Media ecology classroom assignment: Comparative media paper

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Caputo
Keyword(s):  
Media Studies ◽  
Television News ◽  
Cultural Influence ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
News Story ◽  
Print Journalism ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Experiential Approach ◽  
Comparative Media ◽  
Classroom Assignment

This essay discusses a foundational theory in media studies and uses an experiential approach to learning the concept. Based on the foundational writings of Sapir, Innes, McLuhan, Postman and others, the following is a two-part assignment that appears simple but can be quite complex. When looking at the cultural influence of media, we are often misled by the illusion of content. This assignment requires the student to examine how the form of a medium of communication influences the content. The student is asked to write a brief comparative analysis (two to four pages) of the same story in two different media, e.g., television news story and print journalism; a novel and a film; a blog and an audio story, etc. Again, students find this assignment quite difficult because now they are asked to show how the medium of communication being used actually changes the content.

scholarly journals The effects of constructive television news reporting on prosocial intentions and behavior in children: The role of negative emotions and self-efficacy

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Iris van Venrooij ◽  
Tobias Sachs ◽  
Mariska Kleemans
Keyword(s):  
Self Efficacy ◽  
Positive Emotions ◽  
Television News ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Emotional Responses ◽  
News Story ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Video ◽  
Prosocial Intentions ◽  
And Behavior

Abstract To reduce negative emotional responses and to stimulate prosociality, constructive journalism promotes the inclusion of positive emotions and solutions in news. This study experimentally tested whether including those elements indeed increased prosocial intentions and behavior among children, and whether negative emotions and self-efficacy are mediators in this regard. To this end, children (N = 468; 9 to 13 years old) were exposed to an emotion-based, solution-based, or non-constructive news video. Results showed that emotion-based and solution-based news reduced children’s negative emotions compared to non-constructive news. No direct effects for prosocial intentions were found, but solution-based news led to less prosocial behavior (i. e., money donated) than emotion-based and non-constructive news. Moreover, negative emotions served as a mediator, self-efficacy did not. The more negative emotions were elicited by a news story, the higher the prosocial intentions and behavior. In conclusion, a constructive style of reporting helps to reduce children’s negative emotional responses but subsequently hinders prosociality.

You can’t beat the feeling: How emotional responses to exemplars in news stories affect perceptions of expert sources and the message of the news story

2021 ◽  
Vol 00 (00) ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Lene Heiselberg ◽  
Morten Skovsgaard
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Response ◽  
Electrodermal Activity ◽  
Television News ◽  
Base Rate ◽  
News Story ◽  
News Stories ◽  
Conflicting Information ◽  
Rate Information ◽  
Personal Accounts ◽  
Main Message

Journalists include ordinary people as exemplars – also known as case sources – in news stories to illustrate the general issue through their personal accounts. These accounts from exemplars tend to evoke emotions in the audience and carry greater weight than base rate information when people form perceptions or attitudes on the problem at hand. In this study, drawing on a news story in which an expert source and an exemplar provide conflicting information, we explore viewers’ emotional response to the exemplar and their perceptions of the expert source and the main message of the news story. We do this by presenting participants with two versions of a television news story – one with and one without an exemplar. We measure participants’ emotional response through a combination of open-ended and close-ended self-reports and directly through electrodermal activity, and we explore their perception of sources and the message of the story through open-ended questions. We find that viewers experience increased arousal when they watch the personal account of an exemplar, and that they tend to interpret the base rate information in the light of the exemplar’s account. Furthermore, some respondents tend to delegitimize the expert source that contradicts the account of the exemplar. We discuss the implications that these results have for journalists and provide tentative advice on which measures journalists can take to counter such effects.

The global television news agencies and their handling of user generated content video from Syria

2017 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-308 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen Murrell
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Television News ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Media Ecology ◽  
User Generated Content ◽  
International News ◽  
Information Transparency ◽  
News Agencies ◽  
The Media ◽  
Global Television

This article examines the role that the global television news agencies play in the handling of user generated content (UGC) video from Syria. In the almost complete absence of independent journalists, Reuters, Associated Press and Agence France-Presse are sourcing citizen videos from YouTube channels and passing it on to their clients. This article examines the verification processes that the agencies undertake to check on the veracity of this material and asks whether the agencies have abandoned independent journalism to activists. This article provides a comparative analysis of two months’ worth of UGC videos from Syria that were broadcast by the global news agencies after Russia joined the bombing campaign in Syria in late 2015. It analyses the content, verification processes and information that the agencies give their clients about this material. Through interviews with senior editors from the three organisations, questions of certainty versus probability are explored, along with ethical arguments about propaganda versus information transparency. The global news agencies are the engine drivers of international news coverage and their decisions and interpretation feed directly into the media ecology of mainstream and then alternative media.

Look Who's Talking! Islamic Discourse in the Chechen Wars

2006 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott Radnitz
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Television News ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Print Journalism ◽  
The Public ◽  
News Broadcasts ◽  
Psychological Warfare ◽  
The Media ◽  
Radio Free Europe ◽  
Chechen Wars

In any contemporary conflict, the war of ideas may be just as important as the war on the battlefield. Throughout history, propaganda has been used as a tool of psychological warfare. The prevalence of technology makes the mass media an ever more vital tool in spreading one's message, both to combatants and throughout the world. The case of the Chechen wars demonstrates the importance both sides placed on publicity in the course of fighting. In addition to the use of print journalism, the Chechen wars witnessed the employment of television news broadcasts, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and the Internet as a means to spread messages. Given the importance of the media, the public and private discourse by the combatants has been seen as crucial to their cause. The language of Islam carries a set of widely shared symbols, many related to war, that can be used to manipulate public opinion. This article will analyze how Islamic language was used in the two Russian invasions of Chechnya in the 1990s (1994–1996, 1999–2002). It analyzes three pairs of variables: Russian and Chechen public discourse, especially regarding the language of Islam; Chechen public and Chechen private discourse; and the discourse of both sides in the first war compared to the second war.

Selma in the “Glaring Light of Television”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aniko Bodroghkozy
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Television News ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
News Story ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
News Reporting ◽  
News Program ◽  
American Press ◽  
Television Coverage

This chapter examines television news' reporting of the Selma campaign for voting rights that led directly to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Television cameras present on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday March 7, 1965, were able to capture the beating, gassing, and brutalizing suffered by voting rights demonstrators as they attempted to march to Montgomery. The uproar generated by that footage generated more support, volunteers, and moral clout for the civil rights movement. This chapter considers how one news program, The CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, presented the Selma campaign as an ongoing nightly news story, with particular emphasis on its coverage of the campaign's three martyrs: Jimmie Lee Jackson, Rev. James Reeb, and Viola Liuzzo. It also discusses the response of white Selmians in the “glaring light of television” and the commentary in the African American press regarding the television coverage of the campaign.

The DNA of a Television News Story

2014 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 198-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dean Cummings
Keyword(s):  
Television News ◽  
News Story

scholarly journals Precedent-Based Learning: An Approach for Studio Pedagogy in the Early Years

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ömer Akin ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Problem Solving ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Professional Practice ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Specific Domain ◽  
Problem Solving Skills ◽  
Very Old ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Experiential Approach ◽  
Domain Information

Precedent-Based learning is related to a very old method of teaching, particularly in the studio setting. Usually it takes the form of precedent analysis. An empirical study was conducted in order to better understand how experienced designers use precedents in the course of a brief design session. Normative theories of learning suggest that success is most likely to be achieved when students learn (1) the principles governing events or phenomenon in a discipline, and (2) ways of applying these principles to specific situations to solve problems of various kinds. We call this the didactic method. In the didactic approach there is a systematic representation of the fundamental principles of knowledge that identify a specific domain upon which a corpus of applications or problem-solving skills can be constructed. In fields that deal with professional practice, for example design, instruction appears to deviate from this pattern in significant ways. Students are rarely given robust principles (ones that hold in different contexts), let alone immutable ones, upon which they can construct designs that can be judged unequivocally or without error. Instead they are given plenty of precedents from which to learn a variety of heuristics. This type of knowledge is fundamentally tacit, situated in a context of extra-domain information, and involving pedagogy that is principally experiential. In architectural curricula, the experiential approach to learning is omnipresent. Descriptions of design instruction, or for that matter, architectural curricula within which such instruction is found, are invariably of an indirect kind. They describe the stylistic or formal attributes of the architecture that is promoted by the particular pedagogy in order to explain its characteristics, principles and techniques [5,7,8,11,19].

scholarly journals Design of an Experiential Learning Course in Sensors, Measurement and Instrumentation

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vincent Chan ◽  
Ahmad Ghasempoor ◽  
Devin Ostrom
Keyword(s):  
Experiential Learning ◽  
Digital Data ◽  
Data Conversion ◽  
Approach To Learning ◽  
Labview Software ◽  
Engineering Program ◽  
Experiential Approach ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Analogue To Digital ◽  
Modern Instrumentation

Recently a new course in Sensors and Measurement was introduced to the Mechatronics Option in the Mechanical Engineering Program at Ryerson University. In order to enhance the learning and comprehension of fundamental concepts in measurement and instrumentation, experiential learning was introduced through the extensive use of “hands-on” laboratories to demonstrate the theory taught in the lectures. In the course, the application of modern instrumentation and measurement of both static and dynamic mechanical systems are covered through the use of interfacing of hardware sensors with Labview software. Students learn about transducers, signal conditioning, and analogue to digital data conversion through the writing of their own Labview programs which is used to collect and perform preliminary analysis of the data. These labs are designed to follow Kolb’s experiential learning cycle, where students learn the theory, are introduced to the physical equipment, plan how they are going to program the Labview software to collect the data that they require, and then test their programs in the laboratory. Finally, after the lab, students are required to analyse the data they collected and write a lab report. By taking this experiential approach to learning, the course was successful in teaching and reinforcing the required principles to students.

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