Using African American newspapers, this study examines the consensual opinion of articles and editorials regarding two events associated with the space race. One event is the Soviet launch of Sputnik on October 4, 1957. The second is the Apollo 11 moon landing on July 20, 1969. Space Race investigates how two scientific accomplishments achieved during the Cold War and the civil rights movement stimulated debate within the newspapers, and that ultimately centered around two questions: why the Soviets were successful in launching a satellite before the US, and what benefits could come from landing on the moon. Anti-intellectualism, inferior public schools, and a lack of commitment on the part of the US government are arguments offered for analysis by black writers in the two years studied. This topic involves the social conditions of African Americans living within the United States during an era when major civil rights objectives were achieved. Also included are considerations of how living in a "space age" contributed to thoughts about civil rights, as African Americans were now living during a period in which science fiction was becoming reality. In addition, this thesis examines how two scientific accomplishments achieved during this time affected ideas about education, science, and living conditions in the U.S. that were debated by black writers and editors, and subsequently circulated for readers to ponder and debate. This paper argues that black newspapers viewed Sputnik as constituting evidence for an inferior US public school system, contrasted with the Soviet system. Due to segregation between the races and anti-intellectual antecedents in America, black newspapers believed that African Americans were an "untapped resource" that could aid in the Cold War if their brains were utilized. The Apollo moon landing was greeted with enthusiasm because of the universal wonder at landing on the moon itself and the prowess demonstrated by the collective commitment and organization necessary to achieve such an objective by decades end. However, consistently accompanying this adulation is disappointment that domestic problems were not given the same type of funding or national commitment.

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The current study utilizes Critical Discourse Analysis and Thematic Analysis to study newspaper coverage of F.B.I. sting operations in The New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today. F.B.I. sting operations are a modern counter-terrorism policy designed to preempt acts of terrorism. This study develops a theoretical approach to understanding F.B.I. sting operations by reviewing the critique of security. The critique of security suggests that nations construct threats in order to produce and maintain ideological and practical hegemony. Thematic categories of the newspaper discourse are formulated and analyzed in the context of security. The study employs aspects of grounded theory for theoretical positioning. Findings suggest newspaper coverage of F.B.I. sting operations reflect and expand security in a number of important ways. Newspaper coverage provides information on a significant tactic used in the War on Terrorism and gives insight to the justification and reasoning for using that tactic. These pieces of information explain the interplay of security and counter-terrorism policy. However, findings also suggest security fosters positive relationships between nations, which requires repositioning aspects of the critique of security developed previously. Finally, newspaper discourse of F.B.I. sting operations helps contextualize the way modern counter-terrorism policy is ideologically configured. Findings show the dominant ideological configuration is security. The study considers how this framework contributes to a flawed understanding of the nature of peace.

Text in English / The study aimed to explore the coverage of environmental news by Zimbabwe‟s print media. The research is premised on the admission that the press covers environmental issues in their reportage. However, the study revealed that there are challenges obtaining in environmental reporting by the three weeklies, namely; Daily News on Sunday, The Financial Gazette, and The Sunday Mail. The use of content analysis and critical discourse analysis in analysing the environmental news stories helped to highlight the shortcomings of media houses and journalists as depicted by their choice of words or phrases, the inclusion as well as exclusion of certain viewpoints. The study analysed environmental news in themes such as imminent decimation of wildlife through poaching, climate change, violation of wetlands, destruction of forests, and land reclamation. To aid the understanding and appreciation of environmental reporting by the press, the study utilised three media theories, namely, agenda-setting, development media theory, and framing. Chapter one focused on introducing the context of the study, as well as justifying it, and adopted the qualitative research method for the study. Chapter two gave an extended review for the study. Chapter three provided the research methodology. Chapter four analysed environmental stories published by the Daily News on Sunday.Chapter five analysed environmental stories which were published in The Financial Gazette.Chapter six gave an analysis of environmental news published in The Sunday Mail. Chapter seven concluded the study by giving a summary of the central argument of the study which was that the Zimbabwean press fell short in effectively and efficiently sourcing, selecting and disseminating environmental news. The chapter proffered some recommendations which point to some areas which require further studies. / Communication Science / D. Litt. et Phil. (Communication)

The purpose of this study is to investigate how local and foreign newspapers used the war journalism and peace journalism frames when covering the Sri Lankan civil war, and to uncover subframes specific to the conflict. The first part of the thesis provides an in- depth literature review that addresses the history of the conflict and media freedom in Sri Lanka. The newspaper articles for the textual analysis were selected from mainstream Sri Lankan and U.S newspapers: the Daily News (a state sponsored newspaper) and Daily Mirror from Sri Lanka, and the New York Times and Washington Post from the U.S. A total of 185 articles were analyzed and categorized into war journalism and peace journalism. Next, subframes specific to the Sri Lankan conflict were identified. The overall coverage is dominated by the peace journalism frame, and the strongest war journalism frame is visible in local newspaper articles. Furthermore, two subframes specific to the Sri Lanka conflict were identified: war justification subframe and humanitarian crisis subframe. In conclusion, the study reveals that in the selected newspapers, the peace journalism frame dominated the coverage of the Sri Lankan civil war. All in all, while adding to the growing scholarship of media framing in international conflicts, the study will benefit newspaper editors and decision-makers by providing textual analysis of content produced from the coverage of war and conflict during a dangerous time period for both journalists and the victims of war.

