Although the United States is considered to have one of the safest food supplies in the world, consumers have become increasingly alarmed with the subject of food safety as each crisis-related outbreak is scrutinized. With the onset of an agricultural-related food crisis, the media plays a vital role in publicizing both facts and opinions. Because of the relationship between agricultural risk communication and the media, it is essential to study the level of bias in the news reporting of these agricultural risk-associated events. The purpose of this study was to analyze the coverage and level of bias of the Salmonella outbreak associated with tomatoes in associated press (AP) newswires during a six-month period in 2008 through a descriptive content analysis. A comprehensive search yielded 57 usable articles written during a six-month period surrounding the outbreak; these articles were analyzed using the Hayakawa-Lowry News Bias categories. A total of 1,444 sentences were coded into nine categories: (a) report attributed, (b) report unattributed, (c) inference labeled, (d) inference unlabeled, (e) judgment attributed favorable, (f) judgment attributed unfavorable, (g) judgment unattributed favorable, (h) judgment unattributed favorable, and (i) other. Data indicated a significantly higher number of report sentences as compared to judgment sentences. Report sentences are considered both verifiable and factual. Thus, data indicated a low level of bias. Additionally, although journalists were objectively reporting information regarding the Salmonella outbreak, per capita tomato consumption for 2008 decreased. In the wake of a crisis, objective reporting is crucial. Journalists have an obligation to report information that is objective, factual, and verifiable. Understanding how the media tells agriculture‘s story can help bridge the gap between the industry and those reporting the issues.

The purposes of this research were¡G¡]1¡^to understand the aims of learning content of different textbooks.¡]2¡^to uncover learning content of different textbooks.¡]3¡^to offer feasible suggestions according to the results. This research adopted content analysis approach and interview to analyze the volume 5-8 learning content of different textbooks ¡]Kaohsiung Chien-Kou textbooks , Nani textbooks , and Kingan textbooks¡^censored from Ministry of Education in 2006. The conclusions of this research were as follows¡G 1. Education aims¡G¡]1¡^Chien-Kou textbooks¡GThey put emphases on communication,ethnicism,multi-culture,localism,and culture learning.They should add ability targets in the teacher guidebook.¡]2¡^Nani textbooks¡GThey put emphases on communication,language cognition, and tender regards.They should add multi-culture, localism,and ethnicism.¡]3¡^Kingan textbooks¡G They put emphases on communication and decompressing learning.They should add multi-culture,localism,ethnicism ,and edit language with academic attitude. 2. Education content¡G¡]1¡^Chien-Kou textbooks¡G They put emphases on literature and objectivity.They should enhance teaching aids, and decrease quantity and difficulty.¡]2¡^Nani textbooks¡GThey put emphases on literature,proverbs,songs,pictures,and sentence patterns.They should enhance conversation,nativism, multi-culture,vocabulary,and life practicality.¡]3¡^Kingan textbooks¡GThey put emphases on life practicality,timeliness, pictures,songs, and variety.They should strengthen sentence patterns,multi-culture,and proverbs edited in lessons. 3. Education organization¡G¡]1¡^ Chien-Kou textbooks¡GThey put emphases on mentality,concentric circles rule, and ranking.They should enhance to discriminate difficulty among Grade 3-4,and variety.¡]2¡^Nani textbooks¡GThey put emphases on mentality ,ranking,timeliness,and integration.They should enhance continuation,large unit integration,and variety.¡]3¡^Kingan textbooks¡GThey put emphases on ranking,continuation,horizontal integration,and mentality.They should enhance variety, difficulty link among Grade,and large unit integration. 4. Education methods¡G¡]1¡^Chien-Kou textbooks¡GThey put emphases on steady language teaching.They should enhance multi-alacrity, connection with home and school,and teaching aids.¡]2¡^Nani textbooks¡GThe best character is written by on-the-job teachers. They put emphases on connection with home and school,adaptive learning, and systematic language learning.They should enhance teaching aids and words.¡]3¡^Kingan textbooks¡GThey put emphases on multi-alacrity.The best parts are decompressing and natural learning.They should enhance connection with home and school, and dynamic teaching games. 5. Education assessing¡G¡]1¡^Chien-Kou textbooks¡GThe best character is to combine teaching with assessing.They put emphases on cognition.They should enhance mentality,diagnosis,alternative assessing,the teacher guidebook edition,and add some easy assessing.¡]2¡^Nani textbooks¡GThe best characters are multi-adaption,cooperation between teachers and parents, and formative assessing.They put emphases on mentality.They should enhance diagnosis,alternative assessing,and design techniques to complete assessing easily.¡]3¡^Kingan textbooks¡G Having no pressure and learning easily are the greatest characteristics. They put emphases on technical ability.They should enhance mentality,diversification,diagnosis,alternative assessing, and improve the degree of difficulty. In accordance with the results of this research, suggestions concerning aspects of the textbook publishers,authorties,schools and teachers were put forward. Follow-up studies were also proposed.

