What is taught about diversity and how is it taught? A 2015 update of diversity teaching at U.S. journalism and mass communication programs • Masudul Biswas, Loyola University Maryland; Ralph Izard, Louisiana State University; Sepi Roshan, Astute Radio • Using survey method, this study explores how diversity courses are offered, what is taught in those courses and how learning outcomes are assessed in those courses in 64 U.S. journalism and mass communication programs. This study also seeks to determine the preferred teaching approach to diversity in these programs and whether there is a relationship between the status of a program’s offering of a dedicated course on diversity and its teaching approach.

‘Taking the J out of the J-School’ Motivations and processes of program name changes • Matthew Haught, University of Memphis; Erin Willis • As enrollments, industry trends, and professional demands have embraced digital media, journalism schools throughout the country are reconsidering their own brands. Specifically, many are asking if the program’s name accurately reflects its course content and projects an ideal image to the profession. This research questions administrators at schools with changed names and seeks to understand their program’s motivations for changing their names, as well as the processes by which name changes were considered and approved.

What Trauma? Social Invention and a Pedagogy of Compassion for Teaching Reporting and Writing about the Pain of Others • Michael Longinow, Biola University • This paper uses the theoretical lens of social invention as a guide to the teaching of writing and reporting about trauma, adding to a growing literature about trauma journalism instruction. It suggests the neglect of writing instruction generally, and lack of teaching about trauma, stem from a misunderstanding of journalistic approaches to cultural language leading to neglect of curricular framing aimed at experiences of students. The paper suggests a cross-cultural, empathetic and dialectical approach.

Journalism as/is memory: The role of journalism textbooks in maintaining deep collective memory • Nicholas Gilewicz, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania • This paper is a case study of five journalism textbooks used at dozens of undergraduate and graduate journalism training programs in the United States. This research builds on the consonance found between journalism and mnemonic practices, and suggests that training in newswriting and reporting articulates and maintains through practice a deep cultural memory of journalism. Journalism training is found to induct students into journalism’s mnemonic practices, which themselves indicate and generate journalism’s mnemonic culture.

Perceptions of Credibility and Likeability in Broadcast Commentators of Women’s Sports • Angela Pratt, Clemson University; Morgan Tadlock, Clemson University; Lauren Watts, Clemson University; Taylor Wilson, Clemson University; Bryan Denham, Clemson University • The purpose of this study is to understand perceptions of female sportscasters commentating on female athletes playing feminine sports. Using survey research with university students , results showed that female participants found female sportscasters more credible and likeable than did male participants. The findings may indicate changing attitudes toward female sportscasters, or reinforce female sports as a domain not threatening to male performance. This exploratory study may assist future research concerning women in sport broadcasting.

2016 Abstracts

Just a Phone Call (or Facebook Post) Away: Parents’ Influence at a Distance on Emerging Adults’ Religious Connections • Andrew Pritchard; Sisi Hu • New communication media have to a great degree erased the barriers of distance that once diminished parents’ ability to keep their emerging adult children (ages 18 to 25) connected to the family’s religion. A survey of emerging adults (N = 727) finds that parents’ influence is greatest when they communicate through media in which emerging adults are willing to discuss intimate subjects, and when religiosity and spirituality are frequent topics of conversation.

Moral Mondays in the South: Christian Activism and Civil Disobedience in the Digital Age • Anthony Hatcher, Elon University • This paper is a case study of the 2013 Moral Monday movement in North Carolina and the use of progressive Christianity and religious rhetoric as tactics for protest in the modern media era. Themes explored include: 1) the role religious rhetoric played in this 21st century protest movement; 2) the tone of media coverage; 3) how social media was used by both protestors and their critics; and 4) the political effectiveness of the protests.

Defining the Christian Journalist: Ideologies, Values and Practices • Brad Schultz, University of Mississippi; Mary Sheffer, University of Southern Mississippi • This study sought to understand how working Christian journalists perceive themselves in terms of how their faith shapes their professional practice. An international survey of self-identified Christian journalists showed that they perceive themselves differently from their secular counterparts primarily in terms of ideology (ethics and public service). Younger Christian journalists were the drivers of these perceptions more so than older journalists, who remain more tied to traditional journalistic practice. Interestingly, those who worked at non-religious media outlets were more connected to ideology, while those at Christian outlets were more committed to journalism practice. The implications of these findings were discussed.

Morality and Minarets: The moral framing of mosque construction in the U.S. • Brian J. Bowe, Western Washington University • Journalism is a moral craft with particular social obligations. Moral evaluations are one of the main functions of media frames. Yet morality is a complex concept that includes both individualizing and binding elements. This study applies Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) to examine the moral dimension of frames. Analyzing news articles (n=349) from five newspapers about controversies surrounding the construction of mosques in the United States, this study found four moral frames: Ethnocentric Loyalty, Social Order, Altruistic Democracy and Moderate Individualism. These frames were strongly rooted in socially binding moral foundations, and they were connected to enduring values of journalism.

“I Pray We Won’t Let This Moment Pass Us By”: Christian Concert Films and Numinous Experiences • Jim Trammell, High Point University • This manuscript analyzes the Christian concert film Hillsong United: Live in Miami to investigate how mass media evoke numinous experiences. Using a framework that locates technological determinism within theories of religious encounters, the analysis explores how Christian concert films create numinous experiences through shot composition, editing, and content selection. The manuscript argues that mass media technologies and aesthetics can create expectations of religious encounters, and challenges the use of mass media to manufacture religious experiences.

Thoughtful, but angry: Media narratives of NFL star Arian Foster’s “confession” of nonbelief. • John Haman; Kyle Miller • In 2015, Arian Foster became the first active professional football player to announce he was an atheist. To analyze the media’s framing of Foster’s nonbelief within the context of the overtly evangelical Protestant religious culture of the NFL, we analyzed all news and editorial coverage of Foster’s “confession.” By extending Silk’s methodology for examining religious topoi, we examine how journalists use familiar themes to negotiate the boundary between belief and nonbelief in American culture.

