Louisa Ha is a professor in the School of Media and Communication at Bowling Green State University, Ohio, U.S.A. She is also the editor of Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication and oldest journal in the field of journalism and mass communication. She is the founder and chair of the Emerging Media Research Cluster in the School of Media and Communication there. Her research interests are media management and media convergence, new media business models, social and mobile media use, online and international advertising, and audience research. She received her Ph.D. in Mass Media from Michigan State University, MPhil degree in Communication and Bachelor's degree in Journalism from Chinese University of Hong Kong. Supervisors: Ph.D. Dissertation Advisor: E. Lincoln James, Master Thesis Advsior: Paul S. Lee, and Undergraduate Thesis Advisor: Leonard Chu
Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the motivation of young consumers’ use of TikTo... more Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the motivation of young consumers’ use of TikTok (Douyin) in China and how such motivations may relate to influencer videos’ persuasion power on purchases. Using a national online survey among 382 college students in China, the result showed that entertainment gratification was the most common motivation in using Douyin. But those users with socialization gratification motives had high persuasion knowledge and high parasocial relationships with the influencer, as well as higher purchase intentions for the recommended products. Implications on influencer marketing are discussed.
This paper investigates the factors underlying the active participation and quiet observation of ... more This paper investigates the factors underlying the active participation and quiet observation of subscribers of adforum, an electronic discussion group for advertising educators. Results of an electronic mail survey of the subscribers and a content analysis of the messages posted by the subscribers show that, even though the respondents have a quite positive evaluation of the group, many refrained from contributing messages. Advertising on the internet and ethical issues were the most frequently discussed topics during the study period.
PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines th... more PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines the relative importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting the truthfulness ratings of two common types of online health information: news stories and institutional news releases.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a multi-method approach using (1) a manual content analysis of 400 randomly selected online health news stories and news releases from HealthNewsReview.org and (2) an online experiment comparing truthfulness ratings between news stories and news releases.FindingsUsing content analysis, the authors found significant differences in the importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting truthfulness ratings of news stories and news releases: source and style cues predicted truthfulness ratings better than content cues. In the experiment, source credibility was the most important predictor of truthfulness ratings, controlling for individual differen...
Supplemental material, Supplemental_Material for Mapping Recent Development in Scholarship on Fak... more Supplemental material, Supplemental_Material for Mapping Recent Development in Scholarship on Fake News and Misinformation, 2008 to 2017: Disciplinary Contribution, Topics, and Impact by Louisa Ha, Loarre Andreu Perez and Rik Ray in American Behavioral Scientist
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 2021
This study examines the relationship between selective and cross-cutting/non-partisan media expos... more This study examines the relationship between selective and cross-cutting/non-partisan media exposure, perceived journalism framing, and U.S. public’s perception of China and the United States during the U.S.–China trade dispute. A national survey of U.S. adult population indicated that more people perceived that the media escalated the conflict between China and the United States than promoted peace between the countries. Perceived peace journalism framing was positively related to perception of China, whereas perceived war journalism framing was positively related to perception of the United States. Partisan media use has higher influence on perception of the United States than perception of China.
Drawing on a national survey among American adults, this study focuses on the trade dispute betwe... more Drawing on a national survey among American adults, this study focuses on the trade dispute between the U.S. and China and explores the relationship between social media use and opinion polarization about China’s trade practices. The results reveal that the time spent on social media is indirectly associated with opinion polarization on China’s trade practices through news consumption on social media. Furthermore, the mediating effect of social media news consumption is found to be particularly stronger among those who frequently encounter like-minded information related to the U.S. government’s action during the trade dispute. Implications are discussed for the interaction between foreign policy and public opinion in the contemporary media environment.