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

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Drexel University, 2003. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 129-147).

Social media have grown into a powerful marketing communications tool in the global market. A number of companies are dedicating their time and resources for building trust and rapport with consumers through various social media platforms, but there is a dearth of research on their use of Twitter. The current study, therefore, examines global brands with a Twitter account and their tweets targeted at consumers. The results indicate that marketers attempt to attribute human characteristics to their brands using human representatives, personal pronouns, verbs in the imperative form. Also, satisfaction and investment were the most frequently found consumer-brand relationship determinants in the global brands’ tweets. This study offers the perspective that Twitter serves not only as an optimal vehicle for disseminating corporate information but also as a means to develop and cultivate consumer-brand relationships. Limitations and future research are discussed. / text

Participating in the growing research stream involving the market orientation-performance relationship, this investigation explores the impact of firms’ planning, implementation, and evolution of market orientation on financial performance. A longitudinal approach is used to capture the formation and evolution of market orientation. Evidence of market orientation as depicted in top management’s stated strategy is assessed through content analysis of 150 SEC filings (S-1s and 10-Ks) of seventy-five initial public offering (IPO) firms. The sample covers companies that went public in the years 2001-2003, and the study spans a six-year period from 2001-2007. Customer and competitor orientation are independent variables tested to predict stock return. Moderator variables of firm size, top-management-team (TMT) heterogeneity, services or manufacturing industry, and industry competitive intensity are tested in a series of regression analyses. The study involves a unique combination of features in that: 1) the market orientation of top management is captured; 2) the market orientation formation and evolution is captured; 3) secondary archival data is used in the analysis; 4) objective performance measures are utilized; 5) data from multiple industries is analyzed; 6) factors that moderate the market orientation performance relationship are studied. Contributions of this study are that it: 1) builds on the work of Gebhardt, Carpenter and Sherry (2006) using longitudinal analysis to capture the dynamic nature of the market orientation; 2) establishes evidence of variation of the market orientation across time; 3) examines the division of market orientation as separate constructs of customer and competition; 4) provides insight about important moderators of the relationship; 5) moves literature towards a foundation for a more general theory of market orientation by providing some further evidence of the construct’s relation to financial performance. Results of regression analysis provide support for customer orientation leading to superior financial performance. Significant moderator variables in this relationship include manufacturing vs. service firms, top-management-team (TMT) heterogeneity, and firm size. Unexpected results are found for competitor orientation and some moderator results are not significant.

Environmentalism, like any other noteworthy social movement, has been met with some resistance. Opposition to this movement has come both from the general public and from organized anti-environmental groups. The closeness, or lack thereof, between the organized groups' messages and those of the public has yet to be clearly defined. Given that organized groups are often more capable of getting their message out to a larger audience, it is important to know to what extent the thoughts and ideas they put forward are representative of those of the public. Without examining this relationship, responding to anti-environmental sentiment in the public will be difficult.In an effort to understand opposition towards environmentalism in the general public, this project examined the blogosphere. Anti-environmental weblog (blog) postings were subjected to a content analysis in order to reveal common themes present within them. The specific focus of the analysis was on the manner in which environmentalism was portrayed by its opponents, as opposed to points of factual disagreement. Comparisons were then made to the arguments of the organized anti-environmentalism factions, and a more complete picture of the opposition toward environmentalism was constructed. From this basis, recommendations for a response to anti-environmental sentiment from leaders in the area of sustainable development were given.

The purpose of this research was to understand how the risks associated with West Nile virus (WNV) were presented by the Winnipeg Free Press. A detailed content analysis was completed on all Winnipeg Free Press articles and Manitoba Health news releases, between 1999 and 2008, containing information related to West Nile. Additional data included interviews with government and media representatives. Several recurring frames, including blame, controversy, rights and fairness, risk, and uncertainty were found in the newspaper data. Over time there was a decrease in both the coverage and prominence of WNV-related issues by the Winnipeg Free Press. In terms of the use of sources by media, the provincial government was found to be the most commonly used source in this context. Reporting of WNV-related issues by the Winnipeg Free Press has been relatively clear and balanced despite some initial alarmist coverage surrounding the uncertainty of the arrival of WNV.

