This dissertation studies the new class of political fact-checkers, journalists who specialize in assessing the truth of public claims -- and who, it is argued, constitute a professional reform movement reaching to the center of the elite US news media. In less than a decade this emergent genre of news has become a basic feature of political coverage. It figures prominently in national debates and commands the direct attention of elite political actors, who respond publicly to the fact-checkers and dedicate staff to dealing with them, especially during electoral campaigns. This study locates fact-checking in a wider practice of "annotative journalism," with precursors in the muckraking tradition in American news, which has come into flower in an online media environment characterized by promiscuous borrowing and annotation. Participant observation and content analysis are used together to examine the day-to-day work of the news organizations leading the fact-checking movement. This approach documents the specific and forceful critique of conventional journalistic practice which the fact-checkers enact in their newswork routines and in their public and private discourse. Fact-checkers are a species of practical epistemologists, who seek to reform and thus to preserve the objectivity norm in American journalism, even as their daily work runs up against the limits of objective factual analysis. In politics, they acknowledge, "facts can be subjective." Fact-checkers are also active participants in an emerging news ecosystem in which stories develop, and authority is constructed, in patterns of citation and annotation across discursive networks of media and political actors. This study demonstrates how attention to these media-political networks subtly informs and constrains the work of producing objective assessments of factual claims. And it suggests that the objective status of the fact-checkers themselves can be seen as a function of their position in media-political networks, reproduced in formal and informal partnerships and, most immediately, in the pattern of outlets which cite and quote and link to them. This perspective helps to account for the surprising limits of the political critique offered by professional fact-checkers, who argue for a more honest, fearless journalism but carefully avoid the largest and most controversial political conclusions that emerge from their own work. In seeking to redefine objective practice for a changed media environment, the new genre of fact-checking underscores the essentially defensive nature of what has been called the "strategic ritual" of journalistic objectivity.

While the cannon of objectivity has recently been called into question as the means for evaluating news merit, objectivity continues to harbor public expectation of the news media, especially during times of conflict. Results of past and current objectivity studies of conflict reporting, however, were shown to produce inconsistent and conflicting interpretations of whether the news media is presenting objective coverage of conflicts.To determine objectivity of news coverage, this content analysis examined objectivity differences between three newspapers--the Chicago Tribune, the Indianapolis Star, and the Anderson Herald Bulletin--and how they collectively presented front-page conflict and mainstream straight news stories.The study evaluated the newspapers' collective presentation of the September 11 h terrorist attack for a two-week period from September 12 through September 26, 2001. Presentation of the conflict was compared to a proportionate sample of mainstream straight news stories randomly selected from the months of January through December of 2001.Because the literature review indicated researchers most commonly evaluate news objectivity according to the presence of balance, attribution, or gatekeeping bias, the study assessed differences in objectivity level between conflict and straight news based upon the integration of all three objectivity variables The study's findings suggested that reporting of mainstream straight news was more objective than reporting of the September 11 terrorist attack conflict in the combined three newspapers. Reporting of the terrorist attack was found to be less balanced than reporting of straight news stories, as evidenced by a disproportionate amount of quotations afforded in support of United States war efforts. In addition, conflict stories were found to contain a significantly higher use of negative attributes-non-essential adjectives, inferences, collateral language and non-speech quotes--than straight news stories. Differences between page placement and revelation of theme were found to have no effect on objectivity differences. / Department of Journalism

