Communication Theory and Methodology 2002 Abstracts
Communication Theory and Methodology Division
Television and our Children: A Meta-Analysis of Television’s Impact on Special Populations • Robert Abelman, Carolyn A. Lin and David J. Atkin, Cleveland State University • NO ABSTRACT
Perceived Credibility and Attitudinal Distance in Estimating Third-Person Effect and Affect • Julie L. Andsager, Washington State University and H. Allen White, Murray State University • Messages deemed undesirable often produce a third-person effect, while the converse first-person effect is true for desirable messages. We sought to examine the message content-receiver interpretation interaction of evaluating a persuasive message using the construct of perceived credibility. Credibility was unrelated to the degree of estimated effect on self and others, but it was significantly related to perceived positive/negative affect. Attitudinal social distance was an important predictor of third-person effects, though credibility mitigated its impact.
Evaluation of American Legacy Foundation/Washington State Department of Health Media Literacy Pilot Study • Erica Weintraub Austin, Bruce E. Pinkleton, Stacey J.T. Hust and Marilyn Cogen, Washington State University • A pretest/posttest experiment with a control group was used to evaluate a pilot test of a media literacy curriculum implemented during summer 2001 in the state of Washington. It was expected media literacy training would reduce youthÕs beliefs and behaviors relevant to tobacco use and would increase the extent they would participate in advocacy activities. The results indicate media literacy is a promising avenue for tobacco prevention efforts.
Beyond the Cognitive Mediation Model: Diversion, Interaction and Action Motives Trump the Surveillance Motive • Christopher E. Beaudoin, Indiana University-Bloomington and Esther Thorson, Missouri-Columbia • With data from a 2000 telephone survey of a Midwestern community, the current study retests and reevaluates the cognitive mediation model (Eveland, 2001). In a first step, it expands testing of the model to a different community and measures media use in terms of reliance on five news media for political information. Two well-fitting structural equation models offer strong support for the cognitive mediation model in this context.
Second Level Agenda Seffing and Political Discourse: A Longitudinal Analysis of Campaign Reform in 1999 • Shannon L. Bichard, Texas Tech University • This study investigates second level agenda setting for the campaign reform issue in 1999. Content analysis was used to obtain the agendas of the media, public, and Congress. Cross-correlations were then established using ARIMA time series models to examine relationships. Results suggest that the public agenda as well as congressional framing attributes have a compelling affect on the media. These findings support the need for an expanded approach to agenda setting research.
How Television Shapes Our View of the World: A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach • Samuel D. Bradley, Indiana University • Research known as cultivation analysis has shown that heavy television viewers make social judgments more aligned with the reality shown on TV than the actual world to a greater degree than light TV viewers. Several studies have shown that certain cognitive processes can mediate this effect. A cognitive neuroscience perspective is used here to try to outline brain structures involved in the cultivation effect and account for the mediating effects.
Saying “May Cause Internal Bleeding” with a Smile: A Multi-Year Analysis and Comparison of Prescription Drug Advertising • Samuel D. Bradley, Yongkuk, Leah M. Haverhals, Annie Lang, Indiana University • Since restrictions were eased for broadcast prescription drug advertisements in 1997, there has been a dramatic spending increase on direct-to-consumer advertising. This paper addresses direct-to-consumer advertising by conducting two content analyses of 120 hours of television programming in 2000 and 2002, providing a description of frequency, production features, and emotional tone of information presented in health advertising. The results will be used to construct the stimuli for future experiments investigating how consumers process such information.
Are Computers And Traditional Media Functionally Equivalent? • Xiaomei Cai, Delaware • This study examined the time displacement effects of computers on traditional media in light of the functional equivalence principle. Subjects were asked to give up using computers (except for schoolwork) and television respectively for a day. The results showed that giving up computer use did not increase time allotted to other media. On the contrary, giving up viewing television increased time spent with other traditional media, but not with computers. The implication for the functional equivalence principle was discussed.
