Books by Serena Miller (Carpenter)
A future for the news: What’s wrong with mainstream news media in America and how to fix it, 2024
Rooted in the problem solving, solutions journalism, and Extended Parallel Processing Model liter... more Rooted in the problem solving, solutions journalism, and Extended Parallel Processing Model literature, we propose the Problem Solving Solutions Journalism Model. The news content model seeks to empower people to respond to problems and go beyond reacting to solutions by understanding efficacy’s role. Model concepts include: (1) problem, (2) goal, (3) how-to, (4) solution evaluation, and (5) problem solving efficacious information. A content analysis of solutions news articles (n=555) was used to evaluate performance.
SAGE Handbook of Survey Development and Application, 2023
Conceptual definitions connect theory to the natural world. Yet researchers continually fail to d... more Conceptual definitions connect theory to the natural world. Yet researchers continually fail to define concepts despite their usefulness in scale development. A lack of conceptual definitions lead to problems such as concept and measurement proliferation; misspecification; and scattered measurement practices. This essay lays out guidance on how to engage the literature to identify or create a scientifically useful, parsimonious, and precise conceptual definition. The Framework for Evaluating and Creating Formal Conceptual Definitions suggests that scale developers should: (1) collect and record relevant conceptual interpretations of construct; (2) thematically map conceptual definitions; (3) map neighboring concepts to determine boundaries; (4) evaluate state of conceptual definitions; (5) present existing, modified, or new formal conceptual definition; (6) content validate the conceptual definition; and (7) refine and present the formal conceptual definition.
Oxford research encyclopedia of communication, 2019
The emergence of citizen journalism has prompted the journalism field and scholars to readdress w... more The emergence of citizen journalism has prompted the journalism field and scholars to readdress what constitutes journalism and who is a journalist. Citizen journalists have disrupted news-media ecosystems by challenging the veracity and representativeness of information flowing from mainstream news-media newsrooms. However, the controversy related to the desired level of citizen involvement in the news process is a historical debate that began before the citizen-journalism phenomenon. As early as the 1920s, journalist and political commentator Walter Lippman and American philosopher John Dewey debated the role of journalism in democracy, including the extent that the public should participate in the news-gathering and production processes. This questioning of citizen involvement in news reemerged as an issue with the citizen journalism phenomenon around the late 1990s. People with no news-media organizational ties have taken advantage of the convenience and low cost of social computing technologies by publishing their own stories and content. These people are referred to as citizen journalists. Scholars have assessed the quality and credibility of citizen-journalism content, finding that citizen journalists have performed well on several standards of traditional news-content quality. Levels of quality differ dependent upon citizen journalists’ goals and motivations, such as serving the public interest, increasing self-status, or expressing their creative selves. As it is an emerging area of study, unarticulated theoretical boundaries of citizen journalism exist. Citizen-journalism publications emphasize community over conflict, advocacy over objectivity, and interpretation over fact-based reporting. In general, citizen journalists have historically acted when existing news-media journalists were not fully meeting their community’s informational needs. Scholars, however, vary in how they label citizen journalists and how they conceptually and empirically define citizen journalism. For example, researchers have shifted their definitional focus on citizen journalists from one of active agents of democratic change to people who create a piece of news content. The mapping of the citizen-journalism literature revealed four types of citizen journalists based on their levels of editorial control and contribution type: (1) participatory, (2) para, (3) news-media watchdog, and (4) community. Taken together, these concepts describe the breadth of citizen-journalist types. For those of us interested in journalism studies, a more targeted approach in the field of citizen journalism can help us build community around scholarship, understand citizen journalists’ contributions to society and practice, and create a more a stable foundation of knowledge concerning people who create and comment on news content.