A free and competitive media environment is the cornerstone of political accountability. News media provide citizens with the information necessary to assess policy performance and attribute it to the correct political actors. Many non-democratic governments attempt to manipulate citizens' beliefs about the competence and performance of political leaders by controlling the news media. In this dissertation, I investigate the extent to which this strategy is effective. I conduct a series of online experiments in Russia, a prominent modern autocracy. The three chapters of this dissertation illuminate how the public reacts to the coverage of domestic politics by state-controlled media; whether independent local media in an otherwise controlled media environment can give rise to partial accountability; and how citizens' prior experiences, knowledge, and beliefs moderate what citizens learn from the news. Chapter 1 studies a kind of coverage produced by many state-owned media: messages that target citizens’ perceptions of whether the central or the local government is responsible for policy outcomes. I report results from a survey experiment with over 4,000 respondents in Russia. The experiment randomly assigned respondents to watch news reports from Russia’s popular state-owned TV channel, Rossia-1. The reports emphasize the central government’s monitoring of road maintenance and natural disaster management – two policies that fall under the purview of local governments. My findings suggest that even though the reports did not shift beliefs about the locus of policy responsibility, they improved policy performance perceptions and increased government support. One explanation for these findings is that citizens know that the central government would only associate itself with local policies if the performance is high. I show that my findings are consistent with a Bayesian learning model in which citizens can be aware of biased media reporting strategy and update positively on policy performance and government competence when they observe central government associating itself with the policy. The broader implication is that propaganda can be effective not despite, but because citizens know that news outlets are controlled by the government. In Chapter 2, I focus on the effects of independent news outlets in an otherwise controlled media environment. Existing empirical evidence suggests that such news outlets can decrease support for the government, encourage collective action and ultimately lead to regime change. In this chapter, I show that the information provided by media outlets that are not controlled by the government can have limited effects on citizens' beliefs. I rely on data from an experiment conducted in one of the largest cities in Russia, Novosibirsk. I show residents pre-recorded local news reports on one of the most salient policy issues, healthcare delivery. Despite high compliance rates, the effects of exposure to local independent media reports are limited. I also find no evidence for treatment effect heterogeneity across a number of dimensions. Overall, these findings cast doubt on the ability of independent local media to bring about partial accountability. Chapter 3 investigates another type of coverage that is common in state-controlled media environments: messages that attribute successes in macroeconomic policy to an authoritarian leader. I propose a simple model of belief-updating in which citizens are simultaneously uncertain about the government's competence and the bias of the media source. Since macroeconomic performance is difficult to observe for citizens, the model in this chapter allows the media outlet to lie about government competence. The model makes predictions about the types of citizens who are most and least susceptible to being persuaded. I derive hypotheses about the effects of propaganda on citizens’ beliefs about government competence and media bias. To test the model's predictions, I design and implement an online panel experiment that uses news reports from the leading state-owned TV channel in Russia. Contrary to the model's predictions, I find that positive policy events presented by biased media can backfire and lead citizens to worsen their perception of policy performance and government competence.

This thesis examines the development of Sinn Féin's communication strategies and considers how news coverage of the party has evolved in recent years, and in particular with the advent of the Irish peace process from the mid-1990s onwards. The aim of the research presented here is to establish the relationship between the development of the party's professional communication apparatus and the evolution of its news coverage and to determine the extent to which the emergence of a sophisticated approach to communication has impacted upon media coverage. The thesis argues that the development and implementation of the party's professional communication apparatus has been the result of a much wider process of republican reappraisal that took place during the 1980s. This culminated in the 1990s with the transformation of the republican movement into a more constitutional and negotiation-oriented party, while progressively moving away from the armed struggle as a means to achieve Irish re-unification. Moreover, in emphasising that there has been a considerable improvement in the reporting of Sinn Féin; namely that the news media have become progressively more interested in republican predicaments, less biased and more critical of unionism, it also suggests that the improved media coverage must be seen as a result of the political re-alignment of the movement itself. Ultimately, the main argument of this thesis is that we are now witnessing a new phase of the republican movement and, by proxy, of Northern Irish politics and its coverage in the media. This has meant that Sinn Féin has become more wiling to reach a political compromise and to find a peaceful solution to the conflct, and has attempted to affirm itself as a party with political and social interests, other than Irish re-unification. This has also forced the British government to reappraise its own view of the conflict and of Sinn Féin, recognising above all that the party and Northern Irish politics have evolved from a situation of war to one where it is dominated by careful and sensitive diplomacy. The result is that most of the common assumptions held about Sinn Féin including those of some academics, its political communication and its news coverage, must now be reconsidered in light of the radical transformations that have taken place.

