Mass Communication Commons^™

The Evolution Of The Internet And Social Media: A Literature Review, Charles Alves De Castro, Isobel O'Reilly Dr, Aiden Carthy

Articles

This article reviews and analyses factors impacting the evolution of the internet, the web, and social media channels, charting historic trends and highlight recent technological developments. The review comprised a deep search using electronic journal databases. Articles were chosen according to specific criteria with a group of 34 papers and books selected for complete reading and deep analysis. The 34 elements were analysed and processed using NVIVO 12 Pro, enabling the creation of dimensions and categories, codes and nodes, identifying the most frequent words, cluster analysis of the terms, and creating a word cloud based on each word's frequency. The …

Book Review: Media Education In Latin America, Helen J. Dewaard

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.

Viral Hangouts: The Media Literacy Lifeline I Didn’T Realize I Needed, Scott Spicer

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article describes my experience as an academic media librarian initially seeking guidance on best support practices for the virtual world from other media literacy educators at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic outbreak. What I found through the Virtual Viral Hangouts community turned out to be so much more! In addition to sharing tips on media literacy education (my contribution emphasized commercial media resources and student created media projects in virtual contexts), I also developed dear friendships with participants from all walks of life. The one hour a day spent away from my daily work served as a lifeline, …

Connect The Dots, Edward Mcdonough

Journal of Media Literacy Education

During the dawn of the Covid Pandemic our isolation was a depressant. As teachers we were struggling with how to teach, as the popular saying explains, in an environment “that was like building an airplane as we were learning how to fly it.” As a teacher in practice, Virtually Viral Hangouts became my antidepressant. This daily online community of educators gave me the skills to teach more effectively during the pandemic and beyond. The experience taught me how to seek and forge connections with students and cyber colleagues; how to carve out a cyber environment of psychological safety to …

Seeding Change: What Vvh Can Teach Us About Teaching And Learning In Digital Spaces, Michelle Ciccone

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In this essay, I reflect on a central question: “why did I experience something so profoundly different in Virtually Viral Hangouts (VVH) than I was able to help seed in my own district during the COVID-19 crisis?” I identify three key components of the VVH ethos that inspired new ways of thinking, namely: digital technologies free us from constraints to build something different, digital technologies are most effective when we use them to build community, and digital collaboration enables us to tap into the wisdom of the group. As we build better and more humane educational spaces, it is important …

Virtually Viral Hangouts: Reflections On The Role Of Community During Crisis, Lauren G. Mcclanahan

Journal of Media Literacy Education

In this essay, I reflect on two key aspects of my membership in the online community known as Virtually Viral Hangouts (VVH). First, I reflect on how membership in this group helped me professionally, providing important, in-time instruction as I learned to make the switch from in-person to remote learning in the early days of Covid-19. Next, I reflect on how membership in this group helped me personally, as I struggled to find my identity as a teacher through a computer screen. I conclude by reflecting upon what it means to be a member of a community and why such …

The Secret Sauce Of Online Community Of Practice During Covid-19 Pandemic: Nonviolent Communication, Yonty Friesem, Elizaveta Friesem

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The challenges of work-family balance while being asked to move to remote instruction and engage students creatively have affected us all globally on multiple levels - from our professional identity, to our own health, mortality and purpose in life. The idea behind Nonviolent Communication (NVC) is that as Rosenberg (2015/1999) put it, it is a language that celebrates life. Applying these practices in a community building initiative of the Media Education Lab during the COVID-19 pandemic supported our community not only for their professional needs, but also and most importantly in their social and emotional resiliency to keep positive their …

Hope Matters: How An Online Learning Community Advanced Emotional Self-Awareness And Caring During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Renee Hobbs

Journal of Media Literacy Education

For many educators with interests in digital and media literacy, the COVID-19 pandemic was an inadvertent opportunity to explore digital and media literacy through online learning and professional development. This paper describes how a diverse and multidisciplinary group of educators gathered each weekday in a Zoom video conference meeting for fellowship, emotional support, and sharing, building relationships which evolved over time to support emotional growth, technology skill development, learning, and reflection. Survey data shows that program participants had higher levels of optimism and emotional self-awareness as compared with a control group. Participants who had more exposure to the program were …

