25 pages, To foster the responsible development and governance of CRISPR, it is important to understand how agricultural communities perceive and discuss this technology. This study conducted a content analysis of 529 articles from 53 diverse agricultural news publications across sectors and U.S. regions between 2012 and 2022. We analyzed how CRISPR technology is depicted in terms of risk, benefit, social/policy context, quoted experts, and the mentioning of other biotechnologies. Our findings show that from the time that CRISPR was developed for agriculture over a decade ago, agricultural news has consistently reflected a pro-innovation stance, frequently describing its benefits as well as advantages over longer-standing biotechnologies. Industry representatives were quoted most frequently, followed by university scientists and political representatives, while producers and non-governmental groups were quoted least frequently. Technology-related risks (off-target effects, financial risks) were notably lacking, but CRISPR’s social context was covered more extensively, including uncertainties in regulation and consumer acceptance. We discussed the implications for agricultural news professionals, communicators, and future researchers, emphasizing the importance of fostering a more balanced discourse and ensuring informed decision-making within the agricultural sector.
21 pages, Women empowerment and gender equality have been found to be statistically significant and positive predictors of global agricultural development. Therefore, reducing gender disparities can encourage economic progress and growth in developing nations. As such, determining effective ways to stimulate social progress and women’s empowerment has emerged as a critical need. One strategy used to raise the public’s consciousness about gendered issues in Thailand has been through mass media. In response, this study aimed to (1) determine to what extent Thailand’s newspaper coverage focused on topics related to women and the agricultural industry; and (2) describe how women in agriculture have been portrayed in newspaper coverage since the introduction of Thailand 4.0’s policy in 2016. Using a qualitative content analysis of Thailand’s newspaper coverage of women in the agricultural sector, four themes emerged: (1) economic policy implications for Thailand’s agricultural system; (2) human rights; (3) women entrepreneurship and leadership; and (4) agricultural development. Therefore, this study concluded that newspaper coverage of women in agriculture was diverse and conflicting – a finding not previously reported. The findings also revealed that women in agriculture have been underrepresented in newspaper publications historically. Moving forward, we provided critical implications for how future research, theory, and practice can depict women in agriculture more positively in the newspaper media.
21 pages, Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of “hate speech” as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n = 33) to better understand how rural journalists report on hate. We find that rural journalists articulate a clear definition for hate speech but struggle to apply that definition to events within their communities, even as they articulate numerous forms of hate. Journalists often dismissed acts of hate using the residual category of “not hate, but … ” to signal something that they felt was out of place or unsuitable but did not rise to the legal definition of hate speech and thus was not worth reporting on. This approach ends up challenging journalists’ normative commitments to their communities and exemplifies their desire to avoid an objectivity trap.
20 pgs., Twelve U.S. states were tasked with developing nutrient reduction strategies to help address hypoxia in the Gulf of Mexico. To better understand the kinds of messages different stakeholders in these states are likely to encounter about such strategies, we conducted a content analysis focused on the Iowa Nutrient Reduction Strategy (INRS). We examined 483 articles in two agricultural and two non-agricultural news outlets. We found that agricultural news outlets more often led with agricultural themes and more often used agricultural representatives as sources. The non-agricultural news outlets more often quoted representatives of environmental groups. News articles infrequently led with science or health themes. The volume of coverage over time in three of the four news outlets appeared followed similar issue attention cycles. Differences among the outlets may lead to differences in stakeholders’ knowledge or views about the INRS and conservation, posing challenges to consensus-building.
24pgs, Opioid drug abuse has created an epidemic recognized as a public health emergency in 2017, and the detrimental impacts of this epidemic have reached into rural America. When it comes to presenting information via the mass media, communications professionals serve as gatekeepers for what information is passed on to media consumers. Additionally, news organizations place certain degrees of importance upon issues through the amount of coverage dedicated to an issue. In late 2016, when the Farm and Dairy newspaper editorial staff decided to dedicate a vast amount of time and resources to covering Ohio and Pennsylvania’s rural opioid epidemic, a variety of questions and concerns followed. This complicated topic was largely unfamiliar and untraditional to agricultural communications. Concerns about how to research the topic, work with sources, and manage responses from stakeholders emerged at the onset, but motivations to increase awareness, reduce stigma, and instill hope in the midst of a rural opioid epidemic brought the series to fruition. This case study details the actions taken by those involved in the series and stakeholder reactions to a unique journalistic investigation from a rural newspaper. Discussion of recommendations for future research and curricular impacts are provided.
