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Although considerable research has been done on the evaluation of online content credibility, little of this work has considered the context of how users get to a Web site in their final evaluation of the content they find. Using unique data about how a diverse group of young adults looks for and evaluates online content, our paper makes contributions to existing literature by highlighting factors beyond site features in how users assess the credibility of material they encounter on the Web. We show that the process by which a user arrives at a site is an important component of how the final destination is judged. In addition to search context, branding and routines also play an important role in this assessment as does a continued reliance on resources beyond Web sites including people's social networks. We also discuss the fact that users differ considerably in their skills when it comes to evaluating online content. Finally, we identify areas for future research including a need for more valid survey instruments and continued work in more naturalistic settings. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This transnational discourse analysis examines the relatively recent visibility of transmen on the web. The sites selected represent two types of web presence: resource web pages sponsored by organizations or individuals and individual transition blogs. Several North American and European sites were visited repeatedly over a one-year period to document transmale discourse on the Web and to examine the cultural identity constructions embedded. The analysis points to the emergence of two meta-discourses: a global transmale youth discourse and a traditional transman discourse. A key aspect of contemporary transman identity, the inability to avoid locating oneself in multiple, sometimes contradictory discourses, overshadows multiple webbed discourses. Key themes identified could be considered active discursive strategies designed to counteract erasure. Rather than constructing trans identities, these sites can be said to inscribe transpeople's lives in durable and conspicuous ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the rise of news aggregators, internet start pages and portal sites, there now exists a chain of sources for any piece of online news. Credible portals sometimes carry news items published by non-credible sources, but do users really factor in all the distal sources or do they rely simply on the proximate source delivering the news? Dual process models in psychology would predict that source is a peripheral cue and only those who are highly involved in the topic of the story would care to dig deeper. We tested this proposition with a 2 (Issue involvement: High vs. Low) x 2 (Proximal source credibility: High vs. Low) x 2 (Distal source credibility: High vs. Low) full-factorial between-subjects experiment (N = 238) and found that while highly involved readers considered both proximate and distal sources, low-involvement readers were primarily influenced by the proximate source. Implications of these findings are discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists' blogs (j-blogs) are novel journalistic practice emerging in Chinese news industry. This study is the first step in establishing what is going on in Chinese news media in terms of j-blogs and finding out how new technology would change and transform the traditional news industry in Mainland China. Content analysis was conducted to study j-blogs on Chinese newspaper websites and investigate their implications for journalism in China. Topic, format, reader comments, hyperlinks and multimedia such as video, audio and pictures in j-blog posts were analyzed. It was revealed that the most often addressed topics in Chinese j-blogs were lifestyle, politics/government/military, crime/accidents/disasters, and business/economic activity. The most frequently adopted formats in Chinese j-blogs were the straight opinion column, the rumor-mill blog, and reporter's notebook of news tidbits and incidentals. It was shown that the formats of j-blog posts varied by topics. Significant influence of topic and format were found on the number of reader comments in Chinese j-blog posts. The use of hyperlinks and multimedia also differed in j-blogs with different topics and formats. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The first aim of this study was to examine which uncertainty reduction strategies members of social networking sites used to gain information about a person who they had recently met online. The second aim was to investigate whether and how these uncertainty reduction strategies resulted in social attraction. Drawing on a survey of 704 members of a social networking site, we found that respondents had used active, passive, and interactive strategies to reduce uncertainty about their new acquaintance. Interactive strategies were most effective in reducing uncertainty about the target person. Respondents' level of uncertainty about the acquaintance mediated the relationships between the use of interactive uncertainty strategies and perceived similarity on the one hand and social attraction on the other. Finally, respondents' perceived valence of the obtained information about the acquaintance moderated the relationship between the level of uncertainty and social attraction. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This qualitative exploration takes an in-depth look at computer-mediated communication (CMC) within social networking websites. In order to examine needs, and motivations concerning such sites, a uses and gratifications framework is implemented. The purpose of this study is to understand how and why people make use of CMC via online networking sites. Twenty-five social networking website users were interviewed in order to examine participants' needs, and motications. Motivations include entertainment, information, and social utility. Needs are broken down into categories including cognitive, affective, personal, social, and escapist. These needs and motivations are revealed through user behavior, which concentrated on messaging, comments, pictures, friend networks, personal profiles, and others profiles. Part of the appeal of social networking sites is the ability of the software to meet multiple needs on multiple levels. This ability brings back users for repeat participation and explains the stickiness of the software. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Online news has become one of the major news sources in the 21st century and more people read news on the Web. The aim of this paper is to examine the news seeking behavior of the online news audience. The paper attempts to put the study into the context of digital society and link the online audience with the online medium format and Net user characteristics. Since online news audience adopts a “purposive news seeking mode” to locate news they want to read, this paper tries to identify the key elements in their online news consumption. Findings indicate that the online news seeking mode is characterized by convenient search, timely search, pick and choose (selective search), target search, non-linear reading and comparative reading. Online audiences’ news seeking behavior is affected by the Net users’ characteristics and the “open” format of the online news media. Three types of online news readers are identified, namely “demanding readers,” “pragmatic readers” and “casual readers.” ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Independent labels continue to direct much of their attention on the growing “world music” market. World music is no longer solely the province of Western pop musical elites, but is now widely seen through the further outgrowth of globalization as constituting a popular music market that has the potential to gain substantial sales traction. Popular media has insinuated the growth of world music to have reached the same level of inevitability as globalization. Drawing upon work in anthropology and cultural studies, this paper addresses the genre of world music marketed primarily to Western markets by record labels such as Putumayo World Music, Real World Records, and a host of other independent labels. More specifically, through a cultural analysis making use of Raymond Williams’s concept of social formalism, this analysis examines the way in which these labels use their websites to construct themselves musically as returning tradition and authenticity to the modern West, which is seen as having become disconnected from its cultural authenticity. In addition to complementing existing cultural studies approaches to the study of popular music, this analysis integrates the growing scholarship within anthropology examining modernity and global popular music. In more practical terms, this paper provides a tangible cultural analysis of the websites of world music labels, used as primary means in the marketing and selling of world music to Western capitalist markets. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasingly online fan sites are providing instant feedback to television and script writers, who are starting to pay more attention to the chatter of "the boards." J.J. Abrams, the show runner for a US program called "Alias" is a confessed board watcher: ""If the Internet is your audience, TV is quite like a play," he observed. "Movies are a done deal -- there's no give and take -- but in a play, you listen to the applause, the missing laughs, the boos. It's the same with the Internet. If you ignore that sort of response, you probably shouldn't be working in TV right now." Abram's observation highlights the expectations of an audience immersed in an increasingly interactive media environment, one in which they are provided with proliferating avenues for talking back to the tube, whether by kicking cast members off reality shows, creating fan sites or venting on to the boards. This paper explores the way in which interactivity doubles as a form of value-enhancing labor for television producers in two ways: by allowing fans to take on part of the work of making a show entertaining, and by providing instant feedback to producers. Based on interviews and surveys of contributors to TelevisionWitoutPity.com and on interviews with producers who frequent the site, the paper explores the two sides of interactivity: the promise of shared control, and the ability to offload some of the labor of market research on to viewers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how organizations are using their Web sites in crisis communication. Specifically, the paper studies the actual rhetorical strategies employed by organizations when they communicate about one particular type of crisis--mismanagement, and which of these rhetorical strategies are then repeated by the media. It also examines the discursive strategies used by organizations through the lens of Benoit's image repair tactics.

This paper considers whether Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are legally responsible for defamatory speech posted by third parties. Toward that end, the paper begins by identifying two competing models?ISPs as distributors and ISPs as publishers?developed by the courts in Cubby v. CompuServe (1991) and Stratton Oakmont v. Prodigy (1995). The second section of the paper revisits this controversy in light of the United States Court of Appeals decision in Zeran v. America Online (1997), a case involving Section 230?the so-called "Good Samaritan" clause?of the ill-fated Communications Decency Act. The final section of this paper briefly summarizes the growing scholarly criticism of Section 230 and the Zeran decision. In the final pages, the paper directly responds to this criticism, arguing that Section 230 was intended to immunize ISPs, and that Zeran was correctly decided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given that nearly 80 percent of all Internet content appears in English, it is important to know what kind of images are placed on English language, Middle Eastern-originated, media sites. Among the most important issues examined there are those concerning the status and rights of women. Using discourse analysis, this paper examines three English-language newspaper websites from three politically different Middle Eastern countries ? Jordan, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia - to see how women are portrayed. This paper examines from a feminist perspective how women are portrayed on these Internet sites and extrapolates from the images some observations about the status of women in those countries. The review of the Jordan Times, the Gulf News and the Arab News found that there were three major ways in which women were most frequently portrayed: (1) as victims, (2) as ?angels of mercy,? and (3) as increasingly important to development of economic assets of the region. When female authority figures were represented, they were generally members of royal families and were