Showing papers in "Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly in 2011"

Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age

Abstract: Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. Clay Shirky. New York, NY: Penguin, 2010. 242 pages, $25.95 pbk. It sometimes seems that the hardest thing to do in the Information Age is to communicate. In the rush of easily accessible data and the maelstrom of conflicting viewpoints, two otherwise intelligent people can talk past one another as they stake out territory with the tenacity of computer viruses. NYU professor Clay Shirky and media critic Nicholas Carr have been squaring off now for two years over what impact the Internet is having on our society. Shirky takes the more optimistic viewpoint, Carr the more pessimistic. Carr threw down the gauntlet with his 2008 Atlantic cover article "Is Google Making Us Stoopid?" and has continued the debate with his recent book The Shallows. Shirky provides a response in Cognitive Surplus, but criticizes skeptics like Carr only obliquely. Shirky says their main frustration is with the profusion of choice: "Scarcity," he says, "is easier to deal with than abundance." But this book doesn't dwell much on the naysayers. Instead, it frames the subject of the Internet with a bold and startling vision about its potential. "Imagine," he says, "treating the free time of the world's educated citizenry as an aggregate, a kind of cognitive surplus." We've not always used that surplus wisely. Shirky's case in point is television, and how it has come to dominate our culture. Over much of the planet, Shirky writes, "the three most common activities are . . . work, sleep, and watching TV." Like gin in early-eighteenth-century London, twentieth-century television is one of those social habits that critics have denounced and tried hard to minimize, but without success. There are signs now, however, that TV viewing - still thoroughly popular - isn't quite the juggernaut it used to be. Young people are increasingly turning to the Internet; and the Web, it turns out, allows humans to do things they can't do with other media - namely, create, produce, and connect. Instead of devoting twenty passive hours a week to the tube (the international average), people now use a medium that lets them make and share things. That may seem trivial, considering the amount of silly, offensive, or deceptive fare on the Web, but think of it this way: Which do you think contains more enduring cultural, intellectual, and societal value - posting comments on a blog or watching Gitligan's Island! The Internet is no utopia, but neither are older media. In fact, some of them may be a good deal less salutary. Take, for example, the online fantasy game World of Warcraft. As Shirky puts it in a tart retort: "However pathetic you may think it is to sit in your basement pretending to be an elf, I can tell you from personal experience: it's worse to sit in your basement trying to decide whether Ginger or Mary Ann is cuter." There's a wide variety of content on the Internet, of course - the widest in any medium - and the largest number of producers of content: a colossal and revolutionary force. The "hundred million hours of cumulative thought" it took to produce Wikipedia is one example of Shirky's "cognitive surplus," and while it still pales before the "two hundred billion hours of TV every year," you can readily see the potential. …

Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences

Abstract: Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences. Philip M. Napoli. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2010. 272 pp. $27.50 pbk. Philip Napoli's new book, Audience Evolution: New Technologies and the Transformation of Media Audiences, is a good combination of a critical approach to audience measurement as well as a thorough review of the development of audience information systems. His key argument is that technologies foster the collection and compilation of audience information beyond the traditional exposure model, and allow new dimensions of audience information be incorporated into business use. Napoli, a professor in the Graduate School of Business at Fordham University and director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, focuses on the institutionalized audience, in which the audience is understood and used as currencies in the formal procedures and practices of institutions such as media organizations and advertisers. "The concept of audience is constructed and defined to reflect the economic and strategic imperatives of media organizations," he says. The book consists of six parts: (1) introduction, (2) contextualizing audience evolution, (3) the transformation of media consumption, (4) the transformation of audience information systems, (5) contesting audiences, and (6) the implications of audience revolution. Throughout, Napoli reminds readers that new and alternative dimensions of audience, such as engagement and appreciation of content, should be considered for a more complete picture of the audience's interaction with the content beyond the traditional exposure model. He also suggests that the new dimensions may increase acceptance of audience research results by content producers. The book builds on his previous Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace (2003). In this work, Napoli recognizes two key phenomena causing the change in media industries' conceptualization of audience related to technologies: audience fragmentation and audience autonomy. The proliferation of media platforms and outlets has resulted in diverting audience attention to more media channels. Various interactive technologies empower audiences to make choices and create user-generated content. The process of rationalization of audience understanding in the media industries highlighted in Audience Evolution is of high relevance to practitioners and researchers. By using "scientific methods" to collect audience information and then base business decisions upon them, media industries have moved from an intuitive model based on executive judgment to a more rational and objective model. There are, of course, negative consequences of such a model, such as stifling creativity and encouragement of homogenization. I like Napoli's discussion of the political economy of the audience measurement industry, in which various established media and stakeholders resist changes for their own interests and do not Support new measurement initiatives. …

