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Item Post-truth public diplomacy: a detrimental trend of cross-national communication and how open societies address it(Informa UK Limited, 2023-01-02) Wu, H. DenisItem Assessing China's news coverage and soft power in Latin America in the wake of the Belt and Road Initiative (2013–2021)(SAGE Publications, 2023-02) Morante, Andrea; Wu, H. DenisThis study assesses the impact of China's mediated communication strategies implemented in Latin America from 2013 to 2021. We content-analyzed the press coverage about China in nine countries and unveiled tones, topics, and frames which were then examined further across different sources. Public sentiments toward China were gauged to infer a potential link to China's communication efforts. Overall, China's program to influence Latin American media outlets and public opinion has not resulted in substantial gains; the region's sentiment toward China actually deteriorated. There is a communication gap between Chinese and Latin American publics, which is inimical to public diplomacy.Item Nation branding as a modern expression of colonialism in Latin America: a focus on Chile, Colombia, and Peru(University of Southern California, 2022-07-01) Miño, PabloSince the 2000s, several Latin American governments have launched nation branding campaigns to internationally promote the exports, foreign direct investment, and tourism offerings of their countries. This study examines how these projects have attempted to appeal to both internal and external audiences by capturing specific moments in the history of these countries’ political, social, and economic development, in a context of heightened neoliberalism in the region between the 1990s and 2010s. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 21 professionals involved with nation branding campaigns on behalf of Chile, Colombia, and Peru, this study recognizes nation branding as a reflection of modern colonialism in Latin America, through the lens of the literature on the coloniality of power and the duality between modernity and coloniality. This finding contributes to the cultural approach to nation branding, recognizing that brands act as vessels for the cultural meaning of ideas that are bound to time.Item Diverse teams: sharpening student-run public relations agency efforts(2022-05-02) Shanler, AmyThe value of PRLab and student experiences, and how diversity makes the experience and client work stronger.Item Twenty queers of Madame Satã(University of California Press, 2022-09-01) Guaraná, BrunoFQ contributing editor Bruno Guaraná reviews the significance of the Brazilian director Karim Aïnouz’s groundbreaking Madame Satã on the occasion of the film’s 20th anniversary. Guaraná argues that Madame Satã was a film ahead of its time. While in dialogue with queer theory and queer cinema contemporaneous to it—placing it squarely within a global queer film canon—it also anticipated now-current notions of transgressive representations of nonbinary identities in Brazilian cinema. To think about Madame Satã in its original context thus means also recognizing the quantitative and qualitative leaps in media representation of queerness and blackness since its release.Item At the edges of sleep(University of California Press, 2022-12-01) Guaraná, BrunoItem TV snapshots(University of California Press, 2022-09-01) Guaraná, BrunoItem Cinematic TV(University of California Press, 2021-09-01) Guaraná, BrunoItem Queer African cinemas(University of California Press, 2022-06-01) Guaraná, BrunoItem Hollywood’s Embassies(University of California Press, 2022-03-01) Guaraná, BrunoItem Leveraging genomics to understand threats in a migratory waterbird(Wiley, 2021-03-22) Larison, Brenda; Lindsay, Alec R.; Bossu, Christen; Sorenson, Michael D.; Kaplan, Joseph D.; Evers, David C.; DaCosta, Jeffrey M.; Smith, Thomas B.; Ruegg, KristenUnderstanding how risk factors affect populations across their annual cycle is a major challenge for conserving migratory birds. For example, disease outbreaks may happen on the breeding grounds, the wintering grounds, or during migration and are expected to accelerate under climate change. The ability to identify the geographic origins of impacted individuals, especially outside of breeding areas, might make it possible to predict demographic trends and inform conservation decision-making. However, such an effort is made more challenging by the degraded state of carcasses and resulting low quality of DNA available. Here, we describe a rapid and low-cost approach for identifying the origins of birds sampled across their annual cycle that is robust even when DNA quality is poor. We illustrate the approach in the common loon (Gavia immer), an iconic migratory aquatic bird that is under increasing threat on both its breeding and wintering areas. Using 300 samples collected from across the breeding range, we develop a panel of 158 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) loci with divergent allele frequencies across six genetic subpopulations. We use this SNP panel to identify the breeding