Mass Communication Commons^™

The Pacific Sentinel, February 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Jake Johnson

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter from the Editor
• Putting a Stop to PPOP?
• Portlanders Say "No War With Iran"
• Hospitals Penalized for Readmissions
• Dying Young
• Flower Power
• "Take a Nap!"
• Making People Homeless: Our Country's Collective Shame
• Draft Dodging: My New Favorite Sport
• A Century of Socialism
• Spoiler Alert Alarmism
• Mo Troper Delivers in New Album

The Pacific Sentinel, January 2020, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Jake Johnson

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter from the Editor
• Study Determines How Measles Destroys the Immune System
• Another Police Shooting: A Whose Fault WHODUNNIT?
• (News) Portlanders Join Nationwide Rallies to Impeach and Remove Trump
• (Opinion) Reconstructing America
• The Uyghurs: A Fading Chapter
• Chickens Are for Hugging
• The Myth of Vegan Virtuosity
• Stop Saying "Be Grateful for What You Have"
• Who Would Make a Baking Challenge Like That?! Zumbo Would.
• Best of 2019 Staff Picks
• Baby Ketten Finds Its Forever Home
• (Satire) How to Deal With the Crushing Weight of Familial Rejection Next Holiday Season

The Pacific Sentinel, December 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Jake Johnson

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter from the Editor
• Making Oregon Count
• Sandwich Ministry
• Racist Propaganda at PSU
• Perils of Commuting
• Pricey Parking
• Further Thoughts on Phrases
• Merry Krampus
• Festival Highlights
• Pop up Readings
• Impact of YA on Teens
• Deep River
• Hard Conversations
• Portland Review & Ooligan Press
• Schnitzer Museum
• Exquisite Creatures
• Giant Poop
• 3 From Hell

The Pacific Sentinel, November 2019, Portland State University. Student Publications Board

The Pacific Sentinel

Editor: Jake Johnson

Articles in this issue include:

• Letter from the Editor
• PSU Dodges Walkout on the Eve of Fall Term
• 5th Avenue Cinema Then and Now
• Goodbye Maps Collection, Hello Graduate Collaboratory
• Thousands of Students Ditch School to Lead Portlanders in Climate Strike
• Brief Thoughts on Familiar Phrases
• Critiquing the Critic
• Nothing Wrong with Apu
• The Importance of Media Literacy
• Pop Weekend 2019
• (Sandy) Alex G Album Review
• Clairo Album Review
• The Signs of Beloved Celebrity Birds of PSU
• Funny Page

Why Do Adults Read Young Adult Books?, Monica Hay

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Young adult books are widely read by adults. Through interviews with publishing professionals and a survey of 2,139 participants, several reasons were discovered regarding why adults read young adult literature. In the research, the most common reasons were the influence of Harry Potter and Twilight, the relatability for millennials, the social media presence of YA online, and the success of women writers in the category. Survey participants had more to add. The survey themes were nostalgia, "less pretentious," "faster reads," diversity, escapism, "less graphic," and perhaps most importantly, hopeful.

A Cover Is Worth 1000 Words: Visibility And Racial Diversity In Young Adult Cover Design, Jenny Kimura

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

Diversity in young adult literature has been a hot topic in the publishing industry for many years now, and calls for diversity from the YA community, librarians, authors, and publishing professionals have garnered nationwide attention. But while the conversation around diverse content is well documented, few have considered how young adult cover design might have an impact on how diversity, especially in terms of race/ethnicity, is represented visually.

The research detailed in this paper compiles and analyzes data from 700 covers each from 2014 and 2018 respectively (1400 book covers total). In my quantitative analysis, I wanted to know whether …

Marie Kondo And The New Self-Help, Kristen Ludwigsen

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

In the wake of the Marie Kondo phenomenon, is the self-help literature genre being redefined? How is Marie Kondo and her book affecting the ways self-help literature is being shared, discussed, and interpreted? This paper attempts to answer these questions by first discussing the difficulty in defining the self-help genre, and how recent definitions reflect the current economic climate. This paper examines The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo; the tone and language used and how it’s typical of books in the self-help genre, despite categorization as a House and Home—Cleaning and Organizing book. This paper looks at …

Engagement In The Fiber Craft Community: How Authors Can Increase Visibility And Market Their Books, Victoria Raible

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

This paper conceptualized the “fiber craft community,” a group of people heavily engaged with other members in community spaces, both online and in person, surrounding their craft. Drawing on scholarship about imagined communities, brand communities, and subcultures of consumption, this research argues this potential audience is a “community.” In addition to providing contextual information on the creative products industry and craft/hobby books market, this research uses a case study approach to gather ethnographic information about where and how the fiber craft community engages. It draws conclusions about how authors can best reach this community to market their fiber craft books.

