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In a single capture-recapture problem, two new Wilson methods for interval estimation of population size are derived. Classical Chapman interval, Wilson and Wilson-cc intervals are examined and compared in terms of their expected interval width and exact coverage properties in two models. The new approach performs better than the Chapman in each model. Bayesian analysis also gives a different way to estimate population size.

This thesis focuses on the question of preferential treatment by U.S. national newsmagazines of presidential candidates in the 2004 election as evidenced by their visual coverage. Using content analysis, all the visual depictions of candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry were analyzed for 10 visual attributes to determine whether one had received better pictorial treatment. This study asked if the newsmagazines had printed greater amounts of visuals overall for one candidate and if one candidate's visuals were more or less positive than the other. The author concludes that more coverage was given to Bush over Kerry in a 60/40 ratio in all three magazines, and overall, the pictures published for each candidate were positive and neither candidate was given preferential treatment by any of the magazines. The newsmagazines were not deemed biased for publishing more visuals of Bush because, though more visuals were of the president during September, the newsmagazines published nearly equal numbers of visuals in October and November, often pairing them in layouts. The magazines were also not biased in their selection of visuals. All three tended to publish more positive or neutral visuals and rarely did any significantly differing patterns emerge to show that the editors favored one candidate over the other. Those attributes that did reach significance had weak associations. This study is a replication and a continuation of visual media content analyses of the 1984, 1988, and 1996 campaign coverage by Moriarty and Garramone (1986), Moriarty and Poppovich (1989), and Waldman and Devitt (1998) respectively. This research adds to the body of media bias and agenda-setting among newspapers and magazines and visual media.

The purpose of this essay is to examine and compare the news covering of Swedens three biggest cities (the metropolitan areas) and their surrounding areas with the covering of the rest of the country (the provincial areas) in two daily national newspapers, Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter. The aim has been to answer the following questions:- What amount of the news coverage in Aftonbladet and Dagens Nyheter concern the metropolitan areas compared to the provincial areas, and how do these two newspapers differ in the news covering of these areas?- Is there a difference in the news articles size and content, depending on weather they concern the metropolitan or the provincial areas?- How has the balance between news concerning metropolitan and provincial areas changed over the recent 20 years?The theories used in this study are News values, the media commercialization and Popular Journalism, and The Agenda Setting Theory. The method that has been used is a Quantitative Content Analysis.Despite the essays hypothesis, that the news coverage in the two newspapers would be dominated by material from the metropolitan areas, the result showed that a majority of the examined articles concern the provincial areas. It also showed that Aftonbladet has a bigger percentage of provincial news than Dagens Nyheter. The result also pointed towards the conclusion that the metropolitan areas and the provincial areas are similarly represented in the news, regarding the articles’ sizes and content.The overall conclusion in this study is that the fact that the provincial areas are being overrepresented in the examined newspapers news coverage ought to mean that the consumers of these papers are probable to get a wide, true image of what is Sweden, considering the Agenda setting theory and it’s view on how the media’s priorities will become important to the public.

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.

published_or_final_version / abstract / History / Master / Master of Philosophy

Writing declarative models of software designs and analyzing them to detect defects is an effective methodology for developing more dependable software systems. However, writing such models correctly can be challenging for practitioners who may not be proficient in declarative programming, and their models themselves may be buggy. We introduce the foundations of a novel test automation framework, AUnit, which we envision for testing declarative models written in Alloy -- a first-order, relational language that is supported by its SAT-based analyzer. We take inspiration from the success of the family of xUnit frameworks that are used widely in practice for test automation, albeit for imperative or object-oriented programs. The key novelty of our work is to define a basis for unit testing for Alloy, specifically, to define the concepts of test case and test coverage as well as coverage criteria for declarative models. We reduce the problems of declarative test execution and coverage computation to partial evaluation without requiring SAT solving. Our vision is to blend how developers write unit tests in commonly used programming languages with how Alloy users formulate their models in Alloy, thereby facilitating the development and testing of Alloy models for both new Alloy users as well as experts. We illustrate our ideas using a small but complex Alloy model. While we focus on Alloy, our ideas generalize to other declarative languages (such as Z, B, ASM). / text

