Popular Media Coverage Research Articles

Media Analysis of Lia Thomas Surrounding 2022 National Collegiate Athletic Association Championship Win

In March 2022, swimmer Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I individual title. The current study analyzed popular online media coverage of Thomas during the month of the NCAA championships. Conservative-oriented media set the agenda by publishing a disproportionate number of articles about Thomas, frequently framing her performance as (a) illegitimate and (b) enabled by activists who “silence” their opponents. All media outlets often framed Thomas’ performance as (a) unprecedented, (b) a question of fairness as it relates to (1) science and policy and (2) concern for women’s rights, and (c) complex, while nonconservative media more frequently framed her performance as (a) a matter of LGBTQI+ rights and (b) an inspiration.

Unmade in America: The gendered politics of birth tourism in the United States

This paper interrogates the discursive production of the “birth tourist” and associated opposition to jus soli birthright citizenship in the United States. I trace the intersecting axes of heteropatriarchy and racism that underpin history of opposition to jus soli citizenship, and position contemporary media and political attention to “birth tourism” as an extension of those axes. Through a critical discourse analysis of popular media coverage and public commentators, I position the “birth tourism” category within a broader national discourse of white supremacy, before linking this discursive production to national-level regulatory efforts. Interrogating the “birth tourist” categorization as a discursive tool of white, patriarchal ethnonationalism, I advance the study of political geographies of fertility and argue that contradictions embedded within the “birth tourism” discourse ultimately work to fuel fears of white supremacy's collapse. Keywords: birth tourism, birthright citizenship, white supremacy, intersectionality, feminist geopolitics.

Correlations between the selection of topics by news media and scientific journals.

The aim of this study is to reveal a robust correlation between the amount of attention international journalism devotes to scientific papers and the amount of attention scientific journals devote to the respective topics. Using a Mainstream-Media-Score (MSM) ≥ 100 (which we regard as an indicator for news media attention) from the altmetrics provider Altmetric, we link 983 research articles with 185,166 thematically similar articles from the PubMed database (which we use to operationalize attention from scientific journals). The method we use is to test whether there is a concomitant increase in scientific attention after a research article has received popular media coverage. To do so, we compare the quotient of the number of thematically similar articles published in scientific journals during the period before and after the publication of an MSM ≥ 100 article. Our main result shows that in 59 percent of cases, more thematically similar articles were published in scientific journals after a scientific paper received noteworthy news media coverage than before (p < 0.01). In this context, we neither found significant differences between various types of scientific journal (p = 0.3) nor between scientific papers that were originally published in renowned opinion-leading journals or in less renowned, non-opinion-leading journals (p = 0.1). Our findings indicate a robust correlation between the choice of topics in the mass media and in research. However, our study cannot clarify whether this correlation occurs because researchers and/or scientific journals are oriented towards public relevance (publicity effect) or whether the correlation is due to the parallelism of relevance attributions in quality journalism and research (earmark hypothesis). We infer that topics of social relevance are (more) likely to be picked up by popular media as well as by scientific journals. Altogether, our study contributes new empirical findings to the relationship between topic selection in journalism and in research.

Beyond Caster as object? Examining media constructions of Caster Semenya through decolonial thinking

ABSTRACT The popular media coverage of South African track and field star Caster Semenya showcases how colonialist discourses shaped the sexed, gendered, and racialised meaning of her public biography. Yet, when researchers study Semenya as their research ‘object’, does this act of inquiry reproduce the knowledge constructs of Western coloniality as well? In this article, we consider both issues by conducting and reflecting on our poststructuralist analysis of popular media coverages of Semenya’s athletic career, with specific attention to her dealings with gender-verification testing. We examine the discursive construction of Semenya’s public biography by popular newspaper outlets in the United States and South Africa from 2009 to 2019, arguing that both geopolitical locales maintained Western social binaries and scientific discourses concerning Semenya’s sexual identity in similar, yet distinct ways. Drawing from the poststructuralist methodology of intertextuality, we reflect on its capacity to deconstruct the colonial discourses shaping the cultural meaning of a non-Western athlete of colour such as Semenya, as well as its relation, as a method of knowledge production, to the epistemological legacies of Western coloniality. We also contend that by approaching Semenya as the ‘object’ of our poststructuralist framework, our analysis implicitly reproduced, rather than challenged, the Eurocentric subject/object framework of modern (Western) epistemology. Thus, our purposes are empirical, methodological, and reflexive as we seek to contribute to critical analyses of the constructed cultural meaning of celebrity athletes while subjecting our own research assumptions and frameworks to poststructuralist and decolonial deconstruction.

