Perceptions of Partisanship in Local Television News

People turn to local media for information during crises such as the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19). What factors impact media consumers’ decisions about which local television news broadcast to watch? This study argues that media consumers infer the partisanship of local television affiliates — judging local Fox and NBC news broadcasts to be right and left slanted, respectively, based on their perceived associations with Fox News and MSNBC. Using the results from a representative survey of Americans (N = 5,461), the study demonstrates that local Fox and NBC viewers are significantly more likely to watch Fox News or MSNBC. As a result, watching local Fox is associated with less coronavirus risk because media consumers choose local Fox believing that it will align with their existing conservative views. This study demonstrates the importance of the perceptions of local news partisanship in influencing the consumption of critically important local crisis news.

An Evaluation of English-to-Yoruba Translations of some Concepts by Selected Radio News Bulletins

This study examines translations of selected official names/titles contained in news broadcasts in the Yorùbá-speaking part of Nigeria, interrogating their adequacy and appropriateness. Sixty-five concepts/titles extracted from one hundred news bulletins presented by five radio stations across the Yorùbá-speaking states of Nigeria are examined. The study is prompted by an intuitive feeling of inaccuracy and inappropriateness of important words in news broadcasts in Yorùbá and predicated upon the fact that misinformation can be as pernicious as lack of information. The renderings of the concepts in Yorùbá are compared with their original versions in English, revealing translation weaknesses such as semantic narrowing, expansion, wordiness, and sometimes even unwitting distortions. It concludes by emphasizing the adoption of appropriate translation strategies and a more rigorous engagement with the texts as a way of guarding against unintended distortions and misinformation.

The reception of subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing in Spanish TV news programs

The current paper presents a study on the subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH) in Spanish TV news programs (live and semi-live subtitling). The aim of this reception study is to analyze users’ comprehension and assessment of live and semi-live SDH. A contemporary corpus comprising items from real news broadcasts was used for the research, and a sample of 52 deaf and hard-of-hearing participants was recruited for the experiment, which was carried out through a variety of virtual and live sessions. The results show that users consider the quality of SDH acceptable and audiovisual comprehension insufficient.

Correlation Between English Major Sophomores’ Critical Thinking Disposition and Their Listening Comprehension Performance

Critical thinking has drawn the attention of western researchers and domestic researchers as well. The study aims to explore whether there exists correlation between sophomore English majors’ critical thinking disposition and their listening comprehension performance, and any significant difference between critical thinking disposition and listening comprehension performance in different proficiency levels. Based on the analysis of the data collected from listening comprehension tests and critical thinking disposition questionnaire, the following findings are obtained: 1) there exists significant correlation between participants’ critical thinking disposition and their listening comprehension performance in general, with truth-seeking, analyticity and systematicity at the significant level of 0.01 and inquisitiveness, maturity, self-confidence and open-mindedness at the level of 0.05 in particular; 2) critical thinking disposition is significantly correlated with conversations and news broadcasts at the level of 0.01, and with passages at the level of 0.05.; 3) there also exist differences between critical thinking disposition and listening comprehension performance at different proficiency levels, with the correlations stronger in higher groups than those of lower groups. This study indicates that English major sophomores’ critical thinking needs fostering, and there is a necessity to utilize different types of listening materials to cultivate their critical thinking dispositions.

Portrayals of autism and social awareness: a scoping review

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to look at recent trends in scientific literature on the portrayal of autism in published and broadcast media and social awareness of the subject. Design/methodology/approach A bibliometric analysis of content of such publications was performed. Findings Results show that portrayals of autism from books, newspapers, news broadcasts, films and TV series are being scrutinized. Research focuses on the social categories of resulting stereotypes, the quality of such depictions, the benefits and downsides, stigmatization of individuals (with autism) and how society responds to these portrayals. Originality/value It is important to understand if media portrayals of autism are creating a realistic and constructive awareness of autism in society.

Elements of caption quality: determining the priority of qualitative closed caption elements

In Canada, the Canadian Radio Television and Communications Commission requires that all English- and French-language broadcasters caption 100% of their programs, and that live-produced programming – such as news broadcasts, sports events, and award shows – arecaptioned with a 95% accuracy rate for English-language. However, measuring caption quality as a purely objective count of the number of errors in the text means that many qualitative factors of quality are not considered. This research explored what priority Deaf and hard of hearing viewers place on non-quantitative elements of caption quality, namely caption display speed, missing words, spelling and grammar errors, and speaker identification. Using a survey tool based off the principals of the NASA-TLX workload assessment tool, participants were asked to watch two television clips with their original live-produced captions and provide feedback on how the captions impacted their viewing pleasure. The main findings suggested that viewers place equal value on verbatim accuracy and caption display speed, and that a trade off between the two cannot easily be made. This research provides a starting point for measuring caption quality using subjective quality factors.