In the interest of better connecting academic researchers and professional communicators, AEJMC started a program called "News You Can Use," in which editors of academic journals submit research to be promoted to journalists and others in the relevant industries. For my first issue as editor of the Journal of Public Relations Research (which is sponsored by the PR Division of AEJMC), I selected "The Effects of Attribution of VNRs and Risk on News Viewers' Assessments of Credibility," by Colleen Connolly-Ahern (Penn State), Susan Grantham (University of Hartford) and Maria Cabrera-Baukus (Penn State).
The article challenges the notion, perpetuated by the U.S. Government Accountability Office and others, that unattributed government video news releases are overly-influential forms of covert propaganda. The authors' experiment found that partisanship had a tremendous impact on how viewers interpreted the VNRs. AEJMC's news release explains the results of their study in more detail.
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