“I Never Told My Story”: An Analysis of Stalking in Women’s Memoirs

AbstractOne in six women and one in 19 men in the USA experience stalking. The vast majority of stalkers are men. Popular culture and media coverage tend to offer a distorted image of stalking or ignore it completely. Women who have survived a stalker are often victim-blamed and made to feel shame. In this context of doubting women, this article analyzes three women’s memoirs—Kate Brennan’s In His Sights (2008), Jane Jeong Trenka’s The Language of Blood (2003), and Belle Yang’s Forget Sorrow (2010)—that create awareness about stalking. My discussion suggests that women skillfully use memoir’s flexibility to portray the intersections of various forms of oppression that nourish stalking; their testimonies craft community among survivors, provide advice about how to negotiate a legal system that ignores women’s experiences, and promote empathy.

COVID-19, Shincheonji, and the limits of South Korean secularism: The Devil in Patient 31

ABSTRACT International headlines present the Shincheonji Church of Jesus the Temple of the Tabernacle of the Testimony on the one hand as a ‘dangerous sect’ or ‘cult’ and on the other hand as a marginalised Christian group in need of defence by human rights advocates fighting for religious freedom. Our contribution examines the Church’s internal text messages and recorded meetings of executives leaked to the press, court orders, arrest orders and charges against its founder Lee Man-hee, and Korean and Anglophone popular media coverage in order to provide a discourse analysis on the political nature of constructing Shincheonji as ‘bad’ or ‘good’ religion. We argue that understanding the contemporary situation requires a look at the political history of Protestant Christian – specifically American Protestant – influence on the secularism of South Korea. The state’s attempt to enforce public health measures during the COVID-19 pandemic continues to clash with Shincheonji’s secret proselytisation process. Protestant influence on the South Korean state is also present in public health values, which are now presented as secular values but have roots in religious traditions. What is at stake here is how state power to immunise and quarantine rationalises and legitimates itself by claiming to protect the majority, at the expense of (religious) minorities.

“I Want to Bury It, Will You Join Me?”: The Use of Ritual in Prenatal Loss among Women in Catalonia, Spain in the Early 21st Century

Prenatal loss, such as miscarriage and stillbirth, may be understood as the confluence of birth and death. The most significant of life’s transitions, these events are rarely if ever expected to coincide. Although human cultures have long recognized death through ritual, it has not typically been used in cases of pregnancy loss. Interest in prenatal losses in the fields of medicine and the social sciences, as well as among the general public, has grown significantly in recent years in many countries, including Spain, as evidenced by increasing numbers of clinical protocols, academic books and articles, public events and popular media coverage. Even with this growing attention, there are still no officially sanctioned or generally accepted ways of using ritual to respond to prenatal losses in Spain. However, despite a lack of public recognition or acceptance of the use of ritual, we found that women in the autonomous community of Catalonia, in Spain, are employing ritual in various fashions, both with and without the support and acceptance of their family, friends or community, to process their losses and integrate them into their lives.

Psychedelic Mushrooms in the USA: Knowledge, Patterns of Use, and Association With Health Outcomes.

