Personalized news stories affect men as well as women

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-186
Author(s):  
Scott R. Maier ◽  
Marcus Mayorga ◽  
Paul Slovic

Using an online survey with embedded experimental conditions, the study examines gender and generational differences in reader reaction to news reports of mass violence in Africa. Affective response from women was found stronger than for men on 9 of 10 measures of emotion. But the gender gap disappears when the story is personalized. Depending on story framing, older readers tended to express greater affective response than millennials.

Journalism ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (8) ◽  
pp. 1011-1029 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott R Maier ◽  
Paul Slovic ◽  
Marcus Mayorga

Drawing from psychological research, the study examines how story form influences reader reaction to news accounts of mass violence in Africa. An online survey with embedded experimental conditions was administered to a US Internet panel (n = 638). Results show that how the story is told affects reader emotional response and, indirectly, charitable giving. Story personification had the strongest influence, followed by stories with photographic images. Use of statistical and mobilizing information had only a small effect on reader response. The straight news story – the predominant form of news reporting – evoked the weakest emotional response. The findings underscore that simply ‘reporting the news’ is often insufficient to arouse audience response. The reader needs empathetic connection, especially when dealing with large-scale distant suffering. Applying psychological principles to practical journalism, the study is intended to guide media practitioners and activists as they seek better ways to bring attention to the world’s most deplorable conditions.


Public Voices ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 89
Author(s):  
Rachel Lange ◽  
Kimberly Nelson

Despite gains by women in many professional fields, the top level of local government management ranks continues to be populated primarily by man. The percentage of females serving as local government chief administrators has not increased since the 1980s. Little empirical research exists that attempts to uncover the reason for the gender gap. The purpose of this research is to identify some of the obstacles and barriers that affect a woman’s decision to advance her career in local government. Utilizing an online survey, the authors surveyed female chief administrative officers (CAOs), assistant CAOs, assistant to the CAOs, and deputy CAOs in Illinois. The survey results show that barriers such as a male dominated culture and time commitment to work life and family life are preventing females from achieving higher authority. Mentoring proves to be a positive solution to many of the barriers facing women in local government.


Author(s):  
Yujeong Kim ◽  
Eunmi Lee

Bioterrorism is destructive enough to cause a societal collapse, and preparation for bioterrorism is imperative. This study aims to identify the factors influencing preparedness for bioterrorism among Koreans. A total of 1,050 subjects were included in the study, which were allocated according to region and age in proportion to population. An online survey was used to examine the following factors: participants’ general characteristics; cognitive factors including perceived probability, perceived seriousness, perceived personal impact, perceived coping efficacy, and perceived resilience; social–contextual factors including perceived governmental preparedness and perceived front-line preparedness; affective responses including affective response to terrorism and anxiety; and bioterrorism preparedness. The factors influencing the level of preparedness for bioterrorism included age, marital status, experience of bioterrorism education, perceived personal impact, perceived coping efficacy, perceived resilience, and perceived front-line preparedness. The factors that most significantly affected the level of preparedness for bioterrorism were perceived coping efficacy and perceived front-line preparedness, with an R2 of 41.4%. Relevant education and public relations programs should be strengthened to help citizens minimize their exposure and known to inform relevant institutions in the event of suspected bioterrorism, and front-line responders should cultivate their ability to respond to bioterrorism quickly and accurately.


2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 39
Author(s):  
Phillip Ozimek ◽  
Hans-Werner Bierhoff ◽  
Elke Rohmann

Past research showed that social networking sites represent perfect platforms to satisfy narcissistic needs. The present study aimed to investigate how grandiose (GN) and vulnerable narcissism (VN) as well as social comparisons are associated with Facebook activity, which was measured with a self-report on three activity dimensions: Acting, Impressing, and Watching. In addition, the state self-esteem (SSE) was measured with respect to performance, social behavior, and appearance. One hundred and ten participants completed an online survey containing measures of SSE and Facebook activity and a priming procedure with three experimental conditions embedded in a social media context (upward comparison, downward comparison, and control group). Results indicated, as expected, that high VN was negatively associated with SSE on each subscale and the overall score. In addition, it was found that VN, but not GN, displayed positive associations with frequency of Facebook activities. Finally, it was proposed and confirmed that VN in interaction with the priming of downward comparisons negatively affected SSE. The conclusion drawn is that VN represents a key variable for the prediction of self-esteem as well as for the frequency of Facebook activity.


2005 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 492-500 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lydia Reeves Timmins ◽  
Matthew Lombard

As our lives become increasingly dominated by mediated experiences, presence scholars have noted that an increasing number of these mediated experiences evoke (tele)-presence, perceptions that ignore or misconstrue the role of the medium in the experience. In this paper we explore an interesting countertrend that seems to be occurring as well. In a variety of contexts, people are experiencing not an illusion that a mediated experience is in fact nonmediated, but the illusion that a nonmediated “real” experience is mediated. Drawing on news reports and an online survey, we identify 3 categories of this “illusion of mediation”: positive (when people perceive natural beauty as mediated), negative (when people perceive a disaster, crime, or other tragedy such as the events of September 11, 2001, as mediated), and unusual (when close connections between people's “real life” activities and mediated experiences lead them to confuse the former with the latter). We label this phenomenon inverse presence and consider its place and value in a comprehensive theory of presence, its possible antecedents and consequences, and what it suggests about the nature of our lives in the 21st century.


Journalism ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 146488492110459
Author(s):  
Lillian Boxman-Shabtai

Although media-audience encounters are always potentially open to different interpretations, little is known about the textual mechanisms that encourage polysemy. Focusing on a story about a CEO who pledged to drastically cut his pay to increase his employees’ salaries, this study compared news reports that covered the same event but were met by different levels of polysemy in their reception. Through a combination of frame and semiotic analysis, the study pinpoints differences in content and style between news stories that were met by interpretive convergence from audiences (low polysemy) and those that were met by interpretive divergence (high polysemy). Based on these differences, a typology of three textual mechanisms is offered to explain the range of polysemy in the news: the attributes and representation of characters, the use of empiricism versus mythology in structuring conflict, and the level of closure versus uncertainty in the story’s conclusion.


Author(s):  
Kristy A. Hesketh

This chapter explores the Spiritualist movement and its rapid growth due to the formation of mass media and compares these events with the current rise of fake news in the mass media. The technology of cheaper publications created a media platform that featured stories about Spiritualist mediums and communications with the spirit world. These articles were published in newspapers next to regular news creating a blurred line between real and hoax news stories. Laws were later created to address instances of fraud that occurred in the medium industry. Today, social media platforms provide a similar vessel for the spread of fake news. Online fake news is published alongside legitimate news reports leaving readers unable to differentiate between real and fake articles. Around the world countries are actioning initiatives to address the proliferation of false news to prevent the spread of misinformation. This chapter compares the parallels between these events, how hoaxes and fake news begin and spread, and examines the measures governments are taking to curb the growth of misinformation.


Author(s):  
Yijun Gao

This study finds some publicly available data, such as the comments posted to the news stories and online survey results, could be an alternative data source for researchers to analyze news websites when the Web server log data are not available.Cette étude indique que les chercheurs pourraient utiliser des données publiques, comme les commentaires de reportages publiés en ligne et les résultats de sondages électroniques, pour analyser les site Web d’information lorsque les journaux transactionnels des serveurs ne sont pas accessibles. 


Author(s):  
Nicolá Goc

Throughout the history of journalism the notion of a mother killing her infant child—committing an act of infanticide—has always been high on the news values scale. In the 19th century, sensational news reports of illicit sexual liaisons, of childbirth and grisly murder, appeared regularly in the press, naming and shaming transgressive unmarried women and framing them as a danger to society. These lurid stories were published in broadsheets and the popular press as well as in respectable newspapers, including the most influential English newspaper of the century, The Times of London. In 19th-century England, The Times played a powerful role in influencing public opinion on the issue of infanticide using lurid reports of infanticide trials and coronial inquests as evidence in stirring editorials as part of their political campaign to reform the 1834 New Poor Law and repeal its pernicious Bastardy Clause, which had led to a large increase in rates of infanticide. News texts, because of their ability to capture one view of a society at a given moment in time, are a valuable historical resource and can also provide insight into journalism practices and the creation of public opinion. Infanticide court and coronial news reports provided details of the desperate murderous actions of young women and also furnished potent evidence of legal and government policy failures. The use of critical discourse analysis (CDA) in studying infanticide reports in The Times provides insight into the ways in which infanticide news stories worked as ideological texts and how journalists created understandings about illegitimacy, the “fallen woman,” infanticide, social injustice, and discriminatory gendered laws through news discourse.


2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 473-489 ◽  
Author(s):  
Monica Ferrín ◽  
Marta Fraile ◽  
Gema M García-Albacete ◽  
Raul Gómez

To what extent does conventional survey measurement capture the political interest of men and women equally well? We aim to answer this question by relying on unique data from a national online survey in Spain, where we used various questions unpacking the standard indicator of political interest. The findings show that men and women nominate different personal political interests. We also find that the gender gap in political interest vanishes once these specific interests are taken into account. This suggests that at least part of the documented gender gap in general political interest might be due to the fact that, when prompted to think about politics, women disregard their own specific political interests and instead focus on the dominant, male-oriented understanding of politics.


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