Research Publication Roundup: January 2023

A vibrant and collaborative interdisciplinary research culture at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media creates new knowledge, advances scholarship and helps reinvent media.

Faculty members Eva Zhao and Lucinda Austin recently published work investigating the effects of information repertoire on Americans' reported hesitancy toward the COVID-19 vaccine. More details on this study are listed below, along with a list of other recently published or soon-to-be-presented scholarship by UNC Hussman faculty and students.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Zhao, X., Ma, Z., Xu, S., & Austin, L. (2022). How information repertoire affects vaccine hesitancy: Processes of information verification and cognitive elaboration. Health Communication, Advance online publication. 

As information consumption plays a critical role in addressing vaccine hesitancy in the hybrid media environment, it becomes crucial to understand how individuals’ use of a combination of channels and sources affects their vaccine hesitancy. Based on information repertoire approaches emphasizing the multiplicity of channels and sources, the authors investigated Americans’ patterns of information repertoire related to the COVID-19 pandemic and how these patterns affected vaccine hesitancy. The authors’ results suggest that while a richer information repertoire – that is, a greater number of channels and sources – related to increased confidence in vaccines through increased information verification, this richness also corresponded with deepened vaccine hesitancy through heightened cognitive elaboration and perceived information inconsistency. The authors’ findings support the utility of repertoire approaches for better understanding health information acquisition in the complex media ecology, and implications for future research are discussed.

Wilson, N., & Carney, B. (2022). “Articles that infringe”: The fate of the Nexus test and how commissioner Kearns’s four-factor test could help (or hinder) future litigants. 337 Reporter: Paul J. Luckern Summer Associate Edition, 51 – 63.

What constitutes an “article that infringes” patents under Section 337 of the Tariff Act has been the subject of much litigation in the International Trade Commission, particularly in cases where the alleged infringement does not occur until after importation. However, following a recent case before the ITC, the commissioner recently issued an “Additional Views” memo in which he proposed a new framework to determine whether imported components violate Section 337. In this article, which won the Brian Koo Memorial Award for best piece in the 2022 Summer Associate Edition, the authors examine the evolution of “articles that infringe” in ITC jurisprudence; discuss potential benefits, justifications and implications of Commissioner Kearns’s proposed test; and suggests other issues the Commission may consider going forward.

CONFERENCES

Automation by Design: Politics, Culture & Landscape in an Age of Machines that Learn
February 17-18, 2023 | Virtual

Anderson, L. (2023). Religion, relation, and society: A textual analysis of an open coding platform [Conference presentation]. Virtual. 

AEJMC Midwinter Conference
February 24-25, 2023 | Norman, Oklahoma

Li, C. (2023). Uses and gratifications for virtual reality games: An analysis of the reviews of Beat Saber [Conference presentation]. AEJMC Midwinter, Norman, OK.