A obesidade decorre de um processo multifatorial que envolve aspectos biológicos, comportamentais e ambientais. Atualmente, o tema, por sua dimensão e universalidade, tem despertado o interesse coletivo, sobretudo da ciência, dos governos e da mídia. Um visível esforço está sendo empreendido com vistas ao controle dessa pandemia, com chamamento à responsabilidade de todos os stakeholders, entre eles os atores do Agronegócio mundial. Com o propósito de evidenciar os fundamentos científicos dessas iniciativas e as interrelações entre os agentes envolvidos, buscou-se identificar as dimensões disciplinares presentes nas publicações da FAO/WHO, do governo e da mídia dos Estados Unidos sobre obesogenicidade. Para tanto, foi realizada a análise documental das publicações divulgadas em meio eletrônico por cada um dos agentes, utilizando a mineração de texto. Para a construção dos argumentos que norteiam a pesquisa foram utilizadas as Teorias do Agendamento, do Enquadramento e Priming. Para a construção da estrutura analítica utilizada na mineração de texto foram utilizados 4.648 artigos científicos disponíveis no Portal Web of Science que abordam o tema. Além disso, para caracterizar a dimensão Agronegócio foram coletados todos os artigos publicados no Agribusiness International Journal e no International Food and Agribusiness Management Review no período de 2003-2013. Após a coleta, foram construídos os dicionários de palavras representativos de cada dimensão disciplinar e do Agronegócio, utilizados no escaneamento dos documentos. A base de dados foi composta por 3.342 políticas introduzidas ou promulgadas pelos estados norte-americanos, 1.168 artigos jornalísticos publicados no The New York Times e no The Washington Post e 67 publicações da FAO/WHO publicados no período de 2003-2013. Os resultados indicaram que a mídia tem enquadrado frequentemente a temática sob a perspectiva das Ciências da Saúde, seguida da Multidisciplinar e Agronegócio. Já para o governo, as dimensões disciplinares mais frequentes são Multidisciplinar, Agronegócio e as Ciências da Saúde. Na FAO/WHO as Ciências da Saúde, Multidisciplinar e Agronegócio são as mais frequentes. Mesmo considerando as diferenças quanto ao enquadramento do tema pelos stakeholders, nota-se a existência de alguma semelhança entre esses enquadramentos, evidenciada pela similaridade entre as Ciências da Saúde, Multidisciplinar e as Ciências da Vida. Destaca-se ainda que a participação do Agronegócio é expressiva nos instrumentos políticos dos Estados Unidos, sugerindo o seu papel no crescimento da obesidade coletiva e na sua responsabilidade frente à desejada reversão dessa tendência mundial. / Obesity results from a multifactorial process involving biological, behavioral, and environmental aspects. Today, the scale and universality of obesity has attracted widespread interest, especially among the scientific community, the government, and the media. A visible effort is being made to control this pandemic, with a call for responsibility by all stakeholders, including the leaders of the global agribusiness industry. Aiming to highlight the scientific foundations of these initiatives, and the interrelationships between those involved, we sought to identify the disciplinary dimensions regarding an obesogenic environment in the publications by the FAO/WHO, government, and media in the United States. Therefore, a documentary analysis of publications disseminated electronically by individual agents was conducted, using text mining. Agenda-setting theory, framing, and priming were used to construct the arguments that guide this research. To build the analytical framework used in text mining, 4.648 scientific articles available on the Web of Science portal addressing the issue were used. Furthermore, to characterize the scale of the situation, agribusiness articles published in the International Agribusiness Journal and the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review from 2003-2013 were also used. Subsequently, dictionaries of words representative of each disciplinary dimension and agribusiness were constructed and used while scanning the documents. The database comprised 3.342 introduced or promulgated policies by the North American states, 1.168 media articles published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and 67 publications by the FAO/WHO, published during this period. The results indicated that the media has often framed the issue from the perspective of health sciences, followed by multidisciplinary and agribusiness. As for the government, the most frequent disciplinary dimensions are multidisciplinary area, agribusiness and health sciences. In the FAO/WHO, health sciences, multidisciplinary area and agribusiness are the most frequent. Even considering the differences in the framing of the issue by stakeholders, it is to be noted that there is some similarity between these frameworks, with a joint occurrence of the health sciences, life sciences, and multidisciplinary area. Note also that the participation of the agribusiness industry is significant in political instruments of the United States, suggesting its role in the growth of obesity and collective responsibility to be taken for the desired reversal of this global trend.

