International: Two Sides North America, Inc., Chicago, Illinois.
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 142 Document Number: D11532
Notes:
3 pages., Online via publisher website., Article from the non-profit organization, Two Sides North America. It reported progress in a campaign to stop organizations from making misleading anti-print and anti-paper claims in their customer communications. It included findings of an international survey among more than 10,000 consumers assessing their document-storing preferences and attitudes about print versus digital communications.
18 pages, via online journal article, On April 2016, the weekly Farm News cut its ties with veteran freelancer Rick Friday who drew a cartoon that called attention to how much the CEOs of large agricultural corporations are paid. This study examines the determinants of people’s attitudes toward Mr. Friday’s firing. Using data gathered from a national online survey of newspaper readers, this study traced the antecedents of these attitudes. While the incident drew strong negative reactions, we found that public attitudes were strongly mediated by readers’ attitudes toward Big Ag advertisers. That is, those who saw Big Ag in a positive light were more inclined to report less negative attitudes toward the firing. Another factor that influenced public reaction is the way people perceived the relationship between the farm press and their large corporate advertising sponsors. These findings indicated audience awareness of the synergy between content making and profit making in the farm news business, and that readers saw the relationship between big advertisers and the press as not necessarily adversarial. Those in agricultural states tended to see the editorial cartoon and the firing incident as more relevant to their lives than their counterparts in non-agricultural areas. However, the perceived relevance of the editorial cartoon and the firing incident had no bearing on people’s attitudes toward the incident. Implications of the findings on fostering a healthy relationship between farm newspapers, their readers, and the agribusinesses that advertise in them are discussed.
15 pages, via online journal article, Okja is a fictional Netflix original film that was released in 2017. Okja features a “super pig” that is owned by the large, agricultural company Mirando Corporation. Okja is raised by a young girl, Mija, and her grandfather in the South Korean mountains. The film climaxes when Mija and the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) narrowly save Okja and a smuggled piglet from the slaughter process. The purpose of this study was to understand how college students responded to the film. The viewers of this film included students who were majoring in a field within the agricultural college (COA) at Texas Tech University as well as students who were majoring in a field outside of agriculture (NCOA). Emergent themes from this focus group study identified the film as overdramatized and that the film misrepresented food production. Previous knowledge and experiences impacted how viewers perceived the film with COA students indicating that Okja was portrayed more like a pet than as a food animal. Both COA and NCOA students indicated that their food purchasing decisions would not be affected by viewing the film. Findings suggested that entertainment films may not be an effective method for changing public opinion of agriculture and food production. Transparency in agriculture through real-life and real-time activities in a documentary style may serve a greater role in improving public opinion of food and agricultural production practices and industries.Findings from this study serve as an indicator of the role entertainment films play in swaying public opinion of food and agriculture.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 8 Document Number: D10310
Notes:
Online from the Center for Investigative Reporting, Emoryville, California., "Backing away from attempts at censorship, the National Park Service today released a report charting the risks to national parks from sea level rise and storms."
Online via UI subscription., This article analyzes debates on sugar and the supermarket industry in the British national press in the 2010-2015 period. This article’s primary premise is that traditionally “female” subject areas of journalism (health, supermarkets) migrated from “soft” news sections to “hard” news pages of newspapers and, when this happened, women journalists were squeezed out of covering these issues; instead, most topics on hard news pages become the preserve of male journalists.
