Is internet content different after all? A content analysis of mobilizing information in online and print newspapers

Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly

Volumn 83, Issue 1, 2006, Pages 58-76

  Hoffman, Lindsay H ^a  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY; INTERNET; TELECOMMUNICATION;

EID: 33745316752     PISSN: 10776990     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/107769900608300105     Document Type: Article

References (155)

1. Ruy A. Teixeira, Why Americans Don't Vote: Turnout Decline in the United States, 1960-1984 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1987);
2. Sidney Verba, Kay. L. Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995);
3. Dietram A. Scheufele and Matthew C. Nisbet, "Being a Citizen Online: New Opportunities and Dead Ends," Harvard International Journal of Press-Politics 7 (June 2002): 55-75;
4. Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital," Journal of Democracy 6 (January 1995): 65-78.
5. Robert D. Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community (New York: Touchstone, 2000).
6. Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized: Online News Audience Larger, More Diverse," (8 June 2004).
7. See Bruce Bimber, "The Internet and Political Transformation: Populism, Community and Accelerated Pluralism," Polity 31 (1998): 133-60;
8. Thomas J. Johnson and Barbara K. Kaye, "A Vehicle for Engagement or a Haven for the Disaffected? Internet Use, Political Alienation, and Voter Participation," in Engaging the Public: How Government and the Media Can Reinvigorate American Democracy, ed. Thomas J. Johnson, Carol E. Hays, and Scott P. Hays (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1998), 123-35.
9. Robert Kraut, Michael Patterson, Vicki Lundmark, Sara Kiesler, Tridas Mukopadhyay, and William Scherlis, "Internet Paradox: A Social Technology That Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological Well-Being?" American Psychologist 53 (September 1998): 1017-31;
10. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital."
11. Robert Kraut, Sara Kiesler, Bonka Boneva, Jonathan Cummings, Vicki Helgeson, and Anne Crawford, "Internet Paradox Revisited," Journal of Social Issues 58 (January 2002): 49-74.
12. Kraut et al., "Internet Paradox Revisited," 68.
13. Pew Research Center, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized." Figure is based on those who reported going online for news at least three days per week.
14. Pew Internet & American Life Project, "America's Online Pursuits: The Changing Nature of Who's Online and What They Do," (22 December 2003);
15. see also Pew Internet & American Life Project, "Modest Increase in Internet Use for Campaign 2002: Political Sites Gain, but Major News Sites Still Dominate," (5 January 2003);
16. and Bruce Bimber, Information and American Democracy: Technology in the Evolution of Political Power (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).
17. See Herbert Blumer, "Suggestions for the Study of Mass-Media Effects," in American Voting Behavior, ed. Eugene Burdick and Arthur A. Brodbeck (New York: Free Press-Macmillan 1959), 183-94;
18. Steven H. Chaffee, "Mass Media Effects: New Research Perspectives," in Communication Research: A Half-Century Appraisal, ed. Daniel Lerner and Lyle M. Nelson (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii, 1977), 210-41;
19. Pippa Norris, "Does Television Erode Social Capital? A Reply to Putnam," PS: Political Science and Politics 29 (September 1996): 474-80.
20. See Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital";
21. Putnam, Bowling Alone.
22. Blumer, "Suggestions."
23. Christopher Weare and Wan-Ying Lin, "Content Analysis of the World Wide Web: Opportunities and Challenges," Social Science Computer Review 18 (August 2000): 272-92.
24. Erik P. Bucy, "Second-Generation Net News: Interactivity and Information Accessibility in the Online Environment" (unpublished manuscript).
25. Daniel Riffe, Stephen Lacy, and Frederick G. Fico, Analyzing Media Messages: Using Quantitative Content Analysis in Research (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998), 32.