Book Chapter: The media helps shape individual attitudes and beliefs. Communication research has ... more Book Chapter: The media helps shape individual attitudes and beliefs. Communication research has found the morality of an issue can affect human behavior in experimental and survey settings. Comment forums present an opportunity for researchers to examine behavior in naturally occurring settings. Through a quantitative content analysis of individual comments (n=2,103), this research examines human behavior in comment forums to determine whether there are significant differences between reactions to morally laden and nonmoral articles in adjacent forums on 15 U.S. newspaper websites. The results show that morally laden articles featured a greater proportion of negative emotional responses from participants than nonmoral ones.
I have a chapter in this book. This book provides a much-needed analytical account of the implica... more I have a chapter in this book. This book provides a much-needed analytical account of the implications of interactive participation in the construction of media content. Although web journalism is a fast-changing technology this book will have sustained appeal to an international readership by seeking to critically assess Internet news production. With the rise of blogging and citizen journalism, it is a commonplace to observe that interactive participatory media are transforming the relationship between the traditional professional media and their audience. A current, popular, assumption is that the traditional flow of information from media to citizen is being reformed into a democratic dialogue between members of a community.The editors and contributors analyse and debate this assumption through international case studies that include the United Kingdom and United States. While the text has been written and designed for undergraduate and postgraduate use, the book will be of use and of interest to all those engaged in the debate over Web reporting and citizen journalism.
I have a chapter in this book. Public Journalism 2.0 examines the ways that civic or public journ... more I have a chapter in this book. Public Journalism 2.0 examines the ways that civic or public journalism is evolving, especially as audience-created content—sometimes referred to as citizen journalism or participatory journalism—becomes increasingly prominent in contemporary media. As the contributors to this essay collection demonstrate, blogging and other participatory journalism practices enabled by digital technology are not always in line with the original vision of public journalism, which strives to report news in such a way as to promote civic engagement by its audience. Public Journalism 2.0 seeks to reinvent public journalism for the 21st century and to offer visions of how digital technology can be enlisted to promote civic involvement in the news.
Papers by Serena Miller (Carpenter)
Journal of Communication in Healthcare, 2024
Background: U.S. journalists embedded in rural and agricultural communities could adversely affec... more Background: U.S. journalists embedded in rural and agricultural communities could adversely affect the health of residents if they avoid alerting and engaging their readers – farmers, ranchers, and community members – on environmental and health issues. We expected reporters would maintain community status quo and inaction by framing local water pollution and quality issues neutrally deemphasizing threats and solutions to maintain their own credibility as unbiased informational sources.
Method: In a content analysis of local water quality newspaper articles from five farming and cattle ranching states in the west central U.S. Midwest, we employed seven variables to investigate whether journalists practiced neutral, detached forms of journalism (i.e. dissemination versus interpretative role enactment, government-frame) as well as whether they deemphasized water pollution as a concerning issue (i.e. problem, threat), water pollution solutions, and readers’ efficaciousness.
Results: The results showed these journalists relied heavily on government-driven narratives presenting water quality issues from an impartial, straight reporting lens in which they primarily followed the journalistic dissemination role enactment, while neglecting to provide readers with interpretative, threat, efficacy, or solution’s information.
Conclusions: The study seeks to help communicators understand the information diet people living in this part of the country likely receive on environmental and health risks in the context of water pollution. Communicators seeking to reach and affect audiences in this region should understand local information practices to navigate how to craft culturally specific public health messages.
Newspaper Research Journal, 2024
The extended parallel process model summarizes the positive impact of threat and efficacy message... more The extended parallel process model summarizes the positive impact of threat and efficacy messages on behavioral intentions. In news contexts, research to date shows national journalists emphasize threat information and neglect efficacious information. Findings show U.S. university student journalists emphasized efficacy rather than threats countering past content analysis research. We also found environmental and sustainability communities of practice did not predict threat and efficacy information, but topics did.