Introduction: Popular media coverage of psychedelics use, growing research into this class of compounds for psychiatry and decriminalization initiatives, are transforming the public perception of psychedelics. However, little is known about levels of knowledge and psychedelic mushroom (PM) use among American adults.Methods: We examined PM use and various measures of health status, quality of life, and self-reported mental health outcome measures obtained through a national on-line, cross-sectional survey of adults with a demographic composition representative of the US adult population by region, gender, age, and race (weighted N = 251,297,495) from November 2020–March 2021.Results: General mental health and well-being were popular reasons for PM use (63.6%), although use for medically-diagnosed (31.8%) and self-diagnosed (19.0%) conditions was also common. PM users reported more depression and anxiety as reflected in higher GAD-7 and PHQ-9 scores. Factors predictive of PM use included being male [OR 1.54 95%CI 1.09–2.15] and having higher Charlson Comorbidity Index scores [OR 1.42; 95%CI 1.22–1.65]. Self-reported PM use was less likely among participants with health insurance [OR = 0.50 (0.35–0.72)], increased age [OR = 0.92 (0.90–0.93)] and, relative to those living in the west US census region, living in the northeast [OR = 0.27 (0.15–0.50)], midwest [OR = 0.34 (0.20–0.56)], and south [OR = 0.38 (0.26–0.55)].Discussion and Conclusions: A significant number of Americans are already “self-medicating” with PM and as growing positive media coverage of psychedelics drives public interest in the health benefits of PM, this number will increase. The association between PM use and poor mental health requires further research to inform policy.

Dynamics and near-optimal control in a stochastic rumor propagation model incorporating media coverage and Lévy noise

The appearance of rumors intensifies people’s panic and affects social stability. How to control the spread of rumors has become an important issue which is worth studying. In order to more accurately reflect the actual situation in the real world, a stochastic model incorporating media coverage and Lévy noise is proposed to describe the dynamic process of rumor propagation. By introducing two control strategies of popular science education and media coverage in an emergency event, an near-optimal control problem that minimizes the influence and control cost of rumor propagation is proposed. Sufficient conditions for near-optimal control of the model are established by using a Hamiltonian function. Then the necessary conditions for near-optimal control are obtained by using the Pontryagin maximum principle. Finally, the effect of popular science education, media coverage and Lévy noise on rumor propagation process control is verified by numerical simulation.

Higher Hussle: Nipsey's Post Hip Hop Literacies

Nipsey Hussle is a post hip hop icon. In this essay, we mine popular music and media coverage of Nipsey to describe his artistry and advocacy anchored by his articulation of an African American diasporic identity, his ambivalence as an independent rapper within a mainstream music industry, and his leverage of Black capital in his Crenshaw community. We address these relationships--identity, industry, and community--to situate Nipsey within African American and hip hop literacies. By recalling relationships and roots, we call attention to emancipated blackness enacted by Nipsey Hussle.

The Chav Youth Subculture and Its Representation in Academia as Anomalous Phenomenon

The Chav Youth Subculture and Its Representation in Academia as Anomalous Phenomenon

Interrogations of the “Chinese Dream” campaign from a critical perspective: deconstruction, receptions and critiques

AbstractThe high-profile “Chinese Dream” campaign, which appeared in the public discourse in as early as 2012, has captured worldwide attention. Various interpretations and dissections of this heavily promoted political catchphrase have been proposed by a large number of scholars, political commentators, China specialists and even policy-makers across the globe. Academic publication and popular media coverage regarding the “Chinese Dream” campaign are extensive and numerous.However, despite the sheer amount of literature in existence, a critical deconstruction of the “Chinese Dream” is almost neglected and the crucial strategic functionalities the “Chinese Dream” campaign performs are also downplayed. Therefore, in this article, we intend to provide a series of critical interrogations and in-depth critiques of the “Chinese Dream” campaign from a more critical perspective in order to argue the following points: A) what are the true meanings of the “Chinese Dream” and what are the crucial ingredients deliberately included and excluded in the campaign; B) what are the important strategic functionalities the “Chinese Dream” campaign is designed to perform and what is the supporting understructure upon which the “Chinese Dream” campaign operates and C) what are the uncertainties and challenges facing the eventual realization of the ambitious “Chinese Dream” in the foreseeable future.

