This dissertation focuses on the potential empowerment writing has among a homeless community in Atlanta, Georgia. Through the participation in a newly created writing workshop and a street newspaper in that community, the narrative and communication among writing participants demonstrate negotiations of self-identification as public and private writers and the situational influence writing has on their lives. The study adds to the “public turn” of writing instruction with the intention of helping to bridge the gap between traditional composition pedagogy in academia and such education in outside community. That participatory instruction reinforces the notion that writing and rhetorical performances can effect positive change in individual lives beyond that institutional space.

This thesis describes and analyzes implications of going from hypertext news to hypermedia news through a process of design, involving users and producers. As in any product development, it is difficult to conceive design of a novel news format that does not relate to earlier genres, and thus to antecedent designs. The hypothesis is that this problem can be addressed by explicitly taking a genre perspective to guide interaction design. This thesis draws on genre theory, which has previously been used in rhetoric, literature, and information systems. It is also informed by theories from humancomputer interaction. The methodological approach is a case study of the ELIN project, in which new tools for online hypermedia newspaper production were developed and integrated. The study follows the project from concept design to interaction design and implementation of user interfaces, over three years. The thesis makes three contributions. Firstly, a genre perspective on interaction design is described, revealing broadly in what respects genre affects design. Secondly, the online newspaper genre is described. Based on a content analysis of online newspaper front-pages, and interviews with users and producers, genre specific design recommendations regarding hypertext news front-page design are given. A content analysis of Swedish online newspapers provides a basis for a design rationale of the context stream element, which is an important part of the news context on article pages. Regarding hypervideo news, design rationale is given for the presentation of hypervideo links, in the context of a hypermedia news site. The impact on news production in terms of dynamics of convergence is also discussed. Thirdly, the design processes in cooperative scenario building workshops are evaluated, regarding how the users and producers were able to contribute. It provides implications and lessons learned for the workshop phase model. A discourse analysis also reveals important facilitator skills and how participants relied on genre in the design process.

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For over 160 years, The Economist newspaper has been one of the most influential, sophisticated, and effective proponents of capitalism. It has consistently championed and conveyed a form of humanitarian political economy to its weekly, global audience of professionals and business and government leaders. The Economist began in 1843 to campaign for free trade in agriculture and to advocate for the emerging regime of capitalism in Britain. Its primary concern during its first two decades centered on agricultural change. This thesis examines those first two decades, from 1843-1863, and The Economists focus on improvement, or capitalist development, in the English countryside.<p> The Economist was a staunch advocate for increased urbanization, private property, and high agriculture a modern system of agriculture that involved scientific techniques, free trade, large landholdings, and significant amounts of capital. It vehemently opposed any attempts to alleviate rural poverty using measures it felt were inconsistent with the principles of political economy and argued rural labourers would be better off if they were forced to sell their labour and submit to the discipline of the market. The Economist repeatedly portrayed this process of capitalist development as beneficial for all and as a natural occurrence, brought about through the free working of the market. Its account contributed to the prominent idea of the success of British agriculture in the 19th century; an idea that has had profound effects on subsequent notions of development.<p> This thesis uses Marxist and Foucauldian concepts to demonstrate that the process of capitalist development in the countryside was not brought about through market forces. Extensive and often oppressive government intervention was needed to dispossess people from the land and to force them into waged labour. Though much of this dispossession had occurred by the 19th century, The Economist performed a crucial role in advocating for policies that cemented capitalist relations of production. The Economists most important function was to spread belief in capitalism by making its inequality and poverty more palatable.

This research is designed to explore the ever-building international image of Taiwan by reviewing the news reports about Taiwan affairs from the American elitist publications. With the unprecedented advancement of communications and media developments, many people in the world has realized foreign affairs through media broadcasting. In the meantime, the perspectives about national images held by average people are greatly influenced by media reports, especially international news. The forming of Taiwan¡¦s image is no exception. Any piece of news about Taiwan has affected the projected image on the world stage one way or another. This study applies the methodology of content analysis to the news reports, letters, editorials and column reviews about Taiwan in the American elitist newspapers of The New York Times and The Washington Post, ranging from 1986 to 2005. The research acquires the samples form LEXIS-NEXIS database and analyzes the theme, main covered area, US-related content, independence-related content, leadership-related content, direction (strength) category and statement category from every sample. The researcher tries to investigate the distribution, important issues of different news themes, strength of content reports and the ever-constructing Taiwan international image. This research reveals: 1. In terms of themes and main covered area, nation-wide reports are the major. 2. In terms of US-related content, it is stressed on themes about foreign affairs, economy and trade, cross-strait relations and national defense technology. It shows these news themes are the very issues about Taiwan the US is most focused on. 3. In terms of Taiwanese leadership-related content, politics and cross-strait relations reports take up the most proportion. This shows political and cross-strait relations reports were what Taiwanese leaders were most involved during the two decades. 4. Among the themes of the news, neutral reporting is the major, positive reporting the second, negative the least. However, Constitution Reform in the politics category, Foreign Policies and Relations in the foreign affairs category, Literature, Art and Recreations in the education, science and culture categories mostly appear positive reporting. Only foreign spot news, society and laws, accidents and disasters are the few with more negative reporting than positive. Besides, in light of the quantitative ratio of news report samples, among all the news themes the most three categories are cross-strait relations, national defense and domestic politics. If we combine the small items broken down from the big categories, the category of cross-strait relations makes up the most proportion, followed by politics, foreign affairs, national defense and economy. The category of cross-strait relations totally takes up 38.09% and becomes the spotlighted issue of news reporting outstandingly. Finally, based on the sample statistics gathered from The New York Times and The Washington Post, the top five accumulated amounts of Taiwan news reports are 2000 (72 items), 2001 (45 items), 1996 (43 items), 1999 (41 items) and 2004 (35 items). 2000 tops the list of reporting on Taiwanese affairs; it¡¦s mainly because the second general election in Taiwan occurred on 2000. Chen Sui Bian and Liu Xiou Lien were elected as president and vice president. It was the first regime change ever in Taiwan¡¦s history and the DPP took the reins. On the other hand, the KMT was voted out of office for the first time and became the opposition, which attracted the international media and led to a significant increase on reporting. In addition, owing to the first regime change, the DPP that was generally perceived as pro-independence came into power and made China highly concerned, which contribute to the increase on news about cross-strait relations and policies, national defense and independence-related issues in this year.