Effects of Salience Dimensions of Informational Utility on Selective Exposure to Online News • Silvia Knobloch, Dresden University of Technology, Francesca Dillman Carpentier and Dolf Zillmann, Alabama • Informational Utility is conceptualized as consisting of three dimensions: magnitude of a threat or opportunity, likelihood of the materialization of the threat or opportunity, and proximity in time of the occurrence of the threat or opportunity. It is hypothesized that readers will selectively expose themselves increasingly more to stories high in these three dimensions as opposed to stories low in these dimensions. To test this proposal, respondents chose to read selections from an experimental Internet-style online newspaper.
Analyzing the Effect of “Impactive” Visual Stimuli on Ad and Product Perceptions Using a Computerized Experiment • Fiona Chew and Maya Chandrasekaran, Syracuse University • Three “impactive” visual stimuli proposed as eliciting eye fixations or orienting responses were constructed, tested and analyzed for basic advertising and product perceptions among 85 young adults. A computer program was developed to set up the experimental materials for display on computer terminals in a computer laboratory. Specifically it rotated the treatment and control conditions as well as the order of the visuals, logged the time subjects spent on each visual, displayed the questions and registered the responses.
The Deep Audit as an Epistemology for the Watchdog: Computer-Assisted Analysis and Investigative Journalism • Ira Chinoy and John E. Newhagen, Maryland • Computer assisted data analysis, sometimes called computer-assisted reporting, has emerged as an innovative form of investigative journalism during the past 35 years, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Its legitimacy has been validated by prizes and awards, but it has failed to become fully integrated into the journalistic routine. That fact is evidenced both by the ambiguous location that practitioners of computer analysis occupy on newsroom organizational charts.
Processing Anti-Drug Public Service Announcements The Role of Perceived Self-Relevance • T. Makana Chock, Mija Shin, Yongkuk Chung, Suengwhan Lee and Annie Lang, Indiana University • This study applied the Limited Capacity Model of media processing to investigate the role of reported self-relevance of Public Service Announcements (PSAs) in the processing of the information contained in those messages. The impact of the arousing content and production pacing of anti-drug and tobacco PSAs on adolescent and college age viewersÕ perceived self-relevance was examined. The impact of self-relevance upon the attention given to a PSA and subsequent memory of that message was also assessed.
A Life Cycle Model of Media Development: The Internet as Case Study • Nava Cohen-Avigdor and Sam Lehmun-Wilzig, Bar-Ilan University, Israel • Based on several earlier, preliminary theories and models of the life cycle development of mass media (taken from such fields as mass media history, technology diffusion, and even marketing), this paper puts forward an overarching, universally applicable, interactive, life cycle model involving five stages: 0- technical invention; 1- market penetration/growth; 2- maturation; 3- defensive resistance; 4a- adaptation/change, or 4b- obsolescence/disappearance. The Internet is employed as a case study to amplify the modelÕs various factors and elements.
A “Mix of Attributes” Approach to the Study of Media Effects and New Communication Technologies • William P. Eveland, The Ohio State University • The purpose of this paper is to discuss the media effects approach broadly, point out the limitations the traditional approach imposes on the field, and to discuss a “mix of attributes” approach with a focus on the study of “new” technologies for the dissemination of news that would better serve to advance both theory and empirical research not only in the area of new media technologies, but also for more traditional media effects research.
Influence of Story Structure and Reader Partisanship on Perceived Story Bias and News Organization Credibility • Frederick Fico, John D. Richardson and Steven Edwards • A 3 (story structure) x 3 (partisanship), full-factorial experiment was conducted to illuminate the joint effects on four dependent variables: perceived story bias, perceived story quality, news organization credibility and persuasiveness. Participants’ prior opinion on each of three issues (capital punishment, flat income tax rate and drinking age) was measured as pro, con, or neutral. Mock newspaper stories were systematically manipulated to be balanced or imbalanced. Imbalanced stories favored either the pro or the con side on each issue.
