Arthur D Santana | San Diego State University (original) (raw)

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Papers by Arthur D Santana

Journalism Practice, 2019

The smartphone is now an indispensable part of everyday life. Such mobile devices are increasingl... more The smartphone is now an indispensable part of everyday life. Such mobile devices are increasingly used to consume news. Newspapers have embraced the mobile devices to augment their print and online versions. Newspapers, however, appear to offer different news content to mobile newsreaders when compared to their own print and online content. Mobile newsreaders are provided significantly more sensational, breaking, and entertainment-oriented news. Mobile devices on the mobile web also provide significantly less public affairs content as top stories. Analyzing a sample of 50 U.S. newspapers over a six-month period, this content analysis quantifies the heterogeneity of news content in print, online, and mobile platforms.

Newspaper Research Journal, 2019

Via a content analysis of 4,800 comments from online commenting forums of top news sites, this re... more Via a content analysis of 4,800 comments from online commenting forums of top news sites, this research examines the overall quality of the comments. Expanding the scope of previous research in this area and guided by the theory of deliberative democracy, the normative conditions for quality discourse were measured with six parameters: civility, reciprocity, reflexivity, rationality, diversity, and relevance. In measuring the quality of the comments, two conditions were the identity of the commenter.

This study used self-determination theory (SDT) to investigate the motivations for selecting a ma... more This study used self-determination theory (SDT) to investigate the motivations for selecting a major among mass communication and media majors at 18 colleges and universities across the United States. Specifically, 669 mass communication majors were queried on their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for choosing a major, their degree of major satisfaction, and positive outcomes related to academic performance and overall well-being. As a whole, the findings suggest that students who select their major on the basis of its perceived ability to satisfy intrinsic needs tend to be more satisfied with their major selection and report higher levels of academic performance, career surety, and overall life satisfaction. These results are discussed in the context of both post-secondary mass communication programs and students' ability to successfully navigate the transition into professional life.

This research seeks to quantify social media’s value as a reporting tool for journalists by under... more This research seeks to quantify social media’s value as a reporting tool for journalists by understanding it as an instrument for accessing personal data. A national survey of
reporters at all large and midsize U.S. newspapers shows that journalists place more value on Twitter than Facebook as it relates to professional practice. Evaluation of the various practice-based functions relative to individual journalists’ value perceptions suggests that Facebook’s value is tied to its use for querying friends and conducting research. Twitter’s value was significantly tied to the platform’s use for querying followers, performing research, and activities associated with contacting sources.

The social networking site Facebook has risen to become an important campaign tool for politician... more The social networking site Facebook has risen to become an important campaign tool for politicians while also raising new questions about how its use is reshaping the agenda setting paradigm. This research examines the ex-tent to which the Facebook messages of presidential nominees during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign were transferred to the online public on Facebook and, via a two-step flow, to the greater citizen’s agenda. Findings demonstrate that in their political campaigns on Facebook, politicians are successfully transferring their first- and, to a lesser extent, second-level agendas to the Facebook public agenda, which largely mirrors the greater public agenda.

This study examines the potential of Facebook to provide a channel of political deliberation duri... more This study examines the potential of Facebook to provide a channel of political deliberation during electoral campaigns. Through a comparative content analysis of user-generated political commentary on candidates’ Facebook pages during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, it explores the technical role of moderators and moderators’ political ideology for online deliberation. Results show that social networking sites (SNSs) can represent spaces that accommodate a new public sphere and that
quality deliberation can occur even in nonpolitical platforms. However, the quality of online deliberation depends on the sociopolitical context in which it occurs rather than on the technological use of online spaces for deliberation. Although political discourse in moderated sites showed more sophisticated
argumentation, political ideology did not seem to matter for the quality of deliberation. Rather, the quality of the discourse depended on the particular candidate’s use of the Facebook platform as a tool to obtain different goals.

An analysis of reader comments on the sites of three online newspapers in border states finds a m... more An analysis of reader comments on the sites of three online newspapers in border states finds a much higher percentage of uncivil comments following stories about immigration than those following stories about the Tea Party.

