In March 2003, President Bush declared the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the anticipated commencement of intensive American-led military operations in Iraq. With this declaration, the media began intense coverage of military operations from the field. For the first time, viewers were able to see images of actual events. This was due to three developments: the advancement of technology allowing immediate transmission of text and images, the actual presence of journalists identified as "embedded journalists" at military sites, and the fierce (...) competition among networks for viewers. One result of this constant coverage was significant pressure on decision makers within the television and cable news networks to decide within a matter of seconds which images to air. In particular, producers and broadcasters of competing networks experienced this pressure. Though the radio and broadcasting industry has a published code of standards, it is "general and advisory rather than specific and restrictive." Therefore, it did not address the unique time sensitive decision-making required within this new environment. Issues such as the security of soldiers, confidentiality of troop maneuvers, and the safety of the embedded journalists were critically important. Equally serious were the concerns about the impact of the immediate airing of information and violent images to the public. This research used Patrick Primeaux's ' mind-heart-sou¾ model of decision-making as its theoretical framework. The study investigated the gender and industry experience of selected professionals in a cable news network, MSNBC, to explore how ethical codes of behavior are integrated when people make decisions. Decision-making in both their professional and personal lives was examined. It is from this perspective that their professional decisions to air/not to air material from Operation Iraqi Freedom were studied. The findings on decisions about airing/not airing material from Operation Iraqi Freedom yielded both expected and unexpected results. There was no clear gender difference regarding ethical decision-making, but there was a difference when analyzed by industry experience. When the study focused on questions regarding the respondents' personal lives, the original hypothesis that there was a gender difference was validated. (shrink)

Technological advances in media communications have raised questions about the appropriateness of media ownership rules for traditional TV and radio broadcast. This article contributes to this debate by defending a set of principles that ought to govern the distribution of broadcast spectrum. In particular, it defends principles reflecting the ‹public interest’ constraint currently informing broadcast media ownership rules, and argues against a free-market procedure for distributing spectrum use. The argument relies upon the application of a political constructivist approach typical to (...) many political theories. In applying this approach, the author illustrates the strengths and weakness of constructivism and in the process provide an example for how constructivism can be applied to other subjects. As a result, the article has two aims. First, it defends a set of broadcast ownership principles. Second, it provides a model for how philosophers might apply constructivism to other subjects. (shrink)

Religion was always perceived as the threshold between two worlds. It is a space where individuals are supposed to be connected to a different reality through the mediating power of a particlular ritual, at a specific time and in a certain space. A new space of appearance is the expected outcome along with this relocation from profane to sacred. Religious broadcasting could be conceptualized as a visual and acoustic “altar”. The ritual, space and time are the pillars of this (...) audio-visual “cathedral” the very space that could build the bridge between sacred and profane, and the means for this mediated, symbolic transfer. This paper tries to outline the power of media representation in the context of religious broadcasting that uses ritual and imagination to maintain and negotiate the distinction between sacred and profane and to generate alternative narratives. In this regard, the religious broadcasting, presuming the sacerdotal role to represent, mediate and interpret the relationship between sacred and profane is being conditioned by a ritualized medium. As a result, the religious messages could end up as a ritualized mystification that would jeopardize the production of meaning. (shrink)

This article presents an overview of the transition that has taken place in Arab media over the course of time. It focuses more specifically on the case of Saudi Arabia to show how television interviewers there have performed their roles throughout three different phases. The first phase covers the period when the media was still controlled by Arab governments, the second focuses on the advent of satellite and the third focuses on the aftermath of the recent series of uprisings which (...) has become known as the Arab Spring. An examination of these three phases, which includes a discussion of some illustrative examples, will show how television interviewers have shifted from initially taking a very cautious and overtly deferential approach with interviewees, officials and public figures to adopting a more aggressive approach in the third phase. (shrink)

John Maynard Smith was one of Britain's most eminent evolutionary biologists. For over forty years, from 1954 onwards, he also regularly appeared on radio and television. He primarily acted as a scientific expert on biology, but in the late 1960s and the 1970s he often spoke on the implications of science for society. Through four case studies, this paper analyses Maynard Smith's scientific broadcasting against developments within the BBC as well as the relation between science and society in Britain. (...) It finds that while Maynard Smith acknowledged and accepted increasing mediation through the BBC and its producers, he stayed publicly and privately critical of both format and content decisions in his reflections on the science–media relationship. At the same time, we find that over a decade before the 1985 report by the Royal Society on the public understanding of science, Maynard Smith came to think of engagement with the public via the media as scientists’ responsibility. (shrink)

Although considerable attention has been paid to the application of leadership in virtual communities, the field of live streaming has not been involved. This exploratory study aimed to explore how different broadcaster leadership traits influence audiences’ loyalty. And audience self-construal was chosen as a key moderator. The top 15 broadcasters from the regional rankings were selected from each of the two popular live streaming platforms, Douyu and YouTube, for the study. And we used snowball sampling with a link to an (...) online questionnaire as a recruitment procedure. 310 audiences with live streaming experience from the Chinese Mainland and Taiwan participated. Hierarchical linear modeling was adopted for the analysis. This study found that broadcasters with servant and charismatic leadership traits positively affected cognitive loyalty. Broadcasters with servant leadership traits also had a positive effect on conative loyalty. Additionally, independent self-construal negatively moderated the relationship between servant leadership and cognitive loyalty. Independent self-construal positively moderated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and conative loyalty. Furthermore, interdependent self-construal negatively moderated the relationship between charismatic leadership and conative loyalty. Interdependent self-construal positively moderated the relationship between authoritarian leadership and conative loyalty. These conclusions extend the understanding of broadcasters’ traits and audiences’ psychology concerning the booming phenomenon of live streaming and can help platform managers motivate audiences’ loyalty on these platforms. (shrink)

Following the outbreak of COVID-19, farmer-assisted live streaming has become a hot topic in China. In this manuscript, we explore the ways in which broadcaster and platform characteristics jointly influence consumers’ purchase intention. To examine our hypotheses, we distributed questionnaires to 261 Chinese consumers who viewed farmer-assisted live streaming. Correlational analyses, regression analyses, and confirmatory factor analyses were conducted to examine our hypotheses. The results show that broadcasters’ expertise is positively related to consumer trust and that platform reputation moderates this (...) relationship. In addition, consumer trust mediates the positive relationship between broadcasters’ expertise and consumer purchase intention. Furthermore, the theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed. (shrink)

In “How We Know Our Own Minds: The Relationship Between Mindreading and Metacognition,” Peter Carruthers argues for a view according to which first-person awareness of one’s own propositional attitudes is always interpretive, though one’s awareness of “sensory-imagistic” states is not. In this commentary, I criticize Carruthers’ way of drawing the distinction between sensory states and propositional attitudes. Furthermore, I argue for the superiority of a view, which I derive from Wilfrid Sellars, according to which all self-ascriptions of mental states are, (...) at bottom, interpretive—i.e., the outputs of an inferential process that consists in applying a folk-psychological theory to oneself. (shrink)

This contribution focuses on legal issues raised by the audiovisual broadcasting of performing arts, which has significantly increased due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. First, we contextualize this practice and briefly present the emergence and evolution of the practice of “filmed theater”, as well as any other form of performances (e.g., concert, ballet, opera) originally conceived for the stage but subsequently diffused through other channels. Secondly, we address the current legal issues that have arisen because of the increase of such (...) practice due to the containment measures taken by government. Two axes are of particular attention: the matter of copyrights and related rights, on the one hand, and the question of public financing, on the other. Concerning intellectual property, audiovisual broadcasting leads to several legal consequences and issues: effectiveness of related rights, emergence of new modes of exploitation and new authors, recognition of the recording as an original work, etc. This new practice is, moreover, likely to disrupt the categories established by public funding legal mechanisms, which are often poorly adapted to hybrid artistic objects. The objective of this part is therefore to analyze the new legal issues raised by the audiovisual distribution of performances. Finally, we go beyond exclusively legal issues to examine the very specificities of performing arts and, more specifically, the possible loss that would result from a fixation of a production on a reproducible medium, making its diffusion possible beyond the stage. (shrink)

