Pamela J Shoemaker
Biographic Data
| ID | 1322605 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Pamela J Shoemaker |
| GIVEN NAMES | Pamela J |
| FAMILY NAME | Shoemaker |
| SIGNATURE | SHOEMAKER P J |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Texas at Austin |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 284 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1982 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Gatekeeping and Journalism
One of the oldest social science theories applied to the study of communication, the gatekeeping approach emphasizes the movement of bits of information through channels, with an emphasis on decision points (gates) and decision-makers (gatekeepers). Forces on both sides of a gate can either help or hinder the information’s passage through a channel. The gatekeeping process shapes and produces various images of reality, not only because some bits …
A Media Sociology for the Networked Public Sphere
We have promoted a hierarchy of influences model for understanding the complex factors shaping media—particularly news—content: from the individual to social-system level. Meanwhile, technology-enabled changes in the media eco-system have shifted old boundaries and encouraged new, more spatially oriented concepts, such as fields and networks. In this essay we revisit our levels-of-analysis perspective, which in the historical context of communica…
The Gatekeeping of Political Messages
Simply put, gatekeeping involves deciding which messages to send to others and how to shape them. Billions of events occur each day, many with political ramifications, but there are more events than the news media can cover or even know about. Political information competes with all other topics to pass through source and media gates. Politicians create forces that constrain or facilitate this passage, but making it through one gate is usually no…
Mediating the Message in the 21st Century
Hailed as one of the "most significant books of the twentieth century" by Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Mediating the Message has long been an essential text for media effects scholars and students of media sociology. This new edition of the classic media sociology textbook now offers students a comprehensive, theoretical approach to media content in the twenty-first century, with an added focus on entertainment media and the Inter…
Comparing Media Cultures
The transmission of information across countries has changed dramatically since the middle of the 20th century, not just because time has passed, but also due to social developments in, between, and among countries. Nonetheless, perhaps the most important development has been technological, with the advent and impact of the Internet during the last quarter-century. Technological change alone, however, cannot totally explain the pattern of informa…
What shapes Americans' opinion of China? Country characteristics, public relations and mass media
This study looks at the effect of China's political freedom, economic development and public relations efforts on the US media's coverage of China, and on Americans' opinions of China in the past 30 years. China's political freedom was found to be significant in predicting US media coverage of China and Americans' opinion of China, with more freedom leading to more positive coverage and more favorable opinions. More positive news coverage is rela…
Gatekeeping Theory
Gatekeeping is one of the media’s central roles in public life: people rely on mediators to transform information about billions of events into a manageable number of media messages. This process determines not only which information is selected, but also what the content and nature of messages, such as news, will be. Gatekeeping Theory describes the powerful process through which events are covered by the mass media, explaining how and why certa…
Journalists as Gatekeepers
Journalists are bombarded with information from the Internet, newspapers, television and radio news, news magazines, and their sources. Their job of selecting and shaping the small amount of information that becomes news would be impossible without gatekeeping. It is the process of selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating and otherwise massaging information to become news. Since gatekeepers provide a picture of the world fo…
News and newsworthiness
This commentary argues that the concept of news is a primitive term, one whose existence is not questioned, and that assumptions about the news need to be identified and questioned. One common assumption is that news is composed of things that are newsworthy, i. e., that news and newsworthiness are essentially the same, and that the prominence with which an event is covered in the news is an indicator of newsworthiness. Shoemaker's recent researc…
How to Build Social Science Theories
Preface Foreword - Jerald Hage 1. Introduction: The Nature of Science 2. Theoretical Concepts: The Building Blocks of Theory 3. Theoretical Statements Relating Two Variables 4. Theoretical and Operational Linkages 5. Theoretical Statements Relating Three Variables 6. Theoretical Statements Relating Four or More Variables 7. Theoretical Models 8. Creativity and Theory Building 9. Using and Evaluating Theory Appendix A: Guidelines for Preparing Tab…
Individual and Routine Forces in Gatekeeping
Lewin's concept of “force” is explored in this study, which shows support for the proposition that newspaper gatekeeping is influenced more by forces on the routine level of analysis than by individual staff writers' characteristics. Newspaper stories about fifty Congressional bills were content analyzed, and two surveys were conducted of the stories' writers and of editors at their newspapers. No individual-level force was related to the quantit…
Hardwired for News
Journal Article Hardwired for News: Using Biological and Cultural Evolution to Explain the Surveillance Function Get access Pamela J. Shoemaker Pamela J. Shoemaker 1Pamela J. Shoemaker is the John Ben Snow professor in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 46, Issue 3, September 1996, Pages 32–47, https://d…
