Daniel Riffe

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | UNC

Purpose Consumer engagement has become a critical component to many brands' relationship and promotional efforts. Empirical studies have documented the psychological elements that can drive consumers to engage with brands. However, there is a knowledge gap regarding how consumer engagement is influenced by the social environment consumers are embed...

This study compared 50 years of the New York Times’ international news (N = 20,765) with U.S. foreign aid allocations and country rankings in Freedom House's Freedom in the World report to understand how the amount of foreign aid relates to the amount and content of coverage of nations as well as whether/how political similarity impacts coverage an...

Since World War II, U.S. citizens have reported overwhelming agreement that freedom of expression is a basic right. But, like the law on free expression, public opinion shows that citizen rights to free expression are not absolute or unidimensional, but conditional. To better understand the extent of citizen rights to free expression according to t...

Importance: Rap artists are among the most recognizable celebrities in the US, serving as role models to an increasingly diverse audience of listeners. Through their lyrics, these artists have the potential to shape mental health discourse and reduce stigma. Objective: To investigate the prevalence and nature of mental health themes in popular rap...

Today’s media companies seem to be more intertwined than ever. But are they? Do these “interlocks” affect editors and the content journalists produce? This study uses a three-method design to examine the connections among newspaper organizations and corporations. The network analysis examined the interlocks among newspaper companies’ directors. The...

Social and physical isolation, gender roles, cultural values, and poverty associated with the Appalachian region of the United States may shape how domestic violence is identified, discussed and addressed. This analysis identifies framing devices, sourcing, and mobilizing information within domestic violence news coverage across Appalachia, and com...

This research article examined the perception of reporters and news managers at local television stations in the United States regarding “solo journalism.” Solo journalism is the work practice in which a single reporter is expected to gather information, write, shoot video, and edit their news stories on their own. This is contrasted with a traditi...

A quantitative survey of local television news directors in the United States ( N = 159) explored three main topics: the perception/attitudes of current local TV news directors, potential differences in those attitudes by market size, and whether news directors felt “in step” with their staff and/or upper management. The results indicated that the...

Investigative journalism’s value to democracy is straightforward: it provides useful information to citizens by exposing wrongdoing and holding powerful institutions accountable. But its financial value is questionable. There are indications that this often-expensive form of reporting can enhance audiences and thereby increase revenue, but very few...

Analyzing Media Messages, Fourth Edition provides a comprehensive guide to conducting content analysis research. It establishes a formal definition of quantitative content analysis; gives step-by-step instructions on designing a content analysis study; and explores in depth several recurring questions that arise in such areas as measurement, sampli...

This quantitative content analysis uses 36 years of New York Times international news to understand how conflict coverage is presented to audiences in terms of quantity and geographic focus, whether conflict is covered because of its linkage to US interests, and whether the Times relies on its own personnel for first-hand coverage. Additionally, a...

Analyzing 50 years’ of New York Times international news coverage (N = 20,765), this study extends research on the “shrinking international news hole,” levels of press freedom, agent (e.g., Times correspondent), and “borrowed” news—information gleaned from local media, including social media. Data show a recent, growing role for social media and an...

Self-efficacy theory suggests that one’s perceived ability to successfully find facts may motivate political information seeking. A telephone survey of voters in a presidential campaign attempted to further validate the concept of epistemic political efficacy (EPE), or belief one can discover the “truth” in politics, and applied it to modern inform...

This study aims to contribute to the understanding of business news coverage of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within a comparative international context by investigating two business newspapers, The Wall Street Journal from the United States and The Financial Times from the United Kingdom. Drawing on the news framing research and the implic...

This study explores the roles of corporations and a monitoring group in building the corporate social responsibility (CSR) agenda in the news media. Using agenda-building theory as a theoretical framework, we content analyzed 7672 press releases from 223 U.S. corporations and 1064 news articles covering those corporations from the New York Times an...

This study examines how the competing concerns of environmental effects and economic development were used to frame the news coverage of mountaintop coal mining in community and metro papers in Kentucky and West Virginia, regions heavily dependent on the coal-mining industry.

Building off previous literature on journalistic roles, this study showed that local television investigative reporters were more adversarial and placed greater value on audience appeal compared to other journalists. A factor analysis of survey responses (N = 165) revealed five functions describing investigative journalists’ perceived roles: advers...

This analysis of unnamed sources in newspaper coverage of the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, Libya, finds unnamed sources to be most common just after the attack and in its immediate aftermath. While unnamed sources were prevalent, they were less common than in studies of routine news coverage, suggesting journalists seeking transparency...

Mail survey (N = 112) of lead city government reporters at randomly selected television stations in the 210 local designated market areas replicates a 1997 study. The 2014 reporters had a more pessimistic view of station commitment to and valuing of city government reporting than in 1997 study. Among 2014 respondents, older reporters were more pess...

This study examines reliability reporting in content analysis articles (N = 672) in three flagship communication journals. Data from 1985 to 2014 suggest improvements in reporting across time and also identify areas for additional improvement. Data show increased reporting of chance-corrected reliability coefficients and reporting reliability for a...

This study compares the coverage of new federal regulations on New England fisheries in local newspapers in historic fishing towns and that in regional newspapers. Local newspapers were much more likely to present anti-regulatory viewpoints and name one person or entity as a villain, thereby dismissing or demeaning pro-regulation environmental acti...

This article discusses three issues concerning content analysis method and ends with a list of best practices in conducting and reporting content analysis projects. Issues addressed include the use of search and databases for sampling, the differences between content analysis and algorithmic text analysis, and which reliability coefficients should...

This content analysis sheds light on research topic, method, theory, and authorship in crisis communication research published in communication and business journals and assesses which field has been more “interdisciplinary” in approach. Crisis research in communication has focused heavily on the effects of crisis management, using a quantitative a...