Esta dissertação se debruça sobre a formulação da agenda, o processo de tramitação, de aprovação, e de constituição de uma rede de apoio ao Marco Civil da Internet (MCI), sob a perspectiva da literatura de políticas públicas e ativismo. O MCI foi proposto em 2009, pelo Executivo, a partir de uma consulta pública realizada via Internet. Em 2013 o projeto foi colocado em regime de votação urgente no Congresso Nacional como resposta política às denúncias de espionagem eletrônica por parte dos EUA, sendo finalmente aprovado no início de 2014. A lei foi considerada pioneira por estabelecer direitos e responsabilidades entre os diversos entes que compõem o ecossistema da rede. Para analisar a formulação da agenda é utilizado o conceito de “janela de oportunidades” de Kingdon (2013), que designa o momento em que há a convergência de fluxos independentes da política pública. Para analisar o ativismo e a mobilização dos atores em torno das políticas de Internet é utilizado o conceito de insurgent experts, proposto por Shaw (2011). Para a realização do trabalho foram entrevistados 37 atores-chave ao longo de 2013 e 2014. A conclusão é que houve a constituição de uma policy community que mobilizou Estado e estabeleceu laços de cooperação entre atores individuais e coletivos em torno de ideais sobre as políticas relacionadas a neutralidade da rede, a defesa da liberdade de expressão e a proteção da privacidade na Internet. / This master’s thesis is focused on the process of agenda-setting and approval of the bill “Marco Civil da Internet” (MCI), drawing from the sociological literature on public policy and civic engagement. The MCI was proposed in 2009 by the executive power through a public consultation online. In 2013, it was fast-tracked by president Dilma Rousseff after classified documents were leaked by the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, revealing the fact that the US intelligence agency had been monitoring the president's communication. The bill was finally approved in early 2014 and pioneered a new framework for a civil Internet with rights and duties. To analyze the process of agenda-setting, I use Kingdon's (2013) concept of "policy window" which addresses the convergence of independent streams of public policy. In order to analyze the civic engagement and the network formation for mobilization in support of the project, I use the concept of "insurgent experts" proposed by Shaw (2011). The corpus of analysis for this research was composed by 37 interviews with key-actors conducted from 2013 to 2014. In conclusion, I demonstrate how the constitution of a policy community around the issue of net neutrality, the defense of freedom of expression and protection of privacy on the Internet, that created the conditions for mobilization of State, creating cooperation ties among activists and policy makers for the defense of policy proposals for the Internet.

A obesidade decorre de um processo multifatorial que envolve aspectos biológicos, comportamentais e ambientais. Atualmente, o tema, por sua dimensão e universalidade, tem despertado o interesse coletivo, sobretudo da ciência, dos governos e da mídia. Um visível esforço está sendo empreendido com vistas ao controle dessa pandemia, com chamamento à responsabilidade de todos os stakeholders, entre eles os atores do Agronegócio mundial. Com o propósito de evidenciar os fundamentos científicos dessas iniciativas e as interrelações entre os agentes envolvidos, buscou-se identificar as dimensões disciplinares presentes nas publicações da FAO/WHO, do governo e da mídia dos Estados Unidos sobre obesogenicidade. Para tanto, foi realizada a análise documental das publicações divulgadas em meio eletrônico por cada um dos agentes, utilizando a mineração de texto. Para a construção dos argumentos que norteiam a pesquisa foram utilizadas as Teorias do Agendamento, do Enquadramento e Priming. Para a construção da estrutura analítica utilizada na mineração de texto foram utilizados 4.648 artigos científicos disponíveis no Portal Web of Science que abordam o tema. Além disso, para caracterizar a dimensão Agronegócio foram coletados todos os artigos publicados no Agribusiness International Journal e no International Food and Agribusiness Management Review no período de 2003-2013. Após a coleta, foram construídos os dicionários de palavras representativos de cada dimensão disciplinar e do Agronegócio, utilizados no escaneamento dos documentos. A base de dados foi composta por 3.342 políticas introduzidas ou promulgadas pelos estados norte-americanos, 1.168 artigos jornalísticos publicados no The New York Times e no The Washington Post e 67 publicações da FAO/WHO publicados no período de 2003-2013. Os resultados indicaram que a mídia tem enquadrado frequentemente a temática sob a perspectiva das Ciências da Saúde, seguida da Multidisciplinar e Agronegócio. Já para o governo, as dimensões disciplinares mais frequentes são Multidisciplinar, Agronegócio e as Ciências da Saúde. Na FAO/WHO as Ciências da Saúde, Multidisciplinar e Agronegócio são as mais frequentes. Mesmo considerando as diferenças quanto ao enquadramento do tema pelos stakeholders, nota-se a existência de alguma semelhança entre esses enquadramentos, evidenciada pela similaridade entre as Ciências da Saúde, Multidisciplinar e as Ciências da Vida. Destaca-se ainda que a participação do Agronegócio é expressiva nos instrumentos políticos dos Estados Unidos, sugerindo o seu papel no crescimento da obesidade coletiva e na sua responsabilidade frente à desejada reversão dessa tendência mundial. / Obesity results from a multifactorial process involving biological, behavioral, and environmental aspects. Today, the scale and universality of obesity has attracted widespread interest, especially among the scientific community, the government, and the media. A visible effort is being made to control this pandemic, with a call for responsibility by all stakeholders, including the leaders of the global agribusiness industry. Aiming to highlight the scientific foundations of these initiatives, and the interrelationships between those involved, we sought to identify the disciplinary dimensions regarding an obesogenic environment in the publications by the FAO/WHO, government, and media in the United States. Therefore, a documentary analysis of publications disseminated electronically by individual agents was conducted, using text mining. Agenda-setting theory, framing, and priming were used to construct the arguments that guide this research. To build the analytical framework used in text mining, 4.648 scientific articles available on the Web of Science portal addressing the issue were used. Furthermore, to characterize the scale of the situation, agribusiness articles published in the International Agribusiness Journal and the International Food and Agribusiness Management Review from 2003-2013 were also used. Subsequently, dictionaries of words representative of each disciplinary dimension and agribusiness were constructed and used while scanning the documents. The database comprised 3.342 introduced or promulgated policies by the North American states, 1.168 media articles published in The New York Times and The Washington Post, and 67 publications by the FAO/WHO, published during this period. The results indicated that the media has often framed the issue from the perspective of health sciences, followed by multidisciplinary and agribusiness. As for the government, the most frequent disciplinary dimensions are multidisciplinary area, agribusiness and health sciences. In the FAO/WHO, health sciences, multidisciplinary area and agribusiness are the most frequent. Even considering the differences in the framing of the issue by stakeholders, it is to be noted that there is some similarity between these frameworks, with a joint occurrence of the health sciences, life sciences, and multidisciplinary area. Note also that the participation of the agribusiness industry is significant in political instruments of the United States, suggesting its role in the growth of obesity and collective responsibility to be taken for the desired reversal of this global trend.

The goal of this thesis is to describe the basic characteristics of intermedia agenda setting in the news broadcasted by Czech Radio using quantitative content analysis. The theoretical part of the thesis, which precedes the analysis, puts the concept of intermedia agenda setting into the wider context of agenda setting research, introduces some of the most important studies presented in this area, and provides explanations of related concepts such as gatekeeping or news values. In the empirical part of the thesis are first analyzed data concerning the frequencies of references to individual czech media outlets, then results of correlation analyzes describing the relationship between these references and the thematic agenda of Czech Radio are presented.

