This study of American news media coverage of the Vietnam War, detailed chronologically, demonstrates the fractionalization of the Saigon press corps, the government tactics to obfruscate communication and the problems of journalists operating within the commercial confines of their craft. As institutions, the American news media and the U.S. military never demonstrated that they knew what to do in Vietnam, so they did what they knew how to do. The military experimented with firepower at the expense of civic action programs, while the journalists covered the action and generally ignored analysis, interpretation or investigative reporting. Vietnam was covered mostly as a sports event or a police beat, with many brave, but few intellectually aggressive reporters challenging the basic premise of the war or receiving any encouragement to do so from editors in the United States. Throughout the 15-year American phase of the revolution in Vietnam, the news media reacted to actions and statements by government spokesmen in both Washington and Saigon, and rarely initiated the agenda for reportage. This was caused by six main factors. The journalistic philosophy that reporting reflects the social environment and generally does not advocate pro-social behavior or function as commercial aspects of American journalism which, in conjunction with the gate-keeping functions integral to the process and the use of material by news agency and network clients, severely confined the press corps in Indochina to covering news events and topics to which it had easy access. The professional expertise of press corps members was diversified and many did not substantive background in either Vietnam or military tactics. The massive amounts of information disseminated by the U.S. government could not be analyzed rapidly by the limited bureau staffs in Saigon and resulted in limited interpretative articles which competed with more colorful and timely reports which were usually initiated by the government. The failure of professional journalistic organizations in the United States to consistently support efforts by reporters in Saigon during their struggle to make the American government more accountable for its actions or any institutional journalistic attempt to mount a lobbying effort on behalf of the reporters to pressure the government into adopting a more liberal information policy. The public confusion caused by the inconsistency of news organizations in transmitting reports from Indochina while simultaneously disseminating conflicting reports without properly analyzing the divergent views or including the incongruent statements and interpretation.

To provide normative data and assess the impact of teacher use of rhetorical questions on student evaluations of teachers, 101 randomly selected college class sessions were audio tape recorded with teacher consent (while naive about true researcher intent). Questions were classified as interrogative or rhetorical and, if rhetorical, further labeled as agreement, concession, or information questions. Up to three students per class session rated their teachers on scales from -10 to 10 representing teaching dimensions. The ratings and teacher question use were compared by correlation and regression analysis. Findings revealed frequent use of all types except concession questions. Weak negative associations between teacher use of rhetorical questions and student ratings of teachers did not support the conclusions of previous experimental research.

Television programming has not been subjected to close critical analysis of its underlying structure. Four tenets of structural analysis: transformation, intelligibility, self-regulation, and formalization, are drawn from the theories of Claude Levi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, and Jean Piaget and applied to television situation comedy. Preliminary examination of the genre establishes that it is more closely alligned to radio than film, while a survey of literary comedy reveals transformations which demonstrate the importance of analyzing television on its own terms. Analysis of "I Love Lucy," "McHale's Navy," and "All in the Family," establishes three precepts basic to television structure. Serial chronology represents television's way of structuring time. Rather than compressing time, television fragments it. Changes occur gradually and mimick real life as when Lucy becomes pregnant in "I Love Lucy." Technical experimentation in the sixties, illustrated by "McHale's Navy," led to a temporary dissolution of exploitation of serial chronology as a structural component. "All in the Family" heralds a return to capitalizing on serial chronology by extending action as well as character over time. Telemythic scope represents television's characteristic scale, which is limited in terms of setting and tends to make images recede into abstraction. This is illustrated in "I Love Lucy" by confinement of characters to the Ricardo living room and the focus on domestic events. In the sixties, illustrated by "McHale's Navy", producers attempted to expand scope using exotic settings. In the seventies, illustrated by "All in the Family," extreme close-ups, as well as the concentration of action and scene, show an appreciation of scope. The electron factor represents television's way of recomposing reality so that it becomes abstract and symbolic without losing its immediacy. It is present in diluted form in "I Love Lucy," which used cinematic techniques. It is most evident in "McHale's Navy" in dream scenes. In "All in the Family," videotape approximates the immediacy of live transmission which, along with topicality, works to capitalize on the vitality and abstraction of the electron factor.

