The present work concentrates on a segment of information whose socio-political importance is steadily increasing. Theoretical framework of the study is centred on conceptualization of the term 'information' and social significance of information in the contemporary world. The main part of this study focuses on first-time voters in the elections to the Chamber of Deputies of the Parliament of the Czech Republic that will take place in 2014. The necessary data about this specific group of future voters were acquired through printed, quantitative questioning based questionnaires. The questionnaires were distributed to the first-time voters by their teachers during regular lessons in various types of secondary schools. Subsequently, the collected data served as a basis for confirmation of the pre-stated hypotheses and for conceptualization of the 'model' average first-time voter in the 2014 elections to the Lower House of the Parliament of the Czech Republic. As was revealed by the research, the attitude of the future first-time voters towards politics and political affairs is to a large degree lukewarm. In forming their own political views and opinions they prefer information acquired through internet and television over alternative sources such as school or family. These and many other findings are the result of this study. They can and should serve to public institutions, political representatives, general public and first-time voters themselves as a basis for introducing such measures that would increase participation of younger age-groups in the political discourse. In this respect some elementary suggestions are offered in the end of this paper.

"An Analysis of the Arguments Used in the Home School Issue," by Jaime P. Meyer is a study employing a twelve point method of analysis taken from the work of Ch. Perselman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca. This study sought to answer the question: Are the values in the arguments of those for or against conditional home schooling in North Dakota consistent with the values underlying the laws of the state? Chapter I established the nature of the study. Chapter II provided a review of the literature concerning home schooling in North Dakota. Chapter III identified the similarities of the values in the arguments stated by those for conditional home schooling and the laws of the state. Chapter IV noted the dissimilarities of the values in the arguments stated by those against conditional home schooling and the laws of the state. Chapter V concluded that the values in the arguments of those for conditional home schooling are more consistent with the values underlying the laws of North Dakota than the values in the arguments of those against conditional home schooling.

In this thesis we will focus on the concept of the influence of mass media and the Internet on human society, due to the development of the media from the first half of the twentieth century to the present time. The aim of the thesis is to use this research method to introduce options, which media dispose in order to influence the public opinion, spread an ideology, construct a distorted reality and enforce specific interests through effective media and marketing communication. The thesis therefore works also with a concept of interpellation as it was understood by Louis Althusser, thus in a manner of interpellative action through which information produced by an ideology can penetrate individuals' consciousness. The thesis illustrates these aspects of media and marketing communication on a campaign from the political marketing field, specifically Karel Schwarzenberg's presidential campaign from 2013. For these purposes, the work traces the development of critical theories of media and theories of communication structures in the concept of the Frankfurt School's thinkers, William John Thomas Mitchell, Vilém Flusser and George P. Landow. The selection of concepts and ideas from these sources is derived from attempts to analyze political communication as applied in the context of political campaigns....

The theory of motivated reasoning predicts that partisan cues in the media will affect political attitudes, by encouraging individuals to align their views with those of their party's elites. The effect has primarily been tested by looking at issues which have pre-established partisan positions (e.g. immigration reform, gay rights, etc.). This study looks at the effects of partisan cues in the media on attitudes toward a non-partisan issue, the NSA's collection of American's meta-data. Additionally, the study extends research on partisan cues by exploring the moderating role of an individual's political communication network and, specifically, exposure to cross-cutting political communication. Findings are mixed: although there was no main effect of exposure to partisan cues in general, strong partisans were more affected by exposure to partisan cues than weak partisans. Additionally, although frequency of political discussion was not found to moderate the effect of partisan cues, individuals with high exposure to cross-cutting communication were significantly less affected by partisan cues than those with low exposure to cross-cutting communication. Limitations, implications, and future directions are discussed.

This thesis problematizes the interplay of power and media institutions as a general difficulty in democratic societies and as a specific challenge in countries that are emerging from authoritarian regimes. Based on more comprehensive studies about power, dominance, compliance, resistance and information monopoly developed in the United States, the project approaches a particular case in modern history, namely Romania, during the period of transition following Ceausescu's overthrow, in December, 1989, and before the first free elections, in May, 1990. The bulk of the work concentrates on deconstructing political and media discourses developed throughout this period, while trying to address the role that the political and media environments had in reshaping post-communist Romania. My major argument is that, given a number of difficulties that have marked this period, ranging from economic setbacks, political ambiguities, and social confusion, the May elections have been monitored and orchestrated starting early in this period by the provisional authorities (a group of former communist bureaucrats), in tandem with a number of central media outlets. From this combination of power interests, the Romanian public was deprived of correct information on a number of issues that pertained to the future of the country and was trapped in the web of a carefully designed imagery that fostered a dissimulated totalitarian propaganda. The last part of the project advances these contentions and considers them in turn, while trying to capture how the specifics of the case inscribe themselves in larger patterns of dominance and compliance. / Master of Arts

