This study is a description and interpretation of mass media appropriations (or media references) in social interaction in US American culture. Two research questions guide the study: One, how, if at all, do cultural members appropriate texts from mass media in their ongoing, socially interactive lives? And two, what are the functions and meanings of mass media appropriations (MMAs) so enacted? The study is situated within the Ethnography of Communication research program and uses Cultural Discourse Theory as its main theoretical frame. The study employs ethnographic and cultural discourse analysis methods including participant-observation, interviewing, cultural description and interpretation to formulate a native theory of mass media appropriations as they are patterned and practiced in US American culture. This theory is then compared to similar practices in Western Apache, Zambian, German, and Dominican American cases. The major descriptive findings include a sequence that MMAs typically follow in social interaction including a trigger, reference, and response; the essential, typical, and possible parts of MMAs, various combinations of which are formulated into types and subtypes of MMAs; the frames typically involved in MMAs including performance, play, and quotation and how they are cued, maintained, and terminated; and a set of dimensions upon which MMAs vary. The major interpretive findings include MMAs being performed for the humor, pleasure, play, shared identity and bonds that they create, these being necessary to diffuse the focus in the culture on self, serious talk and work.

This study describes the cultural discourses in the communication and meta-communication among Finns about the mobile phone. The overall task at hand was to find out how mobile phone communication is described and discussed in speech and writing about mobile phoning, and what the underlying premises are in play on communication, personhood and social relations in these descriptions. Mobile phone communication was approached from the theoretical and philosophical perspective of ethnography of communication, and from cultural discourse analysis in particular. The analyses were conducted through the main theoretical constructs of terms for talk, myths, positioning, and the discursive force of norms. The analysis of interview talk, newspaper, magazine and other media texts, official documents, reports, and books suggested a number of different findings: Pragmatic communicative actions on mobile phone were described with several cultural terms (Carbaugh, 1989) referring to both oral and written communication. Mobile phone talk was discussed by using descriptive terms for talk. 'Idle talk' on the mobile phone was found to vacillate with asiallinen (matter-of-factly) style of communication. The comments about kännykkäkansa (the mobile phone nation), and more generally about Finnishness and mobile phoning were seen as contesting as well as re-creating the almost 150 year old myth of Finnishness. Reachability and disturbance via mobile phone were examined as paradoxical universal. Reachability was found to be related to positive face needs. Disturbance or a threat to one's negative face needs, in turn, was also an inherent feature of the mobile phone, and the need to reach others and respond could count as disturbance. As the model of discursive forces (Hall 1988/1989) was deployed, it was found that the demand or norm of reachability was criticized and challenged in many ways, and the expectation of not disturb others and not being disturbed by them was negotiable. A value of being in peace was considered more important for some Finns than being reachable or disturbing. The analyses provided insights to the Finnish cultural discourses about Finnishness, social relations, communication, and culture and technology.

Gesher is a theatre founded by a group of Russian immigrants in Tel Aviv in 1990. Gesher is a cultural phenomenon that, like a prism, refracts issues of interethnic relations, cultural and immigration policy, and the status of media discourse in Israel. Therefore, Gesher is a rich site for research on cultural production and exchange. In this dissertation, I apply the theoretical perspectives of cultural and critical studies to the analysis of the cultural practices of Gesher and the discourses emerging in the theatre's reception. First, I use the theoretical perspective of cultural studies to write the history of the Gesher theatre, connecting each stage in its evolvement with the cultural and social context in Israel. Second, I offer a critical discourse analysis of Gesher's media reception, exploring questions of cultural production and exchange in the context of hegemonic ideology. I contrast the media reception of Gesher in Israel to its reception abroad. Third, I theorize the dynamic of cultural exchange that emerges in this media reception in order to uncover regimes of power and normative knowledges active in Israeli cultural production. To that end, I construct an original theoretical model grounded in my fieldwork. My analysis of Gesher's reception indicates a novel situation in which the discursive condition of immigration has important parallels to colonization. And so, extrapolating post-colonial discourse analysis to the context of immigration, I suggest a model of Mutual and Internal Colonization. In the discursive process of mutual colonization the roles of the cultural colonizer and the colonized shift in different contexts, leading both immigrants and their hosts to colonize each other, and then ultimately to colonize themselves as these roles turn inwards. In the future, this model can be applied for theorizing the positions of different subjects with hyphenated identities across cultures.

