Philip Merrill College of Journalism
Permanent URI for this communityhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/1629
The collections in this community comprise faculty research works, as well as graduate theses and dissertations.
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Item EMERGING TECHNOLOGY AND ITS IMPACT ON THE PRODUCTION AND QUALITY OF LOCAL TELEVISION NEWS(2019) scanlon, jason lawrence; steiner, linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)Technology is an integral part of journalism. Journalists use computers, IP-based servers, and digital gear as instruments to gather, process, and distribute news regarding events that impact our lives. Beyond the basic tools of the trade, the use of technology can dramatically influence the process of producing news. This project examines how the use of this technology impacts the collection, analysis, production, and quality of local television news. The study also addresses how technology is redefining the role of newsworkers in local television newsrooms. The methods of data collection include a survey and focus group of journalists with experience at local and national news networks, a content analysis of sixty local newscasts, and interviews with television news workers. The research questions address the impact of technology on the production and quality of local television news. I ask, among other questions, whether the increased number of required daily tasks has affected quality and whether news professionals say they see such effects; how, and to what extent, digital technologies such as IP-based store-and-forward technology, smaller portable newsgathering gear, and cellular-based transmission methods have affected production, and whether journalists say they see negative effects; that the use of network-affiliate and subscription-based news services have changed how local television news is produced. Overall, I conclude that the role of a local television journalist has changed and a new hybrid editorial/technical role has emerged. These hybrid journalists are required to perform more technical tasks, resulting in time diverted away from traditional tasks such as story research, news analysis, and script writing. My research aligns with existing literature in proposing that these changes are contributing to a decline of quality in local television news. This is an indirect result of using newer technology. The use of these tools has made the collection and distribution of content more efficient, but the speed and ease of this technology have resulted in more tasks being performed by individual journalists, which leads to less locally generated content. In addition, the increased need to supply original content to station websites and social media platforms has also negatively affected quality.Item Trends and Strategies of News on Social Media in the U.S.: A Multimethod Analysis(2019) Herd, Maria; Yaros, Ronald; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)There is growing interest in how social media and news interact, but much of that information is not widely available because news organizations pay third party analytics services for proprietary data. This study, however, employs a multimethod design to explore the issue. First, a quantitative analysis of audience data and social media trends is based on an aggregate of metrics (Parse.ly) from hundreds of news organizations to identify the most popular news categories on the top social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Reddit). Second, qualitative interviews are conducted with social media strategists at four U.S. news organizations to capture emerging trends of best social media practices within newsrooms, including humanizing content, shifting coverage, training, encouraging subscriptions, third-party tools, and crowdsourcing.Item LEARNING TO LOVE THE AUDIENCE: How Journalists and Newsrooms Adjust to Audience Inclusion and Engagement(2019) Assmann, Karin; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This study examines how institutional change in the news industry, in particular empowerment and inclusion of the audience, affects journalists. How does minding the audience, interacting with readers or viewers and engaging with them at various stages of the news production process, make journalists feel about their jobs, themselves, their workplace and their audience? How might this outcome affect journalistic output? Answering these questions is a contribution to the discourse about the future of journalism practice in a hostile economic environment. Through in-depth interviews with 131 journalists and newsroom managers in four newsrooms, with 22 audience engagement editors in 20 newsrooms and with 15 consultants and audience analytics providers, as well as through observation in three newsrooms, I offer empirical data exploring the increasingly normalized practice of audience engagement in traditional newsrooms that are trying to find sustainable business models in a news industry marked by increasing corporate ownership and austerity measures. interacting with audience members on social media platforms to in-person events. I find that journalists, tasked by their editors and newsroom management to engage with the audience on social