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张楠迪扬. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 140-157) / Electronic reproduction. Hong Kong : Chinese University of Hong Kong, [2012] System requirements: Adobe Acrobat Reader. Available via World Wide Web. / Abstracts in Chinese and English. / Zhang Nan Diyang.

Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy: Management Sciences, Durban University of Technology, Durban, South Africa, 2015. / Nigeria’s vociferous media has the potential to be divided along ethnic and religious lines. Given that most Nigerians view political aspirants in terms of their ethnic and religious lineage rather than political ideology, and since most Nigerians rely on the media for information, there is the tendency to fall prey to biased and insensitive reportage, capable of inciting violence which is elicited by prejudiced information often presented as news, features, commentaries, documentaries, etc. This problem is the major motivation behind this research, which aims to build through training, the capacity of the media to report elections in a conflict-sensitive manner. This thesis develops, through the use of a participatory action research design, an alternative method of news reportage using the peace-journalism model. The model, developed by Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick (2005), encourages journalists to report social issues in ways that create opportunities for a society to consider and value nonviolent responses toward conflict by using the insights from conflict analysis and transformation to update concepts of balance, fairness and accuracy in reporting. It also provides a new route map, which traces the connections between journalists, their sources, the stories they cover and the consequences of their reportage. In addition, it builds awareness of nonviolence and brings creativity into the practical job of everyday editing and reporting. This research holds theoretical significance in that it explicitly identifies conditions that encourage journalists to apply conflict-sensitivity to their reportage, thereby promoting societal peace, particularly during elections. The research findings herein offer a unifying multi-dimensional, conceptual framework which can be used to analyse and discuss the role journalists play in ensuring peaceful elections and demonstrates that they have a constructive part to play when covering sensitive social issues. A training manual has been developed from the findings of the study; it is intended to serve as a template and guide for journalists reporting on elections across the African continent.

In this dissertation, I explore the ways in which traditional processes of opinion formation, media exposure, and mobilization operate in a networked, fragmented, and high-choice environment. From a methodological standpoint, one of the advantages of this shift toward Internet-mediated activity is the potential for enhanced measurement. In my dissertation, I take advantage of the data trail left by individuals in order to learn about political behavior and media effects online. Combining this measurement strategy with field experiments conducted in naturalistic online environments, I am able to shed light on how longstanding concerns in political science manifest themselves in the present-day media landscape. The overarching theme is that, thanks to advances in both research design and technology, many well-articulated concerns about the impact of the Internet on politics and public life can now be subjected to rigorous scrutiny. As I show here, the most dire predictions -- about people's tendency to cocoon themselves into ideological echo chambers or opt for low-cost "slacktivism" over more meaningful contributions to collective action -- appear to lack strong support. But it is also clear that results clearly depend on the structural features of a particular medium: Twitter enables peer effects and the mutual reinforcement of viewpoints, while the high-choice environment of the Web may inherently lead to moderation.

This study offers a mythical examination of the addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt during his first two terms of presidency. The direction of the study is to determine the use of the hero persona in Roosevelt's goal of gaining an unprecedented third-term presidential reelection.The study overviews the historic American public attitude toward the concept of a president being elected for a third consecutive term. Close attention is given to the fears of Americans during the late thirties generated from both the Great Depression and the current war in Europe and Asia. Drawing upon comments from various authorities and particularly those of Roosevelt's 1940 election opponent Wendal Willkie, the study establishes that many Americans were afraid that a third-term election would give Roosevelt too much power, and that many compared this power to/ dictatorships like those in Italy and Nazi Germany.-.Examination of numerous addresses by Roosevelt before the 1940 election reveals that FDR established a dramatistic rhetorical framework in which he cast a variety of players including the American people, Congress, the financial leaders of the Nation, foreign countries and dictatorships. These were cast as villains, victims and heroes.Two of the victims were democracy and the American Dream, both being threatened from without and from within America. The study looks at ways Roosevelt cast himself in this drama as the hero and defender of these two myths. / Department of Speech Communication