Does the Digital Divide Matter More? Comparing the Effects of New Media and Old Media Use on the Education-Based Knowledge Gap

As the Internet has become increasingly widespread in the world, some researchers suggested a conceptual shift of the digital divide from material access to actual use. Although this shift has been incorporated into the more broad social inclusion agenda, the social consequences of the digital divide have not yet received adequate attention. Recognizing that political knowledge is a critical social resource associated with power and inclusion, this study empirically examines the relationship between the digital divide and the knowledge gap. Based on the 2008–2009 American National Election Studies panel data, this research found that, supporting the shift of the academic agenda, socioeconomic status is more closely associated with the informational use of the Internet than with access to the Internet. In addition, socioeconomic status is more strongly related to the informational use of the Internet than with that of the traditional media, particularly newspapers and television. More importantly, the differential use of the Internet is associated with a greater knowledge gap than that of the traditional media. These findings suggest that the digital divide, which can be better defined as inequalities in the meaningful use of information and communication technologies, matters more than its traditional counterpart.     

Old Against New,or a Coming of Age? Broadcasting in an Era of Electronic Media

“Broadcasting” is often cast as an outdated term—we are constantly told that we are in the midst of a digital/social media revolution that will make the unidirectional, mass communication model obsolete. In response, we argue that to consider the continued relevance of terms like “broadcasting” in an era of electronic media is to neither hastily disregard the legacy of these terms, nor cling to them too rigidly. In this special issue of the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media written and edited by graduate students, we begin a new thread in the longstanding conversation about what it means for media to be “old” and “new.” While this distinction is not one we should take for granted, the articles in this issue all show how we can strategically approach the intricate intersections and interconnections of different media, old and new. As such, this issue collectively calls our attention not to the familiar trope of “old against new,” but rather to the tensions that arise around a “coming of age.” Presenting a wide range of international scholarship from graduate students across many different disciplinary backgrounds, topical literatures, methodological approaches, and theoretical frameworks, this special issue represents an emerging approach to what it means to study broadcasting in an era of electronic media.     

Do old Norms Have a Place in New Media?

Emerging business models for news have the potential to affect the nature of democracy. As the economic foundations of mainstream journalism become increasingly shaky, a new economic model is emerging in the form of news organizations operating as nonprofits. These are mostly run by former newspaper journalists bringing with them traditional journalistic norms they worked under previously; now they are operating under a vastly different economic framework. These organizations are producing a growing amount of public affairs news while mainstream news production shrinks. The research question examined here is whether this emergent form (1) changes but maintains core norms and practices of the journalistic culture from which it arose, or (2) transforms norms and practices into something new. I briefly review norms and practices of traditional journalism to create a framework against which to compare behaviors at one nonprofit news organization, MinnPost, through ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews. My findings indicate that MinnPost values some traditional norms (e.g. loyalty to citizens); other norms are valued but not fulfilled in a traditional way (e.g. comprehensiveness of news coverage); yet others are largely eschewed (e.g. forum provision). This suggests a set of evolving journalistic tenets, which observations indicate are linked to MinnPost's economic structure. It points toward how emerging business models are changing journalism, and by extension could be affecting American democracy. This paper is part of a larger project investigating how nonprofit news organizations are changing the information available in local news environments.     

Managing Social Media Use: Whither Social Media Guidelines in News Organizations?

Fears exist that social media use by news media and journalists may affect basic journalistic tenets such as objectivity, gatekeeping, and transparency. As a result, more and more news media organizations are issuing guidelines to manage employee use of social media. In this article we discuss the complex relationship of a selection of market-leading news media organizations with prescribed use of social media. Applying content analysis to 12 existing social media guidelines, we elaborate on the various types of rules linked with the basic principles of journalism. A key intention of this research is to provide insights for media management and journalism scholars to better understand the use of social media by journalists and the implementation of guidelines by media organizations. More practically, this article can aid media organizations who are shaping their own set of rules regarding use of social media by their staff.     

A Vendor Perspective: What Do All of These Changes Mean for Vendors?