A Qualitative Study Of Early Adolescents’ Critical Thinking About The Content And Consequences Of Media Violence, Erica Scharrer, Yuxi Zhou

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Research shows that young people are likely to encounter considerable amounts of violence in the media they use. Some of those depictions trivialize the severity of violence. Past studies show that media literacy education can spur critical thinking regarding violent portrayals in media texts. But rarely do prior studies employ qualitative methods to understand how young media audience members reason through the key question of whether media violence is either surprising or concerning. In the current study, an in-school media literacy program is offered to 48 6th graders who provide data in the form of written responses to a number …

Higher Education Students’ Social Media Literacy In Ethiopia: A Case Of Bahir Dar University., Atinafu Behailu

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This study investigates the status of Bahir Dar University students’ social media literacy and how associated factors affect developing core competencies. A combination of qualitative and quantitative research methods have been employed in the study. Both descriptive and inferential statistics of means core, standard deviation, one sample t-test, independent sample t-test, correlation and multiple regressions were used to analyze data gathered from the quantitative design. Data gathered from FGD were analyzed qualitatively. Accordingly, the students’ overall social media level was found to be low. Female students perform slightly lower than their counterpart male students. Among the five skills of social …

A Local Lens On Global Media Literacy: Teaching Media And The Arab World, Katharina Schmoll

Journal of Media Literacy Education

The globalization and transnationalization of media use have facilitated access to voices from the Arab world. Students and teachers in Western higher education can make use of these voices within and outside the classroom to enhance students’ knowledge of the region and challenge Eurocentric imaginations of the ‘Other’. Yet to ensure students engage with these Arab sources in a meaningful way, media literacy is key. Drawing on and challenging a framework of global critical media literacy, this article argues that media literacy is grounded in time and space, meaning an effective teaching of global media literacy skills supposes an awareness …

An Approach To Creative Media Literacy For World Issues, Abduljalil Nasr Hazaea

Journal of Media Literacy Education

This article introduces an approach to creative media literacy for world issues (WIs) such as Covid-19. In so doing, the article integrates four positions on discourse and media as terrible facets of globalization in the context of critical discourse analysis (CDA). The objectivist position deals with WIs as neutral discourse shared among humanity and distributed through English as an international language and educational media. The ideologist position treats creative media literacy as relations of power between global and local identities in the form of competing discourses associated with WIs. The rhetorical position reveals the hidden strategies used in global media …

Media, Obesity Discourse, And Participatory Politics: Exploring Digital Engagement Among University Students, Tao Papaioannou

Journal of Media Literacy Education

Situated within research on youth, participatory politics, and media framing of obesity, this study examined how undergraduate students in a media literacy course engaged with obesity discourse as a nexus of civic participation. Twenty-nine students enrolled on the course identified frames of obesity in plus-size model Tess Holliday’s Instagram posts surrounding her controversial Cosmopolitan cover in 2018. Analysis of these frames – self-validation, injustice of fat-shaming and stigmatization, influences of Instagram celebrities on fat embodiment, and health stereotypes of obese people – enabled the students to critique activist responses to accepted body norms and moral values facilitating weight bias. In …

The Effects Of Deepfakes And Synthetic Media On Communication Professionals, Axel Ebermann

Student Theses and Dissertations

The spread of misinformation and disinformation is regarded as one of the most salient challenges for communication professionals around the world.

Now, a new technology called "DeepFakes" or “Synthetic Media” has the potential to further uproot the infosphere. Artificial Intelligence (AI) will enable the mass creation of synthetic audio-visual content that resembles real videos, in which people will appear to say or do things they never actually said or did.

The existing literature predominantly focuses on three aspects of DeepFakes and Synthetic Media: the technical background, coverage of preexisting DeepFakes and possible solutions to combat the malicious use of the …

Skills For Navigating A Complex World By Angela M. Kohnen And E. Wendy Saul, Oluwakorede Ajibona

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

No abstract provided.

