Hundreds of thousands of Australian children under the age of six witnessed at least some of the coverage of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States. In the days and weeks that followed September 11, the researcher was confronted with numerous anecdotes from mothers who talked about the impact the coverage had had on their children. Many of the mothers reported that they had not known their children were watching the coverage or had not believed that they were old enough to understand what was going on. This raised the question of responsibility and sparked the research project which asked how could preschool children best be protected from material that was likely to disturb or harm them both in scheduled news broadcasts and extraordinary events such as September 11? Through surveys, focus groups with mothers and interviews with news directors, the research looked at existing protections, how well they worked in the view of both parents and the industry and whether there could or should be a better way. The research recommended that greater protection of preschool children from inappropriate television news content could be achieved through the implementation of six recommendations. 1. Television news should be Rated PG. 2. Digital television technology should be employed to prevent news events 'overtaking' scheduled children's programming and to protect safe harbours placed in the classifications zones to protect children. 3. Broadcasters should regain control of the images that go to air during 'live' feeds from obviously volatile situations by building in short delays in G classification zones. 4. Parents should be educated to understand that even very young children can take in television news and are often scared by it. 5. Television journalists should understand that even very young children are exposed to television news and are often scared by it. 6. News promotions during afternoon children's programming should be dropped.

Arabic satellite television has recently attracted tremendous attention in both the academic and professional worlds, with a special interest in Aljazeera as a curious phenomenon in the Arab region. Having made a household name for itself worldwide with the airing of the Bin Laden tapes, Aljazeera has set out to deliberately change the culture of Arabic journalism, as it has been repeatedly stated by its current General Manager Waddah Khanfar, and to shake up the Arab society by raising awareness to issues never discussed on television before and challenging long-established social and cultural values and norms while promoting, as it claims, Arab issues from a presumably Arab perspective. Working within the meta-frame of democracy, this Qatari-based network station has been received with mixed reactions ranging from complete support to utter rejection in both the west and the Arab world. This research examines the social semiotics of Arabic television and the socio-cultural impact of translation-mediated news in Arabic satellite television, with the aim to carry out a qualitative content analysis, informed by framing theory, critical linguistic analysis, social semiotics and translation theory, within a re-mediation framework which rests on the assumption that a medium “appropriates the techniques, forms and social significance of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real" (Bolter and Grusin, 2000: 66). This is a multilayered research into how translation operates at two different yet interwoven levels: translation proper, that is the rendition of discourse from one language into another at the text level, and translation as a broader process of interpretation of social behaviour that is driven by linguistic and cultural forms of another medium resulting in new social signs generated from source meaning reproduced as target meaning that is bound to be different in many respects. The research primarily focuses on the news media, news making and reporting at Arabic satellite television and looks at translation as a reframing process of news stories in terms of content and cultural values. This notion is based on the premise that by its very nature, news reporting is a framing process, which involves a reconstruction of reality into actualities in presenting the news and providing the context for it. In other words, the mediation of perceived reality through a media form, such as television, actually modifies the mind’s ordering and internal representation of the reality that is presented. The research examines the process of reframing through translation news already framed or actualized in another language and argues that in submitting framed news reports to the translation process several alterations take place, driven by the linguistic and cultural constraints and shaped by the context in which the content is presented. These alterations, which involve recontextualizations, may be intentional or unintentional, motivated or unmotivated. Generally, they are the product of lack of awareness of the dynamics and intricacies of turning a message from one language form into another. More specifically, they are the result of a synthesis process that consciously or subconsciously conforms to editorial policy and cultural interpretive frameworks. In either case, the original message is reproduced and the news is reframed. For the case study, this research examines news broadcasts by the now world-renowned Arabic satellite television station Aljazeera, and to a lesser extent the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation (LBC) and Al- Arabiya where access is feasible, for comparison and crosschecking purposes. As a new phenomenon in the Arab world, Arabic satellite television, especially 24-hour news and current affairs, provides an interesting area worthy of study, not only for its immediate socio-cultural and professional and ethical implications for the Arabic media in particular, but also for news and current affairs production in the western media that rely on foreign language sources and translation mediation for international stories.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Diss. Göteborg : Göteborgs universitet, 2005.

Thesis (M.A.) in Communication--University of Maine, 2004. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-91).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, June 1999. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Michigan State University. Dept. of Communication, 2008. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on July 23, 2009) Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-122). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 1998. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 519-529). Available also in a digital version from Dissertation Abstracts.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, Dept. of History, June 1999. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.