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This study explores how playing "Papers, Please" (PP), a serious game that puts players in the role of an immigration officer, affects attitudes toward immigration after repeated exposure. The results are compared to a control group longitudinally playing "The Westport Independent" (WI), a game that puts players in the role of a newspaper editor. Though PP and WI players' attitudes showed no difference at baseline and after the first play session, PP players showed decreased attitudes toward migrants after the second play session compared with WI players. PP players also showed decreased perceived behavioral control in helping migrants relative to WI players after the first play session, but PP players' baseline and second session perceived behavioral control scores showed no differences. Additionally, perceived behavioral control for helping immigrants significantly decreased among PP players after the first and second play sessions relative to baseline scores, but the first and second PP play sessions showed no differences in perceived behavioral control scores. WI players' scores did not change over time. Overall, preliminary findings imply that playing PP reduced attitudes toward migrants relative to WI players. The results are linked to the cultivation hypothesis and vicarious reinforcement effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the socially constructed nature of money and its function as a medium of mass communication. A paper which examines the imagery and symbolism of U.S. paper currency before and after its nationalization in 1861 is presented. The evolution of U.S. national currency from 1861 forward is characterized by three major developments: an increasing standardization, a reduced repertoire of portraits and imagery, and an overall reduction of different types of issues.

Unlike most recent presidential candidates coming from privileged, well-established roots in mainstream society, political newcomer Barack Obama's 2008 presidential candidacy broke the mold as an African-American from a single-parent family. That situation challenged journalists trying to offer a cohesive narrative of the campaign. This paper argues that when faced with unfamiliar situations, journalists turn to familiar stories drawn from collective memory and mythical narrative to facilitate news that is resonant to their culture and their media audiences.This paper presents the results of a qualitative textual analysis of American news and editorials about the Obama presidential campaign to explore the role of collective memory and mythical narrative in covering that candidate. In the case of Obama's campaign, the candidate himself introduced collective memory of endearing past presidents Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. Although journalists could have rejected those comparisons - as was the case for vice presidential candidate Dan Quayle - the feel-good memory of those past leaders and the irony of the comparisons made them journalistically useful. In addition, when Obama's acceptance speech ironically coincided with an anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic "I Have A Dream" speech, journalists introduced the racial element of collective memory that Obama himself had avoided.In all, the study found that although collective memory served as a useful guide for journalists, mythical narratives played a more subtle role because of the inevitable comparisons to those American leaders and the sacrificial hero narrative that their lives mirrored. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the Asian American student newspaper Gidra, which was published from 1969-1974, as a way of advancing our notions of the role and function of ethnic media within minority populations. Studies of ethnic media rarely include radical papers, as it is theorized that ethnic communities have a vested interest in avoiding coverage of conflict. However, the importance of Gidra in terms of Asian American identity construction and contribution to activist movements cannot be overlooked, particularly with regard to conflict. I investigate the publication through three categories: external conflict, internal conflict, and productive conflict created by the paper itself. This counters the notion that ethnic media shy from covering conflict, and importantly contributes to our understanding of the history of the Asian American Movement as it was shaped by the radical press. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The digital age is characterized by the increasing availability and pervasiveness of electronic communication products and services. These advancements, epitomized by the Internet, greatly increase the speed and efficiency of transactions and catalyze productivity and economic growth. The architecture of the Internet separates content from ownership on the network and allows for application and service providers to lie beyond the jurisdiction of national rules and regulations (Bach 2001). While characteristics of the Internet appear to make this technology “borderless,” our geo-political global makeup, the backbone of the law, remains delineated in terms of sovereign nations. These nations follow vastly different approaches in their attempt to regulate the Internet and the digital economy. Thus, while the Internet can be viewed as a global network, national governments have different standards for the treatment of personal information and identifiers. This essay first explores the cross-border variation in privacy protection in the United States and European Union, and discusses major regulatory initiatives implemented by both regions, including the EU Data Directive and the US Patriot Act. Theoretical analysis of privacy protection is offered to explain the considerable variation between the different regimes. An examination of the regulatory spillover in the travel industry with regard to passenger information concludes the practical analysis of this paper. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the key concepts that facilitate a pluralistic public sphere is the diversity of sources and issues provided by the media for deliberative civic communication. This paper examines the role of national and battleground state newspaper in providing diverse information sources and issues covered in a closely contested 2004 presidential campaign. Our analysis reveal that national and battleground newspapers significantly differ in their reliance on various governments, non-government, elite and non-elite sources. Results also indicate that national and battleground state newspapers significantly differ in their coverage of various issues. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hip hop is evident is all aspects of popular culture and Eminem has achieved a level of success unmatched in the world of hip-hop. Conscious of his race, Eminem stresses that he is not to be placed in the white rapper category but should be respected for his skills. Despite this yearning, his emergence in a musical genre linked to blackness furnishes a point of entry to outline strategies white MCÂ’s use to construct a non-racist form of whiteness. Popular culture and media are implicated in the social construction of race by providing texts reinforcing and maintaining essentialized notions of blackness and whiteness. Furthermore, the power and privilege of whiteness resides in its non-naming and in response, hip-hop clearly marks whiteness, and provides a space to critically interrogate and question its normalcy. With relatively few discussions pertaining to white participation in rap music this paper links the struggle for authenticity in the hip-hop world to the social constructions of race, and specifically whiteness. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the work of Benedict Anderson, research on the emergence of national consciousness in the US has largely focused on the role of print capitalism. Newspaper circulation, so the story goes, combined with geographically proximate centers of population and commerce to constitute the conditions necessary for inhabitants of the thirteen colonies to imagine themselves as part of a sovereign, limited political community whose members might never meet face to face. Without downplaying print capitalism's pivotal role in the formation of American national identity, this paper foregrounds the part played by bells, a medium whose contributions, to the formation of national identity and the shaping of the social world more generally, have been long overlooked by communication scholarship. At one time, bells composed the score and set the tempo for daily life in colonial America. They summoned listeners for civic and religious meetings, sounded the alarm when danger threatened, marked the hours, and regulated activity at the local level, but they also oriented listeners toward distant political and ecclesiastic communities. As tensions mounted between the British empire and its American colonies, bells played an important role in defining membership in communities, both face-to-face and imagined. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract / This paper examines whether a journalist may report an illegally wiretapped conversation, comparing the South Korea Sangho Lee case with the U.S. Bartnicki case. Sangho Lee was the first case in Korea, in which the reporting of wiretapping was argued in the courtroom. However, the Korean High Court, rejecting the journalist's immunity from liability, gave more value to the right of privacy than to freedom of the press. In contrast, the U.S. Supreme Court protected the journalist, who disclosed secretly and illegally wiretapped telephone conversations, under the shield of the First Amendment. Even if both countries have different laws and legal systems, these conflicting judgments mainly result from how the court understands the role of the media as a watchdog. I argue that the Korean press cannot have more freedom until the Korean court realizes the press "watchdog" function as an important value in society. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the extension of communication accommodation theory into intergroup communication and considers its applications to law enforcement training, practice and policies. The media plays a role in shaping the views of the average person of the police. This became apparent with the popularity of shows such as "Dragnet" and "NYPD Blue." Since 1972, U.S. citizens demonstrated some confidence in and support for law enforcement officers.

An essay is presented on the press and political discourse analysis on the healthcare policy of the U.S. It presents an analysis of its moral discourse aimed at separating the undeserving from deserving healthcare recipients of the country. Moreover, it mentions that undeserving recipients are regarded as consumers who are irresponsible.

This study examines 17 U.S. Supreme Court transcripts in oral arguments that took place in mass communication-related cases from December 8, 2004 to April 22, 2008. Researchers sought to understand differences among Justices in type of prompts given to lawyers at oral argument. In order to accomplish this, we categorized each prompt by a Justice as one of the following types: open-ended (who, what, when, where, why and how questions); disjunctive (question offers alternative possible answers); yes/no questions; leading questions (question itself suggests desired answer); rhetorical questions; and declarations or statements. These categories were derived from literature in interpersonal communication and legal studies. We hypothesized Supreme Court Justices would fall toward the non-question controlling, rather than open-ended inquisitive, end of what one scholar called the "continuum of control." Results are presented to discuss Justices' information-seeking profiles and the implications for broader communication study. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars from a variety of disciplines have observed that the coverage of the hallucinogenic drug LSD in popular magazines in the 1950s and 1960s seemed to stoke public interest in the drug. The lack of drug information in the mass media during much of the first half of the twentieth century may have helped this magazine coverage to have such a strong effect. Speech about other, illegal drugs was restricted in much of the media prior to the 1960s through a variety of means, including obscenity law and industry codes. This study examined some of the legal and pseudo-legal mechanisms that controlled speech about drugs and explored why LSD may have been covered differently in popular magazines. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past year witnessed an event unprecedented in modern telecommunications history. An otherwise obscure telecommunications policy debate spilled outside the rarefied airs of Congressional Committees and the Federal Communications Commission's eighth floor to rage across the Blogosphere, major newspapers, YouTube and episodes of The Daily Show. This contentious discussion centers on an issue known as "network neutrality," defined broadly as the non-discriminatory interconnectedness among data communication networks that allows users to access the content, and run the services, applications, and devices of their choice. As Congress debates whether network neutrality protections should be written into current legislation, the battle lines have been drawn between large telecommunications companies who own the pipes, on one side, and Internet content companies and public interest groups, on the other. This paper contextualizes recent events in relation to historical telecommunications antecedents. In doing so, we critically evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the current network neutrality debate and offer a set of guidelines for a new understanding of network neutrality. The paper concludes with an exploration of the social and political ramifications of this broader conception of network neutrality. We suggest that this "new network neutrality" provides a proactive foundation for creating a more democratic Internet. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on past studies of virtual community by illuminating the effect of offline gatherings ("meetups") on physically dispersed virtual communities. While research to date has examined the way in which online interaction affects offline community, the question of how offline interaction affects online community has largely been ignored. Non-obtrusive analysis of over eight years of user activity from a large, active online community suggests that the development of multiplex relationships -relationships maintained both online and off -enhances attendees' engagement with the online community as a whole, strengthens ties to other attendees, and contributes to the creation of bonding social capital. However, weak ties with non-attendees dissolve and bridging social capital is sacrificed as those who meet offline favor interaction with other attendees. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fewer than 10% of recording artists become profitable; the few who do constitute a form of labor in short supply. Labor shortage favors employees by increasing their bargaining power and mobility. The recording industry presents a stark example of employer response to labor shortage. In 1987 record companies obtained a "carve-out" of recording artists from a statutory 7-year limit on employment contracts, singling out recording artists from all other California workers, effectively exposing them to unlimited contractual bondage. My paper analyzes this under-studied moment in the history of the recording industry and argues that the contractual relations of "imperfectly substitutable" creative workers make visible the generally obscured regulatory rigidities that undergird today's increasingly "flexible" labor markets. It argues that, as a "limiting case" of employment in contemporary market society, recording artists' treatment in law and by employers illuminates the harsh politics at the core of the institution of employment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

U.S. newspaper reporters and editors have heard a chorus of calls for greater transparency in recent years. Journalists are being told to lift the curtain and tell readers how the news is gathered and produced. Yet little research has shown whether journalists are heeding such calls. This exploratory study content-analyzes editor's notes at major U.S. daily newspapers and finds little evidence that they are being used to increase transparency. Although editor's notes have generally become more prevalent, that trend appears to be tapering off. Editor's notes are seldom used to explain reporting and sourcing methods. Moreover, such notes typically are written from a third-person point of view rather than taking a more conversational approach. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 2000 presidential election, the United States is seen less as a dichotomy of Democrats and Republicans, and more as a dichotomy of "red states" and "blue states." This breakdown of the tendency of certain states to throw their electoral support one direction or the other seems to be increasingly referenced in political coverage, yet little academic study has been done to chronicle this shift. This study was designed not only to detect the presence of this terminology over the last five federal election cycles, but also to analyze if the use of the terms is related to the means by which the stories are framed. This content analysis suggests that the terms are indeed increasing in frequency, and are most closely associated with stories that are framed in terms of the contest of the election, and campaign strategy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how the American social movements of the 1960s and 1970s talked about the technology of their time. Through an analysis of a sample of underground newspapers, it highlights how the American counterculture thought of technology in a prevalently negative way. It identifies three negative discourses: technology of war, technology of capitalism, technology of repression. These three views are effectively condensed into the famous expression attributed to Huey P. Newton: "the spirit of the people is greater than the Man's technology", whose meaning and diffusion is traced throughout the sample. Two, more marginal, views - technology for abundance and technology for revolution - are also analyzed. I then argue that these diverging visions of technology are also different visions of social change. The paper thus contributes to the debate on the relationship between social movements and technologies by historicizing it and emphasizing the symbolic role that technology is invested with. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores how cultural context influences news content by comparing American and Swedish print and broadcast news stories about the 2003 war in Iraq. Using a theoretical foundation derived from the works of Hall (1980a, 1997) and Hofstede (1979), a theme analysis was conducted of broadcast television news and print news. Results indicate that the news media in Sweden presented a very different picture of the Iraq war as compared to the news media in the U.S. was represented differently in the two countries, simply by emphasizing different aspects. In the U.S., the war was described in terms of strategy, interpreted via a perspective from inside the American troops, and explained as the United States bringing freedom to the Iraqi people. Swedish media interpreted the war from a perspective of the international community and from Iraqi civilians’ point of view. They portrayed the war in terms of suffering civilians and explained it as a failure of the international community. As hypothesized, American media had comparatively more masculine content, while Swedish media had comparatively more feminine content. Implications of this study for future research on news media portrayals of international events are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes neighbors' online forum interactions to examine how differing ways of addressing racism result in miscommunication and disagreement among neighbors. Miscommunication among neighbors stems from the use of two differing discourses to discuss racism: folk theory of racism and critical theory of racism (Hill, 2008). Analysis in this paper illustrates that central to the way participants enact each of these discourses are the identities that participants invoke in their interactions. Talk reflecting folk theory, for example, tends to use person referencing practices that address each person as an individual and positions all individuals as equal. Talk reflecting critical theory, on the other hand, tends to reference different groups of people and emphasize inequality among different social groups in the neighborhood. When these discourses come into contact, neighbors who employ folk theory often interpret discussion of inequality among groups (e.g. White people are privileged and minorities are often excluded) as personal insults (e.g. I am White, and I am not privileged). Therefore, despite the well-intentioned efforts of these neighbors to address issues of racism, the discussions seem to exacerbate already existing tensions between White (folk theory) and non-White (critical theory) neighbors and hinder any actions neighbors would want to take to remedy issues of racism in their community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalism's adaptation to television fundamentally changed the nature and shape of journalistic work. This paper addresses one of the ways in which journalism changed as a result of the introduction of television technology: the focus on the appearance of TV journalists. This is an element of the journalist's job that is unsettled within the American journalistic community and with which the community continues to grapple. The journalist's appearance became central to the journalist's job through the visual imagery of television, marking a departure from the attributes commonly associated with journalists more generally. Of all those practicing journalism in the television era, the struggle between the time-honored principles of print and radio journalism and these new elements introduced by television is experienced to the greatest degree by the TV news anchors themselves. The television news anchor embodies the effect of television technology on journalism through traits associated with his or her visual presence, qualities related to personalization, and other aspects of a particular kind of relay of news to audiences. Anchors are also important to consider, for when it comes to anchors, the journalistic community is schizophrenic; externally, it uses anchors for community promotion and reaps the positive benefits of power, adulation, and affirmation of authority that anchors afford. But internally, the community feels that anchors, and the appearance of anchors in particular, undermine many key journalistic values. This paper uses the anchor as a lens through which to examine the journalistic community's struggle brought on by the wedding of journalism and television technology, as manifested in discussion about anchors' appearances. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Working from a critical position that media representation is both informed by and reinforcing of dominant cultural messages, this paper undertakes a discourse analysis of the recent coverage in American weekly celebrity magazines of two pregnant entertainers, seeking to provide a descriptive overview of some prevalent themes in the representation of pregnancy. Based on the Foucaultian notion that discourses can "structure the way a thing is thought, and the way we act on the basis of that thinking" (Rose, 2005), this analysis assumes that the magazine representation of pregnant celebrities works within a larger system of meaning, both drawing upon and informing the ways in which we conceptualize women, pregnancy and celebrity. The paper considers how representation of the pregnancies of actors Angelina Jolie and Katie Holmes functions in relation to issues of female stereotyping. Though analysis suggests that the stars tended to be represented in such a way as to construct a "double bind" for women in terms of their idealized roles as expectant mothers, the analysis is problematized by the issue of celebrity and its associated discourses. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on BBC News and its changing role in the United States. Recent developments suggest that a new, powerful hybrid BBC is emerging in the United States. This paper examines a number of "faces" the BBC presents to the United States. 3 of these faces are more traditional, but the BBC has now added a fourth: as a "super-alternative" news/information source in the United States, carrying an aura of credibility that sets it apart from U.S. mainstream news media. It is the BBC's "multifaceted" nature, its reputation for honesty and integrity, and its independence from U.S. political forces, that allows it to be considered in this way. All in all, it's an attractive package for many U.S. news consumers and, potentially, a powerful combination for influencing U.S. public opinion. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues, in line with post-structuralist thought, for Islam to be understood as an empty category, the content of which is filled associatively in the course of a discursive articulation. 2. As an empty signifier with no determinate meaning, it functions as the signifier of a fundamental antagonism between traditional cultures (backwardness) and Western societies (modernity) in discursive articulations. In this sense, what Islam signifies is not a particular religion but “religion” itself thus secularizing Christianity. The struggle for hegemony is the struggle for how this empty category should be ‘overdetermined’, that is, colored by a particular signification. The paper illustrates this point with an analysis of newspaper coverage of Islam in the US and Denmark and of qualitative interviews with ordinary Danes. The second part of my argument is that hegemonic articulations are the result of discursive interventions that set up specific antagonisms according to which membership of identity categories are made meaningful and have an explanatory power for the social world. In modern times, opinion polls play a great role in fixing, however temporarly, the meaning of categories. It also directs the media’s respond to particular communications via their institutional and daily routines, professional ideologies, and their embeddedness in the ideological environment within which public debate is conducted. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

