Yin, Xiani. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 58-59). / Abstracts in English and Chinese. / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / 摘要 --- p.iii / ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS --- p.iv / ABSTRACT --- p.ii / Chapter Chapter 1. --- Introduction --- p.8 / Chapter Chapter 2. --- Literature Review --- p.14 / Chapter Chapter 3. --- Institutional Background of the Political Control of Chinese Media --- p.19 / Chapter Chapter 4. --- Data and Sample Selection --- p.24 / Chapter 4.1 --- Data source --- p.24 / Chapter 4.2 --- Sample selection --- p.25 / Chapter 4.3 --- News collection --- p.28 / Chapter Chapter 5. --- Summary Statistics --- p.29 / Chapter Chapter 6. --- Methodology --- p.33 / Chapter 6.1 --- Event study --- p.33 / Chapter 6.2 --- Using CAR to calculate the overall market response after earnings announcement --- p.36 / Chapter 6.3 --- Measuring announcement date effects on stock performances --- p.36 / Chapter 6.4 --- Measuring news effect using CAR and Statistical Inference --- p.37 / Chapter Chapter 7. --- Empirical Results --- p.39 / Chapter 7.2 --- Overall market response after the earnings announcement --- p.42 / Chapter 7.3 --- Market reaction to official earnings announcements --- p.43 / Chapter 7.4 --- Market reaction to news report ´ؤ event study --- p.44 / Chapter 7.5 --- Differentiate higher circulation news effects on the market from lower circulation news --- p.47 / Chapter 7.6 --- Differentiate regional publications news effects on the market from national publications news --- p.48 / Chapter 7.7 --- Relationship between the number of news items and Cumulative Abnormal Return --- p.49 / Chapter 7.8 --- Relationship between “news influence coefficient´ح and Cumulative Abnormal Return: --- p.51 / Chapter 7.9 --- "Relationship between “news influence coefficient´ح, CAR, and number of restructuring activities in the second year" --- p.53 / Chapter 7.10 --- "Relationship between the number of restructuring activities, CAR, different news influence coefficient, and the third year ROE change" --- p.55 / Chapter Chapter 8. --- Conclusion --- p.57 / Tables --- p.61 / Table 1 Summary Statistics on Basic Information of the Sample --- p.61 / Table 2 Summary Statistics on ROE Change --- p.61 / Table 3 Two-sample Mean Comparison Test of the Earnings Performance Between the Subgroup with Negative News and the Subgroup Without Negative News --- p.62 / Table 4 Statistics about the number of restructuring activities of the companies with negative news --- p.63 / Table 5 Daily Average CAR over Different Periods --- p.64 / Table 6 Two-sample Mean Comparison Test --- p.65 / Table 7 Average Abnormal Returns From 3 Days Before Announcement to 10 Days After Announcement --- p.66 / Table 8 Abnormal Returns on the First Headline News Date and First Negative News Date --- p.67 / Table 9 Cumulative Abnormal Returns 10 Days After the First Headline News and First Negative News in a Clean Comparison --- p.68 / Table 10 Cumulative Abnormal Returns 10 Days After the First Headline News and First Negative News --- p.69 / Table 11 Comparisons of the CAR Between Higher and Lower Circulation News --- p.71 / Table 12 Comparisons of CAR Between Regional and National First Headline News --- p.72 / Table 13 Linear Regression Results With Dummy Variables --- p.73 / Table 14 Linear Regression Results with Number of News Items --- p.77 / Table 15 Linear Regression Results With “news influence coefficient´ح --- p.80 / Table 16 Poisson Regression Results with Number of News --- p.84 / Table 17 Linear Regression Results with Number of News --- p.86 / Table 18 Final Event Study Results --- p.88 / "Figure 1: Average CAR across Sample over (-3, 90) Days" --- p.92 / Appendix 1: Sample Companies --- p.93 / Appendix 2: Record of News Reports for Each Firm --- p.96 / Appendix 3: Number of Restructuring Activities During the Second Year --- p.99

The paths to homelessness are complex and attributable to a combination of structural issues associated with poverty that can magnify personal vulnerabilities. However, as homelessness became more prominent in news media during the 1980s, media discourse increasingly focused on personal characteristics within the homeless population which cast people as personally responsible for their plight. Simultaneously, media explanations for homelessness that called attention to structural conditions that contribute to homelessness decreased during the decade. Scholars explain this shift by situating it within the social and political climate of the time. This study extends the line of research on homelessness in news media in order to understand how coverage of homelessness has changed between the 1980s and the 2010s. A quantitative content analysis examines newspaper articles in two cities in the western United States -- Portland, Oregon, and San Diego, California -- where homelessness is a prominent and enduring social and political issue. News articles are examined for changes between two time periods (1988-1990 and 2014-2016) in mentions of personal and structural factors as well as changes in the discussion of solutions for homelessness. Results show an increase over time in portrayals of structural factors that contribute to homelessness as well as an increase in talk about permanent housing solutions. However, mentions of personal problems and behaviors, such as mental illness and substance abuse, have also increased. This suggests that, while news discourse may be moving toward more nuanced portrayals that acknowledge societal factors, news media still tend to focus on characteristics of homelessness that can cast people as personally culpable.

