Faculty Research Competition
Muhammad Ali’s Vietnam War Challenge: An Examination of Framing by the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal • Zainul Abedin, Mississippi Valley State University • This study examines framing of Muhammad Ali’s anti-Vietnam War role by the New York Times and the Louisville Courier-Journal. The trials Ali endured are legendary for his refusal to join the U.S. Army as a conscientious objector. Ali, alias Clay, struggled to uphold self-determination and civil rights especially during the period from 1967 through 1971 when he faced legal barriers and racial discrimination. The study revealed the press, especially popularly known “liberal” Times was disrespectful to Ali’s historic fight for human rights and justice. Ali’s challenge not only helped redefine the law of conscientious objectors protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution but also has long been inspiring other athletes to raise their voices for civil rights.

Communication, Perception of Candidate Ethnicity, and Hispanic Engagement During the 2018 Texas Senate Election • Oluseyi Adegbola; Sherice Gearhart • Existing research indicates that Hispanics tend to support co-ethnic candidates, due in part to the assumption that such candidates will be committed to the Hispanic community. However, candidate ethnicity may differ from perception of candidate ethnicity, especially when attributes about candidate ethnicity may be ambiguous. This study examines the extent to which perception of candidate ethnicity and commitment to the Hispanic community, as well as political communication, guide varying types of political engagement. A survey of Hispanic voters located in Texas (N = 424) was collected during the 2018 Texas senate election featuring Beto O’Rourke (D) and Ted Cruz (R). Results suggest that perceptions of candidate ethnicity and commitment to the Hispanic community are related to active engagement, although findings vary across candidates. Similarly, exposure to political advertising is more closely associated with active rather than passive engagement, while political discussion is related to both outcomes. Implications for political communication and engagement among Hispanics are discussed.

Framing Federal Recognition: Native American Sovereignty and Casinos • CRISTINA Azocar, San Francisco State University • A content analysis of almost 4,000 print, online and broadcast news stories spanning forty years examines mainstream news coverage of the federal recognition of Native American Tribes and the conflation of recognition and gaming. The analysis uses the theories of agenda setting and framing to show how the pattern of coverage of federal recognition has helped the U.S. maintain cultural hegemony of tribes. As predicted, the news media perpetuated ignorance and stereotypes about the sovereignty of Native tribes by keeping tribes’ pursuit of federal recognition off the news agenda, and by overplaying gaming frames and underplaying sovereignty frames.

Fifty Shades of White: Default whiteness and performative speech in television-news coverage of the Charlottesville Unite the Right riot • Angie Chuang, University of Colorado Boulder; Autumn Tyler, University of Colorado Boulder • The violence surrounding the 2017 Unite the Right rally challenged journalists with multiple ambiguities, from euphemistic language like “alt-right” to describe white supremacy, to President Trump’s “very fine people on both sides” statement. This mixed-methods analysis of television-news coverage of events in Charlottesville shows that, in the absence of a racialized “us versus them” narrative, national networks tended to adhere to a default, invisible presumption of whiteness in representations of participants, overlooking counterprotesters of color.

“Through Our Prism”: A Survey of Black Local Sportscasters’ Views and Interactions with Black Athletes • Kevin Hull, University of South Carolina; Denetra Walker; Miles Romney, Brigham Young University; Kirstin Pellizzaro, University of South Carolina • Black local sports broadcasters throughout the United States were surveyed to discover how they view media treatment of, and their own interactions with, Black athletes. Results demonstrate that the majority feel the athletes are negatively stereotyped and that, as Black journalists, they have an easier time relating to and telling the story of the Black athlete.

* Extended Abstract * When Do Victims Become Activists? Asian Americans’ Experience with COVID-19 Related Discrimination, Communicative Coping Strategies, and Engagement in Activism • Jungmi Jun; Priscilla Li • Due to the origin of COVID-19, racist and xenophobia attacks against Chinese and Asian Americans have radically increased. We investigate Asian Americans’ COVID-19 related discrimination experience, communicative coping strategies, and engagement in activism. Three relevant communication theories guide the research. Online survey will be conducted with Asian Americans across the US. The findings will guide efforts to combat discrimination of racial/ethnic groups, share effective coping strategies, and empower the victims.

#BlackLivesMatter in Sacramento: Digital Media Maintenance of Black Stereotypes, Protest Repression and the Status Quo • Danielle Kilgo, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities • This research analyzes news representations of the killing of Stephon Clark and protests that followed, while also considering the role social media users play in empowering some narratives over others. Results suggest that the press negatively characterized Clark while avoiding assessment of the characters of police officers. In general, the protests were described as disruptive and emotional, though episodic demands were regularly mentioned. Selective social media sharing amplified the limited coverage about police character.

Coping with Workplace Racial Discrimination: The Moderating Role of Transparent Communication • Queenie Li, University of Miami; Yeunjae Lee, University of Miami; Shiyun Tian, University of Miami; Wanhsiu Tsai • “Based on an integrative framework, this study evaluates whether and how internal communication efforts are connected to racial minority employees’ coping strategies for workplace discrimination to influence their relationship with and communicative behaviors toward their organizations. A survey was conducted with 412 full-time employees working in various industry sectors in the U.S. Results suggest that racial minority employees were likely to choose emotion-focused rather than problem-focused coping strategies. The choice of coping strategies in turn impacted the relational and behavioral employee outcomes. Importantly, transparent communication was found to be a significant moderator that reduces the negative impacts of discrimination experiences while increasing the motivation of adopting problem focused approaches. The theoretical and practical implications were discussed.”

George Wallace and racial polarization in Alabama during the civil rights era: A theory of media legitimacy and political leadership • Ali Mohamed • Existing literature on the relation between media legitimacy and effective political leadership shows the utility of Max Weber’s “charismatic” leader attributes based on a leader’s behavior, his/her political principles, and his/her fidelity to those principles. But few studies so far have considered this relationship between media and charismatic leadership in polarized political contexts. Our examination of Governor George Wallace’s paradoxical relationships with the Birmingham News in 1960s Alabama showed no legitimation of his leadership either during his 1962 campaign for office or during his first term as governor — despite his high popularity and despite News support for his segregationist political platform. The paper strongly opposed manipulation of racial divisions for political gain because of the negative implications of such conflict for Alabama’s prosperity and for the rule of law. The News instead supported Wallace’s opponent, Ryan deGraffenreid, for promoting unity of all Alabamians; and ascribing to him charismatic attributes of honesty, competence, and credibility.

* Extended Abstract * “It’s not a movie, it’s a movement:” Analysis of Asian-Americans in American 2018-2019 films • Patrice Oppliger, Boston University; Siyu Liu, Boston University • This paper will explore and reason the changes in the representations of Asian Americans in U.S. films released in 2018 and 2019. We use Said’s latent and manifest Orientalism as a theoretical framework to analyze the content and production of the four films, Crazy Rich Asians, To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, Always Be My Maybe and The Farewell.

Chick-Fil-A Vs Popeye’s: Memes of Chicken Wars and Hegemonic Ideologies • Nathian Rodriguez, San Diego State University • The study employed a textual analysis using a lens of encoding and decoding theory and found that Popeye vs Chick-Fil-A memes contained stereotypical racist and classist humor, furthering hegemonic ideologies. It was also found that LGBTQ discourse was also created around the chicken feud, establishing a dichotomy of pro-and anti-LGBTQ stances for Popeyes and Chick-Fil-A, respectively. The findings suggest that hybridity nature of memes can not only reify hegemonic ideologies through digital discourse, but also ascribe those ideologies to organizations, in this case fast food chains, without the organization’s intent or control.

* Extended Abstract * Stevie Wonder, Black Genius and Herald of Music and Media Integration • John Vilanova • This is a historiographic project that uses a corpus of more than 7,000 articles written about the musician Stevie Wonder between 1962 and 1977. It unpacks and analyzes the way media discourses “made” Wonder into an exceptional and unique figure whose music was said to transcend both racial and artistic boundaries. This work illustrates how media was key to Wonder’s acceptance in mainstream music industry and popular culture circles.

Student Papers
Black Maternal Mortality in the Media: How Journalists Cover a Deadly Racial Disparity • Denetra Walker; Kelli Boling, University of South Carolina • Through semi-structured interviews with five news journalists, this study offers an in-depth understanding of journalists covering Black maternal mortality. Discussions include the role of advocacy in journalism as well as the struggle of covering the complex, long-standing systemic issue of maternal mortality associated with race in American society. Three themes discuss a need for journalistic responsibility, the role of media advocacy in public health, and complications when reporting race. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: An Analysis of Attitudes and Perceptions of Body Image Among Young Adult Hispanic Women • Christina Jimenez Najera, Texas Tech University; Othello Richards, Texas Tech University • Research has shown that constant exposure to thin body types and beauty ideals portrayed in media generate negative effects among women. This study focused on exploring attitudes and perceptions of beauty and body image ideals among a young adult Hispanic female population through semi-structured interviews. Preliminary results show that the ideal body type is thinner and “thick”, and beauty is a dualistic concept in which media and family have a direct influence in its construction.

