Thesis (Ph. D.)--Syracuse University, 2009. / "Publication number: AAT 3381566."

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Syracuse University, 2008. / "Publication number: AAT 3345012."

Thesis (PH.D.) -- Syracuse University, 2006 / "Publication number AAT 3242491."

Thesis (PH.D.) -- Syracuse University, 2006 / "Publication number AAT 3251769."

<p> This thesis sets out to explain the causes and consequences of American mass media silence on the subject of civilian death in Iraq in the 2003-2012 war. The thesis finds the principal causes of silence to be: The embedding program, the need for fast, marketable, American-sourced "officialdom", the cultural-political shift to the right after 9/11 and the rise of Fox News, the takeover of advertising interests in media executive management, and various psychological causes including group diffusion of responsibility. The thesis finds the principal consequence of media silence to be <i>dehumanization through omission</i>, effecting widespread American public ignorance (and consequent apathy) of civilian death in Iraq. The concept <i>dehumanization through omission</i> is introduced in this thesis as a variant of traditional dehumanization that can be either intentional or naturally occurring. In this particular variant, the absence of like-identification across ingroups and outgroups, the absence of socially supportive affiliates interested in forming a humanizing counter-narrative, the denial of and disinterest regarding ingroup sin, the denial of event importance, the denial of individual agency, occasional overt dehumanization, sustained infrahumanization, and finally the assumption on the part of the American people that their media was vigilant against civilian death paired with that media's actual and complete absence of vigilance against death and against the delegitimizing and prevailing war narrative, form a dehumanization that is softer, quieter, and more elusive than overt propaganda, but which in all likelihood is just as fatal to those who suffer its consequences. </p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2006. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-11, Section: A, page: 4320. Adviser: James H. Kuklinski. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 150-155) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

Thesis--Freie Universität Berlin. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 807-827).

This study closely examines the features of political cartoons, testing whether cartoons exhibit the form and function of narratives, an assumption that has been advanced but not demonstrated in previous research. By focusing on cartoons about a specific event, the 1988 Presidential campaign, two questions are raised. How may cartoons be considered as narratives? What stories do they tell about the 1988 Presidential campaign? These two questions are intertwined. Seeing political cartoons as narratives is initially problematic, because narratives possess a temporal aspect. Conventionally, political cartoons are not presented in sequential patterns. This study argues that cartoons are capable of movement and effect a sequencing, particularly when they employ visual metaphors. Because metaphors involve a step-by-step cognitive transformation of something or someone from an initial state to a second state, they create sequence and activate audience response through the use of culturally shared referents. Drawing upon a collection of 2752 cartoons, this study examines them for displays of the basic elements of narrative: character, setting, narrator, and plot. Political cartoons are found to exhibit these elements collectively, in various configurations. Cartoons operate rhetorically by creating persuasive definitions, constructions that function as terministic screens, defining campaign events and personalities. These cartoons create terministic screens in three basic ways: (1) by making characterizations, (2) by casting characters into situations, and (3) by narrating or verbally describing situations. Visual metaphors, motifs, and references to campaign actualities are the inventional tools of the cartoonist, and contribute to the elements of narrative. Political cartoons are found to reflect the elements of narrative--character, setting, narrator, and plot--and to offer historicizing narratives about the 1988 Presidential campaign. The significance of seeing political cartoons as narratives is to be found in their realization as collective experience and in their moralizing function. Although the usual function of a cartoon is subversive, this discrediting function is reflected against its opposite, the expression of an ideal. As satire, as comic correctives, and as narratives, cartoons implicitly-propose ideal modes of conduct by providing commentaries on the absence of the ideal.

This thesis investigates the nature and impact of Russian influence on Russian-language print and broadcast news in Ukraine and Belarus. TV channels and publications with shareholders or partners in Russia are widely available in both the countries studied; existing literature suggests that such ‘Russian’ media are a source of regional power for the Kremlin. To shed light on how Russian partners and shareholders affect editorial treatment of Russia, the thesis compares content samples from 27 TV news bulletins and newspapers available in Ukraine or Belarus, some of which have Russian partners or shareholders while others do not. It also draws on in-depth interviews with 46 journalists and other media professionals. The thesis then compares the cases of Ukraine and Belarus to explain how political and economic conditions in a ‘target’ state affect the Russian authorities’ scope for communicating messages to mass audiences abroad via pro-Kremlin broadcasters. The findings of the thesis serve as a basis for assessing whether Russian news exports might contribute to Russian foreign policy success in the way envisaged by the literature on soft power. This research reveals complexities which have previously been overlooked in discussions about Russia’s media influence in the post-Soviet region. The news providers in Ukraine and Belarus which have Russian partners or shareholders are diverse and often vulnerable to constraints within their operating environment. Their utility as a source of soft power for the Kremlin is questionable, because the association between media and soft power is premised on public sentiments swaying foreign policy decisions. This premise is problematic, particularly in authoritarian Belarus. Pro-Kremlin Russian news exporters undoubtedly play a role in Moscow’s relations with Minsk and Kiev. However, their significance may lie at least as much in their capacity to provoke as their capacity to ‘softly’ attract and persuade a mass audience.

This dissertation examines the process of limited political liberalisation in China by analysing the coexistence between critical journalists and the party-state under the Hu-Wen leadership. In contrast to the scholarship on authoritarianism and Chinese politics, which tends to analyse the perspectives of societal actors and the state separately from one another, this study brings the two together, unveiling the intricacies of their interactions. In the past decade, critical journalists and the party-state maintained a partnership which can be best described by a jazz ensemble metaphor. The players—critical journalists and the party-state—share a common purpose: improving their performance or governance within the existing political system. They overcome the limitations on their collaboration with ad hoc creative adjustments made in response to one another. The party-state acts as a band leader, setting the key by establishing a framework within which creative manoeuvring can take place. The study is based on unique access to politically sensitive material, including 120 in-depth interviews with critical journalists, media and crisis management experts, and government officials. It also includes multilayered textual analysis of the Chinese Communist Party journal, Qiushi, and investigative reports in two outspoken media outlets, Caijing and Nanfang Zhoumo. The data is employed to analyse the boundaries for limited political liberalisation of the media as well as how it manifests itself during major crisis events. More broadly, the dissertation draws the attention of both China and authoritarianism scholars to the significant yet neglected feature of interactive improvisation as a force that can sustain coexistence between critical actors and authoritarian states. It shows that by engaging in actor-driven analysis and illuminating the process of their interactions, we can better grasp the dynamics of authoritarianism in China and beyond. A step is made towards applying the analytical framework distilled in the China case on other authoritarian regimes by including a limited comparison to media–state relations under Gorbachev and under Putin. It shows that the variables of collaboration and improvisation are useful in explaining the different outcomes of political liberalisation reform.