Two hundred and fifty-three subjects were used in an experiment to try to determine how differences in news media presentations affect the reader's view of terrorism. Two stories about a terrorist attack were used, one describing a bombing, the other a hijacking. Both stories had two versions using no one injured or eight innocent people injured. One group of subjects was given no additional information about terrorism. The second group was given information after the description that emphasized the salience of terrorism. The third group received information that de-emphasized the seriousness of terrorism. Subjects were also given a questionnaire designed to measure authoritarianism and one to measure conservatism. It was found that subjects scoring high on authoritarianism or conservativism favored more severe punishment for terrorists than did those scoring lower on the two scales. Findings did not support the hypothesis that providing people with information about terrorism could lessen the impact of terrorist events.

The discussion that follows seeks to critically examine the manner in which a South African financial publication, the Financial Mail (FM) magazine, reported on the country’s Finance Minister over two time periods. The specific time periods are April – June 1996, and February – April 2007. This will be done to assess whether the style of reporting changed over time. In order to accurately analyse the coverage, a content analysis of a number of articles published by the FM over two periods will be conducted. The first period to be examined correlates with Manuel’s first three months in office (April to June 1996) as finance minister, a role he took over after the resignation of then Finance Minister Chris Liebenberg, and the subsequent cabinet re-shuffle. This time period also coincides with the adoption of the internationally acclaimed South African constitution which pre-supposes, amongst others, freedom of the press. Manuel’s first three months in office furthermore coincided with the African National Congress’ (ANC) first period in government under the stewardship of President Nelson Mandela, having taken over power in 1994. The second time period selected is during Manuel’s 11th year in office (February to April 2007). The second time period coincides with a different economic and social situation, with the country’s economy having strengthened to the extent of recording a budget surplus. Relevant media theories and principles will be studied to evaluate which theories, if any, reflect the Financial Mail’s style of writing, language use and choice of stories to cover regarding Minister Manuel. An analysis of the first time period will include a look at the socio-economic conditions that prevailed at the respective times, against the background of the political situation during both periods. Dominant economic policies implemented and decisions taken during both periods relevant to the particular office Manuel held will be critically examined, since FM is a financial publication mostly covering financial and economic news. Research conducted will be qualitative in nature, and include an in-depth content analysis of articles.

The main objective of master thesis is to analyse the selection of negative stories in TV news of chosen commercial TV broadcaster with a focus on the relationship between negative stories and the impact of advertisement. At the beginning, the theoretical analysis devotes to mass media and matters related to audience, the media influence, and historical development of views on media content. After that, the next part is dedicated to TV news. The research has been based on the analysis of documents, in-depth interviews and the analysis of previous study. They have helped to find the answers on the problematic questions that are to find in the last overview chapter. The master thesis provides one of possible views on TV news of commercial TV broadcaster and can lead to thinking about the influence of negative news on advertiser in the commercial break.

Using a Second Level Agenda Setting theory, Interpersonal Communication, Attitude Accessibility and Need for Orientation framework, this exploratory study examined, using the qualitative research method of focus groups, the relationship between Interpersonal Communication and media messages about Stockton, CA. Based on the themes that emerged from the discussions, results show contextual evidence that Interpersonal Communication acts as a facilitating instrument, allowing participants to 6 develop an understanding beyond the attribute description of Stockton, CA, generated by the media. This study also discovered new technology, especially social media, amplified the influence of lnterpersonal Communication of how media messages were ultimately understood. Lastly, the study concluded the University of the Pacific's reputation compensated for the school's undesirable location. Limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.

Located at the intersection of literary, journalistic, and socio-historical discourses, “Writing Scenes and Telling Time” looks at diaristic texts in post-war German literature through the lens of news reporting and mass media. Since the 1970s, diaristic texts in German emerged across genres in the works of canonical authors. These works are widely read as subjective texts and linked to their authors’ supposedly diaristic interest in introspection and self-expression. However, these texts’ orientation towards the outside world and their interest in the temporality and scene of writing does not fit into this existing narrative. This dissertation looks at four decades worth of journal texts by Peter Handke, Sarah Kirsch, Jürgen Becker, and Rainald Goetz. Considering these texts between the poles of diary and news(papers), “Writing Scenes and Telling Time” argues that the modes of writing that emerged must be read as a new genre. Looking at novels, poetry, prose, blogs, and epics, “Writing Scenes and Telling Time” analyses writing as the site of narrative experiments that resulted in new attempts to define literary categories. “Writing Scenes and Telling Time” establishes links between the accelerating and alienating effects of mass media and the narratological impact of journalistic reporting on literary writing. The project takes reporting and the report as its methodological cornerstones and looks at the journal’s conception of scene, time, image, narrative, and writing through the lens of contemporary literary theory. My project situates itself within the temporal turn and contributes to recent studies on literature and time. The three chapters of this dissertation trace different modes of journal writing emerging since the early 1970s. Chapter I investigates how the texts of Jürgen Becker focus on the temporality of short-term memory and its implications for a new definition of plot. Chapter II traces journal writing in Sarah Kirsch’s poetry and prose and the way in which it focalizes settings of spatio-temporal liminality. Chapter III looks at the works of Peter Handke and their focus on the temporal simultaneity of writing and its relation to the surrounding scene. My conclusion revisits these modes through the lens of 2000s journal writing in the works of Rainald Goetz. “Writing Scenes and Telling Time” suggests that these texts’ very rigid repudiation of mass media and journalistic reporting lies at odds with the extraordinary phenomenological influence both have on the conceptions of writing contained in them. This dissertation, therefore, intervenes in a literary history of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s by challenging common center/periphery binaries that imply an author’s supposed degree of (non)involvement with the modern world. It expands existing theories on diaristic writing, looking at journal writing as a specific genre that transcends existing categories. “Writing Scenes and Telling Time” concludes that a broad range of supposedly diaristic texts from the German post-war era must be reconceived with regards to their genre status. Through its focus on writing, this dissertation ultimately aims at establishing journal writing as a new theory of genre.

