This dissertation applied mass communication theory and the interdisciplinary theory of social network analysis to the networked political blogosphere and its relationship to mass media. Utilizing such mass communication theories as agenda setting, the two-step flow, and gatekeeping, this study examined eighteen political blogs across the political spectrum (left-leaning, right-leaning, and moderate blogs), two elite mass media outlets (the New York Times and the Washington Post), and two elite mass media blogs (political blogs from the New York Times and the Washington Post), using both hyperlink analysis as well as textual content analysis. Hyperlinking provided information on gatekeeping and the social network connections between blogs and mass media and among the different ideological political blog networks. Content analysis conducted at the issue and the issue attribute level provided a second layer of evidence to analyze how agendas are formed, framed, and transferred in the emerging new media environment. All the both levels of textual content analysis and hyperlink analysis, this dissertation found solid support for the operation of both mass media agenda setting and social network influence at both the issue and the attribute level. Though the agenda setting function of the press is still a tenable assumption, blogs from all ideological spectrums were able to set the mass media's agenda. The issue agendas of blogs of shared partisan perspective, particularly the agenda of the left-leaning blogosphere, provided strong evidence of homogenous issue adoption by blogs of the same partisan network neighborhood or social network. At the attribute level, strong correlations between the agendas of blogs and media, and among the agendas of blogs that share ideological perspectives, highlight the need for deeper analysis at causation to determine whether the media or blogs set each other's agenda. This dissertation contributes to mass communication studies and political communication through its identification of political social networks as a complementary and competitive agenda setting force in the context of the US political blogosphere. These findings call for a revision of the relationship between agenda setting and the twostep flow theory towards an acknowledgement of how they work in both complementary and competitive ways to redefine the role of the press and social influence in networked political environments. These findings also highlight the significance of social network analysis as a methodology to explain how agendas are formed and framed in the emerging new media environment.

Situated between the state and civil society, the role of the public sphere is seen to be one of mediating between the two through the circulation of information, ideas, and the subsequent formation and propagation of public opinion. However, there is an ambivalence within conceptions of the public sphere in terms of how it is to best effect this mediation. This sense of ambiguity in the understandings of the public sphere is a reflection of a deeply rooted and unresolved tension about whether democracy should mean some kind of popular power or an aid to decision-making. This dissertation argues that defining democracy as a political method provides a means by which to navigate the ambiguity imbued within current understandings of the function of the public sphere. Understanding democracy as a public, instrumental process underscores the extent to which the character of the public sphere should be seen as being derived from and shaped by the institutions and practices that make up the state. Of all the institutions within the public sphere, it is within perceptions of the media that the conceptual tensions underlying the public sphere and democratic theory are best reflected. While the media are a major forum for political communication, the nature of this forum remains theoretically underdeveloped and conceptually misconceived in the literature. It is the contention of this dissertation that the political role of the media should not be understood in relation to some abstract idea of democracy and public opinion, but rather in contrast with and connection to the concrete political institutions and practices of democracy.

In the area of mass communications and media sociology, connections between theoretical claims and empirical evidence have often been tenuous. Using American national Election Study data gathered by the Center for Political Studies, this dissertation tests a series of hypotheses about the political impact of the mass media. The work profiles the news audience, and examines the public's reliance upon television and newspapers as sources of political information. Next, evidence is brought to bear upon the set of pessimistic assumptions that television news personnel hold about the tastes and capacities of the news audience. Finally, a crucial test is developed in order to evaluate five competing and contradictory hypotheses, all attempting to explain the relationships between the consumption of political materials through the mass media, political interest, and political participation. Of the previously untested claims assessed in the thesis, few were supported by the evidence gathered in research.

The conventional method for studying media systems has been to analyse the relationship between media and politics, based on Hallin and Mancini's (2004) seminal research Comparing Media Systems: Three Models of Media and Politics. Their approach automatically places the nation-state as the key unit of analysis to understand why media systems are the way they are and why they change. Research that has advanced this endogenous method of analysis in countries outside of the Western, democratically advanced context, has brought to light the importance of including external factors in studying media systems. Building off this analytical direction, this thesis introduces three new external factors; foreign aid, the conditionalities attached to foreign aid, and the role of externally created Pan-African media policy agreements Using a case study of Malawi, a small aid-dependent country in Southeast Africa, this research interrogates these three factors to reveal that foreign aid is a coercive foreign policy tool that has been used for manipulating change and shaping the type of media Malawi has. Based on the country's recent transformation from its authoritarian populist past towards the dominant liberal media model in 2012, this research also reassesses Hallin and Mancini's convergence thesis, which claimed that most countries are 'naturally' heading towards the dominant liberal media model. Therefore, the general conclusions drawn from this thesis indicate that media systems analysis is best accomplished through detailed empirical case studies, which not only rely on historical insights, but synthesise the role that media, politics and foreign intervention play collectively, especially in the era of neoliberal capitalism. By moving beyond the parameters of the nation-state in this way, and examining what external forces that are extraterritorial to the nation-state, it is hoped that media systems researchers will engage more critically with factors that are opaque, and view variables such as foreign intervention as instrumental in future media system research.

This thesis interrogates how China influences one of its neighboring regions, Southeast Asia, in the aspect of media. Issues of how China's growing influence extends to media coverage and framing of news involving China and China's engagement in Southeast Asia have been brought up but has not been examined with empirical evidence. The research questions of this thesis concern how China is presented in local reporting in Southeast Asian media and why it is framed as it is portrayed in news media in the region. This research considers whether China's political and financial interests through media ownership, funding, soft power, and other factors are exerting influence on media coverage in Southeast Asia. Drawing on theoretical contributions from the theory of the political economy of media, comparative media systems theory and the theory of public diplomacy, the thesis assesses the situations based on a case study of the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia by collecting and analyzing empirical data from these three Southeast Asian countries. The mix-method approach has been adopted in this study, which includes a quantitative content analysis on the news content of the selected Southeast Asian newspapers, and a qualitative analysis depending on semi-structured interviews with local media practitioners who share their understanding of journalistic routines and personal experiences in reporting China-related news in the field study. Some noteworthy findings have been drawn from the analysis. China has observable impacts on the media content in the Philippines, Thailand and Cambodia, limited to certain aspects in relation to China's growing regional power. Philippine newspapers adopt considerably more negative frames than newspapers of Thailand and Cambodia. There are unwritten guidelines in their news outlets and certain principles that media practitioners in Southeast Asia need to follow when covering China-related issues.

No description available.

No description available.

The field of media assistance has grown ever more complex with the inclusion of ‘new media’ networks, channels, tools and practices (such as the Internet, satellite television, mobile devices, social media and citizen journalism) to the media development mix. Adding to the ferment is the increasing convergence between the formerly discrete terrains of ICT for development, media for development and (mass) media development. Much of the discussion regarding the utility and objectives of media development in general and ‘new media’ in particular has been viewed through a modernist and techno-determinist prism which offers a limited ideological view of media development and its objects and consequently, a limited set of communication approaches and strategies. This study contextualises the assumptions of media development historically and critically, with particular focus on new media’s roles and relationships with the media environment, and its objectives democratisation and development. Through the application of literature, theory and various research studies, this thesis establishes a broader view of new media’s role and diverse consequences for media development, democracy and development. The study recommends greater collaboration, contextual research and theorisation of media development and new media as part of mixed media systems and cognisant of the multi-dimensional natures of its objects of democracy and development. One implication is the need for professionalisation of the media development and media assistance sector. In relation to the influences of new media on media use and the media as an institution, it motivates the need to address digital divides and emphasise the sustainability of the practice of journalism.

Not available / text

No description available.