For the Public Good or Just Good Publicity? Celebrity Diplomacy and the Ethics of Representation

Celebrities in recent years have taken on a more active role in communicating global humanitarian crises to the American public. This role at times shifts between journalist, advocate, philanthropist, and personal publicist. This article evaluates how three of the most well-known celebrities in this genre in the United States—Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, and Bono—differ in their method of speaking about these issues, focusing on how their public discourse adds to, or detracts from, citizens' abilities to understand, discuss, and respond to the issues presented in the public sphere. Through critical discourse analysis, similarities and differences are teased out and placed within the context of previous research on celebrity diplomacy and humanitarian crises, in order to evaluate the usefulness of such performances for the U.S. public as democratic citizens and for the victims of foreign suffering the celebrities purport to represent.     

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous: Celebrity Media Diet and the Cultivation of Emerging Adults’ Materialism

The present study used cultivation theory to explore the relationships between celebrity media diet and materialism for a sample of 224 emerging adults. Results indicated main effects between both celebrity magazine consumption and celebrity TV news consumption on materialism. Total celebrity media diet was also significantly related to materialism. Findings suggest that a media diet high in celebrity culture and lifestyle has significant impact on emerging adults’ preoccupation with consumerism, particularly for women. This research contributes to a growing body of literature on the effects of a celebrity-saturated media environment and the cultivation of materialistic attitudes.     

Public Trust or Mistrust? Perceptions of Media Credibility in the Information Age

This article explores perceptions of news credibility for television, newspapers, and online news. A survey was administered to a randomly selected sample of residents in Austin, Texas, to assess people's attitudes toward these 3 media channels. Contingent factors that might influence news credibility perceptions, such as media use and interpersonal discussion of news, were incorporated into the analysis. Findings suggest that people are generally skeptical of news emanating from all 3 media channels but do rate newspapers with the highest credibility, followed by online news and television news, respectively. Furthermore, opinions about news credibility seem to be correlated across media outlets. The data also show a moderate negative linkage between interpersonal discussion of news and perceptions of media credibility for television news but not for newspapers. When controlling for basic demographics, a positive correlation was found between interpersonal communication and online news credibility. Finally, a marginal association was noted between media use and public perceptions of credibility across all 3 media channels.     

Does Online News Reading and Sharing Shape Perceptions of the Internet as a Place for Public Deliberations?

With the rapid development of interactive communication technology, the Internet is a major source of news and also plays an important role in connecting individual members of society. However, Internet users may have different perspectives on whether the Internet positively functions as a medium for public deliberation. Based on the assumption that being exposed to information on public affairs is a crucial step for one's civic engagement, this study explores how individuals’ motives related to news consumption, elaborative online news reading, and online news sharing influence their perceptions of online deliberation using structural equation modeling method (N = 998). The study finds significant relationships between news consumption motives and elaborative news reading and sharing behaviors, but only elaborative reading behavior had a significant effect on one's perceptions of online deliberation. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

When Online Instruction Doesn’t Measure Up: How Can You Tell,and What Should You Do?

At Duquesne University, freshmen are required to take a one-credit information literacy course. This course has traditionally been offered mostly face-to-face, but has expanded into more online offerings. Unfortunately, the experience for students and instructors online was not as positive as those involved with the face-to-face version of the course. Assessment results on a variety of levels and anecdotal evidence indicated that students did not work as well together to learn as those did in the face-to-face version of the course. Not only did instructors receive lower student evaluation scores, but students did not perform as well on their final, collaborative project. While there will be barriers to learning online, especially when students work together in a group, instructors and instructional designers can take distinct steps to make the experience a positive one. Instructors must use particular interventions to increase student-to-student interaction that leads to learning.     

Trust or Bust?: Questioning the Relationship Between Media Trust and News Attention

This article establishes the theoretical significance of media trust and explores the relationships between individuals' levels of media trust and news attention. Three distinct types of media trust are introduced: 1) trust of news information, 2) trust of those who deliver the news, and 3) trust of media corporations. The findings indicate that these different types of media trust relate to news attention in distinct ways, specifically when examined across medium. The theoretical significance of the findings are discussed and contextualized in light of an evolving media environment.     

Crisis Communication Strategy on Social Media and the Public’s Cognitive and Affective Responses: A Case of Foster Farms Salmonella Outbreak

This study examined an organization’s crisis communication strategy (i.e., crisis response strategy and technical translation strategy) on social media and the public’s cognitive and affective responses. Twenty crisis communication messages posted by Foster Farms regarding a salmonella outbreak and 349 public responses were analyzed. The results showed that a technical translation strategy generated more public acceptance of the message and more positive emotions than a crisis response strategy. A crisis response strategy generated more public rejections of the message and more negative emotions than a technical translation strategy.     

The Interplay Between Media Use and Interpersonal Communication in the Context of Healthy Lifestyle Behaviors: Reinforcing or Substituting?