Communicating the culture through Korean food between authenticity and adaptation • Solyee Kim, University of Georgia • This study explores how Korean restaurants in the States promote their businesses by using the Circuit of Culture as a theoretical framework. Five elements in the Circuit, representation, production, consumption, identity, and regulation, provided a contextual understanding of how Korean food is communicated at a local level. In-depth interviews with 10 small business Korean restaurant owners in the U.S., the study highlighted the discrepancy in perception, knowledge and access to resources in promoting their businesses.

Local news representations of race and homicide in Baton Rouge, Louisiana • Tim Klein, Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication; Quincy Hodges • Prior researchers have found that media portrayals of crime influence the publics’ views on criminality and the criminal justice system. In addition, news coverage of crime often fails to be representative of victims and perpetrators, with most studies finding Whites are oversampled as victims, while Blacks are undersampled. Despite this body of research on news representations of race and crime, there have been no recent studies that focus on racial representations of crime in the southern parts of the U.S., where homicide and incarceration rates tend to be the highest, and the history of racial prejudice has been the most severe. This study begins to fill that void by conducting an interreality comparison of homicide news coverage and homicide statistics in Baton Rouge, the capital city of Louisiana. Findings revealed that among Baton Rouge’s four nightly TV news broadcasts and the state’s largest daily newspaper, the majority of the news stories had White victims (52.11%), though Whites made up only 2.2% of the homicide victims in 2018 in Baton Rouge. This study adds critical empirical data to the broader debate over media portrayals of crime and race.

Separate and (Almost) Equal: Analysis of “It’s Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges” • Vincent Peña, University of Texas at Austin • In September 2019, former ESPN personality Jemele Hill wrote a controversial article for The Atlantic, titled “It’s Time for Black Athletes to Leave White Colleges,” in which she argued for an exodus of black athletes from predominantly white institutions to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). This paper conducts a rhetorical textual analysis of Hill’s article while using a theoretical framework based on Marxian concepts such as ideology and hegemony to examine her article’s implications.

News Presenters and the People Who Lead Them: Examining Diversity of Local Television News Teams • Robert J. Richardson • Research has shown that people of color are underrepresented as members of the media. A majority of local television news directors and station general managers are White, and most of them are men. This study collected race and gender data of 4,317 newscasters from 64 U.S. television markets selected randomly through stratified sampling. It examines relationships between race and gender of management, market size, location, and diversity of on-air staffs.

* Extended Abstract * Left out of the equation: Examining perceptions of racial bias on social media platforms • Kelsey Whipple, University of Texas at Austin; Martin Riedl, University of Texas at Austin; Ryan Wallace, University of Texas at Austin • News coverage of the technology industry regularly identifies racial and gender biases built into online platforms through the stereotypes internalized by their creators. However, public perceptions of these algorithmic and technological biases remain largely unexamined — particularly when it comes to social media platforms. Through a cross-sectional panel survey (N = 1,022) distributed nationally in the United States, this study examines demographic and ideological factors that contribute to perceptions that social media platforms are racially biased.

<2020 Abstracts

* Extended Abstract * We are the people – audience engagement as catalyst for newsroom unionization? • Karin Assmann, University of Georgia • This study explores the tension between management, journalists and their audience around audience engagement with a focus on the role of newsroom unionization. Ethnographic work in three U.S. newsrooms and interviews with 131 journalists, newsroom managers and editors in four newsrooms, shows that audience engagement work encourages unionization and that journalists in already unionized newsrooms regard the relationships with their audience as more collaborative than combative.

Drivers of merger and acquisition activity: A quantitative investigation of the telecommunications industry • Yang Bai, Pennsylvania State University; Ryan Wang, Penn State University; Rachel Peng, Penn State University; Krishna Jayakar, Penn State Bellisario College of Communications • Over the last decade, merger and acquisition activity has significantly changed the landscape of the telecommunications industry. While a few mega-mergers have attracted a lot of media attention and public interest, the vast majority of M&A transactions are small mergers. The objective of this paper is to investigate the differences if any, between large and small mergers in terms of merger type, mode of financing and deal valuations. Data on 1725 mergers occurring between 2000-2019 involving at least one U.S.-based company in the SIC code 48 was collected from the Zephyr database. Significant differences were noted based on merger type, mode of financing, and the influence of factors such as interest rates and stock market performance.

Exploring the Dimensions of Media Brand Trust: A Contemporary Integrative Approach • Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, University of Florida • As brands become more media-like and news and information platforms gravitate toward infotainment, this project aims at developing a reliable and valid media brand trust scale that reflects the reality of today’s mediated lives. As the first phase of the process, this study integrated deductive and inductive methods, using literature review to offer a conceptual basis and exploring the identified trust dimensions through the qualitative method of personal interviews. Eight key dimensions were uncovered for further investigations.

The Effect of Emotional vs. Informational Message Appeals on Crowdfunding Campaign Success: Testing Product Type as a Moderator • Ying Cheng, California State University, San Bernardino; Yongseok Jang, California State University, San Bernardino • This study examined the effect of emotional vs. informational appeals and their interaction effect with product types (i.e., hedonic vs. utilitarian product) on crowdfunding campaign performance. Using a sample of 249 Kickstarter messages and an online survey (N = 1892), the study revealed when a product was perceived containing higher (vs. lower) utilitarian values, messages perceived to be informational (vs. emotional) led to more positive campaign outcomes. No main effect of message appeals was observed.

Crowdfunding & Cryptocurrency – A New Conduit to Film Finance • J. Christopher Hamilton, Syracuse University • Raising financing for a film with cryptocurrency through blockchain is bound to change every aspect of not only film finance but our content ecosystem. As we witness COVID-19 ravage our economy and force us into a new version of normalcy, the strain on our content ecosystem will lean heavily on technology in the coming years to survive. The increased fragmentation of viewing audiences, the shrinking theatrical windows and the exploitation of the indie film market by streaming services like Netflix, has gutted the indie film business for filmmakers and over-leveraged the major studios. These global economic factors create a unique opportunity for the use of crypto to finance film content. There are still lots of regulatory, technological and credibility hurdles to surmount before crowdfunding with cryptocurrency becomes a viable or practical industry-wide solution for raising capital. But there’s strong evidence that the latter might be a real possibility sooner than we think. Equity crowdfunding coupled with cryptocurrency through blockchain will be the key to unlocking future capital. So, whether crypto through blockchain helps connect unbanked communities to the global economy, supplant Byzantine bureaucracies in bank and presales financing or just guarantees fair dealing in a business transaction with potentially dubious investors, it will certainly live up to its moniker as the internet 2.0 for Hollywood.

Public Service Mandate Versus Profit-Making Motive: A Study of the Daily Graphic Newspaper in Ghana • Paul Koomson, University of Oregon; S. Senyo Ofori-Parku, University of Oregon • This study examines the extent to which the Daily Graphic as a public newspaper operating as a limited liability company balances its public service mandate with its economic rationality. This case study is based on interviews with the newspaper’s editorial team members, managers, and executives of three top advertising media agencies and study of official documents. The content of the newspaper is also analyzed to determine the news – advertisement ratio. The study shows that despite its clearly stated public service mandate, the Daily Graphic’s organizational and individual-level economic logic (coupled with its advertiser client relations) informs its operations, news practices, and to some extent, content. The newspaper allocated more space to advertisements than news content. These processes are aided by advertiser clients and their collaborators within and outside the news organization. We offer some recommendations for addressing this challenge.

Media Repertoires of Chinese Young Users: An Exploratory Study Based on 2010-2015 Chinese General Social Survey • Weijia Li • This study adopts a repertoire approach to explore Chinese young users’ media usage patterns based on an analysis of Chinese General Social Survey (CGSS) data from 2010-2015. The author used latent class analysis and multilevel multinomial logistic regression to demonstrate the patterns, changes and predictors of Chinese young people media repertoires.  Results show that during 2010-2013, Chinese young users’ media repertoire remains stable, including four types: people who only watch TV; people who make a combination use of TV and Newspaper; people who make a combination use of TV and Internet and people who tend to use multiple media platforms including TV, Newspaper, Magazine and Internet. However, in 2015, a new media repertoire featured by the combination usage of TV, Internet and Mobile phone emerged while the previous media repertoire ‘TV + Newspaper’ is not existing anymore, indicating that new media has a growing influence on younger generation.  Besides, the author integrated individual factors and structural factors to predict the media repertoire formation based on CGSS 2015. The study finds that age, education level, number of computers owned by individual, province mobile phone penetration rate and number of books per capita are the relatively powerful predictors of user’s media choice. This means that demographic variables, media access ability and regional media environment can shape audience media consumption pattern and influence their media choice.