Engaged Social Media In Higher Education While Avoiding The Label Of "Striving", Jessica Nerren

Journal of Critical Issues in Educational Practice

Striving has become a word laden with problematic meanings in the world of higher education. For instance, if a university is too aligned with business, or becomes overly selective, or deviates from original purpose or mission, then, at times, those actions are seen as striving (O’Meara, 2007). O’Meara (2007) defines striving as participation in efforts to improve status and prestige in line with the hierarchy. Allen (2021) echoes the problematic nature of this practice witnessed abroad, equating striving educational practices with neoliberalism, potentially overshadowing primary purposes of the institution, such as learning and teaching, or drowning out important parts of …

The Journey Of The Black Sports Journalist: Past, Present And Future, Gary Washburn

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

It took nearly 60 years for the mainstream audience to learn and digest the impact of the Black sports journalist on the American sports landscape.

In the Disney-movie “42,” detailing Jackie Robinson’s breaking of baseball’s color barrier in 1947, Robinson bonded with a journalist named Wendell Smith, who served as a guide, mentor and liaison for the baseball player during his travel journey with the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Smith not only covered Robinson’s ground-breaking excursion into a sport that had proudly prohibited and disavowed Blacks from playing Major League Baseball, he became Robinson’s trusted colleague, gaining access to stories and insights …

A Postfeminist Multimodal Discourse Analysis Of Red Bull Sponsored Female Action Sports Athletes’ Digital Media Representation, Charli Celine Kerns

Doctoral Dissertations

This study applies a multimodal discourse analysis to social media content produced by Red Bull Media House. The aim of the research is to determine what postfeminist sensibilities discourses are used and how in the framing of the female action sports athletes the energy drink company sponsors. Specifically, Instagram posts, YouTube videos, and the biographical web pages about the 23 athletes were analyzed using multimodal discourse analysis. The findings revealed that while action sports have the potential to disrupt dominant discourses around femininity in sports contexts, ultimately Red Bull repackaged the discourses into different narratives.

Video 101: Video Production Basics, Visually Explained, Chris Flanery

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Professional Projects

As video becomes more prevalent in all aspects of life, the demand for competent video production skills continues to grow. Having the technical literacy to capture professional-level video is highly sought-after and begins with proper education and training. This project found the process for learning video production often fails to maximize on its full potential. Despite being a visual medium, most individuals surveyed and interviewed for this project who work in the video production industry report visuals are rarely used to demonstrate fundamental concepts in learning video production. These same individuals and additional research indicate visual aids help illustrate many …

The Influence Of Social Media On The Tourism Industry: A Content Analysis Of Culinary Tourism Brands Via Instagram, Angela White

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The tourism industry in the United States is constantly changing and being influenced by social media, specifically Instagram. Culinary brands use Instagram to advertise their restaurants and dishes in a creative, visual way. As a result, Instagram is now being used as a tool by tourists and both potential and current customers to share their dining experiences and find these locations based on the visual appeal. This study provides a content analysis of Instagram account information and photo composition within eight popular culinary tourism destinations by examining the strategies used by the accounts. 50 randomly selected photos were used from …

Social Media Influencers (Smis) In Context: A Literature Review, Charles Alves De Castro, Isobel O'Reilly Dr, Aiden Carthy

Articles

This review focused on three main areas, "Social Media Influencers (SMIs) in Context, The Impact of SMIs on Adolescents, and Consumer Behaviour in a Digital Era – Generation Z in Perspective". This article aims to further the overall understanding of SMIs and outlines the impact of SMIs on adolescents‘ lives. Thus, the main objective of this literature review is to raise awareness within the marketing field about the influence of social media influencers on adolescents and how brands promote their products and content through social media influencers. The review comprised a regular search using electronic journal databases and secondary data …