Using Time Series Analysis to Measure Intermedia Agenda-Setting Influence in Traditional Media and Political Blog Networks:

Abstract: Using time series analysis to gauge intermedia agenda setting in a sample of eighteen U.S. political blogs, two elite traditional news entities, and their eleven political newsroom blogs across thr...

Effects of Visual Framing on Emotional Responses and Evaluations of News Stories about the Gaza Conflict 2009

Abstract: The experiment investigates visual framing effects of news stories on readers'(1) emotional response, (2) evaluation of communicative quality, (3) journalistic credibility and (4) objectivity, and (5) perception of actor representation. Three versions of a news report about the Gaza conflict were used. While the text remained the same, different images were added representing visual human-interest framing, visual political framing, and no visual framing. Visual human-interest framing elicited stronger emotional responses, higher values concerning the communicative quality, and had an impact on the perceived actor representation. No differences in objectivity and credibility were found among the three stimuli.

Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics

Abstract: Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics. Jodi Dean. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009, 232 pages. $74.95 hbk. $21.95 pbk. Jodi Dean is a multitasker. She teaches political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, and is the Erasmus Professor of the Humanities at Erasmus University in Rotterdam. She is also a critical scholar worthy of the title. Rather than following the well-worn path of criticism directed at the "powers that be," Dean directs her attention toward the infirmities within and among critics and activists on the political left in the United States. At the heart of her critique is her suggestion that the once-sharp edges of social movement vanguards have been dulled by their emersion in a cloud of meaningless and self-serving chatter that merely adds to the flow of digital detritus that she defines as the essence of "communicative capitalism." Despite the fact that most of the analyses that serve as core of her six tightly organized chapters were written before we had much experience with the "postpartisan" and "post-racial" versions of progressive politics as performed by the Obama administration, most readers could fiU in the blanks on what her assessment would likely be. Dean lays the groundwork for her attack on liberal capitulation to a neoliberal hegemony by identifying several core themes in the approach to social policy that achieved dominance during the Clinton years. Of particular significance is her suggestion that the discursive frameworks that supported progressive struggles for the "rights" of various oppressed groups served to reinforce the "position of the victim" at the heart of these movements. She then suggests that it is precisely the character and capacity of communicative capitalism that creates "ideal discursive habitats for the thriving of the victim identity." Although Dean gives a central place of honor to recent work in psychoanalytic theory, the examples, arguments, and illustrations that she provides throughout the book wUl still generate understanding and appreciation among those of us not well grounded in Lacanian Marxism. Dean explicates her take on the nature of communicative capitalism, appropriately enough, in a chapter on technology. In essence, she argues that rather than serving the democratic functions of enlightenment that we expect to find in a Habermasian public sphere, the everexpanding flow of commentary and personal expression exists as Uttle more than circulating content, something akin to a warm bath. For example, she suggests that pointed criticism "doesn't require an answer because it doesn't stick as criticism. It functions as just another opinion offered into the media-stream." Thus, her definition of communicative capitaUsm is "talk without response." In her view, communications technology helps to provide a "fantasy of participation" where taking poUtical action is reduced to an act of talking into the space of flows of which the Internet is the deepest end. …

Merchants of Culture: The Publishing Business in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract: John B. Thompson, profesor en la Universidad de Cambridge, ha dedicado los últimos 10 años de su vida e intereses en la investigación, a comprender la lógica que hay detrás de la producción de publicaciones, tanto en el ámbito académico como en el comercial. En el año 2005 publicó su libro Books in the Digital Age, el cual devela el mundo de las publicaciones académicas en dos entornos anglosajones: el de Estados Unidos y el de Inglaterra. Una reseña a este libro fue publicada en Comunicación y Sociedad (Fuentes Navarro, 2006, pp. 181-185). Posterior a la descripción y análisis de las publicaciones en el entorno académico, Thompson se propuso un reto mayor: describir y analizar la industria de la publicación de libros pero ahora comerciales –tanto de ficción como no ficción–, también en Estados Unidos y en Inglaterra.

