News Media

Scholars from Northwestern University set out to study an underappreciated aspect of public opinion and communications: how the sequence and timing of messages from electoral and policy campaigns can shape views over longer intervals of time. Typically, as the scholars point out, experimental research has focused on the short-term effects of a given message on the public and has found that two competing, simultaneous messages can cancel one another out.

Television and radio anti-drug campaigns — including the well-known “This Is Your Brain on Drugs” and “Just Say No” ads from the 1980s — have long warned youth about the perils of illicit substances. Millions of dollars have been spent on such efforts, but are they effective? Drugs continue to be a significant public health problem among youth, and the patterns of usage continue to evolve.

As part of our ongoing collaboration with Nieman Journalism Lab, we’ve rounded up the latest in digital- and media-oriented scholarship — picking highlights from disciplines such as computer science, political science, journalism research and communications.

One strategy of social movement groups has been to leverage local media coverage of events in order to advance public opinion and debate around that particular organization’s focal issue. However, not all social advocacy organizations are created equal, and seemingly similar groups can inspire more media attention than their peers. What, then, are the attributes that set one organization apart from the pack when it comes to garnering increased media exposure?

The number of evening network news stories about the presidential nominating contests has generally declined in recent decades, according to a paper by scholars at George Mason University. The 2008 election — which for a variety of reasons generated massive media attention — stands as an exception to this trend. But whether or not 2008 is a sign of renewed interest by the television networks, or just an anomaly, remains to be seen during the 2012 election cycle, the researchers note.