Ferraz de Oliveira Nicholas – Page 8 – Funk Library

ACDC News – Issue 12-08

Posted on May 11, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Metaphors that farm magazines use about climate change . Researcher Therese Asplund recently identified three metaphors used by the two largest Swedish farm magazines during 2000-2009:

Greenhouse metaphor. Highlights temperature and radiation in the atmosphere. Neglects other meteorological aspects (such as precipitation, clouds, snow) and impacts of climate change on natural and social systems.
Game metaphor. Highlights positive impacts such as higher yields and increased income) and as winning through mitigation. Neglects negative impacts such as more insect outbreaks, warmer and drier conditions, shorter growing season.
War metaphor. Highlights negative impacts (such as crop damage, higher taxes and negative image) and combat/battling for mitigation.

These findings prompted the author to observe that the inconsistent and confusing messages may result in conflicts and disputes. At the same time, she noted, multiple metaphors may “open up new perspectives on the issue of climate change” and allow readers to talk about it from several angles.

You can review this Journal of Science Communication article (Volume 10, December 2011) through open access at http://jcom.sissa.it/archive/10/04/Jcom1004%282011%29A01/

Rural community coverage earns Pulitzer recognition. Editorial staff members of a weekly newspaper serving a small rural community in Maine were named finalists recently in the 2012 Pulitzer Prize program. Editor A. M. Sheehan and Assistant Editor Matt Hongoltz-Hetling of the Advertiser Democrat (Norway, Maine) earned finalist honors in the local reporting category. They were recognized for their “tenacious exposure of disgraceful conditions in federally-supported housing in a small rural community.” Within hours, the coverage sparked state investigation.

The Advertiser Democrat has a history of covering burglaries, poverty, homelessness, internet access, scarcity of doctors, fire services, and other rural issues. You can learn more at www.advertiserdemocrat.com/featured/story/02-16-news-2012pulitzerfinalist-16

Nine best practices for boosting media coverage . Recently we added to the ACDC collection a report about Maisha Yetu, a project that is changing media coverage of health in rural and other areas of Africa. Maisha Yetu (“Our Lives” in Swahili) has been carried out for about a decade by the International Women’s Media Foundation. One unusual idea features several ways to gain buy-in from top editors and top management of media organizations—even memorandums of agreement. Another successful practice features use of in-house journalist/trainers.

You can read this report, “Writing for our lives,” at http://iwmf.org/docs/9464_WFOLforweb2.pdf

So where are we finding information these days? You may be interested in some of the out-of-mainstream journals from which we have recently identified agricultural communications literature for the ACDC collection:

Annals of Internal Medicine

Journal of Foodservice Business Research

Adotas

Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research

Field Methods

Cultural Studies Critical Methodologies

ETC: A Review of General Semantics

South African Journal of Agricultural Extension

Science Technology and Society

Journal of Community Informatics

Please let us know at docctr@library.illinois.edu when—in unusual or usual places—you, too, come across information about the communications aspects of agriculture. We welcome additions you may suggest.

An unusual perspective on how information affects food buying . Studies of the impact of information on food demand often center on foodborne illness or food safety events. Many studies focus on effects of advertising. Less often do they analyze the impact of scientific nutrition information, delivered by multiple media. Using U.S. consumer panel data and content analysis of information in popular media sources, Sakiko Shiratori and Jean Kinsey studied the impact of information on the purchase of omega-3 fortified eggs.

Results showed significant positive impact of nutrition information from the popular media on consumers’ food choices. Authors noted that although mega-3 fortified eggs usually sell at a premium price, “growing knowledge of the health benefits of omega-3 propels their consumption.” They concluded that “publishing in popular media can be said to be an effective communication approach.”

You can read this 2011 conference research paper via AgEconSearch at http://purl.umn.edu/103850

Thanks and best wishes to Michelle Fluty as she leaves the Center after two school years as ACDC student assistant. We congratulate Michelle for completing her undergraduate degree in agricultural communications this month. She also parts with a remarkable record of having checked the entire ACDC collection to be sure documents are filed as intended and in good condition. Perhaps it is surprising Michelle has not gone blind! This sharp-eyed dairy judge inventoried some 37,000 documents about agricultural communicating around the globe. And the inventory project was only part of what she contributed. She will be missed here as an associate and friend.

Picture of Michelle Fluty

Communicator activities approaching.

May 21-24, 2012
“East Meets West for Sustainable Development.” 2012 conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AEAEE) in Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand. Information: http://www.aiaee.org/images/stories/AIAEE/2012Conference/flyer.pdf
May 28-June 1, 2012
26th annual National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.netc2012.org
June 2-5, 2012
“Adventures in Communications.” Annual institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Tucson, Arizona USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop
June 11-14, 2012
“Charting a New Course.” Annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA. Information: http://www.aceweb.org
August 4-6, 2012
Agricultural Media Summit in Albuquerque, New Mexico USA. Organized by the Livestock Publications Council (LPC), American Agricultural Editors’ Association (AAEA) and Agri Council of American Business Media. Also the annual meeting site of Agricultural Communicators of Tomorrow (ACT). Information: http://www.agmediasummit.com

Colorful climate reporting. We close this issue of ACDC News with a 2011 winning entry in the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest sponsored by the English Department, San Jose State University. This annual competition challenges entrants to compose the opening sentence to the worst of all possible novels. Here is the winning entry by Mike Pedersen of North Berwick, Maine, in the Purple Prose category:

“As his small boat scudded before a brisk breeze under a sapphire sky dappled with cerulean clouds with indigo bases, through cobalt seas that deepened to navy nearer the boat and faded to azure at the horizon, Ian was at a loss as to why he felt blue.”

You can read other mind-stretching entries at http://www.bulwer-lytton.com/2011win.html

Best wishes and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu

ACDC News – Issue 12-07

Posted on April 24, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

What “digital divide” means. And so what? One of the most thorough analyses we have seen about the digital divide appeared in the September 2011 issue of the journal Telecommunications Policy . Martin Hilbert used network analysis to view the main approaches researchers have taken to conceptualize the digital divide. He found many diverse actors with dissimilar goals are involved in confronting it.

Beyond that, will efforts toward a single definition, coherent national strategy, and common outlook on digital development do better than others? Not really, he said. Instead, he suggested shifting focus to identifying desired impacts, which then determine ways to solve a particular problem and reach a desired goal. “The ends should determine the means, not the other way around.”

You can review a permitted scholarly posting of this article, “The end justifies the definition,” online at: http://www.martinhilbert.net/ManifoldDigitalDivide_Hilbert_AAM.pdf

How U.S. agri-businesses address the triple bottom line. A recent article in the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review examined sustainability strategies that U.S. agribusinesses use to integrate environmental and social responsibilities with economic goals. Researchers gathered responses from a sample of 165 agribusiness professionals representing U.S. firms participating in management seminars.

Results indicated that “although U.S. agribusiness companies tend to adopt broad sustainability views which are driven by management pressures, they primarily develop actions at the lower sustainability levels which are driven by external pressures such as customers, suppliers and the media.”

