Informal Media Research Articles

An interdisciplinary assessment of information literacy instruction

Information literacy is a crucial skill often overlooked by faculty in higher education, who expect incoming Gen Z students to have some ability to navigate the information landscape appropriately and efficiently either from prior high school instruction or simply by the ubiquity of information access. Assessments of college students' information literacy paints a different picture, indicating that information literacy instruction is required and that deliberate efforts should be made to aid students in proper evaluation and use of informational media. This study investigates the value of generalized information literacy instruction at a medium-sized, public 4-year university in a rural area. Student knowledge is assessed pre- and post-instruction to determine specific impacts of information literacy instruction on various facets of information literacy – source quality, relevance, and context. Specifically, the purpose of this research is to determine (1) whether information literacy varies across students in different fields/disciplines and (2) if so, whether generalized information literacy instruction tends to close those cross-disciplinary gaps or extend existing disparities. Data collected herein demonstrate that gains in information literacy vary substantially by academic discipline. For example, students in the College of Humanities and Fine Arts began with the second-highest average pre-instruction scores (75.00 %) and exhibited the largest gains between pre- and post-instruction assessments (+12.14 %). The results obtained in this study indicate that generalized instruction tends to inflate existing disparities in information literacy between disciplines. Based on these findings, there is ample evidence to suggest that discipline-specific information literacy instruction could provide students with larger individual gains and potentially allow information literacy to converge across fields.

Implementasi Kebijakan Pengelolaan Dana Desa Pada Kecamatan Kei Besar Besar Kabupaten Maluku Tenggara

There needs to be implementation of village fund management to be able to measure the success of the use of funds in the district of Maluku Tenggara. Weak accountability and human resources in support of the implementation of these funds and still weak communication between the village government and the Maluku South East district government. In addition, the weakness of the control functions of the Village Visit Authority (BPD) so that the village government manages without a transparent supervisory function. The research method used is qualitative descriptive by conducting in-depth interviews with selected information. As for the findings of the research, (1) the formal and informal media of the village are able to support the implementation of the policy of the Village Fund. (2) the geographical factors affecting the planning of village development. (3). Resources are very supportive of the village fund planning managers.

Board skill diversity and corporate environmental responsibility: the moderating effects of formal and informal pressures

Purpose This study aims to investigate the impact of board skill diversity (BSD) on corporate environmental responsibility (CER). In addition, this study explores the moderating effects of formal regulatory pressure and informal media pressure. Design/methodology/approach This study uses Chinese high polluting companies as the sample and uses regression analysis. Robustness checks, including instrumental variable regression, Heckman two-stage model and propensity score matching method, are performed to test the robustness of the results. Findings The findings suggest that BSD significantly improves CER performance. Both formal regulatory pressure and informal media pressure strengthen the positive impact of BSD on CER. Further channel analyses reveal that BSD improves CER performance by promoting corporate proenvironmental behaviors rather than by restricting environmental violations; skill diversity of executive directors has a more significant effect on CER than that of independent directors. Finally, the moderating effect of regulatory pressure is only significant after the implementation of the Environmental Protection Law, and the moderating effect of media pressure mainly concentrates on negative media coverage. Practical implications The involvement of directors with more diverse skills is essential to improve corporate proenvironmental behaviors. Companies should select qualified directors with different skills to further improve their performance on environmental protection and sustainable development. Social implications Regulators and standard-setters should develop efficient guidelines on corporate board governance to enhance the positive role of companies in environmental and sustainable development. Originality/value This study broadens the research on the determinants of CER by examining the influence of BSD on CER and the moderating roles of various stakeholder pressures, thereby providing a deeper understanding of corporate environmental performance and sustainable development.

Perancangan Media Informasi Berbasis Video Dokumenter Pengenalan Produk Bio Gas Kelompok Tani Simantri Sandakan, Sulangai, Petang

The province of Bali, Indonesia, as a tropical destination with abundant natural resources, exhibits a serious focus on the agriculture and livestock sectors. The Simantri program, as a local government innovation, aims to accelerate the adoption of agricultural technology in rural communities. Bio gas, as a renewable energy alternative, emerges as a crucial solution amid the challenges posed by unsustainable fossil fuels. The Simantri Farmers Group in Br. Sandakan, Sulangai Village, faces challenges in introducing their bio gas products to the community. In the Community Service activity, a documentary video was created as an effective informational medium, successfully introducing, enhancing understanding, and raising awareness about the use of bio gas among the community. The video not only promoted the product but also strengthened the role of Simantri in village development and tourism potential. The success of this activity reaffirms that utilizing video-based informational media is an effective step in introducing innovations, enhancing understanding, and supporting the well-being of the local community.

AOA Critical Issues: A Culture of Safety Across All Orthopaedic Professional Endeavors.

Medical professionals strive for a culture of safety in which error is anticipated, systems are designed to catch an error before it causes harm, and each event is an opportunity for specific clinicians and the system they work in to improve. A culture of safety is based on behavioral ethics, which recognizes that the automatic functions of the human mind can lead good people to misstep, and it incorporates tools such as checklists that embody critical thinking in order to help limit missteps and associated harm. Although the discussion surrounding a culture of safety often focuses on patient care, the social contract between physicians and society involves expectations that physicians will use their expertise to promote the public good in all of their professional endeavors. For example, lapses in professional conduct in the management of conflicts of interest and in ethical marketing have led to restrictions in physician self-regulation. Orthopaedic surgeons can cultivate a culture of safety and a growth mindset across all aspects of the profession, including media coverage of musculoskeletal illness, surgeon participation in informational media (e.g., podcasts and blogs), the marketing of oneself or one's practice, practice patterns and variations, academic discourse, expert legal testimony, the development and implementation of policy and law, and commercial ventures. Systems that anticipate the human potential for missteps; create tools, tactics, and structures to limit missteps and associated harm; and support surgeons and their teams in all professional endeavors can contribute to the effective and fulfilling promotion of the public good.

Linguomedial Reconstruction of an Event: COVID-19 Pandemic Coverage in British and French Quality Press

The article looks at linguistic units applied for creating an image of an event. The first section of the article dwells on the most important works of Russian scholars in the field under investigation. Here, the term “linguomedial reconstruction of an event” is introduced and defined as the creation of an image of an event in mass media, including the analysis of information, its interpretation, creating media texts, and their positioning and functioning in media space. The second section describes in detail the analysis of informational and analytical media texts from British and French quality press dedicated to the Coonavirus pandemic: spread of the new virus, measures taken by the authorities, and vaccination. The analysis was conducted on lexical (identification of key lexical components of the texts) and suprasegmental (identification of key structural elements of the text) levels. The third section contains the results of the study. It was found out that both informational and analytical media texts consist of roughly equal number (usually less than 6) of topic-based sections (TBS). Analytical texts explore each topic more fully than informational ones; besides, the former include such topic as ‘expert opinion’. Seemingly, the larger is the volume of articles describing certain topic, the higher position this topic takes in news agenda. Any TBS may be characterized with a particular set of words and expressions - its lexical base. The lexical base of the TBS differs between cultures; the study shows that British quality press media prefer words describing actions and deeds, while French ones pay more attention to emotional response to the event. Besides, it was noted that military lexical units were widely used in pandemic new coverage, thus conceptualizing anti-coronavirus measures as military actions.

Understanding Consumer Attitudes toward Cultured Meat: The Role of Online Media Framing

The widespread commercialization of cultured meat, produced from animal stem cells grown in vitro, faces significant challenges related to technical, regulatory, and social acceptability constraints. Despite advancements in knowledge, the acceptance of this innovation remains uncertain. Understanding individuals’ decision-making processes and interpretative patterns is crucial, with media framing playing a key role in shaping attitudes toward cultured meat adoption. This research, focusing on Twitter as a social media platform, examines the impact of media framing on consumer attitudes (cognitive, affective, and conative) regarding cultured meat. Qualitative (content analysis) and quantitative (MANOVA) analyses were conducted on 23,020 posts and 38,531 comments, selected based on media framing or containing relevant attitude components. This study reveals that media-framed posts significantly influence consumer attitudes compared to non-media-framed posts. While different types of media framing (ethical, intrinsic, informational, and belief) exhibit varying impacts on attitude components, posts combining ethical, intrinsic, and informational frames have a more substantial effect on cultured meat acceptability. The belief frame, particularly for the behavioral component, is equally influential. Consumer attitudes toward cultured meat are found to be ambivalent, considering the associated benefits and risks. Nevertheless, the affective component of attitude is notably influenced by posts featuring informational and ethical media frames. This study suggests implications for authorities and businesses, emphasizing the importance of differentiated education and marketing strategies. Advertising messages that combine ethical, intrinsic, and informational frames are recommended. Additionally, this study advocates for regulatory measures governing the production, marketing, and consumption of cultured meat to instill consumer confidence in the industry. By highlighting the significance of beliefs in cultured meat consumption behavior, this research points toward potential exploration of cultural and religious influences in future studies.

Infisdial as Learning Media for Strengthening "Anti Bullying" Attitudes

Bullying is increasingly common in Indonesia, especially in school environments. Teachers have a very important contribution to overcoming bullying behavior towards students, one of which is by providing interesting but still effective learning to transform knowledge and information as well as life values through learning at school. The learning process can be carried out using learning media. The aim of this research is to develop infographic-based learning media through social media that can strengthen students' anti-bullying attitudes. This development uses the ADDIE model. This study involving material experts and media experts, as well as Pancasila Education subject teachers and 30 Phase E students as research subjects. Data collection was carried out using questionnaires and interviews. At the validation stage, the material expert received the "Very good" category. The results of the Independent Sample T-test were interpreted to show that the calculated t value was greater than the t table so that it could be concluded that H0 was rejected and H1 was accepted with the test decision being that the experimental class mean was greater than the control class. This shows that treatment using informal media has a significant impact on strengthening the value of anti-bullying attitudes in students.

Consent-deception: a feminist cultural media theory of commonsense consent

This article draws on feminist cultural studies, media and cultural theory, and engages with feminist law and criminology, to argue for a newly invigorated conceptualisation of consent in feminist theory. Rather than advance a particular feminist theory of consent, the article argues for a feminist cultural media theory of commonsense consent that is both sensory and representational. This theory acknowledges that there is no concept of consent reserved for sexual encounters. Rather, a more universal, commonsense theory, shaped as much by twentieth-century media as eighteenth-century political philosophy, informs how consent shows up to social experience. The article offers a revision of feminist discussions about consent in law, political philosophy and cultural studies, proposing that accounts such as Laura Kipnis’ Unwanted Advances: Sexual Paranoia Comes to Campus can be read as descriptions of consent's affective structure. Feminist accounts have underestimated the implications of the involvement of media, from early cinema through to contemporary social media, in co-locating consent with deception. This article shows how the media concept of consent-deception plays a role in suspicion and betrayal, both of which act as consent's structures of feeling. To further probe an enquiry into how personalised media are transforming commonsense consent, the article discusses the TV programme The Tinder Swindler. Various production techniques encourage a view of social media as a complete encapsulation of the social life and affectivity of consent-deception, suggesting a number of implications for a feminist cultural media theory of commonsense consent. In particular, the programme asks us to problematise the evidentiary status of informational social media linked to the changing perceptibility of consent-deception.

A Translational Approach to Increase Pulse Intake and Promote Public Health through Developing an Extension Bean Toolkit.

