Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror. Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2010. 249 pp.

The cover art of Pop Culture Goes to War: Enlisting and Resisting Militarism in the War on Terror might lead the reader to believe that the book will examine American pop culture for military influences. Instead, the book offers a subjective look into U.S. domestic and foreign policy and the motivation behind America’s wars. 

Authors Geoff Martin and Erin Steuter are both professors at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick, Canada. Together, they argue that the persistent influence of militarism in the United States is related to decades of popular culture that reinforces domestic and foreign policy. Having staked out their argument in the introduction, you would expect next to read example after example of pop culture mimicking militarism. Oddly, the initial chapter focuses on the costs and benefits of war and how the warchests of many in Congress are filled by industries from outside of their districts. Pop culture takes a back seat to discussions of U.S. foreign policy that chooses military solutions over political solutions to solve the world’s problems.

In chapter 2, “The Call to Arms: Propaganda Persuades the Public to Go to War,” the authors state that average Americans are reluctant to go to war. They go on to argue that the government uses persuasion to win public support for aggressive foreign policy. Journalists are portrayed as often too caught up in the frenzy of the run-up to war to render objective reporting. Taking a page out of history, the authors write, “The Spanish-American War of 1898 was famously the war that made William Randolph Hearst’s active promotion of war in his newspapers the subject of critique and mockery from a generation of ‘muck-raking’ journalists.”

Readers must wait to page 52 for the first real evidence and discussion of pop culture’s relationship to war, as the authors cite instances of pop culture supporting World War I and World War II and modern conflicts. For example, in World War I, more than 200 children’s books were published on the topic of youths helping to defeat the Central Powers. During World War II, the Office of War Information, created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, helped explain and promote government efforts to win the war through everything from disseminating information to the public to outright propaganda.

Martin and Steuter point out that pop culture was enlisted to help fight the Cold War as well, and that Hollywood was conspicuously complicit. Tinseltown produced a long list of war movies such as I Married a Communist (1949), Big Jim McClain (1952), The Green Berets (1968), and many more, the latter two films starring that icon of American patriotism John Wayne. According to the authors, early anti-Communist films were produced with haste as Hollywood caved in to pressure from government leaders such as Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

But every movement has a counter-movement, and the backlash against pro-war films came in the form of movies such as The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Later, in reaction to Vietnam, anti-war films such as The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), and Platoon (1986) drew critical acclaim and won at the box office. Full Metal Jacket (1987), directed by Stanley Kubrick, “all but abandoned the ‘good war’ script and instead explored the dark consequences of war on the perpetrators and their enemies,” according to Martin and Steuter.

Chapter 3, titled, “Toying with War,” delves into the toy industry’s promotion of militarism from plastic molded cowboys and Indians to BB guns. Even Barbie® was called to duty, as the Pentagon collaborated with the Mattel Corporation to ensure that women in the military were properly represented on store shelves.

Even the Women in Military Service for America Memorial Foundation, which oversees the memorial for servicewomen at Arlington National Cemetery, endorsed combat Barbie® on its website: “Criticized for excessive emphasis on clothing, exaggerated physical attributes, and empty-headedness, Barbie® has, nonetheless, served as a leader in career paths for young women…. In 1989, Barbie® joined the Army; in 1990, the Air Force. A year later, she joined the Navy and then, in 1992, the Marines.”

Unfortunately, Pop Culture Goes to War only briefly touches on the influence of militarism on music, television, video games, fashion, and even bumper stickers. From the perspective of these Canadian authors, it would appear that militarism now permeates the American lifestyle. But all is not lost, say Martin and Steuter. The resistance movement has creative tools at its disposal in the form of culture jammers and counter-propaganda that are effective counterweights to militarism. That said, Pop Culture Goes to War is more about U.S. domestic and foreign policy than what the title of the book implies.

NAPOLEON BYARS
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. Napoli, Philip M. (2011). New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 240.

Philip M. Napoli provides a critical cultural examination of the evolution of the concept of audience, beginning with its twentieth-century definition by media theorists and media practitioners. Persons within media industries, academia, and the consumer have redefined the conceptualization of audience, given the onset of the Internet in the twenty-first century. Napoli’s ideas help to shed light on the conceptualization of “audience” for the future. Scholars of journalism, mass communication, and cultural studies (as well as business) will find useful information in Napoli’s book, which provides new entrees into understanding how socially constructed definitions of audience are changing. 

Audience Evolution, according to Napoli, grew out of ideas that were fermented while writing his award-winning book, Audience Economics (2003). He states that his new book “is primarily concerned with the institutionalized audience, that is, the audience as socially constructed by media industries, advertisers, and associated audience measurement firms” (p. 3). Napoli addresses “…how these social constructions of media audiences change over time, of how technological and institutional forces can… [affect] such change, and how such changes are negotiated and resisted by the stakeholders involved in attracting and monetizing media audiences” (p. 3). Napoli raises ideas about the sociocultural implications of these changes that can serve to stimulate discussion and debate in classrooms and possibly lead to further research by media scholars.

Following from the proposition that media are evolving as a result of technological change, Napoli posits that the conceptualization of audience is evolving as a consequence of “the technological changes that are transforming how, when, and where audiences consume media,” and that two key phenomena are produced: (1) media and audience fragmentation, and (2) audience autonomy (pp. 4-5). These two phenomena, according to Napoli, are key to the fading away of the “mass” audience ideal and the evolution of audience conceptualization based on “long tail” scenarios, “in which audience attention is clustered around a select few content options, followed by a long tail, in which the remaining multitude of content options each attract very small audiences” (p. 5). The cumulative number of smaller audiences in the long tail eventually may outnumber the size of the aggregate “hits” or audience at the head. Furthermore, Napoli makes a case that media stakeholder resistance and negotiation of the latter phenomena lead to an evolving social construction of “audience.”

Media stakeholders’ reactions (resistance and negotiation) to the dynamics of audience evolution are the subject of a critical cultural analysis study by Napoli and the basis for Audience Evolution. In conducting the study, Napoli reports that he engaged in participant observation during media and advertising conferences and symposia, conducted informal interviews, and read and dissected the primary and secondary literature of those in the field of media and advertising.  His study’s findings and his reflections are reported in the five chapters of Audience Evolution (“Contextualizing Audience Evolution,” “Transformation of Media Consumption,” “The Transformation of Audience Information Systems,” “Contesting Audiences,” and “The Implications of Audience Evolution”). Sixty-two pages of author notes and bibliographical references are provided in the book.

In chapter 1, “Contextualizing Audience Evolution,” Napoli gives a brief historical and theoretical overview of the evolution of media and the coinciding understanding of audience by modern media industries. Napoli’s examination of media “refers to the idea that media industry sectors essentially evolve over time in response to changing environmental conditions, these may be technological, economic, cultural, or regulatory” (p. 25). Napoli reviews the context of media evolution and the evolution of audience, by examining major changes in media from its origins as an intuitive industry to one that transitioned to use rationalization in its operations, beginning in the 1930s with Paul Lazarsfeld and others, and later to media changes brought about with the introduction of the Internet. A key research presupposition that Napoli points out in this chapter, and comes back to throughout the book, is that “both improvements in the availability of analytical tools and technological changes that undermined the status quo were… [and are still]…necessary conditions for the process of media evolution to take place” (p. 28).

In chapter 2 of Audience Evolution, “Transformation of Media Consumption,” Napoli underscores the rise of media fragmentation and audience autonomy that are a result of technological changes. Media fragmentation, Napoli outlines, stems from several factors including new delivery platforms, disaggregation of content and increased bandwidth, all of   which increase consumer choice. In order for media content providers to remain viable in the fragmented media environment and with limited production budgets, media producers have turned to recycling or “repurposing” media content and using various forms of “user-generated” content (pp. 68-69).

Audience autonomy, made possible largely as a result of technological change, creates manifest changes in the dynamics of media production and consumption. Terms such as “prosumers” and “produages” have been coined to reflect the evolving role of media content users’ as both consumers and producers (p. 79). As Napoli, explains,

Audience autonomy refers to the extent to which the contemporary media environment provides audiences with unprecedented levels of control over not only what media they consume, but also when, where, and how they consume it; and also, increasingly, the extent to which audiences have the power to be more than mere media consumers, becoming contributors to the media environment as well. (p. 55)

Chapter 2 describes the transformation of media consumption in detail and with concrete examples, posing questions along the way, as Napoli does throughout the book, for scholars and practitioners to ponder. At one point in chapter 2, Napoli states, “…the objective here is less to document the ways in which the dynamics of media consumption have changed than it is to explore what these changing dynamics mean for how media industries understand their audiences” (p. 79). One critical question asked is, “How do these changing dynamics of media consumption effect what audiences mean to content producers and distributors, advertisers, and media buyers?” (p. 54).

Chapter 3, “The Transformation of Audience Information Systems,” discusses the major technologies that have given rise to greater audience autonomy while at the same time opening possibilities for media providers to negotiate with audiences and to use audience behaviors and actions to their advantage. Audience use of the Internet, in particular web 2.0, is a prime area utilized by media producers and providers to track audience “digital footprints” through various means. According to Napoli, “These interactive infrastructures facilitate the flow of information not only from content providers to audience members, but also from audience members to content providers (typically referred to as ‘return path data’)” (p. 88). Audience behaviors on the Internet, such as site visits, recommendations, and ratings can be collected on an individual and group basis. Chapter 3 analyzes media industries’ emergent understanding and use of “audience engagement” data. As Napoli points out, “The rise of user-generated content therefore has a significance that extends beyond the fact that audiences are now empowered to produce and distribute content, and to operate alongside traditional media organizations. These organizations can unobtrusively learn more about the tastes, preferences and interests of their audiences” (p. 94). The latter has tremendous impact on a new “market information regime” (p. 121).

