Making the Case for Critical Media Literacy: Goals and functions in undergraduate education • Seth Ashley, University of Missouri-Columbia • Media literacy is the province of a vast array of educational goals and a diverse field of study. This theoretical paper examines and seeks consensus among existing understandings of media literacy and aims to advance the definition, establish clear goals for media literacy and justify its inclusion in general liberal arts education. The paper emphasizes the role of critical media literacy education in preserving quality journalism and democratic self-governance.

The Success of Opting Out? Political Information in the Changing Media Environment • Leticia Bode, University of Wisconsin – Madison • As technology develops, the sources from which people may obtain political information continue to increase. This paper represents a first step in understanding the implications of the increasing prevalence and use of alternative information flows online. By examining the systematic differences between purposive information seeking (Google News) and possible sources of incidental exposure to political information (Twitter). We address important differences between the two, but verify the ability to be incidentally exposed to political information.

Wait, Who Said That? The Role of Source Cue Placement in Argument Evaluation • D. Jasun Carr, UW-Madison; Emily Vraga, University of Wisconsin-Madison • The 2002 Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act mandates that campaign advertisements identify their origin. This requirement provides an opportunity to examine a real-world impact of source cue placement on the persuasive process. Utilizing a 2 x 2 (cue placement by consonant vs. dissonant ad exposure) experiment to explore the effects of cue placement on the persuasive impact of an advertisement, we find that cue placement matters more when individuals are not motivated to process the ad.

I Want to Help Others: Empathy and Distance effects on Compassion, Attitudes, and Behavioral Intentions • Sheetal Chhotu-Patel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • An experimental study examined the self’s compassion, attitude, and prosocial behavioral intentions in response to a news story about a suffering other. The results showed that the interplay between empathy in relation to a suffering other in a news story and the geographical distance of the other were inconsistent to a certain degree with previous theoretical findings. Theoretical and applied implications and recommendations for future research on emotion and social cause messaging are discussed.

A New Area of Video Game Research? The Pro-Social Effects of Playing Violent Video Games Cooperatively • J.J. De Simone, University of Wisconsin – Madison • Given their prevalence in American culture, violent video games’ negative effects are a heavily studied phenomenon in the social scientific literature. However, many studies analyze the issue on the individual level, hence ignoring the potential pro-social effects of playing violent games cooperatively with another person. This research review discusses the relevant literature, analyzes problems with the current state of the research, and posits future directions for study of the pro-social effects of collaborative play of violent video games.

Directing the Dialogue: The Relationship Between YouTube Videos and the Comments They spur • Stephanie Edgerly, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Emily Vraga, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Timothy Fung, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kajsa Dalrymple, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Timothy Macafee, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study performs a content analysis of YouTube videos and comments about the Proposition 8 campaign in California. Specifically, we examine how a video’s focus and tone are related to comment features. We find consistent support for the flow of information from topics mentioned in the video to topics addressed in commentary, as well as uptake of an uncivil tone from the video to the comments. Implications are discussed for promoting quality online information exchanges.

The Writing on the Wall: A Content Analysis of College Students’ Facebook Groups for the 2008 Presidential Election • Kevin W. Bowers, University of Florida; Juliana Fernandes, University of Florida; Magda Giurcanu, University of Florida; Jeffrey C. Neely, University of Florida • This study looks at student Facebook groups supporting one of the 2008 presidential candidates from largest land-grant universities in seven battleground states. The findings reveal that students are using Facebook to facilitate political involvement. Pro-Obama groups demonstrated higher site activity than pro-McCain groups. Discussions related to the political civic process, policy issues, campaign information, and praise for the supporting candidate overpass topics related to social interactions across all groups during both Primary and General Election seasons.

Birds of a Feather Flock Together – Homophily in Online Social Networking Sites such as Facebook • Mia Fischer, College of Charleston • Facebook recently registered its 400 millionth user. Positioning itself as a leader of interactive, participant-based online Web 2.0 media, Facebook promises to change how we communicate even more fundamentally, in part by digitally mapping and linking peripatetic people across space and time. As socio-demographic boundaries are torn down, it may seem as if Facebook runs counter to 50 years of sociological research regarding what is known as homophily, the tendency of individuals to associate only with like-minded people of similar age and ethnicity. This study investigated how the concept of homophily, taken out of its traditional interpersonal context, is evident in relationships on Facebook. Quantitative methods in form of an online survey among a purposive sample of 447 Facebook users were employed. Participants clearly depicted signs of inbreeding homophily regarding age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, educational level, occupation and income; all factors typically segmenting our society. Despite participants’ strong belief in Facebook’s ability to globally connect people with different socio-demographic backgrounds, exclusively pre-existing offline relationships were fostered. Aware of their account privacy settings, users rigorously restricted profile access to outsiders, such as professors, strangers and parents. This can be seen as an attempt to maintain Facebook’s original college niche community status, further rising issues of identity construction in online environments. If Web 2.0’s interactive media disseminating user generated content really provides potential for social and political change, an analysis of homophilious factors on Facebook is a first indicator to infer about the factual possibilities of such desired changes.

A Theory of Planned Behavior Study of the HPV Vaccine: a comparative analysis of college students’ intention to get the vaccine in the United States and South Korea • Eun Go, University of Florida • This study explored factors that can affect the behavioral intention to get the HPV vaccine of American and Korean female college students using the TPB. Results indicated that both American and Korean female college students’ attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavioral control regarding the HPV vaccine were significantly associated with the intention to be vaccinated. Involvement was also positively related to both attitude and behavioral intention to get the HPV vaccine for both sets of respondents. Furthermore, subjective knowledge could predict behavioral intention with greater accuracy than perceived behavioral control could.

News Framing of Swine Flu in Time of Global Economic Recession: A Comparison of Newspaper Coverage in the United States and China • Miao Guo, University of Florida; Fangfang Gao, University of Florida • This study examined the news coverage of swine flu (H1N1) by newspapers in the United States and China in terms of prominence, news source selection, and frames. The results showed that there were no significant differences in the volume of front-page coverage of swine flu between the U.S. and Chinese newspapers, indicating that the number of cases of swine flu in these two countries had little to do with the volume of news coverage. However, the patterns of source selection and the presence of economic consequences, health severity, human interest, international action, and conflict news frames varied depending on the newspaper’s country of origin and newspaper type. Social context, culture, media structure, and different focuses of media outlets were utilized as the influential factors that contribute to the differences.

Three Decades of Direct-to-Consumer Advertising of Prescription Drugs • Wan Jung, Univ. of Florida; Jihye Kim, Univ. of Florida; Eun Soo Rhee, Univ. of Florida • The current study content-analyzes topics, trends, authorships, and patterns found in studies on Direct-To-Consumer Pharmaceutical Advertising (DTCA) published in 97 U.S. journals between 1981 and 2009. Two hundred thirty nine papers were analyzed in this study. The results demonstrate a definite pattern of increase in DTCA research, the existence of a wide variety of individual and organizational contributors, and a need for better methodological rigorousness in DTCA research.

A convergence journalism course design grounded by education-psychological research of knowledge types and transfer • Adam Kuban, University of Utah • Current convergence journalism research rarely offers transparent examples of what faculty should consider in their attempts to become more convergence-focused. Three instructors at a public university in the Intermountain West applied education-psychological theories related to knowledge transfer and how people learn to the content created for a new convergence journalism course. The resultant course design—grounded in theory—could serve as a template for journalism educators who wish to develop their own course.

Understanding Web Identity: Approaches to the Study of Identity and Self-Expression in Cyberspace • Mark Lashley, University of Georgia • This paper examines the body of literature on social media and online social networking as they relate to expression of individual identity. The paper argues that, while many theoretical approaches have been taken to the study of identity in online spaces, the work of Goffman and the theory of Impression Management provide the most useful and versatile framework for ongoing inquiry in this area.

Canonical Correlation Analysis of Online Video Advertising Viewing Motivations and Access Characteristics • Joonghwa Lee, University of Missouri; Hyunmin Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia • This study investigates consumers’ motivations for watching online video advertising, and the relationship between the motivations and access characteristics of viewers. Findings revealed five different motivations for viewing online video advertising—social interaction, relaxation, information, escapism-pass time, and entertainment. Canonical correlation analysis revealed that the desire to fulfill viewing motivations are positively correlated with frequencies to actively access Web sites, and frequencies to visit different types of Web sites. Implications and future research are discussed.

Star Wars Revisited: An Analysis of Ronald Reagan’s Rhetoric On The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) • Ji Hoon Lee, University of Florida • This study analyzes President Ronald Reagan’s discourse advocating the Strategic Defense Initiative by focusing on the use of language, motivational appeals and speaker’s character and addresses how he rhetorically justified the apparent change in American foreign policy. The study also illustrates how he was able to deal with such sensitive issue as nuclear weapon and come out with highly persuasive speeches for the public during the times of the Cold War.

Internet Service Providers and Defamation: The United States and the United Kingdom Compared • Ahran Park, university of Oregon • This paper compares ISP liability for online defamation in the United States and the United Kingdom. Because American and English defamation laws have the same root, ISP liability for defamation in England would deserve attention from U.S. lawyers and scholars. In addition, English libel law has more reason to compare for online research in that the CDA of the United States and the Defamation Act of the United Kingdom were the first attempts anywhere in the world to legislate ISP liability at the same year in 1996. Thus, this comparative research will be helpful to online speakers and ISPs who have similar common law background but eventually fall under different online defamation laws.

Celebrity Endorsements and Nonprofit Charitable Organizations: The Role of Celebrity Altruistic Motive and Identification • Sun-Young Park, University of Florida; Moonhee Cho, University of Florida • The not-for-profit charitable organizations are undergoing a significant burst of enthusiasm over the potential uses of celebrity endorsers. The current study aims to investigate the effects of attributions of a celebrity’s motive and identification with a celebrity who supports a charity on publics’ attitudinal and behavioral responses. Specifically, the findings of this study attest to source effects on consequential responses, including the perceptions of and attitudes toward the celebrity’s credibility, the celebrity’s endorsement, the nonprofit organization, and intentions to donate money and volunteer time to the charitable organization. This study lays the theoretical groundwork about the factors that influence the effects of celebrity endorsement and provides nonprofit charitable organizations with useful managerial implications of using a celebrity to endorse a socially worthy cause. Overall, the findings suggest that to maximize celebrity endorsement effectiveness, nonprofit practitioners should keep in mind the importance of attributions of celebrity motive as well as celebrity identification. Implications, limitations, and future research are suggested.

Does market matter? Proximity, placement, graphics, and topic in News Recommendation Engines on newspaper Websites • Ed Simpson, Ohio University • The Internet inherently has been seen as a worldwide medium, offering equal access across the globe to information to anyone with the proper equipment and connections. Yet, newspapers inherently serve a local general market, based primarily on geography. Key questions arise about whether traditional elements of news definitions and play remain applicable in the digital environment. In other words, when it comes to newspaper Websites, does market matter? In order to begin addressing these questions, which are important for understanding industry trends and theoretical implications involving Internet usage, this study focused on self-selected items in News Recommendation Engines on eight national and regional newspaper Websites. This content analysis examined 1,248 items contained in NREs. The primary entry point into the study, guided by the theory of uses and gratifications, was to seek whether significant differences in self-selection items could be detected across markets. This study found such differences. The most prominent findings included wide variances in the origin of items self-selected as well as the type of item appearing. The findings suggest, overall, that traditional news values, such as proximity, timeliness, and impact, do affect self-selection patterns, and that findings of self-selection patterns on national Web sites such as New York Times and Yahoo! News, do not necessarily reflect what is happening on newspaper Web sites in general.

