The effects of native advertising on audience perceptions of legacy and online news publishers

Extending research from Wojdynski and Evans, this experimental study replicates the challenges of effectively disclosing native advertising to readers and demonstrates a promising inoculation method that increases likelihood of recognition. Moreover, this quantitative research indicates that both legacy and online news publishers were evaluated less favorably for displaying native advertising. Attitudes toward the publisher and perceptions of its credibility declined for both, although online publishers suffered greater attitudinal damage than did legacy publishers who may benefit from their established reputation

A Comparison of Correction Formats: The Effectiveness and Effects of Rating Scale versus Contextual Corrections on Misinformation

What style of journalistic factchecking is most convincing to readers? This study uses an online survey experiment to compare two prevailing approaches to correcting both consumer and political misinformation: factchecks that rely only on written analysis to assess claims, and those that also deploy a graphical meter or "truth scale." Testing a series of simulated factchecks from a fictitious factchecking organization, GetTheFacts.org, we find first of all that both approaches were effective on the whole, with respondents who saw either format significantly more likely than a control group to correctly evaluate a claim that had been previously debunked. Does using a truth meter make a difference? In the case of a misleading advertising claim unrelated to politics, adding a meter to the written analysis appeared to make the correction more convincing. However, both formats proved equally effective in challenging political misinformation. Both formats also yielded their largest improvements among readers who selfidentified from the same party as the politician being checked. Although respondents scored best in identifying misinformation from a politician of the opposing party, seeing a correction made no significant difference in that case. Among other results, we also find that when given the choice, just over half of respondents preferred to see corrections that included a truth scale

Correcting political and consumer misperceptions

While fact-checking has grown dramatically in the last decade, little is known about the relative effectiveness of different formats in correcting false beliefs or overcoming partisan resistance to new information. This article addresses that gap by using theories from communication and psychology to compare two prevailing approaches: An online experiment examined how the use of visual “truth scales” interacts with partisanship to shape the effectiveness of corrections. We find that truth scales make fact-checks more effective in some conditions. Contrary to theoretical predictions and the fears of some journalists, their use does not increase partisan backlash against the correction or the organization that produced it

Deliberative Television: Encouraging Substantive, Citizen-Driven News

With Americans’ confidence in the news media dwindling, the quality of programming declining, and audiences turning elsewhere, the American news media is at a crossroads. We argue that news outlets should consider a new form of deliberation-based programming for local news coverage as a means of responding to these problems. As a basis for the programming, we build on public journalism (Rosen & Merritt, 1994) and deliberative citizen panels (Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy, & Walsh, 2013). By engaging citizens in the production of news, media outlets not only stand to gain viewers by increasing the quality of their issue coverage, but they also could secure their claim as a public institution providing a valuable public good. We urge media outlets to consider turning to citizen panels to determine which issues are salient and to engage in structured deliberations about those issues, which can be captured and built into content packages for use in news programming. In so doing, news outlets can help activate viewers by positioning them not as passive consumers but as engaged citizens prepared for public deliberation

The Bullying Pulpit: The Audience Effects of a Partisan Character-Attacking Speaker

Campus speakers, and the protests against them, have sparked debate in the U.S. about declining support for free speech. Yet, the content of such speeches has largely been ignored. Do audiences want to shut down a speaker because that speaker holds a disagreeable position, or is it the way in which that position is conveyed? That is, does disagreement generally or only difference delivered with animus—in this case, with character attacks—drive audiences toward retaliatory action? To answer, we draw from Kenneth Burke’s theory of identification to investigate how audiences react to political rhetoric when they encounter character attacks against the political party with which they affiliate. We propose that the very character attacks a speaker uses to achieve identification with a target audience can also cause disidentification that engenders an oppositional audience poised to act against the speaker – in this case, to restrict the speaker’s right to speak. We expect that espousing a different opinion absent character attacks will not have this effect, but we do anticipate differential effects based on the type of character attack. For this, we turn to Burke’s approach to framing to determine whether character attacks presenting one’s in-group party as foolish (comic frame) rather than traitorous (tragic frame) have distinct effects on the audience. We conduct an online survey experiment of U.S. residents to test whether the two types of attacks, compared to arguments that use identification strategies, decrease support for expressive rights in the context of a college campus speech. Our results indicate that character attacks increase the likelihood that participants attribute malevolence to the outgroup political party, which then decreases their support for a speaker’s right to speak. Both comic and tragic attacks lead to the same outcomes. Optimistically, civilly disagreeable speeches that use identification strategies prompt normatively beneficial outcomes, suggesting that not all disagreeable content decreases free speech support. Conversely, character attacks prompt disidentification that leads to retaliatory action. These findings indicate that audiences’ free speech support may be more dependent on a speaker’s use of character attacks than their issue content