Chapter 4, “Contesting Audiences,” covers how audience interactions currently are either fostered or impeded by media producers. The chapter “demonstrates that dominant conceptualizations of audiences are, in fact, often negotiated outcomes between companies, audience measurement firms, and even policymakers and public interest organizations” (p. 118). Napoli points out Hollywood studios’ initial reaction to the VCR and the studios’ efforts to have VCRs banned is a type of response that media all too frequently have had toward what they perceive as potential threats to the status quo. Chapter 4 provides a close analysis of contesting perspectives on a new audience information system, the introduction of the DVR, and the transition to the C3 rating system.

In chapter 5, “The Implications of Audience Evolution,” Napoli proposes a “post-exposure marketplace.” Napoli suggests that the outdated social constructions of audience based on media content exposure will be replaced with an “evolving institutionalized media audience,” a more holistic conceptualization of audience based on media users’ exposure, interest, appreciation, engagement, and response to media content. He briefly discusses how this new conceptualization of audience will interplay with political economy, public policy, and media scholarship. Certainly scholars will find fertile ground in the ideas and questions raised in Audience Evolution on which to base further research.

GRACE JACKSON-BROWN
Missouri State University

The Media Economy. Albarran, Alan B. (2010). New York: Routledge. pp. 201.

With everyone looking for the business model that puts the economy back in media economy, books with that title raise great hope. The difficulty in writing a book about the media economy is that the ecosystem is so fluid that any attempt to describe it is in danger of becoming a history and not a model for the future. 

Alan B. Albarran’s The Media Economy is a good description of how macroeconomic principles can be used to understand and analyze media firms and industries. It provides a framework to standardize the analysis of a media company in the way that other firms are analyzed. The book provides a discussion of economic theories and principles and applies them to media organizations. However, it is more of a basic economics text than it is a discussion of the uniqueness of a media economy.

Albarran defines media economy as “the study of how media firms and industries function across different levels of activity (e.g., globalization, regulation, technology, and social ASPECTS) through the use of theories, concepts, and principles drawn from macroeconomic and microeconomic perspectives” (p. 3). This definition confines the analysis to the traditional media industries that have been disrupted by the entrepreneurial economy that results when everyone can be a publisher.

A key part of understanding the media economy is making sense of what is disrupting it and reshaping it. This book does not provide that analysis. The economy of media firms has been thoroughly disrupted by those firms’ decisions to offer their content free online and by the fact that an army of individuals also provides free content. How do we understand and analyze a media economy where individuals in their apartments around the world are disrupting it by creating new free products? What does this mean for the bottom line of the NBC’s or Verizon’s or newspapers of the world?

The “Issue of Free” receives about one page of discussion in this book. The issue of free is simply too powerful and too complex for that cursory treatment. Similarly, the operation of the media economy as part of the distributed social networking economy must be discussed if one is to understand the media economy in the entire media ecosystem.

The book is organized well for teaching about macro influences on media firms. The author is a professor of radio, television, and film, and the director of the Center for Spanish Language Media at the University of North Texas, as well as the former editor of the Journal of Media Economics and the International Journal for Media Management. Albarran discusses key economic concepts in chapters devoted to markets, technology, regulation, finance, labor, and multi-platform distribution. This book lays a useful foundation for those who want to understand or create business models that build upon a knowledge of what has and what has not worked for media firms.

Other issues affecting our understanding of the media economy are not just those in the media field. Each week, new technologies and new products find uses as communication tools.  Facebook, Twitter, or FourSquare were designed as tools for social networking. Additionally, however, they are being used as tools to spread news and information. They have become an essential part of the media economy—not only because of their large individual valuations, but also because of how they continue to disrupt the revenue streams of the firms that are the main unit of analysis of this book. Studying the media economy means we also need to study the technology economy.

As innovators keep disrupting and changing the way we communicate, the successful firms become those that can ingest these disruptions without killing them. Innovations need a specific culture in which to thrive, and often that culture is quite different from the one that maintains the established media firm. How media organizations adapt to change and create a culture that supports change is a key element of their survival. If we want to know what media organizations will be around in five to ten years, because they had a business model that survived disruption, we need to look at those organizations that have created a culture that supports and encourages constant change.

GARY KEBBEL
University of Nebraska-Lincoln

The October 2011 issue of the Journal of Communication Inquiry (JCI) marks the tenth anniversary of Hardt and Negri’s groundbreaking book Empire (2000) with a special theme issue devoted to its impact on critical communication studies.

The issue, guest edited by Jack Z. Bratich of Rutgers University, contains 19 essays from internationally recognized academics in communication, cultural, and media studies.

The focus of this issue resonates with the OWS (Occupy Wall Street) movement, as Hardt and Negri’s books (especially Empire) are believed to have predicted and helped shape the current wave of radicalism.

A key essay, “Corruption and Empire: Notes on Wisconsin” by M.R. Greene-May, directly links the concept of “corruption” from Hardt and Negri’s works to street action and thus would be useful in understanding current social activism.

Examining the (eventually failed) class struggle in Wisconsin that began with Gov. Scott Walker’s union-busting legislation earlier this year, Greene-May argues how framing the solution to the problem of union busting as an electoral solution (through the ballot box strategy of recall and referendums) threatens the possibility of compositional and autonomous politics in class struggle. By demonstrating how party politics can politically capture and exploit class composition, as in the case of Wisconsin, Greene-May asserts that events of class struggle should “create their own conditions of possibility unfolding in their own time” rather than being defined and controlled by “the terms of the debate” by others. This claim parallels Hardt and Negri’s argument of how a successful radical movement should be like a “swarm:” that despite being decentralized, spontaneous, and free-flowing, a radical movement can self-organize, self-regulate, and self-govern.

We encourage those who are interested in seeing how Hardt and Negri’s works connect to current events to check out our entire October 2011 special theme issue.  The Greene-May essay abstract can be accessed at: http://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/recent. (Full text download is available to Sage Journals Online subscribers.)

Contacts: M. R. Greene-May (essay), North Carolina State University, mrmaygreene@gmail.com, Jack Z. Bratich (guest editor), Rutgers University, jbratich@rutgers.edu, Hye-Jin Lee (managing editor, JCI), University of Iowa, hye-jin-lee@uiowa.edu

• Download the feature article “Corruption and Empire: Notes on Wisconsin” (PDF) by M. R. Greene-May
• Download the abstract: http://jci.sagepub.com/content/early/recent (Full text download is available to Sage Journals Online subscribers.)

While the use of anonymous online forums is growing among newspapers, a majority of reporters say the online comments do not promote civil thoughtful discussion, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal. Researcher Arthur Santana concluded that many reporters are troubled by the anonymous content and express dismay over their newspaper’s “providing a forum for anonymous discussion, where emotions run high and mudslinging is the norm.”

According to Santana, although most newspapers have online forums, almost half of reporters “never” respond to readers’ comments on their own stories. Some 41.7 percent of reporters in Santana’s research said that they have not changed their approach to reporting based on reader comments.

In fact, 23.1 percent of reporters adapted their reporting practices to include more sources, and 22.9 percent of reporters changed their practices to include more facts. Hence, the online forum has become a medium for feedback to journalists.

Citizen comments also “have spurred reporters to re-examine the newsworthiness of a topic and have also helped them think of new and different stories to tell while nudging them toward new and different ways to tell them,” according to Santana, a doctoral student in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Oregon.

The study was published in the summer 2011 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt Cell: (901) 628-2553 e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

• Download “Online Readers’ Comments Represent New Opinion Pipeline” by Arthur D. Santana

At the 2011 White House Correspondents’ Dinner, Seth Meyers poked fun at the notion that bloggers take stories from traditional news media sources. He was giving the audience a mock rundown of the after-parties when he hit on something that research has confirmed.

Meyers joked, “The New York Times party used to be free, but tonight there’s a cover, so like everyone else I’ll probably just go to the Huffington Post party. And the Huffington Post party is asking people to go to other parties first and just steal food and drinks and bring it from there.”

The truth in Meyers’ joke is that blogs do tend to use stories from other traditional media outlets, like The New York Times. And the newspaper used most, according to a study published recently in Newspaper Research Journal is The Washington Post.

Marcus Messner, an assistant professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, and Bruce Garrison, a professor at the University of Miami, studied the relationship between political bloggers and elite traditional news media and found both bloggers and elite media rely on each other to some degree rather than on original reporting. While traditional news media are the dominant sources for bloggers, blogs compete with many other sources in shaping traditional news media agendas.

The top-ten rankings for most cited media by blogs in the findings included:

1. 1. The Washington Post
2. 2. CNN
3. 3. NBC News
4. 4. The New York Times
5. 5. ABC News
6. 6. Fox News
7. 7. Los Angeles Times
8. 8. USA Today
9. 9. CBS News
10. 10. Christian Science Monitor

The findings are limited to the popular blogs used in the study. The liberal filter blogs were DailyKos, Talking Points Memo, Eschanton, Crooks and Liars, and Think Progress. The conservative filter blogs were Instapundit, Michelle Malkin, Little Green Footballs, Powerline, and Quarters.

