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Political polarization surrounding the COVID-19 health crisis has been on the rise since the beginning of the pandemic. We combine prior research on motivated reasoning, selective exposure, and news framing to understand the association between partisan media use and social distancing behavior related to COVID-19. To do so, we collected media content data and national survey data during the onset of the pandemic. We employed structural topic modeling (STM), dependency parsing, word co-occurrence, and manual coding to examine the media coverage. Next, we analyzed survey data collected with a Qualtrics panel from a sample of U.S. residents for factors explaining social distancing behaviors. Results reveal coverage from the right leaning outlets downplayed the virus and highlighted the consequences of lockdowns on the economy. Our survey findings show that even after accounting for a range of demographic, political orientation, and COVID-19 awareness variables, conservative media use was linked, although modestly, with a lower likelihood of social distancing behavior. Our findings echo past research on media framing of pandemics and their association with public attitudes and behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

BIPOC scholars have criticized that feminism and feminist activism have often failed to include race, class, and intersectional identities in the feminist agenda. Using theoretical concepts from framing, rhetoric, and cross-platform activism, we examine (a) the discourse in social media posts around white feminism and (b) the platform differences of this content across five different social media platforms: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, and YouTube. The methodology we use is a combination of computational text analysis approaches and content analysis. Our study highlights the voice of those who felt marginalized by the feminist movement including the uprising of #MeToo. We find pockets of conversations on topics such as experiences of People of Color or Women of Color; critique of white feminism, experiences of LGBTQ+ communities, and Black experiences. These posts predominantly used techniques to persuade the audience with reason, facts, and logic. The most common framing technique used was acknowledgment. Moreover, our findings show multiple differences across the five social media platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study examines prominent news frames, sources, and refugee characteristics present in coverage of the under-reported Rohingya refugee crisis across newspapers from four nations. Findings show victim, thematic, and administrative frames were most commonly used. Politicians, international organizations, and NGOs were dominant sources, while nationality, age, and gender were frequently used refugee characteristics. Findings suggest positive practices that journalists can incorporate while reporting refugee crises. These include more frequent use of thematic and personalized frames that will help provide holistic background to crises and lead to nuanced portrayals of refugee subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Within the theoretical framework of framing, this study comparatively content analyzed the portrayals of overseas Chinese students in five newspapers of mainland China, U.S., and Hong Kong. The primary findings reveal that mainland Chinese media favored to frame overseas Chinese students as victims and patriots, while the U.S. and Hong Kong medias framed them as of liberalists and education seekers. Findings also revealed nuances among different media within the same society. This study enriched the extant framing literature through the utilization of consistent versus unique frames, using episodic versus thematic frames as its typological model, and the comparisons of media in different societies as well as different media organizations within a given society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Individuals increasingly rely on the Internet, and social media in particular, for health-related information. A recent survey reports that 80% of Internet users search for health information online. In the present study, we employ Twitter data to understand content characteristics and the patterns of content flow of the conversations about the HPV vaccine debate. Approaching the HPV vaccine conversations on Twitter as a social network, we can identify key self-formed subgroups—clusters of users who create "siloes" of interactions and information flow. Combining network analysis, computer-aided content analysis, and human-coded content analysis, we explored the communication dynamics within the groups in terms of group members' affective and cognitive characteristics. Our findings show that positive emotion is positively correlated with cluster density, an indicator of strong ties and rapid information flow. In the case of negative emotion, we found that anger is a significant negative predictor for graph density. We also found a correlation between certainty and tentativeness; both at cluster as well as at tweet level, suggesting that clusters bring together people who are sure about the HPV vaccine and people who are exploring for answers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study is to explore the intermedia influence between Twitter's and newspapers' agendas on the topic of climate change. Accordingly, using President Trump's announcement of withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris Agreement as a dividing point, we compare the agendas on Twitter and newspapers before and after the announcement, analyzing rank-order and cross-lagged correlations between both platforms. Results suggest that newspapers influenced Twitter before the announcement, whereas Twitter conversely influenced newspapers within five days after the announcement. However, Twitter's influence was found ephemeral, newspapers regained its unidirectional impact five days after the announcement. The findings imply that Twitter is more likely to influence newspapers' agenda in terms of breaking news, whereas newspapers are more likely to lead Twitter's agenda in terms of ongoing discussions during non-breaking news periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Few studies have examined political content on YouTube, especially in comparison to the traditional television spots. Relying on both audience- and platform-based theories, we develop expectations of differences in content between political ads posted online and aired on television. We use content analysis to compare both online political ads and televised political ads from the 2012 presidential campaign, relying upon data from YouTube and the Wesleyan Media Project. We find that negative ads are more likely to be sponsored by groups than candidates on both television and YouTube. Online ads are less negative and less policy focused. By comparing ads made for TV uploaded to YouTube and those only on YouTube, we find that there is no difference in viewership between the two types, but online ads are more likely to be shared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is beneficial to reflect on the research literature of emerging communication technology and what has been studied so far, given the rapid growth of this area of research. This study conducted a content analysis of the published literature related to emerging communication technology over a period of 16 years from 1998 to 2013. An exhaustive sample was gathered using two methods of sampling: all Institute for Scientific Information (ISI)-listed communication journals and key word searches. The study examined the common patterns in theoretical, methodological, and technological variables. The primary findings reveal a lack of theory, fuzziness in the conceptualization of the research, growth in empirical research methods, frequent use of nonprobability sampling methods, and growth in studies on blogs, social networking sites (SNS), and mobile technology. Implications and future directions are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is increasing research about the influence of political use of social networking sites on audience members, few studies have examined the content in candidates’ pages on these sites. To fully comprehend the impact of these online political messages, an analysis of the messages themselves is fundamental. The present study uses theoretical concepts from functional theory, political advertising, emotional appeals, and social endorsement to conduct a content analysis of the official Facebook posts of U.S. presidential candidates in 2008 and 2012 elections. Results demonstrate that John McCain and Mitt Romney attacked more, while Barack Obama acclaimed more. The Republican candidates used higher percentage of fear appeals, while Barack Obama used humor and enthusiasm in his posts. Implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents visual communication research, using content analysis on the photographs used by two U.S. newspapers, "The New York Times" and "The Washington Post," of two natural disasters, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004. Overall, photographs of both disasters were more likely of physical damage, followed by images of rescue activities and disaster relief. Both newspapers presented more images of the U.S. disaster, the hurricane. There were many more photographs of human suffering, death, and grief presented from the tsunami than from Katrina, while more photographs of public officials were presented as part of each paper's hurricane coverage.

This study employs three methods to understand media content. First, the study examines the 'peak periods' to ascertain the pattern of coverage. Second, with a sample of 4058 articles the study examines the prominent frames used by newspapers. Third, with the help of interviews of journalists from the same newspapers, the study examines the factors that influence the way these frames are created in the first place. Results show that, in general, the driving force of this coverage is marketability of the stories. This is implied by the overall coverage as well as the responses of journalists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]