The Junck Colloquium with Natalie Stroud will occur on Friday, April 27, in the Freedom Forum Conference Center from noon to 1:30 p.m.
Stroud, an associate professor in the Department of Communication Studies and director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin, will deliver her keynote, "Engaging News in a Partisan Age."
Photo of Natalie Stroud courtesy of the Knight Center for Journalism in the Americas at the University of Texas at Austin
Engaging News in a Partisan Age
Motivated reasoning proposes that partisanship serves as a powerful motivator when selecting and interpreting information. People tend to select like-minded messages and subject counter-attitudinal information to greater scrutiny than information agreeing with their beliefs. These same patterns influence how people behave online. Online discussion forums, such as news comment sections, provide a space to better understand partisan behavior. But herein lies the dilemma: partisanship can be good for business, but bad for the press’s democratic mission.
In this presentation, Dr. Stroud will discuss research showing that partisanship is an important component of how people behave in news comment sections. Drawing from the stereotype content model, she will describe empirically tested ways to curb the influence of motivated reasoning in news comment sections. Dr. Stroud also will present results from a recent project in which she examined how newsrooms and news users respond to uncivil and partisan news comments.
The Mary Junck Research Colloquium series was formally established in 2007 to nurture an intellectually vibrant climate with both interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary shades, by scheduling scholarly presentations on diverse topics.
The speakers represent various disciplines and units on campus as well as other universities and organizations in the Triangle. The series has been particularly successful in attracting scholars and researchers of national and international renown from within the U.S. and abroad. The series attracts a diverse audience comprising faculty, graduate students and researchers from around the Triangle.
For more information contact Dr. Adam Saffer at adam.saffer@unc.edu