Dominic L. Lasorsa

NORMALIZING TWITTER: Journalism practice in an emerging communication space

This study examines how mainstream journalists who microblog negotiate their professional norms and practices in a new media format that directly challenges them. Through a content analysis of more than 22,000 of their tweets (postings) on the microblog platform Twitter, this study reveals that the journalists more freely express opinions, a common microblogging practice but one which contests the journalistic norm of objectivity (impartiality and nonpartisanship). To a lesser extent, the journalists also adopted two other norm-related microblogging features: providing accountability and transparency regarding how they conduct their work, and sharing user-generated content with their followers. The journalists working for national newspapers, national television news divisions, and cable news networks were less inclined in their tweets than their counterparts working for less “elite” news outlets, to relinquish their gatekeeping role by sharing their stage with other news gatherers and commentators, or to provide accountability and transparency by providing information about their jobs, engaging in discussions with other tweeters, writing about their personal lives, or linking to external websites.

THINKING ABOUT CITIZEN JOURNALISM: The philosophical and practical challenges of user-generated content for community newspapers

This study seeks to understand how community newspaper editors negotiate the professional complexities posed by citizen journalism—a phenomenon that, even in the abstract, would appear to undermine their gatekeeping control over content. Through interviews with 29 newspaper editors in Texas, we find that some editors either favor or disfavor the use of citizen journalism primarily on philosophical grounds, while others favor or disfavor its use mainly on practical grounds. This paper presents a mapping of these philosophical-versus-practical concerns as a model for visualizing the conflicting impulses at the heart of a larger professional debate over the place and purpose of user-generated content in the news production process. Moreover, these findings are viewed in light of gatekeeping, which, we argue, offers a welcome point of entry for the study of participatory media work as it evolves at news organizations large and small alike. In contributing to a growing body of literature on user-generated content in news contexts, this study points to the need for better understanding the causes and consequences of journalisms hyperlocal turn, as digitization enables newswork to serve increasingly niche geographic and virtual communities.

TRANSPARENCY AND OTHER JOURNALISTIC NORMS ON TWITTER

A growing argument in communication scholarship is that quality journalism online can distinguish itself from rumor and unchecked information by being transparent, by revealing how information was obtained, so audiences can see through it to its origins and help correct errors. This study examined the extent to which female and male journalists differ in their use of Twitter and, specifically, their journalistic transparency on Twitter. Female journalists were found to differ little from male journalists in their Twitter presence, topics, opining or gatekeeping, but they were significantly more transparent. They revealed more about their jobs, personal lives and everyday activities, and they linked more to external websites, all indicators of greater transparency. While women working for national news media were less likely to offer opinion, retweet, link or tweet about themselves or their everyday lives than women working for less “elite” media—which would support a professional socialization perspective—none of these differences was statistically significant.

Political Outspokenness: Factors Working against the Spiral of Silence

Tested here is the argument that political outspokenness is affected not only by ones perception of the climate of opinion and ones gender, age, education and income, as Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann argues, but also by ones interest in politics and level of self-efficacy, the obtrusiveness of the issue, extent of media use, and by certainty of views held. A 1987 survey of 624 individuals in Austin, Texas, suggests that people may not be as helpless in the face of public opinion as Noelle-Neumanns “Spiral of Silence” theory would hold, and that there are certain conditions under which it is possible to buck the spiral to express opinions.

Effects of Personal, Interpersonal and Media Experiences on Issue Saliences

Three sources of issue salience are examined simultaneously through a survey in Austin, Texas. Three hypotheses are tested: 1. Media experience will enhance conformity to the news medias agenda; 2. Interpersonal experience will inhibit conformity to the news medias agenda; and 3. Personal experience with an issue will inhibit conformity to the news medias agenda. The study concludes that the strongest predictor of media conformity is media exposure and attention. Personal experience, however, while also a significant predictor, produced a positive effect on media conformity, suggesting that personal experience sensitizes individuals to important issues. Individuals then seek out additional information on these obtrusive issues from the news media and in turn become more susceptible to agenda-setting effects. Interpersonal communication, while producing a negative coefficent, was not a significant predictor of media conformity.

News Source Use in the Crash of 1987: A Study of Four National Media.

Employing content analysis, this study examines coverage of the stock market crash in 1987 for October and November by CBS Evening News, Newsweek, The New York Times, and Wall Street Journal. The news media published/presented 167 crash stories, citing 1022 sources from business, government, academic life, Wall Street, lobbyists, and others. Sources differed, with the government sources mentioning causes of the crash — most often the national debt — while business and lobbyist sources focused more on effects. Print media favored Wall Street sources — and used more sources in general — while CBS favored government sources. This study finds, as hypothesized, that news media favor high prestige sources, and that use of different sources resulted in distinctly different slants. Public views of the crash would have been shaped as much by the sources cited as medium read/viewed.

Question-Order Effects in Surveys: The Case of Political Interest, News Attention, and Knowledge

Subjects were exposed to one of three survey versions differing only in question order. Those who first faced difficult political knowledge questions reported significantly lower levels of both political interest and news attention than those who did not first face the knowledge test. However, when the knowledge questions and the interest and attention questions were separated by a “buffer” item that could serve as an excuse for poor knowledge, self-assessed interest and attention were less depressed. Characteristics of survey questions that may make them particularly susceptible to these types of question-order context effects are discussed and strategies for dealing with such effects are noted.

Effects of Newspaper Competition on Public Opinion Diversity

This study used survey data from the 1988 American National Election Study by the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research to compare the diversity of opinions on public issues held by individuals in communities that have newspaper competition versus individuals in noncompetitive newspaper communities. The study also controlled for socioeconomic status, population density, and racial and ethnic mix in the 92 counties studied. Findings are that socioeconomic status accounted for 13% of the variance in diversity of opinions reflected in a public opinion survey, while newspaper competition accounted for 4%, a smaller but still significant amount. Racial and ethnic mix was not related to diversity of public opinion but population density did account for 6% of the diversity. Findings argue that newspaper competition remains important for encouraging diversity of views on public issues.

The News Readability Problem

The low readability of news has often been attributed to production and format features, such as deadline pressures and news story organizational features. This study, however, puts the blame elsewhere. News stories written by nine high-profile journalists and later revealed as deceptive were more readable and contained more direct quotations (another readability indicator) than authentic stories generated by the same news organizations. Because the stories were written under similar production and format conditions, these findings indicate that low readability is due to the challenge of journalism to convey information only about the real world. Not so constrained, deceptive “news” portrays a simpler world.

Issue Importance and Trust in Mass Media

are more likely than Protestants to attend parochial schools. Our results are consistent with the assertion that religious broadcasts, particularly those on television, are relatively ineffective in providing audience members, particularly Protestants, with religious knowledge. But even those results that suggest that religious broadcasts are relatively ineffective in conveying religious knowledge to Protestants d o not deny the possibility that religious broadcast media may be effective in attaining many other goals. For one, they capture an audience of significant proportions; in this representative sample of American adults, 39% report watching some religious television or listening t o some religious radio in a normal week. This clearly indicates that they provide some measure of gratification to their audience, since their viewers and listeners don’t have to tune in. Beyond breadth, the broadcasts seem to evoke a depth of loyalty which may be expressed in tangible form approximately one to two billion dollars in contributions a year.” Yet even though religious broadcasting may be effective in attracting contributions, its role in changing attitudes, perhaps even in winning converts remains a matter worthy of study.