People carry their culture wherever they go, and that culture influences how people behave and respond to others’ behaviors. Despite the beauties and uniqueness of each, when two different cultures come together, there is a strong likelihood that some clashes may occur. This paper is an attempt to show how cultural differences among Western teachers and Arab students in university classrooms can lead to clashes during classroom interaction. As Hofstede (1986) observed, “when teacher and student come from different cultures…many perplexities can arise” (p. 30). However, unlike Hofstede who puts the burden of adaptation on teachers, this papers looks equally at both teachers and students as partners in the adaptation process and holds both responsible for understanding and resolving classroom conflict. After examining real culturally conflicting incidents, the paper ends with proposing a framework for the purpose of analyzing and resolving classroom cultural conflicts. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. Presidential election of 2004 was an exciting reprise of the 2000 election and was closely watched by numerous observers across the world. Norwegian media in particular followed the election with great interest. In the eyes of Norwegian media, the election held significant ramifications for world issues such as the war in Iraq and the war on terror. Further, the strong social and familial bonds between Norwegians and Americans was a foundation for an interest in the role that social issues such as abortion, gay marriage, and religion played in the campaign. This paper is a case study based on data from 2004 U.S. Presidential election coverage in Norwegian newspapers. The paper examines the way in which Norwegian newspapers framed the U.S. Presidential election. Framing theory was utilized as the tool for conducting a content analysis of newspaper coverage. Results are presented and implications for the role of framing theory in international contexts are discussed. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper-in-progress makes two contributions in a larger search for a social history of early cybernetics. The first is a simply a close and comparative reading of four key cybernetic texts on both sides of the Atlantic from 1948 to 1955: two American (Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics (1948) and The Human Use of Human Beings (1950)) as well as two Soviet (Sergei Sobolev, Anatolii Kitov, and Aleksei Liapunov’s “The Main Features of Cybernetics” and Ernest Kolman’s “What is Cybernetics?” (1955)). The close reading of texts in two languages offers at once an introduction and a reexamination of the foundations of first-order cybernetics as an interdisciplinary and international science. The second contribution made is an attempt to develop and revisit a historical irony: cybernetics emerged as a subtle and often sublimated cry for peace-oriented collaboration across, and largely thanks to, the academic internecine aggression across the Atlantic. Cybernetics, as initially envisioned by Wiener, remains an irreducibly cross-cultural artifact—one whose call for international translation, cooperation, and an ultimate peace may stand worthwhile revisitation in Wiener’s time as well as in our own. Especially appropriate to note for conference-goers in Dresden, this paper loosely details in its footnotes some of the explicitly European social, cultural, and literary projects that preceded cybernetic thought. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper analyzes the news coverage of presidential inauguration 2005 for the strategic use of reported speech in making sense of the ritual and the message. Based on the study of reported statements selected from live programming, the paper shows how dramatic presentation and alignment of commentary with the official viewpoint steer the coverage towards ‘tracing voices’ of the past establishing the fit with the tradition and legitimizing the inaugural speaker in his position of a leader ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores whether American citizens’ rights are violated when excluded from official White House event based on the citizens’ speech. In particular, this paper examines an event which took place in April, 2005, where three citizens were excluded from a Social Security “town-hall” meeting because the vehicle they arrived in exhibited a bumper sticker critical of Bush administration policies. The key question examined is whether private individuals who volunteered at the event can be considered “state actors” thereby implicating the citizens’ First Amendment rights. The issue is highly relevant, especially in America, given the increasing importance and power in our society of private institutions and individuals and given that such private persons are generally not constrained by the Constitution. The paper also provides a good launching pad through which to discuss other countries treatment of freedom of expression and the differences between the First Amendment and its counterparts or lack thereof in other societies. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing from a variety of disciplines, this paper examines some of the tensions reflected and reproduced by the global hegemony of English. It does so by way of critical interpretation of accounts of the global spread of English published in five American-owned prestige press publications--the Los Angeles Times, the International Herald Tribune, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post. Part of a 275-text data pool generated for a forthcoming dissertation, the texts discussed and analyzed in this paper wrap the story of the global hegemony of English around Anglo-Franco competition and rivalry. They embrace what the author calls the French Foil narrative, or a story about the global hegemony of English that pits English against French, the United States against France, and Americans against "the" French. Generally, the story told is one in which English is triumphing over French because of its superior status as a popular language. This anti-elitist plot line relies in particular on the consummate antagonist of American populism, the French intellectual. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Secret History is one of the case studies in a larger, cross-national research project into the bestseller system. The results of this research show that bestsellers in art and culture can be studied as multistage processes in which different sorts of gatekeepers participate sequentially and in which success in one stage is vital for success in subsequent stages. In my paper I describe the network of mediators that contributed to the best-selling status of The Secret History in the United States. Part of the research into the bestseller system will examine the role, function and status of critics and criticism in art worlds where commercial and popular aspects have become more and more dominant. Special attention will therefore be paid to the role of the serious press in the valuation of the work of Donna Tartt. The paper ends by describing the reception of The Secret History in the Netherlands, where the book found its largest reading public. Thus, the paper not only highlights the different stages of a bestseller in art and culture, but also shows its strong international character. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the framing of the US intervention in Somalia, 1994. The paper triangulate textual analysis and content analysis to examine how the U.S. media framed the intervention. It compares and contrasts the Clinton's administration frames, the Congressional frames, and media frames. It examines how these frames converge and diverge. The paper concludes that in the post-Cold War World it is difficult to create a common enenmy and marshal public opinion against that enemy. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An examination of newspaper coverage in an American newspaper and an Arabic paper revealed that the coverage of the war in Iraq was framed differently in each newspaper. The “who,” “what,” and “why” emphasized in each paper were significantly different. These differences lend credence to the idea that frames are ideologically based and that the war was seen differently in different parts of the world. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes media coverage of Mel Gibson’s controversial movie “The Passion of the Christ” to gain a better understanding of the categories used to comprehend the nation’s current political and religious divisions. The results reveal not so much a polarized nation as one that sees reality through separate prisms, one comprised of a particularistic strain of Christian ethics, the other of secular reason. The paper develops a theory for understanding the themes underlying the discourse to clarify the meaning of “moral issues.” It also explains their role in creating political divisions that promote strict religion and its political allies. The analysis also explains why there is little incentive to compromise. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the efficiency of advertising expenditures on four media – TV, the Internet, Newspapers, and Radio – focusing especially on the latter two because of their poor performance as national media for sales effects in previous research (King, Reid, and Morrison 1997; Reid and King 2003). Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA), the paper evaluates the advertising practices of the leading 100 U.S. advertisers in 2003, in order to identify best practices and determine the efficiency of the advertising in these four types of media. The results reveal inefficiencies with each medium, relative to the advertisers’ expenditures, and also indicate less efficiency for newspaper and radio advertising for these advertisers than for expenditures on either TV or the Internet. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions about the professional parameters for the practice of journalism and public relations continue to hold a central place in academic discourse. This paper uses framing analysis and critical discourse analysis of the New York Times articles and PR Week commentaries to analyze case of Armstrong Williams, syndicated journalist who was paid through Ketchum Public Relations to promote government initiative No Child Left Behind. This case implicates both professions, that of journalists in their responsibility to their audiences, and that of public relations practitioners, in their obligation for transparency. In this paper, the ethical and moral considerations of both professions were critically analyzed. The goal of this paper, then, is twofold: to reconceptualize the academic discourse about journalism ethics and professionalism as well as public relations ethics and professionalism. This paper asks: How does public relations practice and journalism practice relate/differ in their respective practitionersÂ’ understanding of professionalism? Finally, this paper asks how does the Williams case address the professional social framework of journalistic and public relations practice? ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing a lesson from current convergence technologies, this paper proposes the future regulatory framework for telecommunications. As new convergence technologies have significantly impact on the telecom industry and regulators, a debate continues to grow over how the convergence technology fits into the traditional telecommunications regulation and industrial schemes. Internet telephony has sparked a regulatory debate on whether it is phone call service or information service: that is, whether or not Internet telephony traffic should be subjected to any or all of the various common carrier regulations. A similar series of legal questions will arise in the emerging convergence technologies: whether mobile TV is broadcasting or telecommunications; whether IPTV is information service or broadcasting? Currently FCC is taking a hands-off approach to the convergence technologies in the hope to let the premature technologies grow. However, the provisional approaches leave much room for debates on regulating other upcoming convergence services. This paper reviews the nature of these debates, outlines the challenges faced by regulators, discusses the current regulatory models, and offers a new praxis that will be appropriate in the next generation of networks. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses how Germany and the United States construct Arab or Islamic actors in print media articles around the 9/11 attacks. The analysis focuses on two central questions: Who appears in the media & how are the actors constructed? What self-image is implicitly communicated? One hypothesis is that Arab or Islamic actors are constructed as geographical, cultural or political others. This construction draws an in-group definition for the self via the othering of characteristics that are ascribed to the Arab or Islamic actors. The created image can implicitly serve as an identification platform for the reader as an in-group member. The Arab or Islamic other portrays the behavior or characteristics that deviate from socially favored norms and values. By doing what is not preferred or allowed the other actors help the society (i.e. the self) to remind itself of these norms and of what its own national or trans-national, Western identity is based upon. The analysis covers 8 weeks before and 4 weeks after the event and includes 6 print media. The paper introduces four of the major types of actors and illustrates them with a few examples. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on a close analysis of how the Abu Ghraib photographs originally were framed in the American news media, public debate and in popular cultural contexts, this paper addresses the question of how news media images exert power in the shaping of news, politics, and public opinion. Specifically, it takes issue with the scholarly tendency to foreclose any inquiry into the workings of news media images with presuppositions that such images mainly play the passive role of illustrations to dominant news frames and official political discourse, with little or no potential for independent influence on members of the audience. The paper argues instead that the relationship between visuals and news narratives not seldom is a ’high-tension’ one, and that images which contradict or disrupt a dominant discursive frame might have a considerable impact, if not directly on politics and policy making, then more so on popular imagination and historical consciousness. Even if the Abu Ghraib photographs in a short-term perspective had minimal political or policy repercussions, they nevertheless dealt a fatal blow to the United States’ mission in Iraq. Not only were these photographs bound to alienate much of the Arab world, but also, in a long-term perspective, to percolate into the mind of Americans, and to create their own autonomous frame of reference in the sense that the heretofore banned sight of American soldiers in the role of sadistic dominators has become an integral part of our understanding of the US war on terror. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a theoretical framework for studying the role of research in communications policymaking and presents first findings of a project examining these relations for the United States. At a conceptual level, the paper distinguishes between the epistemic base of communications policy, ideas that influence communications policy and practical knowledge that is used to design specific policy measures. The relations between these areas of knowledge are complicated and multifaceted but lie at the root of understanding the role of research in policymaking. The paper also presents selected findings from two case studies (media ownership, spectrum policy) that allow a more detailed examination of some of the conceptual claims. As the cases illustrate, research does matter but many contingencies apply to whether it is recognized and influential. The paper concludes with a brief synthesis of the main insights and an analysis of the structural conditions of policymaking and academic research that might impede a more fruitful exchange of information between the two realms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ushering in the digital information and entertainment age, total must carry has relit the forty-year fire of must carry regulation in the United States. Total must carry, also known as multiple must carry, multichannel must carry and multicast must carry, has surfaced as the most recent, most contentious, incarnation of the must carry debate. At issue is whether a cable operator is required by the 1992 Cable Act to carry all video streams (total carriage) of a digital television broadcaster. This paper examines the multi-faceted debates over total carriage by examining the individuals and groups on each side of the debate, as well as the arguments they put forth. Additionally, this paper examines what the possible outcomes of the debate will mean for the broadcasting group that is often overlooked in these discussions: public broadcasting stations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper provides a critical review of the meaning of the public interest, and offers a recommendation for a normative and multi-layered conceptualization that is based on participatory democratic theory. The first section of this paper clarifies what is meant by a multi-layered definition of the public interest. The remaining sections look specifically at the layers of meaning within the public interest standard, especially those layers of process and principle. In comparing various theoretical viewpoints, the author recommends a participatory process as the preferred method for identifying and applying public interest principles. The ultimate goal of the examination is to discover ways to increase public participation in the ongoing dialogue regarding media policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For some time, people have been predicting that new media environments will facilitate the development of rather focused, segmented audiences: groups of people who follow current events in one topical area but not the news in others. Such a development may have consequences for the nature of public opinion over time and even for the functioning of democratic societies. This paper is designed to evaluate whether online news audiences read broadly when they are on the Internet or, as many observers expect, focus their reading on a limited number of topics. The data examined in this analysis are records of online news selection over a period of two months by a nationally representative sample of Internet users. These data were subjected to cluster analyses that identified groups with similar news reading patterns. The resulting clusters show that the online news audience contains a large number of highly focused readers of news and information. These results suggest that the Internet is conducive to reader specialization. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the results for the issue of public fragmentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This dissertation is concerned with the position of regional journalism in the global information era. Information and communication technologies are having a paradoxical impact on the border Mexico-USA regions: on one hand consolidating the power and influence of the major Mexico and USA Mass Media Groups (creating a group of global influence) and on the other one extending their influence over a new mass media consumers, whose language (Spanish) is an attractive market for both USA and Mexico Mass Media Groups. This paper attempts to explain these forces to establish whether their impact over the Mass Media consumers. So we have to try to identify the preferred attributes of a region in this environment and, using a face to face research among inhabitants of Baja California north border state with USA. The approach in developing this paper has been to conduct a literature review from a variety of disciplines and sources covering economic, politics and new communication theories. We presented a preliminary work in BINACOM last meeting in New Orleans. Now we have finished the research and it is ready to diffuse. The research was made in Facultad de Ciencias Humanas of Universidad Autonoma de Baja California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the history, functions and the formats of the U.S. presidential debates 2004 and the TV-duels in the German Federal Election Campaign 2002. The major result of this comparison is that the German TV-duels are by far different from the U.S. presidential debates. The paper suggests that the German debates follow a logic of their own which is intentionally directed at serving the politicians' and especially the broadcasting media's interests, and not those of the German voters.

The United States government wishes to have a universally available high-speed Internet infrastructure by 2007. However, there exist many competing ideas about how this rollout might best be achieved. This paper deals specifically with two of these: the market versus the open access approach. Market proponents argue that the government should take a hands-off approach to regulation and let the marketplace determine how broadband deployment should occur. Open access proponents maintain the government should use regulation to assure that the broadband infrastructure remains true to the end-to-end architecture upon which the Internet was built. This debate is particularly heated when it concerns Internet provided over the cable broadband platform. This paper explores the U.S. government’s problem in more detail, and then takes a closer look at Canadian cable broadband policy. It is determined that Canada’s hybrid approach to cable broadband regulation has both allowed for the deployment of broadband infrastructure while also assuring that competing high-speed retial-level providers maintain a presence in the market. Further, given the legislation governing telecommunications in both the United States in Canada, an argument is made for the fungibility (or transferability) of Canadian policy to the United States’ problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of how to preserve and promote cultural diversity in Mexico, The United States and Canada has been central in policy debates and regulations within each country. How should governments proceed then to promote and maintain cultural diversity in a region closely integrated not just through economic trade but through the mass media? This paper reviews the current international debate on communication policies related to the promotion of cultural diversity through television. It starts with a discussion about what constitutes diversity in television, and follows with a review about the real impact of former media policies in the achievement of diversity. Using the concepts of source diversity, content diversity and exposure diversity, the paper analyzes the communication policies adopted or proposed in Mexico and compares them with current policies in Canada and the US. The paper concludes that current commercial strategies and goals both at the national and international level do not stimulate cultural diversity in media contents. It questions the utility of policies designed to regulate competition and ownership in the media with the objective of maximizing the number of outlets and emphasizing audience choice between these outlets. Instead, proposals which advocate a more mixed system of mass media with different mandates and different modes of financing are considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a text and audience approach to the Americanisation thesis, looking at which USA is being exported in global phenomenon The Simpsons. In contrast to the warm, enlightened, and idyllic suburb of countless other American family dramas and sitcoms, The Simpsons?s Springfield is a dark zone of xenophobia, provincialism, and dysfunction, a realm where American life is satirised and held up to ridicule. However, if the family sitcom has traditionally been a major tool for exporting the American Dream and all that is supposed to be comfortable about capitalism, this paper asks what we are to make of the success of The Simpsons?s anti-suburb moving across the globe. The paper mixes textual analysis with audience research of non-Americans watching The Simpsons to connect with, contribute to, and further complicate debates on cultural imperialism and Americanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper chronicles 20th century American media coverage of the Middle East. Communication scholars have been at odds with determining just how the region has been portrayed, and their descriptions are not entirely uniform. But many have accused American media of taking sides in the 54-year-old conflict, and argue with their research that objectivity has been present but rare in the nation's mainstream press. The following paper traces those research efforts in an attempt to establish a picture of the patterns and shifting paradigms of American media coverage of the Middle East, particularly the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]