The Emergence of Nano News: Tracking Thematic Trends and Changes in U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Nanotechnology:

Abstract: Mediated messages can influence awareness and nascent perceptions of novel or new issues. Nanotechnology is one such issue. This study explores descriptive and thematic characteristics of journalistic coverage of nanotechnology over a twenty-year span using computer-aided content analysis, finding an emphasis on research throughout the period with an increasing focus on both business and health aspects of nanotechnology. Later stories are more likely to address potential risks, while the regulatory dimensions, environmental implications, and uncertainty inherent in this emerging technology remain largely unaddressed.

Source Cues in Online News: Is the Proximate Source More Powerful than Distal Sources?

Abstract: With the rise of intermediaries such as portals, social-bookmarking sites, and microblogs, online news is often carried through multiple sources However, the perceived credibility of different sou

Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media

Abstract: Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media. Beth A. Haller. Louisville, KY: The Advocado Press, 2010. 213 pp. $24.95 pbk. Sophisticated and highly readable, Representing Disability in an Ableist World is a work that can be appreciated both by those who are already familiar with disability studies scholarship concerning media and by those who are seeking a comprehensive introduction to it. Written by Beth A. Haller, a professor of journalism at Towson University as well as the author of the popular blog Media disd rather, she argues that new media provide an opportunity for more sophisticated representation, often without the gatekeeping, filters, and interests associated with the traditional media. Plenty of examples help prove her case, and those with an interest in disability representation might find themselves rapidly underlining Haller's resources of blogs, YouTube videos, and Twitter feeds to return to later. Besides her strong use of resources and scholarship, Haller's overall tone is one of the book's great assets. There is a sense of cautious optimism as she discusses the changing media landscape. As readers, we are treated in chapter 8 to an analysis of texts such as the work of John Callahan and the development of his Pelswick animated series on Nickelodeon. …

Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics

Abstract: Rude Democracy: Civility and Incivility in American Politics. Susan Herbst. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2010. 216 pp. $24.95 pbk. Like an exciting classroom discussion, Rude Democracy opens with the shock of a counterintuitive challenge. Author Susan Herbst suggests that the incivility so rife in our politics can be a valid tactic, and that condemning it outright is "banal and unsophisticated." From there, she constructs a nuanced argument that some incivility, but not too much, stimulates healthy debate. Rather than wasting time trying to drum it out of politics, she maintains, we should educate our students and citizenry to deal more thoughtfully with the inevitable discord. Herbst is professor of public policy at Georgia Tech and has a deep academic record. But she also draws on the personal. She dedicates the book to her father, Adolph, a "holocaust survivor and once stateless person, who lived the ideals of American civility without ever having to think about it." Together, her personal experience and scholarly expertise allow Herbst to achieve something unusual in this day and age: a civil book about the uncivil. She begins with a compact essay on the nature of civility and incivility, then uses material from the 2008 presidential campaign and its aftermath to flesh out her points. She also offers survey results on how young people respond to a politicized climate. Herbst refuses to spend time debating "the alleged decline of civility," an exercise she labels a "distraction." Instead, she suggests that incivility be dealt with as an ongoing presence in the civic arena. Importantly, she believes, civility and incivility play to both the emotional and interactive aspects of contemporary politics. Rather than approaching civility as "a set of social and cultural norms," she prefers to see it as a "tool in the rhetorical behavioral arsenals of politics." With that in mind, Herbst looks at 2008 vice presidential candidacy of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who she says resented "extraordinarily effective uses both civility and incivility as assets." Palin could be "rabid, ed, catty, empathetic, warm, humane, engaging, all at the same time," as says. Palin' s rhetoric could be extreme, example in accusing then-Sen. Obama of "palling around with ists." But Herbst also finds that Palin interaction, humor, passion, warmth, gratitude to "create a comfortable ment for people to express Palin's campaign "ran to the heart of civility and incivility are both and self-reflexively tactical, thrown on off, in an age of constant media and Internet chatter," she says. As for Obama, Herbst focuses early activities of his presidency, a speech at Notre Dame where he ly asked Americans to debate despite their differences. Then, however, came the notorious town hall over health care reform, where anger and disruption often kicked civility aside. …

Commentary: Interviews and Focus Groups as Critical and Cultural Methods:

Abstract: Interviews and focus groups are valuable methods that share an important place in qualitative research in many disciplines, including journalism and mass communication. A wise use of these methods,...

