UNC at AEJMC 2014 in Montréal

Twelve faculty members, 14 graduate students, one staff member and nearly 40 alumni represented the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media at the 2014 Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) convention in Montréal Aug. 6-9.

The Carolina contingent presented more than 35 authored or co-authored papers or research posters, received honors, and served as moderators, discussants and panelists for nearly 50 different panels.

Among Carolina’s activities at AEJMC 2014 are: 

• Daniel Riffe, Richard Cole Eminent Professor, received the Eleanor Blum Distinguished Service to Research Award, which recognizes a person who has devoted a substantial part of his or her career to promoting research in mass communication.
• Scott Parrott, a 2013 doctoral graduate and an assistant professor at the University of Alabama, was honored with the Nafziger-White-Salwen Dissertation Award for the best dissertation in the field of mass communication research for his dissertation “An examination of the use of disparagement humor in online TV comedy clips and the role of audience reaction in its effects.” The win marks the third consecutive time a UNC doctoral alum has won the award. A UNC doctoral graduate has won the award eight times all-time.
• Professors Barbara Friedman and Anne Johnston received the Donna Allen Award for Feminist Advocacy for The Irina Project, which they co-direct, and its advocacy for the responsible and accurate reporting of sex trafficking.
• Stacey J.T. Hust, a 2005 doctoral alumna and an associate professor at Washington State University, received the Mary Ann Yodelis Smith Award for Feminist Scholarship along with Kathleen Boyce Rodgers, an associate professor in the Washington State Department of Human Development.
• Doctoral student Meghan Sobel won second place in the James W. Markham Student Paper Competition for her paper “The Case of Female Genital Cutting: Newspaper Coverage in Ghana, The Gambia, Kenya and the United States.”
• Doctoral students Karen McIntyre and Meghan Sobel won top student paper honors for their paper “Positive News Websites and Extroversion: Motives, Preferences, and Sharing Behavior Among American and British Readers.”
• Doctoral student Kylah Hedding won a second place student paper award for her paper “Does Access to Environmental Information Have a Critical Problem?: Interpretation of FOIA’s Exemption 4 After the Critical Mass III Decision.”
• “What Matters 2 Us,” an interactive multimedia project created in associate professor Pat Davison’s classes that tells the stories of hardship and hope as the U.S. continues to recover from the economic recession, was honored with a first-place award in the Best of the Web competition. The project is recognized in the Multiple Class or Institutional Projects category. The award is given by the Visual Communications and Communication Technology Divisions.
• “Living Galapagos” and “Heart of the High Country” tied for third place in the Individual/Class Project Web Design category in the Best of the Web competition.
• Dean Susan King joined Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy; Thomas E. Patterson, Bradlee Professor of Government and the Press at Harvard University; and Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Phillip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland; for the panel session “The Need for Knowledge-Based Journalism.”
• Associate professor Andy Bechtel led the annual Breakfast of Editing Champions, which will feature the Poynter Institute’s Craig Silverman.

Papers presented by UNC faculty members and graduate students include:

• “Unwitting Investigators: Documentary Filmmakers as Investigative Journalists,” doctoral student Jesse Abdenour
• “The Investigative DNA: An Analysis of the Role of Local Television Investigative Journalists,” doctoral student Jesse Abdenour
 and Richard Cole Eminent Professor Daniel Riffe
• “Losing Their ‘Mojo’?: Mobile Journalism and the Deprofessionalization of Television News Work,” doctoral student Justin Blankenship
• “A Cross-cultural Comparison of Campaign Tweets in the 2012 U.S. and South Korean 
Presidential Elections,”
Yeojin Kim, Dylan McLemore, Jennifer Greer and doctoral student Justin Blankenship
• “Preparatory Journalism: The College Newspaper as a Pedagogical Tool,” doctoral student David Bockino
• “Scandal and Sharknado Are Not Alike: Individual Factors Differentiating Social Media Opinion Sharers,” doctoral student Joseph Cabosky
• “Media Choice As A Function of Prior Affect: An Attempt 
To Separate Mood From Emotion,”
associate professor Francesca Dillman Carpentier, doctoral alumnus Ryan Rogers and doctoral student Elise Stevens
• “Rube Goldberg-Like Contrivances and Broadcasting: The Litigation Challenging Aereo,” J.D./M.A. student Kevin Delaney
• “Environmentalism in Transition: Defining an Identity in the Pages 
of Membership Magazines,” doctoral student Suzannah Evans
• “Examining Cultural Presonance of Health Narratives to Influence HIV Prevention Behaviors Among Young African Americans,” doctoral student Diane Francis, senior lecturer Joan Cates 
and Adaora Adimora
• “Evaluating Intent in True Threats Cases: The Importance of Context to Threatening Internet Messages,” doctoral student Brooks Fuller
• “Incidental Contact with Same-Sex Couples in Non-Traditional News Content: An Examination of Exemplification and Parasocial Contact Effects,” associate professor Rhonda Gibson and doctoral alumna Jessica Myrick
• “Does Access to Environmental Information Have a Critical Problem?: Interpretation of FOIA’s Exemption 4 After the Critical Mass III Decision,” doctoral student Kylah Hedding
• “Community Conflict, News Coverage, and Mountaintop Mining 
in Appalachia: A Content Analysis of Major State and Mining Community Newspapers,” doctoral student Kylah Hedding and Richard Cole Eminent Professor Daniel Riffe
• “User-Generated Rumors On YouTube,” doctoral student Hyosun Kim
• “What Makes ‘Good’ News Newsworthy?,”
doctoral student Karen McIntyre
• “Positive News Websites and Extroversion: Motives, Preferences, and Sharing Behavior Among American and British Readers,” doctoral students Karen McIntyre and Meghan Sobel
• “The Effects of Online News Package Structure on Attitude, Attention, and Comprehension,” doctoral student
 Karen McIntyre, assistant professor Spencer Barnes and associate professor Laura Ruel
• “Taking It One Game At a Time: Prevalence of Temporary Work in North Carolinian Newspapers’ Sports Departments,” doctoral student Sada Reed
• “Who is to Blame? An Examination of American Sports Journalists’ Lance Armstrong Hero Narrative and Post-Doping Confession Paradigm Repair,” doctoral student Sada Reed
• “A Quarter-century of Reliability in Communication Content Analyses: Simple Agreement and Chance-corrected Reliability in Three Top Journals,” Jennette Lovejoy, doctoral alumnus Brendan Watson, Stephen Lacy
and Richard Cole Eminent Professor Daniel Riffe
• “The Case of Female Genital Cutting: Newspaper Coverage in Ghana, The Gambia, Kenya and the United States,” doctoral student Meghan Sobel
• “Covering Africa (2004-2013): U.S. Linkages in New York Times Coverage 
of Nigeria, Ethiopia and Botswana,” doctoral student Meghan Sobel and Richard Cole Eminent Professor Daniel Riffe
• “Media Genre Preferences Predicted by Current Mood and Salient Media Uses,” doctoral student Elise Stevens and associate professor Francesca Dillman Carpentier