scholarly journals We Hold These Distruths to be Self-Evident: How Legal History Could Save America from Itself

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (Fall/Winter) ◽  
pp. 1-19
Author(s):  
William Murphy
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Legal History ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Cable News ◽  
Inaccurate Information ◽  
Viral Spread ◽  
Background History ◽  
American Society ◽  
Fairness Doctrine

This paper explores the threat of disinformation to American society. Focusing on social and cable news media as the primary disseminators of disinformation, it examines how the very design and nature of these two mediums promote and stimulate the intentional and viral spread of wholly inaccurate information as well as the significant and tangible negative consequences experienced across American society as a result. The paper subsequently proposes a legal solution to this dilemma in the form of a repeal of Section 230 paired with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine. The background, history, and effect of each are thoroughly discussed, and the prevailing legal and policy arguments against their respective repeal and reinstatement are considered and countered in concluding that the proposed solution would, to some degree, likely promote a more civil and informed American society better equipped to confront modern challenges.

How Media Shapes the Public Discourse and Influences Health

2020 ◽  
pp. 23-35
Author(s):  
Alonzo L. Plough
Keyword(s):  
News Media ◽  
Public Discourse ◽  
Multiple Roles ◽  
Health Issues ◽  
The Public ◽  
Inaccurate Information ◽  
Modern Media ◽  
Multiple Media ◽  
American Society ◽  
The Many

This chapter describes the multiple roles of modern media in determining not only what consumers know, but also how and what they think. The exponential growth of ideologically driven cable channels and social media, dovetailing with cutbacks in newspaper staffing and coverage, point to the many ways that the power and reach of media are shifting even as they continue to reshape American society and norms. In this environment, multiple media compete for viewers, readers, and listeners who will click on their websites, buy their products, sign their petitions, and often accept their spin, especially if it reinforces personal perspectives. Thoughtful information about complex public health issues is easily lost in that context, leading too many people to base their decision-making on incomplete, biased, and even inaccurate information. For the news media to help build a Culture of Health, people need to understand how it works, what it does, and how it can be used for widespread benefit.

“Last Night, I Prayed to Matthew”: Matthew Shepard, Homosexuality, and Popular Martyrdom in Contemporary America

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 121-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott W. Hoffman
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Social Action ◽  
News Media ◽  
Hate Crime ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Gays And Lesbians ◽  
American Society ◽  
Historical Moment ◽  
The University ◽  
Matthew Shepard

AbstractIn October 1998, Matthew Shepard, a young gay student at the University of Wyoming, was brutally murdered. Upon hearing the news, many Americans described him as a victim of a hate crime. Others, however, proclaimed Shepard a gay martyr. This declaration was not simply political rhetoric. Despite long-standing conservative religious opposition to homosexuality, they believed that Shepard had been granted salvation and a place among the saints in heaven. This article addresses the questions, “How and why was Matthew Shepard declared a popular martyr?” More specifically, how does this popular martyrdom relate to contemporary debates surrounding civil rights for gays and lesbians in America? As part of a series of social movements that followed the Second World War, sexual minorities have struggled to claim legitimate space in American society, leaving dramatic social changes in their wake. Noting this, while contrasting the news media’s construction of Shepard with the simultaneous popular discussion on the Internet, this article argues that a long tradition of popular martyr-making came together with social and political circumstances at a certain historical moment to transform the obscure victim of a hate crime into a popular martyr residing in heaven. That is, although the news media constructed Shepard as simply the affable young victim of a fatal hate crime, these contingencies allowed many Americans to reconstruct Shepard as a popular martyr. They expressed this belief in political, cultural, and social action. In time, Shepard's popular martyrdom helped further a growing acceptance of gays and lesbians into America's mainstream.

Effects of Cable News Watching on Older Adults’ Physiological and Self-Reported Stress and Cognitive Function

2017 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 111-123 ◽  
Author(s):  
Caroline Deal ◽  
Ryan Bogdan ◽  
J. Phil Miller ◽  
Tom Rodebaugh ◽  
Charlene Caburnay ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Cognitive Function ◽  
Social Stress ◽  
Physiological Stress ◽  
Stress Test ◽  
Trier Social Stress Test ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Healthy Older Adults ◽  
Cable News ◽  
Fox News

Older adults are the largest consumer of cable news, which includes negative and politicized content and may constitute a daily stressor. As older adults are also vulnerable to the negative consequences of stress, we hypothesized that cable news watching could induce a stress reaction and impair cognitive function. We tested exposures to cable news (i.e., Fox News and MSNBC) in a within-subject randomized controlled design in 34 healthy older adults. We also included negative (Public Broadcasting Station) and positive (trier social stress test) controls. Cable news watching had no effect on psychological stress, physiological stress, or cognitive function. This remained true even if the news exposures were discordant with participants’ political affiliation. We conclude that brief cable news watching does not induce a physiological or subjective stress response or cognitive impairment among healthy older adults.

scholarly journals The Role of Indoor Plants in air Purification and Human Health in the Context of COVID-19 Pandemic: A Proposal for a Novel Line of Inquiry

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rania El-Tanbouly ◽  
Ziad Hassan ◽  
Sarah El-Messeiry
Keyword(s):  
Human Health ◽  
Indoor Air ◽  
Transmission Rate ◽  
Mitigation Measures ◽  
Air Purification ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Viral Spread ◽  
Indoor Plants ◽  
Indoor Air Purification

