Many varieties of consumption are often mischaracterized as “addictive,” such as social media use, chocolate consumption, shopping, and viewing pornography, even though considerable evidence indicates that they are not intrinsically addictive. This research examines whether labeling everyday products and activities as “addictive,” a common occurrence in modern media, popular culture, and marketing, can actually influence consumption. Given the consistent use of warning-based interventions related to established addictions (e.g., cigarettes, drugs, gambling), there exists an implicit assumption that warning consumers about the addictiveness of freely available products and generally socially acceptable activities will reduce the behavior. However, the potentially negative consequences of labeling non-addictive behaviors as addictive remain unclear. It was predicted and found that explicitly framing everyday consumption behavior as being addictive reduces consumers’ perceived control over the focal behavior resulting in increased consumption. Specifically, across twelve studies, consumers led to believe that consumption activities including eating chocolate and granola, shopping, using social media, and viewing pornography are addictive increases that behavior due to a decrease in perceived control. The effect of the addictive frame was not found to occur for purely virtuous and arguably less desirable and enjoyable foods (e.g., peas). Further, the effect does not spillover to other similar foods (e.g., M&Ms versus Skittles), meaning the effect is not simply a result of inducing a general lack of perceived control over all activities. Finally, boosting control by reminding consumers of situations where they had control over their own food consumption attenuated the effect of existing addictive beliefs. Alternative explanations such as the influence of a diminished sense of personal responsibility (via guilt), the forbidden fruit effect (via desire and excitement), affect regulation, and descriptive social norms were also tested and ruled out. This research has implications for how these behaviors are portrayed in marketing communications, the media, and public policy, and can be used to develop more effective interventions for at-risk consumers. / 2019-06-06T00:00:00Z

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On March 13, 2006 in Durham, North Carolina, some of the Duke lacrosse players decided to throw a party. For this particular party, a group of Duke players decided to hire some strippers. Although the night started out harmless enough, the end result was two angry African American women leaving the house of 610 Buchanan Street to alleged sounds of insults and racial epithets. The police arrived a short time later to investigate the scene. Allegations of rape filled the air as one of the strippers indicated to Durham police that she had been raped. From there, implications of race, class, gender, and the university culture became prevalent and important topics for the media to cover. They covered the scandal extensively and made it a prevalent subject story matter from April 2006 to April 2007. Utilizing a content analysis, this study coded for generic, macro and issue-specific frames used by six different newspapers that covered the Duke Lacrosse rape scandal finding some significant results. Additionally, this study employed frame and story valence, as well as frame substance, to further analyze the frames present in the newspapers provided. Furthermore, there appeared to be a significant similarity between the overall story valence and the news story type. Although the majority of frames used were found to be neutral, results found that there was still a great deal of negative media attention in the Duke Lacrosse rape scandal. / Master of Arts

Climate change is one of the preeminent problems facing humanity today. It has the potential to cause incalculable damages, loss of life and property, and can create an almost unlivable habitat for humans on this planet. Governments need to act in order to stop future climate harms, but the electorate must be literate in the subject in order to do so. One of the jobs of the media is to inform the public, and so it is imperative that the media find a way to accurately inform the U.S. electorate about the changing climate in order to stimulate pro-environmental behavior and voting. It was hypothesized in this thesis that journalists should utilize narrative instead of simply relaying statistics and fact-based information to better engage the electorate and that it would prove a better way to educate them about science topics such as the climate. However, the politicization of such topics could not be ignored and so needed to be accounted for. A 2x2 factorial analysis was done using narrative versus fact-based stories with either conservative or liberal news outlet headers. These were then tested against three covariates: political ideology, narrative transportation, and locus of control. This research found that political ideology was far and away the best predictor of a person's stance on climate change cognitively, affectively, and cognitively, and it was not moderated by locus of control, frame, or source. While narrative showed significance when it came to emotional engagement, it did not show significance on other level.

Donald Trump’s announcement on June 1st, 2017, to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Agreement generated widespread news coverage. In this qualitative framing study, a selection of articles published on that topic in the German Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and the American New York Times are analyzed with respect to generic news frames, issue-specific frames, actor-statements, and images. The most frequently used news frames were economic consequences, conflict, and responsibility. The morality frame appeared only twice, whereas the human interest frame was not evident in the verbal text at all, but occurred in one image. Two issue-specific frames emerged, the setback frame, evident in the majority of articles, cast Trump’s decision as a momentous setback for the U.S. and the global fight against climate change. The contradictory no impact frame implied that the Paris Agreement has many problems as is, and the U.S. withdrawal will have no impact on the state of the climate. The images accompanying the articles were shown to support the verbal issue-specific framing of the articles, whereas no clear relation could be found connecting certain types of actor-statements with the presence of a certain frame.

In the past years the usage and growth of social media has increased, through the increase in popularity, growth and use, social media has become an all the more important arena. Politicians need to communicate with the public, where the public is, in order to be elected and right now a large amount of the public is on social media. This research studies how four of the largest political parties in Sweden, Socialdemokraterna, Moderaterna, Sverigedemokraterna and Miljöpartiet, together with an upcoming party Feministiskt initiativ, used social media in the governmental election in Sweden 2014. In order to study how these political parties used social media, the posts made on Facebook and Twitter were selected. The posts were selected from the two weeks leading up to the election. The posts on Twitter had a higher quantitity and were studied through a quantitative content analysis; while the posts on Facebook included richer text and were studied through a qualitative content analysis. The choice to include both a quantitative and a qualitative content analysis were made to give a richer result with a more including picture. The result showed that there is not one universal media logic used by the parties on the posts posted on Facebook and Twitter, however the elements used were the same, but in different extent. One of the parties, Miljöpartiet, had a consequent media logic of all of the selected post made by them on Facebook. On social media political parties become gatekeepers themselves, without relying on journalists to bring forth their ideals, election issues, and topics of importance. On social media the political parties decide what to publish and how to publish it. The political parties frame the topics to benefit themselves and argue for why their approach is the right choice and why the viewer of the post should vote for them.

The United States has been increasingly concerned with the transnational threat posed by infectious diseases. Effective policy implementation to contain the spread of these diseases requires active engagement and support of the American public. To influence American public opinion and enlist support for related domestic and foreign policies, both domestic agencies and international organizations have framed infectious diseases as security threats, human rights disasters, economic risks, and as medical dangers. This study investigates whether American attitudes and opinions about infectious diseases are influenced by how the issue is framed. It also asks which issue frame has been most influential in shaping public opinion about global infectious diseases when people are exposed to multiple frames. The impact of media frames on public perception of infectious diseases is examined through content analysis of newspaper reports. Stories on SARS, avian flu, and HIV/AIDS were sampled from coverage in The New York Times and The Washington Post between 1999 and 2007. Surveys of public opinion on infectious diseases in the same time period were also drawn from databases like Health Poll Search and iPoll. Statistical analysis tests the relationship between media framing of diseases and changes in public opinion. Results indicate that no one frame was persuasive across all diseases. The economic frame had a significant effect on public opinion about SARS, as did the biomedical frame in the case of avian flu. Both the security and human rights frames affected opinion and increased public support for policies intended to prevent or treat HIV/AIDS. The findings also address the debate on the role and importance of domestic public opinion as a factor in domestic and foreign policy decisions of governments in an increasingly interconnected world. The public is able to make reasonable evaluations of the frames and the domestic and foreign policy issues emphasized in the frames.

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