media platforms, often view audience engagement as an exercise solely meant to generate revenue. Poorly articulated and communicated strategies leave many journalists feeling cynical and burdened with labor that they consider to be part of a marketing or promotions department’s responsibility. Women journalists in particular experience the demands of audience engagement as requiring literally dangerous exposure of their private lives to a frequently hostile public. This dynamic is compounded by journalists’ awareness of the precarity of their position, a sentiment that easily slips into resentment toward newsroom management and owners. For all stakeholders involved – journalists, industry consultants, newsrooms and scholars – I recommend seeking clearer definitions of all agents in the journalistic field. Implementing audience engagement strategies without agreement about the definition of “audience” and “engagement,” or about the purpose and desired end of engagement, is counter-productive. Without a better understanding of what the audience means to journalists, editors, newsroom managers, publishers and owners, the search for new business models will not advance.Item THE ROLE OF ACCOUNT FEATURES AND SOCIAL NETWORKS ON PERCEIVED QUALITY OF INFORMATION SHARERS ON SOCIAL MEDIA(2019) Auxier, Brooke Elizabeth; Golbeck, Jennifer; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)In today’s complex social media environments, users are inundated with news and information. Due to the affordances of the internet, not all content is created equal and much of what exists online is less-than-quality. However, it is important for online users to locate trustworthy and reliable information. It is also important to understand how social media account features and social network connections may mediate users’ evaluations of quality on social media. This dissertation presents a multifaceted look at how users evaluate the quality (i.e. trustworthiness and reliability) of news and information sharers on social media. This work is comprised of three unique, yet complementary studies, that use several methods including survey, social network analysis and statistical analysis. Each study focuses on different types of information sharers—unknown users, network connections, and news organizations. Taken together they suggest that sharers of information are central to users’ propensity to trust and rely on information itself. At a high level, this dissertation suggests the following: (1) when examining unknown information sharers, U.S. audiences are more likely to trust and rely on accounts that are gender-neutral and share a cultural background; (2) there is no relationship between more connected nodes within a person’s social network and trust in news shared by that connection, and young adult Facebook users report having low levels of trust in news shared by friends; and (3) news consumers look for tangible signals of reliability and trustworthiness, like About descriptions and official website links, when assessing news organization social media profiles. This work shows that beyond the reliability of news content, social media users depend on signals, social ties, and platform features to determine trust and reliability in news sharers. Though users consider many factors when assessing credibility of information on social media (e.g. verification status of the sharer, prior interaction with a sharer) the role and influence of the sharer has not been substantially studied in the evaluative process.Item No Place for a Girl? Women as Sports Reporters from the Gilded Age to the Roaring Twenties(2019) Siqueira Paranhos Velloso, Carolina; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines some of the first women to write about sports for print media from 1870 to 1920. It also explains the social, economic and cultural circumstances from which early women sports journalists emerged. The thesis discusses the evolution of reporting as a profession and shows that the birth of this new occupation increased opportunities for women in the newspaper industry; demonstrates how the rise of organized sports, and changing attitudes towards them, affected women’s ability to participate in, be fans of, and write about sports; and introduces three women sportswriters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – Maria Morgan, Ella Black and Ina Eloise Young – as well as explains the different strategies and mechanisms they used in order to achieve success in a male-dominated field where their presence was very much contested.Item Understanding Sticky News: Analyzing the Effect of Content Appeal and Social Engagement for Sharing Political News Online(2018) Xu, Boya; Oates, Sarah; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation investigates the concept of news stickiness and why certain news stories are shared more than others in an online environment. Building on theories of framing, uses and gratifications, and social psychology, the study is guided by the perspective that sharing behavior is considered a joint product of informational and personal factors. Previous research in the investigation of sharing motivations were usually one-sided, focusing on one particular attribute that contributes to the behavior; however, this