26. James B. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change Public Opinion After All?: A New Approach to Effects Analysis (Chicago: Nelson-Hall, 1981);
27. James B. Lemert and J. Larkin, "Some Reasons Why Mobilizing Information Fails to Be in Letters to the Editor," Journalism Quarterly 56 (autumn 1979): 504-12;
28. James B. Lemert, Barry N. Mitzman, Michael A. Seither, Roxana H. Cook, and Regina Hackett, "Journalists and Mobilizing Information," Journalism Quarterly 54 (winter 1977): 721-26.
29. Merrill Morris and Christine Ogan, "The Internet as Mass Medium," Journal of Communication 46 (winter 1996): 42.
30. William P. Eveland, Jr., "A 'Mix of Attributes' Approach to the Study of Media Effects and New Communication Technologies," Journal of Communication 53 (September 2003): 395-410.
31. John V. Pavlik, Journalism and New Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
32. Morris and Ogan, "The Internet as Mass Medium," 43.
33. Pablo J. Boczkowski, Digitizing the News: Innovations in Online Newspapers (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2004).
34. Boczkowski, Digitizing the News, 183.
35. Bruce Bimber, "Information and Political Engagement in America: The Search for Effects of Information Technology at the Individual Level," Political Research Quarterly 54 (March 2001): 53-67.
36. Kraut et al., "Internet Paradox" and "Internet Paradox Revisited";
37. Paul Rich, "American Voluntarism, Social Capital, and Political Culture," The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 565 (1999): 15-34.
38. Richard Davis, The Web of Politics: The Internet's Impact on the American Political System (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999).
39. Putnam, Bowling Alone;
40. Barry Wellman, "Computer Networks as Social Networks," Science 293 (September 2001): 2031-34.
41. Johnson and Kaye, "A Vehicle";
42. Dhavan V. Shah, Nojin Kwak, and R. Lance Holbert, "'Connecting' and 'Disconnecting' with Civic Life: Patterns of Internet Use and the Production of Social Capital," Political Communication 18 (April 2001): 141-62;
43. Dhavan V. Shah, Jack M. McLeod, and So-Hyang Yoon, "Communication, Context, and Community: An Exploration of Print, Broadcast, and Internet Influences," Communication Research 28 (August 2001): 464-506;
44. Mira Sotirovic and Jack M. McLeod, "Values, Communication Behavior, and Political Participation," Political Communication 18 (July 2001): 273-300.
45. Shah, McLeod, and Yoon, "Communication, Context, and Community."
46. Scheufele and Nisbet, "Being a Citizen Online."
47. See also Davis, The Web of Politics,
48. and Johnson and Kaye, "A Vehicle."
49. Scheufele and Nisbet, "Being a Citizen Online," 57.
50. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change.
51. William P. Eveland, Jr. and Dietram A. Scheufele, "Connecting News Media Use with Gaps in Knowledge and Participation," Political Communication 17 (July 2000): 215-37;
52. Bruce Hardy, "Mobilizing Information Online: The Effects of Primary-Source and Secondary-Source Website Use on Political Engagement" (paper presented at the annual meeting of the Midwest Association for Public Opinion Research, Chicago, IL, November 2004);
53. Jack M. McLeod, Dietram A. Scheufele, and Patricia Moy, "Community, Communication, and Participation: The Role of Mass Media and Interpersonal Discussion in Local Political Participation," Political Communication 16 (July 1999): 315-36;
54. Zhondang Pan and Jack M. McLeod, "Multilevel Analysis in Mass Communication Research," Communication Research 18 (April 1991): 140-73;
55. Michael Schudson, The Power of News (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995);
56. Shah, Kwak, and Holbert, "'Connecting' and 'Disconnecting'."
57. Alan M. Frager, and Alice Khan, "How Useful Are Elementary School Health Textbooks for Teaching about Hearing Health and Protection?" Language, Speech and Hearing Services in Schools 19 (April 1988): 175-81;
58. Laurie Hoffman-Goetz, Charlene Shannon, and Juanne N. Clarke, "Chronic Disease Coverage in Canadian Aboriginal Newspapers," Journal of Health Communication 8 (September 2003): 475-88;
59. Megan MacDonald and Laurie Hoffman-Goetz, "Cancer Coverage in Newspapers Serving Large and Small Communities in Ontario," Canadian Journal of Public Health 92 (September/October 2001): 372-75.
60. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change;
61. Lemert et al., "Journalists";
62. Lemert and Larkin, "Some Reasons";
63. S. Hungerford and James B. Lemert, "Covering the Environment: A New "Afghanistanism'?" Journalism Quarterly 50 (autumn 1973): 475-81, 508;
64. James B. Lemert, "News Context and the Elimination of Mobilizing Information: An Experiment," Journalism Quarterly 61 (summer 1984): 243-49, 259;
65. James B. Lemert and Marguerite Gemson Ashman, "Extent of Mobilizing Information in Opinion and News Magazines," Journalism Quarterly 60 (winter 1983): 657-62;
66. James B. Lemert and Roxana Cook, "Mobilizing Information in Broadcast Editorials and 'Free Speech' Messages," Journal of Broadcasting 26 (winter 1982): 493-96;
67. Douglas W. Stanfield and James B. Lemert, "Alternative Newspapers and Mobilizing Information," Journalism Quarterly 64 (summer/autumn 1987): 604-7.
68. Arvin W. Murch, "Public Concern for Environmental Pollution," Public Opinion Quarterly 35 (spring 1971): 100-6.
69. David M. Rubin and David P. Sachs, Mass Media and the Environment, Volume II. The Environmental Information Explosion: The Press Discovers the Environment, Stanford University (ERIC Document Reproduction Service No. ED058710, 1971).
70. Rubin and Sachs, Mass Media, 9.
71. Rubin and Sachs, Mass Media, 32.
72. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change.
73. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change, 118.
74. This difficulty is apparently what led Lemert and his colleagues to study alternative newspapers (Stanfield and Lemert, "Alternative Newspapers");
75. environmental news (Hungerford and Lemert, "Covering the Environment");
76. public service announcements (Lemert and Cook, "Mobilizing Information");
77. liberal, conservative, and news magazines (Lemert and Ashman, "Extent of Mobilizing Information");
78. and to interview journalists to discover their reasons for excluding MI (Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change,
79. and Lemert, "News Context").
80. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change, 134;
81. see also Sharon Dunwoody and Robert J. Griffin, "Structural Pluralism and Media Accounts of Risk," in Mass Media, Social Control & Social Change, ed. David Demers and K. Viswanath (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1999), 139-58.
82. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change,
83. and Lemert, "News Context."
84. Lemert and Larkin, "Some Reasons";
85. see also Ralph R. Thrift, Jr., "How Chain Ownership Affects Editorial Vigor of Newspapers," Journalism Quarterly 54 (summer 1977): 327-31.
86. Jane B. Singer, "The Metro Wide Web: Changes in Newspapers' Gatekeeping Role Online," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 78 (spring 2001): 65-80.
87. Pavlik, Journalism and New Media;
88. Eric S. Fredin and Prabu David, "Browsing and the Hypermedia Interaction Cycle: A Model of Self-Efficacy and Goal Dynamics," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 75 (spring 1998): 35-54.
89. David Tewksbury and Scott L. Althaus, "Differences in Knowledge Acquisition Among Readers of the Paper and Online Versions of a National Newspaper," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 77 (autumn 2000): 457-79.
90. Daniela V. Dimitrova, Colleen Connolly-Ahern, Andrew Paul Williams, Lynda Lee Kaid, and Amanda Reid, "Hyperlinking as Gatekeeping: Online Newspaper Coverage of the Execution of an American Terrorist," Journalism Studies 4 (August 2003): 401-14.
91. Steve Outing, "Newspapers' Taste Standards Get Loose Online," Editor and Publisher, (28 May 2003).
92. Outing, "Newspapers' Taste."
93. Outing, "Newspapers' Taste."
94. Morris and Ogan, "The Internet as Mass Medium."
95. Michael A. Xenos and Kirsten A. Foot, "Politics As Usual, or Politics Unusual? Position Taking and Dialogue on Campaign Websites in the 2002 U.S. Elections," Journal of Communication 55 (March 2005): 169-85.
