Radio-TV Journalism 2011 Abstracts
Sourcing in national vs. local television news coverage of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill: A study of experts, victims, roles and race • Andrea Miller, Louisiana State University; Victoria Bemker LaPoe, LSU • The purpose of this study is to identify the sources used by national and local television news outlets in the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill coverage and how those sources contributed to the frames and functions of the media in crisis. The study consisted of a content analysis of the sourcing from weeks one and six of the disaster. Findings show national press did a better job of serving the management role, but also operated in a responsibility frame and relied heavily on political analysts. Local outlets relied more on state officials and scientists. National versus local differences in sourcing (experts, victims, race) and frames are discussed in terms of their individual missions and responsibilities to their publics during a crisis situation.
Who says news can’t be imaginative? A quasi-experiment testing perceived credibility of animated news, news organization, media use and dependency. • Ka Lun Benjamin Cheng, School of Communication, Hong Kong Baptist University; Wai Han Lo, Hong Kong Baptist University • Animated news is a news reporting technique emerging in Hong Kong, Taiwan and mainland China. Online news media using such technique has yielded very considerable size of viewership to their news videos. Animated news is a format of using digital animation to reenact the detail course of a news event as part of a news report. Often times animated news video mixes the facts gathered by journalists with their own imaginations to fill missing links of an event. A quasi-experiment with 153 college students as participants was done to compare the perceived credibility of news using and without using animation. Results showed that participants indicated sound effects of animated news would reduce its credibility. Perceived news credibility was also found related to its news organization and medium dependency. Implications to animated news media and future research direction in animated news were discussed.
Are Advertisers Potential (and Effective) Influencers on News Content? An Examination of TV Reporters’ Perceptions of Possible Extramedia Pressures on Media Content & Coverage Decisions • Rita Colistra • This study examined reporter perceptions of extramedial-level influence on news content based on an original data from a national Web-based survey of TV reporters. More specifically, this study asks how, how often, and under what conditions do organizational forces attempt to influence television media and their coverage, and to what effect are they successful at doing so? The project also attempts to develop the little-studied area of agenda cutting.
Golden-age Foreign Correspondence, Sourcing, and Propaganda • Raluca Cozma, Iowa State University • This study uses content analysis to complement existing historical research on the use of propaganda by CBS foreign correspondents during World War II. Using the propaganda definition and typology proposed by the Institute of Propaganda Analysis during the time that this research captures, the analysis could not find support for the thesis that Edward Murrow and the reporters he recruited to cover World War II used blatant propaganda in their foreign news reporting. While many of their reports were biased and relied heavily on foreign officials and local media, they also used more peace journalism than war journalism and steered away from employing fear appeals. The study also lends support to the literature on the relationship between sourcing and framing.
Making Noise in the New Public Sphere: How Small Market Television Stations Find Their Mouth on Facebook • Shawn Harmsen, University of Iowa • For decades, Jurgen Habermas and other scholars and critics have worried that mass media in general and television in particular would stunt or destroy the public sphere necessary for a health democracy. This study examines the experience of several television news departments and finds some evidence that television news might be helping recreate a new public sphere online using social media, particularly Facebook.
Across Town or Across the Country? Remote Delivery of Local TV News • Lee Hood, Loyola University Chicago • The practice of outsourced local news, a trend for several years in radio, is also appearing in local television markets. This study employs a content analysis to compare locally- and remotely-produced newscasts in one market served by both, examining newscasts recorded over several weeks in fall 2010. Newscasts are compared on measures of story type, including the use of video, and on whether the stories cover local, state, or national news. Statistical measures of the comparisons yielded highly significant results on several measures.
Thirty Years of Broadcasting Africa on the U.S. Network Television News • Yusuf Kalyango, Ohio University; Uche Onyebadi, Southern Illinois University Carbondale • The study examines how ABC, CBS, and NBC covered news topics about Africa. It also assessed whether coverage featured stories with a specific U.S. strategic interests and whether coverage changed over time. A content analysis of news items about Africa from 1980 to 2010 indicated that the networks disproportionately focused primarily on southern Africa (mainly South Africa) and northern Africa (mainly Egypt and Libya) regions. Coverage of natural disasters and conflicts featured more stories on the aftermath than during the event itself. Coverage declined in the 1980s and 1990s and during the U.S. wars with Iraq and Afghanistan.
Skill Set: A Measurement of Journalistic Skills, Accuracy, and Objectivity in Television Journalists • David Keith, University of Central Arkansas • This study suggests that people perceive broadcast journalists who they see as having a higher level of journalistic skill also provide information that is more accurate and objective. It is indicated that positive perceptions of a journalist are possible even if the individuals have a low opinion of the journalist’s network. It also appears that individuals’ personal political beliefs are not a strong factor in measuring the journalistic skill, accuracy, and objectivity of specific journalists.
Political Transition, Freedom of the Press, and the Iraqi Broadcasting Industry • Hun Shik Kim, University of Colorado at Boulder • This study examined how Iraqi broadcasters perceive the concept of press freedom in their newly emerging media environment since 2003. Based on the survey of 122 Iraqi broadcasters, this study found that individual, attitudinal, and organizational factors determine Iraqi broadcasters’ perceptions of press freedom. Specifically, their perceptions are shaped by their individual characteristics such as education, and income; their attitudinal characteristics such as job satisfaction, interest in adopting Western-style reporting skills, and their views on the future of Iraqi broadcast media; and their organizational characteristics such as type of broadcast media ownership, the expansion of their broadcast operations, and beat reporting. Three groups—Shiite militias, religious sects, and Sunni insurgents—were identified as the groups that are most influential on press freedom in Iraq. Departing from the conventional press freedom indices on Iraq compiled by Western freedom advocate organizations, this study suggests that the Iraqi broadcasters’ perceptions on the press freedom are relative, not absolute or uniform as depicted through numerical indices or qualitative labels.