The impact of technology-enabled learning: A comparison of ideal versus real. • Lakshmi N Tirumala, Texas Tech University; Catherine Team, Texas Tech University • The current study examined the differences between traditional classroom learning versus technology mediated learning (video podcasting). A 3-minute instructional video was delivered through a podcast with the same topic taught in a traditional classroom by the same instructor. This study used a between-subjects design with one independent variable and multiple dependent variables. The sample size consisted of 72 students from a large southwestern university who participated in the study. The study found no significant difference in students’ evaluations of the instructor between the video podcast condition and the conventional classroom condition. On the other hand, the student perceptions toward the classroom condition were found to be significantly positive compared to the student perceptions toward the video podcast condition.

Unusual Pathways to Issue Engagement: How Dispositional Cynicism Conditions Incivility Effects on Television Political Talk Shows • Ming Wang, University of Wisconsin-Madison; porismita borah, University of Wisconsin-Madison; David Wise, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Keith Zukas, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Bryan McLaughlin, University of Wisconsin, Madison; Michael Mirer, University of Wisconsin • In this study, we attempt to explicate the effects of televised political talk shows on viewer issue engagement and how they are conditioned by dispositional cynicism and skepticism. Using an experiment manipulating guest tone and host style on a talk show, this study finds that strong cynics were more likely to engage than weak cynics when both guests were civil. We offer a revisionist account of how talk shows and cynicism impact the public.

<< 2010 Abstracts

How (and why) Can Tragic Drama be Enjoyable? Cognitive, Affective, Physiological, and Motivational Accounts • Dohyun Ahn, University of Alabama • The hedonic principle governs human behaviors including media selection. However, the enjoyment of tragic drama poses a challenge to the hedonic principle. Two questions arise from this challenge: (1) why do people, particularly lonely individuals, select tragic content, and (2) why is the intensity of sadness positively associated with the degree of enjoyment of such negatively valenced content? This review suggests that feeling sad for others can be enjoyable, because (1) cognitively, it feels nice to feel bad for others’ pain, instead of being insensitive, (2) affectively, feeling sad for others enables individuals to feel the sense of social connection, (3) physiologically, the vagus nerve regulates the fight-or-flight system so that individuals can care for others, and (4) motivationally, the mu-opioid system rewards individuals for feeling sad for others.

Who lives, who dies, and why? Doctors, diseases, and mortality in TV medical dramas • Julie Andsager, University of Iowa; Rauf Arif, School of Journalism & Mass Comm., University of Iowa; James Carviou, The University of Iowa; Kyle Moody, University of Iowa; Erin O’Gara, University of Iowa • We examined contemporary, primetime TV medical dramas to ascertain implicit messages about the nature of disease, patients, and doctor-patient relationships. Cultivation and social identity theories undergirded the study. Forty randomly selected episodes of ER, Grey’s Anatomy, House, and Private Practice indicated that male doctors outnumbered female doctors. Female patients presented significantly different diseases/conditions than males. White doctors and minority doctors dealt with different types of cases. The diversity suggested in medical dramas is not straightforward.

Deconstructing Dust: Postmodern Superhero Extraordinaire or a Stereotype in Disguise? • Arthur Bamford, University of Denver • In 2002, a young Afghani woman and devout Muslim called ‘Dust’ joined the ranks of one of Marvel Comics’ most popular teams: the X-Men. This paper discusses the findings of a pilot study conducted with two interpretive communities: one comprised of comic book fans, and another of Muslim students, and considers whether or not Dust ought to be considered a vanguard, positive portrayal of an Arab, Muslim young woman in a medium that has historically vilified, marginalized, and/or ignored each of those three distinctions. In addition, this research considers comic books as what Baym (2005) has called discursively integrated texts, and explores how efficacious real-world social and political commentary is when it is interwoven into comic book narratives.

In with the Tweens: Appeal of Disney’s High School Musical Among College Students • Kelly Barrows, Syracuse University • This study examines the appeals of Disney’s High School Musical franchise for non-target audiences. When the original movie was released, current undergraduate students were beyond the targeted tween market. Using the lens of uses and gratifications, focus groups of self-fans explored enjoyment of the movies. The results show that in addition to emotional appeals of an escapist movie, the movies are able to provide viewers with a form of conversational capital to use with friends.

Watch What Happens: How People Watch and Talk About Reality Television • Kelly Barrows, Syracuse University; Simone Becque, Syracuse University • The purpose of this study was to explore how people watch and talk about reality television. Previous research reveals that motivations for watching reality television differ from those for serialized television. In a survey, college students indicated which reality shows they watched and answered follow-up questions regarding the shows. The 274 responses indicate reality television is typically watched in a group setting and that men and women watch different types of reality television.

Who Is the Loser?: A Critical Analysis of Contestant and Trainer Communication about Weight Loss on The Biggest Loser • Kim Bissell, University of Alabama; Lauren Reichart-Smith, Auburn University • This study used textual analysis to examine The Biggest Loser contestant comments during the weigh-in portion of the reality television show to determine how contestants framed their weight loss throughout the season. The overarching themes that emerged from the analysis of 13 episodes were themes of disappointment, expectations, game-play, positivity, and not being able to see the forest for the trees. While the reality-based show does offer viewers a glimpse into the world of morbidly obese individuals trying to make a positive change in their own lives, the commentary from the contestants during the vignettes largely represents weight loss as unachievable and disappointing because regardless of how much effort is exerted, disappointment on the scale will result. These messages communicated to viewers may not serve as motivation to lose weight but rather serve as a roadblock or detriment to even begin trying. Findings are related to entertainment theory and the ways in which reality programming is created to maintain ratings and viewers. These and other findings are discussed.

Prevalence and Portrayal of Sexual Content in Adolescent Novels • Mark Callister, Brigham Young University; Sarah M. Coyne, Brigham Young University; Lesa A. Stern, Westmont College; Malinda Miller, Brigham Young University; Laura Stockdale, Brigham Young University; Brian Wells, Brigham Young University • Most media research on sexual content focuses on TV, film, advertisements, and magazines. The popularity of novels and their potential role in adolescents’ sex education heightens the importance in examining what messages such literature provides young readers. Results show that novels are replete with sex-related material, but impoverished as a source dealing with issues of abstinence, safe sex practices, and potential health risks and consequences. Implications for lack of a rating system are discussed.

Reading the Brandfan: Using Twilight to Explore Brands and Fandom • Barbara Chambers, Texas Tech University • This article examines the crossover appeal of the Twilight brand and fandom in females of different ages through original focus group research. It also provides an overview of the Twilight brand and promotion, history of fandom, vampire texts and romance genres. Parallels are made with Radway’s (1984) Reading the Romance. The paper concludes with future recommendations on brands and fandom through a new concept known as Brandfans .

Shining a Bright Light: An Analysis of Race and Identity in Online Messages • Naeemah Clark, Elon University; Amanda Gallagher, Elon University; Lori Boyer, Texas Tech In February 2010, Joanna Douglas, a writer for Yahoo’s Shine.com website, posted an article critiquing the lack of diversity in Vanity Fair magazine’s 2010 Hollywood issue. In response to Douglas’s story, Shine’s readers contributed more than 18,000 messages to the Shine site. Most of these messages included critiques of the state of race in the magazine industry, Hollywood, and America. This study is a textual analysis of these messages. The results indicate that while some of Shine’s readers think discussions of race and diversity are passé, most agreed that racism exists in the form of the entertainment industry’s marginalization of people of color and in a perceived double standard that permits racial/ethnic minorities to have media content that caters only to them. Furthermore, an analysis of the discourse appearing on Shine reveals that many of those who are posting highlight their own identities to take a stand when it comes to the issue of race. Personal confessions and words such as I, you, and they are used when the writers are positioning themselves in their messages and discussions with other Shine readers.
Keywords: Online messages, race, confessions, and identity

Cartoon Planet: The Cross-cultural Acceptance of Japanese Animation • Anne Cooper-Chen, Ohio U. • Japanese animation, the un-Disney, represents a major challenge to U.S. global entertainment dominance. Through interviews, survey research and content/ratings analysis, this study verifies the validity of cultural proximity (Straubhaar), given the enthusiastic acceptance of anime in Asia. It discovered two facets of between-nation cultural differences (Hofstede): 1) Japan’s domestic (Sazae-san) vs. overseas audiences’ favorite anime and 2) overseas audiences’ differing favorites (Doraemon in Asia, but not in the West). Ironically, overseas exports may save the domestic industry.

Changing Gender Stereotypes in Disney Films: A Content Analysis of Animated and Live-Action Movies • Bruce Finklea, University of Alabama • Disney has long been criticized for its gender portrayals in feature-length animated films. Being one of the most-watched entertainment providers for children, a great deal of research has been conducted into what Disney is actually portraying on the screen. This paper examines gender stereotypes in recent animated and live action Disney films. Results of the content analysis revealed that, while many traditional stereotypes are still being seen, there are some significant shifts in gender portrayals.

Soap Dish: An Exploratory Examination of Daytime Soap Opera Message Boards • Maria Fontenot, Texas Tech University • Employing both quantitative and qualitative methods, this exploratory study investigates motives for visiting, reading, and posting on soap opera message boards, and analyzes content from such message boards from the uses and gratifications perspective. Results revealed that entertainment and information seeking as the most popular motives for visiting soap opera websites, and reading and posting on such boards. Results also uncovered that nearly half of the threads analyzed fell into the information seeking category.

Moving out of the spotlight?: An analysis of Playboy Centerfolds’ career goals and ambitions, 1977-2001 • Amanda Gallagher, Elon University; James Gallagher, Triangle Business Journal • This qualitative study analyzes the career goals and aspirations of the iconic Playboy centerfolds from 1977 to 2001. These statements were gathered from the centerfold profile/data sheets provided each month in the centerfold section of the magazine. In total, 268 centerfold section issues were analyzed. Findings indicate that while many centerfolds embraced careers in entertainment and a desire to be serve in domestic roles in the early years of this analysis (1970s), these desires were not as prevalent in later decades (especially the late 1990s and early 2000s). As time progressed, centerfolds appeared to become more independent-minded and career-oriented, focusing less on their traditional, expected careers in entertainment and domestic roles, and, instead, focusing more on professional oriented careers. These changes reflect nationwide trends and call into question the changing role of the centerfold.

Reality Does Bite: Generation X Enters Adulthood • Timothy R Gleason, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh • Generational tensions appear in Singles and Reality Bites, two 1990’s films concerned with the Generation X label and entry into adulthood. Using the perspective of social representation and the context of American Studies, this paper identifies themes. In brief, characters try to pursue their art, or they just try being true to themselves in the face of sad economic realities. Additionally, these films address the problem of parenthood, or more accurately, the lack of parenting.