Selling Protest In The News? Movement-Media Framing Of Occupations: An Exploratory Study, Andrew David Butz

Dissertations and Theses

Using quantitative content analysis, this study explores social movement (SM) framing in commercial news media -- by comparing how leading newspapers covered prominent protest occupations in 2011 and 2016. More than other SMs, anti-systemic protests like the 2011 Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and the 2016 Malheur Refuge Occupation (MRO) only have partial frame-setting agency, raising a broad theory question (to inform the research questions below): If SMs and media relate as interacting systems, are protest news frames more movement- or more media- driven; and do media not just enable but also constrain SMs?

With the movement-media theory question above, the …

Politics In The Social Media Era: The Relationship Between Social Media Use And Political Participation During The 2016 United States Presidential Election, Kevin Everett Curry

Dissertations and Theses

The growth of social media use raises significant questions related to political information and its effect on political knowledge and participation. One issue is whether social media delivers news and political information in a similar manner as traditional news media sources, like newspapers, TV, and radio, by contributing to political knowledge, which is linked to voter turnout. This dissertation examines the relationship between an individual's social media use, their use of traditional news media sources, and whether they turn out to vote. It utilizes American National Election Survey data from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to complete three studies. First, …

News Work: The Impact Of Corporate Newsroom Culture On News Workers & Community Reporting, Carey Lynne Higgins-Dobney

Dissertations and Theses

By virtue of their broadcast licenses, local television stations in the United States are bound to serve in the public interest of their community audiences. As federal regulations of those stations loosen and fewer owners increase their holdings across the country, however, local community needs are subjugated by corporate fiduciary responsibilities. Business practices reveal rampant consolidation of ownership, newsroom job description convergence, skilled human labor replaced by computer automation, and economically-driven downsizings, all in the name of profit. Even so, the people laboring under these conditions are expected to keep their communities informed with democracy- and citizenship-enhancing information.

This study …

Building A Literary Culture: How Indie Publishers Can Establish Stability By Operating Community Hubs, Lisa Hein

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

What’s causing the recent rise in publisher-operated brick and mortar bookstores? Are there significant advantages that arise from concentrating on in-person connections rather than more convenient engagement methods such as digital marketing? How are some indie book publishers using high-fidelity, physical experiences to promote their brands and foster a literary culture in their communities?

The Role Of The Developmental Editor In Emerging Forms Of Narrative, Stephanie Argy

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

This research paper looks at how developmental editing techniques and analytical processes can be applied to emerging forms of storytelling. By examining a sampling of projects that expand narrative beyond traditional approaches, and talking to people involved with those projects, this paper examines how developmental editing can be used in these new forms; the skills that editors might want to add to their toolkit; and the impact that developmental editors might be able to have on projects and on new storytelling forms themselves. The paper is meant as a roadmap for next steps for what editors might want to learn …

“Listen To What Your Jotería Is Saying”: Coverage Of The 2016 Orlando Shooting By English- And Spanish-Language Media, Julian A. Bugarín Quezada

PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal

This study will focus on coverage of the 2016 Pulse nightclub shooting by multiple English- and Spanish-language media sources in the month following the attack. The study assesses the extent through which following the shooting, coverage of the event often ignored the victims’ and survivors’ queerness, Latinidad, or both. Did these actions diminish the intersectional experiences of queer Latinx people? Were stories of the victims and survivors of the shooting accurately represented? How did this event shape queerness, gender identity, and Latinidad in the year after the attack? Through the frameworks of Latino critical race theory and queer theory, this …

Framing Homelessness As Crisis: A Comparative Content Analysis Of Local Media Reports On Portland's Tent Cities, Katrien Cokeley

Dissertations and Theses

This content analysis of mainstream and alternative news narratives interprets the use of the crisis media frame, and describes the relationship between local policy initiatives, media discourse and public opinion on tent cities, organized by people experiencing homelessness in Portland, Oregon. Framing homelessness and housing as a crisis intensified the public debate, attested by an increase in mainstream media reports on tent cities, and by controversial policy changes that addressed the individually-experienced traumatic impacts of the City's anti-camping ordinance, as well as the systemic lack of affordable housing and emergency shelter. Media discourse related to city-sanctioned tent cities blurs the …

