Television news in Bangladesh: intersection of market-oriented journalism and perceived credibility

The television medium has occupied a dominant place in Bangladesh. With the unprecedented expansion of the television industry, questions are being raised about a palpable rise in market-oriented journalism (MOJ) in the country. This article examines the theoretical and empirical relationship between MOJ and credibility of TV news. Three surrogate factors of MOJ including independence, social role, and objectivity, along with TV news credibility are analyzed for insights. The findings suggest that there is a complex relationship between the two constructs. To improve the perception of credibility of TV news, our findings suggest an important role of public journalism as an alternative to MOJ.     

新闻报道的客观性的基本涵义辨析

中西新闻客观性的涵义相差甚远。从狭义的角度而言,新闻客观性是在主客二元和平等主义的认识论前提之下,美国新闻界20世纪初期确定下来的至今仍占主导地位的新闻报道理念。西方新闻界对客观性的界定虽多,但已形成基本共识——主张事实与价值分离,坚持真实(准确)、公正(平衡、中立)等报道原则,并在实践中形成了一套特定的写作惯例。     

Television Doctors: An Analysis of Physicians in Fictional and Non-Fictional Television Programs

Although fictional television traditionally has portrayed doctors positively, recent fictional programming appears to portray physicians in a less positive manner. It has also been suggested that these images may conflict with depictions of doctors found on non-fictional television. A content analysis conducted here indicates that television's physician portrayals are less positive than they were in 1992, contemporary genres differ in their physician depictions, and television's doctor portrayals do not differ according to sex or race.     

The talk radio phenomenon: An update

This article reviews talk radio research and summarizes articles from the trade and popular press that document the phenomenal growth in talk radio since 1987, when the Fairness Doctrine was abolished. Anecdotal evidence suggests that talk radio can have a powerful impact on public debate, especially regarding “hot button “ issues that arouse emotion and address voter frustration with the status quo. Examples include the successful defeat of the proposed Congressional pay raise in 1989 and the election to Congress of a Republican majority in 1994. Talk radio is less successful in rallying listeners on complex issues such as campaign financing reform.     

Diversity in Broadcast Television: An Empirical Study of Local News

The relation between the structure of a market and the diversity of its product offering has been extensively explored by theorists. We develop 2 measures of diversity and explore the content of local news for 60 stations and 20 designated market areas (DMAs) in the United States. Using a relative station-level diversity metric, ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates imply that relative diversity of local news content decreases as market concentration increases. This result is not, however, robust to an instrumental variables specification. Using a total market diversity metric, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (Hirshman, 1964) is significant in OLS and robust to instrumental variable estimation. Because the total market diversity metric is arguably superior to the incremental metric as a measure of overall diversity, this result is useful-it suggests that the total diversity of local news content within a DMA is sensitive to the level of concentration.     

Flagging fake news on social media: An experimental study of media consumers' identification of fake news

Policymakers are taking action to protect their citizens and democratic systems from online misinformation. However, media consumers usually have a hard time differentiating misinformation from authentic information. There are two explanations for this difficulty, namely lazy reasoning and motivated reasoning. While lazy reasoning suggests that people may feel reluctant to conduct critical reasoning when consuming online information, the motivated reasoning theory points out that individuals are also thinking in alignment with their identities and established viewpoints. A proposed approach to address this issue is adding fact-checking flags in the hope that flags could alert people to information falsehoods and stimulate critical thinking. This study examines the impact of fact-checking flags on media consumers' identification of fake news. Conducting an experiment (n = 717) on Amazon Mechanical Turk, the study finds that experimental participants with different political backgrounds depend heavily on flag-checking results provided by flags. Flags are powerful to influence people's judgments in a way that participants have blind beliefs in flags even if the flag assessments are inaccurate. Furthermore, the study's results indicate that flag assessments made by professional fact-checkers or crowdsourcing are equally influential in shaping participants' identification. These observations provide public and private leaders with suggestions that fact-checking flags can significantly affect media consumers' identification of fake news. However, flags appear to have little ability to promote critical thinking in this experiment.     

