This thesis is about television news. I conducted a qualitative study of the decoding of television news on an opportunistic sample of 38 participants with whom I watched news programmes and then conducted individual or paired focused discussions about their thoughts and feelings as they watched. While problems of representativity and scale preclude our making demographic statements as to the prevalence of decoding practices, this database enables me to perform a critical interrogation of two seperate strands of scholarship relating to TV news. I am concerned to interpose a series of caveats as to the complexity and subtlety of interpretive practice which intervenes between the news and any ideological effect it might exert. Secondly I wish to indicate some problems in that genre of empirical studies concerned with 'learning from news' and 'information gain', which do not exhaustively capture the decoding process. I look at how we might study reasoning and inference in relation to the news, and what happens when people confess themselves unable to remember or understand, since these are areas which are not fully probed by information gain studies. I focus on the resources of meaning and reasoning strategies employed in understanding news. I also extend attention to some areas not normally considered in news audience studies, namely the expression of emotions in relation to news, particularly news about South Africa; and ludic or playful decoding. Memory is the crucial structuring construct of most mainstream research on the television news audience. I begin to problematise the nature of memory by indicating how memories are mutually produced, rather than originating entirely in internal psychic storage. I am also trying to develop ideas of social cognition and how they might be applicable to the business of decoding and the meanings which are developed between people rather than the conventional focus on decodings which are produced by individual viewers as finished products, I also try to develop a reflexive conception of how the conduct of the discussions might construct the thinking and behaviour of the particpants, particularly by reference to their apologies and the expectations they seemed to entertain about the research situation.

Studies of political communication in the UK have focused primarily on election campaigns and reportage of parliamentary and public policy issues. In these contexts, two or more parties compete for coverage in the news media. However, the main British party conferences present a different context, where one party's activities form the (almost exclusive) focus of the news media's attention for a week, and that party's leadership 'negotiates' coverage in a direct one-to-one relationship. Conference weeks are the key points in the organizational year for each party (irrespective of their internal arrangements), and a critical period for communicating information about the party to voters at large, especially via television news coverage, which forms the focus of this study. The visual and audio impressions generated in the conference hall shape the way in which citizens not involved with that party perceive its organization, membership and policies. This thesis is the first specialized study of how TV news coverage of party conferences is shaped. Source-centred approaches to understanding the production of news focus on the activities of extra-media actors such as party elites in shaping coverage. Media-centred approaches substantially disagree, stressing the media elites' exercise of discretionary power or licensed autonomy in framing news. Party conference coverage reveals the activities of both party and media elites in an exceptionally clear and uncluttered form. Using qualitative interviews with party and media influentials, content analysis of TV news coverage and transcripts, direct observation of conferences and newsrooms, and collateral material from press coverage, historical material and other sources, this study explores the main stages in the production of news. Parties and media organizations both undertake detailed pre-planning for conference week, in the process negotiating key parameters which shape coverage. Journalistic news gathering activities shape the emergence of stories once the conference week begins. The parties have developed specialist teams to handle immediate news management, taking account of media strategies, but coverage can also be affected by internal dissent inside the parties, and by collective and individual responses among TV organizations. The production of conference news is symbiotic at many levels. The one-to-one character of party-media relations in conference weeks demonstrates clearly that broadcasting organisations exert a disciplinary effect upon political parties. Media pressures have fostered a degree of homogenization in parties' internal structures, and a certain standardization in their previously unique organizational cultures and modes of public self-presentation. Party conferences have come to look and sound similar, partly in response to the organizational demands of media professionals and the emergence of media-oriented party cadres. But access to TV news is also an increasingly effective tool for party leaderships to influence the internal debates and power struggles within the parties themselves.

