AEJMC 2005 papers (accepted) - 10 examples relevant to "democracy"
AEJMC is the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication; AEJMC divisions are described at the organizaton's site. Graduate students who might want to become educators in journalism, telecom, public relations or advertising should join AEJMC.
Communication Theory & Methodology Division
Communication and Democratic Participation: A Critical Review and Synthesis - Ellen Kanervo, Weiwu Zhang and Caroline Sawyer, Austin Peay State - The past decade has seen the flourishing of scholarly work on citizen participation since Putnam’s provocative thesis that the number of Americans coming together in community organizations for the civic good is declining. However, conclusions concerning citizen participation and media’s role in it are often conflicting and contradictory, and comprehensive assessments of the participation literature are scarce.
The Fourth Estate in the Digital Age: Formulating A New Role for Journalists Based in Theories of Civic Discourse - Jack Rosenberry, St. John Fisher College - Ideas drawn from theories of cyber-democracy, or use of the Internet’s interactive nature to foster political discourse, can be used to define new ways in which online journalists can become facilitators of that discourse.
International Communication Division
Does the Internet Affect Attitudes? Comparing Democratic Values Of U. S. Journalism Students With Those in Post-Soviet Nations - Byron T. Scott, Anya Litvak and Irma Guseva, University of Missouri - Columbia and Stanley Ketterer, Oklahoma State University - Two hundred and seventy-eight second-year journalism students in the United States, Russia, Bulgaria, and Albania were given a structured questionnaire identical to that used in a 2001 study of students in Kazakhstan. Focusing on media usage and democratic attitudes, this pilot analysis pays particular attention to differences that might be related to Internet usage between U.S. subjects and the youth of post-Soviet societies.
Magazine Division
Framing the Enemy Following September 11 - Jeff Patterson, University of Texas at Austin - The news media’s rush to explain terrorist motivations in the weeks after September 11, 2001 led to thematic frames of traditional depictions of enemies (i.e., as barbaric; criminal; antidemocratic; evil; beast/inhuman; as death). Given critics’ concerns of news media coverage being overly simplistic in portraying the Middle East and Islam, the paper raises concerns about the news media’s in creating sufficient images by which rational choices are made/justified in the in the first weeks of the new war on terror.
Mass Communication and Society Division
Political Knowledge, Civic Engagement, and Media Use Across Election Campaigns - Robert Kirby Goidel and David D. Kurpus, Louisiana State University - Understanding the role of the media in informing and engaging the public in democratic political processes has been at the core of empirically based mass communication research. Yet, despite a considerable body of literature, we know surprisingly little about how patterns of media use differ across elections (presidential, senate, and mayoral) within a single election season, and media use translates into civic engagement.
Second Level Agenda Setting and Political Advertising: Investigating the transfer of issue and attribute saliency during the 2004 U.S. presidential election - Guy Golan, Louisiana State University and Spiro K. Kiousis, University of Florida and Misti L McDaniel, Louisiana State University - The current study examines the agenda setting function of televised political advertisements during the 2004 U.s. presidential election. Adding to the growing research on second level agenda setting, we examined how the advertising agendas of the Bush and Kerry campaigns may have impacted public evaluations of the two candidates. Our results provide support for the agenda setting hypothesis as well as mixed support for the second level hypothesis.
Democratic Consequences of Hostile Media Perceptions: The Case of Gaza Settlers - Yariv Tsfati and Jonathan Cohen, University of Haifa - In this paper, we examine the consequences of the hostile media phenomenon and advance the argument that people’s perceptions of hostile coverage shape their trust in mainstream media institutions. Media trust in turn affects trust in democracy and willingness to accept democratic decisions.
Media Ethics Division
Bloggers Strike a Nerve: Examining the Intersection of Blogging and Journalism - Bryan Murley and Kim Smith - University of South Carolina - Researchers conducted a census after the 2004 presidential election of the authors of the top 100 most-visited, current-events blogs to discover what they thought about politics, their role as bloggers in society, and as citizen journalists. More than 90 % considered blogs an important contributor to democracy; 93 % said fact-checking the traditional news media was an important; and nearly 90 % opposed using an editor to check postings for accuracy.
Minorities and Communication Division
Good or Bad TV? Mediating Race and Racism on MTV’s The Real World - Ji Hoon Park, University of Pennsylvania - This study explores the democratic potential of reality TV shows through a textual and audience analysis of two episodes of The Real World Philadelphia. The findings suggest that The Real World Philadelphia served as an important cultural forum that offered an opportunity to witness an incident of racial profiling. Not only did white and nonwhite viewers alike sympathize with the victim, they all engaged in thinking of solutions for gaining a mutual understanding of the cast members who had different racial experiences.
Newspaper Division
Stepping Back from the Gate: Online Newspaper Editors and the Co-Production of Content in Campaign 2004 - Jane Singer, Iowa - In their coverage of the 2004 political campaign, editors of Web sites affiliated with major U.S. newspapers continued to emphasize the provision of credible information. But they moved toward seeing that information less as an end product and more as a basis for user engagement, participation, and personalization. This study suggests a way that journalists might preserve their gatekeeping role in our democracy while simultaneously accommodating the interactive nature of the Internet.
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AEJMC is the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication