The Stubborn Pervasiveness of Television News in the Digital Age and the Field’s Attention to the Medium, 2010–2014

A secondary analysis of 2010–2014 World Values Survey (WVS) data (N = 81,229) is performed across 56 countries to assess frequency of exposure to television news versus the Internet and mobile phone as information sources. A large majority of the comparisons (105/112; 93.75%) reveal television to be used more frequently than Internet or mobile phones (p < 1.0E-09). A content analysis of works published in 9 communication journals from 2010 to 2014 indicates a precipitous decline in the attention political communication scholars are giving to television. Meanwhile, there is substantial growth in the focus on new media.     

Bringing evidence to practice: a team approach to teaching skills required for an informationist role in evidence-based clinical and public health practice

Objective: The objectives were (1) to develop an academic, graduate-level course designed for information professionals seeking to bring evidence to clinical medicine and public health practice and to address, in the course approach, the “real-world” time constraints of these domains and (2) to further specify and realize identified elements of the “informationist” concept.Setting: The course took place at the Division of Health Sciences Informatics, School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University.Participants: A multidisciplinary faculty, selected for their expertise in the course core competencies, and three students, two post-graduate National Library of Medicine (NLM) informationist fellows and one NLM second-year associate, participated in the research.Intervention: A 1.5-credit, graduate-level course, “Informationist Seminar: Bringing the Evidence to Practice,” was offered in October to December 2006. In this team-taught course, a series of lectures by course faculty and panel discussions involving outside experts were combined with in-class discussion, homework exercises, and a major project that involved choosing and answering, in both oral and written form, a real-world question based on a case scenario in clinical or public health practice.Conclusion: This course represents an approach that could be replicated in other academic health centers with similar pools of expertise. Ongoing journal clubs that reiterate the question-and-answer process with new questions derived from clinical and public health practice and incorporate peer review and faculty mentoring would reinforce the skills acquired in the seminar.

Highlights

• Interdisciplinary faculty designed and offered a graduate-level course to teach the skills required by an informationist in clinical and public health practice, further elaborating a model for preparing informationists.

Implications

• This scalable approach to teaching skills for the transfer of evidence into practice could be replicated in academic health centers with similar pools of expertise; such replication could contribute data toward validating this training approach.
• Greater clarity on an appropriate, or “good enough,” standard of evidence for supporting point-of-action decision making is needed.
• Based on the assumption that practicing skills increases confidence and the likelihood that skills will be applied, this course included mentored practice of oral and written evidence presentation skills. Further research could determine whether a course that includes such mentored practice increases the likelihood that students will apply their newly acquired skills.

     

Exploring attribution theory and bias

Courses: This activity can be used in a wide range of classes, including interpersonal communication, introduction to communication, and small group communication

Objectives: After completing this activity, students should be able to: (1) define attribution theory, personality attribution, situational attribution, and attribution bias; (2) provide examples of both personality and situational attributions; and (3) recognize why and when each type of attribution is used. This activity provides students an opportunity to explore attribution theory and attribution bias in a low-stakes setting, where the ultimate goal is a deeper understanding of the theory itself. Therefore, this activity is typically not treated as a graded assignment, but rather an opportunity for exploration and discussion.     

A Comparison of Three Approaches to Electronic Media Diaries

This project compared the richness of reporting and reflection of three approaches to electronic media diaries. For 1 week, 145 students were randomly assigned to keep daily diaries about their media use and perceptions of media content using one of three methods: (a) a traditional daily journaling approach conducted online, (b) an experience sampling method (ESM) approach that combined daily journaling with multiple daily message prompts, and (c) an approach that combined online peer-group discussion with online daily journaling. The goal was to determine if the supplementary diary activities yielded more detailed, emotive, and cognitive responses. Diary content was analyzed using traditional manual content analysis and linguistic software. Results indicated that the ESM condition elicited less cognitive- and affective-oriented language than the other conditions. The group discussion condition evidenced some advantage over the diary-only group in terms of number of media channels and specific content mentioned.