Journal Description
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly (JMCQ) is the flagship journal of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). It is a quarterly, peer-reviewed journal ranked in the Journal Citation Reports that focuses on research in journalism and mass communication. Established in 1924, JMCQ or the Quarterly is the oldest refereed scholarly journal in mass communication and provides leadership in scholarship for the field. It serves all the divisions and interest groups of AEJMC and publishes original articles and book reviews on topics including but not limited to theoretical and methodological developments in journalism and mass communication, international communication, media technologies and society, advertising, public relations, journalism history, media law and policy, media management and economics, political communication and health communication.
This journal is a member of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE).
Journal Feed
- by Utku BozdağJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This paper analyzes whether articulated populist dichotomies or fractured populist styles attract more user engagement on social media focusing on the 2023 Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections via Twitter, considering the tweets of individual candidates and parties (n = 4,139). Negative binomial regressions revealed that the explicit populist style, which articulates “the people” and “the harmful others” in the same message unit, predicts user engagement. The study shows that explicit populism triggers more favorites, retweets, and replies than any other populist style. Although implicit people-centrism has positive associations with retweets and replies, […]
- by Ejae LeeJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study focuses on the impact of authenticity in organizational advocacy for polarizing sociopolitical issues. The study examined how individual publics’ perceptions of authenticity influence the quality of the relationship between an organization and the public, as well as the level of support for the organization. The study also compared these effects across different polarizing sociopolitical issues. Through an online survey (N = 387), findings revealed a positive association between authenticity in organizational advocacy and the quality of an organization’s relationship with individuals, which led to increased support. Furthermore, the multigroup analysis […]
- by Teresa Vernal-VilicicJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Few studies at the Ibero-American level have delved into the gender gaps present in expert and academic sources in the media. Therefore, through a media content analysis, 1,069 news items related to COVID-19 from three Chilean newspapers were analyzed, and 2,844 primary and secondary sources were identified, of which the minority were women. Therefore, in line with the objective of this study, low visibility of Chilean academics, experts, and politicians as predominant sources during the pandemic was observed, although positive advances in the use of feminine names to refer to them were […]
- by Lars WillnatJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Data from six decades underpin this representative survey of 1,600 U.S. journalists conducted in 2022 that analyzes changes in journalists’ characteristics, values, and attitudes. Findings indicate the “interpretive-investigative” function remains prominent, while endorsement of the “disseminator” role has dropped dramatically. Social media usage is now routine but concerns about its adverse effects on journalism have risen sharply since 2013. While lack of diversity is still a problem in U.S. newsrooms, women have made strides in numbers and leadership and are now at parity on salaries. Alarmingly, six in 10 U.S. journalists report […]
- by Morgan BadurakJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
- by K. Macy BurkettJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Purity culture, a movement that emphasizes sexual abstinence before marriage, infiltrated American evangelical Christian churches in the 1990s and has been found to induce shame in young women while excluding people of color and the LGBTQ+ community. By using their influencer status to persuade their audiences, American evangelical Christian YouTube creators have brought purity culture back into the U.S. cultural zeitgeist. Through an inductive thematic analysis of 25 YouTube videos by evangelical Christian creators, this study seeks to understand the themes evangelical YouTube channels use to promote purity culture: heteronormativity, patriarchal submission, […]
- by Manuel GoyanesJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Drawing on a Spanish representative two-wave panel survey, this study examines the role predicting the intent for paying for news of (a) a culture of free mindset, and (b) pay for news injustice. Findings suggest that both variables negatively predict citizens’ intent to pay for public affairs information. Furthermore, the study also advances the moderating role of political interest on these effects, which increases the intentions to pay for news, particularly for those who report low levels of culture of free mindset and pay for news injustice.
