Via UI Library subscription., Study aimed to provide tools to improve the quality of journalism regarding ethical issues that concern our relationship with nonhuman animals. Explored the role of news media (two years of coverage by the New York Times newspaper, U.S., and El Pais, Spain) in constructing perceptions of nonhumans used for food and their treatment. Results showed that both newspapers played a major role in concealing the nonhumans' cruel treatment, but a distinction can be drawn between the crude speciesism of El Pais and the camouflaged, more deceptive style of the New York Times.
Abstract and citation via UI Library Catalog subject term search/Ebscohost.com., Study revealed that what editors applaud as their contribution to the development of northern Ghana was simply publishing challenges of the North in their various media outlets. Media stories fell short of fulfilling the tenets of development journalism in order to enhance progress in deprived communities. It proposed the re-orientation of journalists to play development advocacy roles.
Abstract and citation via Ebscohost.com. 1 page., Article focuses on the impact of mass media in rural development, including experiences of development communication in India.
Agricultural Communications Documentation Center, Funk Library, University of Illinois Box: 202 Document Number: D11984
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20 Pgs., Named essential workers, the country’s small farmers, ranchers and farmworkers are coping with the pandemic without a corporate safety net, persevering through shutdowns, slowdowns and supply-chain meltdowns.
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.
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.
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.
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.