The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election

Abstract: The Obama Victory: How Media, Money and Message Shaped the 2008 Election. Kate Kenski, Bruce W. Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. 378 pp. $21.95 pbk. This is the best book on a presidential campaign since the Making of the President series by Theodore White in 1960, 1964, 1968, and 1972. It is a product of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania under the leadership of Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the Elizabeth Ware Packard professor of communication. Bruce Hardy is a senior research analyst at Annenberg, and Kate Kenski, who was at Annenberg when the study was made, is now an assistant professor of communication at the University of Arizona. The heart of the study is the extensive survey effort by the National Annenberg Election Survey - 57,000 telephone interviews conducted between December 2007 and the election. However, there is a lot more to this study than this enormous database. There was a post-election panel study with 3,700 respondents. There was a post-election survey to find out what people believed and didn't believe of the campaign claims. There was a debriefing of those involved in the campaign in Philadelphia and Washington in December 2008. There were interviews with campaign staffers during the campaign. There was computerized content analysis. The Annenberg Public Policy Center's FactCheck.org was used to check accuracy of campaign ads. All of this is woven together into a comprehensive tale of what the candidates and their staffs were doing and how it worked out and how the campaign went day-by-day and over time. Newspapers and television news tend to focus on today, but this book gives you the longrange picture that you didn't get from the press. The text is supported by more than one-hundred charts and tables. You may think that Obama led all the way or all the way after the Democratic Convention, but there is evidence to the contrary in this book. If you think TV ads are a sure-fire thing, there is evidence to the contrary of that, too. The book is divided into three parts, "The Forces and Messages That Pervaded the Campaign," "Shifts in Momentum," and "The New Campaign Landscape." The first section begins with analysis of the importance of the economy and the Iraq war as issues. The economy became seen as the more important increasingly, and Barack Obama was seen increasingly as the candidate who could best deal with the economy. The book then deals with the stereotypes that McCain was too much like Bush and that Obama was a tax-and-spend liberal. Republicans did not think McCain was the same as Bush, but a majority of Democrats did, and that image persisted throughout the campaign. …

Women matter in newsrooms: How power and critical mass relate to the coverage of the HPV Vaccine

Abstract: This study explored how female journalists affect news content when holding positions of power, reaching a critical mass in the newsroom, and covering an issue that appeals to them. The study compa...

Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture

Abstract: Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture. Jim Collins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010. 288 pp. $22.95 pbk. During the last two decades, the popularity of books has grown exponentially. According to Bowker, book production through traditional avenues in the United States alone has grown from just over 100,000 titles in 1993 to nearly 300,000 in 2008, and the number of fiction titles has more than doubled. This does not account for the more than 750,000 self-published and print-on-demand books published in 2009 alone. In a nutshell, books are big business. In Bring on the Books for Everybody: How Literary Culture Became Popular Culture, Jim Collins, professor of film and television and English at the University of Notre Dame, explores the impact of the convergence of literary, visual, and material cultures on the book publishing industry. Collins begins by analyzing the audience - readers, starting with a historical examination, including readers of Ladies Home Journal in the early twentieth century, who were encouraged to "read only the best books" as a means of obtaining culture. He discusses the difference between "high-brow" professional readers - literature scholars and critics - as opposed to "middle-brow" unprofessional readers. As literacy rates have increased, the popularity of books, particularly literary fiction, progressed naturally. By the 1990s, the growth of the book superstores such as Amazon.com, Borders, and Barnes & Noble, along with the rising popularity of book clubs, took book discussions from the hallowed halls of academia into the homes of ordinary, everyday people. Oprah Winfrey's Book Club, for example, created instant bestsellers, although his discussion of Oprah's Anna Karenina show is a laborious and tedious transcript that serves only to challenge Winfrey's authority as the "national librarian" for those Collins views as unprofessional readers. While film adaptations of books have existed since the silent era, Collins presents the "Miramax formula," which garnered the Weinstein Brothers more than 200 Oscar nominations in the last two decades. Many of these book adaptations intertwine sexual passion with a love of all things literary, resulting in a "quality cultural experience" that, combined with intensive marketing, guarantees grand box office success. Collins supports this argument by providing comparative textual analyses of Shakespeare in Love, The English Patient, and The Hours both as books and films. Collins closes by exploring the literary bestseller, and questions what is, indeed, "literary." Should literature be appreciated because one resonates with the characters on the page or is the author's craft more important? …

