Studies on letters to the editor examine many areas, including function of the letters column. Much agenda-setting research focuses on media influence, though the principles have been applied to many fieldsThis content analysis combined the two areas in an effort to measure how letters to the editor might reflect the agenda set by a newspaper.The study evaluated all letters and news stories that appeared in The Truth during June, July, and August 2004. Items were sorted into content categories, regions of coverage, and page position to see if a relationship existed between stories and subsequent letters.The findings suggest that readers respond strongly to an agenda of local news and are more likely to write about front-page stories. Furthermore, the strong response of letter writers to other letters led the author to conclude that letters themselves can play a role in the agenda-setting process. / Department of Journalism

On May 21, 1998 Kip Kinkel drove to Thurston High School in Springfield, Oregon. Kinkel killed two students and wounded another twenty-two students. He killed his parents the day before. The shootings at Thurston High School came on the heels of a number of prominent school shootings and Kip Kinkel provoked tremendous attention from the media. In an attempt to understand how the media told the story of Kip Kinkel and the shootings at Thurston High School, Ernest G. Bormann's fantasy theme analysis is used as a critical model. To generate insight into the rhetorical visions present in the media coverage articles from three newspapers, The Register-Guard, The Oregonian and The New York Times, are studied. Fantasy types and themes including characters, settings and plotlines are identified and explored. A literature study provides information about the media and how it functions in telling stories, particularly those focused on crime. The critical evaluation of the fantasy themes and types at work the three newspapers provide a number of conclusions. Two rhetorical visions are revealed and discussed. Specific strengths and weaknesses of fantasy theme analysis are also discussed. Finally, a number of future research possibilities are suggested. / Graduation date: 2002

This dissertation seeks to investigate the role of the tabloid newspaper, Daily Sun, in contemporary South Africa by exploring the meanings that readers of the newspaper appropriate through their engagement with it and the uses to which they put these meanings. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2008.

This thesis explores the manner in which the conflict in the oil-rich Niger Delta in Nigeria is represented in western Anglophone media. Large oil reserves in the Niger Delta have contributed millions of dollars towards the growth of Nigeria's export economy. Despite this, the Niger Delta is the least developed region in the country and is characterised by high rates of inequality. Residents of the Niger Delta have been outraged by the lack of action on the part of the Nigerian government and multinational oil corporations. Their discontent over the inequalities in the region has resulted in the proliferation of armed groups and militants who often use violent and criminal tactics to communicate their disgruntlement. This thesis closely examines the representations of the violent insurgency in the Niger Delta by conducting a Critical Discourse Analysis of 145 news texts selected from four western Anglophone newspapers from 2007 to 2011. The depiction of the conflict as it appears in the four newspapers is discussed in relation to an overview of scholarly literature which explores the portrayal of Africa not only in western media, but also in other forms of western scholarship and writing. The research undertaken in this study reveals that to a significant extent representations of the Niger Delta conflict echo and reflect some of the stereotypical and age-old negative imagery that informs meanings constructed about the African continent. However, the analysis of the news texts also shows that there are certainly efforts amongst some newspapers to move beyond simplistic representations of the conflict. The disadvantage however, is that these notable attempts tend to be marred by the use of pejorative language which typically invokes negative images associated with Africa. This study argues that the implications of these representations are highly significant as these representations not only affect the way in which the conflict is understood, but also the manner in which the international community responds to it.