Mass Communication Commons^™

Cinema Studies, Burak Turten

University of South Florida (USF) M3 Publishing

PREFACE

Cinema Studies is a comprehensive book that, is hoped, will provide students and researchers with film studies and other persons interested in cinema with a useful reference book on film analysis and, where relevant, the different discussions surrounding that. The contributors analyze some films using ideas and concerns from modernism, cinematographic narrative, ideology, propaganda, migration, nomadism, and the sense of revenge. The book provides new insights into films and turns the discussion towards recent research questions and analyses, representing and constituting in each contribution new work in the discipline of film text analysis.

Therefore, each chapter of this book, …

Social Media As A Tool For Evangelism Among Youth And Young Adults, Trisney Bocala

Student Research

This research aims to answer the question of which social media platforms youth prefer and what types of content they prefer. Using data collected from a quantitative survey, this research seeks to identify the most-used social media platforms and most appealing formats of content so that Seventh-day Adventist churches, media organizations, and digital missionaries can more effectively utilize social media as a tool for evangelism among youth, defined as 15 to 24 years of age.

Professors’ Perspectives On Truth-Seeking And New Literacy, Zachary W. Arth, Darrin J. Griffin, William J. Earnest

Journal of Media Literacy Education

New media and new literacy are essential in our contemporary paradigms of education and communication research. Though truth-seeking is one of the primary objectives inherent in higher education, the process for students may be less clear than it may be for trained academics or professors. The current study sought to explore how professors recommend that students seek truth in the information age. Relying on an assignment from a communication course, this study examined responses from student-led interviews with professors from across the U.S. and categorized trends in their recommendations for students. Overall twelve themes taken from advice on student truth-seeking …

Can Cooler Heads Prevail? New Media Technology And Affective Polarization, Brian Kendall Watson

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Are new media technologies stirring up negative partisan feelings in the American public? Can researchers find ways of using new media tools to reduce affective polarization? Relying on a series of experiments featuring online newsfeeds and social media discussions, this dissertation seeks to answer these questions by testing the influence of partisan news and political discussions in realistic Internet environments. Two custom news “portals” (2016, 2018) expose participants to actual partisan news content. Two Facebook discussion experiments (2017, 2019) randomly assign participants to start real political discussions on their personal social media accounts, using discussion-initiation strategies designed to reduce partisan …

The Curated Chronicles Of The American Family: An Ideological Analysis Of The Love Taza Blog, Elizabeth Radley

Master's Theses

Named one of the top ten influencers of parenting by Forbes, Naomi Davis of the family-lifestyle Blog, Love Taza has transformed her family chronicles into a successful Internet business with an extensive following ("Top Influencers of 2017: Parenting"). This thesis examines the content of Love Taza to understand what messages Naomi communicates to her readers and how her readers may be receiving those messages. Using a sample of 600 posts from 2012-2017, a quantitative analysis was conducted to determine the type of content being presented. According to the findings, the majority of the posts included sponsored content and the most …

A Political Ecology Of Information: Media And The Dilemma Of State Power In China, Michael L. Miller

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I employ a Weberian concept of social power in order to theorize the challenges posed by, and the varieties of state response to, the dilemma of state power: the need of all states to empower societies with social capacities that may, in turn, threaten state interests. Through a comparison of traditional and new forms of media in China, I show that rather than posing qualitatively new types of challenges to authoritarian states, new media exacerbate the dilemma of state power. They do so because along each of three dimensions of social control, new media shift the relationship …

Choosing To Choose: The Impact Of Technology On Choice, Aaron J. Alford

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

The development of modern technology has increasingly focused on efficiency over expression. Interfaces limit and scale down human choice and expression. Entertainment and communication now use interfaced technology for even basic human expression, artificially limiting the number of potential choices to the options presented by the interface. The logic of technology has become a totalizing phenomenon, bringing all areas of human life under it purview. According to Heidegger, Ellul, and Flusser, the result of this development is a different way of being-in-the-world for humans. The traditional man has been the constant in production and communication, which the medium and technology …

And The (Fourth) Wall Came Tumbling Down: The Impact Of Renegotiating Fan-Creator Relationships On Supernatural, Alena Karkanias

