Neutralizing Protest: The Construction of War,Chaos, and National Identity through US Television News on Abortion-Related Protest, 1991

This paper examines how US TV news on abortion-related protest forecloses possibilities for democracy and political action. Representing abortion-related activism as a battle, news segments portray activists, correspondents, and viewers as villains, witnesses, and victims in a tale of a nation decimated by civil war. While activists describe their work militaristically, the news's war is not the war that activists describe. News discourse represents activists as threatening the American family/community/nation. Applying Hannah Arendt's and Mary Douglas's work shows how the news eclipses public spheres by mapping a pollution narrative onto those who threaten myths of national homogeneity and proper citizenship.     

Where are you Coming from?

The increasing prominence of transparency as a news value warrants discussion over its effects in various forms of media. Literary journalism provides a useful platform to assess the function of transparency because of its position on the margins of mainstream journalistic practice. This paper analyses the function of disclosure and participatory transparency against the truth-claims of a book-length work of literary journalism. It concludes that while transparency is valuable in building a journalist's credibility, significant thought needs to be given to how disclosure transparency interacts with the rhetorical effects of narrative in sustaining the truth-claims made about a text.     

Disciplining the Virtual Home Front: Mainstream News and the Web During the War in Iraq

Considered by many to be the first war of the Information Age, the 2003 War in Iraq provided a unique opportunity for observing how the American mainstream press defined the Web's journalistic value and how it reacted to the competition from alternative online news sources. In an attempt to exert control over the Web as a journalistic space, the mainstream press used rhetorics of “professionalism” to discipline online news seekers into conforming to the definition of “news” favored by the mainstream press. This essay analyzes these tactics and their implications for the Web's journalistic potential, and concludes with a call for a more collaborative online journalism that maintains journalistic credibility while also incorporating a wider variety of perspectives.     

The call of conscience,rhetorical interruptions,and the euthanasia controversy

Emmanuel Levinas writes of how the “call of conscience”; is a “primordial discourse”; that “interrupts”; the routines and language‐games that help organize and give meaning to a person's everyday existence. Levinas thus provides a way of thinking about the relationship between the call of conscience and rhetoric that advances what rhetorical theorists have so far claimed about this relationship. This essay develops the position that the call of conscience is a rhetorical interruption in its purest form. A case study is offered to illustrate how such an interruption manifests itself in the debate over the justifiability and social acceptability of physician‐assisted suicide. The specific rhetorical transaction in question occurred in cyberspace and lasted five months; it began when members of a disability civil rights group known as “Not Dead Yet!”; conducted what their opponents described as an “invasion”; of an electronic mailing list operated by the Euthanasia Research and Guidance Organization.     

Mediated Negotiations: A Case Study of a Transcultural Exchange between Lebanon and Israel

This article examines the strategies and practices by which the Israeli news media negotiated and (re)appropriated a Lebanese documentary that was produced in cooperation with a French company and was purchased and broadcast by an Israeli commercial channel. Using this transnational textual event, the article explores the dynamics, opportunities and pitfalls associated with transcultural exchanges that take place in a conflictual, translocal context, and the ways in which such exchanges are shaped by an interplay of material-institutional and discursive-symbolic dimensions. The article also provides a multi-layered framework for analyzing the broadcasting and journalistic practices surrounding such textual events, and establishes the relationship between appropriation and witnessing strategies. I show how the Israeli media—driven by commercial interests and applying complex forms of witnessing and appropriation—worked to sustain national myths and suppress the potentially disruptive aspects of the documentary, while at the same time exposing the weaknesses of these myths, as well as the limits of the State's power. Emerging from this case study is a complex picture of the multifaceted roles played by national news media in a transnational economy, and of the ways in which commercial media interests serve as both hegemonic and disruptive forces within the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict.     

NEWSROOM'S NORMAL ACCIDENT?

This study examines 10 recent high-profile cases of journalistic deceptions at major American news organizations, and analyzes deceptive news and authentic news in a comparative perspective. Applying disaster incubation theory and normal accident theory to newsrooms, it focuses on how newsroom organizational culture contributes to journalistic deceptions. Results suggest that prior to the final revelation of a reporter's deception, an incubation period occurs during which a “first flag”—an initial warning signal often related to the reporter's earliest work that gives rise to suspicion of authenticity—is overlooked. The study also identifies patterns in deceptive news that distinguish it from authentic news. Deceptive news stories are more likely than authentic news stories to be filed from a remote location, to be on a story topic conducive to source secrecy, to be on the front page (or magazine cover), to contain more sources, more “diverse” sources and more hard-to-trace sources. It is suggested that editors might use these recognizable patterns to help prevent journalistic deceptions.     

