The growth of social media use raises significant questions related to political information and its effect on political knowledge and participation. One issue is whether social media delivers news and political information in a similar manner as traditional news media sources, like newspapers, TV, and radio, by contributing to political knowledge, which is linked to voter turnout. This dissertation examines the relationship between an individual's social media use, their use of traditional news media sources, and whether they turn out to vote. It utilizes American National Election Survey data from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election to complete three studies. First, the dissertation compares people who prefer social media and those who prefer traditional news media sources across as series of political habits and attitudes. Second, it looks at the expansion of the media environment and examines whether a person's social media use and preference for news or entertainment is related to political knowledge and voter participation. Finally, this dissertations examines at whether social media use increases the odds an individual will turn out to vote, thus acting in a similar manner as traditional news media. The results identify differences between people who prefer social media and people who prefer traditional news media sources. In particular, people who prefer social media tend to be younger, have less political knowledge, and have a lower voter turnout rate. However, unlike traditional news media use, the use of social media did not increase the odds an individual turned out to vote in 2016. Further, the use of social media and an individual's content preference of entertainment versus news was not related to political knowledge nor voter turnout. While social media does not appear to have a positive relationship with turnout, it does not appear to discourage a person from voting either. The results suggest that more work needs to be done, including examining the relationship between age, social media use and turnout, as well as how content length may be related to political participation. Finally, further examination is needed of the possible indirect ways social media may be related to voter attitudes and participation.

This study analyzed the coverage of Time, TT.S. News and World Report, and Newsweek's coverage of the 1992 presidential campaign. The four research questions posed concerned the newsmagazines' overall direction of coverage concerning the campaign; the individual and collective direction of newsmagazine coverage concerning the candidates and the election, the percentage of attribution given to the newsmagazines, or other sources; and the issues that were covered.The time period of this study spanned the traditional Labor Day kick off of the campaign to Election Day. A total of 29 lead presidential campaign stories were used for this investigation. The sentence was the unit of analysis; the method employed was a directional content analysis. A coder judged each sentence for source, subject, content, and evaluation. In addition, the coder evaluated each sentence as either positive, negative, or neutral.After the raw scores were converted into percentages, the researcher used a chi square to test the level of significance.Findings showed overall the newsmagazines were neutral in their coverage of the 1992 presidential campaign. Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News all contained more negative than positive sentences about the candidates, issues, campaigns, and party.In respect to candidate coverage, George Bush received more than 70% negative coverage in all three magazines. Bill Clinton received more negative coverage in U.S. News than positive or neutral. Time, printed more positive than negative sentences about Clinton, and Newsweek printed more neutral statements about Clinton than either U.S. News, orTime.Consistent with past research, the bulk of statements contained in the lead articles were judged to come from the writers. Finally, coverage during the 1992 campaign overwhelmingly centered around the "horserace" aspects of the campaign instead of the substantive issues. / Department of Journalism

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 37-44). / viii, 60 leaves, bound ill. 29 cm

This study seeks to examine how Ugandan journalists’ and politicians’ views on journalism professionalisation in Uganda relate to the broad theoretical arguments about professionalism within sociology and media studies. It also seeks to examine how such views impact on the democratic role of the media. The study finds out that there are two sets of distinct ideas on journalism professionalisation. The idea espoused by politicians is statutory professionalisation in which the state plays a major role through regulation and control, hence professionalisation is seen primarily as a control system. On the other hand, journalists perceive professionalisation as nurtured by voluntarily and socially inculcated professional values, hence as a value system. The study however, finds that both sets of understandings have their own complexities. While the statutory approach has complexities like how core elements of professionalism such as professional values can be imposed through legislation, the voluntary approach to professionalism also exhibits tensions within, especially stemming from the relationship between the professional and the news organisation regarding what constitutes professionalism. The study concludes that both sets of ideas have implications for the democratic role of the media, with both perceptions of professionalism curtailing this role. Statutory professionalisation in the Ugandan political context where the state is the dominant institution brings media institutions within its control, which leads to suppression of content of democratic value through a number of means. On the other hand, the self-regulatory perception does not protect media professionalism from the assault of commercial imperatives, especially when fused with state patronage in regard to broadcasting licences and placement of advertising.

News in our contemporary newspapers has come to be associated more and more with what the elites do and say. Both their deeds and misdeeds are treated as newsworthy events and in the process they become newsmakers, both actors and sources of news. Even when they are not directly involved in news events they are sought out by journalists to validate those events and to interpret the social reality to the readers as news sources. This study is about the selection of news sources in the Daily Nation, a contemporary, independent newspaper based in Nairobi, Kenya. In this study, I set out to unravel the complex processes that underlie newsmaking and source selection. This study is informed by the theory of news values and the paradigm of the role of media in democracy. Based on qualitative interviews, observations and content analysis of the front-page stories, it investigates the process of news and source selection in front-page stories. Through these approaches, I established that news values are significant criteria that inform journalists in both the selection of front-page news stories and the sources of these stories. I also established that social values of the society in which this newspaper operates are heavily embedded in the news. For example, the journalists preferred male politicians as sources of news in the front-page stories to women, and the elites to ordinary people, and this reflected on the social structures and cultural norms that are prevalent in this society. This study, further, established that the news values of this newspaper share commonly with the Western news media in terms of journalistic conventions and ways of interpreting the social reality in the news. Ideally, the newspaper embraces the principles of democracy in news reporting, but in practice it does not satisfactorily adhere to the full requirements of its democratic role in terms of source selection. The democratic principles in news reporting require, among other things, that the newspaper should allow a diversity of views in the news, representing various groups that are found in real society including the elites, non-elites, women, ordinary people and minorities. In the case of the Daily Nation, a tiny group of elite male professional politicians made up the largest majority of its front-page news sources.