The study was published in the summer 2011 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt Cell: (901) 628-2553 e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

• Download “Study Shows Some Blogs Affect Traditional News Media Agendas” by Marcus Messner and Bruce Garrison

Research from the Newspaper Research Journal suggests that big city local news is interesting to people hundreds and even thousands of miles away.

In fact, the Los Angeles-based Daily News website attracts readers far away than within Los Angeles.

For readers of the online version of the Daily News, the reader’s average distance from Los Angeles was 422.5 miles.

The research conducted by Hsiang Iris Chyi, an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, included reader surveys at 28 local newspapers that suggest newspapers based in locales with larger populations, as well as those with higher print circulations, tend to have a more geographically dispersed online readership.

Local news stories from Los Angeles top the list, which included a Staten Island paper, in a geographic ranking of reach.

The top-10 list for geographic reach of newspapers’ websites included:

1. Los Angeles – DailyNews.com
2. Denver – DenverPost.com
3. Denver – RockyMountainNews.com
4. Pocatello – JournalNet.com
5. Waterloo – WCFCourier.com
6. St. Paul – TwinCities.com
7. Erie – GoErie.com
8. El Paso – ElPasoTimes.com
9. Whittier – WhittierDailyNews.com
10. Dubuque – THOnline.com

The study was published in the summer 2011 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt Cell: (901) 628-2553 e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

• Download “Online Readers Geographically More Dispersed Than Print Readers” by Hsiang Iris Chyi

By  Steve Myers on Poynter, Aug. 9, 2011 – Newspaper ombudsmen and media critics complain often about excessiveand unnecessary use of anonymous sources, and yet the press uses them less frequently now than in the so-called “golden age” of journalism.

The use of unnamed sources peaked in the 1970s in the wake of Watergate. By 2008 it had dropped to the same relative frequency as in 1958, according to a paper to be presented at AEJMC this week.

“Going into this, I really did think that I was going to find that anonymous sourcing was used more than in the past,” said Prof. Matt J. Duffy, a professor at Zayed University in Abu Dhabi who worked on the study with Prof. Ann E. Williams of Georgia State University.

The other key findings:

• Nowadays journalists almost always describe anonymous sources in some way rather than simply calling them “reliable sources.” In 1958, 34 percent of stories with unnamed sources used such vague language; that dropped to under 3 percent in 2008.
• Reporters are doing a better job of explaining why they grant anonymity. In 2008, about a quarter of stories offered some explanation. While Duffy said that’s still low, through 1998 such explanations were provided in fewer than 10 percent of stories.
• Journalists haven’t changed their practice of independently verifying all information from anonymous sources. They do so in most cases, but not all.

By Robert Niles from Online Journalism Review, Aug. 23 – Why should journalists care about the scientific method? I suggested in my post last week that journalism students should take a lab science class to learn about the scientific method. Here’s why I think that’s so important to journalists today.

The scientific method provides a standard procedure through which scientists gather, test and share information. Obviously, part of that should sound familiar because gathering and sharing information is what journalists do, too.

But there are substantial differences between the scientific method and journalism reporting. And while I believe that those differences did not affect journalism’s viability when newspapers had an information monopoly in their communities, our lack of standards for testing information is hurting us in today’s more competitive information market.

Before I go any further, let’s introduce the scientific method, for those readers who aren’t familiar with it. Here’s a good overview of the scientific method:

1. Find a topic or question worth exploring

2. Do some initial, background research to learn about your topic or question. Read what’s been written before.

3. Come up with a hypothesis. This is your best guess of what happened/is happening/will happen, based upon what you already know.

4. Test your hypothesis. You do this by collecting data, either through controlled experimentation or observation.

5. Look at and analyze your data.

6. Based on your analysis, either accept or reject your hypothesis.

7. Publish your information, including all relevant details on how you collected and analyzed your data.

Read the full article

The Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism has released their 2010 News Coverage Index raw data. Their findings can be used by scholars for their research by visiting the PEJ website: http://www.journalism.org/by_the_numbers/datasets.

A press release from PEJ says:

The News Coverage Index (NCI)—The NCI captures and analyzes some 50 news outlets in real time to determine what is being covered and what is not in the U.S. news media. The NCI launched in January 2007 and has run continuously since. Weekly findings are released every Tuesday in a concise narrative that charts the top stories of the week, trajectory of the coverage and differences among media sectors. In all, the 2010 NCI sample includes 52 outlets, every Monday through Sunday. The key variables include source, story date, big story, broad story topic, placement, format, geographic focus, story word count, duration of broadcast story and lead newsmaker. The outlets studied come from print, network TV, cable, online, and radio. They include evening and morning network news, several hours of daytime and prime time cable news each day, newspapers from around the country, the top online news sites, and radio, including headlines, long form programs and talk.

To view the data, visit the PEJ website or learn more about it from the PEJ press release.

By Joshua Benton on Nieman Journalism Lab, July 18 – Pew’s Project for Excellence in Journalism is out with a new study this morning that looks at the new universe of nonprofit journalism — and tries to get beyond the ProPublicas of the world to see who else is producing journalism under the legal structure of a 501(c)3 exemption. After all, remember, “nonprofit” signals a tax status, not a belief system or a commitment to any particular ideals, journalistic or otherwise.

The study found more than a little ideology lurking under that IRS umbrella. Of the 46 sites examined — 39 nonprofit and 7 commercial as a control — around half “produced news coverage that was clearly ideological in nature,” the researchers report.

Read full article

The white paper, Rethinking Public Media: More Local, More Inclusive, More Interactive, is available as a free download from the Aspen Institute website.

The paper was written by Barbara Cochran. A press release for the paper says:

[This paper] addresses the context in which public media operate and the strategic openings created by broadband expansion. It recommends building on existing models of innovation, making a virtue of the decentralized structure of public broadcasting and redefining what is included under the umbrella of public service media”

Download the white paper here

The Pew Research Center recently released a report on how online users interact with the news, where they go to get it, why they leave sites and other information on their habits.

You can read an article about it on Pew’s website here – http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/navigating_news_online

Or look at some of the details of the report here – http://www.journalism.org/analysis_report/how_users_interact_news

Editor & Publisher, Mark Fitzgerald | [...] The study found that just 56% Internet users ranked newspapers as important or very important sources of information for them, down from 60% in 2008 — and below the Internet (78%) and television (68%).

And while newspapers also regard themselves as being in the entertainment business, just 29% of users consider them as important sources of entertainment, down from 32% two years ago, and last among principal media.

[...]

If their newspaper dropped its print edition, Internet users say, 59% said they would read the online edition of the  publication while just 37% said they would start reading another print newspaper.

More than a fifth of respondents said they would not miss the printed newspaper.

“The downward spiral in print newspaper circulation no doubt will be accelerated by advances in online delivery of news content through e-readers or other handheld electronic devices,” Jeffrey I. Cole, director of  the [USC Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism's] Center for the Digital Future, said in a statement. “After years of aborted attempts, these advances finally appear to be practical and  affordable methods of providing electronic news content to readers.  If so, what will that mean for the future of the traditional print newspaper?”… MORE

As U.S. newspaper publishers increasingly talk of building paywalls around their online content to ward off free-riders cannibalizing their print product, new research suggests that such efforts may backfire because most local users of local newspaper sites already are paying customers—by paying for the print edition.

A study published in the latest issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly found that two-thirds of visitors to local newspaper websites are “hybrid” readers—that is, they regularly read the print edition (and most of them pay for it) as well as the online version—in contrast to the remaining one-third of “online-only” readers.

Across a range of measures, hybrid readers were found to be more active on the local newspaper site (i.e., using it to search for a variety of news and classified ads information) and also more satisfied with the site’s offerings. These findings run counter to conventional wisdom that most online readers are avoiding the paid print newspaper because they can get the same information online for free, said the team of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin, led by Dr. Iris Chyi, an assistant professor in the School of Journalism.

“Thus, an online subscription or micropayment model would entail asking many local users to pay twice—or, if print subscribers are granted free access, it would mean publishers are chasing a minority of online-only users in the local market,” the authors concluded. “Moreover, these online-only local users are less active and are not more satisfied with the local newspaper site, making a pay model all the more challenging. In essence, in their pursuit of monetizing online content, publishers may very well end up alienating local users (hybrid as well as online-only).” Long-distance users, on the other hand, constitute a different market segment, which is examined in a different study as part of the overall research project (to be published in the International Journal on Media Management).

These findings were based on an analysis of data originally gathered by a newspaper research firm that conducted online reader surveys on 28 local newspaper websites around the United States from October 2007 to June 2008. Responses from 18,484 survey respondents were analyzed in the study.

Chyi and her co-authors—Mengchieh Jacie Yang, Seth Lewis, and Nan Zheng (see http://www.newmediaresearch.org/merg/)—have conducted a number of studies using the media economics perspective to challenge misperceptions regarding the economic nature of online news. Chyi’s research can be found at http://www.newmediaresearch.org.

CONTACT: Dr. H. Iris Chyi, assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin; chyi@mail.utexas.edu; http://www.newmediaresearch.org/

• Download “Use of and Satisfaction with Newspaper Sites in the Local Market: Exploring Differences between Hybrid and Online-only Users” by Hisang Iris Chyi, Mengchieh Jacie Yang, Seth C. Lewis, and Nan Zheng

Editorials and op-ed pages framed the debate over medical marijuana differently, using societal, legal and therapeutic frames to look at this highly-contested issue, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

Researcher Guy Golan conducted a content analysis of more than 100 editorial and op-ed articles and found that editorials tended to frame medical marijuana in terms of the social, political and legal implications of legalized medicinal marijuana, while op-ed pieces tended to look only at the medical implications of the debate.

