Thesis (M.A.) University of Missouri-Columbia, 2006. / The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (June 27, 2007) Includes bibliographical references.

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Approved for public release; distribution in unlimited. / A noticeable civil-military gap has emerged in American society where the public does not fully understand the mission of the military, and the military does not understand the expectations and demands by the public in a liberal democracy. Maintaining a good rapport with the media and not fostering a civil-military gap will allow the public to embrace 'good news' stories that are introduced by the military as well as accept the times when a negative story breaks the news. Cooperating with the media by allowing appropriate access to the military is vital to effective information operations. This research identifies instances of failure in military-media relationships by reviewing the historical relationship between the media and military in wartime as well as two examples in the last 15 years in which the Navy has mishandled newsworthy events-the 1989 explosion aboard the USS IOWA and the 2001 collision between the submarine, USS GREENEVILLE and the Japanese fishing trawler, Ehime Maru. The purpose of this project is to determine and ultimately to mitigate military bias against the media. / Lieutenant, United States Navy

The U.S. Department of Defense employs both uniformed military personnel and non-uniformed civilian employees as information sources. The objectives of this study was to determine whether students, acting in the role of journalists, attributed greater credibility to uniformed or non-uniformed spokespersons and whether a difference in attribution could be measured when the topic being briefed was more specifically related to the military mission.Seventy undergraduate journalism students were randomly assigned to four groups and exposed to one of four videotaped press briefings. Two briefings announced the outbreak of hostilities involving U.S. forces or award of a major construction contract. Each of the announcements was delivered by a uniformed military public affairs officer or by a spokesperson in civilian business suit.Following the briefings, students evaluated the source using semantic differentials first developed by Berlo, Lemert and Mertz (1969) and prepared questions exactly as they would ask them following the spokesperson's prepared statement. The semantic differentials were analyzed using ANOVA. The follow-on questions were coded using methodology similar to that used by Einsiedel (1974) and evaluated using the "Coefficient of Imbalance" proposed by Janis and Fadner (1949). This second method was employed to determine whether data obtained and analyzed using the Coefficient of Imbalance would validate results obtained through the use of more traditional semantic differentials.Neither method resulted in findings which would suggest a statistically significant difference in the credibility attributed to the defense source by the student-journalists in any of the four treatments. / Department of Journalism