Public Journalism’s Use of Visual Communication in an Election
19
number of graphic elements containing information on how citizens could contact the
media in these newspapers (F = 5.011, d.f. = 1, 647, p = .013). Public journalism stories
used significantly more graphic elements with information on how citizens can contact
the media than traditional journalism in these newspapers (Public journalism M = .80,
s.d. = 1.72; Traditional journalism = .81, s.d. = 1.29). (See Table 2).
Hypothesis 6, that public journalism stories will use more graphic elements that
convey common ground and solutions than traditional journalism stories was supported.
A one-tailed ANCOVA showed that public journalism stories used more graphic
elements that conveyed common ground and solutions than traditional journalism stories
in these newspapers. Public journalism used on average .06 (s.d. = .35) graphic elements
containing content related to common ground or solutions while traditional journalism
stories used .02 (s.d. = .15) graphic elements (F = 3.437, d.f. = 1, 647, p = .032). (See
Table 2).
While not a formal hypothesis, we also found that public journalism used
significantly more photographs of all types than did traditional journalism in these
newspapers (Public journalism M = 1.26, s.d. = 1.4; Traditional journalism M = .83, s.d.
= 1.59. F = 12.98, d.f. = 1, 648, p = .00025). But, there were not significantly more staff-
written public journalism stories than traditional journalism stories. In fact, it was the
traditional journalism stories that were significantly more likely to be staff written in
these newspapers (Traditional journalism M = .44, s.d. = .497; Public journalism M = .35,
s.d. = .478; F = 5.4, d.f. = 1, 648, p = .02). Previous content analyses have hypothesized
that public journalism should produce more staff-written articles in keeping with public
Convention