Revisiting on news objectivity and its portrait of history: From the perspective of transaction costs • Lu Liu • The American news industry is arguably run by its laws of news values and business logic. This paper aims to explore the principle of news objectivity in American commercial newspapers from a theoretical perspective of transaction costs. Previous studies on professional ideology have overlooked its origin that rooted in American commercial environment and developed along with commercial newspapers. This study indicates that the principle of objectivity is not only an editorial policy for commercial newspapers, but also a business strategy and governance mechanism, which reduces both the internal and external transaction costs of news production and improves the use of resources. Furthermore, news efficiency can increase the profit margin, and this is the core reason for the emergence and maintenance of the principle of news objectivity.

Concentration of Journalistic Output Across Media Outlets and Outlet Types: An Analysis of 100 Communities • Jessica Mahone, Duke University; Qun Wang; Philip Napoli; Matthew Weber, University of Minnesota; Kathleen McCullough, Augustana University • This study provides a quantitative examination of the concentration of journalistic output in 100 U.S. communities. The primary objective is to determine the extent to which various types of journalistic output are concentrated within few outlets, or outlet types, within a community. The results indicate that in most communities one type of outlet produces most content; and that, in many cases, only one or two outlets are responsible for the bulk of journalistic output.

* Extended Abstract * “No One Knows What I Do”: Strategic Hires and Emerging Professions in the Context of Organizational Absorptive Capacity • Renee Mitson • Absorptive capacity theory posits organizations gain external knowledge primarily through research and development conducted to acquire external knowledge and apply that knowledge inside the organization. This study hypothesizes that until new hires and emerging job roles are fully absorbed into an organization, they remain sources of outside knowledge, even internally. Semi-structured interviews (n=18) were conducted in order to explore how the role of strategic hires and organizational readiness may impact a firm’s absorptive capacity.

* Extended Abstract * Alternative and Mainstream Local News Competition and the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Computational Content Analysis • Angela Powers, Iowa State University; Yuxi He • The COVID-19 outbreak is having severe health, economic and political effects on society, as well as on the way media is reporting these issues. This study analyzes news coverage of COVID-19 in a computational content analysis of two local media outlets during the early outbreak. Variables including frequencies of themes, stories, issues and sources are analyzed. The purpose of the analysis is to reveal how alternative and mainstream local news media compete by differentiating products and finding market niches in times of crisis.

Who Cut the Cord?: Factors Which Predict Cord-Cutting Behavior Across Generations • Ashley Spiker, Kent State University • The existing literature in the field of television consumption utilizing new media  platforms examines what streaming media service options exist and some possible motivations for adopting streaming media services. While research has examined technological adoption to predict and describe behavioral intentions and self-reported behavior, few have examined why individuals make the decision to stop using certain technologies or media services. This study aimed to examine the differences in cording-cutting behaviors across three Generations (Millennials, Gen Xers, Baby Boomers) and to identify predictors of cord-cutting behavior. Of 734 participants surveyed, Results indicated that five factors significantly predicted cord-cutting behavior among all generations, including: income (β =.173, p =.004), owning a tablet (β =.171, p =.004), preference of religious programming (β =.125, p =.036), preference of sports programming (β =.122, p =.039), and time spent watching television (β =.120, p =.042). These factors explained 12.8% of variance in cord cutting behavior.

Predicting the Consumption Behaviors of Foreign Broadcast Programming in the Age of Global Over-the-Top (OTT) Video Streaming Market • Kenneth C. C. Yang, The University of Texas At El Paso; Yowei Kang, National Taiwan Ocean University • The rise of over-the-top (OTT) video streaming services (such as Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix) have enabled broadcasters to distribute their programming all over the world in a cost-effective manner. However, factors affecting the consumption of foreign broadcasting programming are yet to be investigated. This study employs the country animosity dimensions to study Taiwanese audience’s consumption of broadcast programming from Japan. This study uses a survey to collect data from Taiwanese participants. Linear regression analyses find that both contemporary/economic and historical/social animosity against Japan could predict Taiwanese viewers’ judgment of Japanese television dramas. As expected, a favorable judgment also generates a higher intention to watch Japanese television dramas. However, long-term social, but not temporary economic, animosity dimension predicts viewers’ intention to watch Japanese television dramas. The predictive power of social animosity against Japanese people is robust and stable, after taking into consideration viewers’ demographics, in the hierarchical regression model. This study concludes with theoretical implications and managerial recommendations to promote cultural products to foreign audiences.

Working Together in Global Media Markets: The Sustainability of Western-China International Joint Ventures • Qian Yu; Peter Gade • This study explores economic, resource and cultural factors that executives of Chinese-Western media joint ventures consider essential to the ventures’ sustainability. In-depth interviews with Chinese and Western executives from two magazine joint ventures (Harvard Business Review China and GRAZIA China) found managing cultural factors, including ideological and media policy differences, essential to the ventures. Differing economic and resource commitments to the ventures were largely attributed to products in different niche markets with different market conditions.

<2020 Abstracts

Burnett Award for Graduate Student Papers
Journalism as a Calling: Linking Social Identity and Institutional Theory to Protect the Profession • Michael Davis, University of Iowa • “Journalists often refer to their work as a calling, giving its practices and rules a symbolic power of importance. The institution of journalism uses this rhetorical device as a shield between it and those who wish to break it down, and to create markers of social identity. By linking social identity theory and institutional theories, this paper argues that this perspective potentially harms the profession, blocking professional innovation and public accountability in a democracy.

Learning from Confucius: Moral self-cultivation (xiuji) and its application in media ethics education • Yayu Feng • This article investigates the questions of moral development and ethics education through the Confucian approach. It introduces the concept of self-cultivation (xiuji) from Confucian ethics, and applies it as a new perspective that enriches media ethics and lightens a new pathway to understand moral development and professional excellence. It argues that the Confucian idea of moral self-cultivation offers a less instrumental and more engaging perspective for media ethics teaching and learning than the reasoning skill-oriented and decision-making-centered model of ethics training. Through a close reading of the concept of self-cultivation and its ideas of zixing (examination of the self) and observance of li (ceremony/social rites), the article provides practical examples of how these ideas can be applied to media ethics learning and teaching.

Imagining culinary communities: Exploring lifestyle journalism ethics through the New York Times food section • Joseph Jones • This paper investigates the ethical obligations of lifestyle and food journalists. Informed by the history of food writing and the ethical principles of care and democracy, a text analysis of six months of the New York Times food section was conducted. While the Times provided a playful, aesthetic, and potentially empowering discourse on food and eating, it was limited by class privilege and the strictures of consumer culture. Although lifestyle journalism is often defined with reference to consumerism, it is here argued that such definitions are inadequate when considering the vital role of journalists imagining culinary communities. If food journalists are to be considered journalists, then they must show care and feed the social connections necessary to empower democratic actors.

Open Call
Do What Works: Journalism Ethics as a Framework for Social Media Content Moderation • Caitlin Carlson, Seattle University • Social media platforms from Facebook to Twitter are struggling to navigate the process of content moderation. Despite their best efforts to craft reasonable community standards for users, issues such as the spread of disinformation or hateful rhetoric continue to plague social media organizations. Content moderators are in desperate need of an ethical framework to guide their decision-making regarding the removal of individual posts, ads, images, videos, and accounts. Scholars and activists have begun to offer piecemeal solutions to the problem but what is needed is a comprehensive framework for content moderation ethics. This paper argues that the existing professional standards used by journalists in the United States, specifically the Society of Professional Journalists’ (SPJ) Code of Ethics, should serve as a starting point to develop ethical guidelines for social media content moderation. The four main principles of the SPJ Code of Ethics are analyzed to determine what lessons they might offer to social media content moderators. The insights yielded are then used to develop a comprehensive framework for social media content moderation ethics based on the SPJ Code.

Moral Reasoning Regarding Sponsored YouTube Videos: An Investigation of Children’s Theory of Mind and Disclosure Prominence • Jessica Castonguay, Temple University • While a great deal of research has assessed age differences in children’s ability to understand commercial messages, this understanding does not necessarily mitigate advertising effects. Therefore, some scholars suggest that moral assessments of advertising practices influence children’s acceptance of persuasive messages. This study therefore responds to Nelson’s (2019) call that “New forms of advertising to children necessitate new studies and examinations of ethics,” by investigating the development of children’s moral evaluations of sponsored YouTube videos. Findings suggest that moral disapproval of sponsored YouTube content is more likely as children cognitively develop and they are more likely to justify this stance by considering the impact on others and societal “rules,” while less mature children reason purely based on the perceived impact on the self. When a disclosure that the video is an advertisement is explicitly stated, the likelihood of children’s disapproval increases. Both the presence of a disclosure and children’s moral disapproval of the practice are negatively associated with liking of the promoted brand. These findings have implications for parents and educators and provide a starting point for future research.