Vendor keynote speaker Caitlin Trasande addressed the practical and applied implications of how government mandates and regulations drive innovations and research information management technologies, while tying in remarks made by Jane Marks, the publisher keynote speaker, and Scott Plutchak, the librarian keynote speaker. She is uniquely positioned to do this as she has been at Digital Science for 5 years, most recently as Head of Research Policy; holds a PhD in Neurobiology; and was very recently appointed Senior Strategy Editor at Nature. Trasande used products developed by Digital Science as examples to demonstrate how all sectors of the scholarly community are finding solutions to help enable compliance with mandates, such as those on data and Open Access. She also provided a futuristic look at how the UK government has begun to ask funded researchers to document the social impact of their research; how Digital Science worked with the UK government, and how likely this is to also happen in the United States.     

What's the Use of Use? : Return on Investment Strategies for Consortial DDA Programs

Column Editor's Note. This column focuses on formal collaboration and networking among libraries through consortia. It offers in-depth examinations of issues facing modern library consortia including (but not limited to) e-resource licensing, ebooks, next generation integrated library systems, shared print archiving, shared digital repositories, governance and other relevant topics. Contributions are accepted for this column and must be submitted to George Machovec (george@coalliance.org). Contact the column editor for suggested topics, deadlines and formatting.

ConnectNY has been involved in consortial e-book projects since 2010. Based upon the experience of these group e-book projects, we will explore different methods for assuming the shared cost of group e-book programs and then describe ways in which DDA programs may promote a positive Return on Investment (ROI) for groups as compared to individual institutions. We will argue that while use is a factor that can be taken into account when distributing cost amongst members, a budget-based percentage approach will allow consortia to effectively initiate and manage such projects over time.     

Which New Forms of Television Advertising Are Most Strongly Recalled? A Quantitative Analysis

In recent years the loss of effectiveness of television advertising based on traditional spots has led to the development and consolidation of new forms of advertising. In this article, the authors analyze the recall effectiveness of three new television advertising formats (television billboards, internal telepromotions, and external telepromotions). We use a representative sample of Spanish television audiences to compare the advertising recall generated by each new form of advertising. The empirical analysis, carried out by means of a probit model, shows that television billboards generate better recall than external or internal telepromotions.     

Social Media and Information Behavior: A Citation Analysis of Current Research from 2008–2015

This article presents a survey study of social media and information behavior research published from 2008 to 2015 by way of bibliometric principles. Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar were used in order to determine the publication rate, established researchers, impact, productivity, and thematic areas of selected papers. The results show a dearth of published works and a low level of established authors; however, the results also indicate high rates of impact, especially in relation to information seeking and information sharing studies. Overall, this study serves as a springboard for new scholarly inquiries in order to further develop research in the field.     

News Habits Among Adolescents: The Influence of Family Communication on Adolescents’ News Media Use—Evidence From a Three-Wave Panel Study

Keeping up with what’s going on in the world of politics and current affairs through various news media is commonly seen as important for civic engagement and informed citizenship. Today, however, citizens face more opportunities than ever to select media content according to their personal preferences and interests—leading to what previous research has identified as a polarization between news-seekers and news-avoiders. Given heightened concerns regarding growing shares of news-avoiders in particular, this study analyzes the development, stability, and family influences on Swedish adolescents’ news habits over time. The findings, based on panel survey data among adolescents and their parents, show that (a) news habits are fairly stable at the individual level, (b) parents’ own news consumption is the most consistent predictor of adolescents’ development of news habits, and (c) these family effects are distinct from adolescents’ personal motivations for seeking out news.     

Can Money Buy Happiness? A Statistical Analysis of Predictors for User Satisfaction

2007 data from LibQUAL+™ and the ACRL Library Trends and Statistics database were analyzed to determine if there is a statistically significant correlation between library expenditures and usage statistics and library patron satisfaction across 73 universities. The results show that users of larger, better funded libraries have higher expectations for information resource availability, but not higher satisfaction scores. Furthermore, the data show no significant correlation between library usage statistics and user satisfaction. The researchers conclude that the lack of expected correlations could be attributed to limitations in the LibQUAL+™ method of measuring patron satisfaction, or the difficulty of using the quantitative measurements found in ACRL statistics to try and accurately predict user satisfaction.     

