Shannon Mcgregor

University of Utah | UOU · Department of Communication

This study focuses on second screening for news, a hybrid media process that combines watching news on television and a second, web-connected screen (i.e., smart-phone, lap-top). Based on U.S.-national, 2-wave panel data, the paper (a) examines people's motivations to engage in second screen use, and then (b) advances the relationship between secon...

This study focuses on the ‘self-personalization’ of campaign politics, marked by candidates highlighting their personal lives over their policy positions. The rise of social media may be accelerating this shift. Applying Strategic Stereotype Theory [Fridkin, K. L., & Kenney, P. J. (201427. Fridkin, K. L., & Kenney, P. J. (2014). The changing face o...

Despite the recognized influence media have over participatory political behaviors, there are insufficient studies that focus on systematic and direct cross-national comparison of news use and its effects on citizenship in different countries. It is less so when social media news use are also taken into consideration. By analyzing comparable and co...

As campaign discussions increasingly circulate within social media, it is important to understand the characteristics of these conversations. Specifically, we ask whether well-documented patterns of gendered bias against women candidates persist in socially networked political discussions. Theorizing power dynamics as relational, we use dialectic c...

From Kohlberg's moral reasoning approach, this study analyzes the decision-making process of a group of Swedish newspaper editors. We use a qualitative methodology to examine how editors respond to three ethical dilemmas related to company loyalty, journalistic values and newsroom diversity. Findings suggest that commercial considerations do not ou...

This edited volume brings together a diverse group of leading scholars in communication, media studies, political science, sociology, and related fields to analyze the relationship between media and the events of January 6, 2021. The authors in this volume argue that the attempted coup at the U.S. Capitol was a politically significant event that la...

Scholars increasingly point to polarization as a central threat to democracy—and identify technology platforms as key contributors to polarization. In contrast, we argue that polarization can only be seen as a central threat to democracy if inequality is ignored. The central theoretical claim of this piece is that political identities map more or l...

In this study, we map the legal work seven U.S. digital consultancies and public relations firms undertook across social media and digital platforms of behalf of four foreign governments. We find these firms used a range of different strategies on social and digital media, very few of which featured legally required disclosures linking the content...

Studies suggest a growing interdependence between journalists and Twitter. What is behind this interdependence, and how does it manifest in news texts? We argue that social media platforms (and Twitter in particular) have situated themselves as purveyors of legitimated content, a projection that journalists have not fully challenged and at times ab...

This study develops the concept of identity ownership to explain how, in the course of electioneering, candidates perform their own identities to align with groups whose support they seek. We frame this from a communication perspective—media are increasingly central sites for constructing and conveying the identity of candidates and the groups of c...

The question of how Facebook and Google make and justify decisions regarding permissible political advertising on their platforms is increasingly important. In this paper, we focus on the U.S. case and present findings from interviews with 17 former social media firm employees (n = 7) and political practitioners (n = 11). We also analyze emails (n...

Public opinion, as necessary a concept it is to the underpinnings of democracy, is a socially constructed representation of the public that is forged by the methods and data from which it is derived, as well as how it is understood by those tasked with evaluating and utilizing it. I examine how social media manifests as public opinion in the news a...

The literature suggests that journalists give a substantial amount of attention to Twitter and use the platform widely, but the impact of that use on news judgment has not been assessed. We hypothesize that Twitter affects journalists’ news judgment, impacting coverage decisions. To test this, we conducted an online survey experiment on working US...

This article offers the first analysis of the role that technology companies, specifically Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Google, play in shaping the political communication of electoral campaigns in the United States. We offer an empirical analysis of the work technology firms do around electoral politics through interviews with staffers at the...

This study inductively develops a new conceptual framework for analyzing strategic campaign communications across different social media platforms through an analysis of candidate social media strategies during the 2016 U.S. presidential election cycle. We conducted a series of open-ended, in-depth qualitative interviews with campaign professionals...

In recent years, journalists, political elites, and the public have used Twitter as an indicator of political trends. Given this usage, what effect do campaign activities have on Twitter discourse? What effect does that discourse have on electoral outcomes? We posit that Twitter can be understood as a tool for and an object of political communicati...

As second screening becomes more widespread, this study addresses its mediating role on the impact of TV news in political participation online and offline, and how this impact varies across groups. We expand the existing line of research by assessing the moderating role of support for Donald Trump on the established mediated model. Through a cross...

This study explores frequency of election-related chatter as an antecedent to agenda setting. In this study, we conducted a longitudinal analysis of 38 million tweets from the 2012 election. Users who participate more in election talk align more with partisan media than less active users. Users who participate less align less with partisan media an...

Scholars have documented growth in media coverage and popular discourse focusing on politicians’ personal lives—personalization. Candidates use social media and personalization to circumvent mainstream news media, disrupting conventional processes. This personalization arguably increases voters’ reliance on personal characteristics as voting heuris...

Second screening is widespread worldwide, particularly in younger populations. We analyze a survey of college students in Brazil and the United States to compare second screening frequency, types, platforms, and motivations between the two countries. Despite lower Internet penetration, Brazilians second screen significantly more than Americans, a r...

In recent years, Latin Americans marched the streets in a wave of protests that swept almost every country in the region. Yet few studies have assessed how Latin Americans support various forms of protest, and how new technologies affect attitudes toward protest tactics. Using data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project (N = 37,102), cluste...

On June 25, 2013, the Senate chamber of the Texas state capitol became the scene of a remarkable political showdown. For 13 hours, citizens at the capitol—along with over 100,000 viewers via a live web stream and thousands more on Twitter—watched and waited for the conclusion of a contentious filibuster of Senate Bill 5 (SB 5), which would impose n...

Despite the recognized influence media have over participatory political behaviors, few studies perform systematic and direct cross-national comparisons of news use and its effects on citizenship in different countries. And even fewer studies consider social media news use. By analyzing comparable and concurrently collected survey data from the Uni...

The continued decline of the newspaper industry, coupled with a rapid evolution of online and social media, exerts tremendous pressure on modern journalists. The tension between journalistic values and profitability is well documented, as well as ethical decisions in the newsroom and other environments. Largely absent from current literature, howev...

The continued decline of the newspaper industry, coupled with a rapid evolution of online and social media, exerts tremendous pressure on modern journalists. The tension between journalistic values and profitability is well documented, as well as ethical decisions in the newsroom and other environments. Largely absent from current literature, howev...