You can read this journal article at http://purl.umn.edu/117601

More courageous rural reporting . Recently we added to the ACDC collection several reports about honors for courageous rural reporting. Here is a sobering example:

Reporter Vicky Ntetema received the 2010 Courage in Journalism Award from the International Women’s Media Foundation for bravery in covering an issue in rural Tanzania. Her investigation shed light on brutal killings of albinos, as arranged by witchdoctors for use in traditional “remedies.” Her life was threatened, she was forced twice to leave Tanzania for her safety, and at the time of the honor she was operating under cover. According to the BBC, for which she reports, some 170 witchdoctors have been arrested for albino killings.

You can learn more about Vicky Ntetema’s reporting efforts at: http://iwmf.org/archive/articletype/articleview/articleid/1217/vicky-ntetema-tanzania.aspx

Contributing valued historic documents . Thanks to Eldon Fredericks, emeritus faculty member at Purdue University, for contributing 75 historic documents to the ACDC collection. Most of them include reports, newsletters and training materials from the National Project in Agricultural Communications during the latter 1950s. NPAC is one of the most effective professional development programs so far for extension and research communicators in land-grant universities and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. It was funded by the Kellogg Foundation.

Contributions such as this are helping ACDC assemble a complete set of NPAC resources for future reference. You can learn more about the project and the materials by visiting the ACDC search page: http://web.library.uiuc.edu/asp/agx/acdc/search.html . Conduct a Subject search on “npac”

Food issues in the minds of UK residents: a 2011 update. We added recently to the ACDC collection a 2011 report, “Biannual Public Attitudes Tracker,” from the UK Food Standards Agency. Based on a probability sampling of more than 2,000 adults, the survey identified these top six total concerns about food:

Food prices 61 percent

Amount of salt in food 50

Amount of fat in food 44

Date labels 27

Foods aimed at children, 26

including school meals

BSE 18

All six concerns had increased significantly since November 2010.

You can read the full report at: http://www.food.gov.uk/multimedia/pdfs/biannualpublicattitudestrack.pdf

A challenge for land-grant universities. We appreciate a heads-up from ACDC Associate Steve Shenton about a case study that argues for stronger public engagement in land-grant universities. This report in the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement suggests that scholars increasingly need to embrace and pursue a view of scholarship as a public rather than a private craft. It tells of a natural resources faculty member who built up a large research and extension education program at Cornell University addressing the human dimensions of wildlife management.

“Dan and his colleagues…have demonstrated that it is possible for academic professionals to pursue their scholarship through a stance of deep engagement, leading to products of both public and academic value. Crucially, they have shown that deep public engagement does not require the sacrifice of academic values. … these forms of value can feed and build upon each other.”

You can read “The craft of public scholarship in land-grant education” at http://openjournals.libs.uga.edu/index.php/jheoe/article/view/493

We welcome your thoughts and experiences. Reach us at docctr@library.illinois.edu .

Communications – key to new EC action plan for welfare of animals. Early this year the European Commission posted a 2012-2015 action plan in this arena. Livestock farming in the EU represents an annual value of 149 billion euros. The Commission cited communications is a major factor in this strategy because:

Consumers and many other stakeholders lack appropriate information on important aspects of animal welfare.
Principles of animal welfare need to be simplified

According to the report, strategic actions for communications will begin with research. It will map out the current animal welfare education and information activities directed at the general public and consumers.

You can read the report at: http://ec.europa.eu/food/animal/welfare/actionplan/docs/aw_strategy_19012012_en.pdf

Communicator activities approaching.

May 21-24, 2012
“East Meets West for Sustainable Development.” 2012 conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AEAEE) in Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand. Information: http://www.aiaee.org/images/stories/AIAEE/2012Conference/flyer.pdf
May 28-June 1, 2012
26th annual National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.netc2012.org
June 2-5, 2012
“Adventures in Communications.” Annual institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Tucson, Arizona USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop
June 11-14, 2012
“Charting a New Course.” Annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA.

Eye-opening testimonials in agricultural advertising. We close this issue of ACDC News with an eye-opening claim by a company wanting to buy advertising space in farm papers during 1922. The marketer of Ditto Egg Tablets claimed that more than 100,000 poultry raisers testified to the value of this egg tonic.

In reporting the claim to member publications, the Agricultural Publishers Association urged them to scrutinize advertising copy carefully. APA energetically fought fraudulent advertising across the decades.

Best wishes and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 12-06

Posted on April 12, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

First fashion brand from rural women. February 15 proved a significant day in the fashion industry of Pakistan as an impressive fashion show launched the nation’s first brand for rural women. It’s called Sughar (translated in English as “skilled and confident woman”) and it involves the work of 500 rural women in two provinces of the nation. Featured products include stylish hand clutches, hand bags, and traditional-cum-modern dresses. Each product depicts a folk story or a tradition that is followed in diverse communities of Pakistan.

A national nonprofit organization, Participatory Development Initiatives, facilitates this social enterprise program. “The fashionable and fabulously designed products were the source of attraction to many who were amazed at the talent and skills of rural women.”

You can learn more about Sughar at http://sugharwomen.blogspot.com/2012/02/sughar-pakistans-first-ever-rural-women.html

On the changing definition of “agricultural journalism.” William Allen, University of Missouri, usefully traces the roots and growth of agricultural journalism in the new Encyclopedia of Science and Technology Communication . He describes the uniqueness and importance of agricultural journalism, extending beyond “just good journalism.” the “farm story” has evolved to target urban as well rural areas, and deals with concepts like food, science, or trade.

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu if you lack access to this article.

Careers, commodity websites, social media, “Food, Inc.” featured in JAC . You can read research reports about these and other dimensions of agricultural communications in the third 2011 issue of the Journal of Applied Communications :

Tamra Watson and J. Tanner Robertson, “Perceptions of agricultural communications freshmen regarding curriculum expectations and career aspirations”
Joy N. Goodwin, Christy Chiarelli and Tracy Irani, “Is perception reality? Improving agricultural messages by discovering how consumers perceive messages”
Christy Witt, David Doerfert, Tracy Rutherford, Theresa Murphrey, and Leslie Edgar, “The contribution of selected instructional methods toward graduate student understanding of crisis communication.”
Mica Graybill-Leonard, Courtney Meyers, David Doerfert, and Erica Irlbeck, “Using Facebook as a communication tool in agricultural-related social movements.”
Kori Barr, Erica Irlbeck, Courtney Meyers, and Todd Chambers, “Television journalists’ perceptions of agricultural stories and sources in Texas”
Courtney Meyers, Erica Irlbeck, Mica Graybill-Leonard, and David Doerfert, “Advocacy in agricultural social movements: exploring Facebook as a public relations communication tool”
Courtney Meyers, Erica Irlbeck, and Kelsey Fletcher, “Postsecondary students’ reactions to agricultural documentaries: a qualitative analysis”

View them online at http://journalofappliedcommunications.org/current-issue.html

How to research, monitor, and evaluate communication for development . Special thanks to Dr. June Lennie of the Queensland University of Technology (Brisbane, Australia) for alerting us to a comprehensive new resource:

“Researching, monitoring, and evaluating communications for development:trends, challenges and approaches.”

