全球的電視新聞文化現今都已偏好聳動的主題及令人目眩神移、訴諸感官刺激的綜藝化製作方式。台灣的電視新聞綜藝化自壹週刊、蘋果日報在台出刊後更加明顯氾濫，這種辛辣聳動的刊物成為各家電視新聞台的重要新聞來源。此外，過多的24小時新聞台為了搶收視率亦在視聽覺吸引及口語報導方式上無所不用其極的“吸睛”。值得一探的是，觀眾對於這種綜藝化播報方式的觀感究竟如何，而此種播報方式對於其電視新聞可信度又是否會有影響。 本文從不同變項探討現今台灣電視新聞綜藝化手法對大學生評估新聞可信度的影響及觀感。除人口變項外，亦討論媒介使用習慣、媒體素養與電視新聞可信度評價的關係。研究結果發現，一般來說，媒體素養越高的受測者對台灣電視新聞可信度評價越低，也較不喜歡看綜藝化手法製作的電視新聞。此外，本文除討論現今常使用的綜藝化手法所引發的新聞可信度評價影響，亦發現大多數綜藝化手法應用於硬性新聞較應用於軟性新聞播報中引發較低的新聞可信度評價。 / The phenomenon of infotainment tendency in TV news broadcasting has been rising globally. Taiwan is no exception since last decade, especially a turning point that Apple Daily first published in Taiwan. This sensationalism- oriented publication has become an essential reference for TV news producers and resulted in a revolution of TV news in Taiwan, which from content to format presentation have become relatively infotainment- oriented. The excessive 24-hour news channels is another cause of the infotainment phenomenon in Taiwan, which results in a vicious viewing rate competition. In order to draw audience’s attention, each channel tries hard to be “eye- catching” to please audience instead of providing substantive information. This study investigated the effect of the current prosperous infotainment tendencies in news broadcasting in Taiwan on college audience’s evaluation and perception of TV news credibility through different variables. In addition to demographic investigation, this study also conducted research on the correlation between audience’s media literacy level, media use habit and TV news credibility evaluation. It is found that respondents with more media understanding are more sensitive and critical to the infotainment issue in TV news. Moreover, the results showed that the infotainment applications used in hard news generally lead to lower TV news credibility than used in soft news. The findings of this study contribute reference to the news discipline for TV news producers in Taiwan.

This thesis seeks to define the difference between commercial media and public service media, given the degree of tabloidization. The work is based on the assumption that the tabloid principles do not interfere only the commercial media, but due to the gradual development of the media industry they even penetrate the public service media. The work is focused on the reasons and forms of penetration by the tabloid media principles to the public. The theoretical section outlines the basic theoretical background and terminology to the topic of public service media and to the topic of tabloid principles. There are presented the characteristics of the tabloid media in the theoretical part, not only in theme but also in language. At first the methods used are presented in the analytic part and then work attempts to outline the current situation in the public service media, specifically on the example of radio broadcasting. The practical part of this thesis is based on the content analysis of media messages. Public media represents the Český Rozhlas 1 - Radiožurnál, concretely its news reports. This work not only tries to find the tabloid principles in broadcast of this media, but also try to make its comparison with the news of commercial media, represented by broadcasting station Radio Impuls. Aim of this work is to confirm or eventually to refute the assumption that public service media in the Czech Republic are affected by some degree of tabloidization in the form of penetration of tabloid principles.

The 85th percentile off-road glances while performing three tasks on an in-vehicle system while driving in a simulator was investigated. The tasks were a radio task, a telephone task and a sound settings task which were performed at three occasions each. The distribution of 85th percentile off-road glance durations for each subject and task showed that durations differed between individuals rather than between tasks. It also turned out that durations longer than 2.00 seconds were not rare and 2 of 16 subjects had durations longer than 2.00 seconds in the radio task. Even though the distribution showed small differences between tasks on an individual level, differences on a group level were found between the tasks. A tendency of a learning effect was found, which implied a decrease in 85th percentile off-road glance durations as the tasks were performed at several occasions. A tendency of a floor effect in 85th percentile off-road glance durations, when the subjects are familiarized with tasks, was also found. Performance on a computerized trail-making test, measuring ability of visual search, motor speed and mental flexibility, was found not to be related with 85th percentile off-road glance durations.