The Real “Sunshine” State: An Oral History of Cameras in the Courtroom During the 2000 Recount in Florida” • Christina Locke • The debate over cameras in the courtroom pits fair trial rights against the guarantee of a free press. Florida has long been a leader in bringing “sunshine” into the courts. This paper draws on oral history interviews to illustrate how the 2000 election recount proceedings in Florida once again allowed the state’s openness to spur better access in other courts.
From State Controlled to Public Broadcasting: Signs of Change in Serbia’s RTS Television Newscasts from 1989-2009 • Ivanka Radovic, University of Tennessee; Catherine Luther • This study examined the newscasts produced by Serbia’s main television broadcaster, Radio-Television of Serbia (RTS), from 1989 to 2009. Its goal was to reveal possible changes that had been made in the newscasts as a shift took place in Serbia’s political system, from one of authoritarian control to that of democratic governance. The findings showed the newscasts had changed, making them appear Western in style. Elements of Serbia’s older news practices, however, were also apparent.
Facebook and Twitter: How and Why Local Television News is Getting Social with Viewers • Suzanne Lysak, Syracuse University; Michael Cremedas, Syracuse University; John Wolf • This paper examines the role social media is playing in local television newsrooms. The authors used a Web-based national survey of news managers at network affiliated stations to look at what forms of social media are being used in the newsroom, who is using it and how it is being applied. The results show stations are embracing social media as a means of connecting with news consumers and raising their newsrooms’ profile in the community, and are encouraging their news staff members to have an individual social media presence. Stations also report their news staff are using social media as a newsgathering tool, but the value and reliability of information gathered through this means is up for debate.
Perceived Media Bias and Cable News Branding: The Effects of Diversification in the Marketplace of Information • Dylan McLemore, Southern Arkansas University • This study measured perceptions of bias in differentiated news outlets CNN, MSNBC, and the Fox News Channel. An experiment was conducted utilizing an unbiased news article and the cable network logos, serving as cues for potential perceptions of bias. Participants had distinct perceptions of each of the networks, which often differed among partisans. However, neither personal ideology nor perceptions of the cued networks affected perceptions of the experimental article, which was overwhelmingly perceived as unbiased.
Modern Arab Uprisings and Social Media: An Historical Perspective on Media and Revolution • Roger Mellen, New Mexico State University • New social media are given credit for helping to organize and even causing the wave of current popular uprisings in the Middle East. Using primary sources from social media sites, news reports, and state department documents, this paper examines—within the media theories of historians—the idea of new media causing revolution. It concludes that new media are an important factor in inspiring and implementing these recent revolts, but that they do not cause revolution.
The Tyler Perry Effect: George Musambira; Nicole Jackson • This paper examined the relationship between Tyler Perry’s two highly rated shows, House of Payne and Meet the Browns and the cultivation of the black identity. Only House of Payne was found to have some positive links with African American identity.
Measuring the Messenger: Analyzing Bias in Presidential Election Return Coverage • Kathleen Ryan, University of Colorado, Boulder; Lane Clegg • Media bias has long been discussed in relation to the presentation of politics to media consumers and is defined as “a concept used to account for perceived inaccuracies to be found within media representations” (Hartley 2002, 17). It is a concept that has gained traction with the general public, with the assumption that some news outlets skew more conservatively and others more liberal. But it has frequently been difficult to quantify, with the perception of bias often being in the eye of the beholder (and his or her own world view). This study used methodology developed by Zeldes et al (2008) to measure if bias was present in 2008 national election return coverage by the American broadcast and cable news networks. Partisan and structural bias were differentiated as a measurement of favoritism shown to candidates on each of the news channels. The study found that while the coverage was skewed in favor of the winners on election night and the day after, networks and news channel were distributed over a fairly narrow spectrum of difference, presenting partisans from both sides for analysis and commentary. It argues that hostile media perception, rather than news outlet bias, may be responsible for accusations of bias by outlets.
Multimedia Effects on News Story Credibility, Newsworthiness, and Recall • Zhi Wen Ho, University of Missouri; Alice Marie Roach, University of Missouri; Youn-Joo Park, University of Missouri; Yue Sun, University of Missouri • The purpose of this experiment was to investigate whether multiple multimedia elements presented on an online news story influence people’s perceptions of credibility, perceptions of newsworthiness, and recall of story information. Sixty participants were presented with six online news stories; three of the stories contained three multimedia elements plus a text story, and three of the stories were text-only. Findings indicated that exposure to a text story plus multiple multimedia elements—a video, photo, and illustrative graphic—in online news stories significantly enhances the story’s perceived message credibility, the story’s perceived newsworthiness, and respondents’ recall of the story.
Broadcast journalism education and the capstone experience • Andrea Tanner, University of South Carolina; Kathy Forde; John Besley, University of South Carolina; Tom Weir, University of South Carolina • This study assesses the current state of the television news capstone experience in accredited journalism and mass communication programs. Specifically, the authors employed a mixed-methods approach, interviewing 20 television news capstone instructors and conducting an analysis of broadcast journalism curriculum information obtained from 113 schools. More than 90% of accredited schools offer a television news capstone, and faculty had similar insights about television news instruction and how best to teach the television news capstone course.
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