Thesis (M.S.)--Ohio University, August, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. Includes bibliographical references.

Agreement between trained and untrained coders in assessing television content was investigated. A model integrating the different approaches to content analysis was proposed. The model contains three dimensions: audience coders versus expert coders, microanalysis versus macroanalysis, and quantitative versus qualitative analysis. The audience versus expert coders facet of that model was evaluated by having university students watch and assess the content of 24 television programs chosen from prime-time on the basis of their popularity. They were not trained in content analysis and did not know the questions about which they were asked until after viewing their program. Their evaluations were compared with similar evaluations given previously by trained (expert) coders. Each of the 24 programs was watched by 5 male and 5 female naive coders (total N=240). The groups were balanced for ethnicity and socioeconomic status. A statistic developed especially for this research was used to compare the naive and expert ratings on 22 selected variables. The results indicated that untrained and trained coders in general evaluated the programs similarly. Moreover, the questions on which the experts tended not to agree (that is, were unreliable) were generally the same ones on which the untrained coders did not agree, both amongst themselves and with the experts. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

Since 2004, the Chinese media scene has been dominated by what is called the “pan-reality television” trend. Reality television is capable of synchronizing the effects of all the political, economic, and cultural factors into the participants’ actions and becoming a powerful reconstruction of the social environment from which it emerges. The thesis takes Jiangsu Satellite TV (JSTV)’s golden hour reality televisions as the case to address the question of how they express, reflect and formulate the imaginations and understandings of urban living, focusing on the cultural, social, and political specificities of these reality television shows. The thesis is an attempt to bring into discussions ignored aspects of popular television culture that can be potential source for furthering the understanding of urban conditions in China. The thesis finds that the images, the discursive fields, and the procedures of the games in the reality television shows and the governmental regulations imposed on them are part of the mechanisms to dissemble a set of discourses into the colloquial, the practices of urban lives, and possibly the imaginations of urban lifestyles. Emerging out of this dynamic process is the formulation of a way of life in the context of urban China – specifically, the linear, individual progressivity. The main body of the thesis will empirically show how the linear, individual progressivity is installed and enacted in the shows and political implications of that.

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AFRICAN LANGUAGES / MA (AFRICAN LANGUAGES)