What Color Is The Threshold? An Exploration Of The Materiality Of Racial Descriptions In Marketing Paratext In Adult Fiction, Jordana Beh Wathey

Book Publishing Final Research Papers

The conversation in book publishing has established that the industry is remarkably, well, white. We abstractly understand that minority groups have not been represented well, if at all, in our literary history; and, I would add, most publishers including the tenor-setting Big Five, want to change this heternormative face of the book industry. In fact, the question in all American media today is how do we make our fictional worlds better reflect our lived existence? But, as we talk about improving the inclusivity of our chosen medium, there is a conversation that is being missed as we canvas the landscape …

Narratives Of Native American Women And Tribal Courts: The Framing Of The Violence Against Women Act Of 2013 In Mainstream, Native American, And Tribal Press Coverage, Alesha Marie Sangster

Dissertations and Theses

The Violence Against Women Act is a legislation created to expand more legal rights and services to survivors of domestic violence or intimate partner violence. Frame analysis was used to examine the coverage of the Violence Against Women Act of 2013 in three genres of press media: mainstream press, Native American press, and tribal press. Based on the media frames produced in the three media genres, the legislation was presented as more of a conflicting or controversial issue in mainstream press through the use of the conflict frame and the "Indian as other" frame. But all news coverage also presented …

Advocacy Campaign For Women's Reproductive Health And Access On Social Media, Rachel Crist, Jules Montes, Lauren Frank

Student Research Symposium

Advocacy organizations increasingly rely on social media (e.g. Twitter hashtags) to foster issue awareness. Social media platforms can be promising communication channels to reach diverse audiences; however, it is unclear how effective these campaigns are at reaching audience members whose views do not align with the campaign. Using diffusion of innovations as a theoretical framework, this study examines the #BirthControlHelpedMe campaign to better understand the response to an advocacy campaign promoted via Twitter. Focus groups were conducted separately for men and women. The moderator led participants in a semi-structured discussion of perceptions of birth control. Participants were then shown example …

Entrapment As A Threat To Community Peace In The Global War On Terror: An Analysis Of Discourse In Local Press, Priya Kapoor, Adam Testerman, Alex Brehm

International & Global Studies Faculty Publications and Presentations

Our study tries to understand the phenomenon of Entrapment, which is an outcome of (a) security discourses that prioritize pre-emptive community strategies; (b) the ongoing military initiative of the Global War of Terror (GWOT); and (c) and the increased budgetary convergence of state agencies of the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the military, impacting the legal and court processes that indict “homegrown” terrorists. We offer a critical discourse analysis of the events that led to the arrest and trial of Mohamed Osman Mohamud, covered in local newspapers The Oregonian and The Willamette Week, after …

The Effect Of Social Media On Public Awareness And Extra-Judicial Effects: The Gay Marriage Cases And Litigating For New Rights, Sarahfina Aubrey Peterson

Dissertations and Theses

When the Supreme Court grants new rights, public awareness is a crucial part of enforcement. Gerald N. Rosenberg and Michael J. Klarman famously criticized minority rights organizations for attempting to gain new rights through the judiciary. The crux of their argument relied heavily on the American media's scanty coverage of Court issues and subsequent low public awareness of Court cases. Using the 2013 United States v. Windsor and Hollingsworth v. Perry rulings as a case study, I suggest that the media environment has changed so much since Rosenberg and Klarman were writing that their theories warrant reconsideration. Minority rights groups …

Black And Blue And Read All Over: News Framing And The Coverage Of Crime, Kalistah Quilla Cosand

Dissertations and Theses

This study explores the representation of crime in the news in relation to expressed emotion and intention for future action. Episodic and thematic framing (Iyengar, 1991) and narrative processing (Singer & Bluck, 2001) served as the theoretical foundations of this study and helped examine how scripted news stories involving crime influence levels of fear, anger, and empathy in individuals, and how these emotions subsequently affect behaviors. To measure these framing effects, an experimental manipulation was employed using three conceptually different news stories all involving gun-related crimes. One news story utilized an episodic format, while the other two stories used a …

"Game Over" For The Climate: The Keystone Xl Pipeline On Tv News, Elisabeth Wilder

