Journalists’ Coverage of Online Firestorms in German-Language News Media

When people perceive events that conflict with their expectations they can easily express their agitation and concerns online and likely find others who share their opinion. When large quantities of messages containing negative word-of-mouth suddenly spread in social media we speak of an online firestorm. By covering the outcry, journalists elevate it onto a mainstream communication platform and support the process of scandalization. Content analysis was used to explore how journalists, working for German-language media, cover this phenomenon. Over a period of 16 months, 130 online firestorms were identified and analyzed. Based on a typology of online firestorms, we have found that the majority of cases address events of perceived discrimination and moral misconduct aiming at societal change. Vilification of the organization or person occurred to a much lesser extent. Thus, journalistic coverage of the phenomenon focuses on the rectification attempts of an aroused public. Image-repair responses of the firestorm objects are quoted by journalists in about half of the articles, thereby providing some balanced reporting about the online criticism. This study provides an initial insight into how online firestorms are used as a topic of news coverage by journalists and explores journalists’ contribution to attempts of online scandalization.     

Media’s Influence on the Accessibility of Altruistic and Egoistic Motivations

Previous research suggests that media featuring exemplars of specific altruistic motivations can make those motivations more accessible in viewers’ minds. The present study extends this research to also examine egoistic motivations. We (a) developed a coding scheme to examine how frequently exemplars of altruistic and egoistic motivations appear in media content, (b) developed an intuitive motivation-affect misattribution procedure to measure the accessibility of altruistic and egoistic motivations, and (c) examined whether exposure to media content portraying specific motivations makes those motivations more accessible in audiences. The findings are discussed in terms of the model of intuitive morality and exemplars.     

Muslim Women’s Use of Internet Media in the Process of Acculturation in the United States

This study examines how Muslim women use Internet-based media in the process of acculturation in the United States. Grounded theory methodology (Glaser, 1992) and Sam and Berry’s (2006) model of acculturation were used as theoretical and analytical frameworks. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 14 Muslim women to learn about their media use and experiences in forming and maintaining relationships in the United States. Educational opportunities were an emerging theme in the determining factors of immigrating to the United States. The data indicated that Muslim women use a variety of Internet-based media such as Facebook, Skype, WhatsApp, Instagram, and Viber for communicating with family and friends locally and abroad. A majority of the participants reported that social media allowed them to express a part of their identities. The data suggests that the participants attained the level of acculturation defined as integration. The participants use these media to build and create relationships in their new communities. The combined relationships the participants maintain both locally and abroad seem to play a role in the creation of balance in their lives, which allows them to thrive in their new communities, at school, and at work.     

Article’s scientific prestige: Measuring the impact of individual articles in the web of science

We performed a citation analysis on the Web of Science publications consisting of more than 63 million articles and over a billion citations on 254 subjects from 1981 to 2020. We proposed the Article’s Scientific Prestige (ASP) metric and compared this metric to number of citations (#Cit) and journal grade in measuring the scientific impact of individual articles in the large-scale hierarchical and multi-disciplined citation network. In contrast to #Cit, ASP, that is computed based on the eigenvector centrality, considers both direct and indirect citations, and provides steady-state evaluation cross different disciplines. We found that ASP and #Cit are not aligned for most articles, with a growing mismatch amongst the less cited articles. While both metrics are reliable for evaluating the prestige of articles such as Nobel Prize winning articles, ASP tends to provide more persuasive rankings than #Cit when the articles are not highly cited. The journal grade, that is eventually determined by a few highly cited articles, is unable to properly reflect the scientific impact of individual articles. The number of references and coauthors are less relevant to scientific impact, but subjects do make a difference.     

Conversing Ethics in India’s News Media

This paper identifies the significant ethical challenges expressed by journalists and editors working in media companies in the city of Hyderabad, India. Keeping those dilemmas and challenges in mind, the authors propose economist and Noble laureate Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach as a theoretical outline for the development of future journalism ethics curricula. The major challenges described by the journalists and editors were cross-media ownership, which fosters a political economy focused on revenue generation rather than journalism for public good; problems with the publication of inaccurate information, which are now precipitated by the omnipresence of social media; and a culture of “democratic deficit” where journalists find it increasingly difficult to practice journalism safely and to report about poverty, corruption, crime, environment, caste, and gender. The specific knowledge systems from Sen’s capabilities approach suggested for integration are the study and coverage of injustices in a democratic society; the focus on whether people have flourishing lives that give them the opportunities, freedoms, and choices they need; and economic and political freedoms that give journalists an understanding and appreciation for reporting on inequality and strengthening democratic institutions.     

Google Scholar’s Coverage of the Engineering Literature: An Empirical Study

Google Scholar’s coverage of the engineering literature is analyzed by comparing its contents with those of Compendex, the premier engineering database. Records retrieved from Compendex were searched in Google Scholar, and a decade by decade comparison was done from the 1950s through 2007. The results show that the percentage of records appearing in Google Scholar increased over time, approaching a 90 percent matching rate for materials published after 1990.     

Where Is My Issue? The Influence of News Coverage and Personal Issue Importance on Subsequent Information Selection on the Web

Researchers believe that the Web functions to supplement traditional news media. Little is known, however, about how traditional news media consumption influences Web use patterns. This study investigates how prior TV news exposure influences individuals' subsequent Web use by testing 3 theories that may explain individuals' information selection patterns—accessibility, instrumental utility, and personal issue importance. The results of this study reveal the strong effects of personal issue importance when selecting information on the Web, regardless of news coverage in traditional media. The findings also indicate higher levels of information selection when there is no prior exposure to news coverage.     