Hundreds of thousands of Australian children under the age of six witnessed at least some of the coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In the days and weeks that followed September 11, the researcher was confronted with numerous anecdotes from mothers who talked about the impact the coverage had had on their children. Many of the mothers reported that they had not known their children were watching the coverage or had not believed that they were old enough to understand what was going on. This raised the question of responsibility and sparked the research project which asked how could preschool children best be protected from material that was likely to disturb or harm them both in scheduled news broadcasts and extraordinary events such as September 11? Through surveys, focus groups with mothers and interviews with news directors, the research looked at existing protections, how well they worked in the view of both parents and the industry and whether there could or should be a better way. The research recommended that greater protection of preschool children from inappropriate television news content could be achieved through the implementation of six recommendations. 1. Television news should be Rated PG. 2. Digital television technology should be employed to prevent news events 'overtaking' scheduled children's programming and to protect safe harbours placed in the classifications zones to protect children. 3. Broadcasters should regain control of the images that go to air during 'live' feeds from obviously volatile situations by building in short delays in G classification zones. 4. Parents should be educated to understand that even very young children can take in television news and are often scared by it. 5. Television journalists should understand that even very young children are exposed to television news and are often scared by it. 6. News promotions during afternoon children's programming should be dropped.

Thesis--University of Wisconsin--Madison. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 120-127).

Between 1950 and 1970 television emerged as one of the most important forms of mass communication in Mexico. An analysis of television news scripts and film clips located at the Televisa (the nation’s largest television network) Archives in Mexico City exposed tensions and traditions in television news. The tensions reveal conflicts between: the government and media producers; modernity and the desire to create traditions and maintain those already invented; elite controllers of the media and popular viewers; a male dominated business and female news producers and viewers; an elite (mostly white) group of media moguls and a poor mestizo and indigenous viewers; and the United States and Mexico in the midst of the Cold War. In contrast to the trend in scholarship on Mexican television, this dissertation demonstrates that media executives such as Emilio Azcárrraga Milmo and high ranking government officials within the Partido Revolucionario Institucional (PRI) maintained close connections, but the two groups did not always walk in lock-step. Analysis of newscast scripts and film clips located at Televisa’s (Mexico’s largest network) Archive reveal a more complex picture, which shows there were several and sometimes competing visions for the country's future. Examining the first twenty years of television news in Mexico City, the author focuses on production, content, and interpretations of the news. The dissertation finds evidence to prove that news producers and writers formed tele-traditions that influenced news production, content, and interpretation well into the 1980s. Unprecedented access to Televisa Archives allowed the author to ask and answer questions, that to date scholars have not treated, such as, what makes Mexican television news Mexican? The dissertation is grounded in a theoretical framework called hybridity of framing, which combines the concepts of cultural hybridity and news framing. The dissertation concludes that although news producers and writers attempted to frame events in certain ways, viewers often interpreted the news differently.

Previous research indicates stereotypes of minorities are persistent in television news stories. Can personal familiarity with different racial/ethnic groups influence the selection of non-stereotypical news images? Supported by theories of the personal contact hypothesis, framing, priming, schema, and stereotyping, this study hypothesized that student journalists with a high level of personal contact with different races/ethnicities would select non-stereotypical images to help illustrate television news stories focusing on social issues and hypothesized that student journalists with a low level of personal contact would select non-stereotypical images for the same texts when primed to think about facts countering common misconceptions of racial/ethnic stereotypes. Also, will the level of personal contact with different races/ethnicities and the self-identified race of the student journalist influence non-stereotypical image selection? A two-part experiment tested 128 student journalists with an online pre-test measuring the level of personal contact in social activities with different races/ethnicities. Later, a substantive in-person experiment required participants to select from a set of four photographs, the photo that they believed best represented the content of a news story in which race played a possible role. This task was conducted five times with five different news stories and five different sets of photographs. The independent variables were the level of personal contact and whether or not the participant was first primed to think about facts countering common racial/ethnic misconceptions. The dependent variable was the selection of either a non-stereotypical or stereotypical photo. A two-way between-subjects analysis of variance was used. Results showed no significant difference in photo selection attributed to the level of personal contact or to prior priming to think non-stereotypically. There was no significant difference between prior priming and photo selection. Additionally, the race of the participant made no difference in photo selection. While these results are contrary to existing theory, research, pedagogy and intuition. It is worth noting that finding no statistical significance does not necessarily mean that the phenomenon is not happening in reality. Responses to open ended questions within the manipulation tests were qualitatively analyzed and showed that although the 14 participants enrolled in a university liberal arts course were able to recognize the racial stereotypes within the news stories, some chose stereotypical images contrary to their stated criterion for selecting a non-stereotypical image. Future research should test the hypotheses with subjects from more heterogeneous regions of the country, and recruit professional and student journalists as study participants and compare generational differences in cultural, racial, and ethnic understanding, education, and tolerance. / text