Journalism Practice , 2023
Communities of practice (CoP) are distinct community groups that share a common interest in which... more Communities of practice (CoP) are distinct community groups that share a common interest in which they interact with one another to address problems and reach goals. In the present study, we investigated one niche community—sustainability and environmental communities of practice—to determine whether stronger communities of practices differed from weaker ones. We developed a summative index rating each sampled university student news publication with a single score ranging from 0–3 to represent community of practice strength: (a) universities with a sustainability ranking, (b) student publications with an environmental specialization, (c) universities with an environmental journalism specialization, and (d) no CoP to determine whether university students situated in stronger communities practiced journalism differently. Data from a content analysis of sustainability and environmental news articles showed the strongest sustainability community of practice was related to more topic diversity,but source affiliation diversity levels appear to continue to remain mostly constant across contexts and time. Implications concerning environmental journalism training and university outreach are discussed.
Ewha Journal of Social Sciences, 2013
A national online survey of U.S.-based citizen journalists is conducted to assess their journalis... more A national online survey of U.S.-based citizen journalists is conducted to assess their journalistic role conceptions along with their sourcing practices. Findings reveal citizen journalists align their views moderately with five journalistic role conceptions identified in the literature — disseminator, interpreter, adversary and populist mobilizer — along with the civic function. Citizen journalists were found to most frequently rely on mainstream and online media reports. However, regression analyses reveal that mainstream and online media sources were negative predictors of the disseminator and civic roles while interpersonal connections and experiences emerged as positive predictors of these roles. Official sources were also found to function as a negative predictor of the adversary role. The importance of sourcing routines and patterns of citizen journalists are discussed in the context of developing citizen journalistic professionalism.
Journalism & Communication Monographs, 2023
Research into journalism and mass communication (JMC) theory use and creation suggests that schol... more Research into journalism and mass communication (JMC) theory use and creation suggests that scholars fall short of standards required for the scientific method to perform properly. Sociologist Gerald Hage said this reflects inconsistency among scholars in the use of language and a lack of tools used to create social science theory. To address these conditions, this essay draws on three books to provide a glossary of terms about social science theory and to develop a format for presenting such theory. The aim is to improve consistency and precision in the creation of JMC social science theory.
REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION, 2023
Faculty members interested in creating creative scholarship face advancement obstacles due to few... more Faculty members interested in creating creative scholarship face advancement obstacles due to few known tenure and promotion standards. This study involved qualitative semistructured interviews with U.S. communication and media creative faculty members producing scholarship spanning multiple mediums. Interviewed scholars primarily expressed their scholarship’s contributions involved local community engagement. Yet creative scholars perceived departmental leadership preferred to rely on
artistic and professional standards to evaluate the quality of their work rather than engaged criteria. Participants felt such criteria too narrowly constrained them and delegitimized the value of their work. The results provide evidence that creative scholars struggle when communicating their work’s value and documenting their scholarship achievements. Guidance is provided through the formalization of a Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework conceptually made up of four evaluation concepts rooted in the engaged and creative scholarship literature: (1) collaboration, (2) outreach, (3) peer review, and (4) innovation.
The Journal of Media Education, 2023
Critical, creative, scientific, and engaged scholars are part of a large academic social system, ... more Critical, creative, scientific, and engaged scholars are part of a large academic social system, but each social group varies in terms of their preferences, rituals, languages, and norms in relation to their interpretations of the meaning of scholarship. Members of each group likely abide by varying social consensuses concerning the perceived functions of scholarship (e.g., predicting, explaining, and controlling phenomena; solving real-world problems; creating awareness of community issues; investigating the roots of social problems; theorizing the impact of powerful institutions on marginalized individuals). Creative scholars may pivot away from creative scholarship if tenure and promotion definitions and guidelines are unclear regarding what is and what is not creative scholarship. Ambiguity creates challenges when guiding faculty members who produce creative scholarship because traditional researchers serving on tenure and promotion committees may have different under
Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 2022
The tenure and promotion system influences whether, how, and the extent faculty members produce c... more The tenure and promotion system influences whether, how, and the extent faculty members produce creative scholarship. A thematic analysis of 69 media and communication departments' documents was carried out to systematically assess creative scholarship standards. The results showed most documents formally recognized creative scholarship and equated it to traditional research. Results showed less concreteness in comparison with traditional research standards. Artistic and professional peer review criteria such as securing awards, exhibitions, and festivals were the primary evaluative approaches. One implication is that leadership and senior faculty members need to rethink how to evaluate impact because scholars often seek to engage local nonacademics.