grounds for 142 live nonbreeding individuals and carcasses. For example, genetic assignment of loons sampled during botulism outbreaks in parts of the Great Lakes provides evidence for the significant role the lakes play as migratory stopover areas for loons that breed across wide swaths of Canada, and highlights the vulnerability of a large segment of the breeding population to botulism outbreaks that are occurring in the Great Lakes with increasing frequency. Our results illustrate that the use of SNP panels to identify breeding origins of carcasses collected during the nonbreeding season can improve our understanding of the population-specific impacts of mortality from disease and anthropogenic stressors, ultimately allowing more effective management.Item The COVID-19 vaccine communication handbook. A practical guide for improving vaccine communication and fighting misinformationLewandowsky, S.; Cook, J.; Schmid, P.; Holford, D.; Finn, A.; Lombardi, D.; Al-Rawi, A.; Thomson, A.; Leask, J.; Juanchich, M.; Anderson, E.; Sah, S.; Vraga, E.; Gavaruzzi, T.; Rapp, D.; Amazeen, Michelle A.; Sinatra, G.; Kendeou, P.; Armaos, K.; Newman, E.; Ecker, U.; Tapper, K.; Bruns, H.; Pennycook, G.; Betsch, C.; Hahn, U.This handbook is for journalists, doctors, nurses, policy makers, researchers, teachers, students, parents – in short, it’s for everyone who wants to know more: About the COVID-19 vaccines; How to talk to others about them; How to challenge misinformation about the vaccines.Item Sharing native advertising on Twitter: content analyses examining disclosure practices and their inoculating influence(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2021-05-07) Amazeen, Michelle A.; Vargo, Chris J.Based upon a large data set of tweets linking to native advertising in leading U.S. news publications, this study provides a content analysis of the practice of native advertising disclosure in the field and explores whether disclosures serve the inoculating function of resistance to persuasion. Leveraging the Persuasion Knowledge Model (Friestad & Wright, 1994) and inoculation theory (McGuire, 1964), results show a) regular use of disclosures on publisher landing pages, b) the absence of disclosures in over half of publisher thumbnail images, and c) the presence of disclosures corresponded to an increased likelihood of negatively-valenced posts.Item Native advertising in a mobile era: effects of ability and motivation on recognition in digital news contexts(Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2021) Amazeen, Michelle A.Digital news is progressively blurring with commercial content at the same time that mobile technology is increasingly being used to access news. To understand if these trends affect ability to distinguish news from covert advertising, two experiments were conducted examining whether viewing content on a mobile device versus computer interacts with motivation levels in affecting recognition of native advertising. Consistent with tenets of the Covert Advertising Recognition and Effects model, results show that although people with greater motivation to process media content were more likely to recognize native advertising, it was not enough to compensate for the reduced ability to process information inherent with mobile consumption.Item Agenda-cutting versus agenda-building: does sponsored content influence corporate news coverage in U.S. media?Vargo, Christopher; Amazeen, Michelle A.Sponsored content articles (N = 2,711) from 27 major U.S. corporations were analyzed across five years in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. The degree to which sponsored content predicted significant changes in corporate news coverage was investigated for elite media and U.S. online media. Corporate-sponsored content appeared to mildly suppress coverage of that corporation in online news. This effect, known as agenda cutting, happened both inside elite media and across the media landscape. Conversely, agenda building, or instances where sponsored content resulted in more media coverage, was very rare. We suggest that “content studios,” the departments of news media organizations that create sponsored content, may be exhibiting an agenda-setting effect more akin to traditional advertising departments, which have been known to suppress critical coverage of corporations that pay for ads.Item Mediated communication and customer service experiences(Periodica Polytechnica Budapest University of Technology and Economics, 2022-01-03) Mays, Kate K.; Katz, James E.; Groshek, JacobPeople around the world who seek to interact with large organisations increasingly find they must do so via mediated and automated communication. Organisations often deploy both mediated and automated platforms, such as instant messaging and interactive voice response systems (IVRs), for efficiency and cost-savings. Customer and client responses to these systems range from delight to frustration. To better understand the factors affecting people's satisfaction with these systems, we conducted a representative U.S. national survey (N = 1321). We