Faith Manifest: Spiritual and Mindfulness Tourism in Chiang Mai, Thailand

From books to movies, the media is now flush with spiritual and wellness tourist-related images, films, and fiction (which are primarily produced in the West) about Southeast Asia. Combined with the positive effects of spiritual practices, greater numbers of tourists are travelling to Southeast Asia for mindfulness, yoga, and other spiritual pursuits. Influenced by popular mass media coverage, such as Hollywood movies and literary bestsellers like Eat Pray Love (2006) and tourism imaginaries about particular peoples and places, spiritual tourists are visiting Southeast Asia in increasing numbers. They travel to learn about and practice mindfulness, so as to recharge their batteries, achieve spiritual fulfillment, enhance their spiritual well-being, and find a true self. However, there is a notable lack of scholarly work around the nature and outcomes of spiritual tourism in the region. Owing to its Buddhist temples, cultural heritage, religious history, infrastructure, and perceived safety, Chiang Mai in Thailand, in particular, has become a major spiritual tourism destination. Based on participant observation including informal conversations, and 10 semi-structured interviews in Chiang Mai during two summers in 2016 and 2018, our research explored why Western tourists travel to Chiang Mai to engage in mindfulness practices regardless of their religious affiliation. We explored their faith in their spiritual practice in Chiang Mai. Rather than the faith implied in religion, this faith refers to trust or confidence in something. Interestingly, none of the informants identified themselves as Buddhist even though many had practiced Buddhist mindfulness for years. They had faith that mindfulness would resolve problems, such as depression and anxiety, following life events such as divorces, deaths in family, drug abuse, or at least help free them from worries. They noted that mindfulness practices were a constructive means of dealing with negative life events. This study found that the informants sought to embed mindfulness and other spiritual practices into the fabric of their everyday life. Their faith in mindfulness led them to a destination where Buddhist heritage, history, and culture are concentrated but also consumed. Whilst discussing the preliminary findings through a critical lens, the research recommends future research pathways.

Zombic Forms: Ebola's Postmortem Virality.

This article examines US-based popular media coverage and public health discourse surrounding the 2014-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa. It demonstrates how the construction of the Ebola virus and its victims as "zombies"-not properly live nor properly dead, spectacularly supernatural yet materially impactful has worked to displace culpability, suppress theories of iatrogenic contagion, and ultimately, justify modes of disease surveillance that seek to cordon off non-Western bodies. In order to do so, Section 1 traces representations of the disease in popular fictional and nonfictional accounts; Section 2 analyzes the visual representation of the disease by photojournalists; and Section 3 examines the oftentimes paradoxical rhetoric that emerged from disease surveillance projects regarding local populations' complicity in their own infection rates.

Guest Editor's Introduction to Special Issue on Wild Foods

Guest Editor's Introduction to Special Issue on Wild Foods Nancy K. O'Hare introduction and background Food networks in developed economies have largely shifted to industrialized production of plants and animals as the primary means of feeding people. Yet wild foods obtained through foraging, fishing, and hunting have remained critical to both food networks and local economies in the United States (US) through intersecting pathways. Foraging and hunting remain essential sources of supplemental food, nutrition or income. They also play strong roles in cultural traditions, reinforcing place-based knowledge, and promoting physical and mental well-being for people across the socio-economic spectrum (Watson, Christian, Emery, Hurley, McLain and Wilmsen 2018). Activities including community oyster roasts and collecting wild mushrooms or ramps with family reinforce the social fabric while providing important opportunities for nature-connection and physical activity. Wild foods have not received as much attention as other food movements— farm to table, locavore, slow foods—but this may be changing as people seek out non-industrial food, a trend tapped into by many chefs specializing in local foods. The 2018 James Beard Award for American cookbook was awarded to The Sioux Chef's Indigenous Kitchen (Sherman and Dooley 2017) which promotes the traditional Native American foods before European colonization and updates recipes to modern cooking methods. Another 2018 James Beard Award went to The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African American Culinary History in the Old South (Twitty 2017) (see review by Passidomo, this issue). Michael Twitty documents his culinary journey as he explored his roots as a descendant predominantly of enslaved African Americans but also White slave-owners. Both award-winning authors recognize that wild foods no longer constitute a primary food source, but each seeks to reconnect with wild foods to reclaim cultural knowledge. In developed countries, members of the wealthier classes may dine in restaurants serving wild foraged delicacies (e.g. European truffles or ramps) or engage in trophy game hunting that transforms the procurement of meat as sustenance to hunting as sport—a sport in which some hunters know only the enjoyment of marksmanship rather than of culinary consumption. The engagement of wealthier people with wild foods may disconnect knowledge of how to procure from the wild, since money can buy access and the local knowledge of others (e.g. fishing charters, guided trophy hunts, private lands which may be fenced). [End Page 6] Modern day industrial foodways and urbanization may be reinforcing the socio-economic divide of access to types of wild foods. A recent study of urban foraging in the northeastern US found that those engaged in foraging tended to have either the highest annual income (>$100,000 per year) or the lowest (<$24,000) (Arrington, Diemont, Phillips and Welty 2017), aligning with motivations of recreation or sustenance, respectively. Similar motivations appear in popular news media coverage. Sachdeva, Emery and Hurley (2018) found that the motivational framing in news media was influenced by the broader economic mood, with greater reference to sustenance during the Great Recession in the late 2000s. Wild Foods as 'Tragedy of the Commons'? Wild foods, particularly plants, fungi and certain fisheries, are typically conceived of as open-access or common pool resources (Ostrom 2008, Ticktin and Shackleton 2011). Access to public, common resources can be regulated formally by laws or informally by cultural traditions or social enforcement. In a landmark paper, Hardin (1968) argued that once "tribal wars, poaching and disease" (page 1244) are replaced by the "long-desired goal of social stability" (page 1244), then human populations will exceed the carrying capacity of the natural environment. If unrestricted access to communal natural resources continues then individuals acting out of self-interest will inevitably degrade the environment—a tragedy of the commons. Hardin argued that it was necessary to "exorcize the spirit of Adam Smith" (page 1244) and the premise that "decisions reached individually will in fact be the best for the entire society" (page 1244). Consequently, Hardin proposed restrictions on access to natural resources as well as "the necessity in abandoning the commons in breeding" (page 1248) to limit human population growth which he framed as a key root to the tragedy of the commons. Hardin's...

