interCOMM

Why Wikipedia May Go Dark on Wednesday

2012-01-16T22:42:00.003-05:00

If you're like me and you like to look up the occasional obscure fact on Wikipedia, you may not be able to do so on Wednesday, 1/18. According to news reports, the online encyclopedia plans to shutdown for the day to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) that is currently under consideration in Congress.

While no one really likes piracy, this legislation has the potential to have some serious repercussions beyond simply stopping unauthorized distribution of content. Blogging for the New York Times, Jenna Wortham notes that SOPA "may force search engines and Internet service providers to block access to Web sites that offer or link to copyrighted material." Basically, if SOPA is passed as it was originally conceived, when a website is accused of containing pirated content, it can be wiped off the digital map without any real due process. Any website can be accused and be essentially shut down. Declan McCullagh writing for CNET put it best: "[SOPA is] kind of an internet death penalty."

So while a day without our favorite online encyclopedia may be a pain, it is for a worthy cause. Imagine an internet with no Wikipedia, ever. Or no New York Times. With SOPA as law, that could be very possible.

For more information about SOPA and its potential impact, see this CNET article.

Reporting When a Sex Abuse Scandal Hits Home

2011-12-21T09:31:00.003-05:00

This morning the lead story in the Philadelphia Inquirer was probably one that no one at the paper ever imagined they would have to write. Award winning baseball writer Bill Conlin had been accused of multiple instances of sexually abusing children back in the 1970s. The story on philly.com details horrific acts and how the allegations managed to remain secret until now. Also accompanying the article is another piece from the editor of the Philadelphia Daily News talking about how it was difficult, but necessary for the Inquirer/Daily News conglomerate to report on these allegations against one of their own.

While editor Larry Platt pledges vigilance in their coverage of these accusations, I wonder how this story will impact their coverage of the Penn State and Catholic Church sex abuse scandals. Will they be less likely to write about the ignorance of those closest to the alleged abusers since they themselves didn't know an alleged abuser was in their midst for 30 years? I did notice that neither of the Bill Conlin articles online allowed for comments and I'm interested in why that is. Perhaps the papers have seen the hurtful comments that people have left on their stories about the other two scandals and don't want to have all that venom spewed in their direction? What does that say about the value of comments left on news stories?

It will be interesting to watch how the Inquirer/Daily News conglomerate handles the Bill Conlin abuse scandal and others going forward.

Plagiarism Goes to Court

2011-10-27T12:40:00.006-04:00

When I teach my library session on citation and plagiarism, I always like to throw in the story of Adam Wheeler, the former Harvard student who was criminally prosecuted, in part because he was awarded scholarship money for works of literature that he plagiarized.

Now, I have another story I can add to my repertoire: Apparently reporter Susan Bradford has sued the Huffington Post and the New York Times alleging that they stole her stories about notorius financier Jack Abramoff.

So students, let this be a warning to you: If you steal someone else's work and claim it as your own, you may not only fail out of Towson but you may end up in court.

Baltimore Sun is Going Pay Wall!

2011-09-28T19:02:00.002-04:00

If you blinked, you may have missed it. The Baltimore Sun will be putting up a pay wall on October 10th. What this means is that through the Sun's website, you get 15 free story views per month and you will need to pay a subscription fee after that . They estimate the fee will come to about 35 cents per day and even if you subscribe to paper copy, you still need to purchase a digital subscription for to get past the pay wall. For all the nitty gritty, see their relatively well-hidden FAQ. I think it is relatively interesting that the paper has somewhat kept quiet that this is coming and I also wonder how effective it will be. After all, look how quickly advice on how to break the New York Times' pay wall appeared when it was launched...

Of course, I'd be remiss as a librarian if I didn't remind all you Towson folks that you can access the Sun all the way back to 1837 through our databases and this won't cost you a dime :-)

Mediamark Missing the Mark

2011-09-15T12:28:00.002-04:00

A new semester is underway and with a new semester invariably comes the semi-annual updating of my library instruction handouts. One of the updates that I usually make in late August is to my MRI+ Quick Guide and Powerpoint because Mediamark adds last year's data to MRI+ around that time. (For those of you who don't know, MRI+ is a consumer data set that advertising students can use to learn how to best target their campaigns).

This year was different. The new data was just added yesterday and as of my writing this, it appears to be less robust in some areas than last year's data. For example, it is missing the data for women throughout.

Also, we are still trying to get clarification on what some of the categories mean. An example of this is the listing of dollar amounts in the Contributions to Public TV/Radio report. This report also seems to list contributions to other types of charities such as religious organizations so this raises the question of whether the dollar amounts refer to just public media contributions or to charitable giving in general. A colleague of mine began investigating the meaning of this report last school year and still hasn't gotten an answer.

I think that Mediamark's MRI+ can be a great teaching tool for communication students, but I wish they would do a better job of communicating with their customers about product changes and what their data means.

Fix the Broken APA Please!

2011-08-10T11:49:00.003-04:00

Just last week I was looking at an article in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database and when I clicked on the cite link, a new screen popped up. Instead of the usual pop-up box containing a tiny disclaimer and the incorrect APA citation for the article, I now see a larger disclaimer and still the incorrect APA citation in the middle of the page. This is not what I meant EBSCO when I asked you to fix your broken APA this summer at the American Library Association conference!

While the new disclaimer is a step up from the old one (which was minuscule), it doesn't really make anything better. I highly doubt that students will give it a second or even a first glance. They want to be able to get their citations and get on with their research. Even if they do look at it and click on the EBSCO support site, they still have to go through pages of text to find examples and some of those even aren't correct.

As a librarian, the new disclaimer doesn't help my credibility. I need students to be able to trust the library and the information we provide--that is the only way for us libraries to survive--but how can I do that when one of the primary resources I am telling students to use is riddled with errors? I've had students lose points on assignments over incorrect EBSCO citations and it breaks my heart. They trusted us and I now have to tell them that sometimes they are better off doubting us.

Basically the only one the bigger disclaimer helps is EBSCO. It allows them to feel like they have addressed a complaint. But it doesn't really accomplish anything. Please EBSCO, I am begging you, fix the APA citations in your databases--for the good of everyone.

NBC Learn Higher Ed

2011-07-19T16:07:00.002-04:00

As many of you know, streaming news video can be tough to locate. That's why I was more than happy to take a look at NBC Learn Higher Ed at a recent library conference. This product makes thousands of NBC news videos, as well as content from their partners such as the Washington Post, available to universities. Also interestingly enough, they have collections of educational videos in chemistry and environmental science too.

I have registered for a free 30-day trial of this resource and you can too at http://highered.nbclearn.com/portal/site/HigherEd/freetrial. I think it is at least worth a look because streaming news content is so hard to get.

The CSI Effect

2011-07-06T09:02:00.003-04:00

Yesterday twelve men and women managed to do what presidents and politicians have been unable to do in quite some time--emotionally unite a large section of the United States populous.

When the Casey Anthony verdict came down yesterday, and she was acquitted of murdering her daughter Caylee, it seemed that a cry of outrage echoed across the country. Legal commentators like Nancy Grace said "the devil is dancing tonight" and celebrities from Kim Kardashian to Jason Biggs tweeted their shock and dismay.

So how did this jury come to reach a different conclusion than so many other people across the country? One theory I have is the CSI effect. Basically I wonder if TV shows like CSI have gotten juries to expect to see physical evidence in murder cases and when it isn't there, they won't convict. Some anecdotal evidence and research back up this theory. For example, a 2004 USA Today article outlines a number of cases across the country of how crime dramas have had an impact on the courtroom. Also a 2006 study by Judge Donald E. Shelton, and criminologists Young S. Kim and Gregg Barak found that those jurors who watched crime dramas like CSI were slightly more likely to expect scientific evidence of some kind in murder cases than those who did not. If the Casey Anthony trial was held 20 years ago, pre-CSI, I wonder if the verdict would have been different.

To learn more about the CSI effect and its impact, check out this ebook.

Roper and the $1000 Sundae

2011-06-16T13:37:00.004-04:00

Earlier this week, I went to one day of nearby library conference and I attended a session about public opinion resources. One of the presenters at this session was from Roper Center at the University of Connecticut which produces iPOLL, a database of the polls from every major survey organization going back to the 1930s. For me, watching the presenter demo iPOLL was like watching a chef make the $1000 sundae at Serendipity restaurant in New York City -- You salivate over the end product, but you know there is no way you can afford it.