Dr. Lennie and Prof. Jo Tacchi of RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia) wrote this 153-page report for the United Nations Inter-agency Group on Communication for Development.

The report highlights principles and approaches for effective, appropriate and sustainable research, monitoring, and evaluation of communication efforts in support of development. You can read it at:

http://www.unicef.org/cbsc/files/RME-RP-Evaluating_C4D_Trends_Challenges__Approaches_Final-2011.pdf

Tell kids to do journalism in high school to boost grades and scores. Students in the U.S. who work on high school newspapers and yearbooks get better grades in high school, earn higher scores on college entry exams, and get better grades as college freshmen. Those findings come from research commissioned by the Newspaper Association of America. The study involved more than 31,000 randomly selected students who took the ACT college entrance exams across a five-year period. The findings do not assure causation, but do show what the report describes as strong positive relationship.

High school journalism faces many obstacles, according to the report, due mainly to budget cuts and legal pressures (related to free speech). Rural schools were cited as being among those most likely to cut back on journalism offerings.

You can read the full report at:

http://www.naafoundation.org/Research/Foundation/Student-Journalism/High-School-Journalism-Matters.aspx

Communicator activities approaching.

April 16-18, 2012
“Sustainable Human Development.” The World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) in New Delhi, India. Organized by the International Federation for Information Processing. Will focus on four key areas: agriculture, education, health and e-governance. Information: http://www.witfor.org
April 18-20, 2012
“Acres of Innovation.” 2012 conference of the National Agri-Marketing Association in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://nama.org/amc
May 21-24, 2012
“East Meets West for Sustainable Development.” 2012 conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AEAEE) in Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand. Information: http://www.aiaee.org/images/stories/AIAEE/2012Conference/flyer.pdf
May 28-June 1, 2012
“That Voodo You Do.” 26th annual National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.netc2012.org
June 2-5, 2012
“Adventures in Communications.” Annual institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Tucson, Arizona USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop
June 11-14, 2012
“Charting a New Course.” Annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA.

To dream the impossible dream. We close this issue of ACDC News with a “hen” story told in 1935 by Victor Hayden, executive secretary of the Agricultural Publishers Association. He offered it in response to a tale circulating in newspaper trade circles. A newspaper was claiming to have issued its first annual farm edition in tabloid form. According to the paper, members of the regular staff produced this 24-page edition in 10 days, along with their regular editorial duties.

Hayden responded with a tale of his own. It involved a farmer’s hens and may speak to motivational appeals we all have heard and endured:

The farmer exhibited an ostrich egg to his hens and told them that, while he wasn’t scolding them for their efforts, they might take this as an example and try to do better.

Best wishes and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 12-05

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Reputations, framing, exhibits, students, and more featured in JAC . You can read new research about these and other dimensions of agricultural communications in the second 2011 issue of the Journal of Applied Communications :

Mark Tucker, Jon Bricker, and Alexandria Huerta, “An approach to measuring the impact and effectiveness of educational science exhibits”
Rebecca McGovney-Ingram, Tracy Rutherford, and Alvin Larke, Jr., “The voices of minority students in an agricultural communications and journalism program: a case study”
Leslie Edgar and Tracy Rutherford, “Citation structure: an analysis of the literature cited in the Journal of Applied Communications from 1997 to 2006″
Erica Goss Irlbeck, Cindy Akers and Ashley Palmer, “A nutty study: a framing analysis of the 2009 Salmonella outbreak in peanut products”
Lauri M. Baker, Katie Abrams, Tracy Irani, and Courtney Meyers, “Managing media relations: determining the reputation of a land grant institution from perspective of media professionals”

View them at http://journalofappliedcommunications.org/2011/11-volume-95-no-2-html

Ag story tips for general media reporters. The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism, Arizona State University, provides a continuing stream of ideas to help news reporters find local stories related to agriculture. Here are samples of recent tips:

What is happening locally in government-supported conservation reserve program (CRP) contracts and rural development projects
Local impacts of rising commodity prices and farmland values
How hunting seasons affect local businesses and communities
Keeping tabs on influences of new leases of land for drilling shale gas wells
Local angles in cases of food recalls and outbreaks of food-borne diseases
How a mild winter may influence local food and agriculture interests

You can follow such leads by visiting the Reynolds Center website at http://businessjournalism.org and reviewing information on the Agriculture beat.

How selling farm products locally affects farming operations. The practice increased on-farm biodiversity in an exploratory case study in Sweden. The vegetable farmers in this study gained personal satisfaction—and a great deal of positive feedback—from their contact with consumers. In the process, they found increased motivation to grow a greater variety of crops.

Authors of this article in the Journal of Sustainable Agriculture reported: “Important driving forces for increasing the diversity of crops were that they attracted more customers and gave more income per consumer visiting the market, which led to better income for participating farmers. Positive feedback from customers appreciating the abundance of variety was also significant.”

You can read the publisher’s abstract of the article at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10440040903303694

Or check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Worries about losing photos. Reader Gordon Collie of AgriProse, Brisbane, Australia, voiced his concern about losing his digital photos. Gordon is immediate past president of the Australian Council of Agricultural Journalists. In response to our recent note in ACDC News about “when digital data die” he says:

“[I’m worried,] not just my own extensive collection, but the vast gatherings of all newspaper and magazine photos now being archived on digital systems. Will they even exist 50 or 100 years? I’m told the digital storage has an uncertain life, let alone the issue you raise of whole systems becoming redundant every few years. I make back-ups of back-ups and now have two external hard drives which I alternate. One lives in the shed to guard against fire/theft in my home office. Of course a portable hard drive is such a small, insignificant thing it could easily get thrown out in the trash by someone not realizing what’s on it. (My son is just doing a big shed clean up, heaven forbid!)”

Gordon reports he has “just started putting my toe into the water with cloud computing and have some photos on Flickr. Is that a solution, perhaps?”

Thanks for your thoughts, Gordon. We welcome other experiences, views and ideas about preserving digital information, especially for the wellbeing of agriculture. Please send them to us at docctr@library.illinois.edu

Innovative news model serves “a fragmented rural landscape.” That is the goal of NewsShed. It is 2011 recipient of a “Women Entrepreneurs in the Global Digital News Frontier” grant from the International Women’s Media Foundation. Co-founders Julie Reischel and Lissa Harris are establishing NewsShed in rural Catskills communities of upstate New York.

About 400,000 residents are scattered throughout the countryside involving about 75 small towns and hamlets, according to a report we are entering into the ACDC collection. At least half of the towns have no news coverage. Through NewsShed, residents of a particular town can post local information on “Town Pages” and link it to a regional online hub. As well, these micro sites will offer local businesses opportunities for more targeted advertising.

