Journal of Mass Communication & Journalism

The purpose of this study was to reveal whether there is a relationship between students’ volume of text
messaging and formal writing performance on the Scholastic Aptitude Test writing section. The study also examined gender as a contributing variable in this measure. The study focused solely on texting because texting has become the preferred method of telecommunication among teens and young adults. The design included a questionnaire that collected data to show whether any relationships exist that indicate a correlation between paired scores. The sample was taken from college freshmen who completed the SAT writing test before the fall 2011 semester. The results of the study showed a significant negative relationship between female students’ average monthly text message volume and SAT writing scores.

Message receptivity is a construct that represents rational and affective reactions to messages and has been used to predict changes in attitudes toward public service advertising. Health communication studies show that receptivity can act as a mediator of behavior change. This study extends the receptivity construct to prediction of Census participation. The 2010 Census Integrated Communication Campaign Evaluation measured receptivity to the 2010 Integrated Communication Campaign, an advertising campaign designed to promote Census participation. This study aimed to identify differences in receptivity to Census messages between advertisements and targeted populations and opportunities to improve messages in future. Measured items loaded onto a single receptivity factor. We regressed Census cognitions and behaviors on the receptivity factor in the general population and examined differences between hard-to-enumerate subpopulations targeted by the campaign. Higher receptivity was associated with more positive cognitions about the 2010 ICC. Higher receptivity was also associated with more positive attitudes and beliefs about the Census. Receptivity was associated with higher Census participation among some hard-to-enumerate populations and is an important construct for future media campaigns.

Three decades of civil war which was recently ended in Sri Lanka can be considered as one of the most brutal conflicts in the Asian region. The content of the both electronic and print media in Sri Lanka have been dominated with the war related information during the past three decades. Especially, during the final stages of the war there was no notable space for other information as everything was written and reported on war. There was a clearly visible competition among national newspapers to attract the readership with content of war. Since the end of the war, newspapers found it difficult to keep their readers with ordinary news and they started reporting crimes and other sensitive incidents to attract readers. This paper discuses the post war media behavior in Sri Lanka with special reference to National newspapers in the country. Discourse analysis is conducted on four selected newspapers representing both government and private sector newspapers. As the war ended in may 2009, the study is conducted on randomly selected newspapers from January 2010 to March 2012. The analysis is limited to the news content in the front pages of the newspapers. Though there are many studies have been conducted on the media behavior during the war, there is no study has been done to examine the significances of the post war media behavior in the country and also no recent study has been done in the region regarding post conflict media behavior. The research is conducted with the hypotheses that the newspapers have exaggeratedly reported crimes  catch readers. Though the initial study clearly indicates the domination of crime related content in newspapers, the research aims to identify whether there is an increase in the crimes in the country as the media reported or it is an exaggeration created by media in the post war context.

Online mass media was often linked to the word with online newspapers in this study, which generally refers to an exchange of information. In the recent years there has been much debate on the impact of new communication media on the household online newspapers. In Sri Lanka, online newspapers have been rapid, but lack of work was done to test public acceptance of online news media with respect to printed newspapers. The present study  deals with communication revolution of online newspaper media in Sri Lanka. Research was derived into several areas. Main focused area was to find out whether after communication revolution of online newspapers how it was affected the printed newspapers and find out, how readers perceive the credibility of online newspapers with the experiences with the Internet, online newspapers, and familiarity with printed newspapers sociologically analyzed in the study. According to study, a questionnaire for the users was emailed. In addition fourteen individual websites of newspapers were examined and Sri Lankan online news media was a symbol as well as a reflection of Sri Lankan society, finally extremely increasing trend was observed.