
Gregory PerreaultAppalachian State University | ASU · Department of Communication
Gregory Perreault
Doctor of Philosophy
About
74
Publications
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Introduction
Gregory P. Perreault (Ph.D., University of Missouri) is an associate professor of multimedia journalism at Appalachian State University. He is a media sociologist whose research is motivated by a concern for societal justice and a value for scholarly collaboration; his work primarily examines phenomena associated with journalism and gaming. His recent work examines news coverage of hate, lifestyle journalism, and gamification.
Skills and Expertise
Additional affiliations
January 2021 - July 2021
August 2011 - May 2015
Education
August 2011 - May 2015
August 2008 - May 2010
Publications
Publications (74)
Through the lens of theories of field and normalization process, this research seeks to understand technology's current role in how self-identifying digital journalists define the field. The definitions of digital journalism/journalists and what constitutes digital journalism practices are essential-they shape a range of crucial activities includin...
Journalists who cover rural areas in the United States say they are afraid to report on hate groups, and this fear is exacerbated by close community ties and limited resources among rural journalists. We examine the concept of “hate speech” as a boundary object, analyzing in-depth interviews with U.S. journalists reporting in rural communities (n =...
While Facebook and Twitter have received significant scholarly attention for their role in shaping the journalistic field, Instagram has received sparse attention in comparison. The present study examines how lifestyle journalists (n=63) from Austria and the United States perceive Instagram influencers operating in relation to the journalistic fiel...
Through discourse analysis, this article seeks to compare the cable news coverage of the Columbine High School shooting and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting (n=81) in the first two days of coverage using field theory, with CNN broadcast transcripts as the unit of analysis. The research showed that the shooter was the dominant shapi...
Situating gaming as a cultural practice aimed at constructing issues of power through cultural discussions necessitates a framework of discourse of gaming to explain how meanings around gaming practice develop. Built on the premise that gaming offers multimodal opportunities for interaction, we theorize the discourse of gaming framework to connect...
Long trivialized as the "toy department," sports journalism nevertheless represents an enduring, and vital subfield within journalism. As with many niches of journalism, sports journalism has needed to adjust to changes resulting from the technology of the field. In particular, digital sports journalism faces pressure from adjacent fields, represen...
Gatekeeping as a concept refers to the process by which information can be included or excluded by a mediator prior to reaching an audience. It has been conceptualized both as a normative journalistic role and as a theory. The concept was initially developed by David Manning White in 1950 through a published article “The ‘Gate Keeper’: A Case Study...
Religion journalism is perhaps one of the most challenging subfields within journalism—it requires specialist knowledge to discern its specificities and the subject matter is so sensitive that the slightest mistake in wording can lead to angry outcries from the public. Topics such as religion are incredibly nuanced, and the ability to communicate r...
Through a lens of boundary work and role conception, this study seeks to understand how political journalists discursively construct the role of the newspaper editorial endorsement. Researchers conducted long-form interviews with political journalists in the United States (n = 64) to understand how journalists conducted boundary work relative to en...
The present study analyzes the role of religion reporting with the journalistic field. Personnel cuts within newsrooms and the development of “religion reporters” operating from religious institutions necessitate a re-exploration of the changing field. At stake is the coverage of religion, a topic particularly pertinent to residents in the United S...
The present study analyzes the role of religion reporting with the journalistic field. Personnel cuts within newsrooms and the development of “religion reporters” operating from religious institutions necessitate a re-exploration of the changing field. At stake is the coverage of religion, a topic particularly pertinent to residents in the United S...
This study examined journalists’ use of technology, their gender identity, and how they rate themselves as adopters of innovations. Through the lens of diffusion of innovations, this study conducted telephone interviews with 68 U.S.-based digital journalists and applied Creswell and Clark’s (2007) explanatory mixed method research design in order t...
In 2016 and 2017, several newsrooms presented guidelines for using the term "alt-right" in the wake of events such as the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (USA) and the US presidential campaign of Donald Trump. This study analyzed metajournalistic discourse regarding the use of the term "alt-right" including internal newsroom poli...