MORE NEWS FOR LESS

Using an ethnographic case study of the Newschannel at TV2 Norway, this article reveals ways in which the assembly-line mentality required by 24/7 news production nevertheless encourages reporters to negotiate a certain autonomy over their work and the routines required to produce it. By reorganizing its staff's use of time, space, and resources, TV2 was able to generate roughly 18 hours of “live” news coverage a day during the article's research period from 2007 to 2009. This production process is framed in terms of Schlesinger's “reactive” mode, here qualified as “reactive-active”, because it allows for the possibility of broadcasting live and gathering news at the same time. The article also revisits the concept of “professionalism” with regard to a traditional broadcaster's implementation of a 24/7 news channel within its existing newsroom. As a result of this process, more news—and more content concerning that news—is produced more efficiently while the tenets of traditional journalism remain operative.     

Symbolic convergence and special communication theories: Sensing and examining dis/enchantment with the theoretical robustness of critical auto ethnography

This study answers 4 research questions as it explicates the SCT's ability to explain how special communication theories come into being as the product of rhetorical visions that contain the norms, conventions, and customs for exemplar participation in a specific communication style. This study demonstrates that the concept of rhetorical vision yields insights into the creation, rise, and potential for demise of a style‐specific, special theory of communication named the critical autoethnography special theory (CAST). The study reports that the CAST itself is a symbolically created product of the critical autoethnographic rhetorical vision (CARV). The study's findings indicate that CARV's life‐cycle is congruent with those of other rhetorical visions and would predict that the CARV may well implode upon itself as it contains the seeds of its own destruction.     

The rhetoric of political newscasting

Television has become the major source of news for most Americans. Therefore, it seems important to consider television's rhetorical potential to influence the public's understanding of political affairs. The purpose of this essay is to explore some of the ways television news reporting, documentaries and docu‐dramas may lead us to know and judge political events, political leadership and political institutions.     

News Media's Rhetoric on Facebook

ABSTRACT

While Facebook is an important distribution channel for today's media houses, there is a lack of research on how news outlets choose to present their stories in social media. The present study aims to narrow this gap by analysing two weeks of Facebook updates by the Norwegian tabloid Dagbladet and the public-service broadcaster NRK and comparing them to the corresponding stories on their news sites. An important objective is to uncover if and how the Facebook updates depart from established text norms for online papers. The method is triangulated. A quantitative content analysis reveals that newsrooms tend to utilize a wider range of speech acts when writing presentations specifically for Facebook. A follow-up qualitative analysis identifies five rhetorical strategies for unique promo texts on Facebook: adding emojis, posing questions, making requests, expressing emotions and stating subjective points of view. Qualitative interviews with responsible journalists confirm that these strategies are more common the less controversial the stories are. However, the newsrooms have few explicit guidelines for when it is acceptable to transgress traditional journalistic text norms. The findings are summarized in a model that connects the continuum of decreasing story controversy to a corresponding continuum of increasingly interpretative and subjective rhetoric.     

Richard Nixon's April 30, 1970 address on Cambodia: The “ceremony” of confrontation

This essay examines President Nixon's April 30, 1970 address announcing the American incursion into Cambodia. Examining the perceptual patterns of the speech, the authors found that Nixon's remarks led to a climax which justified the war on ritualistic rather than Cold War premises. The last third of the speech was content analyzed. The resulting term clusters were then interpreted for their symbolic significance. The authors found the President's remarks in conformity with the potlatch ceremony of the Kwakiutl Indians. The essay concludes by relating the perceptual patterns and analogical matrix of the potlatch to trends which may be developing on the international scene, and calls for the rhetorical critic to become aware of ritualistic elements in public communication.     

Legitimating TV journalism in 60 Minutes : the ramifications of subordinating the visual to the primacy of the word

–The television news magazine genre carries with it an implicit bias that began in an earlier stage of television's dissemination when TV journalism sought to be legitimized by using standards of objectivity handed down from newspapers and magazines. This article contends that this legitimation was attempted by valorizing the rhetorical power of the spoken word and effectively ignoring that visual images carry independent persuasive power–persuasive power, moreover, that often contradicts the verbal and escapes the containment of the objective word. In support of this contention, the essay examines several episodes of 60 Minutes programming. Particular attention is paid to verbal and visual juxtapositions in which the visual imagery and editing choices subvert the stated intentions of the verbal elements. The aim is two-fold: to contribute to critical rhetorical analyses that seek to comprehend the impact of the visual in verbal or print-oriented contexts; and to uncover some of 60 Minutes' ideological underpinnings by casting light on the particular version of reality it constructs, and the beliefs, attitudes, and values it shapes.     

A quasi experiment on how the field of librarianship can help in combating fake news

This study experimented how fake news could be combated through social media literacy skills training. A quasi-experiment in one public university's library was conducted and 470 participants were randomly split into equal parts to form a control and experiment group. The respondents in the experiment group were exposed to 8 weeks of training to improve their social media literacy skills to fight fake news. We realised that social media literacy skills training is effective in increasing social media knowledge, users' recognition of fake news, tendency to verify information and reduce the inclination to share false news. Implications for research and practice were discussed.     

