Mass Communication Commons^™

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …