Alternative Outlets Research Articles

News media and the racialization of protest: an analysis of Black Lives Matter articles

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine coverage of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in seven US-based newspapers to determine whether the protest paradigm, “a pattern of news coverage that expresses disapproval toward protests and dissent,” and other marginalizing techniques are present, and racialized.Design/methodology/approachRelevant articles published during a six-month period of 2014 near the death of Michael Brown were retrieved from the selected outlets, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, and the St Louis Post-Dispatch. Textual and content analyses were performed.FindingsThe articles heavily followed the paradigm. An additional characteristic, blame attribution, was also identified. Language of crime, lawlessness, violence, blame for nearby acts of violence, and inflammatory quotes from bystanders and official sources were often present. There was little discussion of key issues associated with the formation of BLM.Research limitations/implicationsMainstream outlets rather than social media or alternative outlets were examined. Future research should study coverage of BLM in other outlets.Practical implicationsMeasures to avoid marginalizing protests and racialization of coverage, including increased diversity in the newsroom and monitoring for racialized language are suggested.Social implicationsRacialization of news and coverage of BLM has widespread negative consequences, such as association of Blacks with criminality that may affect their quality of life. The protest paradigm has the ability to squelch participation in social movements, which have the possibility to bring about needed social change.Originality/valueThis interdisciplinary paper highlights the important role of mainstream media and news routines in affecting the BLM movement. It uses diversity research to make recommendations for media practitioners to avoid racialization of news.

Working Mechanically or Organically?

Climate change frames in the media affect the political and public debate. However, focusing on the frames in texts, most framing research overlooks the factors which influence frame-building by reporters. However, this is crucial for a fuller understanding of the potential implications and meanings of frames. Besides, the existing frame-building research is exclusively engaged with mainstream media. Also, visual frame-building is under-researched. Therefore, we have conducted interviews with 26 climate journalists, photo editors, chiefs and opinion-makers, working for three mainstream and two progressive alternative outlets in northern Belgium. The findings were combined with the outcome of a deductive framing analysis of 114 climate articles. The results show a strong overlap among journalist frames and news frames. Anthropocentric Subframes prevail in the mainstream news articles and among the reporters. A mixture of Biocentric and Anthropocentric Subframes was found in the context of the alternative outlets. We explain this by presenting the studied mainstream newsrooms as machines and the (progressive) alternative newsrooms as organisms. We conclude that the mainstream journalists are guided towards Anthropocentric Subframes by various (internalised) pressures. The practices in the alternative media liberate reporters to introduce a broader variety of frames.

Use and Impacts of Campbell Systematic Reviews on Policy, Practice, and Research

Aim:This study examines use and impacts of systematic reviews produced by the Campbell Collaboration’s Social Welfare Coordinating Group (SWCG) on practice, policy, and research. Methods:A mixed-method research design was used to examine impacts of 52 systematic reviews published by the SWCG. We conducted author surveys and retrieved multiple sources of bibliometric data. Results:Campbell SWCG reviews were downloaded 136,356 times and cited 3,184 times. Most reviews did not receive significant attention in alternative outlets (i.e., social media). Review authors provided evidence that reviews were used directly to make changes in policy or practice or inform future research. Discussion:Assessing the use and impacts of research is challenging. While downloads and citations provide evidence that these reviews receive attention, it was more difficult to determine the extent to which the reviews were used to impact practice or policy. More work is needed to better track and assess impacts of Campbell reviews.

Changes in Prosocial Motivation over Time: A Cross-Sector Analysis of Effects on Volunteering and Work Behavior

ABSTRACTA gap in research on prosocial motivation is that very little is known about its change across time, let alone, how such changes affect employee behavior. Using multiple waves of panel data, covering a period of sixteen years, this article finds that prosocial motivation is mostly stable, and there are no broader socialization effects in the private and public sector. However, when prosocial motivation increases, it leads to increases in either work or volunteering behavior, suggesting that public employees may use alternative outlets to realize their motivation if such motivational capital cannot be linked to the mission of their organizations.

More Bang for the Buck: Media Coverage of Suicide Attacks

ABSTRACTThis paper provides empirical evidence that suicide attacks systematically draw more media attention than non-suicide terrorist attacks. Analyzing 60,341 terrorist attack days in 189 countries from 1970 to 2012, I introduce a methodology to proxy for the media coverage each one of these attack days receives in the New York Times. Suicide attacks are associated with significantly more coverage. In the most complete regression, one suicide attack produces an additional 0.6 articles—a magnitude equivalent to the effect of 95 terrorism casualties. This link remains robust to including a comprehensive list of potentially confounding factors, fixed effects, and country-specific time trends. The effect is reproduced for alternative print and television outlets (BBC, Reuters, CNN, NBC, CBS), but remains weak for Google Trends (worldwide and in the U.S.), a more direct proxy for people’s interests, and is non-existent for C-SPAN, a television station dedicated to broadcasting political discussions directly. Thus, the media appears to cover suicide missions in an extraordinary fashion, which may in turn explain their prominence among terrorist organizations.

Mechanical Properties and Durability of Concrete with Water Cooled Copper Slag Aggregate

Copper slag is a voluminous waste material obtained during the manufacturing of copper (matte smelting process). As its disposal becomes a concern for environmental protection agencies and governments, possible alternative outlets for this waste material are needed. The paper presents a laboratory study on CEM-II concrete mixes, containing water-cooled copper slag waste material for a partial or full replacement of fine concrete aggregate. A series of tests were performed at two different water to cement ratios, to determine the workability, cube compressive strength, indirect tensile strength, static modulus of elasticity, and a number of durability-related characteristics (water absorption, accelerated corrosion, carbonation, alkali-silica reaction). The results showed that water-cooled copper slag had variable effects on the resulting fresh or hardened concrete properties, depending on the sand replacement level and water to cement ratio. However the measured strength values were likely to be linked to the usual variability of concrete batches, rather than a significant effect of the copper slag aggregate. This hypothesis was further supported by statistical analysis. Concerning the durability related characteristics, the overall performance of the concrete containing copper-slag was in most cases similar or better than that of normal concrete with natural sand aggregate. Based on the results water-cooled copper slag can therefore be considered to be a suitable fine aggregate for concrete. This shows promise for developing an additional viable solution to tackle the issue of copper slag waste.

The Share Price Effect of CVS Health's Announcement to Stop Selling Tobacco: A Comparative Case Study Using Synthetic Controls.

We study how the announcement by CVS Health, a large US-based pharmacy chain, to stop selling tobacco products affected its share price and that of its close competitors, as well as major tobacco companies. Combining event study and synthetic control methodologies we compare measures of CVS's stock market valuation with those of a peer group consisting of large publicly listed firms that are part of Standard & Poor's S&P 500 stock market index. CVS's announcement is associated with a short-term decrease in its share price, whereas close competitors have benefitted from CVS' decision. We also find a negative share price effect for Altria, the largest US domestic tobacco firm. Overall our findings are consistent with markets expecting consumers to shift from CVS to alternative outlets in the short-run, and interpreting CVS' decision to drop tobacco products as signal that other firms may follow suit.

The politics of being Muslim and being British in the British Christian print media

AbstractThere have been a significant number of published studies in recent years on the British media representation of Muslims. These studies have tended to focus only on the British mainstream media, and to my knowledge, there is no significant research on the discursive construction of British Muslims in alternative media outlets. This paper attempts to fill this gap, focusing on the representations of British Muslims in the British Christian print media. Drawing on empirical data relating to four British Christian print media, Church Times, The Tablet, Evangelicals Now and Evangelical Times, this paper investigates how the questions of being Muslim and being British are dealt with in the British Christian print media, and the extent to which the politics of being Muslim and being British inform us about identity formation and affirmation.

What Determines the Choice of Milk Marketing Channel of Dairy Farmers: Evidence from Kashmir Region?

The study was carried out in Pulwama district of Kashmir Valley with a total sample of 100 dairy farmers. An attempt is made to investigate the choice of market outlets preferred by the dairy farmers for disposing milk and also to examine the determinants of the milk outlet channels with the help of multinomial logit model. Three distinct types of milk marketing outlets were available for the farmers in the district, viz., cooperatives, private processing plants, and traditional players. Results revealed that the important determinants of market participation in alternative milk disposal outlets were the distance to milk collection centers, provision of output services, procurement price of milk and social participation score of the dairy farmer.

Current Trajectories of Democracy – Diagnosis, Implications, Proposals

type="graphical" xml:id="gpol12219-abs-0001"> There is agreement across the various contributions to the special issue that the state of democratic systems has deteriorated – not only in Europe but also in the United States. Of course, attention must be paid to the different contexts, reasons and the degrees to which democracies are experiences a period of unease. There is also agreement as to the necessity of national democracies - and the EU as a supranational political actor - to re-think current practices and to allow for a new democratic ethos that gives greater room for contestation.

Periphery Discourse: An Alternative Media Eye on the Geographical, Social and Media Peripheries in Egypt's Spring

The growing literature on the use of social media for social protests generally, and during the Arab Spring in particular, has generally failed to show a periphery-inclusive perspective. This article employs statistical data on the use of alternative media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, blogs and YouTube) in Egypt's spring to show how an alternative media structure was expanding which not only empowered social and geographic peripheral actors but was, in turn, also empowered by their contributions. YouTube videos and Twitter messages from peripheral areas exposed police brutality towards protestors in the backstreets that could otherwise have been unnoticed and saved lives in isolated areas in Egypt. Social media thus gained critical mass and expanded to the point that it had an overflow effect from the virtual sphere to the real world. Contrasting the roles of alternative and state-run media machines in different phases of the revolution, the article traces how peripheries could challenge the existing opportunity structure through alternative media, but also how their role has contracted again after the revolution reached its peak.

New rules for school caterers

New rules for school caterers

Where Urban Residents Shop for Produce

There is limited research documenting the shopping behaviors of urban residents with regard to where they shop for fruits and vegetables. This study sought to: (1) describe characteristics of consumers who shop for produce at supermarkets, alternative fresh food outlets, and farmers' markets; and (2) identify correlates of farmers' market shopping among urban consumers. Participants were recruited from 30 randomly selected residential blocks in West and Southwest Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to complete a cross-sectional survey. Of 622 residents contacted, 82.6 percent completed a usable survey. Participants were predominantly African American (75.2 percent), single (47 percent), and receiving public assistance (30.1 percent). About half of the respondents reported shopping at farmers' markets (48.2 percent), produce stores (47.9 percent), and/or fruit and vegetable trucks (48.0 percent percent) for produce. Having vouchers for farmers' markets was significantly associated with shopping at those markets, being younger, and not owning a car. Our analysis begins to bridge the gap in understanding how individual-level differences may influence shopping patterns. Findings suggest that financial incentives to shop at farmers' markets can be meaningful contributors to shopping at these venues and may work to support the narrowing of disparities in access to healthy, affordable food.

Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing ed. by Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks, Tiffany Rousculp (review)

Reviewed by: Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing ed. by Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks, Tiffany Rousculp Beth Savoy Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks, and Tiffany Rousculp, eds. Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011. 230pp. From the start, editors Paula Mathieu, Steve Parks, and Tiffany Rousculp acknowledge the difficulties in defining and representing all types of what they call “community publishing” and “community writers.” As they argue, rhetoric and composition has been a bit of a latecomer in noting the value of community publishing, as the field has much longer valued writing done for the purpose of attaining a college degree. Starting in the 1990s, though, scholarship began to consider “composition’s extracurriculum” (Gere) by looking at writing beyond the classroom, especially writing that calls for public change and how that writing circulates (Wells), sometimes written by academics who have chosen to “go public” (Mortensen) as “public intellectuals” (Cushman) or by students engaging in service learning (Herzberg). While Mathieu, Parks, and Rousculp acknowledge the importance of these steps, they ask for a shift in how we imagine our roles as writing teachers, particularly as we move from writing framed to be “about, with, and for” the community to community publishing being seen as “writing by the community.” More than that, Mathieu, Parks, and Rousculp believe that higher educational community partnerships can continue to exist so long as there is a shift in how these partnerships are maintained, especially as they believe that there needs to be consistent dialogue between both parties and a transparent effort in representing community writers as “marginal writers” and not simply “native informants.” Therefore, Circulating Communities: The Tactics and Strategies of Community Publishing represents community writing as a type of participatory media that works to challenge dominant frameworks used by mainstream media to articulate the needs of poor or under-resourced populations. The text argues that “community writers” do this by challenging and/or [End Page 88] offering alternative outlets for expression in order to express their knowledge and worth to a larger audience, and in turn, encourage broader participation. The goal of the book is to represent scholarship about this type of “community writer” by investigating community publications created fully outside of the academy, exploring projects that work to inform composition and rhetoric classrooms by drawing from community-based publication projects, and asking us to consider how community publishing can take on an advocacy role as we link them to college students. To summarize, the book is divided into three major sections. The first section includes four chapters that explore community publications that begin outside of the academy. Nick Pollard and Pat Smart are authors of the first chapter titled “Making Writing Accessible to All: The Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers and TheFED.” Pollard and Smart discuss the coming together of the Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers (FWWCP) and TheFED from a writers’ workshop at the Centerprise bookshop in 1976 London. The chapter itself explores the history and diverse publications of the group and argues that throughout its history, the group’s central effort is the same—to make workers’ voices heard and on their own terms. Paula Mathieu’s chapter, “The Challenges of Circulation: International Networking of Homeless Publications,” focuses on the challenges that community publications face as they work to circulate ideas within and beyond their communities, particularly the diverse circulation situations among street paper publications. Mathieu posits that these types of publications have the potential to do important advocacy work through helping impoverished and homeless people to establish networks, but that there are important steps that still need to be taken first. In “Respect, Writing, Community: Write Around Portland,” Sara Guest with Hanna Neuschwander and Robyn Steely discusses the ways that Write Around Portland “serves ‘underserved’” populations in the Portland area by offering participants a voice in their eight-to-ten week workshops since 1999. The chapter gives an overview of the program, history, and publications, discussing in much depth the publication process for their Write Around anthologies. The last chapter in this section, “Listen to My Story: The Transformative Possibilities of Storytelling in Immigrant Communities” by Mark Lyons, talks...

Macaronic satire: making sense of nonsense in the parodies of Dario Fo and Sora Cesira

Since the Middle Ages satirists and parodists have used macaronic language, originally a humorous mix of Latin and the vernacular, to mock or criticize the powerful. Dario Fo's celebrated grammelot is one notable example – in monologues including few or no real words, he uses sounds and gestures to incarnate a particular discourse, such as the empty machinery of Berlusconi's political language. In the singer-activist-blogger Sora Cesira's parodies of pop songs, macaronic language that combines Italian, the Roman vernacular and English is a vehicle for critiquing Italian politics and the country's fascination with show business. Using popular songs and music videos as a digital palimpsest, she re-voices and re-presents Berlusconi in a hilarious linguistic mash that is subtitled for full effect, a multimodal performance that fits into and at the same time subverts Italy's traditions both of film dubbing and of re-recording foreign hits. Both artists use translation and invented language in a comically mechanical way to create meaningful nonsense that communicates a powerful satirical message about public language, spectacle and power. They also exemplify different ways in which satirists in Italy have eschewed mainstream media, instead using alternative outlets for the circulation of their political satire.

Appropriation of Mainstream News: How Saturday Night Live Changed the Political Discussion

This study analyzes the sourcing role alternative news outlets can play for mainstream news by focusing on one particular late-night comedy program. Quantitative and qualitative content analyses were conducted on the how journalists framed Sarah Palin's 2008 interview with Katie Couric prior to and following a Saturday Night Live (SNL) skit that parodied the exchange. Findings suggest that before the skit aired journalists tended to overlook the interview or attribute blame to those in the McCain campaign. After the skit was aired, however, journalists overwhelmingly attributed the fault to Palin herself and raised questions about her qualifications for office, especially when the SNL skit was included or referenced in the news story. Furthermore, a qualitative reading analyzed the context of including the skit by journalists and found that when the skit was used as a lead-in or reference, journalists tended to attribute the blame to Palin, yet gave agency of the critiques to others. This incident demonstrates the way that alternative news sources such as commentary, parody, and online content are increasingly being incorporated into the mainstream information environment.

The development of stereotypic behavior in caged european starlings, Sturnus vulgaris

Stereotypic behavior in captive animals has been hypothesized to emerge from thwarted natural behavior patterns and is thought to be more common in captive-reared animals. However, data on the early stages of developing stereotypies are currently scarce. We compared the development of stereotypic route-tracing and somersaulting in hand-reared and wild-caught starlings placed in individual cages for the first time. We found that wild-caught birds were less active but showed more escape motivation and more evidence of route-tracing behavior. Furthermore, somersaulting was only observed in wild-caught birds. Development of somersaulting was predicted by subtle differences in behavior during the first few days in cages and developed in individuals with low levels of route-tracing behavior. Our data suggest a role for escape motivation in the development of starling stereotypies and additionally that route-tracing and somersaulting may represent alternative outlets for thwarted escape. In contrast to observations from mammals, our results show that stereotypies are more common in wild-caught starlings.