The Impacts Of Social Media On Social Movements, Gabriela Aguilar

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

As time passes by there is more representation of social movements due to their high exposure on social media. Technology has become a major part of our everyday lives and on average we spend many hours on social platforms. We are exposed to the injustices that occur every minute of every day through social media. Before, when technology was not accessible for everyone the news people received were from television, newspapers, or even magazines. Now, we have platforms such as Twitter and TikTok among others that provide us with news on any malpractice that occurs in our communities and society. …

Model Of Inspiring Media, Mary Beth Oliver, Arthur A. Raney, Anne Bartsch, Sophie Janicke-Bowles, Markus Appel, Katherine R. Dale

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

Scholars have increasingly explored the ways that media content can touch, move, and inspire audiences, leading to numerous beneficial outcomes including increased feelings of connectedness to and heightened motivations for doing good for others. Although this line of inquiry is relatively new, sufficient evidence and patterns of results have emerged such that a clearer picture of the inspiring media experience is coming into focus. This article has two primary goals. First, we seek to synthesize the existing research into a working and evolving model of inspiring media experiences reflecting five interrelated and symbiotic elements: exposure, message factors, responses, outcomes, and …

Taking Corrective Action When Exposed To Fake News: The Role Of Fake News Literacy, Brigitte Huber, Porismita Borah, Homero Gil De Zúñiga

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

Fake news poses a threat to democracy. The rise of social media and its lax content regulation have facilitated a dynamic environment where mis- and disinformation are spread. However, social media is also the place where false information may be corrected. Initial scholarly efforts begin to highlight what is needed for citizens to take corrective action when exposed to fake news on social media. This study is a further step in that direction by introducing the construct of ‘fake news media literacy’. Relying on survey data from the U.S. (N = 1338), we show that news media literacy in terms …

Book Review: News Literacy And Democracy, Huan Gao

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

No abstract provided.

Putting The Social In Social Media: How Human Connection Triggers Engagement, Stephanie Adomavicius

Proceedings of the New York State Communication Association

Social media has become the preferred channel of information and has altered patterns of interaction and connection. As a result, society now revolves around a two-way form of communication with constant dialogue and instant responses. Public relations practitioners have had to adapt and change their strategy in order to keep up with the times, and because of this, engagement is now considered to be a measurement of success.

In terms of social media, engagement is how users interact with content and participate in online conversations. This study will uncover what causes people to engage on social media and identify the …

Our Tools And Our Values, Text, Ethan Zuckerman

Open Access Week

The text of Ethan's talk on "Our Tools and Our Values"

Our Tools And Our Values, Response Text, Martha Fuentes-Bautista

Open Access Week

Text of Martha's response to Ethan's "Our Tools and Our Values" talk

Untangling Media Literacy, Information Literacy, And Digital Literacy: A Systematic Meta-Review Of Core Concepts In Media Education, Géraldine Wuyckens, Normand Landry, Pierre Fastrez

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

This article presents a systematic meta-review of the scientific literature discussing the concepts of information literacy, media literacy, and digital literacy. While carrying out a cross analysis of the way in which literature reviews specifically address these three concepts, this article identifies, and articulates a critical analysis of, the main findings from the reviewed texts regarding the conceptual landscape that they cover. This work highlights confusion between the constitutive dimensions of literacies, recurrent difficulties in establishing theoretical articulations between contributions, and operationalization problems in observing and assessing these literacies. These issues are the subject of a discussion grounded in the …

Media And Information Literacy (Mil) Competencies Of Language And Communication Students, Janet S. Tibaldo

Journal of Media Literacy Education Pre-Prints

This descriptive study aims at identifying the level of media and information literacy (MIL) competencies of Language and Communication students along UNESCO’s Access, Evaluation and Creation components. Results surface that even if the respondents have a general intermediate MIL competency along the three components, they have basic competency levels along four performance criteria. Specifically, along Access, the (1) recognition of metadata roles; along Evaluation, the (2) creation of arguments for conclusions drawn, and the (3) demonstration of the importance of indexing; and along Creation, the (4) application of international standards and requirements for new knowledge creation in an ethical manner. …