Exploring Anger in the Hostile Media Process: Effects on News Preferences and Source Evaluation:

Abstract: Most studies of news bias judgments and news consumption do not consider the likely emotional responses to news content, and theoretical arguments suggest that approach emotions, like anger, may actually motivate more, not less, news consumption. An experiment found support for hypotheses that bias judgments would positively correlate with anger responses, and anger responses would associate not only with greater criticism of the reporter but also more, rather than less, interest in additional news stories containing both identity-threatening and identity-bolstering content.

Political Socialization: Modeling Teen Political and Civic Engagement:

Abstract: Research on adolescent political and civic engagement has focused on a wide variety of socializing agents, including parents, school, peers, and the media. This study builds an explanatory model th...

An Experimental Comparison of Two Perspectives on the Concept of Need for Orientation in Agenda-Setting Theory

Abstract: Need for orientation (NFO) is a key contingent condition for agenda-setting effects. Traditionally, this concept has been measured by two lower-order components, but a recent reconceptualization ex...

Young Adults' Reasons behind Avoidances of Daily Print Newspapers and Their Ideas for Change

Abstract: Focus groups in three cities were conducted with young adults (ages 18–29) to understand why they don't read daily print newspapers. The study examined news media avoidances, like “inconvenience” a...

Newsonomics: Twelve Trends That Will Shape the News You Get

Abstract: Newsonomics: Twelve Trends That Will Shape the News You Get. Ken Doctor. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2010. 219 pp. $25.95 pbk. $12.99 Kindle (http:/ /newsonomics.com/). Ken Doctor is a "Leading Media Industry Analyst." It says so right under his name on the cover of his new book, Newsonomics. A former managing editor of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Doctor spent twenty-one years with Knight Ridder. Now, as an analyst for a company called Outsell, he has joined the cottage industry that proclaims the future of media for all who will pay to listen. How does he foretell the future? Mostly, it seems, by reading blogs. Apparently that is where all the wisdom required to understand the future of the mass media can be found. What method do bloggers use? "We build on each other's ideas," explains Doctor, "engage in intellectual battles." Doctor directed new media for Knight-Ridder, based in San Jose, until 2005. Now he's a consultant whose work "centers around the monetizing power and democratizing work of digital content." One source you won't find in Doctor's prescription for the new economics of news are media economists or scholars examining digital media. In fact, Newsonomics offers no citations or references of any kind. Doctor doesn't need the input of academics to formulate his dozen maxims for what he terms the coming Digital Decade. In addition to all of his online experts, he's got lots of colleagues and former colleagues to call on for wisdom, of which there seems to be no shortage when it comes to the future of media. According to Doctor, because news now surrounds us, "it's hard not to know what's going on." At least, not if you're as plugged into the blogosphere as Doctor is. Because of this oversupply of news, only the fittest will make the cut, ushering in a new age of "Darwinian content." The winners, of course, will use technology better, engaging the social nature of Web reading and focusing news to audiences. Newspapers will survive for a while, according to Doctor, but not in all cities. They will be more expensive, printed only as a niche product for boomers and older. Newsonomics is not based entirely on conjecture, however. Doctor does some calculations to bolster his arguments: At about 150 stories per year for every position lost, for example, he figures that 828,000 stories are now not being reported every year due to the newspaper layoffs of 2007-08. Doctor also offers a theoretical basis for his prediction that a handful of giant media conglomerates will dominate the new media world. He calls them his "Digital Dozen," although they actually add up to about sixteen to eighteen, and their domination will be enabled by what Doctor describes as a "multiplier" effect in which the big only get bigger. …

Framing Immigration: Geo-Ethnic Context in California Newspapers

Abstract: In 2006, millions of immigrants protested against H.R. 4437, a new bill in Congress that threatened to treat undocumented immigrants as felons. Content analysis of news coverage of the bill reveals...