96. Ben H. Bagdikian, "The U.S. Media: Supermarket or Assembly Line?" Journal of Communication 35 (summer 1985): 97-109.
97. Daniel Riffe, Charles F. Aust, and Stephen R. Lacy, "The Effectiveness of Random, Consecutive Day and Constructed Week Sampling in Newspaper Content Analysis," Journalism Quarterly 70 (spring 1993): 133-39;
98. Riffe, Lacy, and Fico, Analyzing Media Messages.
99. Riffe, Lacy, and Fico, Analyzing Media Messages.
100. This time period was selected because it was seen as likely to have more occurrences of MI related to politics and voting, as regional elections were taking place.
101. I selected 1:30 a.m. (EST) as the download time, just after press time for most print newspapers. This allows for maximum comparability between print newspapers and their online counterparts (William P. Eveland, Jr. and A. Timiraos, "Variations in Story Frequency and Prominence in Web and Print Newspapers" [unpublished manuscript, 2001]).
102. Exhaustive research and an attempt to contact Lemert yielded no published or unpublished coding criteria for MI. These criteria are based on conceptual and operational explications in previous research.
103. Richard M. Perloff, Political Communication: Politics, Press, and Public in America (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1998), 7.
104. A coding instrument identified the section for the coder, as some newspaper sections differed in name in online and print versions. If the story did not indicate a section, the dateline and/or byline were used to identify story type. For example, a dateline of "CHICAGO" in the Columbus Dispatch would be considered National, and a byline of "John Wildermuth, Chronicle Political Writer" would be considered Politics. If the section was split (e.g., "National/ International"), datelines and bylines were utilized to assess the nature of the article origin.
105. A. S. Twyman, "Council Eyes Campaign Donations," The Philadelphia Inquirer, 18 November 2003, sec. B, p. 6.
106. These took the form of "Contact staff writer Carrie Budoff at 610-313-8211 or cbudoffπhillynews.com," Carrie Budoff, "Debt Pushes Pittsburgh to the Brink" The Philadelphia Inquirer, 7 November 2003, sec. A, pp. 1, 18.
107. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change.
108. ChronicleWatch, The San Francisco Chronicle, (2004).
109. Spidersoft, "WebZIP (Version 5.0.5.896)" [Computer software]. (2002).
110. Franz Faul and Edgar Erdfelder, "GPOWER: A Priori, Post-Hoc, and Compromise Power Analyses for MS-DOS [Computer software]" (Bonn, FRG: Bonn University, Dep. Of Psychology, 1992).
111. With an effect size at .20 (anticipating small effects), alpha at .05, and power set at .80, a t-test group comparison would require a combined (both online and print) sample size of approximately 620 articles. In order to reach this sample size overall, I estimated that approximately 65 articles per newspaper (each for print and online versions) would be sufficient. However, not every issue had 65 articles. The Columbus Dispatch, for example, had fewer than 65 articles in the original sample that actually fit the coding criteria. Additionally, there were a few cases (seven total) in which articles were excluded during the coding period because they were shown not to fit the coding criteria (e.g., a wire-authored article discovered only after coding had begun). After assessing power, a set of random numbers was created for each newspaper, and the first 65 numbers (without replacement) were entered into the sample.
112. In this case, the number of articles coded for reliability was 87, or 11.4% of the total sample. Roger D. Wimmer and Joseph R. Dominick, Mass Media Research: An Introduction, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1997).
113. Klaus Krippendorf, "Krippendorf's Reliability (Version 3.12a) [Computer software]" (Philadelphia: Annenburg School for Communication, 1996);
114. Klaus Krippendorf, Content Analysis: An Introduction to Its Methodology (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1980).
