Search

This study was an effort to uncover 4 major facts: (a) the predictive power of the proposed integrated model, which posits the influence of attitudes (ATT), subjective norms (SN), perceived behavior control (PBC), altruism, and two-types of self-construal on behavioral intentions to recycle paper materials; and (b) the moderating effects of individualism-collectivism (I-C) on the attitudes-intentions relationship and the subjective norms-intentions relationship. Conducted in 2 contrasting cultures, this cross-sectional research consisted of two phases: the TPB elicitation research and the main study. Participants were undergraduate students recruited from 2 major public universities in Thailand and the U.S. The sample size used in the main analysis comprised 417 respondents from Thailand (representing a collectivistic society) and 432 respondents from the U.S. (representing an individualistic society). Structural equation modeling (SEM) was employed to investigate the predictability of the integrated model. Multigroup SEM was implemented to examine the moderating effects of I-C. The results yielded some significant findings enhancing our understanding of paper-recycling intentions of college students in the 2 countries. First, TPB determinants, especially PBC and SN, were potential predictors of paper recycling. Although ATT was not a successful antecedent of paper-recycling intentions in Thailand, it predicted intentions of U.S. participants. Second, altruism was a significant factor explaining ATT and PBC for both samples; it also directly influenced intentions. Finally, 2 types of self-construal significantly and distinctively affected ATT and SN. Findings can benefit communication campaigns targeting audiences in different cultural milieus. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background. Little is known about how the excessive drinking culture entrenched in college social life influences the fear of missing out (FOMO) on the binge drinking experience among college students and how such fear plays in the mechanisms linking various risk factors with binge drinking intentions. Objectives. The main objectives of this study were to 1) develop and validate a self-report measure of alcohol-related FOMO, and 2) assess the role of alcohol-related FOMO in increasing binge drinking intentions through mediating the effect of alcohol expectancies and enhancing susceptibility to peer norms. Method. A college student sample (N = 490; 66.3% female) completed a one-shot survey. Selfreport data was analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses, and structural equation modeling along with mediation and moderation analyses. Results. Factor analyses supported an 18-item multidimensional scale tapping the alcoholrelated FOMO (ALFOMO). The scale demonstrated good internal consistency, satisfied the validity requirements and was free of gender bias. Additionally, ALFOMO was a significant focal predictor of binge drinking intentions. It significantly mediated the effect of alcohol positive expectancies and mediated and moderated the positive effect of peer descriptive norms. Conclusions. This paper presents the development and initial validation of the alcohol-related FOMO scale. The present study also provides the first theoretical and empirical investigation of the alcohol-related FOMO in relation to alcohol expectancies, peer norms, and binge drinking intentions. Results confirm that the ALFOMO scale is a promising measure and provide evidence for its indispensability in future research and interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the senior population has been increasingly engaged with reading on mobile technologies, research that specifically documents the impact of technologies on reading for this age group has still been lacking. The present study investigated how different reading media (screen versus paper) might result in different reading outcomes among older adults due to both cognitive and psychological factors. Using a laboratory experiment with eighty-one participants aged 57 to 85, our results supported past research and showed the influence of cognitive map formation on readers' feelings of fatigue. Our findings also suggested that individual levels of technophobia was an important barrier to older adults' effective use of mobile technologies for reading. In the post-hoc analyses, we further showed that technophobia was correlated with technology experience, certain personality traits, and age. The present study highlights the importance of providing tailored support that helps older adults overcome psychological obstacles in using technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores how playing "Papers, Please" (PP), a serious game that puts players in the role of an immigration officer, affects attitudes toward immigration after repeated exposure. The results are compared to a control group longitudinally playing "The Westport Independent" (WI), a game that puts players in the role of a newspaper editor. Though PP and WI players' attitudes showed no difference at baseline and after the first play session, PP players showed decreased attitudes toward migrants after the second play session compared with WI players. PP players also showed decreased perceived behavioral control in helping migrants relative to WI players after the first play session, but PP players' baseline and second session perceived behavioral control scores showed no differences. Additionally, perceived behavioral control for helping immigrants significantly decreased among PP players after the first and second play sessions relative to baseline scores, but the first and second PP play sessions showed no differences in perceived behavioral control scores. WI players' scores did not change over time. Overall, preliminary findings imply that playing PP reduced attitudes toward migrants relative to WI players. The results are linked to the cultivation hypothesis and vicarious reinforcement effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a study that explores citizen's engagement with a particular foreign policy issue on social media. It mentions that neither the scholarship on ‘foreign policy-media-public opinion' nexus nor soft power and public diplomacy bodies of literature sufficiently explain public engagement with foreign policy on social media. It further explores how social media impact citizens' engagement with the issue of Great Britain's departure from the European Union.