Religion, coping and healing in news about school shootings • Michael McCluskey, University of Tennessee-Chattanooga; Hayden Seay • Religion offers comfort to those undergoing trauma, including communities affected by a school shooting. News content offers one means to heal. Analysis of news content about school shootings showed the presence of five key functions of individual religious coping methods identified in prior research. Most common were comfort/spirituality, meaning and control, followed by intimacy/spirituality and life transformation. Presence of healing and coping themes in the news reflect a journalistic role to heal the community.

Believing news from the Christian Broadcast Network: The intersection between source trust, content expectancy, and religiosity • Robin Blom, Ball State University • A randomly-selected sample of 200 U.S. adults indicated their believability of a news headline attributed to the Christian Broadcast Network to test whether an interaction between news source trust and content expectancy could predict believability levels. Overall, the data indicate that certain non-religious people or those with low levels of religiosity considered the Christian Broadcast Network headline highly believable, whereas some people with high levels of religiosity did not—depending on whether they were surprised on unsurprised that the headline was attributed to CBN—and not just because of their religiosity level. In fact, religiosity was not a statistically significant predictor of believability in a regression model with news source trust, news content expectancy, and its interaction. This provides new insights to whether non-secular media outlets could be considered valuable news sources for people outside the traditional, religious target audience for those organizations.

Media Framing of Muslims: A Research Review • Saifuddin Ahmed, University of California, Davis; Jörg Matthes, University of Vienna • This study provides an overview of English language academic research on media framing of Muslims from 2001 to 2014. Through content analysis of 128 studies we identify patterns involving research trend, methodological approach, media analysis, and authorship. A qualitative review results in presentation of seven common frames. Attention is paid to frame commonality across media sources and regions. Current research gaps are highlighted and findings point to key directions for future scholars.

2016 Abstracts

I Like You, You’re Like Me: Influences of Partisan Media Use on Ideological Primary Voting • Aaron Veenstra, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • The two major political parties in the U.S. are increasingly polarized in terms of ideology, which is reflected in the diminishing tendency of liberals to identify as Republicans or conservatives to identify as Democrats. Another way of looking at this phenomenon is that each party is a social group in which being in the “correct” ideological grouping has become an important social norm. This study examines how that norm influences vote choice in partisan primary elections, where all the available choices are members of the in-group. National Annenberg Election Study data from the 2008 presidential primary season shows that voters were most likely to express intent to vote for the candidate they saw as ideologically closest to themselves. Subsequent analysis found that this was a robust relationship between out-party media use and greater distance between oneself and one’s candidate, while in-party media only had effects for Democrats. That is, out-party media, which should weaken group norms, was related to weaker expression of the norm of ideological voting, while fro Democrats, in-party media was related to stronger expression of that norm. These findings demonstrate the importance of perceptions about ideology to performing one’s identity as a partisan, and also provide key evidence of a role for partisan media and specifically television, in bolstering or diminishing that ideological behavior.

Folksy talk or simplistic chatter? An analysis of rhetorical complexity and charisma in U.S. presidential campaign speeches • Ben Wasike, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley • This study used integrative complexity to examine partisan dynamics of rhetorical complexity and charisma in the 2004, 2008 and 2012 presidential stump speeches. While the candidates demonstrated low IC levels overall, the decline in rhetorical complexity was faster for Republicans. Democrats displayed more complexity and charisma. The findings also show correlation between IC and charisma. Unique contributions to scholarship include linking charisma to IC and using IC rather than readability scales to measure rhetorical complexity.

Source Networks and Environmental Regulation: Proposing a New Measure of Partisanship in the Portrayal of Climate Policy • Bethany Conway, Cal Poly; Jennifer Ervin, University of Arizona; Kate Kenski, University of Arizona • This study used social network analysis to explore the networks of news sources used in coverage of the Obama administration’s climate change report and the subsequent emission reductions proposed by the EPA in summer 2014. Coverage from May through July 2014 by CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC was coded for source use. Aggregate and monthly source networks were created and analyzed for similarities. Results suggest unmistakably partisan patterns of source use, with MSNBC using a larger number of sources than CNN and Fox News. We suggest such patterns facilitate the conceptualization of an ideology of news construction on behalf of cable news organizations.

Partisan Assessment and Controversial News Online: Hostile Media Perceptions of the 2014 Chris Christie “Bridge” Scandal • Boya Xu, University of Maryland • The cognitive process of audience response has caught increased attention among media effects scholars. Hostile media phenomenon exemplifies the extent to which media coverage is perceived as agreeable or disagreeable to one’s own opinion, which serves as an important indicator of perceived news bias. Over the past few decades, hostile media effect studies have researched several cases of notable conflict between two different groups of interest. Guided by literature on this theory and partisan assessment of controversial news, the current study examines the 2014 Chris Christie bridge scandal in the commentary coverage of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. The findings demonstrate that partisan news consumers reacted to constructed news information in hugely different ways. The present research extends hostile media research by offering an expanded model to examine people’s perceptions in the psychological sense, and places the discussion of hostile media effects toward the direction of online media environment.

Meeting Diversity and Democratic Engagement: Mobile Phone Usage Patterns, Exposure to Heterogeneity and Civic Engagement • Chang Sup Park, Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania • This study, based on a survey of 1,351 mobile phone users, investigates the relationships among patterns of mobile phone use, exposure to heterogeneity, weak-tie networks, and civic engagement. It finds that informational uses of mobile phones are positively associated with civic engagement. Relational and recreational uses have a null association with civic engagement. Using mobile phones for informational or recreational purposes is significantly linked to meeting diverse voices in mobile communication. The current study also finds that both exposure to heterogeneity and weak-tie networks moderate the impact of mobile phone use on civic engagement. This research indicates that even using the mobile phone for non-informational purposes can result in engagement in civic affairs if mobile phone users meet diversity frequently and have large weak-tie contacts.