Reader commenting forums of online newspaper sites allow newsreaders the opportunity to participa... more Reader commenting forums of online newspaper sites allow newsreaders the opportunity to participate in an online conversation about the news topic at hand. By providing the forums, journalists diffuse part of their gatekeeping responsibilities to non-journalist commenters, empowering them as secondary gatekeepers to decide what content appears alongside the news. To encourage constructive dialogue, however, virtually all comment-hosting newspapers require that online reader commenters remain civil in their comments. They recognize that incivility in the forums is toxic to their brand identity and serves to antagonize, polarize and silence the very readers they are trying to attract. To combat this, newspapers have developed strategies aimed at reducing incivility, including prohibiting anonymity or disallowing the forums altogether. In reasserting their agenda-setting and gatekeeping role in discouraging incivility, newspapers appear to be adopting a new strategy, as yet unquantified. In an examination of 2100 news stories from 50 US newspapers using a constructed-week sampling method, this research investigates the extent to which some news topics are more likely than others to appear with a commenting forum. Findings reveal that controversial news stories are more likely to appear without a commenting forum than non-controversial news stories, adding a new dimension to newspapers' ability to set the public agenda.

In an effort to encourage community dialogue while also building reader loyalty, online newspaper... more In an effort to encourage community dialogue while also building reader loyalty, online newspapers have offered a way for readers to become engaged in the news process, most popularly with online reader comment boards. It is here that readers post their opinion following an online news story, and however much community interaction taking place therein, one thing appears evident: sometimes the comments are civil; sometimes they are not. Indeed, one of the chief defining characteristics of these boards has become the rampant incivility—a dilemma many newspapers have struggled with as they seek to strengthen the value of the online dialogue. Many journalists and industry observers have pointed to a seemingly straightforward reason for the offensive comments: anonymity. Despite the claim, however, there is a striking dearth of empirical evidence in the academic literature of the effect that anonymity has on commenters' behavior. This research offers an examination of user comments of newspapers that allow anonymity (N=450) and the user comments of newspapers that do not (N=450) and compares the level of civility in both. In each group, comments follow news stories on immigration, a topic prevalent in the news in recent years and which is especially controversial and prone to debate. Results of this quantitative content analysis, useful for journalism practitioners and scholars, provide empirical evidence of the effect that anonymity has on the civility of user comments.

Among the findings is that print news readers remember significantiy more news stories than do th... more Among the findings is that print news readers remember significantiy more news stories than do those who read content online.

Journalism Practice, 2019

The smartphone is now an indispensable part of everyday life. Such mobile devices are increasingl... more The smartphone is now an indispensable part of everyday life. Such mobile devices are increasingly used to consume news. Newspapers have embraced the mobile devices to augment their print and online versions. Newspapers, however, appear to offer different news content to mobile newsreaders when compared to their own print and online content. Mobile newsreaders are provided significantly more sensational, breaking, and entertainment-oriented news. Mobile devices on the mobile web also provide significantly less public affairs content as top stories. Analyzing a sample of 50 U.S. newspapers over a six-month period, this content analysis quantifies the heterogeneity of news content in print, online, and mobile platforms.

Newspaper Research Journal, 2019

Via a content analysis of 4,800 comments from online commenting forums of top news sites, this re... more Via a content analysis of 4,800 comments from online commenting forums of top news sites, this research examines the overall quality of the comments. Expanding the scope of previous research in this area and guided by the theory of deliberative democracy, the normative conditions for quality discourse were measured with six parameters: civility, reciprocity, reflexivity, rationality, diversity, and relevance. In measuring the quality of the comments, two conditions were the identity of the commenter.

This study used self-determination theory (SDT) to investigate the motivations for selecting a ma... more This study used self-determination theory (SDT) to investigate the motivations for selecting a major among mass communication and media majors at 18 colleges and universities across the United States. Specifically, 669 mass communication majors were queried on their intrinsic and extrinsic motivations for choosing a major, their degree of major satisfaction, and positive outcomes related to academic performance and overall well-being. As a whole, the findings suggest that students who select their major on the basis of its perceived ability to satisfy intrinsic needs tend to be more satisfied with their major selection and report higher levels of academic performance, career surety, and overall life satisfaction. These results are discussed in the context of both post-secondary mass communication programs and students' ability to successfully navigate the transition into professional life.

