Conference Presentations by Itay Gabay
This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their school
e-mail avoid... more This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their school
e-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequently used medium for college students in general. However, communication and business students are more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors and they are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of two social media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and the frequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” based on factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upper-class students are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outlet positively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social media for college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students are discussed.
Papers by Itay Gabay
This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their schoole-mail avoida... more This study examines how U.S. college students’ social media use affects their schoole-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequentlyused medium for college students in general. However, communication and business studentsare more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors andthey are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of twosocial media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and thefrequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” basedon factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upperclassstudents are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outletpositively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social mediafor college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students...
Journalism, 2016
Based on a 4-year longitudinal analysis of social media and mobile phone users in a Midwest US ma... more Based on a 4-year longitudinal analysis of social media and mobile phone users in a Midwest US market, this study differentiates news content engagement from news medium engagement, proposes four levels of news engagement, and compares how social media and mobile media differ in their effects on engagement in news content and news medium between the general population and college students. The analysis shows a steady decline in the interest in political news but not in other types of news. Total news consumption time gradually declined among the general population, and the gap between general population and students diminished over time. Social media use positively predicts total news consumption time. Predictors of news engagement differ for different levels of news engagement.
Journal of Information Technology & Politics
Internet Research
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how college students’ social media use affects th... more Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine how college students’ social media use affects their school e-mail avoidance and campus involvement. Design/methodology/approach The study employed face-to-face interviews and self-administered survey/quantitative data. Findings Communication and business students are more involved on campus and likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors. Social media and text messages are not the culprits of school e-mail avoidance. University departments, student organizations, and faculty advisors’ e-mails are most likely to be avoided. Social media users can be categorized as either “instant communicators” or “online content curators.” Facebook is the only social media brand conducive to campus involvement. Research limitations/implications This study only used one university’s students as sample. In examining school e-mail avoidance, it only focused on the source of e-mail. The study is limited by its sole rel...
Journal of Communication, 2017
Despite the democratic significance of citizen talk about politics, the field of communication ha... more Despite the democratic significance of citizen talk about politics, the field of communication has not considered how that talk is weathering stresses facing our civic culture. We examine political talk during an archetypal case of political contentiousness: the recall of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin in 2012. Pairing qualitative and quantitative methods, we show that a fracturing of civic culture took place in which many citizens found it impossible to continue political discussion. Individuals at fault lines of contention, by nature of occupation, geographic location, or other personal circumstance, were most prone to this breakdown. Our results call into question the ability of talk to bridge political and social differences in periods of polarization and fragmentation, with implications for democratic functioning. In the field of communication, informal political talk among citizens is heralded for its capacity to connect citizens, improve the quality of their opinions and make them aware of those of others, incentivize news consumption, and spark civic engagement. As such, citizen talk contributes positively to societal integration and civic culture (Dahlgren, 2002). The tenor of the field is consistent with the claim that citizen talk is
Based on a 4-year longitudinal analysis of social media and mobile phone users in a Midwest US ma... more Based on a 4-year longitudinal analysis of social media and mobile phone users in a Midwest US market, this study differentiates news content engagement from news medium engagement, proposes four levels of news engagement, and compares how social media and mobile media differ in their effects on engagement in news content and news medium between the general population and college students. The analysis shows a steady decline in the interest in political news but not in other types of news. Total news consumption time gradually declined among the general population, and the gap between general population and students diminished over time. Social media use positively predicts total news consumption time. Predictors of news engagement differ for different levels of news engagement.