This study explores motivators for mobile app purchase among "Gen Z" consumers. Adjectives that describe the mobile purchase experience were collected from focus group respondents. Factor analysis of the adjectives produced clusters named "Affective," "Functional" and "Anxiety." "Anxiety" was the most powerful factor. However, when tested in linear...
Utilizing the theory for disruptive innovation, this study endeavors to better understand how working self-identified digital journalists conceptualize innovation and perceive the impact of technological innovation on practice. Through in-depth interviews with 25 digital journalists, this study finds that journalists often perceive innovation as ma...
This study, based on in-depth interviews with U.S.-based journalists (n = 18), explores the increasingly fraught circumstances of reporting on hate groups. We examine how journalists think about the First Amendment vis-à-vis their coverage of such groups. Through the lens of media ecology and First Amendment principles and theories, we argue ultima...
The present study seeks to understand the 'loot box' gamer-gamers who play games in which real money is spent in order to gamble for the chance at digital game content. Prior research has found loot box gaming associated with problematic gaming behaviors and gambling. This study seeks to understand the players themselves through a case study of pla...
The COVID-19 Pandemic created a two-fold challenge for journalists: first, the task of gathering and distributing information vital to the responses of the public, and second, the challenge of mitigating the complexities of the journalism field. The purpose of this study is to connect the theoretical frameworks of metajournalistic discourse and fie...
Video games have long held a spotty history in their narratives regarding women. Most research has examined large budget games and identified issues of simplification, oversexualization, and a general lack of agency among female characters. The present study explores the gaming niche of “indie”—or independent game developer—video games in their rep...
The COVID-19 Pandemic created a twofold challenge for journalists: first, the task of gathering and distributing information vital to the responses of the public and second, the challenge of mitigating the complexities of the journalism field. The purpose of this study is to connect the theoretical frameworks of metajournalistic discourse and field...
Through the medium of memes, narratives about the individual athlete can sometimes spiral out of the athletes reach and become at best, an avenue for critique and, at worst, a way of amplifying hate speech. The team’s visible, inarguable athletic success created a social media “echo” in which the performative presentation of gender necessitated a d...
The news coverage of eSports presents an attractive avenue to a new audience for business, sports and gaming journalists. The audience interest is understandable given the financial vibrancy of the hobby. This chapter reflects an analysis of news articles (n=406) published in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Forbes and Business Insider...
Interview data from the Final Fantasy: Brave Exvius Fan Festa
A mixed-method interview exploring how mobile journalists practice and conceptualize mobile journalism.
In journalism, issues of religion are increasingly reported by nonspecialists or specialists in other fields. This poses obvious challenges. This study explores the narrative frames employed by gaming journalists in reporting about religion in video games. This was done through semi-structured interviews with gaming journalists (n = 17) and an expl...
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, journalists have the challenging task of gathering and distributing accurate information. Journalists exist as a part of an ecology in which their work influences and is influenced by the environment that surrounds it. Using the framework of disaster communication ecology, this study explores the discursive co...
Mobile games featuring the loot-box design are associated with gambling because of the uncertainty in the value of the purchase and the propensity for gamers to keep spending. Role-playing games (RPGs) have been associated with gaming disorders because of the addictiveness and immersion experienced by gamers. Advertisers have capitalized on this ga...
Through a textual analysis of online comments in response to live broadcast from the San Bernardino shooters’ apartment, we explore the rhetorical strategies the audience used to legitimate its participation in boundary work. Our study demonstrates that audience members can operate as resourceful boundary workers with a sophisticated, multifaceted...
In the United States, journalists covering white nationalist groups find themselves in an impossible situation: how do you cover the newsworthy rallies—and the concerns raised by the local community—without providing a platform for hate speech? The present study conducts in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 18 journalists who have covered whit...
When the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High shooting happened in February 2018 in Parkland, Florida, US President Donald Trump stated, "I'm hearing more and more people say the level of violence on video games is really shaping young people's thoughts." President Trump also held a video game summit shortly after to call out the practices of video game c...
In The Lord’s Radio, Mark Ward seeks to tell the story of the rise of evangelical popular culture from the context of radio. Ward makes the case that during the golden age of radio, gospel radio music helped create an evangelical interpretive community comprising an audience bound together by the shared interpretation of radio. He supports this in...
