Using Twitter for Promotion and Branding: A Content Analysis of Local Television Twitter Sites

A content analysis examined the Twitter sites of 488 local television stations in the United States, based on a strategic and tactical model of media promotion. One finding of the study was that news stories were the most frequently occurring items on the sites. However, stations that offered news items also seldom promoted their regular newscasts. Overall, stations did not appear to use Twitter to direct viewers to the station's on-air programming.     

Credibility of Radio News

This study used a statewide sample of 400 Alabama residents to analyze the relative credibility of local radio news, as compared to local television and local radio. The results indicated that local radio news has a level of credibility that is lower than that of local television, but is comparable to that of local newspapers. This finding confirms previous studies that have noted that media consumers tend to have a higher regard for television than any other news medium, but this difference was not as dramatic as those reported by studies that have used forced-choice questions. Local television is indeed more credible than local radio news, but not dramatically so.     

#SocialJournalism: Local News Media on Twitter

A content analysis of 4,507 tweets from 60 local news organizations in the United States was conducted to examine Twitter strategies used by the local news industry. Results indicate that local news organizations in the United States mainly used Twitter as an additional platform for news dissemination. While local TV stations and newspapers differed significantly in their use of tweet structures, content, and strategies, both followed the similar practices of their traditional media portals. In addition, the number of followers and total tweets of a news organization’s Twitter account, use of photos, hashtags, usernames, and tweet content predicted audience engagement with the site. Overall, local news organizations in the United States did not appear to use Twitter to cross-promote and/or supplement their traditional business practices. This research calls for more systematic, multi-dimensional social media management in local newsrooms.     

Relationships among economic,newsroom, and content variables: A path model.

This study examines the relation between local news content and ownership structure in 17 television markets in the United States. It is an extension of the localism research that was conducted by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2004 and the Local Television News Media Project at the University of Delaware in 2007 (see FCC, 2007). The findings point to the need to consider television markets as the appropriate unit of analysis when examining the effect of ownership on local content. Ownership does matter in the production of news on local broadcasts. When examining only station-level factors, independent stations broadcast more local content on their newscasts than those stations that were either (a) owned-and-operated (O&O) and part of a duopoly, (b) O&O-only, or (c) part of a duopoly-only. However, when examining station-level and market-level factors of television markets, the station-level ownership profiles positively affected local content. Market-level factors that indicated more consolidation negatively affected the proportion of local news presented in the entire designated market area.     

Convergence Concerns in Local Television: Conflicting Views From the Newsroom

This nationwide survey studies the impact of convergence on reporters and producers in small and medium local television markets. The article examines the manner in which convergence-related responsibilities affect the daily routines of these news workers. It also assesses their perceptions of convergence and challenges they face, including concerns about the impact of convergence on the quality of their work. Authors compare these views to the opinions of news directors across the United States (gathered in previous research), finding significant differences between news workers' perspectives and those of their bosses.     

Reaching a Moving Target: How Local TV Stations are Using Digital Tools to Connect With Generation C

Local television in the United States is experiencing dramatic changes due to shifts in viewership and digital technologies. This study examined the extent to which a sample of local television stations in the United States are meeting the demands and needs of Generation C/Millennials through the use of social media, mobile technology, and other online communication tools. The major finding of this study was that television stations have a growing repertoire of social media and other connectivity tools with which to engage their viewers, but that stations in larger markets are making fuller use of interactive technologies.     

Newsrooms and Transparency in the Digital Age

Facing a decline in public credibility, news organizations have been encouraged to embrace transparency to combat rising public distrust. In this paper, we examine how journalists at six leading news outlets in the United States grapple with the concept of transparency and its implementation in their newsrooms. Our data indicate that news outlets engage in a limited and strategic form of transparency that enable them to appear transparent without offering substantive insights into the journalistic process.     

