Beyond Violence and Villains: How Local Television News Frames Key Sources in Crime Narratives
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The Symposium provides undergraduates from all academic disciplines with an opportunity to share their research with the university community and other guests through conference-style oral presentations. The Symposium represents part of a larger effort of Iowa State University to enhance, support, and celebrate undergraduate research activity.
Though coordinated by the University Honors Program, all undergraduate students are eligible and encouraged to participate in the Symposium. Undergraduates conducting research but not yet ready to present their work are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the presentation process and students not currently involved in research are encouraged to attend the Symposium to learn about the broad range of undergraduate research activities that are taking place at ISU.
The first Symposium was held in April 2007. The 39 students who presented research and their mentors collectively represented all of ISU's Colleges: Agriculture and Life Sciences, Business, Design, Engineering, Human Sciences, Liberal Arts and Sciences, Veterinary Medicine, and the Graduate College. The event has grown to regularly include more than 100 students presenting on topics that span the broad range of disciplines studied at ISU.
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Jan Lauren Boyles, Greenlee School of Journalism and Mass Communication Abstract: Culturally, television plays an important role in developing social identity (Gerbner, Gross, Morgan, Signorielli & Shanahan, 2002). For local television news stations, crime stories occupy a prominent place in nightly broadcasts. Building upon prior literature, this study illustrates how television newscasts frame crime stories for audiences. Based upon a content analysis of local news programming from three Washington, DC network affiliates, the researchers examined how news reporters and anchors construct social identity for three key sources mentioned in crime stories: perpetrators, witnesses and victims. While crime was featured prominently in the first block of newscast content, television reporters and anchors rarely contextualized sources within the narratives, instead relying heavily upon demographic descriptions of these individuals, such as age and gender.