An experiment with 98 participants was conducted to explore the effects of government versus multiple sources on perceived credibility and interest when applied to the same risk stories. It also analyzed the effects of source treatment on participants' assessment of government credibility and source reasonableness. The study investigated the effects of demographic characteristics of participants (age, gender, media use) on the same variables, and tried to determine if there was any statistical correlation between the two dependent variables of credibility and interest. It also analyzed the effects of human-interest reports on credibility and interest. Overall, the study found that participants who read stories with multiple sources (government, industry, expert), perceived the risk stories (two about HIV epidemic, and two about coastal erosion in Louisiana) as more credible and more interesting than the participants who received only government sources. Age appeared to affect the two dependent variables, as well as media use and the anecdotal (human-interest) frame. The study also found that participants liked and believed the health stories more than the environmental stories.

As change is an inevitable part of organizational life, this study explores one aspect of communication in organizational change: the creation and use of meaning during the change process. The implementation of a new, higher education admissions criteria framework of a state master plan is the specific change under study. University administrators, contracted consultants, and board staff members participated in the study. Framed by symbolic interactionism and a stakeholder perspective, I pose four research questions: RQ1: What meanings were created during the particular process of change under study? RQ2: How were meanings intentionally and unintentionally created among stakeholders during this organizational change? 2a: How do the various elements (e.g., documents, meetings, etc.) of organizational change interact with and influence one another during the change process? RQ3: How does the presence of similar and dissimilar meanings influence the change process? RQ4: From a symbolic interactionist perspective, how does the concept of multiple levels of power affect the process of creating meaning during organizational change? A qualitative approach, including interviews, text analysis, and observations was utilized to address these questions. In all, twenty interviews were conducted and fifteen texts reviewed for analysis. As a result of data analysis, categories of meaning were determined. These categories help to define the experiences of the participants and reveal subtle details of the interactions taking place among the stakeholders. The concept that meanings are created intentionally and sometimes unintentionally through the use (or lack) of symbols was also evident. Examples of symbols in this study include meetings, workshops, and written documents. Data analysis further revealed that both similar and dissimilar meanings were created through interactions. The existence of similar meanings helps to facilitate change processes while dissimilar meanings can hinder the process. Aspects of power are relevant to this study as evidence points to the concept that the type of power a person possesses impacts the meanings created. Several strategies for more effective communication in organizational change are suggested as a result of the findings from this study. Finally, implications for future research are included.

The research undertaken in this study explores five years of the Louisiana Office of Tourism's public relations campaign to attract Canadian visitors to Louisiana. The study considers how the campaign's organizers used the cultural bond between French-speaking Canadians and Louisiana to attract Canadians to Louisiana. The study also examines how important the public relations strategy of highlighting the cultural bond between host and tourist was in attracting Canadian visitors to the state. In addition, the study uncovers whether or not campaign organizers considered the impact their campaign would have on Louisiana's Cajun citizenry. The research method employed was the case study method. Interviews were conducted with campaign organizers, and a case description was used to organize and analyze the data. The findings of the study show that the campaign's planners segmented the Canadian market into two distinct demographics, French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians. In its campaign to attract French-speaking Canadians to the state, highlighting the cultural bond between the two regions was vital to the campaign's success. The strategy included the hosting of a year-long celebration of the state's French heritage as well as a mammoth Cajun family reunion and event sponsorships throughout French-speaking Canada. Ultimately, the Louisiana Office of Tourism concluded that its campaign positively impacted the state's Cajun community, both economically and culturally. For their part, representatives of the Cajun community expressed concern about the campaign. Specifically, they said they believed the way in which Cajuns were sometimes portrayed in the campaign served to perpetuate stereotypes. Lastly, the study shows that the campaign jibed with one of the four tourism public relations models developed by prominent tourism public relations scholar, Don Stacks. Stacks translated the four historic models of public relations developed by J. Grunig for application to the tourism industry. The campaign is a clear example of Stacks' two-way asymmetric model, the research shows.

Masculinity is a multi-dimensional, fairly pliable construct that some scholars approach from a biological perspective, others approach from a social constructionist perspective, and others approach from a unifying perspective. Part of the environment that informs the meaning of masculinity to a given culture is the mass media. This study takes the constructivist theoretical perspective, which attempts to explain the activation of schemata. The schematic process for this study concerns how people perceive, process, and judge masculine signs. This study seeks to explain gender role orientations influences on the development of schemata for masculinity as evidenced by differences in assessments of differing masculine images. Participants (N = 747) rated their own sex role orientation and then assessed the sex role orientation and evaluated the masculine imagery. The results of this experiment reveal that gender role has a limited effect on schematic development for masculinity. Though gender role affects how we perceive our world, the extent to which it influences that perception is smaller than expected. Directions for future research are also offered.

Some contemporary theories in political science maintain that public lobbying is merely an expression of latent and resolute public opinion that is communicated to policymakers. Other theories contend that the public is highly manipulable and that public lobbying by extension can be considered a form of strategic framing that takes place through the news and paid media. Both theoretical approaches specify a function for words or text but are silent on the influence of photographs or images. In this dissertation, I hypothesize that environmental public lobbying operates as strategic framing and that text and photographs have unique and discrete effects on public opinion and policy action. In a study on the effects of greenwashing, I examine how photographs and text influence aggregate public concern for the environment, public preferences on specific public problems and congressional committee action on environmental issues. Time series agenda-setting models show that photographs and text do have differential effects on public salience and policy action: public concern is largely compelled by words, whereas photographs drive policy attention. In a related experiment, findings suggest that images may directly influence specific policy preferences, but that there is no evidence of exclusively photographic framing effects. Words on the other hand are capable of directly changing opinions and also show evidence of framing effects.