This study is an attempt to analyse the newspaper supplements published by the Turkish printed press. An analysis of the qualitative and quantitative characteristics of the contents of the newspaper supplements selected due to the circulation numbers follows a brief history of the newspaper supplements. The study ends with the interviews made with the editor-in-chiefs of the weekend supplements. What results from these two analyses on different levels is that even though the basic aim of the daily newspaper supplements, mainly the weekend supplements is to increase the advertising revenues of the publishing companies, the content presented to the readers through these supplements also plays an important role in the social-ideological reproduction as the symbol of a specific life style. Therefore, this study also shows that critical political-economic approaches have to be completed with cultural analyses in the media studies.

This study examined a specific and controversial issue in health communication: the complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Recent studies have shown that both online newsgroups and traditional newspapers have involved in communicating CAM information, but research has not answered whether there are differences between the new and old media. From the perspective of uses and gratifications, this study first investigated that how people are using newsgroups to solve CAM-related problems. Then contents of newsgroup messages and newspaper stories were analyzed to do the comparison in topics, source types, efficacy claims, and CAM categories. The results showed that both similarities and differences existed between the two media.

This study identified the leadership competencies, skills, behaviors, and training needs most critical to a college newspaper leader's success. A Web-based Delphi technique, supported by the Center for Distance Learning Research at Texas A&M University, was used to submit three rounds of questionnaires to a panel of 25 editors from 19 institutions in 13 states. The experts responded to 13 open-ended questions in Round One designed to elicit information to establish the leadership competencies, skills, and behaviors critical to college newsroom leaders. Round One also established information concerning participants' prior knowledge of the top leadership position. The Round Two instrument included seven questions with 189 statements developed from responses to Round One. Panelists rated responses using a four-point Likert scale. Panelists reached consensus in the final round by selecting the three most important of the ranked responses to each question returned from Round Two. Additional questions asked for recommendations for the future training and development of editors. The panel's list of leadership traits agrees with more than 50 percent of the admired traits of all leaders (Kouzes and Posner,1997), and more than 50 percent of the ideal traits of top professional journalists (Peters, 2001). The panel reached consensus on 8 situations they considered unique to the college newsroom that had a significant impact on their leadership experience. The topthree included: the need to manage everything and still publish a great paper, dealing with uncommitted students, and dealing with frequent staff changes. The panel reached consensus on the following as most important for incoming college newsroom leaders: the most critical leadership competency was "ability to communicate"; the most critical leadership behavior was "a passion to improve and develop the newspaper"; the most critical leadership competency editors "lacked" was "ability to take charge"; the experiences they considered most important to shaping their understanding of the role was that it is a full-time, difficult, and frustrating position; and they indicate that "dedication to the newspaper" is the leadership trait that separates an average from a great newsroom leader.

This study proposes biosocial reciprocity framework in environmental communication, which suggests the interdependent relationships between mass media, people's attitudes, and the physical environment. Biosocial reciprocity is applied to analyze the mass media's possible roles in giant panda conservation in China. The mass media's image construction of giant pandas is assessed through a content analysis of People's Daily (1995 to 2004); the conservation awareness, activities, and environment changes are assessed by a review of the country's giant panda conservation history and policies. The result suggests active interrelations among the media, Chinese attitudes toward wildlife, and the loss of wild panda population and habitat. The study urges that to positively influence the natural world, much needs to be done to improve the Chinese media's effectiveness in fostering grassroots environmental value and awareness. Biosocial reciprocity provides a practical conceptual framework for this study to sort out media-related linkages between the social and physical world of giant panda conservation.

The research object of this paper is the Economic Daily Paper that is a newspaper specialized in economic topics. The purpose is to find out the relation between the IC semiconductor industry and the media's report by using the content analysis of dissemination as a research method. It studies and analyzes the industrial development and investor behaviors based on the front and second pages of Economic Daily in the past ten years, separated a year into four different industrial seasons starting January, April, July and October. The conclusions are as follows: 1.After the analysis, the circulation appears to be the information on the semiconductor industry and it disseminates mostly in the form of ¡§News¡¨. Because the semiconductor industry accounts for the large volume in the Economic Daily Paper, I chose this newspaper to be the reference of my paper. 2.¡§Security¡¨, as an important index to the readers, is the most valued topic because the profitability of a company affects the management efficiency of the company. Followed by ¡§security¡¨ is the ¡§management strategy¡¨. The companies of the semiconductor want to fully utilize the management skill, so they would have to focus on the business management strategies. 3.As we look at the industry development from the reports, we can easily find that the industry development obviously push forward the report of the development. 4.Semiconductor is a high technological industry, and its development can be divided into six stages: research and development, establishment, growth, maturity, expansion, and success. The sources of capital can be divided into foundation fund, development fund and expansion fund. After a high-tech company succeeds, it should make the stock listed and disperse the stocks as quickly as possible to raise the fund.