While media are the primary sources of information about foreign events, we know very little abou... more While media are the primary sources of information about foreign events, we know very little about how local television news, the most frequently watched news in America, cover foreign events and how their coverage relate to public attitudes. In this paper we examine public attitudes about Israel and show that Americans who watch local news were more likely to support Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War. We suggest that this attitudinal gap can be explained by the nature of the local news coverage of foreign events. To test this, we apply Entman's framing functions
Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology, 2015
Israel Studies Review, 2014
Local television news is the most-watched news source in America, yet we know very little about h... more Local television news is the most-watched news source in America, yet we know very little about how local channels cover foreign events. In this article, we examine and compare the news coverage of the 2006 Lebanon War on local and network news channels in the United States. Applying Entman's framing functions, we find that the local news coverage of this war was significantly more supportive of the Israeli position compared to the coverage of the same event on network news. We suggest that this difference is due to features of the local newsroom, including economic and institutional constraints, as well as newsroom routines that result in the tendency of the local media to comply with the positions of the US authorities.
Political Communication, 2009
This study focuses on the competition over international agenda building and frame building as th... more This study focuses on the competition over international agenda building and frame building as the main step within the public diplomacy process. It is the first analysis of a multi-actor contest over agenda and frame building in foreign media, focusing on two strategic acts of public diplomacy, (1) Israel's disengagement from Gaza, and (2) the 2006 general elections in the Palestinian Authority. We examine the success of the actors in promoting their agenda or and frames to a sample of media in the US and Britain. We find a complex media arena, which includes antagonist actors, foreign governments, and the media as additional actors, each trying to promote its own agenda and frames. Cultural and political congruence between a foreign country and an antagonist who launches a dramatic event gives that antagonist an advantage over its rival actor. However, the antagonist actor still needs to compete with the agenda and frames of foreign governments and media organizations.
Israel Studies, 2010
Abstract Israeli public diplomacy surrounding the disengagement from Gaza and the general electio... more Abstract Israeli public diplomacy surrounding the disengagement from Gaza and the general elections in the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005 reflects a problematic misconstruction of Israel's messages in English regarding its relations with the Palestinians. Based on content analysis of official documents, such as official announcements, press releases, and speeches by Israeli government officials (the PM and the foreign ministry), we point to the incompleteness of Israeli public messages aimed at non-Hebrew speakers in terms of ...
Communication Research, 2013
Abstract This study examines how the campaign information environment influences individuals&... more Abstract This study examines how the campaign information environment influences individuals' ambivalence reduction and polarization. Based on the 2008 presidential television campaign advertising data and individuals' electoral behavior data in 2008 designated market areas nationwide, this study utilizes multilevel modeling to better understand the interactions between the effects of individual-level predispositions and that of the contextual-level campaign information environment. The findings of the study ...
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 2012
This study explores whether negative political advertising has any impact on adolescents. Two dat... more This study explores whether negative political advertising has any impact on adolescents. Two datasets are merged for this inquiry: (1) content-coded ad-buy data on the placement of campaign messages on a marketby-market and program-by-program basis and (2) national survey data of parent-child dyads collected immediately after the 2008 presidential election. The authors' analysis finds that the negativity of political advertising to which adolescents were exposed predicted human-interest candidate knowledge, but not policy-relevant candidate knowledge. in addition, the negativity of political advertising exposure suppressed political consumerism among adolescents, but had no effect on their levels of political participation. This study shows that political campaigns can affect adolescents' knowledge and participation in unconventional and potentially deleterious ways.
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Conference Presentations by Itay Gabay
e-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequently used medium for college students in general. However, communication and business students are more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors and they are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of two social media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and the frequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” based on factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upper-class students are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outlet positively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social media for college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students are discussed.
Papers by Itay Gabay
e-mail avoidance and campus involvement. We found that text-messaging is the most frequently used medium for college students in general. However, communication and business students are more likely to use social media as the primary communication medium than other majors and they are more likely to be involved in the campus community. We created a typology of two social media user types by the specific combination of social media outlets they use and the frequency of use in those outlets as “instant communicators” and “online content curators” based on factor analysis. Increased use of social media leads to lower school e-mail avoidance. Upper-class students are more likely to avoid school e-mails. Facebook is the only social media outlet positively related to campus involvement. Implications of the findings on the use of social media for college educators and marketers and effective reach of college students are discussed.