Luckily for those of us who crave public opinion data but can't part with a silver spoon to pay for it, Roper has put some free resources on their website. One is their Topics at a Glance section which contains preselected iPOLL data on a variety of what they call "hot topics". So for example, you can get some recent numbers related to the public's confidence in the economy or education or Congress. Also you can find poll results on social issues like drugs or lifestyle information like following sports. It's not as robust as I might like, but you can't beat the price. In addition, Roper provides historic data on presidential approval for free. So if you want to know how Obama's high and low numbers compare to other presidents back to FDR, you can find out.

While I may never get to devour the $1000 sundae of public opinion, I think I can make do with the occasional free scoop that comes my way. After all, finding something wonderful for free, even if it is only a little bit of it, makes this librarian smile :-)

Welcome to the New Communication Books!

2011-06-02T13:42:00.003-04:00

We were able to do some last-minute end-of-the-fiscal-year book ordering and a few new gems have joined our collection. They include:

Satire and dissent : Interventions in contemporary political debate by Amber Day

Latina/o discourse in vernacular spaces : Somos de una voz? by Michelle A Holling and Bernadette Marie Calafell

Alternative and activist new media by Leah A Lievrouw

Bad news : How America's business press missed the story of the century by Anya Schiffrin

Summer is one of my favorite times of year because it affords me the opportunity to catch up on my reading and explore new ideas and subject areas in communication. I hope you get that chance too!

Searchable State Employee Salary Database

2011-05-23T16:54:00.006-04:00

For those of you that know me, you can imagine me as a curious little kid. So when I was about four years old, I was learning about numbers and money so one night at the dinner table I blatantly asked my father how much money he made. The room went silent and my dad said it wasn't polite to ask that question. Well if my dad was a state employee in Maryland now I wouldn't have to go through the impropriety of asking. I can just find the figure online thanks to the Baltimore Sun.

As I was reading an article on the Baltimore Sun's website about how Gov. Martin O'Malley makes less than many University System of Maryland VIPs, I noticed a sidebar that invited me to search a database of all state employees' pay. I clicked on this link and discovered that I can search salaries by name. So now my neighbors, coworkers, and anyone else can find out how much money I make. As a librarian, I generally like information to be freely available, but this creeps me out a bit and seems like a violation of my privacy. If my census record must be kept confidential by law, why not my pay too? I can see the value of aggregate data and that should be available, but pay data on an individual, identifiable level just seems wrong to me.

JTA Jewish News Archive

2011-05-11T14:52:00.000-04:00

A fantastic new news repository came online last week -- The JTA Jewish News Archive.

This free searchable database contains 250,000 news reports from JTA: The Global News Service of the Jewish People (formerly the Jewish Telegraphic Agency) from 1923 to the present. (The JTA organization is a not-for-profit media company similar to the Associated Press.)

One of the most significant parts of this archive is the JTA coverage on the Holocaust from the late 1930s and early 1940s because the bulletins shed light on what was actually known about the Holocaust during that time period. It would be interesting to compare coverage in the JTA news bulletins with coverage in secular news sources from around the world and see what the differences were.

You can obtain more information about the archive on the JTA site as well as through this YouTube video.

New Movie on "Selling Out"

2011-04-25T16:43:00.002-04:00

Morgan Spurlock, the man who took us along on his month-long fast food binge via his documentary "Super Size Me," has a new movie coming out this Friday. This time, he is taking aim at the pervasiveness of advertising. According to an interview with CNN, Spurlock has made a documentary about advertising that is completely paid for with advertising. It's called "Pom Wonderful Presents: The Greatest Movie Ever Sold."

As someone who personally contributes to the advertising clutter on Towson's campus and also helps train future advertisers to contribute to the overall general advertising noise, this movie makes me a little bit nervous. Will Spurlock distinguish between socially responsible advertisers like non-profits, or will he condemn us all for trying to get our messages across? I guess I will just have to go to the movie and find out.

Meanwhile, in the spirit of advertising, here are a few books about the topic that you can get at Cook :-)

"One Life to Live" Taken Off Life Support

2011-04-14T15:21:00.006-04:00

ABC announced today that it is canceling two of its soap operas, "All My Children" and "One Life to Live," because of declining ratings. Apparently daytime drama isn't the draw that it once was because programming tastes have changed and "many of the women who made up the target audience [are] now in the work force."

The passing of these two former broadcasting heavyweights is somewhat sad for me because it represents the demise of a communication research subject that was once so very rich. A quick search for soap operas in the library catalog yields a plethora of books from the 1970s, 80s, and into the 90s. You also find soap opera articles in our databases such as "Soap opera viewing motivations and the cultivation process" which was in a 1985 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media. I guess what I am trying to say is that in their heyday, soap operas like "All My Children" and "One Life to Live" helped us better understand communication so it is somewhat tragic to watch something that was once so vital fade into oblivion.

But time marches on and so does research. So if you want to study soap opera's younger, hipper sibling (reality TV) we have resources for that too :-)

Cook Library and the NYT's Pay Wall

2011-03-29T14:29:00.004-04:00

As you may have heard, the New York Times' pay wall came up on Monday. This means that individuals are limited to 20 free articles per month on the New York Times' website unless they have a home delivery subscription. In that case, full digital access is free. The key words here are "home delivery subscription".

It is unclear what that means for libraries like Towson that get a handful of print copies each day. My fellow librarians and I aren't hopeful that our hard copies will translate into full-access passes and we are trying to get clarification from the paper about what their pay wall means for us.

In the meantime, the best way to get to the New York Times is through the library databases. (Don't forget -- you will need your TU OneCard to log on from off campus).

I'll keep you posted...

Where Does It Count? Census Data and the News

2011-03-22T14:58:00.004-04:00

I am a self-described "news addict" so needless to say, I spend a lot time on news websites. In the last few weeks, I've noticed more and more news stories about population shifts on local papers' websites. For example, today in the Baltimore Sun, we have one about "white taggers" -- the people who have moved up I83 to Pennsylvania but haven't changed their license plates yet.

So what is the reason for all these demographic stories? Beginning this month, the US Census Bureau is releasing the data from the 2010 Census. You can see the release schedule here and given the schedule, it looks like we are going to see many more news stories based on Census data in the coming months.

As a researcher, I welcome all these news stories because they give us one more access point for Census data. Anyone who has worked with government information knows that it can be difficult, if not impossible sometimes, to find the data you need because they are often buried in a maze of hyperlinks on government websites. Also, even if you do find the right data, it's not unusual to encounter broken links and this too can make finding old data difficult. Thanks to the hard work of librarians though, news stories usually get stored in a searchable archive.

So 50 or 100 years from now it will probably be a whole lot easier to find out how many people moved from Maryland to York, PA between 2000 and 2010 using the Baltimore Sun news database than it will be to try and search a government website for that same data.

I guess the moral of the story is that if you are looking for Census data, it doesn't hurt to search the Census' website, but you may also want to check out the library's news databases like LexisNexis or the Baltimore Sun Historical too.

Researching Journalists' Safety

2011-03-07T11:12:00.002-05:00

Between the story of the sexual assault of Lara Logan while she was covering the Egypt protests and the story that came out of China today about police intimidating ABC reporters in that country, the world seems to be getting tougher and tougher for journalists.

If you want to keep track of how reporters faring around the globe, there are a few organizations that can help you find this information:

International News Safety Organization (INSI): A coalition of news organizations, journalists, and other support structures that try to provide a "global safety network" for reporters who are abroad. They have a good news feed about the latest dangers facing reporters abroad.

Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ): Independent, non-profit started in 1981 that is devoted to press freedom. This organization keeps statistics on reporters killed or wounded on the job and provides information for journalists on how to be safe while abroad.

International Federation of Journalists (IFJ): An organization that monitors press freedom and works for a free press around the world.

When it Comes to Article Searching ... It's Location, Location, Location!

2011-02-21T15:16:00.003-05:00

A couple weeks ago, I taught a library session for a section of Nonverbal Communication. As those of you who have been to one of my sessions know, I usually work through a sample search and this session was no different. The sample search in this class was "the role of gaze in the courtroom setting" and we looked in the PsycINFO database for peer review articles.

So I'm going through the usual brainstorming synonyms exercise (the point in my session where I ask students to think of all of the possible ways to express the sample topic) and a student mentions that a possible search term could be "trial". That's perfectly logical term. It makes good sense. Except...we're searching in a psychology database. So I showed the class what happens when we add trial to our search. Wouldn't you know we doubled our results...but most of those new results had nothing to do with the justice system and had everything to do with animal and human behavior therapy experiments. Not quite what we need.