Summer Research

This paper explores the unique relationship that has developed between the fans and creators (encompassing writers, producers, directors, crew, and particularly actors) of the television show Supernatural. Since early in its run, fans of the show have interacted avidly with each other and the show’s creators on social media platforms, and at conventions, working together to create charities, support each other in fights against mental illness and other personal struggles, and celebrate the show and their relationship with humor and compassion. However, these interactions have also raised questions about ownership, influence, and input on the show, particularly concerning the fate …

The Core Concepts: Fundamental To Media Literacy Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow, Tessa Jolls, Carolyn Wilson

Journal of Media Literacy Education

“New media” does not change the essence of what media literacy is, nor does it affect its ongoing importance in society. Len Masterman, a UK-based professor, published his ground-breaking books in the 1980’s and laid the foundation for media literacy to be taught to elementary and secondary students in a systematic way that is consistent, replicable, measurable and scalable on a global basis – and thus, timeless. Masterman’s key insight was that the central unifying concept of media education is that of representation: media are symbolic sign systems that must be decoded. This paper explores the development and the application …

News And The Public Sphere: The Boston Marathon Bombing In The New York Times And Le Figaro, Ioana Alexandra Coman

Doctoral Dissertations

The current dissertation explores the online mediatization of the Boston Marathon bombing crisis by an American newspaper (The New York Times) and a French one (Le Figaro) and their publics’ reactions to it. The research was conducted along two main analysis axes: (1) the main frames and themes through which the journalists and the publics gave meaning to the event, and (2) the characteristics of the online public spheres therefore created. The comparative perspective on the journalistic frames showed a strong tendency of homogenization, as the same main frames appeared in both analyzed newspapers. However, the …

Review: The Media Ecosystem: What Ecology Can Teach Us About Responsible Media Practice, Ju-Pong Lin

Journal of Media Literacy Education

No abstract provided.

New Media Business Models, Where Content And Commerce Collide: Strategies And Ethical Considerations For Success In A New Media World, Aryn Bea Sanderson

Journalism

Media practitioners are finding themselves at a crossroads. Due to increasing digitalization and decreasing funding for so-called traditional outlets, “new media” forms have emerged and, with those, new economic models to generate revenue. New media platforms diverge from old media archetypes in the way they utilize the interaction of content and commerce. The collision of content and commerce is both a novel idea for media sustainability and treacherous water for its credibility. This study analyzes a few key new media economic platforms - sponsored content in a digital-first publication, crowd funding stories and a ranked, e-commerce model - in hopes …

Book Review: The Ethics Of Emerging Media: Information, Social Norms And New Media Technology, Sue Burzynski Bullard

College of Journalism and Mass Communications: Faculty Publications

Discussions of new media and ethics sometimes include the notion that “ethics are ethics”—that doing the right thing is, and has been, a constant over time and across media.

The idea has a certain appeal. But it gets new twists in The Ethics of Emerging Media, by Bruce E. Drushel and Kathleen German, assistant professors of communication at Miami University. New media create new ethical questions and opportunities to cross ethical lines, as the thirteen contributors to this collection examine.

Communication Technologies: Diffusion Of Online News Use And Credibility Among Young Web Users In The Information Age, Chee Youn Kang

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The increasing popularity and extensive usage of communication technologies, particularly the Internet and online news, makes it important to obtain an insightful perception of the new media. The purpose of this study is to examine the diffusion of online news use and credibility among young web users in terms of how these main users adopt, use, and trust the new media. This study attempts to find which online news sites are widely used by this group, based on the credibility of online news adopted among undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), in which demographic …

Revisiting “Mass Communication” And The “Work” Of The Audience In The New Media Environment, Philip M. Napoli

McGannon Center Working Paper Series

This paper revisits the concept of mass communication, which has faced persistent challenges to its continued relevance in light of changes that have taken place in the media environment. This paper offers a counterpoint to claims of the term’s diminished relevance, as well as to some recent efforts to reposition the term, by putting forth an interpretive approach that is not exclusive to the “institutional communicator” and that allows the term “mass” to extend to both the senders and receivers of messages. This paper argues that this interpretive approach is in keeping with some early interpretations of the concept’s meaning, …

North America: Multiplying Media In A Dynamic Landscape, Carrie Buchanan, Mahmoud Eid

Carrie Buchanan