Domesticating patriarchy: hegemonic masculinity and television's "Mr. Mom"

This essay examines television news treatments of stay-at-home dads (Mr. Moms)during the late 1990s and argues that these news accounts represent a challenge to more traditional masculine identities depicted in media. While offering a nominal challenge, however, these representations reinscribe significant aspects of patriarchal privilege within domestic space. Through a combination of discursive strategies compatible with the commercial needs of contemporary media organizations, television news programs' Mr. Moms operate ideologically to legitimate domesticity and nurturance as appropriately masculine. In so doing, they challenge some traditional notions about men while further solidifying a connection between these men and heterosexuality in the context of mainstream television news representations of middle-class family life in the contemporary United States. This process of legitimating nurturance and domesticity also and concurrently reverses the genders long articulated to particular advertising target segments within the commodity broadcast audience. This representational process reifies and naturalizes the class specificity of these Mr. Moms while it fuels television's continual need to produce and satisfy new audience niches in order to survive and compete in the media environment of today.     

Exploring Attribution of Responsibility in a Cross-National Study of TV News Coverage of the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen

This study investigates how prime-time television news portrayed attributions of responsibility for climate change policy issues in the United States, China, and Canada. In analyzing news coverage of the 2009 climate change summit in Copenhagen, we distinguish between causal and treatment responsibility. Additionally, we develop frames to test Cerutti's conceptualization of responsibility attribution (2010). The results suggest that television news in the 3 countries portrayed treatment responsibility differently. The prominence of morality, global justice, and national efficacy frames varied across countries, and these conditions were associated with the treatment responsibility frame, partially lending support to the validity of Cerutti's conceptualization.     

LOSING THEIR “MOJO”?

Mobile journalism, whereby a single reporter must write, shoot, and edit their own news stories, is a rapidly growing trend among local television news organizations in the United States and around the world. Using qualitative case study methodology, specifically in-depth interviews and observation, this study compares “mobile journalists” with journalists working within a traditional television news crew, in which a reporter concentrates on the writing and interviewing aspects of newsgathering and a videographer concentrates on the audio/video production. The research looked at four aspects of “professionalization” found in the sociology of professions literature; expert knowledge, professional autonomy, routinization, and encroachment from outside organizations. Findings suggest that the mobile journalists in this study have less specialized expert knowledge. Also, though the mobile journalists felt that working outside a crew gave them greater autonomy, their increased use of work routines suggests they have given up some control to organizational needs. Additionally, there is evidence that these mobile journalists have allowed some encroachment by other professionals, specifically public relations professionals, in order to accomplish their work tasks within specified deadlines with limited time and resources.     

Second Generation Net News: Interactivity and Information Accessibility in the Online Environment

This study assesses the ways in which local television news operations and major metropolitan newspapers in the top 40 U.S. media markets are making information accessible and structuring interactive experiences online as the industry transitions into a third generation of Internet news. As Net news approaches its first decade of existence, online news sites are assumed to be evolving from a noninteractive, passive model of information delivery into an environment of increased immediacy, content richness, and user control. To investigate this question, a content analysis was performed in 2 waves, once during fall 1998 and again during fall 2000. For comparative purposes, differences across years are examined. In addition, the efforts of local television news sites are contrasted with the online activities of dominant newspaper sites, which have assumed a commanding lead in building a local online audience. The analysis argues for valuing Net news sites less from a profit-loss standpoint and more for the nonmonetary contributions they make in relation to the broader news mission, namely, enhanced coverage, brand loyalty, and news credibility.     

国家档案事业战略规划的国际比较及其借鉴

战略规划具有引领与规范档案事业发展的功能,是档案治理现代化的重要方式。文章从静态视角比较分析中国与美国、俄罗斯、英国、加拿大、澳大利亚国家档案事业战略规划的理念、目标、重点任务、保障措施,发现我国战略规划兼顾传统档案工作模式与新兴业态发展,统领性更强,而其他五国战略主题更为明确,可操作性更强。从动态视角比较分析战略规划的流程、延续与更新,发现六个国家战略规划的制订均遵守科学规范的流程与方法,在坚守和变革中寻求平衡。我国档案事业战略规划需要统筹好环境扫描、规划方法、战略主题、战略目标和规划实施五项核心要素。     

Conceptualizing Continuous Coverage: A Strategic Model for Wall-to-Wall Local Television Weather Broadcasts

The 2005 hurricane season provided unprecedented opportunities for local television stations to serve the public interest in live, often commercial-free, coverage of severe weather. In this examination of four local television stations' coverage of four Atlantic hurricanes in two Southeastern markets, observed patterns of behavior culminated in the development of the Local Weather Continuous Coverage Model. The study showed that unlike their cable news counterparts, local television news continuous coverage prioritizes weather personnel over live, on-the-scene news reporting. Of all the weather tools used, radar was the most frequently used, followed by watch and warning graphics.     