There are mixed opinions about the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in general ... more There are mixed opinions about the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in general and the Internet in particular in promoting development. While Internet has been viewed as contributing to the ever-changing information dissemination across urban and rural spaces, others argue that the Internet does not always bring drastic social and economic advances as scholars and pundits have made us to believe. However, in rural areas such as China where websites have been set up to market goods, attract investments and enlarge business scale (Zhao, 2008), it is the view that Internet has impacted lives and rural development. In Nigeria, despite its headquarters and leadership role in the New Partnership for Africa\u27s Development (NEPAD) and the African region\u27s headquarters of United Nation Millennium Goals (MDGs), an initiative that is geared to reduce poverty, improve health care and education, and ensure productivity in poor countries around the world, it remains to be seen how the Internet could be utilized for development and add into the equation in economic improvement of lives in the rural villages. The MDGs goals set 2015 as deadline. The basic purpose of this study is to explore demographic characteristics of the Internet users--individuals in a rural population such as Ihiala in South eastern Nigeria that could be the end-users of innovation technology. The study also examined the innovation attributes of the Internet that are likely to make the technology adoptable and facilitate economic development. And finally, it examined the different purposes for which they use the Internet that included financial and business activities. The study findings were analyzed using Rogers (1995), Davis (1994), Technology Adoption Model (TAM). A total of 270 respondents (out of 300 people sampled) completed the questionnaire, achieving a 90% response rate. The study found that there is no significant difference between the genders in their Internet use. Internet users are likely to be well educated, but both the rich and poor use the Internet. An analysis of the activities and the users\u27 impetus shows that Internet is used primarily for activities related to economic development, especially conducting business and financial transactions, although many began with just communicating by e-mails with friends and family
This study investigated social networking site (SNS) activities from a prosumption-time budget pe... more This study investigated social networking site (SNS) activities from a prosumption-time budget perspective, which is the combination of the prosumption and time budget perspectives. SNS activities were categorized into three groups: SNS consumption activities, SNS production activities, and total SNS activities. The associations between work time and the frequencies of these three kinds of SNS activities were examined. Data for the empirical analysis were collected through a mail and web survey with a sample of 253 respondents and a sample of 394 college students in the Midwest United State from September to November, 2012. Significant correlations between work time and SNS production frequency were found for the two samples. Significant correlation between work time and total SNS activity frequency was found for the student sample. These significant correlations suggest a new pattern that has not been revealed by previous studies: busier people are more active in SNSs.
Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the motivation of young consumers’ use of TikTo... more Abstract The purpose of this study was to explore the motivation of young consumers’ use of TikTok (Douyin) in China and how such motivations may relate to influencer videos’ persuasion power on purchases. Using a national online survey among 382 college students in China, the result showed that entertainment gratification was the most common motivation in using Douyin. But those users with socialization gratification motives had high persuasion knowledge and high parasocial relationships with the influencer, as well as higher purchase intentions for the recommended products. Implications on influencer marketing are discussed.
This paper investigates the factors underlying the active participation and quiet observation of ... more This paper investigates the factors underlying the active participation and quiet observation of subscribers of adforum, an electronic discussion group for advertising educators. Results of an electronic mail survey of the subscribers and a content analysis of the messages posted by the subscribers show that, even though the respondents have a quite positive evaluation of the group, many refrained from contributing messages. Advertising on the internet and ethical issues were the most frequently discussed topics during the study period.
PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines th... more PurposeTo provide human judgment input for computer algorithm development, this study examines the relative importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting the truthfulness ratings of two common types of online health information: news stories and institutional news releases.Design/methodology/approachThis study employed a multi-method approach using (1) a manual content analysis of 400 randomly selected online health news stories and news releases from HealthNewsReview.org and (2) an online experiment comparing truthfulness ratings between news stories and news releases.FindingsUsing content analysis, the authors found significant differences in the importance of source, content, and style cues in predicting truthfulness ratings of news stories and news releases: source and style cues predicted truthfulness ratings better than content cues. In the experiment, source credibility was the most important predictor of truthfulness ratings, controlling for individual differen...
Supplemental material, Supplemental_Material for Mapping Recent Development in Scholarship on Fak... more Supplemental material, Supplemental_Material for Mapping Recent Development in Scholarship on Fake News and Misinformation, 2008 to 2017: Disciplinary Contribution, Topics, and Impact by Louisa Ha, Loarre Andreu Perez and Rik Ray in American Behavioral Scientist
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, 2021
This study examines the relationship between selective and cross-cutting/non-partisan media expos... more This study examines the relationship between selective and cross-cutting/non-partisan media exposure, perceived journalism framing, and U.S. public’s perception of China and the United States during the U.S.–China trade dispute. A national survey of U.S. adult population indicated that more people perceived that the media escalated the conflict between China and the United States than promoted peace between the countries. Perceived peace journalism framing was positively related to perception of China, whereas perceived war journalism framing was positively related to perception of the United States. Partisan media use has higher influence on perception of the United States than perception of China.
Drawing on a national survey among American adults, this study focuses on the trade dispute betwe... more Drawing on a national survey among American adults, this study focuses on the trade dispute between the U.S. and China and explores the relationship between social media use and opinion polarization about China’s trade practices. The results reveal that the time spent on social media is indirectly associated with opinion polarization on China’s trade practices through news consumption on social media. Furthermore, the mediating effect of social media news consumption is found to be particularly stronger among those who frequently encounter like-minded information related to the U.S. government’s action during the trade dispute. Implications are discussed for the interaction between foreign policy and public opinion in the contemporary media environment.
There are mixed opinions about the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in general ... more There are mixed opinions about the role of Information Communication Technology (ICT) in general and the Internet in particular in promoting development. While Internet has been viewed as contributing to the ever-changing information dissemination across urban and rural spaces, others argue that the Internet does not always bring drastic social and economic advances as scholars and pundits have made us to believe. However, in rural areas such as China where websites have been set up to market goods, attract investments and enlarge business scale (Zhao, 2008), it is the view that Internet has impacted lives and rural development. In Nigeria, despite its headquarters and leadership role in the New Partnership for Africa\u27s Development (NEPAD) and the African region\u27s headquarters of United Nation Millennium Goals (MDGs), an initiative that is geared to reduce poverty, improve health care and education, and ensure productivity in poor countries around the world, it remains to be seen how the Internet could be utilized for development and add into the equation in economic improvement of lives in the rural villages. The MDGs goals set 2015 as deadline. The basic purpose of this study is to explore demographic characteristics of the Internet users--individuals in a rural population such as Ihiala in South eastern Nigeria that could be the end-users of innovation technology. The study also examined the innovation attributes of the Internet that are likely to make the technology adoptable and facilitate economic development. And finally, it examined the different purposes for which they use the Internet that included financial and business activities. The study findings were analyzed using Rogers (1995), Davis (1994), Technology Adoption Model (TAM). A total of 270 respondents (out of 300 people sampled) completed the questionnaire, achieving a 90% response rate. The study found that there is no significant difference between the genders in their Internet use. Internet users are likely to be well educated, but both the rich and poor use the Internet. An analysis of the activities and the users\u27 impetus shows that Internet is used primarily for activities related to economic development, especially conducting business and financial transactions, although many began with just communicating by e-mails with friends and family
This study investigated social networking site (SNS) activities from a prosumption-time budget pe... more This study investigated social networking site (SNS) activities from a prosumption-time budget perspective, which is the combination of the prosumption and time budget perspectives. SNS activities were categorized into three groups: SNS consumption activities, SNS production activities, and total SNS activities. The associations between work time and the frequencies of these three kinds of SNS activities were examined. Data for the empirical analysis were collected through a mail and web survey with a sample of 253 respondents and a sample of 394 college students in the Midwest United State from September to November, 2012. Significant correlations between work time and SNS production frequency were found for the two samples. Significant correlation between work time and total SNS activity frequency was found for the student sample. These significant correlations suggest a new pattern that has not been revealed by previous studies: busier people are more active in SNSs.
