Research Publication Roundup: March 2022

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 member Dr. Xinyan (Eva) Zhao recently published two articles exploring framing across social media platforms, including Twitter and Weibo. More details on this event are listed below, along with a list of other recently published or presented scholarship by UNC Hussman faculty and students.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Barnes, S., & Sontag, J. (2022). On the use of narrative structure and encapsulation for health-related stories contained within digital news packages. Journalism Practice.

People rely on the media to serve as purveyors of health information and keep them apprised of current knowledge and advancements in medicine, pharmaceuticals, healthcare and lifestyle management. A digital news package is an immersive feature story housed on the internet. This study examined how the combination of media elements (e.g., photographs, graphics, video, etc.) contained within digital news packages are capable of supporting the presentation of engaging and insightful coverage of health-related topics. Specifically, the authors investigated what aspects of immersive feature stories should be captured or encapsulated by static and animated graphics, and how these items should be arranged relative to the stories that they accompany. The findings revealed that effective visual storytelling is facilitated by parity between the written components and visual components of digital news packages.

Cartwright, A. F., Alspaugh, A., Britton, L. E., & Noar, S. M. (2022). mHealth interventions for contraceptive behavior change in the United States: A systematic review. Journal of Health Communication.

In this study, the authors systematically describe the format, theoretical basis and impact of mHealth interventions for contraceptive initiation and continuing use among people of all ages in the United States. The authors collected data on 18 published studies to compare outcomes. Most of the 18 studies (11; 61%) used text messaging. Twelve of the 18 studies focused on encouraging initiation of contraceptive use, with the rest focusing on continued use over time. The authors found little evidence of contraceptive behavior change across the 18 studies, suggesting that there is little evidence that mHealth interventions will change individuals’ behavior with contraceptives. Implications for future interventions are discussed.

Zhao, X. (2022). A multilevel perspective to social media influentials’ frame building across crises. Social Science Computer Review.

This study applies a multilevel perspective to examine how social media influentials’ frame the topic and responsibility across crises, as well as how those frames are affected by crisis clusters and message characteristics. More than one million tweets were extracted from social media influentials’ Twitter accounts. A random sample of 2,000 tweets were analyzed. The content analysis indicated that both crisis-level factors (i.e., crisis origin and organization type) and message-level factors (i.e., communicative functions and types of influential) affected social media influentials’ use of responsibility and topic frames.

Zhao, X., & Wang, X. (2022). Dynamics of networked framing: Automated frame analysis of government media and the public on Weibo with pandemic big data. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly.

To unpack the dynamics of networked framing, or how the public becomes gatekeepers on social media, the authors conducted an automated frame analysis to identify the shift of frame structures of government media (N = 12,090) and the public (N = 1.49 million) on Weibo during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors found a moderate level of frame alignment between the government media and the public, with high divergence observed during the pandemic’s initial stage. The public challenged government media frames by deploying unique frame functions and creating new frames, but their frame network was fragmented relative to that of government media, which constructed a cohesive network of frames to enhance discursive control.

CONFERENCES

Broadcast Education Association Conference
April 19 - 26, 2022 | Las Vegas, NV

Hester, J.B., & Gibson, R. (2022). Still fighting the God-vs.-gays battle: Twitter reaction to presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s identification as a gay member of the Christian Left [Religion & Media Division]. Broadcast Education Association Conference, Las Vegas, NV, United States.

Kentucky Conference on Health Communication
April 7-9, 2022 | Lexington, KY

Comello, M. L. G., Francis, D. B., Jain, P., & Porter, J. (2022). Communicating about mental health, well-being, and difference during and beyond the COVID-19 pandemic [Panel]. Kentucky Conference on Health Communication, Lexington, KY, United States.