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This study uses a randomized posttest-only between-subjects experiment (N = 148) to investigate the communication rules participants perceive after a journalist interviews a politician about race-related housing policies. Perceived question appropriateness, journalistic bias, and perceived credibility (journalist and politician) were examined depending on the journalist's varying adversarial stances (no challenge, simple challenge, contextualized challenge). Social dominance orientation (SDO), a key concept associated with racial intolerance, was used as a moderator to understand perceptions of the interview style, the journalist, and the politician. Overall, SDO weighs more heavily than does level of challenge, with high-SDO participants perceiving journalistic challenges on the question of race less appropriate than do low-SDO individuals. Contrary to expectations, low-SDO participants viewed a contextual challenge as less appropriate and the journalist as more biased than when a simple challenge was used. Overall, participants endorsed journalists engaging in the watchdog role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Corruption is a complex, widespread phenomenon with harmful economic and societal effects. Drawing upon theories in social psychology, political science, and communication, this study examines the direct and joint effects of mediated exposure to grand corruption and the presence of monetary incentives on people's likelihood to engage in dishonest behavior. In a 2 × 2 factorial design (N = 404), half of all participants were exposed to a newscast about political corruption and one half was offered a reward for correctly answering questions about the newscast. Findings suggest that incentivizing was highly effective in predicting chances of cheating while news exposure to corruption was not. The data also indicate cheating is more common among certain sociodemographic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. political discourse increasingly emphasizes Islam and Muslims. Rooted in political communication and religious discourse scholarship, this study seeks to identify broader trends and patterns in modern presidential discourse on Islam. Our quantitative content analysis builds on a sample of nearly 1,500 invocations of Islam and Muslims in U.S. presidents' spoken domestic communications, ranging from Franklin Roosevelt (1933) to Donald Trump (2018). Results indicate that Islam largely entered presidential discourse during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. Since then, references to Islam and Muslims have risen (particularly since the Clinton administration) and have tended to be embedded in foreign rather than domestic contexts. Presidential discourse on Islam has primarily focused on people (e.g., Muslims, Muslim Americans) and over time has become less likely to be linked to other communities of faiths. Presidents have consistently associated Islam and Muslims with notions of violence, but, with the exception of Trump, portrayals frame them as opponents or targets rather than enablers of violence. Our empirical findings are discussed in their historical and sociopolitical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines how webpage type (Twitter, blog) and journalist type (citizen, professional) influence both source and information credibility of a story portraying public upheaval in an international context: the Iranian post-election protests (2009-2010). Results indicate that participants in our experiment could not differentiate between citizen and professional journalists, thus providing evidence that the use of online platforms for such news is blurring the line between the two types of journalists. It was also found that source and information credibility were higher in the blog condition compared to the Twitter condition. Interest in the conflict was positively associated with source and information credibility. Overall results offer a broader understanding of the intertwined relationship between level of expertise and channel characteristics in a news context that is determined by conflict. Study limitations and suggestions for future research on the rather symbiotic relationship between citizen and professional journalists are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the discursive construction of American national identity have tended toward one of two approaches: They have focused on representations of America alone, or they have looked abroad to see how America is represented in relation to a narrow, often evil, "other." This paper focuses its attention more broadly, considering the role that foreigners-not just leaders, but foreign citizens of all stripes-play in the construction of American national identity. By examining every mention of foreign leaders, military troops, and citizens in presidents' State of the Union addresses over eight decades, we illuminate where and how foreigners fit into the identity construction process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]