Effects of Online Comments on Perceptions of a Political News Interview: Experiments Extending Theories of Blame and Equivocation to Web 2.0 • David Clementson, The Ohio State University • Research indicates that online comments overpower the substance of web news items. We created experimental stimuli of a political news interview and manipulated comment sections beneath. We ran experiments with college students (Study 1, N = 154) and voters (Study 2, N = 153). Results indicated that people made attributions of blame, source credibility, and evasiveness, as well as their own attitudes and comments, based on whether comments implicated the politician or the media.

Think Tanks and News Media in U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda-Setting: Who is Telling Whom What to Talk About? • Dzmitry Yuran, Florida Institute of Technology • This study explores the roles news media and think tanks play in U.S. foreign policy in an analysis of their possible effects on each other’s agendas The connection between the agendas of think tanks and the news agenda, as well as the possible impact of think tanks on news media attention to countries, suggest that think tanks should be included in foreign policy agenda-setting models, traditionally limited to policymakers, public, and media as active participants.

People Power and Media through the Eyes of Late Night Comedy Viewers • Edo Steinberg, Indiana University • Using secondary data analysis of NAES and Pew surveys from 2008 and 2012, this study examines the relationship between watching late night comedy shows and trust in the media and external efficacy. Total number of shows watched is positively correlated with external efficacy and low evaluations of the media, but individual shows’ relationship to these variables is complex. Furthermore, the paper argues that The Daily Show promotes a constructive form of distrust in media.

Does the Political Apple Fall Far from the Tree? Agenda-Setting in Tweens’ and Teens’ Agreement with Parental Political Beliefs • Esther Thorson, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Di Zhu, University of Missouri • There have been few studies of how closely parent political beliefs match their children’s. That question is addressed here with a national survey of parents and their children 12-14 and 15-17 on 14 various political belief questions (e.g., “government has gotten too big”). Social salience of the beliefs in news and public opinion influences youth beliefs. Parental beliefs are the best predictors for both younger and older children’s beliefs even after extensive controls are applied.

How High School Classroom Experiences Influence Youth Political Knowledge and Participation: A Mediation Model • Esther Thorson, University of Missouri School of Journalism; Joseph Moore, University of Missouri; Benjamin Warner, University of Missouri • This study utilizes an OSROR model of political socialization to examine the effects of demographics, school socialization, news media exposure, interpersonal and online communication, and political knowledge on adolescent political participation. Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) revealed that, among all the criterion variables, school socialization, and particularly participation in mock trials, had significant direct and indirect effects on youth political participation. Contrary to previous studies, this study found a negative relationship between online communication and political knowledge.

Questionable democratizing soft news effects on political knowledge • Heesook Choi, Missouri School of Journalism • This survey study investigates the relationship between the exposure to soft news and political knowledge based on the incidental learning hypothesis. To replicate Baum’s (2002) findings, I employ the media consumption survey data that the Pew Research Center collected in 2010 and 2012, which were the last two. Unlike Baum’s findings, this study illustrates a strong negative relationship between people’s consumption of soft news and their knowledge about politics. People who consume relatively more soft news are less likely to be knowledgeable about politics, compared to people who consume relatively less soft news. In general, the relationship is not conditional on people’s level of political interest. However, when it is, the exposure to entertainment-oriented soft news is more likely to lead to the lower level of political knowledge even among politically attentive individuals. These incompatible findings also highlight the need to revisit what constitutes soft news and create a more sophisticated or multidimensional scale to measure more precisely people’s exposure to soft news in comparison to hard news programs, rather than blindly relying on the oversimplified dichotomy, hard versus soft news. This study also examines the role of recording services such as TiVo in political learning. The results suggest that TiVo does not necessarily have a negative effect on political knowledge.

Political Persuasion on Social Media: A Moderated Moderation Model of Political Disagreement and Civil Reasoning • Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna; Matthew Barnidge, University of Vienna; Trevor Diehl, University of Vienna • A fair amount of scholarly work highlights the importance of news use and political discussion to fuel political persuasion. Exposure to both novel information and diverse opinions are key for individuals to change their views over a political issue. In the context of social media, news use arguably contributes to the prevalence of contentious politics, in part because individuals can express dissent through their social networks as they consume news content. However, individuals might be more open to political persuasion in social media environments, especially if they are exposed to political disagreement and discuss it in a civil and reasoned manner. Relying on national survey data from the United Kingdom, results of a moderated moderation model shows that 1) social media news use predicts political persuasion on social media (direct effects); 2) discussion disagreement and civil reasoning levels moderate this relationship in a two way, and three way interactions

How Does Political Satire Influence Political Participation? Examining the Factors of Exposure to Pro- and Counter-Attitudinal Political Views, Anger, and Personal Issue Importance • Hsuan-Ting Chen, Chinese University of Hong Kong; Chen Gan, the Chinese University in Hong Kong (CUHK); Ping Sun, Chinese University of Hong Kong • While research has shown that exposure to political satire elicits negative emotions, which in turn mobilize political participation, we use experiment data to extend this line of research by examining the type of exposure (i.e., exposure to counter-attitudinal and attitude-consistent political views) and investigating a specific negative emotion—anger—in influencing political participation. Results document that exposure to counter-attitudinal political satire is more likely than attitude-consistent exposure to increase the likelihood of participation in issue-related activities through evoking one’s anger about the political issue. More importantly, this indirect effect functions under the condition when people consider the issue to be personally important, and the indirect effect is stronger when one’s personal issue importance is greater. Implications for the functioning of deliberative and participatory democracy in media genres that are emotionally provocative are discussed.

