Search

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]

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]

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]