Search

Despite both scholarly and popular claims that citizen journalism (CJ) represents a growing democratizing force in the journalistic field, recent scholarship in the area has noted the decline of the organizational population of CJ. In this paper, we investigate how individual characteristics of sites and the dynamics of larger organizational population affect a CJ site’s risk of experiencing a mortality. Drawing on the largest sample to date of US-based English-language CJ sites, this study examines the risk of site mortality through an event history framework. Findings indicate that the strongest predictor of a site’s mortality is the age of the site, consistent with organizational population theory’s ‘liability of newness.’ We also find that for-profit and community-based sites have lower rates of site mortality, indicating that adopting legitimate conventions of journalism may serve as a protective buffer to site death. The results offer mixed evidence on whether CJ has become more professionalized via attrition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On 26 April 2007, US sportswriter Mike Penner told readershewas transsexual and thathewould return to the paper as Christine Daniels. Journalists immediately analysed and assessed this column. Three months later, Daniels' first byline appeared assheassumedherformer beats. Yet, after eight months in the spotlight, Daniels faded from view and, without explanation, Penner's name returned. Although the paper did not offer details on Penner's return,hisre-emergence proved newsworthy. While the byline appeared consistently, Penner rarely appeared in public. On 27 November 2009,hecommitted suicide. By interrogating the fragmented coverage of Penner/Daniels in these three periods of his/her life – transition, (re/de)transition and suicide – this paper argues that the media selectively framed Penner/Daniels's gender identity and used gender pronouns purposefully to create specific meanings. Few described Penner/Daniels in entirety; as a result, the life was flattened into a one-dimensional category of gender advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines disability terminology to explore how the news media frame cultural representations of the disability community. More specifically, the paper examines the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act on journalist's language choices about disability topics. A content analysis of news stories using disability terms in The Washington Post and The New York Times during the past decade was conducted. The paper illustrates that disability community identity continues to be formed, transformed and maintained through news media presentations of disability terminology. The paper argues that the US Disability Rights Movement had some success during the 1990s in putting forth language that advances its aims, though the study also suggests that some journalists continue to use terms that perpetuate limiting, narrow stereotypes about people with disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the communication-acculturation perspective, this study assumed active roles of mass media during the acculturation process among foreign immigrants. Employing major postulates and methodologies used in the "cultivation" hypothesis, surveys among two Korean communities in the U.S. found little substantial support for the cultivation hypothesis in general, nor (or the "resonance effect" in particular. While the inter- cultural testing of the hypothesis failed to find evidence for television's perceptual influence, the study generally supported previous findings showing positive associations of various media orientations with antecedent factors such as perceived language proficiency, length of stay, educational background and gratifications sought from media exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well known that mass media have the ability to frame a sociopolitical issue in specific ways, which can have considerable impact on the public's thoughts and perceptions regarding the issue. Through analyzing coverage of capital punishment in the New York Times since 1960 and then conducting an experiment in which we assessed individual-level responses to differently framed news stories, we show (a) the dramatic emergence of a new "innocence frame" within the past 10 years that accentuates imperfections in the justice system, and (b) the much greater impact of this frame on individuals' thoughts - in particular on those who favor the death penalty - when compared to the traditional morality-based frame. We suggest that the latter finding can be explained because individuals tend to resist changing their interpretations of issues based on arguments that contradict their core moral or religious beliefs; however, they seem quite receptive to new information along dimensions that they previously had not considered. This research also implies that U.S. trends toward lower sentencing rates and eventual public opinion changes are likely to continue as long as media and public discussion remains focused on questions regarding flaws in the justice system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a new institutionalism approach to news grounded in sociological and historical approaches to new institutionalism and argues that this approach to news production has several advantages. Among them are that it encourages analysts to see the news as an outcome of interaction between journalists and other political actors, that it allows for variance in news coverage around a general tendency toward homogeneity in the news, and, finally, that it encourages scholars to examine the full range of news outlets in the media universe rather than to concentrate their attention on the narrow world of mainstream elite media. This approach is compared and contrasted with that offered by Sparrow elsewhere in this issue, and future directions for research are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on the images of power and professional status of women in contemporary media organizations in the U.S. Radical improvement in the cultural visibility of women; Impact of liberal feminist on communication research; Accounts on the social perspectives of sociology.