Communication Theory and Methodology 2001 Abstracts
Communication Theory and Methodology Division
Message Credibility and Congruence in First- and Third-Person Estimations • Julie Andsager, Washington State University and H. Allen White, Murray State University • This experiment explores how message characteristics such as perceived credibility and congruence with the reader’s attitude influence third-person and first-person perceptions. One of two versions of a persuasive message on abortion rights was presented to 158 subjects, who estimated the effect on their attitudes, most people’s and pro-choice and pro-life others. Message congruence did not directly affect attitudes, but related to credibility, which had a positive first-person effect. Social distance did not relate to estimations.
A Comparison of Target Publics’ and Expert Coders’ Perceptions of Alcoholic Beverage Advertising: A Receiver-Oriented Content Analysis • Erica Weintrub Austin, Petra Guerra, Stacey Hust, Amber Caral-Reaume Miller, and Bruce Pinkleton, Washington State University • Media scholars often warn against inferring effects by examining media content, because meaning exists within the receiver rather than in the message itself. Only to the extent receivers and experts perceive messages similarly can exposure-based studies assert that effects are attributable to particular content analyzed separately by experts. Accordingly, this study examined the extent to which traditional content analysis performed by trained experts concurred with the meaning in messages as reported by typical recipients of those messages. Results from a traditional content analysis of 73 print alcohol ads using two sets of expert coders were compared with results from a receiver-oriented content analysis, which used members of the target public as coders. College students (n =520) comprised the target public for the analysis of a random sample of 40 ads. Z scores indicated that receivers and coders largely agreed on manifest content but disagreed frequently – often dramatically – on latent content. More sensitive t -tests indicated significant differences existed on every content characteristic evaluated.
Media Literacy: A Review and Critical Assessment of its Diverse Literature • Stefne Lenzmeier Broz, Ohio State University • This paper attempts to unify the varied research in media literacy in order to make sense of this growing yet fragmentary movement and to organize the widely varied literature by the focus, objectives, and depth of the initiative. A critical assessment of the literature, theoretical links, and application to health messages are provided and will point to opportunities and challenges that can be met through healthy skepticism and a healthy dose of theory.
Counteracting the Biasing Effect of Unrepresentative Exemplification on News Readers’ Issue Perception • Hao-Chieh Chang, Chinese University of Hong Kong • Use of unrepresentative exemplification has been shown to mislead news recipients’ perceptions of majority/minority position featured in the base-rate information. This study examined the effects of vivid presentation and causal information in counteracting the biasing influence of unrepresentative exemplification. Results showed that 1) the vivid presentation of base-rate information increased recall of such information., 2) the presence of causal information increased the utilization of base rate information, 3) the observed effects sustained both in the issue of high relevance and low relevance to news readers.
Applying the Health Belief Model to Promote Healthy Lifestyles via Television in Poland • Fiona Chew, Syracuse University, Sushma Palmer, Center for Communications, Health and the Environment, Zofia Slonska, National Institute of Cardiology and Kalyani Subbiah, Syracuse • This study applied the framework of the health belief model (HBM) to examine the impact of a preventive health TV program series on health knowledge and behavior. Using data from a post-test control field experiment with 151 viewers and 146 nonviewers in Poland, hierarchical regression analysis showed stronger support for the HBM factors of efficacy, susceptibility, seriousness and salience in their contribution towards health behavior among TV viewers compared to nonviewers. Cues to action variables (including TV viewing) and health knowledge boosted efficacy among viewers. Without the advantage of receiving health information from the TV series, nonviewers relied on their basic disease fears on one hand, and interest in good health on the other to take steps towards becoming healthier. A preventive health TV series can increase health knowledge and enhance health beliefs which in turn contribute to healthy lifestyles.
A Communication “Mr. Fit?” Living with No Significant Difference • Fiona Chew, Syracuse University, Sushma Palmer, Center for Communications, Health and the Environment, and Kalyani Subbiah, Syracuse • This methodological report addresses internal validity problems including contamination and randomization. It profiles an empirical study and examines the methodological soundness of decisions made. Focusing on the science of research is as important as focusing on the theoretical constructs guiding research.
Racial Cues and Political Ideology: An Examination of Associative Priming • David Domke, University of Washington • This research theorizes that the presence or absence in political conversation of racial cues – that is, references by elites and news media to images commonly understood as tied to particular racial or ethnic groups – may substantially influence whether citizens’ racial cognitions contribute to their political judgments. In particular, such symbolic cues in discourse may activate an important linkage between an individual’s racial perceptions and political ideology, which some scholars suggest have become closely intertwined in the U.S. political environment. With this in mind, an experiment was conducted in which the news discourse about crime was systematically altered – as including racial cues or not – within controlled political information environments to examine how individuals process, interpret, and use issue information in forming political judgments. The findings suggest that racial cues not only “trigger” the association between racial perceptions and political ideology, but in turn may prompt individuals to become more ideologically distinct in their political evaluations.
The primes of our times?: An examination of the “power” of visual images • David Domke, David Perlmutter and Meg Spratt, University of Washington • Claims by political and news elites about the influence of visual images are far more common than actual evidence of such effects. This research attempts to gain insight into the “power” of visual images, specifically those that accompany lexical-verbal messages in the press. We argue that the widely held notion that vivid images often drive public opinion is overly simplistic; in contrast, we posit that images most often interact with individuals’ existing understandings of the world to shape information processing and judgments. With this in mind, we conducted an experiment in which news coverage was systematically altered – as including a famous photograph widely attributed great influence, or not – within otherwise constant information environments. Findings suggest that visual news images (a) influence people’s information processing in ways that can be understood only by taking into account individuals’ predispositions and values, and (b) at the same appear to have a particular ability to “trigger” considerations that spread through one’s mental framework to other evaluations.
Back To The Qualitative Drawing Board: Uses and Gratifications, Rap Music, and African American Teenagers • Tim Edwards, University of Arkansas • This study examined the uses and gratifications of rap music among African American teenagers using qualitative data. Results suggest that some African American teenagers listen to rap music for the beat as well as the lyrics. Teenagers involved in this study feel that rap artists speak directly to them, providing morality tales which can be useful in their (teenagers) own lives.
Ventriloquist or Dummy? A Model of How Sources Set the Investigative Agenda • Mark Feldstein, University of North Carolina • This conceptual paper proposes a new model of how sources set the investigative agenda. While the relationship between sources and beat reporters has been studied before, little work has been done about investigative reporters, who are ostensibly independent agenda-setters. However, the author’s “Dummy Model” posits that muckrakers are in fact often captives of their sources, deliberately concealing their hidden agendas from the public. This model suggests that investigative reporters may not really be an independent check on societal wrongdoing.
Emotional Television Viewing and Minority Perceptions of Television News: How Mexican Americans Process and Evaluate Television News about Mexican Americans • Yuki Fujioka, Georgia State University • This experiment examined the effects of emotional TV viewing on minority viewers processing and evaluation of TV news stories. Fifty-one Mexican American subjects viewed 12 emotional television news stories featuring Mexican Americans. They completed a cued recall test and evaluated recalled news stories. The study found a main effect of arousal, but not of valence, on viewers’ attention and memory. Negative messages were evaluated more negatively when they were arousing than when they were non-arousing.
INVOLVEMENT AND SELECTIVE ATTENTION TO POLITICAL NEWS • Joseph Graf and Sean Aday, George Washington University • Selective attention is a key concept in communication research despite equivocal supporting evidence. This paper advances selective attention research by (1) introducing unobtrusive measures of attention to on-line content, (2) finding consistent support for the selective attention hypothesis using these measures, and (3) finding support for the hypothesized interaction between involvement and selective attention. This hypothesis proposes that selective attention will increase as a subject’s involvement in an issue increases.
GLOBAL TRIADIZATION: A theoretical framework for global communication research • Shelton A. Gunaratne, Minnesota State University • A macro theory that recognizes the world’s three competing center-clusters and their respective hinterlands offers a realistic framework for global communication research. This study has used recent data on world trade, computers, Internet hosts and high-tech exports to map the triadization of the world in the Information Age. The original dependency theory and world-system theory perspectives emphasized the hierarchical linking of national societies to the capitalist world-economy in a center-periphery structure. The proposed global-triadization formulation looks at the center-periphery structure in terms of a capitalist world-economy dominated by three competing center economic clusters, each of which has a dependent hinterland comprising peripheral economic clusters. These clusters may not necessarily be geographically contiguous. Strong-weak relationships may exist within each center-cluster, as well as within each periphery-cluster, with one center-cluster occupying a hegemonic role. The rudimentary Information-Society Power Index, constructed for this study, can guide the researcher to test an abundance of hypotheses on the pattern of global communication and information flow with particular attention to source, message, channel, and receiver.
