Electronic News 2013 Abstracts
Beyond “Death Panels”: Fox News’ Prime-Time Coverage of Health Care Reform in August 2009 • Mitchell Bard • Writers often offer the partisan bias of Fox News as its defining characteristic. But the lack of neutrality should not end the discussion. Does Fox News abide by the other traditional values of objective journalism? I answer this question by qualitatively examining Fox News prime-time programming in August 2009 related to health care reform. I find that the channel does not abide by journalistic values, instead working more closely within the traditional elements of propaganda.
Traversing the Twittersphere: Social Media Policies in International News Operations • Terry Bloom, University of Miami; Johanna Cleary, University of Florida; Michael North, University of Miami • This article examines the workflows, editorial guidelines, and managerial oversight of social media, particularly Twitter, at six different international news agencies. Through a series of in-depth interviews with news managers, social media producers and public relations officials at Al Jazeera, CNN, Globo, Telecinco, RTVE, and the U.S. government’s Office of Cuba Broadcasting, the authors examined how these policies may affect the framing of news stories.
Missing White Woman Syndrome: How Media Framing Affects Viewers’ Emotions • Lindsey Conlin, The University of Alabama; William R. Davie, Univ. of Louisiana at Lafayette • Missing White Woman Syndrome relates to the idea that stories about attractive, young white females who go missing are more prevalent in the news to the exclusion of similar stories about other demographics. This study employed an experiment to test whether visual framing elements affected the emotional responses of viewers. Results showed that participants did respond more strongly to some emotions in some situations, particularly to the emotions sympathy and pity, and generally supported the ideas of framing and framing effects.
Tweets from the Horse’s Mouth: Network television news framing of 2012 presidential candidates on Twitter • Denae D’Arcy, University of Tennessee; Dzmitry Yuran, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Ioana Coman • Voters rely on the media to provide information about presidential candidates. One platform from which voters now glean this information is social media. This study considers network television news coverage of the 2012 presidential election on Twitter. Content analysis of tweets from news networks examines patterns of tone and framing. This study found that news networks gave more positive coverage to Obama than Romney and used horserace framing most often when covering the presidential candidates.
Broadcast meteorology, clashing institutional logics, and the pursuit of legitimacy • Betsy Emmons; Wilson Lowrey • Due to technological innovations both within institutional journalism and interactive communication, broadcast meteorologists are at a crossroads in the routines of their professions. This study builds on institutional logics within organizational structures in interviews with broadcast meteorologists to learn how professional duties have shifted in this new technological domain.
Journalists’ Credibility Assessments and Use of Social Media in the News-gathering Process • Tamara Gillis, Elizabethtown College; Kirsten Johnson • A survey of 421 journalists identified key factors used when evaluating credibility of social media information sources. Results show journalists consider social media sites that contain accurate information, documented expertise of the writer, and evidence of objectivity to be credible. Journalists reported their use of social media is increasing. Three-quarters of those surveyed reported that they need to maintain a Twitter account connected to their job, however traditional means of news gathering are favored.
“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Reporting: Examining Broadcast Network News Coverage and Indexing of a National Debate over Time • Jacob Groshek; Lanier Holt, Indiana University • The maelstrom of coverage surrounding the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) debate provides an instructive setting in which to compare television news and analyze how tones change over time along the contours of official consensus. In advancing the concept of indexing further beyond actual conflict or the threat of war and honing in on a domestic but still military issue, we examine all U.S. network news coverage on this topic for the years 2010 and 2011 (effectively 1 year before and after DADT was repealed). Findings observed here suggest relatively high levels of similarity across networks and additional independence from military operations and official consensus than have been suggested in previous research. Importantly, though, findings observed here suggest that on certain contentious but sensitive topics, conventional conceptions of indexing may not hold.
