<p>Abstract</p><p>Title: Foreign news coverage. Does the media influence the action in international crises? (Utrikesbevakning. Påverkar media agerandet i internationella kriser?)</p><p>Number of pages: 39</p><p>Author: Charlotta Andrésson</p><p>Tutor: Professor Lowe Hedman</p><p>Course: Media and Communication Studies C</p><p>University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University.</p><p>Date of submission: 2007-01-03, autumn term of 2006</p><p>Purpose/Aim</p><p>The purpose of the essay is partly to examine if foreign news coverage influence the political agenda setting and the incentives of the public’s willingness to give charity for humanitarian crises. It is also to answer if the media are responsible for the possible consequences of the news coverage. My main questions at issue are:</p><p>1. Does the foreign news coverage influence the political agenda setting and the incentives of the public’s willingness to give charity for humanitarian crises?</p><p>2. Is media responsible for the possible consequences of their foreign news coverage?</p><p>I also ask a question at issue in a research of Swedish foreign news coverage in my essay to get a clearer picture of the foreign news coverage:</p><p>3. How does Swedish foreign news coverage relate to prior research?</p><p>Method:</p><p>The second chapter of the essay is a literature research of news selection and news values. The third chapter of the essay is a research of media’s influence on the world politics and humanitarian aid. These two chapters are literature studies based on prior research, theories and debates. The fourth chapter is an empirical study of a news programme on a Swedish TV-channel during a five months period between 2004 and 2005. My interest in the empirical study was to examine how the material was divided geographically and as regards contents. The fifth and sixth chapter of the essay consists of an analysis and a discussion.</p><p>Main results:</p><p>As my main result I concluded that the media influence the political agenda setting and the the incentives of the public’s willingness to give charity for humanitarian crises. The media throw light upon which crises that should be given priority to. The theories for news selection and news value agrees with the result of my research of Swedish foreign news coverage. I also concluded that the media alone was not responsible for the possible consequences for their foreign news coverage but that they are the premier channel of information about the world for most people.</p><p>Keywords: Foreign news, news selection and news value, CNN-effect, Media and political agenda setting, Media influence of humanitarian aid.</p>

Political blogs have emerged as a new journalistic format that has gained influence on the political discourse in the United States. Previous research has shown that this influence stems mainly from attention given to blogs by traditional news media. Based on the concepts of intermedia agenda setting and agenda building, this study explored the source interaction between 10 elite traditional news media and 10 political filter blogs during the 2006 Congressional Midterm Elections. An analysis of 2587 sources used in the election context found that traditional news media frequently cited blogs in their election coverage, but that the source attributions to the blogs were vague. Blogs, on the other hand, heavily cited traditional news media, but the analysis revealed that conservative blogs cited elite traditional news media less than did liberal blogs. Conservative blogs relied more on conservative media outlets in their election coverage. A case study of the dominant election topic, the Mark Foley scandal, showed that the daily interaction between the two media formats was driven by the use of breaking news elements as well as controversial opinions. The findings of this study show that the blog agenda is strongly influenced by traditional news media sources and that blogs at the same time have become part of the routine newsgathering process of traditional news media journalists. However, the findings also raise questions about changes in the standard journalistic research and attribution procedures as both media formats often rely on each other as sources rather than on original reporting.

In this dissertation the construction of two coastal railways, the East Coast Line and the Bothnia Line, in the Norrland region of northern Sweden is used as a case study of how regionally based interest groups are formed, and how they gain access to decision-making processes on a national level. In periods when a number of preconditions were in place, a window of opportunity opened for the coastal railway that the regional elites could exploit. Among these was the ability to form a coherent regional interest group, through institutions that created platforms and power-bases that enable regional elites to co-operate and act on regional and national levels.The existence of an institutional framework that was adapitve towards regional railway promotion was also important. The study shows that the coastal railway had a very flexible role on the agenda, as it provided a fixed solution against which actors could pin a multitude of different problems. An important factor for explaining the development of the coastal railway question in Norrland was the ideological notion of the region itself. Being a vast, resource-rich and sparsely populated region, Norrland had almost always received special consideration in both public opinion and national policy making. It also created a remarkable stubbornness among the regional actors in working for the coastal railway. Regional interest groups had also learnt that linking their claims to Norrland's peripheral position had high legitimacy on the national arena, by claiming the need for regional fairness and/or the national importance of the regional export-intensive industries. This was instrumental in justifying the repeated exemptions from the national railway policy regimes that ultimately were decissive in making the regional elites successful.