Catalogers’ Perceptions and Use of Social Media and Conventional Information Sources for Professional Development

Many professional development information sources are available to catalogers, who may be constrained by limited time and money to devote to them. This article reports the results of a survey gathering information on six types of information sources: journal articles, conferences, electronic discussion lists, blogs, microblogs, and social networking sites. Catalogers rated these resources regarding their importance to filling professional development needs, the reliability of the information disseminated, and their usefulness for obtaining specific types of information. The results should help catalogers and their administrators decide where to focus their attention both as consumers and disseminators of continuing education information.     

Media pluralism: What matters for governance and regulation?

Media pluralism is valued in most jurisdictions because it contributes to a well-informed citizenry. The authors examine what media policy and regulatory levers appear to affect five types of citizen knowledge across the European Union. They conclude that concentration of titles matters more than ownership in newsprint; and that neither type of concentration matters in broadcasting in the same way, but the regulatory regime for public service broadcasting does, particularly for political knowledge.     

What is a Media Company? A Reconceptualization for the Online World

The current understanding of a media company is based on the idea of a publisher or broadcaster producing or aggregating, bundling, and distributing content. In this scenario, the content creation mainly is done by professionals. However, with the advent of mobile devices and ubiquitous Internet access, users have been enabled to produce content themselves. This gave rise to a new form of media companies: the platform operators, who aggregate, manage, and distribute user-generated content. Based on a historical summary, this article delineates the characteristics of this new approach of content distribution, draws comparisons to the traditional media companies, derives implications for the media markets, and provides a definition for the term media company that is valid in both the online and offline world.     

Did Social Media Really Matter? College Students' Use of Online Media and Political Decision Making in the 2008 Election

This study examined college students' use of online media for political purposes in the 2008 election. Social media attention, online expression, and traditional Internet attention were assessed in relation to political self-efficacy and situational political involvement. Data from a Web survey of college students showed significant positive relationships between attention to traditional Internet sources and political self-efficacy and situational political involvement. Attention to social media was not significantly related to political self-efficacy or involvement. Online expression was significantly related to situational political involvement but not political self-efficacy. Implications are discussed for political use of online media for young adults.     

The Media Audience: A Brief Biography—Stages of Growth or Paradigm Change?

The concept of audience was widely adapted from its earlier origins in public spectacles and performance to apply to the new circumstances of mass media reception in the early 20th century, and especially to the public for film and broadcasting. It could even be applied more generally to include print media. The then novel usage of the term was a component in the larger paradigm of mass communications that in turn rested on certain preconceptions about its ‘mass’ character. These preconceptions have been challenged by subsequent research and theory. More recently, however, the ongoing transformation of the means of communication may have rendered the whole mass communication paradigm itself obsolescent, and with it the concept of a mass audience. In this article it is argued that paradigmatic change in ideas about the audience may be less due to a shift in technology than to the more fundamental theoretical changes of the intervening period.     

Librarians as Advocates of Social Media for Researchers: A Social Media Project Initiated by Linköping University Library,Sweden

ABSTRACT

Librarians at Linköping University help researchers keep abreast of developments in their fields and to increase the visibility of their work. Strategic, professional use of social media ought to be an essential part of a researcher's communication strategy. This article investigates the level of awareness of the professional use of social media among LiU researchers. The investigation showed that use of social media was not significant; however, a small number saw potential. The purpose of this article is threefold. The first purpose was to evaluate the potential of using social media as a tool for communicating research outside LiU. Second, the article presents a study in which views of LiU researchers on social media were ascertained via seminar discussions, informal feedback, and interviews. The study has a case study approach involving eight researchers. Third, the article covers how LiU Library created a web-based information package to support researchers in social media use.