You can learn about NewsShed at:

http://iwmf.org/pioneering-change/new-media-women-entrepreneurs/2011-winners/newsshed.aspx

How agricultural employers assess communications skills of college graduates. We added recently to the ACDC collection a journal article that shed light on this matter. Researchers Brian C. Briggeman and F. Bailey Norwood used an internet survey of agribusinesses and others that employ college graduates in the U.S. Here (ranked) are the most useful ways the responding employers said they assess the communications skills of an agricultural science graduate:

Personal interview
Leadership positions
Software knowledge
Grades
References
Courses taken

You can review the abstract of this 2011 article in the Journal of Natural Resources and Life Sciences Education here: https://www.jnrlse.org/view/2011/e09-0040.pdf

Or get in touch with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Communicator activities approaching.

April 16-18, 2012
“Sustainable Human Development.” The World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) in New Delhi, India. Organized by the International Federation for Information Processing. Will focus on four key areas: agriculture, education, health and e-governance. Information: http://www.witfor.org
April 18-20, 2012
“Acres of Innovation.” 2012 conference of the National Agri-Marketing Association in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://nama.org/amc
May 21-24, 2012
“East Meets West for Sustainable Development.” 2012 conference of the Association for International Agricultural and Extension Education (AEAEE) in Nakhon Pathom Province, Thailand. Information: http://www.aiaee.org/images/stories/AIAEE/2012Conference/flyer.pdf
May 28-June 1, 2012
“That Voodo You Do.” 26th annual National Extension Technology Conference (NETC) in New Orleans, Louisiana USA. Information: http://www.netc2012.org
June 2-5, 2012
“Adventures in Communications.” Annual institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Tucson, Arizona USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop
June 11-14, 2012
“Charting a New Course.” Annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA.

Losing something in preparing agricultural journalists? We close this issue of ACDC News with words of a U.S. agricultural editor in 1916. He was responding to a national survey conducted by an industrial journalism faculty member at Kansas State Agricultural College.

“The great objection that I have to the college trained man of the present time is that the real sympathy and poetry of life have been mostly trained out of him.”

Gender aspect aside, today do you observe the tendency he mentioned? If so, to what extent? In what ways? For what reasons? With what results? Share your thoughts with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu . And let us know if you would like to read this research report. (N. A. Crawford, Preparation for editorial work on farm papers )

Best wishes and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 12-04

Posted on March 9, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Reaching a million consumers about farmers and farming . A report from AgriMarketing Weekly alerts us to news about a video, “God made a farmer,” that has reached nearly one million video views. Farms.com, with offices in Canada and the U.S., posted it last June as a tribute to farmers.

You can view this 2:36 inspirational video at:

http://www.farms.com/FarmsPages/ChatDeshBoard/ChatThreadView/tabid/146/Default.aspx?chatid=112671&CV=1

“Next Frontiers” symposium attracts more than 300. On February 17, The University of Illinois hosted a symposium, “‘Food and Agricultural Communications: The Next Frontier,” for more than 300 participants. It marked the 50th anniversary of the academic program in agricultural communications, a dual effort of the College of Media and College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences.

You can view presentations online at www.agcommevent.com

Among the featured reports and panels:

“The communications challenges ahead of us and why they are important”

“Communicating better about what science can deliver”
“Colliding beliefs and common ground”
“Bringing nutrition and rural development to the farthest reaches”
“Communications leaders: creating the next generation”

Talented recruits from rural areas feed a successful freelancing cooperative. We recently added to the ACDC collection a news report about African Eye, a news service that functions as a cooperative. In this unusual business model each reporter keeps half of the revenue generated by his or her own stories, according to the news item. The other half supports the enterprise that edits and markets those stories.

African Eye was launched 18 years ago and now has 15 full-time journalists as well as a network of correspondents, covering six countries. Apprentice correspondents undergo a rigorous training process; “the best can become full-fledged reporters of the service.”

You can view this report at http://ijnet.org/blog/african-news-service-thrives-cooperative

Keeping agricultural information private . A 2010 research report we have added to the ACDC collection sheds light on why farmers may choose not to share their experiences and knowledge. Dr. Julie Ingram’s study involved farmers practicing reduced tillage in England. Here are some of the reasons they offered for being unwilling to share their experiences and knowledge:

Aversion to publicity. Example: “I don’t shout about what we do.”
Past experiences of criticism from neighbors.
A competitive nature and perspective.
Established, pioneer reduced tillers may “see themselves as purists” and question the motivation and skill of others. Example: “I suspect most are doing it to cut costs and they think it’s easy, but they are not doing it properly and some are making of mess of it.”

Do you know of reports of other research that sheds light on this topic of information sharing? If so, please get in touch with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu .

You can read the publisher’s abstract of this Journal of Sustainable Agriculture article at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10440040903482589

Or check with us for help in gaining access to it.

Food writing – journalism at its best. Paula Crossfield, managing editor of Civil Eats, offered that view in a commentary we added recently to the ACDC collection.

“I write about food,” she said, “because I think it is a vital issue that has for decades been critically overlooked by the media – and thus the American public – leaving a vast backlog of interesting stories. And because I think food has the potential to unite us.” Food writing fits well with traditional agricultural journalism, she suggested. From her perspective, journalism can be the facilitator of conversations among farmers and eaters across the country, laying things “in the sunlight.”

You can read “Why I write about food” at:

http://civileats.com/2011/01/21/why-i-write-about-food-its-journalism-at-its-best

News framing, online tools, and university image featured in JAC . You can read research reports about these dimensions of agricultural communications in the first 2011 issue of the Journal of Applied Communications :

Karen J. Cannon and Tracy A. Irani, “Fear and loathing in Britain: a framing analysis of news coverage during the foot and mouth disease outbreaks in the United Kingdom.”
Joy Goodwin and Emily Rhoades, “Agricultural legislation: the presence of California Proposition 2 on YouTube.”
Mark Anderson-Wilk, “Improving discoverability, preventing broken links: considerations for land-grant university publishers.”
Courtney A. Meyers and Tracy A. Irani, “Measuring the value of a land-grant university.”

View them at: http://journalofappliedcommunications.org/2011/10-volume-95-no-1.html

Mobile phones “can be enslaving as well as liberating.” Researcher Cara Wallis reported this outcome in a journal article we added recently to the ACDC collection. It came to her attention during 10 months of ethnographic fieldwork among young rural-to-urban migrant women working in the low-level service sector in Beijing, China. One case example involved a supervisor manipulating and controlling employees through their mobile phone.

In conclusion, Wallis encouraged attention to the “contingencies of culture” in analyzing information technologies. Marginalized workers’ use of mobile phones will not necessarily lead to greater income, a better job or more autonomy, she observed.

You can read the abstract of this New Media and Society article, “Mobile phones without guarantees,” here:

http://nms.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/03/24/1461444810393904.abstract

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Communicator activities approaching.

