<p>This dissertation uses game-theoretic modeling, statistical testing, and case studies to analyze how authoritarian governments manage the news media to maintain regime stability, control local officials, and make reform. In the first essay, ``Regime Competence and Media Freedom in Authoritarian States'', I explain why some authoritarian regimes allow more media freedom than others, as they tradeoff increased rents when the media is suppressed with the reduced risk of being misjudged by citizens when the media is free. In the second essay, ``Local Media Freedom, Protest Diffusion, and Authoritarian Resilience'', I argue that media reports about citizen protests, which may lead to protest diffusion, do not necessarily destabilize authoritarian rule. If protests are targeted at local governments, the central government of an authoritarian regime can use media-induced protest cascades to force local officials to improve governance. In the last essay, ``Central Rhetoric and Local Reform in China'', I address the puzzle of why the Chinese government would furnish the state media with conservative and dogmatic rhetoric on the one hand and allow reform on the other, by showing that this strategy is used to control local governments' pace of reform.</p> / Dissertation

News media organization vacillates and hesitates among high competition, commercialization and social public tools in the capital circumstance in Taiwan. The organization culture of the media, the executives¡¦ leadership style often influence yard stick and direction that the news edits and interviews virtually. It also influence organization members¡¦ job satisfaction, even about value judgment of the people. its influence is enormous. Therefore, besides pursuing profits, how media executives adjust the existing organization culture structure, to lead the reporters to reach tactics and the goal that the organization set up and to improve newspapermen¡¦s job satisfaction, become media executives¡¦ important topics. Media executives must think deeply about the important subject. This thesis regards newspapermen as study subjects through questionnaire investigation to collect relevant materials. Three researches such as exchangeable leadership, organization culture and job satisfaction carrying on the research of dependence, that the executives are using to probe into the newspapermen of Kaohsiung area relationship between exchangeable leadership and organization culture, and how to influence the reporters' job satisfaction. The results of study show: 1. In demography variable items, including sexes, service ages and monthly pay in job satisfaction, reach significant standards. 2. The transformational leadership has positive influences on job satisfaction and reaching significant effect. The transformational leadership has positive influences on innovative culture and supporting culture and reaching significant effecy. The innovative culture or supporting culture have positive influences on job satisfaction and reach significant standards. 3. Interfered by innovative culture or the supporting culture, transformational leadership will strengthen positive influence on job satisfaction, and reaching significant effect. Under interfered by for hierarchy culture, exchangeable culture is not obviously influenc on job satisfaction.

The “global war on terrorism” has pervaded the social scene following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Although the ripple effects of the wars are continuing to spread across the globe in the various political and foreign policy arenas, the aim of this study is to turn attention to the individuals who bore the battle, have returned home, and now face new challenges. The United States veteran population has experienced an unprecedented increase in numbers as a response to troop withdrawals in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although previous research has considered the potential difficulties veterans face when reintegrating into society, this study goes a step further and investigates how news media sources are called to participate in narrating veteran stories of war and specifically their stories documenting post-traumatic stress disorder. Drawing on a variety of theoretical perspectives and utilizing a multi-methodological approach, this study seeks to answer four central questions: First, how and by what channels do sources enter the news media conversation to comment on the veteran experience? Second, are veterans the main sources narrating their experiences or do other individuals, groups, or organizations speak more often in the news media? Third, what stories circulated and gained traction by narrating the lived experiences of veterans with PTSD? And fourth, what stories did veterans tell about their experiences, and what stories were told about veterans who suffer from PTSD? This study is organized in two distinct parts. Part one employs a quantitative content indexing analysis of four veteran related news media events across various newspaper, broadcast television news, and cable television news outlets in order to determine how sources entered the news media landscape, and who the sources were. Part two turns to examine four dominant news narratives that emerged from the direct quotation and paraphrased remarks gathered from part one’s analyzed news media texts. The study concludes by illustrating the powerful role news media sources play in the news, as well as the stories that emerge to define the lived experiences of veterans who suffer from PTSD. / text

With the diffusion of smartphones in the United States, the news industry is trying to turn this mobile innovation into an effective vehicle for delivering news anytime, anywhere. But does smartphone adoption mean news consumption via smartphones? To provide insight to this question, a national Web-based survey was conducted to explore smartphone adopters vs. non adopter, smartphone news consumers vs. non-consumers, and younger vs. older smartphone news consumers. Smartphone adopters were younger, had higher household incomes, and used news media more often than smartphone non-adopters. Most of the smartphone adopters primarily used their phones as an interpersonal communication device. Unlike smartphone adopters, smartphone news consumers were more likely to be male. Similar to smartphone adopters, they were younger and used news media more often than non-consumers of smartphone news. Moreover, smartphone news consumers used portal news sites more than newspaper, television, or social networking sites. As such, they also expressed higher satisfaction with portal news sites. A complementary relationship was found between smartphone news and traditional and online news media. Predictors of smartphone adoption included age and social pressure; predictors of adopting smartphones for news included news interest, gender, education, and income. In addition, news interest was a significant predictor for the amount of time users spent on smartphone news, while age, income and news interest were significant predictors for the number of times (frequency) users accessed news via smartphones. Even though younger smartphone news consumers showed lower news interests and used traditional news media less often than older smartphone news consumers, they did not spend any less time or access different kinds of news topics any less than their older counterparts. More of the younger than older smartphone news consumers followed health and fitness, science and technology, and entertainment news. / text