So when it comes to finding articles in a database, where you are matters as much as what you search :-)

Social Media Changing Super Bowl Ads?

2011-02-08T13:28:00.002-05:00

Not only was last Sunday the biggest day of the year for football, it was also the biggest day of the year for advertising. USA Today acknowledges this significance and has been measuring the popularity of ads run during the big game for the last 20 years. To see how the 2011 ads fared, check out this article.

I think one of the more interesting trends, though, was noted in an article by Bruce Horovitz that ran today in USA Today. The author points out how social media is changing how Super Bowl ads are rolled out. Companies no longer wait until the big game to unveil ads--they are pushing them out before kickoff via social media, like Facebook and Twitter. Also the article notes that this pregame unveiling didn't seem to hurt how popular the ads were during the game. Could this be a sea change in advertising?

To learn more about social media and advertising, check out these books at Cook Library:

Advertising and new media by Christina Spurgeon
Socialnomics: How social media transforms the way we do business by Erik Qualman

Researching Egypt and Communication

2011-01-31T14:37:00.005-05:00

If you're hungry for more information about what's behind the chaos in Egypt, Cook Library has you covered.

We have a new guide on researching countries and cultures, which you can use to get background information and international news.

These are a few of our books that look at Egypt and communication:

And to find out about the history of and the current state of press censorship in Egypt, look at the Committee to Protect Journalists' website.

New Books!

2011-01-24T15:30:00.002-05:00

Cook Library has just gotten in a number of new communication titles in a variety of disciplines. Here are some of the new books:

In Advertising:

"Advertising, Commercial Spaces and the Urban" by Anne Cronin
"Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Advertising" edited by Matthew Eastin, Terry Daugherty, and Neal Burns

In Business Communication:

"The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World" by David Kirkpatrick
"The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires" by Tim Wu

In Interpersonal Communication:

"Dark Side of Close Relationships II" by William R. Cupach
"Why People Cooperate: The Role of Social Motivations" by Tom Tyler
"You Were Always Mom's Favorite: Sisters in Conversation Throughout Their Lives" by Deborah Tannen

In Journalism:

"Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law 2010" edited by Darrell Christian
"News from the BBC, CNN, and Al-Jazeera: How the Three Broadcasters Cover the Middle East" by Leon Barkho
"Representing Death in the News" by Folker Hanusch

In Media:

"The Erotic Engine: How Pornography has Powered Mass Communication from Gutenberg to Google" by Patchen Barass
"Popular Media, Democracy, and Development in Africa" by Herman Wasserman
"Old and New Media after Katrina" by Diane Negra

In Political Communication:

"Media, Power, and Politics in the Digital Age: The 2009 Presidential Election Uprising in Iran" edited by Yahya Kamalipour
"The Obama Victory: How Media, Money, and Message Shaped the 2008 Election" by Kate Kenski, Bruce Hardy, and Kathleen Hall Jamieson
"Political Communication and Social Theory" by Stephen Spurr

In Public Relations:

"Public Relations Cases: International Perspectives" by Daniel Moss, Melanie Powell, Barbara DeSanto
"The SAGE Handbook of Public Relations, 2nd ed." edited by Robert Heath

New Way to Search Online Journalism Outlets

2011-01-12T15:40:00.006-05:00

Columbia Journalism Review launched a new database for searching digital news outlets today. The News Frontier Database is a searchable tool that allows users to find digital news outlets that meet certain criteria (such as location, type of coverage, and revenue sources--to name a few). They've started with only 50 sites for the launch (there aren't any in the database from Maryland yet), but they plan to grow. Also the pull down menus make it relatively easy to use. This looks like it has the potential to be a very good resource since it has two of the qualities I like best in a database--free and straightforward to use.

New Communications Theory Encyclopedia!

2011-01-05T12:24:00.004-05:00

Happy new year! I've been searching for what to write about for the last few days and then I realized that in the hustle and bustle of finals week that I forgot to formally introduce the latest member of our communication resource family!

We now have an online Encyclopedia of Communication Theory. To access it, just click on the yellow "Find It" button at the top (you may need to log on if you are off campus) and click on the "Read Full Text at Sage Reference Online" link.

This is a great reference source if you need to look up an unfamiliar theory that you come across in a journal article and it has "Further Readings" links at the end of each entry so you can continue to explore.

I'm very excited about this new resource :-)

Effects of HIV PSAs?

2010-12-15T17:33:00.003-05:00

NBC New York has a story about the controversy surrounding New York City's new HIV public service announcements. Some gay rights groups want them pulled saying that they stigmatize homosexuals, while other groups say that the ads should stay because they are starting a conversation about a very important topic.

My question is - Does anyone know what the effects of these PSAs actually are? I really hope that the Health Department tested these ads before running them and this controversy is just speculation on the part of advocacy groups. With focus groups and interviews, health communication researchers can answer these sorts of questions and prevent organizations like the Public Health Department from needlessly spending money on ads that have little, or worse, no effect. Let's hope the communication research process intervened here.

Is WikiLeaks Good or Bad for Scholarship?

2010-12-08T17:33:00.002-05:00

Daniel W. Drezner, a professor of international politics at Tufts, has written a Chronicle of Higher Education column entitled "Why WikiLeaks is Bad for Scholars" which argues that the massive unauthorized release of classified documents will hurt future scholars because the U.S. government will seek tighter control of information as a reaction to this scandal.

As an information professional, I can't help but think that any release of information can't be entirely bad for scholars because, whether it was authorized or not, these cables provide yet another source for researchers to study so that they can get a clearer picture of what was happening diplomatically. While the U.S. government may try to impose tighter control on its information in the future, many such attempts in the past have failed and the information eventually gets out anyway. Just look at how WikiLeaks has been able to move its site around over the last few days to still be able to get its message out.

Basically in this information age, scholars really don't have to worry about having too little information for their research. It's information overload and the credibility of sources of information that really should be the bigger concerns.

Congress Turns the TV Down

2010-12-02T19:44:00.004-05:00

Today Congress passed the CALM Act - it is a bill that would outlaw loud TV commercials. I've noted two common themes (or frames for you communication scholars) in the news coverage:

A focus on strategy. For example, CBS News leads with: "Congress is scrambling to address many issues during the lame duck session, including the Bush tax cuts, immigration reform, gays in the military and the extension of unemployment benefits -- but the House made time today to also pass the CALM Act, a bill that will ban loud television commercials."
An issue focus. For example, an AP story points out (bad grammar aside): "Consumers long have been complained about being blasted with noisy TV ads, but the FCC currently does not regulate audio levels."

This reminds me of the strategy and issue framing that is described in Cappella and Jamieson's Spiral of Cynicism. I just love it when research plays itself out in daily life.

Tales of an iPad Newspaper

2010-11-22T15:14:00.002-05:00

There was a story in the New York Times yesterday about how News Corp. is planning to create a new newspaper for the iPad.

I think what is really interesting about this story is that this new paper seems like it won't be updated all that frequently. According to the story, "The Daily will be a newspaper, an ancient motif on a modern device. It will be produced into the evening, and then a button will be pushed and it will be 'printed' for the next morning. There will be updates — the number of which is still under discussion — but not at the velocity or with the urgency of a news Web site." This is surprising given that the trend seems to be with more updates, not less. Maybe News Corp. figures that once you've bought the App, they have your money so they don't need to worry about keeping you coming back for more news?

If you'd like to read up on the future of news, we have lots of books on the topic in Cook Library.

Grant and Nonprofit Research

2010-11-16T16:02:00.004-05:00

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been getting a lot of questions from students about how to find information about nonprofits, specifically how to find out about charitable contributions and grants.

Actually, a great resource is the new Nonprofits Subject Gateway, created by Business Librarian Shana Gass. This resource lists resources for finding charitable giving statistics, charity tax filings, and grant applications.

Two other things of note:

The Mediamark (MRI+) database does have some information on charitable contributions so you can find out what media contributors are more likely to use. Oddly enough, that info is listed under the category of "Contributions to Public TV/Radio" so it is easy to miss.
The Foundation Center has released a new GrantSpace site. This site offers lots tools to help novice grantseekers navigate the application process.

Since nonprofits and grants are becoming more of a part of the vernacular of communications, I think these requests are only the tip of the iceberg. I wouldn't be surprised if nonprofit research/grant writing become a larger part of the communications curriculum in the future.