Presidential Agenda Setting: The Weekly Radio Addresses and Foreign Policy • Beverly Horvit, Winthrop University • This paper examines how presidents influence the media agenda with weekly radio addresses and if their ability is enhanced when discussing foreign policy or when the nation faces a military crisis. The radio addresses by Presidents Reagan and Clinton, as well as coverage in the New York Times, were examined for 1983 and 1993. Reagan was more successful than Clinton at attracting news coverage, and neither used the radio addresses to discuss a military crisis.
Cyber House Rules: A Path Model Examining How Convenience and Reliance on the Web Predict Online Credibility • Thomas Johnson, University of Southern Illinois, and Barbara Kaye, Valdosta State University • This study surveyed politically interested Web users online during the 2000 campaign to examine whether they view Internet sources as credible and whether reliance on the Web, reliance on traditional sources, Web, convenience, political and demographic variables predict credibility of online media. A greater percentage of respondents judged online media credible in 2000 than in the 1996 presidential campaign. Reliance on traditional media proved the best predictor of online credibility followed by political trust and convenience.
Interpersonal Discussion as a Moderator of News Framing Effects on Political Issue Interpretation • Heejo Keum, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although numerous studies have examined the effects of news frames on the individuals’ interpretation of political issues, there has been no work looking at the role of interpersonal discussion in framing effects. Using an experimental manipulation, this study analyzes the interpersonal discussion as a moderator of news framing effects. The findings indicate that framing effects on issue interpretation are stronger among individuals having low level of interpersonal discussion than among people with high level of discussion.
THINK ABOUT IT THIS WAY: The attribute agenda-setting function of the press and the public’s evaluation of a local issue • Sei-Hill Kim, Dietram Scheufule, and James Shanahan, Cornell University • This study tested attribute agenda-setting function of the media, an extended version of agenda-setting hypothesis, which hypothesizes correspondence between the prominent issue attributes in the media and the agenda of attributes among audience members. Our opinion survey on a local issue, combined with content analysis of a local newspaper, revealed that mass media, by covering certain aspects of an issue prominently, can influence how salient these aspects are among audience members. We also found an important outcome of attribute agenda-setting, attribute priming effects. Our data analyses indicated that the issue attributes salient in the media were functioning significant dimensions of issue evaluation among audience members. We conclude that the media, by emphasizing certain attributes of an issue, tell us “how to think about” the issue as well as “what to think about.” We also discuss several conceptual and operational considerations for the attribute agenda-setting hypothesis.
Use of Online News Sites: Development of Habit and Automatic Procedural Processing • Maria Len-Rios and Clyde Bentley, University of Missouri • The “newspaper habit” is a U.S. cultural symbol, yet researchers of online media use are not sure how habits will develop and function online. This paper presents a theoretical perspective to examine habit and offers data from two surveys. Findings suggest that habit for online news may be more difficult to foster because habit appears less time-bound online, thus lessening the context stability for habit development.
The Learned Helplessness Effect of In effective Recommendation in Threat Messages • Yulian Li, University of Minnesota • no abstract
Political Advertising and The “Transaction Process” Model of Campaign Agenda Setting in The 2000 New York Senatorial Election • Joon-Soo Lim, University of Florida • no abstract
Online Use Activity and User Gratification-Expectations • Carolyn Lin, Cleveland State University • As a hybrid communication medium, the Internet optimizes communication channel functions in addition to serving as a rudimentary interactive encyclopedia of information content. The present study explores the relations between online access patterns for the most widely utilized online search categories and their use gratification-expectations. Data from a probability sample of Internet users suggests that entertainment, surveillance and habituality are the three most expected gratifications for online use. Few differences in usage patterns between novice and more experienced users were found.
Building a Health Promotion Agenda in Local Newspapers: Community Structural Pluralism and News about Breast Cancer • Beverly Martinson and Douglas Blanks Hindman, North Dakota State University • This study is an analysis of a four year, National Cancer Institute-funded study devoted to promoting mammography screening in a Northern Great Plains state. This study describes the agenda building techniques used by local volunteer health organizations that were part of the campaign. Findings show that community volunteers were more effective in obtaining coverage in smaller, less structurally pluralistic communities and in communities with weekly newspapers.
Mental Maps of Fear and Connectedness to the Communication Infrastructure: The Case of Son Los Angeles • Sorin Matei, Sandra Ball-Rokeach, and Jack Linchuan Qui, University of Southern California • Using Geographic information systems techniques fear of urban space is studied as an effect of people’s connections to their residential area “communication infrastructure.” Spatial-statistical analyses reveal that fear perceptions of Los Angeles urban space are associated with presence of non-White and non-Asian minorities. Respondents more strongly connected both to television and interpersonal communication channels are relatively more fearful of minorities than those who are less strongly connected to them.
