Digital Commons Network^™

The Perturbing Mediatization Of Voice-Based Virtual Assistants: The Case Of Alexa, Leopoldina Fortunati, Autumn P. Edwards, Chad Edwards

Human-Machine Communication

This study examines the role of voice-based assistants (VBAs), specifically Alexa, in the mediatization paradigm framework. The authors hypothesize that emerging technologies such as chatbots and VBAs intensify the process of online meta-reintermediation of news. Three research questions were investigated through a questionnaire administered to 655 university students in the US and Italy: Do participants try to get news from Alexa? Are participants aware that VBAs represent a case of meta-reintermediation of news? Does Alexa contribute to the potential hybridization of news, information, and knowledge? The analysis of 451 open-ended answers showed that only a fraction of participants searches for …

Listen To Black Women: Newsgathering In Digital Third Spaces, Gheni N. Platenburg

Feminist Pedagogy

This teaching activity re-introduces the concept of digital third spaces and how to use them as complementary newsgathering tools. Students are tasked with visiting these spaces to listen to Black women. In other words, they will observe content and engage in conversations with digital third space visitors to better educate themselves on the topics, issues and concerns of Black women and learn how to take this information and formulate story ideas for improved news coverage of and about Black women.

A Fake Future: The Threat Of Foreign Disinformation On The U.S. And Its Allies, Brandon M. Rubsamen

Global Tides

This paper attempts to explain the threat that foreign disinformation poses for the United States Intelligence Community and its allies. The paper examines Russian disinformation from both a historical and contemporary context and how its effect on Western democracies may only be exacerbated in light of Chinese involvement and evolving technologies. Fortunately, the paper also studies practices and strategies that the United States Intelligence Community and its allied foreign counterparts may use to respond. It is hoped that this study will help shed further light on Russian and Chinese disinformation campaigns and explain how the Intelligence Community can efficiently react.

College Students’ Perspectives Of Bias In Their News Consumption Habits, Jolie C. Matthews

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article builds off prior work on news consumption habits and perception of bias in the news by focusing on college students’ self-generated definitions of bias, and the strategies they employ to guard against how their personal bias potentially affects what news they choose to believe and consume. Through interviews with undergraduate students, findings show that while participants acknowledged they had personal bias to a degree, the majority still defined bias as an external issue imposed on them by others than as an internal issue shaping their thoughts about the sources they consumed. Some students attempted to mitigate any perceived …

Exploring News Coverage About Plant-Based Milk: A Content Analysis, Elise Regusci, Courtney Meyers, Nan Li, Erica Irlbeck

Journal of Applied Communications

Plant-based milk has provided more options to consumers who are looking for an alternative to dairy milk. Recently, sales of plant-based milk have increased while dairy milk has continued to decline. To gather more insight into what is being discussed in news coverage about plant-based milk, a quantitative content analysis was conducted on 250 articles published from 2011 to 2020. These articles were coded for word count, location of publication, frame, and article type. The seven frames used to describe plant-based milk were Environment, Animal Welfare, Health, Economics, Labeling, Taste, and Trend. There was an increase in articles published each …

For Want Of Deeper Coverage, Zachary Michael Jack

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Syrian Crisis Representation In The Media: The Cnn Effect, Framing, And Tone, Savannah S. Day

Venture: The University of Mississippi Undergraduate Research Journal

Over the past seven years of the Syrian Civil War, Syrian refugees have been painted in a negative light by news media outlets around the world. History of media coverage regarding global humanitarian crises shows that with various tools and processes, media can shape public opinion and policy in whichever direction it desires, and oftentimes policymakers and the public are quick, as well as emotional, to react. In this paper, my objectives are to analyze specific examples of this CNN Effect phenomena within news coverage of the Syrian refugee crisis, as well as generally explain the negatively correlating relationship between …

Analisis Bingkai Pemberitaan Aksi Bela Islam 2 Desember 2016 (Aksi 212) Di Media Massa Bbc (Indonesia) & Republika, Abidatu Lintang Pradipta, Nadya Warih Nur Hidayah, Afifah Nafiatun Annisa Haya, Carissa Ervani, Deny Kristanto

Informasi

Jones, Rodney H. & Hafner, Christoph A. (2012). “Understanding Digital Literacies: A practical introduction”. Oxford: Routledge.

