In today's technological environment, there is constant competition for audience readership and viewership between various media outlets. News media provides a great deal of information to the general public through television, print, and web sources, especially in terms of agriculture. This study aimed to discover audience perceptions of two different natural disasters by examining the effects of photographic inclusion in print news articles including agricultural perceptions and content recall. Additionally, differences between self-perceived milk industry advocacy and a milk campaign story are also examined. Newspaper articles about the effects of the 2010-2011 drought in Texas and the aftermath of Tropical Storm Irene were also used. Students in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences at Texas A&M University were surveyed in online pre and posttests. Student responses displayed a moderate relationship between photos and article content in regards to the Hurricane Irene article. A significant relationship was present between self-perceived non-advocates and their outlook on milk consumption and the dairy industry with the inclusion of photographs. There were differences seen between students who have family who work in agriculture, claim membership in an agriculture association, live on a farm or ranch, and were members of FFA as they viewed the drought article to be more positive than those who did not have these agricultural backgrounds. Furthermore, student responses show a relationship between the milk industry article in the pretest (photos included) and posttest (photos not included) by viewing the photos as positive, humorous, and shocking. This study found student perceptions of the two news articles related to the drought as well as the tropical storm to be the same regardless of photographic presence. This leads the researcher to conclude that photos had no effect on the overall perceptions of the news stories. However, students who received photographs did see a relationship between the photos associated with the flood article and the content presented in the story. This effect was not seen with the photographs of the drought story. Since the photos associated with the flood story were the original photos printed with the news story, it is probable to conclude that students properly associated photographic elements with that of the story's content.

Submitted by Angela Maria de Oliveira (amolivei@uepg.br) on 2018-06-19T17:15:59Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) PEDRO HENRIQUE SOARES DE ALMEIDA.pdf: 8669671 bytes, checksum: bf6252d5566d0b626215c08edce94dca (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-06-19T17:15:59Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 811 bytes, checksum: e39d27027a6cc9cb039ad269a5db8e34 (MD5) PEDRO HENRIQUE SOARES DE ALMEIDA.pdf: 8669671 bytes, checksum: bf6252d5566d0b626215c08edce94dca (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-05-15 / O mosaico de imagens é o alinhamento de múltiplas imagens em composições maiores que representam partes de uma cena 3D. Diversos algoritmos de mosaico de imagens foram propostos nas últimas duas décadas. Ao mesmo tempo, o advento contínuo de novos métodos de mosaico torna muito difícil escolher um algoritmo apropriado para uma finalidade específica. Este trabalho teve por objetivo avaliar métodos de mosaico baseados em característica de baixo nível utilizando imagens agrícolas obtidas por meio de Aeronave Remotamente Pilotada (RPA). Algoritmos detectores de característica de baixo nível podem ser invariantes à escala e rotação, dentre outras transformações que comumente ocorrem em imagens agrícolas obtidas por meio de RPA. O detector de cantos de Harris, detector de cantos FAST, detector de característica SIFT e detector SURF foram avaliados de acordo com o desempenho computacional e a qualidade do mosaico gerado. Para avaliar o desempenho, foram levados em consideração fatores como a média de características detectadas por imagem, o número de imagens utilizadas para compor o mosaico e o tempo de processamento (tempo de usuário ou user time). Para avaliar a qualidade, os mosaicos gerados pelos métodos foram utilizados para estimar a severidade da ferrugem asiática da soja e uma comparação com o software comercial Pix4Dmapper foi realizada. Em relação à qualidade, não houve diferença significativa e todos os métodos demonstraram estar no mesmo patamar. O detector SURF, dentre todos os métodos, obteve o pior desempenho utilizando, em média, apenas 33,1% das imagens de entrada para compor os mosaicos. O detector de cantos de Harris mostrou-se como a solução mais rápida, chegando a ser 7,27% mais rápido para compor o mosaico. Porém, em seu último mosaico gerado, o aproveitamento das imagens de entrada foi pobre: apenas 52%. O detector de cantos FAST obteve o melhor aproveitamento das imagens de entrada, porém, descontinuidades significativas de objetos ocorreram em seu último mosaico gerado. Além disso, obteve um tempo de processamento consideravelmente superior ao dos demais métodos, chegando a ser 6,42 vezes mais lento para compor o mosaico. O detector de característica SIFT obteve o segundo melhor tempo de processamento e o segundo melhor aproveitamento das imagens de entrada, sem apresentar problemas de descontinuidades de objetos. Portanto, mostrou-se como o método mais adequado para imagens agrícolas obtidas por meio de RPA. / Image mosaicing is the alignment of multiple images into larger compositions which represent portions of a 3D scene. A number of image mosaicing algorithms have been proposed over the last two decades. At the same time, the continuous advent of new mosaicing methods in recent years makes it really difficult to choose an appropriate mosaicing algorithm for a specific purpose. This study aimed to evaluate low level feature-based mosaicing methods using agricultural images obtained by Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPA). Low-level feature detecting algorithms can be invariant to scale and rotation, among other transformations that commonly occur in agricultural images obtained by RPA. Harris corner detector, FAST corner detector, SIFT feature detector and SURF detector were evaluated according to the computational performance and the quality of the generated mosaic. To evaluate computational performance, were taken into account factors such as the detected features average per image, the number of images used to compose the mosaic and the processing time (user time). To evaluate quality, the mosaics generated by each method were used to estimate the Asian soybean rust severity and a comparison with the commercial software Pix4Dmapper was performed. Regarding quality, there was no significant difference and all methods proved to be on the same level. SURF detector, among all methods, got the worst performance using, on average, only 33.1% of the input images to compose the mosaics. Harris corner detector proved to be the fastest solution, becoming 7.27% faster to compose the mosaic. However, in its final mosaic, the use of the input images was poor: only 52%. FAST corner detector had the best utilization of the input images, however, significant discontinuities of objects occurred in its final mosaic. In addition, it had a considerably longer processing time than the other methods, becoming 6.42 times slower to compose the mosaic. SIFT feature detector had the second best processing time and the second best utilization of the input images, without presenting object discontinuities problems. Therefore, presented itself as the most suitable method for agricultural images obtained by RPA.