2 Much Txting Bad 4 Teens

2010-11-10T09:08:00.003-05:00

Dr. Scott Frank, a physician from Case Western University, presented research at the American Public Health Association conference that shows a correlation between teen hyper-texting (that is sending more than 120 texts a day) and other risky behavior such as smoking, drinking, drug use and having sex. Dr. Catriona Morrison of Leeds University in the UK says that this research suggests that hyper-texting is similar to other addictive behaviors, like gambling, in its co-morbidity with other risky behaviors.

I think it is interesting how this study measures hyper-texting in only quantitative terms and I wonder if we are going to see more robust measures of "texting addiction" (which I think would measure not only the number of texts but also people's attitudes about texting) in future studies.

To learn more about texting, check out these books from Cook Library.

It's the World Series and No One Seems to Care

2010-11-01T16:33:00.003-04:00

Yet again last night, "Sunday Night Football" beat Major League Baseball (MLB) playoff games in the ratings according to an AP story on ABC.com.

So what's the big deal? I believe we are witnessing a shift here. Baseball used to be king. In fact, this is the first time that NBC aired a "Sunday Night Football" game in direct competition with the World Series because they were afraid of losing in the ratings. Now it seems they have nothing to fear because these ratings suggest that football has replaced baseball as America's pastime.

So from a communications perspective, I can't help but wonder where baseball lost its way. Is it that they need to sell the game in a new way and reintroduce the game to younger viewers? Maybe it is a fundamental problem with the product of baseball itself, meaning that the game just moves too slowly for our hyper-driven world? Whatever it is, MLB better figure it out fast or else they risk being about as popular as competitive basket weaving.

For more information about sports, media, and economics, check out the following resources:

Center field shot: A history of baseball on television by James R. Walker and Robert V. Bellamy
National pastime: How America plays baseball and the rest of the world plays soccer by Stefan Szymanski and Andrew Zimbalist

Red Brand/Blue Brand

2010-10-26T09:31:00.003-04:00

There's a fascinating piece in Ad Age this week about what brands are top with Republicans and Democrats.

No surprises for the number one slot for either party with Google topping the Democratic list and Fox News Channel leading the GOP list. There are some brands that are on both lists such as the History Channel.

The article talks a bit about what impact such partisanship can have on the brand, but in this political season I think the far more interesting thing is how campaigns utilize consumer data. Back in 2004, I was fortunate enough to coordinate an election debriefing with the top political operatives for both the Kerry and the Bush campaigns. One of the things that stuck out in my mind was how the Bush camp was able to successfully target their get-out-the-vote efforts using consumer data. They knew for example that if a person drove a Volvo, that person probably wouldn't be voting for Bush so they didn't bother trying to get that person to vote. To the best of my knowledge, this was the first election to use such consumer data in this way and it probably made a difference in the 2004 race.

Unveiling the Wish List

2010-10-19T09:13:00.004-04:00

There are a lot of books that we'd like to purchase for the library, but can't because of budget cutbacks. So we've created an Amazon wish list for Cook Library.

The books on this list have been selected by the library liaisons, including yours truly.

To purchase a book, just click on the link to the list and purchase it through Amazon. Then the book is shipped directly to the library and we'll send you a thank you note. Also, each donated item added to the collection will include a placard recognizing the donor.

Please consider donating a book to the library. For as little as $20, you can make a big difference.

How Does God Communicate?

2010-10-12T15:38:00.004-04:00

I saw a USA Today story last week about a new book, America's Four Gods: What We Say about God and What That Says about Us by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader.

The book lays out the four different ways that people think about God:

The Authoritative God (engaged in people's lives and is judgmental)
The Benevolent God (engaged in people's lives, but is loving)
The Critical God (keeps track of our sins, but doesn't intervene in the world)
The Distant God (created the world, but doesn't intervene in the world)

What struck me about these descriptions is that an integral part of a person's portrait of God is how that person thinks God communicates with humanity. So even when it comes to something very abstract, like God, we find that communication is the heart of how people make sense of things. Communication is such a great field!

Cook Library doesn't have this new book, but you can request it through interlibrary loan.

Science News in a Nutshell

2010-10-04T18:01:00.004-04:00

I come from a family of engineers and I am married to a scientist in a family of doctors. When I began studying journalism and news many moons ago, all of them pointed out how bad they felt science news coverage is. One of the chief criticisms I often hear is that science news lacks context and depth. Reporters cover a study like it is the be-all and end-all, studies are covered only if they are easy to understand instead of if they have merit, science only gets covered if it is political, etc...

I think this Guardian blog post that outlines what a typical science news story contains sums up their criticisms quite nicely. The fact that such a piece can be written (and be so darn funny) points to the fact that journalists may want to take a second look at how they cover science.

Cook Library has lots of great books about science news coverage including:

Banned Books Week

2010-09-28T15:32:00.003-04:00

This week Cook Library, along with other libraries across the country are celebrating Banned Books Week. During this week, the library emphasizes the importance of having the freedom to access and read information, no matter how controversial that information is. Freedom of information and communication go hand-in-hand. Without freedom to access and read information there is nothing to communicate.

So celebrate Banned Books Week along with us in Cook Library!

Maybe take the time to read a banned book (a list of some of the more recent ones can be found on the American Library Association's website). What is on the list may surprise you!

Another thing, you can do is stop in at the Banned Books Week Read-Out on Wednesday in the Cook Library Lobby from 12-1pm. At this event, students, faculty and staff will be reading from banned or challenged books.

All the News that's Fit to Read

2010-09-21T13:08:00.002-04:00

Pew's latest study on news consumption came out last week and there are some interesting findings:

About a third of Americans go online to get their news and that's a little higher than those who get their news from papers

People aren't replacing more traditional news content with digital, they're supplementing it

That last point made me think back to a story I remember hearing when I was a communication undergrad. I remember one of my professors saying how there was a fear when television first came out that people would stop going to the movies. It turns out that fear was ultimately misplaced. I wonder if the same will bear out for TV news and newspapers in this digital age. I think as long as there is a niche that those media can fill that is different from digital, they will survive. The question is: Can they find that niche?

The Beginning of the End of OPRAH...

2010-09-13T11:45:00.004-04:00

As the Associated Press reminds us, the final season of The Oprah Winfrey Show begins today.

The story hints at the effect this will have on her viewers, but as a quick search of the communication literature suggests, Oprah's impact went well beyond her audience. By just searching for scholarly articles containing "Oprah" in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database, I find 31 articles. A couple of the articles talk about the power that Oprah's endorsement of Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary had on the race. Many more talk about the impact that Oprah's Book Club has had on discussions about race, cultural, and social issues.

I think all of the research that has been done and probably will be done on Oprah is really a testament to the impact that media can have on society and culture.

Arizona Hires PR Firm

2010-09-07T12:42:00.003-04:00

I recently saw a news story announcing that the state of Arizona has hired HMA Public Relations to come up with campaign to improve their image. The state's tourism office is hoping to counter any negative backlash that has arisen from the state's controversial immigration bill.

This news story made me wonder what the PR firm's best tactic would be here. Should they address the immigration bill head-on in ads or should they focus on the scenic touristy stuff that would traditionally be a major selling point? If they take the first tactic, they run the risk of having the most memorable part of the ads be the negative opinions about Arizona and if they take the other tactic, they run the risk of being seen as ridiculous for just glossing over one of the biggest controversies to hit the state in decades. Thus, I have a feeling they might allude to the immigration controversy in some way, but not specifically mention it in the ads. This seems like a nice, safe, middle-of-the-road approach. I'll be watching to see what happens...

What Do We Know about Weather Broadcasts?

2010-08-31T14:42:00.006-04:00

With the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina last week and Hurricane Earl threatening to barrel down on the east coast this week, I found myself being curious about news coverage of weather.

I wanted to know whether communications scholars uncovered any patterns in weather broadcasts? (For example: During a big storm, how likely are we to see that poor weather-beaten field reporter compared to the high and dry station meteorologist with his mighty Doppler Radar data?)

After turning to the Communication and Mass Media Complete database and searching for broadcasting AND news, I found a great article from the February 2007 issue of the Journal of Applied Communication Research titled " Conceptualizing Continuous Coverage: A Strategic Model for Wall-to-Wall Local Television Weather Broadcasts". This study looked at four local television stations’ coverage of four Atlantic hurricanes in two Southeastern markets in 2005 and found that live reporting only made up about 12% of coverage and weather reporters received most of the air time compared to news talent.