Media critics and scholars have questioned and tried to define the role newspapers play in society for many years. Answers range from impartial observer to watchdog to social advocate. To understand how newspapers' roles are defined, this study looked at agenda-setting research, social responsibility theory, and conflict-reporting research. This study focused on coverage of a protest that turned violent. The objective was to evaluate newspaper content and identify paragraphs of coverage as issue-centered, event-centered, or neutral.Two coders evaluated 5,383 paragraphs of coverage in 300 articles that appeared in five newspapers between Nov. 29, 1999, and Dec. 5, 1999. The articles covered the World Trade Organization ministerial meeting that took place during that time in Seattle, Washington. Thousands of demonstrators went to Seattle to protest a variety of issues, including globalization, child labor, free-trade barriers, and pollution.Two local newspapers and three national newspapers were analyzed. Local newspapers were found to favor event coverage over issue coverage. National newspapers were found to favor issue coverage over event coverage.Chi-square analysis confirmed significant difference between issue and event coverage at each newspaper. Further analysis revealed an even greater difference between page-one stories' issues and events at the local newspapers. National newspapers showed balanced coverage in their page-one paragraphs. / Department of Journalism

On March 19, 2003, the United States military led a "pre-emptive" strike on Iraq, thrusting media into a heightened responsibility to keep the American public informed. By May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush had officially declared the war over, but at the time of this study, Spring 2005, violence prevailed in Iraq.Throughout the Iraq War, different styles of print media coverage appeared between the United States and German presses – reflective of each country's stance on the Iraq war. As influenced by numerous factors, U.S. and German newspapers covered the Iraq conflict in different ways. Several predictions resulted from considerations of nationality and political stance on the Iraq war.To assess the accuracy of those predictions, a content analysis was conducted. Two independent variables were named--the German newspaper, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) and the U.S. newspaper, the Washington Post.The results gleaned from the analysis were examined with a chi-square, and most were found to be significant: As hypothesized, both U.S. and German newspapers overwhelmingly featured official sources. This meant that the media did not fulfill its watchdog function, but instead, allowed officials to frame the story of war.Although each country was viewing the war through official sources, those sources accentuated different aspects of the war and often carried strong positive or negative tones. The Washington Post carried more neutral sources, whereas the Frankfurt Allgemeine Zeitung carried more negative sources. With a clear sentiment against the war, German newspapers more often featured sources who weren't active players in the war and non-American, non-Iraqi sources in their articles, thus attempting to offer more balanced reporting. This study may offer an explanation as to why the United States and Germany shared such opposing opinions about the Iraq War–each country's citizens experienced the news from different perspectives. / Department of Journalism

Condemned prisoners in Texas and most other states are given an opportunity to make a final statement in the last moments before death. An anecdotal review by the author of this study over the last 15 years indicates that condemned prisoners use the opportunity for a variety of purposes. They ask forgiveness, explain themselves, lash out at accusers, rail at the system, read poems, say goodbyes to friends and family, praise God, curse fate - and assert their innocence with their last breaths. The final words also are typically heard by a select group of witnesses, which may include a prisoner's family and friends, victim's relatives, and one or more journalists. What the public knows about a particular condemned person's statement largely depends on what the journalists who witness the executions chose to include in their accounts of executions, the accuracy of their notes, and the completeness of the statements that are recorded on departments of correction websites or records. This paper will examine, through rhetorical and content analyses, the final words of the 355 prisoners who were executed in Texas between 1976 and 2005, identify those who made unequivocal claims of innocence in their final statements, and analyze news coverage of their executions by the Associated Press.

The media’s role is to disseminate accurate and objective information about particular phenomena but the media itself is rarely an objective institution. In international relations, the media exists as a non-state actor, able to exert power through its representation, reinforcement and the possibility to challenge the narrative of a particular conflict or intervention. The hypothesis of this paper is that the media does not play the role of neutral observer in a conflict. Using the New York Times’ coverage at the start of the Darfur conflict in 2004 as a case study, this paper discusses how the newspaper reported on the conflict, exploring how the description of the conflict, its root cause and actors involved, as created by the coverage as well as the calls for international intervention demonstrates the role of the media as a nonstate actor. Using discourse analysis and discussing power and representation through language and framing, it links international relations theory with that of media theory to show how the media is situated within discourse, where it creates and recreates historical representation. This paper suggests that through a more nuanced description of the Darfur conflict and subsequent intervention and more interrogation of the accepted narrative, the media could have created a richer contribution to the existing discourse on the Darfur conflict specifically and conflict in general.