Keeping up with the ethical boundaries of advertising: Big soda, metadiscourse and paradigm repair • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado-Boulder; Erin Schauster • This study utilizes a framework previously unseen in advertising ethics research – paradigm repair – and applies it to the divisive 2017 Kendall Jenner Pepsi advertisement by studying metadiscourse from trade publications and mainstream press. After the controversary surrounding the commercial ensued, actors within and outside the advertising industry argued the ad violated the ethical boundaries of the industry because it coopted a social issue, acted as a form of cultural appropriation, and served as an example of brand activism (gone awry). Textual data analyzed also argued this paradigm violation occurred because Pepsi created the ad with an in-house agency, there’s a lack of diversity within the industry, and the industry’s current professional culture often catalyzes controversial material. This study concludes with an argument for paradigm repair’s utility for studying advertising ethics, and with implications for advertising practice.

Public Relations Practitioners’ Understanding of Fake News: Examining the influence of ethics counsel identity and individual ethical orientations • Rosie Jahng; Hyunmin Lee • This study examined whether public relations practitioners’ ethical responsibility as public communicators can help better address problems associated with fake news. Based on role theory (e.g., Dozier, 1984) and other studies regarding professional code of ethics and individual ethical orientations, this study explored whether public relations practitioners identify their ethics counsel responsibility and how that influences the way they understand fake news. An online survey with a nationally representative sample of public relations practitioners was conducted to examine the relationship between strong ethical identity among public relations practitioners and different aspects of understanding and addressing fake news. Results are discussed in terms of ethical responsibility of public relations to communicate truthfully and regain trust from the public.

* Extended Abstract * In the Media We Trust? Exploring the Effects of Perceived Risk, News Disputes, and Credibility on Consumer Attitudes Toward Biotechnology Companies   • Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; Fan Yang • This study conducts a 2 (Risk: Low vs. High) X 2 (Pre-existing Attitude: Anti gene-editing technology vs. Pro gene-editing technology) X 2 (Dispute: absent vs. present) X 2 (Media source: Buzzfeed vs. NYT) factorial online experiment to examine the impact on individuals’ attitudes toward a biotechnology company and trust in the media source. Results indicate that dispute messages enhance attitudes toward the company but decrease trust in media sources. Implications are discussed.

Moving into the media world: The moral psychology of emerging adults in journalism and communication • David Craig, University of Oklahoma; Patrick Plaisance; Erin Schauster; Ryan Thomas, University of Missouri; Chris Roberts, University of Alabama; Katie Place, Quinnipiac University • Emerging adulthood is a distinct, transitional stage of life and work characterized by several features, wherein little is known regarding moral development. This study is part of a three-year, longitudinal study with recent graduates across six U.S. universities who studied journalism and communication. Guided by emerging adulthood, moral psychology and media exemplar research, 192 participants completed an online survey regarding their personality traits, virtuous character, moral reasoning and ethical ideology.

The Moral Psychology and Exemplarism of Leaders in Marketing Communication • Erin Schauster; Patrick Plaisance • Organizational leaders shape what others believe and how they behave, which is also true for moral behavior. Moral exemplars are invaluable resources for education and in practice, yet there is scant research on media exemplars. The current study utilized a questionnaire to better understand the moral psychology profile of marketing communication executives in positions such as chief executive officer of international agencies, which suggests what personality traits, ethical ideology and moral reasoning that exemplars possess.

Familial Experiences of Moral Exemplars in Marketing Communication • Christopher Vardeman, University of Colorado Boulder; Erin Schauster • Media and communication executives, from journalists and public relations practitioners to brand managers and the advertising agency executives that represent them, are continuously confronted with dilemmas that require moral deliberation. To understand how a person, such as a moral exemplar, develops moral awareness and moral imagination, media ethicists have looked to moral psychology theory. Based on the understanding that life experiences impact morality, such as familial experiences with one’s parents, and considering the limited research in media ethics literature on the topic, the current study uses interview data with thirteen media and communication executives to determine how, if at all, childhood and adolescent familial experiences have impacted their later-in-life moral decision making. Participants indicated, via both prompted and unprompted anecdotes, that values such as honesty, empathy, compassion, and positivity were instilled by their family members from an early age and that they have carried these values and consciously applied them to their professional practices. The current findings suggest that value salience is a result of early life, familial experiences that include positive modeling experiences, as well as experiences and instruction that arose during times of adversity. Because of these vivid experiences and memories, today, marketing leaders are able to perceive the moral nature of various actions and decision-making that has potential consequences for employees, other stakeholders, and their families.

Covering a complicated legacy with a sledgehammer: Metajournalistic and audience discourse after Kobe Bryant’s death • Carolina Velloso, University of Maryland, College Park; Wei-ping Li, University of Maryland; Nohely Alvarez; Shannon Scovel, University of Maryland; Md Mahfuzul Haque, University of Maryland College Park; Linda Steiner • This paper assesses journalists’ and audiences’ responses to both Kobe Bryant’s death and the Washington Post’s suspension and subsequent reinstatement of Felicia Sonmez. Journalists’ coverage of Bryant’s death and the Sonmez suspension focused on the complexity of Bryant’s legacy and emphasized the journalistic values of professionalism and truth. Audience members posts comments that offered feedback to the journalists on their coverage, generally supporting Sonmez while critiquing the Post’s newsroom social media policy.

The Path Forward: A Thematic Analysis of Structure and Autonomy in Local Digital Journalism • Rhema Zlaten, Colorado Mesa University • The main purpose of this qualitative thematic analysis was to examine the shifting digital news industry, especially in regard to individual and organizational-level structure and autonomy. Via in-depth interviewing, I worked with the editorial staff at a hyper-local digitally native news organization to examine their organizational structure and expressions of autonomy. Four major themes emerged: workflow (with sub-times of time constraints, workplace expectations and role-balancing); company culture; navigating tensions; and autonomy.

Special Call for International Topics in Media Ethics
Traditional Knowledge for Ethical Reporting on Indigenous communities: A cultural compass for social justice • Ann Auman, University of Hawaii; Alana Kanahale, University of Hawai’i • This study seeks to improve reporting on Indigenous communities by applying Traditional Knowledge labels and guidebooks for appropriate ethical behavior and practices that respect Indigenous cultures, cultural knowledge and protocol. The method and discussion draw on a sample of reporting guidebooks on Indigenous peoples as well as TK labels developed by cultural preservationists to educate people about Indigenous information, visuals and artifacts that are sacred, restricted or shared. They could be called the journalist’s “cultural compass.”

Representing the “Other” Woman: Transnational Feminism and the Ethics of Care in Media Coverage of MENA Feminist Movements • Sara Shaban • This paper aims to illustrate how transnationalism enables the ethics of care by examining how American journalists covered the women’s movements in Saudi Arabia and Iran. By exploring the United States’ geopolitical relationship with these two countries, this study highlights how geopolitical agendas can negate ethical reporting and influence the decision-making process of journalists as well as the nationalist values that manipulate those choices.

<2020 Abstracts

Moeller Student Paper Competition
Are You Frightened? Children’s Cognitive and Affective Reactions to News Coverage of School Shootings • Gyo Hyun Koo • A survey of U.S. parents explores children’s exposure and reaction to news coverage of school shootings. Major findings suggest that exposure to such news makes children frightened. This tendency was strongest among the youngest children, and they used a variety of coping strategies. Exposure to the news predicted children perceiving the world as dangerous, and their frightened reactions mediate this relationship. This study suggests that news producers minimize the harm when creating news.

Wedging the Gap: A Multi-Level Analysis of Genre-specific Television and Internet Information Seeking Impacts on Health Knowledge Over 8 Years • Wenbo Li, The Ohio State University; Ruoyu Sun; Xia Zheng • The study uses a nationally representative survey to investigate the concurrent impacts of television watching and health information seeking from the Internet (HISI) on education-based health knowledge gap from January 2005 to December 2012. A multi-level regression analysis shows that entertainment television watching narrowed the gap in health knowledge between high-educated and low-educated population segments. However, this trend disappeared over time and entertainment TV watching started to negatively influence health knowledge across all segments around 2009. Meanwhile, the highly educated obtained more health knowledge from HISI than those with lower education and this pattern persisted over time. Television news watching did not affect the knowledge gap, nor did its effect change over time.