Research into the relationship between terrorism and the media traditionally has treated news media as a conduit for the terrorist and thus as responsible for increased terrorist activity. Few studies have focused on the emergence of terrorism as a threat of crisis proportions. The perceived crisis posed by terrorism deserves scrutiny given the fact that, during the 1980s, international terrorist activity did not increase substantially, and the actual danger terrorism posed to American citizens was remote. Through an analysis of news coverage of terrorism during the Reagan presidency, this study identifies ways in which media representations of terrorism and official discourse about terrorism escalate the significance of discrete terrorist acts to constitue a threat capable of immobilizing the United States. Using coverage of terrorism in ABC World News Tonight and statements regarding terrorism as published in White House and State Department documents, this study analyzes the relationship between media portrayals of terrorism and official U.S. policy statements and objectives. News reports are treated as popular narratives that are grounded by ideographs of terrorism and statistics which demonstrate the magnitude of the terrorist threat. Features characterizing ABC News narratives include the decontextualization of terrorism, the mobilization of audience emotions through an emphasis on victims and their families, and the building of speculative scenarios about terrorist events that might transpire. These narratives constitute morality plays that privilege overt military action over diplomacy as an appropriate response to terrorism. News coverage of terrorism also relies on images of the terrorist that are reproduced in official discourse. Depictions of terrorism in public statements made by President Ronald Reagan and Secretary of State George Shultz resonate with the portrayals of terrorism presented in the news and indicate points at which official discourse and ABC News representations of terrorism are structurally aligned. Broadcast news portrayals of terrorism are seen to reproduce an official ideology that supports foreign policy objectives based on military strength and intervention and which forestall the knowledge necessary to address the international challenges posed by political violence.

This thesis aims to contribute to recent discussions in media and cultural studies and political communication about reconceptualising the relationships between politics, media and public engagement. It will do so by articulating the context and processes in which private citizens form political publics and the ways in which media genres beyond conventional news and public affairs encourage or enable civic engagement. It explores these issues in the context of the ongoing democratisation of South Korea since 1987, a nation with a particularly dynamic digital culture. The thesis critiques the conventional binaries between the private (emotion/entertainment/fans) and the public (reason/news/publics), and articulates the mediating contexts and processes in which the private shifts to the public. It seeks to situate affect and entertainment (popular culture) as key agents in mobilising and sustaining citizens' political interest and participation. The key research questions are therefore: in what context do media offer a discursive space to connect people's everyday lives to the public world as well as to recruit and sustain political interest?; how does affect play a critical part in making sense of the public world, and mobilising political participation?; and in what ways do private individuals come to shape the public? These questions are examined in the context of ICT-based media environments and in relation to three empirical studies: 1) OhmyNews - a global icon of citizen journalism - in which the ‘feminised' news produced by citizens (re- )contextualised private interests into public concerns, and allowed the public to make a real change in the 2002 Presidential election and the 2010 local elections; 2) online political satire, in which politics is situated in an entertainment mode through citizens' creative reinterpretation, and which helped mobilise citizens' political interest and action during the 2004 Presidential impeachment and general election; and 3) the politicisation of teen fandom, in which music fans were mobilised as political actors in the 2008 anti-US beef protest. The thesis employs a wide range of research methods including participant observation, interpretive textual analysis, and semi-structured and in-depth interviews. In this way the thesis identifies a complex linkage of traditionally separated spheres, such as reason and affect, news and entertainment media, and expert and common knowledge.

<p> This study reports the findings of a systematic visual content analysis of 356 randomly sampled images published about the Iraq War in <i>Time, Newsweek,</i> and <i>U.S. News and World Report</i> from 2003-2009. In comparison to a 1995 Gulf War study, published images in all three newsmagazines continued to be U.S.-centric, with the highest content frequencies reflected in the categories U.S. troops on combat patrol, Iraqi civilians, and U.S. political leaders respectively. These content categories do not resemble the results of the Gulf War study in which armaments garnered the largest share of the images with 23%. </p><p> This study concludes that embedding photojournalists, in addition to media economics, governance, and the media-organizational culture, restricted an accurate representation of the Iraq War and its consequences. Embedding allowed more access to both troops and civilians than the journalistic pool system of the Gulf War, which stationed the majority of journalists in Saudi Arabia and allowed only a few journalists into Iraq with the understanding they would share information. However, the perceived opportunity by journalists to more thoroughly cover the war through the policy of embedding was not realized to the extent they had hoped for. The embed protocols acted more as an indirect form of censorship.</p>

