In 2008 Ciudad Juarez erupted in a violent drug war. The Sinaloa Cartel and Juarez Cartel were in a battle for the lucrative drug route used to smuggle drugs into the United States, while President Felipe Calderon was waging his own war against all the drug cartels. During the height of the violence women journalists emerged on the front lines to tell the stories of Juarez. They risked their lives and dared to tell a story that others refused to. This mixed-method study examines frames used most often in the coverage of the drug war in Ciudad Juarez from 2008-2010. It examines The New York Times, the El Paso Times, and El Norte and also examines articles by the sex of the reporter. It also used in-depth interviews of both Mexican and American woman journalists who covered the drug war in Juarez to examine which themes developed about the reporter’s experiences in covering the drug war.

En la actualidad las relaciones internacionales se ven vinculadas por diversos aspectos de índole política, económica y social, donde participan activamente los gobiernos de los Estados soberanos y una serie de actores no estatales. Si bien el estudio de este tema en el campo de la comunicación política, en general, y de los medios de comunicación, en particular, han aportado contribuciones sobre algunos aspectos como la globalización, la diplomacia y las negociaciones comerciales, este todavía no ha alcanzado los análisis e interpretaciones que merece. El presente estudio, luego de una dilucidación, representa una contribución dentro del esfuerzo de aproximación al conocimiento y comprensión, desde la cobertura periodística de los sucesos, de las políticas de Estado e iniciativas privadas en asuntos como la promoción y defensa de su soberanía e integridad territorial así como de su patrimonio y la promoción en el exterior de su riqueza cultural; el fortalecimiento de su seguridad; la protección al nacional en el exterior y su inserción en los países que los acogen; y el comercio y la cooperación con los países vecinos, organizaciones y bloques político económicos. En consecuencia, la investigación de las relaciones internacionales desde la perspectiva metodológica del framing, se estima imprescindible el estudio de los acontecimientos acaecidos en los últimos años en el Perú, especialmente la sentencia de la Corte Internacional de Justicia en La Haya sobre el diferendo marítimo con Chile; la definición del Perú por la Alianza del Pacífico, entendida como propuesta distinta a Unasur; la abertura a las economías más prósperas del mundo árabe, a raíz de la Cumbre ASPA y su foro empresarial, y la entrada en vigencia, aunque de manera parcial, del TLC con la Unión Europea, entre otros.

Titel: State of the Donald - En kvantitativ innehållsanalys av svenska mediers gestaltning av den tillträdande amerikanska presidenten Donald Trump.
Författare: Carl-Johan Linde & Sarah Olsson
Antal ord: 10 560 Problemformulering: Det amerikanska valet 2016 beskrevs av många som ett av de allra smutsigaste och mest brutala valen i mannaminnen. Ett val som till slut kom att stå mellan två kandidater, nämligen Hillary Rodham Clinton och Donald J. Trump. Efter en lång och inte minst intensivt val, stod det under morgonen den 9 november 2016 svensk tid klart att det amerikanska folket valt att rösta fram Donald Trump som landets näste president. Detta blev ett valresultat som förvåna många människor och ett val som skapa ett massivt medialt intresse, inte minst i Sverige där det skrivit hela 114 000 artiklar. Men vilken bild av den blivande amerikanska presidenten är det vi svenskar får ta del av utifrån våra svenska medier. Hur väljer våra ledande svenska morgon- och kvällstidningar att gestalta den kommande amerikanska presidenten. Syfte: Syftet med denna studie är att granska hur den blivande amerikanska presidenten Donald Trump gestaltats i olika svenska nyhetsmedier under valet 2016.
Metod och material: En kvantitativ innehållsanalys har genomförts bestående av totalt 146 analysenheter från Sveriges fyra ledande morgon- och kvällstidningar. Huvudresultat: Genom arbetet med denna studie har vi nått resultat som visar på att våra utvalda svenska morgontidningar visar på en majoritet av politiska spelgestaltningar. Vi ser därmed att delar utav resultat går i viss utsträckning i motsatta riktning mot den tidigare forskning som funnits kring området. Vår studie visar även att det är just kvällstidningarna och inte morgontidningarna som i en tydligare utsträckning genom perioden som vi valt att analysera, använda sig av just sakgestaltningar.

