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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Testing News Trustworthiness In An Online Public Sphere: A Case Study Of The Economist's News Report Covering The Riots In Xinjiang, China, Dexin Tian, Chin-Chung Chao Sep 2012

Testing News Trustworthiness In An Online Public Sphere: A Case Study Of The Economist's News Report Covering The Riots In Xinjiang, China, Dexin Tian, Chin-Chung Chao

Communication Faculty Publications

This paper explores the news trustworthiness and media credibility of The Economist’s news report on 9 July 2009, and the communicative roles of 846 readers’ responses. Theoretically guided by news translation and cultural resistance and the online public sphere, we applied online field observation and discourse analysis and achieved two main findings: First, although the news report covered the Xinjiang riots with comprehensive and attractive details, it violated the core journalism value of media credibility and journalistic objectivity by providing misleading pictures and significant unreliable and biased coverage. Second, the major communicative roles of the online readers’ responses generally match …


Speaking Ill Of The Dead: Anonymity And Communication About Suicide On Mydeathspace.Com, Lynette G. Leonard, Paige W. Toller Jan 2012

Speaking Ill Of The Dead: Anonymity And Communication About Suicide On Mydeathspace.Com, Lynette G. Leonard, Paige W. Toller

Communication Faculty Publications

From birth to death, many individuals chronicle their lives online through blogs, pictures, games, Web sites, and social networks. Online spaces, created by the living about the dead, provide a glimpse into often invisible or silent grieving practices. To investigate the role computer-mediated communication (CMC) plays in influencing communication surrounding the often private and taboo topic of suicide, we analyzed the comments sections of MyDeathSpace.com. Our results suggest both a breaking down of social taboos (speaking ill of the dead) and a reaffirming of strict social norms (enforcing a narrow range of acceptable presentation of identity and purpose in life), …