Many scholars have noted the increasingly widespread combination of politically-relevant information and entertaining or sensational media formats and presentational styles over the past several decades, falling broadly under the umbrella term of ‘infotainment.’ However, in spite of this burgeoning infotainment literature very little research has been done on the nature and dynamics of infotainment within the Canadian context. This is especially true of research on infotainment within Canada’s traditional news media outlets. To being filling this gap, this study undertakes a mixed-methods content analysis of Canadian newspapers’ coverage of the 2019 federal election to evaluate the scope and nature of infotainment therein. Building off of a systematic review and mapping of the existing infotainment literature, this study develops a comprehensive conceptual and analytical framework for defining and evaluating infotainment characteristics within ‘hard news’ coverage. The quantitative and qualitative results are outlined in detail before being evaluated for their potential implications on citizens’ information processing and political knowledge, as well as some broader evaluations of potential implications for Canadian politics. These ethico-political considerations are developed by drawing on insights from a number of literatures, including political psychology and decision-making, strategic voting, and broader media and infotainment research.

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Local television news is caught between two major forces that determine its future: doing its journalistic duty to society and maximizing profits by providing content that audience members want to see. Various communication models examine the relationships between content providers, audience, and news makers by looking at organizations, media routines, external social and business pressures and ideologies that affect both media and the public they seek to serve. The dissertation argues that the key to satisfying the dictates of both forces lies with the audience and the ways in which local news content producers react to the audience's influence. The research in this dissertation examines a microcosm of the numerous relationships that impact TV news--the one between the content producers and members of the audience. The research uses behavioral theories as tools to examine how content producers and audience members relate to each other individually and how the institution of journalism is broadly affected by that relationship. It examines the normative model of journalism and how the audience and content producers fit into it. The study investigates the current state of audience research, both from an academic and a professional standpoint. This study utilizes qualitative and quantitative methods including ethnographical observation of a newsroom as well as one on one interviews and Web-based surveys to closely examine the way in which behavioral theories apply to local television news content producers. Results indicate the influence audience members exert over content producers is deeper and broader than previous research suggests. The results also show the content producers are aware the influence exists but do not recognize the pervasiveness of the influence. The conclusions offer a better understanding of the symbiotic relationship between audience and the media. / Mass Media and Communication

Gender-based discrimination is an issue that permeates many aspects of today's society and is influenced by numerous factors, including the presence of fake news, or emotionally driven, factually inaccurate, and misleading media. This study aimed to examine fake news' impact on consumer attitudes regarding women and to investigate how certain demographic factors relate to consumers' attitudes towards women. The current study had two main hypotheses: (1) participants exposed to fake news materials will report higher levels of both old-fashioned and modern sexism than those in other conditions and (2) participants with higher levels of sociodemographic factors such as right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and levels of religious involvement will have higher levels of both types of sexism. Data for the current study was collected from male students at the University of Central Florida. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions: watching three consecutive real news clips about women, watching three consecutive fake news clips about women, or watching nothing. Participants then completed online questions related to the study's aims. Analyses conducted included correlational analyses of all variables, analysis of variance to determine if there are differences in level of sexism based on experimental condition, and linear regression analysis to determine how various sociodemographic factors relate to consumer sexism. Results indicated no significant impact of fake news on participants' levels of sexism but does demonstrate justification for future research on the topic.

News credibility studies have been around since radio and television began competing with the newspaper industry for consumers' attention. However, at this time, the news industry is experiencing a shift in medium as the Internet is quickly becoming the predominant source by which many get their news. Due to the free and independent nature of the Internet and the rise of blogging as a source by which people get news and information, audience perception of what constitutes a credible source needed to be examined. This study took the dimensions of news credibility that have been set in previous studies and compared them against an individual's news blog use to see if there was any change in what was important in measuring credibility. Through these comparisons, the measure that was used in previous studies did not seem deep enough and did not produce the expected outcome. Barely touching on each dimension, this study calls for individual studies on each dimension that would provide a better look at how credibility is perceived by news blog users.

Because of the advent of the Internet, traditional journalism is changing. Advanced technology includes the tools for everyone to publish their thoughts, feelings, photos, and videos, allowing individuals to be citizen journalists. This experimental-design study was aimed at discovering the influence of biographies in people's judgments of the credibility and professionalism of news articles. The study involved four treatments 1: professional journalist feature article with professional journalist biography; 2: citizen journalist feature article with professional journalist biography; 3: citizen journalist feature article with citizen journalist biography; and 4: professional journalist feature article with citizen journalist biography. These treatments were used to determine how the 198 study participants judged the work and biography of a traditional journalist compared to the work and biography of a citizen journalist. Study data was acquired through an online survey. A credibility scale and a professionalism scale were used to determine that, based on the articles used in the study, news consumers do not see professional journalists as more credible than citizen journalists, although news consumers do see traditional journalists' content as more professional.

This degree project investigates how and why current affairs materials are incorporated in English language learning at two Swedish upper secondary schools. The question of what current affairs learning materials are is also answered. We look at current affairs materials from the viewpoint of two teachers and 7 students. We investigate how and why the teachers use current affairs in the ELT classroom through the use of qualitative interviews. Using the same method, we also investigate the students’ experiences of working with current affairs materials in the ELT classroom. We found that both the teachers and the students are positive towards working with current affairs materials in their ELT classrooms. Nevertheless, one cannot ignore the importance of selecting the appropriate materials. The materials should be authentic, connect to the students’ experiences and also match the teacher’s interests and personality. If fulfilling these criteria, current affairs materials function as a suitable learning material for language learning.Keywords: current affairs materials, English, learning materials, ELT classroom, authentic texts.

The following thesis examines and historicizes the assortment of tools and practices—material, epistemic, and institutional—that developed over the last century in U.S.-based newsrooms as a result of news organizations’ first sporadic, then increasingly conscious, attempts at incorporating data-driven methods of information gathering, classification, archiving, and distribution into their organizational operations. In its methods this thesis presents, first, a historical narrative that reaches from the early decades of the twentieth century into the early 2020s, and second, showcases empirical evidence through five case studies. Of the case studies one is historical and is explored in the third chapter through previously not consulted archival material. The other four are recent or current—two involved computational data collection and web scraping (seen in chapters four and five), one relied on ethnographic embedding, and one on interviews (mixed in with the previous two and also featured in chapters four and five). In its conclusion, the thesis will argue that, at the very least, current and future organizational histories of journalism ought to more readily take into account the approaches and findings of the histories of technology and the sociologies of scientific knowledge, especially because understanding the contemporary epistemic and technological intrusions of computer science, statistics, data science, and software development into journalism requires the exploration of both the parallels and fault lines between these domains. In its Conclusion, then, this thesis will speculate on the potential future trajectories that such convergences might take and asks hopefully generative questions, both analytical and (mildly) normative. These include: Can news organizations maintain a unique position among technology companies, intelligence services, and private data brokers in such a way that public and personal data can be responsibly collected, analyzed, and made transparent? Should the multi-lingual journalistic media corpus (text and images both) constitute a significant part of the training data used by generative language models and computer vision algorithms? Should investigative reporters work alongside computer scientists, statisticians, geographers, and data scientists, or should they incorporate the skills of the aforementioned domain knowledges into their own area of expertise? Does it benefit news organizations to rely on external data-analytic products for their work, or should they develop their own proprietary ones? And finally (and very broadly): What is the role of news stories today in not only the traditional sense of framing and giving account of current events but as automatically becoming the data that are inevitably ingested into the machines that “read,” “make sense of," and invariably produce much of the public intelligence on which humans rely?

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