Mediating the Message
Studying influences on media content beyond processes and effects analyzing media content patterns of media content influences on content from individual media workers influence of media routines organizational influences on content influences on content from outside of media organizations the influence of ideology linking influences on content to the effects of content building a theory of news content
Communication in Crisis
Pamela J. Shoemaker; Communication in Crisis: Theory, Curricula, and Power, Journal of Communication, Volume 43, Issue 4, 1 December 1993, Pages 146–153, https
Critical thinking
Deviant Acts, Risky Business and U.S. Interests
Significant events happen daily around the world, but only some of these are reported in the U.S. news media. A content analysis of the New York Times, and ABC, CBS, and NBC found that the Times covered only about a fourth of a sample of world events and the networks mentioned only about a tenth. This study finds that events which are deviant in certain ways from U.S. national values and which occur in nations of political and economic significan…
Exposure to What? Integrating Media Content and Effects Studies
This essay argues that communication scholars should make more effort to match content with readership/viewership because audience members can read or view widely different aspects of a particular medium on any given day. Citing George Gerbner, among others, the essay argues that a field that has borrowed so much from other disciplines will not progress far unless communication scholars develop better measures and locate better fits between media…
Public Relations Versus Journalism
Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media
This article goes beyond describing media content and places it in a broader theoretical framework by examining some determinants that have been considered important in the study of international news flow. The article attempts to identify the factors that best differentiate those international events that are covered in the U.S. news media from events that are not. The dependent variable was media coverage of international events. Based on previ…
Mass Communication by the Book
Journal Article Mass Communication by the Book: A Review of 31 Texts Get access Pamela J. Shoemaker Pamela J. Shoemaker 1Pamela J. Shoemaker is Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 37, Issue 3, September 1987, Pages 109–131, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1987.tb00998.x Published: 07 February…
Deviance as a Predictor of Newsworthiness
(1987). Deviance as a Predictor of Newsworthiness: Coverage of International Events in the U.S. Media. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 10, Communication Yearbook 10, pp. 348-365
Ethnicity-of-Interviewer Effects Among Mexican-Americans and Anglos
A general interpersonal deference explanation for ethnicity-of-interviewer effects is tested with a random survey of Anglos and Mexican-Americans using Anglo and Hispanic interviewers and questions related to Mexican-American culture. The theory was most clearly supported among Anglo respondents. The mixed support found among Mexican-Americans suggests that deference is strongest when questions deal with the culture represented by the interviewer…
Media Treatment of Deviant Political Groups
The Perceived Legitimacy of Deviant Political Groups
This article serves three purposes: (1) An explication of the concept legitimacy. Legitimacy has been measured in a wide number of ways by several researchers. By using factor analysis and correlation validation techniques, the various measures of legitimacy are grouped into four dimensions: evaluation, legality, viability, and stability. (2) an investigation of a critical hypothesis which holds that the U.S. media support the centrist political …
A Media Sociology for the Networked Public Sphere
We have promoted a hierarchy of influences model for understanding the complex factors shaping media—particularly news—content: from the individual to social-system level. Meanwhile, technology-enabled changes in the media eco-system have shifted old boundaries and encouraged new, more spatially oriented concepts, such as fields and networks. In this essay we revisit our levels-of-analysis perspective, which in the historical context of communica…
How to Build Social Science Theories
Preface Foreword - Jerald Hage 1. Introduction: The Nature of Science 2. Theoretical Concepts: The Building Blocks of Theory 3. Theoretical Statements Relating Two Variables 4. Theoretical and Operational Linkages 5. Theoretical Statements Relating Three Variables 6. Theoretical Statements Relating Four or More Variables 7. Theoretical Models 8. Creativity and Theory Building 9. Using and Evaluating Theory Appendix A: Guidelines for Preparing Tab…
The Perceived Legitimacy of Deviant Political Groups
This article serves three purposes: (1) An explication of the concept legitimacy. Legitimacy has been measured in a wide number of ways by several researchers. By using factor analysis and correlation validation techniques, the various measures of legitimacy are grouped into four dimensions: evaluation, legality, viability, and stability. (2) an investigation of a critical hypothesis which holds that the U.S. media support the centrist political …
Ethnicity-of-Interviewer Effects Among Mexican-Americans and Anglos
A general interpersonal deference explanation for ethnicity-of-interviewer effects is tested with a random survey of Anglos and Mexican-Americans using Anglo and Hispanic interviewers and questions related to Mexican-American culture. The theory was most clearly supported among Anglo respondents. The mixed support found among Mexican-Americans suggests that deference is strongest when questions deal with the culture represented by the interviewer…
News and newsworthiness
