“He sounded like a vile,disgusting pervert …” An Analysis of Persuasive Attacks on Rush Limbaugh During the Sandra Fluke Controversy

This article examines the persuasive attacks made against Rush Limbaugh after his insults of Georgetown Law student Sandra Fluke. The persuasive attacks against Limbaugh attempted to increase perceptions of his responsibility for the acts, but the majority worked to increase the perceived offensiveness of his acts. The most successful attacks extended Limbaugh's attacks to the audience, pointed out Limbaugh's own inconsistencies, applied pejorative labels to Limbaugh's words, and linked Limbaugh to the positions and ideologies of the Republican Party. The analysis found that the attacks were successful in the short-run, but less so in the long-term.     

Propaganda and rush Limbaugh: Is the label the last word?

A content analysis measured the performance of much‐labeled talk show host Rush Limbaugh against traditional and modem standards of propaganda. A month of Limbaugh's syndicated radio program was recorded off air. The tapes were randomly sampled for topic segments defined as the units of analysis. Trained coders working in pairs rated each sampled segment on 40 questions, grouped to test seven hypotheses about Rush Limbaugh's performance, and t‐tests were used to test the variance of scores from the neutral median. Although Limbaugh was not found to use the majority of traditional and modem propaganda techniques or to conceal the source and purpose of the ideas he presented, he was found to have a political agenda, to espouse that agenda openly, and to employ a minority of propaganda techniques. The findings support the notion that analysis of the message source, individual techniques of presentation, and the totality of the message may be more important to effective understanding than the assigning of labels.     

Who Listens to Rush Limbaugh's Radio Program and the Relationship Between Listening to Limbaugh and Knowledge of Public Affairs, 1994–2006

What factors predict listening to Limbaugh's program? Previous studies, many more than a decade old, analyze his audience at one or two data-points. This study differs from earlier studies of Limbaugh's audience in two ways: (1) the data come from six Times Mirror/Pew Research Center polls between July, 1994 and April–May, 2006, and (2) the paper focuses on the relationship between listening to Limbaugh and knowledge of public affairs. Conservative Republicans are in his audience, but educational attainment, family income, and race do not predict who listens. Listening to Limbaugh is significantly correlated with public affairs information.     

Giving the “Viewser” a Voice? Situating the Individual in Relation to Personalization,Narrowcasting, and Public Service Broadcasting

This article undertakes a critical comparison of contemporary personalization practices on Web platforms such as YouTube and Facebook with long-established practices of narrowcasting. Though such platforms appear to adhere to goals of universality similarly adhered to by public service broadcasting (PSB), the implementation of personalization on these platforms proves problematic to their discursive positioning as free “public” services. Furthermore, though public service broadcasters have embraced personalization in the name of pluralism, critics suggest that the narrowcasting inherent in personalization exists in tension to PSB's enduring commitments. Finally, the article argues that system-initiated personalization negates the “consumer sovereignty” that narrowcasting has traditionally mobilized.     

The Scullery of the Broadcasting House: Female Writers and the Literary Features of the Dutch Broadcasting Organization KRO (1928–1940)

Departing from the claim that media actively co-construct gender relations in a society, this article focuses on the interwar literary features of the Dutch Catholic radio broadcaster KRO. Similar to all broadcasting organizations in the Dutch Interbellum, the KRO aired these literary features in order to contribute to the cultural elevation of its listeners. Remarkable about the KRO, however, is that it created a division between an official literary feature, which was aired on Sunday afternoons, and a series composed of literary contributions aimed specifically at women, which was broadcast on Tuesday afternoons. Specifically focusing on their repertoires, this article primarily aimed to analyze the differences between these two features. It appears that the books of female writers were underrepresented in the official feature and overrepresented in the women’s feature, which indicates that Dutch radio reflected the hegemonic gender relations in the interwar literary field.     

Digital Archival Image Collections: Who Are the Users?

Archival digital image collections are a relatively new phenomenon in college library archives. Digitizing archival image collections may make them accessible to users worldwide. There has been no study to explore whether collections on the Internet lead to users who are beyond the institution or a comparison of users to a national or international audience. This study of the Orang Asli Archive, a repository for anthropological, historical, journalistic, and other documentary sources relevant to Orang Asli peoples and cultures of Malaysia, examines the Web analytics of its digital archival image collections.     

Far from Fifty-Fifty: Legal Measures and the Relative Lack of Women in Powerful Decision-Making Positions in Germany’s Broadcasting Sector

A gender-equal organization of institutions requires adequately qualified women to be equally present on every hierarchical/functional level. In light of this, the authors evaluate how women participate in leading managerial and supervisory positions of administrative relevance, i.e., beyond editorial departments, in public and private broadcasting corporations and organizations in Germany. The study comprises an examination and comparison of existing legal requirements/regulations for gender equality on the supervisory councils of Germany’s broadcasting corporations/organizations and contributes to the analysis on the contemporary politics of gender in Germany’s broadcasting sector. It is the first study of its kind.     

