Author Archives: Ralph Hanson

Guest Blog Post: When a bomb explodes

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

Editor’s Note: The following blog post is from my old, old friend Dr. Chris Allen, who is a broadcast journalism professor at University of Nebraska – Omaha.  For years he’s been traveling around the world as a media scholar and to take … Continue reading →

Posted in Chapter 15, Travel | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Questions Worth Asking (Maybe)

Posted on May 23, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

After an end of the semester break – we are back. With all new questions! Is this the changing of the guard? MSNBC on top, Fox on bottom No probably not. But it is no longer automatic that Fox News … Continue reading →

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And now you know… the rest of the story

Posted on April 27, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

Followup to several stories we’ve been talking about here: No Kidding! United dragging report: “Our review shows that many things went wrong that day.”  United had a terrible few days a couple of weeks ago when they ended up having airport … Continue reading →

Posted in Chapter 12, Chapter 6, Chapter 9, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | Comments Off on And now you know… the rest of the story

What do we talk about when we talk about fake news – Part 3

Posted on April 16, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

This is the final day of sequentially posting a paper I’m giving at the Western Social Science Association.  Instead of being in the form of a traditional academic paper, I’m going to post it in HTML with links to many of … Continue reading →

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What do we talk about when we talk about fake news? Part 2

Posted on April 14, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

Over three days I’m sequentially posting a paper I’m giving at the Western Social Science Association.  Instead of being in the form of a traditional academic paper, I’m going to post it in HTML with links to many of the … Continue reading →

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What do we talk about when we talk about fake news? Part 1

Posted on April 13, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

Over the next three days I’m going to be sequentially posting a paper I’m giving at the Western Social Science Association.  Instead of being in the form of a traditional academic paper, I’m going to post it in HTML with … Continue reading →

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Pepsi, United, and Sean Spicer in a race to see who can be worst at PR

Posted on April 11, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

UPDATE: Special new United nasty message to full fare first class passenger. Presented with little further commentary, tweets explaining why Pepsi, United Airlines, and the Trump administration have had a bad week in communicating with their publics: It started with Pepsi and … Continue reading →

Posted in Chapter 13 | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

High School Journalism Students in Pittsburg, Kansas Take Down High School Principal With Questionable Credentials

Posted on April 6, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

Pittsburg, Kansas is not a city that shows up much in the national media. Before this week, there had only been about four mentions of the city in the Washington Post over the last decade.  One was when Pulitzer Prize-winning poet James … Continue reading →

Posted in Chapter 13, Chapter 6 | 1 Comment

Are ‘Contact’ and ‘Prometheus’ essentially the same movie?

Posted on March 29, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

  I recently saw the 1997 science fiction movie Contact on streaming for the first time, nearly 20 years after its initial release.  And as I watched it, I was immediately struck by how many ways it resembled director Ridley Scott’s Alien … Continue reading →

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Did McDonald’s Twitter Get Hacked or Go Rogue With Trump Dissing Tweet?

Posted on March 16, 2017 by Ralph Hanson

The tweet was up and gone from the official McDonald’s Twitter feed within 20 minutes this morning – but for the time it was up, it was a drawing a huge amount of attention: Not surprisingly, McDonald’s quickly posted that … Continue reading →

Posted in Chapter 12 | Comments Off on Did McDonald’s Twitter Get Hacked or Go Rogue With Trump Dissing Tweet?