Shaping Media Trust: News Parody, Media Criticism, and Valuations of the Press • Jason Peifer, Indiana University – The Media School • This study explores how news parody and perceptions of news media importance (PNMI) can contribute to shaping perceptions of the press’s trustworthiness. A two-wave survey (N=331) exposed participants to news parody stimuli, measuring media trust and PNMI one week before and immediately after the parody exposure. Results demonstrate a mediated process of influence, wherein parody’s implicit commentary about the press (compared to explicit criticism) promotes PNMI, which in turn fosters trust in the news media.

Predicting voting intentions using congruity theory and stereotypes related to political party and race/ethnicity • Jennifer Hoewe, University of Alabama • This study explores the intersection of the cues of race/ethnicity and political party affiliation as they are presented in the news media and predict evaluations of political candidates. It predicted individuals’ responses to political candidates after considering the expectations of congruity theory and cueing. It found that congruity theory is an appropriate theoretical mechanism for explaining intentions to vote for political candidates, where individuals’ political party affiliation is the necessary moderating variable to consider. Also, a candidate’s political party affiliation as well as race/ethnicity are salient in determining voting preferences and attitudes toward the candidate, but party is more consistently salient. Finally, this study identified that Independent Party candidates are not favored or disfavored when compared to Republican and Democratic candidates, and Independent voters do not show significant preference for Independent Party candidates.

Is Group Polarization a Function of Conflict Framing or a Pre-existing Rivalry Group Schema? • Jiyoung Han, University of Minnesota • Two experimental studies tested whether conflict framing of the news promotes group polarization along party lines. Informed by self-categorization theory, an underlying mechanism behind the news effect was also identified. Specifically, Study 1 showed that Democrats and Republicans exposed to partisan conflict-framed news adopted more extreme positions on a disputed issue. This polarization effect of the news emerged via partisan identity salience and perceived in-party prototype. Study 2 retested the group polarization hypotheses in an apolitical context. The results showed that gender conflict-framed news heightened the level of gender identity salience in the minds of news consumers and lead women and men to express more polarized positions. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed.

Closing the technocratic divide: How activists utilized digital form letters to engage the public in the FCC’s 2014 net neutrality debate • Jonathan Obar • Building upon research suggesting activists close technocratic divides with digital form letters, this study investigates the extent to which structural/rhetorical subordination central to the divide was overcome during the FCC’s 2014 net neutrality debate. Results suggest activists helped address impediments of geography, time and access; however, the prevalence of standardized language in many comments suggests the public’s voice was largely absent. This raises questions about ‘slacktivist’ tactics advancing mobilization efforts while avoiding principal-agent problems.

Different Strokes for Different Folks: Examination of Open-Carry Frames on Twitter Across States in the United States • Joon K Kim; Yicheng Zhu, University of South Carolina • This paper examines the online conversation about open carry policy in the U.S. Twittersphere in terms of its connection to media frames in traditional media. We collected 54,699 tweets about open carry policy using Sysomos Twitter API and our analysis showed that Twitterers from different states have significant distinct preferences over frames. Such preference was influenced by both the open carry policy and the political inclination of the states, while the later has a stronger influence than the former. For the open carry policy, tweets from Democratic states uses more safety and racial frame, while those from Republican states prefer legal and gunrights frame.

Learning the Other Side? Motivated Reasoning, Awareness of Oppositional and Likeminded Views, and Political Tolerance • Jörg Matthes, U of Vienna; David Nicolas Hopmann, University of Southern Denmark; Sebastian Valenzuela, Pontificia U Catolica de Chile • We posit that two basic information-processing motives—accuracy and directional goals—help explain when people learn from counterattitudinal news. Study 1 uses a two-wave survey matched with a media content analysis, and finds that awareness for oppositional views increases with cross-cutting news only for people with high accuracy motivations. In Study 2, we corroborate this finding with a survey experiment, and also find that a high directional motivation may actually hinder learning from counterattitudinal news.

Social Media and Civic Engagement: Results from a European Survey • Josef Seethaler, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute for Comparative Media and Communication Studies; Maren Birgit Marina Beaufort • There is considerable controversy as to the effects of social media on political participation. Drawing on Bennett and Segerberg’s concept of “connective action,” which – contrary to “collective” action – puts more emphasis on civic engagement as an act of personal expression, the study analyzes the relationship between media use and various forms of political participation across 15 European countries. Results indicate a notable switch from “collective” to “connective” forms of participation, particularly among people under 40.

Political Gratifications of Internet Use in Five Arab Countries: Predictors of Online Political Efficacy • Justin Martin; Ralph Martins; Shageaa Naqvi • Informed by research into uses and gratifications of the internet for political utility, this study examines predictors of online political efficacy, the belief that the internet has political utility, among internet users in five Arab countries (N=4,029): Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Lebanon, Qatar and the U.A.E. As hypothesized, variables in Arab countries often assumed predictive of political activism—being young, being unemployed, distrust of news media, progressive ideology, and more—were not consistently associated with online political efficacy. Yet counter to hypothesized, internet dependency and social media use were also not strongly or consistently associated with efficacy in the five countries. Rather, the strongest predictors of efficacy were belief in news media credibility, print media use (newspapers, magazines, books), belief in the reliability of online information, and tolerance of free speech online.

Do journalists facilitate a visionary debate among US presidential candidates? Content analysis reveals temporal orientation of debate questions • Karen McIntyre; Cathrine Gyldensted • Applying prospection — or imagining possible futures — to political journalism, a content analysis examined questions asked during U.S. presidential debates. Half of debate questions asked from 1960 to 2012 focused on the present, one-third focused on the future, and 12% focused on the past. Members of the public were more likely than journalists to ask future-oriented questions. The percentage of future-oriented questions also related to the specific election cycle and which news organization hosted the debate.

When and How Do Media Matter in a Policy Debate? The Multi-faceted Role of Newspapers in the Fracking Debates in New York and North Carolina • Kylah Hedding, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This study brings together framing research from political science and communication through the lens of the Advocacy Coalition Framework. It examines the role of the media in the fracking policy debates in North Carolina and New York, two states with very difference policy outcomes. A multi-method approach shows that the media had a multi-faceted role in the policy process that may differ from the way scholars have previously conceptualized the media.