This study aims to explore how media use for health information and interpersonal health communication interact in the context of healthy lifestyle behaviors. This study hypothesizes that media use for health information and interpersonal health communication will serve as substitutes for one another. To test this hypothesis, this study uses a nationally representative survey of 2,107 civilian, noninstitutionalized adults in the United States. The results show that the associations between television use and Internet use and healthy lifestyle behaviors are enhanced among those who talk about health issues with their family and friends less frequently, which supports the substitution model. The implications that these findings have for future research are discussed.     

OPACs,Users, and Readers’ Advisory: Exploring the Implications of User-Generated Content for Readers’ Advisory in Canadian Public Libraries

This article examines the contribution of social discovery platforms and user-generated content (UGC) on readers’ advisory (RA) services in Canadian public libraries. Grounded Theory was used to conduct a content analysis of library-assigned subject headings and UGC of 22 adult fiction titles in 43 Canadian public libraries that use BiblioCommons, SirsiDynix, and Encore social discovery platforms. Findings indicate that UGC complements the MARC bibliographic record as it provides insight into the subject of a work, its protagonists, and the effect the book has on readers. User-generated reviews provide a rich data set that clearly connects to known RA access points.     

Seeking Out and Avoiding the News Media: Young Adults’ Proposed Strategies for Obtaining Current Events Information

This study takes a closer look at the role the news media plays in how young adults inform themselves in the high-choice media age. In-depth interview data with 21 young adults from varying socioeconomic backgrounds were used to identify the strategies they had for locating current events information. During the interviews, the young adult participants responded to six hypothetical “vignettes” by articulating the steps that they would take to find information about current events. Findings revealed two strategy patterns that interviewees voiced—one set of strategies directly involved use of the news media, and another set avoided the news media in favor of functional information alternatives. Common among all the interviewees, however, was the need for information skepticism when navigating the contemporary media environment. Implications for social inequality and news media literacy are discussed.     

Does It Matter If I Feel Sorry or Sorry for You? Testing the Roles of Empathy and Sympathy as Mechanisms Driving Viewer Response to a Dramatic Ad

Narrative messages on average produce higher levels of involvement, intention, and behavior than other message formats. Narratives also generate feelings of sympathy and empathy, although few studies have directly compared the roles of each emotion in the persuasion process. This article presents the results of two studies that tested the effect of exposure to a narrative or nonnarrative ad on persuasive outcomes and the roles sympathy and empathy play in the persuasion process. Both studies found that the narrative ad produced higher levels of involvement, intention, and behavior and that empathy played a more important role in persuasion than sympathy.     

“The Cameras Were Everywhere”: Media Conduct Through the Eyes of Homicide Victims’ Families: Switzerland,Italy, and Israel

Using a qualitative research method of life stories, this article examines perceptions among families from Switzerland, Italy, and Israel regarding the media’s role in their process of coping with the murder of close relatives. The findings reveal a duality of attitudes regarding the media found in all three countries examined. The media logic predominant in the experience of victims’ families has a very similar effect, clearly leading to a mediatization of victimhood.     

The land of confusion?: High school students and their use of the World Wide Web for research

The use of the World Wide Web by high school students to complete school assignments was studied by interviewing high school students. The author expected to find that students were using the World Wide Web as their primary source of information and that the students had difficulty in evaluating whether information on a web site was scholarly. The author considered Perry's Scheme of Student Development and the unique nature of the World Wide Web to come to these assumptions, which were only partially validated by this study. As is typical in a qualitative study, the sample was small, but some themes that could help provide direction to further research emerged. It was discovered that the students in the study used a good variety of resources, including libraries and the World Wide Web, to find information for school assignments. However, the students were weak at determining the quality of the information that they found on a web site. Students did poorly at evaluating web site information in the absence of gatekeepers.     

“Are We There Yet?”: Searching for Springfield and The Simpsons’ Rhetoric of Omnitopia

The Simpsons’ visual and textual depiction of Springfield as a typical American city provides an insightful critique of the modern project. We demonstrate how America's longest running sitcom depicts urban life as a mutable environment whose disparate locales convey their inhabitants to a ubiquitous, ever-present continuum that we term “omnitopia.” In depicting Springfield as omnitopia, the show offers a cartoon version of public life marked by dislocation, conflation, fragmentation, mutability, mobility, and commodification. The study of these components provides a means to interpret and critique the increasing decline of locales in the urban environment.     

Action Research,Assessment, and Institutional Review Boards (IRB): Conflicting Demands or Productive Tension for the Academic Librarian?

This article puts forward an “assessment/action research/publication” cycle that integrates aspects of the assessment, research, and Institutional Review Board (IRB) processes to provide academic librarians with a systematic approach for balancing competing workplace demands and give library managers a roadmap for creating a “research culture” (Jacobs, Berg, and Cornwall) within their libraries. The article argues that librarians and library managers have much to gain by integrating action research into librarians’ everyday work loads, including increased ease in meeting publication demands for tenure and/or promotion, institutionalizing habits of reflective practice across all library service areas, and overall library improvement.