Accumulating phones: Aid and adaptation in phone access for the urban poor

This study draws on participant observation and interviews with low-income adults in Chicago to show how the poor stay connected to phone service and mobile Internet through the possession of multiple phones, including those subsidized by government aid. The “accumulation” of phones by individuals is widely observed, though underexplored in scholarship. Popular media coverage in the US frames the possession of multiple phones by people in poverty as criminal or excessive. In contrast, this study identifies three functions for phone accumulation as a strategy for maintaining phone access: to back up other phones, to build up capacities across phones, and to share phones with others in need. Each function responds to struggles unique for the urban poor as mobile technology advances and public phone access declines. Extra phones insure against regular disconnections due to loss and theft of devices and limits on subsidized service. Active service on one device combines with Internet functionality on another to approximate a single, high-end device and service plan. Subsidized phones help overcome the hesitation that poor people feel in lending out their devices to others in need. Accumulation thus contributes to the goal of securing reliable phone access for low-income Americans. There are limits to accumulation as a strategy for maintaining access, which result from the prevalence of inferior hardware, limited service plans, and lack of trust among strangers. Telecommunications policies should adapt to the needs of low-income phone users with accumulation in mind. The article concludes with recommendations for adapting policy to the needs of low-income phone users.

A content analysis of popular media reporting regarding increases in minimum ages of legal access for tobacco

BackgroundIn the late 20th century, US localities began increasing the minimum age of legal access (MLA) for tobacco from 18 to 21 years by enacting “Tobacco 21” ordinances. Although these policies have a strong evidence base and broad popular support, popular media coverage of tobacco control laws has not always been accurate. This study sought to determine if contemporaneous popular media reporting accurately reflected the scientific findings regarding increased tobacco MLAs.MethodsWe searched LexisNexis for popular media reports that (1) addressed proposed or enacted Tobacco 21 ordinances and were (2) published in English, (3) drawn from a US news source, and (4) written after January 2004. We conducted a content analysis for quality based on a validated measure of accuracy of reporting, the Index of Scientific Quality (ISQ), which allows assessment of articles by assigning scores ranging from 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest).ResultsSearches yielded 378 articles; after screening for relevance and duplicates, 98 were included in the review. All studies identified through the keyword searches addressed Tobacco 21 policies. The average global score identifying the scientific quality of the articles was 2.98 of 5. Over three-quarters of the popular media articles addressing Tobacco 21 laws were written after a systematic review of these policies was released by the Institute of Medicine and approximately 4 in 10 cited findings from that review.ConclusionsPopular media reports on Tobacco 21 laws demonstrated average overall quality and relied on both anecdotal and scientific evidence, in contrast to previous studies found that popular media reports on tobacco issues demonstrated low overall quality and relied primarily on anecdotal evidence. The systematic review of increased MLAs for tobacco written by the Institute of Medicine diffused quickly into popular reporting, suggesting that this type of evidence might improve research translation.