How the West was Family Friendly: Disney’s Westerns and Generation X in the 1970’s • Timothy R Gleason, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh • Disney’s Westerns The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975) and Hot Lead and Cold Feet (1978) are as much slapstick as shoot-out, and they are as much social commentary as popcorn entertainment. Underlying the Disneyesque goofiness of these latter Westerns however, is a focus on establishing families at a time when the family structure was in crisis. These films reinforce Disney’s view that children need two loving parents to properly raise children.

People Watching: Genre Repertoires and Multichannel TV Environments • Chad Harriss, Alfred U.; Maria Fontenot, Texas Tech University • Locating and identifying contemporary television audiences is challenging. This essay builds on scientific and critical/cultural theories in hopes of doing that. The researchers employ a hybrid methodology (Q-methodology) to attempt to accomplish two goals. First, we hope to determine if Carrie Heeter’s concept of channel repertoires can be extended to focus on television genres. Second, we hope that this extension will provide some insight into whether audiences can be defined by their genre repertoires.

Fictional Minds and Symbolic Interaction: How the Act of Communication Facilitates Understanding between Characters • Megan Hill, The Ohio State University • Despite widespread growth in the study of narrative in the past decade, the study of communication within these analyses has largely focused on audience effects. This essay moves beyond the effects tradition by focusing attention on the act of communication between characters in the novel. Alan Palmer’s forthcoming research on social minds in the novel is considered in light of principles of symbolic interactionism. Possibilities for future interaction between narrative and communication are discussed.

Personally, I feel sorry for her A Focus Group Analysis of Journalistic Coverage of Celebrity Health • Amanda Hinnant, U. of Missouri; Elizabeth Hendrickson, University of Tennessee • This study assesses how magazine readers in a focus group setting say they negotiate celebrity health stories cognitively, affectively, and behaviorally. We use both symbolic convergence theory and play theory to examine ways in which celebrity health news might perform a functional role in society. This research illustrates how celebrity health coverage serves to patrol the boundaries of acceptable health behavior through readers’ interpretation of moral codes and their application to personal health.

Times Change, But Trailers Don’t: Violent and Sexual Content in a Decade of Movie Trailers Adrienne Holz Ivory, Virginia Tech; Julie E. Leventhal, Virginia Tech; James D. Ivory, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University • Movie trailers are viewed widely, and they have been found to influence viewers’ media choices and anticipated experiences. This study expanded prior research on movie trailers by examining violent and sexual content in all available trailers for the top 50 movies from each of the years 1998-2007 (n = 498). Violent and sexual content were present in the majority of the sample’s trailers, but the prevalence of neither type of content varied consistently over time.

Late-Night Talk Shows:Why People Watch and What They Seek to Gain • jin kim, university of iowa; Julie Kocsis, Hope College • This paper will examine the historical importance of the late-night talk show genre in the development of American television culture and why people watch for what purposes. Our main argument is that the popularity of the genre originates in broadcasting strategy (joint of interpersonal and mass mode of communication) and audiences’ imagination (in their para-social relationship with media celebrity). Based on para-social interaction theory and uses and gratification theory, we identified four major reasons for the popularity of late-night talk show: entertainment, education, habitual media use and emotional attachment. Further theoretical implications and future research agenda will be discussed in the conclusion.

The Mediating Role of Identification and Perceived Persuasive Intent in Overcoming the Resistance to Persuasive Narrative Messages • Kitae Kim, SUNY at Buffalo; Shin-Il Moon, The State University of New York at Buffalo; Thomas Feeley, The State University of New York at Buffalo • Theories on narrative message processing, such as Extended Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (Slater & Rouner, 2002) and Entertainment Overcoming Resistance Model (Moyer-Gusé, 2008), suggest that a narrative message is persuasive because the transportation into the narrative world reduces the resistance to the message such as counterargument and psychological reactance This study proposes and testes the mediating role of identification with a character in a narrative and perceived persuasive intent in the relationship between transportation and two forms of the resistance to the narrative messages (e.g., counterargument and psychological reactance), using a written narrative message regarding bone marrow donation. Results show that identification mediated the relationship while perceived persuasive intent did not. The implications and limitations of this study are discussed.

The Family Osbourne: A Narrative of Domesticity Tames and Enriches the Godfather of Heavy Metal • Jacqueline Lambiase, Texas Christian University • Ozzy Osbourne, sometimes called the godfather of metal, has never been shelved in the where are they now? category because of his family’s willingness to share its straight and true narrative. This rhetorical project analyzes the storytelling acumen of Ozzy and his wife, Sharon, his longest running collaborator. With their children, they have written 10 memoirs in less than a decade, ensuring mainstream success. After decades, Ozzy still occupies a masculinized heavy-metal space, joined now by a matriarchal space of entertainment projects rooted in domesticity and storytelling.

Goffman in The Real World: Processes of Performance and Characterization Across Three Reality Television Series • Mark Lashley, University of Georgia • This paper looks at three reality television series (The Real World, Starting Over and The Osbournes) through the lens of Goffman’s Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and Propp’s Morphology of the Folktale. Techniques of casting and performance of reality television participants are examined. It is argued that reality television comprises a performative sphere of action where archetypes are continually reproduced, through institutionalized casting techniques and participant performance.

Multimedia in the Website: How do the U.S. Professional Sports Team Websites Adopt and Use Media Technologies? • Yang-Hwan Lee, Sungkyunkwan University; Sung-Chul Ihm, Sungkyunkwan University • Internet and new media technologies plays an important role in establishing the relationship between consumers-marketers. This study investigates what kind of media technology the professional sport team Website adopt and how those media technologies are used as a marketing communication tool. The results showed that Website and its technologies can be useful to sell and promote products and to communicate with customers. In the U.S., therefore, many sports teams are interested in the Website as a pipeline of marketing communication, but it seems not to be a matter of primary concern for some professional sports teams.

Power and Violence in Angry Aryan Song lyrics: Exploring the Recruitment Strategies of the White Power Movement • Andrew Selepak, University of Florida; Belio Martinez, University of Florida • This paper uses a qualitative interpretive framework to analyze song lyrics by the skinhead band the Angry Aryans. It also explores the legitimacy of skinheads as a social movement and the role of power in asserting their status as an oppressed group. Social movements are typically viewed as positive constructs advancing the rights of oppressed people. However, racist extremist groups also portray themselves as grassroots social movements. Results indicate the Angry Aryans perceive ethnic minorities and homosexuals as inferior and subhuman and along with non-skinhead whites a threat to white superiority and survival in the United States. The song lyrics are used as a communication strategy to recruit, intimidate and promote violence. The concept of power and notions from social movement theory support the view of skinheads as a legitimate social movement. However, this study does not suggest that skinheads embody noble aspirations, only that they possess similar dynamics to progressive efforts that seek a common good.

Awe and disgust: American Idol press coverage • Amanda McClain, Temple University • This paper contains discourse analyses of the 2002 and 2008 American Idol news coverage. It finds that both analyses focused on economics, power, and contestants; other topics include Simon Cowell and authenticity versus artificiality. However, while the 2002 coverage included themes of awe and derision, these were absent in the 2008 coverage. American Idol is now so ingrained into American culture, that contempt for it may be tantamount to contempt for American ideals.

Alcoholic content: a textual analysis of Rock of Love • Tim Hogarth, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University; Mike McComb, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University; Kareema Pinckney, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University; Sandra Smith, S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University • Although there have been studies about reality television, there is a lack of research on the affects of alcohol within competitive dating reality shows. We conducted a textual analysis of Rock of Love with Bret Michaels examining the role alcohol plays within the narrative structure of the program. We determined that alcohol is presented as a positive influence on the participants and a connective thread within the major story arcs of the program.

Quick Measures of Transportation • Daniel G. McDonald, Ohio State University; Jonathan J. Anderegg, Ohio State University; Erin M. Schumaker, Ohio State University; Andrea Quenette, Ohio State University • This study provides an overview of the development of six subscales designed to measure the concept of transportation. The subscales measure multiple dimensions of transportation, but do so in a way that provides a more efficient and more exact measure than is currently available. We examine the reliability of the measures and their validity in several different ways, finding them as powerful as current measures but more sensitive to content variation.

How moviemakers frame the media: An analysis of the portrayal of journalism in popular Vietnam-era cinema • Alexa Milan, Elon University • This research project, guided by framing theory, explores how journalism as a profession and the media were portrayed in film during a time in which journalism was arguably transforming its role in society – the Vietnam War. Rather than studying films focused primarily on journalism, a content analysis of the most popular films was conducted and the presence of the media in everyday life situations coded. The top five highest grossing films from 1968-1977 were included in the sample. These films were in production during the war, and their images reached up to 120 million Americans. The 50 films studied contained 460 representations of media that paint an overall picture of how media was portrayed to audiences in this era. Variables studied included what type of media was present (i.e. newspapers, television), whether it was in the foreground or background of the scene, whether its use moved the action forward, and the reporter’s demographic information. Some key findings include that 53.3% of the media frames were of newspapers, characters responded to the media 32.6% of the time, the media moved the plot forward 45.4% of the time, 30.2% of television portrayals were framed as sensationalistic, and more Black and female journalists appeared in the last four years of the sample. This research is significant because by making the deliberate choice to utilize media in their movies, filmmakers are revealing the media’s importance. Framing theory argues that unconsciously, these portrayals drive public opinion about the media and its role in everyday life.

How to Make a Bully: Examining the Impact of Violent Entertainment on Adolescents • Patrice Oppliger, Boston University; Denis Wu, Boston University • This study explores the connection between different genres of violent media and adolescents’ attitudes toward fighting and bullying behavior. We tested the impact of masculinity on bullying using Bem’s Sex Role Inventory (BSRI). Parental attitude toward violence is also incorporated in the regression models. Results showed that scoring high on the BSRI dominance factor predicted adolescent attitudes and bullying behavior. Individual genres of violent media were predictive of attitudes bullying depending on the gender of the participant.

Uses and Gratifications Structural Model of Videogame Play • Emil Bakke, Ohio University; L. Meghan Peirce, Ohio University • This study deductively tests the structure of a uses and gratifications model where audience background characteristics, viewing motivations, exposure and attitudinal factors are considered in how one constructs their reality. Specifically, it examines how users’ locus of control predicts entertainment, companionship and pass time motivations. It then looks at how these motivations predict users’ perceived reality. Results suggest a significant negative relationship between users’ locus of control and the motivations of entertainment, companionship and pass time. Users who hold an external locus of control proved more motivated to play video games. Videogame play as a source of entertainment is a negative predictor of casual gaming. Individuals who were motivated by companionship were significantly likely to be classified as hardcore and casual gamers; and no significant relationships were found by individuals motivated by pass time. The more exposure a user held with the media, the more likely they were to construct their own world based on video game content. By understanding this relationship as a complete structural model, a deeper understanding will be gained of how users construct their reality based on video game play.

Girl power: A content analysis of gender portrayals on popular children’s cable networks • Jack Powers, Ithaca College • A two-week sample of after-school television programs (3-6 p.m.) for The Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network was constructed to represent popular after-school cable programming for children. In a systematic content analysis, the frequencies and character attributes of the male and female characters were documented with particular attention paid to how females were presented. This study’s findings update the current state of gender depictions on cable television programs geared toward children, depictions that may influence child viewers. The results suggest that girls are presented more favorably than boys across several variables, but that boy characters still far outnumber girl characters.