providing either commentary on the victimization of women by the Israelis or were leaders of relief efforts aimed at helping these victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To begin to grasp the relationship of digital democracy and foreign affairs at the nation-state level, this paper raises the following questions: Does the web presence of national foreign policy organizations represent any advance in the notion of digital democracy? Also, does the website, as microcosm, represent the future of the organizational mission or strategy of a nation-state?s foreign affairs department? To accomplish these goals, this paper provides an overview of both the notion of digital democracy as well as a snapshot of the ?state of relations? between public opinion and foreign policy formation, followed by an overview of the institutional tendencies of both the United States and the United Kingdom in constructing governmental online presence and finally an analysis of the content and functionality of the U.S. Department of State and the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) web sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper conceptualizes the study of a web site based in Turkey that has become enormously popular in the three years of its existence. Despite a low Internet penetration rate in the country, the site daily attracts about 55,000 visitors and submission of between 800 and 1000 confessions. This paper frames the research of this site in social and religious ways and discusses how uses and gratifications research, somewhat reconceived to apply to research of Internet genres, could be used to determine why the site has sustained such popularity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of reflexivity in interaction and, in particular, participation in political discourse. Specifically, the study explores the participation of Generation Xers on an Internet site dedicated to political discussion and the ways in which they position themselves in relation to the identity marker "Generation X." An emergent typology from participation suggests that participants' reflexive moves are motivated by the need to appropriate or repair the stigmatized generational label and fluctuate between individualistic and collectivist positions. The paper concludes with a discussion of the importance of a secure sense of place from which civic participation can occur. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on a research paper which focuses on the use of international hyperlinks as social and communicational ties, for the analysis of specific roles and structures in the global network. It analyzes the hyperlinked networks and their contents among TLDs (top level domains) and ubiquitous dotcom. The paper randomly selected 20,000 websites hyperlinking dotcom from database software of MSSQL (Micro Software Structured Query Language).

This paper investigates the process of the transformation of blogs from online "filters" into a "format" for sharing content on the Web. This study draws on a mixed-methods research design and combines scholarship in STS and communication studies. The article analyzes how different communities of users created three types of websites at the end of the 1990s: online diaries, personal publishing journals, and weblogs. The paper explores next three dynamics involved in the process of technological stabilization of weblogs as a format. First, users appropriated weblogs by expanding its original content. Second, a software program (Blogger) helped the weblog stabilize as a website suitable for the purposes of these communities. Third, as the creation of templates standardized blogs, software developers and users worked to redefine them as the Web's "native format." This paper thus shows that the analysis of technological stabilization requires considering how artifacts and content are variously articulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at mixi, a Japan-based social network site (SNS) with a focus on its web interface. It argues that mixi's interface imagines the boundary of the social network of an 'average Japanese person,' which in effect sets a criteria for what types of people can 'fit in' in the 'Japanese society.' It also demonstrates that the interface does not simply embody preexisting notions about Japaneseness and politics of inclusion and exclusion prevalent in Japanese society. Rather, there is a 'neighborhood of relations' residing in and around the interface. Thus, the way mixi's interface draws a boundary around 'Japan' differs from the ways in which traditional modes of boundary making do so. Additionally, this paper examines how this imagined boundary affects members of different racial, ethnic and cultural minorities living in Japan and discusses implications of the findings in relation to future directions in internet studies and SNS research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates how newspaper web site feedback interacts with the media agenda, and the role that this form of public response plays in the agenda-setting process. By examining how media and public agendas interact through Internet feedback opportunities over a two-week period, this paper looks at the gap in knowledge about online agenda setting after media agendas are built but before long-term agenda-setting effects take hold.Results indicate that media demonstrated a powerful and immediate influence on the public from day to day. On a consistent daily basis, stories presented as important in both the print and online editions of the paper corresponded with stories on which web site users offered the most comments. Yet the dynamic between media and public agendas yielded more complicated and less consistent results over time. These findings provide a preliminary step toward a better understanding of how media and public agendas develop and interact online. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars have seldom tested the innovation and normalization paradigm of e-campaigning over time. Particularly outside the U.S., there is a lack of comparative analyses of candidate or party Web sites that deal with the concept's temporal validity and scope. The paper addresses this research gap through a longitudinal content and structural analysis of German party Web sites in the 2002 and 2005 National Elections. The results provide empirical evidence of a twofold development in e-campaigning that challenges past assumptions of the innovation and normalization framework. Specifically, the paper proposes two theoretical revisions: First, innovation and normalization do not represent mutually exclusive opposites of a scientific controversy, but rather signify a dynamic conceptual continuum of parallel stages in the evolution of e-campaigning. Second, this continuum is affected by the Web site dimension as well as by the status of the political actors being observed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I study the website content of five international organizations committed to helping GLBTQ individuals. Given the international audiences of these organizations, it is interesting to consider how they frame their language to ensure that all audiences are included in their definition of the individuals they wish to help. Strategic ambiguity theory helped to illuminate their framing choices and this paper attempts to open a discussion about the ways in which language is used for international nonprofits who work within the queer community. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to previous research, online news as opposed to traditional news is characterized by interactivity, immediacy and liquidity. However, most research in this area has focused on the news site-level of analysis, and there are still only few studies on how interactivity, immediacy and liquidity affect online news on the news story-level. In addition, there are virtually no content analyses that include online news while taking its special characteristics into consideration. Thus, the overall purpose of this paper is to explore approaches for the study of interactivity, immediacy and liquidity on the news story-level of analysis. The paper develops a three-pronged strategy for freezing the flow of online news to enable systematic content analyses of how online news stories are affected by interactivity, immediacy and liquidity. The paper also tests this strategy in a comparative analysis of the news sites Guardian.co.uk in Britain and Aftonbladet.se in Sweden. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study marks the first time that the day-to-day practices of citizen reporters are examined in an in-depth manner, to include the ways in which they avail themselves of sources and produce original news items. Moreover, the paper compares the methods and means of citizen reporters with those of their counterparts from the mainstream press. Data was gleaned from a series of reconstruction interviews in which reporters from Israeli citizen and mainstream news websites explained how they formulated their sampled items. The paper suggests a round-about version of the "news access" theory, whereby citizen journalists are hindered by their inferior access to news sources, unlike mainstream journalism, where the problem is the superior access of some of their sources to extensive and favored coverage. There are several symptoms for citizen reporters' limited news access: their modest use of human sources; the high proportion of one-source items; their reluctance to interactively negotiate versions with sources; and the absence of established relations with most of their sources. Therefore, citizen reporters' associations with sources tend to be ad hoc exchanges, rather than long-term role relationships. On the other hand, citizen reporters have adopted several mechanisms that help them make up for their comparably limited access. For example, they are much more likely to pursue stories at their own initiative. In addition, they tend to predicate their stories on firsthand witnessing, technical sources (mainly internet), personal acquaintances, and on their own experience. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In contemporary society avoiding media has become a challenge. If exposure to media was once confined to a number of well-defined spheres and moments in the day, today the media is omnipresent and continuous, requiring no disengagement or resumption. The ubiquity and convergence of the media has transformed the act of turning it "off" from a routine unmarked moment into a conscious effort and a personal statement. "Not watching" now signifies the adoption of a "media avoidance" lifestyle, a lifestyle which is flexibly defined and interpreted depending upon community and class context. In this paper, we seek to gain insight into this cultural and technological period of transition through an examination of individuals that make the effort to remain—to some extent and in relation to some media —"unplugged." We approach contemporary media saturation not by studying those who partake in it, but rather through a study of those who negotiate media in a critical fashion—either by setting limits (no cable) or through complete avoidance of television. This paper is part of a larger work-in-progress that explores patterns of non-use of communication media. Here we focus on bloggers who reflect on their discontinuance, rejection or limitation of television viewing. Viewing their discourse as a constructive practice, we analyze how they define television as a problem, the solutions they propose, and the consequences of adopting these solutions. The analysis highlights the ways in which bloggers draw upon lay theories of communication to explain their media avoidance practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cyber-vetting is a process by which organizational representatives use freely accessible information gathered from online tools or sites such as search engines or social networking communities to gather information about (potential) employees. This paper proposes cyber-vetting as a crucial area of future study in organizational communication. Preliminary evidence from surveys, popular media, and trade journals suggest the practice of cyber-vetting and/or perceptions of cyber-vetting are growing. Cyber-vetting is organizationally and communicatively situated given its context within new communication technologies and its impact on professional identity, work, and organizational practices including organizational selection and socialization. This paper argues for the use of Martin's (1992) three epistemological lenses in researching cyber-vetting: interpretive, functional, and critical to best understand the practices, perceptions, and implications of cyber-vetting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the research design and preliminary results of a web experiment aimed at examining the effects of interactivity of health websites on comprehension and attitudes towards two