This thesis has replicated a content analysis study conducted by G. Ray Funkhouser in the 1960s. This study concurs with the Funkhouser assertion that some prominent issues in the news do not necessarily merit the attention from the media at the times they receive it. The findings in this study appear to also indicate a "sampling bias" in the media, whereby the amount of news coverage deviates in a systematic way from the actual flow of events. Additionally, this study indicates a strong relationship between the amount of media attention an issue receives and whether or not that issue was noted as the most important problem by respondents to the Gallup Poll. / Department of Journalism

Text in Afrikaans / It has become clear that the continued existence of the Afrikaner in the 21st century will demand a recontextualisation of the identity and values attached to being an Afrikaans-speaking South African in a post-apartheid South Africa. Various institutions and intellectuals are already busy with this process. The study used the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz to describe and analyse the first steps taken in the recontextualisation of Afrikaner identity from the perspective of letter writers to the Afrikaans daily newspaper, Beeld. Phenomenology accepts that the world of everyday life is man's fundamental and pervasive reality. Schutz uses concepts like the social stock of knowledge, typifications and intersubjectivity to explain how people interpret their everyday reality so that it becomes meaningful to themselves and others in communication. The task of the phenomenologist would be to question the taken-for-grantedness of this life world and identify its underlying principles (or essences). The study found that, while the letter writers did adjust their typification of the Self, no fundamental review of their typification of the Other (black South Africans) took place. Letter writers managed to free themselves of the baggage of apartheid after De Klerk gave up power in 1990 and declared white South Africa ready for negotiations for a new democratic South Africa. Together with giving up power, letter writers also freed themselves from the aspect of Christian-nationalism which was one of the fundamental building blocks of Afrikanerskap. The Afrikaner of 2004 seems to be a white minority, proud of their language and culture, and fighting for their right to speak and hear Afrikaans. However, no major revision of the Other has taken place. The study will show that letter writers have adjusted their perception of blacks in so far as it became practically relevant to do so for survival in the new South Africa. Very few, if any, fundamental changes took place in terms of the perception of racial or cultural superiority. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)

Text in Afrikaans / It has become clear that the continued existence of the Afrikaner in the 21st century will demand a recontextualisation of the identity and values attached to being an Afrikaans-speaking South African in a post-apartheid South Africa. Various institutions and intellectuals are already busy with this process. The study used the social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz to describe and analyse the first steps taken in the recontextualisation of Afrikaner identity from the perspective of letter writers to the Afrikaans daily newspaper, Beeld. Phenomenology accepts that the world of everyday life is man's fundamental and pervasive reality. Schutz uses concepts like the social stock of knowledge, typifications and intersubjectivity to explain how people interpret their everyday reality so that it becomes meaningful to themselves and others in communication. The task of the phenomenologist would be to question the taken-for-grantedness of this life world and identify its underlying principles (or essences). The study found that, while the letter writers did adjust their typification of the Self, no fundamental review of their typification of the Other (black South Africans) took place. Letter writers managed to free themselves of the baggage of apartheid after De Klerk gave up power in 1990 and declared white South Africa ready for negotiations for a new democratic South Africa. Together with giving up power, letter writers also freed themselves from the aspect of Christian-nationalism which was one of the fundamental building blocks of Afrikanerskap. The Afrikaner of 2004 seems to be a white minority, proud of their language and culture, and fighting for their right to speak and hear Afrikaans. However, no major revision of the Other has taken place. The study will show that letter writers have adjusted their perception of blacks in so far as it became practically relevant to do so for survival in the new South Africa. Very few, if any, fundamental changes took place in terms of the perception of racial or cultural superiority. / Communication Science / M.A. (Communication)