As the essence of livestream e-commerce is social commerce, building a livestream brand community and attracting brand followers are the key aspects to achieving sustained revenue. For many companies, inviting celebrities has become a shortcut to attract new followers. Considering the unsustainability and high cost of the celebrity host mode, some companies switched to using their own branded broadcasters to attract followers. However, as branded broadcasters lack a fan base, choosing the suitable broadcaster type has become a challenge in livestream (...) e-commerce. The motivation of consumers to follow brand livestream accounts is mainly to obtain potential value by embedding them in social networks. Therefore, based on motive theory, this research explores how different broadcaster types affect consumer’s intention to follow a livestream brand community. Results from the analysis of secondary data from livestream platforms and two laboratory experiments reveal that celebrities contribute more to consumer’s intention to follow than branded broadcasters, and utilitarian products can strengthen the effect of branded broadcasters on attracting potential followers. Moreover, branded broadcasters can promote consumer’s intention to follow a livestream brand community by satisfying consumer’s need for informational value during utilitarian product evaluation. This research analyzes the differential effects of different types of broadcasters on livestream brand community building. The findings can deepen the understanding of the consumer’s behavior of following brand livestream communities and provide companies with suggestions on broadcaster selection in livestream e-commerce. (shrink)

The present study aimed to examine whether the applied practice of cameras in courtrooms plays a positive role in public confidence in legal authorities and how such impact may occur from the perspectives of the Group Value Model and the surrogacy effect. A convenience sample of 170 college students participated in this experiment. The control group read the written judgment of a civil case published online while the experimental group read the same judgment and watched the court trial video of (...) that case. The overarching mediation model confirmed that there was a significant and indirect influence of video watching on confidence in justice in general. The key underlying mechanisms of this impact were the positive perception of the interpersonal treatment by the judge as well as the perceived fairness of the procedure. This study contributes to the currently limited research examining whether and, if so, how courtroom broadcasting promotes public trust through obtaining empirical evidence. It also expands the application of the Group Value Model to a vicarious interaction setting and provides evidence of the surrogacy effect in a civil legal context. (shrink)

This article explores cynicism as an ethical issue associated with the blurring of content and advertising in mass media. From a communitarian perspective and adapting Hardin's (1968) metaphorical use of “commons” to the domain of broadcasting, we surveyed the attitudes of individuals toward two phenomena of media saturation (product placement and video news releases) and three constructs (cynicism directed toward government, cynicism directed toward marketers, and the individual's assessment of their marketing literacy). Respondents were highly cynical about government regulation (...) of advertising and nearly as cynical of the ability of marketer's to self-regulate. (shrink)

The Public Broadcasting System’s series Frontline has served as one of the major documentary and public affairs program on American television since its debut in 1983. Emerging at a time when the U.S. television networks were dramatically cutting back on documentary and public affair’s television, producer David Fanning and his team have produced a series of award-winning programs on issues ranging from programs on the Gulf War, Afghanistan war, and Iraq to producer Ofra Bikel's investigation of the Little Rascals (...) sexual abuse case to Martin Smith and Lowell Bergman's chronicle of America's drug wars. (shrink)

Theoretical discussions of ethics in the broadcasting industry remain abstract, intellectual exercises until they go to court. U.S. v. National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) in 1982, led to the death of the NAB Code of Good Practice. This article examines objections to codes and evidence of need for a revised set of broadcast ethics, visible to a media?conscious public. It calls for adoption of a new ethics code in broadcasting.