March 22-23, 2012
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org
April 16-18, 2012
“Sustainable Human Development.” The World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) in New Delhi, India. Organized by the International Federation for Information Processing. Will focus on four key areas: agriculture, education, health and e-governance. Information: http://www.witfor.org
April 18-20, 2012
“Acres of Innovation.” 2012 conference of the National Agri-Marketing Association in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://nama.org/amc
June 2-5, 2012
“Adventures in Communications.” Annual institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Tucson, Arizona USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop
June 11-14, 2012
“Charting a New Course.” Annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland, USA.

When farm magazine subscribers failed to pay . Back in the days when subscriptions provided a larger share of income than at present, farm publishers used powerful medicine to urge subscribers to pay up. We close this issue of ACDC News with an appeal that one publisher used with some success, according to Clarence Poe, long-time editor of The Progressive Farmer :

The man who cheats his paper

Out of a single cent

Will never reach that heavenly land

Where old Elijah went.

But when at last his race is run –

This life of toil and woe –

He’ll straightway go to that fiery land

Where they never shovel snow.”

Best wishes and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 12-03

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

When the food label says “Best Before.” Consumer confusion sets in, according to a news report we have added to the ACDC collection from Ottawa, Canada. It explained that consumers are throwing away lots of good food because they don’t understand what the Best Before date means.

“Most of us see them as expiration dates, when they’re often anything but,” said reporter Angela Mulholland of CTVNews.ca, “In fact, a Best Before date says nothing about the safety of a food.” She explained that the Best Before dates are only an indicator of the quality of the product – in terms of how long it will maintain its optimum taste and texture.

You can read the document at: http://ottawa.ctv.ca/servlet/an/local/CTVNews/20111223/food-safety-freshness-best-before-dates-111226/20111226/?hub=OttawaHome

What “sustainable agriculture” means to high school agriculture teachers. This widely-used expression takes on many dimensions. We recently added to the ACDC collection a Journal of Sustainable Agriculture article that reported on beliefs of high school agriculture teachers in 12 north-central U.S. states. Here are the top six aspects of sustainability on which they agreed:

Development of healthy soils is important to sustainable agriculture.
It conserves natural resources for the benefit of future generations.
Crop rotation is important to sustainability.
It promotes recycling of renewable natural resources.
It values nature for its own sake.
Agricultural knowledge from Extension is important for its success.

You can read the publisher’s abstract of the article at: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10440041003680312 Or check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Advice to researchers: Focus on the agricultural press. In a European Journal of Communication article, Olivier Baisnée observed that most research conducted about the European public sphere has been heavily influenced by a definition promoted by the European Union (EU) institutions themselves. It has emphasized information about the EU in national media. However, he noted, the public of the EU is sectoral and highly selective, socially and economically. Nor are all the actors located within EU official boundaries.

“Paradoxically, it seems rather clear that some of the social groups most involved are not the most frequently mentioned. Farmers and fishermen, for example, are much more involved in the [European public sphere] than most of the rest of the population. Then the question remains, instead of focusing only on national media would it not also be (more) interesting to study the specialized press directed to those who really take part in the political debates about European issues? In practical terms, that means studying the specialized press relevant to EU policy processes: e.g. business dailies, international publications, publications on agriculture, and the fishing industry.”

View the abstract here: http://ejc.sagepub.com/content/22/4/493.abstract Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Helpful resources about “when the digital data die.”

Thanks to Professor Chris Morgan, University of Georgia, for suggesting these websites that may be helpful for those interested in preserving digital materials:

“Care and handling of CDs and DVDs – a guide for librarians and archivists”

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/docs/CDandDVDCareandHandlingGuide.pdf

“The Archival Advisor”

http://www.archivaladvisor.org/index.shtml

“CD and DVD Archiving”

http://www.itl.nist.gov/iad/894.05/docs/disccare.html

Guidelines for assessing risks of poor animal welfare . Journalists and communicators who cover animal agriculture may find interest in a new resource that came to our attention. “Guidance on risk assessment for animal welfare” was published during January by the European Food Safety Authority. An accompanying glossary defines the terms used.

You can read the document at: http://www.efsa.europa.eu/en/efsajournal/doc/2513.pdf

How careers in agricultural journalism are born (by accident). During the 2011 IFAJ Congress we appreciated meeting Henry Heald. Now retired, Henry is an honorary life member of the Eastern Canadian Farm Writers Association and Ontario Institute of Agrologists.

“My experience in the Parliamentary Press Gallery led me into agriculture reporting,” he explains in his chapter of a new book, Media Values . We added it recently to the ACDC collection. How did he land there? He recalls being in a line-up of Canadian Press reporters, getting their assignments for covering government affairs.

“Heald, you’re Agriculture.”

You can read the publisher’s description of the book here: http://www.troubador.co.uk/book_info.asp?bookid=1244

Communicator activities approaching.

March 22-23, 2012
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org
April 16-18, 2012
“Sustainable Human Development.” The World Information Technology Forum (WITFOR) in New Delhi, India. Organized by the International Federation for Information Processing. Will focus on four key areas: agriculture, education, health, and e-governance. Information: http://www.witfor.org
April 18-20, 2012
“Acres of Innovation.” 2012 conference of the National Agri-Marketing Association in Kansas City, Missouri USA. Information: http://nama.org/amc
June 2-5, 2012
“Adventures in Communications.” Annual institute of the Cooperative Communicators Association (CCA) in Tucson, Arizona USA. Information: http://www.communicators.coop
June 11-14, 2012
“Charting a New Course.” Annual conference of the Association for Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland, USA.

Examining the (rural) roots of broadcasting . We close this issue of ACDC News with something we added recently to the collection. A Journal of Radio Studies article included this observation by Layne Beaty, a pioneering farm broadcaster in the U.S.:

“It may be coincidental that the first use of “broadcasting” was agricultural, referring to the sowing of seeds. It is nonetheless fitting because in the early days of radio when rural people lived in varying degrees of isolation, radio became a link to the outside world and a live-in companion for farmers and their families.”

Best wishes and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions, and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu

ACDC News – Issue 12-02

Posted on January 30, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

New ways to connect organizations and agencies that focus on climate, agriculture, and water.

New forms of media provide new opportunities for global outreach, Andrew C. Revkin emphasized recently in WMO Bulletin , journal of the World Meteorological Organization.

He observed that societies rich and poor need reliable and timely information on the weather and, increasingly, on the causes and consequences of grander-scale shifts in the climate system itself. On that front, “an enormous gap persists between what is possible and what is happening.” Part of it can be narrowed, he suggested, if scientists and scholars—and their institutions—think creatively about how to expand their communication circles and pathways. Among the examples he described:

National Atmospheric Space Administration’s use of Twitter to “bat down rumors and provide a swift source of updates.”
A “station scientist” program by the American Meteorological Society to help those who deliver weather forecasts on television.
A “Climate Q&A Service” to reporters from the American Geophysical Union.
A “singing climatologist” at Pennsylvania State University

You can read the article online at: http://www.wmo.int/pages/publications/bulletin_en/60_1_revkin_en.html

A new agricultural communications text.