The last two decades have seen the discovery of novel retroviruses that have resulted in severe negative consequences for human health. In late 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) emerged with a high transmission rate and severe effects on human health, with 5% infected persons requiring hospitalisation and 3.81 million deaths to date globally. Aerosol particles containing virions are considered the main source of SARS CoV-2 transmission in this pandemic, with increased infection rates in confined spaces. Consequently, public and private institutions had to institute mitigation measures including the use of facial masks and social distancing to limit the spread of the virus. Moreover, the role of air purification and bio-decontamination is understood as being essential to mitigate viral spread. Various techniques can be applied to bio-decontaminate the air such as the use of filtration and radiation; however, these methods are expensive and not feasible for home use. Another method of air purification is where indoor plants can purify the air by the removal of air pollutants and habituated airborne microbes. The use of indoor plants could prove to be a cost-efficient way of indoor air-purification that could be adapted for a variety of environments with no need for special requirements and can also add an aesthetic value that can have an indirect impact on human health. In this review, we discuss the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the currently used air purification methods, and we propose the use of indoor plants as a new possible eco-friendly tool for indoor air purification and for reducing the spread of COVID-19 in confined places.

scholarly journals Is Gender a Driver of Topic Choice? A Comparative Keyword Analysis of Political Cable News Interviews

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Mariasophia Falcone ◽  
Belinda Crawford Camiciottoli
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Gun Control ◽  
Cable News ◽  
Political News ◽  
Social Nature ◽  
News Networks ◽  
And Gender ◽  
American Society ◽  
News Interviews

Cable news networks have become an increasingly important source of political news in the United States. They wield considerable influence on public opinion, particularly in relation to current issues involving social roles and gender dynamics. This study offers insights into how the choice of topic in political cable news interviews may be influenced by the gender of participants. A corpus of 40 political cable news interviews was compiled and analyzed on the basis of various combinations of male and female interviewers and interviewees. Corpus software was implemented to extract keywords that were then grouped to identify prominent topics according to gender. Topics discussed exclusively among male participants were more issue oriented (i.e., immigration, healthcare, the economy, and gun control) as compared to those discussed exclusively among female participants that were more in social nature (i.e., personal matters, the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination, and tech giants in the context of social justice). Results showed that topics emerging from the female participants’ discourse were aligned with some widely held perceptions of women’s speech. At the same time, other features of the female participants’ speech appeared to be driven largely by their professional and institutional roles, and thus, not aligned with stereotypical perceptions. The findings have implications for the role of media and cable news in contemporary American society in avoiding the perpetration of gender-related topic bias.

scholarly journals A topic analysis of traditional and social media news coverage of the early COVID-19 pandemic and implications for public health communication

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wallace Chipidza ◽  
Elmira Akbaripourdibazar ◽  
Tendai Gwanzura ◽  
Nicole M. Gatto
Keyword(s):  
Public Health ◽  
Social Media ◽  
Health Communication ◽  
News Media ◽  
Latent Dirichlet Allocation ◽  
News Coverage ◽  
Cable News ◽  
Public Health Communication ◽  
Health Related ◽  
Public Health Officials

AbstractKnowledge gaps may initially exist among scientists, medical and public health professionals during pandemics, which are fertile grounds for misinformation in news media. We characterized and compared COVID-19 coverage in newspapers, television, and social media, and discussed implications for public health communication strategies that are relevant to an initial pandemic response. We conducted a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), an unsupervised topic modelling technique, analysis of 3,271 newspaper articles, 40 cable news shows transcripts, 96,000 Twitter posts, and 1,000 Reddit posts during March 4 - 12, 2020, a period chronologically early in the timeframe of the COVID-19 pandemic. Coverage of COVID-19 clustered on topics such as epidemic, politics, and the economy, and these varied across media sources. Topics dominating news were not predominantly health-related, suggesting a limited presence of public health in news coverage in traditional and social media. Examples of misinformation were identified particularly in social media. Public health entities should utilize communication specialists to create engaging informational content to be shared on social media sites. Public health officials should be attuned to their target audience to anticipate and prevent spread of common myths likely to exist within a population. This will help control misinformation in early stages of pandemics.

scholarly journals Between Bullshit and Faketuality

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Elena Pilipets
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
News Media ◽  
Search Engines ◽  
Online News ◽  
Refugee Crisis ◽  
Visual Content ◽  
Viral Spread ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Digital Methods ◽  
Media Environments

This paper explores the anomalous role that today’s social media environments play in the dynamics of affective amplification through viral visual content. Affected by the post 9/11 logic of media securitization, the circulation of manipulated images and internet memes has created an atmosphere of controversial sentiments and irrational facts. The prevalent experience of disorientation that perpetuates itself in these relations feeds on the everyday micro-anticipations of claim and counterclaim, making the double binary of fact and fiction, source and adaptation impossible to sustain. Against this background, the discussion will focus on how the viral spread of one particular image during the refugee crisis has contributed to the emergence of the issue of ‘terrorist refugees’. Exploring the infrastructures of media alert behind this issue, I address the re- and premediating forces at play in the circulation of the image as faketual. Rather than relying on the availability of valid sources, networked formations of faketuality feel true even they are known to be fabricated. I develop this argument by adapting digital methods to reflect on the shifts in controversial relations of relevance/visibility as they unfold through our everyday encounters with search engines, online news media, and social platforms.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document