In recent years a wave of right-wing populist parties has sweep in Europe. Two of these are Sweden’s Swedish Democrats and Norway’s Progress Party. The purpose of this thesis is to contribute to research on how political parties are portrayed in mainstream media and how that may influence political party success in the elections. Content of two daily newspapers over two months before the last parliamentary elections in Sweden and Norway is examined within the study. The method used is a quantitative content analysis. The result was added to the agenda setting theory. From the result, an analysis was conducted to reveal how publication in newspapers can be expected to affect or not affect the selected parties’ successes in the elections. The result shows that the Progress Party receives more space in the daily press than the Swedish Democrats. Both parties are often mentioned in relation to other parties. In several articles, other parties want to show that there is a difference between their basic values, as opposed to the right-wing populist parties. Negative value words appear in the articles, especially in the case of the Swedish Democrats. There are both negative and neutral values in the case of the Progress Party. However, the articles often appear in a neutral way. The conclusion is that the daily press does not seem to have influence over the political parties’ successes in the elections in this case.

Scholars of intermedia agenda-setting have examined how news organizations can affect one another's content, but research is lacking on the influence of foreign news programs on fledging media outlets, such as Rwanda Television (RTV). A quantitative content analysis conducted between October and December 2016 indicates that media outlets in core countries dominated RTV's international news edition, which depended mostly on foreign programs, mainly from Euronews and Al Jazeera English. The 2016 U.S. election was the predominant topic. More than half the stories had a negative tone. In addition, qualitative interviews with the RTV editorial team revealed that the main factors influencing story selection were proximity, prominence, impact, cultural values, and relevance. Cross-lagged correlation coefficients indicated that both RTV and two Rwandan newspapers—igihe.com and Imvaho Nshya—focused on the same news topics but with slightly different sources. In Rwanda, the defining factors for this intermedia agenda-setting are not media type, ownership, or technology, as other studies have found, but institutional barriers, language, and the globalization of news. Faced with limited finances and a shortage of trained journalists, fledging media organizations in Rwanda will continue to depend on big media for their daily international news. Strategies are suggested for helping to break the cycle of foreign media domination and news homogenization in Rwanda

Masters in Public Administration - MPA / Agenda setting is about how some issues get onto the policy agenda for discussion and action why others do not. Drawing critically on the ―policy windows‖ approach of J.W Kingdon (2003) this dissertation will describe and explain the shifting of policy agendas in health with reference to human resources in Zambia between 2000 and 2006. This research explores how and why the issue of human resource shortages in health became prominent on the state‘s agenda in 2005.The research is a qualitative study and data was collected using both primary and secondary sources of data across various stakeholders in the country. It tested the applicability of Kingdon‘s conceptual framework to a case study of Zambian health policy by analysing the degree to which agenda-formation is influenced by such factors as issue definition, the presence of policy alternatives, presidential support, interest group advocacy, media attention, political cycles, and public opinion. The general elections scheduled for the following year, coupled with media attention and strong public action contributed to the selection of the human resource crisis as an issue on the state‘s agenda for serious action. Furthermore, the slow progress on the attainment of the health related Millennium Development Goals and the poor performance of some donor funded programmes necessitated the state to act. Despite some weaknesses, Kingdon‘s multiple streams approach was found to be useful in explaining the agenda-setting of the Human Resources for Health Strategic Plan (2006-2010) in Zambia.