This study is a minor field study and is sponsored by Swedish Development Cooperation Agency. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and struggles with continuing reducing the national maternity mortality rate in order to satisfy WHO millennium targets. In order to improve the maternal care in Nepal an understanding of midwives experiences is needed. This study aims to explore midwives experiences from working in the Nuwakot region in Nepal from a transcultural caring perspective. The study uses a qualitative methodological approach. Unstructured interviews were performed during April 2015 at health posts in remote mountain villages in the region of Nuwakot, Nepal. Seven midwives, two men and five women were involved. By analyzing the interviews with a qualitative content analysis several categories emerged. The result shows that midwives working in a rural area of Nepal today experience several challenges in their work based on cultural influences; challenging family hierarchy, dangerous home deliveries, villagers lack of education, patients arriving too late, patients distrust in medicine and lack of resources but happy to help. The conclusion is that in order for Nepal to keep improve their maternal care, midwives needs to develop an understanding of the patient and the family’s cultural beliefs. The result can be used to reflect on how the patient's cultural beliefs can affect the midwives when performing their work in a rural area of Nepal. It can also be used to develop the midwifery education in Nepal by improving midwives’ meeting with patients and their families with cultural needs.

Background: The theory of framing suggests that the media have the ability to influence how the public thinks about issues (Nelson, Oxley & Clawson, 1997; Chong & Druckman, 2007), by influencing what definitions, causal attributions, moral evaluations, and treatment recommendation the public considers applicable to an issue (Entman, 1993; Tewksbury & Scheufele, 2009). The theory of framing has been supported in studies of media representations of a variety of social issues. With particular relevance to this thesis, framing studies have suggested that health news often portrays the essence of health issues as highly alarming, with few efficacious treatment or coping options (Chang, 2012). The social issue this thesis focuses on specifically is infertility. Study 1: In Study 1, a content analysis is utilized to examine how Canadian print news frames infertility. One-hundred and fifty-seven Canadian print news articles that contained the key word “infertility” in the year 2012 were analyzed. Two independent coders read the articles, and coded each article using a predetermined coding strategy (Chang, 2012) for if/how infertility was framed with respect to: prevalence; need for alarm; severity; vulnerability; need for alertness; means of coping; causes; and possible solutions. Just over one-half of the articles employed alarm frames (n=80), and the vast majority of these met the criteria for categorization as high alarm (96%). The most commonly cited cause of infertility was delayed childbearing (41% of articles) and the most frequently presented way to cope with infertility was in vitro fertilization (IVF; 46% of articles). Infertility was most often constructed as a women’s issue. Study 2: Study 2 build on Study 1 by examining the influence that high alarm framing strategies in the presentation of infertility have on news consumer reactions to, and knowledge of, infertility issues. One hundred and thirty-nine male and female undergraduate students were randomly assigned to read news articles focusing on infertility judged to employ either high alarm framing strategies (high alarm condition, n=65) or low alarm framing strategies (low alarm condition, n=66). Participants in each condition read the assigned news articles and subsequently completed a self-administered questionnaire. The questionnaire included measures of: fear of infertility, perceived severity of infertility, perceived vulnerability to infertility, worry about infertility, prevention efficacy, coping efficacy, and knowledge about infertility. The participants in the high alarm condition evidenced higher levels of perceived vulnerability to infertility (p = .04), and marginally higher levels of worry about infertility (p = .075) than those in the low alarm condition. In contrast, participants in the low alarm condition relayed higher levels of infertility related knowledge than those in the high alarm condition (p= .001). Discussion: Canadian print news portrays infertility as a serious, a prevalent, an alarming and predominantly a women’s disease, and presents IVF as the principal means of coping. This partial depiction of infertility may not be promoting informed reproductive decision-making. Print news portrayal of infertility using high alarm framing strategies may induce higher worry about infertility and heightened levels of perceived personal vulnerability to infertility, while neglecting to relay pertinent knowledge about infertility. Implications for the societal understanding of infertility and the potential repercussions for informed reproductive decision-making are discussed.