Not credible but persuasive? How media source and audience ideology influences credibility, persuasiveness and reactance • Lelia Samson, Nanyang Technological University; Edson Tandoc, Nanyang Technological University • This paper seeks to understand the impact of media source and audience ideology on how readers process political editorial news in the context of the Singaporean press, particularly focusing on the perceived credibility and persuasiveness of news message, as well as audience reactance to them. It does so through the framework of information processing and within the peculiar cultural, historical and social context of the Asian press, particularly that which lead to the formation and development of the Singaporean press. Through a mixed factorial experiment (N= 110) conducted online, the study found that both media source and audience ideology affected ratings of source credibility, persuasiveness of the political editorial news message, and audience reactance to them. Participants identifying with the dominant political ideology rated the dominant news source as more credible, while participants with alternative political ideology rated the alternative news source as more persuasive as well as higher in reactance. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed, as are directions for future research.

Perceived Agenda-Setting Effects: Factors Impacting Awareness of Media Influence • Linsen Su, Beijing Jiaotong University; Wayne Wanta, University of Florida • Using the air pollution issue in Beijing as the focus, the current study examines respondents’ perceived media impact on both issue agenda-setting (first-level) and attribute agenda-setting (second-level) effects through a self-reported telephone survey in January 2015.The results confirm media impact on the awareness of issue agenda-setting effects but only partly support attribute agenda-setting effects. The results show perceived media credibility, direct personal experience with air pollution, interpersonal communication frequency, and media (TV, radio, newspaper, magazine, and Internet) exposure frequency all positively predict the perceived issue agenda-setting effect by individuals. Only media credibility and direct personal experience predict perceived attribute agenda setting effects. The findings suggest that Chinese media are effective in telling people what to think about, but ineffective in telling people how to think.

A Linkage of Online Political Comments, Perceived Civility, and Political Participation • Masahiro Yamamoto, University at Albany – SUNY; Francis Dalisay, University of Guam; Matthew Kushin, Shepherd University • This study investigates how exposure to uncivil and reasoned online political comments is related to offline and online political participation. Data from a survey of online panels show that exposure to reasoned online political comments was positively associated with offline and online political participation both directly and indirectly through one’s perceptions of civility in society. Data also show that exposure to uncivil online political comments predicted decreases in perceived civility in society, which in turn was related to lower levels of offline and online political participation. Implications are discussed for political deliberation and uncivil political discourse.

Mobile Information Seeking and Political Participation: A Differential Gains Approach with Offline and Online Discussion Attributes • Masahiro Yamamoto, University at Albany – SUNY; Seungahn Nah • This study, derived from a differential gains model, examines how mobile-based political information seeking is associated with offline and online political participation in interaction with three political discussion features: frequency, size, and heterogeneity. Data from a Web survey of an online panel indicate that the link between mobile information seeking and offline political participation is greater for respondents who discuss politics with others face-to-face and online more frequently and a greater diversity of others face-to-face and online. Data also reveal that the link between mobile information seeking and online political participation is stronger for those who discuss politics with others offline and online more often, a larger number of others online, and a greater diversity of others offline and online. Implications are discussed for the role of informational use of mobile phones in fostering political engagement.

Framing Without Attribution: Party Competition, Issue Ownership and how Journalists Frame the News • Michael Wagner, UW-Madison; Mike Gruszczynski, Austin Peay State University • Do journalists index news coverage even when they are not quoting a source? We specify the circumstances under which indexing occurs during times that journalists frame issues on their own. Our analysis of news coverage of abortion, energy, taxes, and Iraq from 1975-2008 demonstrates that during periods when the two major parties fail to frame issues with consistency within their party and competition between the parties, journalists are more likely to frame issues while acting as their own source, even when controlling for economic factors and public opinion. When journalists do frame issues on their own, they often “self-index,” adopting preferred frames from the party that “owns” that issue while applying game frames as Election Day draws near.

Learning Politics from Facebook Friends? The Impact of Structural Characteristics of Facebook Friend Network on Political Knowledge Gain • Minchul Kim, Indiana University; Yanqin Lu, Indiana University; Jae Kook Lee, Indiana University • This study examines whether and how people learn about politics from Facebook. In particular, we hypothesize that structural characteristics of one’s Facebook friend network can promote political knowledge gain. Results indicate that the proportion of Facebook weak ties, but not the size of Facebook friend network, has direct effects on political knowledge gain. The impacts of these structural characteristics on political knowledge are more pronounced for the politically interested. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Weapons and Puppies: Effectiveness of TSA’s Use of Instagram • Ming Wang, University of Nebraska-Lincoln; Valerie Jones, UNL • This paper examines the effectiveness of communication on visual social networking sites by government agencies, using TSA’s Instagram account as a case. Results show that TSA’s Instagram account elicited stronger emotional reactions a private business’ Instagram account. More importantly, perceived usefulness of content, perceived persuasive intent of content, and negative emotions all affected attitudes toward the TSA and all three except persuasive intent of content also influenced communicative action regarding the TSA account.

Political Divide in Twitter: A Study of Selective Exposure Clusters • Mohammad Yousuf, University of Oklahoma; Abu Daud Isa, University of Georgia • This study tests the Selective Exposure Clusters model by examining connections among Twitter users engaged in discussion on shared political topics. A network analysis was conducted on two topic networks defined by the hashtags #SOTU and #WeAreAllMuslim. Results show that Twitter users form distinct clusters as they participate in Twitter discussion on political topics. Most hubs and top mentioned users within a cluster appeared to have identified themselves with one side of a topic. The top mentioned users and the most shared URLs also identify with the dominant political standpoint within a cluster.