21 pgs, The purpose of this paper is to compare the reporting of vital agricultural news between the mainstream print media and the farming press in Ireland. To achieve this, this study examined coverage of a recent and significant agricultural news event by mainstream Irish newspapers and the Irish farming press. Taking the 2018–2019 Irish beef sector crisis as the case study for examination, researchers conducted a comparative content analysis of the most widely circulated mainstream national newspapers’ (n = 5) and farming newspapers’ (n = 2) coverage of the story over a 14-month period. We analyzed the timing, frequency, and placing of some 294 articles published to communicate issues regarding the beef crisis at three specific stages—before the national farmer protests, during the farmer protests, and after the farmer protests. We found mainstream newspapers to be significantly slower to start reporting on the Irish beef sector crisis of 2018–2019 compared to the country’s farming newspapers—although national print media coverage of the event increased as the crisis escalated. This early underreporting of the event by mainstream newspapers is compelling considering the importance of the agri-food sector, and beef farming in particular, to Ireland’s economy. Building on existing international, but very limited Irish, research on agricultural journalism, we concluded that farming newspapers are more in touch with the critical issues affecting Irish farmers while mainstream newspapers appeared slower to cover a vital agricultural issue of public importance.
22 Pages, Online Public Access, Restoration of oyster habitats is a critical solution to halt the decline of one of the world’s most threatened resources. News coverage about environmental topics, like oyster restoration, is important to local communities that are directly impacted. However, little research has assessed how restoration topics are framed by journalists, nor how environmental disasters may affect framing of news stories for the public. This study employed a longitudinal framing analysis, using the quantity of coverage and social responsibility theories, to examine how coverage of the restoration of oyster ecosystems shifted before, during, and after the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill. The frames and sources of 763 newspaper articles were assessed, including 18 local newspapers from five U.S. Gulf Coast states and three high-circulation national newspapers. Logistic regression analyses revealed that the occurrence of an environmental catastrophe shifted media focus from environmental frames before the spill to community and economic frames during and after the spill. Stories were dominated by environmental frames (49%) and primarily relied on quotes from resource managers (50%) over all other groups. Local resource users were quoted less than 5% of the time in local articles. Findings provide a foundation for natural resource managers and communication specialists to understand how information about natural resources changes during disasters and reveals the perspectives that are most and least commonly used to frame and define stories about coastal resources and important gaps in coverage.
Baranowski, Dariusz B. (author), Flatau, Maria K. (author), Flatau, Piotr J. (author), Karnawati, Dwikorita (author), Barabasz, Katarzyna (author), Lubaz, Michal (author), Latos, Beata (author), Schmidt, Jerome M. (author), Paski, Jaka A.I. (author), and Marzuki (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2020-05-19
Published:
UK: Nature Portfolio
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 207 Document Number: D13091
10 pages, Floods are a major contributor to natural disasters in Sumatra. However, atmospheric conditions leading to floods are not well understood due, among other factors, to the lack of a complete record of floods. Here, the 5 year flood record for Sumatra derived from governmental reports, as well as from crowd-sourcing data, based on Twitter messages and local newspapers’ reports, is created and used to analyze atmospheric phenomena responsible for floods. It is shown, that for the majority of analyzed floods, convectively coupled Kelvin waves, large scale precipitation systems propagating at ∼12 m/s along the equator, play the critical role. While seasonal and intraseasonal variability can also create conditions favorable for flooding, the enhanced precipitation related to Kelvin waves was found in over 90% of flood events. In 30% of these events precipitation anomalies were attributed to Kelvin waves only. These results indicate the potential for increased predictability of flood risk.
Curtiss, Brook D. (author), Hale-Spencer, Melissa (author), Hueston, Brett (author), Whitney, Jonathan (author), Harnack, Roger (author), McLaughlin, Kaylie (author), Lozinski, Peter (author), Hedlund, Patric (author), Meyer, Eric (author), Wagner, Ellen (author), Nash, Noel (author), White, Mark (author), Ranson, Steve (author), Meier, Jill (author), Sawvell, Derek (author), Keck, Randy (author), Murray, Ian (author), McCarthy, James (author), and Valpy, Bruce (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2020
Published:
USA: International Society of Weekly Newspaper Editors
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 201 Document Number: D11786
Online via UI electronic subscription., Brief case examples of how community newspapers adapted to the COVID-19 pandemic in the face of suspended activities in their communities.