The article offers information on the communication strategies of entrepreneurs within social media networks and its impact on their firm performance. Topics discussed include information on the social networks in communication management; and the discussions on the conceptualization the communication of startups in social networks within the framework of communication management theory.

This meta-analysis examines the overall effectiveness of Internet supplemented health campaigns on behavior change in the United States. Results show that Internet supplemented health campaigns have significant but relatively small effects (d = 0.23) on behavior change. Moreover, further meta-regression analysis shows that campaign effect size was moderated by campaign topic, presence of audience segmentation, target behavior, behavior type, presence of theoretical foundation, and delivery channel. Aligns with the findings of previous meta-analyses, theorygrounded health campaigns were more effective (d = 0.30) than campaigns with no theoretical foundation (d = 0.16). Campaigns targeting adoption of new behaviors (d = 0.26) were more effective than those targeting cessation of undesirable behaviors (d = 0.10), while campaigns targeting addictive behaviors (d = 0.13) were less effective than those targeting non-addictive ones (d = 0.27). More importantly, the results of the meta-regression analysis shows supplementing the Internet as a delivery channel improves health campaign effectiveness. The results show empirical evidences that Internet can be an effective and cost-effective tool for health communication campaigns, and should be considered as an important supplement for campaigns in the digital era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers insight to a study conducted for examining message content of Tweets on social network site, Twitter regarding the ongoing Flint water crisis. It informs on audience-centric crisis communication research, and plurality of voices represented within Tweets centered around Flint's water crisis. It also informs on recommendations for incorporating social media in professional crisis and risk communication practices.

This study examines how ethical vegan identity is communicatively conceptualized and impacted by human-animal relationship(s) with participants' companion animal(s) (i.e., "pets"). This study not only showcases a plurality of voices from ethical vegans whom are also companion animal guardians (i.e., "pet owners"), but it also seeks to expand our knowledge of the communicative constitution and function of human-animal relationships as related to individual identity/ies. Thirteen participants were interviewed and data were analyzed using iterative qualitative analysis. Data illuminated propositions of the Communication Theory of Identity (CTI). Identity enhancements were discovered for participants' personal-enacted identity regarding companion animal adoption and personal-enacted-relational identity regarding companion animal agency and shared, specialized space. An identity gap was also discovered pertaining to personal-enacted identity regarding spaying/neutering and companion animal diets that conflicted with ethical vegan values. However, these were communicatively negotiated via personalrelational identity. These findings illuminate the dynamic and fluid nature of identity for ethical vegans whom are also companion animal guardians. Ethical vegan identity was communicatively constructed as independent of, yet interdependent on, identification as a companion animal guardian in this context, thus, consistent with theoretical propositions of CTI. Findings also reveal how identities are communicatively negotiated among CTI's four intersecting frames. Implications of these findings are discussed as related to extant theory and research as well as ways that identity and human-animal relationships can be further researched and theorized within communication studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a longitudinal analysis of media substitution between personal computers (PCs) and mobile phones using Nielsen's PC-Mobile 2-Screen panel data. Topics include the interrelationship between mobile phones and personal computers (PCs), theoretical and methodological contributions to existing research on media substitution, and the time displacement effect on television caused by home computers.

A survey (n=208) evaluates the role of social media message source (expert and peer) on publics' intent to comply with crisis preparedness directives issued thereon and further crisis information seeking in two crisis scenarios (severe weather and Zika virus). ANCOVAs indicate a significant difference in subjects' intent to comply with crisis preparedness directives in the Zika scenario as they are more likely to comply with protocol issued through an expert (professional) Facebook account than a peer (layperson) Facebook account. The findings add understanding to the complex nature of crisis preparedness decision-making process and provide opportunities for future research examining the effect of social media message source across different crisis scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One HPV vaccine was approved this July in China, which caused wide attention and discussion on social media Weibo. This study systematically analyzed information posted on Weibo to learn both the media discourse and public's reactions on this HPV vaccine. A content analysis was conducted on 382 posts. The posts were analyzed with respect to message source, tone, format, number of reposts, and information specific to HPV vaccine. Correlations between the aforementioned variables were also examined. The results showed a neutral or positive tone toward HPV vaccine in general, however, 30.8% of messages from individual sources hold a negative tone. Statistics was the most often used format. Comprehensive information on HPV vaccine, HPV and cervical cancer were presented by most of the messages (60%). However, the accuracy and effectiveness were lacking in half of the messages. The average numbers of reposts were 1083 and 8580 for individual and organizational sources. Higher numbers of reposts were associated with neutral tone, statistics format and complete and accurate descriptions for messages from individual sources. This relationship, however, didn't exist for messages from organizational sources. Health practitioners should pay attention to the inaccurate and ineffective issues of online information about HPV vaccine, especially when it is from organizational sources since it is highly disseminated without much scrutiny from online users. Moreover, when utilizing interpersonal source to disseminate health information, a neutral tone with complete and accurate account might be disseminated more widely at the current stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the most seductive aspect of modern communication technologies is not simply their interactivity, navigability, or multimodality, but rather their potential for customization by imbuing a richer sense of agency amongst users. Increasingly, the communication receiver serves as the gatekeeper of information (ipod; myyahoo.com) and even as a provider of information (blogs; wikipedia.com). Theoretical implications of such a move towards “self as source” are explored from two perspectives—technological and psychological. Rationale is presented for considering interactivity as a source (not just a message) feature that is ontologically responsible for creating unique individual experiences of mediated content. The psychological importance of such a technological development is demonstrated by reviewing findings from a recent set of CAT division papers. Finally, a new theoretical model, highlighting the importance of “self as source” as a crucial mediator between technological antecedents and psychological consequences, is proposed for future testing. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though most of the literature suggests that competition in the media market is positive, this paper argues otherwise. Drawing on a small number of studies from emerging media markets, the authors argue that the relationship between competition and the quality of the journalistic product is curvilinear, with an optimal level of competition producing a quality media product and higher levels of competition–such as the hyper-competition existing in many emerging media markets–producing journalistic products that do not serve society well. The paper examines this question empirically through use of existing data from a small sample of countries where measures of media performance and of market competition exist. The findings are consistent with the expectation of a curvilinear (inverted U) relationship between competition and the quality of journalistic products in that country. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the socially constructed nature of money and its function as a medium of mass communication. A paper which examines the imagery and symbolism of U.S. paper currency before and after its nationalization in 1861 is presented. The evolution of U.S. national currency from 1861 forward is characterized by three major developments: an increasing standardization, a reduced repertoire of portraits and imagery, and an overall reduction of different types of issues.

Unlike most recent presidential candidates coming from privileged, well-established roots in mainstream society, political newcomer Barack Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy broke the mold as an African-American from a single-parent family. That situation challenged journalists trying to offer a cohesive narrative of the campaign. This paper argues that when faced with unfamiliar situations, journalists turn to familiar stories drawn from collective memory and mythical narrative to facilitate news that is resonant to their culture and their media audiences.This paper presents the results of a qualitative textual analysis of American news and editorials about the Obama presidential campaign to explore the role of collective memory and mythical narrative in covering that candidate. In the case of Obama's campaign, the candidate himself introduced collective memory of endearing past presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Although journalists could have rejected those comparisons - as was the case for vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle - the feel-good memory of those past leaders and the irony of the comparisons made them journalistically useful. In addition, when Obama's acceptance speech ironically coincided with an anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic "I Have A Dream" speech, journalists introduced the racial element of collective memory that Obama himself had avoided.In all, the study found that although collective memory served as a useful guide for journalists, mythical narratives played a more subtle role because of the inevitable comparisons to those American leaders and the sacrificial hero narrative that their lives mirrored. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the role of journalism in shaping the meaning and outcomes of collective reparative rituals, and the ways in which such rituals are used to negotiate and repair journalists' own cultural authority. Using the case study of the publication of the Winograd Commission Report on the 2006 war between Israel and Hizbullah, and integrating different theoretical frameworks for understanding mediatized rituals and the memory work of journalism, the paper analyzes the complex web of interactions between journalists and other social players, between competing news outlets, and among the different cultural roles of journalism. The analysis shows that while the Israeli news media built the publication of the report as a crucial historical event and worked to fill in some of the missing pieces of a successful collective ritual, it also constructed it as a doomed-to-fail, and ultimately unsatisfying, ritual. This dialectical construction allowed the Israeli news media to reconcile its conflicting roles as news provider and ritual agent; repair its own failures in covering the second Lebanon War; and position itself as better qualified than the commission to both investigate and remember the war. The paper also demonstrates how competing media players advanced different reparative narratives, collaborated with different social and political players, and invoked the memory of the war in ways which served these different interpretations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Asian American student newspaper Gidra, which was published from 1969-1974, as a way of advancing our notions of the role and function of ethnic media within minority populations. Studies of ethnic media rarely include radical papers, as it is theorized that ethnic communities have a vested interest in avoiding coverage of conflict. However, the importance of Gidra in terms of Asian American identity construction and contribution to activist movements cannot be overlooked, particularly with regard to conflict. I investigate the publication through three categories: external conflict, internal conflict, and productive conflict created by the paper itself. This counters the notion that ethnic media shy from covering conflict, and importantly contributes to our understanding of the history of the Asian American Movement as it was shaped by the radical press. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examined a historically significant case of how, for the first time in China, environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs) collectively changed government decision and exerted considerable influence over a multimillion dollar paper company with the help of the media. An examination of media coverage on this issue was executed using media transparency framework (Tsetsura, 2005), and revealed the following findings. First, at the national level, most media hold supportive attitudes toward ENGOs, except for one media outlet that is affiliated with the party media − People's Daily. Second, at the local level, analysis showed that the media provided overly supportive coverage for the company, which can be attributed to potential influence of the company on the local media. The results of this case study once again demonstrated that the lack of media transparency is manifested more often at the local level than at the national. The study offered theoretical and practical implications of the findings and recommendations for future research. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In most democracies, the public reputation of journalists is on the decline. However, other than with attitudes towards parties and politicians, the concrete cognitive map that people have of journalists has received rather little attention. This paper describes the results of a representative telephone survey of the German population (N=1,054) that was designed to explore the public's perception of journalism. The paper contains a first analysis of these data. Our results confirm a rather negative public reputation of journalists, particularly concerning the profession's trustworthiness and here especially among the younger population. While two thirds of respondents have esteem for journalists, only a third trust journalist. We further found large gaps between the public's expectations and the public's perceptions of journalistic goals and values, characteristics of news content, as well as journalists' behavior in ethical dilemmas. In the final part of the paper we test the effects of some of these variables on trust and esteem. Our work is based on the assumption that the relationship between the people and the press deserves more research because a functioning relationship between both actors is the basis for a functioning democracy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Beauty has always had an enduring but troubled and complex relationship with the epidermisâ??its color, tone, texture, and its representations in a multitude of sites and media vehicles. The unstable epidermal surfaces of morphing white, light, fair, olive, dusky, tanned, wheatish brown, dark, and black bodies that populate India's transforming semio-sphere of the last decade bear the forensic traces of competing and colluding signifying forcesâ??racism, individualism, nationalism, cosmopolitanism, and commodity feminism. This paper's transnational feminist critique of beauty's supple visual economy tracks the polysemic meanings of corporeal lightness and darkness that circulate in India's recently altered public sphere, meanings that are always articulated within and against historical matrices of power relations. The paper's analysis of gender, skin color, and global modernity in multiple connected and disconnected media sitesâ??representational and ethnographicâ??strives to account for power relations without sacrificing notions of audience agency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When James Watson suggested that Africans are less intelligent that Whites in October of this year, he was quickly called 'stupid' and 'irrational.' In this paper, I argues that this characterization misses the structural elements at play and the social, cultural, and scientific conditions in which these comments are made. Specifically, this research examines the role of cultural and scientific discourse in genomics. While scientific research is built on a position of neutrality from the object of study, it is impossible to study race without common sense understandings of racial difference 'infecting' the purity of science. Scientific discourse is embedded in cultural assumptions about the nature of race and social order. Theoretically, this paper identifies four discursive frames that characterize race talk in contemporary society, drawing on the work of Bell, Bonilla-Silva, Gilroy, Hall, and Spivak. Through a textual analysis of interviews with participants from the next Human Genome Project and articles from biomedical and science journals, I show how these frames operate in the field of human genomics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how the fear of an abstract notion of the 'Third World' plays a role in the way the identity of New Zealand is communicated. Through a careful analysis of the discourses around the two distinctly separate but highly contentious social-scientific issues of immigration and genetic modification in the country, the paper reveals how race, culture, and identity intersect in the systematic stigmatizing of the 'Third World' as an imagined discursive space of people, places, and practices that are deemed to be 'underdeveloped', 'primitive', or 'inferior'. This obsession with the 'Third World' in a country that sees itself as part of the 'First World', the paper argues, is shaped in part by the forces of neocolonialism that dictate dominant conceptions of development. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Throughout Judith Butler's works resides a tension regarding the social construction of gender and the idea of originality as it relates to social acceptance. The purpose of this paper is to introduce Judith Butler's construction of gender to the theoretical model known as hyperreality as conceived by sociologist and thinker, Jean Baudrillard. By placing Butler' ideas regarding gender within hyperreality, the question of originality becomes moot. Thus, rather than straining under the yoke of "correctness," the notion of reality is completely removed from the currently existing gender labels that are applied to individuals. Such a conflation of theoretical constructs reconfigures the hierarchal, value-laden conception of the oppositional and restrictive forces known as masculine and feminine. Instead of a hierarchal order of gender based on preconceived heternormative notions of gender, each gender "copy" will in itself be primary thereby owing no allegiance to earlier notions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main aim of this investigation is to understand the way in which identity is created in written media. For this purpose we will use the magazine Chilango as our object of study and we will identify in which way its section "Alameda" conceives chilangos and the activities they do in order to conform an identity. In the last three years, Chilango has compounded several aspects of Mexico City's culture such as slang, images, places, social behavior, and even some political criticism. It has also given these cultural practices an irreverent and funny perspective. For this paper, three issues of the magazine have been selected, each corresponding to one of the three first quarters of these year. The research strategies that we will be using are: (1) a textual semiotic analysis of the magazine content and (2) the use of focus groups and interviews. This magazine reflects how its producers conceive life in Mexico City and gives tips on where to go and what to do to make the best of this city. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the human rights legal foundation for ‘information intervention’ or ‘media intervention’ conceived of as a part of rebuilding post-conflict societies. The media space is a critical site for post-conflict reconstruction, particularly when factional conflict and violence persist after the war, as in the present case of Iraq. Media / information intervention refers to the means of getting involved in a humanitarian crisis where there is evidence that the mass media have been manipulated to incite hatred and violence. It will be demonstrated that media intervention as a practice has ambiguous legal support in international law, due to the conflict between the jus cogens principle of non-intervention and the limited derogation of that principle provided by Chapter VII of the UN Charter, and by exceptions to allow restriction of speech provided in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR). A review of the legal framework in international law that has an impact on media intervention campaigns will be provided. Reference will be made to media intervention experiences in previous post-war situations, e.g. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Kosovo, Rwanda, Cambodia. It will be argued that between an absolute prohibition of intervention and a set of specific conditions allowing derogation to non-interventionism, lies a small window of opportunity – a ‘limited exceptionism’ – for cultivating a media space that respects human rights. The stakeholders involved in rebuilding the media space should grasp the significance of this narrow opportunity to establish peace and security in post-conflict zones. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital age is characterized by the increasing availability and pervasiveness of electronic communication products and services. These advancements, epitomized by the Internet, greatly increase the speed and efficiency of transactions and catalyze productivity and economic growth. The architecture of the Internet separates content from ownership on the network and allows for application and service providers to lie beyond the jurisdiction of national rules and regulations (Bach 2001). While characteristics of the Internet appear to make this technology “borderless,” our geo-political global makeup, the backbone of the law, remains delineated in terms of sovereign nations. These nations follow vastly different approaches in their attempt to regulate the Internet and the digital economy. Thus, while the Internet can be viewed as a global network, national governments have different standards for the treatment of personal information and identifiers. This essay first explores the cross-border variation in privacy protection in the United States and European Union, and discusses major regulatory initiatives implemented by both regions, including the EU Data Directive and the US Patriot Act. Theoretical analysis of privacy protection is offered to explain the considerable variation between the different regimes. An examination of the regulatory spillover in the travel industry with regard to passenger information concludes the practical analysis of this paper. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines discourses of identity that turn into ‘anti-Other’ accusations through a case study on ‘international media echo’ conducted in the framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. Specifically, Le Monde’s and The New York Times’ editorials on Russia from 1999 to 2001 are analysed linguistically and socially in connection with Russia’s socio-political context at the time and response to Western discourse. The role of language in social phenomena, especially of media in intercultural / international relations, is underlined in the description of the sources, development, weakening, and long-time effects of the spiral of ‘anti-Other rhetoric’. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key concepts that facilitate a pluralistic public sphere is the diversity of sources and issues provided by the media for deliberative civic communication. This paper examines the role of national and battleground state newspaper in providing diverse information sources and issues covered in a closely contested 2004 presidential campaign. Our analysis reveal that national and battleground newspapers significantly differ in their reliance on various governments, non-government, elite and non-elite sources. Results also indicate that national and battleground state newspapers significantly differ in their coverage of various issues. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For many years, the Israeli Communist Party (ICP) has been seen as the political other of the Israeli parliamentary scene, due to its radical views on Jewish-Arab relations, its anti-Zionist stance, and its socioeconomic ideology. This paper analyzes the ways in which the Israeli mainstream press utilized these characteristics of the ICP in order to dialectically confirm the moral superiority, historical inevitability, and ideological cohesiveness of hegemonic Zionism over the first three decades of IsraelÂ’s existence. By portraying the ICP as treacherous, irrational, dogmatic, violent, and passive, Zionism was shown to be patriotic, logical, pragmatic, peaceful, and active. By focusing on the ICPÂ’s support of Arab interests, Zionism became reduced to its nationalistic components, at the expense of the socialist ideals supposedly embraced earlier. The implications of these findings for the role of the media in the construction of collective identity and the exclusion of marginalized social groups are discussed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Homosexuality in Singapore is illegal and suffers from social stigmatization. The local media avoided the topic and homosexual activities had flourished without publicity through the years. Recent admission by a top-ranking official to an international news magazine that the Singapore government has revised its policy to prevent discrimination against homosexuals opened the floodgates for media publicity, with the international media began naming Singapore as Asia’s new pink capital. The public declaration of Singapore as a gay haven spooked the government, who sought a subtle approach to discipline and control the public behavior of homosexuals: through discourse about homosexuality in the national newspaper. This paper examines news coverage of a senior government official’s claim that the rise of HIV/Aids cases in Singapore is due to the promiscuous lifestyles of homosexuals and argues that Singapore’s national daily, in framing homosexuality as promiscuous and contrary to traditional values, served as a platform for the government to reestablish control and subvert homosexuality in Singapore. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hip hop is evident is all aspects of popular culture and Eminem has achieved a level of success unmatched in the world of hip-hop. Conscious of his race, Eminem stresses that he is not to be placed in the white rapper category but should be respected for his skills. Despite this yearning, his emergence in a musical genre linked to blackness furnishes a point of entry to outline strategies white MCÂ’s use to construct a non-racist form of whiteness. Popular culture and media are implicated in the social construction of race by providing texts reinforcing and maintaining essentialized notions of blackness and whiteness. Furthermore, the power and privilege of whiteness resides in its non-naming and in response, hip-hop clearly marks whiteness, and provides a space to critically interrogate and question its normalcy. With relatively few discussions pertaining to white participation in rap music this paper links the struggle for authenticity in the hip-hop world to the social constructions of race, and specifically whiteness. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the Kaiser Family Foundation’s 2004 “Kids and Media II” survey to investigate three relationships associated with families-as-organizations, children’s behavior and parents media regulation: (i) how children’s offline subversive behaviors (rule-breaking or rebelliousness not associated with media usage) relate to their media-associated subversive behaviors; (ii) how parental regulations used to control children’s media usage relate to children’s media-associated subversive behaviors; and (iii) how parental regulations used to control children’s media usage relate to children’s “offline” subversive behaviors (rule-breaking or rebelliousness not associated with media usage). The analyses use Scott’s (1995) institutional model as a framework to consider the regulatory, normative and cognitive-cultural influences on children’s media environments, and to argue that new media offer unique opportunities to study how parents attempt to regulate children’s media usage through a combination of technologies, rating systems, self-designed rules and social awareness. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The transformative and highly personal nature of sex reassignment surgery (SRS) makes it a unique health care procedure, the context of which could provide rich data for both transsexual research and health communication research. Health care providers need practical information that explores how to provide respectful, supportive care for transsexual patients. This paper proposes ways to frame research from the SRS provider and staff perspective to explore how they address the combination of physical treatment, palliative care, emotional support, and empathy for this special patient population. First, I provide an overview of the historical background of sex reassignment surgery and define key terms as used in this proposal. Then I review the major literature in two areas: transsexual and transgender research and health communication. Following this review, I will address proposed fields of inquiry that may bridge the gap between these two disciplines, as well as proposing specific research questions. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The legal status of search engines that copy information from Web sites for indexing and cataloguing remains an unsettled issue in American copyright law. While the fair use doctrine may allow such copying in specific cases, this paper argues that the courtsÂ’ traditional application of fair use does not provide the clarity that is required to encourage technological innovations for the benefit of society. Instead, a broad-based legal rule should be adopted that would allow search engines to copy material for the purposes of indexing and cataloguing Web sites. Such a rule could be established by adopting a broad law and economics-based fair use rule or by recognizing the existence of an implied license given to search engines by Web site operators to copy for socially beneficial purposes. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will address two separate but linked contradictory phenomena within the greater discursive universe of hiphop culture, non-normative masculinity and black technological identity, or the ‘thug-nerd’. First, I aim to explore a particular instance of a self-avowed, overdetermined performance of the black geek in the work of the artist Fatlip. Second, I examine the links between music technology and black identity through an analysis of the black producer whose relationship to complex musical technologies is often masked, elided or reconfigured under broader assumptions of either black technophobia or an anti-intellectual hypermasculinity. Here the thug-nerd indicates the degree to which black technological identity is structured not through references to normative white or Asian constructions of the techno-geek, but rather re-presents a long alternative history of black engagements with technology. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptualization of health literacy has moved beyond the doctor's office to include a wide range of everyday activities that require understanding and responding to various forms of health information. Much of this occurs in a social environment, where people are likely to involve others in understanding health information and making health decisions. The resources available through one's social connections, or social network, appear to play a role in how health literacy is enacted. However, the assumption of current definitions of health literacy and much of literature in this area is that health literacy exists solely at the level of individuals, not social relations. This paper proposes a network theory of health literacy by demonstrating a theoretical relationship between social capital available through one's social network and health literacy, and suggests that a prerequisite of advanced health literacy is an awareness of one's social network and resources it contains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The democratic potential of social media to integrate diverse sectors of the population has triggered utopian predictions about its use as a channel to foster new spheres for political expression. This paper aims to assess its implementation by examining whether the types of discussions that citizens maintain in two social media channels managed by the White House - Facebook and Youtube - meetthe necessary conditions for deliberative democracy. For this purpose 7, 230 messages posted by Facebook and Youtube users were assessed by democratic indicators such as politeness, civility, argumentation, and deliberation standards derived from the work of Habermas. Results showed that conversational coherence, anonymity, role of participants, interactivity, content of messages and other variables recognized by previous research in online deliberation influence users' participation, especially inYoutube where participants use more impolite messages to express their ideas. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotions are often assumed to be the heart of media entertainment. Relatively little is known, though, about the development of entertainment experience over the life span. This paper reviews the research literature on age differences in entertainment needs and gratifications within the theoretical context of emotional life span development and presents a study designed to extend existing findings. Specific attention is given to the differential roles of gratifications sought and gratifications obtained. On the level of gratifications sought, young adults reported greater interest in thrill and poignant experiences, whereas older adults were more interested in thought-provoking entertainment experiences. However, ratings of film scenes showed that the same types of gratifications obtained predicted positive scene evaluations independent of age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study posits that Badiou's (2007) count-as-one is a theoretical construct that can advance the clarity with which counting is understood in the rhetorical situation. Cox (1981) introduced the concept of the counting rule as a decision making process of exigence evaluation. I argue that Badiou's (2007) explanation of counting procedures and his identification of the one as a fictive effect reorients the role of counting in the rhetorical situation from a decision making mechanism to a meaning making mechanism. To demonstrate the utility of the count-as-one in rhetorical analysis, this paper discusses F. Max Müller's series Sacred Books of the East (1879) as an example of a situation in which counting procedures organized terminology, provided a structure for a research method, and contributed to imperial interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformations in the information environment-namely, the explosion in the number of media outlets, the blurring of entertainment and news, the proliferation of opinionated news, and the resulting increase in selectivity in media consumption-highlight shortcomings in empirical research that fail to account for endogeneity in media selectivity and content preference while focusing disproportionately on news. Reconceptualizing preferential media consumption as the product of media behavior, media preference, and predispositional factors, this paper uses panel data to examine the effects of "media selectivity" on political knowledge, learning, and misinformation. Although media selectivity had no effect on levels of political misinformation, likeminded news negatively affected political learning and overall knowledge. Among subpopulations of respondents who consumed more opinionated news during the election, both likeminded and cross-cutting news exposure increased knowledge. These findings suggest that active selection of news, rather than opinionated news itself, exerts the most powerful effect on media consumers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a case study of the BBC, and the attitudes of its news workers towards Audience Material, or as it is more commonly referred to, User Generated Content (UGC). It is based on a major study of Audience Material at the BBC, co-funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the BBC. A team of five researchers spent ten weeks in nine different newsroom across the BBC, both in London and across the United Kingdom, and as part of these observations undertook interviews with 115 journalists and ten senior editors. A typology of the different types of Audience Material is offered, along with descriptions of the different roles they play within the BBC, the tensions which exist between them, and the different attitudes journalists hold towards them. It becomes clear that news workers are enthusiastic about certain types, and perhaps unsurprisingly, these are the types which fit the traditional model of journalism: audience footage, audience comments and experiences, and are types of Audience Material which the BBC has always received, and used. However, there are certain key people based in individual newsrooms, and some holding senior management positions, who are also enthusiastic about types of Audience Material which challenge traditional models of journalism: collaborative and truly participatory models of journalism. But while it is true that there are a number of impressive examples of collaborative and participatory journalism that exist throughout the BBC's UK operations, most news journalists perceive 'UGC' as simply another newsgathering tool. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the career and work of journalist Elmo Scott Watson, describing the role of his syndicated feature stories in standardizing discourses about American Indian people in the popular press of the early twentieth century. Situating Watson's work against the backdrop of professionalized news, I argue that it was not merely the emerging technologies which led to the reproduction of the noble and ignoble savage binary in the popular press, but the "internal logics" of such discursive formations which made them so easily reproduced. In addition, I suggest that while scholars have focused a great deal of attention on hard news stories and the ideal of objectivity, we can learn more by exploring the productivity of "entertaining" newspaper content such as Watson's stories. Watson was an agent in reproducing the standards of his discipline, and looking to his work can tell us a great deal about the exigency of his field as journalism was becoming professionalized. I argue that while Watson's stories were considered entertaining, he and others in his field believed such content served an important educational function; in particular, Watson believed he was correcting negative misconceptions about American Indian people through the noble savage identity construct. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the work of Benedict Anderson, research on the emergence of national consciousness in the US has largely focused on the role of print capitalism. Newspaper circulation, so the story goes, combined with geographically proximate centers of population and commerce to constitute the conditions necessary for inhabitants of the thirteen colonies to imagine themselves as part of a sovereign, limited political community whose members might never meet face to face. Without downplaying print capitalism's pivotal role in the formation of American national identity, this paper foregrounds the part played by bells, a medium whose contributions, to the formation of national identity and the shaping of the social world more generally, have been long overlooked by communication scholarship. At one time, bells composed the score and set the tempo for daily life in colonial America. They summoned listeners for civic and religious meetings, sounded the alarm when danger threatened, marked the hours, and regulated activity at the local level, but they also oriented listeners toward distant political and ecclesiastic communities. As tensions mounted between the British empire and its American colonies, bells played an important role in defining membership in communities, both face-to-face and imagined. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the large volume of empirical deliberation studies, researchers have given little effort to the analysis of citizens' verbal expressions themselves. This paper connects theoretical frameworks in cognitive complexity and political sophistication (Sniderman et al., 1991; Tetlock, 2004) with methodological advances in textual network analysis (Carley & Palmquist, 1992; Popping, 2006). We examine how deliberators' mental models are transformed by the group condition. For the textual network analysis, saved transcripts of online deliberators about the health-care policy were analyzed. To warrant the validity of the properties of our textual network measures, three variables (need for cognition, health-care knowledge, and argument repertoire) are adopted as validity criteria. Our results demonstrate that ordinary citizens who met and discussed with elites in an earlier interaction ,express in the next deliberation more diverse ideas that are more complexly interconnected , whereas elites who talked with other elites depress the range of concepts and the complexity of their interconnections in subsequent interactions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Virtual reality (VR) offers new possibilities for learning, specifically for training individuals to perform physical movements such as physical therapy and exercise. The current paper examines two aspects of VR which uniquely contribute to media interactivity: the ability to capture and review physical behavior and the ability to see one's avatar rendered in real-time from third person points of view. In two studies, we utilized a state of the art, image-based tele-immersive system which is capable of tracking and rendering many degrees of freedom of human motion in real-time. In Experiment One, participants learned better in VR than in a video learning condition according to self-report measures, and the cause of the advantage was seeing one's avatar stereoscopically in the third person. In Experiment Two, we added a virtual mirror in the learning environment to further leverage the ability to see oneself from novel angles in real-time. Participants learned better in VR than in video according to objective performance measures. Implications for learning via interactive digital media are discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pursues the explication of the conduct of commercial broadcasters in Digital TV market and their commitment to voluntary public affairs programming in terms of their programming strategies and business models (A single HDTV channel or multiple channel with the standard resolution, i.e., SDTV with other auxiliary services). While eagerly looking for competitive business models, most commercial stations typically rely on HDTV programs during prime time, which are distributed by major networks or syndications. Also, many ambitious trials have been occurring: making a capital pool from local stations or partnering with stations to provide pay-TV services, exploring a cable network model, such as major networks' 24/7 news and weather channels, and even leasing spectrum to the third party. Although broadcasters are expected to voluntarily operate under public interest obligations in return for use of the spectrum, the amount of local public affairs programming transmitted on digital channels was insignificant for both commercial and public stations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the early stages of a project whose central aim is to plot the development of British Communication Studies and examine the various intellectual ideas and influences which have shaped its history. The term 'communication' is used to demarcate the whole area of study, in that it at least marks the boundaries of the accepted consensus as to what the area actually consists of at any one time. Within that area, however, the term has been subject to what Mattelart calls 'semantic scattering' (trans. Emanuel, The Invention of Communication, 1996, p. xiii) and the history of its usages involves reconstructing the attempts made to privilege particular meanings. The project also aims to engage with the idea of writing 'communication' history in a reflexive sense. This is an increasingly important area of the field, and as Nerone indicates, it is an area which reflects the academic diversity of 'communication':Looked at from an Archimedean perspective, communication history displays galloping theoretical incoherence. It is as interdisciplinary and eclectic as any neighbourhood of scholarship anywhere. None of its formations we've looked to have any real promise for establishing coherence. ('The Future of Communication History', Critical Studies in Media Communication 23, no.3, 2006, p. 262.)The project therefore will also offer itself as a case study in how an intellectual activity develops sufficient critical mass to be awarded the status of a branch of knowledge, so codified that it is recognised as sufficiently distinct and prestigious to allow the awarding of degrees. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contextualizes discourses surrounding new media technologies by examining activism around independent media, using as a case study an activist group who since the mid-1990s have advocated for greater citizen access to low power FM (LPFM) radio. The continuing interest in the viability of FM radio demonstrates the need for a nuanced understanding of the uses and impacts of communication technologies. I argue that the significance of new media technologies can be grasped most effectively when considered in a dynamic field that includes older technologies; emerging technologies are often viewed through the lens of patterns of use and interpretation of older technologies, at least initially. I follow the activists' assessments of not only FM radio but emerging digital technologies, including webstreaming, "smart" (or software-defined) radio, and wi-fi networks. In practice, the activists circumspectly negotiate expanding their efforts to encompass community wi-fi networks, while trying to retain the vision, flavor, and organizing strategies from their LPFM campaigns. I trace the tensions they experience as they consider the implications of this shift for their emphasis on a "grassroots mandate", for their policy work versus hands-on technical work, and for their identification with FM radio technology versus the inclusion of computer and wi-fi technology in their conception of their work. By attending to the interplay of old and new technical options, it is possible to better understand the trajectory of technological adoption without relying on deterministic or revolutionary explanatory mechanisms. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]