Practical, affordable solutions need to be implemented to address global challenges confronting human and environmental health. Despite a myriad of benefits for people and the planet, beans and other pulses (e.g., chickpeas, cowpeas, dry peas, lentils) are under-consumed. To better understand consumer concerns and interests, a Food Habits Survey was conducted and the findings were incorporated into the Colorado State University Extension Bean Toolkit. Guided by the Information-Motivation-Behavioral Skills model, the toolkit included informational social media posts, cooking guidance, and an online class. A convenience sample of participants was recruited through Extension and university networks. After class participation, significant gains in knowledge of pulse nutrition, versatility, and cooking were observed, with an average increase of 1.5 points on a 5-point Likert scale (p < 0.001). Moreover, participants (n = 86) perceived a greater importance of motivators (e.g., nutrition, versatility, environmental benefits) and found barriers (e.g., flatulence, long cooking times, unfamiliarity) to be less discouraging. Most participants reported an intention to eat more pulses, and among those who completed the 1-month follow-up survey, pulse intake frequency increased (p = 0.004). Emphasizing motivating factors while simultaneously mitigating barriers to consumption can help reverse insufficient intake and promote healthy behavior change. Leveraging Extension or similar networks is one way to adopt a translational approach to better reach the public with this information.

Polarization & populist backlash in transitioning Tunisia: the role of internet media & media ownership

ABSTRACT Since it’s revolution, Tunisia’s road to democracy has been turbulent—with apathy, polarization, and politically motivated violence stifling its transition. While much has been made of internet media’s role during Tunisia’s revolution, far fewer studies have examined its continuing effects throughout the country’s ongoing democratic transition. This study draws on original interviews conducted with politicians, journalists, and democracy activists immediately following Tunisia’s 2019 presidential elections to highlight how internet media and media ownership have hindered democratic consolidation. Since its revolution, internet media has stood as a central pillar of Tunisia’s political discourse—but despite the country’s many subsequent gains in informational freedom and media pluralism, I find that concentrated ownership and weak regulation over the internet/media have created space for powerful elites, former regime officials, and other anti-democratic forces to marshal influence over the online marketplace to stifle and push back against democratic consolidation. Overall, concentrated media markets—especially online—have empowered elite owners to impede media regulation and disseminate an unchecked deluge of bias, misinformation, conspiracies, and extremism—thereby propelling the kinds of deepening divisions, polarization, and mistrust towards the democratic process that has given rise to more populist/authoritarian actors seeking to erode democratic institutions and seize political power.

Connecting historical events to contemporary issues in bioethics and medical humanities teaching

Introduction: Didactic pedagogy and passive learning in bioethics and medical humanities teaching are ineffective in engaging students and gauging learning interests. As a result, medical students are unaware of why and how bioethics and medical humanities relate to their learning and thus prioritising acquiring clinical knowledge in their medical education. Methods: This project involves a teacher-student collaboration to develop a teaching approach, which bridges historical events and contemporary issues, acknowledging how ethics and humanities are interwoven in clinical and everyday life. The objectives are to (1) highlight landmark historical events in bioethics and medical humanities and (2) recognise the evolving nature of values and social norms that inform current practice. Results: The three activities include the use of historical narratives, annual newsletter publications, and social media to augment didactic classroom teaching and learning. Video narratives of landmark events in bioethics were developed to strengthen historical knowledge and encourage self-reflection. The newsletter invited students to write about any topic in bioethics and medical humanities and enabled them to experience a peer-review process. It allowed students to critically appraise everyday issues. Social media engagement via Instagram offered a flexible and informal medium to diversify the traditional bioethics content taught in the classroom. The advantages and obstacles of each element are discussed. Conclusion: A holistic approach using historical narratives, newsletters, and social media engages students’ learning and allows students to become conscious of how past events shape the present.