dissertation argues the two key factors that drive news sharing each play a role in moving the audiences from content “internalizing” to content “externalizing.” Additionally, the dissertation also considers that the act of news sharing is carried out by humans and therefore, driven by the innate human needs that extend beyond content captivation. To bridge the gap in existing research, this dissertation adopts a mixed methods approach consisting of the following: 1) Framing analysis of the “most shared articles of the day” on the New York Times website, examining shared content characteristics; and 2) online experiment testing whether the content features concluded from the framing analysis would make news stories more likely to be shared, with a post-experiment questionnaire evaluating the audience’s psychological motivations for sharing. Findings revealed that news personalization, particularly the use of emotional testimony, localized identification, and partisan provocation, constitutes the key content appeal shared by all articles sampled. Moreover, social engagement appeal is made up of five elements that help explain sharing behavior: reciprocal value, individual interest, information utility, persuasion potential, and the bandwagon effect. This dissertation is a step forward toward better understanding of how to make news sticky, in a sense that the news will not only be read but will also be shared extensively. It provided recommendations for news organizations seeking to analyze web traffic data and produce content that deeply resonates with their audiences. This study further contributed to the theoretical frameworks in audience engagement by associating human psychology with news sharing and ultimately confronted concerns such as an attraction to ‘fake news’ or a lack of interest in critical news on key issues.Item What Could Have Been: The Mediated Life and Afterlife of Len Bias(2018) Hudson, Justin; Moeller, Susan; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This dissertation considers the role of sports journalists, politicians, activists, and other mythmakers in constructing the posthumous legacy of Len Bias, a black college basketball star who died of a cocaine overdose two days after being selected second overall by the Boston Celtics in the 1986 National Basketball Association Draft. Guided by previous research on myth, collective memory, and the intersection of sports media and race, I analysis Bias as a cultural text that reveals both hegemonic and counter-hegemonic views of black masculinity, crime, drugs, and sports. Journalists lauded Bias during his career at the University of Maryland for being an exemplary scholar-athlete, and the antithesis of the wayward black athlete and black drug-dealer that increasingly appeared in the media during the mid-1980s. After his death, however, journalists, university presidents, sports administrators, and politicians used Bias’ death, erroneously linked to crack cocaine, to call for anti-drug reforms in American sport aimed at black athletes and tougher legislative measures to combat the threat of crack, a cheap form of powder cocaine that originated in poor, black inner-city communities. During this anti-crack frenzy, Congress passed the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986, which established harsh penalties for drug offenders found with crack cocaine. After the initial frenzy dissipated, Bias’ death still shaped discussions about the criminal justice system and sports. Bias was blamed for the decline of the Boston Celtics and Maryland basketball program. Professional sports leagues and college teams changed the way they screened potential draftees and monitored current players. Reporters, columnists, and politicians also frequently invoked Bias as a cautionary tale, a symbol of the dangers of drug use and poor decision-making. The creators of these dominant narratives justified the increased surveillance of black athletes and young black men in general, signaling an ongoing crisis of black men in America. On the other hand, activists, sports journalists, and fans of Bias have used counter-narratives to both signal the damage done to black men due to the politicization of Bias’ death and to reposition Bias as a sports hero.Item Early and often: Can real-time intervention by trusted authorities help stop a tsunami of disinformation?(2018) Zeitvogel, Karin; Nelson, Deborah; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)A tsunami of disinformation is washing over the world, with social media helping it to spread quickly and widely. The purveyors of disinformation use it to press their agenda by adding untruths where previously there were none, fabricating stories, reporting them out of context, or doctoring images to promote their message. In the past, disinformation has been a prelude to and run concurrently with other attacks, including cyber and conventional warfare, and when officials reacted to disinformation, they successfully slowed its flow but did not entirely stop it, and may not have “won” cyber or conventional battles. Researchers say even multiple corrections don’t fully stop disinformation, and sowing skepticism by forewarning of a probable disinformation campaign is the most successful