On any topic? Topics of publications of investigative journalism and journalistic intervention in the local press (on the examples of Poland and the USA)

The author raises an interesting subject, hitherto unexplored comprehensively in American and Polish media studies, namely, the problem o f topics o f investigative journalism and journalistic intervention at the level o f local newspaper publishers. In local media, just as in national media, disclosure of corruption and misconduct of local government happens quite rarely. Additionally, the checking activity - as the watchdog function o f the press - is present in the Polish reality only in some local commercial media which are independent from local government. The author discusses the impact of the media’s checking function for the selection o f topics by local investigative journalists and the nature of the activities of local political and business decision-makers limiting the subjects addressed by investigative reporters. A comparative analysis relates the problems of the functioning o f local government andlocal communities which are aired in articles published by investigative journalists and journalistic intervention. For the comparison, articles recognised by the jury of the Pulitzer Prize for investigative journalism 1926-2015 and texts submitted and recognised in the “Local Press” competition 2012-2013 organised by the Association o f Local Newspapers were used.Autor podjął ciekawy, chociaż do tej pory niezbadany kompleksowo na gruncie amerykańskiego i polskiego medioznawstwa problem tematyki poruszanej w publikacjach dziennikarstwa śledczego i interwencyjnego na poziomie lokalnych wydawnictw prasowych. Podobnie jak w mediach ogólnokrajowych ujawnianie afer i nagłaśnianie niewłaściwych zachowań władzy zdarza się dosyć rzadko w mediach lokalnych, a działalność kontrolna w ramach watchdog function of the press występuje w polskich realiach tylko w nielicznych lokalnych mediach komercyjnych, niezależnych od organów samorządowych. Autor omawia wpływ funkcji kontrolnej mediów na dobór tematyki przez lokalnych dziennikarzy śledczych oraz charakter działań lokalnych decydentów politycznych i biznesowych ograniczających tematykę podejmowaną przez reporterów dochodzeniowych. Analizie porównawczej poddano problemy funkcjonowania organów samorządowych oraz społeczności lokalnych nagłaśniane w publikacjach demaskatorskich i interwencyjnych. Do porównania wykorzystano artykuły o tematyce lokalnej nagrodzone Pulitzer Prize za dziennikarstwo śledcze w latach 1926-2015 oraz materiały nadesłane i nagrodzone w latach 2012-2013 w konkursie ,,Local Press”, organizowanym przez Stowarzyszenie Gazet Lokalnych

While the Nation Looked On: A Framing Analysis of Print News Media Coverage of Terri Schiavo\u27s Final Days

One of the richest areas of current research in mass communication involves framing theory. Originally developed by Erving Goffman (1974), framing is used by the media to organize content. As such, it has implications for the values, beliefs, and actions of those exposed to that content. This study attempts to apply framing theory to a controversial issue and event profusely covered by American mass media: the case of Terri Schiavo. To accomplish this, coverage of her final month by two print newspapers, The New York Times and the New York Post, was analyzed for prevalence (present or absent), level of substance (substantive or ambiguous), and valence (positive, neutral, or negative) of frames. Each paper was also coded for the type and valence of sources cited. Significance was found to support the presence of certain frames in each newspaper, with a leaning toward keeping Terri Schiavo alive found in frame valence in New York Post and a leaning, with stronger significance, toward removing her feeding tube in The New York Times

Passion with Purpose A Case Study of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is “leading the way the world understands, treats, and defeats childhood cancer and other life threatening diseases” (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital). Fifty-five years ago when St. Jude opened its doors, the overall childhood cancer survival rate was 20 percent; today, the overall childhood cancer survival rate exceeds 80 percent. Through research and discovery, St. Jude has played a pivotal role in increasing this survival rate. St. Jude, a non-profit organization and hospital in Memphis, Tennessee, operates primarily through donations. St. Jude-American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) is the fundraising and awareness organization with the sole purpose of keeping St. Jude Children Research Hospital’s doors open. This senior Honors capstone project will explore the connection between passion paired with purpose and the success of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. This capstone develops a detailed case study gleaned from interviews with several St. Jude-ALSAC representatives who provide provocative insights into leadership structure at St. Jude and more importantly, the role that passion plays in an employee’s commitment to the organization’s values, vision, and mission

Hashtags for Gatekeeping of Information on Social Media

Since the inception of gatekeeping research in the 1940s, most studies on gatekeeping have been human‐centric, treating and studying individuals as gatekeepers, who perform their gatekeeping role using a combination of the following mechanisms: forming communities, and/or broadcasting, discovering‐searching, collecting, organizing, or protecting information. However, the nature of communication channels and how information is produced by and shared with users has fundamentally changed in the last 80 years. One significant change is the growing use of technology‐enabled metadata like hashtags when sharing information on social media. Rarely any study investigates whether hashtags can perform gatekeeping of information and what it means for information gatekeeping. This paper fills in the gap by conducting a content analysis of 77 interdisciplinary studies on hashtags and gatekeeping to confirm how they can implement six gatekeeping mechanisms. This study shows that hashtags expand our understanding of the role of technology solutions in gatekeeping and advance research on hierarchical gatekeeping. The benefits of hashtags for gatekeeping suggest that they act as “information anchors” for online communities, thereby highlighting the utility of information gatekeepers for society

Investigating Iranian Information Gatekeepers in the Field of Medical Genetics Using Network Structure Analysis