This chapter features a game from the Shin Megami Tensei series called Persona 5. This chapter examines how the case of role playing video game Persona 5 depicts agenda setting through the use of an in-game audience-oriented polling systems and comment system in order to understand to a greater degree the ways in which games contribute to our under...
This study explores the discursive, normative construction of gamification within journalism. Rooted in a theory of discursive institutionalism and by analyzing a significant corpus of metajournalistic discourse from 2006 to 2019, the study demonstrates how journalists have negotiated gamification’s place within journalism’s boundaries. The discour...
Mobile games are saturating the market and the daily lives of those who engage in them. A recent study conducted at the Final Fantasy Brave Exvius Fan Festa examined the interactions of mobile game players with the game and its marketing strategies on social media. Final Fantasy Brave Exvius is a mobile role-playing game, which uses characters from...
In recent years, high profile Biblically-oriented movies have sought to find an audience in America. This approach is reasonable in that 70.6 percent of Americans identify with some denomination of Christianity. Yet, how Christianity motivates those Americans, and more specifically, whether it motivates them to watch a Biblical epic movie remains a...
In May 2015, a crisis erupted for the Duggar family from the TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting” after InTouch Magazine published an article detailing how Josh Duggar—the eldest son in the well-known evangelical family—molested several underage girls in 2006. In August, a data leak of the extra-marital affair website Ashley Madison revealed tha...
Political journalism is a pertinent part of newsrooms across the world. This study aimed to analyze the shifting role conceptions of U.S. political journalists, primarily in reference to the White House Correspondents’ Dinner. Researchers conducted 32 long-form phone interviews with political journalists from news outlets ranging from the Los Angel...
This paper examines how religious news organizations in the UK covered the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. Using narrative framing theory, this paper examines all coverage from 2015 and 2016 published in BBC Religion (a part of BBC News), The Muslim News, and Christian Today to examine shared and disparate narratives regarding Syrian refugees migr...
Gaming journalism, which finds its origins in public relations-oriented gaming magazines, discursively attached itself to traditional journalism in the wake of the 2014 GamerGate controversy. Yet it had remained unclear where gaming journalism fits within the ecology of journalism. This study examines metajournalistic discourse regarding gaming jou...
This research explores the memes from the 2015 Deflategate controversy shared via Twitter. Through the lens of Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT), and its associated method of Fantasy Theme Analysis, these memes illustrate four distinct fantasies that led to their creation: a fantasy related to mistrust of corporate powers, a fantasy relishing in th...
Moral panics refer to the societal response to the identification of a deviant group or behavior. Moral panic research has identified panics stemming from daycare abuse, drug use, youth crime, online pornography, and school shootings. When these moral panics occur, journalism acts as a hegemonic enforcer of normalcy, and through the various process...
Recent reports on university student wellness expose a disturbing trend. Students indicate heightened depression and anxiety, with a decrease in healthy lifestyle behaviors. The most significant inhibitors to wellness were related to university activities, in conjunction with low levels of motivation. Students suffer through a confluence of stresso...
Mobile journalism is one of the fastest areas of growth in the modern journalism industry. Yet mobile journalists find themselves in a place of tension, between print, broadcast, and digital journalism and between traditional journalism and lifestyle journalism. Using the lens of field theory, the present study conducted an online survey of mobile...
This chapter explores the complicated relationship evangelicals and conservative protestants have with digital media. Using the case study of video game culture, this chapter identifies counter public discourse used by evangelicals to determine the boundaries of appropriate and inappropriate media consumption. In some instances, evangelicals adopt...
Gaming culture has in the past proven itself adverse, if not openly hostile to the presentation and inclusion of women in gaming (Massanari, 2015). That said, a few moments in gaming have illustrated rare subversive moments where women have taken the center stage (Perreault, Perreault et al., 2016). As a business, Nintendo has always skated a fine...
The analysis of journalism and religion emerges from two different research paradigms: a post-positivist and a culturalist. The primary debate in the field stems from the two paradigmatic orientations. Post-postivist journalism and religion research argues that religious topics are already complex and so by simplifying, researchers can help explain...