Although electronic word-of-mouth communication has attracted more and more attention, much resea... more Although electronic word-of-mouth communication has attracted more and more attention, much research has been conducted to investigate the traditional word-of-mouth (WOM) communication. This study compared WOM use of general population and college students with a focus on the fans on Facebook fan pages. The results indicated that fans used social networking sites (SNS) more frequently than non-fans. The difference between fans and non-fans in the general population is more discernible than college students. Additionally, from the WOM perspective, the researchers examined the moderating role of product type in people's word-of-mouth (WOM) preferences and found that people had different preferences for WOM for different products. Though traditional WOM is still the most important source when shopping online, the general population and college students had different preferences for other types of WOM when taking product type into consideration.
This article is a substantive review of online advertising research published since 1996 in all m... more This article is a substantive review of online advertising research published since 1996 in all major refereed advertising journals. The purpose of the review is three- fold: 1) to analyze the conceptual foundations, theoretical and practical contributions of online advertising research, 2) to examine the state-of-the-art in the practice of online advertising research, and 3) to propose a research agenda for future online advertising research.
International Journal of Technology and Human Interaction, 9, 20-40. Special Issue On: Mobility and Human Interaction., 2013
In this study, the authors examine the use of smart phones for self-broadcasting among college st... more In this study, the authors examine the use of smart phones for self-broadcasting among college students based on motivation and network externalities theories. The authors propose that smartphones have changed telephones from a point-to-point interpersonal medium to a broadcast medium for individuals to disseminate information to their networks through the use of social media. The authors hypothesized that the more friends and followers a student has on Facebook and Twitter respectively, the more likely the student will use friends and followers as self-broadcasting mediums from their smartphones. The hypothesis was supported based on survey data collected at a public university. The study also discusses the social implications of using smartphones as a broadcast and self-promotion medium.
Human Behavior, Psychology, and Social Interaction in the Digital Era/ Editors: Anabela Mesquita & Chia-Wen Tsai
This chapter examines the use of smartphones for self-broadcasting via social media among college... more This chapter examines the use of smartphones for self-broadcasting via social media among college students. Based on motivation and network externalities theories, our survey of a public university’s college students confirmed our hypotheses that network size, years of experience using social media and the time spent on social media positively predict their frequency of self-broadcasting on their smartphones. The results suggest that 85.2% of college students self-broadcast at least once a month by updating their status on SNS and students are likely to self-broadcast within their network. Most students set their profile privacy setting as private or semi-private. But privacy setting does not affect self-broadcast frequency.
This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their school
e-mail avoid... more This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their school e-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequently used medium for college students in general. However, communication and business students are more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors and they are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of two social media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and the frequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” based on factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upper-class students are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outlet positively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social media for college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students are discussed.
This study proposes a new hybrid method combining computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPI) wi... more This study proposes a new hybrid method combining computer-assisted personal interviews (CAPI) with interviewer-assisted self-administered Web surveys with data entry device provided (IASAD) and examines the effect of data collection mode and entry devices on survey response quality. We compare the response quality of CAPI versus IASAD modes; and between smartphones and laptop computers as data entry devices. Both main effects of mode and data entry device on data quality were found. The field experiment shows that respondents who entered the Web survey on laptops have significantly higher completion rates only on open-ended questions than smartphones, but no other significant differences in data quality between data entry device were found in other question formats. CAPI in general resulted in lower response quality than IASAD. The benefits and limitations of IASAD and the use of smartphones as data entry devices are discussed.
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Papers by Louisa Ha
Keywords: Facebook, Motivation Theory, Network Externalities Theory, Self-Broadcast, Self-Presentation, Self-Promotion, Smartphones, Twitter
e-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequently used medium for college students in general. However, communication and business students are more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors and they are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of two social media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and the frequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” based on factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upper-class students are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outlet positively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social media for college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students are discussed.