Two faculty members at the University of Florida have written a new book about skills and concepts in agricultural communications:

Ricky Telg and Tracy Anne Irani, Agricultural Communications in Action: a Hands-On Approach . Cengage Learning, Florence, Kentucky. 368 pages. 2011

“Current communication trends are integrated throughout this practical, ‘how-to’ text. It also includes insight from real professionals in various agriculture-related industries, illustrating how they tackle communication issues and problems.” It is tailored to help students and professionals become better equipped to serve as effective communicators in this field.

You can read the publisher’s description here: http://www.cengage.com/search/productOverview.do?Ntt=agricultural+communications||9781111317140&N=11&Ntk=all||P_Isbn13

How farmers prefer to be identified .

Results of the recent Iowa Farm Poll suggest that in Iowa they think the term “farmers” best describes them.

Here are preferences among five terms that respondents were asked to consider:

Farmer 60 percent

Producer 18

Farm operator 18

Grower 3

Rancher 1

You can read a news brief about this survey at: http://www.agrimarketing.com/s/71892

Who’s got the phone? A five-country gender comparison. This question formed the basis of a study in New Media and Society about the use of the telephone by men and women at the “bottom of the pyramid.” Researchers used face-to-face interviews based on probability sampling in rural and urban centers of India, Pakistan, the Philippines, Sri Lanka and Thailand. Telephone usage involved household fixed phones and respondents’ own mobile phones. Among the findings:

A significant gender divide appeared in Pakistan and India, and to a lesser extent in Sri Lanka. A divide was absent in Thailand and the Philippines.
Male and female respondents in India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Thailand did not differ much in their use of telephones.
The core cause of the gender problem “appears to lie outside the realm of telecom, in the subordination of women in economic decision-making within families.”
Authors recommended policies that will enable wider telephone uptake, especially mobiles and among women.

You can read the abstract of this New Media and Society article here: http://nms.sagepub.com/content/12/4/549.short

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Photographing the fading of rural community. Thanks to Prof. Kenneth Tunnell of Eastern Kentucky University for alerting us to his new book, Once Upon a Place , that pays visual attention to the fading of community in rural Kentucky. It’s packed with photos that reveal “the downturn in family farming and to the closing of local businesses, schools, post offices, and churches; to the influx of big-box retailers; to symbols of community awash in change; and to indications of social disorganization played out as social problems.”

You can learn more about the book at: http://onceuponaplacexlibris.com/index.htm

Wondering what to do with your professional materials? Wanting to find a home for professional references and resources you’ve gathered and used—even created—during a career in agricultural journalism and communications? If so, please check with us about the possibility of using the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center as a forever home for them and as a way to help them serve others during the years ahead. Perhaps you are aware (through the Contributors section of the ACDC website) that we value private collections. Across the years, they can be an important resource for professionals, students, teachers, researchers, and others interested in agricultural journalism and communications.

You can get acquainted here with ACDC contributors and the varied kinds of resources they have provided. Get in touch with Joyce Wright at jcwright@illinois.edu or Jim Evans at evansj@illinois.edu if you wish to consider this approach.

Communicator activities approaching.

February 5-6, 2012
Agricultural Communications Research Meeting at the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists Conference, Birmingham, Alabama USA. Registration online at: https://store.lsuagcenter.com/p-94-saas-registration-2012.aspx
February 17, 2012
“Food and Agricultural Communications – The Next Frontier.” Industry-wide symposium hosted by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the College of Media at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Information: http://www.agcommevent.com
March 22-23, 2012
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org

Guideline for agricultural issue managers and risk communicators. We close this issue of ACDC News with a story we noted in the archives of the Agricultural Publishers Association. Executive Secretary Victor Hayden reported it in 1932 when he spoke to staff members in the USDA Office of Information:

An enthusiastic courtier said to the king: “May your subjects all die before you.”

He was ordered beheaded by the angered king.

Another courtier with a flair for diplomacy phrased the sentiment in these words:

“May your Majesty outlive all his subjects.”

He was knighted.

Best wishes and good searching.

Please pass along your reactions, suggestions and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information, and please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu

ACDC News – Issue 12-01

Posted on January 18, 2012 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Welcome to the first 2012 issue of ACDC News.

We hope you enjoy and find value in a new year of research, updates, and perspectives from the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center based at the University of Illinois. This Center began in 1982 through the frustration of faculty members who were expanding their teaching and research agenda, but lacking resources to do so.

How wrong we were in thinking that little of such information existed. What began as a small teaching file has become a unique international resource and service. This collection passed the 37,000-document mark during 2011. Resources in it involve communications aspects of agriculture, food, feed, fiber, renewable energy, natural resources, and rural development in more than 170 countries. What you read in ACDC News only scratches the surface of information flowing into this online-searchable collection. We hope you enjoy these selected resources.

Internet killing rural community journalism?

Not if you build a sustainable model. The successful efforts of a publisher in rural Maine received attention in a recent journal article we added to the ACDC collection. Authors described the experiences of Richard Anderson who “has found a formula for sustainable news coverage in an age when the Internet seems to be killing the news business.” Here are some of the key ingredients identified:

He started with a website, specializing in quick, hard news, community service, citizen involvement, and community leadership. “We were organizing affinity groups.”
He then added weekly newspapers, developing software that could convert Web content into print content. They attracted print advertisers and provided context for the timely information that online news service provided.
“We put feet on the ground.” (skilled editorial staffing to provide local news and build trust)

You can read the article, “VillageSoup: sustaining news in a rural setting,” at: http://ojrrp.org/journals/ojrrp/article/view/232/112

A scenario approach to communicating about climate change .

Recently we added a commentary about how to communicate in a world of massive climate change “drivers” and unending options for responding to them. Ricardo Ramirez invited consideration of staging climate scenarios. That is, develop “what if” and “what next” stories—perhaps on stage—using rich narratives by characters with whom citizens can identify.

“You will see people like yourself in probable situations in the near future, you will identify with the bold decisions of some, and with reluctance to change of others. … sometime soon you too will be ‘on stage.'”

You can read this commentary, “Climate change communication—time for the stage?” at: http://64.141.2.205/en/node/327719/bbc

More about “when the digital data die.” Thanks to Steve Shenton for these thoughts and suggestions regarding our recent item in ACDC News about this matter:

“On the digital recopying issue, lots of stuff I have on disks and CDs cannot be read on newer computers as software updates exclude files made in older software. So having a paper copy of research that can be scanned into new software is of critical importance. Also, if your archive manager has a passion for throwing out…old stuff, guard your paper copies with your life.”

If you have thoughts on this subject please pass them along to us at docctr@library.illinois.edu

How food risk managers view efforts toward traceability in Europe.

A team of researchers from the Netherlands used Delphi methodology to understand how food risk managers view the efficiency of existing traceability systems in Europe. Findings reported in the British Food Journal revealed that:

Effective food and ingredient traceability systems have the potential to improve food safety.
Further refinements in operationalisation are required.
Efficient communications with consumers about the advantages of traceability will be necessary if they are to gain confidence in the safety of their food.

