Master of Science / Department of Journalism and Mass Communications / Robert W. Meeds / This report is based on an exhibition of 37 photographs at the Kemper Gallery in the Student Union of Kansas State University. All photographs presented here and in the exhibit were created during the past 28 years of my career. Hence the exhibit is a mid-career retrospective. My photojournalism experience is very unique in that I am the only photojournalist in the world who has worked as a presidential photographer, published photo essays in National Geographic Magazine as a freelancer, and been on the staff of a large metro newspaper. The photographs chosen for the exhibit were highlighted by, but not limited to, assignments from those three experiences. This report mirrors the exhibit except for a few additional photographs that, because of space limitations, didn’t make it into the final edit for the exhibit. There are three sections: Moments from Kansas to Papua New Guinea, The Presidency, and After 9/11. The “moments” section presents a wide variety of photographs from a wide variety of assignments. The “presidency” section focuses on my tenure as Official White House Photographer for President Reagan, and also includes photographs of the Reagan funeral, other presidents, and a possible future president. “After 9/11” begins at the Pentagon on 9/12, and then follows the course of events in Afghanistan during the following weeks. Extensive captions accompany most of the photographs. The captions are written in the third person which is customary for gallery exhibitions. More than the who, what, where and when, they provide some additional context and are intended to inform both the journalism student and the layperson.

Presidential primary elections could demonstrate current developments in the American society and contribute to better understanding of general elections in November 2008. Therefore, after theoretical introduction about primary elections as process, I describe and compare standpoints of front-runners to the most debated issues (Hillary Rodham Clinton, John McCain and Barack Obama, then partially John Edwards, Rudolph Guiliani, Mike Huckabee, Mitt Romney). As a result, new trends in American political parties could be identified. Moreover, this analysis could forecast main tensions during the general presidential election in November. Apart from issues, this thesis deals with race and gender question and ageism and effects and success of using new communication channels in candidates' political campaigns.

La política exterior es un tema de relevancia constante, un asunto estatal fundamental y que, junto a la política de defensa, son las únicas políticas públicas que tienen una orientación predominantemente internacional. En los sistemas presidenciales, el presidente, sobre todo en Latinoamérica, ha tenido un lugar privilegiado en la definición y conducción de política exterior; pese a esto, aún falta mucha literatura actualizada al respecto. Es por lo anterior, que se desarrolla el siguiente análisis, bajo la pregunta general ¿Cuáles son los principales aspectos de la política exterior mexicana y chilena que los presidentes destacan ante el Debate General de las Naciones Unidas y en qué forma (frame) lo hacen? Con la particularidad de ser estudiado a través de dos teorías complementarias y actuales: el Foreign Policy Analysis y el Framing analysis. / Foreign policy is a subject of continuing relevance, a key state issue, and along with defense policy, are the only public policies that have a predominantly international orientation. The president has been privileged in setting the agenda of foreign policy in presidential systems, especially in Latin America; however, there are very few studies in Latin America explaining this issue. This analysis focuses in the following question: What are the main foreign policy’s aspects that the presidents of Mexico and Chile highlight in the General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly and by which frame they do it? This will be studied through important concepts of the Foreign Policy Analysis and Framing analysis approaches.

Cette thèse porte sur la relation qu'un président, bénévole et un directeur, salarié, d'une MJC, mais aussi d'autres associations d'éducation populaire, peuvent entretenir dans le cadre de la gouvernance qu'ils exercent ensemble. Des entretiens avec 62 présidents et directeurs mais aussi d'autres salariés de fédérations de MJC ainsi que trois historiens ou sociologues ont permis de confirmer certains postulats théoriques quant à la complexité de la relation entre un président et un directeur d'association, parfois conflictuelle, mais aussi de révéler la diversité de formes que cette relation peut revêtir, tout comme la diversité des acteurs, quant à leur rapport au pouvoir mais aussi à leur militantisme. Cette thèse a en outre mis en avant un point commun à l'ensemble de ces acteurs associatifs : un sentiment d'appartenance à un réseau et plus largement à un courant de pensée, l'éducation populaire. / This thesis deals with the relationship that a volunteer president and a managing director, employee, of a MJC, but also other popular education non-profit organizations, can maintain within the governance they exercice together. Interviews with 62 presidents and managing directors, but also other employees of MJC and three historians or sociologists confirmed some of the basic premises about the complexity of the relationship between a president and a managing director of non-profit organization, sometimes conflicting, but showed also the variety of forms this relationship can take on, as the diversity of the actors, about their relation to authority but also to their militancy. Moreover, this thesis has highlighted a common point to the totality of these associative actors : a sense of belonging to a network and more widely to a line of thought, the popular education.