way of staunching the flow. Tools have been developed to help detect disinformation rapidly but officials often don’t have a plan to track, correct or refute it.Item “A CONSTANT FIGHT WITH OUR MORALS:” EXAMINING UKRAINIAN JOURNALISTS’ NORMATIVE DEMOCRATIC BELIEFS AMID PLURALISM, PROPAGANDA, AND WAR(2018) Nynka, Andrew; Oates, Sarah; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This work addresses a central problem in contemporary democratic theory. John Rawls, the American political philosopher, defined the potential problem of division in plural, liberal democracy: “How is it possible that there may exist over time a stable and just society of free and equal citizens profoundly divided by reasonable though incompatible religious, philosophical, and moral doctrines?” In considering the question of social division, this dissertation asked whether journalists in Ukraine – a country dealing with propaganda, fake news, war, and a difficult transition to liberal democracy – believe they should play a role amid such tension. Qualitative in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 31 Ukrainian reporters probed their normative beliefs for a journalistic pragmatism that represents the full spectrum of beliefs and positions in their society. This research also contrasts and compares the broader normative beliefs of post-Soviet Ukrainian journalists with Western normative journalism theory by analyzing interviews conducted with 41 American journalists. This dissertation used the theoretical work of pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty, who argued that journalists could ease tension in plural society by fulfilling normative journalism theory’s charge for reporters to be a voice for the voiceless. It was hypothesized that journalists in Ukraine would deprioritize journalistic pragmatism, while prioritizing war-time reporting that polarizes society, primarily because of three factors: the business needs of the press, war in Ukraine, and the legacy of Soviet culture on journalistic norms. The findings defied expectations to a degree by showing that journalists believe the press should represent the full spectrum of positions and beliefs in Ukraine and they should uphold established western norms. Journalists said oligarchic ownership of media and a legacy of control over the press by people in power limit their independence. The findings show division on objectivity: roughly half believe reporters must remain neutral amid pro-Russian propaganda and fake news, while the second half said objectivity leads to false equivalency. Journalists said on-the-ground, factual reporting can fight propaganda and fake news. Analysis of the U.S. interviews showed more convergence of concerns between Ukrainian and American reporters than was expected, suggesting that journalistic norms can transcend country contexts to an unexpected degree.Item THE ROLE OF SOCIAL MEDIA IN PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY: A CASE STUDY OF THREE FACEBOOK GROUPS(2018) Gachau, James; Steiner, Linda; Journalism; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)As far back as 1918, John Dewey cautioned that democracy should not be identified with “economic individualism as the essence of freedom of action” (Dewey, 1954). He saw freedom as grounded socially in the human experience of “communicative (not merely economic) exchange through which individuals orient themselves to the world” (Couldry, 2010, p. 133). These communicative exchanges are necessary for people to live an authentically human life. In the widely dispersed societies of the twenty-first century, journalism and mass communication are necessary for this communicative exchange. This dissertation argues that Facebook, through purposefully designed and organized groups, can facilitate such communicative exchanges for social classes that are given short shrift by the mainstream media. I posit that due to their ability to select, control, and filter media content according to their specified needs and concerns, rather than have media fare dictated to them by the dominant classes, social media users in general, and Facebook groups composed of subordinate classes in particular, have the capacity to cultivate and nurture discourses that challenge the views and opinions of the dominant publics in which these groups are located. Using counterpublic theory à la Nancy Fraser, Catherine Squires, and Michael Warner, this dissertation analyzes the media content that members of three Facebook groups shared on their groups’ Facebook walls, and how this content helped them articulate oppositional voices and identities. Based in Kenya, the first group, Freethinkers Initiative Kenya (FIKA), identifies with freethought and atheism in a society that is predominantly Christian. The second group, Pan-African Network (PAN) promotes the interests of Africans across the globe, campaigning for the advancement of a proud black identity in a world increasingly perceived as hostile to Blacks and people of African descent. The third group, Women Without Religion (WWR), espouses a feminist atheist identity that opposes “white male supremacy,” and speaks against the perceived oppression of women occasioned by the patriarchal religions of the Judeo-Christian heritage.