A field investigation was conducted in which a voluntary audience was exposed to educational television programs with humorous episodes inserted so as to produce a 2 x 2 x 2 x 3 factorial design. Factors were level of difficulty of the educational message (easy, difficult), funniness of the humor (not-so-funny, funny), distribution of the humor (random, predictable), and density of the humor (intervals without humor ranged from two minutes to four minutes to six minutes in length). Corresponding to the factorial combinations, twenty-four educational television programs were produced as well as two no-humor control conditions. Viewers' attention to the television screen was assessed on three different indices: (1) the frequency of "stop and go" behavior; that is, the frequency of subjects who "stopped and watched" or who "abandoned watching" the television screen; (2) the frequency of "eyes toward" and "eyes away" from the screen, measured by observing subjects' faces and coding the occurrences of eyes turned "toward the screen" as well as "away from" the screen; and (3) the "persistence" or cumulative duration of eyes on the screen. For each experimental program these data were collected for attention to the educational material as well as for attention to the humorous material. The findings of this study suggest that, under certain conditions, the voluntary choice of viewing an educational message can be measurably enhanced when the informative message is comprised of a mix of humor and education. The packaging of the humor within the educational message was significant in attracting an audience for exposure to the educational message. The density (or pacing) of the humorous segments within the educational message was the single most reliable factor in attracting viewers to turn their "eyes toward" the screen during the educational material. As the intervals without humor increased (or the humorous segments were less in number but greater in length) the frequency of eyes directed toward the screen increased. The level of difficulty of the educational message, the distribution pattern for the insertion of the humor within the educational message, and the degree of funniness of the humor had differing effects on an audience's choice to "tune in" to the educational message. Significantly more viewers turned their "eyes toward" than their "eyes away" from the television screen during easy educational material than did during difficult educational material. Neither the distribution pattern nor the degree of funniness of the humor were statistically significant factors in determining viewers' attraction to or withdrawal from the educational material. While the inclusion of humor within certain educational messages had positive effects on promoting attention to the educational messages that followed the humorous material, the maintenance of viewer attention for the upcoming educational message was not clearly shown.

This study examined the possible contingent conditions for the cultivation effect of television viewing. Program genre, program perceived reality, and direct experience with the outside world were major variables under examination. A survey of college students (N = 255) revealed that the amount of soap opera viewing was related to perceptions (1) more people in the real world having professional jobs; (2) liberal attitudes toward nonmarital intercourse. Viewing was not related to perceptions that most marriages end in divorce, or that people are promiscuous. Regression analyses reveal that while viewing is related to liberal sexual attitudes, the best predictor is church attendance. The results suggest that direct experience with the outside world has much more to do with social reality construction than does TV viewing. Implications for future research are discussed.

This dissertation seeks to assess the editorial treatment given by elite west European and American newspapers to the Arab-Israeli conflict during the 1980-1982 time period. The study was based on a content analysis of editorials dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict in The Washington Post, The Times of London, Le Monde of France, and Corriere Della Sera of Italy. A number of variables were coded for each editorial paragraph, including editorial opinion, political symbols, editorial issues, personality focus, bilateral relations, country category, diplomatic initiatives, prominence, and size characteristics. The study found the four papers to be remarkably similar in their emphasis on issues, topics, countries, and personalities. Further, editorial interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict reached its highest levels during times of crises, such as the Israeli raid on Iraq's nuclear reactor, Israeli's annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights and the war in Lebanon. In addition, the study found the views held by the four papers to reflect to a large extent the basic positions held by the policymakers in the United States, Britain, France, and Italy.