Golan also found that the articles were missing opinions from prominent scientists and religious figures, as most of the articles were written by or included information from newspaper editors, academics or advocacy groups. While these results are consistent with past studies, this led to concern about the lack of balance in framing controversial public issues in newspaper editorials and op-ed pieces.

Golan is an assistant professor in the department of communication at Seton Hall University.

The study was published in the summer 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt Cell: (901) 628-2553 e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.

• Download “Editorials, Op-ed Columns Frame Medical Marijuana Debate” by Guy J. Golan

Former President George W. Bush had little influence over the media and public opinion in regard to stem cell research, according to a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal.

Researchers Shahira Fahmy, Wayne Wanta and Jeannine E. Relly found that despite repeated presidential criticism of stem cell research, most of the 200 newspaper articles they examined were positive. The study examines coverage from 2004 to 2006, before Bush’s veto of a bill that would have ended federal restrictions on stem cell research funding.

While Bush’s main argument against stem cell research was based on ethical issues, only 5.5 percent of articles focused on ethical concerns regarding stem cell research.

The authors concluded that the more Bush spoke out against stem cell research, the more sources were quoted in support of the issue in an attempt by news media to report both sides. Also, the more coverage of the issue, the more informed individuals became on the issue and more information resulted in more support for stem cell research.

Fahmy is an associate professor and Relly is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Arizona. Wanta is the Welch-Bridgewater Chair in sports journalism in the School of Journalism and Broadcasting at Oklahoma State University.

The study was published in the summer 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt Cell: (901) 628-2553 e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or
Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu

• Download “President’s Power to Frame Stem Cell Views Limited” by Shahira Fahmy, Wayne Wanta and Jeannine e. Relly

Reporters are using Internet tools, such as blogs and social media sites, to aid in coverage of public meeting as staff cuts in newsrooms across the nation mean fewer meetings are covered, a recent study published in Newspaper Research Journal reports.

In-depth interviews of 19 reporters from newspapers across the Southeast facing newsroom cutbacks found that reporters often use social media and blogging tools to report extra information, often procedural and content-related, while the final article in print focused on meeting outcomes. The researchers also found reporters use the Internet to avoid attending public meetings by doing things such as e-reading meeting minutes.

Researchers John C. Besley and M. Chris Roberts also found that journalists differed in their opinion of the importance of covering local public meetings. Some reporters said they did not like covering public meetings and while others said they view the newspaper as the record of public meetings for citizens.

Besley is an assistant professor in the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at the University of South Carolina and Roberts is an assistant professor in the Department of Journalism at the University of Alabama.

The study was published in the summer 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Contacts: Sandra H. Utt Cell: (901) 628-2553 e-mail: nrj@newspaperresearchjournal.org or Elinor Kelley Grusin e-mail: egrusin@memphis.edu.

• Download “Cuts in Newspaper Staffs Change Meeting Coverage” by John C. Besley and M. Chris Roberts

Telegraph | American researchers also found that people now trusted the technology heavyweights more than social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

According to the new study, the majority of people rated online privacy as one of their major concerns when using the internet after both Google and Facebook were hit by rows over people’s private details being disclosed on the web.

The study, of more than 2100 people, found nearly half they trusted the big three technology firms Apple, Google and Microsoft” completely” or “a lot”… READ IT

Electronic News | In the wake of extensive television news reporting in Haiti by physicians such as Dr. Sanjay Gupta on CNN, guidelines for physician-journalists in covering disasters are proposed in the current issue of Electronic News, published by SAGE.

Within two days after the January 12 quake, CNN had sent Gupta, its chief medical correspondent, to the scene. Other network physician reporters, including Drs. Richard Besser (ABC News), Nancy Snyderman (NBC News), and Jennifer Ashton (CBS News), arrived in the week following the quake. The physician reporters faced an immediate question. Should they exclusively report? Or should they attend to the sick and injured? Or should they do both? And if so, how should they balance the duties and responsibilities of their two professions?

All four chose to spend some or most of their time attending to injured and dying Haitians. On returning, physician-journalists faced criticism that by reporting about their own medical efforts, they were exploiting their good deeds for crass ends.

The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) Code of Ethics offers no guidelines for physician reporters. In its ”Statement of Principles,” The Association of Health Care Journalists recognizes ”that gathering and reporting information may cause harm or discomfort” and suggests ”special sensitivity . . . when dealing with children, mentally handicapped people, and inexperienced sources or subjects.”

The author of the article, Tom Linden, MD, is a professor of medical journalism in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the medical and science journalism program. He proposes three rules for physician-journalists covering disasters.

• When physician journalists face medical emergencies, their duty to treat might take precedence over their responsibility to report.
• Standard practice should be to seek a parent’s or guardian’s approval before interviewing and featuring a child in a radio or television news report, whether they’re in the United States or abroad.
• A physician reporter who treats a patient shouldn’t feature that patient (or ask that patient for permission to be featured) on a radio or television report.

“News executives might well chafe at these restrictions, but physician journalists should stand their ground and not allow themselves or their patients to be used to boost ratings for commercial gain,” writes Linden.

Contact: Jim Gilden
media.inquiries@sagepub.com
SAGE Publications

# # #

The article “Reporting by TV Docs in Haiti Raises Ethical Issues” in the June issue of Electronic News is available free for a limited time at http://enx.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/4/2/60.

The Radio-Television Journalism (RTVJ) Division of the AEJMC focuses on the teaching, practice, and research of electronic news. The division maintains close ties with the industry through the major professional organization for broadcast and online journalists, the Radio-Television Digital News Association (RTDNA). Goals of the RTVJ Division include enhancing engaged learning of radio, television and online journalism at the undergraduate and graduate levels. http://aejmc.net/rtvj/

SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. A privately owned corporation, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com

A new research study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly examines general and robust constructs of news media brand personality that are applicable across multiple news media outlets, including broadcast and cable news networks, national and local newspaper, and news magazines.

Through a series of rigorous exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis procedures with the final set of 48 personality traits, the authors show that that news media brand personality is composed of five dimensions: Trustworthiness, Dynamism, Sincerity, Sophistication, and Toughness.

One of the significant contributions of this study is to provide news media companies a reliable and valid method to assess their brand personality.

As for the Trustworthiness dimension, for example, the Wall Street Journal was perceived to be the most trustworthy news media brand. It appears that the Wall Street Journal is known as a business newspaper, and uses fewer photographs and graphics than most other newspapers. Respondents may associate the subject and predominance of text with personality attributes such as “smart” and “serious” included in the trustworthy factor.

From a practical standpoint, the news media brand personality dimensions proposed by the authors can be helpful for media companies. In particular, news media companies can understand and monitor their news media brand personality structure to see if it matches the brand identity that they are developing in the crowded media marketplace.

They can also take advantage of the proposed news media brand personality constructs for diagnosing and improving their strategies to attract audiences and advertisers. The study therefore will help media companies fine-tune their image to survive the competition by better serving media audiences.

Baek, T. H., Kim, J., & Martin, H. J. (2010). Dimensions of News Media Brand Personality. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 87(1), 119-136.

CONTACT: Tae Hyun Baek, Doctoral Candidate, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, taehyun@uga.edu; or Jooyoung Kim, Assistant Professor, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication, University of Georgia, jykim@uga.edu.

• Download “Dimensions of News Media Brand Personality” by Tae Hyun Baek and Jooyoung Kim, University of Georgia,

A 30-year review of research comparing and contrasting accredited journalism schools with unaccredited ones shows many more similarities than differences, and no conclusive evidence that accredited ones are significantly or consistently better than un-accredited ones in any important way.

The literature review, by Dr. Marc C. Seamon, assistant professor of communication at Robert Morris University, was printed in the Spring 2010 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, a refereed quarterly published by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), Columbia, S.C. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator is the world’s largest and oldest scholarly journal devoted entirely to education and training in journalism, media, and other mass communication.

In the United States, accreditation of journalism schools is available from only one agency, the Accrediting Council for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (ACEJMC), headquartered at the William Allen White School of Journalism & Mass Communications, University of Kansas. ACEJMC accredits approximately one-quarter (about 110) of the journalism and communication colleges, schools, departments, and programs that are normally counted as such as in the United States (about 450).

Titled, “The Value of Accreditation: An Overview of Three Decades of Research Comparing Accredited and Unaccredited Journalism and Mass Communication Programs,” Dr. Seamon’s essay’s abstract reads, in part, that no study has “discovered evidence that accredited programs are strongly or clearly superior in major ways to unaccredited programs. In fact, studies generally find many more similarities than differences. A review of literature comparing accredited and unaccredited J&MC programs seems to suggest that ACEJMC accreditation is a credential whose reputation exceeds its actual benefit. Although the idea of a formal process by which programs can be evaluated and ‘certified’ as high quality is well intentioned, operationalization of that idea has proved to be difficult. Some accreditation standards ACEJMC has deemed most important (diver-sity and liberal arts curriculum) have resulted in controversial chapters in accreditation’s history.”

CONTACT: Dr. Seamon may be contacted at seamon@rmu.edu. Journalism & Mass Communication Educator’s editor, Dr. Dane S. Claussen of Point Park University, may be contacted at dsclaussen@hotmail.com.

• Download “The Value of Accreditation: An Overview of Three Decades of Research Comparing Accredited and Unaccredited Journalism and Mass Communication Pro-grams” by Marc Seamon, Robert Morris University.