Fake Or Visual Trickery? Understanding The Quantitative Visual Rhetoric In The News, Rohit Mehta, Lynette Deaun Guzmán

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In online and video/television spaces, news media discourses incorporate multimodal design as a discursive move capable of steering meaning toward desirable implications. Around the 2016 U.S. presidential elections, while polarized news outlets made their positionality on the candidates obvious, more neutral or central news outlets revealed their preferences through subtle multimodal design choices. One of these design choices is using a quantitative visual rhetoric: persuasive multimodal moves that draw on quantification through visual, spatial, and textual manipulation—involving the choice of data representation, visual images, and illustrations, (im)balance between numeric and alphabetic texts, and general quantitative narrative. This quantitative visual rhetoric …

Media Literacy And Response To Terror News, Daniel Bergan, Heysung Lee

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Increased fear and threat toward terrorism in the current American society is largely due to vivid news coverages, as explained by cultivation theory and mean world syndrome. Media literacy has potential to reduce this perception of fear and threat, such as people high on media literacy will be less likely to be affected by terror news. We focus on representation and reality for investigating the relationship between influence of terror news and media literacy, one component of media literacy framework developed by Primack and Hobbs (2006), which deals with how media messages reflect or exclude the reality. Our study divided …

Mapping Citizen Journalists’ Profiles: A Case Study On Indonesian Net Citizen Journalist (Net Cj) Program, Asty Rastiya, Hendriyani Hendriyani, Indah Santi Pratidina

Jurnal Komunikasi Indonesia

Makna dari kata “warga” dalam konsep “jurnalisme warga” terus dibahas oleh para akademisi di bidang ini. Pembahasan berfokus pada keterampilan dan modal yang diperlukan jika seseorang berkeinginan untuk menjadi seorang jurnalis warga yang ideal. Jurnalis warga telah lama menghadapi prasangka karena minimnya pengetahuan akan jurnalisme dan rendahnya kualitas berita yang mereka buat. Terlepas dari itu, jurnalisme warga di Indonesia telah berkembang, sebagian besar karena pertumbuhan yang cepat dari telepon pintar dan pengguna media sosial. Penelitian ini menggunakan kasus program NET Citizen Journalist (NET CJ), sebagai komunitas jurnalis warga terbesar di Indonesia. Dengan memetakan profil anggota program CJ NET berdasarkan latar …

Safely Through The Gate: Exploring Media Coverage And Journalists Decisions On The Flow Of Farm Safety Stories, Rebecca Swenson, Brandon Roiger, Alexis Murillo

Journal of Applied Communications

Agriculture continues to rank as one of the most dangerous industries in the nation. Media coverage is an important tool for sharing farm safety information, improving knowledge and changing behaviors. Despite this importance, surprisingly little research has focused on agricultural media coverage and the forces that influence journalists’ decisions about when and how to cover safety stories. This study uses content analysis methods to examine the nature of farm safety issues, accidents, and topics that appear in mainstream news, agricultural media, and blogs. Researchers also interviewed journalists and bloggers to better understand their motivations, barriers, and information needs when covering …

Ngos In Turkey’S Media Field: Causes, Sources And Potentials For Development, Altug Akin, Burak Dogu

Markets, Globalization & Development Review

This study elaborates on the non-governmental organizations in Turkey that operate within the broadly defined media field, where a wide variety of organizations, associations, movements and platforms are observed. Focusing on the two most disputed subdomains of the media in Turkey, namely news and information technologies, this descriptive research, at the first level, examines the causes or existence reasons of the NGOs along with their strategies, operations and achievements or failures. Their organizational forms and resources are studied at the second level. Third level of the study investigates their relations with a particular focus on their operational context. It …

Walking The Line Between Reality And Fiction In Online Spaces: Understanding The Effects Of Narrative Transportation, Sarah Gretter, Aman Yadav, Benjamin Gleason

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Recent contentions about "fake news" and misinformation online has shed light on the critical need for media literacy at a global scale. Indeed, digital stories are one of the main forms of communication in the 21st century through blogs, videos-sharing websites, forums, or social networks. However, the line between facts and fiction can often become blurry in these online spaces, and being able to distinguish between reality and fantasy can have important consequences in the lives of young Internet users. Using contemporary examples from news stories, fanfiction, advertising, and radicalization, this article outlines the features, affordances, and real-life implications of …

Surveying The Landscape As Technology Revolutionizes Media Coverage Of Appellate Courts, Howard J. Bashman

The Journal of Appellate Practice and Process

No abstract provided.

Political Engagement During A Presidential Election Year: A Case Study Of Media Literacy Students, Elia M. Powers, Susan D. Moeller, Yacong Yuan

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This exploratory, mixed-methods study uses data gathered during the previous U.S. presidential election in 2012 to evaluate student political engagement and digital culture. Survey results and media diary entries revealed that college students enrolled in a media literacy course during Super Tuesday or Election Day gravitated toward low-barrier political actions and expressive modes of citizenship, and they were most engaged when there was a social component to following election news. These results, coupled with recent data on political engagement and media consumption, present an opportunity to consider the role of digital platforms and online communities in the 2016 election.