Reflecting and connecting: Testing a Communication Mediation Model of Civic Participation • Jack M. McLeod, Jessica Zubric, Heejo Keum, Sameer Deshpande, Jaeho Cho, Susan E Stein, and Mark Heather, University of Wisconsin-Madison • This study tests a Communication Mediation model of civic participation that specifies the influence of three communication variables: informational use (newspapers, television news, Internet search), discussion of local issues, and the reflective integration (reflecting) as an information processing strategy. Evidence is from a probability sample telephone survey of 357 adults in a local community. All three communication processes mediate the effects of demographic and social-psychological variables on three forms of civic participation. Media effects on civic participation are mainly indirect through their influence on factual knowledge, cognitive complexity (connecting), and beliefs that average citizens can and should make a difference in acting on the local urban growth issue.
Latency to Respond to an Internet Survey as a Predictor of Bias Toward Socially Desirable Outcomes in Political Attitude and Behavior, and Media Use Questions • John Newhagen, University of Maryland • This study compares outcomes of survey questions with socially desirable outcomes to latency to respond data. The efficacy of the latency measure is examined by categorizing respondents’ answers to the question “Did you vote in the last presidential election?” Three categories were created, based on the idea that it takes more cognitive ~ and therefore more time, to lie than it does to tell the truth. They are “real voters,” “liars,” and those who said they did not vote. Results show that “real voters” had the highest political self efficacy, followed by “liars,” and those who said they did not vote. “Liars” reported using about the same amount of news media than “real voters” or those who said they did not vote, but took longer to do so. This suggests they may be over reporting media use. Latency, used as a measure of mental effort, also is compared to questions used in social desirability scales intended to lead respondents to answers that “fake good” outcomes. Those data show those misreporting their behavior on the voting question may also took longer to answer the social desirability questions, even though they might not have been lured into the “fake good” response. Overall the latency data bring self report to a full range of political attitude and behavior, and other questions with pro-social outcomes into question. Results are discussed in terms of their implications for political polling, where sample stratification to identify “likely voters” based on demographic information may only tangentially address the issue of respondent veracity. It further looks at the implications of the possibility that -a significant number of respondents may systematically over report certain kinds of media use and political participation.
MEYROWITZ, MCLUHAN, MEDIUM THEORY AND ME: Why medium theory needs to be taught alongside techniques for new communication technologies • Ronda Oosterhoff, Calvin College • At the 2000 ICA convention, a panel discussed nominees for a communications canon. Fully one-third of these were examples of medium theory, yet the only living author of the three medium theorists listed argues that this branch of thought is misunderstood and under-addressed (1996). This paper includes a brief overview of medium theory and its key theorists and an analysis of a month-long focus on medium theory in a communications class at a midwestern college. The paper concludes incorporates survey results into recommendations for teaching medium theory in the college classroom.
Effects of Negative Political Decision-Making • Bruce Pinkleton, Nam-Hyun Um, and Erica Weintraub Austin • A total of 236 students participated in an experiment testing the effects of positive, negative and negative-comparative political advertising on key variables in the political decision-making process. Results showed that the more negative the advertising stimuli, the less useful participants found the ads. In addition, the more negative the stimuli, the more negativity participants reported toward political campaigns and the less efficacy they reported toward political participation. Comparative advertising stimuli, however, produced lower levels of cynicism, particularly when compared to negative advertising, which produced higher levels of cynicism. No effects on apathy were found. In terms of candidate evaluations and voting intention, the targeted candidate’s evaluations and voting intentions fell in response to the sponsor’s use of negative advertising. In the most negative advertising condition, the sponsor’s evaluations and voting intentions also fell, revealing a backlash effect. The findings suggest that negative advertising influences citizens’ candidate evaluations and voting intentions. While such advertising is perceived as negative and contributes to citizens’ disgust with campaigns, however, this strategy does not automatically increase citizens’ cynicism or apathy.
