News with an attitude: assessing the mechanisms underlying the effects of opinionated news

Opinionated news targets communities of likeminded viewers, relies on dramaturgical storytelling techniques, and shares characteristics with political satire. Accordingly, opinionated news should be understood as a specific form of political entertainment. We have investigated the mechanisms underlying the effects of opinionated news on political attitudes using an experimental design that employed manipulated television news items. Findings confirm that opinionated news positively affects policy attitudes via its presumed influence on others and subsequent perceptions of the opinion climate. However, opinionated news also negatively affects attitudes via hostile media perceptions and evoked anger, especially for people with incongruent political preferences. Due to these opposing processes, we found no total effect of opinionated news on policy attitudes. Conditions are discussed under which either the positive or the negative indirect effect is likely to dominate

Trust in News Media: Development and Validation of a Multidimensional Scale

The dimensions that individuals apply in evaluating the trustworthiness or credibility of news media bear great theoretical and practical relevance. In previous research, however, there is no standardized scale for the measurement of trust in news media. Thus, the purpose of this article is to present the development and validation of a multidimensional scale of trust in news media. A theoretically derived model is tested on a representative sample via confirmatory factor analysis. After some modifications, the model is then validated on another independent sample. These results confirm the hypothesis that trust in news media can be considered a hierarchical factor (of second order) that consists of four lower order factors, including trust in the selectivity of topics, trust in the selectivity of facts, trust in the accuracy of depictions, and trust in journalistic assessment. This model is the first validated scale of trust in news media in communication research

Image-guided Cryotherapy for Musculoskeletal Tumors

Background: This article represents a review about the use of image-guided cryotherapy in the treatment of musculoskeletal tumor lesions. Cryotherapy is able to induce a lethal effect on cancer cells through direct and indirect mechanisms. In this manuscript, we combined our experience with that of other authors who have published on this topic in order to provide indications on when to use cryotherapy in musculoskeletal oncology. Discussion: Image-Guided percutaneous cryotherapy is a therapeutic method now widely accepted in the treatment of patients with musculoskeletal tumors. It can be used both for palliative treatments of metastatic bone lesions and for the curative treatment of benign bone tumors such as osteoid osteoma or osteoblastoma. In the treatment of bone metastases, cryotherapy plays a major role in alleviating or resolving disease-related pain but it has also been demonstrated that it can have a role in local disease control. In recent years, the use of cryotherapy have also expanded for the treatment of both benign and malignant soft tissue tumors. Conclusion: Percutaneous cryotherapy can be considered a safe and effective technique in the treatment of benign and malignant musculoskeletal tumors. Cryotherapy can be considered the first option in benign tumor lesions such as osteoid osteoma and a valid alternative to radiofrequency ablation. In the treatment of painful bone metastases, it must be considered secondarily to other standard treatments (radiotherapy, bisphosphonate therapy and chemotherapy) where they are no longer effective in controlling the disease or when they cannot be repeated (for example radiotherapy)