ECREA16-Abstract

Friday, November 11

1 4 : 3 0 – 1 6 : 0 0

ARS PS

Poster session

PS 001

Audience Reception of Online Debates on the European Refugee Crisis

I.V. Andersen

University of Bergen, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, Bergen, Norway

In this paper, I demonstrate how rhetorical theory can be used to study the participating audience’s own reception of the quality and potential of online

debates on the European refugee crisis. As the audience are also often the producers of the texts, it is only by studying both the participating audience, and

their texts, that it is possible to provide a deeper understanding of how the debate takes place online, and make normative assessments on the qualities

of these debates. Although the notion of audience is paramount for rhetoric, research on the actual audience has traditionally not been very common in

the studies of rhetoric. Rather have the audience been studied by analysing the text or the speaker or writer, or by examining a theoretical construction

of an audience. However, in order to understand what really happens in the encounter between text and audience, it is necessary to give more attention to

empirical studies of the actual audience. One of the central questions asked in studies of rhetoric is:What does it mean to argue well? In order to answer this

question, we can study either which utterances are most persuasive, or which utterances are most useful for practical reasoning. This paper operates with

the latter understanding of 'good argumentation”, and uses terminology from rhetorical theory such as trueness, relevance and accuracy, the use of frames,

newspeak, generalizations, ad hominin attacks and fallacies. Based on both the audiences’ own evaluations and on normative analysis of their texts, I

explore what debate norms should apply in online debates in order to secure a fruitful discussion with real democratic potential, what norms are acted

upon in practice, and what impact this has for practical reasoning concerning one of Europe’s most pressing issues. The debates in the comments sections

of Norway’s biggest newspaper, VG, in the wake of the photograph of Alan Kurdi, the drowned Syrian boy on the beach, and after the Cologne New Year’s

Eve-attacks, serve as cases in this study. The text analysis is combined with interviews with 10–12 of the active participants, which examine the debaters’

own understanding of norms and quality, their evaluation of posts written by themselves and others, and what ideal and real democratic potential and pos‑

sibility of being picked up on by a larger public, they consider the debates to have. By comparing the debates related to two specific events, which affected

the way the refugee crisis was framed in the edited media, it might also be possible to get a sense of how, and to what extent, the dominant discourses in

formal public spheres, can affect discussions in the informal public spheres. This provides us with a deeper understanding of online debates real and poten‑

tial role in civic issues. To sum up, this paper aims to use rhetorical theory to study both the audience’s understanding of the online debates, and their actual

contributions to the debates. The study thus contributes to the hitherto limited research on the actual rhetorical audience.

PS 002

Children’s Self-Reporting of Nightmares and Fear of Terrorism Following the Charlie Hebdo Attack and Its News Coverage. Flemish

Survey Results

R. De Cock

KU Leuven, Institute for Media Studies, Leuven, Belgium

Several researches have shown that news exposure is related to fear of crime and fear of terrorism (FOT) in particular (Altheide, 2006; Nellis and Savage,

2012). Nevertheless, FOT and news exposure have not been studied comprehensively, especially not within a young age group of news users: primary

school pupils. A limited number of scholars has shown that this young age group watches the news for children and adults on a very regular basis (Buijzen

et al. 2007; De Cock, 2012; Riddle, 2012). The recent rise of the Islamic State (IS) has intensified news reporting on terrorism. Most people have no direct

experience with terrorism, which makes them especially dependent on news media. News exposure about terrorism is positively correlated with FOT for

oneself and others (altruistic FOT). Women are more likely than man to report higher FOT scores (Nellis and Savage, 2012). After the nearby terrorist attack

on the news room of Charlie Hebdo in Paris (January 2015), the terror-alert system in Belgium had been raised up to level 3. The war against terrorism was

no longer perceived as a long-distance news item and Flemish news media intensively reported the events. During March and April 2015, a survey was

administrated among a representative sample of primary schoolchildren in Flanders (11- and 12-year-olds, N= 363, 53% boys, 47% girls). Our research

questions and hypotheses focused on the proportion of children reporting having had nightmares after watching the news, (altruistic) FOT, feeling scared

due to news about IS and the role of gender in these issues. Finally, a binary logistic model was set-up to predict having nightmares based on news expo‑

sure. 10% of the children reported having had nightmares after watching the news during the previous months. 23% of the children indicated they had

nightmares after watching fiction. 44.1% of the children said they had been feeling scared due to news about IS regularly, often or very often. 33% said this

had happened seldom and only 22% reported that this had never made them scared. 71% indicated they were concerned they themselves would become

the victim of a terrorist attack. Evenmore children (79%) reported altruistic FOT. Our findings show that girls do report higher levels of FOT for self (M= 3.19)

and family (M = 3.41) and fear for IS due to the news (M = 1.62) than boys (respectively 2.92; 3.15 and 1.27, t-test significant at p <. 05 and .01). Of all

girls in the sample, 16% reports having had nightmares after watching the news versus 3.8% of all boys. Of all girls, 30.9% said having had nightmares after

watching fiction versus 14.6 % of the boys. A binary logistic regression model with having or not having nightmares after watching the news as outcome

variable, shows that gender and frequency of news exposure to children’s news add 11% of variance to the model, fear of IS due to the news adds 19%, and

finally empathy, brings the totally explained variance of our model on 33.4% (= Nagelkerke R2).