Marking the site of death on the road with a shrine, an increasingly popular cultural practice in the United States, is a deeply personal, private affair, however, because shrines are placed in the public right-of-way, they attract attention and invite participation, comment, and criticism. These sites, the materials that mark them, how people come to build them, the messages that those who build them hope to convey, and the accumulative force these sites bring to bear in various contexts offer unique insights into our complex, fragmented, and often confounding relationships with death, living memory, and selective forgetting. This project takes roadside shrines, material cultural artifacts, as points of departure for a multi-track journey. This journey locates shrines on the road and in cultural imagination, in historical records and cultural mythology, and in the researchers personal archive. The construction of the text makes apparent the researchers cultural poesis and invites readers to participate in like manner. Chapter One situates roadside shrines within academic discourse, explains the construction of the written text, provides a brief review of literature pertinent to the study of roadside shrines, and describes the scale, scope and methods employed during the research process. Chapter Two describes roadside shrines from the perspective of the passer-by along two local routes and two cross-country road trips. Chapter Three examines the popularity of shrine-building in the vernacular and academic press, historicizes the practice of shrine-building, explores recent institutional attempts to regulate roadside shrines, and offers a provisional interpretation of shrine-building as resistant performances of protest and warning. Chapter Four explores roadside shrines from the perspective of the participant-observer engaged in various rituals while visiting specific roadside shrines and during additional cross-country road trips. Chapter Five examines shrine-building as social ritual in the popular and academic arts, historicizes shrine-building as a mourning ritual, offers a provisional interpretation of shrine-building as performances that resist normative constraints of healthy mourning while simultaneously re-inscribing a dominant formal aesthetic. Chapter Six restlessly concludes as the researcher returns to the field.

This qualitative study featured 33 in-depth interviews of college-aged, African-American women and offers baseline exploratory data about how a majority cultural artifact like televised depictions become utilized in the everyday lives of an underrepresented group in media studies. This research represents one of a few studies to explore how black females decode and utilize TV content, and offers a new theoretical framework to explain informants' decoded receptions, influence and utility of television. An inductive analysis of interview narratives found that viewers use TV content like a looking-glass to understand how they are seen by others and where they fit in the larger social arena. Television's normative cultural reflections are received, decoded, absorbed and self-applied to improve or enhance the social acceptability of black, female interpretive group members. The incidental lessons learned from the television mirror suggest that changing or reinventing oneself based on information gathered from TV content enhances viewers' satisfaction with themselves. Through TV transcripts black female informants in this study learn how they might improve their personal images to assimilate better into the social and professional circles of Caucasian-American lifestyles. Television's ubiquitous nature warrants a closer look at its influence and utility on TV audiences. This study posits that unwitting social and personal reasons promote the heavy television viewing behavior of African-American interpretive group members.

The news media are the main channel for public relations practitioners to get messages across to their publics. Getting their news or information materials used in the media is, therefore, a key professional responsibility for public relations practitioners. In an Asian country like Indonesia, this practice constitutes one of the more important parts of pubic relations practices. However, there has been little research conducted on predictive factors especially as concerns taking into account different factors together regarding Indonesian journalists uses of public relations news materials, since it is the largest nation in the Southeast Asian region, and no known academic public relations research of the subject has been done till now. The literature related to this study primarily examines how journalists professional roles, news values, informal relations between journalists and public relations practitioners, and business pressures predict Indonesian journalists uses and acceptance of public relations news materials. This thesis then employed survey methods to obtain data from Indonesian journalists working for national newspapers and television broadcasts in the capital city of Jakarta. The news value factor comes first in predicting Indonesian journalists uses and acceptance of public relations materials; the journalists also take their news organizations business interests seriously into their consideration. In addition, this study supports the suggestion that informal relations between practitioners and journalists could play a significant role in the use and acceptance of public relations news materials. The results do indicate that envelope journalism, or positive coverage provided by journalists in exchange for cash payment, is embraced by public Indonesian relations practitioners and journalists. However, this study finds its influence is not as significant as the fundamental tenets in journalism. The findings suggest that public relations activities in Indonesia comprise an important part of a set of complex media practices.

In this study I will look at the main reasons women use the Internet. Studies about women and the Internet are divided; some indicate less use of the Internet than men, but other studies show strong evidence of a narrowing gap in use. Due to this lack of clarity, a study that looks exclusively at womens Internet activities and usage is needed. Although qualitative research does not test or apply theory the same way quantitative research does, uses and gratifications theory informed this study. This is an exploratory study of women and the Internet.

This content analysis was designed to examine, in a single longitudinal study, trends in the quantity and kinds of world news coverage in selected U.S. newspapers during times of relative peace. Using complementary proportion and absolute-item frequencies, two constructed weeks in 1927, 1947, 1977, and 1997 in three newspapers, 168 issues in all, were analyzed. The findings indicate that the percentage of foreign news coverage compared to non-foreign coverage in the three newspapers actually increased between 1927 and 1997. The amount of foreign coverage spiked in 1947 and then started to decline. But even with the decline, coverage by proportion in 1997 was still significantly higher than in 1927. On the other hand, a negative relationship was found in front-page foreign coverage in the three newspapers comparing 1927 with 1977 and 1997. A positive relationship was found in front-page coverage for 1947. Results for front-page coverage were significant for 1947 and 1977.