Engaging the Online Audience: Web News Appearance, Nature and Value • Diane Guerrazzi, San Jose State University; August Grant, University of South Carolina; Jeffrey Wilkinson, Houston Baptist University • As news organizations increasingly rely on the Internet for disseminating content, understanding how best to package that content rises in importance. This study attempts to isolate the qualities of effective online news reports through an experiment that tests the impact of three different online news formats upon a set of dependent variables identified in prior research. Building upon previous research, three different presentations were created for two different news stories: a text-only version, a version with the same text plus subheads and photos, and a version with the same text plus subheads and video. Results included strong relationships among perceived appearance, perceived cognitive impact, and perceived value of the story. Time spent viewing a story was strongly correlated with recall, but there was no relationship between the format of the story and the subjective evaluations or recall. Some suggestions for packaging and presenting news in online formats are presented.
Taking the “Local” out of Local TV News: Implications for an informed public • Lee Hood, Loyola University Chicago • The meaning of “local” in local TV news is not as straightforward as one might imagine. “Local” newscasts in several markets around the country emanate from hundreds of miles away. This study examines the implications of such a delivery system, using a content analysis of more than 1,000 stories to compare outsourced and local newscasts to determine if differences exist on story topics and source types, particularly in the realm of public affairs news.
Televised Objectification of Africa’s Summer Olympic Athletes: Subtle or Blatant? • Yusuf Kalyango, Ohio University, Ohio, Athens, USA • This study examines how major television networks—NBC Universal Sports in the United States, BBC Sport in the United Kingdom, and Supersport in South Africa—are perceived to objectify African athletes in the Summer Olympic Games. It tests assumptions and initiates an intellectual discussion that some African athletes and African viewers perceive irregularities in the global television sports representation of African athletes during the Summer Olympics. The analysis is based on coverage of the 2008 and 2012 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China and London, United Kingdom, respectively, as gleaned from semi-structured in-depth interviews with African athletes, trainers, and viewers in six African countries as well as the United Kingdom and the United States who closely watched the Olympic coverage during the past two Summer Olympic Games.
Restoring Sanity Through Comic Relief: Parody Television Viewers and Political Outlook • Barbara Kaye, University of Tennessee – Knoxville; Tom Johnson • The Daily Show and The Colbert Report regale viewers with satirical, witty, and humorous exposes` of the political world and news coverage. But they have also been criticized for creating cynicism and political disengagement. This study found parody news viewers are more politically knowledgeable, interested, active, and self-efficacious than viewers of CNN, Fox News Channel, MSNBC, or broadcast television news. Additionally, reliance on parody news shows does not lead to polarization or government distrust.
Motives for News Consumption and Patterns of Digital Media Use: Their Differential Relationships among Internet Users • Shin Haeng Lee • To examine online news consumers’ activity and its implications, this study analyzes data collected by the 2010 Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project. The findings demonstrate the relationship of online news consumers’ civic motive to their use of participatory digital media tools whereas their social and entertainment motives are associated with increased acquisition of online news. The analysis also reveals different patterns in that relationship, considering news consumers’ style of digital feature use: the relationship is contingent on the frequency of Internet use. Lastly, this paper suggests online news consumers’ divergent types of digital citizenship.
How People Read Controversial News: Findings from an Eyetracking Study Exploring the Effects of Reader Bias • Soo-Kwang Oh • This exploratory study utilizes eyetracking to examine how an individual’s bias about news topics influences their news reading behavior. As previous studies do not discuss behavioral responses as a result of perceived bias, this study investigated the influence of perceived bias on reading patterns by measuring 1) eye movements and 2) pupil size when reading online news articles containing perspectives they agree or disagree with. Findings suggest consistent trends, which call for further studies.
