On September 4, 2013, two men were shot in the suburb Biskopsgården in Gothenburg. This was the catalysts to a very problematic autumn in both Biskopsgården as in another suburb, Hisingsbacka. The local media reports of the events were very through, where the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten took a leading role. It’s these reports which form the basis, the so called material of our essay. Our purpose with this essay is to examine which kind of medial message about the suburbs and their inhibitors the articles sends out to Göteborgs-Posten’s readers. We did this by putting our material against three issues, the first one was how Göteborgs-Posten did portray the suburbs when it came to; choice of words and phrases, angles and how the photos was composed. The second one was if Göteborgs-Posten had failed in its objective reporting when it came to; an “us versus them” perspective, which kind of medial message was sent out and if the journalist took a subjective position in the article. We also examined which actors were heard and what they represent in the society? We approached this study in a qualitative method way because we felt that we needed to examine the theme in its depth. The result were then linked to our three theories which were; framing, stigma and representation theory. The results from our study showed that our first thoughts about the subject did not match the reality of Göteborg-Posten’s reports. The medial image that was sent out wasn’t that negative as we first expected. The result shows that most of the articles in our sample had not a stigmatized tone or gave a misleading media image of the suburbs. In the cases that did send out a negative image it was mostly in the form of words and phrases. Other results obtained by our content analysis of the Göteborgs-Posten’s reporting on the subject was, for the most part were Swedes in the judicial system followed by affected immigrants who took the most place in the articles. Another interesting result was that both negative and positive stigma was encountered in the articles.

The purpose of this research was to understand how the risks associated with West Nile virus (WNV) were presented by the Winnipeg Free Press. A detailed content analysis was completed on all Winnipeg Free Press articles and Manitoba Health news releases, between 1999 and 2008, containing information related to West Nile. Additional data included interviews with government and media representatives. Several recurring frames, including blame, controversy, rights and fairness, risk, and uncertainty were found in the newspaper data. Over time there was a decrease in both the coverage and prominence of WNV-related issues by the Winnipeg Free Press. In terms of the use of sources by media, the provincial government was found to be the most commonly used source in this context. Reporting of WNV-related issues by the Winnipeg Free Press has been relatively clear and balanced despite some initial alarmist coverage surrounding the uncertainty of the arrival of WNV.

A frame refers to a decision maker’s perception of a decision problem. Frames affect outcomes of decisions and are partially controlled by how decision problems are formulated. This study investigated the effect of framing alternatives in a privacy decision as gaining or losing value, need to make an effort and gaining control in an online environment. Also a structure among the many effects found in earlier research concerning privacy in the context of Internet based services was sought. For these purposes two experiments and one survey were conducted at a university in Sweden. The study included 238 individuals, 197 of them being in the age range of 19-30. The participants were approached in public areas at the University and were asked to register on a fictive online cloud service. During registration they got a choice of registering automatically with little control and manually with control over what information would be published. The most salient effect found was the impact of framing the low control alternative as time saving, meaning that the participants were willing to give up privacy to save time. The practical implication of these results would be for developers of new online services to focus on making it easy and time efficient to take control over private information. For value and control frames no significant effects were found. Also exploring the result of the survey, a structure with the two components online concern and willingness to take risk online were found.

No description available.

Det finns en hel del forskning om högerpopulistiska partiers relation till massmedier, och hur den högerextrema rörelsen använder sociala medier. Hur högerpopulistiska partier använder material från medierna för att rama in sina politiska budskap är däremot mindre utforskat. Frågeställningarna för undersökningen var hur Sverigedemokraterna agerar som news aggregator på sin Facebook-sida i samband med riksdagsvalet 2014, och hur partiet ramar in det redaktionella material de länkar till. En kvalitativ undersökning med utgångspunkt i teorin om framing gjordes av samtliga officiella inlägg på Sverigedemokraternas Facebook-sida under perioden 140801 – 141031. Inläggen grupperades utifrån sex teman (mobilisering, Sverigedemokraterna mot etablissemanget, välfärd, ekonomi, invandring och hotet mot Sverige). De inläggen som innehöll länkar till redaktionellt material analyserades vad gäller syftet med nyhetsförmedlingen och inramningen av det länkande materialet. Analysen visar hur Sverigedemokraterna använder Facebook-sidan för att förmedla sin egen tolkning av händelser under valrörelsen. Det redaktionella materialet används för att ge SD legitimitet, hämta hem segrar och förstärka bilden av stödet för partiet. Två gestaltningar dominerar inramningen av de länkade artiklarna. Den ena är att SD som enda parti vågar tala klarspråk om den negativa utvecklingen i Sverige och därmed ger röst åt ”vanligt folk”. Den andra är att Sverige är hotat och att detta på olika sätt kan kopplas till invandringen. Detta ligger i linje med resultat från tidigare forskning.