We Should Not Get Rid of Incivility Online

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.Incivility and toxicity have become concepts du jour in research about social media. The clear normative implication in much of this research is that incivility is bad and should be eliminated. Extensive research—including some that we’ve authored—has been dedicated to finding ways to reduce or eliminate incivility from online discussion spaces. In our work as part of the Civic Signals Initiative, we’ve been thinking carefully about what metrics should be adopted by social media platforms eager to create better spaces for their users. When we tell people about this project, removing incivility from the platforms frequently comes up as a suggested metric. In thinking about incivility, however, we’ve become less convinced that it is desirable, or even possible, for social media platforms to remove all uncivil content. In this short essay, we discuss research on incivility, our rationale for a more complicated normative stance regarding incivility, and what other orientations may be more useful. We conclude with a post mortem arguing that we should not abandon research on incivility altogether, but we should recognize the limitations of a concept that is difficult to universalize

Course-Based Research Assignment: Using Scholarly Political Communication Research (COMS 335)

This assignment was the product of a Research-Intensive Course Grant through KU’s Center for Undergraduate Research. These grants provide financial support and advising for instructors who want to incorporate larger research and creative projects into their classes.In upper-division courses, I typically assign peer-reviewed academic journal articles rather than textbooks. Some students, however, have not encountered much writing like this before taking my class. Further, I assign an original research project, and the integration of peer-reviewed research into students’ writing has not always been strong in previous semesters. Thus, to address both of these concerns, I created a series of small assignments and activities designed to help students read, summarize, and write about academic research

The instability of incivility : how news frames and citizen perceptions shape conflict in American politics

textPoliticians and media elites have been calling for a return to civility in United States politics, and the vast majority of citizens agree that civility is necessary for a strong democracy. Yet incivility is an ever-present and misunderstood part of politics. In my dissertation, I focus on news, politics, and incivility by asking three questions. First, to what extent does news coverage portray political conflict as uncivil? Second, what political behaviors do citizens perceive as uncivil? Finally, how does news that portrays politics as uncivil affect citizens? I used a mixed method approach to answer these questions. I, first, conducted a content analysis of news surrounding four high-conflict political events to determine whether two conflict frames (interpersonal-level and public-level conflict) emerged. Second, I conducted two experiments and drew from social judgment theory to determine whether citizens perceived multiple types of incivility and whether their partisanship influenced how acceptable they found political behaviors to be. In a final experiment, I tested whether exposure to mediated conflict frames prompted perceptions of incivility from citizens and affected their reactions to politics. This project makes clear that news coverage of conflict emphasizes incivility and negatively affects citizens. Media elites shape political conflict using interpersonal-level and public-level conflict frames. Citizens perceive both types of conflict, as well, and tend to think that likeminded partisans are behaving appropriately while counter-attitudinal partisans are behaving badly. Finally, and importantly, the coverage of political conflict affects citizens in troublesome ways. Particularly when both types of conflict frames are present in the news, citizens feel more anxiety and aversion, have decreased levels of favorability toward political institutions, and think of political arguments in partisan ways. Overall, I conclude that incivility is not stable. Instead, incivility is a two-dimensional concept that is shaped by the media, perceived by citizens, and advanced by partisans. By recognizing these dimensions of incivility, researchers may find new and important effects of incivility, and people interested in ridding politics of incivility may be more successful by beginning with the recognition that what is uncivil to one person is not always uncivil to another.Communication Studie

Deliberative Television: Encouraging Substantive, Citizen-Driven News

With Americans’ confidence in the news media dwindling, the quality of programming declining, and audiences turning elsewhere, the American news media is at a crossroads. We argue that news outlets should consider a new form of deliberation-based programming for local news coverage as a means of responding to these problems. As a basis for the programming, we build on public journalism (Rosen & Merritt, 1994) and deliberative citizen panels (Knobloch, Gastil, Reedy, & Walsh, 2013). By engaging citizens in the production of news, media outlets not only stand to gain viewers by increasing the quality of their issue coverage, but they also could secure their claim as a public institution providing a valuable public good. We urge media outlets to consider turning to citizen panels to determine which issues are salient and to engage in structured deliberations about those issues, which can be captured and built into content packages for use in news programming. In so doing, news outlets can help activate viewers by positioning them not as passive consumers but as engaged citizens prepared for public deliberation