Granted, this is only one study, but it makes me wonder what other patterns exist in weather broadcasting. With all of these news-worthy weather events, I'm afraid communication scholars will have many opportunities to find out.

New Subject and Course Gateways!

2010-08-23T18:06:00.015-04:00

Cook Library has undergone a lot of changes this summer. Last week we unveiled our new interface and this week we bring you new subject and course gateways.

I've created two subject gateways -- one in Communication Studies and one in Mass Communication -- that list some of the best resources (databases, journals, websites, books, and associations) in those disciplines. You can get to the new gateways from the library homepage by clicking on the Subject Gateways icon in the middle of the page. Once on the Subject Gateways page, just select one of the gateways from the drop down menu.

Also, a new feature are the course gateways. These pages list the best resources in specific courses. So far, I've created a gateway for COMM 131 (Fundamentals of Speech Communication) and I hope to create others in the very near future. You can get to the course gateways, by selecting the Research tab on the library's website and clicking on the Course Gateways link. Just enter the subject and the number of the course and you'll get the guide for that class. If no guide exists for that class, then it will send you to the Subject Gateway that covers the course.

I hope that you will make good use of the Subject and Course gateways. I promise that they are chock-full of great resources :-)

Take a look at our new look!

2010-08-16T16:54:00.003-04:00

Last Friday, the Cook Library website got a new look! The functionality hasn't really changed, but we did move some items around to reflect how the site was being used. Mostly, we updated the look and feel to make it more user-friendly and more in line with TU's other pages.

For more information on the changes, visit the library's blog.

Anchorless Local News

2010-08-06T16:27:00.002-04:00

According to a story in the New York Daily News, a local TV news station in Houston is planning to test out delivering their news broadcasts without anchors. Declining viewership is cited as the main reason for the cut.

As the article hints, experimenting with news styles and formats to try and reengage viewers isn't new. In her June/July 2009 article in American Journalism Review, Deborah Potter explains how news stations are trying social media and even "channeling ESPN's SportsCenter" to try to get back viewers.

I just wonder if removing anchors will ultimately make any difference in viewership. With more and more people getting their news online, removing anchors from local newscasts might be the equivalent of applying a new coat of paint to a sinking ship...

New Pew Study: Media, Race, and Obama

2010-07-27T11:11:00.004-04:00

I wish I could say I was surprised or that there was something different in the new Pew Research Center report examining news coverage of race during Obama's first year.

It's the same old story: News stories provide little context and cover events surrounding individuals rather than how trends (like the economic crisis) impact minority groups.

So even in the age of electronic news gathering, it looks like the same news norms outlined by Gaye Tuchman in Making News in 1978 (call number PN4756.T8) still hold true...

No Comment!

2010-07-19T16:47:00.002-04:00

CNN has an interesting story on its website today examining how news websites are handling anonymous user comments. The article talks about how some news outlets are attempting to civilize the discourse on their sites by requiring users to register with their real names, e-mails, and sometimes hometowns so that posters can be held accountable for their comments.

I think this is an interesting topic for a number of reasons.

First of all: How will this impact the business end of news websites? If there are extra steps to commenting, will that mean fewer comments? If there are fewer comments, will that mean less page views, which in turn will mean less advertising? Hardly an ideal business move considering the economic state of many newspapers, so will the news outlets stick with this practice if it costs them money?

Second: What does this move signal about interactive discourse online in general? It is interesting to read articles from American Journalism Review (available through Communication and Mass Media Complete database) which point out that when comment boards were first created a few years ago, editors didn't give anonymous postings a second thought. Now they are a major topic of contention because profanity, vulgarity, and other undesirable content has become more pervasive. Thus, a pattern seems to have emerged - give the people free reign to post things until it gets out of and and then reel them back in. (Wikipedia comes to mind.) So will anonymous online posting across the internet survive or will it die out?

WorldCat TU

2010-07-16T09:09:00.002-04:00

There's a new cat in town and he can help you find books! Cook Library now has access to WorldCat TU, a search engine for books. This tool can help you find books in Cook Library and in other libraries minus some of the headaches of the regular catalog.

What's nice about WorldCat TU is that searching has been simplified and streamlined. For example, you don't have to worry about making sure the word "The" has been removed from the title before searching, results are ranked by location and relevance, many of the results contain pictures of the book covers, and you can easily see which libraries around the world have an item.

The downside is that the searches are very specific, meaning that a search for journalist rather than journalism will produce very different results. Thus it is important to use wildcards (journalis*) and Boolean connectors (reporter + journalism) when searching. Also, WorldCat TU search results sometimes contain journal articles, but they are not always the best results. It is still best to use library databases when searching for journal articles.

To get to WorldCat TU from the library homepage, go to the research tab and select library catalogs. Then scroll down and click on the WorldCat TU link. Happy searching :-)

It's Official! "The Internet is Completely Over!"

2010-07-06T12:36:00.004-04:00

The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince has decided not to release his new album online. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, he said: "The Internet’s completely over, ... The Internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you."

Why do I feel like I have heard this tune before about other media? The Middleton Studies of the 1920s and 1930s raised concerns that radio was resulting in isolation and Robert Putnam in Bowling Alone argues that individualizing technology like television is causing a decline in civic engagement.

Seems like it is the same old tune--just a different player.

Poll Problems

2010-06-29T16:49:00.002-04:00

So here's the story: The Daily Kos, a liberal political blog, had contracted with Research 2000, a Maryland-based research firm, to provide polling data. According to a statistical analysis, the polling numbers provided to Daily Kos were bogus. In fact, Daily Kos founder Markos Moulitsas writes, "I have just published a report by three statistics wizards showing, quite convincingly, that the weekly Research 2000 State of the Nation poll we ran the past year and a half was likely bunk."

You might be wondering what the big deal is here. Organizations sue one another for fraud and breach of contract all the time, right? Well Research 2000's poll numbers didn't just exist on this one blog. News outlets such as KCCI-TV in Iowa, WCAX-TV in Vermont, WISC-TV in Wisconsin, WKYT-TV in Kentucky, Lee Enterprises, the Concord Monitor, The Florida Times-Union, WSBT-TV/WISH-TV/WANE-TV in Indiana, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the Bergen Record, and the Reno Gazette-Journal were among Research 2000's clients.

I agree with the Washington Post's Plum Line blog that "this is likely to prompt a serious discussion about whether news orgs should be doing more to vet the polling they commission or publish." I also think it's a shame that it takes a scandal like this to prompt such an important discussion in news...

CNN cuts AP

2010-06-22T15:55:00.002-04:00

When I first read a story earlier this week that CNN would no longer be using Associated Press (AP) coverage in favor of their own news gathering operations, I was shocked. After all it seems like every time I go to a news website or pick up a paper, it's an AP story that I'm reading. Also, setting up a news-gathering organization is expensive and producing news isn't getting any cheaper these days! But as a I read and thought more about it, I came to realize that actually CNN might be making a good business move here. It seems that more and more financially strapped news outlets are upset with the AP's fees and CNN is hoping to be a competitor with the AP. Maybe local papers in the future will at least have more varied wire content...

Government & Journalism - Should They Mix?

2010-06-16T09:06:00.003-04:00

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has taken on the task of studying how to fix journalism and they released a draft of possible recommendations for discussion.

As noted in an article in the New York Times, the suggestions in this document have come under intense scrutiny. Some conservatives have voiced concern over the possibility of a "Drudge Tax" which would charge news aggregators fees for reproducing content. Other concerns focus on a larger question: Should government be thinking about ways to fix journalism in the first place? What role should government play when an industry, particularly one that is important to democracy, is economically sinking?

So what do you think? Is the FTC on the right path or are they way off base?

New Help Guides Portal at Cook Library!

2010-06-11T12:09:00.006-04:00

Thanks to some of our fabulous emerging technologies librarians here at Cook Library, we have a new Help Guides Portal.

Once in the portal, you can get to the guides either by searching or browsing by category. The portal also has sections at the bottom of the page listing the most popular guides and the guides that will help you get started in the library.

So whether you need help with APA citations, or you aren't sure how to make sense of that chart in MRI+, you can find a guide that will give you some answers.

MyBestSegments

2010-06-02T15:59:00.004-04:00

When you were creating an advertising or media campaign, did you ever come across the Nielsen Prizm market segments and wonder what the heck they were? What exactly makes "The Cosmopolitans" different from "Up-and-Comers," anyway?