Recent studies reveal that a considerable number of U.S. community college leaders will be retiring in the next several years. The concern is that with the large turnover, history, culture, and important lessons of leadership will be lost. The current research on the lives of presidents, their career paths, and experiences in community college leadership centers on approaches to the study of leadership at the macro level. Limited research exists in the published literature that reports and analyzes the development of individuals as community college leaders at the micro level. This results in a gap regarding understanding leadership development and strategies to prepare leaders. This study addresses this gap by providing a critical description of the leadership development of one individual who became a community college chancellor and who the literature on the community context indicates contributed to the local and national context for community colleges. Biography is gaining prominence as a legitimate and viable tool in the study of leadership. Few biographical studies currently exist which focus on leadership development in context at the micro level. This dissertation is a biographical, qualitative study of the leadership path and legacy of R. Jan LeCroy, a community college leader. The study combined two viable approaches to biographical inquiry: a scholarly chronicle and the realist approach. Data included the use of primary and secondary sources and included interviews, document analysis, and archival data such as newspaper articles, memos, and minutes of meetings. The data were analyzed and the findings discussed using the theoretical framework of Gronn's (1993) career model of leadership, Vaughan's (1986) study of the career paths of presidents, and Sullivan's (2001) study of four distinct generations of community college leaders. The leadership path of R. Jan LeCroy paralleled the four stages in Gronn's (1993) career model of leadership; he shared characteristics of the presidents surveyed in Vaughan's (1986) study; and he fit the profile of the second generation of community college leaders as described by Sullivan (2001).

Executive orders are a significant source of presidential power although scholars disagree on the nature of that power. It has been argued that executive orders are an indication of a president's failure to persuade others to act as he desires; others contend that executive orders offer "power without persuasion." This dissertation introduces the conditional model of executive order issuance and duration in order to offer a synthesis to these competing views, and to offer a better understanding of the opportunities and constraints faced by the president when choosing to act unilaterally through executive orders. The conditional theory holds that both the issuance and duration of executive orders is a function of the president's ideological proximity to Congress and the Supreme Court, and the availability of fresh policy space.

Language and discourse can create a space where political decision-making and action is accepted despite its untypical nature. The goal of the study is to un-derstand how political discourse is constructed with the aim of legitimizing ex-traordinary action in relation to the framework of securitization. The study revolves around how and why President Trump discursively attempts to legitimize his order that led to the assassination of Iranian Major General Soleimani, on the 2nd of Jan-uary 2020, by conducting a discourse analysis of two speeches delivered within the first week following the event. The study contributes with insight on the particular case, and shows how Maj. Gen. Soleimani is represented as an irrational terrorist, who posed imminent danger to the American people. The act attempted legitimized is presented as done in the name of ‘security’ which seeks to justify the notion of President Trump ‘breaking free’ of usual procedures. The main conclusions of the study are the presented legitimatization strategies, including the linguistic constella-tion of an existential threat, the allusion of a hypothetical future and the exploitation of emotional trauma. Moreover, the findings uncover that a securitization move has taken place within the analyzed speeches.

The thesis analyzes the key conditions under which technocratic cabinets in Europe are formed. There are 45 technocratic cabinets in Europe since 1989. This year is connected with collapse of communist regimes in Central and East Europe and democratization. There are also similar political, economic and social conditions under which all governments are formed in this period. The thesis composed of nineteen chapters. Because of lack of literature we have to define the technocratic government at first. After introduction of this topic, the second chapter defines basic terminology. Another part of the thesis is about technocratic cabinets in individual European countries.

The diploma thesis entitled "Image of President Donald Trump in the Czech News Agency" closely examines how the Czech News Agency provided information to the Czech readers about the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump whose time in office (January 20 2017 until January 20 2021) brought a number of changes and controversies. One of the most notable one to mention are the US withdrawal from The Paris Climate Agreement or the accusation that the Republican president secretly cooperated with Russia before a unanticipated victory in 2016 elections. The research of Trump's media image in the public agency CTK is based on quantitative analysis of topics as well as a qualitative approach to evaluating the tonality of each individual article.

March 1971 was tough for President Richard Nixon. The American people were tired of the Vietnam War, with many still recovering from the violent anti-war protests of 1970. Congress had just passed an amendment prohibiting U.S. ground troops from operating outside of the borders of South Vietnam. Both the public and secret negotiations with Hanoi were stalled. Confidential channels with Beijing and Moscow about diplomatic initiatives had gone cold. Moreover, Lam Son 719, the joint U.S. and South Vietnamese incursion into Laos that began in February, was turning out to be a failure. The operation, Nixon’s military gamble to prove the success of Vietnamization, would show the opposite—that the South Vietnamese were not ready to take over the fighting from the Americans. Yet, on 7 April 1971, Nixon announced in a television address that “Vietnamization has succeeded,” and that he would accelerate the withdrawal of American troops “because of the achievements of the South Vietnamese operation in Laos.” Many expected Nixon to increase the rate of troop withdrawals no matter the outcome of Lam Son 719. However, instead of being punished at the polls for his lack of credibility, as some in the press were predicting, in 1972, Nixon transfixed the nation with trips to Beijing and Moscow and won re-election by 49 out of 50 states. This thesis mines archival documents from the Nixon Presidential Library, the U.S. media, and television transcripts to explain how and why Nixon re-shaped the story of Lam Son 719 and his Vietnamization policy to persuade a dispirited American people to accept withdrawal from Vietnam. This political comeback, often overshadowed by Watergate, provides unique perspectives on presidential communications.