Conceptualizing Continuous Coverage: A Strategic Model for Wall-to-Wall Local Television Weather Broadcasts

The 2005 hurricane season provided unprecedented opportunities for local television stations to serve the public interest in live, often commercial-free, coverage of severe weather. In this examination of four local television stations’ coverage of four Atlantic hurricanes in two Southeastern markets, observed patterns of behavior culminated in the development of the Local Weather Continuous Coverage Model. The study showed that unlike their cable news counterparts, local television news continuous coverage prioritizes weather personnel over live, on-the-scene news reporting. Of all the weather tools used, radar was the most frequently used, followed by watch and warning graphics.     

Self-Mediation. New Media,Citizenship and Civil Selves

This study examines the attitudes and the selection criteria of U.S. television journalists toward international news. Q factor analysis of 3I journalists from major national networks and local television stations reveals that journalists select international news based on market demands and local relevance. The findings strikingly delineate along the line between network versus local television. Network journalists manifest a global view, selecting international news with diverse themes, while local television journalists adopt a more pragmatic stance due to business pressures and audience demands, choosing international news with a local angle. All, however, emphasize timeliness and U.S. involvement in news selection.     

Taking our Pictures

This qualitative research project explores the specific ways in which 12 traditional television, print and internet news organizations in the United States integrated user-generated visual content into news coverage over the course of an ordinary week, June 8–14, 2014. Framed from a cultural materialist perspective, we found that user-generated visual content constituted a minimal part of the print, broadcast and online news coverage. Based on our research, we suggest that traditional media outlets marginalized the use of citizen photojournalism in an effort to control news production, maintain their influence and power, and to reinforce the reliance on ideological notions of accurate, responsible and relevant journalism.     

Cohort Trends in Media Use in the United States

In this study, I replicate recent research conducted in Germany (Peiser, 1996) on differential effects of television on birth cohorts' media use in the first 2 decades after the diffusion of television. Cohort analyses of television viewing, attitude toward television, and newspaper reading were conducted using secondary data from the corresponding decades in the United States. Unlike in Germany, the American television generation apparently developed a closer relation with television than the preceding cohorts. As in Germany, newspaper reading was lower among the younger cohorts. The study's results point to a displacement process in the United States, and they suggest that the effects of growing up with television may depend on a country's television system.     

Nurturing Authority

When considering the role of local journalism in a networked media environment, it is crucial to examine how audiences attribute news with the power to define social knowledge. In particular, television news programs need to appeal to audiences by reinforcing a sense of local journalistic authority to assert the parameters of who and what is worthy of coverage. This article presents the findings from interviews with a range of commercial television news viewers in Sydney, Australia. It positions viewership in the context of people’s wider engagement with news, and in relation to their interpersonal and digital social interactions. The paper argues that local audiences have conflicting attitudes to the role of television news, both contesting and re-inscribing the programs with the power to demarcate social, political, and cultural knowledge. It traces how local audiences challenge the ability of news to convey boundaries within the community through processes of exclusion, connecting the contestations to the lived experiences of the individuals. It identifies that television news programs nurture journalistic authority in terms of their local relevance, and it contributes insights on the significance of local news by engaging with the means by which audiences themselves attach social power to journalism.     

Obtaining Nationally Representative Samples of Local News Media Outlets

This article presents 1 approach to constructing a valid national sample of local news outlets. Using designated market areas that represent the dominant geographic area of influence for television stations, researchers can create a nationally representative sample of local media, including television and newspaper outlets. A method for adapting the approach to smaller geographic areas is also discussed. Data are provided to support the validity of the sampling method proposed in this study. The data analysis is based on a 2-year sample of TV newscasts and daily newspapers from across the country.     

Implications of technological change for scientific communication in the third world a case study 1

This study approaches media use among international students from a uses-and-gratifications perspective to explore the relationship between need for acculturation, acculturative motives, and media use among Chinese students in the United States. Eighty-four Chinese students participated in a survey at a large research university in the Midwestern United States. Results indicate that need for acculturation is, in fact, correlated with media use motives and patterns. An acculturative motive, for example, is correlated with watching US-based TV news programs and using US-based news websites and BBS. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.