Educational, Entertaining, Integral or Irrelevant? Toward a Deeper Understanding of Mediated Environmental Communication • Wendy Worrall Redal and Joseph G. Champ, University of Colorado-Boulder • no abstract
FAITH-BASED INITIATIVE? Religion, Mass Media, and Political Participation in America • Dietam Scheufele, Matthew Nisbet, Eunjung Lee, Dominique Broossard, and Mark Chong, Cornell University • Recently, there has been a renewed focus on religious institutions and networks as important catalysts for political participation. All of these approaches share the assumption that religious networks promote among their members the essential components of political participation: motivation, recruitment, and ability. Using survey data from the 2000 National Election Survey, we examine the processes that link religious and secular networks, mass and interpersonal communication, and various indicators of democratic citizenship, including political participation. Our results show that the role of religious networks is limited, compared to more secular networks, which provide an ideal setting for citizens to gain and exchange information, increase feelings of efficacy, and most importantly engage in various forms of participation.
The Interplay of News Frames and Elite Cues: Conditional Influences on the Activation of Mental Models • Dhavan Shah, Jessica Zubric, Heejo Keum, Cory Armstrong, Michael Boyle, and Lauren Guggenheim, University of Wisconsin-Madison • Although numerous studies have examined the attitudinal and behavioral effects of news frames (i.e., organizing devices used to construct press accounts), little research has considered the possible interplay of such frames with elite cues (i.e., labels and terms used to identify issue domains and policy debates). Further, relatively few studies have examined framing and cueing effects on cognitive network variables such as common-sense mental models or lay theories regarding social phenomena. Using a 2X2 experimental manipulation concerning urban growth embedded within a broader survey, this study tested the interactive effects of news frames and elite cues on the activation of mental models concerning this issue. To do so, the experiment framed the problem of urban growth at the individual and the societal level and alternately embedded the cues of “urban sprawl” and “suburban development” in the news stories, all the while keeping other substantive features of a radio report constant. The findings indicate that frames and cues do interact to activate more or less complex cognitive models, with combination of individual frame/sprawl cue and societal frame/development cue generating the most complex lay theories about urban growth. Possible implications on learning and political behavior are given, as well as directions for future research.
Interactivity and Media Power: Will Online Delivery Erode the Gatekeeping and Agenda Setting Functions? • Dan Shaver, Michigan State University • Online news delivery differs from traditional delivery Systems in several significant ways, including the degree of audience/producer interactivity. This paper proposes a taxonomy for quantifying audience involvement within an individual medium. It then examines the impact of online delivery and interactivity on medium content compared to traditional newspaper products. It concludes that online audience influence appears likely to reduce the information worker’s degree of independent control over content, eroding the basis for social control.
U.S. and South Korean Television News Coverage of North Korea: Before and After the 2000 Korean Summit Meeting • Ju Yong Ha and Byong Ryul Shin, University of Southern Illinois • no abstract
The Role of Advertising in the Formation of Ideal Drinking Scenarios Among Underage Youth • Leslie B. Snyder and Mark A. Hamilton, University of Connecticut • no abstract
HOW INDIVIDUALS EXPLAIN SOCIAL PROBLEMS: THE INFLUENCES OF MEDIA USE • Mira Sotirovic, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign • This study examines the role of media use in individuals’ explanations of crime and welfare. Attribution theory and the information processing approach to media effects provide a theoretical framework for this research. Media effects on explanations of social problems are enhanced by individuals’ patterns of information processing. The study also shows that individualistic explanations of crime and welfare are related to support for the death penalty and to opposition toward welfare programs.
Titillation, Frustration, or just plain Orientation? Teasing out the “Tease Effect” of Slow Downloading • Shyam Sundar, Sriram Kalyanaraman, Penn State University, and Carson Wagner, University of Colorado • Prior research has shown that the slow-downloading version of a sexual image is more physiological arousing than the fast-loading version of the same image. It is not clear however whether this is due to titillation, frustration, or orienting response. This paper explores these three theoretical mechanisms for explaining the so-called “Tease effect” with two experimental studies. Results suggest that content arousability is critically important in inferring effects of download speed upon arousal and excitation transfer.
Innovativeness and Perceptions of Faculty innovation Champions on the Diffusion of World Wide Web Course Features • Patrick J. Sutherland, Bethany College and Ohio University • This study examined perceptions of faculty and administrators involved in courses with Web features diffusing at journalism and mass communication programs. This research considered the role of the innovation, champion and whether they found interpersonal communication to be most effective in explaining features to others. Innovativeness characteristics of administrators and faculty were measured. Two national surveys were conducted. Innovation champions scored higher on innovativeness and intrapersonal communication was most effective in explaining Web course features.
