My main purpose is to investigate the characteristics of the merging oflhe literary mode of the fantastic and journalism that constitutes the most original element within Buzzati's non-fictional production. I intend to analyzc the modes of representation that his journalism borrowed from fiction in order to demonstrate that Buzzati's journalism forces us to challenge our idea of objectivity and that the fictional element of representation which characterizes his articles provides a further option to investigate the ambivalence of the real. In order to understand Buzzati's contribution to the creation of this new hybrid prose that I will define ' fantastic news' I intend to focus on the cultural role of Buzzati's journalistic production, his relationship with his historical, cultural and social time, and the readership effected by Buzzati 's distinctive narrative between the 1940, and 1970s. I will ground my discussion on journalistic and literary theory, by taking in particular consideration those works which deal with the fantastic and the relationship between journalism and fiction. The close reading of the most relevant collections of his pieces of journalism will help to identify the factors that shaped the author's nonfictional prose. Particular attention will be given to the influence of Fascist censorship, the experience from Italian colonies, and aboard Italian Navy ships during the Second World War. I will also investigate Buzzati 's interest in occultism, paranormal phenomena, and crime news. My research aims to provide a broader idea of the cultural implications carried by Buzzati's journalistic writings and the author's role in the context offantastic journalism as a literary mode. Despite his great success all around the world, It was the French, not the Italian scholars who initially studied Buzzati. Furthermore, Ilalian scholarship focused on his journalistic production only at the end of the 1990s. The amount of criticism is considerable in French and Italy today, whereas Buzzati still remains almost unknown in Anglophone criticism. Lastly, in spite of the increasing interest in Buzzati 's production among Italian scholars during the last three decades, Buzzati is still not unanimously included in the Italian literary canon and his works are rarely anthologized. It is my purpose to treat Buzzati's articles as part of a unitary production. r will analyze the author's modes of representation in order to demonstrate how his atypical position in the Italian cultural panorama, often defined 'isolated' by scholars, is due to the continuous dialogue between fantastic literature and non-fiction which characterizes his entire oeuvre.

Mass media images and narratives have an important role to play in the workings of international and domestic politics. Technological developments, particularly in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, have enabled a rapidly- growing 'economy' of images, information and means of communicating. These new commodities are circulated in an international sphere defined by shifting and unequal power relations. With this context in mind, this work undertakes an analysis of media representations of place and people in selected coverage of the Somalia intervention of 1992-1993 and the American sieges of Fallujah, Iraq in 2004, looking at both media narrative and imagery. Despite technological changes and differences in political context, coverage content for each case study illustrates many similarities in representations of places and people. Both case studies highlight the continuing resonance and use of long-standing racial and colonial stereotypes to describe, or to 'disappear', 'other' people and places. The aim of this project has been to recognise and problematize these powerful dichotomizations between a primarily Western 'us' and Others', illustrating the political nature of such attempts, their failings, and the consequences of these efforts at division. Exploration and exposure of the political nature of categorizations can assist in provoking a re-thinking not only of how 'others' are seen but of how 'we' construct our own identities.

Investigative interviewing is a core practice within a criminal investigation and is used by police officers to gather information and evidence from suspects, victims and witnesses of crime. The research presented in this thesis examines the process of conducting investigative interviews. It investigates the factors which shape interview practices focusing on whether there is a 'science' to interviewing - characterised by factors such as the integration of research, guidance and 'best practice' - or whether it is a 'craft' developed by police officers in the context of their day-to-day working routines and cultural understanding of police work. Utilising a criminological (and sociological) approach and qualitative research methodology (semi-structured interviews and observation), this research considers the function of investigative interviewing and how legislation and guidance (formal), research, training and supervision (organisational) - all designed to improve the interview process - and cultural practices (informal), are understood and applied in practice and used operationally in police officers' day-to-day work. The overall findings of the research suggest that although there is a 'science' to investigative interviewing as evidenced in the means of the production of guidance, models of interviewing, and legislation, it is , still best understood as a 'craft' by officers. The accounts provided by officers in the course of the research suggested that investigative interviewing, or more specifically effective investigative interviewing, is a skill that is developed over time, and one which is shaped by the officers own experiences, learning from colleagues and through processes of socialisation (formal training and informal).

