Information is power in the 21st century and strategic narratives through framing are nowadays regarded as part of the modern armoury of war. States constantly compete to create credible narratives in support of their actions on the international policy arena. After the Crimean crisis in 2014 the world was forced to open its eyes to medias new usage in modern warfare. State funded news agencies play an important role in this recent development and one of the most prominent actors is Russia. This thesis seeks to contribute to the discussion of strategic narratives and framing in the news media through a case study of the Russian news site Sputnik News. The thesis focuses on the news agency’s depiction of five empirical events in which the Swedish and Russian armed forces were involved during 2014 and 2015. A qualitative analysis of 25 news articles discussing the five events has detected proof of pro-Russian framing processes. The aim of Sputnik News seems to be a transformation of the general Swedish frame regarding Russia itself and perhaps more specifically Russia’s recent change in foreign policy.

abstract: This study explores how newspapers framed the weight-loss drugs Xenical®(orlistat) and Alli® (over-the-counter orlistat) during the time period of three months prior to their approvals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration until one year after each became available on the market. As of June 2011, orlistat is the only weight-loss drug available for long-term use in the U.S. Newspapers are influential sources of information about health issues. Agenda-setting, framing, and priming in news articles can have a powerful effect on public perceptions and behaviors. To conduct the content analysis, researchers first developed a codebook containing variables that described the sources of attribution and the features of each drug. They tested the codebook in a series of pilot tests to ensure inter-rater reliability. The sample of texts for the content analysis, drawn from LexisNexis Academic, contained 183 newspaper articles composed of 85 Xenical articles and 98 Alli articles. The overlap was 25% for inter-rater reliability as well as intra-rater reliability. Frequencies were tabulated using Predictive Analytics SoftWare, version 18.0.3. Results demonstrated that Xenical and Alli were framed differently in some critical ways. For example, there were twice as many quotes from the manufacturer for Alli than for Xenical. Researchers concluded that the reporting on Alli was heavily influenced by the manufacturer's multi-media public relations campaign in the months prior to the market-release date. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.S. Nutrition 2011

The purpose of this paper is to describe the current communication techniques and strategies used by political parties resulting in these parties achieving significant growth, understand the components of those communication techniques in order to isolate the factors attributing to this achieved success and develop a model that can be replicated from a business organization in order to achieve similar beneficial results.The study revealed that there is a clear connection between political parties and business organizations, broadening the research fields of both entities respectively. Furthermore, the findings were categorized based on potential value, with practices such as “thriving on dissatisfaction”, “taking advantage of emotions”, “showing visible structures as an organization / political party”, “intentional use of weak signals”, “leader’s direct connection to audience” and “formulating receiver interpretation of signals” appearing to have high potential in achieving success if implemented correctly in the communication strategy.

This research paper studied the first two weeks after President Donald Trump allegedly called African countries “shithole countries” in a bi-partisan meeting on immigration. It explored the frames and emerging themes used by the media when covering the incident and the surrounding issues. Using the framing theory as a theoretical framework, the study examined the six identified news frames through qualitative content analysis. The six frames used in the coverage of the “shithole countries” incident are racial, conflict, consequences, morality, human interest, and policy. The study examined articles from four news sources that lean liberal, conservative, central-liberal, and central conservative. The study indicated that the four news sources all used five of the six frames, as the Wall Street Journal did not use the morality frame at all. The most used frame was the human interest frame, followed by conflict and consequences. The New York Times and the Wall Street Journal used the conflict frame the most. And CNN and FOX used the consequences frame the most.