Black Studies Scholarship and Its Coverage in Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science

This study analyzes the coverage of black studies journals as compared to women's studies journals in Web of Science, Academic Search Complete, and ArticleFirst. This study also examines black studies bibliographies and directories to identify journals that are suitable for inclusion in Journal Citation Reports and consequently Web of Science and evaluates seven black studies journals using the Thomson Reuters journal selection process.     

Children’s and school libraries in the USSR

Abstract

Changes in the state structure since 1989 and their effect on the development of culture are discussed, as is the liquidation of censorship. The transition of publishing from a monopoly state enterprise to a part of the market economy is described, along with the development of the new mass electronic media. A final section deals with the situation in public libraries after 1989 and the difficulties experienced by librarians in dealing with the threatened disappearance of traditional culture under the tidal wave of mass media for entertainment.     

The Canadian State of Mind: Coverage of Men and Women Athletes in the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Prime Time Broadcast of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games

The following study represents the first attempt in to empirically analyze the Canadian Broadcast Corporation’s (CBC) prime time Olympic broadcast to determine if there were significant trends based on the sex of the athlete. All 72 hours of the CBC’s 2014 prime time Winter Olympic broadcast were analyzed. When excluding mixed-pair competitions, men received 60.4 percent of the airtime. Men received 61.2 percent of the mentions and comprised 65 percent of the top 20 most-mentioned athletes list. Sportscaster dialogues surrounding the attributions of success and failure of athletes, as well as depictions of physicality and personality, contained some divergences based on the sex of an athlete. Men were more likely to be depicted as succeeding because of athletic ability and intelligence while women were more likely to have their successes attributed to experience. Additionally, men were more likely to have their failures attributed to lack of intelligence. In the areas of personality/physicality, women athletes were more likely to receive comments about their size/parts of the body while men were more likely to receive comments in the areas of outgoing/extroversion and emotions.     

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Celebrity Media Diet and the Cultivation of Emerging Adults’ Materialism

The present study used cultivation theory to explore the relationships between celebrity media diet and materialism for a sample of 224 emerging adults. Results indicated main effects between both celebrity magazine consumption and celebrity TV news consumption on materialism. Total celebrity media diet was also significantly related to materialism. Findings suggest that a media diet high in celebrity culture and lifestyle has significant impact on emerging adults’ preoccupation with consumerism, particularly for women. This research contributes to a growing body of literature on the effects of a celebrity-saturated media environment and the cultivation of materialistic attitudes.     

New Challenges in the Coverage of Politics for UK Broadcasters and Regulators in the “Post-Truth” Environment

The last two years have been times of turbulence for the BBC, and other broadcasters, in terms of their coverage of UK politics. Their reporting of the general elections of 2015 and 2017, of the 2016 European Union Referendum and the 2015 election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party have been much criticised (as has that of other mainstream media outlets). And despite the rise of social media, the BBC remains the most used and most trusted source of news in the UK and hence is a vital element in the UK public sphere. Consequently, these journalistic failures—when its political coverage failed to reflect what turned out to be the reality on the ground - are particularly problematic. This brings into focus the issue of “the truth” in election and referendum campaigns. The example quoted here—about the Labour Party and antisemitism—illustrates the difficulties in arriving at the “truth”, even in the less frenetic atmosphere between campaigns. It demonstrates how there can be many truths and this, in itself, raises urgent questions about the nature of political journalism which pose challenges for public broadcasting in Britain with implications that go much wider.     

Parents’ Use of the V-Chip and Perceptions of Television Ratings: The Role of Family Characteristics and the Home Media Environment

Nearly 20 years after the Telecommunications Act of 1996, it is unclear how its mandates influence current parents’ mediation behavior. Parents of 2- to 17-year-old children (N = 1,431) were surveyed about their awareness and perceptions of the TV ratings system and use of the V-chip. Most (81%) parents knew about the ratings system and found it to be only “somewhat useful.” Only 16% of those parents had ever used the V-chip. Ratings awareness and perceptions and V-chip use varied with family characteristics. Policymakers should revisit how to provide better tools for mediating children’s viewing in this new information age.     

Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model and the circulation of journalism in the digital landscape

ABSTRACT

Notions of circuitry are central to Stuart Hall’s conceptualization of how communities, cultures, and media constitute each other. This is very explicit in his encoding/decoding model from 1973. Hall here reserves the term “circulation” for a delimited process within a broader argument for a circular movement, or a “reproduction” of culture through media. In this broader view, however, Hall sees circulation as both technological and hermeneutical processes through which meaning and/or ideology move into and out of discursive form. The encoding/decoding text(s) refer on several occasions to “current affairs” but later applications of this model have somewhat neglected the sphere of journalism. This paper consequently situates Hall’s notions of circulation in relation to new modes of circulating journalism on participatory digital platforms. Given the status of Hall’s model, the overall goal of this re-reading is twofold: seeing Hall through contemporary issues puts into perspective key aspects of Hall’s thinking, while Hall’s framework in turn helps illuminate important characteristics of how journalism is ascribed meaning in a digital landscape. The paper ultimately argues that while Hall’s insistence on seeing the circulation of journalism within a broader circuit of culture is as important as ever, some of his main tenets and assumptions need to be rethought and supplemented in light of newer developments.