Bollywood and the Indian Premier League (IPL): The Political Economy of Bollywood’s New Blockbuster • Azmat Rasul, Florida State University; Jennifer Proffitt, Florida State University New forms of cricket have been introduced for the last four decades to maintain the interest of the audience in the game and, in recent years, to make the game more media-friendly. In India, an innovatively formatted tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL), was started in 2008. The IPL magnetized cricket fans and corporate sponsors when Bollywood superstars not only promoted but also purchased teams in the league. The interlocking of industry and showbiz carries heuristic value and stipulates the need to examine this phenomenon from a political economic perspective. As such, we argue that the IPL-Bollywood alliance is a new synergistic mechanism that is attracting the attention of global entertainment corporations.

More of the Same from Television Doctors: A Content Analysis of Their Portrayal, Interactions, and Ethical Behavior • Tom Robinson, Brigham Young University; Jessica Danowski, Brigham Young University; Kenny Trent, BYU • The medical drama has been part of television programming since its infancy. Each week on early television medical dramas, doctors were asked, under unbeatable odds to perform a miracle and more often than not – they did. With an almost uncanny ability to dominate and control the lives, these doctors exceeded the abilities of a natural man to a point where they seem almost omnipotent. Then in the 1994-95 television season, ER was introduced to the television audience and although many of ER’s doctors often performed under unbeatable odds, and showed skills well beyond normal doctors, these doctors contained character flaws that presented them as fallible, human-like beings. Views are now seeing doctors who made mistakes, make bad decisions, and who have patients who died. The purpose of this research is to look at the evolution of the medical show and the TV doctor, and determine their role in influencing mass audiences today. Through a content analysis of 10 medical dramas, 55 doctors were coded and the results show that most are male, Caucasian, middle-aged, and attractive. These doctors do make mistakes and many have personality flaws, but most are shown beating medical odds, breaking restrictive rules, dealing with patients’ families, fighting hospital administrators, and still having time to cure their patients.

The Man Without Fear at a Time of Great Fear: A review of Countercultural Themes in the First 100 Issues of the Comic Book, Daredevil. • Bill Schulte, Ohio University • This study reviewed the first 100 issues of Marvel Comic’s Daredevil: The Man Without Fear for countercultural themes prevalent the 1960s and 1970s. This comic book was examined for three countercultural themes: youth interacting with establishment and moving away from 1950s style and values, racial issues and civil rights in the face of a world becoming more integrated, and commentary on the Vietnam War. The study follows the book from its wholesome 1950s style roots, through the free but often pessimistic years between 1964 and 1973. The Marvel comic book, Daredevil, was a previously unexplored medium for creating meaning and engaging countercultural social issues.

No Future No Longer: Pop-Punk and the Second-Wave Legacy • Alexandra Smith, Penn State University, College of Communications • To date, there has been very little academic research focused on the political potential of today‟s pop-punk musical genre. This paper seeks to address that lack by analyzing the music of the pop-punk band NOFX. Drawing on past scholarship examining the political nature of first-wave punk music, an intertextual lyrical analysis of several NOFX songs, the members‟ activist tendencies, and the band itself reveals that the music does contain activist messages and uses intertextual methods to effectively create its own model listener.

Critic-Adored, Award-Ignored: Roots and Consequences of Emmy Gone Wire-less • Todd Sodano, St. John Fisher College • The Emmy Award is an overused yet undervalued piece in countless conversations about television. Fans, viewers, and critics lament the broken system that rewards the same talent year after year but ignores cutting-edge, diverse television. This article examines paid journalistic TV critics’ commentaries about the Emmy and why HBO’s The Wire, a critic-adored, award-ignored series, was overlooked by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, a group whose mission includes the promotion of diversity. Furthermore, this essay looks at what the consequences are of this oversight in today’s era of niche market programming.

Motivated Cognitive Processing of Risky and Sexy Video Game Content • Sarah Miesse, The University of Alabama; Johnny Sparks, Texas Tech University; Harsha Gangadharbatla, University of Oregon; Curtis B. Matthews, Texas Tech University • The current study examined the influence of risky and sexy content on motivated cognitive processing of video game content. Participants viewed video clips from the games Fable II and Grand Theft Auto. Negative emotional experiences increased with risky and sexy content. Positive emotional experiences were associated with nonrisky and nonsexy clips. The guiding theoretical perspective predicted that resources allocated to encoding would be greater for positive (nonsexy and nonrisky) than negative (sexy and risky) content because both elicited a low level of arousal. As predicted, recognition sensitivity was greater for nonrisky and nonsexy video game content. Although the findings supported the theoretical predictions, the results do not necessarily correspond with conventional expectations.

The Lady Is (Still) a Tramp: Prime-Time Portrayals of Women Who Love Sex • Jan Whitt, University of Colorado • Expressing their sexuality while being ridiculed by others unites several controversial television characters, including Blanche Devereaux (Rue McClanahan) of The Golden Girls, Jackie Harris (Laurie Metcalf) of Roseanne, Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) of Sex and the City, and Paige Matheson and Edie Britt (both played by Nicollette Sheridan) of Knot’s Landing and Desperate Housewives, respectively. Because this study does not focus upon lesbians or women of color, it underscores the manner with which straight white women are caricatured when they disrupt suburbia (Knot’s Landing The Golden Girls, Roseanne, and Desperate Housewives) or an urban community (Sex and the City). The Lady Is (Still) a Tramp suggests that women who subvert unwritten heterosexual codes of conduct must be punished; in fact, their conniving and sometimes narcissistic behavior is the object of humor at the same time that it allows other characters (and viewers of the television program) to bask in moral superiority. It also argues that women who love sex are often the ones who are most unruly by society’s standards; furthermore, although they may be objects of ridicule, they often use wit to retaliate against those who judge them.

An examination of college sports fans’ perceptions of scandal coverage in the media • Molly Yanity, Ohio University; Ashley Furrow, Ohio Universtiy • This study examines which factors motivate how and where college football and men’s basketball fans get their news on scandals, or negative off-field incidents that involve misconduct by coaches and/or players. The main factors examined in this study are trust, bias and characteristics of coverage as distinguished between local and national coverage. This research is important because it could ultimately help to determine how those motivating factors influence what local media outlets cover, and how they cover – or do not cover – controversial topics and scandals in the sports arena.

Using Sense of Control and Sense of others to Explicate User Experiences and Impact of Online Games • Gunwoo Yoon, Graduate School of culture Technology, KAIST; Seoungho Ryu, Department of Visual Culture, Kangwon National University, Korea • This study examines how the sense of control and sense of others influence idiosyncratic experiences and the impact of violent online games. All participants were assigned to one of the four game conditions according to involvement (watching vs. playing) and social interaction (alone vs. together). The participants’ feelings of presence and aggression were measured after the experiment. Results indicated that networked game playing conditions and social interaction entail users to feel more presence and aggression.

<< 2010 Abstracts

A Comparison of Gender Portrayals in News Content across Platforms and Coverage Areas • Cory Armstrong, University of Florida; Fangfang Gao, University of Florida • With the continuing disparity between male and female mentions in news content, this study seeks to compare how news organizations employ men and women in Twitter feeds and how that connects to portrayals in news stories. In particular, researchers examine how mentions in tweets of men and women may influence mentions in news stories that were linked from tweets. The study employed a content analysis of national, regional and local newspaper and television tweets, along with their accompanying news stories to compare media platforms and coverage areas. Results indicated a positive relationship between male and female portrayals in tweets and portrayals in news content. Further, male mentions were more likely to appear in national news stories than other regions and more frequently than female mentions in print media than in television. Implications were discussed.

More of the same old story?: Women, war and news in Time magazine • Dustin Harp, University of Texas at Austin; Jaime Loke, University of Texas at Austin; Ingrid Bachmann, University of Texas at Austin • Feminist media scholarship has long examined the role of women in journalism and criticized the gendered nature of news in general and war coverage in particular. This content analysis of 406 stories from Time magazine explores the intersection of war reporting and gender in the coverage of the war in Iraq. The results show than in war news, women are still scarce. Female reporters accounted for a fifth of the bylines, but tended to cite more diverse sources, including more women. Female sources were mostly private individuals without affiliation, and represented less than a tenth of the subjects cited. These findings indicate that when it comes to war, women are still symbolically annihilated through omission.

Mammy Revisited: How Media Portrayals Of Overweight Black Women Affect How Black Women Feel About Themselves • Gina Chen, Syracuse University; Sherri Williams, Syracuse University; Nicole Hendrickson, Syracuse University; Li Chen, Syracuse University • In-depth interviews with 36 black women, ages 18 to 59, reveal that exaggeratedly overweight depictions of black women in television and film had a strong effect on their identity. The women reported portrayals, such as Rasputia in Eddie Murphy’s Norbit, were mammy-like and made them feel conflicted over their own identity because of the disconnect between the dominant white ideal of thinness and media portrayals of black women. Social comparison theory is used for interpretation.

Plugging old-media values into ‘new media’: Social identity and the attitudes of sports bloggers toward issues of gender in sport • Marie Hardin, John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, Penn State University; Bu Zhong, Pennsylvania State University; Thomas Corrigan, College of Communications, Penn State University • This research suggests that individual-level, social identity factors in gatekeeping by sports bloggers present a critical dilemma for the exposure and promotion of women’s sports. Using a survey of independent bloggers linking their social identities to their attitudes toward women’s sports and Title IX, this research suggests that the sports blogosphere will not become an egalitarian space for sports commentary without more participation from female bloggers who cover female athletes and advocate for women’s sports.

Silent No More: Regan Hofmann and POZ Magazine • Robin Donovan, Ohio University • During the emergence of the HIV/AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, AIDS was largely seen as a problem faced by gay men and intravenous drug users. POZ magazine was founded to educate people with HIV and AIDS and provide a way to live positively despite these illnesses. With the addition of Regan Hofmann as editor-in-chief in 2006, that mission was well on its way. Hofmann was such an unlikely face of HIV in the 1990s that she hid her identity from all but her family and closest friends for a decade. This study examines the anonymous columns she wrote for the magazine from 2002 to 2006. In each column, she shared her status with someone, documenting both the reactions she received and the process of becoming more comfortable with disclosure. The columns exemplify her personal and professional transformation from hiding her HIV status with shame to publicly announcing her identity on POZ’s cover in April 2006.

Gender violence in the Twilight phenomenon: A feminist analysis of blood, lust and love • Meenakshi Durham, University of Iowa • This paper seeks to interrogate the tensions in the construction of masculinity in the Twilight books and films, vis-à-vis issues of implicit and overt gender violence. The analysis addresses the overarching research question, How is gender implicated in the vampire mythology of Twilight? A combination of feminist rhetorical analysis and semiology are used to examine the verbal and visual texts at work in the Twilight books and films. The analysis identifies four dominant themes in these texts: (1) the representation of violence as an inherent and presumptive characteristic of masculinity; (2) the portrayal of male violence as an acceptable and justifiable by-product of male-female relationships; (3) the continual imperilment of girls in situations from which they were rescued by boys; and (4) the definition of masculinity in terms of a dualism wherein good boys recognized and repudiated their own instinctive predilection for violence and bad boys allowed it to go unchecked. I conclude that Twilight works rhetorically and visually to coax audiences to expect boys to be violent and girls to be compliant in regard to that violence.

