Dr. Barbara Barnett, assistant professor, received the Mary Ann Yodelis Smith Award for Feminist Scholarship. Given annually, the national award recognizes feminist research that has the potential to make significant contributions to the scholarly literature on gender and media. Barnett accepted the award Aug. 11 from the Commission on the Status of Women at the AEJMC conference in Washington. The award, first presented in 1995, honors Smith, a past AEJMC president and advocate for women in the academy.
John Hudnall, lecturer and director of Kansas Scholastic Press Association, received the Educator of the Year Award from the Scholastic Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication at the annual convention in Washington, D.C. He was praised for his leadership of the division from 2003 to 2005, and for contributions to three national scholastic journalism associations, as well as his accomplishments as executive director of the Kansas Scholastic Press Association. Dick Johns, longtime executive director of Quill and Scroll, said Hudnall’s “leadership and teaching skills have not only reached beyond the traditional classroom in promoting the support of journalism education in Kansas but throughout the nation as well. He has been instrumental in establishing programs that have been on the cutting edge of journalism education. He has been unselfish in sharing information with others about the successes he and others have experienced through KSPA.”
Dr. Kristen Swain received the first place faculty paper award in the poster category of the public relations division at the conference. She also was elected chair of the teaching standards committee for the Science Communication Interest Group.
Dr. Barbara Barnett presented "Good Sports? A Feminist Framing Analysis of the Duke Lacrosse Crisis." This paper examined how Duke University officials responded to a crisis in which three white lacrosse players were accused of raping a black woman. The charges ultimately were dropped, but the university spent 15 months coping with the crisis. Duke's key messages were that it was a victim of false media reports and that the public needed to put reason and logic ahead of emotion. Although the crisis involved allegations of rape, Duke officials spent very little time discussing sexual assault.
Dr. Kristen Swain presented five refereed papers at AEJMC, two of which received top paper awards.
Her paper for the Minorities and Communication Division, titled “Risk Framing in News Coverage of the U.S. Environmental Justice Movement,” was a content analysis of 480 stories published in 88 U.S. newspapers during the environmental justice movement of the 1990s. The risk perception theme characterized coverage during the social unrest phase more so than civil conflict, and the victimization theme characterized the mobilization phase. Environmental justice advocates were quoted more often than government officials, and criticisms of these advocates appeared ten times more often than anti-industry criticisms.
Swain’s other four papers came from a content analysis of U.S. news coverage of the anthrax attacks. Five coders examined attribution of 12 source types that appeared in 833 stories from 272 newspapers, the AP, NPR, and four television networks. Her study titled “Uncertainty Framing in News Coverage of the Anthrax Attacks” was a Top Three Faculty Paper in the Communication Theory and Methodology Division. The content analysis and a qualitative evaluation of 150 story excerpts revealed that outrage rhetoric often was linked to worries about economic impact of the attacks. Surprisingly, the stories that included conflicting reports or speculated about worst-case scenarios were significantly likely to include risk comparisons.
Her Public Relations Division paper, “Public Relations in a Non-Conventional War Disaster: Advice Framing during the Anthrax Attacks,” won the first place presentation award for the division’s poster research session. It showed that stories containing practical advice typically provided more elucidating information than other stories and more often implied that the threat was low, reducible, treatable, and detectable. As the crisis unfolded, an inverse relationship between coverage of practical advice and outrage rhetoric became more pronounced.
Swain’s Science Communication Interest Group paper, “Sourcing Patterns in News Coverage of a Non-Conventional War Disaster,” examined sourcing patterns across disaster phases. Surprisingly, top sourcing shifted from federal politicians to federal health officials after the incidents were declared acts of terrorism, and first responders did not emerge as prominent sources until after the attacks ended.
Her Newspaper Division poster, “Sourcing and Play in Newspaper Coverage of the Anthrax Attacks,” examined sourcing and play in the 457 newspaper stories that were coded. The more play a story received, the less likely it was to include explanations. Stories quoting experts received higher play than stories quoting non-experts. The more sources a story used, the less likely it was to include vague advice. A large proportion of stories quoted unnamed sources, only one source, or non-experts, indicating a lack of access to authoritative interview sources during the outbreak and impact phases of the crisis.
Dr. Tien-Tsung Lee presented the following:
"Why They Don't Trust the Media, an examination of factors predicting trust." Many people believe the news media in the U.S. have a liberal bias and therefore shouldn't be trusted. This study examines reasons behind such mistrust – beyond the audience's own political ideologies.
"The Impacts of Declining Newspaper Readership on Young Americans’ Political Participation." Are Americans, especially young citizens, really reading newspapers less often? More importantly, would their changing reading habits affect their political knowledge and participation?
"The Ethics of Outing in the 21st Century: Two case studies." This study analyzes recent news coverage of two gay politicians – a formal major of Spokane, Washington, and a congressman from Florida – and discusses whether the media have violated ethical standards of news reporting.
Dr. Charles Marsh presented:
"Postmodernism, Symmetry and Cash Value: An Isocratean Model for Modern Practitioners" (of public relations) Postmodern critics attack current public relations theory and practice for being arrogant and exclusionary. Similar concerns 2,300 years ago in Athens led Isocrates to create an ethical, inclusive form of rhetoric that could serve as a practical model for current public relations practitioners.
Dr. David Perlmutter co-authored:
(David D. Perlmutter with others.) Paper accepted for the Communication Theory and Methodology division: "Blogosphere and participatory democracy: Hostile media perception, information selection, and political participation."
(David D. Perlmutter with others.) Paper accepted for the Communication Theory and Methodology division: "Expression to Influence: Understanding the Change in Blogger Motivations over the Blogspan."
(David D. Perlmutter.) Presentation on "Eroding press freedoms" for the Mass Communication & Society and Law & Policy divisions.