You can read the journal publisher’s abstract at : http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=1847003

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Viewing rare breeds of poultry. Recently we became aware of what is described as the largest existing single collection of portraits of rare poultry breeds. The WATT collection includes 57 framed oil paintings created by three American artists between 1926 and 1950. J.W. Watt, founder of Watt Publishing Company and long-time publisher of the Poultry Tribune , commissioned them.

You can view a brief video showing some of them and describing them at: http://www.wattnet.com/ArticleDisplay.html?menuid=15&id=507

Honoring their ag communications teacher. Former students, associates, and other friends are grieving at the recent passing of an exceptional agricultural communications teacher here at the University of Illinois. Bob Siebrecht taught agricultural photography and reporting for nearly 30 years, inspiring a generation of students with his insights, skills and caring spirit.

You can see a display of their photos and letters posted in Bevier Hall on the University of Illinois campus: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150493537851843.373922.204857546842&type=1

Welcome to Stephanie Pitts-Noggle , new academic coordinator and webmaster in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center. As new ACDC graduate assistant, Stephanie joins us during her master’s degree studies in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science. She holds special interest in data curation and archival work. Her prior studies include a M.A. degree in art history, University of Chicago; and a B.A. in art history and classics, McMaster University (Hamilton, Ontario, Canada).

Stephanie also brings to the Center her useful skills and experience in website management, relational databases, editing and proofreading (including cookbooks), and online research—plus a full measure of enthusiasm.

Communicator activities approaching.

January 23, 2012
Deadline for submitting research papers for presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the International Association of Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA. Special Interest Group in Research invites papers relevant to agricultural communications. A companion recognition program for graduate student papers also is available. Information: Prof. Courtney Meyers at courtney.meyers@ttu.edu
February 5-6, 2012
Agricultural Communications Research Meeting at the Southern Association of Agricultural Scientists Conference, Birmingham, Alabama USA. Registration online at: https://store.lsuagcenter.com/p-94-saas-registration-2012.aspx
February 17, 2012
“Food and Agricultural Communications: The Next Frontier.” Industry-wide symposium hosted by the College of Agricultural, Consumer, and Environmental Sciences and the College of Media at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Information: http://www.agcommevent.com
March 22-23, 2012
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org

Word of caution to professionals. We close this issue of ACDC News with a piece of advice from a veteran agricultural communicator, Gene Hemphill. He offered it during a session at the 2011 Agricultural Media Summit:

“Don’t ever think you’re so good in your profession that you can’t pass out the doughnuts.”

Thanks for your interest, encouragement, ideas and help .

We look forward to a new year of identifying and providing information that helps you communicate effectively about agriculture and grow professionally in this broad, dynamic, vital field of interest. And we look forward to being in touch with you. Please pass along your reactions, suggestions, and ideas. Feel free to invite our help as you search for information. And please suggest (or send) agricultural communications documents we might add to this unique collection. We welcome them in hard copy (sent to Ag Comm Documentation Center, 510 LIAC, 1101 S. Goodwin Avenue, Urbana, IL 61801) or in electronic format sent to docctr@library.illinois.edu

ACDC News – Issue 11-20

Posted on December 16, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Season’s greetings to you from all of us in the Agricultural Communications Documentation Center. We have enjoyed being in touch with you during 2011 through ACDC News and other contacts. Thanks for your interest in this dynamic, growing field of knowledge about communications within – and about – agriculture in all its breadth. Your interest gives us real encouragement.

Looking to see some of you on February 17. Business leaders, media, non-profit organizations and academia will meet here in Champaign, Illinois, on February 17 for a first-of-its-kind international agricultural communications symposium. Focused on “Food and Agricultural Communications – The Next Frontier,” this event is hosted by the College of Media and College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences. It is open to anyone interested in strengthening communications about food, fiber, feed, renewable energy, rural-urban relations, natural resources, rural development other dimensions of agriculture.

More than 20 speakers from throughout the nation, and abroad, will define and explore critical issues facing food and agriculture including:

Seven revolutions and the world in 2030
Communicating better about what science can deliver
Food and ag – colliding beliefs and common ground
Bringing nutrition and rural development to the farthest reaches
Communications leaders – creating the next generation

This event marks the 50th anniversary of the agricultural communications program at the University of Illinois. A gala celebration will follow the symposium program.

You can learn more at: http://www.agcommevent.com

About climate change: “Perhaps, in the end, feeling really is believing.” Findings reported recently by researchers Jane Risen and Clayton Critcher suggest that well-conducted research is not necessarily what makes a future event feel more real. People’s current personal experiences may over-ride scientific evidence. Authors concluded in a 2011 article in Chicago Booth Magazine from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business:

“Although there is no doubt that scientific evidence is an important method for convincing people of scientific facts, … our research suggests that factors that facilitate the ability to picture what a future event would look and feel like may, at times, exert a strong (if not stronger) effect.”

You can read the article here: http://www.chicagobooth.edu/magazine/33/2/facultydigest/facultydigest1.aspx

How to mix food advertising claims with product features. A recent article in the Journal of Applied Communication Research reported on research to explain the increasingly popular practice of using unmatched claims for food advertising. Researchers used theory involving schemas, the mental structures that organize our beliefs and expectations about given domains. In particular, they focused on how to identify effective advertising claims for “vice foods” (that provide immediate benefits and delayed costs) and “virtue foods” (immediate costs and delayed benefits).

Researchers found that individuals’ pre-existing product schemas play an important role in processing food information and evaluating products. They suggested strategies for choosing advertising claims that mix and match effectively with “vice” and “virtue” foods.

View the abstract of “The interplay between advertising claims and product categories at: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/routledg/rjac/2011/00000039/00000001/art00004

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Media disconnect in Sub-Saharan Africa . A 2009 report from the International Women’s Media Foundation described results of a study that monitored newspaper, television and radio coverage in Mali, Uganda and Zambia. Among the findings:

Stories about agriculture accounted for only 4 percent of all media coverage. Nearly half of the content involved government, legal and social welfare topics.
Farmers and other rural/agricultural workers were seldom used as sources for agricultural reports. Most sources were government representatives (48 percent), experts/professionals (22 percent), community leaders (6 percent) or others (4 percent).
Women accounted for only 11 percent of the sources for agriculture stories.
Women were the focus of just 7 percent of the agriculture stories. “Yet women produce 70 percent of Sub-Saharan Africa’s food and make up half of the region’s population.”

You can read the full report here: http://www.iwmf.org/docs/SowingTheSeeds_final.pdf

Tip of the hat to Southern rural humor. It came under review recently in a panel discussion at the University of North Alabama and was covered by reporter Dennis Sherer of TimesDaily.com (Florence). Panelists acknowledged how television shows about life in the South became huge hits with fans in the 1960s and 1970s, but often the target of critics.

“They would rush for the thesaurus to find new words to use to describe how terrible these programs were,” explained panelist Tim Hillis. “The more critics yelled about them, the more popular the shows became.” It happened with “The Beverly Hillbillies,” “Hee Haw,” “The Andy Griffith Show,” “The Dukes of Hazard” and other television shows (and films).

