The following thesis examined the coverage of HIV/AIDS in Uganda's top newspapers. Both evidence from previous literature and this study shows that HIV/ AIDS is a dangerous social, health, and demographic problem which has received varied media attention over the years. This study sought to investigate the different frames used in HIV/ AIDS news stories, the major themes associated with HIV/ AIDS, the different risk groups identified in the news stories, and the different preventatives/correctives provided in the HIV/AIDS news stories so as to discover what has been emphasized or de-emphasized in order to help the media become more valuable in HIV/ AIDS prevention. While some findings were consistent with previous literature, some were different. The general coverage of HIV/ AIDS news stories was low, with a fluctuating trend in the four-year period. The thematic frame emerged as the most used frame in both The New Vision and The Monitor. The themes of prevention, treatment, prevalence, awareness, moral issue, and stigma and discrimination appeared more frequently. Among the risk groups that appeared most were children, married couples. and women while some preventatives/correctives that appeared more frequently were diagnosis and antiretroviral therapy. The married couples appeared most in the risk group category for example. This group is a recent addition to the HIV/ AIDS risk group and has quickly become predominant as illustrated by this study hence showing that the concentration of HIV/ AIDS is constantly changing.

This study analyzed headlines in three influential newspapers to assess how those publications exercised media social responsibility in reporting the outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS). The situation posed the common media paradox where inherent news values encourage dramatic reports and escalation of conflict that, in tum, are criticized as irresponsible. The particular circumstances surrounding the SARS outbreak presented an opportunity for media social responsibility through public education and conveying perspective about risk from the disease. This study developed an analytical framework to evaluate the extent of fearful language, style of communication about risk of the disease, use of source material, and prevalence of journalistic normative behaviors. The analysis indicates that personal fear responses of journalists may influence the use of frightening language in news headlines. The study found that in early stages of reporting about the disease, journalists relied on overtly fearful language with little analysis or situational context. As the story became more familiar, even though the factual circumstances did not change, headlines revealed more efforts to communicate productively about risk and less use of explicit fearful terminology. However, most of the headlines demonstrated reliance on traditional news-gathering behaviors emphasizing conflict, controversy and human interest, rather than analysis and interpretation. Political controversy stemming from concerns about disease management by the Chinese government often prevailed over headlines representing socially responsible information about health protection or risk perspective. This study affirms the importance of media in public education during health crises. It also suggests journalists would benefit from better understanding risk communication principles and the influence of personal fear responses on their reporting. Additionally, the study demonstrates that the concept of media social responsibility deserves to be reconsidered in contemporary terms, to better guide both journalists and those charged with developing communication strategies during such circumstances.

Health financing policies implemented by nations around the world vary based on who receives coverage and what health system resources are covered. Although, many health systems are attempting to move towards Universal Health Coverage, part of their populations continue to incur out-of-pocket payments for using all or some health services. Some health systems restrict health insurance for certain migrant populations, providing coverage for emergency care only, or none at all. Other health systems fail to provide coverage for prescription drugs, leaving those without the ability to pay out-of-pocket for medications behind. The lack of financial protections against catastrophic or impoverishing healthcare expenditures for these patients may deter them from seeking the care they need or increase the risk of severe financial hardships. This dissertation addresses these migrant and drug coverage gaps by examining the impacts of health financing policies and how these can be changed to move health systems towards Universal Health Coverage. First, this dissertation examines restrictions to refugee health policy in Canada by conducting an interpretive policy analysis to reveal how political actors strategically use causal stories to enact policy change. Second, quantitative studies assessing the effects of health insurance on migrants’ health-related outcomes are systematically reviewed. Third, this dissertation explores a provincial health system without universal prescription drug coverage to establish associations between health services use, prescription drug coverage and immigrant category. Finally, given migrants experience health outcome and health services utilization disparities, an exploratory analysis of factors that impede or assist migrants’ access to prescription drugs is conducted to uncover how these factors influence their health. While each study is distinct, together, these chapters build on each other using mixed methodological approaches to identify ways that address health financing policy gaps to reduce health inequities, build inclusive and cost-effective health systems and strengthen global health security. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

This study investigated the significance of semantics in computer-generated word frequency counts in response to a call for new word lists (Read, 2000; Gardner, 2007). Read claims that no corpus projects to date have produced any "definitive, stand-alone word-frequency lists" (p. 226). Many researchers are wary of the fact that the concept of a word is never clearly defined in most studies that have dealt with word frequency counts. It is clear from the research that one universally acceptable construct for the concept of word does not exist. In fact, many past word frequency counts only examine word forms without considering the word meanings and the possible effects of homography on lists. Ming-Tzu and Nation (2004) did some research on the Academic Word List (AWL) that addresses some criticisms of word-frequency lists. They evaluate the extent of homography throughout the AWL. However, words found in the AWL are often not a part of the highest frequency word-forms in English. The present study focuses on high frequency words. It evaluates a randomized sample of 46 lemmas that occur at least 1500 times in the British National Corpus (BNC). A further random sampling of 200 examples for each lemma, in context, was semantically analyzed and tallied. One hundred of these examples were from the written portion and the other 100 from the spoken portion. The list of meanings for each word was compiled using conflated WordNet senses and some additional senses. Each context was double and sometimes triple rated. The results indicate that the impact of semantic frequency versus form-based frequency is considerable. The study suggests that the presence of homography tends to be extensive in many high-frequency word forms, across major registers of the language, and within each of the four major parts of speech. It further suggests that basing frequency on semantics will considerably alter the content of a high-frequency word list.