Digital Feminist Activism & the Need for Male Allies: Assessing Barriers to Male Participation in the Modern-Day Women’s Movement • Sydney Nicolla, UNC-Chapel Hill Hussman School of Journalism and Media • Feminism and feminist activism have seen many changes and iterations throughout history. Modern feminists have harnessed the power of the internet to broaden visibility, challenge inequality, and connect with those who share gendered experiences. Typically, women instigate and drive participation in digital feminist activism, but research has suggested that male activists could play a valuable role as allies for the digital women’s movement. Social media reduce some of the traditional barriers to activism – time, financial resources – and force us to consider the social and emotional factors that may interfere with outward male support for feminism. Results of a U.S. based national online survey demonstrated the following among men who have yet to participate in digital feminist activism (DFA): (1) support from and characteristics of those in their social networks may play an important role in their willingness to engage with DFA in the future, (2) strong masculine gender identity may interfere with support for feminism and outward feminist identification, and, (3) there is still a disconnect between support for feminism and feminist identification, which in turn may affect willingness to participate in DFA.

Benefits of Social Media Use on Mental Health: Implications for College Students • Bumsoo Park, The University of Alabama; Nicholas Eckhart, The University of Alabama • This study examined whether and how social media use affects college students’ positive mental health (subjective well-being) and negative mental health (anxiety, depression) with a focus on the mediating role of social connectedness. The results indicated social media use was positively associated with social connectedness and social connectedness was positively associated with subjective well-being. While social media use was not directly associated with subjective well-being, social connectedness mediated this relationship. Similarly, social media use was not directly associated with mental health problems (anxiety, depression). Yet, this study discovered the mediating mechanism by which social media use was negatively associated with mental health problems through social connectedness and subjective well-being.

Open Competition
Correcting Vaccine Misinformation: Effects of Source Attributes and Recall on Misinformation Belief and Persuasive Outcomes • Michelle Amazeen, Boston University; Arunima Krishna, Boston University • This study offers a roadmap to employing and expanding the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright, 1994) as a useful theoretical framework for studying persuasive misinformation and corrections. Within the context of correcting vaccine-related misinformation, this experimental study (N = 1,067) indicates that the source of misinformation has significantly more influence on the belief of misinformation and on behavioral intentions than correction sources, bringing new urgency to the gatekeeping responsibilities of social media.

Crossing the Border: News Framing of the Definition, Causes and Solutions to Illegal Migration from Nigeria • Theresa Amobi, University of Lagos, Nigeria • This study explored the framing of illegal migration by Nigerian media, specifically Punch, DailyTrust, Observer and Sun newspapers, and ChannelsTV and TVC. Results show more media focus on defining the problem than on causes and solutions. Compared to newspapers, television focused more on defining illegal migration as Threat to lives/National Security. Causes appeared more in national newspapers, as driven by Pecuniary Interests/Exaggerated Expectations. Solutions, more in the local newspaper were framed as Revamping the Economy.

* Extended Abstract * Religion in Crisis: Examining the Impact of Religiosity and Religious Rhetoric in Organizational Crises • Lucinda Austin, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Jordan Morehouse, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • Research suggests people turn to religious organizations to provide comfort during times of crises; however, few scholars have examined crises within religious organizations. This study examined the impact of religious rhetoric in crisis response strategies from religious organizations and the impact of religiosity. Results from a survey-experiment with 689 respondents indicates that religious rhetoric and religiosity may impact trust and supportive intentions in crisis, particularly in ‘intentional’ crises.

Issue Controversiality Matters: How Emotions and Imagined Audience Influence the Decision to Share Societal Issue-Related Facebook Posts? • Nicky Chang Bi, University of Nebraska at Omaha • Sharing, a term that is associated with “going viral,” is an aspect of communication that all strategic communicators strive for in their communication campaigns. The Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) provides a framework for the current study to understand the effects of emotions generated from a message on persuasion—how high- and low-effort processes of comprehending information influence people’s decision in spreading societal issue-related Facebook posts. The researcher conducted a survey-experiment to explore the effects of emotional response to societal issues on sharing. The findings suggest individuals’ sharing decisions depend on issue types and their imagined audience. Emotions trigger both cognitive and heuristic processing of information. The results reveal that message elaboration mediates the effects of both positive and negative emotion arousal on sharing medium-controversial issues to the more symmetrical audience. Positive and negative emotions were only directly associated with sharing high-controversial issues to the symmetrical audience.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: Epistemic Political Efficacy and Online Political Information Seeking Before and After the 2016 Presidential Election • Justin Blankenship, Auburn University; Martin Kifer, High Point University; Daniel Riffe, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This research sough to understand the influence of online disinformation campaigns that have become more common since the 2016 US presidential election using epistemic political efficacy and online political information seeking behaviors. Analysis of two separate surveys, one conducted in 2014, the other in 2017, show an overall decline in EPE and that online political news seeking became a strong negative predictor of EPE in 2017, while it was a strong positive predictor in 2014.

A dual system theory approach: What shapes pro- and anti- social behavior in an online discussion forum? • Yunya Song, Hong Kong Baptist University; Christine Hiu Ying Choy, Department of Social Science, The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong; Qinyun Lin; Ran Xu, Department of Allied Health Sciences, University of Connecticut • This study examined how two types of online discussion are predicted by a Dual System Theory model. We collected 28,506 original posts and 1,126,455 related replies from the Hong Kong Golden forum (the most popular online discussion forum in the studied period). Using combined approaches of computerized text analysis and topic modeling, we empirically tested and compared impulsive automatic and reflective cognitive component in relevant posts to predict pro- and anti-social behavior in replies.

How Fact-checking Information Stems Spread of Fake News via Third-person Perception • Myojung Chung, Northeastern University; Nuri Kim • While fact-checking has received much attention as a potential tool to combat fake news, it remains underexplored whether and how fact-checking information lessens intentions to share fake news on social media. Two experiments uncovered the theoretical mechanism underlying the effect of fact-checking on sharing intentions, and identified an important contextual cue (i.e., social media metrics) that interacts with fact-checking effect. Exposure to fake news with fact-checking information (vs. fake news only) yielded more negative evaluations of the news, and subsequently greater belief that others are more influenced by the news than the self (third-person perception, TPP). Increased TPP, in turn, led to weaker intentions to share fake news on social media. Fact-checking information also nullified the effect of social media metrics on sharing intentions; without fact-checking information, higher (vs. lower) social media metrics induced greater intentions to share the news. However, when fact-checking debunked the news, such effect disappeared.

* Extended Abstract * The Motivated Processing of Emotions, Efficacy, and Morality in Sustainability Messages on Social Media • Carlina DiRusso, Pennsylvania State University; Jessica Myrick, Penn State University • To investigate how individuals process sustainability messages on social media, a between-subjects experiment tested the effects of emotional tone (fear/hope), efficacy (high/low) and moral framing (harm/impurity) on motivational system activation, memory, attitudes and intentions. Low-efficacy and fearful messages increased aversive system activation and memory. Political ideology significantly moderated most outcomes; namely, hope and low-efficacy influenced conservatives’ processing more than that of liberals or moderates. Future mediation analyses will employ a full path model.

Dynamics of Cognitive Biases in Assessing Age Appropriateness of Media Content: A Multilevel Moderated Mediation Analysis • Guangchao Feng, Shenzhen University; Shan Zhu, Shenzhen University • The paper discovered significant differences in age and likability ratings among the raters. Through multilevel moderated mediation modeling, it also found that the differences in age ratings between the raters were moderated by the three content-valence variables (extent of negativity, positivity, and consumerism) and that the mediation effects of likability on the rater differences in age ratings were also moderated by the extent of valence, particularly negativity and positivity.

The Diffusion of Misinformation Across Scientific Communities • Jennifer Harker, West Virginia University; Laura Sheble, Wayne State University; Jillian Peyton, West Virginia University • The National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation (2002) define “scientific misconduct” as consisting of fabrication, falsification, and plagiarism (Fanelli, 2009). Scientific misconduct occurs frequently in scientific literature, and after an article faces retraction, it is often still cited as factual information, plaguing readers with false ideas (Lewandowsky et al., 2012; Noorden, 2011). As a result, misinformation diffuses in academic journals and spills into public discourse despite counterefforts (Budd et at., 1999). This spread of misinformation has the potential to negatively impact the scientific community and the public’s knowledge and health (Chen, Milbank, & Schultz, 2013). To learn more about the diffusion of misinformation within the scientific community and beyond, we analyzed 840 retracted articles that were published from 2000 to 2018. Citations of the retracted works were then collected (n = 49,630) and post-retraction citations were tracked. This research will help inform academic journals how best to communicate retractions to mitigate the diffusion of misinformation across scientific communities, and thus reduce subsequent dissemination of misinformation to the broader public.