Joining in online newspapers’ message forums increases participants’ perception that they understand their local communities better, according to a new research study in the Spring 2010 edition of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. However, that participation and accompanying sense of community understanding is not related to their getting out and taking part in real-world community activities.

These findings are based on a survey of 538 participants in message forums at the online sites associated with 80 U.S. newspapers. Such forums generally consist of a portion of the website where visitors can post comments organized into common message “threads,” and can be found at about a third of all U.S. online newspapers.

One of the goals newspapers frequently have in hosting such forums is to build a virtual community that overlaps the geographic one. The study titled “Virtual Community Support for Offline Communities Through Online Newspaper Message Forums” done by Jack Rosenberry, a researcher at St. John Fisher College in Rochester, N.Y., found that this overlap does develop. Forum users tended to be longtime community residents, with 57 percent of them living in community served by the newspaper for more than 20 years. About a third of forum participants said they know one or more of their online correspondents personally offline as well, and a quarter said they have become friends offline with someone they first met online.

Participation in the forums gives users a perception that they relate better to their communities. More than three quarters of respondents agreed with a statement that taking part in forums leads to better understanding of community issues while about 60 percent said the forums offered useful ideas for solving community problems. About half also said that their thinking about community issues had sometimes been changed by information from the forum. A further statistical analysis indicated that greater participation in the forums led to stronger agreement with each of these ideas.

However, forum participation was not related to actual community involvement or social-capital-building activities that might extend from this greater understanding. This was the case even though more than half of survey respondents reported that they had contacted someone offline about a community issue in response to online discussion about it, or had attended a meeting or event based on information from a forum discussion.

Taken at face value, these numbers seem to imply a mobilizing influence on the part of the forums. But statistical analysis showed that other variables were better predictors of this behavior, especially whether or not respondents’ offline relationships overlap their online ones. This means such “civic engagement” behavior is related more closely to existing social relationships and community involvement than it is to association with the online community. As it was colorfully described by another set of researchers who investigated virtual communities, “there is little reason to presume that the Internet will make social butterflies out of homebodies.” Participation in newspaper forums apparently does not, either.

Contact: Jack Rosenberry, Associate Professor, St. John Fisher College, Rochester, N.Y. 585-385-8206; jrosenberry@sjfc.edu.

• Download “Virtual Community Support for Offline Communities through Online Newspaper Message Forums” by Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College.

A recent study in the Newspaper Research Journal found that citizen journalism sites differ significantly from Web site supported by newspapers. As a result, most citizen journalism sites serve as complements rather than substitutes for commercial news Web sites.

The content analysis of the sites by researchers at Michigan State University, the University of Missouri, and the University of North Carolina studied the content at 86 citizen blog sites, 53 citizen news sites, and 63 daily newspaper sites. Citizen news sites were those that produced news articles similar to those found on newspaper sites, and citizen blogs were opinion sites.

Newspaper sites in the study were more likely to have contact information, a wide range of electronic distribution technology and more interactive elements than were citizen journalism sites. Daily newspaper sites allowed more uploading opportunities than did citizen blog sites, but not more than citizen news sites.

Of the 137 citizen journalism sites, 24% had not posted any material within a month of the downloading for the study.

The study, which was financed with grants from the Knight and Pew foundations, examined the design and features of the sites rather than the nature of the content.

Contact: Stephen Lacy e-mail: slacy@msu.edu.

• Download Citizen Journalism Web Sites Complement Newspapers by Stephen Lacy, Margaret Duffy, Daniel Riffe, Esther Thorson and Ken Fleming.

Sports reporters on the high school beat, often the youngest and most inexperienced in the newsroom, are also the most likely to believe they can operate by more relaxed ethical codes than their counterparts, according to a new survey.

The telephone survey, conducted by researchers in the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State, asked 263 reporters who cover sports at the high school, college or professional level about their attitudes toward ethical codes and professional norms for reporters.

More than one-third of the reporters surveyed covered prep sports, and almost as many said they covered professional teams. Far fewer – 14 percent – said they covered college sports. Eighteen percent reported on several beats.

Researchers analyzed responses by beat and found that reporters covering high school sports were more likely than those on professional beats to advocate a more “relaxed” code of ethics for sports reporters than for other parts of the newsroom. Preps (high school) reporters also more often reported friendships with sources and endorsed home-team boosterism in stories than did those who covered pro teams.

At the same time, preps reporters were more likely to agree with the idea that sports journalism should work in a public-service, “watchdog” role.

Marie Hardin, associate director of research in the Curley Center, said the findings may reflect both the idealism and inexperience of reporters at the preps level. Reporters covering high school sports had less journalism experience than those on other beats, and 65 percent of reporters on this beat were under 40.

“These reporters – often the least experienced in a sports department – are also the closest to their communities and face different types of ethical issues than do other sportswriters,” Hardin said. “Their jobs are often just as much about public education as they are about sports.”

Results of the survey, “Sports Reporters’ Attitudes About Ethics Vary Based on Beat,” by Hardin and Bu Zhong, who both teach in Penn State’s College of Communications, is published in the Spring 2010 issue of Newspaper Research Journal.

Other questions on the survey—administered by students in COMM 412 Sports, Media and Society, one of the core class offerings of the Curley Center—asked reporters about job satisfaction. Reporters covering prep sports less often said they had considered quitting their jobs. They also more often said they saw their career futures as bright.

“This could be a reflection of their age,” Hardin said. “They’re younger and more likely in a career-building stage.”

Their optimism may also reflect the perception that their beats are more secure than those at the professional or even college level, added Hardin, where travel costs and competition from a variety of sources – including sports leagues – is cutting into sports-department budgets.

“Meanwhile, the high school beat is a staple in sports sections, and that’s not going to change anytime soon,” Hardin said. “These journalists may understand the key role they play for their papers and in their communities.”

Contacts: Marie Hardin e-mail: mch208@psu.edu or Bu Zhong e-mail: zhongbu@psu.edu.

• Download Sports Reporters’ Attitudes About Ethics Vary Based on Beat by Marie Hardin and Bu Zhong.
  

The 2008 Democratic and Republican Party conventions drew a bigger average nightly television audience than did the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympic Games, according to recent research by University of Oklahoma scholars Jill A. Edy and Miglena Daradanova.

Most media pundits and journalists insist that the national nominating conventions are a dying institution that draws few viewers and produces no news. However, Edy and Daradanova found that over the last four decades, the average size of the nightly audience for the conventions was larger than the audience for the opening night of the Summer Olympic Games unless the Games were held in the United States. The lone exception was the 2000 Games in Sydney, which marginally outdrew the 2000 nominating conventions.

The study also shows that while audiences for network entertainment programming continue to decline substantially, the audience for the conventions has stabilized and may even have begun to grow again. Today, nearly half of the convention audience watches it on cable, and during the first two days of the 2008 Republican National Convention, the cable audience was bigger than the broadcast audience.

“Academics and pundits talk about how much the audience for the conventions has declined over the years, but since cable television came on the scene, the size of the audience for all types of programming has declined,” said Edy. “We thought it was important to compare the convention ratings to other television ‘events’ to get a clearer picture of how the conventions stacked up in the current media environment.”

The research relies on Nielsen ratings points for measures of audience size. Using the Nielsen ratings lets the researchers examine the changes in audience size while taking into account the growth in the U.S. population over the last four decades. The authors compare the average size of the audience for both conventions to the audience for the Olympics opening ceremony held in the same year.

Edy and Daradanova speculate that one reason the size of the convention audience is underestimated by journalists, pundits, and network executives is because the advertising revenues from airing the conventions are split among so many different networks. They argue, however, that any network programming that drew an audience as big as that for the political conventions would be in no danger of cancellation.

CONTACT: Jill A. Edy, Associate Professor of Communication, University of Oklahoma; (405) 325-5051; jedy@ou.edu.

• Download “Convention Wisdom: Putting National Party Convention Ratings in Context” by Jill A. Edy and Miglena Daradanova.

A recent study shows that ideology is a better predictor of beliefs about climate change than is educational attainment, and that the resulting “belief gaps” between liberals and conservatives grow over time.

This study marks a departure from previous work which showed that heavy media coverage of science news contributed to “knowledge gaps,” or growing disparities in knowledge between those with different levels of educational attainment.

The concern raised in the 1970s by the Minnesota team of Phil Tichenor, George Donohue and Clarice Olien was that widening “knowledge gaps” would impede institutional responses to social problems.

The present study by Doug Blanks Hindman of the Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at Washington State University is different from the previous knowledge gap studies in a couple of important ways.

First, Hindman suggests that knowledge is replaced by beliefs when social problems enter the political fray. Second, he notes that whereas knowledge, and the resulting gaps, are predicted by educational level, beliefs are easily predicted by ideology. Hence, the “knowledge gaps” of a previous era become the “belief gaps” in an era of political polarization.

Data for the study were from five probability-based telephone surveys comprised of nationally representative samples sponsored by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and conducted by Princeton Survey Research International from June, 2006, to June 2008.

Hindman’s study showed that ideology was a stronger predictor than was educational attainment of the belief that there was solid evidence that the earth has been getting warmer.

The hypothesis of a strengthening relationship between ideology and beliefs over time—the belief gap—was weakly supported in the case of beliefs about whether or not there is solid evidence that the earth was getting warmer. Thus, under conditions of heavy media coverage, beliefs about the existence of global warming became more ideologically entrenched so that gaps between conservatives and liberals widened.

