Electronic News 2015 Abstracts
“Erosion” of Television City Hall Reporting? Perceptions of Reporters on the 2014 Beat • Daniel Riffe, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; Jesse Abdenour, University of Oregon • Mail survey (N=112) of lead city government reporters at randomly selected stations in the 210 local DMAs replicates a 1997 study. The 2014 reporters had a more pessimistic view of station commitment to and valuing of city government reporting than in 1997 study. Among 2014 respondents, older reporters were more pessimistic while smaller market reporters were more optimistic, and a majority believes media commitment to covering city government remains generally strong.
A Survey of Social Media Policies in U.S. Television Newsrooms • Anthony Adornato, Ithaca College; Suzanne Lysak • The use of social media by journalists raises new ethical and professional dilemmas. As a result, news outlets are implementing policies addressing what is and what is not permitted on social media platforms. Through a nationwide survey of local television news directors, this study examines the prevalence of social media policies in TV newsrooms, the source of those policies, and how they are implemented. This study also investigates if and how the policies address emerging matters related to five specific areas: personal and professional social media activity of reporters, social media sourcing and content, audience complaints on social media, use of social media while reporting in the field, and ownership of social media accounts.
User-generated Content and Television News Stations • Eva Buchman; Rita Colistra; Kevin Duvall • With the technological growth our society has experienced over the last several years, user-generated content has become a popular way for television stations to gather news. This relationship was investigated through a national online survey of news directors/executive producers at television stations. This study explores news directors’ perceptions of user-generated content, and how those perceptions shape policies regarding this type of content. By understanding if, or how, television stations incorporate user-generated content into their newscasts, it will help to define and to understand how perceptions shape newsroom policies regarding this type of content’s use. This study investigates how user-generated content is integrated into a television broadcast as well as what types are most often used. This research also seeks to learn if there is a standard policy that is used by television stations, and how and why this type of content is integrated into television news broadcasts.
Medium Matters – Examining Television, Newspaper and Online News Definitions on Facebook and Twitter • Jennifer Cox • More news organizations have begun to emphasize social media as a means of distributing news. Television, newspaper, and online-only organizations have traditionally defined news differently from one another, yet little research has addressed whether those differences have carried over to their social media offerings. A content analysis of 1,232 Facebook and Twitter posts revealed differences among the three organization types, indicating those publications are continuing to differ their content from one another on social media.
Microblogging the news: Who sets the agenda? • Dmitri Diakov, Graduate Student; Valerie Barker, SDSU • A content analysis was conducted on a sample (N = 600) of reddit front-page posts; in an attempt to determine how frequently mainstream news media uses it as a source. Reddit’s unique voting structure and abundance of UGC and citizen journalism, makes it a great starting point for a glimpse at the reverse agenda setting concept. The findings indicate that there is indeed a relationship between reddit news and mainstream media news.
Media personality Projection in the Digital Age: Revisiting Parasocial Interaction and Local Television News • Ashley Gimbal, Arizona State University • “Parasocial interaction has been widely studied since its development in the 1950s, but little has been investigated in recent years. With the immense changes local television news has gone through in recent years, there is a vital importance to understanding the role of the on-camera persona (anchor) in relation to the impact they may have on viewers. Here, a telephone survey in the Phoenix Metropolitan area was conducted to measure parasocial interactions among local television news viewers. The parasocial framework developed by Rubin (1985) was used to measure viewer responses. Findings of the study indicate a decrease in measurable levels of parasocial interaction from previous studies, but also found strong correlation between news ratings and parasocial interaction.”
“Good B-Roll for the Scissor Makers Museum” • Desiree Hill, University of Oklahoma • In a time when anyone with a camera phone can become a video content creator, the concept of storytelling takes on a meaning that goes beyond the purview of professional video workers. This study is a textual analysis of how professional videographers in a Facebook group discuss the meaning of story. The videographers use a widely-viewed video as a common element for their discussion. Bormann’s (1972) symbolic convergence theory is used to understand how individuals create and share stories together. Common themes emerge from the video workers about what is required for video storytelling: character, feeling/emotion, and story construction. The storytellers reveal that story is not about the quality of the video, nor the quality of the topic at hand. It is what occurs by the hand of the storyteller.