Perceptions vs. Performance: How Routines, Norms, and Values Influence Journalists’ Protest Coverage Decisions • Summer Harlow; Danielle Kilgo, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities • Protest paradigm researchers theorize that protests are delegitimized in news coverage because of journalistic culture and practices. This study explores the degree to which norms, routines, values, and perceptions explain coverage patterns of protest. This mixed-methods study utilizes self-reflections from a survey of journalists in four regions, alongside a content analysis of their coverage. Our study highlights how objective-observer role conceptions, routines driven by newsworthiness, and a perception-performance gap help explain protest coverage patterns.

In-Group vs. Out-Group CSR Messages and the Effects of Gender and Cause Involvement on Brand Attitudes and Positive Word-of-Mouth Intentions • Yujin Heo; Chang Won Choi, University of South Carolina; Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; Joon Kyoung Kim; Nanlan Zhang • This study investigates the influence of social distance on consumer evaluations of a CSR activity supporting women’s empowerment. One hundred and forty participants participated in a 2 (social distance: low vs. high) x 2 (gender: female vs. male) online factorial experiment. Results indicate that consumers evaluated the CSR activity more positively when they were exposed to in-group messages than out-group messages. The impact of social distance was moderated by gender differences. Implications are discussed.

You’ve Lost that Trusting Feeling: Examining the Consequences and Conditions of the Diminishing Trust in the Press in Rural and Urban US Communities • Jay Hmielowski, University of Florida; Eve Heffron, University of Florida; Yanni Ma; Michael Munroe, University of Florida – College of Journalism and Communications • In this study, we use Social Identity Theory to examine whether political ideology, where people live, and time correlate with trust in the press in the US. Moreover, we examine whether the correlation between ideology and where a person lives varies over time. We also examine a three-way interaction to determine if decreases in trust are concentrated among conservatives living in rural areas in the US. Lastly, we examined whether trust in the press serves as a mediating variable between where a person lives and their newspaper use.

Emotional Labor During Disaster Coverage: Exploring Expectations for Emotional Display • Gretchen Hoak, Kent State University • This study explored emotional labor in journalists in the context of natural disaster– a scenario when the emotional burden is high and the energy to cope is low. Analysis of 30 interviews with journalists who covered a hurricane revealed they actively engaged in emotional labor. Tactics were chosen based on a shared understanding of professional display rules and expectations mandating emotional distance. Implications for news managers and journalist mental and emotional health are explored.

A Semantic Networks Approach to Agenda Setting: The Case of #NeverAgain Social Movement on Twitter • Daud Isa, Boise State University; Itai Himelboim, University of Georgia; Guy Golan, Texas Christian University • This study examines if Network Agenda Setting (NAS) theory can better explain media influence on the public in the social media era. Findings indicate that the media is still able to influence the public by setting their agenda both explicitly and implicitly. Strong correlations between the media and the public agenda suggest that as long as the news media remain the primary source of information, it will continue to have agenda setting effects on the public.

Effects of Fake News and the Protective Role of Media Literacy Education • Se-Hoon Jeong • In this research, we tested (a) whether the effects of disinformation could increase when a deepfake video is included and (b) whether the negative effects of disinformation could be reduced by short media literacy education. An experiment using a 2 (disinformation including vs. not including a deepfake video) by 3 (no literacy vs. general disinformation literacy vs. deepfake-specific literacy) design was conducted with 316 Korean adults. Results showed that disinformation message including a deepfake video resulted in greater vividness, persuasiveness, credibility, and intent to share the message. Results also showed that media literacy education reduced individuals’ acceptance of the disinformation message such that both literacy education conditions (general and specific) resulted in less credibility and greater skepticism compared to the no literacy education condition. Interestingly, general disinformation literacy education was as effective as or even more effective than deepfake-specific literacy education. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

The Resistance to Media Advocacy of Pro-Environmental Civic Engagement • Hyunjung Kim • Drawing on the theory of psychological reactance, we explore a possible explanation for the decrease in individuals’ participation in environmental movements despite media advocacy and increased public awareness of the need for an environmental movement. A web-based experiment was conducted with a 2 by 2 factorial design with media and political orientation as between-subjects factors. The results demonstrate that pro-environmental civic engagement intention after exposure to an online newspaper editorial advocating the environmental movement is greater for the progressives in the progressive media group than for those in the conservative media group. The effect of media congeniality was explained by perceived media credibility and psychological reactance to the message. Implications of the findings and limitations of the study are discussed.

Who says what to whom on Twitter: Exploring the roles of mass media and opinion leaders on a gun issue via two-step flow and network agenda-setting • Seonwoo Kim, Louisiana State University; Myounggi Chon; Yangzhi Jiang, Louisiana State University • This study aims to explore the relationship between activist publics and mass media on a gun issue in the framework of network agenda-setting theory. The results show partial evidence for the two-step flow of agenda-setting effects on social media. In particular, gun rights organizations bridge the gap between conservative media and gun rights activists public on Twitter. In contrast, the two-step flow is relatively rare for gun control groups compared to gun rights groups. It also reveals that gun rights groups and gun control groups use different targeting strategies. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of the findings.

Emotions, Misinformation, and Correction Tweets in El Paso and Dayton Mass Shootings • Jiyoung Lee; Shaheen Kanthawala, University of Alabama; Danielle Deavours, University of Alabama; Tanya Ott-Fulmore, University of Alabama • Although social media have become an important tool for helping users understand risky situations through information exchange, misinformation widely spreads on these platforms. This exploratory research examines features of misinformation and correction tweets during the El Paso and Dayton mass shootings in terms of emotion and users’ engagement in emotional misinformation and correction tweets. From the total number of tweets about these mass shootings exchanged between August 3 to 11, 2019, we manually coded 1,498 tweets. Our key findings suggest that misinformation was prevalent on Twitter and a large portion of the misinformation had negative emotions—particularly anger. Misinformation containing emotion was more likely to be retweeted and liked by users than emotion-neutral misinformation. However, angered misinformation was less likely to be retweeted and liked by users than general information and correction tweets with anger; however, emotional misinformation overall received comparatively more retweets and likes than correction tweets and other general information containing emotion.

#MeToo: A Social Movement Platform to Promote Social Identity, Social Judgment and Social Support among Victims-Survivors • Yukyung Lee, University of Connecticut; Carolyn A. Lin, University of Connecticut; Taiquan Peng, Michigan State University; Louvins Pierre • This exploratory study examined the #MeToo movement via a conceptual framework which integrates the constructs of social identity, social judgment and social support. Five hundred tweets with hashtags relevant to the movement were randomly selected and coded. Findings suggested that females and gender-unidentified individuals are more likely to accept the #MeToo movement than males. Those who accept the movement are more willing to provide social support to victims-survivors than those who reject the movement.

How Rational and Emotional Expression Intertwine? Exploring Public Discussion of China’s Vaccine-Scandal Event on Weibo • Yuanhang LU, Hong Kong Baptist University; Shijun NI, Hong Kong Baptist University; Yunya Song, Hong Kong Baptist University • “Focusing on the public discussion of China’s vaccine-scandal event on Weibo, this study utilizes structural topic modeling to examine how public and private issues are discussed rationally or emotionally. Our results indicate that the public issues were discussed far more than the private at both post-level and comment-level discussion. Compared to the post-level discussions, the comment-level discussions contain more emotional expressions toward public issues and more rational expressions toward private issues.

* Extended Abstract * [Extended Abstract] News Media and Twitter Users’ Framing of the Russian-Linked Facebook Ads Issue • Catherine Luther; Xu Zhang • This study examines how the mainstream news media and the public, via Twitter, framed the issue of Russian-linked Facebook advertisements that appeared prior to, during, and following the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Findings thus far indicate convergences in news media framing, with the exception of two frames from Fox News. Frames from the social media posts suggest that domestic politics might have clouded any concern for Russian interference and national security.

Black Lives Coverage Matters: How protest news coverage and attitudinal change affect social media engagement • Rachel Mourao; Danielle Kilgo, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities • Building on protest paradigm literature, this research explores the effects of news coverage of protests on social media engagement. In a 3×2 experiment, we assess if legitimizing/delegitimizing frames increase people’s likelihood to read, share, like or comment on a story about Black Lives Matter. We found that attitudinal change mediates the relationship between protest frames and social media outcomes, but most people are reluctant to actively engage with this content on social media platforms.

How attitude certainty influences the effectiveness of direct persuasion and selfpersuasion in mass media campaigns • Barbara Müller, Radboud University Nijmegen; Lieke van den Boom; Shuang Li • The current study examined how mass media interventions can be improved by considering attitude certainty. The experiment consisted of measuring attitude certainty towards the promoted counter-attitudinal statement, and subsequently presenting participants with no persuasion (control), five arguments in favor of the statement (direct persuasion), or with the request to produce arguments themselves (self-persuasion). Results suggests that the effectiveness of direct persuasion may be affected to a stronger extent by attitude certainty than self-persuasion.