Review of Communication Research, 2022
The participant observation method involves numerous methodological competencies and procedures, ... more The participant observation method involves numerous methodological competencies and procedures, yet no systematic research has been found to date that evaluates the qualitative practice. The method has played a foundational role in the field of journalism and is growing in use among researchers. Despite its contributions to knowledge about organizations, movements, and cultures, the procedures that encompass the method may be unfamiliar or unclear for some researchers according to the literature. The study analyzed journalism researchers' reporting of methodological information in studies involving news contexts and assessed scholars' adherence to methodological reporting best practices in 150 journal articles. The results showed participant observation researchers employed data trustworthiness techniques by primarily using qualitative formal interviews and they also provided site selection logic. The results, however, also showed evidence of methodological conceptual ambiguity when referring to participant observation method techniques and low reporting of several specific recommended techniques associated with participation observation. The narrative reflects our desire to help other researchers learn more about the method, while also encouraging methodological transparency to improve the collective understanding of the method. We put forth eight participant observation reporting recommendations rooted in anthropology and sociology to consider when reporting methodological practices. The hope is this introduction and the proposed measures will initiate discussions and support community around the practice of participant observation.
https://www.rcommunicationr.org/index.php/rcr/article/view/133
Journalism Practice , 2023
The decision to use a particular social media application for news is affected by many factors, b... more The decision to use a particular social media application for news is affected by many factors, but less is understood is how a platform’s technological features promote or impede people’s social media news use. A structural equation model derived from the Unified Theory Acceptance and Use of Technology and Task-Technology Fit models were applied to investigate what social and technological perceptional factors explain people’s news use behaviors within the context of WeChat. Results showed an application’s technological features (i.e., technology characteristics and task-technology fit) played a significant role in predicting multiple social media news use behaviors. We put forth a theoretical model that predicts social media news use based on the results.
Journalism & Mass Communication Educator, 2021
University reward systems (i.e., tenure and promotion standards) can shape educators’ behaviors a... more University reward systems (i.e., tenure and promotion standards) can shape educators’ behaviors and dedication to teaching. This study contributes to knowledge by conceptually mapping teaching evaluation standards through a thematic analysis of U.S. tenure and promotion documents from media- and communication-centric departments. The results revealed that evaluation criteria coalesced around three areas: (a) teaching performance, (b) teaching service, and (c) scholarship of teaching and learning. Performance was the most formalized teaching evaluation approach, while scholarship of teaching, a distinct area, was much less present. Conceptual and empirical clarification associated with the scholarship of teaching and learning is presented.
Electronic News, 2020
Teachers shape how aspiring journalists collect and evaluate information. The primary method jour... more Teachers shape how aspiring journalists collect and evaluate information. The primary method journalists employ to gather this information is through the interviewing method. However, research has yet to be conducted on how this important competency is taught in university settings. This study sought to identify the instructional approaches used by print and broadcast journalism educators through qualitative interviews. The results revealed that a variety of exercises and pedago-gical approaches (i.e., observation, simulation, direct experience, and reinforcement) are employed by educators to teach students the complexities of the interviewing process. We also highlighted classroom exercises, identified challenges, and shared teaching strategies concerning the teaching of both broadcast and print journalistic interviewing.
Scale development involves numerous theoretical, methodological, and statistical competencies. De... more Scale development involves numerous theoretical, methodological, and statistical competencies. Despite the central role that scales play in our predictions, scholars often apply measurement building procedures that are inconsistent with best practices. The defaults in statistical programs, inadequate training, and numerous evaluation points can lead to improper practices. Based on a quantitative content analysis of communication journal articles, scholars have improved very little in the communication of their scale development decisions and practices. To address these reoccurring issues, this article breaks down and recommends 10 steps to follow in the scale development process for researchers unfamiliar with the process. Furthermore, the present research makes a unique contribution by overviewing procedures scholars should employ to develop their dimensions and corresponding items. The overarching objective is to encourage the adoption of scale development best practices that yield stronger concepts, and in the long run, a more stable foundation of knowledge.