115. Krippendorf, Content Analysis;
116. Riffe, Lacy, and Fico, Analyzing Media Messages.
117. Kim A. Neuendorf, The Content Analysis Guidebook (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2002).
118. Lemert and Cook, "Mobilizing Information," 495.
119. Stanfield and Lemert, "Alternative Newspapers";
120. Lemert, "News Context";
121. Lemert and Ashman, "Extent of Mobilizing Information";
122. Lemert and Cook, "Mobilizing Information";
123. Lemert et al., "Journalists";
124. Hungerford and Lemert, "Covering the Environment."
125. Hungerford and Lemert, "Covering the Environment;"
126. Lemert et al., "Journalists."
127. Stanfield and Lemert, "Alternative Newspapers."
128. Singer, "The Metro Wide Web."
129. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change.
130. See, for example, Andrew Paul Williams, Kaye D. Trammell, Monica Postelnicu, Kristen D. Landreville, and Justin D. Martin, "Blogging and Hyperlinking: Use of the Web to Enhance Viability During the 2004 U.S. Campaign," Journalism Studies 6 (May 2005): 177-86.
131. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change.
132. Davis, The Web of Politics;
133. Michael Margolis and David Resnick, Politics as Usual: The Cyberspace "Revolution" (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2000);
134. Pippa Norris, Digital Divide: Civic Engagement, Information Poverty, and the Internet Worldwide (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).
135. W. Lance Bennett, News: The Politics of Illusion, 4th ed. (New York: Longman, 2001);
136. Warren Breed, "Social Control in the Newsroom: A Functional Analysis," Social Forces 33 (May 1955): 326-55;
137. Pamela J. Shoemaker and Stephen D. Reese, Mediating the Message: Theories of Influence on Mass Media Content, 2d ed. (White Plains, NY: Longman, 1996);
138. David H. Weaver and G. Cleveland Wilhoit, The American Journalist in the 1990s: U.S. Newspeople at the End of an Era (Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1996).
139. Thomas E. Patterson and Wolfgang Donsbach, "News Decisions: Journalists as Partisan Actors," Political Communication 13 (October 1996): 455-68.
140. John Soloski, "News Reporting and Professionalism: Some Constraints on the Reporting of the News," Media, Culture & Society 11 (April 1989): 207-28.
141. Randal A. Beam and James Bernstein, "The Impact of Channel Reliance on Tactical Mobilizing Information about HIV Transmission" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Washington, DC, August 1989);
142. Frager and Kahn, "How Useful";
143. Daniela B. Friedman and Laurie Hoffman-Goetz, "Cancer Coverage in North American Publications Targeting Seniors," Journal of Cancer Education 18 (March 2003): 43-7;
144. Hoffman-Goetz, Shannon, and Clarke, "Chronic Disease Coverage;
145. Connie M. Kristiansen and Christina M. Harding, "Mobilization of Health Behavior by the Press in Britain," Journalism Quarterly 61 (summer 1984): 364-70, 398;
146. Barbara Straus Reed, "The Link between Mobilizing Information and Service Journalism as Applied to Women's Magazine Coverage of Eating Disorders" (paper presented at the annual meeting of AEJMC, Minneapolis, MN, August 1990).
147. Lemert, Does Mass Communication Change; "News Context";
148. Lemert and Ashman, "Extent of Mobilizing Information";
149. Dunwoody and Griffin, "Structural Pluralism."
150. Mark Tremayne, "The web of Context: Applying Network Theory to the Use of Hyperlinks in Journalism on the Web," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 81 (summer 2004): 237-53.
151. Eveland and Scheufele, "Connecting News Media Use," 221.
152. M. Kent Jennings and Vicki Zeitner, "Internet Use and Civic Engagement: A Longitudinal Analysis," Public Opinion Quarterly 67 (fall 2003): 311-34;
153. Lori M. Weber, Alysha Loumakis, and James Bergman, "Who Participates and Why? An Analysis of Citizens on the Internet and the Mass Public" Social Science Computer Review 21 (February 2003): 26-42.
154. Johnson and Kaye, "A Vehicle."
155. Pew Research Center, "News Audiences Increasingly Politicized."