Framing Gender Amid Crisis: A Woman University President Faces the Press • Frank Durham, CCS • Women in positions of leadership are more likely than men to be framed according to dominant, gendered themes, in ways, which limit their access to power. This text analysis of the role of gender in the framing process that is evident in coverage by the Iowa City Press-Citizen takes the case of University of Iowa President Sally Mason as she faced two crises in 2007-08. In the first, she was confronted with an alleged rape by two football players of a woman athlete in the Hillcrest dormitory on campus. In the second, she was called to respond to the floods, which inundated the University campus, as well as much of Cedar Rapids and Iowa City. As it finds that Mason was framed differently in each case, the study theoretically interrogates how dominant gender ideology played a role in the framing process.

Agency, Activism or Both? Feminism and Mothering in the Pubic Sphere • Katherine Eaves, University of Oklahoma • Until fairly recently mothers and issues relating to motherhood have been relegated to the private. In the late 1960s, however, the personal became political, giving women and mothers the freedom to talk about elements of their lives that were previously deemed inappropriate for public discourse. This new found freedom, coupled with the proliferation of electronic media, particularly niche media geared toward women and mothers, has led to a considerable amount of public political discourse about motherhood issues. This paper specifically examines the concepts of agency and activism as they relate to mothering in feminist public spheres, and examines the ways in which feminist Web sites about motherhood promote agency and activism.

Mother as Mother and Mother as Citizen: Mothers of Combat Soldiers on National Network News • Karen Slattery, Marquette University; Ana Garner, Marquette University • This study examines national television news images of mothers of U. S. combat soldiers during the first seven years of the Iraq War. News stories presented mothers as archetypal good mothers engaged in maternal work long after their childrens’ deployment. Mothers were depicted as vocal vis a vis their position on the Iraq war, a contrast to the historical depiction of archetypal patriotic mother who is stoic and silent. The resulting image is more complex suggesting the archetype may be shifting.

Building bias: Media portrayals of postpartum disorders and mental illness stereotypes • Lynette Holman, UNC-Chapel Hill • Postpartum depression (PPD) is a disorder that affects one in 10 new mothers. Symptoms include fatigue, anxiety, and excessive concerns about the baby or alternatively, feeling detached from the baby. Only about one in 1,000 new mothers develops postpartum psychosis. Only 4% of these women commit infanticide; however, they make the news. Through a content analysis of 11 years of print media coverage of postpartum disorders, this study illuminates the media’s misrepresentation of these disorders.

From Social Control to Post-Feminism: A Longitudinal Analysis of Reporting on Title IX by Journalist Gender • Kent Kaiser, Northwestern College, University of Minnesota Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women in Sport • This longitudinal study uses quantitative content analysis of frames to investigate differences in newspaper coverage, by journalist gender, on Title IX as it relates to women in sports. The investigation seeks to discern whether female journalists, when given an explicit opportunity to advocate for women’s rights and advancement in a traditionally male domain, a) succumb to social control and therefore conform to the male hegemonic dynamics of newsrooms, b) embrace a feminist predisposition to advocate for women and promote equality or c) distance themselves from the feminist view in post-feminist fashion. The study’s findings suggest that female journalists may have succumbed to social control in the earliest years of Title IX, as their use of frames was similar to that of their male colleagues. Later, female journalists asserted more advocacy frames than their male colleagues, consistent with a feminist style. Yet in the most recent years analyzed, female journalists returned to using frames more like their male colleagues. The findings suggest that, rather than the lack of a critical mass of female journalists, a transformation from social control, to a feminist style, to a post-feminist style is operative in the assertion of Title IX advocacy and opposition frames over time.

Sex & Glamour in the Hillbilly Field: The Objectification of Women in Country Music Videos • Ann McClane-Bunn, Middle Tennessee State University • Despite its rich history as an authentic American art form, country music remains a largely untapped area of scholarly research, especially where women in music videos are concerned. This has been particularly true since 2000, when Viacom, Inc., the parent company of MTV Networks, purchased Country Music Television (CMT). Applying framing theory, objectification theory and the male gaze theory, this thesis employs textual analysis to examine country music videos’ portrayal of women before and since the Viacom purchase. The findings indicate three prevalent frames: Focus on Women’s Bodies, Women’s Gratuitous Presence and Scantily Clad Women. This research identifies parallels between women in country music videos and women in advertisements, suggesting that a musical genre once called the heart of America has become an industry that uses women as sexual objects. Furthermore, this study briefly discusses the implications that such reckless and needless use of women may have on society.

Gender Framing in the 2008 Presidential Election • Erin O’Gara, University of Iowa • This study examines newspaper coverage of the Democratic and Republican presidential and vice presidential candidates in the 2008 U.S. election through the lens of framing theory. The study especially focused on the ways in which gender was framed in newspaper coverage of the election. A total of 225 newspaper articles randomly collected from The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and USA Today were content and textually analyzed. The results show that the media continued to cover male and female candidates in very different ways. The discussion of gender and the one female candidate was stereotypical and used harsher and more negative language than that used for the male candidates. This suggests that contrary to what some believed were improving conditions for female political candidates, the media still put a much greater emphasis on their gender. In doing so, the media are sending a message to potential voters that they are somehow less qualified than their male counterpart: women first, politicians second.

Examining Effects of Romance Consumption on Feminism and Social Media Use • Kristin Russell, Kansas State University; Ruochen Qiu, Kansas State University • Previous research has analyzed feminist themes in romance media mainly through content analysis. The present study attempts to examine the association among romance consumption, feminism and social media use through a cross-sectional survey method. Multiple regression analyses indicated that the more females consumed romance, the less feminist ideas they maintained and that the more females consumed romance, the more they participated in romance-based social media. However, no relationship between romance-oriented social media and feminist ideas was found.

Newspaper Coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the Presidential Election • Tiffany Shoop, Shenandoah University • This research project examined a sample of three prominent newspapers’ coverage of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama during the 2008 presidential election. One of the major findings of this research project was the common reference made in the newspaper articles to controversies related to McCain and Obama, raising the question of if increased coverage of controversies is one of the prices paid for having it all, both personally and professionally, as a presidential candidates’ spouse.

Navigating the Invisible Nets: Challenges and Opportunities for Women in Traditionally Male-Dominated South Asian Newsrooms • Elanie Steyn, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma; Kathryn Jenson White, Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Oklahoma • Invisible nets, labyrinths, glass ceilings and other obstacles create obstructions along women’s paths toward leadership positions, including those in media settings. Expanding on exploratory research, this paper investigates newsroom management expectations and experiences related to communication and teamwork as managerial competencies among a sample of female journalists in Nepal, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Using a quantitative research design, the researchers outline opportunities and challenges for women in navigating these obstacles in traditionally male-dominated South Asian newsrooms.

Gender Framing on the Covers of Media Guides • Lacey Duffy, Ackerman McQueen; Natalie Tindall, Georgia State University • Past research on women, sports, and the media has produced two consistent themes: Female athletes are not given equal media attention compared to men, and when portrayed, women are more often framed in traditionally feminine and passive roles compared to men. This exploratory study explored gender framing of 2006-2007 Big 12 Conference intercollegiate athletic media guides through a content analysis of 97 athletic media guide covers from sports having both male and female versions. Overall, the majority of male and female athletes on all of the guides examined were portrayed on court, in uniforms, in action, and with sporting equipment. Male and female athletes were not portrayed in sexually suggestive poses. The majority of these athletes were also pictured from eye level and from close or medium range.

Examining New-technology-related Content in Women’s and Men’s Magazines: 2007- 2009 • Wei-Chun Wang, Ohio University • Women are often marginalized in discussions of new technology as portrayed in the media. To examine whether traditional gender biases exist in magazines, this study explored new-technology-related content in popular magazines intended for three groups: men, women and general interest readership. Different from previous research which analyzes the image and advertisements in magazines, this research analyzed the content of magazines, and thus, can be seen as an exploratory study in the field. Through the content analysis approach, this study examined a total of 216 issues of popular magazines from 2007 to 2009. Results indicate that from the 2,967 women’s magazines’ articles sampled, only one article (0.034%) was found that related to technology. Also, among all magazines, news magazines whose readership includes more men than women provided more content oriented to new technology. Results reveal that traditional social roles are reinforced, with males being considered to have more knowledge of IT and new technological subjects.

What is Sexy? How Young Women Ages 19-26 Define Sexiness in the Media and in Real Life • Meng Zhang, University of Florida • Women ages 19-26 participated in a qualitative research on the topic of what is sexy. The study revealed that these women defined sexy broadly as attractive for both men and women, yet their personal ideals of sexiness tended to diverge from what they believe represented in the media. The women in general considered sexy a compliment although there were mix feelings about being sexy. Media were both direct and indirect sources of their feelings and thoughts about sexiness.

<< 2010 Abstracts

The Differences That Matter: Identifying Predictors of Attitudes toward Binge Drinking and Anti-Binge Drinking Public Service Announcements among College Students • Hoyoung (Anthony) Ahn, University of Tennessee; Lei Wu, University of Tennessee; Stephanie Kelly, University of Tennessee • Bing drinking is a prevalent problem on college campuses which has been shown to affect students’ health, social life, and academic performance. Public Service Announcements (PSAs) are government funded social marketing campaigns whose purpose is to present specific audiences with unbiased information in hopes of inducing beneficial behavioral change. Despite almost three decades of initiative, PSAs targeting the college drinking issue have been largely ineffective at inducing behavioral change. This study sought to better understand the college drinking phenomenon by investigating how norms of drinking acceptability and perspectives of PSAs differ between sexes. A number of sex differences were identified. Findings and implications are discussed for both researchers and PSA practitioners.

Models: The Missing Piece in Climate Change Coverage • Karen Akerlof, George Mason University • As the sole tool for projecting future climate trends under conditions of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations, climate models form the basis for global warming risk assessments and are inextricably linked to policy formation. In an analysis of media coverage across four U.S. national newspapers from 1998-2007 and 20 media sources frequented by high-knowledge U.S. audiences for the year 2007, there was little mention of climate models overall though comparatively high levels in political commentary outlets.

The shifting agenda: A scientific event and its print and online coverage • Ashley Anderson, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dominique Brossard, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin • While much is known about how science is covered in traditional media, including sources journalists tend to use (e.g. Tanner, 2004) and what news values inform how an issue is covered (e.g. Galtung & Ruge, 1965), scholars are still exploring how scientific issues end up in online media. Here, we analyze as a case study media coverage of a scientific study examining the deaths of Chinese factory workers due to lung damage from their repeated exposure to nanoparticles. We argue that the scientific study results embody the news values that would make them a prime candidate for news coverage. Nevertheless, mentions of the event in traditional print media were nearly non-existent. Online media, on the other hand, covered it widely. We offer an explanation for why the agenda for print and online media were different in this particular context and discuss why this case exemplifies the importance of the online media environment for science communication scholars.