health websites. It also sought to determine if individual differences in need for cognition moderated such an effect. A 2 (high need for cognition vs low need for cognition) x 2 (high interactivity vs low interactivity) factorial design was used to test the hypotheses. Two sites with the same content were designed with different levels of interactivity and randomly assigned to 445 undergraduate students (aged 18-27) at a Southeastern university. Results show a non-significant main effect for interactivity on comprehension, and a significant main effect for need for cognition (p < .05) holding reading style constant. Results also show a significant effect of interactivity on attitude towards site (p < .01), with the high interactivity group displaying more positive attitudes. The results suggest that while level of interactivity does not affect comprehension, it has a positive impact on whether people are attracted to and will continue to pay attention to a website. The implications and suggestions for future analyses are also given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Content analysis of activist organization Web sites determined how activist groups use online resources in media relations. Seventy-four activist Web sites were analyzed. About one-third (32.4%) included organized online press rooms. The most common media relations materials were: organizational history (70.3%), organizational mission statement (54.1%), organizational publications (47.3%), press releases (33.8%), and policy papers (31.1%). Activist Web sites did not provide strong dialogic features for journalists, but dialogic features were more available for the general public. Six recommendations are made for improving online activist press relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some claim that weblogs could serve as a form of civic journalism by encouraging broad participation by the public in the journalistic process. This paper applies the principles of network and emergence theory to weblogs, and proposes a hybrid weblog model that uses decentralized and centralized production methods. The result is a form of media that would enable the participation of the public that civic journalism encourages while still upholding journalism's traditional ethical standards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Second-wave feminist theorists have been criticized for lack of diversity and inclusiveness, and a general disregard for the social ramifications of location and experience. Such criticism has fostered the post-modern environment in which one's experience impacts her position in society. This paper analyzes theories of multiracial feminism and then applies these perspectives to representations on three feminist Web sites: Feminist.com, the Ms. Magazine site (msmagazine.com), and the National Organization of Women site (now.org). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines factors that determine voters' exposure to candidates' campaign Web sites and the Web's possible effects on voting behavior in the Presidential Election 2000. A two-wave panel survey of college students was conducted. The study has documented two major findings: (1) a potential for Web sites to enhance the probability of voting turnout, and (2) respondents' tendency of selective exposure toward preferred candidate Web sites. The first major finding provided empirical evidence contrary to what had been found in the previous studies, i.e., the online media were predictors for voting turnout while the traditional media were not. The second major finding also includes evidence that the degree of preference for a candidate corresponded to the degree of selective exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Internet is becoming increasingly important as a tool used by social movements. It is used for a variety of purposes by these movements. The Website may be employed as a place to demonstrate the purposes of social movements. E-mail management lists may serve as a recruitment channel for membership in social movements. However, can actually be used to create a new form of social movement? This debate, therefore, raises fundamental issues for deliberating about the roles of information communication technology (ICT) in modern social movements. In terms of function of organizations, the study shows the virtual social movement is an information provider and a mobilization vehicle as well. Secondly, in the analysis of the purpose of action, the paper finds that the virtual movement is still combined with elements of traditional social movements. For instance, the declaration of alliance, means we should avoid overestimating the emancipating power of technology. Most importantly, the study indicates a new type of self-reflexivity emerging from such Internet-based social movements. In terms of the e-mail content, the virtual movement member uses a common language to implement the "movement." Apparently, the element of self-reflexivity should not be uniquely limited to the inflexible purpose of a movement group. Instead, the social boundary between public and private sphere in the virtual movement seems to be blurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explore Congressional Web sites as spaces for government--constituent relationship building. An analysis of Congressional Web sites (n= 100) and interviews with Congressional offices (n=32) shows that Congressional representatives recognize the value of the Internet and the WWW for communicating with constituents. However, our examination of Congressional Web sites suggests that they are not very dialogic, furthermore, interviews with legislative aides responsible for maintenance of legislative Web sites suggest that legislators see Web sites primarily as information dissemination tools. There appears to be an almost total absence of dialogic communication and relationship building on legislative sites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports the effect of website interactivity on change in smokers' behavioral intention to quit with a pretest-posttest design experiment. An online experiment with 92 smokers tested the effect of the number of interactive features on the website ranging from zero to three. An inverted U-shaped quadratic trend was found in perceived interactivity, which indirectly influenced the change score of participants' behavioral intention to quit after browsing. Only one or two interactive features, not three, led to significant increase in the change score