Abstract Drawing on literature related to convergence and conflict in diaspora, this manuscript describes how one long-standing, immigrant, regional Spanish-language newspaper in the United States responded to economic pressures by employing the highly contested topic of immigration to build a larger, more diasporic audience. A comparative analysis of two weeks’ worth of print content and content published on its Facebook page, its primary digital platform, found a larger proportion of immigration stories online than in print. Furthermore, although immigration was the third most frequent subject of online news stories, behind crime and entertainment stories, immigration stories were the most popular stories as evidenced by audience ‘likes’ and ‘shares’. These results lend support to the idea that so-called ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ can refocus and redirect diasporic audiences around new conflicts in countries of residence.
War, political persecution, and human rights abuses all drive millions from their homes. Some qualify for asylum as refugees, often after spending years in camps and intermediary locations before attaining asylum. The United States has been criticized for taking in relatively few refugees as well as for playing a role in the conditions that lead people to seek asylum. Once in the United States, though, how are refugees constructed in community discourses? Is an international or local frame more prominent? The United Nations established World Refugee Day to bring attention to the problems refugees face. This study tracks US coverage of World Refugee Day, analyzing it both quantitatively and qualitatively, to determine how refugees as people and as a political issue are constructed in the US press. Discursive features and measures of framing are discussed as indicators of journalistic practices of newsmaking and localization.
In this increasingly global and digitally connected society, we learn and interact with the world and gather information to make decisions by acquiring, processing, and curating digital data shared through cyberspace. While enabling timely distribution of digital data and facilitating rich social interfaces, cyberspace also comes with many vulnerabilities, e.g., manipulated digital data and misinformation that may adversely impact the user and their decision-making process. Although the need for connectivity and social belonging is universal, the segments of society which would benefit the most include children, who are learning about the world, and older adults - typically 65 years or above and referred to as seniors, who cherish old personal relationships. But they are also an extremely vulnerable group to potential cyber-attacks and phishing. In this paper, we lay out some of the current challenges to ensuring safe cyberspace for senior adults, who can be misguided to cause irreparable personal, financial or physical harm to themselves or others through misinformation, and the research opportunities to turn the corner.
Social media use has become essential for journalists. Although previous research has explored how journalists use social media, less is known about how journalism and mass communication programs incorporate social media in their coursework. Based on our survey of 323 students and 125 faculty in American universities, this study offers a comparative analysis of social media use among journalism faculty and students, both personally and in coursework. Faculty and students in our sample report using Facebook more frequently for personal reasons, whereas Twitter is the main platform required by faculty members for class assignments. We also found that students’ majors and faculty’s experience in the industry influenced not only how they evaluated the utility of social media in coursework but also how they utilized various platforms in classes.
For communication instructors charged with safely and constructively educating students, incorporating social media in communication coursework presents a variety of problems. Among them are how to grade social media and how to respond to students’ social media mistakes, knowing these mistakes and corrections could follow students into their careers. This project surveyed journalism faculty ( n = 125) and students ( n = 323) to learn how each assess the challenges and opportunities of using social media in journalism coursework. Both groups expressed concerns about privacy, but faculty were also concerned about the legal consequences of students making mistakes publicly online.
Abstract Although communication is largely understood as a prerequisite for transnational activity, little research explores exactly how transnational communities use media and what the implications of media use are for transnational civic and political participation. Research from communication studies suggests that media can affect civic and political participation in various, sometimes contradictory, ways. In an effort to merge literature from transnational and communication studies, in this study I focus on the case of Mexicans in the USA, offering secondary analyses of two datasets concerning their communication habits and civic and political participation in Mexico. Results suggest differential effects on participation based on preferences for certain media and pre‐existing attitudes.
We propose that emotional responses to a media stimulus (e.g., a news article), in addition to presumed influence, can help explain one’s evaluation of the media stimulus. Our model was evaluated using data collected from 261 college students who read a news article discussing the harmful effects of multitasking. Structural equation modelling (SEM) analysis revealed that the participants’ emotional feelings (i.e., anger, guilt and happiness) after reading the message and perceptions of how professors and administrators’ perceived the researchers interviewed in the article directly predicted the evaluation of the news article. Presumed influence of the news article on neutral Americans and professors and administrators on campus did not directly predict participants’ evaluation of the news article, the influence of which was mediated by anger. Message evaluation and select emotions explained 58 per cent and 26 per cent of the variance in supporting publication of the article and intentions to avoid multitasking, respectively. Results support the inclusion of emotional responses in news evaluation research.
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