This thesis analyses the policy debate surrounding National Missile Defense in the US during the 1990s from the framework of strategic intelligence failure. It focuses on the Congressional reaction to the release of the national intelligence estimate "NIE 95-19: Emerging Missile Threats to North America During the Next 15 Years" and the establishment of a new interpretation of foreign ballistic missile threats to the continental US. The role that partisan politics plays in the oversight of the US intelligence community is a vital and inescapable one. Yet little academic investigation has been devoted to understanding the political nature of intelligence oversight and its potentially catastrophic impact on intelligence product. Instead most of the scholarly literature treats intelligence and its oversight as apolitical, objective processes and intelligence failures as 'sins' produced by human error or organisational dysfunction with little analysis of the essentially subjective nature of political debate. The debate between the Clinton Administration and the Republican Congress can be understood as a conflict between two competing policy frames, each giving their holders a subjective assessment of what threats the US faced from ballistic missiles. Both parties sought to use their competing power over the intelligence community to produce community support for their paradigm and undermine support for that of their rival. The production and release of NIE 95-19 highlighted these competing claims. The unambiguous nature of the NIE's threat projections caused Congress to wield its oversight powers in an ultimately successful attempt to overturn the findings of the NIE. This represented an unprecedented level of Congressional involvement in strategic intelligence interpretation. Most importantly however it highlights the inherent dichotomy produced by current conceptions of strategic intelligence failure. In building a system of oversight that protected US strategic intelligence from certain apparent sources of failure the ability for Congress to actively meddle in the production of strategic intelligence and arguably undermine the value of long-term projections such as the NIE were massively increased.

Background: The theory of framing suggests that the media have the ability to influence how the public thinks about issues (Nelson, Oxley & Clawson, 1997; Chong & Druckman, 2007), by influencing what definitions, causal attributions, moral evaluations, and treatment recommendation the public considers applicable to an issue (Entman, 1993; Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009). The theory of framing has been supported in studies of media representations of a variety of social issues. With particular relevance to this thesis, framing studies have suggested that health news often portrays the essence of health issues as highly alarming, with few efficacious treatment or coping options (Chang, 2012). The social issue this thesis focuses on specifically is infertility. Study 1: In Study 1, a content analysis is utilized to examine how Canadian print news frames infertility. One-hundred and fifty-seven Canadian print news articles that contained the key word “infertility” in the year 2012 were analyzed. Two independent coders read the articles, and coded each article using a predetermined coding strategy (Chang, 2012) for if/how infertility was framed with respect to: prevalence; need for alarm; severity; vulnerability; need for alertness; means of coping; causes; and possible solutions. Just over one-half of the articles employed alarm frames (n=80), and the vast majority of these met the criteria for categorization as high alarm (96%). The most commonly cited cause of infertility was delayed childbearing (41% of articles) and the most frequently presented way to cope with infertility was in vitro fertilization (IVF; 46% of articles). Infertility was most often constructed as a women’s issue. Study 2: Study 2 build on Study 1 by examining the influence that high alarm framing strategies in the presentation of infertility have on news consumer reactions to, and knowledge of, infertility issues. One hundred and thirty-nine male and female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to read news articles focusing on infertility judged to employ either high alarm framing strategies (high alarm condition, n=65) or low alarm framing strategies (low alarm condition, n=66). Participants in each condition read the assigned news articles and subsequently completed a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included measures of: fear of infertility, perceived severity of infertility, perceived vulnerability to infertility, worry about infertility, prevention efficacy, coping efficacy, and knowledge about infertility. The participants in the high alarm condition evidenced higher levels of perceived vulnerability to infertility (p = .04), and marginally higher levels of worry about infertility (p = .075) than those in the low alarm condition. In contrast, participants in the low alarm condition relayed higher levels of infertility related knowledge than those in the high alarm condition (p= .001). Discussion: Canadian print news portrays infertility as a serious, a prevalent, an alarming and predominantly a women’s disease, and presents IVF as the principal means of coping. This partial depiction of infertility may not be promoting informed reproductive decision-making. Print news portrayal of infertility using high alarm framing strategies may induce higher worry about infertility and heightened levels of perceived personal vulnerability to infertility, while neglecting to relay pertinent knowledge about infertility. Implications for the societal understanding of infertility and the potential repercussions for informed reproductive decision-making are discussed.