Växthusgasutsläpp från personbilar påverkar klimatet negativt och har lett till att vi idag står inför stora utmaningar. För att minska på växthusgasutsläppen krävs att människor förändrar sina transportbeteenden. Nudging är ett koncept som används för att komplettera befintliga åtgärder och bygger på att en valsituation arrangeras på ett sätt som hjälper människan att fatta ett önskvärt beslut utan att begränsa individens valfrihet. Det finns olika typer av nudge-verktyg, varav ett handlar om framing av information. Framing innebär att en viss typ av information presenteras på ett visst sätt genom att via kommunikationstexter belysa ett särskilt problem. Huvudsyftet med föreliggande studie är att med hjälp av en enkätundersökning demonstrera om, och i så fall hur, framing av information och bilder påverkar hur människor skattar sina miljöattityder, samt attityder och intentioner till resvanor och val av färdmedel. Ett delsyfte är också att undersöka om framing av geografiskt avstånd påverkar skattningen i enkäten olika. Enkäten besvarades av 120 studenter på Högskolan i Gävle. Enkäten innehöll frågor som mätte generella miljöattityder samt egenkonstruerade frågor som mätte studenternas attityder och intentioner till sina resvanor och val av färdmedel. Tre enkäter utformades, varav två innehöll framing av information om problemet med växthusgasutsläpp från personbilar, samt en kompletterande bild utifrån ett geografiskt lokalt respektive globalt perspektiv. Resultaten visade att framing inte hade någon signifikant påverkan på hur studenterna skattade sina miljöattityder, eller sina attityder och intentioner till resvanor och val av färdmedel. Resultaten indikerade heller inte på några skillnader mellan hur geografisk framing påverkade skattningen. Baserat på resultaten har det metodiska förfarandet diskuterats. Ett antagande är att framingen haft större chans till att ge en effekt om budskapet varit skarpare och mer oroväckande, och om urvalet gjorts på en annan population än studenter. Resultaten påvisar dock vikten av att fortsätta testa olika nudges, däribland nudge-verktyget framing, i olika kontexter och att de testas småskaligt innan de implementeras i större skala. / Greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars have a negative impact on the climate and have led us to face major challenges today. To reduce greenhouse gas emissions, people need to change their transport behavior. Nudging is a concept that is used to supplement existing measures and is based on the fact that a selection situation is arranged in a way that helps man to make a desirable decision without limiting the individual's freedom of choice. There are different types of nudge tools, one of which is about producing information. Framing means that a certain type of information is presented in a certain way by highlighting a particular problem via communication texts. The main purpose of the present study is to demonstrate, by means of a questionnaire survey, whether, and if so, how, presentation of information and images affect how people estimate their environmental attitudes, as well as attitudes and intentions to travel habits and choice of means of transport. A sub-purpose is also to investigate whether framing of geographical distance affects the estimation in the survey differently. The survey was answered by 120 students at the University of Gävle. The questionnaire contained questions that measured general environmental attitudes and self-constructed issues that measured the students' attitudes and intentions to their travel habits and choice of means of transport. Three questionnaires were designed, two of which contained information on the problem of greenhouse gas emissions from passenger cars, and a supplementary picture from a geographically local and global perspective. The results showed that framing had no significant impact on how the students estimated their environmental attitudes, or their attitudes and intentions to travel habits and choice of means of transport. The results also did not indicate any differences between how geographical framing affected the estimate. Based on the results, the methodical procedure has been discussed. One assumption is that the framing had a greater chance of giving an effect if the message was sharper and more worrying, and if the selection was made in a different population than students. The results, however, demonstrate the importance of continuing to test different nudges, including the nudge tool framing, in different contexts and that they are tested on a small scale before being implemented on a larger scale.

Thesis advisor: Charles Morris / In September 2005 the former dictator of Chad, Hissène Habré, was charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity, and torture. Following an extradition request, Habré was arrested in Senegal – the country he had been living in since 1990, when he was deposed in a coup. The Senegalese government, however, did not follow through on the extradition order. The charges and order had not come from a Chadian court but rather from a Belgian judge. Faced with the delicate issue of extraditing a former African head of state to stand trial in the court of a former colonial power, the Senegalese government turned to the African Union, asking the organization to recommend how to try Habré.During the period between Habré’s arrest in November 2005 and the African Union’s ruling in July 2006, the Habré case appeared in the news framed in several different contexts. For human rights groups, the trial was not only the chance to bring Habré to justice; it was also a chance to further develop the legal precedent established in the Pinochet case. For the Senegalese government, the Belgian extradition order was a threat to African sovereignty.The Habré case as it appears in the media and as it is framed by the involved parties reveals the complexities of the case, demonstrating that the Habré case is not simply about trying a former head of state; rather it is about the politics of war crimes, from the scope and limitations of international law to the emerging role of the African Union on the world stage. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2009. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: College Honors Program. / Discipline: Communications.