Image Repair on the Donald Trump “Access Hollywood” Video: “Grab Them by the P*ssy”

In October 2016, Donald Trump was in the midst of a hotly contested and sharply divisive presidential campaign. Days before the second presidential debate, The Washington Post posted a video of Trump “having extremely lewd conversation about women in 2005.” This video and the firestorm of criticism it provoked threatened to derail his presidential run. Mr. Trump and his wife Melania Trump offered several messages to repair his damaged image. This article analyzes and evaluates these image repair messages concerning Donald Trump’s “Access Hollywood” video. In such a divisive context, the defense had no hope of repairing Trump’s image with the general public (Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million). Even though he lost the popular vote, the business magnate won the Electoral College. We cannot say that the “Access Hollywood” video was solely responsible for Trump’s poor popular vote showing, but it is clear that this defense did not completely dispel the cloud surrounding him.     

Back to the 1990s? Comparing the Discourses of 20th- and 21st-Century Digital Image Ethics Debates

In 2010, New York Times photographer Damon Winter sparked controversy when he used an iPhone equipped with the Hipstamatic application to produce heavily filtered, Polaroid-style front-page photographs of U.S. troops in Afghanistan. The debate over whether such images were photojournalism, or merely photographs, was reignited the next year as some of his images were honored in one of the country's most prestigious photojournalism competitions, and the practice of using filter-friendly apps for journalism spread. This article compares professional discourses around such journalistic use of smartphone apps with discourses that developed earlier in the digital era around digital image manipulation in Photoshop, with the goal of proposing ways to interrogate imaging technology controversies yet to come.     

Mourning “Men Joined in Peril and Purpose”: Working-Class Heroism in News Repair of the Sago Miners’ Story

Initially promising to replicate the story of the 2002 rescue at the Quecreek mine in Pennsylvania, news coverage of the January 2006 coal mine accident in Sago, WV, went terribly wrong when journalists incorrectly reported the miners’ “miracle” survival. Analysis of 761 newspaper, newsmagazine, and broadcast news reports illustrates how journalists corrected a mishandled story, and offers a glimpse into their broader role in constructing politically affirming national mythology. The final story of Sago was one of a rural community with class pride, distinct gender roles, and other “traditional” values presumed lost—a nostalgic parable of blue-collar patriotic sacrifice.     

Players and Whiners? Perceptions of Sex Stereotyping in Animé in Japan and the US

This study examined cognitive and affective responses of Japanese (N=199) and American participants (N=194) to the depiction of gender in a Japanese animé popular in both countries. As expected, Japanese respondents indicated more familiarity with the animation and also reported that they were fans to a greater extent than Americans. Japanese participants and males showed greater agreement with sex stereotyping in the depiction of characters. Males also showed greater liking for characters and expressed the belief that they were positive role models. American females disliked the characters, especially the female character, significantly more than all other participants. Finally, participants, regardless of country, who held conventional views of gender perceived fewer stereotypes in the depiction of the characters. Given the current interest in animé, implications of findings from viewing sex-stereotypical images and directions for future research are discussed.     

Opening the Wrong Gate? The Academic Spring and Scholarly Publishing in the Humanities and Social Sciences

In this paper, I explore the ways in which the 2012 Elsevier boycott and resultant call for open access scholarship known as the ??academic spring?? have been taken up by scholars in the humanities and social sciences. I begin by reviewing the current state of affairs with regards to publishing and the academy, explicating the movement??s reasons for demanding change. From this, I identify two moral principles which emerge from its critique, and then I show how implementing the recommendations which have been circulated as alternatives to the status quo do not necessarily support the academic spring??s foundational principles. I conclude by suggesting a possible alternative direction of productive action and sounding a final word of caution.     

What causes the similarities and differences among the social sciences in different cultures? Focusing on Japan and the West

As the title suggest, this article attempts to account for variations in the approach to the social sciences between Japan and the West. Ito identifies and provides examples for two categories of research that are peculiar to Japan: (1) A tradition of academic interest in long‐term longitudinal social surveys; and (2) Theories that are based on words and concepts that are unique to the Japanese language and experience. He also covers the special focus that Disaster Communication research has had in the country.

The second half of the paper deals with the great deal of similarities in approach to research between the West and Japan by looking at the significance and impact of key developments in the histories of the two cultures.     

Alone in Berlin? Israeli media and the German resistance to Nazism

The commercially successful Hebrew translation of Alone in Berlin (Fallada, 2010) stirred a conversation regarding the German resistance to Nazism, until then a rarely discussed phenomenon in Israel. The analysis of media items dealing with the book revealed that different memory frameworks shaped the discussion about it. Thus, this study contributes to contemporary discussion about the role of “old” and “new” media in the reconstruction of society’s memory.