Friday, September 28, 2012

Health Knowledge

Usually we expect folks with direct experience on a topic to have greater knowledge about that topic.  Seems reasonable.  This survey, at least when it comes to health, suggests otherwise.  It finds "people with a family history of sodium-related diseases did not have more knowledge on the relationship between sodium consumption and risk of getting certain diseases than those with no history."

In other words, direct experience with sodium-based diseases did not lead to greater knowledge about the problems of sodium consumption.

If you're not into following links on suspicious blogs like this one, here's the key graph from the press release:
Researchers from North Carolina State University analyzed data collected from 489 consumers who participated in a quantitative Internet survey designed to gather knowledge and attitudes towards dietary sodium, sodium in foods, and health. The consumers were divided into two groups: group one, for those who had no family history, and group two, for those that did. Results showed that having a disease history did not increase the level of knowledge that excess sodium intake increases the risk of getting diseases.
This is kinda odd and interesting and a little bit scary.  Not that it's about sodium and salt, but if we broadly extend this to health in general it says a lot about what people know, or don't know, even when they're directly exposed to the problem through family.  You'd expect greater knowledge.  This raises some important questions and challenges for those in the health communication field when it comes to informing the public.  If even direct experience with a health problem doesn't help, how much can you expect a health campaign to succeed?

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Not Kidding -- Chinese Sex Knowledge

As I scour the web for stories and studies that touch on media and what people know, I sometimes come across stuff that at least touches on knowledge, but often is about something completely different.  Hence today and ...

Teenagers Lacking
Safe Sex Knowledge


Not just any teens.  Chinese teens.

This story gets into the nitty gritty and even includes a survey conducted by Durex, the condom maker. 
And how often do I get to include that in a post?

The point, obviously, is teens in China don't know a hell of a lot about sex ed and something needs to be done about it.  Kinda like here.  Kinda like everywhere.

Wednesday, September 26, 2012

Catching Cancer

Here's a somewhat misleading lede:
A recent survey poll conducted by Macmillan Cancer Support on 500 children aged between nine to sixteen years old found that 97 percent of the children were either not knowledgeable about cancer or ill-informed about the illness.  The survey showed that many children felt the disease was contagious.
Read the lede of this story and you'd understandably freak out.  Many think it's contagious?  Wow.

Turns out, only 4 percent think you can catch cancer from someone else.  Given we're talking about kids ages 9 to 16, that's hardly surprising.  To me, "many" from a poll means a number a bit higher than 4 percent.  What's fair?  I'd go with 20 percent as a minimum, off the top of my head.  Maybe as low as 10 percent.  But 4?  Nope.

It's unclear from this brief release exactly what "knowledgeable" is or is not.  One-in-five thought cancer was "absolutely fatal," a number I suspect is not all that different than an adult population.

Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Talking Matters

The news alone is not enough for young people to do well on tests of political knowledge, according to a study.  But it gets the ball rolling.

Consuming the news "leads to thinking about the news when then leads to engagement in discussions about the news, which finally ends with political learning," according to this press release about the study (which I haven't seen).  The study, by a doctoral student and a well known mass comm scholar, examined panel data from two surveys of teenagers around the 2008 election.  In other words, the same kids were questioned before and after the election. 

I can't tell if these were surveys conducted by the Missouri folks or a secondary analysis of existing data (ANES, GSS, Pew, etc.).  I'm guessing it's their own data, probably as part of the doc student's dissertation given there's a 2012 AEJMC paper that appears to use some of the same data (search for the author name Edson Tandoc, about 2/3 of the way down the page).