Abstract Title: Foreign news coverage. Does the media influence the action in international crises? (Utrikesbevakning. Påverkar media agerandet i internationella kriser?) Number of pages: 39 Author: Charlotta Andrésson Tutor: Professor Lowe Hedman Course: Media and Communication Studies C University: Division of Media and Communication, Department of Information Science, Uppsala University. Date of submission: 2007-01-03, autumn term of 2006 Purpose/Aim The purpose of the essay is partly to examine if foreign news coverage influence the political agenda setting and the incentives of the public’s willingness to give charity for humanitarian crises. It is also to answer if the media are responsible for the possible consequences of the news coverage. My main questions at issue are: 1. Does the foreign news coverage influence the political agenda setting and the incentives of the public’s willingness to give charity for humanitarian crises? 2. Is media responsible for the possible consequences of their foreign news coverage? I also ask a question at issue in a research of Swedish foreign news coverage in my essay to get a clearer picture of the foreign news coverage: 3. How does Swedish foreign news coverage relate to prior research? Method: The second chapter of the essay is a literature research of news selection and news values. The third chapter of the essay is a research of media’s influence on the world politics and humanitarian aid. These two chapters are literature studies based on prior research, theories and debates. The fourth chapter is an empirical study of a news programme on a Swedish TV-channel during a five months period between 2004 and 2005. My interest in the empirical study was to examine how the material was divided geographically and as regards contents. The fifth and sixth chapter of the essay consists of an analysis and a discussion. Main results: As my main result I concluded that the media influence the political agenda setting and the the incentives of the public’s willingness to give charity for humanitarian crises. The media throw light upon which crises that should be given priority to. The theories for news selection and news value agrees with the result of my research of Swedish foreign news coverage. I also concluded that the media alone was not responsible for the possible consequences for their foreign news coverage but that they are the premier channel of information about the world for most people. Keywords: Foreign news, news selection and news value, CNN-effect, Media and political agenda setting, Media influence of humanitarian aid.

Persuasive appeals posted to United States presidential candidates’ YouTube videos were coded using a grounded theory mixed-methods design. 37,562 comments about education, energy, Iraq, health care, the economy, and the presidential debates were randomly collected by date and time for three studies using coding analysis: pilot, presidential primaries, and the presidential election. Seven argument types were identified and theoretically refined according to dual process models of persuasion: reason-based, candidate-based, emotion-based, endorsements, enthusiasmheuristic, other-interest and self-interest. Theoretical comparisons and hypothesis testing of argument types were conducted by issue and election event. Consistent with impression involvement, reason-based appeals were more frequent during the primaries, whereas consistent with value and outcome involvement, emotion- and candidate-based appeals were more frequent during the election.

The purpose of this study is the reports of Peak Oil in Swedish newspapers. In otherwords, how do the news portray or describe the concept and what sources are usedwhen writing articles. With this in mind, I have studied eight published articles in threeSwedish newspapers, Dagens Nyheter, Dagens Industri and Svenska Dagbladet. To studythese articles I've used a qualitative content analysis, as a method, or more specific aCritical Discourse Analysis (CDA). This method was chosen due to it's tools to examinethe text itself and to reveal the structures, unconscious meaning and power of words.Further more I have used theories as agenda-setting (including framing and priming),ideology and newsworthiness to complement the study. The result from the content analysis shows two evident ideologies, one with aneconomic perspective and the other with an environment perspective – with resourcelimitation in mind. The credibility of the sources used depends on who wrote the texts,where both sides tried to be as convincing as possible when presenting their truth andfacts. Overall the environment perspective was portrayed as doomsayers and pessimistswith a greater degree of uncertainty, while the economic perspective was described asoptimists and with certainty. Regarding the sources the paper also shows that in all thearticles confirm and legitimize the power to certain sources. One particular sourcestands out, specifically Kjell Aleklett who is represented in more than half of the articles.One probable reason being that he is an respected scientiest who primarily representsthe resource limitation aswell as the enviroment perspective. Another that journalistsuse certain sources to apper credible, but also let sources with power to keep holding onto it.