Local television news is caught between two major forces that determine its future: doing its journalistic duty to society and maximizing profits by providing content that audience members want to see. Various communication models examine the relationships between content providers, audience, and news makers by looking at organizations, media routines, external social and business pressures and ideologies that affect both media and the public they seek to serve. The dissertation argues that the key to satisfying the dictates of both forces lies with the audience and the ways in which local news content producers react to the audience's influence. The research in this dissertation examines a microcosm of the numerous relationships that impact TV news--the one between the content producers and members of the audience. The research uses behavioral theories as tools to examine how content producers and audience members relate to each other individually and how the institution of journalism is broadly affected by that relationship. It examines the normative model of journalism and how the audience and content producers fit into it. The study investigates the current state of audience research, both from an academic and a professional standpoint. This study utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods including ethnographical observation of a newsroom as well as one on one interviews and Web-based surveys to closely examine the way in which behavioral theories apply to local television news content producers. Results indicate the influence audience members exert over content producers is deeper and broader than previous research suggests. The results also show the content producers are aware the influence exists but do not recognize the pervasiveness of the influence. The conclusions offer a better understanding of the symbiotic relationship between audience and the media. / Mass Media and Communication

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News provides us with information about our world so we can make decisions about the matters that affect our daily lives—both for our personal and the public good. Television news is a pervasive force in our society, and it is important to study because of the influence it exerts on human action. But news is produced by human beings, and those human beings must make selections and rejections regarding what makes it into a newscast and what doesn’t. In addition, decisions have to be made on how to frame, present, order, word, edit, shape what news items are included. Many forces influence these decisions throughout the complex television news process. Media sociology scholars urge researchers to examine these influences at five levels: the individual, newsroom, organization, extra-organization and societal or cultural levels. This gatekeeping study examined this complex news process at work and revealed the complex set of forces that influence news decisions by news producers at CNN, a global 24-hour news network. By exposing the processes by which the news is made, one can better understand the influences that shape the end product—the news.

Contributing to the broader debate on the nature and identity of the European Union (EU), this thesis is a study of the EU from the outside looking in: an examination of how this novel process of integration among the nations of Europe is viewed by its partners around the world, in particular in New Zealand through its television news media. While there are many studies which examine how the EU is understood and represented within its borders, there is an absence of parallel studies which consider the image of the EU from an external perspective. Recognising that the television news media plays a particularly important role in influencing the knowledge and perceptions of people on foreign matters, the thesis presents an analysis of the entire EU television news coverage in New Zealand's two prime-time television news bulletins throughout 2004. The primary research question that the thesis investigates is, how is the EU framed in the television news media of New Zealand, an external 'Other' of the EU? The study was multi-methodological in nature and analysed each of the relevant news items using content analysis, as well as undertaking deeper analysis of the metaphorical categorisations and the visual images of the EU, to detect the entire range of EU representations and the overall image of the EU these created for New Zealand television news audiences. These findings were then compared against corresponding research from Australia, South Korea and Thailand, as well as to the perceptions of New Zealand's leading newsmakers, in order to account for the most important trends in EU image formation in New Zealand. In particular it was found that the EU was often entirely absent from the New Zealand television news space, and when it was visible, was often presented in a way which ignored the extensive domestic relevance of the Union for New Zealand and its immediate region.