Television Co-Viewing in Mexico: An Assessment on People Meter Data

Television co-viewing is a frequent behavior with important social and economic implications. This study proposes a measure of co-viewing on people meter panel data, tests it on a data set in Mexico, and uses it to explore co-viewing. Individual differences in psychographics, program genres and co-viewing of the lead-in programs were discovered as antecedents to co-viewing. Results indicate as well that co-viewing leads to increased watching time and reduced channel browsing, and this effect interacts with group composition. These findings provide further support for the social uses of television theoretical framework, and shed light on the inheritance effects in continuous programs.     

会诊中国电视--关于中国电视现状及问题的对话

20 0 3年中国电视经历了若干新的探索 ,业界和学界都以“创新”的追求不断推出许多新概念、新名词、新思路、新办法……在这些近乎“轰炸”般的新说法、新做法背后 ,却实实在在地、不可忽略地遮掩着不少新问题、老问题。之所以想推“新” ,除了时代与传媒发展不可阻挡的大势所趋 ,也的确因为这些诸多“问题”困惑着电视人 ,我们认为 ,只有好好对这些问题作一“会诊” ,才可能找到这些问题的“症结” ,才可能进一步对症下药 ,找到解决的路径。为此 ,本刊副主编胡智锋教授与凤凰卫视中文台副台长刘春先生专就中国电视现状及问题作了一番对话 ,希望能引起大家进一步的讨论和探求     

Watch Your Mouth! An Analysis of Profanity Uttered by Children on Prime-Time Television

This study examines the frequency and types of offensive language spoken on prime-time television in 2001, particularly on programs rated acceptable for children and teenagers, and the use of profane language by characters under the age of 21. The findings are compared to similar studies conducted in 1990, 1994, and 1997 to determine whether the use of profanity by child and young adult characters has increased over an 11-year period. Age and content warnings inadequately protect children from profanity. TV-PG programs contain as much off-color language as TV-14 programs, and more coarse language could be found in programs not given an L warning. Further, the earliest hour of prime time, when children are more likely to be viewing, contains significantly more instances of profanity than the time period of 10 to 11 p.m. However, characters under the age of 21 rarely utter profane words, and they are just as infrequently spoken to with such language.     

Mormon "Family Values" Versus Television: An Analysis of the Discourse of Mormon Couples Regarding Television and Popular Media Culture

This research is premised on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model and on Berger's concept that religiosity is socially constructed. However, unlike the early Birmingham studies' emphasis on socioeconomic status as a “cultural code” through which audience members would decode media texts, this study examines the readings of television texts from the perspective of audience members who are, because of their religious practices, ideologically situated to the right of much that is offered on television. The findings in this case are consistent with Hall's notion that individuals bring contradictory and conflicting discourse into their readings of media texts.     

Media Ownership Regulations and Local News Programming on Broadcast Television: An Empirical Analysis

This study analyzes the provision of local news programming on local television and its relation with station ownership characteristics and market conditions. The results show that station financial strength and market competition have a significant, positive relation with the quantity of local news programming. However, there is little evidence that ownership characteristics (e.g., duopoly ownership and ownership by one of the big 4 broadcast networks) contribute to local news production. The findings call into question one of the underlying rationales of the Federal Communication Commission's current policies toward more relaxed national and multiple ownership rules.     

Vertical Integration and Market Foreclosure in the Korean Cable Television Industry: An Empirical Study

This study investigated vertical foreclosure effects in the Korean cable television market. While it focuses mainly on vertical foreclosure, the study also examined reciprocal carriage between large vertically integrated cable operators. From the analysis of cross-sectional data regarding cable operators' carriage information in Korea, two conclusions were derived. First, vertically integrated cable operators tend to carry their affiliated channels and were less likely to carry their rivals' channels. Second, the data suggest that large vertically integrated cable operators were engaged in reciprocal carriage.     