The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2008

Abstract: The Nightly News Nightmare: Media Coverage of U.S. Presidential Elections, 1988-2008. (3d ed.) Stephen J. Farnsworth and Robert Lichter. Boulder, CO: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. 246 pp. $80 hbk. $24.95 pbk. $24.05 e-book. The conclusion I draw from this updated edition of the classic work by Stephen Farnsworth and Robert Lichter, both of George Mason University, is that the free-to-air U.S. television networks long ago reneged on the deal implied but ill-articulated by the 1936 Communications Act that, in return for free access to publicly owned spectrum, these advertising-driven operations would deliver a news product that served citizenship and democracy. There is no evidence that network television has gained from its dedication to mediocrity: The networks converted a 26percentage-point advantage over cable in 1992 to a 20% deficit in 2008, and they remain inept in attracting younger viewers. Yet the three evening newscasts continue to draw an overall audience of 25 million, so their miserable performance is a matter of great concern. The authors' content analysis shows that media coverage of presidential elections is wretchedly inadequate and generally getting worse. The principal shortcomings are well known to readers of earlier editions: "horse-race" framing prevails over substance. There are significant problems of negativity, accuracy, and fairness. There is declining attention to candidates and excessive attention to the journalists who cover them - we hear much more from the reporters who, by 1992, were setting the tone of a story about 80% of the time, and failing to integrate the concerns and views of ordinary citizens. In 2008, two-thirds of all speaking time was allocated to journalists, with the remainder split between presidential and vice presidential candidates and other onair sources. Apart from reporters, barely any independent or nonpartisan individuals are heard. The networks compare unfavorably to many other media, notably PBS. The authors say that the "single most troubling finding" is the "massive chasm between what the campaigns say ... and what citizens learn about those campaigns from the networks." The vested interests themselves - the candidates and campaigns - manage to do a better job than the networks in responding to citizen demand for quality information. All candidates are framed by the media, and these simple media-created frames, however injudiciously constructed, tend to endure throughout campaigns in place of matters of substance: in effect, simple, often silly, frames reduce sweat for lazy journalists. Over time, audiences have been told more and more about who is ahead in the polls and who is behind, rather than where candidates stand on the issues. Viewers consequently appear to know more about the races than about the issues. Even the principles of polling seem poorly understood by many journalists so that the one thing that newscasts do concentrate on, the contest, is often based on unreliable evidence. Viewers tend to support in greater numbers the candidate who reporters say is winning. A band-wagon effect makes it easier for the candidates who hold a lead to keep that lead, although sometimes front-runners attract more media scrutiny, which may turn negative. …

The Mediating Role of Emotions in the Relationship between Frames and Attribution of Responsibility for Health Problems

Abstract: This experiment explored the effects of thematic and episodic and gain and loss frames on emotional responses and attribution of responsibility. Also, it analyzed whether or not emotions mediate th...

Comparing Reporters' Work across Print, Radio, and Online: Converged Origination, Diverged Packaging

Abstract: This paper compares how eighty reporters from three media—print, online, and radio—obtained a sample of their items, seeking to establish which of two schools of thought is closer to reality: schol

You Really, Truly, Have to “Be There”: Video Journalism as a Social and Material Construction

Abstract: News organizations are turning increasingly to video journalism as survival strategy in the era of convergence. Video journalism, the process by which one person shoots, writes, and edits video sto...