<p><strong><strong><p>This thesis has its focus</p>on media portrayal of a large political institution; the European Union. Articles from two nations daily newspapers have been analyzed in order to examine how the European Union is described and framed for their readers. The newspapers that was chosen for this study and from which the material was collected, were the Swedish newspaper <em><em>Svenska Dagbladet </em></em>the American newspaper <em><em>The New York Times</em></em>. The material was taken from three periods of time, and by this the results did not only serve a presentiment on how the media reports about the subject, but also an idea over the media’s coverage character over time. Also, by analyzing articles from newspapers from different countries, the material could give an answer to whether there is any difference in media reporting and coverage about the European Union over nation borders. </strong></strong></p><p>Theories that have been under observation for this study, and which have functioned as tools for the analyzing process are: the agenda-setting theory, media ideology, framing, media logic and political communication. Further inspirations that have been under consideration and of values through the development of this thesis are thoughts from the modern theorist Jürgen Habermas, and earlier studies that have been made on the subject in matter, for example ones by Lars Palm and Vanni Tjernström.</p><p>Results from this study showed that there were differences between the two nations way of reporting about the subject, and also that changes over time have occurred. Mostly, it was the Swedish news reporting that showed evident change over the three investigated periods. This can be explained by the countries over all changed relationship towards the European Union. Further did results from this study show that the American articles included more actors and subjects, compared to the Swedish articles. This can be a factor of the American articles longer character.</p>

A preliminary theoretical framework for analyzing the role of the press in the public process of defining important social issues and labeling of politically marginal minorities is developed. This theory employs the concept of newsworthiness and stresses the effect of the social organization of news work as a factor in press gatekeeping and agenda setting. It is the object of our research to demonstrate that the "objective" perspective of the news media is, in actuality, a biased one which is imbalanced and slanted towards representation of dominant group interests. Two cases, illegal Mexican immigration, and the 1984 Ferraro-Bush campaign, are analyzed to determine how reporting practices result in imbalanced coverage. Our empirical analyses of news content on these issues will show that a favorable rate of access to the press for dominant group, rather than minority group representatives exists. As a result, news coverage of undocumented Mexican workers and the 1984 woman vice-presidential candidate was imbalanced.

As the 2008 presidential election nears, the Democrats get closer and closer to supporting one of two presidential nominees—a Black man or a White woman—both of whom represent demographic groups that have yet to be seen occupying the White House. This creates a unique opportunity for observing the process of transformation and the fluidity of one of some of our most fundamental concepts (i.e., `president' and `woman') through the print media. Therefore, this thesis examines the process of transformation by analyzing the role of Hillary Clinton's gender performances in TIME Magazine.This thesis examines Hillary Clinton's thirteen appearances on the cover of TIME and the corresponding articles, between 1992 and 2008. Through a qualitative content analysis, this analysis combines Judith Butler's theory of gender performitivity and the concept of subversion with more traditional conceptions of male and female gender roles, a in order to assess the subversive potential of Hillary Clinton's mediated gender performances. Specifically, this thesis addresses the following research questions:RQ 1: In what ways does Hillary simultaneously embody both male and femalegender performances?RQ 2: How do mediated gender performances differ from immediate gender performances?RQ 3: How do these performances work to produce her public identity?RQ 4: Do Hillary's gender performances subvert the heterosexual matrix? Or do they reinforce it?This analysis contributes to the theory of gender performance by demonstrating the potential for a methodological application based on the logical consequence of reconstructing gender—even if such reconstruction is based on false pretenses. Furthermore, it contributes to the communication discipline by offering practical guidelines for analyzing and predicting subversive potential. / Department of Communication Studies