With some time, I'll hunt up the AEJMC paper, which will then provide more methodological details.
What Tandoc found is that news consumption does not directly lead to political knowledge. Instead, news consumption leads to thinking about the news which then leads to engagement in discussions about the news, which finally ends with political learning.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-news-consumption-political-stories-retain.html#jCp
news consumption leads to thinking about the news which then leads to engagement in discussions about the news, which finally ends with political learning.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-news-consumption-political-stories-retain.html#jCp

Yes or No

Shamelessly lifted from Romenesko, this great poll result from a Texas newspaper:


Monday, September 24, 2012

Lack of World Knowledge

When it comes to what people know, the scariest part often comes from asking what young people know.

The World Savvy survey paints a butt ugly portrait of U.S. high school graduates, ages 18-24.
  • Two-thirds could not name the Prime Minister of Great Britain
  • Three-fourths could not name our biggest trading partner
  • Nearly three-fourths could not place Afghanistan on a map
Okay, some of these are tricky.  That second one above, for example.  You'd think it's China, but it's Canada.  Who the hell thinks about Canada except maybe in hockey season?

A copy of the big fat pdf report is here.  It's full of interesting statistics, some scary, some comforting.  Want comforting?  Eighty percent said they're interested in world events and 83 percent believe diversity is an asset.  Want scary?  Only half knew Libya is in north Africa and nearly half thought English was the most commonly spoken language in the world (correct answer, Mandarin).

Oh, and a final fun factoid.  TV is the biggest source of info (no surprise) but online newspaper sites were the second most named source of info (kinda surprising) and print newspapers were third (damn surprising).

The web site summary has some excellent points about the relationships between curiosity and knowledge about the world such important democratic behaviors as voting.  Well worth the time.

Who is Influenced by Negative Ads?

It's campaign season, so what's better to talk about than negative political advertising.

I don't have all the details, but this brief description of an experiment suggests the greatest impact among the more knowledgeable and trusting of participants, "a segment of of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be."  A few key points to consider:
  • It's an experiment.  You gain a lot of control and the ability to argue only the manipulation could have caused some effect. 
  • But its weakness in validity.  The artificial nature of experiments can influence findings.
  • And it's college students as participants.  Yes, psychology is the intensive study of the college sophomore and, as we all know, while scientists have linked college students to humans, the relationship remains unproven.
So I can't really say more than this without seeing the entire paper.  Also, full disclosure, I took a class with one of the authors a million or so years ago in graduate school.




Indeed, the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp
Indeed, the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp
ndeed, the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp

the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp
the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp
the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp
the greatest impact in terms of voters penalizing the incumbent for his alleged shortcomings was evident among those individuals who were knowledgeable about politics and who expressed a relatively high degree of trust in their political leaders – a segment of the electorate that is smaller than it used to be.

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2012-09-negative-political-ads-voters-politicians.html#jCp

Friday, September 21, 2012

Trust Not

New Gallup media trust rankings are out and the news, sigh, is anything but good.  The table below says it all.


Thursday, September 20, 2012

Mapping What People Know

Here's an interesting project that attempts to map "how political knowledge can be spread rapidly across big populations using social media."

I won't pretend to understand i all, but it's part of a trend at understanding, through big data, how information is spread via social media. There is so much promise in this work.  Anyway, just an fyi.




Fox & Friends & Polls

Yeah (alliteration alert), the folks at Fox & Friends are smarmy and smug.  They are also, for reasons mysterious, popular.  This morning, as I scanned the various news channels to catch what was breaking, the Foxers mentioned their own poll that showed Obama leading Romney both nationally and in three key swing states.

That the Fox friendsters would report a poll that looks good for Obama -- surprising.

That Fox friendsters would then spin a poll to make Romney look good -- not so surprising.

These Fox News polls are sound methodologically.  What's interesting is how the smarmeisters on Fox & Friends, after noting Obama's lead, then pointed out that among respondents who are "extremely interested" in the prez election, Romney scoots ahead of Obama.

Here's the problem.  Take their Florida poll, for example (detailed results here).  About 6 out of 10 in that state report being "extremely interested" in the campaign.  The total survey was of 829 respondents.  Fifty-nine percent of that = 489 people.  The margin of error?  Call it about 4.5 percent, meaning you'd have to be more than 9 percentage points ahead of the person for it to not be a statistical tie. 