Introduction: In the flow of information and scientific communication, two formal and informal relationships are measured through co-authorship. The present study aims to discover the gatekeeper nodes in both types of scientific communication and seek to strengthen the health cycle of medical genetics information. Methods: This research is applied in terms of purpose, and in terms of nature and method, it is a kind of mixed research, including survey method, scientometrics, and interview and social network analysis.  The research population was the researchers in the field of medical genetics in seven selected centers. First, using centrality indicators, gatekeepers were discovered in the formal communication structure. Then, interviewing formal gatekeepers, the gatekeeper's agents were identified in informal communication. The effectiveness of each gatekeeping factors in the informal scientific communication process was determined using the questionnaire. Results: The network size represents an average degree of 122. Opinion leaders were extracted based on centrality indicators.  By interviewing with leaders, 15 units were identified as target nodes in the centers. Among them, the educational deputy had the most positive effect, and the ethics committee had the least positive effect on the research process.  Conclusion: The low amount of degree indicators revealed that the medical genetic communication network is not efficient. Accordingly, most of the negative, informal communication issues are human communication factors such as professors' characteristics. In the research process, some institutions, such as the Ethics Committee, are an inhibitor of communication

Preparing millennials as digital citizens and socially and environmentally responsible business professionals in a socially irresponsible climate

As of 2015, a millennial born in the 1990's became the largest population in the workplace and are still growing. Studies indicate that a millennial is tech savvy but lag in the exercise of digital responsibility. In addition, they are passive towards environmental sustainability and fail to grasp the importance of social responsibility. This paper provides a review of such findings relating to business communications educators in their classrooms. The literature should enable the development of a millennial as an excellent global citizen through business communications curricula that emphasizes digital citizenship, environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The impetus for this work is to provide guidance in the development of courses and teaching strategies customized to the development of each millennial as a digital, environmental and socially responsible global citizen

Digital and Media Literacy: A Plan of Action

Outlines a community education movement to implement Knight's 2009 recommendation to enhance digital and media literacy. Suggests local, regional, state, and national initiatives such as teacher education and parent outreach and discusses challenges

Social Media Text Mining Framework for Drug Abuse: An Opioid Crisis Case Analysis

Social media is considered as a promising and viable source of data for gaining insights into various disease conditions, patients’ attitudes and behaviors, and medications. The daily use of social media provides new opportunities for analyzing several aspects of communication. Social media as a big data source can be used to recognize communication and behavioral themes of problematic use of prescription drugs. Mining and analyzing such media have challenges and limitations with respect to topic deduction and data quality. There is a need for a structured approach to efficiently and effectively analyze social media content related to drug abuse in a manner that can mitigate the challenges surrounding the use of this data source. Following a design science research methodology, the research aims at developing and evaluating a framework for mining and analyzing social media content related to drug abuse in a manner that will mitigate challenges and limitations related to topic deduction and data quality. The framework consists of four phases: Topic Discovery and Detection; Data Collection; Data Preparation and Quality; and Analysis and Results. The topic discovery and detection phase consists of a topic expansion stage for the drug abuse related topics that address the research domain and objectives. The topic expansion is based on different terms related to keywords, categories, and characteristics of the topic of interest and the objective of monitoring. To formalize the process and supporting artifacts, we create an ontology for drug abuse that captures the different categories that exist in the topic expansion and the literature. The data collection phase is characterized by the date range, social media platforms, search keywords, and a set of inclusion/exclusion criteria. The data preparation and quality phase is mainly concerned with obtaining high-quality data to mitigate problems with data veracity. In this phase, we pre-process the collected data then we evaluate the quality of the data, with respect to the terms and objectives of the research topic phase, using a data quality evaluation matrix. Finally, in the data analysis phase, the researcher can choose the suitable analysis approach. We used a combination of unsupervised and supervised machine learning approaches, including opinion and content analysis modeling. We demonstrate and evaluate the applicability of the proposed framework to identify common concerns toward opioid crisis from two perspectives; the addicted users’ perspective and the public’s (non-addicted users) perspective. In both cases, data is collected from twitter using Crimson Hexagon, a social media analytics tool for data collection and analysis. Natural language processing is used for data preparation and pre-processing. Different data visualization techniques such as, word clouds and clustering visualization, are used to form a deeper understanding of the relationships among the identified themes for the selected communities. The results help in understanding concerns of the public and opioid addicts towards the opioid crisis in the United States. Results of this study could help in understanding the problem aspects and provide key input when it comes to defining and implementing innovative solutions/strategies to face the opioid epidemic. From a theoretical perspective, this study highlights the importance of developing and adapting text mining techniques to social media for drug abuse. This study proposes a social media text mining framework for drug abuse research which lead to a good quality of datasets. Emphasis is placed on developing methods for improving the discovery and identification of topics in social media domains characterized by a plethora of highly diverse terms and a lack of commonly available dictionary/language by the community such as in the opioid and drug abuse case. From a practical perspective, automatically analyzing social media users’ posts using machine learning tools can help in understanding the public themes and topics that exist in the recent discussions of online users of social media networks. This could help in developing proper mitigation strategies. Examples of such strategies can be gaining insights from the discussion topics to make the opioid media campaigns more effective in preventing opioid misuse. Finally, the study helps address some of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) five-point strategy by providing a systematic approach that could support conducting better research on addiction and drug abuse and strengthening public health data reporting and collection using social media data