The threat of lone offenders is a growing problem in Sweden and the world. In this study, three major Swedish newspapers have been selected and analyzed based on their portrayal of a lone wolf perpetrator: Theodor Engström, the man behind the knife murder of the psychiatry coordinator Ing-Marie Wieselgren during the political week in Almedalen, 2022. Using critical discourse analysis, we found a discursive construction of Engström as an extremist, terror suspect and mentally ill. We also found that these constructions emerged at different times during the course of the reporting from the first day of the attack until the end of the trials. This contributed to a complex and diverse representation of Engström and an indication of a creative discursive practice in the media news discourse. The analysis also revealed the distribution of discourses in terms of who was allowed to speak and from which perspectives Engström is presented. The results showed that the majority of all statements and claims were made by authoritarian voices in society or presented as objective truths. Thus, we also found an assumption that unjust power structures and dominance relations are reproduced in the media news discourse. The analysis also showed that the articles predominantly focused on the specific event and the individual Engström and made little reference to other individuals, events or situations. This can be interpreted to mean that the media news discourse is dominated by one perspective and that societal problems are individualized rather than placed in a broader social context. In the analysis of the social practice, the relationship between the discursive practice and theories of stigma was examined. The results showed that the representations of Engström as responsible for the act can lead to stigmatization and that this in turn can also contribute to an individualization of social problems. The result also showed that the relationship between the text, the discursive practice and the social practice both shapes and is shaped by stigma and that this can have consequences in the form of perpetuating and reproducing stereotypical ideas about different individuals and groups. / Hotet från ensamagerande gärningspersoner är en växande problematik i Sverige och världen. I den här studien har tre stora svenska tidningar har valts ut och analyserats utifrån hur de framställt en enensamagerande gärningsman: Theodor Engström, mannen bakom knivmordet på psykiatrisamordnaren Ing-Marie Wieselgren under politikerveckan i Almedalen, 2022. Med hjälp av kritisk diskursanalys fann vi en diskursiv konstruktion av Engström som extremist, terrormisstänkt och psykiskt sjuk. Vi fann också att dessa konstruktioner framkom vid olika tidpunkter under rapporteringens gång från dådets första dag fram till att rättegångarna avslutats. Detta bidrog till en komplex och mångsidig framställning av Engström och en indikation på en kreativ diskursivpraktik i den mediala nyhetsdiskursen. Av analysen framkom också hur fördelningen av diskurser sett ut i form av vilka som fått uttala sig och från vilka perspektiv som Engström framställs utifrån. Resultatet visade att majoriteten av alla yttringar och påståenden uttalats av auktoritära röster i samhället eller framställts som objektiva sanningar. Därmed fann vi också ett förmodande om att orättvisa maktordningar och dominansrelationer reproduceras i mediala nyhetsdiskursen. Analysen visade även att artiklarna övervägande fokuserade på den specifika händelsen och individen Engström och i låg grad refererade till andra individer, händelser eller situationer. Detta kan tolkas som att den mediala nyhetsdiskursen domineras av ett perspektiv samt att samhällsproblem individualiseras snarare än att sättas i en bredare social kontext. I analysen av den sociala praktiken undersöktes relationen mellan den diskursiva praktiken och teorier om stigma. Resultatet visade att framställningarna av Engström som ansvarig för dådet kan leda till stigmatisering och att detta i sin tur också är något som kan bidra till en individualisering av sociala problem. Resultatet visade även att förhållandet mellan texten, den diskursiva praktiken och den sociala praktiken både formar och formas av stigma och att detta kan få konsekvenser i form av att stereotypiska föreställningar om olika individer och grupper befästes och reproduceras.

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With the increasing complexity of modern day processors and system-on-a-chip (SOCs), designers invest a lot of time and resources into testing and validating these designs. To reduce the time-to-market and cost, the techniques used to validate these designs have to constantly improve. Since most of the design activity has moved to the register transfer level (RTL), test methodologies at the RTL have been gaining momentum. We present a novel functional test generation framework for functional test generation at RTL. A popular software-based metric for measuring the effectiveness of an RTL test suite is branch coverage. But exercising hard-to-reach branches is still a challenge and requires good understanding of the design semantics. The proposed framework uses static analysis to extract certain semantics of the circuit and uses several data structures to model these semantics. Using these data structures, we assist the branch-guided search to exercise these hard-to-reach branches. Since the correlation between high branch coverage and detecting defects and bugs is not clear, we present a new metric at the RTL which augments the RTL branch coverage with state values. Vectors which have higher scores on the new metric achieve higher branch and state coverages, and therefore can be applied at different levels of abstraction such as post-silicon validation. Experimental results show that use of the new metric in our test generation framework can achieve a high level of branch and fault coverage for several benchmark circuits, while reducing the length of the vector sequence. This work was supported in part by the NSF grant 1016675. / Master of Science

The problem in this study is to determine and evaluate the practices of twelve small town schools in Navarro County in giving information about the schools to the people of the communities through the newspapers of the county.