The overwhelming consensus of the world's climate scientists is that we must rapidly reduce our greenhouse emissions if we are to avoid catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Yet the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil that emits three to four times the carbon emissions of conventional gasoline across the U.S., is supported by a solid majority of Americans. This level of support for a project a proposal that would dramatically increase greenhouse gas emissions, pollute sensitive lands and water sources, and threaten the health and safety of communities along the way begs the question: what kind of information have Americans received about the pipeline? Relying on theoretical perspectives developed by scholars who examine power structures, ideology, and the political economy of the mass media, I analyze 177 national network and cable news broadcasts in order to determine what kind of information leading media sources provide to the public about the Keystone XL pipeline proposal and the context in which this information is presented. Content analysis of broadcast transcripts reveals that television news stations exhibit biased coverage that encourages viewers to support pipeline construction. Furthermore, television news stations marginalize environmental and social concerns and disproportionately rely on business and government sources for information. Finally, the dominant frame employed by the news media is informed by neoliberal ideology and offers no challenge to the preferences of corporate and government elites--including the continued dominance of the fossil fuel industry. This type of coverage affords viewers a very limited basis for understanding the environmental and ultimately social threats posed by Keystone XL.

This thesis examines the handling of the public relations and subsequent news reporting of the 1942 Dieppe raid. Based on official communiques the Canadian newspapers initially portrayed Dieppe as success and featured human-interest stories written by war correspondents. The revelations of the heavy casualties and a more detailed explanation led some newspapers to criticize the raid, although their reactions reflected their political positions. The Canadian military conducted a campaign to sell the value of Dieppe to the Canadian public, largely patterned on the public relations plans of Mountbatten's Combined Operations Headquarters that distracted fiom failure by emphasising heroism, alleged successes, and the lessons learned. War correspondents actively assisted the military's publicity efforts. General McNaughton wanted a more truthful account, but ultimately chose coalition needs over accurate independent publicity. The information campaign although persuasive for many, left numerous Canadians unconvinced that the raid was successful.

Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Media Studies, 2016 / Many African countries have been holding regular elections since the “Third Wave” of democratisation which reintroduced multi-party politics on the African continent, but few of these elections meet the democratic litmus test, due to, among other factors, the prevalence of election violence. The press has been justifiably or unjustifiably indicted for these imbroglios on account of alleged transgressions linked to its overt or covert incitement to violence. In the ensuing political contestations, citizens bear the burden of diminished prospects of credible information occasioned by a highly politicised press. In the Southern African region, there is no better case to illustrate the entanglement of the press in electoral contestations than Zimbabwe. This study is a qualitative exploration of press and citizen discourses on election violence during the presidential and parliamentary elections held in Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2013. A Foucauldian discursive analytic approach was used to analyse the representation of election violence in two-state-owned and four privately-owned newspapers during presidential and parliamentary elections held over the specified period spanning thirteen years. The study also examined how these press discourses interrelate with citizen discourses. Empirical data were drawn from a corpus of archival textual data comprising hard news and feature articles published in The Herald, The Sunday Mail, The Zimbabwe Independent, The Financial Gazette, Newsday and the Daily News. In-depth interviews were conducted with purposively targeted journalists and editors from the selected newspapers. In addition, in-depth-interviews were held with twenty-one (21) regular newspaper readers who were also politically engaged citizens. The main observation was that press representation of election violence was marked by antagonistic discursive practices reflective of the rivulets of political and ideological bifurcation. Consequently, competing and politically expedient journalistic philosophies emerged. The state-owned press used a model of ‘national interest’ journalism while the privately-owned press preferred the ‘human-rights’ model which crystallized into an over-arching ‘activist journalism’. This ‘activist’ journalistic approach found expression through an array of anti-democratic press discursive practices epitomised by selectivity, silence and salience, the consequence of which was that citizens were starved of credible and impartial information. This thesis argues that the anti-democratic discursive practices deployed by the press camps blunted the citizenry’s critical engagement with the exact motivations, causes and manifestations of election violence. These anti-democratic discursive practices have a potential to engender a culture of political intolerance with long-term consequences that predispose society to political conflict rather than consensus building. / MT2017

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This thesis examines the role of both the local and international media during the May 2000 coup, to determine whether the coverage was fair and to suggest solutions for the future. It will first discuss and compare literature that has been written on the Fiji coups, focusing on literature on the media and the coups in particular. According to Fowler (1991) the role of a journalist is to collect facts, report them objectively and present them fairly and without bias in language which is designed to be unambiguous, undistorting and agreeable to readers. However, in most times this is not the case. A thematic content analysis will be done on news articles that appeared in The Fiji Times, The New Zealand Herald and The Australian to find common themes during the coverage of the crisis. A lot of criticism of the both the local and international media’s role during the May 2000 coup emerged after the crisis. Critics included editors and journalists of the local and international media and political and historical analysts who knew the ‘real reasons’ behind the coup and did not see this being reported. A summary of interviews with journalists and editors who covered the coup, both local and overseas, will give an insight into their thoughts and reactions during the coup. It will also determine whether the journalists suffered from the Stockholm syndrome. The Stockholm syndrome describes the behaviour of kidnap victims or people who associate a lot with the captors, and who over time become sympathetic to their captors. The name is derived from a 1973 hostage siege in Stockholm, Sweden when at the end of six days of captivity at a bank; several kidnap victims actually resisted rescue attempts, and afterwards refused to testify against their captors. During the Fiji coup, apart from Speights supporters, journalists were the only ones who spent a lot of time with the coup leader either at press conferences or staying at Parliament to get good stories. As a result, some journalists began to ‘sway’ towards Speight or began to experience the Stockholm syndrome which was reflected in their stories. The thesis concludes that a few journalists in Fiji did suffer from the Stockholm syndrome. It also concludes that a crisis manual is needed for media organisations in Fiji to avoid the same mistakes being repeated as in the last three coups. The overseas media on the other hand need to attach themselves to the local media to avoid parachute journalism and inaccurate reporting. Overseas media organisations need to assign special reporters to Pacific Island affairs to understand the culture and other complex issues which would help in reporting their issues fairly and accurately.