Reading Is Remembering: The Effect Of Reading Vs. Watching News On Memory And Metamemory, Hesham M. Mesbah

Speaker & Gavel

From which news medium can audiences acquire information best? To what extent does the news source affect receivers’ feelings of knowing? Will the effect of a news source on confidence in knowledge, if any, stay over time?

Exposure to either print or electronic news media is a daily habit for an average person in today’s world. Computerized news transmitted via networks and online services led to more diversification in news presentations. Such diversity inspired many scholars to investigate the comparative effectiveness of news media on memory processes. The study reported here examines the effect of exposure to different news media …

A Multi-Dimensional Approach To Measuring News Media Literacy, Emily K. Vraga, Melissa Tully, John E. Kotcher, Anne-Bennett Smithson, Melissa Broeckelman-Post

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Measuring news media literacy is important in order for it to thrive in a variety of educational and civic contexts. This research builds on existing measures of news media literacy and two new scales are presented that measure self-perceived media literacy (SPML) and perceptions of the value of media literacy (VML). Research with a larger sample of college undergraduate students and a smaller sample of adults enabled the validation of these measures. Results confirm the value of conceptualizing news media literacy using the theoretical subcomponents of authors & audiences, messages & meaning, and representation & realities. The VML scale, in …

"Nobody Wants To Eat Them Alive:” Ethical Dilemmas And Dual Media Narratives On Domestic Rabbits As Pets And Commodity, Gayane F. Torosyan, Brian Lowe

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

Using semiotic analysis, this study explores changes occurring in the societal perception of rabbits as farm animals as juxtaposed to their increasing popularity as domestic companions. This study is based on a preliminary hypothesis that rabbits are increasingly perceived and portrayed in media as domestic companion animals similar to cats and guinea pigs, which challenges a parallel narrative that views rabbits as commodities for their meat and fur. Operating within a theoretical framework that considers news media as both socially constructed reality and recorded history, the study examines the dynamics of change in numbers of coded news narratives drawn as …

Book Review: It's Not News, It's Fark, Christina Van Starkenburg

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

No abstract provided.

Press Freedom In The European Union And Candidate Countries: A New Regional Reality, Stephanie Benedict

Claremont-UC Undergraduate Research Conference on the European Union

No abstract provided.

Motion Pictures As An Agent Of Socialization: A Comparative Content Analysis Of Demography Of Population On Indian Silver Screen And Reported Crime News In Pakistan (1976 To 2006), Erum Hafeez Aslam

Business Review

This study aims to examine and analyze role of motion pictures as an agent of socialization. It focuses the contribution of Indian movies to the increase of violent crimes and criminals in Pakistani society across the four decades (i.e. 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and 2000s) through favorable rather glamorized depiction of violence and perpetrators of violence. It is arbitrarily assumed that violence is often projected on silver screen as a quick and easy solution to social injustice and class discrimination in the blockbusters of Bollywood and Lollywood. Five top grossing Indian films selected through popularity charts and youth polls are thus …

Journalists' Views Of The Environment: Issues And Challenges, Bernadette West, Jane Lewis, Michael Greenberg

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

In advocating the use of an environmental handbook for journalists, the authors report on a survey of reporters and editors regarding salient environmental issues in different regions of the United States and e emphasis placed on environmental reporting in newsrooms.

Aids News As Risk Communication, Admassu Tassew

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Reports on a study of AIDS prevention stories in four prestige dailies, two in Europe and two in Africa, over an eight-year period.

Reporting On Risk: Who Decides What's News?, William Lanouette

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Dr. Lanouette argues that risks alone do not command national media attention; their implications must first be framed by broader national issues.

Historical Notes On German Press Coverage Of Technology, Hans Mathias Kepplinger

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Professor Kepplinger accounts for increased negativism in German media coverage of technology by pointing to changes in journalists' role definitions and attitudes.

The Media, Risk Assessment And Numbers: They Don't Add Up, Sharon M. Friedman

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Professor Friedman argues that, for risks to be reported accurately, journalism educators must help their students understand science, numbers and statistics.

Reporting Risk: The Case Of Silicone Breast Implants, Dorothy Nelkin

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Professor Nelkin finds journalists to be, if reluctantly, subject to influence and describes their uneasy relationship with scientists in filling a difficult role.

Technical Risk In The Mass Media: Introduction, Allan Mazur

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

Special editor, Professor Mazur introduces and explains the origins of the symposium.

Reporting On Risk: How The Mass Media Portray Accidents, Diseases, Disasters And Other Hazards, Eleanor Singer, Phyllis M. Endreny

RISK: Health, Safety & Environment (1990-2002)

The authors summarize their large survey of hazard stories, showing that characteristics of news media affect risk presentation.