This study focused on the level of success Unicef in Paraguay had in communicating its message concerning child street-workers to the press in Asunción. We also examined how the communication works between Unicef and the journalists, and how child street-workers appear in the press according to our sources. We based our study on the theoretical understanding of media logic and planned communication. These theories were useful to explain the possibilities and obstacles Unicef faces in its communication with the press. Our study builds on qualitative research interviews with journalists, communication staff at Unicef and the coordinator of the Global Agency of News, an organization that monitors how children appear in the Paraguayan press.   We found that the communication between Unicef and the journalists is very important and highly valued by both Unicef and the Paraguayan newspapers. The relationship builds on constant trade, where both parts depend on each other. Unicef needs attention from the press in order to spread its message to the general public. The journalists need Unicef because the organization works as a trustable information source to back-up their articles regarding childhood.   No one in our study was satisfied with the way child street-workers appear in the press. The children are often showed as victims or criminals and children’s rights are not always considered. A central problem is that awareness about children’s rights is low, both in the Paraguayan society and among many journalists. Unicef succeeds quite well in their communication with the journalists that are already aware of children’s rights. But the organization does not succeed in communicating with a big part of the press, as a lot of articles are still discriminative towards child street-workers.

In recent years, scholars have shown increasing interest in the concept of collective memory for structuring modern social understanding and political dialogue. However, surprisingly few studies have looked at the role that news media play the processes of collective political memory construction, reinterpretation, and change. This study contributes to the literature on collective memory construction, by helping clarify the means by which different news media serve as a site where collective memory is constructed, reinforced, and revised; and, 2) to identify which political actors and institutions act as sources to assert particular memory frames and what media subsidies they offer to influence the memory construction process. Specifically, the study undertook a two-stage longitudinal content analysis of news media to discern the ways former U.S. presidents (i.e., Truman, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Ford) were memorialized in news media coverage at the time of their funerals, and then again in subsequent news media stories through 2012. The content analysis identified dominant news media frames and secondary attribute sub-frames as applied to former U.S. Presidents, and which news media sources and frame advocates are engaged in setting those frames. As a result, the study identified patterns of change and resilience in particular presidential memory frames as represented in news media, and found journalists—beyond other sources and frame advocates—play a significant role in both creating and revising those memories over time. A range of opportunities for further research are discussed. / text

Grounded in the theory of intra-media agenda-setting, this research will analyze the dynamic process among the Mexican national television networks during the 2006 presidential election campaign period. Specifically, what were the intra-media agenda-setting effects between the Mexican television media Televisa and TV Azteca during the 2006 presidential election campaign? The television content analysis data set is from a systematic random sample of national Mexican prime time television news programs broadcast during the official Instituto Federal Electoral's (Federal Electoral Institute) presidential campaign period, which runs from January 19 to June 28, 2006. The Mexican television newscasts that were analyzed are Televisa's El Noticiero con Joaquín López Dóriga, and TV Azteca's Hechos de la Noche. Overall, the results indicated that television news strongly influences a presidential candidate's television political spots. The flow of communication between television news and a candidate’s television political spots was scrutinized in several time frames in order to examine the influence from a general perspective (3 months, then 2 months) into a specific (month by month) perspective. The outcome at the 3-month scale indicated that television news strongly influenced a candidate’s political spots. The same pattern was observed at the two-month interval. Finally, the month-by month outcome also indicated that television news influenced a candidate’s political spots. / text

Magistro darbo objektas – dienraščių „Lietuvos rytas” ir „Respublika“ publikacijos apie smurtinius nusikaltimus, skelbtos 2008 m. Darbo tikslas – atskleisti smurtinių nusikaltimų pateikimo tvarkaraštį ir dėsningumus dienraščiuose „Lietuvos rytas“ ir „Respublika“. Darbo uždaviniai – aptarti kriminalinių naujienų atrankos kriterijus, atlikti kiekybinę pranešimų apie smurtinius nusikaltimus analizę ir palyginti nagrinėjamų dienraščių pateikiamą kriminogeninės situacijos vaizdą su realia situacija. Darbo metodai – teorinė analizė, turinio analizė, lyginamoji analizė. Darbas bus naudingas tolesniems smurtinės informacijos poveikio auditorijai, kriminalinių temų tvarkaraščio nustatymo, kriminalinio turinio žiniasklaidos pranešimų tyrinėjimams. / Object of this study – homicide stories in dailies „Lietuvos rytas“ and „Respublika“ in year 2008. The aim of the study – is to determinate, if homicide stories were reported disproportionately compared to their incidence in official crime statistics. A content analysis of crime stories in Lithuanian dailies „Lietuvos Rytas” (the biggest mainstream daily) and „Respublika” (the second biggest newspaper), published in year 2008, was compared to statistics of crime in Lithuania in the same year to see if this crime coverage produces an agenda setting effect.