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Exploring The Relationship Between Quantitative Reasoning Skills And News Habits, Bennett Attaway, John Voiklis, Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, Eric Hochberg, Jim Hammerman, Uduak Grace Thomas, Nicole Lamarca, Laura Santhanam, Patti Parson Jan 2023

Exploring The Relationship Between Quantitative Reasoning Skills And News Habits, Bennett Attaway, John Voiklis, Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, Eric Hochberg, Jim Hammerman, Uduak Grace Thomas, Nicole Lamarca, Laura Santhanam, Patti Parson

Numeracy

Because people are constantly confronted with numbers and mathematical concepts in the news, we have embarked on a project to create journalism that can support news users’ number skills. But doing so requires understanding (1) journalists’ ability to reason with numbers, (2) other adults’ ability to do so, and (3) the attributes and affordances of news. In this paper, we focus on the relationship between adults’ news habits and their quantitative reasoning skills. We collected data from a sample of 1,200 US adults, testing their ability to interpret statistical results and asking them to report their news habits. The assessment …


“It’S Not Hate But … ”: Marginal Categories In Rural Journalism, Gregory P. Perreault, Ruth Moon, Jessica Fargen Walsh, Mildred F. Perreault Jan 2022

“It’S Not Hate But … ”: Marginal Categories In Rural Journalism, Gregory P. Perreault, Ruth Moon, Jessica Fargen Walsh, Mildred F. Perreault

School of Advertising & Mass Communications Faculty Publications

Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of “hate speech” as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n = 33) to better understand how rural journalists report on hate. We find that rural journalists articulate a clear definition for hate speech but struggle to apply that definition to events within their communities, even as they articulate numerous forms of hate. Journalists often dismissed …


Metajournalistic Discourse As A Stabilizer Within The Journalistic Field: Journalistic Practice In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Gregory P. Perreault, Mildred F. Perreault, Phoebe Maares Jan 2022

Metajournalistic Discourse As A Stabilizer Within The Journalistic Field: Journalistic Practice In The Covid-19 Pandemic, Gregory P. Perreault, Mildred F. Perreault, Phoebe Maares

School of Advertising & Mass Communications Faculty Publications

The COVID-19 Pandemic created a two-fold challenge for journalists: first, the task of gathering and distributing information vital to the responses of the public, and second, the challenge of mitigating the complexities of the journalism field. The purpose of this study is to connect the theoretical frameworks of metajournalistic discourse and field theory, using the touch point of journalistic practice. Prior research has postulated that metajournalistic discourse operates as a stabilizing force in the journalistic field. Using the timely test of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study seeks to explore the discursive construction of journalistic practice during a pandemic through the …


Surveying The Landscape Of Numbers In U.S. News, John Voiklis, Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, Bennett Attaway, Uduak G. Thomas, Shivani Ishwar, Patti Parson, Laura Santhanam, Isabella Isaacs-Thomas Nov 2021

Surveying The Landscape Of Numbers In U.S. News, John Voiklis, Jena Barchas-Lichtenstein, Bennett Attaway, Uduak G. Thomas, Shivani Ishwar, Patti Parson, Laura Santhanam, Isabella Isaacs-Thomas

Numeracy

The news arguably serves to inform the quantitative reasoning (QR) of news audiences. Before one can contemplate how well the news serves this function, we first need to determine how much QR typical news stories require from readers. This paper assesses the amount of quantitative content present in a wide array of media sources, and the types of QR required for audiences to make sense of the information presented. We build a corpus of 230 US news reports across four topic areas (health, science, economy, and politics) in February 2020. After classifying reports for QR required at both the conceptual …


Mitigating Negativity Bias In Media Selection, Gabrielle R. Jarmoszko Jun 2021

Mitigating Negativity Bias In Media Selection, Gabrielle R. Jarmoszko

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A growing body of research explores implicit negativity bias and how it influences news selection processes of media consumers. However, very little, if any, research exists exploring how negativity bias in the news selection process can be mitigated. Informed by experimental designs that have proven effective in mitigating other types of implicit bias, this study aimed to investigate whether having consumers commit themselves to definitions of their preferred type of news before engaging in the selection process alters manifestations of negativity bias in the selection. This study tested two hypotheses: H1, that non-committed individuals will have a higher selection frequency …