compared with the control condition, by increasing vividness of the stimulus website and decreasing psychological reactance when the level of tobacco addiction was controlled. However, for smokers who are highly addicted, the website with three interactive features decreased their psychological reactance and led to more change in behavioral intention to quit compared with other less interactive conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the navigability of digital interfaces has been long discussed as a key determinant of media effects of Web use, existing scholarship has not yielded a clear conceptual understanding of navigability, nor how to measure perceived navigability as an outcome. The present paper attempts to redress both, and proposes that navigability be conceptually examined along three dimensions, namely logic of structure, clarity of structure, and clarity of target. In addition to this multi-dimensional explication of navigability, we also introduce and validate a scale to measure perceived navigability, and suggestions for incorporating the scale into future user-centered studies of digital interfaces are proposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a benchmark study of how International Environmental NGOs use Web sites and social media to reach out to the general public in multiple nations. This study also surveys the hyperlink network structure among 455 International Environmental NGOs' Web sites. Using data-mining technique and hyperlink network analysis, this study finds that across nations, NGOs' Web sites and social media are able to attract a considerable number of visitors from multiple countries. Further, many NGOs build reciprocal hyperlinks with other NGOs and are embedded in dense clusters. Implications for how activists can use new media to bypass powerful nation-states and corporations and to promote social changes are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Health information seeking (HIS) and emotional support seeking (ESS) for medical conditions are widespread, self-guided online activities that happen concurrently on social health websites. Appraisal and coping theory suggests that these activities may be caused by negative emotions that users experience. In this paper, we examine three key negative emotions--fear, anxiety, and shame--for their potential impact on HIS and ESS. Through an online survey of 518 people, we found that only anxiety positively predicted HIS. In contrast, fear and anxiety both positively predicted ESS, while shame negatively predicted ESS. These findings result in important implications for social health websites. For example, our results suggest that people experiencing fear require immediate emotional relief through solace, and they may benefit more from receiving emotionally supportive comments rather than information about the medical condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Media in the present day society are characterized by an increasing degree of digitalization and of convergence between mass communication and personal communication, leading up to so-called 'mass self-communication'. Through this process new platforms for acting and identity formation are brought to existence. Social network sites (SNS) can be seen as an important fraction of mass self-communication, which are very prominent in the everyday life of many adolescents in the Western World. Unfortunately, SNS are often contested for their lack of privacy they present to their users. This paper aims to clarify the complex relationship between identity and privacy within the population of adolescents on SNS, with the larger goal of developing social requirements in the creation of privacy enhancing technologies (PETs). The theoretical framework of Symbolic Interactionism (SI) combined with a qualitative ethnographic study was used to pin down this relationship. Fifteen adolescents between the age of 14 and 18 were interviewed regarding their online behaviour on Facebook and Smartschool (Belgian digital learning platform). Specifically, we focussed on how an online self on SNS is acquired and how this is interconnected with the context problems of privacy. We conclude that adolescents seem to be benefiting more from context problems on SNS than experiencing it as a problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines what kind of interactive features are available on the web sites of Swedish newspapers, and what factors seem to influence the utilization of those features. Using Chung's typology of interactive features, we can discern four types: human (features that facilitate interpersonal communication), human-medium (allowing users to express their personal opinions), medium (allowing users choice options in experiencing news stories) and medium-human (allowing users to customize news to their liking) interactive features. Factors believed to have influence over interactive features are tested using statistical analysis. Even though different factors tend to influence different types of interactivity, results indicate that the most interactive newspaper web sites belong to large, national newspapers with younger web staff. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research has indicated that although online interactive features are not used by the visitors of different web sites, such features can be appreciated by the same visitors. This paper examines the use and appreciation of interactive features by visitors on Swedish newspaper web sites. By means of an online survey (1343 respondents) focusing on different traits and habits of the online news media audience, the study presents a typology of newspaper web site visitor personas, characterized by the different ways they make use of and appreciate interactive features in the online news media context. Although certain personas tend to make extensive use of the features studied, the overall results of the survey points towards rather low levels of both use and appreciation. As such, newspaper web site visitors might be characterized as "slow learners", taking their time to adapt to the interactive capabilities offered by the online news media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past literatures have investigated user-generated content creation and collaborative production by focusing on human-related factors (e.g., values and motivations, social relationships, social and cultural impact of UGC, etc). The present paper contributes to this line of literature by directing attention to the seldom-discussed aspect of participatory content production: influence of the platform (i.e., websites) on which such UGC productions happen. The present study, through an in-depth qualitative analysis of a popular Japanese video sharing website known for its vibrant user community, identifies three factors of influence that a platform could exert to cultivate a productive and innovative user community: (1) a website architecture that allows the users to directly add value to the website, (2) openness of the management team to encourage and at time adopt out-of-the-box creativity of the users, and (3) the management team's active presence in the website to "create a unified world of entertainment." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Web site design is one arena that provides an ideal environment for the examination of form and function. Visual communication principles strive for the coexistence and collaboration of form and function within a work. The focus of this paper is to examine the perceived usability of Web sites, a key issue related to form and function. Participants viewed nine Web sites representing three vacation locales. Each locale had three versions of a Web site associated with it, each varying in degree of usability. Findings indicated that users didn't always distinguish between visual and content criteria. In terms of visual representations, users most often mentioned colors and graphics (including photos) as elements that draw them to a Web site and encourage use. Furthermore, there was inconsistency with regard to usability. Participants rated the Web sites considered lowest in usability (based on expert ranking utilizing usability literature) as the most usable sites. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using the multi-step model for altering place image, this article sets out to analyze strategies used to restore Israel's positive image. The analysis of Israel's image and its marketing efforts can help us better understand how marketers manage nation branding and marketing effort during prolonged crises and under constant conflict. The paper is based on qualitative analysis of dozens of advertisements, public relations campaigns, press releases, academic and popular articles, news articles, interviews, websites of Israel's government departments, and Jewish organizations. The analysis shows that over the years the nation's marketers used three kinds of strategies: focusing on the source, on the message, and on the target audience. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through an examination of managerial statements and online comments posted on The Body Shop website, this paper investigates the impact of the death of The Body Shop's charismatic founder, Anita Roddick, on the organization's identity. Drawing on an integrated approach to identity and theories of organizational identification and charismatic leadership, the author proposes that the identities of values-led business organizations are strongly linked to identification with the charismatic organizational founder. Furthermore, the author suggests that all those who identify with the values-led organization need not be formal organizational members. Findings reveal that even after her death, Anita Roddick continues to personify The Body Shop identity, resulting in followers perceiving their identities as being intertwined with that of Anita Roddick and The Body Shop. The discursive construction of Roddick as the "heart" and "lifeblood" of The Body Shop by corporate management is central in understanding the discursive practices in organizational identification. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyzes the potential for dialogic relationship building of U.S. embassy Web sites in the Western Hemisphere. Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, this paper examines the use of Kent and Taylor (1998)'s dialogic principles. Additionally, this research tests the relationship between host countries' trade ranking with the U.S. and views of the U.S. as possible determinants of the employment of these dialogic principles and thus of the Web sites' potential for building relationships with foreign publics. This study found that usefulness of information and dialogic loop are the most frequently appeared dialogic principles on the Web sites. This also found that their is no relationship between the host country's trade ranking with the United States and the number of dialogic features found on U.S. embassy sites also no correlation between the views of the U.S. of the people in the host country and the number of dialogic features found on U.S. embassy sites. More findings and implications are discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a theory about the centrality of news articles in the blogosphere. The proposed theory hypothesizes that both newsworthiness of events and prominence of articles on a news website are positively related with centrality of news articles in the blogosphere, and that perceived personal expertise moderates these relationships such that original correlations are diminished with the existence of bloggers' perceived personal expertise. Two dimensions of newsworthiness are considered: deviance of the news event, and social significance of the news event. Two dimensions of centrality of news article are considered: article popularity in the blogosphere, and article importance within blog entries.Empirical data from a content analysis of the most-blogged-about articles on The New York Times' website in 2008 show that deviance of news events is significantly correlated with article popularity, whereas social significance of news events is significantly correlated with article importance within blog entries. Personal expertise only moderates one relationship: it eliminates the original direction of the relationship between social significance of news events and article importance in blog entries. The findings contribute to the understanding of the news media-blogosphere relationship, and also validate the active role of bloggers suggested in recent literature. The empirical data also suggest new directions to refine the proposed theory regarding the relationship between different dimensions of the construct newsworthiness and different dimensions of the construct centrality of news article in the blogosphere. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a preliminary descriptive analysis of content differences between news search engines (or news aggregators) like Google News and non-aggregator news websites like CNN.com. Specifically, Google claims to offer a wider variety of perspectives than other news sites as a result of the news aggregation process. We tested this notion by examining the frequency articles retrieved by news aggregators (Google News and Yahoo! News) and non-aggregators websites cited sources like medical journals, universities, hospitals, NCI, and ACS. We find evidence of significant differences between the two Internet-based news websites on a number of categories, but non-aggregators appear to cite significantly more sources on multiple levels. Implications of these findings and others are discussed, and future exploration posited. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines two news portals, Google News and Yahoo News, using a theoretical framework that incorporates the theory of network gatekeeping (Barzilai-Nahon, 2007) and the notion of search engine bias. The thesis tests three hypotheses about the relationship between dominance of the news media, proximity of news events to the U.S. interests, and position of the news links on portals' front pages and result pages. The study analyzed 34,277 news items from 1,200 pages retrieved in 60 days in 2006 and 2008. The descriptive data show four major trends: 1) Google News and Yahoo News differed significantly in media inclusion on the front pages, with Yahoo relying on a very limited number of media outlets; 2) the two portals also differed significantly in media inclusion on result pages; 3) both news portals increased the proportion of major media and decreased that of non-major media between 2006 and 2008; and 4) for both news portals, the distribution of media outlets was heavily skewed, with very few media outlets used hundreds of times during the studies period while the majority used only a few times. None of the three hypotheses are fully supported. These findings advance the understanding of the traditional gatekeeping notion in the Internet context. They also challenge the network gatekeeping theory regarding the role of the gated relative to the gatekeeper, and caution against any sweeping generalization about news portals as a single entity. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social capital is considered an important aspect of social online networks. It is central to the idea of capital itself, that social capital can be converted into other forms of capital. However, the relevance of online social capital for finding a job or getting information faster than others has not been empirically researched, yet. This paper presents results from an online survey conducted on three large German social networking sites. Our findings suggest that different types of social capital (bridging, bonding social capital, obligations) are not equally convertible into economic, symbolic, and cultural capital. There are large interpersonal differences in social capital conversion effectiveness, that are best explained by the amount of available social capital and active investments into social capital – in other words – doing networking. Surprisingly, demographic attributes and structural variables, like network size, do only affect the amount of social capital, but not the effectiveness of its conversion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Not buying, or boycotting, is a long standing tradition in consumer activism. While many boycotts have been directed at specific corporations or industries (Cohen 2003; Friedman 1985; Garrett 1987; Kozinets & Handelman 2004; Smith 1990) there are some that have been more general. Buy Nothing Day, for example, has become an annual celebration for numerous people around the world. Different from previous boycotts, it has taken the very idea of unchecked consumerism as its target. How then does Buy Nothing Day fit into this history of consumer activism? This question is addressed by looking at websites and videos from BND activists as well as press coverage globally and historically. This paper looks at BND by way of three elements: (1) modes of protest, (2) stated message(s), and (3) intended target. The mode includes the kinds of protests held on BND as well as media produced. The message includes reasons given by activists for participating and proclamations made to their audience. Finally, the intended target is understood as the audience or the primary site where change is expected to occur. While the mode of BND is similar to other consumerism activism, its messages and target are very different. Unlike previous decades' consumer activism, it is focused on encouraging change in individuals not institutions. Through this analysis Buy Nothing Day is shown to be highly tied to niche marketing practices (Turow 2006). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists justify their professional practice as a service that informs the citizenry necessary for democracy, but trends over the last century, since the rise of professional aspirations among journalists, have involved a steady move away from textual practices of current event coverage centered on citizens and nearby places and toward journalists' own opinions of more distant issues. But the rise of the internet, in direct competition with print news, has accompanied several shifts in the news journalists produce. A content analysis for three mainstream U.S. newspaper web sites in 2005 continues a project that has gathered measurements for the same newspapers since the 1890s and replicates a 2001 study, when the papers had established a presence online. On one hand, politics, as a core topic in public-spirited journalism, has continued the older trends for the who,what, when,and wherein story content: toward relatively long, analytical stories with explanations from officials and groups and references to other time periods and more distant places. On the other hand, accident stories typify the new, emergent news: short, less analytical, event-centered coverage linked to individuals, other current happenings, and an especially local focus. On their web editions, the larger, wealthier news organization tended toward the older news, but the smaller or less profitable organizations moved toward the new kind of news. The focus on current events and local politics may be salutary for the informed citizenry, but the loss of context for events makes it unclear whether the impact of internet has been entirely positive. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]