and others, mean scores have been used to determine whether such an effect was present. However, the literature has gone beyond questioning the existence of such an effect to examining its underlying reasons.

Exploring sample sizes for content analysis of online news sites • Xiaopeng Wang, Ohio University • Studies of research trends predict that the Internet will continue to be an important topic in communication scholarship. However, content analysis has been facing many challenges in measuring the hypertextual and interactive Web content. One of the problems is sampling methods that unfortunately draw little attention from the scholars.

Reconsider the Relationship between the Third-Person Effect and Optimistic Bias • Ran Wei, South Carolina and Ven-Hwei Lo, National Chengchi University, TAIWAIN and Hung-Yi Lu, National Chung Cheng University, TAIWAN • Whether the relationship between the third-person effect and optimistic bias is spurious is controversial. The purpose of this study is to help resolve the controversial relationship between third-person effects and biased optimism in the context of assessing the impact of the news about bird flu outbreaks in Taiwan. Using a random sample of 1,107 college students, the third-person perception and optimistic bias were found robust phenomena.

Seeing is Perceiving: The Impact of Message Structure on Televised Presidential Debates • Rob Wicks, Arkansas • A natural experiment was conducted in which college students were exposed to the third televised Presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry in 2004. Randomly assigned participants viewed one of five presentation conditions (i.e., ABC, CNN, C-SPAN, Fox News and PBS). The results suggest that presentation styles influenced perceptions of candidates. Perceptions of Kerry changed favorably on the attributes of friendliness, success and on the feeling thermometer.

Effects of Experientiality and Story Attributes on Risk Perception and Story Evaluation • Shuhua Zhou, Alabama, Chia-hsin Pan, Chinese Culture University, Taipei, TAIWAN and Xin Zhong, Renmin University, Beijing, CHINA • This study tested the conjoint effects of participant experientiality and two story attributes, severity and context, on perception of the SARS threat and on story evaluation. Participants’ rationality was assessed by the Rational-Experiential Inventory. Stories of SARS were manipulated to be either severe or non-severe, and with context or without context. Two experiments using identical manipulations and measurement instrument were conducted, one in the US and one in China.

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