Political narratives have entertained human beings since times immemorial. The political narratives in the form of drama, novel, ballads, and contemporary televisual and filmic stories revolved around various characters that served as role models. Citizens tended to identify with good, morally ambiguous, and sometimes bad characters depending on the context and a host of personal motives, which subsequently determined the enjoyment of the entertainment narratives and absorption into the storyline. Storylines and characters in political entertainment has also been a great source of enjoyable entertainment for the audience. However, female lead characters in political roles were marginalized and frequently represented in conventional roles that were uninspiring and cultivated negative sentiments about females in various leadership roles. In the past few decades, the representation of female lead characters has considerably changed due to the entry of several notable female politicians in the corridors of power across the globe. Since females are visible in different leadership roles, they are attracting attention of the news and entertainment media and their increased visibility is positively influencing attitudes of female and male citizens toward feminine role models. This dissertation focused on the portrayal of female politicians in semifictional and fictional political narratives and explored if enjoyment, character identification, and narrative transportation influenced the attitudes of the audiences toward female protagonists in political entertainment. As political entertainment became a dominant pattern to involve uninterested voters in democratic processes, entertainment psychology research paid attention to the dual process model of entertainment, and several scholars investigated the "serious" nature of enjoyment experience associated with the consumption of political narratives. Several other studies reported that audiences identified with positive political role models featured as the protagonists in "meaningful" semifictional or fictional narratives. Audience were likely to enjoy such narratives by transporting them into the storyline that reduced critical evaluation of the narratives and subsequently influenced their attitudes and beliefs. By designing and conducting two studies to explore the serious nature of political entertainment, this dissertation empirically tested the relationship between exposure to semifictional and fictional narrative and audiences' attitudes toward female protagonists playing the role of a politician, which was not adequately addressed in extant research. Study one served as a pilot study that tested the causal associations between exposure to semifictional biographical political movies and attitude of the audiences toward female politicians, followed by an exploration of the mediating role of a few variables such as enjoyment and narrative transportation. Study two, on the other hand, scrutinized similar relationships between exposure to fictional political drama and viewers' attitude toward female role models featured as political protagonists in the drama narratives. Both studies found significantly insightful results and paved the way for future inquiry into the effects of fictional entertainment, as was advocated by Holbert (2005) in his "typology for the study of entertainment television and politics". Exposure motives with meaningful intentions proved to be a significant exogenous variable due to their potential to elicit cognitive and elaborative processing of the entertainment narratives. This dissertation addressed significant questions surrounding political communication and entertainment psychology research. The studies conducted for this research offered plausible results and paved the way for continued research on fictional political entertainment and its effects on attitudes. Various conceptual models were examined (using SEM) to understand the effects of political entertainment and consistent with the previous research, this dissertation developed a plausible and replicable model that reasonably established causal links between different constructs frequently tested in entertainment psychology research. This research followed and confirmed the results of a relatively new approach based on the dual process model of entertainment experience. In agreement with current research in this area, studies in the dissertation found that biographical political movies and primetime drama engendered meaningful entertainment experience that subsequently paved the way for a story-consistent attitudinal change. This line of research also supported the use of entertainment to involve citizens in political processes, not approved by a stream of research arguing that entertainment weakened democratic ethos. Contrariwise, studies in this dissertation confirmed that entertainment was not a negative emotion, and in a postmodern world, entertainment should be effectively used for political well-being and ensuring the existence of a healthy public sphere. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / March 30, 2015. / Attitudes, Enjoyment, Entertainment, Female politicians, Narrative transporation, Political self-efficacy / Includes bibliographical references. / Arthur A. Raney, Professor Directing Dissertation; Betsy J. Becker, University Representative; Laura Arpan, Committee Member; Jennifer M. Proffitt, Committee Member.

Extant research has demonstrated that the media are rarely able to tell audience members what to think, but are remarkably successful in telling audiences what to think about; this is known as an agenda-setting effect (McCombs & Shaw, 1972). However, little research has examined whether such effects occur when audiences are exposed to news within daily email newsletters- emailed news bulletins sent by aggregator news media featuring important stories of the day. A 2 (topic) x 2 (placement) x 3 (message) mixed online experiment was conducted to examine whether topic and placement of articles within daily email newsletters produced agenda-setting effects over a period of three days. News topic was manipulated as being either health or education content, and placement of articles was manipulated as being the first or last article presented in the newsletter. News topic and placement served as between subjects factors. Participants (N = 108) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions. Participants read one newsletter everyday over the course of three days; thus message repetition was a within subjects factor. Results showed that participants in the health condition exhibited stronger agenda-setting effects relative to participants in the education condition. This difference was stronger when placement of the news story was presented first, indicating prominence as a cue of salience within the newsletters. However, placement of topic was non-significant across both topics, as the cue of placement specifically produced conflicting results within the education condition. The results from this study contribute to the growing body of agenda setting research within the digital news era. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 14, 2017. / agenda setting, daily email newsletters, experiment, salience / Includes bibliographical references. / Patrick F. Merle, Professor Directing Thesis; Russell B. Clayton, Committee Member; Summer Harlow, Committee Member.

This study examines why one may select and enjoy movie adaptations compared to original movies, through the lens of entertainment and media effect theories. The researcher hypothesized that two constructs, parasocial relationships and nostalgia, which can be observed and predicted through individual differences, are important factors to consider when researching the selection and enjoyment processes associated with entertainment media. Using a 2 x 2 online experimental design, this study tested how participants reacted towards movie storyboards portraying potential movie adaptations based on children's cartoon shows in order to explore differences between enjoyment, viewing intentions, parasocial interactions, and nostalgic experiences between participants with different levels of nostalgia-proneness and parasocial relationships with established cartoon characters. Results show that those with stronger parasocial relationships with the cartoon characters enjoyed the storyboards more and had stronger intentions to watch the full movie. Results also showed that those with higher nostalgia-proneness were more likely to want to watch the full movie. / A Thesis submitted to the School of Communication in partial fulfillment of the Master of Science. / Spring Semester 2017. / April 14, 2017. / Enjoyment, Entertainment, Movie Adaptations, Nostalgia, Parasocial Relationship / Includes bibliographical references. / Arthur Raney, Professor Directing Thesis; Russell Clayton, Committee Member; Laura Arpan, Committee Member.

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