Effects of Text and Animated Graphics in Television News Stories on Viewer Evaluations, Arousal, Attention, and Memory • Julia R. Fox, Yongkuk Chung, Seungwhan Lee, Nancy Schwartz, Leah Haverhals, Zheng Wang, Annie Lang, Indiana University and Deborah Potter, NewsLab • This study examines effects of text and animated graphics in television news stories. Text and animated graphics aided recognition for stories participants rated harder to understand, but made no difference for easier stories. Delayed cued recall was best for stories with animated graphics and worst for stories with no graphics. Participants paid less attention to text graphics than to animated graphics or the no-graphics condition. Arousal and evaluations of the news stories are also examined.
Is Psychopathology The Key To Understanding Why Some Children’s Behavior Becomes “Aggressive” When They Are Exposed To Violent Television Programming? • Tom Grimes, Kathy Nichols, Eric Vernberg, Lori Bergen, Kansas State University • Children who have no diagnosed psychopathology did not behave aggressively after seeing a series of violent movie excerpts. On the other hand, children with the most common undiagnosed form of psychopathology — Disruptive Behavior Disorders — behaved aggressively after exposure. This paper explains why there is a difference in behavior between the two groups and suggests that normal children are probably not harmed by violent TV programming in terms of viewing induced psychopathologies.
Theory Of Communication Outlets And Free Expression: A Humanocentric Exploration • Shelton A. Gunaratne, Minnesota State University • This essay combines the yin-yang complements of Chinese philosophy and the dialectic of Western philosophy to derive a humanocentric theory of communication outlets and free expression. It argues that the system of communication-outlets in most nation-states is situated between the extremes of libertarianism and authoritarianism. The meeting or clash of these two complements or antinomies at a particular point of time and space results in creating various shades of social responsibility.
The Intermediary Role of News Media in the 2000 Presidential Campaigns: A Mediator, Moderator, or Political Agent? • Sungtae Ha, Texas at Austin • This study examines the intermediary role of news media between the candidates and the public in the agenda-setting process in the context of the 2000 U.S. Presidential election. Do the media really control the whole process of agenda setting defining the campaign agendas? Special attention is paid to the media’s role at the two different levels of agenda setting: issues and attributes. The New York Times played the role of both the moderator and political agent rather than a mediator.
Fear of Isolation and the Climate of Opinion: Moderating the Spiral of Silence? • Andrew F. Hayes and Carroll J. Glynn, The Ohio State University; James Shanahan and Dietram Scheufele, Cornell University; Patricia Moy, David Domke, and Keith Stamm, Washington • According to spiral of silence theory, silence spirals can develop when fear of social isolation drives members of a minority to silence their own opinion expression. In a secondary analysis of several existing published studies, we tested a prediction directly derived from spiral of silence theory that fear of social isolation and support for one’s opinions would interact in predicting opinion expression. But never did we find an interaction between fear of isolation and perceived support for one’s opinion.
Framing Effects in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Media Environments: The Cases of the on Taiwan Controversy and the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant Dispute • Huiping Huang, National Taiwan Normal University • This study examined the nature of issues and the media environments the issues created in the operation of framing effects. It conducted media content analyses and audience survey to compare media frames and audience frames in different media environments. The cases under study were the On Taiwan controversy and the Fourth Nuclear Power Plant dispute in Taiwan. Results showed that, the media environments the two cases created differed on the dimension of frame homogeneity and heterogeneity.
Cosmopoliteness, Cultivation and Media Use • Leo W. Jeffres, Cheryl Campanella Bracken, Kimberly Neuendorf, and Jennifer Kopfman, Cleveland State University • The constructs of “cosmopoliteness,” cultivation, and media use were examined in a general population CATI survey of a metropolitan area in October and November of 2001. Eight dimensions of cosmopoliteness were identified, and they were in general found to be strongly and positively related to non-broadcast media use (e.g., newspaper readership) but not strongly related to broadcast media exposure. Cosmopoliteness dimensions were found to relate to cultivated views of the world as a “mean and scary place,” although such relationships were diminished somewhat after controls for social categories.