The innate correlation between media and memory is widely acknowledged, but less attention has been devoted to how the complex relationships between media themselves contribute to the formulation of mediated memory. Drawing on contemporary representations of World War 11 in American media from the last two decades, this thesis explores the different ways in which media texts and industries connect and interact, and how such relationships shape and define the memory of conflict. The American experience of World War 11 was refracted first through the multifaceted lens of the wartime generation's mediascape and later through that of their progeny, the Baby Boomers. Each generation's media established layers of meaning for subsequent generations to encounter, challenge, reformulate or preserve. These sedimentary layers of meaning form a 'dark glass' through which the past is viewed; colored by each generation's values, perceptions and experiences. This thesis excavates the stratifications of meaning within generational mediated memories of World War 11 in America, exposing both continuities and changes, in order to facilitate a deeper understanding of the configuration of the memory of the conflict in the media of the current generation. Approaching the construction of the mediated memory of World War II as an ongoing process within a dynamic cultural system involving mass media industries, texts and individuals, this thesis concentrates on the nodes of connection between the component parts of the system of memory as means of illuminating the structural design underpinning current representations of the conflict in film, television and digital games. Exploring the evolution of World War 11 mediated memory in the first decade of the new millennium provides insight not only into how mass media technologies combine to color the memory of past conflicts, but also into how war itself is understood in the present. l

The study of citizen journalism from a sociological perspective is a new and evolving area of research. Accordingly, with such a wide scope for research to be conducted, this thesis has opted to approach the study of citizen journalism from a social constructionist position; viewing those members of the public that choose to engage in the creation of news as active participants in the construction of news today. By focusing on the impact of citizen journalism on the nature of agenda-setting and claims-making, this thesis seeks to add to existing viewpoints of the construction of news by considering the impact of citizen journalism on these traditional processes. In order to address citizen journalism, a case study of terrorism has been selected for analytical purposes; the 7th July 2005 London bombings. Using qualitative media analysis, this thesis- assesses two distinct types of citizen journalism; those acts of public led journalism that involve citizen journalists relying on the news media for publication in acts of dependent citizen journalism, and alternatively acts of citizen journalism that involve citizen journalists' employing their own digital tools for the self-publication of news. By assessing citizen journalism in relation to terrorism, in addition to adding- to our understanding of the social construction of news, this thesis has also been able to contribute to existing academic approaches to understanding the relationship between the media and terrorism. This thesis aims to highlight the importance of a "sociology of the news" that recognises the involvement of the public in the production and distribution of information.

This thesis examines the strategies of aggressiveness and deference employed by Arab interviewers when questioning government officials and public figures. Although broadcast interviews have recently gained popularity on news channels in the Arab world, to date there has been little research exploring this topic or even the format of interviews of this type in general. However, instead of analysing a sample of interviews broadcast on one single Arabic language channel, this study compares the interviewing practices adopted on two Arabic news channels, one independent. the other state-owned, which face different broadcasting restrictions. To ensure the academic rigour of this study, the thesis draws heavily on the principles of conversation analysis, focusing more closely on the format of the interviews than their content. The topics of turn-taking systems and use of aggressiveness in interviewer questions have both been explored by conversation analysts, but their case study material has mostly been taken from Angle-American media. Their substantial corpus of work forms a solid basis for this research, allowing it to compare the findings of this study with data produced from news interviews in a range of countries where different regulatory frameworks apply. Our findings prove that the independent channel interviewers are much more aggressive in their questioning than their counterparts on the state-owned channel. The former prove to be more enterprising when designing their questions, which exerts more pressure on guests, limiting their chances of avoiding the question agenda. However, a comparison of these findings with those relating to Anglo-American studies, revealed that participants in Arabic interviews interact within a more relaxed system that tends to be more conversational and informal, and the results clearly show that the questions posed on both Arab channels were markedly less aggressive and more deferential than the examples provided in the Anglo-American literature

There has been a long-standing debate among scholars, policy-makers, politicians and journalists about the relationship between terrorism and the news media for whom terrorism is usually a newsworthy story. This thesis explores this relationship through a qualitative, thematic analysis of how British TV news covered major terrorist events after the attacks on America on September 11, 2001. It examines the interpretive themes that are selected, prioritized and developed in each of three case studies - coverage of the terrorist attacks on Madrid, 2004; London, 2005 and Mumbai, 2008. It considers the kind of political and organizational factors that might shape or modify the editorial decision-making processes and ideological assumptions that may lie behind such coverage. To this end the research is informed by original interviews by the author with experienced TV journalists and news editors from BBC and ITV News. Ultimately, the thesis maintains that British TV news outlets, though playing an important role in mediating terrorist messages, do not focus primarily on images of terror and violence, particularly if the event occurs on British soil. While there are key differences between public and commercial TV news in the style and presentation of coverage, with the former being more careful in approach, British TV news concentrates on two major themes in the broader narrative: speculation about possible suspects and a consideration of national and international response. Additionally, while most of the coverage is framed in a western-oriented 'war on Terror' framework, domestic contexts also shape coverage in some very explicit ways. The thesis concludes by considering the implications of these findings for professional, editorial codes and practices as they apply in the UK context; and also what lessons other national broadcasters might learn from them.