On the MyBestSegments website you can get the definition of each of the 66 Prizm segments including where each segment is likely to shop and what each segment is likely to drive. Also, you can get basic information on what segments make up a particular zip code. To top that off, each of these components is free!

How to be influential on Twitter

2010-05-26T12:01:00.003-04:00

According to new research, an average Joe or Josephine can gain influence in Twitter by limiting his or her tweets to a particular topic and being engaged in that topic.

The authors of this study analyzed about 2 billion public tweets and looked at followers, retweets, and mentions to see who moves information on Twitter. They found that while news organizations, such as CNN, can hold significant influence on a variety of topics, average people can gain influence "through concerted effort such as limiting tweets to a single topic." Apparently, influence on Twitter is not all about the number of followers that you have.

Polling Websites

2010-05-19T17:40:00.002-04:00

Since this is an election year, we will undoubtedly see political news coverage turn again to poll numbers to help fill the news hole. If you want to see the data for yourself or want to learn more about public opinion in other areas, check out these sites:

Real Clear Politics: This site compiles the latest numbers from all the major poling firms for the 2010 political races and Obama job approval.
Gallup: Sometimes you want to know what the public thinks about an issue and this website contains publicly available polling data on the latest hot-button issues
Pew Research Center: This non-profit research center's website often contains their polling data for issues that are in the news.

Guidelines for Reporters

2010-05-10T16:33:00.007-04:00

Sometimes reporters need to cover sensitive topics, such as a suicide, and there may be some confusion about how that topic should be covered. Once again, research can come to rescue, if you know where to look.

Chances are, if you are faced with an ethical dilemma about how to cover a story, another reporter has faced a similar situation. Other newspapers' standards and policies for reporting can be a guide and journalism organizations, such as the Society for Professional Journalists, may also have ethical guidelines.

Also, foundations or research institutes may have guidelines as well. In a previous life I worked for Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania on a project that focused on improving news coverage of suicides. Previous research had indicated that many news reporters didn't realize (or didn't want to believe) that how they covered suicides (the wording that they used and the pictures that they showed) could impact whether or not "copycat" suicides would later be attempted. We worked with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention to create and disseminate media guidelines for suicide coverage that reflected the research. One thing to keep in mind when turning to interest groups for guidelines is to make sure that they are grounded in sound research and not just a ploy to get favorable media coverage.

The Newseum: A good physical and virtual resource

2010-05-05T16:05:00.002-04:00

Last summer I visited the reopened Newseum in Washington D.C. for the first time and I was blown away. As someone who reads news religiously, I could have spent a lifetime in the building just taking in the exhibits and contemplating the impact that news has on our society.

Thus, I was thrilled when I later went back to the Newseum's website and saw all the great news resources that are available. Through this site, you can:

See the front pages of newspapers from around the world
Keep up with journalism news
Get information on the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution (great for that upcoming informative or persuasive COMM 131 speech!)

So if you haven't visited the Newseum in person or virtually, I recommend that you do both.

Are Bloggers Journalists? or Does Receiving Stolen Property Equal News Gathering?

2010-04-27T12:57:00.004-04:00

David Chen blogs for Gizmodo, a tech blog, and he recently posted pictures of a next-generation iPhone that he somehow acquired on that blog. Last Friday, investigators came to his house with a warrant for his computer, saying that it was used in a felony connected to illegally obtaining that iPhone. Chen and the folks who own Gizmodo are saying he is a journalist and therefor his property is protected under the first amendment.

A number of news stories are framing this incident as a legal question of whether or not Chen has protection under the Shields Law, which prevents a journalist from revealing anonymous sources. I agree with some legal experts, however, that this might be more of a receiving stolen property question. The Awl's Choire Sicha writes, "The reporter shield law, ... might not be germane—if the police are investigating the editor himself as the person who committed the felony. ... maybe you're going to find out that journalism and/or blogging is totally incidental to what happened here."

While I do think there will ultimately be court cases that attempt to settle whether bloggers count as journalists, I don't think this will be the case that tests those waters. There seems to be the larger issue of whether or not Chen knew he was receiving stolen property when he got that iPhone prototype and until that is cleared up, I don't see this case addressing the "Are bloggers journalists?" question.

Come on in -- The World Bank is Open!

2010-04-20T15:46:00.006-04:00

Journalists writing international stories and the researchers who support them, rejoice!

It was just announced today that the World Bank is opening up its data archive and putting up a new website to house all of it. According to an article by Mathew Ingram of the business blog Gigaom, "The data at the World Bank site includes more than 2,000 indicators related to economic well-being and global development, including some that the agency has been accumulating for 50 years."

There looks to be a ton of great stuff in this archive. For example, you can find out how many patent applications were submitted by Bulgarian residents in 2008 and which countries have the highest life expectancy. On top of this, the archive lists the sources for the data so you know where all of it comes from. I can't wait to keep digging in this archive!

Welcome to the New Books!

2010-04-13T17:31:00.006-04:00

As this academic year winds down, I want to highlight some of the new communication books that we've added to the Cook Library collection. While some books were ordered because they were requested by faculty members, I also requested other books to help beef up our collection in some key areas, namely global communication and Web 2.0. I also wanted to expand the number of books with graduate level scholarship.

So without further ado, here are some of the newbies:

International media communication in a global age (Call Number: PN4784.F6 I583 2010)
International communications strategy: developments in cross-cultural communications, PR and social media (Call Number: HM1211 .C36 2009)
Advertising 2.0: Social Media Marketing in a Web 2.0 (Call Number: HF6146.I58 T88 2008)

Enjoy :-)

Where is the media middle?

2010-04-06T08:31:00.003-04:00

John Douthat wrote a column in the New York Times a few days ago asking the question, "Can CNN be saved?" He basically contends that CNN's decision in 2004 to pull contentious shows like "Crossfire" in favor of more middle-of-the-road news programming has killed them in the everyday ratings. Douthat wants CNN to be more like John Stewart on "The Daily Show" and have more "lengthy, respectful and often riveting" debates.

But the research out there on selective exposure makes me wonder if Douthat's strategy would save CNN. Dr. Diana Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania noted in a paper for the Brookings Institute that "selective exposure is alive and well" with Republicans choosing Fox News and Democrats choosing NPR. Mutz goes on to argue that this selective exposure polarizes the electorate because those in the middle become disenchanted with politics and are less likely to participate. So this leads me to ask: If the middle is shrinking and that's where CNN sits, will there be anyone to even watch CNN's new "riveting" programming?

Broadcasting, interpersonal communication, and the job hunt

2010-03-29T14:37:00.003-04:00

I think at least once a week, I come across some kind of communication phenomenon that I would like to scientifically investigate. My moment for this week came early when I saw an announcement on ABC2 offering viewers with resume help. The program allows people to e-mail their resumes to Good Morning Maryland and each week, three people will tape a 20-second video pitch as to why they should be considered for a job.

This made me wonder: It seems that successful resumes (the ones that don't automatically end up in the circular file) are often tailored to the specific organization and even the specific job. So how can the people making these 20-second videos balance this need for specificity with the fact that their pitches are being broadcast and could potentially reach a large number of potential employers? I'd love to study which resumes/videos are the most successful at landing people jobs.

C-SPAN Library is here!

2010-03-22T12:29:00.004-04:00

C-Span has put its video archives online. C-SpanVideo.org contains over 160,000 hours of footage and spans the last 23 years. Best part--it's free!

According to a New York Times piece, MSNBC Host Rachel Maddow compared accessing the archive to "being able to Google political history using the ‘I Feel Lucky’ button every time" and Ed Morrissey, a senior correspondent for the Hot Air blog said, "The geek in me wants to find an excuse to start digging." I couldn't agree more! This a treasure trove for anyone interested in political communication.

Who in the world is using what technology?

2010-03-15T12:35:00.004-04:00

Ever want to know what the broadband penetration is in Iran or how what percentage of Brazil's population has access to a mobile signal?

Check out this website created by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), a United Nations agency.

Select a county using the map or the pull down menu in the middle of the website and you can learn about telecommunications technology and technology policy in that particular country.

(Just in case you were wondering - less than one out of every 100 inhabitants of Iran has broadband and 90.64% of Brazil's population is covered by a mobile signal.)

Oscar doesn't matter that much?