GamerGate is a viral campaign that became an occasion, particularly from August 2014 to January 2015, to both question journalistic ethics and badger women involved in game development and gaming criticism. Gaming journalists thus found themselves managing a debate on two fronts: defending the probity of gaming journalism and remediating attacks on...
This research studies free-to-play mobile game players in the United States (n=592) regarding their experience of flow, gaming involvement, and attitude towards the game's financial model. Following Creswell and Clark's (2007) exploration model of mixed methods, both qualitative and quantitative measures were utilized to identify and examine the va...
This study utilizes textual analysis to analyze how the popular and influential sports magazine Sports Illustrated covered religion over the period from Jan. 1, 1994, to Sept. 1, 2014. The data showed that the magazine wrote about religion in three primary ways: as an exotic characteristic that makes an athlete somehow odd, as incongruous since spo...
While American first ladies have long used media to craft their image, Michelle Obama is the first contemporary first lady to use social media to promote her public persona. We use the lens of symbolic convergence theory to explore the fantasy themes incumbent in images shared through Michelle Obama's Twitter account. Since first ladies have long b...
In this article we analyse the visual portrayal of Syrian refugees in the Facebook group ‘Humans of New York’ – a citizen journalism site run by a New York-based photographer. Specifically, we use narrative theory and its related method, narrative framing analysis, to examine the visual rhetoric of the European refugee crisis that emerges on this s...
While American first ladies have long used media to craft their image, Michelle Obama is the first contemporary first lady to use social media to promote her public persona. We use the lens of Symbolic Convergence Theory (SCT) to explore the fantasy themes incumbent in images shared through Michelle Obama’s Twitter account. Since first ladies have...
This chapter conducts a narrative framing analysis of three American Civil War movies--Cold Mountain, Count Three & Pray, and Love Me Tender--in order to uncover paradigm-level values regarding the soldier. The piece compares the narrative of a post-9/11 text (Cold Mountain) with two post-WW II texts (Count Three & Pray and Love Me Tender) in order...
In the Mormon doctrine of posthumous baptism, people can be invited into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) community through baptism even after their death. When it was reported that the LDS had baptized Jewish Holocaust victims, this caused an uproar in the American Jewish community. The American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust V...
An increasing number of people are playing digital games. By putting technology in the palm of people’s hands, gaming platforms hold potential to increase the flow of valuable survival information to communities. In the wake of recent large-scale natural disasters, such as Hurricane Sandy, the Haiti earthquake and tornadoes in Moore, Oklahoma, and...
Pope Francis’s 2015 visit to Cuba provided a unique opportunity for a comparative study of state-controlled and independent media systems. This study, grounded in the interpretivist tradition, uses symbolic convergence theory and fantasy theme analysis to explore how visuals created by United States-based AP Images, United Kingdom-based Reuters, an...
Digital games historically hold a spotty record on gender depictions. The lack of depth in female characters has long been the norm; however, an increasing number of female protagonists are headlining games. This study used narrative theory to examine depictions of four female protagonists in four 2013 Design, Innovate, Communicate, Entertain Award...
On January 19, 2014, NFL star Richard Sherman made a game winning play, blocking a pass intended for receiver Michael Crabtree in a matchup between the Seattle Seahawks and the San Francisco 49ers. In an interview with Erin Andrews immediately following the game, Sherman, with great intensity, shouted, “I'm the best corner in the game. When you try...
This study explores the pedagogy of Religion and Media. The topic has garnered growing attention in recent years (Stout, 201247.
Stout, D. (2012). Media and religion: Foundations of an emerging field. New York, NY: Routledge.View all references) and the sheer array of classes is a testament to its status as a lively growing topic. This study takes...
In the modernist paradigm, the news is assumed to be secular, or rather, devoid of religious content. Recent research implies that in actuality, journalism contains latent religious values (Silk, 1995; Underwood, 2002). This research aims to challenge the modernist paradigm by uncovering the religious hegemony operating in a niche area of journalis...
Piracy is shaking the financial foundation of the media industry, including that of digital games. This interdisciplinary study conducts a multi-method analysis to explore the understanding of the laws regarding digital game piracy and the ethical approach to digital game piracy. This was addressed through a qualitative survey of the digital game u...