Journalism And Numeracy In Context: Four Case Studies, Steven Harrison Mar 2021

Journalism And Numeracy In Context: Four Case Studies, Steven Harrison

Numeracy

Although research into the relationship between quantitative literacy (QL) and news reporting is sparse, the consensus among researchers is that journalists tend not to place QL very highly among their professional values and that journalism suffers as a consequence. This paper is an attempt to provide concrete examples of the ways in which news reports systemically misinterpret, misrepresent, or misuse numerical data as part of the reporting process. Drawing on scenarios ranging from elections and healthcare to the mundane world of food preparation, it shows how a lack of rigour in the fields of reporting and news production can lead …


Feasting On Words: What University Students Learn When They Study Food Writing And Food Media, Janet K. Keeler Nov 2020

Feasting On Words: What University Students Learn When They Study Food Writing And Food Media, Janet K. Keeler

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The use of food in college curriculum is unique in its ability to create lasting impact because of the keen interest millennial and Generation Z students have in what they eat and drink. Studying media with food at its core is an underutilized mechanism to show how food intersects with the lives of all people thus encouraging students to look beyond their own experiences to consider the wider society. A program evaluation of 10 semesters of food writing and food media courses at a Florida public university reveals the ways in which students make deeper connections to culture and current …


Newsroom Narratives And Newsroom Solutions: Local Print Media In The Digital Age, John Pendygraft Oct 2018

Newsroom Narratives And Newsroom Solutions: Local Print Media In The Digital Age, John Pendygraft

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis seeks solutions to vexing problems facing media institutions today by exploring media narratives n the context of established anthropological theory. It is based in one local newsroom, the Tampa Bay Times, where I have worked for 22 years. The ethnography is a personal journey that draws on those decades of newsroom experience, social science theory, participant observation, interviews with journalists, and personal reflections. It examines dangerous historic periods of social dehumanization to put the political nature of today’s local print media crisis in context, and concludes that the greatest modern challenges to legacy journalism’s broken business model …


Fostering Scientific And Numerate Practices In Journalism To Support Rapid Public Learning, Louise Yarnall, Michael Andrew Ranney Jan 2017

Fostering Scientific And Numerate Practices In Journalism To Support Rapid Public Learning, Louise Yarnall, Michael Andrew Ranney

Numeracy

Journalism has the potential––and arguably the mandate––to expand public understanding of societally important phenomena. However, some methods for more effectively educating the public have been persistently underutilized: in particular, embedding informative numerical rates and efficient scientific explanations in news reports. In the current era of disrupting and downsizing the news business, the challenges to using such methods have only increased. To address this problem, this article seeks to (a) raise awareness about the psychological reasons that help explain why it is crucial to use such elements in news reports, and (b) exhibit some methods for doing so that require modest …


Historical Black Press Newspapers And Technology Adoption: The Weekly Challenger, Daytona Times, And Florida Courier, Indhira Suero Acosta Jan 2017

Historical Black Press Newspapers And Technology Adoption: The Weekly Challenger, Daytona Times, And Florida Courier, Indhira Suero Acosta

USF St. Petersburg campus Master's Theses (Graduate)

According to the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA), there are more than 200 local and regional publications directed to the African-American community in the United States. On its website, the NNPA lists a total of 157 members from 29 states. Currently, there exists no research on how these publications have adopted technology throughout time, or if the adoption of new media contributes to their growth and survival in the publishing industry. In Florida, The Weekly Challenger, Daytona Times and Florida Courier, 3 of 13 historical newspapers directed at the African-American population, are connected in history and structure and apply different …


Journalists, Numeracy And Cultural Capital, Steven Harrison Jul 2016

Journalists, Numeracy And Cultural Capital, Steven Harrison

Numeracy

Journalists are tasked with holding power to account; often, that means evaluating and interpreting numbers. But anecdotally, journalists are ill at ease with figures. This shortcoming is worrying both in terms of the quality of news provided to the public, and the implications for informed democratic debate. This paper tests the assertion that journalism as a profession is numeracy-challenged through a small-scale study of the numeracy capabilities of journalism students. Some oft-cited reasons for these shortcomings are discussed, including the pressures of deadlines and the tyranny of the 24-hour news cycle, where the mantra of “never wrong for long” appears …


History Of Numeracy Education And Training For Print Journalists In England, Steven Harrison Jul 2014

History Of Numeracy Education And Training For Print Journalists In England, Steven Harrison

Numeracy

If the history of journalism education has been a footnote to accounts of the profession’s development, then the history of numeracy training for journalists must be considered a footnote to a footnote. Despite the universally acknowledged centrality of numbers to a clear understanding of the world, many journalism students and entrants are proudly number-phobic; it is even suggested that an aversion to maths is a key reason why some choose journalism as a career. This study traces the development of numeracy education for journalists in England. It is only with the incipient professionalisation of journalism from the mid-19th century that …


