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.     

“Open-Mouth Awe”: ESPN's Streetball and the “Transcendent Simultaneity” of the Media Sublime

An impressive body of research on the subject suggests that the seeds of the sublime experience are rooted either in the aesthetic qualities of the viewed object or in the cultural and contextual characteristics of the viewing subject. In this article, I contend that sublimity is, rather, the product of the relationship between subject and object, a relationship that defies representation and therefore provides the “excess of experience” that is the hallmark of the sublime encounter. Turning to ESPN's Streetball: The AND 1 Mix Tape Tour as evidence, I conclude that mediation as a process invites sublimity in audiences by immersing the viewer in the “transcendent simultaneity” of subjectivity and objectivity.     

Improving Access and “Unhiding” the Special Collections

This article broadly reviews the issue of access in special collections and introduces several solutions for improving access to special collections materials. Drawing on literature and specific case studies, the author finds that special collections units have made great progress in making their materials accessible to researchers and users. A variety of access web and digitization technologies are outlined and discussed.     

Hide and Seek: Neoliberalizing the State and “Stating” the Neoliberal in the Italian Media System

The author claims that neoliberal discourse plays “hide and seek” with the state, which appears at the same time absent and present, negated, and necessitated. In order to test its limits, the paper historicizes such discourse by engaging with the Italian case. More specifically, this study examines the most representative figure of Italian neoliberalism, former prime minister and media tycoon, Silvio Berlusconi, and his ambiguous relationship with the state. Drawing on Marx and Gramsci's conceptualization of the state, the paper sheds light on the Italian context as well as the more general characteristics of the neoliberal state.     

“The Press Motivated Me”: Life Histories with the Media in Brazil

Brazil, with commercial broadcasting and a political press, moved from dictatorship to democracy during the transition after Franco in Spain, with its noncommercial system. This coincidence creates a natural experiment in how political and media systems relate to citizens' subjective experiences. Comparing limited life histories from Brazil to previous American and Spanish narratives suggests two relationships: between market-oriented broadcasting and a postmodern consumer stance, and between a politically committed press and an engaged citizen stance.     

CDC's Use of Social Media and Humor in a Risk Campaign—“Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse”

This is a multiple methods study that highlights the tension between awareness- and behavioral-based campaign successes, particularly when communicating using social media and pop-culture-referencing humor. To illustrate, it examines the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) “zombie apocalypse” all-disaster-preparedness campaign. An interview with a CDC campaign manager, campaign document analysis, and a 2 (information form: social vs. traditional media) × 2 (message strategy: humorous vs. non-humorous) experiment uncovers benefits and pitfalls of using social media and humorous messaging for risk communication. Findings show social media can quickly spread information to new publics for minimal costs; however, experiment participants who received the humorous (i.e., zombie) risk message reported significantly weaker intentions to take protective actions in comparison to those who received the traditional, non-humorous risk message.     

Media Preferences and Democracy: Refining the “Relative Entertainment Preference” Hypothesis

This article extends the work of research connecting media choice and relative preferences for entertainment to voter turnout. Markus Prior found that individuals who both preferred entertaining content to news and had either cable or Internet access were less likely to vote than were other citizens. As an update to his work, this article uses more recent Pew Research Center for the People and the Press surveys to test alternative measures of entertainment preferences and to update the Internet access findings for the broadband age. As a theoretical extension, this article looks at turnout differences among those with even finer content preferences. Specifically, people who prefer hard news are compared to those choosing societal welfare news (e.g., crime, community, health). The results indicate that there is value in considering Relative Societal Welfare News Preference in addition to—or even instead of—entertainment preferences alone.     

“New” Holistic Mass Media Business Model

This qualitative case study, based on the principles of grounded theory, develops a holistic business model for media outlets by investigating the organizational structure and corporate culture of a unique agricultural radio station that operated successfully for over 60 years. It examines the station in the context of its founding era and determines the process used to create this survivor. An inductively generated “theory of commitment” is proposed, and guidelines are provided that could help today's independent media start-ups become survivors.     

Daring to Be Weird: Exploring the Invocation of the “Company Freak” in Vonage’s New Advertising Campaign

A textual analysis was performed on the first five advertisements from Vonage’s “Crazy Generous” campaign. The ads ask the audience to consider what happens when co-optation is itself deployed as a promotional tool. Three primary themes emerge: the main character is Vonage’s “house hippie”; interacting with him is a “sanitary act”; and that by coaxing the main character to take a job with Vonage, the company has has restored social order.     

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.     

How Can Brand-Owned Media Be Managed? Exploring the Managerial Success Factors of the New Interrelation Between Brands and Media

Although owned media formats that pursue brand-policy objectives have been receiving considerable attention in industries since the beginning of the millennium, virtually no research results are available about their conceptual background and strategic management. Using total interpretive structural modeling, this study examines two research questions: (1) Which success factors for the evolving brand-owned media concept can be identified? (2) How can these factors be systematized in terms of interrelations and hierarchies? Results indicate that the success of brand-owned media depends on a complex interrelation of eight factors. Content-centric factors such as content quality and the non-advertising character of brand-owned media are most important for creating relevant content and for achieving media success in terms of reach and frequency. In contrast, brand strength is not regarded as a precondition of brand-owned media success but rather as a result.     

Resistant Matters: Tents,Tear Gas and the “Other Media” of Occupy

From tents to tear gas, objects and architectures of resistance speak to us across the transnational Occupy Movement. More than background scenery or mere props for action, these objects have their own stories to tell about how they mediate and communicate political struggle. Informed by the revitalisation of materialism and object-oriented analyses, this paper draws together affect theory, “post-ANT” scholarship and social movement studies to explore particular nonhuman elements of resistance as “other media.” Beyond those practices already seen to be part of the communications ecology of protest (alternative media, demonstrations, speeches, performative actions), I argue that other technological infrastructures and interfaces make and mediate political communication at sites of resistance in ways that are significant but often overlooked in existing scholarship.     

WARNING—The Existing Media System May Be Toxic to Your Health: Health Communication and the Politics of Media Reform

Our physical health depends, at least in part, upon the health of our media environment. Unfortunately, the commercial media system produces countless messages that not only misinform Americans about their health but also actively promote unhealthy behaviors. Rather than taking the existing media system as a given, this commentary argues that health communication scholars should work with media reformers to transform the media system in ways that advance public health goals. In particular, the ongoing regulatory struggle over low-power radio provides an important opportunity for health communication scholars and media reformers to join forces.     

The Relationship between Traditional Mass Media and “Social Media”: Reality Television as a Model for Social Network Site Behavior

Social cognitive theory suggests a likely relationship between behavior modeled on increasingly popular reality television (RTV) and user behavior modeled on social networking sites (SNSs). This study surveyed young adults (N = 456) to determine the extent to which RTV consumption explained a range of user behavior in the context of social network sites. Results show a consistent relationship between RTV consumption and the length of time spent on these sites, the size of users' networks, the proportion of friends not actually met face to face, and photo sharing frequency while controlling for age and gender.