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Books by Serena Miller (Carpenter)
Papers by Serena Miller (Carpenter)
Method: In a content analysis of local water quality newspaper articles from five farming and cattle ranching states in the west central U.S. Midwest, we employed seven variables to investigate whether journalists practiced neutral, detached forms of journalism (i.e. dissemination versus interpretative role enactment, government-frame) as well as whether they deemphasized water pollution as a concerning issue (i.e. problem, threat), water pollution solutions, and readers’ efficaciousness.
Results: The results showed these journalists relied heavily on government-driven narratives presenting water quality issues from an impartial, straight reporting lens in which they primarily followed the journalistic dissemination role enactment, while neglecting to provide readers with interpretative, threat, efficacy, or solution’s information.
Conclusions: The study seeks to help communicators understand the information diet people living in this part of the country likely receive on environmental and health risks in the context of water pollution. Communicators seeking to reach and affect audiences in this region should understand local information practices to navigate how to craft culturally specific public health messages.
artistic and professional standards to evaluate the quality of their work rather than engaged criteria. Participants felt such criteria too narrowly constrained them and delegitimized the value of their work. The results provide evidence that creative scholars struggle when communicating their work’s value and documenting their scholarship achievements. Guidance is provided through the formalization of a Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework conceptually made up of four evaluation concepts rooted in the engaged and creative scholarship literature: (1) collaboration, (2) outreach, (3) peer review, and (4) innovation.
https://www.rcommunicationr.org/index.php/rcr/article/view/133
Method: In a content analysis of local water quality newspaper articles from five farming and cattle ranching states in the west central U.S. Midwest, we employed seven variables to investigate whether journalists practiced neutral, detached forms of journalism (i.e. dissemination versus interpretative role enactment, government-frame) as well as whether they deemphasized water pollution as a concerning issue (i.e. problem, threat), water pollution solutions, and readers’ efficaciousness.
Results: The results showed these journalists relied heavily on government-driven narratives presenting water quality issues from an impartial, straight reporting lens in which they primarily followed the journalistic dissemination role enactment, while neglecting to provide readers with interpretative, threat, efficacy, or solution’s information.
Conclusions: The study seeks to help communicators understand the information diet people living in this part of the country likely receive on environmental and health risks in the context of water pollution. Communicators seeking to reach and affect audiences in this region should understand local information practices to navigate how to craft culturally specific public health messages.
artistic and professional standards to evaluate the quality of their work rather than engaged criteria. Participants felt such criteria too narrowly constrained them and delegitimized the value of their work. The results provide evidence that creative scholars struggle when communicating their work’s value and documenting their scholarship achievements. Guidance is provided through the formalization of a Creative Scholarship Pathways Framework conceptually made up of four evaluation concepts rooted in the engaged and creative scholarship literature: (1) collaboration, (2) outreach, (3) peer review, and (4) innovation.
https://www.rcommunicationr.org/index.php/rcr/article/view/133
for news stories. Today, it is considered the dominant approach in news-gathering among journalists. We know very little, however, about the theoretical breadth of interviewing and the associated competencies that journalists should possess to be classified as an expert interviewer. Consequently, the first appropriate step toward specification of this particular news-gathering practice is qualitative research. In the present study, we explored the breadth of journalistic interviewing competencies through 20 semi-structured interviews with journalists and journalism educators. The present study revealed 10 possible journalistic interviewing competencies: listening, interaction management, research, empathy, articulation, self-presentation, verification,
news judgment, observation, and open-mindedness, based on editor and educator responses. The results demonstrate the complexity of interviewing in journalistic settings and suggest a need for greater empirical and educational focus on the art of interviewing.