The phenomenon of political marketing entered - together with democratic political competition - the Czech Republic after 1989. Together with parliamentary elections in 2006 a strong negative election campaigns appeared. The parliamentary elections in 2007 proved a stalemate and they launched a long period of political instability. An unusually sharp and mostly negative election campaign proceeded in the Czech Republic continuously during the years 2006 - 2010. For the first time foreign advisory firms prepared strategies for the biggest political parties - ČSSD and ODS. The election campaigns were characteristic not only of mass enter of negativism imported by the foreign consultants, but also of a great number of anonymous mocking and defamatory political advertisements, the customer and the payer of which was unknown and unable to find. The negative campaigns then introduced both the question of ethical limits in the election marketing and of the harmful influence of opaqueness in contracting and financing the campaigns. The thesis is dealing with regularities of political marketing which got control of Czech political scene in 2006 - 2010, and it formulates hypotheses about the possible effecs of negative, defamatory and mocking political campaigns on the environment of Czech public politics.

Ziel dieser Arbeit ist es einerseits, allgemeine Erwartungen an die Bedienabläufe eines Fahrerinformationssystems zu ermitteln, welche Benutzer aus ihren Vorerfahrungen mit anderen technischen Geräten mitbringen, und andererseits zu zeigen, dass sich die Anpassung der Bedienabläufe eines Fahrerinformationssystems an diese allgemeinen Benutzererwartungen vorteilhaft auf die Gebrauchstauglichkeit des Gerätes auswirkt. Dabei wird eine Erwartung, welche in einer bestimmten Bediensituation an das Gerät besteht, verstanden als das mentale Modell von der Funktionsweise des Systems, welches der Benutzer in genau dieser Situation aus seinem schematischen Vorwissen und Merkmalen der Bedienoberfläche des zu bedienenden Gerätes bildet. In einer ersten Studie werden zunächst durch einen Vergleich mit dem konzeptuellen Modell eines bestehenden Fahrerinformationssystems diejenigen mentalen Modelle der Benutzer von Bedienabläufen identifiziert, welche interindividuell übereinstimmen. Dazu wird eine auf process tracing aufbauende, eigens entwickelte Methodik eingesetzt, welche es ebenfalls erlaubt, für diese Erwartungen diejenigen Aspekte zu ermitteln, welche unabhängig von speziellen Merkmalen des untersuchten Systems auch für Bedienabläufe eines Fahrerinformationssystems generell zutreffen. In einer nächsten Studie werden die ermittelten systemunabhängigen Benutzererwartungen verifiziert, indem aus ihnen das Bedienverhalten für ein zweites FIS mit anderem Bedienkonzept vorhergesagt wird. Dank der Verwendung des gleichen, handlungspsychologisch definierten Analyseniveaus für mentale und konzeptuelle Modelle können die verifizierten systemunabhängigen, interindividuell übereinstimmenden Benutzererwartungen als konzeptuelle Modelle in Form von Status-Übergangs-Diagrammen dargestellt und so als allgemeine Gestaltungsempfehlungen für Bedienabläufe in Fahrerinformationssystemen festgehalten werden. In einer dritten Studie werden die Bedienabläufe eines Prototypen entsprechend den allgemeinen Benutzererwartungen gestaltet und gegenüber Bedienabläufen evaluiert, welche von den Benutzererwartungen abweichen. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Bedienabläufe, welche mit den allgemeinen mentalen Modellen der Benutzer übereinstimmen, zu besseren Bedienleistungen und Systembewertung auf Seiten der Benutzer führen. Die formulierten allgemeinen Gestaltungsempfehlungen sind meist generalisierbar auf andere Domänen und die Ergebnisse dieser Arbeit bieten Ansatzpunkte für zukünftige Forschungsarbeiten. / The presented research project has two main goals: To learn about the nature of users’ general expectancies towards the operation of infotainment systems in passenger cars and to show that designing the paths of operation according to the users’ expectancies has positive effects on the usability of such systems. An expectancy at a certain point in the course of operation is understood as the mental model which the user forms of the system’s functionality in this situation on the basis of the system’s interface’s properties and his or her past experiences with other technical devices. A first study compares the conceptional model of an existing in-car infotainment system with the mental models of people using this system and thus identifies which mental models are shared interindividually by a majority of the users. The methodology used in this study was developed based on process tracing and permitted to equally identify those aspects of the mental models which are independent of the specific interaction concept of the examined system and therefore apply to the paths of operation of any in-car infotainment system in general. A next study verifies the users’ system-independent expectancies found in the first study by predicting users’ behavior during the operation of a second system with a different user interface. Both the users’ mental models and the systems’ conceptional models are analyzed and described using the same level of abstraction which is defined on the basis of action regulation theory. Thus directly comparable to the conceptional models, the users’ expectancies are described as state-transition diagrams which in turn as conceptional models represent the derived recommendations for the design of operational paths in infotainment systems. A third study uses a prototype system to evaluate paths of operation which have been designed according to the general recommendations versus paths of operation which deviate from the users’ expectancies. The results of this third study show that a system with paths of operation matching the users’ general mental models permits better user performance and leads to greater customer satisfaction. The general rules for designing the paths of operation of an in-car infotainment system described in this project can be applied to other domains and open perspectives for future research.

