Attributes and Frames of the Aurora Shootings

The present study examined frames and second-level agenda-setting attributes used by national and local newspapers to cover the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shootings. Unlike research examining coverage of school shootings, this study examined a mass shooting that did not occur at a school. Both newspaper types published a similar number of articles—though national articles tended to be longer—and virtually stopped coverage after 18 days. While previous coverage tended to focus on shootings’ societal implications, Aurora coverage focused more on individuals involved in the time immediately surrounding the shootings. National papers focused on the gunman, while the local press tended to focus on victims. Mass shootings in general tend to be salient news items, but the present study further shows news outlets may now focus on incidents’ specifics instead of common characteristics they might share, perhaps because audiences have an existing understanding of them. The shootings were framed in terms of gun control; national newspapers used this frame more often than did local newspapers. Both newspaper types tended to discuss gun control as directly related to the Aurora shootings, rather than as a societal or continuing need. Results offer further evidence that second-level agenda-setting and framing are distinct concepts.     

An Insidious Poison or a Door to the Story?

The aim of this paper is to grasp the influence of the newsroom on frame-building processes. First, journalists’ own understanding of “frames” and “framing” is discussed. Second, from an academic interpretation of these concepts, journalists’ framing practices are studied. To this end an ethnographic study was conducted at two newsrooms, one in Belgium and one in the Netherlands. The findings reveal that while the noun “frame” is sporadically used as a tool, the verb “framing” is considered as something from which a journalist should refrain. This is explained by the associations journalists make with strategic framing from sources as well as by the newspapers’ explicit attempt to no longer view the world from a single ideological frame. It is argued that the studied newsrooms have replaced ideology by, respectively, a counterframing strategy that strives to disprove existing frames (deframing) and a narrative approach that, one the one hand, sharpens existing frames but, on the other hand, offer more opportunities to create alternative frames (reframing) for events.     

National Information Infrastructures in Central and Eastern Europe: Perspectives from the Library Community

Information infrastructures (IIs) are a complex arrangement of people, technology, institutions, content, and conduits. Their development is shaped by the environment in which they evolve and the visions ascribed to them by the various actors. This article examines the assumptions, meanings, and definitions associated with IIs in four Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. In particular, it focuses on how one stakeholder group, the library community, frames the policy debates around IIs. In-depth interviews were conducted in 1999 with 49 library policymakers in 37 institutions. The data shed light on the respondents' collective story and visions and help us gain a better understanding of political and cultural differences in the development of IIs.     

Who's Responsible for the Digital Divide? Public Perceptions and Policy Implications

Addressing the reasons for—and the solutions to—the “digital divide” has been on the public agenda since the emergence of the Internet. However, the term has meant quite different things, depending on the audience and the context, and these competing interpretations may in fact orient toward different policy outcomes. The goals of this article are twofold. First, the authors unpack the term “digital divide” and examine how it has been deployed and interpreted across a range of academic and policy discourses. Second, through a framing experiment embedded within a nationally representative survey, the authors demonstrate how presenting respondents with two different conceptual frames of the digital divide may lead to different perceptions of who is most accountable for addressing the issue. From this, they discuss the dynamic relationship between the construction and communication of policy discourse and the public understanding of the digital divide, as well as implications for effective communication about the digital divide and information and communication technology policy to the general public.     

Exploring the relationship between physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics understanding

Three studies are reported that investigated the relationship between secondary school students’ physics-related epistemological beliefs and physics conceptual understanding. Study 1 involved the development of a Greek Epistemological Beliefs Evaluation Instrument for Physics (GEBEP) which was administered to 394 students (10th graders). Study 2 investigated the hypothesis that physics epistemological sophistication as measured by the GEBEP is a good predictor of physics understanding. The participants were selected from the 394 students who participated in Study 1. More specifically we selected the 10% (38) students with the highest scores in the GEBEP (high epistemological sophistication group, HES) and the 10% (38) students with the lowest GEBEP scores (low epistemological sophistication group, LES) and measured their understanding of Newton’s three laws using the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation instrument (FMCE) developed by Thornton and Sokoloff (1998). The results showed that the HES group had significantly higher scores in the FMCE than the LES group. Regression analysis showed that beliefs regarding the Construction and Stability of physics knowledge and the Structure of physics knowledge were good predictors of physics understanding. Study 3 re-examined the same hypothesis on a new independent sample of students. The results based on the entire sample, showed again that beliefs regarding the Construction and Stability of physics knowledge predicted physics understanding. Overall, the results suggest that sophisticated physics-related epistemological beliefs are necessary but not sufficient for physics understanding and point to the importance of taking them into consideration in physics education.     

