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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

News Media Framing Of Disabilities In Ghana: Journalistic Practices Amidst Advocacy Calls For Change, Pamela Ofori Boateng Aug 2023

News Media Framing Of Disabilities In Ghana: Journalistic Practices Amidst Advocacy Calls For Change, Pamela Ofori Boateng

Communication ETDs

The study contributes to expanding scholarly research on media portrayals of people with disabilities in Ghana. Drawing on theories of framing, ableism, and intersectionality, I analyzed news stories published in Graphic.com.gh. in 2021 and 2022 to explore how the editorial practices framed people with disabilities and how framing patterns revealed change and continuity in representation. The findings affirmed a shift to using more diverse and appropriate language to represent people with disabilities more fairly and accurately; the categorization of most of the disability stories under “General News,” which suggests the significance attached to disability related stories; and the …


Framing Of European Union Borders In Online News: Multimodal Discourses Of Inclusion And Exclusion, Ivana Cvetkovic May 2019

Framing Of European Union Borders In Online News: Multimodal Discourses Of Inclusion And Exclusion, Ivana Cvetkovic

Communication ETDs

In times of crisis, online news media, on whose reports people heavily rely for information and interpretation of complex European affairs, play an important role in production of knowledge and negotiation of the meanings of the European Union’s response to the “migrant crisis” in 2015 when more than million migrants reached Europe after fleeing their home countries. This research project examines how European online news outlets constructed notions of borders, space, mobility and migration, and thus promoted particular institutionalized discourses on inclusion and exclusion with profound ideological implications. A secondary goal of this research is to explore the particular ways …


Using The Theory Of Emotional Stakeholders To Experimentally Test The Influence Of Proxy Communicators About Organizational Crises In Digital News Reports, Alicia Mason, Elizabeth Spencer, Kelley Macek, Alison Smith, Stephanie Potter May 2019

Using The Theory Of Emotional Stakeholders To Experimentally Test The Influence Of Proxy Communicators About Organizational Crises In Digital News Reports, Alicia Mason, Elizabeth Spencer, Kelley Macek, Alison Smith, Stephanie Potter

Faculty Submissions

The emergence of new and social media has transformed the way that stakeholders and organizations interact between and amongst each other. Online news consumers are now able to directly respond to crisis news reports by offering their own interpretation, thus expanding the diversity of viewpoints audiences are exposed to (Carpenter, 2010; Springer, 2014). Using the Theory of Emotional Stakeholders framework our study aims (1) to understand how positive and negative user-generated comments in response to online news reports of crisis events impacts audience perceptions of organizational blame; (2) to examine the persuasive effects of user comments when expert or official …


Who Posted That Story? Processing Layered Sources In Facebook News Posts, Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, Christina Devoss Jan 2019

Who Posted That Story? Processing Layered Sources In Facebook News Posts, Anne Oeldorf-Hirsch, Christina Devoss

2019 Faculty Bibliography

With social media platforms becoming primary news sources, concerns about credibility judgments and knowledge grow. This study (N = 233) experimentally tests the effects of multiple source cues on Facebook news posts on credibility and knowledge. Judgments of story credibility were directly influenced by media source cues, but not friend source cues. Involvement in the source topic moderated the effects of these source cues, such that particular combinations influenced credibility differently, and also influenced cognitive elaboration about the topic. Theoretical implications for cognitive mediation model of learning from the news and the heuristic-systematic model of information processing are presented.


User-Generated Opinion: How Reader Reactions And Source Reputation Influence The Effects Of Online News, Stephan Winter, Nicole C. Krämer, Yuhua (Jake) Liang Jan 2017

User-Generated Opinion: How Reader Reactions And Source Reputation Influence The Effects Of Online News, Stephan Winter, Nicole C. Krämer, Yuhua (Jake) Liang

Communication Faculty Articles and Research

On contemporary online news sites, readers are simultaneously exposed to journalistic articles and social reactions toward these messages. Two online experiments (N = 252) addressed whether negative user reactions can attenuate the persuasive influence of the main article, and whether these effects depend on the reputation of the original source. Results showed a selective consideration of user-generated content: Readers took into account comments with high argument quality and ratings of a credible website but did not follow others’ opinions if the comments merely contained subjective evaluations. On less reputable websites, user reactions were less influential. Findings are discussed with regard …


Finding Your Way: Navigating Online News And Opinions, Charlotte Britten Jul 2016

Finding Your Way: Navigating Online News And Opinions, Charlotte Britten

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

This study investigates how young people navigate through a number of hyperlinked online news on a specific topic and how this effects, and is affected by, their opinions. Navigating though non-linear hypertext forces readers to integrate information from different sources and make more decisions about what to read, which is more difficult than reading information presented in a linear format, but might also promote deeper engagement with that material. This study used a combination of participant observation, think-aloud protocols, and semi-structured interviews to investigate these issues as participants navigated through a curated collection of articles about the Canadian Oil Sands. …


Are People Reading Local News? A Content Analysis Of Popular News Stories On Nine Newspaper Websites, Peter Shiang Chen May 2015

Are People Reading Local News? A Content Analysis Of Popular News Stories On Nine Newspaper Websites, Peter Shiang Chen

Master's Theses

The news industry has come under tremendous pressure in the last decade. None more so than the newspaper industry, which has seen all aspects of its operation: readership, revenue, staff, distribution and reputation decline dramatically. This study uses content analysis to examine the reading habits of news consumers from nine newspaper-based websites from the Advance Publishing chain. The samples were the stories in the “most popular this hour” list, examined every 5 days from August to September, 2014. These stories were separated into categories such as news, sports, business, etc., and further coded based on their proximity to the news …


The News Triumvirate, Susan Forde, Jane Johnston Apr 2014

The News Triumvirate, Susan Forde, Jane Johnston

Jane Johnston

News agencies, or wire services, are playing a growing role in the contemporary news environment, primarily due to the prevalence of the 24/7 online newsroom and its associated need for speed and volumes of copy. At the same time press releases and other public relations-generated material daily flood the news environment. This paper builds on research into these two fields, trialling a new methodology—one which follows press releases and other public relations material through the uptake by news agencies, in particular the Australian Associated Press, and finally, as published stories in metropolitan online newspapers. While previous research has tracked press …


The Effect Of Political Advertising On Perceived Bias And Credibility Of Online News Stories, Salma M. Ayad May 2013

The Effect Of Political Advertising On Perceived Bias And Credibility Of Online News Stories, Salma M. Ayad

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study was an investigation of the effect of political advertising on readers’ perceived bias and credibility of an online news article based on participants’ political leanings. Media priming and the hostile media effect were the theoretical underpinnings. Participants were asked to read an unbiased news article placed alongside 3 advertisements. Participants were put into 1 of 3 conditions — right-leaning advertisements, left-leaning advertisements, or neutral advertisements. They then answered questions about the perceived bias and credibility of the article and their own political affiliation. The researchers hypothesized that left-leaning individuals would perceive the article with right-leaning advertisements as biased …


Communication Technologies: Diffusion Of Online News Use And Credibility Among Young Web Users In The Information Age, Chee Youn Kang Jan 2009

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 …