The research undertaken in this study explores five years of the Louisiana Office of Tourism's public relations campaign to attract Canadian visitors to Louisiana. The study considers how the campaign's organizers used the cultural bond between French-speaking Canadians and Louisiana to attract Canadians to Louisiana. The study also examines how important the public relations strategy of highlighting the cultural bond between host and tourist was in attracting Canadian visitors to the state. In addition, the study uncovers whether or not campaign organizers considered the impact their campaign would have on Louisiana's Cajun citizenry. The research method employed was the case study method. Interviews were conducted with campaign organizers, and a case description was used to organize and analyze the data. The findings of the study show that the campaign's planners segmented the Canadian market into two distinct demographics, French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians. In its campaign to attract French-speaking Canadians to the state, highlighting the cultural bond between the two regions was vital to the campaign's success. The strategy included the hosting of a year-long celebration of the state's French heritage as well as a mammoth Cajun family reunion and event sponsorships throughout French-speaking Canada. Ultimately, the Louisiana Office of Tourism concluded that its campaign positively impacted the state's Cajun community, both economically and culturally. For their part, representatives of the Cajun community expressed concern about the campaign. Specifically, they said they believed the way in which Cajuns were sometimes portrayed in the campaign served to perpetuate stereotypes. Lastly, the study shows that the campaign jibed with one of the four tourism public relations models developed by prominent tourism public relations scholar, Don Stacks. Stacks translated the four historic models of public relations developed by J. Grunig for application to the tourism industry. The campaign is a clear example of Stacks' two-way asymmetric model, the research shows.

Some contemporary theories in political science maintain that public lobbying is merely an expression of latent and resolute public opinion that is communicated to policymakers. Other theories contend that the public is highly manipulable and that public lobbying by extension can be considered a form of strategic framing that takes place through the news and paid media. Both theoretical approaches specify a function for words or text but are silent on the influence of photographs or images. In this dissertation, I hypothesize that environmental public lobbying operates as strategic framing and that text and photographs have unique and discrete effects on public opinion and policy action. In a study on the effects of greenwashing, I examine how photographs and text influence aggregate public concern for the environment, public preferences on specific public problems and congressional committee action on environmental issues. Time series agenda-setting models show that photographs and text do have differential effects on public salience and policy action: public concern is largely compelled by words, whereas photographs drive policy attention. In a related experiment, findings suggest that images may directly influence specific policy preferences, but that there is no evidence of exclusively photographic framing effects. Words on the other hand are capable of directly changing opinions and also show evidence of framing effects.

This qualitative study featured 33 in-depth interviews of college-aged, African-American women and offers baseline exploratory data about how a majority cultural artifact like televised depictions become utilized in the everyday lives of an underrepresented group in media studies. This research represents one of a few studies to explore how black females decode and utilize TV content, and offers a new theoretical framework to explain informants' decoded receptions, influence and utility of television. An inductive analysis of interview narratives found that viewers use TV content like a looking-glass to understand how they are seen by others and where they fit in the larger social arena. Television's normative cultural reflections are received, decoded, absorbed and self-applied to improve or enhance the social acceptability of black, female interpretive group members. The incidental lessons learned from the television mirror suggest that changing or reinventing oneself based on information gathered from TV content enhances viewers' satisfaction with themselves. Through TV transcripts black female informants in this study learn how they might improve their personal images to assimilate better into the social and professional circles of Caucasian-American lifestyles. Television's ubiquitous nature warrants a closer look at its influence and utility on TV audiences. This study posits that unwitting social and personal reasons promote the heavy television viewing behavior of African-American interpretive group members.

The news media are the main channel for public relations practitioners to get messages across to their publics. Getting their news or information materials used in the media is, therefore, a key professional responsibility for public relations practitioners. In an Asian country like Indonesia, this practice constitutes one of the more important parts of pubic relations practices. However, there has been little research conducted on predictive factors especially as concerns taking into account different factors together regarding Indonesian journalists uses of public relations news materials, since it is the largest nation in the Southeast Asian region, and no known academic public relations research of the subject has been done till now. The literature related to this study primarily examines how journalists professional roles, news values, informal relations between journalists and public relations practitioners, and business pressures predict Indonesian journalists uses and acceptance of public relations news materials. This thesis then employed survey methods to obtain data from Indonesian journalists working for national newspapers and television broadcasts in the capital city of Jakarta. The news value factor comes first in predicting Indonesian journalists uses and acceptance of public relations materials; the journalists also take their news organizations business interests seriously into their consideration. In addition, this study supports the suggestion that informal relations between practitioners and journalists could play a significant role in the use and acceptance of public relations news materials. The results do indicate that envelope journalism, or positive coverage provided by journalists in exchange for cash payment, is embraced by public Indonesian relations practitioners and journalists. However, this study finds its influence is not as significant as the fundamental tenets in journalism. The findings suggest that public relations activities in Indonesia comprise an important part of a set of complex media practices.