Freireich, Elliott (author), Fogler, Jim (author), Waltner, Jeremy (author), McLaughlin, Kaylie (author), Wagner, Ellen (author), Nash, Noel (author), van Zyl, Anton (author), Finklea, Betsy (author), Manko, Janet (author), Meyer, Eric (author), Bellune, Jerry (author), Martin, Brad (author), Sieve-Hicks Jen (author), Klomp, Marcie (author), Meier, Jill (author), and Whitney, Jonathan (author)
Format:
Journal article
Publication Date:
2020
Published:
International
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 201 Document Number: D11787
Online via UI electronic subscription, Comments, ideas and concerns expressed by a selection of community newspaper publishers and editors about their adjustments in the face of economic and business impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Online from publisher website. Published February 6, 2020., Article addresses the shrinking number of full-time food critics in Canada, as employed by major newspapers and publications. Cites values that qualified food journalists offer through news and reviews involving food and nutrition.
Online via UI Library Catalog search. 10 pages., Findings of a survey among a sample of 100 farmers in District Sargodha revealed 99% used agricultural radio/TV/FM, 96% used mobile phones, 66% used magazines/newspapers/periodicals, and 61% used social media. Respondents placed highest value on enhancing their productivity.
Online via UI electronic subscription., Editors introduce a special issue focused on now ISWNE members have been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic in their communities.
2 pages., Via online., Editorial critical of the Los Angeles Times newspaper for championing the rise of plant-based burger alternatives without context, accuracy and logic.
23pgs, Media scholarship has commonly regarded newspapers as an essential element of strong democratic societies: a forum that structures public debate, providing engaged citizens with coherent frameworks to identify, interpret and tackle complex issues. Despite general agreement on the merits of this goal, there is little empirical evidence suggesting it approximates the democratic role historically played by newspapers. We examined three decades of newspaper coverage of chicken meat production in the UK to find evidence relevant to the normative expectations of the democratic role of newspapers as forum for public debate, by means of a two-stage framing analysis of 766 relevant articles from seven outlets. We found mutually disconnected episodic coverage of specific issues whose aggregate effect is consistent with the diffusion rather than the structuring of public debate. Newspapers here afforded polemic rather than the systemic contestation expected. The polemic contestation we found, with diffusion of public debate as an emergent political effect, troubles the assumptions subsequent to which it is possible to argue for the democratic role of newspapers.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 121 Document Number: D11097
Notes:
Online from ACES News, University of Illinois. 2 pages., Findings of a survey among farmers in Wisconsin suggested that respondents were open to receiving agricultural health and safety information from any source. Preferred methods of delivery: magazines and newspapers, face-to-face communication. Least preferred: social media, the internet and phone support lines.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11223
Notes:
Online from the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, Florida. 8 pages., Report of how journalists at The Fresno Bee newspaper changed how they cover food.
18 pages., Article 6, Via online journal., The discovery of the antibiotic Aureomycin as a growth promotor for the livestock industry was viewed as revolutionary in 1950. The use of antibiotics as growth promoters in livestock, however, has been questioned by health professionals concerned with the role this use might play in the development of antibiotic resistant bacteria. As a public health issue, newspapers have covered this topic since its discovery. Media, such as newspapers, have used frames to discuss the topic over time as new discoveries have occurred, policy changes have been implemented, and food animal production has changed. The purpose of this study was to determine the frames and sources used by national U.S. newspapers when discussing the topic of antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance. A quantitative content analysis was conducted on three national U.S. newspapers from 1996 – 2017 and found three primary frames were used when discussing antibiotic use in livestock and antibiotic resistance. The content analysis also indicated that over 90% of the news articles contained a scientific source when communicating about this scientific topic. Based on the frames identified some readers are being ill-informed about this topic and could be using this information in their decision making without having all of the facts. Science communicators should prioritize the inclusion of scientific sources in their writing as they communicate about complex, controversial topics.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 124 Document Number: D11226
Notes:
Via online Better News. 7 pages., Describes how the Sacramento Bee newspaper experimented with serving specific audiences for food stories in an effort to grow digital subscriptions. "The sprint terminology is borrowed from developers. We liked it because it allowed us to learn and get results quickly. If we failed, that was fine. If we found success, we kept going." Sprint efforts run from six to eight weeks. A drafted plan includes the strategy and tactics used to achieve SMART goals (SMART standing for specific, measurable, aggressive yet achievable, relevant and time-bound.) Team members measure "obsessively," meeting every week to discuss results and build new story plans. In a reported sprint example, digital subscriptions increased by more than 50 percent in 2018.