<p> Connection to and appreciate for the natural world are directly linked to positive experiences participating in outdoor nature-based activities. These direct experiences have been declining over the past decade, causing concerns about the perceptions of nature by populations that don&rsquo;t participate in nature-based activities. This study examines framing of media coverage about human-wildlife conflicts and its implications for perception building by those audiences with less experience in the natural world. Data were collected via daily newspapers across the Intermountain West from 2010 to 2015. Results demonstrated that there were significant differences between newspapers serving larger, more urban communities and smaller, more rural communities. Findings indicate that urban audiences are exposed to messages that discourage participation in the natural world. Messages regarding human-wildlife conflict in newspapers serving larger, more urban communities should be reframed to avoid negative perceptions of nature and to motivate connection to the natural world.</p><p>

<p> The human brand in social media presents an understudied phenomenon, particularly in the sports domain. The current study focused on sports fans&rsquo; perceptions of athlete brands as presented on Twitter. The analysis assessed the rated likeability of athletes based on the social media content attributed to athlete brands. The current study examined this relationship in the context of interacting variables including message tone, group status, and fan identification. Utilizing social identity theory, the overall aim was to understand interaction effects to enhance the ability of scholars and industry practitioners to investigate the phenomenon of human branding in media. Furthermore, the current study intended to expand the brand persona concept to include the social and branding functions represented by humans in media.</p><p> The current study utilized an experiment with a survey measure. Participants were presented with stimuli via tweets from athletes. The tweets varied on message tone (positive or negative) and group status (ingroup or outgroup), and respondents were categorized as high-level or low-level fans, resulting in a 2x2x2 design. Results indicated a significant main effect of fan identification level on likeability ratings such that those with higher levels of fan identification were more likely to rate athletes as likeable. There was an interaction effect of fan identification and group status with the positive message condition such that fan identification and group status may influence likeability when tweets are positive.</p><p> There was also a significant main effect of message tone on likeability ratings such that those shown positive tweets by athletes were more likely to rate athletes as likeable compared with those shown negative tweets. Finally, results revealed a three-way interaction such that influence of message tone was potentially greater for those who were exposed to an ingroup tweet, but only among high-level fans. There was a greater difference in likeability ratings between negative and positive conditions for those presented with ingroup tweets, which suggests that tweets from athlete brands may have more impact on high-level fans. Thus, social media posts from athletes of a favorite team or rival team prompt stronger reactions from high-level fans than low-level fans.</p><p>

Gender surfaced as an issue in the 1984 Presidential campaign due to the nomination of Geraldine Ferraro, the differences among the male candidates, the expected gender gap, and the "feminization" of the Democratic Party. Using Newsweek, Time, and CBS Evening News, the constructions of gender are interpreted using Kenneth Burke's cluster criticism. Two research questions were addressed: (1) How was gender constructed by the media? (2) What were the rhetorical implications of this study? The study suggests that when women are accepted into Presidential politics, they must balance "feminine" traits with "masculine" ones. Male candidates are expected to primarily exhibit "masculine" traits. Gender was not only a trait that candidates had, it was also constructed by the media as having an influence on how voters perceive and act upon the issues. Finally, the study concludes that male and female candidates used language to express gender characteristics and can overcome negative perceptions by voters with rhetorical strategies.

<p> This study compared and contrasted product placements found in two different pop music markets in the United States: the American Hot 100 Billboard charts and the American Hispanic Hot Latin Billboard charts. It determined there are numerous product placements in the current music video market. Also, differences were found between the types of products in a video and the artists and record labels using those products in videos. A majority of the videos had male artists performing in them. Artists were analyzed based on their genders, ethnicity, and the number of performers in the ensemble. Product placements were also analyzed by the way the products were placed in the music video: background, in use by a character, or connected to the story shown on screen. The study related the theory of the social construction of reality to the product placements present in popular music videos.</p>