Search

Dubbed as the 'ring of fire', Indonesian territories have witnessed many forms of natural disasters such as volcano eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis, which had been widely reported in the mass media. While the media has reported the scale of destruction and number of casualties caused by those disasters, they have also narrated dramatic recounts of the survivors. Imbued with spectacular imagery, the media seek to appeal to the audiences emotionally and evoke sentiments of solidarity as well as humanitarian actions. Employing a textual analysis of media reports in Indonesia, particularly from the weekly news magazine Tempo, this study explores the way in which the media frame the narratives of the survivors of natural disasters (volcano eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis) across Indonesia. Although the media are expected to report events objectively, this study demonstrates the affective element in the practice of journalism on natural disasters. Therefore, this study will contribute to the growing research on the relationship between media and disasters, particularly in the context of a disaster-prone country such as Indonesia. In particular, it will contribute to the body of journalism research which looks at the role of narrating the human subject in tragic events such as natural disasters. Keywords: compassion fatigue, Indonesia, journalism, media, narrative, natural disaster survivors, textual analysis, trauma journalism, I am building my career on the misery of others. Anderson Cooper (as cited by Masse, 2011) Touch so many people's pain and grief And not be burned. Tell me [...]

The current study assesses the association between news use and social capital--and whether this association varies by ethnicity and medium. Ordinary least square regression analysis indicates that social capital is predicted by newspaper exposure, but not TV national news exposure or TV local news exposure. In addition, there are two significant interaction terms between the news exposure measures and ethnicity in predicting social capital. First, the association between newspaper exposure and social capital is more positive for Whites than Latinos. Second, the association between TV national news exposure and social capital is less positive for Whites than Blacks. Of four potential contributory factors, the most viable factor is communication culture. Specifically, the relative oral and literate traditions of American ethnic groups are most suitable for explaining how the association between news use and social capital varies by ethnicity and medium. Keywords: news effects; social capital; ethnicity; medium differences

This study explores the interplay of sex, presence, and enjoyment of nonfictional tragic news content; an experiment was conducted in which participants viewed a news story about Hurricane Katrina's devastation to the Gulf Coast on a standard definition television, high definition television, or a video iPod. The results indicate that women reported more sadness regardless of condition, though they seemed especially moved in the iPod condition. Women also reported more information seeking, and reported highest levels of presence in the iPod condition. The results are discussed both in terms of implications for crisis message practitioners, and in terms of what the results may mean for our understanding of the enjoyment of tragedy. Keywords: Presence; Crisis Communication; HDTV; iPod; Information Seeking

Despite the perception in some quarters that cartoons constitute an important medium for framing social issues, they are often dismissed on the grounds of political absurdity and ideological insignificance. Cartoons are seen as offering just 'passing chuckles' rather than any 'deep reflection' on social issues. The perception may be related to the cartoon's discursive spatial limitation and its very nature as a visual mode of communication. Visual modes of communication are deemed deficient in performing analytical communication. By grounding cartoons within a theory of visual semiotics and visual persuasion, this paper attempts to address some of the concerns raised about the effectiveness of editorial cartoons. It attempts to find out how cartoons, as uniquely visual forms of communication, signify their meanings and manage to offer 'deep reflection,' rather than just simple 'passing chuckle' on social issues.

A growing amount of research is devoted to the question of which individual and contextual variables enhance, limit, or obliterate news framing effects. However, the fundamental question whether framing effects vary depending on the issue at stake has not been addressed. Based on two experimental studies (total N = 1,821), this article investigates the extent to which framing effects differ in magnitude as well as process, depending on how important an issue is. The studies show that a high-importance issue yields no effects and a low-importance issue large effects. This moderating function of issue importance operates both at the contextual and at the individual levels. The implications for future framing effects research are discussed. Keywords: framing effects; moderators; issue importance; attitude strength

'Blame game' coverage relates to news about actors in the public arena as they try to deflect, deflate, or diffuse blame for negative events so that the public does not view them as the cause of harm. The current research looks at formal differences in news presentations and how they affect causal attributions of news readers and subsequent support for agents in the news and policy preferences. In Study 1, verb voice was manipulated in four news stories with one key agent; when active voice was used to describe actions relative to an event, that agent was more seen as the cause of that event than when passive voice was used. Study 2 demonstrated, based on three news reports about conflicts, that facets of causal attributions--perceived control and intention--affect perceptions of agents' traits, as well as assent and support for the changes targeted by the news agents. Keywords: attribution; causation; verb voice; news; blame

This news diffusion study showed that 44 percent of the college students surveyed learned of the Sept. 11 attacks from television and radio and 48 percent from another person. Only two percent of respondents found out about the attacks from the Internet., The terrorist acts of Sept. 11 riveted the attention of the nation as hijacked commercial airliners hit first one tower and then the second tower of the World Trade Center […]

Building on Helen MacGill Hughes's News and the Human Interest Storn we examine how human interest stories create collective attention, essential for the establishment of a public or demos, and the limitations of that process. Although human interest stories are not unique in this regard, such stories encourage shared identification, important for social cohesion and the maintenance of a public sphere. However, since the embedded story is presented as one that is not perceived as having lasting societal impact, it directs attention away from political action. We present four processes through which human interest stories operate: (1) media placement -- how media structure and occupational interests produce stories that capture reader loyalty, (2) identification potential -- the creation of scenes and personae that audiences feel they 'know' and with which they can identify, (3) narrative arc -- the process by which a story maintains reader interest, exposing conflicts and changes in likely outcomes, and (4) d iscursive space -- the role of moral issues, provoking discussion and the possibility of active involvement of audiences. To explore these processes we analyze the case of Floyd Collins, the Kentucky caver trapped for seventeen days in 1925, and detail the associated media frenzy., A popular literature of true stories, by making the local and the remote world human, may be a substitute on an extended scale for those intimate encounters of direct perception [...]

Internet serait le media planetaire par excellence. Mais cet objet presente la caracteristique peut-etre unique d'etre tres disperse, tres eclate, tant du point de vue geographique que culturel ou de [...]