This thesis is divided into two distinct and independent parts. Part I focuses on the extension of the concept of Variability Response Function (VRF). The focus of research community has recently shifted from the improvement of structural models and enhancement of the performance of computational tools in a deterministic framework towards the development of tools capable of quantifying the uncertainty of parameters of the structural system and their effect on the system response in a probabilistic framework. One limitation to this direction is the inadequacy of information to fully describe the probabilistic characteristics of a structural system. In effort to bypass this barrier, VRF was introduced by Shinozuka as a tool to calculate the variability of the response of a system. VRF is a deterministic function and for the case of deterministic structural beams where the uncertain system parameters are modeled as homogeneous stochastic fields, it offers an efficient way to circumvent timely computational analyses. In this dissertation, a flexibility-based VRF for the case of statically determinate beams following an arbitrary non-linear constitutive law is proposed. A closed-form analytical expression of VRF is derived and the constrains of the mechanics approximation embedded are discussed. No series expansion is used, thus the probabilistic part is exact and not limited by any constraint on the relative magnitude of the variations of the parameters. Part II of this dissertation explores the topic of progressive collapse. The appearance of damage in structural systems (explosions, design or construction errors, aging infrastructure) is following an upward trend during the last decades, urging for measures to be taken in order to control the damage advancement within the system. There has been an organized effort to update the design codes and regulations, in order to include provisions towards the reinforcement of buildings to eliminate their susceptibility to local damage. These efforts tend to focus on improving redundancy and alternate load paths, to ensure that loss of any single component will not lead to a general structural collapse. The analysis of a damaged system is a very complicated phenomenon due to its non-linear nature. So far the engineering community has addressed the problem of progressive collapse by employing sophisticated computational finite element methods to accurately simulate an unexpected damaging event. In this framework, damage has been introduced in the model by removing key load-bearing elements of the building and conducting elaborate analyses which almost always require inelastic and loss of stability theories to be considered. The computational complexity renders this kind of analyses almost prohibitive for practicing engineers. In the direction of eliminating sophisticated and computationally expensive analyses, simple, trustworthy tools should be generated for practitioners to easily predict the mechanism of damage propagation and determine the governing collapse mode of a structure. In this environment, this thesis introduces a simple and less labor demanding analytical tool/method which can be used to determine the governing progressive collapse mechanism of steel moment frames under the scenario of a column removal. After performing plain elastic analyses, the method develops critical Euler-type ductility curves for each removal scenario by performing straightforward analytical calculations. The response of structural systems under column removals is examined in a 2D and 3D context. The main objective of Part II is to investigate the response of dierent structural systems to the event of damage introduction (in this thesis, in the form of column removals in several locations of the system) and to develop a simple analytical framework for the identification of the governing progressive collapse failure modes. Although failure may occur due to a number of reasons (shear beam-to-column connection failure, beam yielding-type mechanism, loss of stability of adjacent columns, global loss of stability of the structural system, etc), in this study focus is being placed in only two of them; The proposed method establishes critical limit state functions which are used to identify whether a specic structure will experience progressive collapse through a yielding-type beam-induced collapse mechanism or through a loss-of-stability-induced column failure collapse mechanism.

This project creates an original dataset of 1,008 randomly sampled news items that discussed LGBT political issues posted online between 2011 and 2017 by Huffington Post Queer Voices, NPR, and Fox News. I use quantitative methods and content analysis to locate the 14 most popular LGBT political issues in media coverage and to confirm there are three competing media frames of political discussion in coverage of LGBT political issues. There are three results chapters. Chapter 5 describes the 14 LGBT political issues that appear most often in political science research and to what extent media coverage of these 14 issues differs across the political left, right and center. I find that academia addresses more LGBT issues, more often, than does media coverage. Also, media coverage and academic literature contain four competing narratives about LGBT people and issues: a Family Narrative, an Identity Narrative, a Tragedy Narrative, and a Political Activity Narrative. Moreover, politically left media coverage is more like academic discussions about LGBT politics than politically right or centrist media coverage. Chapter 6 describes three competing frames in media coverage. A legal frame contains language that discusses constitutions, trial and appellate courts, litigation tactics, and appellate procedure. A religious frame contains language that discusses the Bible, Jesus, religious-based curative therapy, evangelicals as political participants, and quotes from clergy. An institutional frame contains language that involves elections, political parties, direct democracy, constitutional amendments, local state and federal legislatures, and the President. I find that legal framing of LGBT issues has increased since the 2000s, while religious framing has declined, and political framing is slowly rising – peaking in federal election years then decreasing in non-election years. Chapter 7 describes how the media’s focus on same-sex marriage eclipses coverage of less-covered, but still important, LGBT political issues. Further, since same-sex marriage was legalized nation-wide in 2015, the media has been increasingly focused on transgender issues rather than 13 other LGBT political issues. So, the issues, narratives, and frames one encounters in news coverage about the LGBT is noticeably different than in the 2000s, and differs on the political left, right, and center.