For the last two decades displaced homeless people living in public places have doted the American landscape, despite increasing national wealth. Two factors which may contribute to this phenomenon are: 1) how the issue of homelessness is perceived through media coverage, and 2) what attributions of causality and responsibility are extricated from the vast multitude of media messages. An integration of theoretical frameworks within social-psychology (attribution and priming theory) and communication (agenda setting and framing effects) was consummated in a hypothesized mediated inference process: conceptualized as a cognitive continuum where the issue of homelessness first enters the cognition of the social observer (inaugural prime); is then given salience by the frequency of media coverage (agenda setting); thereupon shaped by media portrayals (framed); and attributions of causality and responsibility are formed. To examine the proposed mediated inference process a survey questionaire (n=283) was administered to college students revealing a significant correlation between the importance placed on the issue of homelessness (agenda setting) and resultant attributions of causality. As respondents' perceptions of the importance of homelessness increased, their societal attributions of causality increased. Conversely, as perceptions of importance decreased personal, internal attributions of causality increased. Additionally, high television use was found, through regression analysis, to be a significant predictor of situational attributions of causality. An experiment (n=96) was also administered to examine how different newspaper and television framing conditions effect attributions of causality. The results indicate that newspaper portrayals presented as isolated events lead subjects to attribute causality to personal dispositions; whereas portrayals presented as overall accounts lead subjects to societal attributions. Although the evidence for a mediated inference process was inconclusive, the results suggest that the frequency and framing of media coverage significantly affect the process of attributing causality for social issues such as homelessness.

The goal of this research was to examine how the One organization's web site either supports or rejects established literature that concludes that U.S. media contains negative representations of the developing world.