Look Who’s Writing: How Gender Affects News Credibility and Perceptions of Issue Importance • Newly Paul; Mingxiao Sui; Kathleen Searles, Louisiana State University • Studies indicate that women reporters are underrepresented in newsrooms and assigned to gender-stereotypic roles. In this paper, we explore how women journalists can make a difference in a gendered newsroom. Using an experiment, we examine how gender affects readers’ perceptions about: a reporter’s credibility, a news outlet’s credibility, and importance of the issue being written about. Results indicate that readers consider women’s issues important, but reporters who deviate from their gender-stereotypic roles are evaluated negatively. Readers’ gender perceptions, however, do not affect the credibility of the news outlet.

Understanding the interplay between selective and incidental exposure online: The influence of nonlinear interaction on cross-cutting online political discussion • Nojin Kwak, University of Michigan; Brian Weeks, University of Michigan-Department of Communication Studies; Dam Hee Kim, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; Daniel Lane, University of Michigan; Slgi Lee, University of Michigan • This study analyzes whether two patterns of information exposure online, pro-attitudinal selective exposure and counter-attitudinal incidental exposure, work in concert to foster or undermine people’s cross-cutting political discussion online. Using data from a two-wave national survey conducted during the 2012 US presidential campaign, three theoretical accounts that provide alternate predictions were examined. Findings show that incidental exposure may affect how selective exposure contributes to cross-cutting political discussion in a curvilinear way.

A disturbed relationship? Politicians’ view of journalists’ effect on democracy in German-speaking democracies • Peter Maurer • In an environment where the distinction between news and opinion is unclear, this study explores how politicians view the press across three German-speaking countries. It tests how politician’s attitude toward a mediatized political process affects their tendency to contact journalists. Drawing on an international survey, the study finds that when political actors view the press as pundits, they tend to have a lower evaluation of the press in general, and also contact journalists less often.

Read, share, discuss: Examining the relationship between news processing, face-to-face, and online political discussion • Rebecca Donaway, Washington State University; Myiah Hutchens, Washington State University; Michael Beam, Kent State University; Jay Hmielowski, Washington State University • This study seeks to examine differences in online and face-to-face discussion via exposure to online news and people’s information processing strategies. Using national survey data, we determined that online discussion has direct relationships with online news exposure and heuristic processing, whereas face-to-face discussion is associated with systematic processing. We also found an interaction where increased systematic processing and online news exposure also predicts online discussion, but no interactive relationships are related to face-to-face discussion.

Silence on the second screen: The influence of peer-produced social media cues on political discourse and opinion • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University • A 2 by 3 between-subjects factorial experiment tested the effects of peer-produced Twitter posts on political opinions and online discourse via the second screen. Researchers manipulated a Twitter feed as participants simultaneously watched a debate excerpt and were also invited to post to Twitter. Qualitative interviews with participants and a content analysis of the tweets show the primacy effect of peer-produced social media cues and evidence of both the spiral of silence and bandwagon effect.

Why Candidates Turn to Twitter Campaigning? An analysis of 2014 Indian General Elections • Saifuddin Ahmed, University of California, Davis • This study focuses on party and individual characteristics of 2014 Indian general election candidates, to explain why some candidates were more likely to adopt Twitter and use it for broadcasting, conversational and mobilization purposes. Findings revealed, candidates from fringe and minority parties and less covered in traditional media adopt and use Twitter more frequently than others – thereby suggesting Web 2.0 technologies to close the existing offline political power structures. Implications of the findings are discussed.

“Wishing to be Trump” and Other Parasocial Predictors of Trust, Likeability, and Voting Intention for The Apprentice Host • Sara Hansen, University of Wisconsin Oshkosh; Shu-Yueh Lee • This study evaluates parasocial effects of Donald Trump in The Apprentice on attitudes and behaviors toward his presidential run, and effects of political leaning and charismatic leadership. Analysis of survey data from 174 young voters shows wishful identification positively influences liking, trusting, and voting for Trump. Interest positively influences likeability and voting. Being conservative and feeling Trump is a charismatic leader was influential. Impacts of celebrity identification and symbolic modeling on Trump’s popularity are discussed.

Second Screening Donald Trump: Conditional Indirect Effects on Political Participation • Shannon McGregor, University of Texas – Austin; Rachel Mourao • This paper assesses the moderating role of support for Donald Trump to the relationship between TV news and political participation through second screening. Applying a cross-lagged autoregressive panel survey design to the communication mediation model, our results suggest that the mediating role of second screening is contingent upon attitudes towards Trump. For those who do not view Trump favorably, second screening during news leads to a decrease in political participation, both online and offline.

Media frames in mainstream newspaper coverage of Indian general elections: A structural equation modeling method • Uma Shankar Pandey, Surendranath College for Women, Kolkata • “This paper provides a structural equation modeling approach to detect latent unobserved endogenous ‘accessibility-emphasis’ frames through well-defined content analysis variables in news content. This empirical method is more transparent in identifying ‘Emphasis’ frames in election news stories. It also addresses reliability concerns since coding of the news content is done for the text variables and not for frames directly. Election related news appearing on the front page and one special election page of three mainstream English newspapers in India, from the three biggest cities of India — The Times of India, Hindustan Times and The Telegraph are selected for a 53 day period from March to May, 2014. 1767 stories from the 316 pages of these newspapers are content analyzed for themes using Entman’s schemes. These observed themes are then used to define the unobserved latent frames, both generic and issue-specific — Alliances, Conflict, Strategy, Horserace, Novelty and Human Interest. The identification of generic frames — observed in extant literature in western contexts — in a non-western context points to a limited convergence of emphasis framing across diverse democracies. Standard goodness of fit indices is used to measure the acceptability of the proposed model.

A Fine-Tuner of the Q-Sense: Exposure to Political Communication and Misestimating Public Opinion on Immigration • Volha Kananovich • This study explores the role of political communication in increasing the accuracy of citizens’ estimations of public opinion on immigration. Using data from a national survey (N=1132), it shows that greater attention to a presidential campaign predicts a more accurate estimation. Results suggest that political communication can serve as a useful source of public opinion cues that may inhibit pluralistic ignorance, despite the potentially biased samples of opinion that voters are exposed to by competing sides.

