传媒经济学研究的历史、方法与范例

本文主要回顾了传媒经济学在西方的发展历程、研究方法以及不同时期的研究议题。传媒经济学是构建于不同的经济学理论和分析方法之上的应用性学科,它致力于研究经济和金融力量如何影响传媒体系和传媒组织。西方传媒经济学创建于20世纪50年代,至今已发展成为一个活跃的和跨学科研究领域。文章认为,西方传媒经济学的主要研究范例包括理论型、应用型和批评型范例;其研究方法可分为行业市场研究、公司研究和影响力研究。在介绍西方传媒经济学研究的同时,本文还简要回顾了传媒经济学在中国的兴起与发展。     

Buddhist Wall Paintings at Nako Monastery,North India: Changing of the Technology Throughout Centuries

The technical study of wall paintings from the Buddhist temple complex at Nako, Western Himalayas, was one of the basic preconditions required for designing an appropriate conservation strategy. The complex, composed of four temples from the eleventh–twelfth century, offered a unique possibility to carry out a comprehensive research of technology and painting materials used in early and later western Tibetan Buddhist wall paintings as well as a comparative assessment with murals from other sites in the Western Himalayas. The study was based on extensive fieldwork and an integrated analytical approach comprising a wide range of non-destructive and micro-destructive methods. Answering the question of the coevality of paintings in the smaller temples with other original murals, the precise characterisation of binding media, the detection of the yellow dye gamboge and natural minerals posnjakite and brochantite identified for the first time in Himalayan murals, the clarification of technology of metal decoration, and the making of raised elements are some of the most exciting results which emerged from the research.     

Lighting the Shroud of Turin for Exhibition in 2015

ABSTRACT

Lighting a cultural heritage artifact requires balancing visual perception with preventive conservation, by providing the best lighting (in terms of spectral distribution and quantity) to enable the viewer to appreciate details and color, while limiting photo-induced degradation. The paper outlines the methodology applied by a multi-disciplinary team while lighting the Shroud of Turin at its last public exhibition in 2015. The methodology considered the special requirements of the Shroud, including exposure to ultraviolet light, while providing appropriate display conditions that would meet audience expectations. The desired appearance (readability of the body image and color) was defined with the help of Shroud researchers and confirmed by subjective tests, while appropriate light levels for preservation were set in agreement with standard requirements and using knowledge of the degradation of linen in visible and UV light. The installation provided a controlled environment and a managed visitor route to the Shroud, assuring excellent perception of both details and color, with the lowest illuminance level about 15?lx.     

Intercultural Communication and the Central States Region

This reflection essay describes the Central States Region as an area rich in intercultural communication. González describes Mexican American migrant farmworker organizing as an intercultural activity since the union activists attempted to influence both Mexican heritage and European heritage audiences. González also describes the many interculturalists working in the Midwest who influenced his early research.     

Applying LDA Topic Modeling in Communication Research: Toward a Valid and Reliable Methodology

ABSTRACT

Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic models are increasingly being used in communication research. Yet, questions regarding reliability and validity of the approach have received little attention thus far. In applying LDA to textual data, researchers need to tackle at least four major challenges that affect these criteria: (a) appropriate pre-processing of the text collection; (b) adequate selection of model parameters, including the number of topics to be generated; (c) evaluation of the model’s reliability; and (d) the process of validly interpreting the resulting topics. We review the research literature dealing with these questions and propose a methodology that approaches these challenges. Our overall goal is to make LDA topic modeling more accessible to communication researchers and to ensure compliance with disciplinary standards. Consequently, we develop a brief hands-on user guide for applying LDA topic modeling. We demonstrate the value of our approach with empirical data from an ongoing research project.     

Scaling up Content Analysis

ABSTRACT

Employing a number of different standalone programs is a prevalent approach among communication scholars who use computational methods to analyze media content. For instance, a researcher might use a specific program or a paid service to scrape some content from the Web, then use another program to process the resulting data, and finally conduct statistical analysis or produce some visualizations in yet another program. This makes it hard to build reproducible workflows, and even harder to build on the work of earlier studies. To improve this situation, we propose and discuss four criteria that a framework for automated content analysis should fulfill: scalability, free and open source, adaptability, and accessibility via multiple interfaces. We also describe how to put these considerations into practice, discuss their feasibility, and point toward future developments.     

WhatsApp as a Tool for Participation on Spanish Radio: A Preliminary Study of the Program Las Mañanas on RNE

This study was conducted in an environment of widespread use of social media and mobile applications in the mass media. The general goal of the study was to analyze the use of WhatsApp in cybermedia, specifically in radio. A case study was proposed to examine the use of WhatsApp on the program Las mañanas de RNE, broadcast by Spanish National Radio. It was found that the public was very accepting of the program’s initiative to solicit WhatsApp voice messages, beginning in November 2015. The case study used audio files of a direct broadcast that included specific times for audience participation. The use of WhatsApp was accepted by the audience, in addition to the use of the conventional telephone, as a tool well-suited to listener participation in radio programming. Finally, the study highlights the importance of interactive, participatory spaces in broadcasts through the creation of synergies with new forms of online participation.     

Placing Facebook

Facebook is challenging professional journalism. These challenges were evident in three incidents from 2016: the allegation that Facebook privileged progressive-leaning news on its trending feature; Facebook’s removal of the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Napalm Girl” photo from the pages of prominent users; and the proliferation of “fake news” during the US presidential election. Using theoretical concepts from the field of boundary work, this paper examines how The Guardian, The New York Times, Columbia Journalism Review and Poynter editorialized Facebook’s role in these three incidents to discursively construct the boundary between the value of professional journalism to democracy and Facebook’s ascendant role in facilitating essential democratic functions. Findings reveal that these publications attempted to define Facebook as a news organization (i.e., include it within the boundaries of journalism) so that they could then criticize the company for not following duties traditionally incumbent upon news organizations (i.e., place it outside the boundaries of journalism). This paper advances scholarship that focuses on both inward and outward conceptions of boundary work, further explores the complex challenge of defining who a journalist is in the face of rapidly changing technological norms, and advances scholarship in the field of media ethics that positions ethical analysis at the institutional level.