Submitted by Filipe dos Santos (fsantos@pucsp.br) on 2017-12-15T11:36:15Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Francisco Beltrame Trento.pdf: 21869422 bytes, checksum: a3f6dcfdd56e97505e57f2865264ec30 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-15T11:36:16Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Francisco Beltrame Trento.pdf: 21869422 bytes, checksum: a3f6dcfdd56e97505e57f2865264ec30 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-12-06 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / Contemporaneity is characterized by the interweaving of human beings with multiple media forms, through material mediatic objects (our black mirrors). Also by stimuli and incorporeal enunciates that are embodied by them, or in which they momentarily crystallize themselves. These dispositives and networks have been represented in the audiovisual field, scenic arts, performance and literature frequently. The television anthology Black Mirror (Channel Four, 2011-2014; Netflix, 2016-), one of the fictional guides in our analysis, is a set of narratives that, exacerbating this state of things, discusses how those media ecosystems are intrinsically linked with the production of desires in the individuals. We aim to identify and map those modulations through a Spinozist semiotic of affects. Among the affects, we have identified the production of a desire to control, a mode of existence or set of ideas that presupposes that we have the total control of situations and absolute truth through the same media dispositives that involves us. We relate that to the production of subjectivity of the standard ideal neurotypical human being, or of the fine products that emerges from the processes of the antropotecnical eugenic machine, studied by Fabian Ludueña. Starting from this point, we aim to focus the communication processes as agencements or encounters (occursus). Following Black Mirror’s narrative, we seek to produce a mediatic cartography of good and bad encounters, not constructed through moral systems, but following Spinoza’s ethical evaluation, mapping composition and decompositions, increases and decreases of potency observing the semiotical production of desires through affections. Besides the desire to control, which emerged from the anthropocentric and anthropotechnical crusade, other types of desires can be machined in the subjectivities engaged to the omnipresent media dispositives as part of the contemporaneous capitalist system, as the desire of emulation or the desire of imitation, explained in Spinoza's “definition of affects”. The difficult task is to think escapes or lines of flight to these types of media agencements that can emerge performatively/artistically by experimenting with the same media materialities or enunciative apparatuses (we don’t consider them neither good or evil but they can be (re) allocated in agencements that produce good or bad encounters in a field of immanence). It requires to look for the production of good encounters and active agency, or to think new possibilities of world construction. We consider that, in the presence of the exhaustion produced by the control systems, minor and apparently contingent gestures and artistic practices can resist to the total control and normativity. It’s through them that we advocate in favor of an immanent critique of media, incongruent to identitarian bubbles and politics – that usually target moral judgement without observing events’ causality network and the desires agenced in its nodes. Against that, we ally with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, Catherine Malabou and other contemporary rereadings of the Dutch philosopher that can relate with them, as the work of Brian Massumi. To discuss the emergent issues of those complex questions, and try to develop an immanent media critique, Brian Massumi and Erin Manning bring us their particular interpretations of immanent critique, performed through research-creation art practices and minor/disruptive gestures / O cerceamento dos seres humanos por múltiplas formas de mídia, ou por meio dos objetos midiáticos materiais (nossos espelhos negros), ou dos estímulos e enunciados incorporais que deles derivam, ou que neles se cristalizam momentaneamente, tem sido discutido no campo audiovisual (cinema e televisão), nas artes cênicas, em performances e na literatura. A antologia televisiva Black Mirror (Channel Four, 2011-2014; Netflix, 2016-), um dos guias ficcionais de nossas análises, é um dos conjuntos de narrativas que, extremando essa possibilidade, mostra como esses novos ecossistemas e agenciamentos midiáticos modulam de distintas formas a produção de desejo nos indivíduos. Um de nossos objetivos é observar e cartografar tais novas modulações de desejo e afetos. Dentre elas, detectamos a produção de um desejo de controle, um modo de ser ou um conjunto de ideias de que temos o controle das situações por meio dos mesmos dispositivos midiáticos que nos envolvem. Procuramos enfocar a comunicação como agenciamento ou encontro (occursus). Por meio da narrativa de Black Mirror, buscamos produzir e identificar uma cartografia de bons e maus encontros, não mediante uma moral, mas sim, a partir da diferenciação entre os dois conceitos de acordo com a Ética, de Spinoza. Além do desejo de controle, outros tipos de desejos são maquinados nas subjetividades acopladas aos media onipresentes e suas inserções no capitalismo contemporâneo, como o desejo de emulação ou o desejo de imitação. A difícil tarefa é pensar os foras a esses tipos de agenciamentos midiáticos de controle, a partir das próprias ferramentas midiáticas maquínicas ou enunciativas, discutindo novas possibilidades de construção de mundos e possíveis. Diante da exaustão, os gestos disruptores e aparentemente contingentes resistem ao controle e à normatização. É por meio deles que buscamos advogar a favor de uma crítica imanente das mídias, que pretende não se adequar às bolhas e políticas identitárias discursivizadas nas mídias, visando a vigilância e o julgamento moral sem observar sua causalidade a partir de uma avaliação ética. Para pensar a comunicação como agenciamento ou encontro, bem como as particularidades dos desejos que se agenciam nessas redes, nos aliamos à filosofia de Baruch Spinoza, Gilles Deleuze, e a algumas leituras contemporâneas que com ela se relacionam, como as feitas por Brian Massumi e Catherine Malabou. Para discutir essa problemática e pensar uma crítica midiática imanente que não retroalimente o ideário de controle, Brian Massumi e Erin Manning, com suas versões do conceito de crítica imanente, auxiliam-nos nessa questão

The current heated national debate over immigration policy is a reminder of the contentious relationship the United States historically has had with its immigrant population, especially those who enter the country without proper documentation. For example, a major issue confronting California voters in 1994 was Proposition 187, a plan to deny social services to the state’s undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom were nonwhite. In this study, I argue that this issue took place during an immigration “panic,” one of several that took place in the United States during the 20th century. In these “panics,” which also occurred in the 1930s, the 1950s and the 1970s, undocumented immigrants served as convenient scapegoats for larger social ills. A significant and under-researched aspect of these events was the role played by the major U. S. mainstream media in perpetuating this scapegoating process. The study takes an in-depth look at how the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times covered the 1994 debate over Proposition 187, which occurred during the most recent of these immigration panics. It concludes that these newspapers’ coverage of 187 was shaped by the discourse of California’s elite politicians (both liberal and conservative) that focused on the predominantly non-white population of undocumented immigrants as “the problem.” By framing the undocumented as deviant, this coverage helped perpetuate the elite “blame the victim” discourse that diverted public attention from other issues facing the state, such as the fact that California was enduring its most significant recession since the Great Depression. / text

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