Autonomy and perception of work quality drive job satisfaction of TV news workers • Scott Reinardy, University of Kansas • Self-determination theory tells us that intrinsic and extrinsic motivations influence our goal-oriented behavior and determine individual satisfaction. Self-determination issues such as deadlines, breaking news, multiple-screen obligations, competition and the desire to produce quality journalism confront TV news workers each day. In this study of nearly 900 TV news workers, broadcasters who have the freedom and organizational support to conduct their work have managed to find a great deal of job satisfaction. They also say they are producing a high quality of journalism. Of the sample, 19% (n = 155) said they intended to leave broadcast journalism within five years. Those intending to leave demonstrated significantly lower levels of job satisfaction, organizational support, autonomy and work quality. The primary reasons for leaving were salary, family issues and concerns about quality journalism.
Interactive Quizzes on News Websites • Natalie Stroud; Josh Scacco; Ashley Muddiman • The use of interactive features on news websites has become increasingly popular. Drawing from a “mix-of-attributes” approach (Eveland, 2003) and literature on survey research, we propose that a multiple-choice quiz will increase engagement compared to an open-ended quiz because (a) the open-ended quiz is more interactive, (b) an open-ended quiz using a slider poll is more novel, and (c) open-ended questions require more processing time to reach a conclusion. We partner with a local news station to show that a mix of open- and closed-ended polls can increase use of the interactive features and time-on-page. Methodological and practical implications are discussed.
The Effects of “Social Watching” the 2012 Presidential Debates • Esther Thorson, University of Missouri; Joshua Hawthorne, University of Missouri; Alecia Swasy; Mitchell McKinney, University of Missouri • This paper examines the impact of watching the debates with others—whether those others are present in person or accessed through Facebook or Twitter. Theory about the impact of debate content suggests that viewers may experience negative emotions as “their” candidate is attacked, and may experience great uncertainty about issues at the same time. These negative response may occur simultaneously with the excitement of knowing one is sharing an experience of importance with millions of others. These possibilities suggest that “social watching,” whether in person or mediated, will produce a more positive response to the debate (more enjoyment, attention, interest) as well as a higher likelihood of more debates being watching and watched longer. These predictions are strongly supported with a sample of American adults in two different parts of the country.
Broadcasting’s New Scarcity Principle: a Case Study in Radio Newsroom Resource Allocation • Christopher Terry, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee • This case study examines the FCC’s use of the benefits of economy of scale as a rationale to justify many mergers of broadcast radio outlets after the implementation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. After exploring several licensing and transfer decisions where the FCC’s rationale for approving a merger relied on the premise that consolidating stations into common ownerships would allow resources to be dedicated to content production, the article reports the observations of the resources made available to a radio news operation on four presidential election over a twelve year period. The results of this participatory observation indicate that the longer a station was owned and operated by a consolidated media company, the internal news operation received less resources, produced less local news content, and began re-using material produced for other media outlets. These findings demonstrate that the FCC’s use of economy of scale as a justification for approving media mergers was a flawed policy.
Political Advertising on Social Media in the 2012 Presidential Election: Exploring the Perceptual and Behavioral Components of the Third-person Effect • Ran Wei, University of South Carolina; Guy Golan, Syracuse University • This exploratory study examines the perceived effects of political ads that appeared on social media in the 2012 presidential campaign from a third-person effect framework. Results of a survey using a probability sample of 496 college students indicated that they tend to believe that political ads on social media have a greater influence on others than on themselves. However, the more desirable they viewed such ads, the more they admitted the ads to having influenced them. Finally, third-person perception of political ads on social media was found to be a positive predictor of engagement in promotional social media behavior after the influences of demographics, social media use, and political attitudes were taken into consideration.
Subsidizing Disaster Coverage in the Digital Age: An Exploration of Hurricane Sandy • Shelley Wigley, University of Texas at Arlington; Maria Fontenot, University of Tennessee-Knoxville; Ioana Coman • This study explored reporters’ use of user generated content to subsidize coverage of Hurricane Sandy. Sources cited in articles from local and national news websites were analyzed. Results revealed nearly 7% of sources came from UGC (or social media sites), that cable stations used more UGC as sources than network stations, and that reporters sourced content from Twitter significantly more often than content from other social media sources, such as Facebook and YouTube.
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