Panelists concluded that Southern life continues to resonate well with movie and television audiences. You can read the news article here:

http://ftstage.sx.atl.publicus.com/article/20110306/NEWS/110309879?Title=Panned-by-critics-Southern-TV-shows-popular-with-the-masses-

Congratulations and thanks to another valued ACDC associate.

Gemma

We congratulate Gemma Petrie as she completes her master’s degree in Library and Information Science this month. Gemma has contributed in dozens of ways during the past year and a half as graduate assistant in the Center. For example, through her skilled efforts as academic coordinator and webmaster:

An improved ACDC website has come into operation
Plans for an advanced database system moved forward
The ACDC collection passed the 37,000-document mark
A project for digitizing selected ACDC documents got under way
Her efficient, friendly, professional style helped the Center grow in size, scope and service to users throughout the world

Thanks, Gemma, and best wishes in your career ahead.

Communicator activities approaching.

January 23, 2012
Deadline for submitting research papers for presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the International Association of Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA. Special Interest Group in Research invites papers relevant to agricultural communications. A companion recognition program for graduate student papers also is available. Information: Prof. Courtney Meyers at courtney.meyers@ttu.edu
February 17, 2012
“Food and Agricultural Communications – The Next Frontier.” Industry-wide symposium hosted by the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences and the College of Media at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Information: http://www.agcommevent.com
March 22-23, 2012
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org

How a farm editor can double readership levels. We close this issue of ACDC News with a piece of advice we discovered recently while conducting some historical research. Paul Stephens of American Farming offered it during the 1922 meeting of the American Agricultural Editors’ Association, claiming it to be “the best editorial idea I ever had.”

“Every time you cut a story in two

you increase its readability 100 percent.”

Best regards and good searching.

ACDC News – Issue 11-19

Posted on December 6, 2011 by Nicholas Ferraz de Oliveira

Guide to evaluating your website . The Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research has published an 87-page guide for CGIAR Centers. It may hold interest for agricultural communicators in other settings as well. Major sections of “Evaluating the impact of your website” feature:

Where the website fits into your strategy
Measuring usage (web analysis technologies, analytics)
Measuring usability (when to measure, methods to use)
Measuring usefulness (user surveys)

You can read the guide here:

http://ictkm.cgiar.org/archives/Evaluating_the_Impact_of_Your_Website.pdf

The exultant ark: a pictorial tour of animal pleasure . That is the title of a new book we reviewed recently from the University of California Press. “It is meant for humans to enjoy,” explains author Jonathan Balcombe.

In addition, the strong images in this 214-page book can be a creative sparkplug for agricultural journalists who photograph animals. Through narrative and photographs, the author examines these dimensions of animal life: play, food, touch, courtship and sex, love, comfort, companionship and other pleasures.

You can read the publisher’s description here:

http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520260245

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

Social media – mixed blessings in health epidemics. We have added to the ACDC collection a news brief to this effect from the World Health Organization. Director-General Margaret Chan explained that the rise of social media makes it extremely hard for any country to hide a public health threat of international concern. However, “I can assure you that with the rise of social media, the background noises for rumours have become much louder and making it so much harder to detect the really important segments.”

Assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda reported that during the H1N1 scare in 2009-2010 the Internet was rife with rumours about how to build immunity against the disease. “You have a lot of miscommunication mixed in with correct information.”

You can read the news brief here:

http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-social-media-epidemics.html

How “rural” fits into policy thinking about the digital divide. We have added to the ACDC collection a New Media and Society article about framing the digital divide. Researchers examined eight key U.S. and European Union policy documents to identify the similarities and differences in how they defined the digital divide between 1995 and 2005. Among the findings:

U.S. documents tended to define “digital divide” in terms of access to equipment and infrastructure. They referred to distinct demographic segments such as “Hispanic,” “children” or “rural population.”
EU documents defined this issue as access to information and services, using more homogenizing terms such as “society,” citizens” or “public.”

The word “rural” was among the 40 most frequent words in U.S. policy documents, but not in EU documents.
In U.S. documents, “rural” dropped in ranking from 3rd in 1995 to not among the top 40 words in 2002.

You can read the abstract of this article here:

http://nms.sagepub.com/content/8/5/731.abstract?rss=1

Check with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu for help in gaining full-text access.

More on the fragility of digital data . Our recent item in ACDC News about “when the digital data die” prompted agricultural journalist Fred Myers to write:

“What’s alarming is that most aren’t aware all digital media must be copied or they will be lost. The National Archives considers copying every five years as being ideal and necessary within 10 years regardless of what storage medium is used, be it internal or external hard drives or CDs. At the minimum, there will be millions of families who will never see pictures of their relatives because the present masses haven’t a clue that digital isn’t film and that the days of discovering a shoebox full of priceless images is rapidly coming to a close.”

What are your thoughts about this subject, especially in terms of helping assure effective communications for the food, agriculture and natural resource needs of the future? What approaches are you using, or hoping to use? Please get in touch with us at docctr@library.illinois.edu .

Lots of uncertainty about how much salt to eat. A survey report of research for the UK Food Standards Agency reveals how adults across the United Kingdom remain uncertain about salt in their diets. Here is a summary of replies when respondents were asked what they thought to be the recommended maximum daily intake of salt that adults should eat each day:

6 grams (recommended maximum) 9 percent

More than 6 grams About 17 percent

Less than 6 grams About 32 percent

Do not know 40 percent

You can review these and other findings at:

http://www.foodbase.org.uk/admintools/reportdocuments/641-1-1079_Food_and_You_Report_Main_Report_FINAL.pdf

Congratulations, thanks and best wishes to Devi Annamalai , who has served as an able, congenial associate in this Center during the past three years. Devi recently completed her PhD in the Department of Plant Biology, with an active side interest in communications. She helped us identify communications literature in the plant sciences that we probably would not have found without her expertise. She is now a post-doctoral associate at Rockefeller University, New York City, working in the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and Biochemistry.

Communicator activities approaching

January 23, 2012
Deadline for submitting research papers for presentation at the 2012 annual meeting of the International Association of Communication Excellence in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Life and Human Sciences (ACE) in Annapolis, Maryland USA. Special Interest Group in Research invites papers relevant to agricultural communications. A companion recognition program for graduate student papers also is available. Information: Prof. Courtney Meyers at courtney.meyers@ttu.edu
March 22-23, 2012
Annual meeting of the Agricultural Relations Council (ARC) in Charleston, South Carolina. Information: http://www.agrelationscouncil.org

Feeling rushed, pushed and harried? We close this issue of ACDC News with a thought from Howard Nemerov:

“Praise without end for the go-ahead zeal
Of whoever it was invented the wheel;
But never a word for the poor soul’s sake
That thought ahead and invented the brake.”

Maybe his insight resonates with communicators working hard to advance agricultural and rural well-being. In all our countries, we have sometimes seen the sad and costly trail of rush-ahead, unfettered, ill-planned efforts, however well intended.

Share your thoughts with us at docctr@library.uiuc.edu

Best regards and good searching.

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