När SVT i början av 2014 sände programserien Fittstim ­– min kamp med frågeställningen Har feminismen spårat ur? orsakade detta svallvågor av upprörda känslor i så väl traditionella som sociala medier. Många ansåg frågeformuleringen problematisk, då feminismens mål är jämställdhet mellan könen och då Sverige än i dag är långt ifrån att ha uppfyllt de jämställdhetspolitiska målen som riksdagen gemensamt formulerat. Efter en återblick i SVT:s debatthistoria fann vi även liknande frågeställningar som Har jämställdheten gått för långt? och Har jämställdhetsdebatten gått för långt? Detta kan påstås anmärkningsvärt sett till public service-sändningstillstånd och SVT:s uppdrag att verka opartiskt, sakligt och folkbildande. Syftet har därför varit att analysera inramningen av jämställdhet och feminism i debattprogram sända i SVT mellan 1980-talet till 2014, för att se vilka beskrivningar och problemformuleringar som präglat diskursen över tid samt hur dessa i förlängningen kan tänkas påverka tittarnas uppfattning och kunskaper om jämställdhet och feminism. De teorier som har använts i studien är inramning (framing) och Yvonne Hirdmans teori om genussystemet. Metoden för analysen har varit kvalitativ innehållsanalys. Den bygger på ett kvantitativt urvalsförfarande som genomförts med hjälp av förbestämda sökord, vilket resulterat i 16 debattprogram som sedan analyserats mer djupgående utifrån diskursanalys, kritisk diskursanalys, Michel Foucaults teorier om kunskap och makt och inramning som metod för innehållsanalys. Resultatet av studien visar att SVT i över 30 års tid i sina debattprogram upprepat satt mäns och kvinnors intressen mot varandra samt ramat in feminism, jämställdhet och jämställdhetsutvecklingen som något i ständig konflikt med män och mansrollen. Detta har återkommande gjorts utifrån frågeställningar om att jämställdhetsdebatten gått för långt och/eller kuvat mannen. SVT:s inramning kan, genom snäva problemformuleringar, därför sägas förstärka felaktiga idéer om jämställdhet och feminism samt begränsa möjliga alternativa utgångspunkter för den mediala debatten om dessa frågor.

Globally, research has shown that media coverage of illicit drug issues can play an important role in influencing public opinion and shaping drug policies. However, in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, very little is known about the media coverage of illicit drug issues. Afghan media, especially radio and television have developed dramatically during the past 11 years. Using the theories of agenda setting and framing, this study explored what drug-related topics were covered in the Afghan news media; how were these topics covered; how were the health and social consequences of drug abuse depicted in the media; and how much time was devoted to drug related topics in the media. Employing content analysis, the study examined primetime news coverage of the two leading media outlets: Azadi Radio and Tolo Television from 1st March 2011 until 31st July 2011. This thesis found the following types of imbalances in Afghan media reporting on illicit drug issues: 1) media reports on drug issues were heavily focused on supply reduction issues (81%) while paying considerably less attention to drug demand reduction issues (19%); 2) media predominantly framed illicit drugs as a law enforcement issue (83%) with only 15% of the paragraphs in the sample framing illicit drug as a public health problem; 3) media reporting on illicit drugs heavily relied on official sources (79%) lacking voices of the public health practitioners and drug addicts; 4) media coverage of illicit drug issues was heavily centered in Kabul (56%) with considerably less reporting from southern Afghanistan, which is the largest opium producing region. This study, which is presumably the first of its kind, provides media organizations, policy makers, and public health officials with a broad picture on the drug-related information available to the public on the leading Afghan news outlets. In addition, it serves as a basis for future research on media coverage of illicit drug issues in Afghanistan.

The purpose of this research was to understand how the risks associated with West Nile virus (WNV) were presented by the Winnipeg Free Press. A detailed content analysis was completed on all Winnipeg Free Press articles and Manitoba Health news releases, between 1999 and 2008, containing information related to West Nile. Additional data included interviews with government and media representatives. Several recurring frames, including blame, controversy, rights and fairness, risk, and uncertainty were found in the newspaper data. Over time there was a decrease in both the coverage and prominence of WNV-related issues by the Winnipeg Free Press. In terms of the use of sources by media, the provincial government was found to be the most commonly used source in this context. Reporting of WNV-related issues by the Winnipeg Free Press has been relatively clear and balanced despite some initial alarmist coverage surrounding the uncertainty of the arrival of WNV.