Extending the Television Brand: An Examination of Why Consumers Use Broadcast Network Web Sites

Framed by the technology acceptance and customer-based brand equity (CBBE) models, this study investigated how audiences intend to use broadcast television network Web sites. Drawing upon the results of a survey (N = 178), this research found that perceived ease of use and perceived enjoyment significantly influence intent to use broadcast Web sites. Findings also reveal that CBBE plays a significant role as a mediator between motivations and behavioral intention to use broadcast networks' Web sites. It is concluded that as the medium of television evolves, networks' Web sites should be conduits for sustained brand allegiance and broadcasters should make more strategic use of their Web sites.     

探索创新打造精品--对湖北电视台大型综艺晚会的思考

近年来 ,湖北电视台在大型综艺晚会组织、策划、生产和创作上开拓创新 ,连获佳绩 ,获得了业界和学界的普遍认可与好评。不久前中国电视艺术家协会为湖北电视台大型晚会创作举行了专门的研讨会 ,本刊从中撷取若干文字 ,编成本期“专题研究”     

Representations of Interpersonal Interaction and Race/Ethnicity: An Examination of Prime-Time Network Television Programs

Racial and ethnic relations in America are a form of social interaction about which changing perceptions could have important consequences. Current research examining the nature of discrete social interaction situations in entertainment content on television is lacking. This study was conducted with the objective of obtaining an updated account of the state of interpersonal interaction portrayals between characters of different racial/ethnic backgrounds in popular prime time programs on broadcast television. Specifically, we analyzed prime-time television program content on 4 major U.S. broadcast networks. Findings are interpreted via a media priming framework.     

Predicting Audience Exposure to Television in Today's Media Environment: An Empirical Integration of Active-Audience and Structural Theories

Scholars have long advocated empirical integration of active-audience and structural theories to best explain audience exposure to television. This study incorporated both uses and gratifications and structural variables in an integrated model of audience exposure. Results indicated that seven statistically significant factors—ritualistic motivations, use of the Internet, audience availability, the cost of multi-channel service, age, instrumental motivations, and gender—combined to explain 30.3% of the variance in audience exposure to television. Findings suggest that no single theoretical construct explains the complexities that determine exposure to television. Future inquiry should continue to seek theoretical and empirical integration as a way to understand and explain media behavior.     

Television News Viewing,Governmental Scope,and Postmaterialist Spending: Assessing Mediation by Partisanship

This study uses 2000–2002 American National Election Study (ANES) panel data to assess the influence of national television news viewing on opinions concerning the need for federal involvement in social issues reflective of postmaterialist values. This relationship is analyzed in coordination with the testing of perceptions of the proper role of government in society as a potential mediator. In addition, political party identification (Democrat, Republican, and Independent) is assessed as a potential moderator. This study reveals 3 distinct processes of mediation (or the lack thereof) across the party identification groups, with the perceived role of government serving as a full mediator for Democrats, a simple mediator for Republicans, and not serving as a mediator for Independents.     

Television use,stereotypes of African Americans and opinions on affirmative action: An affective model of policy reasoning

This paper proposes and tests an affective model of policy reasoning with television use as a first stage variable in a heuristic causal chain. We predict that TV use leads to affect which then leads to opinions on related issues. We test the power of the model to explain how citizens make up their minds regarding government policies on affirmative action, with stereotypes of African Americans as the second stage, affective variable. Data from White college students indicate that there was good fit (non‐significant chi‐squares) for the model. The paths explaining the most variance were those from perceived negative TV attributes to stereotypes, and stereotypes to opinions. Perceptions of negative TV portrayals predicted negative stereotypes, which predicted opposition to affirmative action policies. Implications for media use and heuristic reasoning models are discussed.