Lacanyen Bilinçdışı ve Yeni Medya Estetiği

Contemporary biotechnologies provide an entryway into thinking about bodies and organisms not as natural and biological entities but as informational media, technological apparatuses, instrumental mediums, symbolic systems and coded means of communication, replacing the theories and practices concerning mimetic imitation of life and mechanical reproduction of nature with the semiotic, linguistic, and bioinformatic reproduction of bodies and organisms. This article examines postbiological articulation of bodies, desires, and sexualities at the site of the convergence between Lacanian psychoanalysis and new media aesthetics. It is at the interstices of the connections between information and communication technologies, modern biology, and structural linguistics that Jacques Lacan locates his psychoanalytic conception of the unconscious and desire. The notion of the unconscious as it is mapped by Lacan over structural linguistics’ intrinsic kinship with information and communication technologies enables him to examine desire and sexuality at the site of the convergence between linguistic-informational, biological, and psychoanalytic discourses. This bioinformatic revolution transforms the aesthetic stakes of everyday life by suggesting new ways of thinking about bodies, desires, and sexualities. By drawing on acoustic and visual remappings of the body, fragmented and hybrid bodies, digital desires and sexualities in new media artworks, I analyze the body in contemporary art as a biotechnological apparatus, symbolic system, and discursive and non-discursive mode of communication flowing among various media networks and systems.

Social media use and polarized redistributive attitudes: a comparative and causal perspective

ABSTRACT As social media has become a means of information sharing, knowledge dissemination, and social interactions, it follows that its use significantly influences the formation of attitudes and social norms. Existing literature has raised significant concerns about social media causing political polarization. This study examines whether the use of social media causes polarized attitudes on redistribution by applying the instrumental variable (IV) estimation to the Asian Barometer Survey (14 countries). We find that informational and expressive social media use contributes to citizens’ diverging redistributive attitudes, and these effects are more pronounced in countries that are perceived as less democratic. Based on our findings, we discuss policy implications regarding the role of social media in forming redistributive attitudes.

Post-punk, Industrial Culture Zines, and the Information Dark Age

Several scholars have noted parallels between the online communicative tactics of the American alt-right and those of industrial musicians in the 1970s and 1980s. This article explores these connections further by analysing the informational media that industrial musicians developed. Between the mid-1980s and 1990s, these zines, handbooks, and websites made a strenuous break with the values of democracy, egalitarianism, and grassroots authenticity that were the default ideological ‘mode’ of DIY. Where the Californian ideology would centre the summer of love and the politics of the New Left, the zines ambiguously celebrated the nihilistic, authoritarian, and occult vectors of psychedelia – tendencies that have been associated with the late 1960s fate of the counterculture rather than its earlier heyday. The article tracks these themes from Vague magazine and Rapid Eye, to the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit in the 1990s, to neoreaction and the Dark Enlightenment, asking whether communicational utopianism should be considered a blip rather than the internet’s default state.

Digitalization and Informality in media industries: beyond the platform-portal divide?

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the significant events that led to the emergence and growth of the online Indian audio-visual sector. The principal argument that drives this narrative is the co-evolution of Indian formal and informal media economies that led to the media industries’ digital transformation. Drawing on historical analysis of the Indian film and television industries, we argue that just as the informal means of finance, social relations, illegal cable and satellite distribution had a formative influence on how these industries formalized, the Indian online audio-visual sector is driven by distinctive formalization processes, led by creators who are engaging with both local and global UGC-led platforms as well as PGC-led portals. Using a critical media industries framework, with data gathered from semi-structured interviews with ‘above-the-line’ Indian online media practitioners together with trade press literature, we propose an analytical framework that incorporates both platforms and portals as industrial objects for mapping digital production cultures that originate as inherently informal.

Addressing Information Overload in Smart Environment: Framework for Critical Media Literacy Integration in EFL Context

ABSTRACT As media and technology advance and the environment grows smarter, information can spread more quickly and extensively, with fewer filters. In the face of the abundance of diverse multimodal and interactive digital resources, many EFL teachers still lack confidence in their ability to implement critical media literacy (CML) instructions. Meanwhile, the myriad informational media provides EFL teachers with a unique opportunity to teach CML to their students. Using a descriptive qualitative analysis of group discussions and interview data, this study proposes a practical framework to aid teachers in navigating the intricacies of CML practice in an EFL setting. The framework comprises three critical literacy practice resources: theoretical basis and critical media literacy principles, student characteristics and language level, and material and media selection. The framework also includes some competencies, comprising skills to analyse credible information sources, the ability to analyse and critique text or process information, and the ability to produce and distribute information.