This dissertation examines how the major television networks, in conjunction with the Reagan administration, launched a lingering cloud of nuclear anxiety that helped to revive the Cold War during the 1980s. Placed within a larger political and cultural post-war context, this national preoccupation with a global show-down with the Soviet Union at times both hindered and bolstered Reagan’s image as the archetypal conservative, cowboy President that could free America from its liberal adolescent past now caustically referred to as “the sixties.” This stalwart image of Reagan, created and carefully managed by a number of highly-paid marketing executives, as one of the embodiment of peaceful deterrence, came under attack in the early 1980s when the “liberal” Nuclear Freeze movement showed signs of becoming politically threatening to the staunch conservative pledging to win the Cold War at any cost. And even if the nuclear freeze movement itself was not powerful enough to undergo the Herculean task of removing the President in 1984, the movement was compassionate enough to appeal to a mass audience, especially when framed in narrative form on network television. In the early 1980s, debates over the possibility of nuclear war and other pertinent Cold War related issues became much more democratized in their visibility on the network airwaves. However, the message disseminated from the networks was not placed in an educational framework, nor did these television productions clarify complicated nuclear issues such as nuclear winter theory and proliferation. I argue this renewed network attention on nuclear issues was not placed in an historical framework and likely confused American viewers because it routinely exposed audiences to both fact and fiction, undifferentiated at the level of the mass media.

The purpose of this study is to examine why the media has a more negative attitude towards lobbyism in 2014 compared to earlier years since the 1970s in Sweden. This study examines first if a change of attitude has occurred between the given years and whether the attitude is more positive, negative or neutral towards lobbyism in recent years compared to earlier years and lastly if the media are comparing different contexts in which lobbying takes place. The method of this study is based on quantitative content analysis, and on Kanol’s ideas that by implementing theories from different disciplines one can develop theories on comparative lobbying in order to increase and improve our knowledge on the phenomenon of lobbyism as the contemporary research on the subject are scars and underdeveloped. The material in this study are news articles that have been collected between 1970 to 2000 and every second year from 2000 up until 2014. This study also provides a comprehensive picture of the Swedish context in which lobbying takes place by gathering information from multiple sources and earlier studies as this information has as of yet not been gathered in a single study up until now. The conclusion is that there has been a change of attitude towards lobbyism in Sweden, however, the dominant attitude is not a negative but rather a more skeptical/cynical one which has increased since 1992. The term lobbying is controversial because it’s being mentioned in various topics that could be considered negative by the reader as the decision making whether the news article is negative or positive is subjective. Because the media has increased its negative news reporting overall and that the unconscious mind of the reader is also attracted to negative news reporting, the term lobbying can be considered “negative” overall as it is constantly being mentioned in negative contexts even when the article is not about lobbying. A reasonable explanation why the media has a more negative / skeptical attitude to lobbyism is because of previous scandals related to lobbying either in Sweden or outside the country's border, but also because the media can’t hold the elected officials responsible for their actions as transparency and accountability is absent. Because of the increased reporting in Sweden on lobbying from all over the world, the subject will most likely become more relevant on the Swedish political agenda.