2010-03-08T17:41:00.003-05:00

According to a piece in this morning's USA Today, The Hurt Locker's best picture win doesn't mean a big financial boost. In fact, after working in marketing costs and movie theaters' cut from the box office revenues, author David Lieberman projects that the film will "be marginally profitable at best." Also, according to Rutgers Business School's S. Abraham Ravid, "The publicity from being nominated for an Oscar is 'more valuable financially than actually winning,'" and "'Award winners do not increase revenues' for the films in which they star."

So what does this mean for advertisers? Maybe it isn't so important for a product or a brand to tie itself to an Oscar winner; being connected with one of the nominees in future projects might just be enough. It looks like Oscar buzz has quite a bit of staying power...

Don't want to miss that hot new new journal article?

2010-03-04T11:08:00.002-05:00

If you are a big fan of keeping up with the latest scholarly publications in the field like I am (or even if you just have an assignment due on a particular topic and you don't want to miss anything), you can stay connected by setting up an alert in any EBSCO database and have those articles delivered right to your desktop.

How it works: If you are in Communication and Mass Media Complete (or any EBSCO database) just log on at the top where it says "Sing In to My EBSCOhost." Next create and try out your search and then save it by clicking on the "Search History/Alerts" tab under the search box. Next, check the box next to the search you want to save and click on "Save Searches/Alerts" just above. Then you will be shown a form and in the last question, make sure you save the search as an alert. Now you will be given the option to have the article links emailed to you or they can be delivered via an RSS feed. I personally like having the RSS feed on my iGoogle page because it forces me to look at the updates daily.

So give it a try for yourself and you might just find that you never miss that really great new article again.

It's Texting, Social Networking and TV?

2010-02-27T09:51:00.004-05:00

The Pew Research Center released a report this week titled Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change. In terms of technology use, there is nothing earth shattering here: 18-29 year olds are more likely to text and tweet than other generations.

I think some of the more interesting information is about where Millennials get their news: 59% get most of their news from the Internet but 65% still get most of their news from television. While the survey asks about CNN and other news channels as sources of news, I wonder if many Millennials actually get most of their news from entertainment sources like The Daily Show. I wish Pew would have asked about that in their survey...

New APA Style Guide

2010-02-19T17:02:00.005-05:00

Cook Library has updated its APA style guides to reflect the changes that the American Psychological Association implemented last summer. These guides cover in-text citations, and how to cite print, electronic, and other sources. You can get a copies of the guides through the Cook Library Citing Sources page or at the Reference Desk.

Getting Customers to do the Advertising

2010-02-14T16:01:00.002-05:00

Having almost a week off because of the snow gave me some time to finally catch up on some reading. I just finished 'I love you more than my dog': Five decisions that drive extreme customer loyalty in good times and bad by Jeanne Bliss, a customer service expert. The book argues that customers will naturally want to sell your product/service when your organization is genuinely guided by principles of putting customers first. Jeanne Bliss notes that this can be difficult for many organizations to actually implement because it requires a radical shift in how business is done -- It requires asking "Do my customers even want a chair?" before asking "Since we make chairs, what kind of chair should we make make?"

As Erik van Ommeren pointed out during his Me the Media lecture at Towson last fall, companies and other organizations are no longer driving how the marketplace thinks about their products/services. Potential customers are developing their opinions based on what other customers are saying. (Customer reviews are king.) In order for companies and other organizations to regain some control of how their products or services are seen in the marketplace, they need to get their customers to be willing to sell their products/services. If Jeanne Bliss is right, getting this to happen on a large scale won't just require marketing executives to learn how to write compelling tweets; it will require a massive organizational overhaul. Those of you in advertising may have your work cut out for you...

Editor & Publisher is Alive!

2010-02-02T13:10:00.002-05:00

E&P was sold to Duncan McIntosh Co. Inc and is planning a February issue. The "bible of the newspaper industry" lives on!

Pay for Hulu?

2010-02-01T14:35:00.003-05:00

According to a recent article in the LA Times, It looks like Hulu, the website created by studios to disseminate TV content, may not be free for much longer. It sounds like they are considering creating a subscription model where users would get access to the most recent episodes for free, but would have to pay to access older content. It also seems like they are thinking about charging for some of the most popular shows like House or 30 Rock.

I'm sure Hulu is hoping that it will have more success than Newsday, which has only had 35 people willing to pay $260 per year for unlimited access...

Looking for some speech inspiration?

2010-01-25T12:42:00.005-05:00

Dr. Michael Eidenmuller of the University of Texas at Tyler has created Speech Bank: a free online database with full-text, audio, and video of over 5,000 speeches.

So whether you're looking for the text of Elle Wood's speech from Legally Blonde or video of Obama's last State of the Union address, this is a great place to find what you need.

News News about Old News

2010-01-19T17:36:00.003-05:00

I know you all think nothing is more exciting than microfilm, but what if I told you that Cook Library now has a new way to look at microfilm!

ProQuest, where we get our newspapers on microfilm, has begun offering microfilm for specific newspapers digitally. Basically, it’s the same as looking at microfilm, but instead, you can do it through the web, on and off-campus, instead of coming to the library and using a microform machine.

For those of you who can't live without the microfilm machines, don't worry - we will continue to get the microfilm at the end of the year.

The newspapers covered are: Barrons, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post, all 2000 forward.

You can access the ProQuest Digital Microfilm archive through the database list on the library website.

The Great News Repackaging

2010-01-12T09:03:00.007-05:00

Pew's Project for Excellence in Journalism has a new study out that examines what makes up "the news." They looked at all the outlets that produced local news in Baltimore from July 19-25, 2009 and then studied the movement of six major news narratives from that week. The results are dramatic:

80% of stories are just repackaged information published elsewhere
63% of news stories were initiated by government officials
95% of the stories that did contain new information came from newspapers

As we know, this is a tough time for newspapers so this study begs the question of who will fill the news hole if newspapers fold. It can't all be repackaged news, right?

H1N1 and New Media

2010-01-05T08:48:00.003-05:00

Happy new year to all of you communication scholars out there! Looking back at 2009, one of the biggest stories was the Swine Flu and what contributed to or helped thwart its spread. The Boston Globe had a piece in December about how the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) used YouTube and Twitter to get the public information about the epidemic. The article notes the challenges of condensing complicated scientific information into 140 characters and discusses how the CDC "has become the predominant online choice for swine flu information." I think the CDC's use of new media to communicate about H1N1 will be a model for future public health communication campaigns.

New Interface for LexisNexis Academic in 1/10

2009-12-18T15:07:00.002-05:00

It looks like LexisNexis Academic’s interface will have a new look and feel in January 2010. The significant changes are to the database’s search forms and navigation menu; content changes are minimal. For more information and to test drive the beta, see LexisNexis Academic’s Wiki: http://wiki.lexisnexis.com/academic/index.php?title=Academic_Search_Form_Menu

A Resource to Relax Your Brain

2009-12-16T09:05:00.003-05:00

With finals here and the holidays right around the corner, it's hard to imagine finding time to delve into a heavy research paper. But if you still want to stay on top of what is happening in the communication world, blogs are a great way to go. One of my favorites is the Z on TV blog written by Baltimore Sun critic David Zurawik. Updated daily, this blog focuses on all news television-related, with an occasional post about what is happening in the Baltimore media market. It's a great resource to get a quick update on what's happening in television.

Editor & Publisher is Closing

2009-12-10T12:32:00.003-05:00

After 108 years of publication, it looks like Editor & Publisher magazine will be no more. I think we owe a moment of silence for this noble information source that kept us up-to-date about all things newspaper related. If you are feeling a bit nostalgic and want to peruse old issues, Cook Library has the print going back to 1964.

Google moves to limit free news

2009-12-07T15:29:00.005-05:00

Apparently some media companies aren't happy that Google is providing a free ride to their content. The BBC reports that Google is allowing newspaper publishers who charge for their content to limit users to five of their articles per day. The sixth click on an article would then be rerouted to a publisher's registration/subscription page. This comes on the heels of some U.S. news outlets floating the idea of charging for content and a British publisher actually implementing it. Will users buy into this new business model? Surveys suggest that may not be likely in the U.S. ...

World News Connection Comes to Cook Library

2009-11-30T16:23:00.002-05:00

Thanks to the integration of Baltimore Hebrew University’s collection into ours, we now have access to an additional news database: World News Connection. Compiled from thousands of non-U.S. media sources, this database offers translated and English-language news and information. Updated hourly, the World News Connection file contains stories back to 1995.