Dissertations and Theses

The overwhelming consensus of the world's climate scientists is that we must rapidly reduce our greenhouse emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Yet the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil that emits three to four times the carbon emissions of conventional gasoline across the U.S., is supported by a solid majority of Americans. This level of support for a project a proposal that would dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions, pollute sensitive lands and water sources, and threaten the health and safety of communities along the way begs the question: what kind …

War's Visual Discourse: A Content Analysis Of Iraq War Imagery, Mary Elizabeth Major

Dissertations and Theses

This study reports the findings of a systematic visual content analysis of 356 randomly sampled images published about the Iraq War in Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News and World Report from 2003-2009. In comparison to a 1995 Gulf War study, published images in all three newsmagazines continued to be U.S.-centric, with the highest content frequencies reflected in the categories U.S. troops on combat patrol, Iraqi civilians, and U.S. political leaders respectively. These content categories do not resemble the results of the Gulf War study in which armaments garnered the largest share of the images with 23%. This study concludes that …

Combating Violence Against Women Through C4d: The “Use Your Voice” Campaign And Its Implications On Audience-Citizens In Papua New Guinea, Vipul Khosla, Akina Mikami, Lauren B. Frank, Isabel Popal, Klara Debeljak, Amelia Shaw

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Violence against women (VAW) is universally identified as a barrier to legal, social, political, and economic equality for women, violating their rights and fundamental freedoms. This article brings together existing literature and empirical research on addressing such violence in Papua New Guinea (PNG), providing results that can inform future work in this area. The literature review examines the causes of violence against women and the role that communication for development (C4D) can play in addressing these issues. The Use Your Voice campaign was implemented in PNG in late 2011 in an effort to promote speaking out against violence and displace …

Crime In The News: How Do People Feel About Crime Reporting In Portland, Oregon?, Kris R. Henning, Brian Renauer, Greg Stewart

Criminal Justice Policy Research Institute Research Briefs

This research brief summarizes the results of a recent survey with residents in Portland, Oregon assessing public opinions on the local news media’s coverage of various crime topics.

Community Newspapers Play Significant Role In Election, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This article compares coverage of the 2007 Philadelphia mayoral campaign in the city's major daily and community newspapers. The findings show that community newspapers serve as a complement to the dailies but also prove to be sources of campaign information in their own right.

News Images, Race, And Attribution In The Wake Of Hurricane Katrina, Eran Ben-Porath, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

This study looks at the effect of news images and race on the attribution of responsibility for the consequences of Hurricane Katrina. Participants, Black and White, read the same news story about the hurricane and its aftermath, manipulated to include images of White victims, Black victims, or no images at all. Participants were then asked who they felt was responsible for the humanitarian disaster after the storm. White respondents expressed less sense of government responsibility when the story included victims' images. For Black respondents this effect did not occur. Images did not affect attribution of responsibility to New Orleans' residents …

Citizens’ Local Political Knowledge And The Role Of Media Access, Lee Shaker

Communication Faculty Publications and Presentations

Locally based media institutions that have been at the core of citizens' media environments for generations are facing an onslaught of new competition from new media. The twin goals of this article are to expand our understanding of the distribution of local political knowledge in general and to specifically examine the relevance of media access. The article suggests that media access does bear upon levels of local political knowledge and confirms that citizens who are knowledgeable about local politics do not mirror the profile of those who are knowledgeable about national politics.

Islamophobia And The U.S. Media, Michelle Maria Nichole Diamond

Dissertations and Theses

The following paper examines the growing fear and discrimination currently projected towards Islam and Muslims in the United States. This thesis will specifically focus on what role the U.S. mainstream media has played in either increasing or decreasing Islamophobia amongst the American public post September 11, 2001. The research collected to conduct this study came from theories of political science, conflict resolution, international affairs, psychology, sociology, and personal interviews. I conclude that Islamophobia has increased in the United States since the attacks of September 11, 2001 and that Islamophobia, due to the mainstream media, is more pervasive in the U.S. …

Public Opinion, The Media, And Environmental Policy: Agenda-Setting, Framing, And Maintaining The Status Quo, Jonela Rae Estes

Dissertations and Theses

Contributing to the research on the topic of the media, public opinion, and public policy, this research investigated the question: Given the environment's relatively bipartisan backing and the public's support for a stronger environmental protection agenda, how can an environmental policy direction apparently incongruent with public opinion be maintained?

The method of answering this larger question was to examine the dynamic among public opinion, the media, and environmental policy, focusing specifically on the media's agenda-setting and framing functions. This dynamic was explored through a three part methodology: by looking at the amounts of environmental policy media coverage over the last …