In 2007 the rotating Presidency of the Council of the European Union (EU) was reformed by the introduction of the so-called trio Presidency . The trio mechanism encourages policy continuity by grouping incumbent Presidencies in teams of three and inviting them to coordinate. This thesis seeks to contribute original knowledge on EU policy-making by mapping how trio practices are established, exploring which factors explain how Member States coordinate, and by assessing how the trio arrangement affects the EU agenda. Empirically, the trio function is examined through its implementation in the policy area of sport, focusing on the three trios to assume office after the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009. The analysis is structured around a number of carefully selected dossiers adopted between 2010 and 2013. Guided by a conceptual framework based on agenda-setting and new institutionalism, these decisions are submitted to in depth process-tracing. The analysis draws on qualitative research, primarily official documents and 37 semi-structured interviews. The findings reveal that actors approach the trio with differing preferences and expectations, leading to much variation in how the arrangement is performed. The thesis identifies a number of factors that explain variation. Thus, a fixed agenda supports trios in coordinating priorities and activities ex ante. Moreover, coordination is conditioned by trio composition, as federal and new Member States are more inclined to cooperate. Further, trio practices are shaped by factors such as multiannual planning and focusing events, with the intenseness of trio coordination reflecting whether the agenda includes issues that demand sustained attention. The thesis concludes that the introduction of the trio mechanism has preserved the ability of Member States to use the Council Presidency to prioritise national priorities whilst also encouraging and facilitating EU policy continuity. By extending agenda-management beyond a six month spell, the trio can strengthen the agenda-setting powers of incumbent Member States, particularly on issues that concern establishing urgent responses or developing Council procedures. Moreover, evidence suggests that the arrangement can produce a specific spirit of collegiality, trio solidarity, which sees trio Member States support each other during negotiations, thus affecting EU policy-making beyond agenda-management.

This research analyses the extent to which three newer (European Union) EU member states, Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia have attempted and succeeded in shaping the development of the EU's energy security policy, focusing on natural gas. This explores the argument that EU membership affects the formation of national foreign and energy policy as well as procedures of policy-making, and that newer member states have also been able to shape EU level policy-making through the ‘uploading’ of national preferences. The research engages with relevant conceptual issues to develop and utilise a framework which is a synthesis of literature on EU agenda-setting, policy framing, Europeanisation and the social construction of energy ‘crises’ and (in)security. This conceptual frame is then used to explore and evaluate the influence of newer member states on EU energy policy agenda-setting, policy-making and policy implementation. Evaluating the obstacles and opportunities for influence, an empirically rich data set is analysed to test the extent to which five theoretically derived hypotheses account for member state influence. Five mechanisms are identified as potentially key factors in explaining the degree of influence which member states have. The thesis suggests that one is the impact of supply disruptions and price rises on perceptions and constructions of national and EU energy security. This can contribute towards a context that is conducive to the arguments about policy change and projection being made, a policy window, and is a reflection of the social construction of energy insecurity and energy crises. Diplomatic skill and learning to ‘play the EU game’, being active in Council summits and technocratic level(s), and engaging in consensual policy-making that adheres to EU norms and interests is seen as important. Another key factor is the role of Russia as a major and sometimes monopoly gas supplier, in constraining, enabling, and influencing the strength of national interests - the extent of political will and EU energy policy activism. A fourth factor is considered to be the extent to which institutionalised sub-EU regional and strategic alliances exist and are prioritised as an arena to develop coordinated policies and preferences. The final conceptually derived factor is related to the strength of administrative capacity, in terms of well-coordinated institutions at the national and EU level, and sufficient personnel and resources. The thesis also provides a study of the development of EU energy policy since the 1950s in chapter two, and chapters three to five focus on the three country case studies; Poland, Bulgaria and Latvia. These empirical chapters include in each case a history of their energy policy and relations with both the EU and Russia. The thesis concludes with an analysis of the empirical findings using comparative country case manner approach, along with conceptual (and methodological) observations based on the testing of the hypotheses.

The Social Democratic MEP mandate performance has certain specific features which distinguish it from mandates of members of other EP fractions. The theoretical part of this thesis focuses on the historical context of European Social Democracy and challenges which it must currently face (euroscepticism, consequences of economic crisis etc.). Furthermore, it considers the role of the Party of European Socialists the whole process. The practical part of this thesis consists of guided interviews with EP Members for ČSSD and SMER - sociálna democracia. The aim of this thesis is to assess the degree of European Social Democracy's Europeanization and differences in national and European aspects of the character of Social Democratic MEP mandate.