Contested smart and low-carbon energy futures: Media discourses of smart meters in the United Kingdom

Abstract The Smart Meter Implementation Programme (SMIP) is arguably one of the most expansive and complex smart meter programmes globally. The UK government regards smart meters to be enablers of a low-carbon energy grid and has set out ambitious consumer-orientated aims within their programme across England, Scotland, and Wales. Despite considerable amount of research on how consumers will (or not) engage with smart meters, media discourses, where some public debates about smart meters are created and reproduced, have received little attention. This paper presents a content analysis of how smart meters are discussed within 11 years of popular print media coverage. A collection of nine discourses are identified: Four of these – “empowered consumers”, “energy conscious world”, “low-carbon grid”, and “future smart innovation” – depict smart meters as a harbinger of positive social change. Five of these – “hacked and vulnerable grid”, “big brother”, “costly disaster”, “astronomical bills”, and “families in turmoil” – represent smart meters as negative forces on society. The results show that discourses and associated storylines mainly represent continuous struggles over particular socio-technical promises linked to smart meters. Somewhat missing are attempts to open up the smart energy debate to broader issues of democracy and energy justice within the print media coverage.

Submersed Aquatic Vegetation in Chesapeake Bay: Sentinel Species in a Changing World

Chesapeake Bay has undergone profound changes since European settlement. Increases in human and livestock populations, associated changes in land use, increases in nutrient loadings, shoreline armoring, and depletion of fish stocks have altered the important habitats within the Bay. Submersed aquatic vegetation (SAV) is a critical foundational habitat and provides numerous benefits and services to society. In Chesapeake Bay, SAV species are also indicators of environmental change because of their sensitivity to water quality and shoreline development. As such, SAV has been deeply integrated into regional regulations and annual assessments of management outcomes, restoration efforts, the scientific literature, and popular media coverage. Even so, SAV in Chesapeake Bay faces many historical and emerging challenges. The future of Chesapeake Bay is indicated by and contingent on the success of SAV. Its persistence will require continued action, coupled with new practices, to promote a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.

Can Practicing Mindfulness Improve Lawyer Decision-Making, Ethics, and Leadership?

To practice mindfulness is to pay attention in a curious, deliberate, kind, and non-judgmental way to life as it unfolds each moment. Mindfulness is currently very fashionable and has been so for sometime now in American business, education, media, medicine, popular culture, and sports. Many American business and law students, business and law professors, business and law schools, business people and lawyers, and business and legal organizations are considering how mindfulness can be helpful in business, law, and conflict resolution. Much of the popularity of mindfulness stems from (popular media coverage about) empirical, experimental research data in psychology and neuroscience about how practicing mindfulness improves emotional, mental, and physical health by boosting concentration, immune response, and positive affect, while reducing distress, emotional reactivity, and negative affect. This Article analyzes novel theoretical perspectives in financial economics, management science, and leadership studies to analyze how and why mindfulness can improve decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Practicing mindfulness is an experience that provides a temporal space to pause and then make reflective decisions, including sustaining ethical behavior and leadership. To date, there is little empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects law students, lawyers, or law professors. There is though a growing body of empirical or experimental research about how practicing mindfulness affects people who are not in the legal profession. Based on this research, this Article makes three recommendations. First, law professors and lawyers team up with neuroscientists and psychologists to conduct multi-methods waitlist controlled research studies involving law students, lawyers, and law professors to determine if practicing mindfulness improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Second, law students, lawyers, and law professors try practicing mindfulness to see if they improve their legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership. Third, law schools, law firms, and bar associations try offering voluntary mindfulness training and supporting mindfulness practice to see if doing so improves legal decision-making, ethics, and leadership.