This commentary argues that the concept of news is a primitive term, one whose existence is not questioned, and that assumptions about the news need to be identified and questioned. One common assumption is that news is composed of things that are newsworthy, i. e., that news and newsworthiness are essentially the same, and that the prominence with which an event is covered in the news is an indicator of newsworthiness. Shoemaker's recent researc…
What shapes Americans' opinion of China? Country characteristics, public relations and mass media
This study looks at the effect of China's political freedom, economic development and public relations efforts on the US media's coverage of China, and on Americans' opinions of China in the past 30 years. China's political freedom was found to be significant in predicting US media coverage of China and Americans' opinion of China, with more freedom leading to more positive coverage and more favorable opinions. More positive news coverage is rela…
Exposure to What? Integrating Media Content and Effects Studies
This essay argues that communication scholars should make more effort to match content with readership/viewership because audience members can read or view widely different aspects of a particular medium on any given day. Citing George Gerbner, among others, the essay argues that a field that has borrowed so much from other disciplines will not progress far unless communication scholars develop better measures and locate better fits between media…
Deviance as a Predictor of Newsworthiness
(1987). Deviance as a Predictor of Newsworthiness: Coverage of International Events in the U.S. Media. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 10, Communication Yearbook 10, pp. 348-365
The Gatekeeping of Political Messages
Simply put, gatekeeping involves deciding which messages to send to others and how to shape them. Billions of events occur each day, many with political ramifications, but there are more events than the news media can cover or even know about. Political information competes with all other topics to pass through source and media gates. Politicians create forces that constrain or facilitate this passage, but making it through one gate is usually no…
Public Relations Versus Journalism
The Perceived Legitimacy of Deviant Political Groups
This article serves three purposes: (1) An explication of the concept legitimacy. Legitimacy has been measured in a wide number of ways by several researchers. By using factor analysis and correlation validation techniques, the various measures of legitimacy are grouped into four dimensions: evaluation, legality, viability, and stability. (2) an investigation of a critical hypothesis which holds that the U.S. media support the centrist political …
Media Treatment of Deviant Political Groups
Ethnicity-of-Interviewer Effects Among Mexican-Americans and Anglos
A general interpersonal deference explanation for ethnicity-of-interviewer effects is tested with a random survey of Anglos and Mexican-Americans using Anglo and Hispanic interviewers and questions related to Mexican-American culture. The theory was most clearly supported among Anglo respondents. The mixed support found among Mexican-Americans suggests that deference is strongest when questions deal with the culture represented by the interviewer…
Determinants of International News Coverage in the U.S. Media
This article goes beyond describing media content and places it in a broader theoretical framework by examining some determinants that have been considered important in the study of international news flow. The article attempts to identify the factors that best differentiate those international events that are covered in the U.S. news media from events that are not. The dependent variable was media coverage of international events. Based on previ…
Mass Communication by the Book
Journal Article Mass Communication by the Book: A Review of 31 Texts Get access Pamela J. Shoemaker Pamela J. Shoemaker 1Pamela J. Shoemaker is Associate Professor in the Department of Journalism, University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 37, Issue 3, September 1987, Pages 109–131, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.1987.tb00998.x Published: 07 February…
Deviance as a Predictor of Newsworthiness
(1987). Deviance as a Predictor of Newsworthiness: Coverage of International Events in the U.S. Media. Annals of the International Communication Association: Vol. 10, Communication Yearbook 10, pp. 348-365
Public Relations Versus Journalism
Exposure to What? Integrating Media Content and Effects Studies
This essay argues that communication scholars should make more effort to match content with readership/viewership because audience members can read or view widely different aspects of a particular medium on any given day. Citing George Gerbner, among others, the essay argues that a field that has borrowed so much from other disciplines will not progress far unless communication scholars develop better measures and locate better fits between media…
Deviant Acts, Risky Business and U.S. Interests
Significant events happen daily around the world, but only some of these are reported in the U.S. news media. A content analysis of the New York Times, and ABC, CBS, and NBC found that the Times covered only about a fourth of a sample of world events and the networks mentioned only about a tenth. This study finds that events which are deviant in certain ways from U.S. national values and which occur in nations of political and economic significan…
Communication in Crisis
Pamela J. Shoemaker; Communication in Crisis: Theory, Curricula, and Power, Journal of Communication, Volume 43, Issue 4, 1 December 1993, Pages 146–153, https
Critical thinking
Mediating the Message
Studying influences on media content beyond processes and effects analyzing media content patterns of media content influences on content from individual media workers influence of media routines organizational influences on content influences on content from outside of media organizations the influence of ideology linking influences on content to the effects of content building a theory of news content
Hardwired for News