Curious Citizens: Whose Voices Are Heard in “Public-Powered” Reporting? • Betsy O’Donovan, Western Washington University; Carolyn Nielsen, Western Washington University • For decades, news narratives have centered the voices of elites over sources who represent lived experience. A new technology platform, Hearken, has sought to change that by involving the audience in deciding what to cover, how, and whose voices are heard. This content analysis examined sourcing in 80 stories from public-media stations and categorized sources as researcher, responsible party, or lived experience. Voices of lived experience dominated coverage produced using the Hearken platform.

* Extended Abstract * The effect of partisan news reporting of sexual assault allegations on blame attribution and perceived source credibility • Rebecca Ortiz • The study experimentally tested the effect of ingroup and outgroup bias on blame attribution and perceived news source credibility based upon political party affiliation (Republican or Democrat) alignment with an alleged sexual assault perpetrator and the reporting news source. Participants attributed more blame to the alleged perpetrator when he was a political outgroup member and perceived the source as least credible when it was affiliated with the outgroup and reported about an ingroup alleged perpetrator.

* Extended Abstract * Examining Consumer Attitudes Toward CSR and CSA Messages • Holly Overton, University of South Carolina; Joon Kyoung Kim, University of South Carolina; Nanlan Zhang; Shudan Huang • This study conducts a 2 (message type: CSR vs. CSA) x 2 (source: company vs. nonprofit organization) factorial online experiment to examine impacts on individuals’ perceived motives and attitude changes toward both the company and nonprofit (NPO) partner. Issue relevance was measured as a moderating variable. Results indicate that individuals inferred more values-driven motives from CSR messages than CSA messages, which ultimately led to more positive attitude changes toward the company. Implications are discussed.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: Seafood stories: How narrative modality, emotion, and transportation influence support for sustainable aquaculture • Laura Rickard, University of Maine; Janet Yang; Vivian Liu; Tabitha Boze, University of Maine • Considerable narrative persuasion research provides evidence of attitudinal and behavioral effects in human health and environmental contexts. Whether the modality of narrative presentation influences these effects, however, remains unclear. This study uses an online experiment (N = 2,225), featuring a narrative video and narrative text condition, to consider how exposure to narrative may influence transportation, emotions, and risk-benefit perceptions and, in turn, how such perceptions affect attitudes and behavioral intentions toward sustainable aquaculture.

There’s no “me” in misinformation: Correcting online falsehoods through WhatsApp group chats • Edson Tandoc; James Lee, NTU Singapore; Sei Ching Joanna Sin, NTU Singapore; Chei Sian Lee, NTU Singapore • Guided by the frameworks of social identity theory and social presence theory, this study examined the impact of source familiarity (familiar vs. unfamiliar) and mode of delivery (interpersonal chat vs. group chat) on the perceived credibility of a correction message to debunk misinformation sent on WhatsApp. Through a five-day long experiment involving 114 participants in Singapore, this study found no main effect of either source familiarity or mode of delivery on perceived credibility of the correction message. However, the study found a significant interaction effect: When the correction is sent to a chat group, members rate it as more credible when it is sent by a source they are familiar with through prior face-to-face and online interactions, than when it is sent by a source they have never met or interacted with.

Fake news: How emotions, involvement, need for cognition, and rebuttal evidence type influence consumer reactions toward a targeted organization • Michail Vafeiadis; Anli Xiao • A 2 (involvement: low vs. high) x 2 (need for cognition (NFC): low vs. high) x 2 (rebuttal evidence type: exemplar vs. statistical) experiment was performed to explore individuals’ psychological and emotional reactions to fake news. Individuals high in involvement and NFC perceived favorably the rebuttal and developed positive attitudes and higher donation intentions toward the affected nonprofit. High-involved individuals rated positively statistical rebuttals, whereas low-involved ones preferred storytelling evidence. Rebuttal messages evoked positive emotions.

Celebrity narratives and opioid addiction prevention: The moderating role of issue relevance • Michail Vafeiadis; Weirui Wang, Florida International University; Michelle Baker, Pennsylvania State University; Fuyuan Shen • This study examined the impact of celebrity narratives on raising public awareness about opioid addiction. An online experiment with 3 (message type: celebrity narrative vs. noncelebrity narrative vs. informational message) conditions was conducted. Results indicated that a celebrity narrative is more persuasive than its noncelebrity counterpart. The data also showed that the effects of celebrity narratives are particularly pronounced for low relevance individuals. Mediation analyses provided insights about the underlying psychological process of celebrity storytelling.

Selective Exposure in the Stormy Daniels Scandal • Alyce Viens, University of Connecticut; David Atkin • In January of 2018 an alleged affair and hush money payment between U.S. President Donald Trump and adult film star Stormy Daniels was leaked. The present study investigates the Daniels scandal’s influence on public perceptions of both the President and his Republican Party by examining the influence of liberal and conservative news consumption on public perceptions of importance, blame, overall opinions of the scandal and voting intentions. Drawing from a framework based on selective exposure theory, this study aims to shed light into how both the scandal and corresponding media coverage can influence public opinion amidst a polarized media environment. Results from an MTurk survey provide qualified support for a selective exposure framework, although these effects are not consistent across media modalities, nor do they operate evenly across left and right-leaning audiences. On balance, levels of variance explained in our model approximate those uncovered in S-R processing work. Study results thus enhance our understanding of the relationship that exposure to news on a controversial topic—including partisan outlets—can have on voter conceptions and support for an incumbent candidate.

Message Framing And Public Policy How Narrative And Identification Influence The Alzheimer’s Caregiver’ Stigma And Burden • Tong Xie; Xuerong Lu, University of Georgia; Rui Zhao; Jiaying Liu • This study investigated the influence of different message framing on people’s willingness to support public policy to help the Alzheimer’s caregiving. The mediation effect of identification, perceived caregiver stigma and burden is proposed to be affecting the message framing. In addition, people’s view of technology is assessed, in order to understand in recent years, how people respond to the usage of high technology to facilitate caregiving for people living with Alzheimer’s.

Users as Experts: Folk Theories of Morality and Harmful Speech on Social Media • Rachel Young, University of Iowa; Brett Johnson, University of Missouri; Volha Kananovich, Appalachian State University • This study analyzes user reasoning about harmful speech online to identify folk theories. In 494 free responses, participants flagged 12 online speech acts or trends as harmful. Individuals were primarily identified both as the ones harmed and the ones responsible for causing harm, by posting or sharing, and for solving the problem, through ignoring or self-censoring. Based on folk theories, speech harm is a familiar but abstract problem users can identify but also comfortably ignore.

Social Identification, Psychological Distance, Compassionate Goals, and Willingness to Help during the COVID-19 Outbreak • Zhiying Yue; David Lee; Janet Yang; Jody Chin Sing Wong; Zhuling Liu • As the spread of the coronavirus is undermining the lives of many, a key question involves: what are the psychological antecedents that propel people to help those in need? Guided by research on social identity theory, psychological distance, and compassionate goals, we examine two factors that can help individuals identify themselves with those in need, which in turn facilitate their willingness to help. We test this idea in an experimental survey on American adults (N = 504) in early March, 2020, before the widespread community transmission of COVID-19 began in the United States. Results highlight two critical processes that lead Americans to identify themselves with those who suffer from the coronavirus in China. Individuals who are more pro-socially oriented (i.e., high compassionate goals) are more likely to identify themselves with those in need when they read an article highlighting similarity (vs. difference) between Americans and Chinese. Further, a moderated mediation analysis indicates that individuals who identify more with people in China are more likely to provide aid to them. These results extend prior knowledge by examining the interplay between prosocial motivation and psychological distance on prosocial behavior. Importantly, these findings suggest that risk communication that highlights the similarity (vs. difference) between us vs. them (or in-group vs. out-group), can critically influence public support for the U.S. government’s response to the pandemic.

Social Amplification of Risk before Coronavirus Was Declared an Epidemic: How Social Media Trust and Disinformation Concerns Affected Information Sharing • Xiaochen Zhang, University of Oklahoma; Raluca Cozma, Kansas State University • A survey conducted in February 2020 in the United States examined how users of social media engaged in sharing of information about COVID-19 before the World Health Organization declared the outbreak a pandemic. Building on the social amplification of risk framework, the study examines the importance of trust in information sources and of disinformation concerns during the incipient stages of a crisis when audiences had only media reports to rely on for information.

Maintaining authoritarian resilience during the public health crisis: An analysis of Chinese state media’s social media posts during the COVID-19 outbreak • Ge Zhu, University of Iowa; Rachel Young, University of Iowa; Li Chen, West Texas A&M University; Yuehong Tai • This paper studies Chinese state media’s social media posts about COVID-19 at the beginning stage of its national outbreak. Our analysis revealed the hybrid nature of state media in health crisis communication, as being government organizations that disseminating up-to-the-minute information about the emerging infectious disease and providing recommendations to the public, and being news agencies that culturally and politically frame a public health crisis to align with the party-state ideology.