Graduate theses: An index of graduate work in speech,XXXII

ABSTRACT

Feeling right or wrong about a message frame can be used as a heuristic to infer one’s motivational state and determine the depth of information processing. Two experiments examined how individuals’ regulatory fit/nonfit response to news headlines interact with their motivation to influence information elaboration and information seeking. Under high motivations, regulatory fit confirmed their state and increased time spent on the news, elaboration, and information seeking. However, under low motivation, regulatory fit decreased elaboration and information seeking. Instead, under low motivational states, nonfit headlines increased elaboration and information seeking. The study fills a gap in the cognitive mechanisms of framing effect by demonstrating that there exists a fast and intuitive framing effect through affective responses such as regulatory fit-ness.     

Stigma activation through dis-identification: cognitive bias triggered by mass media photos of people with obesity

ABSTRACT

This study investigated how the prevalent visual depiction of obesity in the media promotes stigmatization of obese individuals. Particularly, this study proposed and tested the two sequential mechanisms which were not explicated in the previous models but indispensable in stigma research: (1) the disease avoidance response (i.e. discomfort for physical contact) and (2) dehumanizing perception. Results of two experiments overall supported the extended model: the headless photos of obese individuals triggered the disease avoidance responses, which sequentially increased the dehumanizing perception of and negative attitudes toward obese individuals. The identity trait (e.g. gender) match increased readers' level of social identification with obese people and alleviated the disease avoidance response when they saw the photo of the obese model as a whole being. By contrast, the opposite effects (i.e. disidentification and heightened discomfort) were found when the participants saw the headless photo of the obese model of the same gender.     

Metacoverage and Mediatization in US Presidential Elections

This article develops a theoretical model consisting of three mechanisms that link metacoverage, a type of election campaign news, to mediatization, a meta-process in which media organizations influence politics. The mechanisms hinge on the point that metacoverage—consisting of both topics and frames—constitutes a rich set of process-oriented cues that influence how campaign organizations adjust to the media logic in the course of performing functions associated with the office-seeking political campaign logic. A case study of 2012 US presidential election news was conducted to illustrate how metacoverage influences campaign strategies.     

The conservative response to the 2011 Chilean student movement: neoliberal education and media

This paper focuses on the relationship between the media and educational policies in the context of the ‘neoliberal newspeak’, which has characterized the current circulation of ideas in cultural production. Using framing theory, this article presents a critical discourse analysis on the editorials published about the 2011 student movement by El Mercurio, the most influential newspaper in Chile. El Mercurio is more than a newspaper. It is an institution; an institution that supports conservative ideas. El Mercurio framed the public discussion about educational policies and defended neoliberal education based on three discourses: the neoliberal system is absolute, public education is valued less than private and education is a technical issue, not political. By invoking this rhetoric strategy, these discourses attempted to maintain the neoliberal education system in Chile, which in turn rejected the social struggles of the student movement.     

The gods are drinking milk! Word‐of‐mouth diffusion of a major news event in India

The objective of this study is to explore whether the US media overemphasized recalled Chinese products in 2007 and, if so, how news coverage in the US media differed from that of the Chinese media. By using a framing analysis of the coverage in two US media and two Chinese media, this study pursues answers to these questions. After comparing the news coverage of the recalled Chinese products and a real world indictor, this study found that neither US nor Chinese media mirrored the real world phenomenon as it was. By comparing news coverage of the issue in The New York Times and The Associated Press with China Daily, and The Xinhua News Agency, the study found that news coverage of the recalled issues differed significantly in terms of the sources used, the nationality of the source, the dominant frames employed, and the attribution of responsibility for the problems. In particular, Chinese media more frequently employed government officials as their main sources, which inherently increased the use of thematic frames. By contrast, US media often used episodic frames. Likewise, American media approached the issues using ‘Customers' Worries’ and ‘Broken System’ frames, whereas Chinese media often attempted to defend the quality of Chinese products and criticized Western media for exaggerating the issues. Owing to the news framing process, US audiences might have acquired more negative images of Chinese products and China in general. By contrast, their Chinese counterparts might have experienced increased antipathy and distrust concerning the American media.