Political associational ties on mobile social media: A cross-national study of Asia-Pacific region • Wan Chi Leung • This study examined 30 Asia-Pacific countries for national-level factors that can influence the penetration of mobile technology and mobile social media, and development of associational ties with political organizations on Facebook and Twitter. Findings showed that Asia-Pacific countries had nearly caught up Americas’ and Europe’s mobile phone and social media use. Indulgence in a culture was found to predict mobile social media use, which was associated with becoming a fans of Facebook pages of the government, news, political communities, and NGOs. Political participation and civil liberties predicted following Twitter accounts of news and NGOs. Implications on political use of mobile social media in Asia-Pacific region are discussed.

The Moderating Effect of Social Identity on Collective Political Action in Hong Kong: A Communication Mediation Approach of Social Networking Service Use • Yingru Ji, The Chinese University of Hong Kong; Yanmengqian Zhou • As social networking service (SNS) has been found to have increasingly significant impact on political discussion and participation, this study integrated SNS into the communication mediation model, exploring the relationship between overall SNS use, hard news use of newspaper, television, news website and SNS, online and offline political discussion and participation in collective political action in post-umbrella Hong Kong. Data were gathered via a survey of 648 college students in Hong Kong. Results showed that SNS and newspaper hard news, offline and online political discussion, and education significantly predicted the participation in collective political action in Hong Kong. The results also demonstrated that social identity plays a moderating role between political discussion and participation as for those who have higher Hong Kong identity, the more discussion they are involved in the more likely they will participate in collective political action while for those who are less identified with Hong Kong society, more discussion will lead to less participation.

Network structural polarization of opinion leaders: the example of Sina Microblog • Yunxia Pang • This study investigates the composition, interaction and evolution of opinion leader groups on Chinese microblogging platform Sina Weibo, using social network analysis. By analyzing the “following” and “interactive” patterns among the opinion leaders over 1.5 years, we find that the basis of group polarization is network structural polarization. Based on the analysis of 241 selected opinion leaders, this paper finds that traditional classification for “Left” and “Right” intellectuals is still the key factor to differentiate opinion leaders on Sina Weibo, while the different careers do not amplify polarization. We find the in-group interaction density of the “Left” and the “Right” increased significantly as time went, while the “neutral” group’s internal interaction density does not change.

2016 Abstracts

Communicative Antecedents of Political Persuasion. The Roles of Political Discussion and Citizen News Creation • Alberto Ardèvol-Abreu, University of Vienna; Matthew Barnidge, University of Vienna; Homero Gil de Zúñiga, University of Vienna • For quite some time researchers have paid attention to how media and interpersonal discussion influence the way people persuade others politically. Recent academic efforts have been geared toward better explaining the mechanisms by which digital media technologies have afforded people new ways to persuade others. Within this context, a vibrant yet less explored area entails not only political discussion, but also the creation of news and public affairs content online. This study seeks to shed more light on how communicative behaviors lead to attempted political persuasion. Using two-wave panel survey data, we find that political discussion and citizen news creation mediate the relation between news use and political persuasion attempts. Furthermore, strength of partisanship moderates the relationship between content creation and attempted persuasion.

Asserting Credibility in a Crisis: How Journalists, Activists and Police/Government Officials Used Twitter During Ferguson • Amber Hinsley, Saint Louis University; Hyunmin Lee, Saint Louis University; Christopher Blank, Saint Louis University; Ricardo Wray, Saint Louis University; J.S. Onesimo Sandoval, Saint Louis University; Keri Jupka, Saint Louis University; Claire Cioni, Saint Louis University • This study examines the validity of Becker’s (1967) classic credibility model in today’s social media landscape. Interviews with activists, journalists and government/law enforcement officials explore how they used acts of journalism to establish their own credibility and assess the credibility of others via Twitter following Michael Brown’s death in Ferguson. Though their “truth” often was different, they applied similar measures of credibility. Crises like Ferguson that are influenced by social media necessitate a revised hierarchy of credibility.

A Comparison of Journalistic Roles by Visual Journalists: Professionals vs. Citizens • Deborah Chung, University of Kentucky; Yung Soo Kim, University of Kentucky; Seungahn Nah • Using a Web-based survey targeting visual professionals, this study examines their professional role conceptions along with their views on emerging visual citizen contributors’ roles. While participants’ ratings of the two roles were generally correlated within each group, few correlations resulted between the two groups. Further, visual professionals rated their roles as significantly more important for all five roles. When assessing views on citizen-contributed visuals, it was clear that participants did not welcome citizens’ visual contributions.

News and Local Information on Reddit: An Online Ethnography of Collective Gatekeeping • Frank Michael Russell, University of Missouri School of Journalism • This study explores sharing and discussion of news and information on Reddit from the perspective of gatekeeping theory. Although Reddit is primarily an entertainment platform, “redditors” also use the site to share and discuss news and local information. Although they share mainstream news media content on the site, they vote for higher placement of stories in a way that seems to reflect more libertarian or socially liberal views than those reflected by traditional news media.

Spreading the News – Examining College Students’ Awareness of Their Participatory News Habits • Jennifer Cox, Salisbury University • A recent study of what news items college-age students post on Twitter revealed they largely focus on national/international news topics rather than items that affect them locally. The study also showed these college-age Millennials preferred softer news topics, including sports, entertainment/celebrity, and lifestyle items, as well as topics that contained elements of oddity/novelty and conflict. This study builds on that research to reveal whether students are aware of their preferences when posting news. A post-test survey was administered to students to compare what types of stories students thought they posted with the ones they actually did post. Students’ awareness of their news preferences could help researchers understand disparities in their self-reporting and their perceptions of their own online personas. The results indicate students overestimated the amount of hard news topics and local news items they posted, suggesting the image they think they are portraying online may not be accurate. This study also asked students to assess their news knowledge and habits as a result of tweeting the news. Students reported being more knowledge about news and believed the activity to be valuable in helping them understand their news habits.