Price discrimination has been widely discussed in economics. Scholars have discussed perceived fairness in the direct exchange perspective, sellers and buyers. However, there are few studies related price discrimination and its impact on consumers¡¦ psychology. Therefore, this paper examines the influence of price discrimination on consumers¡¦ perceived unfairness and their purchase intention as well as the effect of discount depth and discount framing in consumer¡¦s perspective. Results obtained from 402 questionnaires collected in Taiwan indicate that (1) price discrimination has influence on consumers¡¦ perceived (un)fairness; (2) discount depths moderate the impact of price discrimination on consumers¡¦ perception of unfairness; (3) advantaged inequality has influence on consumers¡¦ purchase intention; (4) discount framing doesn¡¦t have influence on either consumers¡¦ perceived unfairness or their purchase intention.

Den här kandidatuppsatsens syfte är att undersöka hur det amerikanska presidentvalet 2012 gestaltades i Dagens Nyheter, Svenska Dagbladet, Aftonbladet och Expressen. För att göra detta har totalt 18 nyhetsdygn, uppdelade på två perioder, undersökts i de olika papperstidningarna. Kandidatuppsatsen är dessutom en uppföljning på två tidigare kandidatuppsatser som gjorts på Södertörns högskola om presidentvalet 2004 och 2008. Den teoretiska utgångspunkten för studien är framing theory, eller gestaltningsteorin som den kallas för på svenska. Gestaltningsteorin är en ledande teori när det kommer till den journalistiska bevakningen av politik. Några av de frågeställningar som besvaras i uppsatsen är vilka gestaltningsformer som var dominerande i de olika tidningarna, vilka aktörer som syntes mest, och hur resultatet har förändrats över tid i jämförelse med de två tidigare kandidatuppsatserna. För att komma fram till detta har en kvantitativ innehållsanalys valts som arbetsmetod. Resultatet i undersökningen visar att den gestaltningsform som fått mest plats är spel, som handlar om det politiska spelet och vem som vinner och förlorar, på bekostnad av sak, som tar upp sakfrågor och de politiska aktörernas åsikter i dessa frågor. I jämförelse med de tidigare kandidatuppsatserna visade det sig att det framför allt varit en drastisk sänkning av sakgestaltad journalistik jämfört med valet 2004, men att det ändå ökat lite på nytt sedan valet 2008. Studien kom även fram till att det var Barack Obama som fick absolut störst plats på nyhetssidorna och jämfört med utmanaren Mitt Romney förekom han i vissa fall dubbelt så mycket.

Globally, research has shown that media coverage of illicit drug issues can play an important role in influencing public opinion and shaping drug policies. However, in Afghanistan, the world’s largest opium producer, very little is known about the media coverage of illicit drug issues. Afghan media, especially radio and television have developed dramatically during the past 11 years. Using the theories of agenda setting and framing, this study explored what drug-related topics were covered in the Afghan news media; how were these topics covered; how were the health and social consequences of drug abuse depicted in the media; and how much time was devoted to drug related topics in the media. Employing content analysis, the study examined primetime news coverage of the two leading media outlets: Azadi Radio and Tolo Television from 1st March 2011 until 31st July 2011. This thesis found the following types of imbalances in Afghan media reporting on illicit drug issues: 1) media reports on drug issues were heavily focused on supply reduction issues (81%) while paying considerably less attention to drug demand reduction issues (19%); 2) media predominantly framed illicit drugs as a law enforcement issue (83%) with only 15% of the paragraphs in the sample framing illicit drug as a public health problem; 3) media reporting on illicit drugs heavily relied on official sources (79%) lacking voices of the public health practitioners and drug addicts; 4) media coverage of illicit drug issues was heavily centered in Kabul (56%) with considerably less reporting from southern Afghanistan, which is the largest opium producing region. This study, which is presumably the first of its kind, provides media organizations, policy makers, and public health officials with a broad picture on the drug-related information available to the public on the leading Afghan news outlets. In addition, it serves as a basis for future research on media coverage of illicit drug issues in Afghanistan.