Motivations to Form Opinions Based on Reference Group or Generalized Others’ Opinions • Irkwon Jeong and Carroll J. Glynn, The Ohio State • This paper explores motivational reasons for forming oneÕs own opinion based on the opinions of certain group opinions. Specifically, this study examines the importance of these motivations in determining whether or not individuals rely more on reference group opinions or on the opinions of “generalized others” when forming their own opinions. In addition, we explore the determinants of these motivations. Data were collected using a nation wide telephone survey (n= 596).
Download Speed and Physiological Arousal: The Role of Motion, Suspense, and Content Characteristics • Sriram Kalyanaraman and S. Shyam Sundar, Penn State University • Prior research has shown that download speed of Web images affects users’ physiological arousal. Using a three-condition experiment (N= 39) that exposed participants to either a fast, slow-blur (GIF), or slow-frame (JPEG) version of a high-arousal, non-sexual image, this study investigates (1) the role of image characteristics (particularly content arousability) in determining which speed (fast or slow?) is more arousing; and (2) whether motion and/or suspense effects mediate the relationship between speed and arousal.
Entertainment Television Use and Life Satisfaction: Constructed Reality and the Social Comparison Effects of Drama and Sitcom • Heejo Keum and Jaeho Cho, Wisconsin-Madison • This research explores the influence of different types of televised entertainment programming on peopleÕs judgment of life satisfaction. This paper attempts to connect content-based assertions of the cultivation theory with the social comparison arguments positing that audiences compare their real lives with television’s constructed social reality and this comparison results in viewers’ life satisfaction or dissatisfaction. To explore this possibility, we combined content analysis and survey research.
Priming Effects Revisited: Use and Disuse of Contextual Primes in Dynamic News Environments • Young Mie Kim, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This study reexamines priming effects in the case of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. As an alternative approach to traditional priming research, this study suggests an attitude structure model of priming based on an associative network model to assess peopleÕs use and disuse of the contextual prime (i.e., the air war) in dynamic news environments. With a short-term quasi-experimental approach considering the air war as a prime stimulus, the path analysis of the attitude structure model suggests robust evidences of the short-term accessibility effects of priming.
Theoretical Applications to Florida Law Enforcement Records Custodians’ Decision-Making Behaviors • Michele Bush Kimball, South Alabama • The goal of this study was to understand how and why records custodians grant or deny access to government information. Four theories, two legal and two social science, were applied to data collected through legal and qualitative research methods to evaluate whether those theories were relevant. Those theories were used to help explain records custodians behavior and to provide recommendations for changing the way custodians respond to FloridaÕs Public Records Law.
Identifying Dimensions of Media Salience: A Factor Analysis of Media Coverage during the 2000 Presidential Election • Spiro Kiousis, Iowa State • Media salience — the key independent variable in agenda-setting research — has traditionally been explicated as a singular construct. Nevertheless, scholars have defined it and measured it using a number of different conceptualizations and empirical indicators. To address this limitation in research, this study builds a conceptual model of media salience suggesting it is a multidimensional construct consisting of three core elements: attention, prominence, and valence.
A Structural Equation Model of the Uses and Gratifications Theory: Ritualized and Instrumental Internet Usage • Hanjun Ko, Florida • In this study, the uses and gratifications theory was applied to investigate whether motivations for using the Internet could explain one of the key aspects of Internet usage: visiting certain types of Web sites. The proposed latent variable path model identified some of the causal relationships between the motivational factors and the types of Web sites visited by Internet users.