In this study I will look at the main reasons women use the Internet. Studies about women and the Internet are divided; some indicate less use of the Internet than men, but other studies show strong evidence of a narrowing gap in use. Due to this lack of clarity, a study that looks exclusively at womens Internet activities and usage is needed. Although qualitative research does not test or apply theory the same way quantitative research does, uses and gratifications theory informed this study. This is an exploratory study of women and the Internet.

This content analysis was designed to examine, in a single longitudinal study, trends in the quantity and kinds of world news coverage in selected U.S. newspapers during times of relative peace. Using complementary proportion and absolute-item frequencies, two constructed weeks in 1927, 1947, 1977, and 1997 in three newspapers, 168 issues in all, were analyzed. The findings indicate that the percentage of foreign news coverage compared to non-foreign coverage in the three newspapers actually increased between 1927 and 1997. The amount of foreign coverage spiked in 1947 and then started to decline. But even with the decline, coverage by proportion in 1997 was still significantly higher than in 1927. On the other hand, a negative relationship was found in front-page foreign coverage in the three newspapers comparing 1927 with 1977 and 1997. A positive relationship was found in front-page coverage for 1947. Results for front-page coverage were significant for 1947 and 1977.

This thesis focuses on Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blancos press strategies. The first section of the paper provides the standard and documented description of the role and press strategy for a governor. The second section provides a background of the responsibility of the press within a democratic society in the context of the Social Responsibility Theory. The third section examines what elements define a press/politico relationship and what defines positive and negative aspects related to this type of relationship. This research utilizes a qualitative research design, including in-depth interviews, participatory observation/field notes and case studies. Perceptions, derived from the governors staff members inside the Blanco administration and one capitol bureau reporter, examine; 1). Governor Blancos press strategy; 2.) Elements for a successful news story, and; 3). A description of the press/politico relationship. There is a lack of research on gubernatorial press relations. Therefore, three topics from the Blanco administration are examined as case studies in this paper. The topics include the negotiations with the Saints, the Executive Order on non-discrimination against gays and lesbians and Union Tank Car. These were the most popular issues covered by the press in the governors first year in office. Each followed a press strategy within the organization and provided valuable situations to evaluate with regard to the press and the strategies within an Executive level of government. From the thesis and out of the perceptions of the interviewees, a successful governor will manage a message to the media by first being successful in managing a message within the administration. If these messages are disseminated in an organized fashion, reporters are more apt to objectively reporting the elements of a story. Interviewees also perceived that objective reporting is defined for how accurate the news stories are in relation to the information that was provided by their political source. It was also found through the interviews that for the governor to have a successful press strategy may mean that she will use discretion with accessibility to the media. Meaning, the governor is aware that speaking openly to the press on all occasions, may not guarantee success, but will successfully provide media accessibility.

Womens dress and appearance can reflect a lot about a civilized society. It is influenced by many factors as well. The dress and appearance of contemporary Chinese women have not been studied much by mass communication researchers. This paper, however, explored the factors that influence the development and evolution of contemporary Chinese womens dress and appearance. It traced back from Dynastic China to Republican China and then to Maos red China to examine the historical and political influences imposed on the dress and appearance of Chinese women. Then, it used in-depth interviews to find out factors that influence womens dress and appearance in contemporary China. Especially, this paper analyzed the result of all these factors that typically were transmitted or reinforced by mass media. The paper found that media played a very important role in contemporary Chinese womens dress and appearance. Chinese women depend on media very much in choosing their dress style and clothes. In addition to this, peers opinion and social environment also influence Chinese womens choice in dress. Since the results showed that media dependency could also be applied to Chinas contemporary society, the paper concluded that media in China will have much more role on the society especially on womens dress and appearance in the future. It also concluded that Chinese women would not be totally westernized but would maintain some Chinese characteristics in dress and appearance in the future.

The purposes of this study were to determine the likelihood of reporters to adopt Geographical Information Systems and to predict the future of the diffusion of GIS in the journalism industry using the diffusion of innovations theory. The study used two data collection methods: in-depth interviews and a Web survey. The indepth-interviews revealed factors that will influence the diffusion of GIS, including the availability of map data, competition between media agencies, the ease of getting management to buy GIS once its functionality has been demonstrated to them, and the general use of secondary GIS products. The Web survey showed that 63% of the reporters were aware of GIS but only 11% of the reporters surveyed currently use GIS. OLS regression showed that men were more likely to adopt GIS than women, while younger people were more likely to adopt GIS than their older counterparts. The results also showed that reporters who used other technologies in their work were more likely to adopt GIS on a trial basis.

This study employs the organization-public relationship (OPR) scale to measure member perceptions of an art museum affiliated with a Southern university. The scale is a 15-item, multi-dimension tool developed by Bruning and Ledingham to measure a publics relationship with an organization (Ledingham, 2001). The three dimensions are personal relationship, community relationship, and professional relationship. The study found that member perceptions of the museum-public relationship differentiated members who voted to continue their membership from those who voted to discontinue their membership with the museum. Further, this study supports the relationship management theory of public relations as a viable framework for practicing museum public relations and quantifying museum public relations outcomes.