Gina Chen
Gina Masullo Chen is an Assistant Professor at the School of Journalism and Assistant Director of the Center for Media Engagement, both at The University of Texas at Austin. Her research focuses on the online conversation around the news, with a particular interest in incivility and political participation in the digital space. Before entering academe, she spent 20 years as an newspaper editor and reporter.
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Papers by Gina Chen
uncivil—may have a chilling effect on the public discourse vital to a deliberative
democracy. Both forms of disagreement—in comments posted on a news
story about abortion—caused negative emotion and aggressive intentions.
However, only uncivil disagreement led people to respond back uncivilly
and indirectly led to greater intention to participate politically, if it aroused
aggressive feelings. Findings support extending face and politeness theories to
the computer-mediated space of online commenting. Results are discussed in
relation to the impact on the public discourse.
routines. In-depth interviews with 34 journalists reveal they are becoming more comfortable
with online comments and often engage with commenters to foster deliberative discussions or quell
incivility. However, our data also suggest some journalists feel discomfort with engaging in this way
for fear it breaches the journalistic norm of objectivity. Overall, findings suggest journalists are not
ceding their gatekeeping role to the public through comments, but rather re-asserting it through
moderating objectionable comments and engaging. In addition, findings suggest journalists are
participating in “reciprocal journalism” by fostering mutually beneficial connections with the
audience.
(SCL)—to examine the effects of novelty appeals, sexual appeals, narrative versus statistical evidence,
and viewer’s sex on cognitive and emotional processing of HIV/AIDS public service announcements
(PSAs) among heterosexually active single college students. Novelty or sexual appeals differently
affected self-reported attention and cognitive effort as measured by HR. High- rather than low-novelty
HIV/AIDS PSAs, perceived as more attention-eliciting, did not lead to more cognitive effort. High- rather
than low-sex HIV/AIDS PSAs, not perceived as more attention-eliciting, led to more cognitive effort as
reflected by greater HR deceleration. Novelty or sexual appeals also affected self-reported emotional
arousal and SCL differently. HIV/AIDS PSAs with high rather than low levels of novelty or sexual appeals
led to greater self-reported arousal, but not greater SCL. Message evidence interacted with message
appeals to affect cognitive effort. Participants exerted greater cognitive effort during high- rather than
low-novelty narrative HIV/AIDS PSAs, and during low- rather than high-novelty statistical ones. The
advantage of high over low sexual appeals was more obvious in statistical than in narrative HIV/AIDS
PSAs. Males reported greater emotional arousal than females during high- rather than low-sex HIV/AIDS
PSAs.
between the third-person perception (TPP) e that people believe media message have a greater effect on
changing the attitudes of others compared with themselves e and online incivility. It also examined
whether people's agreement with the content of the comments would influence the TPP. Results of an
experiment (N ¼ 301) showed incivility muted the persuasive effect of online comments, so only civil
comments produced a TPP, whereby people felt comments had greater persuasive power over others
compared with themselves. However, counter to predictions, whether people agreed with the comments
did not influence the TPP. Findings also supported the TPP social distance corollary such that subjects
perceived comments as having the largest third-person perceptual gap between the self and those who
disagreed with them. Results are discussed in relation to TPP and face and politeness theories.
instrument for measuring gratifications of photo-tagging on Facebook. The questions
were developed based on open-ended responses of 141 people who use photo-tags
on Facebook. From their answers, 58 items were extracted and then tested on 780
people. This resulted in a 35-item scale that was re-examined with 313 adolescents
and 186 adult photo-taggers. The 35-item instrument offers nine gratifications: likes
and comments, social influence, peer pressure, gains popularity, entertainment, feels
good, social sharing, affection, and convenience. The factorial structure and instrument
validity and reliability were high and fairly stable over time. The findings are discussed
in relation to the uses and gratifications theory, and the practical implications of this
new instrument are explored.
reveal that immersing students in coverage of a historically important news event
enhances learning of multimedia journalism. Study explores how using a team-based
approach to coverage of the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, a key event in
Mississippi’s civil rights history, bolsters students’ ability to learn to tell stories using text,
photos, video, social media, radio, and blogs. Ramifications for multimedia education are
proposed.
recreation. The recreation motivation outweighs the other two motivations in predicting frequency of social media use. However, when differences between Facebook, Twitter,
and other social media were considered, results show women bloggers turn to social media in general for recreation, but to Facebook for engagement and to Twitter for information. Findings also show that psychological needs for affiliation and self disclosure are related to the engagement motivation, and self-disclosure is associated with the information motivation. The results are discussed in relation to need theory.
factor and moderating variable examined gender differences in response to two types of threats to
positive face – rejection and criticism – on a social-networking site. Results showed it did not matter if
men or women were rejected or criticized on a social-networking site; both threats to positive face lead
to more retaliatory aggression, compared to the control. However, men retaliated to a greater extent than
women to both types of threats. Also, men responded differently to criticism than to rejection, while
women’s results did not vary. Findings are discussed in relation to face theory and politeness theory,
particularly in regard to computer-mediated communication.