The Impact of Website Campaigning on Traditional News Media and PublicÕs Information Processing • Gyotae Ku, Michael Pfau and Lynda Lee Kaid, Oklahoma • The present study was designed to examine the impact of website campaigning as new media on the traditional news media agenda and the public opinion during the 2000 presidential election campaigning. Based on an intermedia agenda-setting approach, this study demonstrated the direction of influence among three media in terms of the flow of information. Further, an agenda-setting impact of website campaigning on the public were also identified.
Agenda Setting, Media Framing, News Priming And Status Conferral: A Theoretical Synthesis • Dominic Lasorsa, Texas at Austin • Among mass communication theories that relate to the effects of news coverage on public opinion are agenda setting, media framing, news priming, second-level agenda setting and status conferral. In an effort to clarify the extent to which these five theories are alike and different, consideration is given to their independent and dependent variables, and to the psychological processes that intervene between exposure and effect.
Constructing Theory for Complex Systems • Dominic Lasorsa, Texas at Austin • A strategy is proposed for building theory relating four or more variables. The approach extends to such complex systems-strategies promoted by Hage, Lazarsfeld and Tankard. The paper discusses reasons for exploring multivariate relationships, forms for expressing four-variable theoretical statements, ways to visualize multivariate relationships, ordering multiple variables in time, analyzing causal paths among multiple variables; specifying non-linear relationships and non-additive effects, and useful modifications to the linear, curvilinear and power relationships.
Reconsidering the Effects of News Media Use on Political Learning: Individual and Socio-Structural Implications in Newspaper Reading and Television Watching • Eunjung Lee, Cornell University • This study argued that the effects of news media use on political learning should be assessed by accounting for individual media use patterns (attention vs. exposure) and the sociostructural factors that are embedded in the act of media use as well. The results showed that the effects of news media use are reflecting socio-structural constraints imposed on the acts of newspaper reading and television watching. Especially, the findings shed new light on television’s informational effect.
Its an Arousing, Fast Paced Kind of World: The Effects of Age and Sensation Seeking on the Information Processing of Substance Abuse PSAs • Seungwhan Lee, Yongkuk Chung, Mija Shin, and Annie Lang, Indiana University • This paper investigates how Sensation Seeking and production features alter how adolescents and college students process PSAs. Subjects viewed 30 public service announcements which varied in terms of arousing content and production pacing. Dependent variables included physiological responses, recognition, sensation seeking, and substance use. Results show that high sensation seekers prefer all messages, remember more, and exhibit lower arousal compared to low sensation seekers. Adolescents are more aroused and remember more information.
Cost-Benefit Analysis of the Internet as a Survey Tool: Compare Results across Telephone and Internet Surveys • Jack C. C. Li, National Chung Cheng University, Taiwan • This study compared the results from a random digit dialing telephone interview to those from a paralleling Web-based survey, and evaluated the viability of using the Internet as a survey tool for the study of Internet user behavior from a cost-benefit perspective. The traditional telephone survey suffered from a very low response rate and the cost per interview was extremely high compared to the Web-based survey.
Media Influences On Normative Expectations Of Citizen Efficacy And Effects On Political Participation • Michael R. McCluskey, Sameer Deshpande, Hye Lim Yoo, Dhavan V. Shah and Doug M. McLeod, Wisconsin-Madison • The mass media may encourage a sense that citizens both can and should be able to influence politics and public policy and engage in self-governance, yet this normative value of political efficacy (the “should” evaluation) has been subsumed by a research emphasis on peopleÕs evaluation of their actual effectiveness (the “can” evaluation). Using data from an RDD community survey, this research demonstrates that normative efficacy is conceptually different from evaluative efficacy.