Hindman concludes that in an era of unprecedented partisanship, mass media coverage of politically contested issues contributes to widening belief gaps between ideological camps, further raising concerns about system adjustment to change.

Contact: Doug Blanks Hindman, Associate Professor, Edward R. Murrow College of Communication, Washington State University. 509-335-6149. dhindman@wsu.edu

• Download “Mass Media Flow and Differential Distribution of Politically Disputed Beliefs: The Belief Gap Hypthesis” by Doug Hindman, Washington State University

As new digital media replace traditional sources of news, the public’s knowledge of local affairs may be undermined.

This result headlines a new study by Lee Shaker, a researcher at Princeton University, that examines the effect of increased media choice upon citizens’ local and national political knowledge. The article, “Citizens’ Local Political Knowledge and the Role of Media Access”, is available in the current issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (winter 2009). Based on data from a 2007 survey of 1000 Philadelphia residents, a clear, negative relationship between having access to cable TV or satellite radio and citizens’ local political knowledge is depicted in the piece. A similar relationship does not materialize between new media access and national political knowledge. These results reinforce the fears voiced by many regarding the decline of local media – especially newspapers.

“Digital media clearly expand access to national political information, but they have yet to yield much additional local news,” Shaker says. “At the same time, traditional sources of local news are forced into a tough competition with new media for citizens’ attention. It appears that lower levels of local political knowledge may be one consequence of our changing media environments.”

Given so many new media options, most of which are non-local, it makes sense that citizens will shift some of their time and attention away from local news. “At some point, time spent consuming new non-local media must inevitably detract from time spent with local news,” Shaker says. “Americans need to be knowledgeable about their communities to effectively participate in local politics. Consequently, any evidence that suggests that citizens may become less informed about local affairs is concerning.”

In addition to examining the relationship between media choice and political knowledge, the article also reveals several other differences regarding who knows about local and national politics. For example, scholars have consistently found white, male citizens to be more knowledgeable about national politics than non-white or female citizens. The Philadelphia study replicated this national level finding – but did not find significant differences in local political knowledge across race or gender. “Local affairs are somewhat overlooked by scholars and these results may surprise people who normally focus on national politics,” says Shaker.

The article, drawn from a larger project that examined the intersection of media, technology, and local politics, depicts results from just one city. It is, however, a unique project that suggests that citizens and scholars alike should take a closer look at communication in America’s communities.

“Americans are being pulled in many opposing directions today,” Shaker adds. “On one hand, new media increasingly allows them to feel like citizens of the world. On the other, pressure is mounting to reduce their carbon footprints, eat local, and support small businesses. The danger is that citizens may become distracted by national, or even international, issues beyond their reach and fail to address local concerns that they could impact.”

CONTACT: Lee Shaker, (646) 450-7533, lshaker@princeton.edu, www.leeshaker.com

• Download “Citizens’ Local Political Knowledge and the Role of Media Access” by Lee Shaker, Princeton

A meta-analysis of 23 existing terrorism studies found that exposure to media coverage of terrorism is related to posttraumatic stress reactions.

The meta-analysis also found that the relationship between exposure to media coverage of terrorism and posttraumatic stress was greater for studies involving youth and for studies including people who were farther away from the terrorist event.

These results mean that youth who are further away from the terrorism event are at increased risk for developing posttraumatic stress reactions resulting from exposure to media coverage of a terrorist event.

“Parents, teachers, counselors, and anyone else who works or lives with children should be aware of these effects,” said Dr. J. Brian Houston, an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center who authored this study.

“The mental health needs of youth not directly affected by terrorism may not be obvious in the aftermath of a terrorist attack, but by analyzing the results of several terrorism studies together we can see that this group experiences the greatest amount of posttraumatic stress reactions related to exposure to media coverage of terrorism.”

Dr. Houston says that future work should focus on developing public health interventions for youth that are aimed at ameliorating these potentially negative effects of media use.

Posttraumatic stress reactions may include: feeling hopeless, detached from others, and numb; having trouble concentrating; being startled easily; feeling always on guard; experiencing nightmares and trouble sleeping; and having problems at work or school.

Meta-analysis is the process of combining numerous existing research studies to answer research questions or hypotheses. Meta-analysis provides a more powerful estimate of how variables are related than is possible from a single research study.

CONTACT: J. Brian Houston, Assistant Professor of Research and Program Director for the Terrorism and Disaster Center in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, 405.271.8001 ext. 47633, brian-houston@ouhsc.edu

• Download “Media Coverage of Terrorism: A Meta-Analytic Assessment of Media Use and Posttraumatic Stress” by J. Brian Houston, University of Oklahoma

Government agencies have long distributed prepackaged “video news releases,” or VNRs, to media outlets, as part of their mission to keep the public informed about their policies and activities. The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has said that distributing VNRs without clearly identifying the government as their source, as was done on at least two occasions by the Bush Administration, violates laws against covert propaganda. However, to date little has been known about the effects of attribution – or lack of attribution – of government VNRs on audiences.

A study by a team of researchers from Penn State University and the University of Hartford published in the current issue of the Journal of Public Relations Research indicates that the effects of attribution on audiences seems to depend more on who’s watching the VNR than on what the government agency is saying in it.

According to Colleen Connolly-Ahern, an Assistant Professor at Penn State University and the leader of the research team that included Susan Grantham of University of Hartford and Maria Cabrera-Baukus of Penn State, “The original reason for the legislation, and the premise upon which the GAO has operated, is that VNRs are somehow more credible when they appear to be independent news stories, and not identified as government communications. But our findings don’t indicate that at all.”

In fact, said Connolly-Ahern, the credibility of the communications seems to depend on your political affiliation. “Self-identified Republicans actually judged a VNR higher in expertise when they knew it was from a government agency, and not a traditional news story. For self-identified Democrats the effects were reversed, with Democrats finding the VNR less expert when it came from a governmental agency.” The data was collected during the last year of President Bush’s second term.

The role of government is to develop policies that support public interests and reduce risks for all citizens. But Connolly-Ahern, Grantham and Cabrera-Baukus’ findings indicate it’s important for administrators to understand that citizens may base the credibility of their communications on their relationship with the party in power.

The research was supported by a grant from the Arthur W. Page Center for Integrity in Public Communication at the Penn State College of Communications. The authors are now planning to repeat the study. “The change in administrations has given us the chance to see whether or not the findings are different under a Democratic administration,” said Connolly-Ahern.

Contacts: Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Assistant Professor, College of Communications, Penn State University, connolly-ahern@psu.edu or Susan Grantham, Associate Professor, School of Communication, University of Hartford, Grantham@hartford.edu

• Download “The Effects of Attribution of VNRs and Risk on News Viewers’ Assessments of Credibility” by Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Penn State University; Susan Grantham, University of Hartford; and Maria Cabrera-Baukus, Penn State University.

Within the past four years, Hispanics have become the largest minority in the United States, but their roles in both American and international politics remains limited.

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, in the 2006 U.S. midterm elections, Latinos only comprised 8.6% of all votes cast. Two studies published in the journal Mass Communication and Society indicate that political participation among Hispanics is not proportional to their ever growing population. The findings for these studies were based on research and statistics from the 2004 Presidential election, since research from the recent 2008 election is yet to be examined and analyzed.

Spanish language media is culturally more important and relevant to Latinos in the United States, and they have the ability to shape the audience’s attitudes and political opinions.  Results from the article A Matter of Language or Culture: Coverage of the 2004 U.S. Elections on Spanish and English Language Television, written by Matthew Hale from Seton Hall University, Tricia Olsen from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Erika Fowler from the University of Michigan, show that Spanish language media is doing very little to close the gap between Latino political participation and Latino population growth.

The study emphasized that Spanish language media are keeping their distance from the traditional political sphere. This apparent avoidance of politics may be the key reason why a lack of participation exists among the Latino population, the researchers suggest. While Latino news coverage is more likely to depict Latino issues or concerns than English stations, political candidates are not shown speaking as often and much of the news coverage entails the election horse race without relating where candidates stand on policies.

Since many Latinos are still citizens of their home country and ineligible to vote in America, the study Mexican Expatriates Vote? Framing and Agenda Setting in U.S. News Coverage about Mexico explored how Hispanic media provided information about politics for those able to vote by absentee ballot in the 2006 Mexican Presidential election.

Researchers Melissa Johnson, John Davis, and Sean Cronin from North Carolina State University found that big-circulation newspapers in cities with large Latino populations most often featured Mexican pre-election news. This shows the media recognized the importance of this Hispanic minority. They also pointed out that U.S. newspapers covering Mexican political candidates again focused mainly on the horse race along with political candidate attributes as opposed to policy. Other factors that this article suggests contributed to poor political participation from Mexicans included news coverage that depicted Mexicans as: corrupt, irrelevant to the absentee ballot process, and passive about key policy issues.

Overall, both of these studies describe how the media has a way of broadening the gap among Hispanics in politics. Although, Hispanics prefer media that caters to their needs, the research indicates that different measures need to be taken in order to increase Hispanic engagement in the political process.

CONTACT: Matthew Hale, Seton Hall University, halematt@shu.edu, (973) 275-2013; Melissa Johnson, Department of Communication, NC State University, melissa_johnson@ncsu.edu, (919) 515-9757.