Public Information Officers’ Perceived Control in Setting Local Public Health Agendas and the Impact of Community Size • Elizabeth Avery, University of Tennessee • Using an agenda-setting perspective, this research analyzes data collected from 281 local public health information officers (PIOs) serving various community sizes, from rural to urban, across the country to reveal how size of their communities as well as state and federal agencies affect public health promotion. Findings reveal low levels of perceived control in setting the local public health agenda among urban PIOs while rural practitioners reported surprisingly high levels of control.

Talking Green: Green Quad, Communication Behavior and Environmental Norms • Daphney Barr, University of South Carolina; Caroline Foster, University of South Carolina • The current study explores the role of Green Quad living on student residents’ attitudes and tendency to action, including talking, information seeking and conserving/recycling resources, on environmental issues. While residents are talking about the environment, their conversations are frequently inhibited by lack of knowledge, lack of interest within social groups and lack of prompts to talk about these issues. When they seek environmental information, they first turn to the internet and then to resources provided by the Green Quad Residence Hall. Residents indicated concern for reliability and credibility of environmental information. Residents note a lack of internalization of environmental actions and a lack of interest in environmental topics among peer groups. This research related residents’ lack of internalization of environmental actions to the lack of environment as a normal part of daily life.

Measuring Perceptions of Emerging Technologies: Errors in Survey Self-Reports and Their Potential Impact on Communication of Public Opinion Toward Science • Andrew Binder, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Michael Cacciatore, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin; Bret Shaw, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona State University • This study present an extensive comparison of two alternative measures of citizens’ perceptions of risks and benefits of emerging technologies. By focusing on two specific issues (nanotechnology and biofuels), we derive several important insights for the measurement of public views of science. Most importantly, our analyses reveals that relying on global, single-item measures may lead to invalid inferences regarding exogenous influences on public perceptions, particularly those related to cognitive schema and media use. Beyond these methodological implications, this analysis suggests several reasons why researchers in the area of public attitudes toward science must revisit notions of measurement in order to accurately inform the general public, policymakers, scientists, and journalists of trends in public opinion toward emerging technologies.

The low-down on low-fat and sugar free: Using media to improve children’s health literacy, knowledge of nutrition, and attitudes toward eating and exercise • Kim Bissell, University of Alabama; Scott Parrott, The University of Alabama • While a variety of factors may be related to a child’s likelihood to be overweight or obese, relatively little is known about the factors most relevant in the prevention of the disease. The overarching objective for this study was two-fold in that it provided broader understanding of children’s general level of knowledge, attitudes, and behavior as it relates to health, and it implemented an intervention program designed to increase children’s overall health literacy. The health literacy program developed and implemented here integrated critical thinking skills along with project-based and activity-based learning so that participants received more than a one-time lecture on health and physical activity. Results suggest that gains in health literacy are possible. Using experimental data to test the effectiveness of a health literacy program, post-test measures of cognition, attitudes, and behavior related to health, nutrition, and exercise demonstrated significant gains across demographic groups in all three areas. More importantly, the greater gains in all three key areas of health literacy were found in children at the greatest risk of becoming overweight or obese–younger children and non-White children. The present study summarizes the health literacy intervention program and presents results from a pre-test/post-test within-subjects experiment conducted during the fall of 2009. These and other findings are discussed.

Emergency Risk Communication in the University Community: Exploring Factors Affecting Use for SMS Emergency-Alert service • Jee Young Chung, University of Alabama; Doohwang Lee, University of Alabama • The present study aims to investigate determinants of college students’ use of emergency-alert service provided by their educational institution, especially the use of a Short Message Service (SMS), which has become one of effective communication tools among college students. The results suggested that social norm and individuals’ perceived intrusiveness toward the service were primary determinants of being SMS emergency-alert service subscriber.

Empowering the Patient to Maximize the HealthCare Exam Andrea Ciletti, Hawaii Pacific University; Penny Pence Smith, Hawaii Pacific University • Previous research has focused on improving health communication, mostly targeting healthcare providers or systems. Recent thinking suggests that patient’s health literacy and preparedness may be an important key to a successful outcome. This study considers more patient participation in doctor patient communication, exploring the PACE guide, to assist patients in exam preparation. A patient sample was willing to use the guide, but healthcare providers interviewed about the guide were less confident about its contribution.

Amplifying Risk to Activate Protection Motivation: Merck’s Gardasil Campaign • Susan Grantham, University of Hartford; Lee Ahern, Penn State; Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Penn State University • In 2006 Merck introduced Gardasil in the United States through its One Less campaign. The campaign highlighted how the three-shot series of vaccines protected against the transmission of HPV and minimized the risk of cervical cancer. The occurrence of cervical cancer has dropped dramatically in recent decades through the use of annual pap smears and no longer ranks in the top 10 of health issues affecting women today. The One Less campaign effectively used social amplification to heighten the perceived health risk associated with HPV. The issue was framed to create the impression that one could either forego the vaccine series, thereby increasing their risk of catching HPV, or undergo the vaccine series and minimize their risk The purpose of this study was to determine how young women (current age 18-25) learned about Gardasil, how the campaign dealt with various dimensions of risk from HPV and cervical cancer and how much of an impact the One Less campaign had on the patient’s decision to receive or decline the Gardasil vaccines. Overwhelming, the participants learned about Gardasil from television advertising. Additionally, the participants felt that the campaign addressed the control and empowerment dimensions of the risk associated with HPV and cervical cancer. While the campaign effectively raised awareness about these issues, participants reported that physicians remained the primary sources of influence when the young women chose to receive or decline the vaccine series.

Unrealistic optimism: A systematic review of perceptions of health risks. • Sherine El-Toukhy, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper is a systematic review of the literature on optimistic bias in perceptions of health risks. Out of 518 studies, the study included a total of 55 studies that met the inclusion criteria, from 2000 to 2008, to (a) examine the level of support for the optimistic bias phenomenon, (b) identify the most significant predictors or correlates with optimism, and finally (c) examine whether optimistic bias influences health behavior, and if so, in what way. The study found immense support for optimism in perceptions of health risks. People do underestimate their perceptions of health risks. This holds true even in the presence of objective risk factors that require a person to take proactive behaviors. However, other variables exercise an influence on optimistic bias, thus enhancing or diminishing it. These variables fall under one of three categories: individual-specific, target-specific, or situation-specific factors. For individual-specific factors, prior experience/ history with a disease, self-esteem, sense of uniqueness, perceived control and ability to protect oneself were consistently found to be associated with optimistic bias. Similarly, size of the target group and similarity with the target were two target-specific variables that have been found to correlate with optimism. Finally, for situation-specific factors, frequency or commonness of a health risk has been found to correlate with lower levels of optimism. Finally, the relationship between optimism and health behavior was found to be inconsistent. Implications for health communication theory and practice are discussed.

Employing Strategic Ambiguity in a Multimedia Message: The Case of Hurricane Charley • Gina Eosco, University of Kentucky; Shari Veil, University of Oklahoma; Kevin Kloesel, OU College of Atmospheric and Geographic Sciences/National Weather Center • This study examines how uncertainty is communicated during hurricane forecasts, specifically focusing on Hurricane Charley in 2004. In the case of Hurricane Charley, the audience’s interpretation of the visual representation of a hurricane track projection, called the cone of uncertainty, was that the situation was certain, causing some to forgo preparations that could have limited damage in the wake of the storm. This study explores the verbal and visual message objectives of hurricane forecasters to determine whether strategic ambiguity is employed in presenting the cone of uncertainty. Nineteen interviews with hurricane forecasters are analyzed to determine the objectives of the verbal and visual messages in hurricane forecasts. The study found that forecasters unconsciously use strategic ambiguity for their verbal messages and explores two explanations for why there was still public confusion: inconsistent multi-organizational use of strategic ambiguity, or the power of the visual to unravel the ambiguity

A Content Analysis of Prosocial Behavior on Sid the Science Kid • Caitlin Evans, Western Michigan University; Jocelyn Steinke, Western Michigan University • Sid the Science Kid is a science-based educational program aired on PBS. Using Social Cognitive Theory, this study focuses on the potential prosocial behavior displayed in Sid the Science Kid. In the 25 episodes analyzed, the most prevalent prosocial behavior was appreciation/appraisal behavior/giving a compliment followed by cooperation/sharing and close behind was rule adherence/compliance. The current study also found preschool-aged characters displayed more prosocial behavior than adult characters.
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The Role of Perceived Risk and Self-efficacy in Health Information Seeking, Preventive Behaviors and Choice of Media Channels • Eun Go, University of Florida • This study examined the ways in which the interaction of perceived risk and efficacy on information seeking and, preventive behavior. In addition, it explored how risk perception and self-efficacy guide people’s selection of health information channels in the context of cancer prevention. By identifying the media usage patterns of individuals with regard to their level of perceived risk and self-efficacy, this study aims to provide useful insights into the factors that the effectiveness of health-related messages.

Across the Great Divide: Boundaries and Boundary Objects in Art and Science • Megan Halpern, Cornell University • This paper explores collaboration between artists and scientists through participant observation. Four artist/scientist pairs worked together to create ten-minute performances for a festival held in January, 2009 in Ithaca, New York. Each pair created their piece over the course of three two-hour meetings, the first of which employed a cultural probe to open a discourse between the artist and scientist and to facilitate collaboration. My role as a participant observer allowed me to closely observe collaborative processes in which pairs engaged in boundary work and made use of boundary objects. The boundary work helped the pairs establish authority and autonomy within their respective subfields, while at the same time provoking discussions that led to the creation of their projects. The pairs used three types of boundary objects: existing, created, and appropriated. These established a common language by which they could create and present their performances to an audience.

Framing Health Disparity News: Effects on Journalists’ Perceptions of Newsworthiness • Amanda Hinnant, U. of Missouri; HyunJee Oh, University of Missouri; Charlene Caburnay, Washington University in St. Louis; Matthew Kreuter, Washington University in St. Louis • This study examines health journalist feedback on framing effects of disparity health news. It extends the research of Nicholson et al. (2008), which found that African Americans reacted more positively to colon cancer stories that emphasize the progress African Americans have made against the disease. More specifically, African Americans had positive affective responses and indicated a greater desire for CRC screening when exposed to the progress frame. Participants exposed to the disparity frame reported opposite reactions (negative emotional response/less desire for CRC screening). This study builds on these findings by exposing how health journalists react to disparity and progress frames in cancer communication stories. This double-blind randomized experiment (N = 179) gauged reactions to the progress and disparity frames on news value measures. This study also included a condition in which half of the participants were exposed to the findings from the Nicholson research. Results show that journalists respond more positively to the disparity-frame story than to the progress-frame story in variables across all news value categories. The journalists who saw the Nicholson findings still evaluated the disparity-frame story more positively, but it was across fewer variables. After seeing the Nicholson findings, they did respond more positively to the progress-frame story. Informing journalists of the benefits of using a progress frame could influence story framing on health disparity news.