- by Matan AharoniJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study presents a new type of advertisement—web-series ads. This undiscussed form of advertising is unique, as it presents an independent digital cultural field. By examining the main structural and narrative features of web-series ads and consumers’ responses, this research presents an integration model which explains how advertisements, as a commercial system, integrate into an independent new media system. Using thematic, narrative–structural, and textual analysis methods, this research shows how marketers convey messaging by introducing a free-from-constraints new online advertising media type. The use of polysystem theory offers a new theoretical perspective […]
- by Karen McIntyreJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study evaluates which type of news outlets—independent or government aligned—produce higher quality stories in the East African country of Rwanda. A number of quality indicators are discussed in context, and hypotheses are proposed based largely on Scott, Gobetz, and Chanslor’s (2008) investment model. The data come from a global project —the Journalistic Role Performance Project— and specifically from a content analysis of 2,644 news stories published by Rwandan media in 2020. Findings reveal that independent news outlets outperform government-aligned outlets on the majority of quality indicators included in the study, especially […]
- by Kate FarrishJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This mixed-methods study used Q methodology to uncover two distinct perspectives among U.S. news consumers on their expectations of journalists. One expressed a traditional, neutral view of journalism. The other was more likely to accept journalistic voice and agency. The factors were similar to those uncovered in a previous study of journalists. This study revealed consensus items among news consumers, such as “a journalist’s first obligation is to the truth,” and areas of disagreement. Participants with a more traditional view were more likely to be politically conservative and older. We also found […]
- by Mohamad Hamas ElmasryJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This quantitative content analysis examined how popular Western broadcast news channels—BBC News, CNN, Fox News, Sky News, and MSNBC—used Instagram (IG) to cover the initial phase of the fifth Israel–Gaza war of the 21st century, which began on October 7, 2023. The research was undergirded by framing theory and the victim/defensive mode of reporting model. Overall, findings suggest that Western broadcast IG reporting was decidedly pro-Israel. Studied outlets consistently favored Israeli and pro-Israeli sources over Palestinian and pro-Palestinian sources; highlighted Israeli victims while neglecting Palestinian victims; and framed Israeli violence as self-defense […]
- by Jessica D. ZurcherJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This study examined Disney studios’ portrayals of race as it relates to the physical, mental, and social characteristics of major characters (N = 319) within Disney animated films released from 1937 to 2021 (N = 59). Findings revealed most of the characters featured were portrayed as White (68.3%) whereas BIPOC characters made up 31.7% of the total. Results suggest that BIPOC characters were significantly more likely to be featured in supporting character roles, with White characters featured in both the protagonist and antagonist roles. We further observed a limited integration of characters […]
- by Rachel GrantJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Popular entertainment remains one of the last places where Black history lives on despite the recent political erasure of U.S. Black struggles. The 2021 reboot of The Wonder Years, reframing Black masculinity through the young eyes of main character Dean Williams, rehistoricizes modern notions of Black families in the post-Civil Rights Movement. The purpose of this study is to explore Black masculinity media representations within reboot culture as a means to rehistoricize Black struggle and civil rights. Based on discourse analysis, the authors found the following three discourses: Reimagining Black Excellence, Recontextualizing […]
- by Emily GravesteijnJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Across Europe, Public Service Media (PSM) are increasingly subject to bias accusations in public debates. Excluding academic attention for actual bias in news content, research into the nature of bias accusations is limited. This article studies bias accusations against Dutch PSM in online discourse. Through a qualitative content analysis of tweets and blogs (2017–2022), our analysis develops a novel typology of bias accusations—positional, information, and framing bias—going beyond academic definitions. Bias accusations are diverse in nature, reflect strong perceived intentionality, and refer to heterogeneous social, political groups, yet are easily merged into […]
- by Mats EkströmJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. The emergence of authoritarian attitudes within contemporary democracy puzzles researchers. Under what circumstances do people develop authoritarian attitudes? Research suggests that circumstances of social disturbance have strong impact. There is evidence that predispositions for authoritarianism are activated under such circumstances. In this research, the role of the news media is generally ignored. This article contributes by presenting a theoretically grounded experimental study addressing hypotheses of news framing effects on authoritarian attitudes. Two panel experiments, on news about disturbance in school and public libraries, provide evidence of main effects of amplified framings of […]
- by Afrooz MosallaeiJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Literature suggests that when the image and text of news are congruent, it enhances news salience. However, when incongruent, people prioritize the viewpoint of the picture over the words. But what is congruency? This study experimentally investigates perceived image–text congruency in climate change online news, examining how newsreaders perceive and are influenced by congruency. It also explores the impacts of news format on perceptions of congruity, concerns about the climate crisis, and trust in the news outlet. Findings suggest congruency is partially subjective, highlighting that responsible visual discourse in the news may […]
- by Yanqing SunJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Information overload in online environments leads individuals to be more likely to rely on heuristic cues to make decisions about (mis)information sharing. Drawing on dual-process models of information processing, namely the heuristic–systematic model and the elaboration likelihood model, we conducted a meta-analysis of 31 individual studies to examine the combined effects of five major heuristic cues on misinformation sharing. The results revealed that the affective heuristic of anxiety exerted the strongest impact on misinformation sharing (r = .343), followed by three cognitive heuristics: the self-confirmation heuristic (r = .249), endorsement heuristic (r […]
- by Samuel DansoJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. This systematic review examines a decade of collaborative journalism research globally, extracting 40 articles from ProQuest and Scopus databases. The study underscores collaborative journalism’s efficacy in addressing cross-border issues and engaging diverse audiences but note its underexplored status in Africa. Four dimensions emerged: social media and audience engagement, journalism education and technology, challenges and barriers, and collaboration models. Identified research gaps include media policy, violence against journalists and ethical implications. The review advocates grounded studies using appropriate theories and calls for more collaborative journalism research in Africa.
- by Kostiantyn YanchenkoJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Ahead of Print. Experimental studies show that public opinion cues shape people’s perceptions of public opinion. However, the full extent of political information these cues comprise and, consequently, communicate remains unexplored. This study utilizes standardized content analysis to examine the political values in applauded statements (n = 1,722) from Ukraine’s major political talk shows. The results suggest that applauded statements embody a complex mix of identity- and governance-oriented values, signaling to the broader audience the preferred type of political debate among those within the studio. The study enhances the literature on public opinion cues by […]
- by Luisa TilheJournalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Volume 101, Issue 4, Page 1066-1068, December 2024.