Citizen Journalists’ Views on Traditional Notions of Journalism, Story Sourcing, and Relationship Building • Kirsten Johnson, Elizabethtown College; Burton St. John, Old Dominion University • This study examines whether citizen journalists adhere to traditional journalistic norms when reporting. A nationwide survey of U.S. citizen journalists showed they do consider norms such as objectivity, gatekeeping, and balance to be important. This study also found that citizen journalists who have previous traditional newsroom experience don’t adhere any more tightly to traditional journalistic norms when reporting, than those citizen journalists who have no prior traditional newsroom experience.
How Arousing Features Affect TV News Preferences and Recognition among Young Viewers • Mariska Kleemans; Paul Hendriks Vettehen; Rob Eisinga; Hans Beentjes; Luuk Janssen • This study experimentally investigates whether content (arousing versus non-arousing) and packaging (tabloid versus standard) of television news stories influence preferences for and recognition of these stories among young viewers, varying in educational level. Results showed that the use of arousing news features may help news producers to provide young viewers with news. However, this holds for content but not for packaging. In addition, arousing content improved recognition, but only among higher educated young viewers.
Polarized or parallel? Partisan news, cable news, and broadcast news agendas • Patrick Meirick, University of Oklahoma; Jill A. Edy, University of Oklahoma; Jacqueline Eckstein • Data on news content collected by Pew (2007-2012) reveals the issue agendas of broadcast news networks are indistinguishable from each other. While cable news agendas are more distinctive, their overlap with broadcast news agendas and each other is considerable, although cable news is less diverse and does not increase the television news agenda’s overall diversity. Results suggest political polarization occurs within a broadly shared issue agenda and thus is less fundamental than it might be.
Second Screen Outcomes: Social Capital Affinity and Flow as Knowledge Gain Predictors Among Multiscreening Audiences • Rebecca Nee, San Diego State University; Valerie Barker, SDSU; David Dozier • Complementary simultaneous media use occurs when television viewers use another screen to seek information or communicate about television content. This online survey (N = 645) assessed social capital affinity and flow as potential mediators in the relationships between social vs. information-seeking motives for second screen use and focused and incidental knowledge gain. Findings confirm that social capital affinity and flow act as mediators, with flow being the more potent of the two in this multiplatform context.
Local Television Newsgathering Models: Are Two Heads Better than One? • Simon Perez; Michael Cremedas • This research focuses on whether the trend toward using one person (MMJ) to report, shoot and edit the news versus the traditional method using a two-person crew affects the quality of television journalism. The study’s results suggest, in some instances, two-person crews are far superior to MMJs; in other areas, MMJs seem capable of approximating the quality of the work done by two-person crews.
Evaluating Issue-Oriented Video Journalism Techniques • Richard Schaefer, Univ. of New Mexico; Natalia Jácquez, Univ. of New Mexico • Measures of cognitive retention and evoked empathy were tested across three video journalism stories dealing with trend data conveyed by continuity, thematic montage, and infographic visual treatments. The infographic and montage techniques proved more effective for communicating the complex dimensions of the trend data, with infographics creating the most self-reported empathy in viewers. The results suggest that graphic visualizations, which are easily produced with digital programs, could best communicate complex social trends.
Staying Alive: T.V. News Facebook Posts, Perceived Credibility and Engagement Intent • Kate Keib, University of Georgia; Bartosz Wojdynski, University of Georgia • The public’s perceptions of media credibility have long been rooted in notions of trust, believability and expertise. With news coming at audiences not only through intentional browsing, but also via social media, and with the array of digital news sources growing ever broader, understanding how users make decisions about the credibility of media sources is relevant to both academic researchers and media organizations. This study examines how characteristics of Facebook posts promoting television news stories trigger heuristic cues previously shown to help online content consumers make decisions about credibility. A 2 (likes, shares and comments: low vs. high) x 2 (sponsorship: liked brand vs suggested post) x 3 (post source: peer vs. brand vs. journalist) online experiment was conducted to see how participants judged the credibility of Facebook posts with various manipulations of cues. Participants were US adults (mean age 35.7) who use Facebook. Results indicate that user’s actions do not always match the assumed actions traditional heuristic cues would predict. Results can be used by scholars studying credibility and by news brands and journalists to increase credibility and engage audiences on Facebook.
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