IMPLICIT ATTITUDES AND ANTI-DRUG PSAs: AUTOMATIC PROCESSES AND UNREASONED ACTION • Carson B Wagner, University of Colorado-Boulder • Historically, anti-drug PSA research has focused on explicit drug-related attitudes, but dual process models suggest that automatically-activated implicit attitudes may be more important for predicting behavior. Two within-participants experiments were run to test the relative ability of PSAs to change explicit (N = 13) and implicit (N = 26) attitudes. Results suggest anti-drug ads are better at changing explicit attitudes and implicit attitudes are harder to change than theory suggests. Theoretical, methodological, and practical implications are discussed.
How does political commentary shape perceptions of political candidates? A quasi-experimental investigation of the 2000 Vice-Presidential Debate • Fang Wan and Patrick Meirick, University of Minnesota • no abstract
Going Negative on the Internet: How Presidential Candidates Used the World Wide Web During The 2000 Presidential Campaign • Robert Wicks, Souley Buobacar, and Kayla Johnson, University of Arkansas • This study examines the issues and topics that dominated the 2000 presidential campaign on Internet homepages of George W. Bush and Al Gore. It also investigated the extent to which the two major party candidates used negativity as strategy to strengthen their position and to weaken support for the opposing candidate. The content analysis of the presidential web sites performed reveals that much like contemporary political television advertising, web sites were rife with attacks on one’s opponent. Nearly three quarters of the information posted was negative in nature. About one quarter of the messages posed focused on education and social security.
“You’re No Jack Kennedy!” The Influence of Post-Debate Commentary on Candidate Evaluations • Jennifer Williams and Christina Fiebich, University of Minnesota • This paper presents the results of a natural experiment conducted during a vice-presidential debate that occurred during the 2000 Election Campaign. It examines the effect of post-debate commentary on the criteria that subjects use when evaluating candidates. Subjects were assigned to one of four conditions, “debate only,” “debate-plus CBS commentary,” “debate-plus ABC commentary” and “debate-plus NBC commentary.” After watching the debate, subjects completed a questionnaire which contained both close-ended and open-ended responses. This particular paper presents the results of an analysis conducted on the open-ended responses. The findings demonstrate that while post-debate commentaries influenced the criteria subjects used in their evaluations of the candidates at the categorical level (e.g., issue, trait or performance), they did not influence the specific issue, trait and performance dimensions (e.g., abortion, charisma, articulate). Additionally, although the findings regarding framing effects were only partially supported, the results provide important insight into the weight that subjects assigned to each category when comparing the two vice-presidential nominees.
Acculturation, Cultivation, and Daytime TV Talk Shows • Hyung-Jin Woo and Joseph R. Dominick, University of Georgia • This study is to explore how acculturation and cultivation effects of daytime TV talk shows affect international students’ attitudes and perceptions toward human relationships among primary groups in the U.S. Because daytime TV talk shows overrepresent vulgar, somewhat bizarre, and deviant behaviors about everyday life, heavy exposure to these shows may affect international students in distorted way. Furthermore, depending on different acculturation level with host society of international students, negative stereotypes toward American and American society of international students may be pronounced. The results of this study indicate that lack of information (language & experience) with host country should result in media orientations different from those who are more acculturated into the host society and should, in turn, affect cultivation in a unique manner.
Reassessing the Impact of Recession News: A Time-Series Analysis of Economic Communication in Japan, 1988-1999 • H. Denis Wu, Louisiana State University, Michael McCraken, University of Missouri, and Shinichi Saito, Tokyo Women’s Christian University • This study investigated three critical variables in economic communication the state of the economy, recession coverage, and consumer confidence. These time-series were found to be cointegrated with one another during the time period. The economic condition that affected how the three variables interacted in the last U.S. recession did not generate a similar effect on the Japanese counterpart. The newspapers’ coverage of recession in Japan followed the economy and the public’s sentiment at different lags. The Japanese’s confidence level was influenced by the economic indicator but not by the recession coverage regardless of the economic condition. The study also discovered no substantial media effect and discussed several factors that might have contributed to the phenomenon.
Teens as the Vulnerable Surfers: The Third-Person Perception and Commercial Web Sites Censorship • Seounmi Youn, North Dakota, Fan Wang and Ron Faber, University of Minnesota • The third-person perception states that when confronted with negatively perceived message, people tend to overestimate the message’s effect on others compared to one’s-self. It is also suggested that this perceptual bias motivate people to take action against such message. To explore this possible relationship, this study examined the perceived effects on self and others •other adults and teenagers • for commercial web sites. The results found the perceptual disparity between the estimated impacts on self and others for commercial web sites and further demonstrated that this third-person perception explains pro-censorship attitudes toward these web sites, even after controlling for potential confounding variables.
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