Advertising Agenda Setting and Its Electoral Consequences in the 2000 Presidential Campaign • Young Min • This study investigates the agenda setting function of political ads and its electoral consequences in the 2000 presidential campaign. Overall, it appears that candidate ads had significant effects on the voters’ perception of issue importance, and which issue was most prominent in oneÕs minds substantially influenced her or his candidate evaluation and vote choice. Specifically, the public was more susceptive to the issue emphases in positive ads than to those in negative ads, while partisan voters’ issue priorities reflected the composite ad agenda, rather than their own partisan agenda.
Framing Science: The Stem Cell Controversy in an Age of Press-Politics • Matthew C. Nisbet, Dominique Brossard and Adrianne Kroepsch, Cornell University • Applying the theories of agenda-building, frame-building, and previous work related to the shared negotiations between sources and journalists in constructing news dramas, this paper examines the role of the mass media in the development of the stem cell controversy. How does a scientific issue gain, maintain, or lose political and media attention? What forces combine to emphasize certain dimensions of an issue over others?
An Effective Approach to Conducting a Media-Use Survey in a School-Based Environment • Carol J. Pardun, Kelly L. L’Engle and Jane D. Brown, North Carolina at Chapel Hill • This paper describes a protocol that was effective in collecting media-use pattern data from young adolescents. Using a 34-page mailed survey, extensive media-use pattern data were gathered from 3,255 7th and 8th graders after students were recruited in schools and parents mailed back consent forms. The sample included responses from a large number of African-American teens (1,330), a sub-group that has been particularly difficult for mass communication researchers to access in the past.
Of Leaders, Laggards and Losers: An Examination of Postcommunist Models of Media Transition • Maria Raicheva, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale • This exploratory study aims to examine how viable the existing models of Postcommunist media transition are. As a starting point, the study tries to provide a general definition of transition. Then, it addresses critically the prevailing discussions of the transitional model in mass communication science as well as its alternatives. The final part of this study presents an evaluation of the models of transition and offers suggestions with regard to their utility.
This Just In …. How National TV News Handled the Breaking “Live” Coverage of Sept. 11th • Amy Reynolds, Indiana University and Brooke Barnett, Elon University • This article proposes an adapted theoretical model to explain how content produced in a breaking news situation on television changes journalistic practice and tests this model through a content analysis of national breaking news coverage of the September 11th attacks. The way that these journalists covered the attacks is one example of a model by which scholars can study how the common practice of carrying breaking news live has affected and transformed broadcast news.
Third-Person Perceptions Of Fear During The War On Terrorism: Perceptions Of Online News Users • Michael B. Salwen, Paul D. Driscoll, Bruce Garrison, Rasha Abdulla, Kristin Campbell, and Denise Casey, Miami • This study examined public fear in the aftermath of the U.S.-led War on Terrorism. A representative national telephone survey of 619 respondents confirmed that the third-person effect manifests itself with affective media influence. Non-Web users estimated significantly greater fear effects on those who read online news about the War on Terrorism than Web users. It is possible that non-Web users have ideas, based on stereotypes, about the amount, content and context of news reports available online that explain the findings.
Simplifying The Measurement of Cognitive Complexity • Mike Schmierbach, Cory L. Armstrong and Mark Heather, Wisconsin-Madison • Measurement of cognitive complexity has been methodologically varied, as have the relationships of measures to other variables. This paper presents a closed-ended method of measuring complexity using attitudinal measures from a random telephone survey (n = 657). Complexity is positively related to media use, interpersonal discussion, reflection and political participation. These results parallel findings using an open-ended measure from a previous survey. The authors argue for exploration of cognitive complexity and propose that measures similar to the one employed in this paper may be useful for such research.
The “Trap” Effect Of Television And Its Competitors: The Function Of Audience Interest For The Impact Of Political Information • Klaus Schoenbach and Edmund Lauf, University of Amsterdam • The “trap” effect is the alleged ability of television (1) to disseminate political information to those who are not interested in politics and (2) to influence them more strongly than other channels of information, such as newspapers, can. These ideas are tested in twelve European countries for the campaign of the European elections in 1999: Was television really more powerful than newspapers among the many citizens that did not care about that election?
