Abstract: Media Watch January
2015
(Vol. 6, No. 1)
Impact Factor: SJIF 3.276 |
IIFS 0.993 | ISRA 0.834
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55371
Sharing Fear via
Facebook: A Lesson in Political Public Relations
Jan Boehmer1 & Michael
B. Friedman2
1University
of Miami, Florida, USA
2University
of Tennessee at Chattanooga, USA
Our
study compared the use of fear messages on Facebook by Barack Obama and Mitt
Romney during the 2012 U.S. presidential elections. Results show that written
fear messages embedded in photographs posted on Facebook by both candidates
affected the degree to which those photographs were shared. More specifically,
photographs containing written fear messages were shared more often than
photographs not containing written fear messages. Furthermore, while the
challenging candidate, Mitt Romney, used more photographs containing fear
messages, the increase in shares was consistent across candidates. Implications
regarding information distribution within communities, public relations
practitioners specializing in political campaigning and society as a whole are
discussed.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55376
Fake News? A Survey on Video News Releases and their Implications on
Journalistic Ethics, Independence and Credibility of Broadcast News
Chandra Clark
& Shuhua Zhou
University of Alabama, USA
The traditional lines between
journalism and public relations are now intertwined and public relations
practitioners have an influential role on the content consumers see every day
in newspapers and on news broadcasts. This survey looked at video news releases
and their implications about journalists’ ethics, integrity, independence and
credibility. 533 participants from three different populations (average
viewers, communication college students, and journalists) responded to a
54-question survey that employed two predictors (i) level of experience and
(ii) years of journalism experience. The results indicated that average viewers
found the use of video news releases (VNRs) more unethical than journalists and
communication students, although experienced journalists believed VNR use is
having an impact on journalistic independence in news. Implications are
discussed.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55381
Perception of Government Public Relations Practice by the People in Sabah: A
Public Opinion Survey
Mohd Hamdan
bin Adnan
University Malaysia Sabah, Malaysia
This
survey focuses on how the people in Sabah perceived Malaysia’s governmental
public relations practice and their perception of the government based upon it.
It includes how the different types of mass media and its content that they
expose themselves to have influence their image of the nation administration as
well as its policies and implementations. Also included are how their own
experience with the various government agencies has impacted their views with
regard to those authorities specifically and the government generally. Method
used for this public opinion survey is the random sampling technique.
Respondents selected were 600 people based on four categories. All of them were
located in and around Kota Kinabalu and chosen randomly. For the interview a
structured questionnaire was prepared and pilot tested on 40 respondents with
ten from each category. This survey finding further revealed that the media the
public chose and exposed themselves to, do impact their perception of the
government and its public relations, positively or negatively, depending on its
content. However, the survey found that the impact was rather moderate with
about half of the respondents declaring positively and the remainder not so
positive and a few negatively.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55387
Advertising and Ethnicities: A Comparative Study of Sri Lanka and Northeast
India
Darshana
Liyanage
University of
Ruhuna, Sri Lanka
Ethnicity
has become a key interest of advertisers in diverse societies. Contrary to the popular
argument that ethnic identities are threatened by the intensified influence of
media and consumer culture, they have become the core sites of representation
and reproduction of ethnic identities. It is arguable that in today’s (mass)
mediated societies there are no ways of imagining ethnicities without the
media’s influence and impact on them.
Advertising1, no longer a mere commercial activity, is an important
component of popular culture and hence plays a crucial part in the social and
cultural life of our times. Sri Lanka2 has long
been a country of communal unrest, which culminated in a civil war. Northeast
India is a region where a number of conflicting identities are in a constant
battle of production and reproduction. The ways the ethnic identities are
represented in advertisements in these two societies are worthy of studying in
this context. When ad-makers segment a market for a particular brand, they
mostly rely on ethnic identities. As a result, advertisements too become a site
of reproduction of ethnic identities. This paper is intended to identify and
analyze the ways of representations of ethnic identities in advertisements in
Northeast India3 and Sri Lanka by a comparative reading of a
sample of print and electronic advertisements.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55389
Community-Based Media in Promoting Identity and Culture: A Case Study in
Eastern Thailand
PISAPAT
YOUKONGPUN
Griffith
University, Australia
This paper analyses the role of
community-based media in information distribution in the Riverside community, a
cultural tourism destination in Chanthaburi, Eastern Thailand. It has started
to produce its own media, and to use social networks to promote itself to the
nation. Exploring the role of community media produced by locals will reinforce
the idea that community media have provided much more effective communication
channels for local people in a community environment. By using ethnographic
action research as a methodology, this research gains strength through a rich
understanding of the community by following an ongoing research cycle of
planning, doing, observing and reflecting. Moreover, this study reflects the
idea of ‘hyperlocal’ media. With approximately one hundred households on which
to focus, it is much easier for ‘hyperlocal’ to reach local people by providing
local news, covering local politics and engaging people in the affairs relevant
to their area.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55390
Social Media Challenges and Adoption Patterns among Public Relations
Practitioners
Radhe
Krishan
Vivekananda Institute of
Professional Studies, New Delhi, India
Social media has
altered the design of modern society. It has changed the way people lived and
worked. Though no profession or industry is left untouched by the communication
revolution stirred by social media, yet communication professionals bore maximum
impact. This paper analyzed the usage and perception of public relation (PR)
professionals regarding the use of social media, particularly, Facebook,
Twitter and YouTube. The primary
research questions, this paper attempted to find answers for, are: (i) Did
social media transformed the modus operandi of PR practitioners?; (ii) Do PR
practitioners rely on one social media tool/platform over the other?; and (iii)
To find out whether social media is an aid or a burden for a PR practitioner?
