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Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of "hate speech" as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n = 33) to better understand how rural journalists report on hate. We find that rural journalists articulate a clear definition for hate speech but struggle to apply that definition to events within their communities, even as they articulate numerous forms of hate. Journalists often dismissed acts of hate using the residual category of "not hate, but ... " to signal something that they felt was out of place or unsuitable but did not rise to the legal definition of hate speech and thus was not worth reporting on. This approach ends up challenging journalists' normative commitments to their communities and exemplifies their desire to avoid an objectivity trap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the recent focus on news poverty and gaps in local journalism, rural journalists would seem to have a challenging job. This study seeks to understand the novel experiences and challenges of journalists who cover rural communities and how they conceptualize their knowledge-building practices. Through the lens of journalistic epistemology, researchers conducted a two-step, in-depth interview procedure with rural US journalists (n = 61) to better explore how rural journalists place their knowledge-making in relationto non-rural journalists. Rural journalists identified as being rural in that they practiced in rural communities, but also thought of their knowledge-building as tied intimately to their rural communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rural journalists are news professionals, but also citizens engaged in their communities. The function and purpose of local journalism and public relations have become interdependent as media and communication has become more digital. These relationships create some tensions and it is in this environment that rural journalists make daily choices to cover a story or run prepared content provided by an outside source. Through the lens of boundary work, this study explores how (N = 33) self-identifying rural journalists navigated this gray area and walked the line between creating authentic journalistic content and publishing public relations content. We found that in principle they identified stark boundaries between public relations and rural journalism based on journalistic norms, but in practice these journalists were often put in a position to engage in public relations work to support their communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 Pandemic created a two-fold challenge for journalists: first, the task of gathering and distributing information vital to the responses of the public, and second, the challenge of mitigating the complexities of the journalism field. The purpose of this study is to connect the theoretical frameworks of metajournalistic discourse and field theory, using the touch point of journalistic practice. Prior research has postulated that metajournalistic discourse operates as a stabilizing force in the journalistic field. Using the timely test of the COVID-19 pandemic, this study seeks to explore the discursive construction of journalistic practice during a pandemic through the lens of both metajournalism and field through metadiscourse (n=141) gathered from the United States, United Kingdom, and Austria. This study will argue that metajournalistic discourse stabilizes the field by affirming the tools western journalists use in order to make sense of a crisis like COVID-19, and by providing a discursive avenue between the ideals of the journalistic field—in the journalistic doxa—and the habits of the field—as represented by journalistic habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Video games have long held a spotty history in their narratives regarding women. Most research has examined large budget games and identified issues of simplification, oversexualization, and a general lack of agency among female characters. The present study explores the gaming niche of "indie"—or independent game developer—video games in their representations of women in particular with Never Alone, Gone Home, and Her Story. These games were released around the time frame of the GamerGate controversy—a controversy which drew attention to the treatment of women in gaming culture—and hence, the games are used to reflect on a potential shift in games culture following the controversy. This article argues that these game narratives emphasized multilayered female characterizations, female-to-female interactions, and internal dramas as a way to potentially reach female gamers and present an alternative, humanizing narrative on women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists have the challenging task of gathering and distributing accurate information. Journalists exist as a part of an ecology in which their work influences and is influenced by the environment that surrounds it. Using the framework of disaster communication ecology, this study explores the discursive construction of journalism during the COVID-19 crisis. To understand this process in the field of journalism, we unpacked discourses concerning the coronavirus pandemic collected from interviews with journalists during the pandemic and from the U.S. journalism trade press using the Discourses of Journalism Database. Through discourse analysis, we discovered that during COVID-19 journalists discursively placed themselves in a responsible but vulnerable position within the communication ecology—not solely as a result of the pandemic but also from environmental conditions that long preceded it. Journalists found their reporting difficult during the pandemic and sought to mitigate the forces challenging their work as they sought to reverse the flow of misinformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In May 2015, a crisis erupted for the Duggar family from the TLC reality show "19 Kids and Counting" after InTouch Magazine published an article detailing how Josh Duggar – the eldest son in the well-known evangelical family – molested several underage girls in 2006. In August, a data leak of the extra-marital affair website Ashley Madison revealed that Josh Duggar had been a user, actively cheating on his wife Anna. Media events like the Duggar scandal are narrated in social media through the use of symbols, such as memes and Instagram photos. This study analyzed the crisis response using Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) to shed light on the social media practices used in reputation management, specifically among religious celebrities. The researchers used fantasy theme analysis to reveal the shared rhetorical vision of the event as it progressed through different crisis communication phases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study draws on the theoretical framework of collective memory to ascertain the ways in which a story from journalism’s past—Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers—was brought to bear in coverage and commentary of a broadly analogous story in journalism’s present—WikiLeaks, Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning, and Edward Snowden. The discourse was far from uniform, which we see as indicative of the contingencies of collective memory. We find four themes: (1) lack of consensus on whether Ellsberg, Manning, and Snowden constituted a lineage of leakers, as some journalists contended, or if there are distinctions to be drawn; (2) discussion about the contingencies of historical representation and awareness of the role of “victors” in shaping history; (3) celebrations of journalism and its storied history amid a backdrop of flux; and (4) discussion of changes in technology and how they impacted the methods of the leakers. Theoretical and methodological implications for the study of journalism and collective memory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital games historically hold a spotty record on gender depictions. The lack of depth in female characters has long been the norm; however, an increasing number of female protagonists are headlining games. This study used narrative theory to examine depictions of four female protagonists in four 2013 Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain Award-Winning Digital Games: The Last of Us, Bioshock Infinite, Tomb Raider, and Beyond: Two Souls. Studying these media depictions provides context for how women’s stories are recorded in society. Stereotype subversions largely occur within familiar game narratives, and the female protagonists were still largely limited and defined by male figures in the games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a mental health disorder that occurs for some individuals following a traumatic experience and that can cause significant health, mental health, and functioning problems. The concept of PTSD has multiple components (cause, reactions, and treatment), which provides for great variety in the experience of an individual with PTSD. Given this complexity, the news media's construction of PTSD is likely an important influence in determining how the public understands PTSD, but research has yet to investigate how the news media depict PTSD. This study addresses that gap in the literature by examining New York Times coverage of PTSD from 1950 to 2012. Results indicate that the number of PTSD articles during this time period increased, with coverage spikes related to U.S. military conflicts and the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Almost half (49.14%) of all PTSD articles included military service as a PTSD cause. Military PTSD articles were more likely than civilian PTSD articles to depict the disorder as causing anger/irritability/rage, homicide/violence/rape, suicide, substance abuse, and home/work/relationship problems. PTSD news stories were almost always (94.8%) situated in the current time and most frequently (46.6%) used a community frame. Implications for public understanding of PTSD are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comprehensive review of online, official, and scientific literature was carried out in 2012-13 to develop a framework of disaster social media. This framework can be used to facilitate the creation of disaster social media tools, the formulation of disaster social media implementation processes, and the scientific study of disaster social media effects. Disaster social media users in the framework include communities, government, individuals, organisations, and media outlets. Fifteen distinct disaster social media uses were identified, ranging from preparing and receiving disaster preparedness information and warnings and signalling and detecting disasters prior to an event to (re)connecting community members following a disaster. The framework illustrates that a variety of entities may utilise and produce disaster social media content. Consequently, disaster social media use can be conceptualised as occurring at a number of levels, even within the same disaster. Suggestions are provided on how the proposed framework can inform future disaster social media development and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]