This research seeks to quantify social media’s value as a reporting tool for journalists by under... more This research seeks to quantify social media’s value as a reporting tool for journalists by understanding it as an instrument for accessing personal data. A national survey of
reporters at all large and midsize U.S. newspapers shows that journalists place more value on Twitter than Facebook as it relates to professional practice. Evaluation of the various practice-based functions relative to individual journalists’ value perceptions suggests that Facebook’s value is tied to its use for querying friends and conducting research. Twitter’s value was significantly tied to the platform’s use for querying followers, performing research, and activities associated with contacting sources.

The social networking site Facebook has risen to become an important campaign tool for politician... more The social networking site Facebook has risen to become an important campaign tool for politicians while also raising new questions about how its use is reshaping the agenda setting paradigm. This research examines the ex-tent to which the Facebook messages of presidential nominees during the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign were transferred to the online public on Facebook and, via a two-step flow, to the greater citizen’s agenda. Findings demonstrate that in their political campaigns on Facebook, politicians are successfully transferring their first- and, to a lesser extent, second-level agendas to the Facebook public agenda, which largely mirrors the greater public agenda.

This study examines the potential of Facebook to provide a channel of political deliberation duri... more This study examines the potential of Facebook to provide a channel of political deliberation during electoral campaigns. Through a comparative content analysis of user-generated political commentary on candidates’ Facebook pages during the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, it explores the technical role of moderators and moderators’ political ideology for online deliberation. Results show that social networking sites (SNSs) can represent spaces that accommodate a new public sphere and that
quality deliberation can occur even in nonpolitical platforms. However, the quality of online deliberation depends on the sociopolitical context in which it occurs rather than on the technological use of online spaces for deliberation. Although political discourse in moderated sites showed more sophisticated
argumentation, political ideology did not seem to matter for the quality of deliberation. Rather, the quality of the discourse depended on the particular candidate’s use of the Facebook platform as a tool to obtain different goals.

An analysis of reader comments on the sites of three online newspapers in border states finds a m... more An analysis of reader comments on the sites of three online newspapers in border states finds a much higher percentage of uncivil comments following stories about immigration than those following stories about the Tea Party.

Reader commenting forums of online newspaper sites allow newsreaders the opportunity to participa... more Reader commenting forums of online newspaper sites allow newsreaders the opportunity to participate in an online conversation about the news topic at hand. By providing the forums, journalists diffuse part of their gatekeeping responsibilities to non-journalist commenters, empowering them as secondary gatekeepers to decide what content appears alongside the news. To encourage constructive dialogue, however, virtually all comment-hosting newspapers require that online reader commenters remain civil in their comments. They recognize that incivility in the forums is toxic to their brand identity and serves to antagonize, polarize and silence the very readers they are trying to attract. To combat this, newspapers have developed strategies aimed at reducing incivility, including prohibiting anonymity or disallowing the forums altogether. In reasserting their agenda-setting and gatekeeping role in discouraging incivility, newspapers appear to be adopting a new strategy, as yet unquantified. In an examination of 2100 news stories from 50 US newspapers using a constructed-week sampling method, this research investigates the extent to which some news topics are more likely than others to appear with a commenting forum. Findings reveal that controversial news stories are more likely to appear without a commenting forum than non-controversial news stories, adding a new dimension to newspapers' ability to set the public agenda.

In an effort to encourage community dialogue while also building reader loyalty, online newspaper... more In an effort to encourage community dialogue while also building reader loyalty, online newspapers have offered a way for readers to become engaged in the news process, most popularly with online reader comment boards. It is here that readers post their opinion following an online news story, and however much community interaction taking place therein, one thing appears evident: sometimes the comments are civil; sometimes they are not. Indeed, one of the chief defining characteristics of these boards has become the rampant incivility—a dilemma many newspapers have struggled with as they seek to strengthen the value of the online dialogue. Many journalists and industry observers have pointed to a seemingly straightforward reason for the offensive comments: anonymity. Despite the claim, however, there is a striking dearth of empirical evidence in the academic literature of the effect that anonymity has on commenters' behavior. This research offers an examination of user comments of newspapers that allow anonymity (N=450) and the user comments of newspapers that do not (N=450) and compares the level of civility in both. In each group, comments follow news stories on immigration, a topic prevalent in the news in recent years and which is especially controversial and prone to debate. Results of this quantitative content analysis, useful for journalism practitioners and scholars, provide empirical evidence of the effect that anonymity has on the civility of user comments.

Among the findings is that print news readers remember significantiy more news stories than do th... more Among the findings is that print news readers remember significantiy more news stories than do those who read content online.