By attempting to answer these three questions the paper explored fresh aspects
of social media with regards to public relations. For the purpose of the study
a survey was conducted among PR practitioners based in Delhi and working with
prominent multinational companies or PR agencies.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55391
Branding Unity: Impact of Advertisements
on Patriotism, Unity
and Communal Harmony
Jyoti
Raghavan
Kamala Nehru College, University of
Delhi, India
Patriotism and national unity
have become favorite brand positioning propositions for advertisers in India.
The paper explores the reasons behind the popularity of these patriotic themes
that also embrace notions of nationhood, communal harmony and national unity in
commercials and public service advertisements. While these patriotic themes
used to be the exclusive domain of the government media in the country, they
are being taken up in a big way by private business houses in their public
communication endeavors. The research study has examined six frequently telecast
advertisements on Indian television networks centered upon the theme of
national pride, communal harmony and national unity. While tracing the
historical context of these advertisements, the paper also attempts to study
their impact upon the public. The primary research for the study comprised
interviews with respondents to explore the impact of these advertisements upon
the public. The findings of the study show that positioning brands on the
themes of national pride, unity and patriotism succeed in establishing a strong
emotional connect in public minds leading to brand recall.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55393
Communication through Advocacy Advertising
for Public Health
Promotion
Mahendra
Kumar Padhy
Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University,
India
This research work is an
investigation into the reception of anti-smoking advertisements that make use
of “fear appeals”. The objective of the research is to bring audience
perceptions, interpretations and making sense processes of such advertising
campaigns to the limelight. Instead of measuring effects or effectiveness of
anti-smoking messages using shocking images, this project has at its basis the
assumption of an active audience that interprets, makes sense and decodes media
texts in various ways. Research methods used in this study are qualitative by
nature. Research findings show that the
prospective audience champion the use of anti-smoking advertisements and see
the use of fear appeals as a one-way road to drawing the audience’s attention,
they nevertheless perceive these communication efforts in a highly
individualized manner, resisting to advertising techniques of persuasion and
showing signs of desensitization towards fear appeals. Findings show that
advocacy advertising using fear appeals are always decoded within the wider
media context and the identity of smokers themselves often nourished by media
representations of smoking, which plays an
role in the way the audience gives different interpretations and relates
to these messages.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55397
Digital Access and Inequality among Primary School Children in Rural Coimbatore
Sudha
Venkataswamy
Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, India
This paper examines the dynamics
of access and exclusion in children’s Internet use, in both private and public
school spaces and interrogates the role of socioeconomic and demographic
predictors as well as the schooling system in shaping Internet habits. More
specifically, it explores the nature of Internet use by primary school
children, mainly for education and information and attempts to understand the
differences across and within two types of schools- a rural public school and
an elite private school. Through in-depth interviews, this research
investigates the level of computer and Internet literacy among the primary
school children in the age group of 8-10 years and reports the differences
observed among the various social dimensions. It attempts to stress the
significance and need in today’s context to provide the opportunities for
physical and material access so that disadvantaged children are not excluded
from the digital opportunities.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55438
Social Media and the
Arab Spring
M.
Rabindranath & Sujay Kapil
Central University of Himachal
Pradesh, India
This paper discusses the effect
of social media on the occurrence of ‘Arab Spring’. In the Arab world no
country could claim to be truly democratic and most were autocratic coupled
with desertification (68.4 per cent of the total land area), phenomenal rise in
population and scarcity of water. Moreover, about 60 per cent of the population
is under 25 years and this group belonging to lower- middle class with high
education, self- constructed status, wider world views and global dreams forced
them to raise their voice and change the autocratic set up. But, in the absence
of effective social media since the year 2000 made it possible to raise their
voice unitedly through facebook, twitter and blogs culminating to the ouster of
Hosne Mubarak in Egypt. The ‘top to down’ approach adopted by the Western
social scientists, thus proved wrong and ‘bottom to top’ approach through
social media brought the dramatic changes in Arab nations.
DOI:
10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55398
Constructing a
Comprehensive Coverage Criterion of Indian States and Union Territories News
Umesh Arya
Guru Jambheshwar University of Science
& Technology, India
The study posits a twelve pronged
formulation of indices to measure the over coverage and under coverage of the
Indian states and union territories by newspapers on socio-economic,
demographical and political aspects. Union territories (UT), mainly Delhi and
Chandigarh were unjustifiably favoured on all twelve counts which clearly
points out media’s biased leanings to cater to the regional aspirations and
preference to the power center. Northern states were most favourably covered
and the coverage reduced with increasing distance of the state from the power center
i.e., the capital of India whereas north eastern states suffered severe
coverage blackout. Quantitative and spatial indices were developed to see news
coverage in a new perspective.
DOI: 10.15655/mw/2015/v6i1/55399
Public relations: Scope and Challenges in Digital Era
Manish
Verma
National Institute of Fashion
Technology, Kangra, India
With the emergence of new media
in 21st century communication industry has been
revolutionized. Although digital or social media provides an advantage to reach
the audience in minimum time but it is critical to draft a right message for
this medium. Digital media has indeed changed the way of communication for
public relation practitioners around the world. Now information is disseminated
much quicker through the internet and mobile phones. In this digital era, it is
imperative that public relation would need to adapt to technological advancement
happening around the world and utilize this advancement as tools to effectively
reach its audiences and achieve the communication objectives. To achieve public
relation, it has become important for a PR practitioner to adapt to these new
changes. The new technologies and methods of communication have made public
relations a much more versatile and effective tool. New communication
technologies allow inventive ways to accomplish a public relation campaign to
build stronger association and trust between businesses and target consumers.
