Community Journalism Interest Group
Virtual or tangible?: An experimental investigation into motivation and memory in place-based, community-oriented virtual reality news • Aaron Atkins • Parts of this research appear in a dissertation. 360-degree virtual reality video content is beginning to spread beyond niche international and national news organizations and into community-oriented news publications. One of the unique aspects inherent to the medium is the relinquishing of journalist control over the perspective, framing, and attention allocation of its audience, which this experiment addresses. This research investigates via controlled lab experiment the motivational effects of experiencing and processing via LC4MP a community-oriented 360VR news story shot in a prominent community location known to the research population sample. The experiment uses the presence or absence of an on-screen reporter to serve as a guide through the news story and measures motivation via sense of community, attention allocation and memory processing via post-treatment assessment. Findings shed light on one of the prominent ongoing discussions among journalists about how best to utilize the medium for nonfiction narrative news purposes, and makes recommendations for best practice based on its findings.
Community public safety information seeking and the news • Chris Etheridge, University of Arkansas at Little Rock • One by-product of the digital age has been the expansion how individuals get information, yet the news has remained both a primary source for information and one that individuals increasingly view as untrustworthy. This study examines the information needs related to crime and public safety as well as how and why they seek this information through the news. These findings are discussed in terms of the theoretical framework of community information-seeking. This study then provides three recommendations for possible ways for news organizations to serve a greater community information role.
Calm During the Storm: Hype-Averse and Thematic Framing of Hurricane Harvey on a Local Independent Weather Blog • Marcus Funk, Sam Houston State University • Abstract: During Hurricane Harvey, a local weather blog heavily emphasized risk and meteorological data without defaulting to disaster or human interest frames common in mainstream news coverage of severe weather. Journalists routinely articulated uncertainty, delineating what was likely and what was possible, while cultivating internal and external community through personal expression and recognition of common experience. Audience members demonstrated clear parasocial interaction and parasocial relationships with authors despite the lack of human interest and disaster frames.
Community through dialogue and its impact on support for NPR member stations • Joseph Kasko • This research examines the role of community in generating support for public radio stations. Building on previous research, which concluded NPR stations were engaged in continuous, two-way dialogue with their listeners, this present study surveyed listeners to gauge how those community building efforts may be influencing support. The results indicate there is a positive, but small, relationship between dialogic communication and levels of support. As a result, this work provides evidence that station efforts to build community, through the use of dialogic communication, are effective in increasing levels of support.
The Role of Community Caretaker: How Weekly Newspapers Defended Their Communities While Reporting on the Mississippi ICE Raids • Nick Mathews • This research presents how weekly newspapers came to the defense of their communities in a time of need. This role, which goes beyond the normative newspaper functions, is identified as “community caretaker.” A qualitative textual analysis examines the coverage of the historic 2019 Mississippi ICE raids. The findings demonstrate that, most notably, the weekly newspapers attempted to heal any reputational damage to the communities by criticizing the national media that painted a grim post-raid future.
* Extended Abstract * Journalism Beyond the Command Post • Mildred Perreault, East Tennessee State University • On Memorial Day weekend 2015, journalists flocked to Wimberley to report the destruction, but only a few local journalists remained to tell the story of the town’s struggle for recovery. Using case study methods and narrative theory this study evaluated how local journalists contribute to long-term recovery and resilience. Through the development of the journalist as citizen model, this study addressed how local journalists are strategic in the narratives they adopted.
Reinforcing Islamophobic Rhetoric through the use of Facebook comments: A study of imagined community • Burton Speakman, Kennesaw State University; Caitlyn Blanchard; Anisah Bagasra, Kennesaw State University • Social media sites such as Facebook allow for the easy creation of imagined community within the online space. This study seeks to examine the role of imagined community and framing in portrayals of Islam and Muslims within the comments of public media pages on Facebook. A comparative analysis of comments on news articles from conservative, mainstream, and liberal media sources was conducted to understand the quantity and content of Islamophobic comments on these pages. Additionally, comments on eight of the most popular conservative Facebook pages were analyzed. Both the qualitative and quantitative data suggest imagined community exists within commenters on conservative media Facebook pages, reinforcing the use of Islamophobic rhetoric.
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