Lam Kwan Heung. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 135-137). / Abstracts in English and Chinese; appendices in English with some Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii-iv / Acknowledgement --- p.v / Table of Contents --- p.vi / Chapter Chapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1-6 / Chapter Chapter 2 --- Literature Review --- p.7-22 / Chapter Chapter 3 --- Research Methods --- p.23-35 / Chapter Chapter 4 --- An Overview on Hainan --- p.36-46 / Chapter Chapter 5 --- Framing of Hainan --- p.47-92 / Chapter ´Ø --- International law and order / Chapter ´Ø --- U.S. peacekeeping surveillance / Chapter ´Ø --- Victimized U.S / Chapter Chapter 6 --- Framing of China --- p.93-125 / Chapter ´Ø --- China's skewed media / Chapter ´Ø --- China as a problematic communist state / Chapter ´Ø --- China as a secretive military power / Chapter ´Ø --- China's aggression towards Taiwan / Chapter ´Ø --- China's buying off U.S. politicians / Chapter Chapter 7 --- Conclusion --- p.126-134 / Bibliography --- p.135-137 / Appendices --- p.138-182

The suicide and the media research field are generally concerned with the effect, content, and production of mass-disseminating suicide information. Most of the previous studies in the field were conducted in western countries. This dissertation is devoted to extending the research map to the Chinese contexts and moving the field forward into the new media era. It proposes a conceptual framework based on the social construction of reality theory and refines the framework through a combination of five studies. Study 1 might be the first investigation on mass-disseminating suicide information’s effect on suicide occurrences in Mainland China, using the Foxconn suicides as a case study. It finds that the Foxconn suicides were temporally clustered and influenced by inter-person contagion within the company, as well as the newspapers’ reporting about the topic in Beijing, the nation’s capital. Study2 examines the prominence and representation patterns of reporting the Foxconn suicides in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan in 2010 calendar year. It demonstrates that the media coverage of the Foxconn suicides in the three societies generally experienced a three-phase evolving process in 2010. Meanwhile, within every phase, the media in different societies showed differences in their representations. Furthermore, the study investigates how the representation can be influenced by news sources and social contexts and explores possible explanations why the Beijing media’s reporting influenced the occurrences of the Foxconn suicides. Study3 compares representation of suicides in case-control psychological autopsy studies with representation of the same suicides in Hong Kong media. Considering the psychological autopsy as relatively more rigorous and validated, the comparison examines the suicide news representation’s accuracy and stereotyping tendencies. It finds a strong homogenisation of the Hong Kong newspapers in accurately reporting suicide methods but inaccurately reporting suicide risk factors, and that their reporting was problematic in stereotyping of gender-and method-specific suicides. Study 4 is a qualitative study of 33newspaper journalists’ experiences with producing suicide news from representative daily newspapers in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Utilising the grounded theory method, it extracts how the journalists construct media reality of suicide within a social context. The study summarises criteria of suicide news values, identifies three types of key agents which are often engaged by the journalists in constructing suicide news, and also generates a comparative framework of suicide news production in the Chinese contexts. Study 5 examines what suicide-related information is easily accessible online in Mainland China and Hong Kong and compares it with its counterparts in English. It explores how the comparative framework proposed by Study 4 can also be applied to understand the nature of the online suicide information and serves as a bridge connecting the thesis with future studies on suicide and the new media. The five studies collectively contribute to understanding the nature and mechanism of constructing media reality of suicide in the Chinese contexts. By applying the research findings, suicide prevention professionals would be able to develop context-sensitive strategies to cooperate with the media and prevent suicide. / published_or_final_version / Social Work and Social Administration / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

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Thesis (MA (Journalism))--University of Stellenbosch, 2006. / Moral questions arising from advances in science and technology are proliferating exponentially. Much controversy surrounds the ways in which biotechnology is used to eradicate a vast range of diseases and injuries. Stem cell research is one such way. Throughout the world stem cell research has been met with varying responses that range from opposition and criticism to approval and advocacy. As a result, it has attracted significant attention from the news media. The media have been accused of bias by focusing only on the controversial aspects of the research as opposed to reporting fully and fairly on the remarkable scientific advances. In this study I look at the patterns of media attention paid to stem cell research in the international weekly magazine Time between November 1998 and September 2005 inclusive. Contrary to the results expected on the basis of my literature study which pointed out the notion that the media tend to focus on sensational news more than non-controversial issues, I found that Time did a fair job in reporting on the scientific aspects of stem cell research. The percentage content of articles by year, focusing on scientific information of stem cells, dominated other news frames. The two years following the 2000 and 2004 American presidential elections, are however marked by the dominance of policy frames. This study found that Time covered controversial issues like embryonic stem cell research, public funding debates and political policy development in direct relation to their rise and fall on the political agenda in the United States.