This study investigates how Islam is reported by English-language Egyptian media. Much research has examined the orientalism that occurs in the coverage of Islam in the West, but little has occurred on how Islam is covered in a Muslim-majority context. This study conducted interviews with eight journalists who report on Islam as a part of their bea...
Mortal Kombat. Night Trap. Lethal Enforcers. Doom. The game titles themselves foreshadow of the controversy they would create. The video game medium arrived suddenly and progressed quickly. Little scholarship has been devoted to examining how the news media has examined video game violence. But no journalistic community has more at stake in these d...
No genre of gaming more exemplifies the ability create deep narratives than the role-playing game, or " RPG " genre which is heavily narrative and often relies on an in-depth back story and deep world history. This paper includes a narrative analysis study that will focus on religious depictions in key video games of the past three years, including...
This study investigates how Islam is reported by English-language Egyptian media. Much research has examined the orientalism that occurs in the coverage of Islam in the West, but little has occurred on how Islam is covered in a Muslim-majority context. This study conducted interviews with eight journalists who report on Islam as a part of their bea...
Questions
Questions (14)
I’ve had it taught to me in graduate schools a few ways: it’s to build expertise in a particular topic so (1) you don’t have to recreate the wheel in new publications and (2) can build legitimacy for grant publications.
Certainly as scholars get further along, you see people build 2nd and 3rd lines of research on that program. Curious to hear other perspectives on the research program
As a current Fulbright scholar (Botstiber Professorship in Austrian-American Studies, University of Vienna), I see this fellowship as helping develop an existing research trajectory while helping me conceptualize the next steps in my career. Would be curious to hear from other Fulbright scholars, or those who have completed similar programs, about how you developed through the experience.
There were certain tasks that in the past I trained my research assistants to do that are significantly harder to teach when I can't be "hands on" with them in person. How have you adjusted to the changes necessary to keep your students safe?
I stress two things with my mentees: (1) persistence through failure and set back--in this way research is emblematic of progress in nearly every field--and (2) teamwork--which isn't necessary for all research but can enhance certain types of research and teamwork is increasingly valuable in numerous professions.
What skills, beyond the technical, do you try to pass on through research?
Many institutions obviously do that through a “research methods” class but in your field how do you integrate research methods into the classroom? In journalism, we do have a research methods class but furthermore we’ve begun integrating research through classes addressing data journalism and investigative classes
I'm very passionate about mentoring undergrads into the process of research. For my field, journalism studies, I commonly tell mentees that research skills are more important than ever in journalism. Understanding how to investigate, distill stories from data and organize complex information is the kind of work that gets you paid. I'd be curious to hear from others--how do you connect research to their professions? What do undergrads respond to?
I'm passionate about mentoring undergrads into the research process--not just collecting data, lit review, but also analysis. How do others go about working with undergrads in research? How do you train them? What tasks do you use to help them build up their skills?
The American Thanksgiving holiday can be a weird one, given it's roots, but I have always appreciated the emphasis on gratitude. What are you thankful for?
As a graduate student, I was advised that if I conducted mixed method research to try to publish the pieces separately (e.g. a qualitative study and a quantitative study might come from a mixed method survey). I have done so. But also, true to their advice--when I have tried to publish mixed method work in a single manuscript--I often receive much more criticism and often rejection.
Has anyone been successful in publishing mixed methods in individual manuscripts? How did you go about it and what worked for reviewers?
Hey folks,
I have a honor's student advisee who is working on a thesis related to news coverage of school shootings. She's trying to discern the difference between framing and second-level agenda-setting theory. Agenda-setting is not my theoretical wheelhouse--are there resources you'd recommend that help explain the difference? Can you summarize the difference in a simplistic way?
A colleague and I are working on developing a communication theory. This of course synthesizes prior literature, but we also have survey data we gathered to help us "make the case" for how the theory works and how it is applicable. Does anyone have a good example of how this is done? In particular, we're looking for how to do a "method section" when in theory development there typically isn't a formal section.
Projects
Projects (2)
This project examines public relations, marketing, and other public communications about videogames. Many of these studies have to do with crisis communication.
The goal of this research is to understand how journalists conceptualize and perform their professional role amidst substantial change in the technology they use in their role