Credibility in Context: How Uncivil Online Commentary Affects News Credibility

In the new media environment, hard news stories are no longer found solely in the “A” section of the paper or on the front page of a news Web site. They are now distributed widely, appearing in contexts as disparate as a partisan blog or your own e-mail inbox, forwarded by a friend. In this study, we investigate how the credibility of a news story is affected by the context in which it appears. Results of an experiment show a news story embedded in an uncivil partisan blog post appears more credible in contrast. Specifically, a blogger's incivility highlights the relative credibility of the newspaper article. We also find that incivility and partisan disagreement in an adjacent blog post produce stronger correlations between ratings of news and blog credibility. These findings suggest that news story credibility is affected by context and that these context effects can have surprising benefits for news organizations. Findings are consistent with predictions of social judgment theory.     

Exploring country's preference over news mentions to academic papers

News mentions to academic papers has provided an important channel for research to yield impact on broad audience in the society, and is particularly useful in scholarly communication, scientific outreach and altmetrics. Unlike academic paper, news articles are often influenced by social factors such as culture, ideology and geography. It is therefore uncertain whether news mentions to academic paper is valid for evaluative purpose as expected by altmetrics studies. In response, this study has conducted large scale statistical analysis to explore country's preference over news mentions, based on the assumption that if news mentions to academic paper is not (or weakly) influenced by social factors, no obvious country's preference would be observed, and the vice versa. The major findings are: (1) From the macro perspective, overall distribution of news mentions is highly imbalanced, with several developed countries taking the dominant position. However, no obvious preference towards domestic papers was observed. (2) From the micro perspective, based on the ZINB test results, news from all countries have more positively mentioned domestic papers and simultaneously shown preference over papers from certain countries. (3) In terms of disciplinary comparison, disciplinary differences were observed in the impact strength and specific preference. These results suggest that in micro level country's preference exist for news mentions to academic papers, but in macro level, country's preference is insignificant. Therefore, it is suggested that news mentions can be used for assessing purpose in the macro level.     

Rhetorical criticism of political myth: From Goldwater legend to Reagan mystique

This essay identifies the American Western myth and the myth of the birth of the nation as political myths depicted by Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan in their 1964 and 1980 presidential campaigns respectively. While Goldwater and Reagan rely on the Western myth through 1964 to “define” America and promote political beliefs, Reagan joins the Western myth with the myth of the birth of the nation after Goldwater's resounding defeat to provide a rhetorical ground for moderating his political views and broadening his audience. In the essay, a model of political myth based on form and function is described and then applied to three addresses, one by Goldwater and two by Reagan. Analysis of the speeches reveals a symbiotic relationship between the Western myth and the birth myth that joins individuality with community in a heroic tale of America's growth as a nation. It also shows that Reagan's rhetoric expresses this symbiosis while Goldwater's does not.     

Disciplining Drunken Mothers: Media Representations of Women's Use of Alcohol

Building on recent feminist and media scholarship, this article examines the manifestation of The Mommy Wars and focuses on women's psychological health and its subsequent news worthiness. Unlike previous Mommy Wars, the war waged between mothers in this project is not focused on whether a woman works in the public sector, but rather, whether she drinks alcohol. An analysis of various news outlets demonstrates how news media extends TMW to the psychological and physical health of women. Specifically, drinking mothers are portrayed by news media as “fractured females,” suggesting that there is a crisis in the United States where children are put in danger by their drunken mothers. The analysis argues that this struggle to fix the definition of motherhood is a power struggle over gender performance. It is also a struggle that separates women from one another with consequences for feminism's future.     

Enactment as rhetorical strategy in the year of living dangerously

In The Year of Living Dangerously, the philosophical position that is argued in the film's content is reflected also in the film's form; i.e., the film is an enactment of the argument it makes. Failure to recognize enactment as a viable rhetorical strategy may have led to a failure to recognize the film's rhetorical force. Further study of enactment and its rhetorical effectiveness are suggested.     

Structural change in search engine news service: a social network perspective

This research investigates structural change made by Naver's online news section and how it has impacted the overall traffic flow of Korea's online news. This paper examined 45 websites in 2008 and 2010, and the total number of pages viewed within these sites was considered in the analysis. Social network analysis was applied to study the relationships between the news sites. The analysis through degree centrality and Bonacich powers shows that there has been a shift in market leadership. In 2007, Naver, the top search engine in Korea, stepped down from its leading position after they started to provide news services. Daum, the second largest search engine, has taken over the central position as the most influential news site. Based on the results of this study, practical implications for online service markets and theoretical implications for online services are recommended accordingly.