At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror

Abstract: * At War with Metaphor: Media, Propaganda, and Racism in the War on Terror. Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2008. 244 pp. $70 hbk. $29.95 pbk. $70 E-book. Erin Steuter and Deborah Wills, who teach sociology and English at Canada's Mount Allison University, are commited to raising the level of public understanding about the role that media play in bringing people into and through a seemingly endless string of wars. Although this book is focused primarily on U.S. media constructions of the so-called "War on Terror," its emphasis on the role that metaphor plays in the strategic "othering" of countless enemies helps to establish the historical roots of this discursive practice. Although the authors acknowledge the important contribution to our understanding of various "wars" that have been provided by the alternative media, this book is primarily a critical assessment of the complicity with which the "mainstream media" support their government's use of propaganda as a strategic resource. The book begins with an accessible introduction to the nature, role, and routine use of metaphor within communications in general, and within mass media in particular. Because of its concern with the call to war and the metaphoric construction of the enemy, most of the book's examples have been chosen to illustrate the use of readily interpreted images of the "Other" as subhuman, dangerous, and worthy of little short of annihilation. In one chapter, this metaphoric othering is associated with Orientalism as an especially extreme form of construction that frames the other as not only different, but essentially the opposite of all that we value in ourselves. The dehumanization of the enemy is accomplished routinely in the nexus of racism and genocide, and it is in this context that Steuter and Wills provide historical examples of the use of metaphor to justify the most extreme treatment of slaves, Jews, Rwandans, and Asian enemies of wars past. The second of three sections in the book is focused on three contemporary case studies that identify some of the common threads that tie the process of dehumanization together. The first, and perhaps most familiar, discursive strategy is the use of animals and disease, and the implied links between them to invite us to accept extermination as an appropriate military response. The strategic use of images and labels of particular animals is quite common in part because of the deeply engrained aversive responses that most of us have to rats and other vermin. Similarly shared impressions of the "character" of individual animals like weasels help to reinforce the impressions of the enemy as treacherous, sneaky, and cowardly. One chapter is devoted to the use of these constructions of the enemy as vermin, and their actions as infestation, in order to justify eradication through extermination. …

The Value of Public Relations in Investor Relations: Individual Investors' Preferred Information Types, Qualities, and Sources

Abstract: A survey targeting individual investors addressed the types, qualities, and sources of information this specific public seeks and values. In keeping with uses and gratifications theory and situatio...

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Abstract: The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains. Nicholas Carr. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Co., 2010. 276 pp. $26.95 hbk. $15.95 pbk. Nicholas Carr's book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains is founded in the author's observations that his mind was no longer processing information as it once did. More specifically, he noticed that it was more of a struggle to read books and complex writing without having his mind wander. The wandering mind may not be a new concept to anyone who is self-aware during his/her daily experiences, but making the connection between the growing lack of focus and Internet time may be. What this opening observation does for Carr's book is to set us up to travel through arguments of how key technological advances have made changes not only to the way people think, but to the way our brains are structured. As we move through the book, we question whether we really are learning more online or if we are just being seduced by the instant access. Ultimately, Carr, a media-tech guru who has written several books on the Internet and technology - The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, from Edison to Google (2008) and Does IT Matter? (2004)- explains how changes in language, writing, books, time, and the Internet have changed us. Those changes may not be all good because they disconnect us, as Carr says: seduction by technological advancements has cost us some of our "human elements." Initially the structure of the book seemed to reflect Carr's argument for people being unable to focus for extended periods, as he presents chapters followed by what he titles "a digression." This would lead careful readers of his argument to expect an element of "See? I'm right" - a reward for the reader pointing to the fact that the only reason we've made it through the book was because the author knew how the human brain now functions under the influence of the net. Yet, that does not happen. No overt commentary is formed around the structure of the work, and how it could possibly strengthen the argument. Additionally, what starts out as a promising and interesting structural approach actually does not go deep enough to support the author's point. This lack of depth is also problematic in other sections. While the overall impression is of a well-researched, well-supported work, several chapters on the historical development of human brains and technology feel, to use the author's concept, stuck in the shallows. …