To whom are they speaking? The imagined audience of online news commenters • Jisu Kim, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities • As the first study examining news commenters’ perceptions of imagined audience, this study attempts to expand the boundary of news commenting research. Through interviews with 12 news commenters, we find that they usually perceive their audience as those having similar backgrounds, journalists, or politicians. News commenters who primarily comment on news websites perceive their audience as public and broader in scope, while news commenters on Facebook consider their audience as being more connected with themselves.

Assessing the impact of citizen publishing on Freedom of Information laws • Jodie Gil, Southern Connecticut State University • This exploratory study looks at proposed changes to Freedom of Information laws in 10 states to explore whether citizen publishing prompts attempts to restrict access to records. Privacy was cited in 69 of 138 law proposals, and a majority of those proposals sought to protect “personal information.” The data in the sample points to clear concerns about personal information being shared, a practice that can more easily happen with unrestricted publishing on the Internet.

Where Did You Get That Story? An Examination of Story Sourcing Practices and Objectivity on Citizen Journalism Websites • Kirsten Johnson, Elizabethtown College • A content analysis of 560 articles from 56 citizen journalism websites based in the U.S. showed more than a quarter of the stories didn’t use sources. When they were used, traditional media and press releases were often cited. More than 90% of the stories did adhere to the traditional journalistic norm of objectivity since many stories were sourced from mainstream media reports and press releases. Stories reported most often included event, political, and business stories.

Metrics, Clickbait, and the Anemic Audience: Audience Perceptions and Professional Values among News Aggregators • Mark Coddington, Washington and Lee University • Journalists have long been dismissive of their audiences, but the rise of online metrics and participatory journalism have challenged that attitude. This study examines that challenge by looking at aggregators’ audience perception, exploring its influence on their news judgment and the role of metrics in their work. It finds that the audience weighs heavily on aggregators’ work, but their conception of it is thin and non-participatory, mediated largely through the professionally contested tool of metrics.

Digital pitchforks: Latent publics and justice-gone-wrong narratives • Nathan Rodriguez • This study examines online discussions of justice-gone-wrong narratives in popular culture. To date, fan studies have not analyzed online collectives that are organized around true-crime narratives. This paper uses grounded theory to approach 8,900 user comments on a highly trafficked website regarding the Netflix miniseries, Making a Murderer. Results from the study contribute to the growing academic discussion of the suasive force of latent publics, particularly within the context of justice-gone-wrong narratives in popular culture.

Networked: Social media’s impact on news production in digital newsrooms • Patrick Ferrucci, U of Colorado • This study examines social media usage by journalists through the prism of actor-network theory and the hierarchy of influences model. Utilizing interviews with 53 digital journalists, it identifies the actors playing a role in producing news through social media. It finds that journalists, opinion leaders, audience and extra-media organizations impact news production. It calls for a revisiting of the hierarchy of influences model to understand on what levels of influence the audience impacts news production.

“It’s like a bar journalists hang out at:” Social Media’s erosion of walls between journalists and their Twitter followers • Rich Johnson, Creighton University • While journalism does not fit the traditional definition of a profession, recent scholars, such as Lewis (2012) and Singer (2003) suggest that professional boundaries may be a reason journalists struggle to engage with their audience on social media. Although journalists often are early adopters of new platforms, they often use them for traditional practices. Using qualitative in-depth interviews and constant comparative analysis, this study identifies three walls that block journalists from engaging in the Internet’s facilitation of personal connectivity, engagement, and a true community forum. Although a wall of objectivity has somewhat been broached by Twitter use, walls of storytelling and routine and traditional news values continue to hold strong.

A hit on American football: Bottom-up framing in op-ed reader comments • Travis R. Bell, University of South Florida; Jimmy Sanderson, Clemson University • Dr. Bennet Omalu, who is credited with discovering chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), wrote a New York Times’ op-ed story on December 7, 2015 and presented reasons why parents should not let their children play American football. This fueled national debate and this research, which used bottom-up framing to examine 114 reader comments connected to Omalu’s story. A mixed methods approach, including linguistic analysis, reveals new conversation points afforded by this new concept of media effects.

2016 Abstracts

What Works at Work: An Analysis of Micromanagement in the Workplace • Christina Jimenez Najera, California State University, Fullerton • Research has shown that good or poor management can deeply influence the culture of a company and its success.  The purpose of this research was to analyze perceptions and effectiveness of micromanagement as a management style.  The results of this research provide insight into individuals’ preferences of the concept of micromanagement through their experiences and knowledge of this management style.  Furthermore, the results of this research explored the prevalence of micromanagement in the workplace.

Help Wanted:  Expanding Social Media, Mobile and Analytics Skills in Journalism Education • Debora Wenger, University of Mississippi; Lynn Owens, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill • Identifying the most commonly required journalism job skills and attributes within the profession is essential for creating relevant curricula.  More than eleven hundred job postings from the top ten newspaper and broadcast journalism companies in the U.S. were part of a content analysis conducted over a three-month period in 2015.  Researchers identified gaps in journalism education, particularly related to social media, mobile and audience analysis or engagement skills.

The use of LinkedIn as a recruitment tool in the UAE: An evaluation • Swapna Koshy, University of Wollongong in Dubai; Iman Ismail • This study looks at the use of LinkedIn in the United Arab Emirates. In–depth interviews with representatives of five organizations and five recruitment companies based in the UAE were conducted to evaluate the use of LinkedIn as a recruitment tool. The study showed that LinkedIn is a cost effective recruitment tool. It is efficient when looking for candidates at the senior level or for those with specialized and unique skills. Recruitment agencies also see it as a competitor. The study concluded that to use LinkedIn effectively organizations should have a clear social media strategy.

2016 Abstracts