• Download “A Matter of Language or Culture:?Coverage of the 2004 U.S. Elections on Spanish and English Language Television” by Matthew Hale, Tricia Olsen, and Erika Fowler.
• Download “Mexican Expatirates Vote? Framing and Agenda Setting in U.S. News Coverage About Mexico” by Melissa A. Johnson, John L. Davis, and Sean Cronin.

Nontraditional online news sources are more likely to hire people with broad bodies of knowledge (“adaptive expertise”) while traditional news organizations more commonly seek out those with solid technical skills, according to a recent study published in Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

Dr. Serena Carpenter, an assistant professor in the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University, examined over a six-month period 664 online media job postings on JournalismJobs.com to gauge whether online news media employers prefer employees with specific skill sets or with knowledge spanning several topics.

Traditional news media were still most interested in hiring new employees with “nontechnical routine expertise,” such as solid writing skills, working under deadline, editing, teamwork and communication skills, and Associated Press Style. About equally, however, they also were seeking employees with “technical routine expertise,” such as content posting and management, image editing, blogging, video editing, and social media knowledge.

Nontraditional online news media were as interested in nontechnical routine expertise as traditional news media, but less interested in routine technical expertise (perhaps because they assumed new employees already had such skills or that they could be easily taught). Instead, nontraditional online news media were significantly more interested in hiring employees with adaptive expertise, such as knowledge outside journalism/mass communication, creativity, independent and critical thinking, leadership, and problem-solving abilities.

Regardless of their preferences, the job postings for traditional and nontraditional online news sources expressed interest in employees with some expertise in both areas, suggesting that teaching specific and broad knowledge areas should each have a place in the journalism and mass communication curriculum.

The study appears in the Autumn 2009 issue of Journalism & Mass Communication Educator.

CONTACT: Serena Carpenter, Assistant Professor, Arizona State University, Serena.Carpenter [at] asu.edu.

• Download “An Application of the Theory of Expertise: Teaching Broad and Skill Knowledge Areas to Prepare Journalists for Change” by Serena Carpenter, Arizona State University.

As John McCain seeks the presidential nod in the general election, his vice presidential pick clearly emphasizes his need to reach the conservative voter, the powerful political voting block that emerged from a coalition of splinter groups pulled together in the 1950s by the writers of National Review magazine according to a recent study.

National Review is a political magazine that is known for its conservative perspective. In an article just released in the scholarly journal Mass Communication and Society, Susan Currie Sivek, assistant professor of mass communication and journalism at California State University, Fresno, credited National Review for its impeccable ability to strategically construct media frames that influenced Americans from three smaller subgroups to merge under the conservative banner.

William F. Buckley, Jr., the magazine’s founder, brought together anti-Communists, Libertarians, and Christian conservatives. He gathered writers who saw the common threads across these groups, emphasized their common values, and de-emphasized more divisive leanings.

One tool that brought these groups together was the framing of “liberalism” as the common enemy, a strategy often employed later by President Ronald Reagan. In National Review’s first issue, it employed the language often used by anti-Communists but applied it in attacking liberalism.

In addition to appealing to anti-Communists, the magazine reached out to Libertarians in its philosophical statement in the opening issue. It said “The growth of government . . . must be fought relentlessly. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side.

To appeal to Christian conservatives, Sivek notes that the magazine “frequently invoked the philosophical nature and history of ‘Western Civilization’ and . . . the existence of moral absolutes.” National Review constructed a historical and religious foundation for conservatism and argued against the relativism of social engineers that “had taken over America.”

Sivek further explains how National Review was more influential than other conservative magazine attempts of the time. By refusing to join in with anti-Semitic voices of the 1950s and employing Jewish writers, the magazine eschewed one fringe branch that tried to identify itself as conservative. It also avoided McCarthyism’s vitriolic vocabulary of anti-Communism conspiracy that was later embraced by the John Birch Society. There is no question National Review still remained solidly anti-Communist.

The magazine influenced 1964 Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater who often used the language of the National Review to appeal to constituents. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush acknowledged the impact it had on American political view points, am impact that seems to have been reincarnated in talk radio programs like The Rush Limbaugh Show. Sivek, however, notes Buckley’s criticism of some Bush policies that have departed from the National Review’s conservative principles.

Sivek’s research was completed before knowing John McCain would be the Republican nominee for President. So she didn’t indicate where he would fit in the spectrum of conservatives that were taken under the National Review umbrella.

But Stephen Perry, Editor of Mass Communication and Society, said, “Perhaps the conservatives that were recruited to ‘take over the Republican Party’ through National Review are no longer in control based on McCain’s nomination. Still, the selection of Sarah Palin for his Vice Presidential running mate clearly indicates the conservatives still pull a lot of weight at the Republican table.”

In the article, Sivek detailed how one magazine shaped and developed the political opinions of millions through applying various frames to political philosophy. Sivek also demonstrates how framing and editing of political movements can increase political engagement throughout the nation. To read more about how National Review framed issues that created the Conservative movement, read “Editing Conservatism: How National Review Magazine Framed and Mobilized a Political Movement” in Mass Communication and Society, Volume 11, Issue 3.

CONTACT: Susan Currie Sivek, California State University, Fresno, ssivek@csufresno, (559) 278-4597.

A study that was just published in the scholarly journal Mass Communication and Society, which is edited at Illinois State University, suggests that structural bias was apparent on many of the major television networks during the 2004 presidential election in a direction that may surprise many.

Frederick Fico, professor of journalism at Michigan State University, and his co-authors of the article Broadcast and Cable Network News Coverage of the 2004 Presidential Election, compare news coverage of Presidential candidates John Kerry and George Bush on ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN. They find that Fox News showed more structural bias toward Democratic candidate John Kerry than any other network, and that its bias was stronger than that on other networks. This was true contrary to criticism cited by Fico in which former CBS anchor Walter Cronkite labels Fox News as a “far-rightwing organization.”

That means Kerry and his supporters received more air time on Fox and were more likely to receive primary placement in stories. The four determinants of structural bias were the number of supporters quoted or given a chance to speak, the candidate whose supporters spoke first, the time they spent speaking, and whether there were visuals of both candidates or only of one. Neither the tone of the quotes used nor talk and commentary were analyzed, but only packaged news stories and segments.

Bush, on the other hand, received favorable coverage from NBC and MSNBC.

CBS, which broke the story questioning Bush’s National Guard service attributed to a source that was later discredited, favored Kerry.

CNN’s structural bias leaned somewhat toward Kerry, while ABC’s bias is less clear, leaning toward Bush in some measures and Kerry in others.

Most journalists would emphasize the importance of remaining impartial, unbiased, and reporting only factual and accurate information when covering a story.  However, structural bias can show patterns of bias that are harder to measure objectively in areas like a reporter’s tone about a candidate.

According to Fico there is no question of the presence of bias in the newsroom. He describes it as something that is “inevitable and ever-present.” However, he feels the real question of news bias lies in how systematic or predictable networks are in presenting certain information.

In this research, Fico and his co-authors, Geri Alumit Zeldes from Michigan State, Serena Carpenter from Arizona State University, and Arvind Diddi from the State University of New York at Oswego, assess both the aggregate partisan structural balance of stories and of multi-story segments, determining whether they favored the Republican or the Democrat. The study examined stories aired from Labor Day to the November 2 Election Day of 2004. Both the National Guard stories and coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth campaign against John Kerry were in the media during the period of analysis.

CONTACT: Frederick Fico, School of Journalism, Michigan State University,  fredfico@msu.edu, (517) 355-4489; Geri Alumit Zeldes, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona Sate University; Serena Carpenter, Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Arizona State University; Arvind Diddi, Department of Communication Studies, SUNY, Oswego.

Playing violent video games can make young adults behave more violently, but the game features selected during play are responsible for the resulting aggression according to a new study published this month in Mass Communication and Society.

Modern video game systems often give the player options to choose to turn blood effects on or off and to change the color of the blood. They also allow players to change their own perspective from being a first person shooter to a third person observer of the character doing the shooting in violent video games like Hitman II, Silent Assassin, which was used in this study.

One might think that being the actual shooter or aggressor from a first person perspective would make the game player more aggressive in real life. But a study called Retaliatory Aggression and the Effects of Point of View Blood in Violent Video Games, conducted by Marina Krcmar from Wake Forest University and Kirstie Farrar from the University of Connecticut, found the opposite.

Players who see their avatar shooting and killing are more likely to express subsequent verbal or physical hostility than someone who sees the violence in the game from a first person perspective. This was especially true for people who leaned toward being more aggressive or hostile anyway. In this study, players expressed hostility in part by recommending against continued funding of an experimenter who initially insulted them.

Another variable that led to more aggression from players was the blood. When players had the blood on, they were more likely to act verbally and physically aggressive after playing the game. The reasons for this increase in aggression stem from the players’ active role in the storyline, which causes the player to act out the aggression. Players identify with the aggressors in the video games, because they want to be heroes.

Additionally, since violent behaviors are rewarded in violent video games, such as Hitman II, Silent Assassin, this can contribute to the belief that violent behavior is acceptable. In this study, Krcmar and Farrar explain a process through which aggression is evoked from video game usage.

According to these authors, “Players actively engage in game play, receive points for acting aggressively, attempt and learn various aggressive roles, actions and strategies, and through repeated play, may learn to play the game quite skillfully. Through this repeated exposure and interaction with violence through repeated game play, it is likely that players can establish similarly aggressive knowledge structures.”

Players can enhance these aggressive behaviors through practice, and activate them when faced with a real, aggressive situation as demonstrated in this study. The authors conclude that playing violent games, both in the short term and over time, can lead to aggressive behavior.