Content analysis is a common research method employed in communication studies. An important part of content analysis is establishing the reliability of the coding protocol, and reporting must be detailed enough to allow for replication of methodological procedures. This study employed a content analysis of published content analysis articles (N=58...

Using statewide telephone survey data from North Carolinians (N=406), this digital divide study oversampled rural households to explore urban rural differences in Internet access, use, and information seeking pertaining to environmental risk. The data suggest that the urban rural access divide has closed, and that urban and rural residents are maki...

Skin cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States, accounting for more than 2 million diagnoses and more than 9,000 deaths annually. A regional online survey of students enrolled at institutions of higher education (N = 1,251) examined (a) associations between health media use and intentions to avoid unprotected sun exposure an...

This study found that between 1997 and 2009 the community weekly newspaper industry became more rural, as the percentage of weeklies in suburban areas declined. The proportion of weeklies that were group owned increased by about half.

This study, using survey data (N = 529), examined perceived immigration “threat,” subjective knowledge, support for punitive and assimilative immigration policies, and opinions about media coverage effects. Perceived threat was not related to a third-person effect; however, perceived threat of immigrants was related to support for punitive immigrat...

Rural, non-White survey respondents face the greatest objective environmental risks in North Carolina, evidence that environmental injustice persists in rural parts of the state. Residents' perceived risks, however, are not significantly associated with their objective risks or demographic characteristics, contrary to what the Risk Information Seek...

This study explores hostile media bias and third-person perceptions of the influence of media coverage of immigrants using data (N = 529) from North Carolina, where the Latino population grew almost 400% in two decades. As hypothesized, anti-immigrant sentiment was significantly related to perceptions of “hostile” (pro-immigrant) news coverage. How...

A statewide survey (N = 564) before Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial election examined issue knowledge, campaign interest, campaign news attention, debate exposure, and attention to political advertising and negative political advertising. Attention to campaign news on television and in the newspaper predicted interest in the campaign as well as knowledge...

Telephone survey data (N=511) are used to explore relationships among exposure, attention, and usefulness of online, newspaper, and televisionenvironmental news; subjective knowledge; personal efficacy; and environmental risk. Correlations show exposure to online environmental news wasrelated to personal efficacy while online attention to such news...

This study examines the relationship between community-level characteristics and the presence of public affairs place blogs in 232 U.S. cities. Two models to predict the presence of these sites are tested: a structural pluralism model, which suggests that the presence of one of these sites reflects more pluralistic voices, and a community stress mo...

A Study of public affairs blogs, alternative weeklies and mainstream news media in 216 cities found negative relationship among the presence of alternative weeklies and the presence of mainstream weeklies and public affairs blogs, suggesting their sustainability.

Using statewide telephone survey data (N=406), this “digital divide” study oversampled rural households to explore urban-rural differences in Internet access, time online, and information-seeking about environmental risk. Although the access divide has closed, parallel regression analyses revealed urban-rural differences in demographic predictors o...

Respondents in a southern state telephone survey agreed that media coverage of public leaders' private lives is an important news media responsibility, with agreement greater for legacy media than for online media, and differing depending on hypothetical scenario. The data also suggest increasing tolerance for such coverage and growing belief in re...

This mail survey of black elected officials in state legislatures looked at black elected officials' views on white Press coverage of the black community, evaluation of the black elected officials' own relationships with the white Press, and ways that these black elected officials think that the white Press can improve coverage of news about blacks...

A statewide survey (N = 564) before Ohio's 2006 gubernatorial election examined political interest, campaign news and advertising attention, and perceived effects of negative political ads. Interest was related to political and negative political advertising attention, which were in turn related to campaign news attention. Candidate preference pred...

A content analysis of 86 citizen blog sites, 53 citizen news sites and 63 daily newspaper sites indicated that citizen journalism sites, including both news and blog sites, differed significantly from newspaper sites.

A survey compares evaluations of local newspaper and television environmental coverage and examines how the audience's attention to environmental news and their concerns about risks relate to how well they think both media cover the issue.

The study of demand for media products requires an understanding of audience members' preferences, which are shaped by their taste for content. Despite the central role of content in understanding some aspects of media economics, media economics scholars sometimes apply content analysis in ways that are inconsistent with the generally accepted prac...

National survey data compares newspapers with other media as sources of environmental information and assesses how well they cover causes, victims, responsibility, solutions and costs of environmental problems.

Based on a statewide telephone survey before the 2004 presidential election, this study probes Ohioans' attention to and perception of campaign advertising and the perceived effects of those negative political ads. Citizens in this “battleground” state had a very high level of awareness of campaign advertising, characterizing it as more negative th...

Both television and newspapers got high marks for environmental coverage in a statewide survey. However, participants rated newspapers higher for their coverage of more complex issues, such as costs and solutions to environmental problems.

Television is preferred for international and national news while newspapers are preferred for state and local news. Other news media, including the Internet, remain bit players.

A survey found a high percentage of Ohio residents attended to environmental news at all geographic levels, but the percentages declined as the focus of environmental news got closer to home.

Residents of environmentally distressed counties in Appalachia showed the dominance of television news as a source of health-related and medical research news. Hazards perceived as serious were correlated with the use of newspapers, television and radio.

In the polluted “chemical corridor” of the Ohio River valley, respondents who most frequently read and view media reports about the environment are more likely to rate their own environmental risks as higher.

The survey indicates that most people agree with journalists that publishing controversial opinions in letters to the editor is ethically justified.

Analyzing Media Messages is a primer for learning the technique of systematic, quantitative analysis of communication content. Rich with examples of recent and classic applications, it provides solutions to problems encountered in conducting content analysis, and it is written so that students can readily understand and apply the techniques.