Scripps Blogs

PhD student Jeremy Saks co-authors two publications

by Michael Sweeney, Professor; Associate Director for Graduate Studies

E.W. Scripps School of Journalism studetn Jeremy Saks has co-authored two publications — one article recently published in an academic journal, and another in press.

The first was published in the Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media (Volume 60, Issue 2). It is “Dialed In: Continuous Response Measures in Televised Political Debates and Their Effect on Viewers” and was authored by Saks; Jordan Compton, instructor at Southwest Baptist University; Scripps PhD student Ashley Hopkin;, and Kareem El Damanhoury, PhD student at Georgia State University. The research examines the influence of including a real-time polling tracker during televised debate coverage. The findings showed that individuals who viewed a senatorial debate with tracker data that favored one candidate or the other were more likely to state that they would vote for the corresponding candidate in a forced choice scenario (like this).

The second will be published in the Journal of Sports Media (Volume 11, Number 1). It is “The Not-So-Neutral Zone? ESPN, Agenda Setting, and the National Hockey League” and was authored by myself and Molly Yanity, an assistant professor at Quinnipiac University. It examines ESPN’s SportsCenter and its “Top 10 Plays” segment to see if the network included more clips from the sports for which the network owned the rights. Of the major American sports, ESPN owns the rights to almost all of them except the National Hockey League. The authors compared the NHL and the NBA because they were comparable leagues in terms of teams and games played per year while one had rights owned by ESPN and the did not. Ultimately, the authors found that ESPN showed NBA clips much more often than NHL clips during the segment. However, where those clips were ranked in the Top 10 was not statistically significant.

June 16, 2016