Romney's sudden vast lead among these people?  Well well well within the margin of error.

The friensters at Fox of course glossed over this little methodological quirk, I suppose to make the Romney results more palatable to their discerning audience.

Don't get me wrong: I'm bitching here about the misuse of poll data, not who is ahead or behind in the poll.  It's the poll abuse I dislike, especially when trying to spin the results a certain way.  Yes, we all torture data sometimes, but in this case it's waterboarding to the extreme.

Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Earlier and Earlier

I tweeted this the other day, but I'm putting it somewhere a bit more permanent by noting how earlier and earlier my university keeps moving our Fall start date.  At this rate, we'll soon start August 1.  Calendar creep.


Are Swing Voters Stupid?

Swing voters, so goes the conventional wisdom, decide presidential elections.  Especially close presidential elections.

Especially this presidential election.

But swing voters, argue some, are the least politically knowledgeable.  In trying to explain Obama's success (so far) against Romney, this essay, published Monday by Ilya Somin, posits:
Some of the models also take account of foreign policy events. While one can certainly make a case against Obama’s foreign policy, he has not presided over a large and obvious failure that can clearly be laid at his door in a way that swing voters – most of whom have very low levels of political knowledge – can readily grasp. 
Note that phrase:  readily grasp.  This is a small part of the essay, which really gets into whether or not Obama is "overpowering historical expectations" by being ahead in such lousy economic times.

The older piece (linked to in the quote block above), examines whether "independent-independents" are the least knowledgeable. Set aside for the moment this all confuses independents with undecideds.  Below, I ran some quick numbers using national survey data I'm presently fooling around with.  It's political knowledge on a 4-point scale, ranging from 0-to-4, by partisan identification.


As you can tell, partisans know more, independents less.  There's no statistically significant difference between strong Democrats and strong Republicans (the far left and far right on the scale), or between weak Dems and GOPers.  You do see a difference between the leaners, for what that's worth.  Give the GOP an edge there, mostly explained by education.
 
Keep in mind it's an open question whether the kind of knowledge we measure in such surveys really matters when it comes to voting your own particular interest in a presidential election.  I suspect even someone who performs poorly on such tests can manage to figure out which candidate may govern in their best interest.  They may not be able to put it in words, or at least the kinds of words that will impress political scientists and law professors (or journalism guys like me), but my hunch is many of these independent-independents, despite doing poorly on our political tests, feel they can vote just fine, thank you very much, by broadly perceiving the differences between the two parties or the two candidates.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Selective Something

We all have filters.  We all selectively choose to attend to certain media, or selectively remember what we see or read, or selectively recall what we've been exposed to.

We're all selective somethings.

The same is true for economic news, apparently, given the fine folks at Pew and their latest report.  The graphic says it all.


Monday, September 10, 2012

Young People Hate the News?

Interesting story (and comments) today over on Romenesko about a new book by Texas journalism prof Paula Poindexter that examines young people and attempts to explain why they, well, hate the news.

Poindexter's book is to the left.  At $150 on Amazon for the hardback, this is as close most of us will ever get.  But it's just $37 for the paperback, so when it's in stock, line up for the cheaper price.

What's all the fuss?  Lemme quote from the press release:

Through a national survey on news engagement, Poindexter has found five major factors affecting millennials’ news consumption:
  • Most millennials give the news media average to failing grades when it comes to reporting on their generation.
  • Millennials describe news as garbage, lies, one-sided, propaganda, repetitive and boring.
  •  When they consume news, millennials are more likely than their baby boomer parents to access news with smartphones and apps and share news through social media, texting and email.
  •  Most millennials do not depend on news to help with their daily lives.
  •  The majority of millennials do not feel being informed is important.
As you can imagine, this is getting some attention, especially the part where millennials find the news "garbage" and don't feel being informed is all that important.  A lot of commenters, of course, argue differently, making the methodological mistake of generalizing from the people they know.  Poindexter's study, which apparently relies on survey data, has something very different to say.