Alone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other

Abstract: Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. Sherry Turkle. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2011. 360 pp. $28.95 hbk. E. M. Forster exhorted readers to "Only connect" with other people. Yet in Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other, author Sherry Turkle observes that these days, Americans are more likely to connect with their handheld devices and virtual lives than with one another. With this trend on the rise, Turkle says we are "at a point of disturbing symmetry: we seem determined to give human qualities to objects and content to treat each other as things." Turkle cites as examples the "digital creatures," such as the robot dog AIBO and My Real Baby, intended to provide company for children and the elderly; and the popularity of Chatroulette, in which people are objectified and then, seconds later, dismissed. "With sociable robots, we imagine objects as people," she writes. "Online, we invent ways of being with people that turn them into something close to objects." Why are we doing this? "These days, insecure in our relationships and anxious about intimacy, we look to technology for ways to be in relationships and protect ourselves from them at the same time," Turkle says. "Digital connections and the sociable robot may offer the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship." At the root of this paradoxical and disturbing pas de deux is people's growing sense of loneliness and isolation, writes Turkle, an MIT professor, clinical psychologist, and as one colleague wrote, "the Margaret Mead of digital culture." At what she calls the "robotic moment" - when we are emotionally and philosophically ready to have robots as pets, friends, and (for some) even romantic partners - Turkle worries that despite the strong emotional connection people develop with these robots, they are settling for way too little in return. She describes children loath to part with borrowed Furbies after two weeks, and a woman so enamored of My Real Baby that she ignores her 2-yearold great-granddaughter. Although the robots don't understand these human interactions, the semblance of connection seems enough for humans - yet there is psychological risk involved when people "cheapen the notion of companionship to a baseline of 'interacting with something.'" These risks are especially acute among children, the elderly, and the physically and mentally challenged - society's most vulnerable members and the very people for whom robots are being developed. "Will only the wealthy and 'well adjusted' be granted the company of their own kind?" Turkle muses. She says that children in particular can develop empathy and a sense of reciprocity only with other people, not with robots. Furthermore, many of the children she has studied seem to lack attentive parents to make the children feel important. …

Who's to Blame When a Business Fails? How Journalistic Death Metaphors Influence Responsibility Attributions

Abstract: This study unites a textual analysis and an experimental audience study to document the use of death metaphor in business news and to assess the impact that death metaphor has on audiences' attributions of responsibility for corporate failure. The findings show that death metaphors are frequently used in financial press coverage and that the use of death metaphor influences audience members' responsibility attributions by intensifying overall levels of blame, while simultaneously deflecting blame away from the executives responsible for managing the firm and diffusing it to other factors, including the state of the economy, the government, and individual consumers. Metaphors are a fundamental element of everyday communication.1 A metaphor is composed of a topic and the vehicle that indirectly describes the topic by referring to a domain that is foreign to the topic.2 Many studies find abundant use of metaphors in political communication, news, and marketing messages.3 Crucially, these studies tiieorize significant effects related to the use of metaphors on audience attitudes and decision making.4 Furthermore, commercial media practitioners contend that metaphors are an efficient and effective tool for persuasion.5 Each of these studies aligns with the view that metaphors "play an important role in structuring how people unconsciously perceive themselves, their lives, and the world around them."6 In this paper, we conduct an experimental audience study to examine how anthropomorphic death metaphor - a communication vehicle that assigns human characteristics to nonhuman entities - can define events as a natural part of the human condition, and thus shape understanding of that event in powerful ways. Specifically, we look at how anthropomorphic death metaphors are used to describe the failing of a business in ways that influence audience members' attributions of responsibility for the firm's demise. We contextualize the effects study by detailing how British and American press coverage employed anthropomorphic death metaphors in news reports of recent corporate failings. The paper begins with evidence of the prevalence of death metaphors in business reporting. We then examine the possible cognitive consequences of metaphors, particularly with respect to responsibility attributions. We present two hypotheses related to the impact that exposure to death metaphors has on audience attributions and two research questions that consider the moderating role that financial investment and business news use might have on audience response. A description of methods and results follows. The paper concludes with an examination of the theoretical significance of the results and future research directions. The Anthropomorphic Metaphor of Death Political theorists identify a longstanding presence of death metaphors in public address and political discourse.7 Historically, death metaphors have been used to reinforce hierarchical power relations among elites, institutions, and publics.8 Contemporary media use death metaphors in political, economic,9 and cultural10 domains, and journalists often anthropomorphize companies.11 Thus, when a company goes through an IPO (Initial Public Offering) a new public company is "born," and when the company goes bankrupt, the firm has "died." In the domains of business and economics, we argue that death metaphors intensify and deflect responsibility from the shoulders of business executives and managers who were supposed to safeguard the company's wellbeing. In essence, we suggest that death as a metaphorical device helps naturalize socially constructed processes. Death in Economic Reporting We focus on economic reporting because the general trend toward a more minimal role for government in the provision of social services and the more central role of commercial actors has placed economic risk on the shoulders of individuals12 and potentially increases the capacity for business news to impact mass economic behavior. …