Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly

This study examines the process and conditions under which U.S. news coverage aligns with—or challenges—the communications of government officials, focusing on the issue of U.S. drone warfare. White House, military, congressional, and press communications during President Obama’s first 5 years in office are analyzed to assess how the policy has been framed among officials and covered within the press. Evidence indicates that news coverage was significantly more critical of the policy than what was expressed among officials. In particular, despite near consensus at home, journalists exercised considerable discretion, consistently locating and amplifying oppositional voices from abroad in news coverage.

Analyzing 50 years’ of New York Times international news coverage (N = 20,765), this study extends research on the “shrinking international news hole,” levels of press freedom, agent (e.g., Times correspondent), and “borrowed” news—information gleaned from local media, including social media. Data show a recent, growing role for social media and an increase in news borrowing, while foreign coverage declined; slight resurgence in foreign coverage during the last quarter-century; reduced wire copy use but increased correspondent news borrowing; and increased coverage of but decreased news borrowing in news from non-free nations. Borrowing from social media was greatest in non-free nations.

Using four between-subjects experiments (N₁ = 106, N₂ = 166, N₃ = 159, and N₄ = 164), this project tests the ways audiences process grammatical errors in news articles. In all, results suggest that readers perceive stories with grammatical errors to be lower in quality, credibility, and informativeness, but the number of errors needed is relatively large. Analysis shows amplified effects for people who report concern about grammar, and, to a lesser degree, people with knowledge of grammar rules. Given these results, the findings suggest a nonlinear, nonuniversal effect of grammatical errors on readers of news articles.

This study examines the impact of photographic–textual and risk–benefit frames on the level of visual attention, risk perception, and public support for nuclear energy and nanotechnology in Singapore. Using a 2 (photographic–textual vs. textual-only frames) × 2 (risk vs. benefit frames) × 2 (nuclear energy vs. nanotechnology) between-subject design with eye-tracking data, the results showed that photographic–textual frames elicited more attention and did have partial amplification effect. However, this was observable only in the context of nuclear energy, where public support was lowest when participants were exposed to risk frames accompanied by photographs. Implications for theory and practice were discussed.

This experiment examined the impact of photo–text congruency regarding solutions journalism. We tested the effects of solution and conflict-oriented news stories when the photo paired with the story was congruent or incongruent with the narrative. Results revealed that a solution-oriented story with a congruent photo made readers feel the most positive, but surprisingly readers were most interested in the story and reported the strongest behavioral intentions when the story was paired with a neutral photo.

This study explored the photojournalism and news presentation of the Middletown (NY) Times Herald-Record before and after the newspaper laid off its entire photography staff. Differences between professional and non-professional photographs were compared. Following the layoff, the paper published fewer images, and presented less prominently. Professional images captured significantly more elements of photojournalism than non-professionals, including emotion, action, conflict, and graphic appeal. Professional images were presented larger and more prominently. Results of this case study provide evidence that—despite clear differences in image content—photojournalists are struggling to assert their professional legitimacy in the digital age.

During the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) outbreak, South Korean citizens blamed the government for the lack of dialogue between the government and its publics, low credibility of risk information, and prevalent rumors reported in media. The purpose of this study is twofold: (a) to examine the role of government dialogic competency and credibility of risk information in negative government–public relationship outcomes and (b) to examine the effects of negative government–public relationship outcomes. The findings of an online survey support the proposed hypotheses, linking the theories of dialogic communication and relationship management in public relations.

Longitudinal social network analyses were conducted to examine social support exchange among patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) on an online health forum. The analyses of 90,965 messages posted by 9,369 patients from 2008 to 2012 suggest that both receiving and offering support significantly encourage continuous social support exchange. Patients, however, were less likely to offer further social support when they kept reciprocating support only with certain individuals on the forum. Sentiment analysis indicates that self-disclosing one’s emotions during support seeking serves as a significant predictor for the amount of social support the support-seeker could obtain. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

A nationwide content analysis of television stations showed low levels of investigative journalism quality and quantity. Most stories introduced as “investigative” were not investigative by definition. However, in an accompanying survey, about half of respondents said investigative quality and quantity had recently increased at their stations. Utilizing Shoemaker and Reese’s hierarchical model, organizational and social-institutional variables were used to predict investigative production. Stations in competitive markets and stations owned by publicly traded corporations produced more investigative journalism and were more likely to emphasize investigations. Stations emphasizing profit were less likely to emphasize investigative reporting.

The question of whether press coverage of racial/ethnic minorities has improved remains. This study tackles it by examining (a) how journalists’ race/ethnicity affects campaign news coverage of race-related issues and (b) whether the nature of coverage is moderated by minority candidates and the racial composition of audiences. We pair local news coverage of 3,400 state legislative candidates with news data from 663 news outlets. We find newsroom diversity by itself does not influence the coverage of race-related issues. But in areas with large numbers of minority audiences, media outlets with diverse newsrooms are significantly more likely to cover race-related issues.

Social media allow users not only to read news, but also to evaluate, reconstruct, and share it. This study conceptualizes curatorial news use via social media as an important news use behavior, which involves evaluating the existing news, adding new values by reconstructing it, and then sharing it with other social media users. An analysis of survey data from 650 South Korean adults shows that curatorial news use on social media has a significantly positive association with political knowledge, internal political efficacy, and offline and online political participation. The interaction of social media news use and curatorial news use is also significantly associated with high levels of political knowledge and political participation.

This study explores spillover effects of one university’s crisis to students from another institution employing the situational theory of problem solving. Defining crisis spillover in terms of problem and involvement recognition, findings from interviews underline organizational, psychological, and communicational aspects that affected students’ perception of the crisis and recognition of its potential spread to their university. This study also highlights how mental associations between two institutions around a critical issue may be mitigated or augmented by individuals’ memories of prior similar events affecting other organizations, recollection of how past issues were handled by their organization, and trust toward their institution.

Partisans in mediated conflicts usually perceive hostile news media, anticipate undesired media effects, and intend to engage discursively. It is hypothesized that hostile media perceptions also encourage polarizing communication. This is tested for scientists involved in a politicized science dispute. German climate scientists (n = 131) firmly believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Yet not all dismiss alternative hypotheses altogether. Results indicate that the more certain climate scientists are of AGW, the more they perceive that the news media downplay AGW and presume that the media nourish politicians’ doubts about it. This explains their justifications of overstatements of scientific findings in public.