Do I buy it?  Only kinda sorta.

Not that Poindexter doesn't know her stuff.  She's a serious scholar, but until I can review the methodology I can't really say one way or the other whether her theses above make sense.  I say "kinda sorta" because so much depends on how you ask these questions and whether what you think of as news is what they think of as news. 

But if you read carefully what's available on the link above, this is an ambitious project worthy of respect and attention.  Just read the graph below:
During the fall semester, Poindexter and other School of Journalism professors are incorporating the Millennials and News resource into their courses. One such course is “Journalism, Society and the Citizen Journalist,” which Poindexter created with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York as part of the Carnegie-Knight Initiative on the Future of Journalism Education. Over the course of the semester, students will read and comment on stories posted on the Facebook news page and relevant news will be discussed during class. With the 2012 presidential election approaching, Poindexter said election stories will be an important part of the news mix, so students will have a convenient and reliable place to go to get informed about the candidates, issues, campaign strategies and latest poll results.

That's the kind of nimble, innovative approach to journalism that I'd love to see in my own university.  Sigh.



Sunday, September 9, 2012

Journalism Education is Going to Hell

Journalism education is going to hell.

I'm not sure where this idea began, but you have to start with Eric Newton.  Here's one speech that opened the floodgates that continued through summer.  And there was this post by Jerry Ceppos of LSU,   Finally, a more recent blog, and subsequent comments, elaborated on this point.

This is a multi-pronged attack, and it was the talk of AEJMC, the major academic organization in journalism and mass comm that meets every August.  The main arguments appear to be:
  •  Universities do not respect professional faculty.  Or as Newton put it, "The degree is primary, competence is an also-ran."  
  • Journalism education is slow to adopt to changes in the real world.
  • Journalism and mass comm research is of low quality and has little relevance or impact on the professional world.
There's probably more, but those three appear to offer a stinging indictment of academic journalism.  But as any cop/courts reporter knows, getting an indictment is easy.  Proving your case in court is another matter.  And the evidence offered in the links above is weak, so weak as to get the case tossed out of court before ever reaching a jury.

Let's take 'em one at a time.

Universities do not respect professional faculty.  From my own limited experience of 21 years teaching, this is bullshit.  What Ceppos and Newton appear to want is a pass for anyone with experience to walk into the classroom of a major research university.  First off, most good schools have a mix of "academic" and "professional" faculty.  Hell, in my own department, even the "academic" types (including me) spent years in the newsroom.  Yeah, I'm a PhDweeb.  Damn proud of it.  I struggled through five years of graduate school making about 10 grand a year to earn my doctorate.  You a pro?  Do the same, dammit, or shut the hell up.  But departments around the country have professional faculty, lots of 'em.  My own has several.  Damn good ones, too.  Our own late Conrad Fink was a god.

Even Ceppos makes this point, noting the number of "professionals" (what the hell are the rest of us, friggin amateurs?) hired recently as deans at major schools.   As he wrote:
I’ll concede that, ironically, it sometimes is easier to be hired as a dean rather than a professor. But many schools offer professional tracks, professional-in-residence jobs and other positions that don’t require advanced degrees.
And the false binary above, that two choices exist -- a degree, or competence, is just plain insulting.  Are there people in the classroom who shouldn't be?  Yup.  And I remember a few of those in the newsroom as well.  At least one of 'em was just made dean at a major journalism school.

Journalism education is slow to change.  I halfway agree with this.  I've seen it in my own department, I've heard about it from others.  Universities are slow to change and lots of faculty want to preserve their little bit of turf when it comes time to change the curriculum.  Yes, we need to update things -- just not my things, not my major, not my class that I like to teach only on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I can have a long weekend where I "work at home."  We struggle with this.  Everyone does.