Reenchanting the Enlightenment

In light of research which, since the publication of Rousseau and Porter’s Ferment of Knowledge, has demonstrated the continued centrality of magic and the occult to what may be termed “scientific knowledge” in the early modern period, this essay argues that one domain of practice where these concerns remained paramount well into the eighteenth century is the consumption of recipes. Whether exchanged between individuals or collected in print format, these mobile informational media relied on forms of proof under­pinned by personal experience and collective accreditation, with an inductive and empirical focus that was distinct from Cartesian deduction. Because the culture of recipe exchange was so widespread, encompassing scholars, savants and lay readers, secrets offered ways to challenge strict mechanistic interpretations in favour of a view of the natural world as informed by unseen active powers, particularly where the virtues of materials such as magnets or medicinal simples were concerned. Using private library catalogues of book owners, a commonplace book and a scientific periodical produced in France during the decades after 1700, the article traces the way secrets culture continued to foster an epistemological space in which mechanical explanations evidently fell short of accounting for quotidian experience.

Diversity of the newest forms of laugh culture in Ukrainian media space

The purpose of the articleis to define new conceptual plans of realisation of modern forms of laugh culture in the media space of Ukraine. The methodology of the research consists in the application of empirical, praxeological, functional, and modeling method. These methods allows studying the current state of laugh culture in the media space, to characterise various forms of laugh culture and to summarise the consequences of their influence on the consciousness of society, to define and to structure characteristic features of these forms and the effectiveness of their further realisation in cultural and artistic activity. Scientific novelty of the research consists in researching of the newest forms of the laugh culture as informational media and in the consistent structuring of characteristic and significant signs of the kinds of laugh culture, their influence on the recipient through the informational space. Conclusions. It is worth noting that the russian aggressive invasion into Ukraine has underlined the importance of the laugh culture of Ukrainians, which is manifested through satire, sarcasm, irony and, certainly, humour, which are their weapons against the invaders and have a powerful visual information force. Proper understanding of humorous forms is necessary, because they can cause both positive emotions and negative influence on the masses and become an instrument of manipulation in society as a whole. Today, there are some metamorphoses, when people’s and political humor is being transformed and military topics are being developed. It is now that life realities dictate to art institutions the development of new forms of national laugh culture, new conceptual decisions of its kinds, the basis of which is the inexhaustible humor of Ukrainians. Besides, humor is a cultural shield, the format of communication, which has a powerful influence on the consciousness of society, always reacts sharply and creatively to the challenges of the present and leads to a special perception through the prism of laugh culture. Key words: laugh culture, media space, humor, satire, standup, parody, mem.

Comparative Analysis of the Use of Metaphors in Russian, English and Chinese Media Texts of Informational and Influencing Nature

The authors analyze the issue of the relationship between metaphoricity in informational media texts and its speech impact on the recipient on the example of Russian, English and Chinese sources. As an initial hypothesis, the authors use the assumption based on the fact that media texts which differ in pragmatic characteristics contain a different index of metaphoricity. To test the hypothesis, a method was developed for calculating the indices of metaphoricity: density, intensity, functions, and the relationship of metaphors with the external and internal structure of the text. The values of these indices were consistently calculated for news reports in three languages, conditionally divided into two groups: informational and evaluative. The analysis showed that, according to the values of all indices, the metaphoricity of texts with an influencing potential is higher than that of texts that perform mainly an informational function. The “evaluation” texts have on average one and a half times more metaphors, they are much more intense, and they use more structural metaphors. In such texts, metaphors are more often found not in the main part of the text, but in the water part and in the conclusion, but in relation to the structure of the text - in them, metaphors are more often concentrated around the rhema. The results confirm the initial hypothesis: metaphoricity is indeed associated with potential impact, and metaphors are used by the authors of media texts to form an assessment of the subject of speech utterance. The proposed method for calculating the metaphoricity indices can be used as an effective tool for calculating this speech impact.