THE POLITICAL COMPETENCE OF INTERNET PARTICIPANTS

The role of the Internet in promoting active and efficacious citizenship has been debated. After initial excitement over the possibilities of the Internet, scholars have increasingly grown more cautious. Not only has it been doubted that the Internet is able to mobilize new segments of the citizenry, the abilities of those virtually active to navigate the political system have also been called into question. Hence, the problem concerns a quantitative aspect, involving the willingness to participate, and a qualitative aspect, that is, the political competences of Internet participants. This paper examines the extent to which the Internet in Finland mobilizes citizens who are both willing and able to participate in political matters, but just happens to prefer alternative outlets for their political preferences. The data used are the Finnish National Election Study 2007, which makes it possible to gauge both the quantitative and qualitative aspects of political participation via the Internet. The results suggest that a substantial part of the Finnish adult population is only politically active via the Internet. Furthermore, these virtual citizens are at least as politically competent as traditional activists, and on most accounts even more so. Accordingly, it seems the Internet may well play an important role in vitalizing the citizenries of the established democracies.

From exile of citizens to deportation of non-citizens: ancient Greece as a mirror to illuminate a modern transition

This article is an ancient Greek historian's response to an invitation to reflect upon modern liberal democratic deportation. The article identifies a revealing contrast between ancient Greek city-states and their modern republican successors. In ancient Greece, institutionalised lawful expulsion of non-citizens was not a major concern. Rather, it was lawful expulsion of citizens which was a prominent political issue, comparable to modern liberal democratic deportation. Indeed, modern liberal democratic deportation and associated rhetoric were significantly foreshadowed in the ancient Greek politics of expulsion: Greeks used and justified lawful expulsion of citizens as a means of constructing and reinforcing both state power and abstract, rationalistic norms of citizenship. The article suggests the hypothesis that the contrast between the ancient and the modern situations can be explained by the modern prevalence of universalist human rights norms, not politically influential in ancient Greece. First, human rights norms exert pressures on modern liberal democratic states, unparalleled in ancient Greece, to integrate and assist outsiders. Deportation is partly a reaction against those pressures, of a type unnecessary in the ancient Greek world. Second, although the modern liberal democratic analogues of Classical republican ideas, partly derived from their Classical antecedents, encourage lawful citizen expulsion, the modern citizen's inalienable human right to residence in his home state militates against it. Modern liberal democratic deportation of non-citizens, and associated rhetoric, can thus be interpreted partly as alternative outlets for the use of expulsion and exclusionary rhetoric to construct and reinforce complex norms of citizenship.

Managers' Use of Language Across Alternative Disclosure Outlets: Earnings Press Releases Versus MD&A

We use textual-analysis software to quantify the language used in earnings press releases and the corresponding Management Discussion and Analysis (MD&A) for approximately 13,000 firm quarters between 1998 and 2003. Analyzing two narrative disclosures in which managers describe firm performance for the same quarter allows us to examine managers’ use of language across alternative communication outlets. Our general prediction, which relies on prior literature suggesting that there is a greater market response to information disclosed in an earnings announcement press release versus an SEC filing, is that managers disclose less pessimistic language and more optimistic language in earnings press releases relative to the corresponding MD&A disclosures. We first document that firms exhibit significantly lower levels of pessimistic language and higher levels of optimistic language in earnings press releases relative to the MD&A. We then construct a measure of the proportion of total pessimistic language reported in an earnings press release relative to the corresponding MD&A and find this proportional measure is negatively associated with the intensity of managers’ strategic reporting incentives. In additional analyses, we find a negative association between the level of pessimistic language in the MD&A and future firm performance, controlling for pessimistic language in the corresponding earnings press release. This evidence supports our assertion that managers disclose pessimistic language in the MD&A that provides information incremental to that in the corresponding earnings press release. Overall, our results are consistent with managers’ use of alternative communication outlets as part of a strategy to influence the market’s response to information disclosed.