found that people overwhelmingly like and trust in-person customer service compared to mediated and automated modalities. As to demographic attitude predictors, age was important (older respondents liked mediated systems less), but income and education were not strong attitude predictors. For personality variables, innovativeness was positively associated with mediated system satisfaction. However, communication apprehensiveness, which we expected to be related to satisfaction, was not. We conclude by discussing implications for the burgeoning field of human-machine communication, as well as social policy, equity, and the pullulating digital services divide.Item Opening education through emerging technology: what are the prospects? Public perceptions of artificial intelligence and virtual reality in the classroom(Periodica Polytechnica Budapest University of Technology and Economics) Katz, James E.; Mays, Kate K.; Lei, Yiming SkylarEducation technology (Edtech) is a booming industry based on its potential to transform education and learning outcomes. With concern over remote learning, there is renewed excitement about the visual component of Edtech, namely VR, along with artificial intelligence (AI), resulting in more significant investments and innovations. Despite industrial-scale investment in Edtech's diffusion, less is known about the public's view. The public's reception of these technologies, though, maybe necessary in determining the contours of their eventual utilization. Therefore, we conducted a mixed-methods analysis based on a survey of a representative sample of the US population (N=2,254) that explores perceptions of Edtech in two instantiations: AI and VR in education. Respondents were more accepting of VR as a teaching tool than AI taking on educational roles. Assistive AI was born over AI with decision-making responsibilities. Personality and experiential traits had an influence on respondents' openness to education technologies. The results suggest support for a blended model of AI and VR use in the classroom.Item Population differentiation and historical demography of the threatened snowy plover Charadrius nivosus (Cassin, 1858)(Springer Science and Business Media LLC, 2020-06) D’Urban Jackson, Josephine; Bruford, Michael W.; Székely, Tamas; DaCosta, Jeffrey M.; Sorenson, Michael D.; Russo, Isa-Rita M.; Maher, Kathryn H.; Cruz-López, Medardo; Galindo-Espinosa, Daniel; Palacios, Eduardo; De Sucre-Medrano, Atahualpa Eduardo; Cavitt, John; Pruner, Raya; Morales, Alcides L.; Gonzalez, Oscar; Burke, Terry; Küpper, ClemensDelineating conservation units is a complex and often controversial process that is particularly challenging for highly vagile species. Here, we reassess population genetic structure and identify those populations of highest conservation value in the threatened snowy plover (Charadrius nivosus, Cassin, 1858), a partial migrant shorebird endemic to the Americas. We use four categories of genetic data—mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), microsatellites, Z-linked and autosomal single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)—to: (1) assess subspecies delineation and examine population structure (2) compare the sensitivity of the different types of genetic data to detect spatial genetic patterns, and (3) reconstruct demographic history of the populations analysed. Delineation of two traditionally recognised subspecies was broadly supported by all data. In addition, microsatellite and SNPs but not mtDNA supported the recognition of Caribbean snowy plovers (C. n. tenuirostris) and Floridian populations (eastern C. n. nivosus) as distinct genetic lineage and deme, respectively. Low migration rates estimated from autosomal SNPs (m < 0.03) reflect a general paucity of exchange between genetic lineages. In contrast, we detected strong unidirectional migration (m = 0.26) from the western into the eastern nivosus deme. Within western nivosus, we found no genetic differentiation between coastal Pacific and inland populations. The correlation between geographic and genetic distances was weak but significant for all genetic data sets. All demes showed signatures of bottlenecks occurring during the past 1000 years. We conclude that at least four snowy plover conservation units are warranted: in addition to subspecies nivosus and occidentalis, a third unit comprises the Caribbean tenuirostris lineage and a fourth unit the distinct eastern nivosus deme.Item Evangelism and pluralism(s)(2017) Stone, BryanItem “A Few Years from Now” in Western Pernambuco(University of California Press, 2020-12-08) Guaraná, BrunoIn this essay, Bruno Guaraná argues that Bacurau presents a cinematic intervention that is twofold: first, into global genre cinema, as it disrupts generic conventions of both the Western and the horror film and relocates the narrative to the margins; and second, into Brazilian cinema—in particular, regarding its depictions of the sertão, or hinterland. Guaraná calls attention to the role played by the film’s narrative and musical soundscape in engineering this audiovisual reeducation.