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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Procrastination And The Shifting Political Media Environment: An Experimental Study Of Media Choice Affecting A Democratic Outcome, Morgan E. Ellithorpe, Lance Holbert, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly Jan 2013

Procrastination And The Shifting Political Media Environment: An Experimental Study Of Media Choice Affecting A Democratic Outcome, Morgan E. Ellithorpe, Lance Holbert, Angela L. Palmer-Wackerly

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

The shifting media environment is expected to have a variety of effects on political knowledge and behavior. An experimental study was conducted to assess the influence of media environment on news consumption, perceptions of media experience quality, and success on a political outcome. In addition, procrastination is introduced as a potentially important individual-difference variable with assessments offered for both its main effects and its ability to moderate the influence of media environment. Media environment complexity predicted lower news use and higher success on our political outcome. Procrastination’s effect was on media experience perceptions and a media environment-by-procrastination interaction on this …


Mapping Injustice: The World Is Witness, Place-Framing, And The Politics Of Viewing On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt Dec 2011

Mapping Injustice: The World Is Witness, Place-Framing, And The Politics Of Viewing On Google Earth, Joshua P. Ewalt

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

Working from assumptions that inequality is often spatially informed, a set of interactive cartographies has recently proliferated on Google Earth. In this essay, I analyze one of those interactive cartographies: The World is Witness produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). I read the map as an organizational rhetoric that frames place as "embedded injustice." I also argue that thorough analysis of the framing of local place on Google Earth must inherently question whether the map can create a disruption in the viewing subject. While the map presents vital information on excruciatingly despicable acts of injustice, and the …


The Logos Of The Blogosphere: Flooding The Zone, Invention, And Attention In The Lott Imbroglio, Damien S. Pfister Jan 2011

The Logos Of The Blogosphere: Flooding The Zone, Invention, And Attention In The Lott Imbroglio, Damien S. Pfister

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This essay examines the significance of a particular metaphor, flooding the zone, which gained prominence as an account of bloggers' argumentative prowess in the wake of Senator Trent Lott's toast at Strom Thurmond's centennial birthday party. I situate the growth of the blogosphere in the context of the political economy of the institutional mass media at the time and argue that the blogosphere is an alternative site for the invention of public argument. By providing an account of how the blogosphere serves as a site of invention by flooding the zone with densely interlinked coverage of a controversy, this essay …


Refugees As People: The Portrayal Of Refugees In American Human Interest Stories, Sarah Steimel Jan 2010

Refugees As People: The Portrayal Of Refugees In American Human Interest Stories, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

This study combines discourse analysis and narrative analysis (Yin 2007) to examine top US newspapers’ coverage of refugees in American human interest stories. I find that the refugees are presented (a) as prior victims; (b) as in search of the American Dream; and (c) as unable to achieve the American Dream. As human-interest features, the stories provide a largely positive portrayal of individual refugees and their families. However, the human interest stories also depict refugees as current victims of the American economic crisis; deeply frustrated by their inability to achieve the American Dream. Together these discourses represent a narrative of …


Refugees In The News: A Representative Anecdote Of Identification/Division In Refugee Media Coverage, Sarah Steimel Jan 2009

Refugees In The News: A Representative Anecdote Of Identification/Division In Refugee Media Coverage, Sarah Steimel

Department of Communication Studies: Faculty Publications

A refugee worker conflict at the JBS Swift plant in Grand Island, Nebraska serves as a representative anecdote of the dominant media discourses about refugees in the United States. This study adopts a critical cultural perspective and applies Burke’s (1969) concepts of identification and division to the ways in which refugees are described in comparison to other immigrants in the media coverage of the conflict. These identifications and divisions generate ideologically powerful official roles for refugees in American society. This study finds that refugees, especially refugees who are also Muslim, are defined in the media coverage of the Grand Island …