The presence of new game systems has led to the creation of more graphic, realistic, and violent video games that really draw users into the violent actions displayed in the game. But with all the commotion violent games, such as Mortal Kombat have caused in the media in the past, now many modern games allow the user to deactivate the blood and gore present in the game. These features are appealing to parents who are concerned with the level of gore in the games their kids play.

If this study’s findings on young adults hold true with younger players, parents who have their kids deactivate the blood are justified in such actions, this study shows. But more surprising is the advice that their kids should play the game from the first person perspective as the one who is committing the on-game violence. Parents who have perhaps thought the third-person perspective was better could be asking for trouble and leading their kids to become more aggressive.

CONTACT: Marina Krcmar, Department of Communication, Wake Forest University, krcmarm@wfu.edu, (336) 758-5405; Kirstie Farrar, Department of Communication Studies, University of Connecticut, kirstie.farrar@uconn.edu, (806) 486-2632.

Magazine advertisements and television commercials for cosmetics and personal hygiene products in India illustrate a cultural bias toward lighter skin, according to the findings of a study published in the fall 2009 issue of Journalism and Communication Monographs.

In their monograph, “Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Cultural Politics of Fair/Light/White Beauty in India,” Radhika Parameswaran and Kavitha Cardoza first provide context for “colorism,” or skin color discrimination, in India. They explain that the nineteenth century colonial attitudes that considered the science of race looked at physical characteristics of natives in order to prove their inferiority. Likewise, colorism has roots in the caste system of India, as well as in the country’s ancient history when lighter-skinned tribes invaded around 1500 B.C.

The authors argue that colorism affects women more than men, and non-white women consider light-colored skin to be an asset that can improve one’s social and economic status. Magazine advertisements, matrimonial classified advertisements, film and music industries, and fashion magazine editorials promote skin-lightening cosmetics and personal products by taking advantage of this cultural perspective.

In their study, Parameswaran and Cardoza identify the themes of transformation, scientific authority and heterosexual romance in the rhetoric of the advertisements they analyze. These themes suggest that a woman can change her skin color; that she should trust the products developed by western science; and that she can gain a successful, fulfilling relationship with a man as a result of having lighter skin.

Parameswaran is an associate professor in the School of Journalism at Indiana University, Bloomington, and Cardoza is a senior reporter at WAMU Public Radio in Washington, D.C.

CONTACT: Dr. Parameswaran at the School of Journalism, Indiana University. Phone: (812) 855-8569. Email: rparames@indiana.edu

• “Melanin on the Margins: Advertising and the Cultural Politics of Fair/Light/White Beauty in India” by Radhika Parameswaran and Kavitha Cardoza. View the title page, abstract (PDF).

Three commissions that investigated violence in the 1960s had a significant impact on the development of widely accepted views about journalism ethics, according to a study published in the summer 2009 issue of Journalism & Communication Monographs.

In a monograph titled “Two Visions of Responsibility: How National Commissions Contributed to Journalism Ethics, 1963-1975,” Glen Feighery says it was not just the work of the Hutchins Commission or the Watergate investigation that prompted media organizations to focus more on social responsibility, but that the work of three commissions, The President’s Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, offered significant advice on how journalists should ethically approach their work. The media responded with revisions of codes of ethics, the creation of news councils and journalism reviews, and increased employment of minorities.

Feighery argues that through this challenge and response, a heightened sense of media responsibility arose. Part of the evolution within journalism ethics at the time forced journalists to consider the relationship between their independence and their responsibility, Journalists valued their freedom from entities of authority, such as government, special interest groups, etc., but they also recognized a duty to adequately inform the public about existing problems. This strong sense of responsibility required journalists to go a step beyond minimizing harm and provide people with information that would allow them to make an informed decision.

Feighery argues that journalists struck the balance between freedom and responsibility by developing the approach of “autonomy,” which meant that journalists would follow self-imposed restraints. As a result, journalists could maintain their independence and work for the greater good of the public, creating an ethical approach that continued to influence the media in the decades following the 1970s .

Feighery is an assistant professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Utah.

CONTACT: Glen Feighery, University of Utah, Office Phone: (801) 585-7521, Email:glen.feighery@utah.edu.

• Download “Two Visions of Responsibility: How National Commissions Contributed to Journalism Ethics, 1963-1975” by Glen Feighery

The prevailing wisdom among many scientists and scientific organizations is that, as a rule, scientists are press shy, and those who aren’t are mavericks.

However, a new study by University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers, published in the current issue (summer 2009) of Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, suggests otherwise. The study, conducted by journalism professor Sharon Dunwoody, life sciences communication professor Dominique Brossard and graduate student Anthony Dudo, provides evidence that many mainstream scientists occasionally work with journalists and some do so routinely. And the interplay between scientists and journalists, say Brossard and Dunwoody, has been remarkably stable since the 1980s.

“By and large, scientists speak to journalists, they know it is important and they’re willing to do it again,” Dunwoody says. “The frequency with which scientists and journalists interact has been pretty stable over time.”

The findings, extracted from a survey of 1,200 researchers in the areas of epidemiology and stem cell research, two fields that experience extensive news media attention, contradict the widespread view in science that scientists are out of touch.

“We found relatively frequent interactions,” says Brossard, explaining that about one-third of the respondents claimed to have had up to five contacts with journalists during a three-year period, while another third of the sample said they experienced more than six contacts with reporters over three years. Only one-third of respondents reported having no contacts with journalists.

“The frequencies are definitely encouraging,” adds Brossard.

The proportion of scientists in the sample who interact with journalists, according to the Wisconsin researchers, is intriguingly similar to studies from the 1980s, as well as patterns identified in the 1990s. The new data imply that journalistic engagement of scientists over time is greater and more stable than “persistent, anecdotal cautionary tales would suggest,” Dunwoody, Brossard and Dudo write.

Another key insight from the data is that it is generally not the case that journalists focus their attention on scientific outliers. Instead, scientists who interact most frequently with reporters tend to be senior, highly productive researchers or administrators. “The notion that journalists concentrate on mavericks is not true,” says Dunwoody. “That’s an important pattern. What it says is that journalists are working mostly with successful mainstream scientists.”

The results of the new study are important because they chip away at the common perception among scientists that media coverage of science is flawed. “We don’t know if the interactions are, in fact, better,” says Dunwoody. “But scientists are eager participants. It reflects a more active role by one of the major players in the process.”

The new study, according to Dunwoody, indicates that although scientists may have a general perception that news media coverage of science is faulty, that perception does not extend to coverage of their own work. “They often view their own work as being covered well, but that doesn’t influence the larger perception.”

The involvement of scientists in active public communication is widely viewed as critical, especially when controversial issues are at play or important policy is being forged. Coverage of such things as stem cell research, infectious disease, nuclear power, nanotechnology and biotechnology frequently entails important information about human health and has economic and social implications that reach far beyond the scientific community.

“We need to keep in mind that most people learn about scientific topics through mass media and not informal channels like science museums,” says Brossard. “Hence, the necessity for scientists to engage journalists.”

Another key insight from the study is that the scientists who work with journalists perceive that they do so not for personal gain but because their participation can influence public understanding of science and the role of science in society. In short, appealing to scientists’ moral or ethical values may be a way to increase participation in the process of making news.

Finally, the study provides evidence that scientists who have been trained or otherwise briefed about how to work with journalists are more likely to engage reporters.

CONTACT: Sharon Dunwoody, 608-263-3389, dunwoody@wisc.edu; Dominique Brossard, 608-262-0482, dbrossard@wisc.edu

• Download “Socialization or Rewards? Predicting U.S. Scientist-Media Interactions” by Sharon Dunwoody, Dominique Brossard, and Anthony Dudo.

In the advertising world, it is becoming ever more important to justify advertising expenditures. In order to more effectively assess the impact of advertising investments, a popular strategy is to divide the market place into meaningful segments, evaluate the responsiveness and profitability of each segment and then select the “best” segments to target. Given that there are numerous methods for dividing the market place and as a result, numerous potential segmentation schemes, it is necessary to utilize an effective metric that will allow for the evaluation and selection of the most beneficial segmentation scheme.

The Direct Marketing industry has long used decile charts, gains tables and lift charts to demonstrate and evaluate response differences between market segments and to compare competing segmentation schemes. As the number of schemes increases, the complexity of comparison also increases using these methods. For the most part, marketing analysts rely on “eye ball”” inspection, without any rigorous statistical measurement. If scheme A “looks” better than scheme B (higher highs, and lower lows), then scheme A is deemed superior and recommended for incorporation. If there are numerous competing schemes, the “eye ball” method becomes difficult, making it even more challenging to select the optimum segmentation scheme.

The Gini coefficient, a statistic developed more than 100 years ago ago for evaluating disparity of wealth within a population is recommended as a useful metric for comparing competing segmentation schemes or for comparing competing response models. The Gini coefficient rages from 0 to 1. Once the Gini Coefficient is computed for each segmentation scheme, a decision can be immediately rendered by selecting the scheme with the highest Gini coefficient. For a more detailed description of how the Gini coefficient is related to other methods currently used to evaluate response performance, please refer to the author’s article in the Journal of Advertising Education.

CONTACT: Henry Greene, Ph.D., Central Connecticut State University, greenehej@ccsu.edu

• Download “Enhancing Students’ Segmentation Skills and Targeting Knowledge: Using the Gains Tables, Lift Charts and the Gini Coefficient” by Henry Greene, Central Connecticut State University.