For a list of sources contained in World News Connection visit: http://wnc.dialog.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=wnc.sources#

Only one person at a time can access the database and it is username and password protected. You can get the username and pw from me or any Cook Library reference librarian.

Keeping up with The Communicators

2009-11-25T09:15:00.003-05:00

In case you've been busy on Saturdays at 6:30pm, C-SPAN's program, The Communicators, is now being offered in podcast form. Recent programs have covered topics such as internet regulation, net neutrality, and copyright. If you are interested in communication and law, this program is worth checking out.

Nonprofits and Social Networking

2009-11-18T14:15:00.003-05:00

Weber Shandwick, a communications consulting firm, commissioned a survey of 200 nonprofit and foundation executive directors and communications officials last summer and they found that a majority of nonprofits are experimenting with social networking technology, but many are uncertain about its benefits to their organizations.

Nonprofits think that social networking technology is best at:

raising awareness
keeping external audiences engaged
reducing communication costs
reaching broad external audiences

They think it doesn't work as well when it comes to:

supporting fundraising efforts
connecting with hard-to-reach audiences such as donors, media, and policy makers

I wonder how this compares to corporate use of social networking technology?

MBC - Museum of Broadcast Communications

2009-11-13T09:03:00.004-05:00

The Museum of Broadcast Communications is an Illinois-based non-profit with the mission of preserving radio and television programming. Their archive includes over 25,000 television programs, 5,000 radio programs, and 12,000 commercials and some of their collection is available online. They say that over 7,000 program assets have been digitized so far. (I would imagine that they would digitize more but money and intellectual property constraints prevent it.)

To view their archive, you do need to register for a free account. Once registered, then you can search their collection. What's nice is that you can limit your search to what is available digitally so you don't have to wade through hundreds of records that you can't view.

What is available digitally runs the gamut - there are snippets from the 1950s game show $64,000 Question along with presidential debates, and "Where's the Beef" Wendy's commercials from the 1980s. The quality of the video, especially the old footage isn't the best, but it is worth taking a look.

Reconstruction of Journalism

2009-11-04T14:54:00.002-05:00

Leonard Downie Jr. (former Executive Editor of The Washington Post) and Michael Schudson (Journalism Professor at Columbia University) have written an interesting paper on how to fix what's economically broken with journalism. "Reconstruction of Journalism" discusses the rise of "citizen journalism" and suggests that it's time for news outlets to explore non-profit avenues of support such as philanthropy, universities and government.

Downie and Schudson say that "There is unlikely to be any single new economic model for supporting news reporting" (p. 75). Thus individual news outlets are ultimately left to feel their way in the dark towards finding a model that will be profitable for them. Hopefully they will be able to find something that works soon before they lose all their capital just trying to stay afloat.

Ad*Access - A Source for Early 20th Century Ads

2009-10-29T14:46:00.007-04:00

Sometimes it can be really difficult to get your hands on old print advertisements, but Duke University's Ad*Access catalog provides free access to over 7,000 U.S. and Canadian advertisements from between 1911 and 1955.

The ads cover five product categories:

Beauty and Hygiene
Radio
Television
Transportation
World War II Propaganda

What's also really helpful is that the catalog provides a timeline of major events and inventions, which helps to put the ads in context.

This resource is definitely worth a look if you are working on a historical advertising project.

New Study on Tailored Advertising

2009-10-22T10:01:00.004-04:00

Dr. Joe Turow from the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania and researchers from the Berkeley Center for Law & Technology and the Annenberg Public Policy Center have just released a new report suggesting that Americans reject tailored advertising. The study included a telephone survey taken last summer of 1000 U.S. adults and found that 66% of those surveyed say that they don't want marketers to tailor advertisements to their preferences.

While I think this is an interesting finding, I wonder how many Americans are actually aware of how much advertising is already tailored to their interests. While Americans may say that they don't like it, I think that tailored advertising is not going away anytime soon.

NINE PAGES OF ERRORS!!!!

2009-10-15T18:32:00.003-04:00

According to a story on InsideHigherEd.com, the American Psychological Association (APA) released nine pages worth of corrections to the latest print edition of their style manual which came out over the summer. They also released four corrected sample papers.

How can students be expected to get their citations right if the citation manual can't even get them right? This boggles my mind...

Films on Demand

2009-10-08T15:12:00.006-04:00

If you are looking for an educational video in Communication, take a look at Films on Demand. This database now available through Cook Library and it offers thousands of streaming videos available on and off-campus.

A quick search of "communication" yielded 376 segments on a variety of topics including communication in the workplace, communication and autism, and nonverbal communication, just to name a few.

CMMC Communication Thesaurus

2009-09-30T17:36:00.004-04:00

How many times have you been searching in the Communication & Mass Media Complete database and not found any results when you know there really should be something?

One tool that may be of help is the Thesaurus. This database feature can be accessed from the upper-right blue navigation menu at the top of the database. The thesaurus is communication-based, so you will only find terms in it that relate to the communication discipline. It's great if the topic you are searching for has a lot of different names (e.g. new media) and you don't want to waste time typing them all into a search box with OR's in between.

So next time you are searching, check out the Thesaurus and don't hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

News Blogs and Websites Now on NewsBank

2009-09-23T17:02:00.003-04:00

NewsBank, a database that provides access to news, is testing out some new content. Users can now search a limited number of news blogs and news websites in addition to their collection of college, local, and national newspapers. If you want to check it out this database, you can access it through the Cook Library website .

Futurity in the Future?

2009-09-16T17:00:00.003-04:00

There might be changes on the horizon for how news covers science. Tired of watching science discoveries go unreported (or, in their eyes, be covered poorly), 35 major research universities have banded together to start Futurity, a non-profit internet wire service dedicated to distributing news about their scientific research findings. In a wire story reprinted by the Baltimore Sun, Paul Rogers writes that the goal of this news service is to bypass the traditional shrinking news outlets and go right to the readers. Futurity plans to "provide articles to popular Web sites such as Yahoo News and Google News, along with MySpace and Twitter," writes Rogers.

Might the public learn more about science with this new model for news distribution? It will be interesting to watch...

Health Care Reform Research

2009-09-11T10:33:00.005-04:00

The hot topic these days is health care reform. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is a unique funding agency that aims to help create leverage for change in health care and in the broader health policy arena.

Given this mission, they are an important resource for research reports about health related topics. Their latest report examines how health care reforms in Massachusetts are going and what the public thinks of those efforts.

PEJ's News Coverage Index

2009-09-09T17:25:00.004-04:00

The Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism (PEJ) is non-partisan, non-profit organization that conducts public opinion polling and social science research about news coverage.

As part of their research, PEJ conducts a content analysis of news coverage each week. The report about last week's coverage is now up on their website.

These reports are a great resource for keeping track of how news coverage has changed over time.

Intute: A portal for scholarly communication sites

2009-09-04T08:10:00.008-04:00

It's worth taking a peek at Intute, a portal for scholarly websites in communication and other disciplines.

It was created by a consortium of seven universities in the UK and it looks like the Communication and Media Studies section has links to open access journals and research project websites from the various facets of the discipline.

World News Digest now online

2009-08-31T21:11:00.004-04:00

Say goodbye to the print version of World News Digest and hello to on-line!

According to the publisher, this database brings together nearly seven decades of news from the Facts On File World News Digest in print. This archival record of domestic and international news, covers major political, social, and economic events since November 1940. World News Digest is updated twice weekly and includes a searchable hourly newsfeed, with more than 1 million internal hyperlinks that allow researchers to follow a story over time.

Check it out on Cook Library's website: http://cooklibrary.towson.edu/databasesByTitle.cfm#W

Introduction...

2009-08-27T13:24:00.002-04:00

Back when I was getting my Master's degree in Communication from the Annenberg School at Penn and when I worked for the Annenberg Public Policy Center, my mentor and boss, Kathleen Hall Jamieson always reminded me to keep my writing short and simple. I am going to try to do that with this blog. So here are some short, fun facts about me, the author:

You name a communication research methodology, and I've conducted a study using that methodology. I am more familiar with quantitative than qualitative, but I have done them all. I especially love a good communication experiment!
While most of my formal communication studies have been in political communication, I've actually branched out and published in health communication and in marketing.
My favorite thing in the whole world is helping people find the information that they need. If you are doing communication research and need some help, please look me up in Cook Library and I will be more than happy to help.

Please continue to check back with this blog for short posts about all the great resources available in Mass Communication and Communication Studies. Enjoy!