To be fair, the professionals have been even slower to change.  Remember that Internet thing?  Academics were there first.  Social media?  There years before you even knew what Facebook was.  And the professionals have been sending us mixed messages for decades.  "We want critical thinkers," they'd say, while advertising for specific skills identified by software, such as InDesign.  But yes, we all need to change.  The problem is the professions, and many academics, are too quick to chase the latest fad.  That helps no one.  We still focus hard on basic and advanced writing skills while integrating multimedia, social media, and computer-assisted reporting into our curriculum.

Journalism research sucks.  Okay, mine may suck, and it's easy to make fun of some of the titles and research you see out there.  Newton's blog post above, though, is so full of logical holes as to be laughable.  For example, he uses citation analysis to say journalism research doesn't matter while at the same time saying we need more research that helps the profession (which would hardly generate more citations).  He names three journals that have "journalism" in the title but skips a vital one -- Newspaper Research Journal -- that focuses on bridging the academic-professional divide.  His essay is flawed and unprofessional -- kinda the same thing he bitches about, except with no real understanding of how social science is done, how it is written, and a key point -- scholarly research is not about helping journalism, it's about asking interesting questions to the scholar, not something determined by industry.  You want industrial research?  Pay for it.  We work for the people, not you.

But here's a hint.  Just because you can't understand a piece of research, that doesn't make it bad research. 

I'd go on, but it's a Sunday night and I still have more papers to grade.  You know, that journalism stuff.


Thursday, September 6, 2012

Uses & Grats

I'm not a fan of the uses and gratifications approach to understanding media, but I have to admit it's becoming more and more -- yes, useful -- in getting at our fragmenting media landscape.  Just look at the graph provided by the fine folks at Pew:


People move from source to source based, it seems, on the gratifications they're likely to get from that source.  Wanna be entertained?  The Colbert Report is there for you (53 percent), but apparently not so much The Wall Street Journal (2 percent).  Sticking with Stephen, look across the row.  Yes, he's entertaining, but few people looking for the latest headlines or in-depth reporting end up there.  And that makes sense.

So uses and grats basically tells us we seek out different media to fulfill a need.  The Pew table above, it validates that body of research in a simple way.  When you want the latest news, you go to the TV networks or your daily newspaper.  Want in-depth stuff?  That's the realm of the two national newspapers (WSJ and NYT).  When asked about views and opinions, up pops the specific programs often found on the cable news channels (O'Reilly on Fox, for example, or Maddow on MSNBC).

For many of you, this qualifies as a "duh" moment.  But for others, it may be new.  An important aspect of understanding why people choose the media they choose is what they hope to get out of it:  entertainment, relaxation, insight, etc.  I read The Atlantic because it makes me look smarter.

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

MTV Cracks the Apathy Code?

I wrote about this some time ago (nice to know I'm so far ahead of the curve), but here's a new LATimes story that argues MTV's fantasy politics game may have "cracked the code to voter apathy."

Dunno about that as there's no real data from which to judge the claim.  Still, it does look like fun, at least if you're fantasy football, baseball, and yes -- politics.  Because, ya know, everything needs to be a game.


Tuesday, September 4, 2012

What People Know ... about Penn State

I'm slow getting to this one -- just stumbled across it today -- but here's a survey asking people what they know about the Penn State scandal.  Turns out, not as much as you'd think.

True or False:  "Joe Paterno was accused of molesting children."

Of course False, but 28 percent said True.  Wow.  Just over half (55 percent) got it right.

There's a trick question too.  "To your best knowledge, what school fired a coach of a major men's sports program in 2011 for sexually abusing young boys?"

It's a trick question because any reasonable person would instantly answer Penn State, but that's not the case.  It's Syracuse that fired an assistant basketball coach last year.  In the Penn State case, the guy was no longer a coach.