The Cognitive Mediation Model: Factors Influencing Public Knowledge of the H1N1 Pandemic and Precautionary Behavior • Xianghong Peh, Nanyang Technological University; Veronica Soh, Nanyang Technological University; Shirley Ho, Nanyang Technological University • This study uses the Cognitive Mediation Model as the theoretical framework to examine the influence of motivations, communication, and elaborative processing on public knowledge of the H1N1 pandemic and behavioural intentions in Singapore. Generally, we found that knowledge levels among the public were high. However, the public were willing to engage in basic protective measures rather than H1N1-specific behaviours. Notably, motivations significantly influenced behavioural intentions, as partially mediated by communication, elaboration, and knowledge.

Swine Flu Shift: Effects of risk and concern on health information sources during a pandemic • Avery Holton, University of Texas at Austin • A multi-regional survey of United States respondents suggests that the public seeks health information largely from news and health websites, health professionals and newspapers. As a pandemic – the H1N1 virus – elevated risk levels, health concern increased, but health information sources remained relatively unchanged. Those at high risk during the H1N1 outbreak may ultimately have sought health information from two traditional health information sources – the newspaper and health professionals.

Testing The Effects of The Social Norms Approach to Correct Misperceptions Related to Sexual Consent • Zijing Li, Washington State University; Stacey Hust, Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University • Norm corrective messages may encourage individuals already practicing healthy behaviors to adopt unhealthy behaviors in an attempt to conform to the norm. Yet, exposure to both descriptive and injunctive norms may alleviate this boomerang effect. An experiment with 394 college students tests the effectiveness of social norms related to sexual consent seeking. Results indicate use of both types of norms has a stronger effect on perceptions and intentions than the use of only descriptive norms.

It’s Easy Being Green: The Effects of Argument and Imagery on Consumer Responses to Green Product Packaging • Virginia E. Board, Virginia Tech; Lindsay M. Crighton, Virginia Tech; Phillip K. Kostka, Virginia Tech; Justine A. Spack, Virginia Tech; James D. Ivory, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University • Although green product advertising is increasingly widespread, the quality and format of green product claims vary substantially. To assess how some elements of green advertising claims influence consumer responses, this study examines the effects of argument strength and imagery used in green product packaging on consumers’ perceptions of product packaging credibility, perceptions of product greenness, attitudes toward product, behavioral purchasing intent, and general attitudes toward green product advertising. A 3 (argument: strong, weak, or none) X 2 (image: present or absent) factorial experiment was conducting using different versions of green product packaging on a bottle of laundry detergent. Results indicated that while argument strength influenced perceptions of credibility, product greenness, and attitude, a weak argument was as effective as a strong argument in eliciting purchasing intent. Similarly, the presence of a green seal image influenced purchasing intent regardless of argument strength. These results suggest that though consumers are able to evaluate the quality of green arguments, the mere presence of any green argument or image serves as a cue that affects purchasing intent similarly regardless of format, modality, or quality.

Individual Differences, Awareness/Knowledge, and Acceptance Attitude of Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) as a Health Risk on Willingness to Self-discipline Internet Use • Qiaolei JIANG, The Chinese University of Hong Kong • This exploratory study proposed that Internet addiction disorder (IAD) is a health risk and examined the effects of individual differences (such as flexibility/rigidity, stigma tolerance, and face-loss concern), awareness/knowledge, and acceptance of IAD as a new mental illness among urban Chinese Internet users on willingness to self-discipline the maladaptive Internet habit. Data were gathered from an online survey of 497 Internet users in urban China in 2009. Based on Young’s (1998) classic definition of Internet addiction and Tao’s (2010) Chinese diagnostic criteria, results showed that 12.3% can be classified into the high-risk group. The high risk group tended to be significantly more rigid in personality, more concerned with face-loss, and more aware of IAD as a mental illness. As expected, being flexible, tolerant to stigma, concerned about face-loss, and in the low risk group were found to be more willing to self-discipline their problematic Internet use. Being female, non-student, and with low income tended to be more determined to seek self-help to recover from IAD on their own as addiction clinic in China is still scarce and expensive. Practical health policy implications were discussed.

A Content Analysis of Health- and Nutrition-Related Claims in Food Advertisements in Popular Women’s and Men’s Magazines • Xiaoli Nan, University of Maryland, College Park; Rowena Briones, University of Maryland, College Park; Hongmei Shen, San Diego State University; Hua Jiang, Towson University; Ai Zhang, Richard Stockton College of New Jersey • This article reports a content analysis of health- and nutrition-related (HNR) claims used in food advertisements in popular women’s and men’s magazines published in the year 2008. A total of 734 food ads were analyzed. Our research shows that the nutrition content claim is the most predominantly used claim and that the health claim is the least used. The use of HNR claims also differ for different types of food and magazines.

Stressful university life: The relationship among academic self-efficacy, academic performance, goal characteristics, and psychological well-being of university students in Singapore Hannah Wen Ya Tay, Nanyang Technological University; Zhu Ian Juanita Toh, Nanyang Technological University; Suu Yue Lim, Nanyang Technological University; Elena Owyong, Nanyang Technological University; Younbo Jung, Nanyang Technological University • This study examines how academic concerns influence the well-being of university students by investigating the relationship among academic self-efficacy, academic performance, goal characteristics (i.e., ideal GPA, goal importance, goal motivation, and GPA difference), and psychological well-being (i.e., depression and satisfaction with life). Based on the two-stage stratified sampling method, a self-administered paper-and-pencil survey was conducted with 603 final-year undergraduate students from the two public autonomous universities in Singapore. The results showed that academic self-efficacy negatively predicted students’ levels of depressive symptoms and positively predicted their satisfaction with life. The relationship between students’ academic self-efficacy and their level of depressive symptoms as well as satisfaction with life was found to be mediated by goal importance and goal motivation. In addition, academic self-efficacy was a significant predictor of academic performance, ideal GPA, goal importance, goal motivation, and GPA difference. Theoretical and practical implications of our findings are discussed.

The Priming Effects of Entertainment-Education on Viewers’ Responses to PSAs: An Application to Binge Drinking among College Students • Kyongseok Kim, The University of Georgia; MINA LEE, University of Georgia • The purpose of this study was to examine the priming effects of an Entertainment-Education message on viewers’ responses to a PSA. An online experiment was conducted with 232 participants using a 2 (E-E: present vs. absence) _ 2 (issue involvement: high vs. low) between-subjects design. The results provided evidence of the priming effects of a health message (related to binge drinking) embedded in a primetime drama. The effects were also moderated by issue involvement.

Perceived or Real Knowledge? Comparing operationalizations of science knowledge. • Peter Ladwig, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Kajsa Dalrymple, University of Wisconsin – Madison; Dietram Scheufele, University of Wisconsin; Dominique Brossard, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Elizabeth Corley, Arizona State University • This study compares two frequently used operationalizations of science knowledge: factual knowledge of an emerging technology, measured using true-false options, is the same as self-reported nanotechnology knowledge (perceived familiarity). We argue that these measurements – which have been used interchangeably in past research – are conceptually distinct and should be treated as such. Using hierarchal linear OLS regression, we provide evidence that these two measurements do in fact capture different concepts and should be treated differently in the future.

Defining obesity: Second-level Agenda Setting in Black Newspapers and General Audience Newspapers • Hyunmin Lee, University of Missouri-Columbia; Maria Len-Rios, U. of Missouri This paper examines how obesity is defined in Black newspapers and general audience newspapers applying the framework of second-level agenda setting theory. A content analysis (N = 391) of a national sample of Black newspapers and general audience newspapers showed that while both Black newspapers and general audience newspapers generally ascribed individual reasons for causing, Black newspapers were more likely than general audience newspapers to suggest both individual and societal solution methods to treat obesity. Additionally, regardless of the audience of the newspaper, negative stories of obesity appeared on front pages. Implications for theory and health communication research are discussed.

Influencing Cardio-Pulmonary Resuscitation Intentions in Singapore based on the Protection Motivation Theory • Shallyn Leow, Nanyang Technological University; May O. Lwin, Nanyang Technological University; Kaiyan Lin, National Chengchi University; Chrong Meng Ng, Nanyang Technological University; Kenneth Mu Mao Chia, Nanyang Technological University Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is crucial for survival during sudden cardiac arrest (Hopstock, 2007). Statistics have shown that the typically low survival rate of cardiac arrest victims can increase manifold when the public is CPR-trained. To date, only 20% of out-of-hospital cardiac arrests in Singapore receive bystander CPR (Lateef & Anantharaman, 2001). This research aims to help develop CPR promotion campaigns by examining the CPR-learning intentions amongst youths in Singapore, utilizing the Protection Motivation Theory.

Comprehensive resource to enhance consumer health informatics evaluation research: A description of a pilot project • Glenn Leshner, University of Missouri; Rob Logan, National Library of Medicine; Glen Cameron, University of Missouri – Columbia • The purpose of this paper is to report on a pilot project that will prepare a master resource of outcome variables and suggested measures to guide comprehensive consumer health informatics evaluation. This pilot project is being conducted in collaboration with the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Library of Medicine’s (NLM) Office of Communications and Public Liaison as well as NLM’s consumer health informatics working group. The resource is envisioned as an online tool kit NLM can use and also will be available as a professional development tool to other consumer health informatics researchers. The resource will be comprised of at least 25 outcome variables, with a specific suggested measure for each variable, and a citation of the source. The variables presented here, which represent a small sample, are health literacy, health orientation, spiritual health locus of control, and self-efficacy.

Analyzing Health Organizations’ Use of Twitter for Promoting Health Literacy • Hyojung Park, University of Missouri, School of Journalism; Shelly Rodgers, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Jon Stemmle, Health Communication Research Center, Missouri School of Journalism This study explored health-related organizations’ use of Twitter in delivering health literacy messages while promoting their images and brands. Content analysis of 571 tweets from health-related organizations revealed that the organizations’ tweets were often quoted or republished by other Twitter users. There were some differences among the various types of organizations in regard to addressing health literacy topics in tweets, although in general, most tweets focused on the use of short sentences and simple language.

A comparative analysis of Chinese and American newspapers’ coverage of the milk scandal in China • Lulu Rodriguez, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, Iowa State University; Jiajun Yao, Greenlee School of Journalism and Communication, Iowa State University Anger and panic spread across China in the wake of country’s latest food scare—melamine-tainted milk that sickened nearly 300,000 children and caused the death of at least six infants in 2008. This study analyzed the content of news, feature and editorial reports from the Economic Daily (China) and the Wall Street Journal (U.S.) to determine the risk information items present in the coverage. A discourse analysis was also conducted. The two papers differed in five information areas: the government’s plans of action; the definition, description and explanation of the cause of disorders and deaths; the extent of assurances made; the number of people harmed; and assignment of blame. The Daily referred to the issue as an event or incident while the Journal called it a disaster and a tragedy. Stories from the Daily contained fewer details about what led to the crisis and emphasized the revitalization of the dairy industry while the Journal expressed concern about the enforcement of food safety laws. The Chinese paper consistently showed a positive attitude toward its government while the Journal took a strong negative position toward Chinese authorities.