Title in English and Afrikaans / Communication Science / D.Litt. et Phil. (Communication Science)

Made available in DSpace on 2015-08-20T17:10:05Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2015-03-27. Added 1 bitstream(s) on 2015-08-20T17:25:53Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 000841174.pdf: 23156753 bytes, checksum: 9278e7e53ac4142a1b4f404e06284c1e (MD5) / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Esta pesquisa busca compreender a relação entre mídia e política nos períodos pré-eleitoral e eleitoral das eleições presidenciais de 2010, para captar como se dá a representação memorial do passado na sociedade brasileira, acerca do regime militar (1964-1985), período que deixou marcas profundas nessa sociedade. Escolhemos analisar a cobertura feita pelo jornal Folha de São Paulo, pelo fato de ser um dos principais meios de comunicação a cobrir as eleições nacionais. Visamos analisar o conteúdo, em todos os fragmentos presentes no jornal, de 01/03/2010 a 06/11/2010. E como o jornal retrata os candidatos, construindo suas imagens a partir de seus respectivos passados opositores ao regime, refletindo como se dá a representação feita pela Folha acerca da memória do período da ditadura civil-militar brasileira ao cobrir as eleições de 2010 / This research aims to understand the relationship between media and politics in both pre-election and election periods during the Brazilian presidential elections in 2010 in order to capture how the memorial representation of the past is in the Brazilian society when it comes to the military regime (1964-1985), a period that left deep scars in this society. We chose to analyze the coverage done by the newspaper Folha de São Paulo, for it is one of the major media to cover the national elections. We aim to analyze the content in every piece of news in the newspaper from 03/01/2010 to 11/06/2010 and how the newspaper portraits the candidates, building their images from their respective pasts as military regime opponents, reflecting how the representation by Folha about the memory of the Brazilian civil-military dictatorship period is done during the coverage of the 2010 elections

There is a considerable amount of literature arguing that economics and business journalism is growing. This subfield of journalism is important as economics issues impact on everyday lives of the people. Media have an important role to inform people about the economy and give them a voice to take part in public debates. The down side though is that economics journalism is criticised for not serving the public well in this aspect. Evidence suggests that economics journalism lost its critical character and that there is closer in economics debates. Using content analysis, this study examines coverage of inflation as reported by South African print media. Three major findings emerged: 1) Evidence shows that there are a variety of cases of inflation. 2) There are also similarities among newspapers on what they view as causing inflation. 3) However, media do not draw sources from all sectors of society. The elite, who are educated people and government officials, are over-accessed while the ordinary citizens - although also affected by inflation – are marginalized. Company and government sources top source lists in the media. It is argued that sources play an important role in shaping the news content. They do so by identifying problems and prescribing potential solutions. They set parameters and define terms of reference. However, media also play a mediating role. They do so by selecting sources and structuring sources in stories. They may chose to quote or report what their sources say and even comment on it. This study concludes that in South Africa ordinary citizens have no voices in economics debates. Media used bureaucratic sources only and that is a consonant agenda on inflation coverage amongst newspapers. The heavy reliance on bureaucratic sources and the exclusion of some sectors of society in sources lists raises questions about impartiality of these sources on issues relating to their organisations and institutions. These are not viable sources that could provide information that could expose abuse of power.

The political significance of the media coverage of District Six is approached in the following way: the issue is approached theoretically by posing the question of the general political significance of news as a communicative form. This question is resolved by an examination of the complicated relationship between the tradition of political thought and the development of modem political forms, specifically the issue of the importance of communication in modern political forms. This is explored by considering the problem of the political outlined by Heller. Arendt reconceptua1izes the problem in terms of political judgement, which is discussed in relation to postmodernism and Wittgenstein's philosophy of language, to establish a new conceptualization of political judgement based on Arendt's view of narrative and Benjamin's writing on history. This conceptualization is used to formulated a notion of the general political significance of news, which is a form of political judgement related to a specific political culture. On this basis the media material is analysed in terms of two processes: the representation of District Six in the liberal media, and the representation of the political process surrounding its racial zoning and demolition. It is concluded that the media coverage of Distract Six during this period is characterized by a political culture termed the politics of the ordinary based on a reification of 'Europe' as part of a ' colonial attitude', and the idealization of specific urban forms, with a special relationship to urban planning. Thus the political significance of the media coverage resides in the perpetuation of this political culture, representative of the politics of the white English-speaking middle class, in terms of which an authentic urban politics is not conceivable. Additional conclusions are also drawn concerning the relationship between this political culture and the politics of Apartheid.

The media’s role is to disseminate accurate and objective information about particular phenomena but the media itself is rarely an objective institution. In international relations, the media exists as a non-state actor, able to exert power through its representation, reinforcement and the possibility to challenge the narrative of a particular conflict or intervention. The hypothesis of this paper is that the media does not play the role of neutral observer in a conflict. Using the New York Times’ coverage at the start of the Darfur conflict in 2004 as a case study, this paper discusses how the newspaper reported on the conflict, exploring how the description of the conflict, its root cause and actors involved, as created by the coverage as well as the calls for international intervention demonstrates the role of the media as a nonstate actor. Using discourse analysis and discussing power and representation through language and framing, it links international relations theory with that of media theory to show how the media is situated within discourse, where it creates and recreates historical representation. This paper suggests that through a more nuanced description of the Darfur conflict and subsequent intervention and more interrogation of the accepted narrative, the media could have created a richer contribution to the existing discourse on the Darfur conflict specifically and conflict in general.