Interaction Between Personal Frame and Issue Frame: Testing the Interaction Assumption of Framing effects Literature • Mihye Seo and Thomas E. Nelson, Ohio State University • The present study shows how individual audience members will vary in the• responsiveness to frames, depending on their own political perspectives, which we term “personal frames.” Indeed, we found that, absent a harmonious personal frame, issue framing hardly made a difference in peopleÕs opinions. This finding is important in terms of testing an oft-stated assumption of framing effects – framing is an interactive process between communicator and audience, as well as for illuminating the framing effect process.
The Effect of Cognitive Load on Perceived Reality • Michael A. Shapiro, Feng Shen and Laura Weisbein, Cornell University • Two models of judgments about perceived reality are compared. One claims people accept narratives as real and then consider whether a narrative might be unreal. A second maintains that when a message has many reality enhancing cues, anything that interferes with processing those cues makes the story seem less real. But, if a message has many cues the message is unreal, then failing to process those cues makes the story seem more real. This study suggests that limiting thought has different effects on different topics.
Deviance as The Nature of News: A Concept Explication and Its Implications for International News Coverage • Jae C. Shim, Wisconsin-Madison • This study investigates how Korean newspapers cover international events, especially those occurring in the First and Third worlds. It also examines whether Shoemaker, Chang, and Brendlinger’s deviant model of newsworthiness applied to the new industrialized countries like South Korea and tests these hypotheses: 1) The more deviant the international news is, the more Korean newspapers cover it prominently, 2) the more socially significant the international news is, the more Korean newspapers cover it prominently.
Advertising Appeals and Culture: The Difference Between Culturally Congruent and Culturally Deviant Individuals in Korea • Sung Wook Shim, Florida • The purpose of this study is to determine how culturally relevant stimuli presented within an advertisement may be perceived by those who are culturally congruent and those who are culturally deviant among young Korean consumers. As expected, Korean culturally congruent subjects had a higher mean effectiveness score than Korean culturally deviant subjects, when presented with culturally relevant ad stimuli (collectivistic appeal). However, collectivistic appeals did not score higher on effectiveness in the entire sample of Korean youth.
Playing on the Internet • Stanley T. Wearden, Joseph M. Harper and Deborah L. Davis, Kent State University • In 1999, Wearden and Harper revisited Stephenson’s Play Theory, trying to put it in context with Uses and Gratifications Theory and Media Systems Dependency Theory. They developed indicators to measure motivations for play on the Internet and on Television. This study follows up on that work, looking exclusively at Internet play. It uses the same indicators in a confirmatory factor analysis, which extracts the same dimensions of Internet play as found in the Wearden and Harper study, although in different order and with some slightly different loadings.
Political Discussion Networks and Civic Participation: Reexamining the Effects of Interpersonal and Mass Communication • So-Hyang Yoon, Hernando Rojas, Seungahn Nah, Dhavan V. Shah and Douglas M. McLeod, Wisconsin-Madison • This paper examines factors related to political participation in the context of the Communication Mediation Model. Specifically, the analysis uses the size and heterogeneity of interpersonal discussion networks, the frequency of political talk, community and value orientations, and public affairs media use to predict political participation. Hypotheses were tested using data collected from 657 respondents to a random digit dialing survey conducted in a Midwestern County with more than 400,000 inhabitants.
Consonance And Disparity; Intervention And Negativity: News Topic Dynamics And Effects Of Media Events • Juyan Zhang and Glen T. Cameron, Missouri-Columbia • Through a content analysis, the research examined consonance and disparity of news topics in major U.S. press coverage of China. The newspapers were found to share a similar pattern in selecting negative topics, but were disparate in balancing different topic categories. Their coverage of China also appeared to have been affected by three important events in Sino-U.S. relations. The research improved measurement of topic category dynamics from nominal and ordinal scales to ratio scale.
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