What Science Communication Scholars Think about Training Scientists to Communicate • Andrea Tanner, University of South Carolina; John Besley, University of South Carolina • This study assesses the volume and scope of the training taking place in the science communication field and explores the views about the skills of several different types of science communicators. Nearly 46% of scholars publishing in academic journals across the sub-fields of science, health, environment and risk communication report conducting formal training for bench scientists and engineers, science regulators, medical personnel or journalists. For most groups, the main focus of training was in the area of basic communication theories and models. There is near unanimity in the field that the science community would benefit from additional science communication training and that deficit model thinking remains prevalent.

Effect of ecological, proximal, and psychometric risk perception on reported self-protective behavior for West Nile virus. • Craig Trumbo, Colorado State University; Raquel Harper, Colorado State University; Emily Zielinski-Gutiérrez, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; Cindy Kronauge, Weld County Department of Health and Environment.; Sara Evans, Weld County Department of Health and Environment • Little is known about the manner in which individuals perceive risk for West Nile virus and how risk perception may affect protective behavior against exposure. To investigate these questions data were collected using a mail survey. The questionnaire included measures of cognitive-affective risk perception, combined with ecological and proximity risk perception constructs, and the Health Belief Model. Results show that all three of the newer risk perception models provide some power to explain protective behavior.

The effect of proximity to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on subsequent optimistic bias and the perception of hurricane risk. • Craig Trumbo, Colorado State University; Michelle Lueck, Colorado State University; Holly Marlatt, Colorado State University; Lori Peek, Colorado State University • In this study we evaluated how individuals living in Gulf Coast counties perceived hurricane risk in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The analysis examined optimistic bias and perception of hurricane risk in January 2006, evaluating these concepts as functions of distance from the area of the Katrina-Rita impact. Data were collected by mail survey (n = 824). Results show hurricane risk perception has a number of significant associations, while optimistic bias does not.

News media and the social amplification of risk for seasonal influenza. • Craig Trumbo, Colorado State University • The effect news media may have had on patients visiting physicians for influenza was examined for 2002-2008. The basis for this investigation rests on theories of media effects applied to the Social Amplification of Risk. It was hypothesized that controlling for the rate of influenza, a positive relationship exists in which increases and decreases of news media attention to influenza precede increases and decreases in the percentage of patients visiting physicians for flu symptoms. The percentage of visits and the percentage of positive flu tests are taken from the Centers for Disease Control’s flu report. Media attention was located through the Lexis/Nexis database as words per week in stories having flu in the headline in 32 newspapers. Time series analysis shows that controlling for autoregressive and seasonal effects, and the actual rate of disease present, news attention in the previous week accounts for a statistically significant portion of the increase and decrease in the number of individuals who go to their physician reporting influenza-like symptoms. Reverse causality was examined and it was shown that controlling for autoregressive and seasonal effects, patient visits did not predict news coverage, while the actual rate of the flu in the previous three weeks did.

News Framing of Autism: Media Advocacy, Health Policy & the Combating Autism Act • Brooke Weberling, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Considering agenda setting, framing, and the concepts of media advocacy and mobilizing information, this study presents a content analysis of U.S. news coverage of autism from 1996 to 2006, the year the Combating Autism Act was passed. Findings revealed that science frames decreased over time, while policy frames increased. Medical and government sources were most common in news coverage. Solutions were more frequent than causes; however, mobilizing information was limited. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Exploring the role of online discussion in improving obesity-related health literacy: A content analysis of health literacy domains and eWOM of The Biggest Loser League • Ye Wang, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Erin Willis, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Shelly Rodgers, University of Missouri School of Journalism • The present study evaluated to what extent and at what levels online discussions about weight-management can improve health literacy, and whether and to what extent health-related eWOM in online discussions can counter-balance misleading information in food advertisements. This study found evidence of health literacy domains in discussions of weight-management, and identified self-efficacy as being influential in users’ performance of weight-loss behaviors. Evidence of eWOM provides a context for health communication to educate and promote healthy living.

Tracking Explanations In Health News. More Attention Is Not Always Needed For Understanding. • Ronald Yaros, University of Maryland • This study investigates the relationship of how readers view health news on a web page and whether certain viewing patterns are associated with different levels of comprehension. Does selective attention always mean comprehension and do explanatory graphics in health news aid comprehension? Participants (N = 20) in an eye-tracking experiment are exposed to two text structures of four health stories with or without explanatory graphics. Recorded eye movements were then associated with robust measures of situational understanding. Based on theory of text comprehension, this study predicted that longer viewing time can indicate little or no explanation in the news more than it indicates interest. Results suggest that longer eye fixations -presumed to indicate more attention in eye-tracking studies – do not always mean a better understanding of complex news.

Willing but Unwilling: Attitudinal Barriers to Adoption of Home-Based Health-Information Technologies Among Older Adults • Rachel Young, University of Missouri, Columbia; Erin Willis, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Mugur Geana, University of Kansas; Glen Cameron, University of Missouri – Columbia • The health needs of aging baby boomers will stress the medical system and family caregivers. Proposals for improving health outcomes include technological solutions, but user attitudes toward these solutions are unknown. This study used in-depth interviews to explore barriers to adoption of a home-based system for communicating with physicians, searching for health information, and receiving tailored messages. A thematic analysis revealed technological discomfort, privacy concerns, and perceived distance from the user representation imagined by participants.

WHAT PARENTAL FACTOR(S) INFLUENCES CHILDREN’S OBESITY? -Investigating the Possible Relationships between Children’s Body Mass Index and • Hyunjae (Jay) Yu, School of Communication, Sogang University; Tae Hyun Baek, University of Georgia • In addition to genetics and nutrition, the notion exists that environmental influences may also indirectly govern childhood obesity. Because children’s eating habits and lifestyles are largely determined by parental upbringing, it is worthwhile to examine and discuss the specific weight-determining variables connected to parenting style and the nature of child rearing. This exploratory study tests for connecting relationships between children’s obesity level (measured by Body Mass Index) and the parents’ television viewing behavior/attitudes. Some of the viewing aspects examined in this study include the parents’ average amount time spent watching TV per day, their attitude toward advertisements targeting children, and their opinions about the parents’ role in regards to their children’s viewing behaviors. Additionally, the researcher examined the parents’ BMI to test for a connection between their weight and their children’s obesity level. Results showed that, in addition to BMI, the parents’ opinions regarding responsibilities for children’s TV viewing behaviors significantly influenced the obesity levels of their offspring.

Communicating a health epidemic: A risk assessment of the swine flu coverage in U.S. newspapers Nan Yu, North Dakota State University; Dennis Frohlich, North Dakota State University; Jared Fougner, North Dakota State University; Lezhao Ren, North Dakota State University • Media can contribute to the public assessment of a health risk and provide general knowledge of basic preventive methods (Allen, 2002; Dudo, Dhlstrom, & Brossard, 2007). The current study content analyzed the coverage of the 2009 swine flu in major U.S. newspapers to uncover: the general pattern of swine flu coverage in 2009, the presentation of health risk, and the depictions of self-efficacy-related information. The results of this study revealed that the risk of swine flu was frequently depicted with qualitative risk and thematic frames. About one third of the stories compared swine flu to a previous known health risk. Swine flu was less frequently portrayed as a deadly disease or a global risk compared to the previous coverage of avian flu. Social disorders more often appeared as consequences beyond health than economic losses and political disturbances. The depictions of the symptoms of swine flu and general preventive efforts appeared less frequently than the mentions of the H1N1 vaccination. However, newspapers expressed uncertainty about the effectiveness of the vaccination.

The Psychophysiology of Viewing HIV/AIDS PSAs: The Effects of Fear Appeals and Sexual Appeals Jueman Zhang, New York Institute of Technology; Makana Chock, Syracuse University • This study investigated the effects of fear and sexual appeals on psychophysiological responses to online HIV/AIDS PSAs. An experiment with a 2 (low vs. high fear appeals) by 2 (low vs. high sexual appeals) within-subject design was conducted (N = 77). Physiological and self-reported data consistently demonstrated that high sexual appeals triggered more attention and greater arousal than low sexual appeals. Self-reported data revealed that high fear appeals elicited more attention and greater arousal than low fear appeals, but physiological data didn’t support it. High fear appeals and high sexual appeals were perceived as more effective but they were not recalled better.

<< 2010 Abstracts

Video Expectations for Non-Television Producers of Community News: Two Newspapers’ Online Video Strategies • George Daniels, University of Alabama • Since 2008, dozens of community newspapers have started producing their own videos for the Web. Many have re-designed their Web sites to make them more videocentric. This comparative case study found the online videos at The Alabaster Reporter and The Tuscaloosa News, both in central Alabama, were similar in their focus on community leaders yet different in their approach. The Alabaster Reporter implemented a YouTube strategy while The Tuscaloosa News used a franchise strategy.

Heart disease in the rural South: A content analysis of the community newspaper coverage • Tracy Loope, University of Florida • Because community newspapers are critical information sources among rural residents, their coverage of heart disease in the rural South was analyzed. Heart disease remains a severe health problem in the South where people are far more likely to die from heart disease than in other areas of the country. Using the Health Belief Model (HBM) to develop the newspaper analysis, this study illustrates the importance of community newspapers’ presentation of heart disease information. Results show that newspapers located in areas with high heart disease mortality rates were more likely to present heart disease as a severe threat to readers, showing these newspapers’ strong tie to their communities. Further research is required to better evaluate this relationship and find ways to use mass media, specifically community newspapers, to improve heart health among people living in rural areas.

The Public Sphere and Web-First Independent News Sites • Mark Poepsel, Missouri School of Journalism • Journalists with varying levels of experience have never-before-seen opportunities to create their own news sites. This ability presents some with an opportunity to create entrepreneurial ventures that could contribute to rational-critical discourse in the 21st Century. This study takes an in-depth, qualitative look at a several successful, locally-focused news sites through the eyes of the people publishing them in order to examine publishers’ goals and expectations, economic and journalistic.

Experiment and adapt: The mantra of survival for one startup Latino newspaper • Arthur Santana, University of Oregon • Eugene, Ore. has a history of failed Latino newspapers, but a new one is trying something new: adopting a bilingual format and embracing uplifting news. Motivated by a sense of civic duty, three immigrants launched the community newspaper in September 2009. But it has been a rocky start. This case study sheds lights on the deliberations and difficulty that go into the creation of a different kind of community newspaper.

After the Storm: Greensburg Residents Discuss an Open Source Project As a Source of Community News • Steve Smethers, Kansas State University • Greensburg was destroyed by an EF5 tornado in May 2007. The famed green sustainable rebuilding effort includes a multimedia telecommunications center, which will produce an open-source community information portal featuring audio, video and textual information round the clock. Prototypes of the portal were shown to focus groups to determine respondents’ propensity to use and contribute to the site. Subjects showed willingness to learn the technology, but worry about the site’s impact on the local newspaper.

Imagining Tibet Online: Discursive Constructions of Nation on Tibetan Website • Nangyal Tsering, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • The paper studies www.phayul.com, the leading online portal of the Tibetan diasporic community, based in India. By looking at the news published on the site, the paper looks at how the website discursively constructs representations of nation online. Even though Tibet is not a nation-state, digital media’s critical role in the formation of an imagined community comes across very strongly, particularly in the case of displaced and geographically dispersed people such as the exiled Tibetans.

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