Authors examined three Malaysian English online newspapers to identify the most relevant keywords used in daily online news. Articles related to agro-food industries were taken from online news websites. Findings identified 12 agro-words considered the most relevant.
Online via UI subscription., This study explores how South Korean newspapers reported the issue of AI (avian influenza) by employing framing, and the concepts of media advocacy and mobilizing information (MI). Results indicate that news stories were more likely to attribute blame to the government. Government, scientist/researcher, and farmer sources were most prevalent in news coverage. Mentions of tactical MI for the preventive actions increased. Overall, findings indicate the increased media advocacy efforts during repetitive outbreaks of AI.
8 pages., Online via Ryerson Review of Journalism website. Published on February 19, 2020., Tara de Ryk, owner and publisher of a rural Saskatchewan weekly newspaper, decided after 21 years to retire from the newspaper business. This article describes how community interest in local news and an adventuresome spirit prompted her to conduct a give-away contest in late 2019. Interested persons were invited to write an essay (500 words maximum) about how they would be ideal owner and publisher of the Davidson Leader. The article describes the contest and winning entry, which led to change in ownership.
6 pages., Via online journal., The study of food is crucial since food is part of daily life of people. Also, food and gastronomy are a very important leisure and travel issue. This is reflected through the huge attention that media pay to food stories. Food journalism has become a field of increasing interest, and the study of journalistic narratives allows to understand concrete cultural and social realities. Within this context, the current paper analyses food in journalistic storytelling. The objective of the research is to define a methodological proposal of topics in order to study the food-based contents found in legacy media, particularly, in daily newspapers. To achieve it, the food contents of The New York Times, the world's food journalism referent, are revisited.
Cross, Al (author / Director, Institute of Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky )
Format:
Commentary
Publication Date:
2018-03
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 8 Document Number: D10311
Notes:
2 pages., Online from the Institute of Rural Journalism and Community Issues, University of Kentucky. Published earlier in the Publishers' Auxiliary, newspaper of the National Newspaper Association., "We need more letters from the editor, not just statements of general principle, but explanations of how and why we do certain tings. If we demand transparency from officials and institutions, we must practice it ourselves."
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.
Via UI Library online subscription., Owner of the Hardwick Gazette community newspaper in Vermont describes his experience in seeking a new owner through an essay contest. His quest included confirmation of the importance of community newspapers in their areas of circulation.
Presents "some of the challenges arising from the growing amounts of information available and exhausting the managements when defining the direction of future development of a company."
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.
5 pages., Via online UI subscription., Report of sessions at a conference about the need and role of community newspapers in sustaining and revitalizing U.S. rural life. Conference organized by the Keene (New Hampshire) Sentinel newspaper and Hannah Grimes Center for Entrepreneurship.
Garfrerick, Beth H. (author / University of North Alabama)
Format:
Monograph
Publication Date:
2018
Published:
USA
Location:
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 199 Document Number: D10069
Notes:
112 pages., Manuscript from author involving dissertation research., This monograph addresses the history of the community weekly newspaper in the United States throughout the twentieth century.
Online U.S. edition of the Guardian newspaper. 4 pages., "Local journalism is doing great work across the country while fighting cutbacks and tight budgets. But we need people to stop expecting news to be free.
29 pages, J. N. Rogers, the publisher of the Rural Citizen, joined the Farmers' Alliance soon after it spread to Jack County, Texas. He started using the newspaper to promote the order in March 1881, and in February 1882 the Alliance named the Rural Citizen its official newspaper. Rogers changed the newspaper's name to the Jacksboro Gazette and distanced himself and the publication from the order shortly before the Alliance's August 1886 adoption of political demands at Cleburne.
