Michael Boyle

Michael Boyle
  • Professor
  • Department: Communication and Media
  • Institution: West Chester University of Pennsylvania
  • Email: MBoyle@wcupa.edu

Education

  • B.A. in Media Studies from East Stroudsburg University
  • M.A. in Mass Communication from the University of Delaware
  • Ph.D. in Journalism & Mass Communication from the University of Wisconsin at Madison

Research Interests

media effectsprotestpublic opinionmedia literacyjournalism

Opportunities

Work Study Positions Available: No

Grant Funded Positions Available: No

Course-Credit Research Opportunities Available: Yes

I appreciate the opportunity to mentor students interested in research through independent study projects. Interested students should contact me 1 semester before they are interested in enrolling.

Volunteer Research Positions Available: No

Biography

My research broadly focuses on how news media present issues to the public, how and why people use media, and the implications of news coverage and media use patterns on subsequent outcomes such as information seeking, public opinion, and perceptions of media effects. These broader interests typically culminate in two specific streams of research. The first stream specifically addresses news treatment of protest groups and how such treatment affects participation in the political process. Basically, I explore what news coverage of protest looks like and then examine how specific coverage patterns might shape people's willingness to protest. The second stream of my research explores the processes underlying how people make sense of media including the third-person perception - a common pattern where people typically perceive others to be more affected by media than they are - and the resulting third-person effect, often characterized by support for censorship and other regulatory responses. Within this stream I also study how shifts in news content can impact how people process and use the media-based information they encounter.

List of Publications

  • -> Oeldorf-Hirsch, A., Schmierbach, M., Boyle, M.P., & Appelman, A. (2023). The influence of fact-checking is disputed!: The role of party identification in processing and sharing fact-checked social media posts. Accepted for publication in American Behavioral Scientist. doi.org/10.1177/00027642231174335 -> Boyle, M.P. (2022). Protesting white supremacy: Analyzing news coverage of the anti-intimidation protests in Forsyth County, Georgia. Atlantic Journal of Communication, 30(5), 451-466. doi.org/10.1080/15456870.2021.1951267 -> Oeldorf-Hirsch, A., Schmierbach, M., Appelman, A., & Boyle, M.P. (2020). The Ineffectiveness of Fact-Checking Labels on News Memes and Articles. Mass Communication & Society, 23 (5), 682-704. doi.org/10.1080/15205436.2020.1733613 -> Schmierbach, M., & Boyle, M.P. (2020). Concrete examples of abstract others: Testing exemplar availability as an additional explanation for third-person perceptions. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 32 (3), 510-529. doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edz032 -> Oeldorf-Hirsch, A., Schmierbach, M., Appelman, A., & Boyle, M.P. (2018). For the Birds: Media Sourcing, Twitter, and the Minimal Effect on Audience Perceptions. Convergence, 26. (2), 350-368. doi.org/10.1177/135485651878 -> Boyle, M.P., & McLeod, D.M. (2018). News framing and social protest: Toward a comprehensive model. In P. D'Angelo (Ed.), Doing News Framing Analysis 2: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives. New York: Routledge. -> Boyle, M.P. (2015). A tale of two sites: Journalist perspectives and patterns in coverage of Occupy Wall Street. Contention: The Multidisciplinary Journal of Social Protest, 3 (1), 17-35. doi.org/10.3167/cont.2015.030102