Journal Article Hardwired for News: Using Biological and Cultural Evolution to Explain the Surveillance Function Get access Pamela J. Shoemaker Pamela J. Shoemaker 1Pamela J. Shoemaker is the John Ben Snow professor in the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communication at Syracuse University. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Communication, Volume 46, Issue 3, September 1996, Pages 32–47, https://d…
Individual and Routine Forces in Gatekeeping
Lewin's concept of “force” is explored in this study, which shows support for the proposition that newspaper gatekeeping is influenced more by forces on the routine level of analysis than by individual staff writers' characteristics. Newspaper stories about fifty Congressional bills were content analyzed, and two surveys were conducted of the stories' writers and of editors at their newspapers. No individual-level force was related to the quantit…
How to Build Social Science Theories
Preface Foreword - Jerald Hage 1. Introduction: The Nature of Science 2. Theoretical Concepts: The Building Blocks of Theory 3. Theoretical Statements Relating Two Variables 4. Theoretical and Operational Linkages 5. Theoretical Statements Relating Three Variables 6. Theoretical Statements Relating Four or More Variables 7. Theoretical Models 8. Creativity and Theory Building 9. Using and Evaluating Theory Appendix A: Guidelines for Preparing Tab…
News and newsworthiness
This commentary argues that the concept of news is a primitive term, one whose existence is not questioned, and that assumptions about the news need to be identified and questioned. One common assumption is that news is composed of things that are newsworthy, i. e., that news and newsworthiness are essentially the same, and that the prominence with which an event is covered in the news is an indicator of newsworthiness. Shoemaker's recent researc…
Gatekeeping Theory
Gatekeeping is one of the media’s central roles in public life: people rely on mediators to transform information about billions of events into a manageable number of media messages. This process determines not only which information is selected, but also what the content and nature of messages, such as news, will be. Gatekeeping Theory describes the powerful process through which events are covered by the mass media, explaining how and why certa…
Journalists as Gatekeepers
Journalists are bombarded with information from the Internet, newspapers, television and radio news, news magazines, and their sources. Their job of selecting and shaping the small amount of information that becomes news would be impossible without gatekeeping. It is the process of selecting, writing, editing, positioning, scheduling, repeating and otherwise massaging information to become news. Since gatekeepers provide a picture of the world fo…
What shapes Americans' opinion of China? Country characteristics, public relations and mass media
This study looks at the effect of China's political freedom, economic development and public relations efforts on the US media's coverage of China, and on Americans' opinions of China in the past 30 years. China's political freedom was found to be significant in predicting US media coverage of China and Americans' opinion of China, with more freedom leading to more positive coverage and more favorable opinions. More positive news coverage is rela…
Mediating the Message in the 21st Century
Hailed as one of the "most significant books of the twentieth century" by Journalism and Mass Communication Quarterly, Mediating the Message has long been an essential text for media effects scholars and students of media sociology. This new edition of the classic media sociology textbook now offers students a comprehensive, theoretical approach to media content in the twenty-first century, with an added focus on entertainment media and the Inter…
Comparing Media Cultures
The transmission of information across countries has changed dramatically since the middle of the 20th century, not just because time has passed, but also due to social developments in, between, and among countries. Nonetheless, perhaps the most important development has been technological, with the advent and impact of the Internet during the last quarter-century. Technological change alone, however, cannot totally explain the pattern of informa…
A Media Sociology for the Networked Public Sphere
We have promoted a hierarchy of influences model for understanding the complex factors shaping media—particularly news—content: from the individual to social-system level. Meanwhile, technology-enabled changes in the media eco-system have shifted old boundaries and encouraged new, more spatially oriented concepts, such as fields and networks. In this essay we revisit our levels-of-analysis perspective, which in the historical context of communica…
The Gatekeeping of Political Messages
Simply put, gatekeeping involves deciding which messages to send to others and how to shape them. Billions of events occur each day, many with political ramifications, but there are more events than the news media can cover or even know about. Political information competes with all other topics to pass through source and media gates. Politicians create forces that constrain or facilitate this passage, but making it through one gate is usually no…
Gatekeeping and Journalism
One of the oldest social science theories applied to the study of communication, the gatekeeping approach emphasizes the movement of bits of information through channels, with an emphasis on decision points (gates) and decision-makers (gatekeepers). Forces on both sides of a gate can either help or hinder the information’s passage through a channel. The gatekeeping process shapes and produces various images of reality, not only because some bits …
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (17 works) · Computer Science (14 works) · Media Studies and Communication (14 works) · Media studies (13 works) · Psychology (10 works) · Journalism (7 works) · Law (7 works) · Politics (7 works) · Social Media and Politics (7 works)