abstract: The purpose of this project is to better understand police perceptions of sexual assault complainants by assessing their likelihood of questioning a complainant’s credibility and by examining police attitudes toward victims of sexual assault. To advance understanding of these issues, this dissertation (1) expands upon prior research by drawing on a sample of officers from one of the largest metropolitan police departments in the United States and, (2) through the use of framing theory, contributes to the literature by focusing on the attitudes of police toward sexual assault complainants and how these beliefs are shaped by day-to-day experiences. This dissertation investigates two research questions using a mixed-methods approach. The data come from 400 sexual assault complaints that were reported to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) and 52 LAPD detective interviews. I quantitatively examine the factors that influence officer perceptions of complainant credibility, focusing on indicators of “real rape,” “genuine” victims, “inappropriate” victim behavior, and “character flaws.” I contextualize this work by examining police attitudes toward sexual assault victims using qualitative data taken from interviews of sex crimes detectives. This research contributes to the broader case processing literature by focusing on victim credibility, a factor consistently found to influence case processing decisions. Moreover, this study contributes to research on the frames officers assign to women who report sexual assault. Analyses from the quantitative portion of the study confirm that indicators of “real rape,” and complainant “character issues” were key explanatory factors influencing credibility assessments. Regarding qualitative results, three sexual assault victim frames were identified. These frames include depictions of victims as they relate to: (a) the suspect/victim relationship, (b) problematic victim behavior, and (c) age. These three frames indicate that certain types of victims are viewed as problematic. This dissertation contributes to three broad bodies of literature: law enforcement decision making, law enforcement perceptions of sexual assault victims, and framing theory. This dissertation was able to tap into officer attitudes to shed light on the ways officers treat women who come forward to report sexual assault, providing valuable insight into officer attitudes, credibility assessments, and victim framing. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Criminology and Criminal Justice 2015

This essay aims at studying the use of social media by states and state actors. More specifically, the study is exploring how the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) are using their official Twitter account @IDFSpokesperson in relation to the 2018 Gaza protests. The study is utilizing a quantitative content analysis as well as a framing analysis for the analysis of the Twitter account and is having a theoretical base in framing theory. The findings suggest that there is a problem when democratic states use social media – there is a fine line between being transparent and disseminating propaganda.

Grounded in framing theory, this thesis presents a quantitative content analysis of newspaper reporting of the Hong Kong protests, also known as the Occupy Central Movement or the Umbrella Revolution, between September 28 and December 11, 2014. The political, economic and legal implications involved have made the protests one of the most newsworthy events in the history of Hong Kong since the transfer of its sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China in 1997. This study aims to examine the various frames used in the coverage of the protests in three major newspapers that operate within different political, economic and ideological boundaries: South China Morning Post, The New York Times, and The Guardian. Results of the content analysis supported the research hypotheses that significant differences existed in the newspapers in their framing of the protests, the protesters, the government, news censorship, and politically sensitive issues. While the frames used by The New York Times and The Guardian were in agreement with the Western democratic-liberal press system, the frames used by South China Morning Post reflected the authoritarian-liberal nature of the Hong Kong press system.

China's smog air pollution has become an increasingly urgent environmental crisis in China. Using framing as theoretical framework, this research examined how much media attention is focused on smog air pollution and how print media frame smog air pollution. An empirical content analysis of 339 articles in the People’s Daily newspaper was conducted from 2000 to 2016, and the results showed that “non-voluntary solutions” and “problem” frames were the two frames that had been most utilized to construct stories about air pollution. Smog air pollution crisis also discussed in terms of Downs issue-attention cycle, a five-stage model explaining the rise and down of social attention to a social issue. The smog air pollution crisis in China been found that exhibiting three cycles that relate to media attention. Also, the research found that the prominence of the frames varied at different cycles. It is worth noting that the prominence of the frames moved away from the “problem “and “effects on social economic” frames to the “government responsibility,” “individual responsibility,” and the “voluntary” frames. The finding suggests that media attention and media concerns and journalists’ narrative considerations change across the different phases of development, that natural instincts, political influence, and media norms can all affect it.

The study aims to analyse how China, under the Xi Jinping administration, assimilates its ethnic minorities by exploring white papers' underlying motives. The ambition is to understand China’s actions and how they can affect the future. The research asks three questions: How does China frame ethnic minorities in white papers? What arguments are used to justify assimilation and sinicisation? How and why is China assimilating its ethnic minorities now? The results show that China depicts ethnic minorities through two accounts, oneness and backwardness. The former stresses the significance of unity within ethnic minorities and between ethnic groups. The latter describes the condition that ethnic minorities end up in if they do not conform to China’s socialist values. One can be stuck by backwardness if one follows declared enemies or shows signs of separatism, terrorism and religious extremism. The results reveal how China uses ‘war on terror’ and modernisation narratives to justify its assimilation and sinicisation acts. The results also point to three areas where ethnic minorities can stick to backwardness and should, therefore, assimilate Han Chinese. These are language, religion and employment. The study reveals that the CPC and Xi Jinping intend to fix anything that disturbs them from realising the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. Consequently, China’s attempt to attain uniformity means that anything which may be prioritised above the party must be eradicated or sinicised.

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