Originally presented as the author's Thesis (doctoral)--Université de Paris II, 1999. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 1115-1140).

Thesis (M.A.)--Humboldt State University, 2009. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 87-90). Also available via Humboldt Digital Scholar.

Thesis (M.A.)--Ohio University, March, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Carleton University, 1999. / Also available in electronic format on the Internet.

Thesis (PhD)--Macquarie University, Division of Society, Culture, Media and Philosophy, Dept. of International Communication, 2008. / Bibliography: p. 348-366.

No description available.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This study explored the perspectives of six public sector human resource professionals on social media policies and how it maintains the behavior of employees that engage on social media. The expansion of technology in the public sector allows personnel to build relationships with the people they serve and participate in public forums. As more legislators and professionals use social media for work and personal matters, they are more likely to face public humiliation and disciplinary punishment over uncivil behavior. This research shows the public sector institutions in the Indianapolis area have lenient social media policies. In addition, this research argues that work policies, i.e., social media, should be modernized and relevant for all cultures. This dissertation analyzes how social media policies are established and executed within local government organizations using a multi-method approach. The first phase of this study surveyed and interviewed human resources professionals. While social media issues are still relatively new, progressive disciplinary procedures are most likely to be implemented when an employee engages in uncivil behavior on social media. The Logic of Appropriateness as the framework for the content analysis of social media policies from eight local agencies explores how the organizations direct employee behavior. The analysis findings determine certain public sector institutions in the Indianapolis area have social media policies for legal protection but place ethical value on respect as an expectation for employee conduct. This study backs the development of transparent social media policies in public sector agencies, especially since there is a recurring shift in the generational and cultural background of public representatives.

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.

In the construction of their media infrastructure, most of the Arab countries are spending millions of dollars on US and Western contracts. Regarded as one of the fastest growing and dynamic markets for media technologies in the world, the region may lack a clear media policy as a guideline to shed light upon the mega million investments on the industry. Some critics suggest that the advanced media technologies provided to the Arab world are mostly initiated by Western sales/marketing strategy rather than Middle Eastern choice and initiative. They see the process as a reaction to the Western media practices, rather than a pre-planned policy. This study is directed toward constructing a critical understanding of the development, and current status, of media policy and infrastructure in the Arab world. Being undertaken as the basis of a Ph. D. thesis in an inter-disciplinary department, the research is informed by a strong inter-disciplinary perspective, but with a clear political economy emphasis. The study seeks to examine whether there is a clear media policy in the Arab world, either at a national or regional level. Within this context, ARABSAT, perhaps the most popular media system in the Arab world, constitutes a specific case study. Inaugurated in 1985, the system has been the subject of extensive debate, sometimes heatedly discussing its pros and cons. Its long period of operation, the extensive contribution of most Arab/Muslim countries in the process of the creation and operation of ARABSAT, as well as the footprint coverage of the system including the Middle East, most parts of Asia, the Indian subcontinent and some parts of Europe, make the contribution of ARABSAT within the Middle East media environment of particular interest. Now, nearly 15 years after the advent of ARABSAT, established and supported by the overwhelming majority of the Arab states, a critical assessment of the system in terms of policy/strategy is timely.

This thesis problematizes the interplay of power and media institutions as a general difficulty in democratic societies and as a specific challenge in countries that are emerging from authoritarian regimes. Based on more comprehensive studies about power, dominance, compliance, resistance and information monopoly developed in the United States, the project approaches a particular case in modern history, namely Romania, during the period of transition following Ceausescu's overthrow, in December, 1989, and before the first free elections, in May, 1990. The bulk of the work concentrates on deconstructing political and media discourses developed throughout this period, while trying to address the role that the political and media environments had in reshaping post-communist Romania. My major argument is that, given a number of difficulties that have marked this period, ranging from economic setbacks, political ambiguities, and social confusion, the May elections have been monitored and orchestrated starting early in this period by the provisional authorities (a group of former communist bureaucrats), in tandem with a number of central media outlets. From this combination of power interests, the Romanian public was deprived of correct information on a number of issues that pertained to the future of the country and was trapped in the web of a carefully designed imagery that fostered a dissimulated totalitarian propaganda. The last part of the project advances these contentions and considers them in turn, while trying to capture how the specifics of the case inscribe themselves in larger patterns of dominance and compliance. / Master of Arts