Tijdschrift voor Communicatie​wetenschap

In the Netherlands relatively few people support the hospitality industry smoking ban. Possibly this is due to the way the media covered the smoking ban. A content analysis of 1,041 articles in six Dutch newspapers showed that when there were economic aspects of the ban in the newspaper articles, the articles were mostly negative towards the smoking ban (62% negative, 29% positive, 9% mixed or neutral). The same was true when the newspaper articles dealt with resistance against the ban (69% negative, 26% positive, 5% mixed). When there were health aspects in the articles, the articles were equally often positive as negative (42% positive, 43% negative, 15% mixed or neutral). Although the smoking ban was implemented to protect hospitality workers from the health damage of passive smoking, economic aspects (59%) and the resistance against the ban (46%) appeared more often in the newspapers than health aspects (22%).

Nowadays teenagers are confronted with a variety of technologies to accommodate their interpersonal communication. In this article, we focus on the communication technology choices of a representative sample of 1725 Flemish teenagers, aged 12 to 18. The results show text messaging to be the most popular means to communicate with a large variety of communication partners of all ages, embedded in a variety of systems within the ecology of adolescent development. Online communication however mainly accounts for communication with peers. By means of additional quantitative data and a qualitative follow-up study, these results are put into the context of the ownership and everyday usage meanings of these technologies.

Increasing handwashing compliance after using the bathroom was the main goal of the two studies. Handwashing is of critical importance for preventing the spread of bacteria. Most people do know this, but they don’t behave in accordance to this fact. Lack of knowledge does not explain the discrepancy and therefore we investigated two strategies from the social influence literature. The effects on the handwashing behavior were observed unobtrusively. In the first study the impact of communicating the injunctive and descriptive norms regarding handwashing were examined. Results indicate that handwashing is promoted by communicating the injunctive norm. The impact of the descriptive norm is less important. In the second study informational and normative social influence were examined under different experimental conditions. Both informational and normative social influence promoted handwashing behavior and increased handwashing compliance after using the bathroom. Implications for influencing automatic and routine behavior by the use of communication and persuasive strategies are discussed.

As journalism practice has changed over the last decade, so have the journalism curricula and the research field. While the news business was undergoing dramatic changes as a result of the digital revolution, Flanders witnessed a boom in journalism curricula and saw the emergence of a new research domain, namely journalism studies. Given the constant interaction, it seems relevant to investigate the degree in which these domains correspond to one another. In this study we identify the thematic focuses as well as the prominence of the four main media platforms within each domain. We carried out a survey among 600 Flemish journalists, analyzed every bachelor and master study program in Flanders and inventoried Flemish research in journalism studies, conducted from 2005 till 2010. The results indeed indicate a number of discrepancies, mainly thematic in nature. Possible remedies are discussed.

This study examines the influence of idealised (extremely attractive) models appearing in beauty advertisements on the self-image of 10-13 year-old girls and investigates the possible protective role of media awareness. Model attractiveness (idealised vs. normally attractive) and media awareness (induced vs. not induced) were manipulated and self-image and internalisation of the Western beauty ideal were measured. Results show that after exposure to beauty advertisements with idealised models, girls with higher induced media awareness had a slightly more positive self-image than girls in whom media awareness was not induced. Moreover, this positive effect of media awareness was more pronounced within the group of girls who highly internalized the Western beauty ideal. It is concluded that media awareness can protect the self-image of young (vulnerable) girls who are exposed to idealised media images.

The most important difference between newspaper and news weblog texts is their subjectivity representation. By means of a linguistic content analysis differences were established between newspapers and news weblogs. In a detailed analysis of specific grammatical and stylistic characteristics at sentence level, subjectivity differences in writing were revealed. The most important outcome was that news events in news weblogs were written from the authors’ perspectives. In contrast, newspaper texts present several voices through which the news reveals itself. The results show that subjectivity in journalism is primarily a matter of style.