Evaluating Scholarly Book Publishers—A Case Study In The Field Of Journalism., Tina M. Neville, Deborah Boran Henry Jan 2014

Evaluating Scholarly Book Publishers—A Case Study In The Field Of Journalism., Tina M. Neville, Deborah Boran Henry

USF St. Petersburg campus Faculty Publications

By adapting multiple metrics used for journal article evaluation and replicating recent publisher metrics, the authors tested methods for evaluating scholarly book publishers. Using monographs published in journalism between 2007 and 2011 as a test case, results indicate these methods may be useful to other scholarly disciplines.


Midtown Images On Exhibit, Dirk Shadd, Tampa Bay Times Oct 2012

Midtown Images On Exhibit, Dirk Shadd, Tampa Bay Times

Newspaper and Magazine Clippings

Feature about the "Through Our Eyes: Midtown and Beyond" exhibit at Studio@620.


Framing Christianity: A Frame Analysis Of Fundamentalist Christianity From 2000-2009, Rebecca Mackin Sitten Jan 2011

Framing Christianity: A Frame Analysis Of Fundamentalist Christianity From 2000-2009, Rebecca Mackin Sitten

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This qualitative frame analysis examines how print media handles the concept of Fundamentalist Christianity. The researcher examined news reports in four prominent national newspapers over the ten-year period between 2000 and 2009 for references made to Fundamentalist Christianity. The sample is examined on the basis of Mark Silk's "topoi," a term taken from classical rhetoric meaning commonplaces or themes (1995). Silk outlines seven common topoi on which stories about religion are written, and these are utilized as a framework for this present study. While much has been written and researched on how religious groups, Fundamentalist Christians, and Evangelicals use mass …


Cuba Fact Sheet, Florida Center For Survivors Of Torture Jan 2010

Cuba Fact Sheet, Florida Center For Survivors Of Torture

Florida Center for Survivors of Torture Collection

Gives a timeline of events in the history of Cuba and discusses use of torture there and the current situation regarding human rights.


Agriculture And Tampa Bay News: How Do Local News Media Frame Agribusiness?, Alex R. Ritzheimer Jun 2009

Agriculture And Tampa Bay News: How Do Local News Media Frame Agribusiness?, Alex R. Ritzheimer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The purpose for this thesis was to explore a dynamic between the news media, their subjects, and their audience. I investigate whether everyday news media frame the information they deliver in such a way as to potentially direct the audience on how to respond to news stories. The setting for this research question is in the Tampa Bay area of Florida and the subject matter deals specifically with agriculture, its practitioners, how they do business, and how the local news media report about it. The issue will be explored from an applied anthropological perspective, basing conclusions on field research and …


Seeking Story: Finding The Modern Day Folktale In The Daily News, Brandice Palmer Nov 2005

Seeking Story: Finding The Modern Day Folktale In The Daily News, Brandice Palmer

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study explores the local news story for evidence of the folktale tradition. It examines a range of local news stories for their folktale functions. The study compares the cultural and psychological function of the news story to that of the folktale and compares the functional definition of folklore to that of journalism. The study also explores the idea of a classifiable sphere of formal character, motif and plot functions that may be explored within the news story and folktale texts. This study builds on the premise that the study of folklore should be at the center of a consideration …


Weblogs And The Technology Lifecycle: Context, Geek-Chic And Personal Community, James M. Milne Mar 2004

Weblogs And The Technology Lifecycle: Context, Geek-Chic And Personal Community, James M. Milne

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Weblogging is an Internet social practice that became known as a technology. This project investigated weblogging (blogging) as an example of a media technology that arose under particular historical circumstances. To investigate this, blogs were examined in detail, participant-observation was used to construct and run a blog, and practicing bloggers were interviewed. The study found that blogging, like all technology, originates within existing social practice (context); has a diffusion process that causes it to spread between people (Geek-Chic); and leads to certain social outcomes (Personal Community). This is seen as a general pattern for the lifecycle of technology, serving to …


Review Of The Book Orange Journalism: Voices From Florida Newspapers. By J.M. Pleasants., Robert Ward Dardenne Jan 2004

Review Of The Book Orange Journalism: Voices From Florida Newspapers. By J.M. Pleasants., Robert Ward Dardenne

Emeritus Scholars

No abstract provided.