In order to fully explicate the role of news media in individuals’ political participation, this dissertation aims at establishing an integrative structural model that specifies relationships among news media use, its antecedents and mediators of its influence on political participation. The proposed model is comprised of key factors of political participation that previous research has identified. The relational structure is based on models and theories relevant to prediction of political behaviors. Specifically, the model integrates (a) communication mediation model, which posits that communication behaviors (i.e., news media use and interpersonal discussion) mediate the effects of socio-demographic variables (i.e., income, education, age, gender, and race) and political dispositions (i.e., political interest, partisanship and ideology) on political outcomes; (b) agenda-setting theory, which posits that frequent exposure to news media increases the salience of news objects in audiences’ minds; (c) cognitive mediation model, which posits that elaborative and collective thinking is a prerequisite to produce political outcomes of news exposure; (d) theory of planned behavior, which posits that human behavior can be best predicted by three proximal variables (i.e., attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control); (e) O-S-R-O-R (orientations-stimulus-reasoning-orientations-response) model of communication effects, which provides a parsimonious framework of effect process. Using the structural equation modeling (SEM) method, this dissertation analyzes the 2008 American National Election Studies data set to test the validity of the proposed structural model. Results indicate that frequent exposure to news media stimulates attentive news use as well as intra- and interpersonal reasoning, which produce a wide range of political outcomes. Two reasoning behaviors (i.e., self-reflection and interpersonal political discussion) are critical mechanisms that linked news media use to various political outcomes including political participation. Personal-psychological mediators, such as strength in affects, personal traits, opinions about political issues, campaign interest, political knowledge, attitude strength, perceived ability of political parties and political efficacy all significantly mediate the influence of news media use on political participation. News media use mediates significant portion of effects that a set of preexisting variables have on political participation as well as various types of political orientations. / text

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In this essay, the aim has been to investigate how the possibilities of leaving gang criminality are portrayed in the news media. It is of criminological interest to examine the extent to which news articles address the limitations and opportunities for individuals involved in gang criminality, as this could have long-term implications for criminal policy and crime prevention efforts. Currently, there is no previous research specifically focusing on the news media's portrayal of the possibilities of leavinggang criminality, hence this essay contributes additional insights. The theories utilized in the essay include labeling theory and social bond theory. A qualitative content analysis method was employed to study 103 Swedish news articles published between October 2022 and November 2023. The material was processed using a coding scheme with themes and categories. The analysis revealed that defection programs are the primary means for gang criminals to exit criminal networks. It highlighted the challenges faced by defectors with high threat levels and emphasized the significance of community and social relationships in successfully completing the defection process. The analysis identified significant shortcomings within authorities and defection programs responsible for the process. Overall, the results depict defection programs as deficient, and the process is portrayed as uncertain, all while lethal violence continues to rise. This may contribute to the public's perception that the preventive efforts of defection programs are not effective enough to handle the situation, potentially leading to a tougher political stance on combating gang criminality. It may also signal to gang members that their chances of leaving gang criminality are slim and that authorities are not reliable

The news media is the most common way for individuals to obtain information about a vast range of events. The purpose of the present study was to better understand what factors predict people's news media patterns, including mental health, personality factors, and propensity for altruism. This study investigated whether certain media patterns correlate with higher pathology in viewers. Participants were asked to complete an informal survey in which they provided information about their news patterns in general, and then specifically about their news media pattern when obtaining information about the Haitian crisis. The Haitian crisis served as an example of a crisis event broadcasted by a wide variety 9f news media outlets including local news, cable news, magazines, and internet sources. Additional measures in the study include the Symptom-Checklist-90 (SCL-90) self-report scale as a measure of psychopathology, the Civic Moral Disengagement Scale (CMDs), and the self-report Altruism Measure. It was predicted that participants who accessed news about the disaster through sources that presented a political agenda rather than just reporting the news, would score higher on psychopathology and lower Qn altruism. Although there was no significant correlation between news media patterns and psychopathology, a correlation between news media patterns and altruistic behavior was found. Personality factors were also significantly correlated to altruistic behavior and media choice. The findings of this study open the doors to further studies in the field of media, personality, and altruistic behavior. Implications of the findings, as well as need for further research are discussed.

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