Student Competition
Hostile Media Perception in the Age of Social Media: The Role of Social Identity • Eric Cooks, The University of Alabama • As more Americans consume news through social media, users are afforded the ability to express opinions through comments. This study uses a 2 (Issue position: Support vs. Oppose) x 2 (Comment identity: Ingroup vs. Outgroup) design to examine the effects of online comments on hostile media perception (HMP). Results show that outgroup comments amplified HMP, and issue opponents displayed reduced HMP. Results are discussed in relation to social identity and biased perception of news media.

* Extended Abstract * Extended Abstract: Media Parenting: Why some parents are not letting electronic media raise their children • Sarah Fisher, University of Florida • Parental mentoring has been partially replaced by technology in many families today. The parental influence and open channels of communication between parents and children which have historically been the foundation for a healthy society, have been largely exchanged for technology. Media Parenting describes the use of electronic media as a replacement for parental mentoring. However, some parents are choosing to limit their children’s electronic media use and this study examines their reasoning for this choice.

Oh Snap!The Relationship Between Snapchat Engagement, Jealousy, and FoMO • Kandice Green; Zanira Ghulamhussain • “This online study identified jealousy as a factor in the relationship between snapchat engagement (SE) and fear of missing out (FoMO). The mediation model assessed 349 Snapchat users (M=32.47, SD= 8.61). Four hypotheses were tested:1)SE predicts FoMO;2) SE predicts jealousy;3) Jealousy predicts FoMO;4)Jealousy mediates the relationship between SE and FoMO. The first three hypotheses were supported. Jealousy partially mediated the relationship between SE and FoMO. Limitations and future directions are discussed.

“He’s so bad but he does it so well”: Interviews with writers of One Direction RPF • Ashley Hedrick, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study focused on interviews with writers of real person fiction (RPF)—a type of fanfiction—about British boy band One Direction. Most interviewees began writing these romantic, often sexually explicit, stories between ages 12 and 16. The findings of this research suggest revisions to sexual super peer theory and sexual scripting theory, as well as contribute to the field of psychology’s knowledge about adolescents’ participation in online contexts involving sex.

From Tweet to Headline: The Influence of Twitter Topics on the Coverage of Democratic Debates • Luna Liu, University of Colorado Boulder; Carlos Eduardo Back Vianna, University of Colorado Boulder • “This study investigates how topics discussed on Twitter during democratic presidential debates

influence the coverage of the debates on The New York Times. By using the reverse agenda- setting theory and Granger Causality tests, the results show that two topics, election and Trump, were transferred from Twitter to The New York Times in the days following the debates. Correlation tests suggest an agenda divergence phenomenon between legacy media agenda and public agenda, which begs additional research.”

* Extended Abstract * Pornography Consumption and Attitudes Toward Sex: A Meta-Analysis • Farnosh Mazandarani, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • A meta-analysis on pornography consumption and attitudes toward sex. A preliminary assessment yielded fourteen studies. We coded four moderating variables: gender, age, study location, and publication. A random-effects model was conducted to estimate combined weighted mean effects of correlations. Cumulative effect size demonstrated a significant positive association between higher pornography consumption and positive attitudes toward sex. Fail-safe N suggested 138 studies is needed to nullify effect size. Study location was the only significant moderator.

Influence of social media use for news on tolerance for disagreement and social tolerance • Aditi Rao, University of Connecticut • Despite a rich body of literature on social media effects, little is known about the influence of social media on social attitudes. This survey study (N = 538) tests the relationships between social media use for news, tolerance for disagreement, and social tolerance, across three datasets. Social media use for news positively predicted social tolerance, and this relationship strengthened after the 2018 midterm elections, indicating that social media may positively influence attitudes on social issues.

Digital Discussions of Women Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day-Saints: Intimacy in Private Facebook Groups Grounded in Motherhood • Alexis Romero Walker, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill • Latter-Day-Saint women find comfort in community, including online community. This study is a digital observation of a private Facebook group with thousands of LDS mothers. The study recognizes patterns around conversations of religion, politics, and gender roles. It examines how LDS women categorize themselves/create identity, and recognizes intimate topics presented in the large “private” space. The study expresses importance to better understand groups of religious women, and communicative practices within private online spaces.

Parental and Peer Mediation in Relation to Adolescents’ Perceptions of On- and Off-screen Risk Behavior • Anne Sadza, Radboud University • Adolescents’ media-related cognitions predict their perceptions of social norms regarding risk behavior, and may be shaped by discussions of media content (i.e. active mediation). A survey was conducted among 278 adolescents to compare the relative contributions of parental and peer mediation within this process. Findings indicate both mediation types are related to adolescents’ media-related cognitions and perceived social norms in different but equally important ways, and that their valence determines the direction of these associations.

Relationships with News in the Modern Socio-Media Ecology • Carin Tunney, Michigan State University • This conceptual paper calls for a paradigm shift that considers the complexity and fluidity of today’s news consumption beyond the snapshots of use captured in previous works. The paper elaborates upon three problems with today’s news consumption research including measurement, ecological concerns, and assumptions of the inverse. The new paradigm incorporates relationship variables of satisfaction, interdependence, and endurance as a more robust method of measurement. Finally, new strategies to study consumption and avoidance are discussed.

Motivating Face-to-Face and Online Contact with Immigrants • Ryna Yeoh • This study investigates how perceived intergroup permeability and out-group status predicts intergroup contact with immigrants. This study also draws comparisons between face-to-face and online contact. A sample of 330 university students participated in a survey. Results show that out-group status predicted contact quantity, while permeability predicted contact quality. However, permeability predicted the quantity of face-to-face contact, but not online contact, suggesting some differences between contact through the online and offline setting.

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Print in a Digital Age: The Changing Production of Singaporean Women’s Magazines • Lydia Cheng • Boczkowski (2004, 2005) identified the production factors of organisational structures, work practices, and representations of users as particularly relevant regarding the digitalisation of newsrooms. Through interviews with 24 journalists from Singaporean women’s magazines, I looked at how technological advances have affected the production factors of these publications. Findings suggest that there is a functional differentiation (Hanusch, 2017) in magazine newsrooms, where journalists enact different values, norms, and behaviours when engaging in print and digital productions.

Analysis of ISIS Publications: Investigation into the Psychological Orientations Exhibited in Dabiq and Rumiya • Mark Kelsey • This study explores the utility of linguistic analysis for terrorism research. Publications of Dabiq (15 issues) and Rumiyah (10 issues), multi-translation online magazines produced by the Islamic State (IS, ISL, ISIS), are analyzed with the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program (LIWC). Comparisons with ISIS-propaganda literature and psychological literature related to linguistic behavior are elaborated and applied. The comparison of a test independent of subject-matter (the present study) with qualitative investigations dependent upon the same subject matter is of particular interest. Linguistic analyses of the collective works of Dabiq and Rumiyah lead to the following findings: (a) Strong proclivity for hierarchical conceptualization; (b) Predilection to express authority; (c) Guarded stance; (d) Hostile emotionality; (e) Reliance on past and present temporal orientation; and (f) Social emphases.

* Extended Abstract * “Touchin,’ Feelin’ and Lovin’”: A Historical Analysis of Black Love in the Pages of Ebony Magazine • Gheni Platenburg • This study aims to identify and unpack the black love ideologies circulated by legacy Black magazine Ebony throughout its publication. Using a qualitative content analysis, the study examines the Ebony’s messaging about romantic unions as communicated through its written and visual content. Additionally, the researcher examined the presence of unrealistic relationship myths within this content. Early findings show messages fell into the general categories of physical attraction, fellowship, adventure, teamwork and endurance.

Stepping outside of the community rhetoric: The death of the Weekly Standard • Burton Speakman, Kennesaw State University; Marcus Funk, Sam Houston State University • The Weekly Standard was one of the few “Never Trump” magazines claiming to be conservative when it closed late in 2018. This paper examines how conservative and mainstream media framed the closing and also investigates the Twitter conversation surrounding the closure. The article engages in a mixed-method approach to review the topic. The findings suggest that conservatives both in the media and on Twitter took pleasure in the closure of a contrarian conservative publication. This suggests that publications who step outside of the present acceptable conservative frames stand to be punished and ridiculed from within through a form of forced rhetorical hegemony. Meanwhile, many mainstream publications lamented the closure of a publication on their opinion pages that would be have celebrated the closure during the presidency of George W. Bush as the loss of a contrary voice in a conservative movement increasingly shaped by Donald Trump.

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