Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: A roundtable on the book There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI counterintelligence, by David Cunningham (University of California Press, 2004). This book looks inside the FBI’s COINTELPRO against white hate groups and the New Left. In a painstaking analysis, Cunningham focuses on the complex organizational dynamics that generated thousands of COINTELPRO actions. His account shows how the workings of the programs led to outcomes that often seemed to lack any overriding logic. Cunningham extends his analysis to the FBI’s often controversial recent actions to show the influence of the COINTELPRO legacy on contemporary debates over national security and civil liberties.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This study is a case study of one alternative medium, The Texas Observer. The study tests ideas about how the alternative press relates to its audience, comparing this with previously published literature about how mainstream media relate to their audiences. Through interviews with staff members and an online survey of the magazine’s readership, the study concludes that the staff’s connection with its readers is closer than is usual for mainstream media and that the readership is politically active; and that this alternative publication’s content serves its audience needs. This study is unique because it provides an up-close look at how the alternative press relates to its audience and what its audience thinks about this publication, and what its producers think about their audience.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study pits traditional rational-choice economics against “new institutionalist” theory in an effort to explain managers’ adoption of new, reader-oriented online features, such as most popular story lists, reader video, blogs and sites that target subcommunities. According to new institutional theory, organizations pursue innovations in order to appear legitimate and to conform with other organizations in their environment. It is proposed here that news organizations are both institutional and financially strategic. Findings from a content analysis of newspaper Web sites revealed evidence of mimicry of other organizations, but also the importance of financial predictors.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study implemented a post-test only control group design which provided evidence for second level agenda-setting effects of print media stories about the August 2006 war in Lebanon. Participants (n = 485) were randomly assigned to one of five groups, each receiving one of five different versions of a news story, consistent in length and formatting but differing in tone and frame. The investigators (1) measured readers’ perceptions of the war’s involved parties, Israel and Hezbollah, and (2) identified and compared the specific attributes that readers from each condition group assigned to Israel and Hezbollah. The results demonstrated clear and statistically significant differences in perceptions of Israel and Hezbollah among the five condition groups. Computer content analysis of open-ended responses demonstrated a clear relationship between the version of the news story read by participants and the attributes that the participants assigned to Israel and Hezbollah.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: In November 2006, we invited bloggers from the top 154 political blogs to participate in a two-part survey of the political blogosphere. The survey was designed to link responses from bloggers with responses from their readers. 66 bloggers from 58 blogs participated in the survey, and 40 of them recruited readers for the project, resulting in 3909 reader responses. This dataset allowed us to examine many facets of the blogger-reader relationship. Our research has examined: the role of blogger motivations in developing readers’ political interest; the extent to which bloggers lead their reader communities in political participation; the roles of media and discussion in readers’ political participation and expression behaviors; the impact of blog diet homogeneity on participation and deliberation; and the use of blogs as an alternate news channel stemming from hostile media perception.