UTV, formerly known as Ulster Television, opened on Halloween night 1959 and has been the franchised commercial broadcaster in Northern Ireland for the last fifty-three years. Compared to the BBC, Independent Television network in Britain has received only limited critical academic analysis and as a consequence, there is a particular dearth of research into regional broadcasting in general and into broadcasting in Northern Ireland in particular. Nonetheless, Jeremy Potter's volume Independent Television Companies and Programmes 1968-1990, includes a valuable chapter on UTV, investigating its history and the initial difficulties it encountered with the outbreak of the 'Troubles' in Northern Ireland in 1968. Building on this, this thesis aims to address the dearth of research carried out on UTV and its position as a regional broadcaster in Northern Ireland subjecting UTV's news and current output during the period of the 'Troubles' to an academic analysis for the first time. It attempts this by looking at the extensive collection of archive material on the 'Troubles' which is held in UTV's library. Archival material covering the following events has been considered in detail: • Civil Rights Marches 1968 • Riots in August 1969 • Internment 1971 • Bloody Sunday and Bloody Friday 1972 • UWC Strike 1974 • IRA Hunger Strikes 1980 and 1981 • The Anglo-Irish Agreement • The Enniskillen Bombing 1987 • The Good Friday Agreement April 1998 • The Omagh Bombing August 1998 This analysis is further contextualised by written Regional Officer's reports and Independent Television Authority papers detailing how various policies were implemented and adapted throughout the period of the 'Troubles'. These papers have also allowed me to situate this information within the larger context of the Independent Television Network.

How did stories about BSE and variant CJD come to be reported? The thesis takes the approach that news stories are one information event in a chain of dissemination that stretches back to the first formulated account Information events are the material objects constructed at each stage in the chain. They are distinct from but related to, the first formulated account of an event or phenomenon. Structures and their mechanisms guide the construction and dissemination of information events. At each stage in the process of dissemination, information events are strategically predetermined to suit the communicative goals of sources. But resistance is possible, as this research demonstrates. The thesis explores three events: FSE in a cat in May 1990, the link between BSE and variant CJD in 1996 and the findings of a study on the prevalence of variant CJD in the UK population led by Dr David Hilton in May 2004. Through quantitative analysis I first explore two information events in the dissemination process: press releases and news reports. I then subject the 2004 event to qualitative analysis through interviews with sources and journalists, facilitating a deeper knowledge of the transformational stages posited. The study is underpinned by a realist assumption that some objective reality is being reported - the physical reality of disease - but applies a weak constructionist approach to the construction of information events. This thesis contends that reality is a crucial conception in the study of news but what that reality is constituted from should always remain elusive, ambiguous and open to question. I contend, however, that one has to know where and how to look for the nearest approximation of it. If we throw away the quest for and belief in reality then we have no defence against the reality constructed for us by powerful elites.

There is evidence that pictures in text serve various functions, with a potential impact on attention, affect, and cognition. Research on how people read news stories has shown that text accompanied with threatening or negative images influenced readers to read news stories compared to news without pictures. Other research, e.g., by Educational Psychologists, has shown that pictures which explain the text content (here called information graphics) can help people remember that content. So two issues arise, both of which are addressed in this thesis. One is whether information graphics would also encourage people to read the story, and the other is whether the more emotional graphics (here called human interest pictures) would also help retention, perhaps by increasing the reader's motivation. These issues were explored across three experiments in which 88 students participated. The first experiment presented four news stories in a controlled order and confirmed the beneficial effect of information graphics on retention, and suggested that human interest pictures could be equally effective. The second experiment let readers choose the order of reading the news stories and found information graphics increased retention more than human interest pictures, which were better remembered than news stories with no pictures, but picture category had no effect on the order in which stories were read. The third experiment let readers choose only two of the stories and found human interest pictures increased the likelihood that people would choose to read a news story, compared with information graphics. The differences among the experimental findings were attributed to variations in methodology. It can be concluded that human interest pictures and information graphics are most effective for different purposes, and that online news stories could usefully incorporate more pictures. The implications for future developments in digital communications are discussed.